Enter the Dragon

Holy cow, I'm covered in scratches! What the hey...?

Also, I saw a commercial on cable television today concerning a new TV show called Fallen that, apparently, involves fallen angels and assorted other demigods in hiding amongst us humans, fighting some kind of cosmic war or something. Sort of like that awesome movie, Prophecy, with Christopher Walken as the Angel of Death...only on TV, and probably nowhere near as cool. Does anyone have any information on this? I thought it was on WTAE tonight at 8, but...nope. A Google search brings up only some unrelated series from 2004 and, of course, that awesome Wesley Snipes movie. So what's up here? I demand fallen angel action!

Misogyny?

I really, really want to see My Super Ex-Girlfriend. One, it's got Uma Thurman in it...looking hot again instead of cracked-out and way too thin. Two, it's about a crazy ex. Hmmm. Might this be a movie that Pegritz can relate to? Quite possibly!

But this review from the normally-interesting and insightful Slate.com (who also have an awesome chart of who hates who in the Middle East) is a little puzzling, in that it calls My Super Ex-Girlfriend "misogynistic" as if that's a bad thing!

Face it, people. Women are crazy. And so are men. Hell, people are crazy...and this movie is a COMEDY that specifically deals with that fact. The male lead is a cad, and Uma Thurman's character is a needy, neurotic, Jennifer-esque mess. We're meant to LAUGH at this shit, not make moral judgments about it. Which is why I don't understand the tone of this review. Witness:

We're meant to find Jenny comically awful and chortle along in eye-rolling sympathy with Matt, but in fact, the script leaves us with no one to care about at all. If Jenny comes off as a petty-minded hag, Matt is a simpering cad, and the supporting characters (who include Eddie Izzard as G-Girl's arch-nemesis, the insecure supervillain Professor Bedlam) are too sloppily drawn to provide any real moral counterpoint.

I reiterate: this is a silly comedy, NOT a moral lesson in responsibility in dating. You do not watch Happy Gilmore to learn about the morality of golf, do you? No--you watch it because it's funny to see Adam Sandler cussin' at a golf ball. The best comedies are those that are vicious, hands down, and if the viciousness in this one happens to be aimed at women, oh well--tough. Deal with it. Or make My Super Ex-Boyfriend, and cast me as the woefully-inexperienced, emotionally-confused, and terminally-lazy supergeek who loses his mind when he's dumped, or something like that.

One final line from the review:

A less willfully misogynist movie might have made Thurman's doubleidentity the starting place for an exploration of female power, super-or otherwise.

There is such a thing, you dummy: it's called The Watchmen, by Alan Moore, and hopefully it will be making it to screen soon enough.

The 95 Theses of Geek Activism

Now here's something I'm truly behind: The 95 Theses of Geek Activism.

However, there's one I don't particularly agree with--no 45: Read of Gandhi’s actions in civil disobedience. Discover Satyagraha.

Nonviolence is always the preferable way to go. But it does not always work. Violence is a last-resort option, but it must always be considered an option. Sometimes--rarely, I'll admit, but sometimes--the only way to solve a situation is to crush your opponent into the ground, salt the ground with plutonium, and then tell everyone else, "Don't do what he did."

So I'd personally revise 45 with the following corrolary:

45b. If 45 doesn't work, blindingly swift, insane, and narrowly-targeted ultraviolence may be necessary.

I've always wanted to do a dark comedy film in which one day Mahatma Ghandi and his followers just hold a big meeting and decide, "OK, this Styagraha thing isn't working. Time to bust out the guns." And then they all morph into super-powered Bollywood robots with multiple arms and weapons systems and they disintegrate the entire British colonial sepoy government in seconds. Then they turn back to regular people and resume their daily lives free of British rule.