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Alex Brown

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Bending Shakespeare

Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:30am 9 comments

As a woman of color who spends an absolutely ludicrous amount of time reading fanfic, I’m a huge nerd for gender, queer, and racebending. I’ve read some amazing fem!Destiel, adore racebent Harry Potter fanart, and to the OP who first came up with the brilliant idea to cast Taylor Swift and Kristen Stewart in an all-girl remake of Grease, I love you. In a lot of cases, I tend to prefer the bent versions over the original canon. I mean, if you don’t think Lucy Liu is the greatest Watson to ever Watson, well, I’m here to tell you that you’re just plain wrong.

I’m also someone who grew up in the 90s, which means I was drowning in a sea of hormones and emotions during the peak of America’s Shakespeare movie adaptation phase. To this day the soundtracks to Romeo + Juliet and 10 Things I Hate About You are on my iPod…and I still have the original CDs, even if they’re too scratched to ever play again. Julia Stiles’ Kat made me fall in love with Shakespeare, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo sealed the deal, Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet made me reconsider my life choices, and Mekhi Phifer’s O set my heart a’flutter once again. And now, with the magic of the internet and several streaming services with extensive catalogues, I can combine my obsession with Shakespeare with my passion for bending.

[Read more]

Where to Start with Diana Wynne Jones

Wed Dec 16, 2015 9:00am 19 comments

So you want to read Diana Wynne Jones. Congratulations! An excellent decision, if I do say so myself. But now what?

For an author who produced a book a year for forty years, figuring out which book to read first is no mean feat. With a catalogue as long as hers and full of so many related and unrelated series, there’s no reason you have to start at the beginning. Lucky for you, I am a huge fan and ready to get on my soapbox and sing her praises.

[“One of the things about fantasy is that it doesn’t date. Only reality gets old-fashioned.”]

Pull List: The Top Comic Books of 2015, Part 1

Tue Dec 15, 2015 2:00pm 9 comments

It’s that time of year again… time to bust out the year-end “best of” lists. Between DC and Marvel, big indies, small presses, and the World Wide Web, thousands of comics made their way to your hands and screens this year. Despite Secret Wars and DCU, 2015 was an all-around gangbuster year for comics. This is the first of a two-part roundup. And don’t forget to drop by the comments to let us know what were your top picks.

[First up on the docket…]

The Walking Dead Season 6 Midseason Finale: “Start to Finish”

Mon Nov 30, 2015 3:00pm 4 comments

The Walking Dead may be a lot of different things to a lot of different people—family drama, zombie horror, warnings of a dystopian future, cash machine—but at the end of the day, it’s a show about the lengths a person will go to survive in a world determined to destroy them. While that’s a thrilling storytelling device, in the long haul it makes for a weak theme. There are only so many ways in which a character can develop within those narrow borders that you end up telling variations on the same story ad nauseum. To spice things up, a writer might turn a bunch of extras into cannon fodder or kill off a beloved character, but once the dust settles the same old, same old is still ambling along. The best and worst thing to be said about TWD this far into the game is that at least it’s consistent.

[“Well, at least you’re being honest.”]

Pull List: Pretty Deadly

Mon Nov 30, 2015 12:00pm 3 comments

At this point, if Kelly Sue DeConnick is involved, I’m guaranteed to be there front and center. She could reboot the phonebook and I’d have it in my pull list the second it was announced. It’s more than just being a fan of her work. Yes, she’s a feminist icon and a comic book powerhouse, but more than that she uses an old medium to tell new stories, well, maybe not new per se but overlooked and ignored. Her take on Carol Danvers reinvigorated a wasted character into a truly amazing run on Captain Marvel. By blending the lost art of Blaxploitation and age-old fears of a patriarchy run wild she created Bitch Planet, a high watermark graphic novels will spend decades trying to match. And with the hook of a genderbent Spaghetti Western, Pretty Deadly came roaring onto shelves.

[“Am I a monster?”]

Farewell, My Robot: Adam Christopher’s Made to Kill

Tue Nov 3, 2015 9:00am Post a comment

Meet Raymond Electromatic: private investigator by day, hitman by night, and the last robot on earth all the damn time. Ray was built by the now deceased Professor Thornton and his basic personality template modeled on the professor. Thornton also developed Ray’s computer partner, Ada, the chain-smoking brains of the operation…or at least she would be if she existed outside of a computer processor. Ada has tinkered with Ray’s prime directive – so that they be financially independent – as well as his tech specs, turning him into an efficient killing machine. If only his battery and memory tape didn’t run out after 24 hours. And while it would probably make his job easier if he looked human, being a 7-foot tall metal monstrosity has its perks.

In the late summer of 1965, an actress with a bag of gold appears at his door. Eva McLuckie hires Ray to bump off one of her missing co-stars, Charles David. Like the Raymond Chandler tales Made to Kill was inspired by, what starts out as a run-of-the-mill murder-for-hire spirals out of control until the plot spans scores of suspects, guilty parties, and unfortunate bystanders, with everyone from Soviet spies to undercover CIA agents to supposedly dead actors to wage jockeys just trying to pay the bills. As Ray draws nearer to the heart of the mystery he stumbles upon a great secret that could either unlock his potential or kill him. But whatever happens, as long as he still has his hat it’ll all work out. Right?

[“No trouble I hope, Sparks?”]

Pull List: Locke & Key

Thu Oct 29, 2015 2:00pm 7 comments

It’s nearly Halloween, which means it’s time once again for my annual Joe Hill re-read. Since all of my copies of NOS4A2 and Horns are currently being read by friends and relations, I decided to take a re-gander at Locke & Key, Hill’s epic graphic novel about a family besieged by evils, human and demon alike. As all good horror stories are, it’s a densely woven tale spanning centuries with an unlikely band of heroes up against the ultimate Big Bad, a creature with endless patience and a zeal for violence, chaos, and corruption.

[“I guess this has always been about family.”]

Don’t Touch That Dial: Fall 2015

Thu Oct 22, 2015 3:00pm 13 comments

And we’re back with the second installment of the Fall 2015 edition of “Don’t Touch That Dial.” Up this time is a show dragged from the grave in a failed attempt to make its struggling network some quick cash (Heroes Reborn), a show created to make an already rich studio enough money to swim around in like Scrooge McDuck (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), and a show created by guys with so much money that no one tells them when something sucks (Scream Queens).

[“When you look back on your life, the one thing you don’t want to feel is regret.”]

Don’t Touch That Dial: Fall 2015 Procedurals

Tue Oct 20, 2015 10:30am 13 comments

DTTD_Fall2015-cover1

Welcome back to “Don’t Touch That Dial,” a seasonal series in which I, your friendly neighborhood television addict, break down some of the shows screaming for your attention. In the first of two very special episodes, we’ll look at new procedurals—specifically, ones with a woman with a very particular set of skills, skills she has acquired over a very long career (Blindspot); a white man who learns that privilege is is all fun and games until someone gets hurt, in which case another privileged white man will just give you more privilege (Limitless); and a cop and a psychic using their knowledge of the future to harass potential criminals (Minority Report).

[“Couldn’t I just kick the door down?”]

The Case of the Dead Princesses: Against A Brightening Sky

Wed Oct 14, 2015 4:00pm Post a comment

Delia Ryan née Martin sees dead people. Like, all the time. She sees them in the street, in windows, in the reflective surface of her tea. Her cat Mai sees them too. As does her good friend and medium Dora Bobet. Delia’s beloved husband Gabe doesn’t see ghosts, but they collect around him like moths to a flame due to his profession as a homicide detective for the SFPD. Their longtime friends and fellow marrieds, Jack and Sadie, don’t see ghosts either, but still suffer the side effects of friendships with those who do.

In the final book in the Delia Martin trilogy, Delia, Gabe, Jack, Sadie, and Dora encounter the toughest case of their lives. They’ve dealt with serial killers and sadistic torturers, mournful ghosts and violent spirits, and Jack the Ripper-like executions and ritualistic slaughters, but they might finally be out of their league when ancient Old World magics descend on San Francisco.

[Read more]

The Walking Dead Season 6 Premiere: “First Time Again”

Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:00am 4 comments

I wasn’t too thrilled with the Alexandria storyline last season, but after the mess of dangling plotlines and cipher personalities rife in Fear The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead shines quite a bit brighter. “First Time Again” opens not long after the deaths of Pete (the abusive surgeon) and Reg (the beloved First Husband who designed the wall). Rather than take its usual pace of arduous place setting, TWD launches straight into one of the biggest episodes it’s ever done. Surprisingly enough, they more or less pulled it off. And once again the show proves it’s aces at premieres and finales.

[“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”]

Fear the Walking Dead, S1 E6: “The Good Man”

Mon Oct 5, 2015 4:30pm 10 comments

The first season of Fear the Walking Dead has been quite the ride. Not an especially good one, mind, but at least I don’t regret giving up 6 hours of my life to it. High praise, indeed. Most of the season arcs were wrapped up in a neat little bow by the end of “The Good Man,” with strong hints to where they’re headed next year. I’ll be there waiting, but not with bated breath.

[“You can get out, but there’s nowhere to go.”]

Pull List: Catwoman

Thu Oct 1, 2015 11:30am 7 comments

Catwoman s been around nearly as long as Batman, but often gotten short shrift. It takes a deft hand to write a character who can use her sexuality to influence others but prefers her wit and cunning. Which means Selina usually gets reduced to the sexpot, victim of the male gaze, and sex object (links NSFW). Put it this way: men like to draw her half-naked and sex-sated, but Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman would never be caught in a post-coital haze saying “I’m better than okay. You couldn’t hear how ‘okay’ I was?” *Gag*

I wasn’t sure what to expect with the current run of Catwoman, but I didn’t think I’d like it, the great Genevieve Valentine notwithstanding. I’d never read any of the previous titles or really much of anything from the Bat family (for reasons that will become clear soon), so I had no notion of tone, style, or dialogue traditions. As luck and my immense relief would have it, Valentine’s Catwoman is crisp, razor sharp, and brutally crafty.

[“On desperate ground, fight.”]

Fear the Walking Dead, S1 E5: “Cobalt”

Mon Sep 28, 2015 3:00pm 11 comments

Oh Fear the Walking Dead. Why must you be like this? The penultimate episode of the season should spark and crackle with dramatic tension, not flail around in expository dumps and unsubtle critiques of torture. As per usual, a few isolated segments shine but the  rest of the material ranges from dreary to dull to downright dumb. There’s always one kickass shot in every episiode, and this one was at the very end: Daniel standing at the stadium as the chained doors bulge at the strain of thousands of hungry walkers. The look on his face was perfect, a mix of revulsion, horror, and disbelief.

Too bad we still have to talk about the rest of the episode.

[“I can do whatever I want. I got guns.”]

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