26 Reply by Jen

(165 replies, posted in Off Topic)

My take on Joss Whedon is that he is an advocate for active women in Sci-fi/comics, but I wouldn't say hes any more of one than George Lucas.   Whedon's tend to be *strong* women, not necessarily strong characters even.  Zoe is the one exception, certainly not Buffy, and lets not talk about what the heck went off the rails with Dollhouse. I think Lucas' treatment of Leia is just as strong, if not more so considering it's almost 2 decades earlier.   

I think the assessment of Martin's portrayal of female strength is perhaps more fair, but again they tend to be strong in the face of some form of adverse conditions or other manipulations in the books, it hasn't played that way as much in the TV show.  Though Martin is dealing with a different genera being far more Fantasy than Sci-fi.  Which I think is an important distinction.  Fantasy has always allowed for a more active role for women and has been marketed toward women as much as men.  Sci-fi/comics on the other hand tend to be much more male oriented and the female characters reflect that.  I think the same thing can be seen with video games as well.  Generally there is a marketing perception that these things don't appeal to women, so there is no effort to make them do so.

I think Sherrilyn Kenyon's books (which started out heavy on paranormal romance and have moved towards more general sci-fi/fantasy though they're still shelved with the romance novels except the kids & graphic novel versions) provide good strong female characters, They've recently been optioned for movie/TV and I'm interested to see how the translation goes.

Related to Game of thrones the series, I think the fact that they didn't do creative hiding of the male nudity was also a rather surprising choice, even on HBO.  And I think encouraging to see the quasi equal treatment. BBC recently ran an interesting article adjacent to that here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20218094.  The fact that full frontal female nudity is not even particularly surprising when it shows up in films or TV shows while full frontal male is is another interesting split how genders are viewed. 

I'm kind of headed off on a tangent here, but I didn't want to side track the Avengers thread any further.  And with being out of town for the holiday I kind of missed jumping in on that discussion.

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27 Reply by Jen

(473 replies, posted in Episodes)

Thank you guys for a wonderful and insightful discussion.  I'm with you on both scared and hopeful.  If Disney lets Lucasfilm work like their agreement with Marvel I think it will be ok, if its more a Pixar kind of situation I'd be a little more worried.  I do have to mention the one thing my Mom came up with and that was the possibility of casting Disney's "stars" in a Star Wars film, i.e. Justin Bieber as young Luke.  Anyway, I think you're right about there being a lot of decisions coming in the next 6 months or so which should give us a better read on the situation, so I guess we'll see. 
I do hope that if Disney decides to go with the C&D route they do it with some amount of tact, I've seen far too much backlash that has resulted from unaware and possibly inexperienced lawyers writing C&D letters to a active community.

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28 Reply by Jen

(52 replies, posted in Episodes)

I think the subsidence, of musicals also probably has more than a bit to do with casting.  You can't just pick people who are known stars and put them in theatrical roles I think in some cases, like Chicago, it succeeds while in others, like Phantom of the Opera, it doesn't.    I think Gerard Butler did an ok job, but his more rock/pop style of singing paired horribly with Emmy Rossum's operatic style.  I think the casting of Nine was another case where a musical could have worked but didn't, for a multitude of reasons.  I think it can be done, and I think Les Miserables has done a good job in that respect with its casting, but I guess we'll see in December.

I agree with Invid that changing musical tastes also has a lot to do with why musicals aren't as successful as they once were.  Though that probably has a lot to do with the fact that stations are kind of "fixed" in what they play, so unfortunately its not just musicals which get the short end of that its other genres as well.

And Teague, very nicely done.

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29 Reply by Jen

(39 replies, posted in Episodes)

Thanks to DIF for affirming Thor is all over the place, I didn't see it in the theater, and wanted to see it before avengers, and everyone I knew said it was great.  I Get dvd, was totally confused by the way the movie jumped around and took me 45 minutes of the movie to realize that it doesn't play correctly, and it skips between chapters, try a second round with the dvd, same problem.  So I thought ok, maybe it makes sense if your DVD isn't messed up.  Finally watch it on Netflix and it still doesn't make sense.   I thought I was broken, so it was nice to realize it wasn't just me.

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