FYI! The editor, TDF Pamela, is currently nomadic! In other words, she's in the process of moving cross-country, and therefore her address has changed and probably will change a couple more times in the next few months.
If you would like to send a review copy, please email her first to make sure you have the most up to date address.
At the Green Lantern panel at San Diego Comic Con, Ryan Reynolds recited the Green Lantern’s oath for a very excited little fanboy.
If I didn’t already have a crush on the guy, this would’ve created one. :D
TDF Pamela
The Discriminating Fangirl, who is more likely to answer to Pamela if you shout it at her, is the proud owner of an MA in English, focusing on children's/young adult literature and popular culture. Because of her ample free time thanks to being gainfully unemployed, she reads voraciously. She also loves geeky movies and tv shows, reads comic books as often as she can buy them, and when she's procrastinating, she enjoys playing video games. She can be contacted at t.d.fangirl @ gmail.com and followed on Twitter at the link below.
Yay, I’m back at my own computer! I can use tabbed browsing and upload images and everything! I love my iPad, don’t get me wrong, but writing blog posts on it was a bit of a pain in the ass.
I’ve also got an obscene number of items in my Google Reader, so I figured I’d start a new regular feature here: the Link Roundup! In which I post all kinds of random things that are cool. Rock on.
What cool stuff have you stumbled across today? Let me know in the comments. :D
TDF Pamela
The Discriminating Fangirl, who is more likely to answer to Pamela if you shout it at her, is the proud owner of an MA in English, focusing on children's/young adult literature and popular culture. Because of her ample free time thanks to being gainfully unemployed, she reads voraciously. She also loves geeky movies and tv shows, reads comic books as often as she can buy them, and when she's procrastinating, she enjoys playing video games. She can be contacted at t.d.fangirl @ gmail.com and followed on Twitter at the link below.
Amazon’s Summary: Is it conceivable that in the United States, profit is increasingly driving the business of birthing–sometimes at the expense of the best possible outcome for mothers and babies? Should birth be viewed and treated as a natural process or a potential medical emergency? This documentary, produced by Ricki Lake and directed by Abby Epstein, opines that money and fear are changing the way Americans give birth, and not necessarily for the better. Beginning with shocking statistics that the United States has the second-worst newborn death rate in the developed world and one of the highest maternal mortality rates in industrialized countries, the film presents interviews with medical professionals including Dr. Jacques Moritz, OB/GYN from St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital; Dr. Michel Odent, OB/GYN researcher; and Masden Wagner, MD, former Director for Women’s and Children’s Health at the World Health Organization. Each expert paints a dismal picture of American birthing and emphasizes the frequent overuse of medical procedures in what are otherwise potentially normal deliveries. Stressing the prevalent use of midwives in birthing in other developed nations (70% of births are attended by midwives in Europe and Japan, versus 8% in the U.S.), the documentary then follows Cara Muhlhahn, a certified nurse midwife in New York City, as she attends a variety of home births. The footage is candid and sometimes very graphic, showing various home-delivery methods, including water birth. Interviews with Cara and her clients emphasize their shared philosophy on birthing as a normal life process that, when attended by a caring and well-trained midwife, can be both empowering and exhilarating. Though a midwife is often characterized as a supportive, but medically untrained birth attendee, the film dispels that stereotype, stressing a good midwife’s solid training and knowledge of when it’s appropriate to seek outside medical intervention. Key in every birth is a commitment to doing what’s best for mother and baby, regardless of pre-planned agendas. The filmmaker’s lament is that hospitals and doctors often too quickly advocate medical intervention in the interest of saving time and avoiding potential litigation. While unquestionably advocating midwifery over hospital birthing, this documentary presents solid expert opinions, concrete facts and statistics, and anecdotal experiences of both mothers and midwives that are crucial in making an informed decision about the use of midwifery in birthing as well as enlightening as to the current state of birthing in the United States
StrangenessAbounds’s Rating:
StrangenessAbounds’s Review: (This review is based on a copy the author personally bought) I will admit to having already arrived at a firm decision as to what I’m going to do to control the birth of my children. Or rather, what I’m not going to do to control the birth of my children.
The Business of Being Born is a documentary by two women, Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein; both have either had children or about to have a child. Ms. Lake gave birth to one child in a regular hospital setting complete with pitocin (a chemical that’s used to ripen the cervix during labor and act as a catalyst for stronger contractions) and epidural, but her second child she had at home with a midwife. Ms. Epstein hopes to have her baby at home and is employing a midwife to help that dream come true. These two women filmed The Business of Being Born in the hopes that they will be able to educate women in the US specifically as to what kind of birth experience they’re giving themselves and their babies.
The Business of Being Born does not claim to be unbiased. It pits hospital-setting births with attending doctors against home-setting births with attending midwives and the Home/Midwife team clearly wins in this documentary. But for me, this is anything but the television show A Baby Story rehashed. I always cringe and look for the nearest cheese grater to claw out my eyes when Baby Story comes on. There’s just something to me that’s utterly repulsive. And yet with Business of Being Born (herewith dubbed BBB to save my fingers ;) ), I only received a warm, deeply moving experience.
When Lake and Epstein filmed BBB, they attended several births in homes with midwives attending. The documentary portrays it well, but anyone can see that there is a stark difference between a hospital birth and a home birth. They interview several OB/GYN’s and midwives, present crazy statistics (did you know that the US has one of the worst rates of babies who are DOA among the most developed countries? And yet the US spends more on hospital birth than most other developed countries?) and gives the history of the rise of the hospital birth. This is a documentary that challenges the regular way of thinking.
I give BBB five stars out of five and I would highly recommend picking up The Business of Being Born for yourself. It is was a thought-provoking, occasionally disturbing but overall very powerful in its presentation. Unfortunately, I’m concerned that this documentary is “preaching to the choir.” The types of people who enjoy documentaries often seem to be the type to seriously reconsider what US society regards as “the best way to have your baby.”
Strangeness Abounds
StrangenessAbounds may be more of a truthful moniker than the author will admit to -- when she is not obsessively playing RPGs and arguing over what is canon in "The Legend of Zelda," she is planning her next sushi outing. Erin "StrangenessAbounds" Leanne is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction and plays "editor" to other authors' works. She graduated in 2009 with her BA in English and is returning for her MS in English in the Fall of 2010. She can be contacted through e-mail.
A review of “The Last Airbender” – written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan; starring Noah Ringer, Dev Patel and Nicola Peltz.
Air. Water. Earth. Fire. The four nations lived in harmony until the Fire Nation attacked the other nations in an attempt to rule the world. Right after the war started, the Avatar, an Airbender named Aang, disappeared and was feared lost – disrupting the Avatar Cycle. Now, 100 years later, the Fire Nation is close to total victory. Aang is found once again and must seek to restore balance to the world while learning how to be the Avatar – the bridge between the physical and spirit worlds.
WereGeek’s review:
Let me just start by saying that I love “Avatar: the Last Airbender”. I have watched every episode from the beginning and have all three “books” on DVD. I engaged in speculation about where the series would go and how it would end as far back as season one and the idea of a live action movie filled me with far more glee than dread – at least until M. Night Shyamalan’s name was attached to produce, direct AND write it. I didn’t believe then that he could faithfully recreate the world of Avatar and I feel my lack of faith is sadly justified.
The bulk of the review contains spoilers for both “The Last Airbender” and book one of the “Avatar: the Last Airbender” TV series. To view the spoilerific bonanza, click “show” below.
The first thing I have to mention, because it bothered me from the opening title scroll, is the complete and utter mispronunciation of names that were well established in the series. They mispronounced “avatar” for crying out loud! (Before you think it’s just an accent thing, one character pronounced it two different ways within the first five minutes.) And Aang, Sokka and Iroh can’t even pronounce their own names! Sure, this wouldn’t be an issue for someone new to the franchise, but someone with even a passing knowledge of the series would be able to pick up on the names. It makes me think one of two things of Shyamalan: either he has never even bothered to WATCH the series he based his movie on or he is trying to put his own stamp on the characters by subtly altering something as intrinsic as their names. Regardless of the reason, getting such basic details wrong is inexcusable.
There has been a LOT of talk regarding race in “The Last Airbender”. To be honest, I never really gave it that much thought (please don’t flame me) until today. The most that race affected my opinion of the movie was the initial casting of Jesse McCartney as Prince Zuko. I can’t even begin to fathom that decision. I could go with Sokka, Katara and even Aang as fairly Caucasian because that’s how they always seemed to me in the series, but not when you compare them to dozens of Inuit extras portraying the Southern Water Tribe and Monk Gyatso being (perhaps multi-racially) African-looking. Having Sokka, Katara and “Grandma” (not GranGran) looking European in the midst of First Nations people is pretty odd, even if you explain it away by saying that Grandma came from the Northern Water Tribe (who all look pretty European, too.) But we don’t know that because the whole subplot about Katara’s necklace and Master Pakku is gone.
Speaking of missing subplots, I know it’s impossible to condense nearly 10 hours of the cartoon into an hour and forty-three minutes, but to leave out the Kyoshi Warriors? That’s like leaving the house elves out of the Harry Potter movies! Okay, that sounded better in my head, but the point is they’re going to be important later on so why not at least give us a cursory introduction to them? And I was very disappointed to see two important battles left out of the Northern Water Tribe section: Katara’s duel with Master Pakku and Aang’s dispatching of Commander/Admiral Zhao. The duel would have gone a long way toward explaining differences between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes, not to mention how awesome it would be to see the creative use of Waterbending that establishes Katara’s mastery and to have someone to cheer for, which is sadly lacking throughout the film. Aang’s Avatar State gestalt with the Ocean Spirit was left out too, and I think the climax of the movie suffered for it. In the series, Commander/Admiral Zhao suffers overwhelming defeat (and is presumably killed off screen) at the hands of the Avatar/Ocean Spirit, letting Aang have the final say in Zhao’s fate. In the movie, four anonymous Waterbenders basically ambush Zhao and drown him in a water bubble, then leave his sodden corpse as they run off to find someone else to gang up on and drown. That completely changes the whole tone of what should have been an important moment and made Zhao just another casualty of war.
Quite honestly, “The Last Airbender” is boring, plodding along until the plodding is interrupted by an action scene. It takes itself far too seriously and none of the humor from the series makes it through the Shyamalan filter. While I am glad Appa and Momo were pictured and mentioned (correctly) by name, neither is rendered in a way that gives suspension of disbelief half a chance. The amount of exposition by all the characters (Katara, Zhao and Grandma especially) makes Fountain of Exposition Albus Dumbledore look positively taciturn. (What is it with me and Harry Potter references tonight?) The rest of the dialogue is wooden and poorly written, leaving even the experienced actors in the cast nothing with which to flesh out their characters. And let’s just gloss over the glaring plot holes (like imprisoning Earthbenders in what is essentially a stone canyon) or we’ll be here all night.
But lest you think “The Last Airbender” has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, there were some things I really enjoyed. I liked the costumes, especially how they all corresponded with their nation colors like in the cartoon. The Northern Water Tribe clothes hinted at Renaissance Venice, which seemed appropriate for the canals prominent in the city (at least in the cartoon.) And Iroh, even if he couldn’t pronounce his name, was awesome as always. We don’t get as much of a chance to see his honorable heart and generous nature in book one and even less in the movie, but he still shines, especially near the end. I also enjoyed how they rendered Aang’s glider and the addition of a print on the cloth was nice. Last but not least, I loved how they did Aang’s tattoos. The solid blue works for the cartoon, but for the live action, the tiny dots, swirls and Air Nomad symbols clustered together to make the arrows seemed much more elaborate and, dare I say it? Realistic.
While I don’t feel “The Last Airbender” is the bomb many prominent critics say, there’s not a lot to recommend it. Given the depth, breadth and popularity of the source material, this film could have been so much better. Having M. Night Shyamalan as the producer OR director might not have been so bad, but to give him complete control over the movie as producer, director AND writer was a disaster waiting to happen. I support those who protest the movie on ethical grounds and I support those who stay away after reading the volumes of bad reviews. I hope that books two and three (if they get made) will have new writers and directors at the very least. Despite moderate opening weekend figures, fans have made it clear that this was not what they wanted from “The Last Airbender.” I, for one, had heard the reviews and went on opening day anyway, because I felt I owed it to my love of the cartoon. I definitely won’t be going again. My curiosity for the world M. Night Shyamalan created has been satisfied. I can live with this being the only live action movie, but I can only hope that the inevitable second week drop off due to word of mouth and the probable mediocre overall box office will not scupper the rumored second cartoon series set in the “Avatar: the Last Airbender” world. The world itself, as envisioned and executed by Michael Dante DiMartino, Brian Konietzko and company is a rich and beautiful one with more stories to share – provided M. Night Shyamalan stays well away.
WereGeek
WereGeek is reading 5-7 books at any given time, not including comics. These can range from alternative universe fiction to historical fact and from theoretical physics to Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. You can argue with her all you want, but Dirk Benedict will always be her Starbuck. Her ringtone is the theme from Airwolf and she believes that there's nothing that can't be improved by the judicious application of werewolves. Or bacon. Or werewolves with bacon. She can be contacted at werewolf17 @ gmail.com and followed on Twitter at the link below.
Note: This is another Old Movie Review, written for a class and posted here so it wouldn’t rot away on my external hard drive. Enjoy!
In October of 2008, I attended the Dallas Sci-Fi Expo/Star Wars Fan Day. Bruce Campbell was the special guest, and while walking the convention floor, I saw no less than four people wearing Ash Williams costumes, Campbell’s character from the Evil Dead series. One was a teenage boy probably no older than 14, dressed in Ash’s trademark dirty khaki pants and ripped shirt, complete with poofy hair and chainsaw hand. The line of fans waiting for their turn to meet Campbell stretched the entire length of the entrance hall, and it wasn’t uncommon at all to hear con-goers quoting lines from Army of Darkness to each other.
Army of Darkness, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Campbell, had a ready-made cult audience at the time of its release in 1993. It is the third film in the Evil Dead series, following The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987), both of which were well-received by critics and horror genre fans alike. Army of Darkness, which follows immediately after the end of Evil Dead II, moves away from the gross-out horror of the first two films and instead blends horror with the sword-and-sorcery conventions of high fantasy, relying on slapstick comedy and campy dialogue instead of the graphic violence and gore of the first two films.
The film is silly, but it was not made to be taken seriously. It was shot using highly exaggerated camera movements and cheesy visual effects–one of the opening shots of the movie, a flashback to the end of Evil Dead II, features Campbell flying through the air toward a time-travel vortex, and his harness and the wire suspending him are clearly visible. Special effects in the early 1990s look primitive to a 21st century audience, but the effects in Army of Darkness are corny even by 1993 standards. The deliberately bad effects are meant to jar the viewer into laughter, adding to the overall feel of self-mockery that pervades the film.
One of the most prominent effects in the film is also an intertexual homage. The evil army that Ash must fight are composed of skeletons animated by evil magic. Raimi chose to use stop motion animation in a style very similar to that used by Ray Harryhausen in Clash of the Titans, among his many other films, and the skeleton army functions as a tribute to Harryhausen’s groundbreaking work in film effects. Other instances of intertextuality in Army of Darkness include the Necronomicon as well as the magical phrase that should send Ash back to his own time. The Necronomicon, which features prominently in all of the Evil Dead films, is the book which, when read, will unleash the evil dead. This book was invented by influential horror writer H. P. Lovecraft as an account of his fictional Cthulhu mythos and is a common device in the horror genre, whether in Lovecraftian stories or otherwise. The magical phrase, “klaatu verada nikto,” is taken from The Day the Earth Stood Still, albeit misspelled.
One of the major attractions for cult fans of Army of Darkness is its quotability. The aforementioned magical phrase, which was butchered by Ash, is a particularly popular quote: “Klaatu… verada… necktie. Nectar. Nickle. Noodle. It’s an N word. It’s definitely an N word. . . . Klaatu! Verada! N (indistinct coughing)!” Other favored quotes come from Ash’s pithy or cheesy one-liners, which make up a large portion of his dialogue: “This… is my boomstick!”; “Good, bad. I’m the guy with the gun.”; and “Gimme some sugar, baby.”
The film has had multiple DVD, and recently Blu-ray, releases, and has expanded beyond film into other media. There are numerous Army of Darkness and Evil Dead comic books, published by Dark Horse Comics and Dynamite Entertainment, and the Evil Dead series has recently been adapted into a comedic stage musical. Army of Darkness and its predecessor films have carved out a niche for themselves in the hearts of horror fans, and their popularity is such that even though the last film was released seventeen years ago, the series is still going strong.
TDF Pamela
The Discriminating Fangirl, who is more likely to answer to Pamela if you shout it at her, is the proud owner of an MA in English, focusing on children's/young adult literature and popular culture. Because of her ample free time thanks to being gainfully unemployed, she reads voraciously. She also loves geeky movies and tv shows, reads comic books as often as she can buy them, and when she's procrastinating, she enjoys playing video games. She can be contacted at t.d.fangirl @ gmail.com and followed on Twitter at the link below.
All reviews posted on The Discriminating Fangirl are honest. We do not promise positive reviews. We do promise that we will give our honest opinion about what we read.
Readers, please note that some of the reviews here at TDF are of books that we received for free from publishers or authors. As stated above, all of our reviews are honest, and the fact that we received a free copy does not mean that we give undeserved praise to these books.
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TDF Pamela
Strangeness Abounds
WereGeek
In October of 2008, I attended the Dallas Sci-Fi Expo/Star Wars Fan Day. Bruce Campbell was the special guest, and while walking the convention floor, I saw no less than four people wearing Ash Williams costumes, Campbell’s character from the Evil Dead series. One was a teenage boy probably no older than 14, dressed in Ash’s trademark dirty khaki pants and ripped shirt, complete with poofy hair and chainsaw hand. The line of fans waiting for their turn to meet Campbell stretched the entire length of the entrance hall, and it wasn’t uncommon at all to hear con-goers quoting lines from Army of Darkness to each other.
