Lucy Liu and Fandom Freakouts: A Retraction

Apparently the news that Lucy Liu had been cast in CBS's Elementary broke yesterday. And then a fandom war broke out, like, instantly.

I wasn't actually aware of it until after I posted my knee-jerk reaction on Tumblr.

My knee-jerk reaction:

I really do think that casting a woman as Watson was to keep the homoerotic subtext fairy away, and also so that Watson and Holmes could have a romance instead of just subtext. If I could side-eye it any harder my eyes would pop out of my head

One of the problems with social media is how easily you can say something that you later regret. I have thought about it (having had time to digest it) and I can't see it as anything worse than BBC Sherlock's "No, we're definitely not gay!" standpoint. And I love the show, but it is seriously problematic in its treatment of women and POC (Start with Sally Donovan and slut-shaming and move on from there). I'm not sure how accurate the Game of Shadows movie was in regards to Romani culture, either, and I've gone on record about how much I hated what happened to both Irene Adler and Mrs. Watson in that movie. (Augh!)

And it's not like the subtext was anything more than subtext in any of those, ever. So we're losing subtext buried under casual homophobia at best, and we don't know what we're gaining out of it yet, other than a WOC in a lead role on TV.

So I formally retract my earlier statements. Having read the concept of the show, it looks like they're trying to do something new and different with it, which I support. Whether it will be awful or not, I don't know. But normally I'm much more reserved about shit like this, and I apologize. I want to judge the thing on it's own merits when it airs- and rest assured, I WILL be watching.

Ending on three notes. 1: CBS is also responsible for HIMYM which I kinda love. 2: Lucy Liu is awesome. 3: Elementary will not end with Holmes in a hot air balloon chasing his brother in a flying metal dragon over London, and that's terrible.

Seriously, you have to watch this movie.

Vincent Price Appreciation Post

I had no internet this weekend due to financial fiasco going on, so I watched some of my Vincent Price collection. I don't have nearly enough of his movies in my possession, but that will change, precious. Oh yes. Because he is my favorite.

Part of my fondness is nostalgic. I watched several Vincent Price movies when I was a teenager, and I've been hooked since. I think the first I watched was House on Haunted Hill, but I swear to nothing. Oh, and Edgar Allen Poe-based movies. I went through this Edgar Allen Poe phase as a kid where I couldn't stop reading and re-reading his stories- stories like "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "Cask of Amontillado", which is my favorite. Vincent Price starred in something like a jillion (approximately) Poe-based movies, and that plays into why I am so fond of him.

I have not, by any means, seen all of his films. I tend towards movies where he's killing people through hilariously improbable means, like "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" or "Theatre of Blood" (how much fun is he having with that Shakespeare?)


I love how many things he's narrated through the years, and it's always fantastic to start watching something and suddenly Vincent Price. If I had a time machine, the first thing I would do is go back in time and meet Vincent Price.

Because of reasons.

The movie I wanted specifically to talk about is Madhouse, which stars Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. We missed the ultimate horror trifecta by not having somehow cast Christopher Lee as well, but what can you do?

I really like Madhouse because it's kinda... well, meta. Vincent Price plays an actor named Paul Toombs who's known for doing horror films. I know, what a stretch, right? Well, he was famous for a character known as Dr. Death. But there's a scandal- his fiancee dies after they quarrel under suspicious circumstances. By which I mean someone dressed as Dr. Death cuts her head the fuck off, and then leaves it on her neck, so when Paul Toombs goes to make up with her, her decapitated head falls off, scarring Paul life. Then he spends a few years in a mental institution.

That's the first, like, fifteen minutes of the movie. Paul Toombs eventually gets back into film, reprising his role as the infamous Dr. Death, and more mysterious murders happen. It's set up so that Paul could possibly be Dr. Death, though he doesn't believe he is (there's an indication early on that someone might be hypnotizing him or something).

I love this film because A: they try to pretend Peter Cushing and Vincent Price are of a similar enough build to be mistaken for each other (ha!) and B: because it has both gory and inexplicable deaths and an air of actual mystery to the perpetrator. Also, Vincent Price, but that pretty much goes without saying. If you like Price and you've somehow missed this one, give it a once over.

I couldn't resist this one.

Edit: I have more things to say.

I call "Madhouse" meta and never really delve into why, because I'm easily distracted by shiny things.

The film references many of Price's earlier films, "Tales of Terror" and "Pit and the Pendulum" most notably, and serves partially as a commentary on how fucked up the movie business is. It also feels like the prologue to every Vincent Price film ever. Like, if there had been a follow-up film called "Toombs' revenge" or "Back from the Toombs" (I crack myself up) where Paul Toombs was killing people for trying to fuck with Dr. Death or something, it would not have surprised anybody in the slightest.

It makes sense to me that Price would do a picture like this, because he preferred playing bad guys who have a compelling reason to act as they do. He likes characters who, while they may have lost their grip on sanity or reality, have a clear motivation. Not just IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE or BECAUSE EVIL, but often out of revenge and grief, motivators that most people can sympathize with.

I can never completely hate the characters he plays, just because they all have a core to them that is just a wounded and broken man who can't make sense of anything. The worlds rules have ceased to mean anything to him and he responds in kind. He also tends to have fun with all of his roles, which makes him very watchable.

...okay, I think now I'm done talking about him. For now.

Guilty Pleasures: George of the Jungle

George of the Jungle started as a cartoon in the late sixties. It ran on some network all the time, and I watched it religiously. It was produced by the same people who did the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, and it's on the list of "Shit I'm Nostalgic for Even Though it Aired Before I was Born", alongside the Mission Impossible and Columbo TV shows. I'll have to make a list of these things one day.





That, however, is not the George of the Jungle I'm talking about. I'm talking about this one:

And now, for a moment, my southwest upbringing will become very apparent.

Oh my god, y'all, I don't even know how to tell you how into this movie I was when I first saw it. This movie came out the year I turned 13, and I destroyed the VHS I watched it so much. To be clear on what I mean by this: we had a tape of the Princess Bride from the year it came out on VHS that Nick and I watched ALL THE TIME and it survived until we moved onto DVDs, but this one didn't. I had every line memorized, including the Swahili bits.


You see, this movie was the first time where I actually started to understand, well, sex. I mean, I understood it on an intellectual level to a very small extent (tab A, slot B, baby) and that people who love each other in romantic ways have sex. I had romantic feelings about boys from time to time, and I assumed that meant having sex with them at some point long down the road, but I had never really connected the "pure" romantic feelings I'd had with sex.

I think I had, until that point, bought into the 'good girls don't actually LIKE sex' idea. I don't know, but I'd never had that moment where I looked at a guy and went "Oh, yeah, break me off a piece of that," until George of the Jungle. Not even joking.

I can tell you the exact SCENE that happened in the movie, too. And it may surprise you that he wasn't naked OR shirtless during it (although his shirtlessness was the reason I watched the movie over and over and over...) Towards the middle of the movie, he's in San Fransisco with Ursula and she leaves him in her apartment while she goes and does... something. He leaves and starts exploring. Then he ends up playing bongos in a dance studio and that is the exact moment I discovered how hot he was.

Look, I don't know. He spent most of the movie largely naked, and a tiny portion of it actually naked. Maybe it was the first genuine moment in the film (or the only)- the rest of the movie, Fraser is mugging and generally acting like an idiot. Which is in character for George, but this is a scene where it looks like the actor is genuinely having fun with the character while being the character. It doesn't matter, really. It was just the precise moment where I fell in lust with Brendan Fraser.

One of the subplots of the movie is about George discovering his sexuality and how to deal with it. That subplot is about as deep as a kiddie pool (and doesn't really go anywhere because she was falling for him anyway) but it was the thing I related to most in the movie: George awkwardly using gorilla pick-up moves on Ursula.

Look, I know the movie is bad. It's a mess of 'trying too hard' and not-very-good meta humor, with lots of breaking the fourth wall because they could. Fraser's ridiculous mugging and random monkey noises is really... well, it gets annoying. The material it's adapted from is not substantial to begin with, and the movie doesn't have anything new to bring to the table, nor does it update the concept in the slightest.

The movie hasn't aged well and feels very dated. George doesn't actually learn or grow in any way. He doesn't end the movie any smarter, or more sure of himself. There's a minute where they try to convince you that he doubts his worth, but it's not expanded upon and ends up going nowhere. Ursula has one moment where you think she might turn into a badass because she swings in on a vine and saves George. Then Lyle kidnaps her and she ends up hollering for George throughout the climax even though Ursula could clearly snap Lyle in half. The story of the movie is that they fall in love and, after some minor conveniences, get married. At one point, a character gets into an argument with the narrator of the story, and the whole movie stops while they bicker. The movie is full of pointless padding (the above scene with the bongos included) and the concept is stretched so thin you could read newsprint through it.

None of that matters. If it's on TV I stop everything and watch in anyway. I started watching for this so I could do some screen captures and I can't turn it off. I CANNOT STOP WATCHING THIS MOVIE. And I enjoy it and laugh at the jokes and look I don't know, stop judging me. I know it's bad. I don't love it because it's bad, this is not 'so bad it's good' for me. I really just have no excuses.

I do wonder if this wasn't meant to pander to the moms who would be watching this film with their kids. I mean, on top of all the mostly-nude, later in the film there's a scene where Brendan Fraser chases a horse with his shirt unbuttoned, and it's like the cover of a romance novel in motion.

No joke.

There was a glut of Brendan Fraser movies to follow this one, including a cringeworthy adaptation of Dudley Do-Right, which I didn't even enjoy a little. I watched a lot of them. Blast from the Past, Bedazzled, and of course the Mummy movies, which will get their own post in the near future. Without a doubt, The Mummy was the best, and have no doubt that I love it. George of the Jungle was first and, therefore, will always have a piece of my heart. It's as embarrassing as it is true.

Grief and Star Trek

Warning: This post is more serious than what I normally do, and is kind of a bummer. I don't have much of a point, I'm just bummed and felt like blogging about it.

The 2009 Star Trek ends with the classic Star Trek narration. You know. "Space: the final frontier." and so on. Nimoy narrates it. I thought, "Man, I'll bet Mike recites that narration every time-" and stopped.

Remembered.

Mike is dead. He has been for nearly three years.

So that's how I wound up sobbing to the end credits of Star Trek.

Mike and my mother went to high school together, and he knew my brother and myself from the day we were born. We considered him an uncle, blood or not.

My brother came home on leave a week or so before Mike died, and we decided we'd round Mike up and all go for food and to see Star Trek. I called and left a message and we went by, but he wasn't home. That wasn't so odd, he had other friends and went out, he didn't have a cell phone so if he wasn't home he wasn't home. We made other plans. I knew Mike would call me back, because he always did.

This time, he didn't.

It's why I associate Star Trek with him, just a little. Not all the time either. Every once in a while my brain catches me off guard, and suckerpunches me right in the feelings.

I'm absolutely certain he would have loved the movie, though.