On Saturday, 2 June 2012, I met Thomas K.Y. & Kai-Yin H. for lunch at Mulan, a decent Taiwanese restaurant in downtown Waltham, Massachusetts. We also screened Snow White and the Huntsman at the Landmark Embassy Cinema. The fantasy film was enjoyable, despite some flaws.
Snow White and the Huntsman only loosely follows the story recounted by the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney. There’s still a princess, a wicked stepmother, a magic mirror, and seven dwarves, but this Snow White reminded me more of the wave of high-minded but inconsistent fantasy flicks from the 1980s, such as Dragonslayer or Labyrinth.
Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart acquits herself well as the eponymous princess, who is more like Joan of Arc than Disney’s cheerful heroine. Charlize Theron (soon also to be seen in Prometheus) happily chews the scenery as Queen Ravenna and needs to be “uglied up” with computer-generated effects for her younger rival to be the fairest in the land.
Thor‘s Chris Hemsworth is appropriately gruff as the drunken widower hired by Ravenna to find Snow White. Sam Clafin (from Pillars of the Earth and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) is a swashbuckling nobleman and potential live interest similar to Robin Hood, and Sam Spruell is Ravenna’s cruel brother Finn.
Snow White and the Huntsman‘s dwarves have less of a role than you might expect, even with clever casting — including the heads of veteran British character actors Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, and Brian Gleeson put onto little people’s bodies. The effect was seamless, but it only serves to whet the appetite for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in December.
Speaking of Jackson’s example, the production values of Snow White and the Huntsman are very good, with nicely unified sets, costumes, and armor. James Newton Howard’s orchestral soundtrack is a bit heavy-handed during the set-piece battles. I think the direction could have been better, since the movie starts slowly and the ending feels rushed. There are also few memorable lines in the script, which felt like a middling Dungeons & Dragonsgame (and I’ve participated in many of these).
In addition to the dwarves and Ravenna’s sorcery, the brief scene where Snow White and her companions enter a faerie glade is a hint of how this movie could have used visual effects for a more fantastic setting (see The Dark Crystalor Legend for examples). Instead, the movie focuses on more mundane matters like raising an army and the princess realizing her birthright, closer in style to Ladyhawke but without the simple but strong plot magical device of that movie.
Overall, I’d give Snow White and the Huntsman, which has finally dethroned The Avengers at the box office, a 7 out of 10, a B, or two and a half out of five stars. It’s rated PG-13 for violence.
As some of you may know from my report of this past weekend’s successful steampunkfestival, I collect costumes, among other things. As a longtime “Trekker/Trekkie,” I already have the boots, phaser pistol, and gold command tunics for the classic 1960s television series. In addition, I recently ordered a shirt and jacket in the style of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/Nemesis uniforms. The space opera garb arrived from China less than two weeks after I ordered it.
These are the voyages....
The materials and stitching are good, especially for the gray yoke. I’ll have to be careful with the small zippers. I may eventually replace the red mock turtleneck with one of a heavier material and use my metal rank pips and comm badge pin rather than the plastic ones that were Velcroed or sewn on. The jacket’s sleeves are a bit short, and the cuffs are a bit wide, but that’s because of my personal proportions and can be altered by a tailor (paging Elim Garak).
It is a period of incredible progress and terrible destruction. Communications and transportation grow ever faster, but they also hasten the spread of wars and disease. Old tribal rivalries and nascent social consciousness challenge vast aristocratic and mercantile empires, and urbanization and industrialization make life easier for millions but condemn millions more to seemingly inescapable poverty. The arts blossom as alliances tighten and harden, leading to what many believe will be a “war to end all wars.” It is the Victorian era, the setting for most steampunk.
Gears and gadgets
Steampunk is a style of speculative fiction that has been growing in popularity in the past few years. It has literary roots, readily incorporates elements of other subgenres, and is well-represented across media.
–Steampunk is alternate history. Much steampunk starts with the premise of “What if everything that authors Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Arthur Conan Doylewrote about was true?” From a North America where the Union didn’t win, to humans hunting dinosaurs (and vice versa), to trips through the ether to a verdant Mars, steampunk combines their wildest dreams.
-Steampunk is romance. The novel, classical and revived folk music (the opera, waltz, and polka), Pre-Raphaelite and Impressionist painting, and modern theater all took shape during the 18th and 19th centuries. The swashbuckling stories of Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas reflect this era as much as the ones they were set in, as does the “noble savage” described by James Fenimore Cooper or Rudyard Kipling. International cuisine, celebrity fashion, and travel for pleasure (and the first amusement parks) are all things we now take for granted that started during that period.
-Steampunk is science fiction. Just as its sibling cyberpunk examines the relationship of humanity with technology (specifically cybernetics, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology), steampunk looks at how the Industrial Revolution reshaped the world. The railroad and the telegraph are only the beginning, with anachronistic conveniences such as personal computers, televisions, and jet packs weighed down by clockwork gears, levers, and dials. Real-world advances in engineering are exaggerated for dramatic effect. Getting there is half the fun, with dirigibles the signature conveyance of the genre.
-Steampunk is fantasy. Like its sibling gothic horror — another product of this era — steampunk often includes elements of the supernatural, just as spiritualism (the forerunner of the modern New Age movement), religious revivals, and utopian experiments were part of the real-world reaction to scientific advancement. Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Dunsanay, L. Frank Baum, and Lewis Carroll inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and other seminal fantasy authors. Lost civilizations still seemed possible.
-Steampunk is socially conscious. Labor unions, waves of migration, the long struggle for civil rights including women’s sufferage, and the polemics of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx are parts of the wrenching social change underlying steampunk. Unlike the real world, where racism and sexism were at their peak, people of color and women are often found among steampunk‘s protagonists.
-Steampunk is idealistic. Like its cousins space opera, pulp cliffhangers, and comic book superheroes, steampunk roots for the little guy to become the big hero. The American West is full of legends and antiheroes. It’s all about attitude. Anyone can put on a pair of goggles, a bowler hat, and suspenders and attend a steampunk convention. Anyone can be a mad scientist, brave archaeologist, laconic gunslinger, or alluring spy. It’s a century and a half ago as many authors and we wish it could have been.
-Steampunk is multimedia. In the actual 19th century, wide literacy made possible the rise of newspapers and “penny dreadfuls,” the forerunners of pulps, current mass-market paperbacks, and online fan fiction. Steampunk has taken advantage of modern media, as demonstrated by numerous Web sites, games, sculptures, and graphic novels.
Examples:Rasputina (musical band); Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (video game); GURPS Steampunk (RPG)
-Steampunk is punk. Like cyberpunk, which looks at the disenfranchised in dystopian near futures, steampunk celebrates individualism and defiance of the established order. The 1960s weren’t the first or last time a bohemian counterculture was fueled by artistic license, sexual experimentation, and drug addiction. The chaotic mashup of genres, a loose approach to history and science, and an emphasis on fun have attracted numerous fans. Many goth enthusiasts have also embraced the retro styles of steampunk. The apparent contradictions or ambivalence reflected in the idealist/punk or fantasy/science fiction strains are just fine in this genre.
-Steampunk is (pre)apocalyptic. The steampunk era roughly coincides with the growth of the U.S. after the Louisiana Purchase to the outbreak of World War I. The so-called Manifest Destiny, the growth of democracy, and the “Gilded Age” would all come to a close as Europe’s dynasties and colonial domination came crashing down after Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. War machines loom on the horizon.
Just as we today look back at the Cold War or the 1990s with a nostalgia born of post-9/11 fears of terrorism, recession, and ecological catastrophe (floods, epidemics, earthquakes; with the attendant resurgence of zombies and other horror monsters), so too does steampunk look back at the 1800s through rosy lenses. In the 20th century, steampunk gives way to the pulps, noir, and dieselpunk. Who knows what else the 21st century will bring?
This past weekend was a good one for superhero fans. Janice and I visited four comic book shops on Free Comic Book Day, including the Comic Stop in Watertown, Massachusetts. I hadn’t visited that store before.
It’s smaller than my usual haunts of the Outer Limits in Waltham and New England Comics and Newbury Comics in Needham, but it was well-organized, and the proprietors were hospitable. I was glad to see that lots of families visited all of the shops for the event. I picked up several free issues for myself, nephews and nieces, and David I.S.
Disney/Marvel has been building its shared cinematic universe toward The Avengerssince at least 2008’s Iron Man. I’m not sure the movie would be particularly accessible to viewers who are unfamiliar with its predecessors or with Marvel’s characters, but for those of us who are fans, The Avengersis a long-awaited reward for our faithfulness.
The Avengersmanages to compress several decades of fictional continuity, adhere to comic book tropes such as superheroes fighting when they first meet, and provide enough explosions to launch the summer 2012 movie season. I’ll try not to give away any “spoilers” here, but note that a few of the links in this review may have some.
The basicpremise of The Avengers, in both print and film, is that the world’s greatest and most powerful heroes band together to fight a common threat. Of course, getting there is half the fun, at least for the audience, if not the battered costumed characters.
A major strength of recent superhero movies has been in casting good actors and treating the material seriously, without the campy excesses of the 1960s through 1980s. (Since then, we’ve suffered through angsty melodrama with the X-Men, Batman, and others.) It’s no surprise that Robert Downey Jr. is witty and charismatic as “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” Tony Stark/Iron Man.
Chris Evans holds his own as supersoldier Steve Rogers/Captain America, the team’s moral and tactical leader. Chris Hemsworth is mighty as Thor, Norse god (OK, extradimensional entity) of thunder, and Tom Hiddleston is delightfully smarmy as mischievous nemesis Loki. Scarlett Johansson returns as superspy Natasha Romanov, the only woman in this version of the group (founder Wasp is absent, and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts has a brief supporting cameo).
Mark Ruffalo joins the merry band as Bruce Banner/the Hulk, the third actor in as many movies to tackle the dual role of compassionate scientist and rage monster. Even though I liked Ed Norton’s paean to Bill Bixby’s TV version, I think Ruffalo did fine with the computer-assisted role, and the Hulk gets some of the funniest scenes in the movie.
Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg are joined by Colby Smulders as SHIELD agents Col. Nick Fury, Agent Phil Coulson, and Agent Maria Hill, respectively. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division is the shadowy organization that initially gathers the high-profile metahumans. Jeremy Renner is no-nonsense as expert marksman Clint Barton/Hawkeye — he’s not quite as flamboyant as his comic book counterparts — a former circus performer or DC’s GreenArrow.
I did like that the colorful vigilantes eventually found a way to work together to protect humanity from the invading Chitauri. The “Earth’s mightiest heroes” may not see eye to eye –leading to some drama and humor, as seen in previews and trailers — but both their squabbles and eventual teamwork are impressive to watch.
As expected, the visual special effects are especially spectacular, with SHIELD’s helicarrier, the Hulk’s rampaging physique, and numerous powers all rendered more realistically than many artists or kids in Halloween costumes could have ever dreamed. The costumes were redesigned to be harmonious, and I’ve long maintained that spandex or tights, if handled properly, can be just as good as the black leather of the X-Men movies. I picked up the HeroClix miniatures, and I look forward to seeing more action figures and Lego sets based on The Avengers.
As with any “juvenile” entertainment, a few critics in the mainstream media gave The Avengersnegative reviews. Some of their points are valid — mostly around pacing, some frenetic scenes that are hard to follow, and more characters than time to develop them equally well — but they assume falsely that popcorn entertainment and high art must be mutually exclusive.
I’d give The Avengers, which is rated PG-13 for violence, an 8.5 out of 10, three to four stars, or a B+/A-. It deserves to be on many of the “best comicbook movie” lists that can be found online.
We also sat through 20 minutes of previews. I was already interested in Disney/Pixar’s Brave, and I’m now a bit more curious about The Amazing Spider-Man and Alien prequel Prometheus. I am not interested in shoot-’em-up Battleship, Tim Burton’s quirky Dark Shadows, or 1980s flashback Expendables 2. As Stan “the Man” Lee says, Excelsior, true believers!
On Saturday, 28 April 2012, Janice and I went to Gore Place in Waltham, Massachusetts, for the 25th annual Sheepshearing Festival. I was impressed by the size of the event and the number of attendees. We enjoyed the herding dog demonstration, fair food, craft tents, and bluegrass music. Janice and I also took a brief tour of the early 19th century home of one of Massachusetts’ governors.
We caught a matinee of The Pirates! A Band of Misfits, the latest comedy from Aardman Animation, the studio responsible for Wallace & Gromit, among other things. We enjoyed the movie, which follows a hapless pirate captain (named “Pirate Captain” and voiced by Hugh Grant) in his quest to win the “Pirate of the Year Award.”
The Pirates!
Along the way, Pirate Captain and his eccentric crew — even for pirates — meet Charles Darwin (voiced by Martin Freeman, also known as Arthur Dent, Dr. Watson, and Bilbo Baggins) and an entirely unamused Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton). Also important to the plot are a dodo, a dirigible, and Darwin’s monkey butler.
If this sounds delightfully chaotic, it is. The Pirates! has a lively Anglo-American voice cast, sight gags too numerous to catch in a single viewing, and good use of modern music (the Clash’s “London Calling” is most memorable). The movie, which combines stop-motion and computer animation, also alludes to real-world literature and science of the 19th century.
I enjoyed The Pirates! more than the past few Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, and I recommend the movie to anyone who likes animation, comedy, or swashbuckling and steampunk. The Pirates! is rated PG for some crude humor and slapstick violence, but most of the adult jokes will sail right over children’s heads. I’d give The Pirates! A Band of Misfits an 8.5 out of 10, a B+/A-, or four stars. This coming weekend is the opening of the much-anticipated Avengers live-action movie….
Gene's Worlds 