Pondering the sexism in the Oscars (and other awards)

As we made it through this recent "awards season" I was struck by the thought: Is not the notion of men and women being segregated into categories by gender a holdover from a much more sexist era? In the so-called progressive twenty-first century were equality of the sexes is supposedly the aim, is it condescending to suggest that women would not be able to compete were they in the same category as me for the acting roles? There aren't gender distinctions when it comes to directing or writing or sound editing, but for those who appear on-screen the fact a century ago it was the case women were separate seems to suggest they still require that special status in order to get any awards.

It is the case that Hollywood is still as much an old boy's club—and a white old boys club at that—where if "the fairer sex" didn't have a separate category for the acting awards the trophies would still be largely doled out to those with the XY chromosomal alignment—and not because men are inherently better actors but (let's face it) because men would have a harder time voting for women over men. Not all men, of course, but enough who have the vote who remember those days when a dame was a dame.

X-Men: Days of Future Cologne

Back in my youth comic books drew some level of dismissal by the larger culture, but now of course "nerd culture" is mainstream. That acceptance seems like a step in the right direction, but those steps can go too far.

With the movie X-Men: Days of Future Past coming out soon the commercials are running heavily. However, yesterday I saw one that proved to be a cross-promotion… with Axe Body Spray—perhaps the epitome of douchebaggery. And while the distinctions were somewhat nebulous in those days of past (when only the nerds would know the X-Men story on which the movie is based) such products would never be explicitly marketed to such a demographic. I'm not saying there was no crossover between nerds and douchebags—of course there were was—but that was not considered a desirable group for advertisers.

It's enough to root for the Sentinels to wipe out everyone; neither humans nor mutants deserve to survive in a world where would happen.

We need to send someone back in time to stop this...

Noah... right

When I see trailers for the upcoming Russell Crowe film telling the story of Noah, looking like a big-budget action flick, I am not interested.

 It's not that I have anything against the Biblical subject matter; it's that it doesn't appear to be based on the best source material out there: Bill Cosby's stand-up on his 1963 album Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow – Right!

In that Noah is a bit... incredulous... upon hearing from the Lord about being told to build the Ark. Somehow I don't get the impression that's how Crowe will play it.

Here's Bill performing it thanks to the wonder of YouTube:



You and me, Lord…

~

Let me know when they've made that movie. (Oh, like Hollywood wouldn't take that and screw it up.)

Our hopeless, Affleck-ted species

I'm not saying that signing a petition to prevent Ben Affleck from portraying Batman is the best way to prove our species is undeserving of our intellect and ostensible role as dominant on the planet, but it probably does a pretty good job of suggesting it.

Come on, nerds--this is why you have blogs.

p.s. Youngsters:  It didn't work against Michael Keaton 24 years ago either.

Rising on the Dark Knight

Recently I re-watched The Dark Knight Rises—it wasn't that I set out to do so; it merely was on HBO when I was looking for something to watch—and I must admit I thought it held up in being an entertaining film.

At least that was my perception at this juncture. I'm not here to argue whether it was by some empirical standard good or not; I'm here to identify that's better than what I thought before.

Before 'After Earth'

Coming to a theater near you today, latest Fresh Prince of Bel Air blockbuster aspirant, After Earth.

Judging from the trailer the premise laid out in the short preview appears to be: Humanity fled the planet a millennium earlier—presumably due to having screwed it up to the point where it was nigh-uninhabitable—and now the elder and younger Smith men are on a space ship that crashes to our species' point of origin. The flora and fauna have flourished in our absence. Then we see the two humans battling CGI animals who understandably see them as prey,  interspersed between scene snippets with the tag line "Danger is real. Fear is a choice."

Remembering (vaguely) James Bond

The cover of last week's Entertainment Weekly declares in 2012 "Bond at his best," touting the latest Bond film, Skyfall, as the "most thrilling since Goldfinger."

I don't know that I'd go that far. (My brief take on it is below.) When someone asked me what the best Bond film was, my response: There is no best Bond movie (although if there were one, it would star Sean Connery as 007, of course), at least as far as I can recall.

Despite having seen and enjoyed most (if not all) of the James Bond movies—many more than once, thanks to the frequency they're aired on TV—I must admit I have some difficulty remembering the full plot of any given film. I recall scenes, but sometimes I cannot recall in which particular movie they appeared.

Superhero'ed

The first topic on last week's Pop Culture Happy Hour was the new Spider-Man movie and in a nice little coincidence we saw that over the weekend (as mentioned in Sunday's post). Not that there was an in-depth analysis of the plot during the discussion, but I had a informed opinion on what they did talk about, which is somewhat rare when it comes to current movies (given that even when we do go we do not tend to go opening weekend, when everyone's talking about it; I think this topic was delayed due to the group being out for vacations or something).

We went more because my wife had an interest in the film, but I certainly was open to seeing it; my nerd card is far from up-to-date but I still have it, and after seeing Avengers earlier this year and planning on seeing Dark Knight Rises later, Amazing Spider-Man fills out the superhero trifecta.

Asshats at the movies

I've finally figured out how it works: There's a secret union of asshats who must send at least one representative to every movie we see in the theater, who will sit in the row behind us and talk during the film.

This afternoon it seemed like we were off the hook, but then 30 minutes into The Amazing Spider-Man he and (I must presume) his girlfriend finally arrived. We suspect they were stoned, and that would explain their tardiness.

I'm not sure if there's any sort of administrative body for the union to whom I should report this, but I'd imagine that sort of indulgence is not only tolerated but probably encouraged. But it is worth noting that when we moved to another row your asshat didn't follow us, so he was too out of it to fulfill his annoying duties to the fullness implied by your implicit credo.

Just FYI.

When it's too late for the Avengers

The Avengers has dominated the box office since its opening three weekends past. It was also the dominant pop culture topic back during that week it premiered, and I even wrote about that at the time (mostly in response to the Culture Gabfest discussion) where I had to more or less reflexively defend the comic book medium (despite not having been part of it for 18 years). It wasn't so much that I thought Avengers looked all that phenomenal but there's something about people who go in with a condescending attitude about "comic book" movies jumping on the bandwagon of what's the hot subject only because it's the hot subject rather than having a worthwhile opinion about the subject.

(I'm not pretending I have a worthwhile opinion, but I choose on what I comment rather than pretending I'm keeping up with all the big topics.)

I don't consider comic books to be something one outgrows, but fighting the crowds at the multiplex is something I have outgrown, so we didn't go that opening weekend. And last weekend my wife had to work on a project so we couldn't get to it then either. So although the pop culture world has moved on from actively discussing the movie, it is only now that I can speak to that specifically, as we finally saw it over the weekend.

Avenging superhero movies (sort of)

On the Culture Gabfest this week they opened with the impending Avengers movie, which they generally found to be so-so. Film critic Dana found it to be pretty much the same as many recent superhero films, competent but nothing special; editor Julia was disappointed only that as a Joss Whedon devotee it wasn't a better end result with all the talent involved—not that it wasn't worth seeing, but that it should have rendered a superior movie; snob Stephen thought it somewhat "shameful" that as adults they were discussing it, thinking this was the sort of thing he enjoyed at 9 but then grew up.

As one who started reading superhero comics at age 7, and then continued reading and collecting them into my teens and (as I've mentioned before) worked in a comic book store for many years as the job that got me through college (well, mostly), it's impossible for me not to have some response.

Eradicating racial bias at the source

Today at lunch I read a New Yorker piece from their Book Bench blog that talked about a guy who started a Tumblr site collecting all the tweets from people who were from dismayed to outright aghast at how in the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games the characters from District 11 were played by black actors. Even though in the book they are described as dark-skinned, that didn't stop a lot of fans of the book from envisioning sweet little Rue as blonde-haired and blue-eyed. And then some of those people were willing to share those disappointments on the internet.

The thrust of the piece was about how characters in books tend to be envisioned as white unless explicitly identified by the author as otherwise (and the hurdle that minorities face in society in general out of that connotation of white with innocence). Certainly it's a fine idea to work toward a world where Caucasians aren't the default race in the collective mind, but rather than merely identify the issue, how can we achieve that?

Going down with the ship again: one Titanic reaction

Last Saturday morning we caught a showing of The Hunger Games (in IMAX), which was intended to be a birthday surprise for my wife (although she wasn't completely surprised she was still excited). However, that's not our topic du jour.

No, I must address something that happened before the film even started.

Spoiler alert

On a recent Extra Hot Great episode, they solicited another set of "I am not a crackpot" submissions (where listeners offer their pop culture rants).

One suggested that there's no such thing as a "spoiler" when discussing narrative works, and thus no need for issuing "spoiler alerts" by those who talk about those works. Anything that relies on a twist to hold any value to make it worth seeing/reading does not actually have any value to make it worth seeing/reading. Good shows/movies/books won't be ruined by knowing major plot points ahead of time.

Muppet Surprise

What's perhaps really sad is that it's already Thursday and I haven't mentioned the best part of the previous weekend.

When we were planning the visit to relatives for Thanksgiving my wife made it clear that we had to come home on Friday because we had a "seminar" on Saturday afternoon to which she'd gotten us tickets. She explained it as a surprise so I didn't press for details. She said it would be good for our marriage.

So on Saturday we headed up to Hollywood, parking at the Hollywood & Highland center, and walking across the street. Then as we were almost there she handed me the tickets she'd printed out and had me read the address.

They were tickets for The Muppets showing at the El Capitan theater.

An open letter to Jason Segel

Mr. Segel,
My wife and I are fans of you as an actor. We liked you in Freaks and Geeks. We enjoy you on How I Met Your Mother. We thought you were charming  in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and appreciated the different sort of character you played in I Love You, Man. We are looking forward to your upcoming Muppets feature film and likely will go see it opening weekend. In short, we are on the Segel bandwagon.

For that reason, I must ask that you please exert some discretion in the roles you accept to play. I think we deserve that.

Surviving Contagion in the theater

They've seen how this post ends.

Over the weekend we did something we haven't done in a while: saw a movie in the theater. It wasn't so much that we had an overwhelming desire to see something that's out at the moment; we had some passes (so it wouldn't cost anything) and that vague sense of missing the experience of going to see something on the big screen—something that years ago we did with regularity. Perhaps it's some subtle nostalgia for an era in our lives when we weren't so busy, for when going to the local Cineplex every other weekend seemed feasible. In any case, it worked out that this past Saturday we considered ourselves to have those hours to spare.

That didn't necessarily coincide with the availability of a film about which at least I was excited to see, and as my wife had some interest in Contagion (and I didn't object) that's for what we exchanged our passes for tickets. (The other one of mild interest: Drive, with Ryan Gosling.)

The movie came out a week earlier, and was (at least in my little realm of what I pay attention to) a significant topic of conversation last week. A couple of the pop culture podcasts to which I listen (Culture Gabfest, Extra Hot Great) discussed it, replete with disclaimers about spoilers. I listened nonetheless, not realizing at the time I'd be seeing the film in a matter of days. But the thing about Contagion: There is no spoiling it. That's not saying it's a worthless waste of time; it's merely a movie where you can know exactly what's going to happen and your enjoyment (or lack thereof) will be the same as if you went in knowing nothing.

Of course, knowing nothing is not realistic; these days if you see a movie you probably saw at least trailers for it ahead of time. It's so unlikely that one wouldn't have at least a modicum of expectations from what one saw on billboards or ads on TV prior to getting in the theater.

And with this film in particular, there's no big secret that could be revealed that would spoil it. I'd argue that if you know what you're getting better than what you'd get from those trailers, you're better off.

The Change Lantern

Another movie trailer mash-up:

In The Change-Up (opening today) it appears from the trailer that Ryan Reynolds plays a womanizing bachelor and Jason Bateman plays a button-down father and husband, and somehow they switch bodies, Freaky Friday-style, so each can experience the other's lifestyle.

When Reynolds, in Bateman's body, has to change diapers, I imagine the first thing he mutters is something about wishing he still had the Green Lantern power ring.

Talk about evil he does wish could escape his sight...

127 Hours Down in the Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Upon seeing ads for the new Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie with James Franco, I found myself thinking: Okay, in this movie, when he falls in the crevasse, it's the ape he taught sign language that cuts off his arm.

That taste of dismembering humans must be what puts the apes on the road to overthrowing humanity.

~

Yeah, let's stop this before someone starts to wish that a chimpanzee were writing this.

Limits

An obvious observation about entertainment media: Of the four major formats (?)—movies, TV, music, and books—the first two are clearly the easiest for one to be a fan of the medium in general; there's only so many theaters, only so many channels, and thus it's not as daunting a task to keep up with all the noteworthy releases/shows.

With music and books, there's more that come out than would be really feasible to keep up with short of focusing on particular genres (or sub-genres).

Movies and TV are the populist media not merely because they're more passive forms of entertainment, but because there's intrinsic ways of limiting how much there is of them.