swatkat

+ This story about Cliff Chiang drawing Black Canary for a fan is the cutest thing ever*. Even if I generally want comics!Ollie to be far, far away from my Dinah.

* Except today's Gunnerkrigg Court, which is beyond adorable. <33333

Speaking of which, I have seen the second episode of Arrow, and it is still quite fun. Ollie is still very pretty, Stephen Amell is still hilariously bad most of the time (his angsty voiceovers, my god), his inappropriate chemistry with his sister is still inappropriate but also gripping (the only scenes where his acting works, as far as I'm concerned), and his Hamlet backstory is still ridiculous and cheesy (he cannot be the man his mother wants him to be! because he has to be the man his ~father wanted him to be). I do like the actor who plays Dinah Laurel a lot, and her relationship with her father has excellent potential, I think. I hope they tell us eventually that her mother was the first Black Canary - followed, obviously, by her taking up the mantle.

+ I continue to make my way through OUAT S1. It's great fun, and ( spoilers till 1.13 )

+ ( HIMYM 8.10 )

+ ribbonspooncat's thoughts on Bering and Wells (there is a moving gif in the link - I used Readability for better reading)

ladyshinkicker's thoughts on Bering and Wells:

So, HG Wells is actually a woman – she provided the ideas, her brother provided the moustache, but who wrote the books? Each of them bears Helena’s name, but we know that she was bronzed before all of HG Wells’ books were published. Her exact status – author or muse – is ultimately an ambiguous one, and I know that this is a plothole which some fans like to criticise the writers for, but I honestly think it works. Helena isn’t quite a muse, she isn’t quite an author, and she isn’t quite a character: her presence queers the narrative (many of her lovers were men; many of her characters were men; many of her authors were men) but it also deconstructs the act of narration itself. She’s introduced before she’s ever introduced – Myka read HG Wells’s novels, Pete’s seen the movies, and Myka spots ‘Edward Prendick’ in the guestbook. Pete’s Genre Savvy, he knows how this works, but he’s still thinking in terms of actors and performance and guesses; Helena can’t quite stay away and the pseudonym she uses is her real name. When she introduces herself as Helena, that’s an implicit admission of her identity as HG Wells as well as a denial. They’re looking for Charles, the one with the moustache, but they’re calling him HG – she is HG, but she isn’t, too. Identity is never that simple for her.

ladyshinkicker's thoughts on HG Wells:

I think that she works brilliantly within the narrative as a sort of ghostly presence, lurking in all of the dark places and threatening to huff and puff and bring down the narrative around them – and, through that haunting, serves to shore up the narrative itself. Helena is the act of deconstruction and she is constantly deconstructed – what else is left, when the story tears itself apart, begins again, and rips that one up too?

LOOK AT ALL THE FEMSLASHY GOODNESS! I had been hoping to get something in for July 19th as well, but all I did in the past week was watch a zillion movies in the big film festival thing that was happening in town and my head, it spins!

See, I'm not what you would call a movie buff. I love vulgar, popular cinema and stay away (mostly) from incomprehensible art-y stuff ("Watch it for the cinematography!" "Uh, but what about the story?"). I don't care about film festivals. I do, however, have friends who are the very opposite - who care and who want me to want to care, which is why I ended up there in the first place ("How can we possibly go without you?" "This is blackmail!"), and I... am actually glad that I went.

Of the ones that we saw, my *favourite* has to be The Band's Visit (from Israel). I don't think I have words to express how much I loved this movie. It was smart, funny and bittersweet, and it talked about politics and people and dialogue, without actually saying them out loud, and that made it all the more poignant (and just plain awesome). Also, it was beautifully shot and the lead actress was incredibly hot.

( proof, because i am shallow )

After this one, we decided to catch all the other films from Israel as well, and so we saw Disengagement (excellent after the first thirty minutes, which were slightly confusing), Lemon Tree (awesome) and Yana's Friends (socute). I'm bummed that we missed Beaufort, because I remember roga mentioning it, but we are planning to get hold of it sometime soon.

Of the Indian movies we watched, my favourite has to be the yet-unrealeased Gulabi Talkies (in Kannada), which again left me speechless by the simplicity with which it handled something so *grim*. The protagonist's character simply bowled me away by her charm and her courage and the way she *smiled* through the entire thing and seriously, if you have access to Indian cinema (that is not Bollywood) and want to watch something brilliant, watch this. I cannot recommend it enough. I also enjoyed Kabootar, which will be out in September and is fairly mainstream, and if you enjoy angry young boys and raw energy and violence and tragedy, then this should be your thing.

A special mention goes to Whatever Lola Wants (from Morocco, but in English and featuring an American actress in the lead), because of the way it sails through the Bedchel test and the awesome slashiness between the lead and the gorgeous Lebanese actress playing Ismahan (I was *totally* slashing them in my head) and Hell's Ground (from Pakistan). We don't get to watch Pakistani cinema very often, so there's always a great deal of interest when Pakistani films hit the festival circuits. Since we had missed every other Pakistani film aired in the festival, we decided that we *had* to watch this, even though I'm not a fan of horror. And then there were MUTANT FLESH-EATING ZOMBIES and a TRANSSEXUAL BURQA-MAN WITH A BLOOD FETISH. *FLAILS* (For a more coherent review, read this; I disagree with the reviewer, however, that it 'tries' to be a spoof - the director only said that *afterwards* because there was so much laughter, in the initial talk he was all about the horror.)

+ How adorable and dorky is RSL? ♥

+ Thoughts on 3.17 Fetal Position, flist? Talk to me.

So tell me my dear fellow mina_de_malfois fans - Mina/Arc or Xena/Arc? I need to know.

This came up while chatting with jaybee65 this morning, and now I have a very shallow confession to make - I don't always get into a show or a character unless the actor is someone I like to look at. The real reason I started watching Angel? I was channel-surfing one day and S3's scruffy!glasses!Wesley caught my eye and I couldn't look away, although it was a silly vampire show (I know, I know). And while I have grown to completely, absolutely love everything about House (except maybe the fandom, which is batshit. of course, so is HP, so maybe I'll get used to it), the reason why I *started* watching, inspite of the fact that I *hate* doctor shows, is because everyone is so darn pretty (then House quoted the philosopher Jagger, and I was in love). And I don't care at all for Smallville, but sometimes I watch it just to look at Tom Welling.

(hello, new people! please make yourselves comfortable. i'm not always this shallow)

ETA: Oddly, I don't care at all if the characters in a book are pretty or not. Emma!Hermione, pretty is she is, is nothing like my!Hermione, who's a plain girl who *can* look good when she's all glammed up but doesn't particularly care about it. Hmm. Does the nature of the medium condition our expectations of it? Television = visual medium = eye candy?

There. Not so shallow anymore.