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I saw Cloverfield the other night - JJ Abrams, shakycam, monster, disturbingly-out-of-place-in-silly-big-budget-monster-film September 11th references - and it struck me, we as a culture have been using the wrong film as a metaphor for pregnancy. Alien has the visuals, but for me, Cloverfield wins.

The Cloverfield monster (alien? primordial being? who knows) is the size of a skyscraper, with claws and teeth and a tail that can smash down a bridge. It marches around Manhattan breaking things, leaving rubble and fire and death in its wake. It swats down buildings. It bites the Statue of Liberty. It wrecks pretty much everything in its path. And it also has creepy little person-sized scuttling parasites that fall off it and cause even more damage, just for extra chaos. But! According to the designers, the monster is a newborn (new-hatched? new-spawned?) baby. It is not wrecking stuff out of malice; it is wrecking stuff because stuff is in its way, and it is confused and lost and has no idea what's going on and can't help it that every time it moves, something else goes ka-BOOM. So on the one hand, it's laying waste to everything you know and hold familiar in a series of gore, disaster and devastating explosions - on the other hand, it's only doing all this as an unintended side-effect of, basically, being a baby.

Why yes I do still have terrible morning sickness, since you ask. And exhaustion. And 36-hour headaches. And, well, the list goes on, but let's just say that the one thing Cloverfield is missing as a pregnancy metaphor is for the army to saunter up to the waves of terrified, injured, fleeing civilians, watching their city burn around them, and say "Have you tried ginger?"

But, I live in hope. The exhaustion is already fading; the sickness hopefully will follow one day (although I have given up on all the advice suggesting when, since it was getting too depressing to watch the points at which it's supposed to start fading whooshing past me as the sickness got worse and worse, and incidentally fuck you every single book and site and article on the second trimester for telling me how much better I'm feeling by this point).

The 12-week scan went fine. I have the requisite selection of blurry ultrasound photos making it look like a cross between a weather radar map and an alien, but they don't capture the best bit about the scan which was the realisation that, oh my God, it moves. Not just waving an arm or something, but a constant burrowing, kicking, somersaulting, bouncing whirl of motion. Did you know they can actually trampoline themselves off the inner walls of the amniotic sac? Because THEY CAN. The scan took forever because it wouldn't position itself obediently for the measurements at all - "okay, that's nearly there, now if it juuuuuuuust moves a liiiiiiiiitle bit to the right...", cue kick, flip, gone - but it was pretty amazing to see so much of it.
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Via a bunch of people on Twitter: 'Ask Pixar to Make a Movie About a Girl? Why, That's Just 'P.C. B.S'!' , which in turn links to Linda Holmes's Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees, and a response piece to that, 'Dear Pixar, How About a Chick Flick?', the comments to which may cause serious damage to foreheads, desks and keyboards alike.

Here's what's still considered a perfectly sensible response to someone's suggestion that, hey, maybe Pixar could make a story with a girl as the main character one day, and maybe that girl could be something other than a princess:

Come on! I’m sure when an interesting story with a female protagonist develops organically at Pixar, they will make that movie. Until that time, stop trying to ruin the fun for the rest of us. Don’t tell me that a woman can’t appreciate a good story for it’s own sake.

Ever seem to notice this complaint pops up somewhere every time Pixar releases a film.

Like all good writers these directors write about what they know. Their films, thus, are greatly influenced by their personal experiences and the themes of their stories are inextricably connected to their personal lives. Pixar’s films reflect closely the individual personalities of each director, so it is only natural that they see their protagonist as a male. Here’s one example, Finding Nemo...

For crying out loud, its not good enough that they create incredible films with amazing stories and perfectly crafted characters of both genders… We need a sanitized balance of the lead characters. When that is done, these clueless people will find something else to cry about.

I find this entire issue pointless and almost rather insulting, and the last thing I want is Pixar focusing on having a strong female lead instead of first focusing on a plot.

[G]uys are usually into more adventure and action, and girls like to bake cookies and be princesses. Of course there are plenty of exceptions and variations but in general I think its just human nature.

I have nothing more to say about all this idiocy, except that someone in that comment thread seriously used a clownfish protagonist as an example of Pixar's directors only writing about what they know.
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I am madly in love with Lovefilm, and all DVD-by-post services like it. As would you be if you'd seen the paltry selection in my local Blockbuster, too. People don't just want to rent new releases! They don't! Really they don't! It's not just me!

Anyway, so. I've stacked up quite a few films now, and added a few more from Fred's recommendations thread at Slacktivist, and I was wondering if you fine people had any recommendations for films I might like.

Here's what I've got already... )

Heavy on film noir and 40s/50s/early-60s anything; light on modern comedy and everything that could be described as 'heartwarming'. Any ideas, based on that kind of selection? (Except for Amelie, which I haven't seen and already know I wouldn't like, and am baffled as to why all my friends keep demanding I watch.) I'm on the lookout for good documentaries as well, if anyone's seen anything interesting in that vein.
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I am no longer the last person in the universe who hasn't seen Revenge of the Sith! Possibly I'm among the privileged few who've witnessed Edinburgh's new sport of People In Public Places Hitting Each Other With Big Foam Sticks, too. All in all, a very productive day.

Spoilers below the cut. Even though there must be undigested bounty hunters sitting in the stomachs of Sarlaccs who've seen the film by now. )
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I'm organising a conference this weekend, so LJ and general internet addiction are taking a back seat until it's over. This damn thing has been plaguing me for months - everything that could go wrong in the planning has gone wrong, and these last few days of peace and progress feel like the eye of the storm.

If you have any spare luck, send it in this direction.

(And, uh, if the entire world could just pretend Star Wars was absolutely awful and that I'm not missing anything by having to wait a week, that would be great too.)
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Friend Who Lives In The Real World: So, what have you been doing lately?
Me: I just wrote the final draft of an eleven-thousand word chapter, in a week! It's almost done apart from bibliography and footnotes! omgwtfeleventyone!
FWLITRW: Oh, okay. What else have you been up to?

Um, slept?

That's not entirely true. I saw The Incredibles at the weekend, which was fun if a little bit too close to the mess Prince Charles got himself into recently, and I went to hospital with my housemate (who lost a toenail, btw - the only two things in the world I'm squeamish about are toe injuries and seafood). Also, I re-read The Handmaid's Tale, which I hadn't read since I was 17 and frantically memorising every useful-sounding line in time for my A-levels.

It's as scary as I remembered. Not scary in a this-could-happen sense (although places like Afghanistan suggest it could), but in what it says about what people are capable of allowing. My A-level class was all-female, which the teacher said made the discussions less interesting - in previous years, there'd been some good arguments about whether men would really let this sort of society form, even if they weren't directly forming it themselves. To our credit, we did notice that the society wasn't just created by men - it's a difficult point to miss, especially when we all agreed on the ceremony where a mob of Handmaids willingly tear a man to pieces as the most disturbing scene in the book - but I don't think I saw until this time round just how much of it was done by women.

When I was seventeen, we didn't like Offred much. We would have preferred it if the book had been about the first Ofglen instead, who could've talked just as much about that society from a Handmaid's perspective, and who seemed far more interesting because she was part of Mayday. And who wants to read about a man character angstily going along with the system when you could be reading about one who's trying to bring that system down from within? (I still wish we'd heard more about Mayday - the people at the end call it a 'quasi-military organisation' that's separate from the underground railroad, and then go back to being haughty and superior academics, which I can do all by myself thankyouverymuch.) But with Offred as the narrator, it's a much more interesting book. Dystopian futures as external forces of oppression aren't difficult to write, and they're easy to feel smug about - we all want to think we'd have been like Ofglen in that situation, sacrificing our lives to fight against it. Except probably we wouldn't. Offred's self-conscious enough to realise she's buying into the mindset, but that doesn't stop her buying into it, and 'Serena Joy' is no more of a real name than 'Offred' is. She doesn't fall for it completely; she just falls for it enough.

I remember the film being pretty terrible, though. Still, there aren't many film adaptations that work as well as the books do.
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Funniest Movie Moment:
Toy Story. Yes, shush. All pretenses to great levels of sophistication went out of the window when I got a Buzz Lightyear action figure for Christmas a few years ago.

Woody: You are a toy! You're not the real Buzz Lightyear, you're an action figure! You are a child's plaything!
Buzz: You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity. Farewell.

Most Intense Movie Moment:
If we're going for 'scariest', then I can't watch - literally cannot watch, have to walk out of the room during - the scene in Stand By Me when the boys are being chased by a train. Trains don't scare me in any other context, and I have no idea what bothers me so much about that one. Second, the scene in Don't Look Now when Donald Sutherland catches up with the little figure in the red raincoat. Otherwise, I don't think many things in films do scare me any more; I was a devout X-Files follower (co-founder of my school's 'Mulder and Mulder's Hair Appreciation Society', aged 14) for too long, my academic work has centred on Scary Stuff for the past few years, and I think somewhere along the line I just got jaded, which is a shame.

Non-scary: The scene in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, when McMurphy returns from electroshock therapy for the final time. Maybe 'non-scary' isn't really appropriate, since although it's not frightening in an edge-of-the-seat way, it's utterly terrifying on its own level.

Also, the first time I saw The Empire Strikes Back, I didn't know Luke Skywalker was Darth Vader's son and was still young enough to scream "No!" at the screen.

Most Heart-Wrenching Movie Moment:

The scene which should have been the last one of The Shawshank Redemption. Red's last words, after setting off to Mexico to look for Andy: "I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake him by the hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it is in my dreams. I hope."

The film ruins the impact of this, IMHO, by showing Andy and Red meeting up again in Zihuatenejo, which is so not the point. The important thing isn't that Andy escaped from prison; it's that Red, for the first time in his life, has hope. Although it's a pretty heart-wrenching film all round, this moment wins for making all Andy's suffering before it (which was itself well-handled and non-gratuitous - learn, Mel) worthwhile.

Best Dance Number in a Movie:

I blame every single teenage sleepover party I ever went to for this one: Dirty Dancing, after the "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!" line.

Best Adaptation of a Classic Work:

I like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, which does a very nice combination of keeping dialogue mostly intact and transposing the action to a completely different setting. (I especially loved some of the minor details - the prince being replaced by "so-and-so Prince, Chief of Police" in particular.) However, Clueless wins, for managing to be sweet enough to make Jane Austen's 'a heroine no-one but myself will much like' as likeable as Emma is in the novel and for being the only romantic comedy which doesn't make me roll my eyes.

Favorite Bond Moment: Revoke my citizenship, do what you must, but I don't actually like Bond films all that much. Either every scene with Judi Dench as M, or Q in Tomorrow Never Dies. (Bond has just discovered how to use the phone-operated car, and zooms it about at ninety miles an hour before bringing it to a screeching stop inches away from hitting both of them. Q, deeply unimpressed: "Grow up, 007.")

Greatest Martial Arts Moment:I know nothing about martial arts, and therefore I'm interpreting this one as 'fight scene', in which case the duel from The Phantom Menace (yes, shut up, I like the prequels, and 80% of the Star Wars fans should stop grumbling that Star Wars isn't as good as it was when they were eleven, thank you) wins. The lightsaber duels in the original three films were okay, but here you get the impression that the people involved seriously want to hurt each other, and it's much more effective for it.

And applying the meme to books: )
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Unless you're a character in the Iliad, of course.

I saw Troy tonight (I'm guessing I don't need spoiler warnings for one of the oldest epics still in circulation). My housemate had seen it already, and recommended it "if you ignore some of the dialogue", so we went to see it together; secretly-deep-down, we're still Classicists. (Our undergraduate Classics professor liked it, too.) It's worth seeing, especially on a big screen, and it was better than I'd expected. But some things...

They took the gods out. They took the gods out. I already knew about this, and I don't really blame them; I'd love to have seen Greek gods done well in a serious modern film, but part of the reason I'd love to see that is because I can't imagine how they'd do it, so quite possibly they couldn't either. (Plus, it would have been terribly confusing and six hours long if they'd tried to fit the gods in.)

But I wasn't expecting them to take the gods out quite so much. They went for a very human-centred Iliad, where people believe in the gods but the gods aren't there. Which, well, okay, Historical Epic. They worked around the plot points that require divine cheating involvement in the story quite well. Except... it made it sort of flat, I think. And it definitely lessened the idea of having characters who think quite differently to us. (Except that one of my favourite parts was the negotiation of burial rituals for Hector, when the script went all subtle and didn't hammer us over the head with Burial Rituals Are Important, just had the characters take this for granted so well that we got the message anyway.) (My other favourite bit was the duel between Menelaus (pronounced 'Men-e-louse', apparently) and Paris, with Paris crawling away and clinging to Hector's ankles.)

They also went for a very hero-centred Iliad, in the sense that they were trying (part of the way, at least) to make it a film about how heroes and myths are created. And this is the sort of thing I like, although here I think there's so much more they could have done with it. When Achilles dies, it's not the arrow in his ankle which kills him, but the four or five in his chest - but he pulls them out, and when his body is found, there's only an arrow in his ankle. I think we were supposed to get the implied "...and when this story is retold, they'll all say that it was just an arrow to the ankle that killed the mighty Achilles!". Hmm. Clever, but...

Oh, and Briseis was about the wimpiest Mary Sue I have ever seen. Helen was at least supposed to not do a great deal, and start a war about as passively as it's possible to do so. Briseis was just a terrible, terrible character all round. I wish she'd stayed as a bit-part, and I hope to hell they didn't give her such an extended role because they needed a good female character, because she's really not it.
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