The Bechdel Test

Watch this video first, then listen while I discuss it. Then I guess you can comment.

I'm all for positive role models for young women. I'm all about women being equal to men in every reasonable measure (penis size is not a reasonable measure). But, in my opinion (without putting too much thought into it), movies that do pass this test tend to suck. I say that not because I can think of examples of movies that are bad, but because I can't think of a movie I like that passes this test. Hold on while I go through my DVD rack.

Okay. That was unfair. Nineteen movies (out of 173) movies passed the test. I didn't count TV shows, but I did count "Razor," the BSG middle-of-the-series "standalone" movie. I also didn't count Wall-E, which was generous of me, since they counted it as one against, which isn't fair because that was a movie about robots, which have no gender. None of the human characters had names. Notable movies that pass the test: Aliens, Breakfast Club, Center Stage, Crouching Tiger, Hannibal, Harry Potter, The Holiday, Kill Bill, Starship Troopers and Zoolander. Notable movies that did not pass the test: Anchorman, Count of Monte Cristo, Dances With Wolves, Dune, Love Actually, Jaws, The Hobbit, Predator, Pride & Prejudice, Star Trek (pick one), Tron, Twilight and Underworld. Good movies and shitty movies on both lists. Movies that portray women positively and negatively on both lists. Chick flicks, horror films and action movies on both lists. I just have to ask: What is the purpose of this test?

I have an idea. Women: for the next week, every time you talk to another woman that has a name (someone you know, not the bank teller or the traffic cop), make a note about whether or not a man comes up in the course of your conversation. I bet (with no agenda) that it will be pretty close, but that men (or a man in particular) will come up in more than half of your conversations with other women.

The sad fact is that (as much as it pains to give in to feminazi propaganda) we do still live in a male-dominated society. Things are getting "better," but it's still the case. Statistically speaking, it's more likely for your boss to be a man. It's more likely for the doctor to be a man, and it's more likely for the cop who pulled you over to be a man. (I feel like) Any person that you don't know with whom you are required to interact is more likely to be a man than a woman. So when you talk about your dentist appointment, or your trip to Best Buy, your asshole boss, or the cop who pulled you over, you're talking about a man.

So is it fair for movies to portray women as "always talking about men?" Yes and no. If you think it's okay for Alec Baldwin to smoke a cigar on 30 Rock, then it's pretty hypocritical to say it's not cool that Tina Fey and Jane Krakowski are always talking about their male co-workers. If, on the other hand, you think it's not cool for Alec to smoke on the show, because he's telling people that it's okay to smoke, then you subscribe to the idea that Americans are mostly children who need to be taught right from wrong. In that case, I can't call you a hypocrite for wishing that Tina and Jane would talk about something other than their co-workers (who are all men), on a show about how they interact with their co-workers. In this instance, I feel totally justified in calling you an ass, but I would be well outside any justification to call you a hypocrite.

Just to be clear, my reaction to this video is somewhere in the neighborhood of “who cares?” but I do think it’s worth a discussion.

So what do the rest of you (all three of you that read my blog) think? What’s the purpose of this test? How many movies on your shelf pass the test?

The Last Airbender

Image via Wikipedia

I have much to say.

I liked the movie. I didn’t love it, but I liked it. I’m really happy that the kid who played Zuko in the series got his part in the movie. The rest of the actors: meh. I like seeing Jackson Rathbone in more movies, since he was horrible in Eclipse and I really want to like him. In this, he was good. Again, not great, but good.

If you’ve seen the show, don’t bother watching the movie. Nothing new. It was fun to see a live-action film of the great story, but I expect a lot more when I see “written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.”

The fights were well-choreographed, the bending was well-done, and the movie kept pretty well to the plot of the show. But there was very little character development. Bottom line: the plot was too much story for a two-hour movie. I feel like this was a six-hour epic that got hacked down to two hours. I hope that’s the case, because then when the DVD comes out, there will be a director’s cut with all the character development and Apa’s and Momo’s names back in.

As it stands, this was a movie about Zuko that focused a bit on Aang. What little character development there was focused on the prince, but the Avatar had more screen time (I think).

It was cool in 3D, and it added a bit of fun to the film without any of the gliche gimmicks.

I’d say see it, especially if you’re a fan of the series, but it felt a bit like watching the third Harry Potter movie. There was nothing new, and all the good stuff was pulled out to make it fit into two hours.

What Grinds My Gears

If you’re  my grandma, stop reading now. Skip this one. Take a day off from loving everything I write.

Is grandma gone? Good.

If one more person calls uses the phrase “silver screen” to refer to the modern motion picture industry, I’m going to eat a baby. I’m going to marinate it in a soy ginger sauce, barbecue it on the Charmglow grill in the courtyard outside my apartment, and eat it with some broccoli and rice. STOP CALLING IT THE SILVER SCREEN!!!

This has been pissing me off for a long time, but I’ve just had a bottle of wine and just read a synopsis on Netflix that called Eddie Izzard a star of the silver screen. I’m going to fucking murder a puppy and broil it with some bacon. I’m going to put a baby racoon’s head on the side of the curb and stomp on it. I’m going to shoot a howler monkey in the eye with a high-caliber handgun and then punt it off a bridge.

Let me be clear. The “silver screen” is a phrase that was used to refer to movies when the screen was, ya know, FUCKING SILVER!!! Black & white. Humphrey Bogart was a star of the silver screen. Brad Pitt is not. It was called the silver screen because a black and white movie looks like it’s being projected on a screen that is literally silver.

Now that motion pictures are filmed and displayed in color, you can’t call it that anymore. You can call it the big screen. You can’t call it the silver screen, because it’s not fucking sliver.

Grandma, if you read all that: Sorry, but I warned ya.

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The etymology of piracy

This was the second half of my reply to PaulC’s comment on my previous Pirate Bay post, but I thought it was an interesting enough thought to warrant it’s own post instead.

Taking something that doesn't belong to you is called theft. Thieves can be sympathetic individuals with all kinds of potential motivation. They could be nice guys with no job and eight kids. Stealing bread makes me a thief, because I took your stuff.

Declaring the unjustness of the government and saying "we're not English anymore" is called rebellion (not revolution). A rebel can also be sympathetic, depending on his motivation. A rebellion can be started "because taxation without representation isn't fair" or because a bunch of guys who want to be the new aristocracy want to stir up the public to make it happen (hmmmmm...). Saying "I don't live by your rules anymore" makes me a rebel.

The dissemination of intellectual property without compensation to its originator is not called "theft." It's not called "rebellion." It's called "piracy." Pirate = bad. There's no ambiguity. Pirates are drunkards and rapists who take what they want and will probably kill you to get it. They are motivated by greed 100% of the time. Making a backup copy of a movie to which I have bought the right to view makes me a pirate. Removing the copy protection from a computer game so I don't have to swap CDs every ten minutes makes me a pirate.

So because I'm guilty of what ought to be considered a "white-collar" crime (but I'm not taking anyone's money, no one’s life is being ruined because of me, and I don't drive a Porsche), I'm the same as those guys who hi-jacked that boat a couple months ago. I guess that makes sense, since they killed a bunch of people and stole a bunch of stuff, and I... killed a lot of... time. And I stole... umm... nothing. And I hurt... nobody. But because the government is a slave to the MAFIAA (their real name), who wants me to shell out fifty bucks every time I scratch a disc, I'm a pirate. I guess I should feel lucky they're not calling me an "intellectual property rapist."

Pirate Bay. Again.

This is getting ridiculous. Yesterday, thepiratebay.org was down for about three hours. That’s not ridiculous. They’re a target of anti-piracy propaganda and deal with all kinds of crap all the time. When they go down, I don’t think “TPB, get your act together.” I think “aw crap. Swedish anti-piracy vigilantes have won a huge court case that I somehow didn’t here about and TPB got whacked.” Then I google “thepiratebay” and the first three results always provide a reliable read on what really happened.

So what I read last night was this: a Swedish court ordered TPB’s ISP to cut their service. At this time I thought “this is getting out of hand.” They can’t touch TPB because TPB doesn’t do anything illegal, immoral or unethical, by any definition, so they go after their ISP for enabling them to enable criminal activity.

It turns out, that’s not what happened. There was a lawsuit. MAFIAA sued an ISP. But it wasn’t TPB’s ISP. It was TPB’s ISP’s ISP. From TPB’s blog.

Amen. This is the same (not similar, the same) as prosecuting Nike’s rubber-supplier’s rubber-farmer (rubber’s from a tree, right? So there gotta be rubber farms, right?) because the guy who kicked you in the face wore Nikes.

Okay. It’s not the same. It’s almost the same. The difference is that when you get kicked in the face, that wound on your head is what is called “actual damage.” When I download a movie or a video game from thepiratebay.org, there is “no damage.” I don’t download something I would otherwise pay for, and despite the propaganda to the contrary, I am convinced that my attitude is the prevailing one.

Anything I download from TPB falls into one of three categories.

1. I own it and want another copy for my own personal use. This includes “my Crackberry doesn’t have a DVD drive (Iron Man, Galactica episodes),” “this video game is copy-protected (Diablo 2, Warcraft 3),” and “I’m taking this to my parents’ house and they don’t have a blu-ray player (Iron Man, Watchmen, Wall-E).”

2. I’m getting it for free or I’m not getting it. This includes “they didn’t release this movie in region 1 and aren’t likely to (Color of Magic),” “I’m not paying money for something that’s probably going to suck, but if it’s free I’ll give it a fair shot (GI Joe, Crank 2),” “you just can’t find this anymore. Even on EBay (Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Diablo, Starcraft licensed expansions, old Disney movies),” and (my favorite) “this was never actually made commercially available, and never will be (Warwick Davis’ RotJ film project, Starcraft: Ghost, unaired episodes of… you name it).”

3. I’m going to buy it, but haven’t yet. This includes “This movie isn’t released until next month (Two Towers),” “This movie hasn’t been released in region 1 yet (Hogfather, Wyrd Sisters, Color of Magic),” and “I’m not paying 50 bucks for that. What if it sucks? (Sims 3, Dawn of War 2, Diablo 2, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Jedi Knight 2, Jedi Academy, C&C Renegade, Fable, Sim City 4, Morrowind, Red Faction 2, Half-Life, half-Life 2, Supreme Commander, all of which I now own legally, and all bit two of which I would not have bought if I had not pirated them first)”

So, getting back to the story: MAFIAA sued TPB’s ISP’s ISP, because they enable someone else to enable thepiratebay.org to provide a service that can be used in a manner that is decidedly illegal.

Let’s be clear. Joe Public breaks the law when he uses TPB’s tracker to find someone from which to download something he’s not supposed to have. TPB is a service with a myriad of legal uses. There is an ISP that sells them bandwidth. That ISP is not Black Internet. Black Internet is the company that sells bandwidth to the ISP that sells it to TPB. Black Internet is also the company that was ordered to shut down access to TPB.

An airplane crashed last week, so GE should stop making LEDs.

2001

I just finished (no joke. Five minutes ago) reading 2001: a Space Odyssey. Wow. You really have to read the book to get anything at all from the movie. All that stuff with the apes makes sense now, and the first third of the movie actually means something.

If you haven’t read this book, do it right now. If I can read it in a week (and I did), you can do it in less. I didn’t realize that while Stanley Kubrick was filming the movie, Clarke was still writing the book, which wasn’t in bookstores until after the film was released.

Okay. I could just type every word of the epilogue, but I won’t. Go to a bookstore, or download the book, or go to the library. If you’re not going to read the book, at least read the epilogue. It doesn’t give anything away. It’s not even part of the story.

So… Last week I read Caves of Steel, and that was good, but different. Asimov is a great storyteller. Clarke is a great writer. Asimov tells an engrossing story of a detective in a future society where robots are third-class citizens. It’s a very complex social environment and it’s very cool.

Clarke rights about people. Humans. Every page is drenched in so much imagery that sometimes you have to read a page twice because you get so wrapped up in it that you forget what he’s actually describing.

Concerning machines: HAL is real. He acts like a computer; he thinks like a computer. Asimov’s robots… Not so much. They’re more romanticized. They’re people who happen to be made of metal. Very far-fetched and hard to relate to. When you read an Asimov book, you put reality on hold and take it on faith that these things are possible.

Reading Odyssey, I had to leave the light on. I measured my blackberry (on whom I read the whole book) to make sure it’s dimensions aren’t exactly 1:4:9 (It’s close enough that I had to measure it twice). I didn’t have to suspend reality because everything in the book is not so much “within the realm of plausibility” as it is “completely believable.” I mean War of the Worlds believable.

While I don’t mean to knock Asimov, I’d forgotten that reading a book could be this much fun. The last book I read that was this good was Dune. I wonder if 2001 is on blu-ray yet…

Star Trek

Thor’s Unemployment Blog is proud to give you your first look at the brand new USS Enterprise.

So. Was it the best Star Trek film ever, bar none? Yes. Were all of the actors perfect? Yes. Was Zachary Quinto as Spock just rehash of Zachary Quinto as Sylar? No. The man is an artist.

The film is balls-to-the-wall excitement from the first minute. Not only that, but it’s got plot, character development, and all the other things you’ve come never to expect from a Star Trek film.

Yet at the same time there was chemistry between the actors, believable dialogue, and a sparing helping of situational irony and one-liners.

That being said, this is undeniably not only a good film, but a Star Trek film. Confusing I know, but bear with me. This film had such a great script that it convinced Leonard Nimoy to play Spock one last time, something he swore he would never do. It had all the characters you needed to see, this time portrayed by professional actors. Let it never again be said that Star Trek ruined anyone’s career. Star Trek gave careers to a bunch of washouts who otherwise couldn’t get a job.

No more of that nonsense.

Star Trek has finally reached the moment at which real actors can get excited about being in a cult film. While Simon Pegg’s Scotty was great, and Quinto’s Spock was not short of breathtaking, most impressive was Karl Urban’s portrayal of Bones. Not only did he manage to give the character a tangible soul, he retained every bit off Deforrest Kelley’s charm and inherent weirdness.

To sum up, the acting was extraordinary, the script was phenomenal, there was no time wasted on tedious explanations of why Klingons have head ridges, and just about every character said their iconic catch-phrases. Chris Pine even tossed in a little Shatner tribute at the very end. Subtle, but splendid.

To anyone who’s counting, this will mark the third occasion on which I cried at a movie. Number one was Phantom Menace, when Anakin left his mommy. Number two was Return of the King “you bow to no one.” Number three was Skywalker vs. younglings. But I have never wept uncontrollably (and I’m not ashamed to lose a few man points to admit it) until I heard Leonard Nimoy do the traditional monologue.

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life-forms and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before."