Emo Hulk?

So, in case I haven't made it clear, I am a comic book person. They're the first things I remember reading, when I was old enough to pick what I wanted to read. I started with Archie (I was always wanted to be Veronica-why not? She had money and clothes and the nice house. Who wanted to be nice Betty? Maybe this explains my love for Scarlett O'Hara...) and moved on to Richie Rich (I was seven) and from there moved on to my brother and sister's comics-reading their leftovers. I'm not sure my parents approved, but as I was the youngest of three, I think they had reached the point of not really caring what their youngest child was reading. And so I moved on to Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and (my favorite) the Avengers. Iron Man got tossed in, of course he did, he was one the founding members of the Avengers. The X-Men joined in, Thor as well. I always loved Daredevil (haven't quite forgiven Ben Affleck for what he did to a character I loved) and Captain America as well. My Mom even bought me a subscription to The Avengers when I was 12-I thought it was the coolest thing ever! I got it in the mail, before everyone else! And they knew my name at the comic book store-as I found out when my brother and sister went there to "buy a present for our little sister". And what did they say? "Oh, you must be Susan's brother and sister!". To be fair, I think I was the only ten-year old girl in there, spending my allowance on old comic books-at that point, very few girls read comic books-I certainly didn't know any, as my sister had given them up years before.
So, I think I have comic-book cred. And all of this is a roundabout way of saying there are many things I liked about the new Hulk movie and a few things I did not. First things first-I liked all the nods to the Hulk's history. This movie gives props to people who know the Hulk's history-Bill Bixby in The Courtship of Eddie's Father on the TV, the big stretchy purple pants Liv Tyler bus for Ed Norton (which he refuses to wear), which are a nod to the purple pants the Hulk and Banner always seemed to wear, even the cameo by Lou Ferrigno as a big security guard were all acknowledgements of the Hulk's history-sorry Eric Bana, you got dissed.
What else did I like? Ed Norton is a really good actor. If you missed his debit movie in Primal Fear, I suggest you get it-it's also notable as the movie in which Richard Gere reinvented himself. No one does tortured better better than Norton-and Bruce Banner is nothing if not tortured. When his heartbeat gets raised, he transforms into a green behemoth with no control-although in this movie, he's a bit like Frankenstein's monster. And Banner hates himself for this, and for knowing that if the government gets its hands on him, they will do their best to reproduce and weaponize him. All he wants to do is get rid of the monster in his blood and to be left alone-and the movie does a good job of showing this-but unfortunately by almost the end of the movie, I wanted to punch Norton just so he'd turn into the Hulk again. I felt for him, I really did, but he just looked so mopey through the whole thing, it was annoying. Finally at the end, Banner acts like a hero. Granted, he never wants to unleash the Hulk, so he's required to be passive but it just got tiresome. When he insists that they let him fall out of the copter so he'll transform to fight the Abomination (and I just don't know what to say about that scene. He falls and it's clearly a reference to several other scenes of sacrifice in movies and it was pretentious) but the fight scenes with the Abomination were good. I'm still a little confused as to what Tim Roth is doing in this movie, indie guy that he usually is, but he gives a great tough guy performance-I never would have pictured as British Army material. Kicked out the British Army for selling drugs or insubordination, yes. Sticking it out to make officer? No. And I'll also say this, the final scene (ignoring the Tony Stark/General Ross bit) was cool. Finally Banner knows he's going to turn into the Hulk-his eyes flash green and hemay not want to be the Hulk but at this point, the Hulk takes over and Banner smiles. That smile is very cool and it has flashes Norton's best performances in it. It's enough to make me sorry he's not playing Stephen Collins in State of Play.
So, those are the things I liked, which brings me to a sore point. Does every woman in a comic book movie have to be a wuss? Is that necessary? And if there is an Avengers movie in the works, how on Earth will that attitude fit in with Janet Van Dyne, rich and smart (usually, except when it comes to her on-and-off again husband, the Amazing Ant-Man) was one of the founding members of the Avengers-and she is no wuss. The Wasp would take on anyone-and toss in many smart-ass comments along the way. All this is to say that Liv Tyler's character was tiresome. Really tiresome. She's in love with a guy who turns into a monster-shouldn't she be trying harder to get him instead of crying all the time? She's a molecular biologist, for crying out loud. She should meet up with Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy, two characters also turned into extreme wusses in their movies. Honestly, if they make an Avengers movie, what will they do to the Wasp? The Scarlet Witch? The Black Widow? The Widow is a bad ass and if they turn her into another female character who sits around and whines about who she is and what she's done, instead of DOING SOMETHING about it, I won't be happy.
Can we please get some good female characters? The X-Men movies did good job with their good and bad mutants (I'm going to ignore the third one, which I hated)-is it so hard to do it again?

Books I've Read Recently

But before the books, a few words about George Carlin. Carlin was a guy I felt I grew up with, like so may others on this blog. He was always there on the TV, on Carson or SNL (when I was old enough to watch it) and always touring. he was always funny, always sharp, always right on the money. He poked, he prodded and his words shone. In this day and age of everyone doing stand-up and getting a movie deal out of it that they don't deserve (I'm looking at you, Dane Cook), Carlin was genuinely funny and smart-always. I have to say this though-my sister and I saw him in concert sometime in the mid-Eighties and he was hilarious. And the line we liked the best? "How many times have you heard YOUR mother say "where are the good scissors?'" That was definitely our Mom he was channeling-and everyone else's as well, considering the laughs. So thank you, George, you were a very funny guy who made a lot of people laugh and that's not a bad way to have lived your life.

So, I've been reading a lot of science fiction lately. Usually I go back and forth between mysteries, sci-fi and some random book that sounds good (Basques, trilobites,H.L. Mencken) but it's been sci-fi lately, except for all the Charles Todd books, which just get better and better. So what was good and what wasn't?

I really like Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. I haven't read that much classic sci-fi, a lot of it seems to have the names Asimov and Clarke on the list and somehow that just puts me off. But I read about this on i09.com and decided to give it a shot. It's the story of spaceman Gulliver Foyle, who gets marooned in space, left there not only by his crew mates but by a space ship that passes him by with no rescue. he becomes determined to seek revenge and to that end, a man described as not very bright and barely literate, teaches himself to run his abandoned ship. Gully has his own travels and he proves to be a not very nice person. He abandons those rescued him, he rapes his teacher (in his own 1950's way, where you can't be sure that's what happened) and he leaves his girlfriend out in the middle of space after he's taken all the loot they were after.
Not very nice, eh? But the thing is, he learns something about himself each time. He transforms from the person in the beginning who could barely say his name to someone who is very self-aware and the process of change is like watching someone being taught and watching them learn. Neil Gaiman in the foreword to this edition likens each change to being reborn and I agree. It's very cool see how Gully transforms each time.

I also read Titan, by John Varley. Apparently this book is very well-known and quite popular (as I told my friend Y, "I'm reading the classics in a very half-assed kind of way) but all it did was annoy me and I'm not sure why. Was it the faint whiff of misogyny? Or the faint whiff of homophobia? Or that the heroine's favorite vice was cocaine? This was written in 1979, so I'm sure all the guys who read it, thought "ooooh! Two girls together and one probably still likes guys! And cocaine! And she becomes a wizard! How cool is this?" Unfortunately, it annoyed me. However, I was at the DMV for four hours that day in my car, in 100 degree heat waiting for it to be inspected, so I was grateful to have something to read, even if it was this.

And now, am I reading another Alfred Bester? No, I am not. Am I reading The Silver Swan, the sequel to Christine Falls? No, I'm not reading that either. I'm reading the sequel to Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds-a book called Redemption Ark. Ah, Revelation Space. The book that each time I picked up, I was never sure who was narrating it at that point. I don't even remember how many different narrators it had-at least three and maybe more. I remember being confused by it and vaguely liking it-but I'm still not quite sure why I bought the sequel because honestly I didn't think I liked it that much and I'm still not sure why I'm reading it when I have MANY other good books I'd rather be reading.
I think I'm doing it because I feel like I'd be leaving something unfinished if I didn't read it (oh God! Does that mean I have to read the sequel to this book too?). I've stopped only two books in my life in the middle and didn't finish them because I didn't like them and I didn't care how they ended (one of Anne Rice's latter vampire books, which was crappy and The General's Daughter which so violent and mysogynist that I couldn't take it-and I have a high tolerance for that sort of thing) and Revelation Space will not join that list. So I don't know how long it will take to finish but at least while there are four different stories going on, I haven't gotten them confused yet and I know what's happening. We'll see how long that lasts.

Oh God No, Part Infinity.

Before I start my review of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Along With Crystal Skull and an Ark, I would like to say that I read that Robert Downey Jr is considering making a Travis McGee movie.
Please, for the love of God, don't do it. Yes, you're a great actor, especially when you're sober. And yes, the success of Iron Man practically gives you carte blanche to do whatever you like. And yes, the McGee books are full of stories that practically beg to be made into movies of some kind, but that doesn't mean you should. Yes, you can probably do just about anything if you put your mind to it but please leave McGee alone. I'm not one to say that the person being cast has to look exactly like the character described in the book-but it does help and you are almost physically the opposite of the way the character is described.
On the other hand, sticking to the way a character is described means someone who can't act might get the part, so what do I know?
Who will play Meyer?

So, Indy was good. It wasn't great but there was never a dull moment, there was non-stop action and some parts were very cool (I speak, of course, of the scene in the beginning when Indy is brought by the bad guys to a warehouse to find a certain box-and in the ensuing mayhem there is a brief glimpse in a broken box of the Ark of the Covenant. So, there's a lost temple and some alien looking creatures and some scorpions and killer ants...a typical Indiana Jones movie. It was perfectly entertaining, although I will say that I thought Cate Blanchett's accent had a tendency to slip. Yes, she was evil (and through a quest for knowledge, destroyed herself, as they always do) but every time I heard her Aussie accent coming through, I thought it was funny that someone so good at what she does let that happen. I liked Shia, he sold his performance, as he always does. And it was good to see Karen Allen again-could you please act more now that your kids are older? And as for Harrison Ford...well, he still looks pretty good for 65 but the man is NOT a great actor and the older he gets, the less he seems to care. Ah for the Harrison of Star Wars who was a charming rogue or the Harrison of Witness, who danced with Kelly in the barn. Even the Harrison of What Lies Beneath, playing the nice doctor who wondered why is wife was going a little crazy all the while knowing the cause. I won't say he was phoning it in in Indiana Jones when it was more than that-but it wasn't much more than that.

The WIngs!

Pro hockey never really excited me that much. The play was too violent, the season too long-and they were pros. i was never sure if they played because they loved the game or because they were being paid-unlike college athletes that you KNEW played because they loved it-because at Michigan State, they kicked you off the team if you didn't pull the grades (the football players were the ones that got a pass).

But I always had a soft spot for red Wings. When my Dad and I would drive home after a MSU hockey game and it was the dead of winter and we'd be freezing until the heat came on-the Wings would always have a game on. And this was at a time when when their nickname was Dead Things or Dead Wings-and the if you had told them then that they would win the Stanley Cup four times in 11 years, they would have laughed at you. I cried the first time they won the Cup. They won for their Captain, the indefatigable Steve Yzerman, who always gave it everything he had, who loved Detroit and led by example. The man who never got into trouble and worked hard every single time he was on the ice. By the time they won, everyone was afraid he was too old and that time had passed him and the team by-and if he was little slower than he was at the start of his career, nobody said anything-and then they won the Cup. All the players said at the time, that they won it for their Captain-how could they not? They loved him and he had lead them their-how could they go all this way and not win it for him?
And then they won it again. And this time, they said it was for themselves. To show that they could do it, that it wasn't a fluke, that they really were that good. Did they have anything left to prove? And the answer to that is yes-Yzerman is gone, Shanahan is gone, Sergei Federov is gone and so is Scotty Bowman and the new group wanted to prove that they were just as good, if not better than the old guard (well, the relatively speaking old guard).
And who did they pick as the Captain? I don't really want to turn this into a essay on Nicklas Lidstrom, on what a great player he is or how they couldn't have picked anyone better as Captain-but it's all true. They picked another man who leads by example, who doesn't talk about himself, but who has won the Norris Trophy )for the best defenseman in the NHL) five times, the Conn Smythe Trophy once (for the MVP in the series), the gold medal at the Olympics and the Stanley Cup four times-and he doesn't want to talk about himself (of course he doesn't, he's Swedish). But I do want to say what a grand gesture it was to hand the Cup off to Dallas Drake after his turn on the ice with it. It's always symbolic, who the Captain hands it to-sometimes it's a veteran, sometimes an up-and comer, sometimes the most valuable player. Lidstrom handed it off to 16 year veteran who had never really come close to the Cup before and was on the verge of retiring.
Thank you, Nik for being a not only player that Detroit can be proud of but for being that guy, the guy who hands off the Cup to a veteran player who hadn't come close to it before. That says volumes about who you are as a person and as a hockey player. The veteran Wings always say, if you want to know how to act-watch Nik. Watch what he does, how acts and what he says, and I can think of few better examples in sports or in daily life than to be like Nik. Not flashy, not bragging, but getting the job done every day and leading by example-you would be hard put to find someone with better character than this 38 year-old Swede who has made a home for himself in Detroit.

I Hate What You etc...

Ah, spring in Washington which every year brings out badly dressed people. When everyone is bundled up in winter, it's hard to insult their clothing choices (except for that woman I saw a few years ago wearing her palish-pink coat, red beret and lime green scarf. That was a crime. And the woman I saw wearing a parka the other day when it was 60 out-what was that?). So, here are few crimes I've seen in the last few days.

1) Woman with orange/yellow/red small flower print skirt with purple top. First things first-namely, these two items did not go together in any way shape or form. They were not in the same color family and the juxtaposition was jarring and not in a good way. I'd also like to point out that I could clearly see that (despite the length of the skirt) she was wearing knee-highs instead of nylons. Lady-you were wearing a (nice) t-shirt and a casual skirt-does the place you work require hosiery? This look actually would be better without any kind of stockings, let alone knee-highs that you can see. (as an aside, I did this once in my life. I was 10 and had to point out my socks and skirt in presentation in French class that day and I couldn't find my knee socks. I repeat, I was 10).

2) Woman I saw today wearing black pants and brown skirt. Lady, your pants were fine. I liked the brown shirt with it's slightly longer sleeves and it fit you nicely as well. but they did NOT go together. It looked dreary and drab and mismatched. The pants were nice and just about anything would have gone with them-and picked a nice brown shirt? Please call me the next time before you get dressed so I can talk you out of it.

3) Lady I saw at lunch today wearing a navy suit with a black shirt (or black suit with a navy shirt). Okay. Anyone who knows me knows I like black clothes and that that has been going on for a very long time. (conversation in the 80's with a guy friend:
Me: I saw a great dress in the window today-I really liked it
Guy: And it was black and what other color?

I have countless black suits, skirts, pants, dresses and tops for all seasons, weights, lengths. My sister once asked me if I had a black skirt she could borrow and I told she had to more specific-I had short, long, medium in cotton, wool, and silk. I had pleated, straight, a-line, narrow, pencil in casual to very dressy. She told me she two black skirts, one for winter and one for summer and I gaped at her.
I light of this, I think it's fair to say I love black and worn countless colors, stripes and patterns with it. However, I have never worn navy with it because it looks like CRAP. people can't figure you if you made a mistake-did you think it matched? Did you think it was one color but it's really not? The navy in this instance was very dark but just blue enough that you could tell it wasn't black and it didn't go together. What it did do was hurt my eyes.

Sex and the City and 300

I went to see the Sex and the City movie, mainly because my good friend R really wanted to go. She loves the show (like a billion other women) so I said I'd go with her. Did I really want to go? Not really. I was not a huge fan of the show, not like M, who loves it and all the seasons on DVD, or D, who every time we went traveling and the hotel had a TV, asked if we could see if it was playing. I finally gave her the entire series on DVD for Christmas a couple of years ago and it was the best gift I've ever given-she loved it. However, I don't look for it on TV (in fact, I usually avoid it) and I just didn't really care-it wasn't my show. However, the movie was very entertaining. Yes, it was filled with drama and consequences and far too many fashion montages, but it was still good. I would have cut the 80's montage, although it was nice to see the tutu again but they had to keep the wedding montage-those dresses were amazing. Still, I didn't care for most of the shoes. Yes, the were high, but the blue Manolos were not special (especially glitzy, maybe) and those sandals that had a sort of sock covering most of the foot were fugly. I did covet Charlotte's dress at the big wedding-it was black and skinny that flared out at the bottom like a saucer and it was beautiful. All in all, it was entertaining, although I wasn't really invested in these character, so their drama didn't really get to me. Also, it did not need to be 2 1/2 hours long-jeez.

My antidote for Sex and the City was finally watching 300, which has been hanging around my apartment for practically a month now. Did I like it? It's hard to say. There were many things to like about it-the script was good, the performances in it were good-Gerard Butler, Lena Heady, even Rodrigo Santoro, (endlessly mocked for his short-lived appearance on Lost) were all good. I liked the endless sub-text of the small force fighting the oppressors who rule the world. It is the Iraqis fight the US? But the Spartans talk about fighting for freedom, the must be the US and the Persians they fight are from present day Iraq, so it must be the other way. I enjoyed myself by switching it around throughout the movie and deciding which side was which.
Do we need a summary? The might of the Persian Empire and the god-king Xerxes is about the display his wrath unless the Spartans bow down to him. The freedom-loving Spartans (ignoring the fact that Sparta was a fascist state and didn't like freedom anymore than the Persians, they just liked their version better and fought so much that they wouldn't give in to anyone, let alone the Persians) take their 300 warriors and make their last stand under the leadership of King Leonidas at Thermopylae. Yes, they all died but it gave the rest of Greece a chance to band together and defeat the Persians a few years later.
So, the script was good, the perfs were good, what's not to love?
Well, I felt like I was watching some sort of fetish show. The Spartans all wore boots, some kind of trunks and long red cloaks (which seemed to me to be very impractical when fighting-they weren't much cover it looked like the could easily get caught in something or would be easy to grab onto so the enemy could pull you down and kill you. But that's me). The Persians, on the other hand, wore chains and piercings through every possible place. This was mainly Xerxes-and I found that kind of funny, because every sculpture of this time and place shows the men with long hair beards-all elaborately braided. But honestly, it was one scene away from turning into a gay porn movie. And as for how it was filmed-that extremely annoying. Yes, I get the whole "stylized to look like the comic book" thing and if you take it on its own terms, it was fine. But I kept hoping for something better and more real. The great thing about the movies being made lately of comic books (the good ones, anyway) make the comic book real-and this made the comic book into a comic book. I could have been really good-but it just missed.
I had to laugh when I went into the comic book store and was griping about Sex and the City though-the guy in there and I agreed that we would rather see Iron Man again and are anxiously awaiting The X-Files-those are MY movies.