A couple of other movies:
HEATWAVE: Watchable but routine 2022 thriller about a bisexual Black woman with a checkered past (Kat Graham) who lands an exciting job with an upscale commercial real estate firm and finds a sexy white girlfriend (Merritt Patterson), only to find herself in a world of trouble after discovering that her new girlfriend is actually the trophy wife of her jealous, domineering new boss (Sebastian Roché). Making the protagonist a Black woman is novel for this genre (although it has less impact on the plot than perhaps it should), and the Graham character is a resourceful heroine, but the plot isn't quite inventive enough to make up for the all-too-familiar premise, and the story can't seem to decide what note it wants to end on, leading to a less-than-satisfying resolution. The corny voiceover that bookends the film doesn't help either.
THE HOT SPOT: GIF sets floating around Tumblr might give you the mistaken impression that this 1990 thriller, directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, and Jennifer Connelly, is some kind of forgotten sexy gem. In fact, it's a curiously lifeless neo-noir about a sleazy used car salesman (Johnson) in a small Texas town who attempts to juggle an ill-advised affair with his boss's vampish wife (Madsen), who has murder on her mind, with his pursuit of the dealership's financing manager (Connelly), a nice girl who's being blackmailed by a local ne'er-do-well (William Sadler) over her past lesbian affair with a now-dead female friend. Wants to evoke DOUBLE INDEMNITY and BODY HEAT, but it trips from plot point to plot point in disjointed, illogical fashion, failing to develop any real narrative momentum, much less suspense. Despite its murders, arson, and other assorted mayhem, it's ultimately just boring, with only the periodic scenes of Madsen or Connelly mostly naked to keep the viewer awake (although the movie defies convention in not making its one bisexual character a conniving femme fatale). Don't waste your time.
THE SQUAD: Frustratingly joyless, moderately exploitative 2023 action movie, written, produced, and directed by Rick Walker, about three ruthless, bikini-clad 20something white girls (Alea Hansinger, Meghan Carrasquillo, and Grace Evans), once rescued from foster care by a benefactor called Alpha (Jennifer Ferguson), who attempt to break into the drug scene on the Oklahoma coast in the run-up to spring break and quickly run afoul of the game's established players. The leering direction is a series of music video clichés — every scene feels like it's leading up to either a montage or a dance routine that's not forthcoming — and the clumsy script does a terrible job of establishing basic plot and character details (the girls' relationship with Alpha, the most potentially interesting part of the story, is consigned to a handful of awkwardly placed flashbacks). Of the poorly defined characters, only the girls' friend JC makes any impression, and then mostly because of the physical presence of MMA star Julia Avila (who isn't given much chance to demonstrate whether or not she can act). As demonstrated by the silly but entertaining 2018 remake of SUPERFLY (by Director X and Alex Tse), it's possible to do this kind of thing in a way that at least qualifies as dumb fun, but THE SQUAD is too mean-spirited to work even on that level, and the end titles' promise of a sequel seems more like a threat than a promise.
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Some cool Easter eggs I caught watching My Adventures with Superman that I want to show to people so they can be in on it with comic book readers:
For the first episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the second episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the third episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the fourth episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the sixth episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the seventh episode's Easter eggs it's here and here
For the eighth episode's Easter eggs post it's here
For the ninth episode's Easter eggs post it's here
For the tenth episode's Easter eggs post it's here
SPOILERS if you haven't seen this week's episode obviously
We start off the episode with this shot of Superman with the drawn on glasses. A good homage to what Lois did in the 1980 Superman II movie...
where she not only drew the glasses but also a full suit and hat on a picture of Superman.
Next we see Jimmy waking up and seeing someone debunking his conspiracy theories on Sub-Diego.
Sub Diego was an actual place in the DC universe before the New 52 reboot. In Aquaman #15 and #16 (2003) , shown here (W: Will Pfeifer, P: Patrick Gleason, I: Christian Alamy, C: Nathan Eyring, L: Jared K. Fletcher for issue 15, Nick Napolitano for issue 16). The underwater city is actually San Diego, but is buried underwater thanks to a tidal wave and makes its first appearance in Aquaman #15 (2003). There was a lot of casualties from this.
When we get to our title its "You Will Believe A Man Can Lie" a reference to the tagline for the 1978 Superman movie.
As seen here on the poster, it says "You'll believe a man can fly".
Next we see our villain, well one of the villains, for the episode, Heatwave.
In the comics Heatwave makes his first appearance in Flash 140 (1963) (cover art by Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, and Ira Schnapp). Heatwave aka Mick Rory is a Flash rogue usually acting as a rival to Captain Cold aka Leonard Snart. In MAwS, their Heatwave shares the same last name and powers, but MAwS Heatwave is gender flipped. You might have seen Heatwave in the CW DC comics shows where he is played by Dominic Purcell in The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.
Lois, later in the episode, name drops Heatwave's name.
Gotta be honest when Heatwave showed up I was like is that Rampage? Cuz the MAwS design looks vaguely like Rampage.
If she does show up in MAwS, I'll talk more about her in another post, but for now, Rampage aka Karen Lou "Kitty" Faulkner, makes her first appearance in Superman #7 (1987) (full page here: W&P: John Byrne, I: Karl Kesel, C: Tom Ziuko, L: John Costanza).
Steve drags Jimmy to film his debunking Flamebird videos and references Starro who I talked about here.
Lois, later runs around with the Daily Planet police scanner trying to catch Superman and the dispatcher reports that a robbery is in progress at McGuinness Luxe Garage.
This is a nice reference to Ed McGuinness who was the artist for Superman, Action Comics, and Superman/Batman in the early 2000s. If you've seen Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, then you'll know the movie takes inspiration from his character designs in the first arc of the Superman/Batman comic series. The Superman/Batman #1 (2003) cover here is done by Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines, and Dave Stewart. I like Ed McGuinness's pencils, very stylized.
Heatwave name drops Livewire and the Gazzo mod family. Both of whom I've talked about here and here respectively
Heatwave has been running away from Deathstroke here who has been taking our her crew. Notice that Slade Wilson doesn't have the half black half orange helmet yet that almost every Deathstroke depiction always has.
He, Amanda Waller, and the General who I totally think is General Sam Lane, Lois's dad, are fans of DBZ cuz of the scouters they're wearing.
Later in the scene we see the General again he's totally General Sam Lane. I'll talk more about him when we get a double confirmation through a name drop/reveal in a later post calling Amanda Waller, Mandy. What a fucking bold thing to say to Waller! Like damn! power move right there!
Superman and Deathstroke are fighting under a highway and we see the traffic is heading to Bludhaven!
Very good reference to my favorite character in all of pop culture, Dick Grayson aka Nightwing. Nightwing makes Bludhaven his city to protect. The city makes its first appearance in Nightwing #1 (1996) (the panel here - W: Chuck Dixon, P: Scott McDaniel, I: Karl Story, C: Roberta Tewes, L: John Costanza). Fun Bludhaven fact, its crime rate is WORST than Gotham! Also HIGHLY recommend reading the new Nightwing run cuz its fucking amazing! Won a few Eisner Awards (think the Oscars but for comic books) recently and I am not just saying that because I am a Dick Grayson fan.
Near the end of the episode, we see Lois willing to jump off a building to prove that Clark is Superman. A lot of discourse was happening online over this, but I do want to say this is pretty on brand for her to do.
In Superman II, Lois does something similar and Clark saves her. its just in MAwS, Clark flies to save her thus ruining the secret identity, while in Superman II, Clark does save her but he is still able to get away with it thanks to him playing it more subtly.
Don't know why people we're in such a fucking fit over something that Lois has done before.
In the after credits scene, Jimmy, who planned a sasquatch finding adventure with Lois and Clark, but they were dealing with their shit and Jimmy was by himself, decides to do the finding on his own and meets a giant gorilla. In the first episode Jimmy mentions an intelligent gorilla in France and my guess is this is Monsieur Mallah. You can read more about him here.
If you made it this far down, I appreciate you taking the time to check this post out and if you want to see my other MAwS Easter Eggs posts -
Episode 1 is here
Episode 2 is here
Episode 3 is here
Episode 4 is here
Episode 6 is here
Episode 7 is here and here
Episode 8 is here
Episode 9 is here
Episode 10 is here
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Two movies with actual wlw content:
THE INCREDIBLY TRUE ADVENTURES OF TWO GIRLS IN LOVE (1995): Low-budget lesbian teen romcom, written and directed by Maria Maggenti, about the budding romance between 17-year-old baby butch Randy (Laurel Holloman, who later played Tina on THE L WORD), who works at a gas station and is in danger of not graduating high school, and a rich Black classmate named Evie (Nicole Ari Parker), who drives a $50,000 SUV and reads Walt Whitman. Cute and generally charming, though mostly at a sitcom level, it's most interesting when it contrasts the girls' home lives (Randy lives with her lesbian moms and aunt, while Evie lives with her affluent control freak single mother, played by Stephanie Berry). A somewhat disquieting element is teenage Randy's ongoing on-the-down-low affair with an older married woman (Maggie Moore), a situation that doesn't seem to trouble anyone other than the woman's boorish husband (John Elsen), and which the movie ultimately plays for laughs. CONTAINS LESBIANS? It's a lesbian movie, Bront. VERDICT: Pleasant, inconsequential.
JAGGED MIND (2023): Awkwardly titled, awkwardly realized lesbian thriller about a young Black artist named Billie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers), on the rebound from an emotionally unavailable ex (Rosaline Elbay), who jumps impulsively into a new relationship with a white woman named Alex (Shannon Woodward) despite struggling with debilitating memory problems that result in frequent déjà vu and jarring flashbacks to arguments and even violent incidents that can't have actually happened. (Or can they? Etc.) The editing tricks used to illustrate Bilie's flashbacks are dramatically effective, but the eventual explanation of what's going on is not, involving too big a leap from what's already been established while leaving some important story threads (and character motivations) largely unexplained; the film ends up relying heavily on Richardson-Sellers' looks and charm to paper over an abundance of holes in the plot. Perhaps most interesting as a companion piece to the 2022 movie HEATWAVE, with Kat Graham, another recent thriller about a queer Black heroine falling, at her peril, for a mysterious white woman — an emerging sub-genre of gay cautionary tale? (Of the two, HEATWAVE is better, mostly because while it also falls short, its more modest ambitions keep it from bruising itself quite so badly in the fall.) CONTAINS LESBIANS? Almost exclusively! VERDICT: Good-looking, half-baked.
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