Author: Colette Arrand
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Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Psychosis (1/6/97)
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Movie Review: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Hiding within Snow White and the Huntsman is something sleek and subversive, a forward-thinking fairy tale concerned with gender politics, something both of and for its time. It’s so well-secluded, however, that to continue on in that vein would mean entirely forgetting about the film’s title characters and focusing on its villain, which isn’t likely to happen in even the best summer blockbusters. The villain, after all, is just a crutch by which a less-than-interesting protagonist is supported, and while Rupert Sanders‘ retelling of Snow White flirts with crafting a staggeringly effective evil queen, the strength of Charlize Theron’s initial performance gives way to your usual bad guy platitudes, culminating in your typical CGI “epicness.” (more…)
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First Issue Collectors Item: Batgirl #0 (2012)
First Issue Collector’s Item is a periodic, ongoing look at that most illusive (and, in many instances, ultimately valueless) pop-culture artifact: The first issue of a comic book series. This week, DC Comics continues to offer issue #0s looking at the origins of the heroes at the focus of the New 52, and Oni Press has something new from Greg Rucka. First, lets take a look at Gail Simone’s slightly tweaked Batgirl origin story in Batgirl #0.
Though I fell somewhat short of my goal to write about all fifty-two new or relaunched series DC Comics trotted out sometime last year to the chagrin of folks who obsess over the way comic books are numbered (in my experience, a staggering amount of people) and the eventual glee of the DC bigwigs whose calculated gamble paid off better than anybody could have anticipated, allow me to float forth a theory on why this massive undertaking rocked the DC Universe to its core. Though several changes have come down the pike that haven’t been universally well-received—Wonder Woman’s Amazonian tribe as a group of maneating baby killers, Superman having never dated Lois Lane, Superman making out with Wonder Woman, Batgirl getting over the whole quadriplegia thing—The New 52 wasn’t ever an initiative to tear the multiverse asunder, assassinate your favorite characters, or front an unstated cultural agenda. The purpose of this whole thing was to make collecting individual issues into trade paperbacks an easier enterprise, one that wouldn’t scare casual readers off a page on Amazon as soon as they saw that a trade collected issues 634-645 of Detective Comics. (more…)
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Movie Review: Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)
Though it’s often portrayed as something fun and adventurous, I suspect that the true nature of time travel, at least for the basement quacks and pseudoscientists working on such projects. Even Marty McFly, patron saint of time travel, booked it to 1955 under tragic circumstances. That’s why it’s hardly surprising to learn that the people who respond to personal ads like the one that inspires Safety Not Guaranteed are inmates and survivors, those looking to rectify a mistake or save someone from dying. This strikes me as about right. Sure, there are plenty of people who’d go back in time just to do it, but the right person for the job has the right reasons for going.
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Jerry “The King” Lawler and the Reality of Wrestling Announcers
I’ve been thinking about writing something along these lines for some time now, longer even than I’ve been involved in wrestling in any capacity beyond mark proprietor of a small-time blog, and I suppose I’ve held off for exactly that reason—even though I’m incredibly new to this business, one of the things I was told early on was that respect didn’t come easily to new guys who wrote often ill-informed musings on what goes on behind the curtain or before the crowd. That, more than anything, explains why a formerly prodigious stream of wrestling-related content on this blog slowed to a trickle, but I continued (and continue) to read plenty of other people’s opinions on wrestling—professional or not—and have found an impressive amount of digital ink spilled on the subject of announcers in pro-wrestling. The two desk-jockeys receiving the most attention are the two who anchor the most important weekly wrestling broadcast in the world, Michael Cole and Jerry “The King” Lawler of WWE’s Monday Night Raw. It’s a funny thing about wrestling: When you’re new, everything is intimidating and you take advice from everybody. At the tail end of my career as an MFA student at Bowling Green State University, everybody I knew told me that it’d be great if I wrote about what it was like to train in that particular field, but three sentences into training, my trainer told me not to. Your trainer’s word, during and often after training, is gospel, so I listened, even after training left me exposed as a fat, concussion-prone kid who wasn’t quite ready to chase his dream. But I’ve always had another dream when it came to wrestling, and it’s one that I’m currently living, and it’s one that I wouldn’t be chasing were it not for men like Jerry Lawler. It’s often the reality of wrestling that most shakes fans and performers, and I suppose that’s why I’m finally writing about this topic.
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Movie Review: Killer Joe (2012)
It isn’t immediately apparent, but William Friedken‘s Killer Joe is the year’s most effective horror movie, a dirty, sexual, gore-spattered test of nerves, a psychological grindhouse film that introduces us to some deeply unlikable people who only grow more unlikable—and more disturbing—with each decision they make. The reason this isn’t obvious from the start is because Killer Joe is also, at times, one of the year’s funniest movies. Its characters and set-pieces are so dumb they defy the theory of evolution. Surely, God shaped the Smith family of mud and forgot to breathe life into them. Save one, they’re a pack of witless bumblers. It’s funny watching them get what’s coming their way, at least to a point, at which you feel disgusting for having enjoyed anything that came before. (more…)