But we still have her words:
Monthly Archives: May 2014
Godzilla — Roar!
Went to see the new Godzilla movie last night. Things I learned:
1) Godzilla has less screen time than you would expect. (But he has the most adorable eyes!)
2) So does Bryan Cranston.
3) Breathing under a mask is loud.
4) Do not mess with school bus drivers.
5) The military never listens to scientists when it comes to monsters.
6) Apparently, the military does not have a lot of EOD specialists lying around. Or tools to break plastic glass.
7) The director of the movie is obsessed with train tracks.
8) Everyone now in San Francisco will get cancer, and definitely don’t eat the fish there.
9) The neatest part of the whole movie is watching a hotel resort I stayed in get destroyed. (Look, it’s the boat dock!)
10) The thing that frightened me the most was a pelican.
11) Woman in the fridge!
12) The plot was slightly less nonsensical than the plot of Pacific Rim, and definitely was a brain trust compared to Prometheus.
It was silly and generally fun, but a bit too long maybe. The monsters and monster battles were pretty well done. I happen to be someone who liked the 1998 Godzilla film (which was very successful financially,) but I will say that this one is probably more in keeping with the spirit of the original Godzilla films. Consequently, it does not have a lot of (intentional) humor to it but there are plenty of smashed buildings. And Godzilla himself has the patience of a saint in this movie. Really, don’t expect him to put up with all this stuff in the sequel.
Videos for a Rainy Friday Evening
My desk looks like a tube of paper exploded on it. So have some entertaining videos:
1) The wonderfully clever short film called Darth Baby’s Lightsaber. This is my new favorite Star Wars parody:
2) The amazing group Arstidir (close as I can get to reprinting properly,) sing an old Icelandic hymn in the stunning acoustics of a German train station:
3) Dan Newbie‘s rendering of the theme to Game of Thrones on water glasses, jugs and pans:
4) The trailer for the up-coming new t.v. show, Constantine, adapted from the comics and airing on NBC in the U.S., which looks pretty good:
5) The trailer for the new New Zealand mockumentary film about vampires, What We Do in the Shadows. I’m hoping it gets widely distributed:* *Apparently, it’s not a film; it’s a t.v. series, which is even better.
6) And lastly, an amazing street performer reproduces Bumblebee from the Transformer movies in Michigan. I don’t know if this is the same guy as the one in New Orleans but it seems very likely, and I don’t know who he is but the special effects people in Hollywood should hire him:
Comicon!
This is how I do Mother’s Day weekend, booya!
Ash, Ash, Baby!
Your Left, Your Left, Your Right, Left, March!
Filed under SFFH
Links & Misc. — Spring Cleaning! — Part 3
Diversity & Ending Discrimination:
Because I can, ha ha! There are just a lot of these saved up, from various craziness that’s occurred in the last several months, and many folks have been writing interesting things. So I’m presenting the links all at once.
At Salon.com, Sara Eckel presents actual evidence that “Feminism Isn’t Ruining Your Love Life.”
Jim C. Hines deconstructed this bizarre rant from Larry Correia back in January. It is even more relevant now with Correia’s Hugo voting fun times. Correia attempts to accuse a writer at Tor.com who was encouraging other SFF writers to think outside the box regarding binary gender in their stories of actually demanding as a commandment that all should get rid of cisgender characters. Hines looks at each of Correia’s assumptions, misinterpretations, and misdirections.
The always interesting super fan Michi Trota explains the extent and damage of discrimination in geekdom in “No One Can Deny You Entry to Geekdom, but Some Can Make It Really Hard to Get Through the Door First.”
Astra Taylor looks at misogyny and inequality built into the Web and how we deal with the gender gaps.
Amanda Marcotte in an editorial at The Raw Story looks at “What Are Misogynist Geeks So Afraid Of.”
Comics maven Janelle Asselin talks about meeting this sort of misogyny firsthand when she dared to criticize a poorly done comics cover, and received rape and death threats.
Jonathan McIntosh writes about the difficulties in the gaming world with “Playing with Privilege: The Invisible Benefits of Gaming While Male.”
The Korra Is Not Tan blog does a nice little rundown of racism and sexism regarding attitudes towards superheroes.
Mark Chu-Carroll at Goodmath.org talks about misogyny in “The Horror, the Horror, How Dare We Discriminate Against Men by Listening to Women.”
Katherine Lampe talks about helping out her guy friends dealing with discrimination issues in “What’s a Good Guy to Do.”
An older piece from two years back that was brought to my attention — Dr. Sheila Addison expands on John Scalzi’s famous piece about privilege, “The Lowest Difficulty Setting.”
The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates tackles recent racism controversies concerning Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling in “This Town Needs A Better Class of Racist.”
PZ Myers, regarding the recent Hugo voting slate discussions, talks about how “But Silence is Political.”
Foz Meadows also tackles the subject for Huffington Post in her highly intelligent way, in “Politics Belong in Science Fiction.”
Daniel Jose Older writes at Buzzfeed.com what is perhaps one of the best pieces on discrimination and diversity I’ve seen in awhile, in “Diversity Is Not Enough.”
Most recently, Violet Baudelaire at Jezebel gives a really excellent explanation of what the term “privilege” means in an open letter to the idiot young white boy who calls himself the Princeton Kid. (But really, it isn’t his youth that’s the issue — we get this at all ages.)
And lastly, a very moving video in which the artist called Panti speaks after a play production about discrimination:
Filed under Life, Social Equality, Women
Let’s Just Take A Moment
A photo of the Silfra Fissure between the North American and European continents by photographer Alex Mustard:
Silfra Ravine by Alex Mustard
Links & Misc. — Spring Cleaning! — Part 2
Arts and Fun:
First, an article from Salon.com about how text and Net lingo does not warp people’s brains. (But don’t text and drive.)
Next, a nice story about the secret animator code used by Disney and other animation shops.
Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde‘s exhibit creates clouds in rooms.
Actor Arthur Darvill, best known for playing Rory on the t.v. show Doctor Who, sings a song, “The Ballad of Arthur Darvill,” written for him by BBC 1 radio DJ’s to the music of Frozen‘s “Let It Go”. And it is awesome.
Improv Everywhere gets into more than usual trouble by having a large group dressed in white bodysuits and Gap clothing pose as mannequins in a Gap store, whereupon they are briefly arrested. It’s funny. And The Gap is really stupid about PR marketing.
The Korean arts Project SH stages an a cappella cellphone performance on a subway train. I am sure if I spoke Korean, it would be even funnier, but it’s beautifully done regardless:
And the incredible painting and mural art of artist David Walker:
The Open Window 