New season of Heroes

So, what do you think of the new season of Heroes? Better than season 2, but sort of a mashup-rewind of Season 1? What do you think of the new "Dark Willow" Claire-o-the-future? Bad ass cool, or just insane? Is Peter as annoying as ever? Did you not love Sylar's "You drink decaf, right Noah?" Hee! I think they must have finally hired a writer with a sense of humor over there, because I've laughed out loud during the last two episodes, and if I complained about anything during Heroes season 1, it was because it lacked humor.

So, what else are you watching this season? Doesn't the apocalyptic tone of Heroes seem a little too apropos these days? How about season 2 of Chuck?

Notes on samurais, vampires, and Miyazaki movies

Of possible interest:

A mini-series on ABC Family of all places called "Samurai Girl" about a San Francisco teenager who must avenge her brother's murder by becoming a samurai! Has potential...
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38195

The new series on HBO called True Blood has vampires and synthetic blood and Anna Paquin!
http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/

For you Miyazaki fans, news about Ponyo, his newest movie:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38173
and also an update on possible US distribution of The Tales of Earthsea movie from Ghibli...

Buffy Updates: Buffy Versus Fray, Animated Buffster

So, I picked up the latest issue of the Buffy versus Fray "Season 8" comic, in which Dark Willow of the Future is revealed on the very last page (Whoops - is that a spoiler? But you totally know it's her all the way through the issue.) I'm enjoying this plotline - where Buffy learns that fairly sad state of slayerhood far in the future, and Fray's ongoing struggle with her evil twin.

And, via Television Without Pity, I learned about a YouTube version of the Buffy animated series pilot. It's good, not great, but still entertaining in that "I miss Buffy" sort of way.
Here's the story:
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/telefile/2008/08/buffy-summers-reanimated-corps.php#more
and the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnUvZP7-5LM

Why Twilight Sucks, Penelope, Hellboy II

So, you say you're interested in a series created by a Mormon housewife for teenage girls that encourages them to abandon their own lives and ambitions to hang out with a guy? Look no further! The Twilight Series is here!
To read more about why this series sucks, read this:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/07/30/Twilight/index.html
Not only does it steal from Buffy but make the main girl character much less interesting and empowered...But also, the writing! Hurts! my! Head!

Okay, on to more pleasant topics:

Hellboy II is a surprisingly romantic and funny superhero film, if a little uneven. I love the star and I love the character, so I was going to like this film no matter what, but the way the writer manages to inject a little sensitivity and existential questioning into a gung-ho testosterone fest is pretty great. The director's pacing left a little to be desired - there were at least ten to fifteen minutes that were realllly slow and served no purpose - but his visual reference checks:
--Miyazaki's forest spirit blooming onto the land in Princess Mononoke
--Indiana Jones fight with the giant German wrestler into the helicopter blades
--many scenes reminscent of Spirited Away and other references to La Puta/Castle in the Sky Robots
--the "welcome to diagon alley" scene in the first Harry Potter movie
are pretty flawless. So, overall, a thumbs up! I even give it a "date night" recommendation.

Penelope is a fairy-tale fable about a contemporary girl cursed with a pig's nose. The first half, in particular, is great - gothic and strange and Christina Ricci is so charming, as is a scene which has the main love interest character literally kissing a (ceramic) frog. Definitely worth a rental.

Tips for sci-fi, fantasy, and speculative fiction writers from Kelly Link

If you're a fiction writer who dabbles in sci-fi, fantasy, or the speculative thing, check out this interview with Kelly Link (author of one of my favorite books, Stranger Things Happen) - she talks about her work at the low-res MFA program at Stonecoast, her teaching gig at the Clarion Workshop in San Diego (with Neil Gaiman, fellow teacher) and general publishing stuff here:
http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/2008/07/aisfp-54-kelly-link-and-lou-anders/
Oh yeah, you have to get about 12 minutes in to get to her part of the interview.
Anyway, makes me wish I wrote fiction instead of poetry! I would sign up for that Clarion deal in a heartbeat - and maybe even sign up for another MFA!
PS Kelly Link has a new Young Adult book, Pretty Monsters, due out in October. I've been recommending her other two books (chock full of sex and violence) to teens, so I'm glad to have something on the "safer" side to recommend.

PS Buffy and Fray crossover comics going on now! So get to your comic shop!

Kurosawa's Dreams

More from my series on the work of Akira Kurosawa...

Now, "Dreams" is a series of vignettes taken from, you guessed it, the dreams of the director. The main character starts out a young boy who witnesses a wedding procession of foxes, which is forbidden, and then goes to seek their forgiveness under a rainbow. He also speaks with life-sized dolls who celebrate a chopped-down peach orchard by dancing in ceremonial kimono. Several of the vignettes are explicitly about war - one in which a commanding soldier encounters the soldiers he sent to their deaths is particularly moving - and nuclear holocaust. Most jarring, although beautiful, was when the movie suddenly shifted into French - then English - in a piece about Vincent Van Gogh (played by Martin Scorcese) and the main character finds himself lost inside Van Gogh's paintings.
These pieces are really more like visual poems than a fictional narrative, with a lot of imagery and very little dialogue. A scene in which men are lost in a blizzard is little more than flying snow and sound effects of wind and walking for ten minutes - until they encounter "Yuki-Onna," a snow maiden. The sense that Kurosawa was trying to make sense of the Japanese society's (and his own personal) love of the natural world and the devastation that arose from technology and war really comes through in the film.
Since I've written both about the legend of the kitsune and Yuki-Onna, I really loved the film. It's not about action, it's very lyric and experimental. The more I get to know his work, the more I enjoy it.

New Futurama Movie - Beast with a Billion Backs

We rented Futurama's second movie, "Beast with a Billion Backs" tonight, and I can tell you after watching the first twelve minutes, I've already laughed more than I did during the whole "Bender's Big Score" movie, which was so bad I ended up watching the math lecture in the special features again and again instead of re-watching the movie.
An early satire of "Steamboat Willie" in "Beast..." was wonderful, and the special features were fun. In other news, the sneak peek at the next movie also looks pretty promising - a satire of LOTR.

Update: Well, sorry to say, it stopped being funny after the first twenty minutes. Then it devolved into an unfunny-tentacle-porn-religion plot thing. Which wasn't really good at all. But, at least the first twenty minutes were funny! Sigh. Futurama is apparently only good when kept to those original running times of a little over twenty minutes.