A Descent into Dullness

I haven't done one of these in a while.  Which explains why so many movies.  Caught Million Dollar Arm in the theaters way back at the start of Summer.  Cute, formulaic Disney movie.  John Hamm is charming even when being a jack-ass.  And I like that they go looking for Indian cricket players to try and convert to baseball and get a pair of more general track and field types...

Also from the actual theater was the recent Dwayne Johnson Hercules.  Which reminded me more than a bit of his Scorpion King movie.  Together they make me wonder, if like Vin Diesel, Johnson also has an Awesome D&D Campaign I Really Want to Tell Everyone About...

Inside Llewyn Davis was wonderfully made, has some great folk music, great acting all round and a lead character I wanted to see die in an alley.  Fucking cat abandoner...

Blue is the Warmest Color is probably the first lesbian-centric romantic, coming-of-age movie that really earned its NC-17 rating.  I mean those were some seriously graphic and lengthy sex scenes.  Also looooooong movie...

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 wasn't as cute or charming as the original.  Still plenty of cuteness and food gags and charm.  Just not as much.  Also an actual villain rather than a more Person vs. Enviroment theme...

Earnest and Celestine is an adorabley sweet movie about a bear who wants to be a musician and not a lawyer and a mouse who wants to be an artist and not a lackey of the rodent dental industry.  And how they become best friends forever and ever...

Finally we've got the Lego Movie.  Which was not quite as Totally, Perfectlly Awesome as it was hyped.  But it comes dang close...

Teens Joni and Laser (yes that is really the characters name) decide to track down the sperm donor their lesbian moms (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) used. And once they meet him his involvement in their lives begins to shake up their family. One of those dramedy type movies. Where the humor comes from weird or uncomfortable situations rather than jokes...

Both Josh Hutcherson (who perfectly captures that exasperated sullenness of a 15-year old boy) and Mark Ruffalo (as the donor daddy) are pretty excellent here. Though Moore is also great, as is Bening. Even if she is channeling a bit of the stressed and controlling mom form American Beauty at times...

Wil tolerates her mother's matchmaking as just one of the costs of being Chinese. And right when she starts a relationship with dancer Vivian her mom shows up on her doorstep. At 48 the widowed Hwei-lan has gotten pregnant and refuses to tell anyone who the father is. A cute and charming romcom. I liked the mild twist at the end when the father is revealed also...

[Poll #1418089]

A Marvel heavy week. In fact a heavy week all around with a few older books tossed in. From Marvel we have the length-aly titled Avengers: The Initiative: featuring Reptil one-shot. Stegron the Dinosaur Man is attacking Initiative bases. And with the various teams still reeling from the Skrull invasion and Osborne's take-over Tigra has to rally various members to stop Stegron. Along with newest recruit Reptil, a kid with dinosaur related powers. Plus the book wraps up a dangling plot thread from the less than stellar and canceled Heroes-for-Hire book...

Guardians of the Galaxy has multiple resurrections and Phyla getting a new job...

And some of the fall-out from THAT leads to Richard Rider getting a new hero ID in Nova. Plus still MORE Osborne running things fall-out...

And the second part of the Darkhawk War of Kings lead-in ends. Still too much The Loners related emo-ness. So annoying. Being a super-hero teen sucked soooooo much. Also included is the original second issue of Darkhawk. Man does Mike Manley suck as an artist...

Wolverine: First Class returns under new writer Peter David. Its..ok. I mean it has Wolverine and Daredevil fighting the Hand. Thats always nice. But it doesn't really have the charm or wit of the Van Lente issues. Sadly it looks like David will be on the book for awhile to come...

Jack of Fables finishes the fall-out from the Revise/Book Burner war, secrets about Jack's origin are learned and things are set-up for a cross-over with Fables...

The Top 10: Special seems to jump ahead of the regular Season Two title. Pete's still no longer a cop and Girl Two has become a Public Defender. The one-shot is still being written by Zander Cannon but the art is by someone named Daxiong. Nice enough and he does well integrating the background cameos Top 10 is known for...

The Umbrella Academy has Space-Boy, the Kraken and Seance taking a stop-over in Vietnam before heading to Dallas to save President Kennedy from #5 and his time-travel buddies...

I also finally got issue two of Jersey Gods. Great cover by Darwyn Cooke and solid story. Zoe and Barock make a connection during the space god mall brawl and then have to go back to their day jobs...

Proof takes a step back to the early 1900s to a story of Proof's days with the circus and an encounter in London with the Spring-heeled Jack...

And from last week, I grab my first ever Avatar book. In this case the Jamie Delano title Rawbone. Which has lesbian pirates. Lesbian. Pirates. Why did no one tell me about this book last week! LESBIAN PIRATES!

A fingersmith is a term for a petty thief. One like Sue Trinder who is brought into a plot to defraud the wealthy heiress Maud Lilly. But Sue and her accomplices didn't plan on her and Maud falling in love. After a string of badly acted lesbian movies its nice to have one where the majority of the acting doesn't put me in a coma. Maybe its all the Britishness or the Victorian setting...

Also, the Victorian psychiatric "sciences" are pretty fucked up...

I swear 90% of all teen lesbian movies are either a: dreadfully dull or b: wander around aimlessly before ending without reaching any real point or of course c: both...

*sigh*

I mean a movie about a teacher/student relationship? At an all-girl Catholic private school? C'mon! How is that not a recipe for super hotness? It doesn't help that Diane Gaidry (poetry teacher Simone) and Erin Kelly (rebellious teen Annabelle) are attractive but very slight actors. And that in a 77 minute movie they spend 60 of them dancing around anything resembling conflict and/or the sex. If your going to label your movie as "a controversial story of forbidden love" maybe you should PUT SOME OF THAT IN THE MOVIE. Or even focus more on the over-controlling Mother Superior who runs the place. You now the one who forces to wear giant crosses until she agrees to stop wearing Buddhist prayer beads?

So disappointing...

You know, for a series about a culture where everyone is female until choosing a permanent gender at adulthood. And one about teen pilots who power up their divine aircraft with the power of girl-girl kissing. And was all about various love triangles between those pilots. Simoun is surprisingly hetero-normative in its message towards the end...

Oh well, just reinforces what an online friend mentioned earlier. How Japanese culture seems willing to accept, even sometimes encourage lesbian activity in its younger women. But only if its a "phase". One that they pass beyond as adults to become "normal" women...

*continues watching Simoun*

Japanese people are weird yo. But also AWESOME...