UMW Bullet, Sept. 27
3:10 TO YUMA
I have a confession to make: I’ve never liked Westerns. It’s difficult to become emotionally attached to a genre that essentially consists of only one film. Poor miner/farmer/townsperson is terrorized by outlaw/neighbor/ruthless businessman. Insert crying wife/kids/saloon girls. Valiant but morally ambiguous stranger turns up just in time to save the day. Wife/kids/saloon girls stop crying and end credits are accompanied by joyful, feel-good music.
So you can understand my initial feeling, no doubt, that in seeing 3:10 to Yuma I was taking one for the team. …

I’d like to carry Michelle’s discussion of the female hero a little further. I’ve done quite a lot of writing about the problems with strong female characters, especially in fantasy novels and fairy tales, so I’m going to leave that angle alone for now and approach this from a more personal standpoint. I really love the story of Fa Mu Lan as told from the narrator’s point of view (rather than third-person as many of the other stories are presented), and as a folk tale, it seems to be fairly …

My new film column, from this week’s Bullet. (Original version)
STARDUST, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE FAIRY TALE
Sick of the onslaught of new Harry Potter movies? Can’t watch Legolas flip his hair even one more time? Do you sometimes find yourself wondering what the world would be like if fantasy characters, instead of wasting wishes on true love, requested acting talent or better screenplays? In this age of inverse correlation between special effects and depth of plot, it’s refreshing to see at least one new movie …

Dreams, or at least half-dreams, are seductive things. Forum post for 295 that I’m re-posting here because it ends with a question, one that I want to keep thinking about.
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I fell half asleep re-reading Possession and I think at some point my subconscious began to blend me with the characters. You know that state that’s nearly sleep but not quite, when you begin to see flashes of the day’s activity as you drift off? And then it spirals away towards other things, blending everything together and inventing new identities, locations, …

Maybe I was just feeling overly sentimental when I finished it on Sunday night, but I’m sorry to admit that I actually cried at the end of this story. And I’m not even quite sure why.
There are so many things about A Japanese Nightingale that really bother (and occasionally offend) me. The fact that Yuki has blue eyes and Western hair may at first be appealing to us, until we realize that the author has set it up like that to attract a Western audience. She’s not unique; she’s engineered …

My friend just showed me this and I had to share :)
Enjoy!

I was working on a film blog post yesterday afternoon when the internet distracted me again (pesky internet) and I discovered something pretty spectacular.
Ever wondered how to make a laser flashlight? Or a snazzy pair of homemade infrared goggles? How about a miniature bow and arrow from a pen? You could even view sound waves in fire!
As if you didn’t have enough online distractions…