Inside Out is Not for Kids, and That’s Exactly Why Your Kids Should See It
by Mayka Mei | Originally posted at The Maykazine
Last week I cried three times. First, the shooting at Emanuel AME Church. Then when I watched Inside Out. Then my friends got married. Adult life is confusing.
Each instance occurred within the span of three days, and though each event has warranted its own inner reflection and the outer two are deserving of their own longwinded meanderings, right now I want to write about the middle one, the kids’ movie. (I’ve also written about the AME shooting. Here are my raw thoughts from the morning after that god-awful Wednesday night.)
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Half the Battle: A Throwback Review of ‘G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’
With Magic Mike XXL about to hit theaters in a couple weeks, Channing Tatum has been making the media rounds to promote the film. Recently, the star was on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show and expressed his displeasure with one of the key movies in his filmography. Talking to Stern, this week Tatum said in reference to the 2009 film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra:
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The Liminal People: An Endorsement
The Liminal War: A Novel by Ayize Jama-Everett drops this week. In preparation for this much awaited sequel, I urge all of you to read the book that started it all, The Liminal People: A Novel. You will not be disappointed. I will post a Liminal War review in within the next week, or two.
First off, The Liminal People isn’t the X-Men and [insert some other superhero franchise]. Whenever there are characters with extra-normal abilities, someone always wants to toss the X-franchise about. If you wanted to make a more accurate comparison, you would have to compare The Liminal People to the old ’60s British television program, The Champions (Google if you don’t know) — albeit the book is a lot more diverse. In a Spec/Fic publishing world that loves little white vampires and werewolves, or little white magic users, or little white vampire hunters, or little white companions on a quest to fight the big black enemy, Liminal is a refreshing burst of the real world. It is the first truly global Spec/Fic book of the 21st century.
Superman: The Man of Tomorrow
by Gene Yang | Originally posted on GeneYang.com
There’s a reason why folks call Superman the Man of Tomorrow.
When he was created in the late 1930s, he really did embody that era’s ideas about the future. Back then, progress was seen in largely physical terms: our technology would make us stronger, faster, more invulnerable. And that’s what Superman was: the world’s strongest, fastest, most invulnerable person.
But in the decades since, our imagined future has changed. Nowadays, when we think of tomorrow’s technology, we don’t necessary think about physical power — we think about information. We think about knowledge. Our dreams of the future are as much about bits as they are about atoms. Maybe more.
So how does Superman, a character whose “tomorrow-ness” dates back to the 1930s, deal with the “tomorrow-ness” of today?
Disabled Geeks: Improve Representation of Disability in Wikis
Calling all geeky crips! Do you have a favorite comic book character with a disability?
Do you find wiki posts about disabled comic book characters ableist, inaccurate, or devoid of a disability perspective?
If so, we’re looking for you!
Dominick Evans and I — through the Disability Visibility Project — are looking for volunteers to update various entries in comic book wikis.
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Download Awesome Asian Bad Guys Right Now!
Today’s the day! If you’ve wanted to watch Stephen Dypiangco and Patrick Epino — better known as the National Film Society — reunite iconic Asian bad guys from the ’80s in the action/comedy Awesome Asian Bad Guys, but couldn’t attend one of the many festival screenings, now is your chance to download the film and watch it in the comfort of your own home.
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Interview with Ryan Nagata, Director of Amigo Undead
Ryan Nagata has worked in Hollywood as a prop builder and model maker as well as a director for television and web series. His latest project, which he co-wrote and directed, is a feature length film that pairs up the unlikely duo of stars, Randall Park and Steve Agee, for a horror-comedy set in a desert called Amigo Undead. I had the opportunity to interview Nagata about Amigo Undead, his film background, and his thoughts on CGI vs. practical effects.
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NOC Recaps Daredevil: Saw Blades & Tender Villains
Four of our favorites are paired up once more and give us some outstanding on-screen chemistry. Claire’s patches up Matt again, even if it’s for a brief moment. While Vanessa is in recovery, Fisk and Wesley share some very tender moments as Wesley tries to balance his BFF’s sanity with keeping the machine moving. Nelson and Murdock Attorneys at Law continues to unravel with Karen upset and the boys still not talking to each other. Mr. Potter battles like a gladiator and we get quite the climatic ending in “The Path of the Righteous.”
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Throwback Review: Grifter & Midnighter
Originally posted on GeeksOut.org
In honor of LGBTQ Pride Month.
The following a reminder why this isn’t the first time DC Comics promised a brand new day with diversity only to pull some of the most bigoted stunts in comics history.
Can you separate the art from the artist?
This is a question that’s often asked when it comes to enjoying the art separately from an artist’s personal (and often bigoted) views.
We Are Brienne
by Lexi Alexander | Originally posted at Lexi-Alexander.com
“All my life men like you’ve sneered at me, and all my life I’ve been knocking men like you into the dust.”
Imagine being a female TV & movie director trying to make it in an already competitive industry and the first thing that comes across your news feed at the beginning of the week is the sad fact that the most talked about show on TV failed to hire a single female director on its last season.
My Visit to Final Fantasy XIV’s Eorzea Cafe
With the Final Fantasy XIV expansion Heavensward coming out in less than a week, the game has been in my mind for the past few days. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the game. Anything Final Fantasy XIV-related, I will eat it up. Literally.
So when it was announced that they were going to have a FFXIV-themed restaurant open in Akihabara, Japan, I was absolutely thrilled. I have the fortune to be living in Japan so it wasn’t a pipe dream to visit. Back in March, a friend was visiting me and she also wanted to go because she loves the Final Fantasy series. It ended up being one of our first places that we visited in Tokyo.
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Rewatching Torchwood: Children of Earth
So in honor of Pride Month and celebrating exceptional LGBTQ characters in speculative fiction, this weekend I did a rewatch of Torchwood: Children of Earth. There’s so much I want to convey and in the hopes of doing this review justice I’m going to break down my review into points and expound upon them in that manner.
Someone else said it best, Children of Earth was the series that should’ve gotten 10 episodes and the subsequent Miracle Day is the series that should’ve been limited to five episodes. Nevertheless, I must say that the Doctor Who spinoff brought its A-game. Not surprising considering that creator Russell T. Davies was at the writing helm.
Four Hollywood Rip Offs of Motoko Kusanagi
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the theatrical release of Ghost in the Shell, (and 26 years since the manga was first published).
There is no denying the influence this film has had on Hollywood. From James Cameron to Steven Spielberg, directors have praised writer Matsume Shirow and director Mamoru Oshii for their work on the series. Ghost In the Shell was a game changer as it introduced a true Japanese post-cyberpunk world to American audiences.
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Finding the Right (White) Actor to Cast in that Non-White Role
Over the past weekend, The Hollywood Reporter released an article about the heightened alert placed on ethnic casting. The article starts off with the controversial choice to cast Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in the upcoming Warner Brothers picture Pan, which will be a re-imagined take on Peter Pan lore. Throughout the article, unnamed producers and studio execs justify their casting decisions with the “tried and true” reasoning that it’s always the best actor being cast for the job, regardless of race, even if that means casting white people to play non-white folks. Ideally, I would be in full support of this idea as I think it really should be about choosing the best actor for the job, regardless of race and nationality. Ideally, casting should be “colorblind” because as actors, we are trained to bring a character to life as far removed from us as possible.
And that’s as far as I can go. No really, that’s it. This is where that dreamy ideal world I’d like to be in is instantly crushed by the not-so-sugary reality that “choosing the best actor for the job” and all that hippy dippy freedom-of-the-arts talk is usually reserved only for the status quo. Or in blunt politically incorrect terms: white people.
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Rape Culture: From Grimdark Fantasy to Reality
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault and Rape Survivors
When I worked as a reporter for a local paper in East Tennessee some years back, a story arose about a young woman who had been sexually assaulted at her high school. When the issue was brought to the school board’s attention, they moved heaven and earth to shame the young woman and to vilify her and her family.
No one denied the attack happened but nothing was done about it because the attacker was a star athlete and the school’s administration was beyond corrupt. When I tried to follow up and get the family’s side of events, the story was buried due to local politics and my publisher’s wish to stay in good with the Powers That Be in the county.
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Why Media Representation Matters
Originally posted on Geeksout.org
In Honor of LGBTQ Pride Month
I must admit that I didn’t know much about Alexis Arquette. I knew she came from a famous acting family and I believe I had seen more of her brother David’s work than any of the other Arquettes. So my first real introduction to Alexis was when she starred in a season of the VH-1 reality series The Surreal Life.
Sam Koji Hale and Shoji Kameda: Yamasong’s Masters of Puppets
Last month, we brought you the trailer and poster for the upcoming fantasy film Yamasong: March of the Hollows. The film, which is a follow-up to a 2010 short, seeks to bring puppetry back to mainstream genre audiences with an all-star cast and backing from a couple of dynastic names in the world of cinematic puppetry.
On the latest edition of Hard NOC Life, Keith sits down with the two men who launched the world of Yamasong half a decade ago: writer-director Sam Koji Hale and composer Shoji Kameda.
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NOC Recaps Daredevil: The Trial of the Incredible Matthew Murdock
Yes, the boys are fighting and Foggy Bear attacks like a… bear. It’s Foggy’s turn to learn about Matt’s powers and the first part of “Nelson v. Murdock” basically repeats previous scenes and flashbacks of folks that know about Matt. Nothing new that we don’t already know until the way Foggy plays it at the end. Besides Foggy’s cross examination of Matt, we get flashbacks to their meeting and law school daze days, Madame Gao puts Fisk in another time out, Karen tricks Ben in a game changing way, and a benefit dinner really could have used a Medieval cup-bearer.
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Remember Comic Books?
Remember comic books? Those flimsy sheets of paper emblazoned with colorful superheroes battling diabolical supervillains in space, in an underground lair, in a bunker, under the sea, or in parallel dimensions? Those passports to wonder that are the progenitors of the DC and Marvel Cinematic Universes and their respective television properties? Yeah, they’ve been completely overshadowed by their on-screen interpretations. Most people enjoying super heroics on the big and small screens aren’t comic fans. This isn’t a bad thing. I know tons of people who loved the Harry Potter films, but have yet to read word one of J.K. Rowling’s epic texts. There are still some of us who are huge comic book fans, and have been feeling a little cheated by the Big Two.
An Open Letter to J.K. Rowling about the American Wizarding School in Fantastic Beasts
by Dr. Adrienne Keene | Originally posted at Native Appropriations
Dear J.K. Rowling,
I am unabashedly a huge Harry Potter fan. I first encountered Harry when I was in Junior High, volunteering at the public library (nerd status, I know). The children’s librarian handed me book one, and I was hooked. I even used to frequent Harry Potter message boards back in the day with my friend Kathleen (we were “Parvati” and “Lavender” cause we also shared an interest in divination, ha). Anyway, all this is to say, Harry holds a sacred spot in my heart. But I’m not one of those fans who can recite things verbatim, or remember every tiny detail, so if I’m missing something, I hope one of those fans will help me out.
I’ve been interestedly following the news that there is a new Harry Potter prequel-of-sorts in the works, for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, following “magizoologist” Newt Scamander. I hadn’t been following it closely, but a few days ago, I saw your exchanges on Twitter about the name/location of the American Wizarding School — and I started to get a bit concerned.
‘Sense8’ and the Failure of Global Imagination
How do you imagine a life you could never live? Though not really a theme, this problem is at the heart of Netflix’s new original series Sense8, created by the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, and heavily influenced by Tom Tykwer. Like many fantastical or science fictional premises, Sense8’s premise is a wish fulfillment: not — as is typical of this genre and the Wachowskis’ earlier work — the wish fulfillment of the disempowered middle school nerd stuffed into a locker, but rather the Mary Sue desire of a mature, white American writer/auteur who has discovered that an entire world is “out there,” one that the maker doesn’t know how to imagine.
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Asians Get #EmmaStoned (Again) in The Martian
Last week, we spent a lot of time on the blog discussing the erasure of people of color — particularly Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — in movies like the upcoming Doctor Strange or the recently released Aloha. I was even asked to talk about whitewashed casting on outlets like HuffPost Live and The Rundown on msnbc. And frankly, getting outraged over Hollywood being racist is kind of exhausting. Fortunately, I was able to take solace knowing The Rock crushed Aloha at the box office and that James Wan would be directing Jason Momoa in Aquaman. There’s nothing like a good genre flick to cleanse the palate after a week of justified moral outrage. Take the new sci-fi thriller The Martian — which just had a pretty cool trailer drop yesterday. Surely, there won’t be anything controversial here? Oh wait, this is Hollywood. Crap.
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Five Marvel Characters Who Deserve Their Own Vehicles
Nearly two years ago today, Marvel Comics announced its initiative to be more progressive in its comic book lineup. Surprisingly they have stuck with said initiative and it has paid off for them immensely in sales, mainstream interest and general good press. Many of the editorial decisions The House of Ideas have made are commendable.
From introducing Miles Morales, a female Thor, the new Ms. Marvel, to the all female X-Men team, Mighty Avengers, to Storm finally getting her long overdue ongoing solo series, Marvel is renewing its commitment to meet the diverse demographic of its readers. It was this type of initiative that translated into Marvel’s success in the past.
With that being said Marvel has often committed the Cardinal Sin of either shelving or misusing some excellent characters who would definitely result in profitable returns. This might be shocking news for some at Marvel but they do have characters other than Wolverine. Characters, who if given the right opportunity have crossover and mainstream appeal that would result in elevating Marvel’s success to the next level.
The following are five excellent examples of said characters.
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