Cupid Bow Mouth

Brave, how I love thee, let me count the ways.

Too often, Disney films featuring female leads (generally a princess of some kind and in one way or another) revolve around reductive agency. Even with heroines coded as independent and with subplots that suggest a higher or greater purpose (i.e. Belle's pursuit of knowledge in Beauty and the Beast, Ariel's thirst for freedom and adventure in The Little Mermaid, or Pocahontas's desire to save her people) the story always winds up as a treatise on how Our Heroine gets a man in the end. Happily Ever After as it has been codified for women in Disney films means marriage, of course.

Culturally, American society likes to privilege romantic love over every other kind of love and nowhere do they showcase that preference better than in films. So, the first time that I saw Disney's Brave I was utterly thrilled and completely charmed. I fell in love with the essential relationship at the heart of the story, Merida and her mother, Eleanor. Like many Disney princess films, Brave is a love story. However, unlike the typical Disney princess films, it is not about romantic love, rather it is about familial love. A few years later, Frozen would do something similar and come under fire for it in the process, but let's not forget that Brave did it first.

In Brave we are shown the importance and intensity of familial love. Personally, I think that it's even more important that it's Mother/Daughter love. Too often that relationship is depicted as fraught an unforgiving. It plays into the stereotype of toxic and competitive women's relationships. An even though the relationship between Merida and Eleanor begins strained, over the course of the film they each learn to understand the other. There is never a question that they love each other, but it is the way that they learn to deal with each other and to LISTEN to each other that, I believe, is most important here. The result of that relationship rekindling is never demonstrated more beautifully that at the end of movie when Bear!Eleanor breaks free of her bonds and takes on Mor'du as he towers over Merida, roaring in preparation of the kill. It is telling, I think, and deeply appropriate that neither Merida's father nor any of the men of the clans are able to save Merida. It is Eleanor's job to do and the opening up of Merida's relationship with her mother has lead them there. Their conflict becomes overwhelmed by the action in that moment and the battle is beautifully representative of what has always been true, even when Eleanor and Merida could not see it for themselves: Eleanor's love for her daughter (and Merida's for her mother in the moment when she defends Bear!Eleanor from her father).

I love the battle between Eleanor and Mor'du because I am a sucker for Mother/Daughter relationships. And Eleanor, willing to sacrifice herself to save her daughter, is the epitome of the ultimate mother sacrifice. Merida's realization that perhaps she realized her mother's value much too late is equally impactful. But of course, this is a Disney film. But here happily ever after doesn't end with a man and a wedding gown, rather it ends with Merida and her mother having learned to understand and appreciate each other. Their love for each other is point and it is recognized and celebrated as the ultimate prize.

In 2004 I read Caitlin R. Kiernan's Murder of Angels. I loved it. I loved it so much that I went and found all the other books that she had written and requested them at my local library. When they arrived, I checked them out and took them home; there were five books in all.

I remember sitting on my bedroom floor with my treasure. I was so excited that I couldn't decide where to start. I stacked them up. I looked at them. Quite at random, I picked up Low Red Moon. I opened it and read the first chapter, maybe five pages in all. I closed it and opened up Silk. Maybe I read the first three pages. I then proceeded to bundle the whole lot of books back into my backpack and return them unread to the library.

As a writer, I understand what it means to appreciate the subtle nuances of a finely crafted plot. I also understand what it is to appreciate the skill of execution with which an author tells a story. Caitlin Kiernan forced me to look beyond appreciation inspired a feeling of such intense jealousy that I could not read her books. I wanted to be the one who had written them. I wanted those words to be mine. It was a difficult, humbling (for a moment humiliating) moment to realize the limitations of my skill. How on Earth could I ever write again?

( Read more... )

First, the most important question: Who'll be writing me that Normal Again/Sucker Punch crossover fic? Bonus points for incorporating Faith.

Overall, the movie was what I expected it to be, and it did what I expected it to do. Sucker Punch is an odd sort of zoetrope, psuedo-steampunk fantasy. I mostly enjoyed it. Robots, dragons, machine gun wielding samurai and hot chicks with swords, really what's not to love? Unfortunately, surprisingly, there are some things. It's amazing how Zack Snyder managed to make all that kinda boring.
( You have all the weapons you need. Now fight! )

I loved it.

The 3D could have been the thing that made all the difference. I was enthralled and delighted by it in the beginning. All of the technical achievements were stunning. However, as the film progressed, I found myself just sinking into the story and forgetting that this was a singularly new experience. I usually avoid 3D like the plague. It gives me a massive headache. My eyes have never been able to adjust, but this next gen 3D was so easy. After a very brief period of adjustment (maybe 30 minutes or so), I forgot about it and there was no strain. This was just how the movie worked and it was pretty damn gorgeous.

Beware: Spoilers ahoy!

( I see you )

Lucy Liu makes a very attractive looking corpse. Unfortunately, her dainty, kick-ass hotness isn't enough to save Rise: Blood Hunter from its needlessly convoluted plot and holes in logic big enough to drive a bus through. The film is dark and gritty, everything washed in shadows and blues to remind us that we are now in no man's land where vampires are sadistic but not quite equipped to deal with their cravings, fangless as they are. The vampires make an appropriately bloody mess of their meals, leaving body parts strewn across crime scenes, aided by various accoutrement to make up for what nature failed to give them.

Rise: Blood Hunter remains faithful to vampire lore only moderately, which really isn't such a problem, but the fact that the movie is bloody boring to boot makes it par for the course in the reinvention of the genre that seems underway. Everyone wants to shake things up, but go too far or not far enough. Thus far the most interesting shift in the emo vampire trend, I found, was 30 Days of Night (released four months after Rise: Blood Hunter) which hearkens back to a more folkloric vampire.

( Here I thought bartenders were supposed to be like priests. )

Sight gags, some decent CGI, and Andre Braugher as a cartoon military cut-out all equal a whole lot of nothing going on.

( Did you know I can create a force field inside someone's body and expand it until they explode? )

There is a piece of Pringle wedged under the "i" key on my laptop and it is driving me to distraction.

I will admit that I only watched Dan in Real Life out of the corner of my eye. I spent much of the movie reading cleolinda's hilarious reviews of the Twilight series. I'd started them on Friday and seeing as how I am confined to bed, weak with a cold (oh, woe is me) I decided to finish up reading them. What I did catch of the film, I found to be charming and adorable although I have severe issues with the film's overall theme.

( You are the murderer of love! )

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

What happens when you get everything you ever thought you always wanted? If it's in the Whedonverse then it comes with a price. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was surprising, to say the least. I wasn't sure what I expected, but what I got definitely wasn't it. Once I got over the surprise, of characters bursting in to song and a villain who blogs the details of his world domination plans, I rather enjoyed it. It was just cheesy and tongue-in-cheek enough to get away with the over-the-top presentation. It never took itself too seriously, except for the end when it almost kinda did. ( Read more... )
ETA: Corrections made, it's a Freeze Ray, not an Ice Ray. Details matter, yo!

deird1 has an excellent post about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and Joss's way with villains. GO Read it.

I love black and white films.

That Kind of Woman is beautifully melodramatic in the way that old movies are, but without being saccharine or overwrought.

Sophia Loren plays Kay, the mistress of The Man (George Sanders), a wealthy, older man, who falls in love with a young paratrooper on a train. Red, played with earnest sweetness and apple-pie naiveté by Tab Hunter, is determined to keep Kay despite her resistance and the counsel of his more world weary friend, George Kelly (Jack Warden).

( Sophia Loren and Tab Hunter are making cow eyes at each other )

In other news, Celebrity Circus is incredibly lame. It is, in fact, pretty much as lame as I thought it was going to be. Lame and dangerous. WTF, NBC! WTF!?

One of the things that I love about Hayao Miyazaki, as much as I hate to admit to it, is that each of his movies is in some way a love story. Some more than others, some more obviously than others. Princess Mononoke suggested a love for the Earth and nature in addition to romantic love between characters. In Spirited Away there was filial love, love for friends and constructed families, in addition to romantic love (which I will insist existed between Sen and Haku with my last breath -- Zara Helma's Bridge Across the Maybe Sea doesn't help me forget about them as a pairing). Kikki's Delivery Service, too, is a story about connections and belonging and varieties of love.

( You who swallowed a falling star ... a heart's a heavy burden )