A Pretty Face

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Her Tits Out.

2011-07-13T19:47:00.001+01:00

I picked up Empire Magazine today for the first time in ages and was treated to a picture of the new poster for David Fincher's remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. For those who haven't seen it yet, it looks like this:

Yeah, that's right. Lisbeth Salander, super hacker, is topless. Why is she topless? Fuck knows. She doesn't actually spend much time topless in the books. I've written and rewritten why this poster pissed me off, and I can't actually explain it beyond "why the fuck is she topless?" Seriously. Forget the fact that Daniel Craig looks like he's been startled mid-kidnap, or the fact that the tagline sort of implies Lisbeth or Blomkvist are actually evil; why does this woman have her tits out?

Maybe more film posters could benefit from random, unexplained nudity, completely unconnected to the plot of the film. I mean, if it's in black and white then it's arty, and not exploitative, right? I've had a go at recreating the Fincher poster magic for Meryl Streep's upcoming Maggie Thatcher biopic, a perfect contender seeing as it probably has no tits in it at all, and Maggie is possibly a feminist icon so it's not going to look like thinly veiled porn. Here we go!

What do you think? It's pretty good, huh? Hollywood, I am available for an immediate start.

Here are some interesting blog posts/articles that I've read on the much-debated topic of whether The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is feminist or not. Personally I think they're a little too voyeuristic and exploitative in tone for me, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. Sadly, I think this poster implies that Fincher's take on the books isn't going to be all that feminist-friendly.

Warning, spoilers for books and films:
Tiger Beatdown: http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/07/29/the-girl-with-the-lots-of-creepy-disturbing-torture-that-pissed-me-off-on-stieg-larsson/
Bitch Magazine: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/pushback-at-the-intersections-stieg-larsson-feminist-hero
Re/action Blog: http://reactionblog.livejournal.com/7930.html

Kittens And Converse Signify A Weak Mind.

2011-06-17T00:15:00.003+01:00

I usually post about films and pop culture and occasionally about the rad white water rafting I did on holiday, but I hardly ever post about my love of knitting and cake and rompers (or playsuits, or onesies for those of you confused by my terminology). Mostly because these things don't really inspire me to post all that much, and this is my blog so I will fill it with rants about shit 3D conversion and the overexposure of Eliza Dushku's rear in Dollhouse because that's what makes me reach for my keyboard. However, I do love those things. I like pink (you may have noticed that my blog is pink themed) and I like wearing Converse with skirts, and buying jewellery from Etsy.

Why am I telling you this? Because according to Julie Klausner this means I am failing the sisterhood.

Above - a kitten and a pair of Converse. Doesn't mean I want you to infantilise me.

In her blog post, Julie rails against women who are, according to her, increasingly acting like little girls. She thinks it's because we want men to think we're sweet and inoffensive, and that we're trying to live up to some weird needy babyish vision of the perfect woman.

Yep, I'd agree there's a definite trend for cutesy, girly stuff for women at the moment. Some of it I like and some of it I don't. I get upset when it's foisted on to children as the only choice for a little girl (see the recent Twitter campaign against Tesco's "zones" for boys and girls). For adults, however, it is a choice and should be respected as such.

Basically, fuck off telling me what I should and shouldn't like.

Fuck off with the "you only like this stuff because (insert reason) and women should like (insert item)". I like what I like. I don't live in a blinkered bubble where I think I make all my choices free from external pressure, and I appreciate that bloggers want to highlight what they consider to be a growing pressure on women to choose things that make them seem childish and inoffensive, but really, fuck off. You might think Etsy and Converse and rompers and knitting makes me a women playing at being a little girl. I think I find crafts soothing, even if I can't afford to buy in to the expensive luxury end of the knitting scene. You might think buying things from Etsy is childish, but I think I can't afford real, non-costume jewellery and so Etsy is a place to get something nice and not cheaply mass-produced from Topshit. You might think my Converse makes me a permanent tweenager, but I think they're comfier than high heels.

I would challenge the idea that most women who like this cutesy stuff don't also read things written before they were born (thanks, Julie, that's super patronising), or share a glass of wine with their friends. Perhaps I'm wrong, but so what? We're all different, and that's okay. This version of womanhood is just as fake and just as bullshit, and I hate that reading that blog post has made me feel the need to justify myself but saying that, hey, I also know how to rewire a plug and change a fuse, and I read Kafka for fun, and I drink wine with my friends.

I also think Julie's post confuses fluffy femininity with childishness (hence the clash of bunnies and baking with trainers and Xbox). To define these concepts by items of clothing and hobbies is ridiculous. None of these things are inherently childish or feminine, but how they are experienced can make them so, and different people will have different definitions of what isn't age-appropriate behaviour.

God, I even hate the term "age-appropriate" in this sense. It seems a little bit too much like "mutton dressed as lamb" and other woman-on-woman hate phrases.

Yes, it's frustrating when women put themselves in a position to be patronised and belittled and have their power leached away because they choose to be babied. It has nothing to do with how they choose to dress or spend their spare time. Hell, in my eyes one of the worst offenders in TV history was Carrie in Sex And The City, who used to love it when Big called her "kid" and patronised her, and she didn't dress like a little girl as far as I can remember. If you want to criticise this behaviour, then believe me I understand the urge, but perhaps don't be so short-sighted as to blame it on a woman's choice of outfit?

There's a far more interesting look at the childish/feminine trend over here at the Ch!cktionary, which manages not to bash women who DO like things considered to be very feminine, whilst considering why women make these choices.

I should also add that despite the fact that I disagreed with Julie Klausner's post so much that I wrote my very own rant, I do want to read her book. Hey, just because I disagreed with her on this one thing!

Is that the sound of a perfectly timed guitar riff I hear?

2011-06-05T21:34:00.000+01:00

Is there anything so fist-pumpingly, smile-inducingly perfect as the marriage of an action packed trailer with a classic rock song? Iron Man became ten times more exciting when I saw the first trailer, which was set to the rocking guitar riffs of Black Sabbath's, uh, Iron Man (a song choice that probably surprised no one), and now Cowboys & Aliens is at it, using the main riff from Audioslave's Gasoline to turn a high-concept sci-fi action film that I was sort of maybe going to check out to something I absolutely have to see. Heavy guitars and crashing drums in my ears, explosions in my eyes. Sold.

See for yourself:

3D. Sometimes it's a bit shit.

2010-03-12T18:42:00.006Z

If the third dimension becomes ubiquitous, then I'm going to have to stop going to the cinema altogether.

Let's be honest here- to many films, 3D adds little more than a headache, mild seasickness, and hordes of people in the cinema complaining that their specs make them look like Buddy Holly/Woody Allen/a twat. It's often just another shiny distraction hiding the entire lack of plot, the terrible acting, or the shoddy direction. In this sense, it's right up there with that well known cinematic tool often employed in teen horror films: girls getting naked.

Above- Alice. Thankfully not naked.

It's a trick. And as such, it can entertain. I enjoyed watching things fly at me during A Nightmare Before Christmas 3D and otherwise awful horror My Bloody Valentine. In Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, however, the occasional 3D rocking horse fly blurring it's way across the screen felt like an annoying misuse of the technology. Here you want to focus on the beautiful CGI scenery and the quirky ticks of the actors but you're finding it hard to see them past the fuzzy blobs lurching out of the screen towards you.

In fact, the majority of the film is 3D-light, the technology barely registering when you lift your glasses. Then every now and then it's as though the director suddenly remembers he's supposed to be using this new stuff, and so he lobs a hedgehog croquet ball at your face. It's horrible. It's distracting. It's tacky. If this is the future of cinema, I don't want it.

That's not to say that done with subtlety, 3D technology can't add something to a film. Avatar, for all that it was arse-numbingly long and mostly like watching someone else play a computer game (which, in essence, you were), had moments that were truly immersive thanks to the depth of the images on the screen. Coraline, too, had a surreal acid-trip feel to it thanks to the use of 3D alongside the animation.

I suppose the difference is that in the hands of a director actively committed to using this new tool, 3D isn't horrible. Tim Burton comes off like a guy who was told "use this so we can sell more tickets" and went with it, begrudgingly. He doesn't seem happy.

What about the film? Well, you can see it in 2D and it will be beautiful, surreal, disturbing and familiar all at once. Mia Wasikowska is a perhaps slightly flat, but dazed and dreamy Alice. Johnny Depp is Johnny Depp, just in a different outfit. Helena Bonham-Carter is doing and out-and-out impression of Blackadder's Queenie. It's a Tim Burton film- you already know what you're getting.

That said, there are some genuinely funny moments in this which set it apart from the likes of (the slightly disappointing) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The story takes familiar elements of the books but gives them more of a root in teenage Alice's real life, and the choice she is being forced to make between doing what is expected of her, or what she wants. It makes the story feel more substantial, and ultimately this is what made me like it.

Oh, that and the amazing costumes. I would like to own everything Alice wore in Wonderland, please.

Micmacs

2010-03-04T22:03:00.005Z

I've just got back from seeing Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs and I wanted to post whilst it was fresh in my mind. It's bloody freezing in my flat though, so this may be short as my fingers are seizing up as I type!

I really enjoyed Micmacs. The film has suffered slightly at the hands of critics by not being Amelie, which seems more than a little unfair. No, it's not bittersweet and there's no adorable girl discovering life and love and making you feel all teary. It's the story of a bitter man getting even with the people who ruined his life and cost him his home, twice. For all that the premise sounds like a bit of a downer, it's actually a lovely, lighthearted caper film with all the beautiful cinematography and quirky asides that you would expect from a Jeunet film, interspersed with some real belly laughs and Ocean's 11 style cons, although with less smug Hollywood faces and more homelessness (yes, I wish I'd made a better film reference there too, but what can I say, I liked Ocean's 11).

Dany Boon has run afoul of British critics who say his humour doesn't translate when they're being generous and labelling him "bland" (in The Guardian review) when they're not. Actually I found him charming as the likeable Bazil whose misfortunes at the hands of two rival arms dealers guide the plot. Admittedly, he's not as hilarious as some of the supporting cast (especially Jeunet fave Dominique Pinon) but in a film like this with an ensemble cast I think that actually works in the film's favour.

The expected asides (here mostly fuelled by the bullet in Bazil's head which threatens to kill him under stress, so he asks himself curious questions as a distraction) don't feel like Jeunet imitating his own work, which can be the case when a director establishes such an obvious signature. One thing to watch out for in Micmacs are the billboards that you see advertising the film itself, with images that match the scene they appear in. Subtle, but a brilliant piece of meta fiction, if you like that sort of thing.

The plot is light enough, although the topical, arms dealer angle adds some weight, and the themes of finding a family and a place in the world, and how the little guy who protests against big corporations can pack a powerful punch (aided by social networking on the internet, of course) gave me the warm fuzzies, I must admit. As a literary nerd, I loved the references to Rimbaud, too. All in all, I'd recommend it as a popcorn comedy with added directorial panache.

Colin Firth in designer glasses, Sean Bean in a skirt.

2010-02-13T00:07:00.005Z

I just got back from seeing Percy Jackson, and A Single Man, and despite the fact that tomorrow promises a hellish tube journey (via Tottenham Court Road, with large bulky luggage, on a Saturday. Kill me now.) I just have to post about them both.

I started with A Single Man, which I keep wanting to call both A Serious Man after the Coen's latest film which I never got to see, and A Simple Man, my favourite Lynyrd Skynyrd track. Anyway, I was surprised by how unsurprised I was. Tom Ford's debut is exactly what you'd expect. One third of the film is like watching a perfume advert. A man floating naked underwater. A slow motion owl. Whimpering music. Another third is film student experimenting with his new-found saturation control. Oooh, look how when he's engaged and enjoying life the colour fades back in! I get the symbolism. Stop beating me over the head with it already.

The final third of A Single Man is, however, quite brilliant. Colin Firth is compelling, heartbreaking and hilarious all at once and sometimes all at the same time. When he gets down to just telling the story, Tom Ford does it quite beautifully. If he could drop all the other bullshit (or at least trim it down a bit. I mean, I'm all for beautiful, artistic cinematography provided it doesn't make my arse go to sleep) it would have been perfect. The fact that it is unfalteringly stylish goes without saying, of course.

Now, Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief has been touted as the new Harry Potter, as has every film starring a teenage boy for the last ten years or so. It isn't. For starters, the writing is dire. The lines are clunky, none of the actors seem particularly sure if this is a drama, a comedy, an action or an outright farce and it doesn't come together particularly well. The support from the likes of Uma Thurman and Pierce Brosnan are cringe-makingly camp, and that's before we get to the glam rock Hades played by Steve Coogan. Yes, Steve Coogan. See now why no one knew whether they should be taking this thing seriously when they were making it?

It's a bit of a shame, as the central premise has some legs. The kids are all half gods, and they end up spending a fair amount of time doing the legwork for their parents whose hands are politically tied. Or sort of. We see the kids of Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares... I'm curious to see the kids of Dionysus. I bet they're a real riot. The three kid leads (probably all in their twenties, but that's Hollywood) are pretty solid, and do their best with a somewhat confusing, and occasionally strangely paced film that fails to build any real tension whilst spending rather a lot of time on throwaway gags. Some weird product placement (BUY AN IPOD NOW!) and an ending that goes a bit Honey I Shrunk the Kids rounds off this lengthy but not wholly unenjoyable affair.

The trailers were amazing though. That dragon thing looks great. I like cute dragons. Plus something with The Rock as a tooth fairy in ice hockey gear? So dreadful it might be brilliant. Or just dreadful.

CSI: it's all about the ladies. And the serial killers.

2010-02-11T21:19:00.006Z

I was going to make a "Who" joke but they've all been done before- SPOILERS FOR CSI SEASON 1O EPS WHICH HAVE AIRED ON FIVE IN THE UK

New year, new season of CSI on Five. I wish I could say I was anticipating the start of season ten with excitement, but somehow it's just worn off a little over the years. It's so hard to keep a show like this fresh and exciting and within the realms of reality after all the many, many cases the Vegas grave shift have tackled over the years. To its credit, the minds behind CSI have realised this, and continue to include tantalising character development threads behind the gory case-of-the-week action to keep the audience hanging in there.

Season ten opens by moving Laurence Fishburne's Professor Langston from bumbling newbie to fully trained-up and newly-promoted CSI level 2. Hurrah! There was only so much of Ray getting his tie in the corpse I was willing to put up with. This also allows the show to instead explore Ray's character, starting with his relationship with his violent father and his concern that he may have inherited the same traits. In this respect, Ray has become a perfect alternative to Grissom, lending a quiet depth and tension to every scene. Oh, and did you see him kick that guy through the glass wall in the season opener? Yeah, that was cool.

Catherine is struggling to fill Grissom's shoes as head of the grave shift, whilst Nick gets to step up as the second longest standing member of the team. Fortunately for the bland twins, they're supported by the ever watchable Greg, the deliciously snarky Hodges and my new favourite CSI lady, Wendy, who will hopefully soon graduate from narrative tool to real cast member.

My favourite thing about season ten so far though has to be that Sara is back. I love Sara. I missed Sara. I know everyone loves Grissom, but Sara was the best female character on a police procedural. I could relate to her. She was strong and opinionated, and throughout her time as cast regular she struggled with a crush on her boss, an inability to relate to her coworkers, a lonely lifestyle, alcoholism, and being pinned under a car in the desert with a broken arm.

Mostly I loved Sara's interaction with Catherine. As the two women on the team, they had a relationship that seemed so much more real that the Grissom-as-father-figure theme that was the main thrust of the male characters' interaction. Sara and Catherine initially held each other at a suspicious arm's length, butting heads frequently over their styles of working. Later on, as they worked together, they developed a respect for each other as professionals that became a trust and a friendship. In the two-part season 7 opener, when Catherine awakes in a motel room suspecting she has been the victim of a date rape, she calls Sara in to help her investigate, and avoids telling her male coworkers. Right or wrong, this is a reaction and a relationship that I can believe in.

CSI might not be the most liberal thing on television (there's a fair amount of stereotypical evil women murderers and swaggering black drug dealers propping up the plots) but it drip-feeds character development in a way that keeps me watching. Not to mention that the trend towards serial killer arcs in recent seasons (the Miniature Killer was brilliant) helps to keep me tuned in. This year's Dr Jekyll, tying up a corpse's intestine in a bow, in wonderfully macabre! I can't wait to find out more.

Why I'm okay that Dollhouse is dead

2009-11-23T22:16:00.005Z

This is a somewhat controversial viewpoint for a self confessed Whedonite, I know, but I'm not sorry about the cancellation of Dollhouse. If you don't mind spoilers for season one, I shall explain.

Firstly, I understand that it was meant to be uncomfortable viewing. I get that the show was about abuse, and prostitution, and slavery, and many other uncomfortable things. I like that they were exploring themes about attitudes to women's bodies, and that they made episodes that dealt with rape, and with loss, and with the struggle for independance from a force that controls your very mind. It was interesting. It was exciting.

It was seriously misogynistic. If you're going to make a show that is at it's heart about a group of women who are stripped of their free will and turned into sex toys, you are treading a fine line between showing this for what it is- a company trading in sex fantasies, but an ugly truth under the surface, that these women are enslaved- and revelling in the fantasy. I felt that Dollhouse fell wide of the mark, and as a result we spent more time being invited to look at Eliza Dushku's body parts than to consider the problems with the concept. Try watching a few eps and counting the number of upskirt shots, or times when her character needs to change on screen, or when the camera pulls back to show us that yes, that revealing outfit does indeed show off her naked bum cheeks. There is a difference between the character who is intentionally sexy in her sex-toy mode, and the camera giving us gratuitous shots of her arse. One of them is plot. The other is exploitation. Watching this show, I felt that the Eliza herself was the one who had been turned into a porn-doll for the viewer's enjoyment, and I felt myself feeling a little bit sick for her.

Joss's superwomen have always been sexy. The short skirts of Buffy and the kicking-ass-in-a-pretty-dress River and all the women in between. But they were sexy, they weren't being actively perved over by the camera. It didn't feel this gratuitous. If anything, it is more important for the camera to seem an impartial observer in a world where the main character is a personality-less drone for a large part of the time, and one where the other characters mostly act on the assumption that it is fine and normal to brainwash and rape young women. If the camera seems to be colluding... well, it sort of undermines any attempt to counter the "rape and slavery okay" world view.

I really wanted to like it. Especially after the amazing Epitaph One, and a good few eps of Season 2. But I can't get over this queasy feeling that the show has already contradicted it's message too strongly in the first Season to ever feel like a feminist endeavour. It's not empowering. It's inviting us to be turned-on by women who have had all their power removed. It's a fetish about strong women made weak and abused, not weak women made strong, and I'm over it.

A splishy splashy holiday...

2009-09-25T12:06:00.008+01:00

Hello blog, it's been a while. A while in which I mostly had a life when I wasn't watching Star Trek films and working.

I have crawled back onto the internet though, and mostly because the new seasons of EVERYTHING are starting again. Supernatural has embarked on it's fifth (and final?) season which promises to be quite theological again, with the trademark gore, bromance, and dorky references (season two sees Dean make a flippant comment about a pit-stop at Mount Doom, for instance. Where does he find the time between saving the world from demons to see all these fantasy films?) which make it the best genre show on TV at present.

Sci-fi is busting out all over the local multiplex too, with the beautifully old-school Moon (reminded me of Sunshine only with more Sam Rockwell) being followed by District 9. The latter turned out to be extremely... satisfying. A thinky opener followed by some The Fly style horror and an action movie ending that left me thinking, for some reason, of Men in Black but with less slapstick. Prawn porn which I totally loved from start to finish. And this week I hope to see Surrogates with Bruce Willis (who hasn't left the house since he can't remember when, but seems to retain his lightening quick action-hero reflexes all the same, which is lucky).

I am at home at the moment, squinting at my own skin to see if I can find evidence of a tan. I just got back from a trip to Croatia, where I spent a lot of time asleep on a beach, and jumping out of my skin when fish bumped into my legs in the sea... I'm a bit of a pussy when it comes to swimming.

Absolute highlight? Going white-water rafting with six enormous Slovenian firemen, who didn't speak a word of English. This was in Omis, (see photo) which used to be a pirate fortress in the gorge made by the Cetina River. My lovely friend Gemma, which whom I was on holiday, was all for doing some rafting down the gorge, and since this was supposed to be the best way to see it, I was rather up for it too. So we went to see a lady offering trips, who said that if we could go right that second, and fill her boat, we could go half price. Uh, provided we didn't tell anyone she was giving us the deal. Dodgy? You bet, but we went anyway.

I was wearing a skirt, which I figured was an atrocious idea, so I went next door to this little touristy shop to see if I could pick up some shorts. The girl there didn't speak any English, but she gave me to understand that she had only one pair in the whole shop, which were some white cotton kids shorts. Desperate not to have to do water sports in my underwear, I took them. They turned out to fit (the perks of being titchy) but were so short that Kylie would have been too embarrassed to wear them in public. My arse was hanging out, but it was all I had, so I went rafting in my hotpants.

The Slovenians were lovely, in a rugby-player way, with our Croatian guide acting as occasional interpreter (sometimes, when they were laughing in a rather robust way and looking at us, he feigned an inability to find the correct words in English and had the decency to look rather embarrassed. Bless). It came as no surprise to Gemma and I to discover they were firemen. We seem to stumble upon firemen in every conceivable situation, which is quite a handy skill to have.

Rafting itself was brilliant. I managed to only inhale river water once, which was pretty good going, and completely avoided falling out of the boat. In fact, I was very impressed with this fact, as the guide was sweet but somewhat patronising. There was a lot of "don't worry girls, I'll put you near me so I can catch you" bullshit, which was well intentioned but quite amusing, seeing as I have never worried about my balance or grip in these situations (years of horse riding and some kayak and sailing experience mean I'm not afraid of failing either) and Gemma used to navigate rapids on a kayak during her days as an outdoor ed instructor. We kept this to ourselves though, and just gave each other amused looks across the raft.

We were also told that it was great for us to go with these firemen, as we wouldn't have to do much paddling. It turned out the guys couldn't paddle for shit and the guide had to keep telling them to watch us, and do it like we were doing it. Oh dear.

Anyway, during one particularly exciting set of rapids the boat tipped and started to flip. I managed to slide into the bottom where I would be safe, as did Gemma, who had to throw herself upwards to make it, whilst the Slovenian firemen hit the water and floated downstream. Cue much hilarity from our guide, who had us help him steer the raft to catch them before they hit the next lot of rapids, and some jokes about how the pretty little girls were considerably better at this than the bit strapping men.

During one set of rapids we missteered round a rock and I was slammed bodily against a tree. Which HURT, and caused me to squeal in surprise and pain, for which I was roundly mocked. I carried on paddling though!

There was a wonderful calm section through a forest, where I felt like I was in that bit in The Fellowship where they paddle down river from Lothlorien. Gemma informed me I was a massive geek, but I knew this already. Another slow slide through a canyon-like section of the gorge with sheer rock walls broken by the occasional waterfall was particularly impressive.

At the end of the trip, the Slovenian firemen drove us back to town, squished in the back of their van, making cracks about the improvements we'd all made in European relations thanks to being impressively composed English chicks who out-paddled them.

This week I also devoured Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box as one of my holiday reads. It's amazing, a horror novel that is subtly scary and actually deserves to be called a page turner. I became an anti-social nightmare whilst reading this book. Also, I'm the kind of person who digs all the nerdy rock music references.

Supernatural: The Monster At The End Of This Book

2009-04-03T21:10:00.006+01:00

It's been a little while, hasn't it blog? Well, I've been busy, and I'm still waiting on the extra RAM I ordered to make my beautiful Dell run at a halfway decent speed (1gb with Vista, are they joking?).

In this time, though, I have been watching an awful lot of good TV. Today I shall mostly be spoiling for Supernatural, up to and including episode 18 of season 4. Consider that fair warning.

Supernatural is by far the best genre TV show currently in production. It may well be the best TV show on air full stop. I just can't fault it. Okay that's not entirely true, I can fault on it's epic white male bias (women and characters of colour are mainly evil or they die. Fail, SPN, epic fail) but for storytelling this show is top. And each series just keeps getting better!

Season four has been spectacular so far. From the opening revelation that angels exist in the SPNverse, to the latest episode in which we discover the existence of prophets that receive the word of God, the show keeps coming up with exciting new moments where it could potentially jump the shark. But it doesn't. The writers make it work! And they do it by never forgetting that essentially their show is about two brothers with enormously depressing and fucked-up lives.

As funny as the "our lives are books, and there are Supernatural fans, and they slash us" opening was, I was a teensy bit scared that they weren't going to make it work in the context of the show. How was this going to be explained in a cheese-free way? In the end, I absolutely LOVED the prophets angle. The show considered how difficult it would be to live your life with too much knowledge about your destiny, and finally went to a really dark place with Chuck deciding to kill himself rather than be a helpless observer of the Winchesters' (apparently not so cheery) fate, only to be told by the increasingly creepy Zachariah that he had no choice.

Despite this doom and gloom, Supernatural always brings the comedy and this episode had more than most. I have to say, I loved the "I'm the Prophet Chuck!" line, and "M Night level of douchiness" as well as the Winchesters discovering the existence of slash fiction about themselves.

In fact the postmodern nod to fandom was quite touching really. Kripke keeps an eye on his fans, obviously, and validates them with a lovable piss-taking on screen. Compare this to the hatred of fanfiction you get from the likes of Anne Rice. Yeah, Kripke loves us. Also, commenting on the terrible writing of episodes like Bugs? Genius. And true. We've come a long way since those days, thankfully!

Castiel had an interesting role in the episode too, developing his relationship with Dean and seemingly showing more disobedience than he ever has before.

Some minor plot niggles. If Lilith wants to stop bringing about the apocalypse because she knows she won't survive it, why would she decide to make a deal with the Winchesters? Surely that's not much of a deal if it's something she actually WANTS to do anyway? So now she got turned down, does she intend to sacrifice herself to free Lucifer to spite the boys? Makes no sense.

I'm loving this season so much! I can't wait to see what the horrific prophecy Chuck had will be. I heart the Winchesters, and I heart watching them suffer, in a really sadistic way. I agree with the publisher lady, it's always best when they're crying.

I am the queen of technology!

2009-03-12T18:26:00.001Z

I have a new, shiny, cherry red Dell inspiron! I love it, it's beautiful. It only set me back £350 which is pretty sweet, although I am skint now so woops.

I am also getting a Nokia brand fake Crackberry as my phone upgrade! It was this or the Nokia fake iPhone, but touch screens are for wankers.

Now I just need a digital SLR to cream over and I'll be sorted for shiny, expensive toys that always need recharging.

Getting in fights with dickheads.

2009-03-08T02:25:00.004Z

Some guy started on me in a club tonight, and it really pissed me off.

This dude was dancing enthusiastically behind me and kept jamming with his elbows and slamming in to my back, clearly unaware/too drunk to notice/uncaring of the fact that this was a) painful for a slight woman b) annoying and c) unnecessary on a not too crowded dance floor provided he tone down the vicious gyrations. After one particularly violent body slam, I elbowed him off me. He took great offence to this and took hold of my arm to say, in a tone dripping with sarcasm: "Sorry if I got in your way."

Well, there you're implying I needed said space, when in fact I was already IN said space, and you just shoved me. Hard. So I replied: "Well, you kept jumping on me so I just figured I'd let you know I was here." I prepared to leave it at that. Oh no.

"Whatever," replies Agressive Dancing Man. "I didn't jump on you, and..." At this point I am no longer listening, because Agressive Dancing Man is RIGHT IN MY FACE, spitting his little tirade at me. Uh, not okay. I pushed him away from me to a decent distance, and getting angry myself I say "Fuck off you fucking dickhead." (I'm lovely, really.) "Oh! And again!" he yells, angry that I've pushed him away for a second time. I've had enough and turn away.

Then he utters the line that really fucked me off.

"You're not that hot."

WHAT?! How is that even minutely fucking relevant? How does my level of physical attractiveness come in to this argument about who shoved who first? Do I have less right to this space I am occupying on the dancefloor because you do not deem me to be attractive? Am I demanding space because I think I'm pretty? Am I here dancing because I think I'm pretty? Do you have the right to ignore the fact that I'm here, and then when I bring myself to your attention, to act aggressively towards me because you do not think I'm pretty? Please explain to me WHY IT MATTERS WHAT YOU THINK.

I replied, quite truthfully: "Well, neither are you." As in, why go there?

"Uh," he gets all disdainful. "I'm GAY."

At this I am completely stumped. You're gay. Uh, fine? Does my opinion on your attractiveness not count because YOU are gay? But YOUR opinion of MY attractiveness, a gay man judging a woman, DOES count. The implication is that this gay man clearly KNOWS where as my opinion is worth nothing.

And this frustrated and irritated me. The accepted stereotype of the fashion and beauty aware homosexual who is insightful and untouchable when it comes to judging the appearance of women is both incorrect, stupid and unhelpful. Perpetuated by the likes of the sickening Gok Wan, who passes judgement on women he supposedly feels a kinship with because he used to be fat, the myth that gay men are accurate and fair judges of female beauty has to end. Not only does this turn all gay men into camp charicatures along the Queer Eye line, which is simply not true, but by condoning this believe we breed a half-hidden misogyny which I have glimpsed in many gay men of my acquaintance. Whether it manifest as the seemingly harmless "Oh, I'll only hang out with women if they can be pretty accessories" or the downright insulting "I am an unquestionable judge of female beauty- do as I say". Either way, the most common attitude amongst gay men towards women appears to be that of exclusion and disdain.

I don't mean to generalise, and this cannot apply to all male homosexuals, but very few straight men have ever used "well, you're ugly" as a reason for being aggressive towards me, and the "I'm gay, so your opinions are worthless because you are a woman and you are not relevant to my world" argument is the worst and most sexist, bigoted thing anyone has ever said to me.

I am a woman, yes. And sadly for you, we make up half the world's population. So I AM relevant to your world, because I demand space in it. If you don't like it, you can have my fist in your face.

My sporting beard

2009-02-21T18:34:00.000Z

I decided that I need to do some fucking exercise, because sitting around in my pants drinking cans of Red Stripe and eating fried chicken whilst laughing about the good genes that mean I hardly ever put on weight was probably going to lead to an extremely ironic heart attack at the age of thirty five.

I picked running, because it's cheap, doesn't involve sweating in a basement with a bunch of other women, and also involves fresh air. And I like the idea of running, thanks to some very romantic Nike ads. To get me started I was going to need some basic equipment, since running in converse and skinny jeans probably wasn't going to be a good idea. I haven't bought trainers since I was thirteen and used to buy four quid pairs from ShoeFayre for PE class, so I asked my friend Gemma to help me.

This wasn't the only reason I asked Gemma to help me. Sports shops are mysterious and foreign to me. The walls are always hung with painful looking instruments of torture, the staff are always watching you expectantly and saying things like "did you want sweat slick technology?" and the customers are usually fully paid up members of the chav community, buying "fashion trainers", which I'm sure is a contradiction in terms. It's terrifying.

Even a simple pair of trainers, once you're past the fashion section, isn't as easy at it sounds. There were running, cross, and trail labelled trainers which all looked the fucking same. The ones I eventually bought had "shock absorb technology" which apparently was a good thing. They make my feet look like I've duct taped pillows to them, which is also exactly how they feel.

Gemma then also suggested that a sports bra might be a good idea, even for tits as titchy as mine. I decided she was right, mostly because my right boob tends to hurt in the area of my scar if I run up stairs too fast or something. I eventually found one that didn't smoosh my girls up towards my shoulders, or mould them into weird points, and myriad other bizarre options that were clearly designed by someone who had never actually seen a breast, and had only heard about them from vague description.

As the proud owner of a lot of unused sportwear, I'm hoping the shame of buying this stuff will spur me on to use it, to at least justify the amount of time today I spent being patronised by people wearing airtex polo shirts with absolutely no irony whatsoever.

Culinary dilemma

2009-02-20T16:46:00.002Z

I have an apple and a personal-sized M&S chocolate fudge cake sitting next to each other on my desk like treat scales, or twin covers of crappy teen novels about vampires. I daren’t eat one and upset the balance. I don’t have time to eat both. What on earth do I do?

Ah, someone gave me some chocolate, and upset the delicate ecosystem of my desk, so I ate that instead. Sorted.

The good, the bad, and the gory...

2009-01-29T00:51:00.006Z

Struggling to find a film you can watch with a hangover in between all the Nazis, biopics and faux-documentaries? Wondering what to see at the cinema now that awards season is in full swing? Let me help with a quick run down of the no-brains-required options of the week... (minor spoilers follow)

Covering the comedy angle with a neat little film that manages to be both predictable and entertaining is Role Models, doing the better-late-than-never coming-of-age story with a wonderfully deadpan Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) and a nicely reigned in Seann William Scott (American Pie, Road Trip). Both leads are on form, and the pace cracks along nicely leaving no time for fidgeting around wondering where the next joke is coming from. It's really the kids in this film that make it so unexpectedly brilliant, though. Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad) is both lovable and ridiculous as a friendless role-playing nerd and Bobb'e J. Thompson had me in hysterics as a foul-mouthed ten year old. A pretty obvious plot (kids are impossible to relate to, but in the end they bond with their mentors and teach them a little something about life blah blah schmaltzy blah) is done with the minimum of puke-inducing chick-flick moments, and the comedy always comes first. The scenes with the seriously unhinged, ex-drug addict volunteer coordinator (Jane Lynch) are sometimes more awkward than funny, but this is a minor quibble in an otherwise very enjoyable film. Besides, hearing a ten year old saying "cock block" will never not be funny.

Also funny in an unintentional way was My Bloody Valentine 3D, which had me creased up over a lengthy and completely unnecessary scene of full frontal female nudity. On the whole, though, this film was pretty satisfying, with the usual amount of suspense, who-dunnit, and slasher gore vastly improved by the impressive use of the 3D gimmick. Gore flies in your face, shotguns are pointed into the audience, and pickaxes are waved under your nose. It's pretty cool. Jensen Ackles is passable in the lead role, although I felt the film would have been improved by more nudity on his part. Something for the ladies, please, makers of slasher films! That said, I also enjoyed the fact that the mysterious masked killer took a few beatings during the course of the film, most of them dished out by Jaime King as Ackles' ex Sarah, who manages to beat the mass murderer off with a shovel, a lamp, and a frozen leg of what may have been lamb. It's nice when women in horror films aren't just there to get naked, scream, and then get killed. That said, the plot twists aren't particularly impressive and any scene which doesn't involve someone getting killed seemed tedious and strained, and full of balls about the importance of mining to the community. But you don't go for the social commentary. You go for the scene where someone's eyeball flies towards your face on the business end of a pickax.

Last, and definitely least, there's Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. If, like me, you have pushed the first two Underworld films so far to the back of your mind that you can only recall vague images of Kate Beckinsale in an improbable outfit and some convoluted stuff about a guy named Corvinus then fear not, for this sequel is, in fact, a prequel and could stand alone, plot-wise. Mostly. It opens with some hurried exposition and then tries really hard to fill the next couple of hours with about enough plot for twenty minutes. Oops. Basically, there's a really weird sex scene over a cliff edge (I really want to make a safe sex joke but I wont), Bill Nighy overacts, and then the werewolves rise. That's pretty much it. The ending relies too heavily on a final showdown between Bill Nighy's vampire king Viktor and Micheal Sheen's (frighteningly buff, more frightening than James McAvoy in Wanted... more frightening than Gary Rhodes!) lycan Lucian which is doomed to fail, tension-wise, because this is a prequel and both these characters appear in the original films! In fact, since we already know what the outcome of the film will be (we have been told that the lycans rise and that Sonja (Rhona Mitra) dies during the plot of Underworld) it would have been nice to spend a little bit more on how we got here. Think the recent Star Wars prequels, or Titanic, for example. Why did Viktor let first-of-his-kind Lucian live? Why train the boy to fight to protect your clan then make him a blacksmith? How on earth did vampire princess Sonja end up falling in love with a lycan slave boy in the first place when her race supposedly despises his? This could have been so much better, and would have given the ending, when Sonja meets her inevitable doom, a sense of tragedy that was sorely lacking. Instead I just wondered at how Lucian managed to get all that tight leather on and off so quickly. I suspect with a liberal application of baby powder. Also, since when did Michael Sheen become such a shrimp (bite off the head, leave the body)?

I have no intention of seeing Bride Wars. Even I'm not that brave.

I washed my shoe...

2009-01-12T21:36:00.003Z

Wow, first post in the new blog! It has taken me ages to get to this point. It looked so nice and neat and clean all post-free, you know? Although I realised that it was also a bit useless waiting for an AMAZING and EPIC first post topic, since very rarely to things amazing and epic actually happen to me.

Instead, I thought I would share one of my most recent failures in life. I washed my shoe. My lovely, real leather, tan coloured brogue to be precise. I must have picked it up along with a mound of sheets I had just stripped off my bed and thrown it straight in the washing machine, where it enjoyed an extra spin cycle on 40 degrees before I discovered it crying and dishevelled inside a pillow case, wondering what it had done to make me hate it so.

I didn't cry. I'm very proud of this. It's only a shoe, after all. A beautiful, real leather, tan coloured brogue that I got from Topshop and was featured a week later in Heat magazine which made me feel all fashion-forward and stuff.

This is it now:The washed shoe is on the right, all shrivelled and dark and devoid of natural oils and suppleness and laces. On the left is the other one of the pair, the one that escaped the washing machine by virtue of being wedged firmly under my chest of drawers.

I'm now left with the dilemma of how to fix this problem. Clearly there is no helping the washed shoe. I borrowed some clear shoe polish from my flatmate and this appears to have made it marginally shinier. The colour has run a bit and leather is hard and the inside is manky, but at least it's shinier. I'm loathe to put the unscathed shoe in the washing machine to try and make them match, but secretly I like the shoe better darker and skankier. I can pretend it's vintage. I'm not just saying that to hide my inner shame at having washed a really nice shoe and totally ruined it.

Moral of this story is: put your shoes away rather than leaving them on the floor. Especially the nice ones. Or stop giving a shit about your shoes. You choose.