Youthberry Tea, good pens, and a character sheet = Perfect Sunday
The brother and I are going to start
DM-ing a game of Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons in a few weeks. In typical
fashion, I've come at the challenge with lists and book-buying and Google Form
creation. To say I'm freaking out would be putting it mildly, but at the same
time I'm really excited.
Creating a world for yourself to
play in as completely different from creating one where other people are
supposed to come along and help make the story with you. What's particularly
interesting about DM-ing is that it brings with it a slew of "thinking on
your feet" that I usually only have to deal with when my characters start
running away from me. Or turning evil for no obvious reason.
Suffice it to say, I am making blog
posts instead of finishing my campaign because I am still trembling in my boots
about it.
And, because I am me, I am also
Procrastination Baking.
Here is my latest creation: Vanilla Cupcakes with a salted caramel frosting. The frosting turned out
a little too salty, but the cupcakes themselves were very tasty and the
recipe was pretty easy so odds are it's on the "To Make Again" list.
The links go to Chow,
a very cool website that sends me recipes on a daily basis. And sometimes those
recipes are delicious and sometimes they are pretentious, but they are always
fun.
Also, you will notice the tea pots
in the top pictures. Those are real teapots, filled with real tea. Tea is
wonderful and warm and the best afternoon pick-me-up ever. Plus, it takes a
little bit of work to make so even if you've done nothing else all day, you can
still think, "Well, I made tea" and it's something. Especially
loose-leaf because then you need to warm the pot before and let it steep just right
and use the awesome little Victorian strainer cup and put honey and milk in and
it's time-consuming.
...This has been an update on the baking and Tabletop front.
Tune in next time for more dithering, this time probably involving bread again
because I think I know the secret for why mine keeps coming out so dense...
A new story to go with the new semester (which I am not participating in because nyah, I don't wanna). Also because I am lazy and now it looks like I'm going to have graduate, low GPA or no. Which...is terriyfing. Absolutely terrifying.
But on to the fic. This began as a very late night chat fic with the Captain as we killed time waiting for Steam to load. He needed a haircut and I was feeling exceedingly silly. Enjoy it in the spirit in which it was written.
--*--*--*--
On the morning of February the 23rd, Solomon Jones opens his
eyes and curses. He cannot see, can barely breathe, and the sound of his alarm
clock is unmistakably muffled. The Curse of the Poof has flared up again. Solomon
Jones staggers across the room, blinded by the Curse. It is flaring up in
shorter intervals, especially since he had started seeing the Mad Korean for an
antidote. He doesn’t have a choice, though. Not after what Ines Hernandez did
to him the last time he had seen her for the cure.
I have A Story about The Hunger Games (that pretty fantastic YA series by Suzanne Collins which...look if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're under a bigger rock than I am...). When I first picked it up, it was at the recommendation of someone whose reviews I had really enjoyed online. So I set off for the closest library and indulged myself in some YA fiction. And got hooked. And had to immediately drive to two different libraries in order to pick up the sequel, Catching Fire. Which I finished and promptly put myself to work searching for the final book. The problem was, Mockingjay, the conclusion of the series, wasn't even published yet, let alone at the library.
So I put myself on the list for it. At position number 274. Which isn't that big a deal especially since I ostensibly had other things to read (like my school books). But then the Miami-Dade Public Library system set up a new thing where in order to check out books, you have to renew your library card each year, and in order to renew, your account has to be paid off. So. Since I had a bit of a backlog of debt I am very forgetful, you understand they turned off my card and cancelled my holds.
Including Mockingjay.
So I haven't finished the series and I hadn't re-read the books in a few years when the spoilers and casting photos and otherwise general tomfoolery for the movie began to seep into my Internet Spaces.
That was all to say: 1) spoil me and die, 2) I'm coming at the movie with a book-ish spin, and 3) Really. Spoil me and DIE
I'm gonna start off by saying that I actually really enjoyed the movie. But by far one of the best parts of it was getting to see it with my sister. Considering the SCoM rarely reads the same books I do, it was a pleasure to go see a movie based on a book we had both read. As well, because she absolutely adores the book, she finally got to see how I feel when my babies are put on the big screen.
This isn't going to be much of a review, if I'm being honest because I didn't take any notes as I usually do. However, the SCoM and I did have a discussion in the car on the way to the comic book store about the differences and how we felt about them, so that's what I'm going to discuss.
Regardless, ye shall be warned:
Right, so the movie opens pretty much exactly as the book does, with less of the flashbacks and various "setting up the setting" details we need in a book. The cinematography in this movie was excellent, as was the set design. The Powers that Be did a fantastic job in really capturing the colors and feel of the different areas. The grittiness of the outlying districts in comparison to the garish decadence of the Capitol was not something that was just explained, rather it pretty much punched us in the gut whenever there was a shot of backgrounds.
As well, for a book that is told pretty much from the confines of Katniss' head, the writers and directors and Jennifer Lawrence herself did a phenomenal job in conveying her turmoil and the roiling thoughts that are in her head. In addition to the acting Lawrence is able to do with just her eyes, the scriptwriters also nicely fleshed out the world of the book, giving us insight into the Gamemakers, the Sponsors, and all of the other background elements that Katniss hints at but can't really devote any of her thoughts to (as she's, you know, trying not to die). Providing the audience with the shape of the world as well as presenting the movie as if we are Capitol-dwellers watching it did a lot to convey the storyline.
But. Okay, here's the thing. When I read the book, I remember really disliking Katniss. When I re-read it a few days ago I changed my opinion slightly (I like her a little more now) but I distinctly recall kind of hating her. And a lot of the reason for this was the waffling and machinations she gets up to in her own head.
Being in Katniss' head throughout the book really lets us see that she is actually Acting Out the romance with Peeta because she becomes aware that this is the only way she and him are going to make it. By selling their story to the viewers, they might make it out of the games alive. Being in her thought process reveals to us, the reader, that not only does she understand the game, but she thinks that Peeta is playing it, too. And he's better at it than she is.
That's why the ending, when Peeta is so injured he physically cannot leave the cave, has blood poisoning, and is essentially dying in her arms is so important and such a turning point in the novel. It's the part where the stakes are high enough that she must make a senseless decision - she has to risk her life in order to save Peeta's, effectively cementing their relationship in the eyes of the viewers (and probably Peeta). But even at this part in the book, Katniss isn't sure of her true feelings. She actually says:
"I haven't even begun to separate out my feelings about Peeta. It's too complicated. What I did as part of the Games. As opposed to what I did out of anger at the Capitol. Or because of how it would be viewed back in District 12. Or simply because it was the only decent thing to do. Or what I did because I cared about him." (pg. 358-359, THG, 2008)
Throughout the book, Collins makes it clear that Katniss is putting on a show. The packages she gets from Haymitch nudge her in the direction she should be acting, but she is very aware of the fact that she is playing a part for the viewers of the Games. Without insight into Katniss' mind, it is pretty difficult for that to come across for an audience of a movie.
My feelings about the movie, then, are confused. On one hand, I liked it. The visuals were gorgeous, the way they filled out the world was welcome, and the acting was a lot better than I really expected. As well, seeing it with a bunch of people who also read the books (and most of whom were 14 year old girls) was quite the...experience. There was a lot of screaming and people yelling at the screen, and yes. That's why I like seeing movies when they premiere.
On the other hand, I found myself constantly filling in the scenes with what Katniss was thinking during them throughout the novel. And in retrospect, while I liked the movie, I can't quite separate whether I would have liked it had I not had that supplementary commentary running in my head.
But my biggest nitpick has to be the end. When Peeta and Katniss are essentially trapped in the cave near the end of the book, they are hopeless. Katniss is just trying to figure out what she needs to say in order to be rewarded with the medicine she needs to save Peeta's life while Peeta is honestly just trying to survive. His wound is described as festering, he has blood poisoning and is nearly incoherent. He is so wounded, after the medicine he can barely walk and once they're free of the games, Peeta is given a false leg because even the Capitol couldn't save his.
The wound and its care are major plot points in the book and they dictate what Katniss does as much as her possible feelings for Peeta.
So while I can forgive a lot of the minor differences between the two mediums, making Peeta's leg wound a non-issue is not one of them. Taking away the stakes that result from the severity of his injury make Katniss' turmoil less apparent and appears to cast her as Peeta's actual love interest. Which, if that's the way they were going, should have been more apparent.
I felt the movie didn't commit to having Katniss and Peeta really be in love nor to Peeta being so injured Katniss has no choice but to save him regardless of her feelings. And that lack of commitment didn't do the film any favors.
I liked the movie, I really did. I'm just not sure as to some of the choices the writers chose to make. That didn't stop me from enjoying it. Nor did it stop me from crying when this happened:
Like a baby, I cried. Me and the SCoM both. Rebellion gets to me, okay?
In the interest of keeping up with my bread-making (and my utter failure at it) I took a few steps backwards in the Bread Zone and went back to the basics.
In this case, soda bread.
For the unitiated (and me) soda bread is pretty much one of the easiest breads you can make outside of the boxed bread machine ones. Most of the ease comes from the fact that it takes no yeast, so there's none of that horrible waiting for the dough to rise and then the punching down and the kneading... Possibly I am too impatient to make good bread, but I digress.
Anyways, soda bread is ostensibly The Easiest Bread since all you need is the ingredients, a baking sheet, and an oven. Of course, the first time I made soda bread it was both crumbly and far too hard for human consumption. Don't ask me how I accomplished this as I have no idea.
But this time I followed the instructions found in Paul Hollywood's 100 Great Breads, combined all of my ingredients until there was no free-floating flour in the bowl (a process that took far too long so I added more milk...oops?), made a ball of bread, smushed it down, cut a cross in the top and popped that sucker in the oven for the prescribed 25 minutes.
In retrospect, substituting sour cream for buttermilk may have turned out to be a mistake as the reaction between the baking powder and buttermilk is a main part of the dough but...
No bread I make can be anything but fraught with problems, and this one was no different.
I exulted at my bread dough looking like bread dough as it went in the oven and retired to my laptop with a mug of tea and Bruce Springsteen's new album.
An untold amount of time later, my dad popped his head in the room and asked me how much time the bread was supposed to cook for.
"25 minutes," I said, removing one of my earphones. "The time left should be on the microwave timer, since I didn't hear it beep..."
My father cocked one eyebrow at me.
"The microwave says 23:03 and it hasn't moved."
I felt color leave my face, jumped out of my chair and ran for the oven. There was my bread, looking like bread. I know the rule about impatient bakers and undercooked foods, but I had to do something, so I popped the oven open and poked the bread.
The problem with bread is, unlike a cake where you can poke it with a knife, there really isn't a way to know when it's done. So I shoved my finger into one of the cracks and deemed it "uncooked...probably" and gave it eight more minutes.
When the alarm dinged this time, I went and removed my bread from the oven. It didn't look any different from the last time I checked but it was slightly less squishy.
Somewhere in my life I must have read something about bread because, unbidden, the thought came to me, "Isn't the way you test to make sure bread is done to knock on it? If it sounds hollow it's done..." Since I had nothing else to go on, I knocked on my bread.
...I'm not sure if it's true advice, but knocking on it gave me a relatively hollow sound so I let it sit on its cooling rack.
It turned out a little crumbly, a little dense, and a little saltless, but overall I can say this is my first succesful bread.
My brain decided to take this slight success and run with it, so I have a baguette and a brioche lined up to try tomorrow.
On its own, that statement is not a cause for concern. Or rather, not much concern.
I've been baking since I was very little, at first helping my mom out, and then making a total mess out of the kitchen All By Myself. A few years ago, however, I started baking in earnest. This is right around the same time I started knitting again as well as sewing. In all honesty, I think I probably picked up handicrafts again as a tribute to my grandmother who passed away last year and also as a form of procrastination. Regardless, I do a little of everything but baking is one of my new loves.
I have slowly been acquiring gizmos and whatsits over the course of a few years and I have an interesting collection now...I think. Some Williams-Sonoma cookie cutters - the Marvel superheroes faces and the Star Wars vehicles - some pretty nifty food colors, all sorts of muffin tins, a cookie-scoop, and The Precious.
What is The Precious, you ask? Why my good fellow:
Me and The Precious at my birthday last year.
The Precious is the 6 quart capacity, bright red, KitchenAid Stand Mixer I received for my birthday last year. This year one of my goals is to add the tengwar found on the One Ring to it in order to more properly connote its name, but until I do, that's just what I call it.
C'mon, you knew exactly what I was referring to when I said the tengwar. ...^^it's this.
So of course, upon receiving The Precious the first thing I did was baptize it in mocha and chocolate.
I'm not going to lie, having a stand mixer is a marvelous step up from using a hand mixer and my own brute strength. Paramount among the awesomeness is the ability to leave the mixer running while I melt/whip/add things. It just smooths everything out. ...I love my mixer, okay?
The problem with the Precious is it doesn't really help me with bread. I've decided that baking a decent loaf of bread is right up there with making a passable Apple Pie on "Things I Want to Do" but it's been...difficult. To that end I picked up a copy of 100 Great Breadsfrom the Barnes and Nobles at school when I went to the bookstore to buy socks...long story...
Unfortunately, the man is a master baker and I just started making bread without the Bread Machine so mine came out all lumpy and weird. :| Going to try soda bread until I can make passable loaves.
Anyhoo. Because I made A Commitment to this blog and its general upkeep, I've decided to go ahead and start keeping better track of the things I bake. I won't make any promises as to the state of the pictures I'll take (synching my phone for pictures is enough of a hassle) but I will be doing more upkeep. And as soon as I figure out how, there will be a nifty "Baking" tab at the top of the blog where these posts will be housed.
But for tiding over, here are some pictures of stuff I've baked lately.
(Left to Right) Apple Pie, Vanilla cupcakes w/ chocolate comic book sayings, Kahlua cookie bowl with ice-cream, mocha cupcakes, apple cinnamon muffins, Star Wars cookies and blue milk.
I have been working on Part Deux of what I'm referring to in my head as "A Week in the Life" since...well pretty much since I put up Part the First in...(checks blog) oh my God, January?! Yikes. In my paltry defense I have been having a doozy of a time with the ending to Part the Second (tentatively titled "Monday's Minotaur" which...yeah). I've re-written the pivotal transition scene five times and I'm still not satisfied. It starts out on a bus and I want to keep the action on the bus in order to keep the story condensed, but (in typical Cell fashion) the characters have gotten all carried away and now want to do things like "walk around the city" and "pretend they're detectives" and...ugh.
So, I'm onto my sixth attempt at finishing this piece and I am thisclose to just crashing the bus they're on and being done with it. "Rocks fall. Everyone dies."
In the meantime I've been doing other things, paramount among those was the reformatting of my computer which was infected with Loki's Own Virus and needed to be completely wiped in order to be useable. The fun part about the "Google Redirect Virus" (also known as "Alureon" which is an awesome name for a craptastic thing) is that it doesn't let you use Google. You go onto the site, it doesn't recognize your Google ID, then when you click on links, it takes you to some scam pages. The virus also disguises itself as a driver and hides in your registry, pushing out little tendrils of evil into your machine and just really mucking everything up.
So. Full-on reformat it was. A three day process. But it's done now and I can finally get back to work. Or, you know, as close to work as I ever get. So, rather, Endless Procrastination and WoW.
What I was doing prior to deciding I needed to write something this Spring Break.
I've also been watching movies and TV Shows because, why not. So. A running list:
Chronicle: the found-footage movie about teenagers getting super powers and then Screwing Everything Up. I saw this with the Captain on Valentine's Day this year and it was very, very good. I thought I was getting tired of the found footage movie but this one was masterfully done and the story was so engrossing that I was riveted the entire time. Although (spoiler) I was kinda upset that the black guy died first...as usual. He looked like the famous Jett Jackson so, bummer.
Sherlock: the BBC series with Benedict "Voice of Smaug" Cumberbatch and Martin "I'm F-in' Bilbo" Freeman. So amazing. They've thrown Sherlock Holmes into the modern era complete with Google searches and cellphones and all the problems those bring to a retelling of Sherlock Holmes. Yet the raport between Watson and Holmes is excellent and the show shines even as it exists in the murky shadows of London's streets. Plus:
Look at this excitement. A murder's just been announced, after all! ;)
Being Human: the BBC version. I watched the first three seasons of it on Netflix last year while I was wracked with insomnia and enjoyed it tremendously. The show is pretty much everything I like wrapped up into one foul-mouthed, gory show. Urban supernatural? I'm all over it. Well-acted? Done. Character development and plot-driven story-telling? And how. While season 4 is a completely different animal (now there's a Prophet Child and Plans for World Domination) at its heart, even with a new cast, there's still just enough of that "three supernatural friends try to make it in a world that doesn't believe in them" that I'll keep watching. And there's the fact that it's very often hilarious:
The Woman in Black: I saw this in the theater with the Captain and I'm pretty sure I gave him a bruise. I don't scream in scary movies, instead I gasp and cut off the circulation of whomever I happen to be sitting next to. When Bilbo turns into evil, troll Bilbo in Fellowship of the Ring, I squeezed my brother so hard, he had little finger-shaped bruises on his thigh for days. But yes, this movie was everything I like in a horror movie - it had the Victorian gothic sensibility, the creeping fog, the over-bearing air of Evil and the threat of Terror around every corner. Plus a few fun mind games and creepy children. Mixed into all of this was a more modern horror element and the mix of the traditional and the new worked together to really make this movie absolutely wonderful. I'd watch it again. Preferably with the lights on, though.
Downton Abbey: oh this show. I'm so addicted and I have my mom, sister, and dad hooked on it too. With a little time and judicious application of the war scenes, I'm sure I can get my brother into it, too. Little did I know when I heard the guild whispering of it on Thursday nights that this show would take over my brain as it has. Attempting to describe it is like trying to describe that book Ishmael. The one about the talking gorilla? You say that and people automatically tune out even though the book is excellent. Explaining that it's essentially a soap opera set at the turn of the 20th century in an English manor house and what happens to the family and the servants is a really good way to turn people off. But. It's amazing. First season's on Netflix. :) Also? Dame Maggie Smith. You can watch for her alone:
The Adventures of TinTin: I missed the first part of this movie, but I really loved the part I did see. It's so pretty and the story is rollicking and I just had so much fun. Completely awesome. I'll have to procure it at some point in the future so I can see how it starts, but regardless, it was really entertaining.
Immortals: I have a color-theory about this movie that is very long and needs its own blog post to describe, but I enjoyed it. A gorgeous movie in the slow-mo style of 300 and that ilk. But though the story isn't quite up to par, it's certainly worth watching for the pretty. (And the color theory) (And what they're saying about man and bestiality and the horror of war). Umm... I only enjoyed this movie because I analyzed the heck out of it, apparently...
I've also been to the ballet to see the ballet I'm named for ("Giselle") and now I want fanfiction...I know, I'm a horrible person. And, in other news, the 6 Nations Rugby Tournament is back. I'm probably going to get around to writing out the rules for those in my family who refuse to believe it has any.
So that's what's been occurring in my life these past few months. I am utterly failing at New Year's Resolution number 3 (keep to a blog-writing schedule) but I'm going to do my very best to do better.
Until next time when I'll (hopefully, please God) be bringing you Part Deux of The Story That Isn't Working.
Back I go... to the pain...I'll let Elijah speak for me:
Finally, finally wrote something. I might...at some point... write up a thing about the crushing depression I suffered last year and how that made me just drag myself around the house in Despair and Angst and Nothing Good came of it. But! It's a new year and a new season and new things have happened and
I.
Wrote.
Something.
My God, it's not even an analysis of the works of late American authors. It's honest to God fic.
As usual, I am late to the Captain America party. I’ve never even read the guy’s comic and a furious Wikipedia search before I saw the movie only enlightened me a teeny tiny bit on the long and convoluted history of the Cap.
I know he’s originally from the 1940s circa World War II and that he gets frozen in ice or something to end up in our current timeline alongside Tony Stark and the rest of the Avengers. I know he recently died (and maybe even came back as comic book heroes are wont to do) and there was some sort of drama with him being unhappy with the state of the government or mixed up in the most recent election…blah di blah.
I didn’t need to know any of that to enjoy the movie (the hallmark of a good comics-movie translation in my opinion).
When we went it was a Saturday, a full week after the movie had come out and the line for Captain America was out the door of the theater. There were hardly any seats available for us by the time we got there, and the crowd was wide and mixed. The packed-ness of the theater a full week and late-night showing later should have warned me that the movie was going to be pretty good.
I was not expecting it to be as great as it was.
The movie begins in the Arctic wastes, with what I’m going to guess is a present-day thingy since there are modern guys crawling around in a frosted-over ship. I will admit to being momentarily confused; if I didn’t know the whole “literally frozen in time” thing about the Cap, I’d think I had wandered into a showing of Transformers: Dark of the Moon by accident.
Luckily, it’s just the set-up, since we then flash back to a small store in some sort of Germanic place in what looks like WWII. You can just tell when it’s WWII, can’t you? That smoky feeling to the shots, the desperation as people run in their paperboy hats…
I was almost expecting this song and dance number...
Anyhoo, an older man with “Going to Die” written plainly across his forehead is in his shop when Elrond barges in wearing what looks suspiciously like a uniform for the SS. What Elrond is doing being Evil so far from Rivendell is beyond me, but I’m going with it because he is a delicious bad guy. Right, Mr. Anderson?
In a great show of continuity, the glowing cube from the end of Thorputs in an appearance…many years before it was acquired by faux!Loki in the future where Thor takes place… At least there’s a nice set-up for The Avengers going. Elrond discovers the cube hidden in an enormous carving of Yggdrasil that the old man has plainly on his wall. I mean, if you’re going to be hiding Asgardian tech in your workshop, perhaps an obvious homage to the Norse gods isn’t the smartest place to hide it? Just a thought…
They call the cube “the Tesseract,” in what I desperately hope is an homage to A Wrinkle in Time but probably isn’t. The old guy dies as we knew he was going to and Elrond holds the Tesseract aloft in all of its glowy awesome before…
We flash over to the World’s Fair circa 1942. Since there actually wasn’t a World’s Fair in New York City in 1942, we get our first not-so-subtle glimpse that even though this looks a lot like our universe we are actually in a parallel kind of place. Even though DC is the company with eight-thousand Earths, by setting up this funky thing, the director and writers very nicely establish the “neighbor universe” concept that is so important to our suspension of disbelief in comic book movies. All is not as it seems, and as we pan down the street in this could-have-been World’s Fair we meet Bucky and Steve, two men out for a night on the town, or rather Bucky is.
Steve, all 80 pounds of him, is desperately trying to get the army to accept his application to be a soldier. He wants to fight, and he has the heart of a soldier if not the strength. It is almost impossible to ignore at this point in the film the amazing effects being put into place by the production team. Chris Evans, who we know to be this hulking figure of a man especially since he bulked up for the part, is a short, scrawny, tiny minuscule… I can’t even explain how little and small and sad they make him look. It’s obviously Chris Evans, I mean it can’t be anyone else, but it’s Chris Evans as he would have been if he was an asthmatic, malnourished nine year-old.
That's him. There in the front....the man behind him is only 5'4"...
Steve Rogers, this tiny man, walks into the recruitment office and falsifies his registration information for what seems the hundredth time. It turns out that our Mr. Rogers has been trying and failing to become a soldier in the US Army for quite a few months now, and each time he is rejected by dint of his lack of strength. This time, however, the officer who does his physical examination sees something else in the small-statured man: a fierce and overwhelming desire to help, a love of country that is miles wider than he is tall, and a humility that puts everyone else to shame.
The doctor, judging from his picture, might admittedly be a little crazy... also look! Stanley Tucci!
This examining physician however, is an escaped German, on the run from the tyranny of Elrond’s SS-like people. And like Einstein and his escape with the Bomb plans safely nestled in his head, Dr. Tucci has brought with him a serum that could very well change the outcome of this war and every war to follow.
He offers Steve the chance to join the United States Army, allowing him to finally carry out his dream. When he reaches the training facility, however, Dr. Tucci must prove to the higher ups and the beautifully clothed Peggy that this mere slip of a man is in fact the perfect test subject for their testosterone-enhancing serum.
To prove the caliber of Steve Rogers over the already present hulks of men, Dr. Tucci throws a live grenade into the center of the army training camp. There is a silence, a terrified silence, and then tiny, scrawny Steve Rogers breaks ranks and runs toward the grenade. He leaps on it and curls into the fetal position, completely covering the deadly object.
Poor baby. :(
At this point in the movie, our theater drew a collective indrawn breath mixed in with some escaping “aww’s.” Who could help it when you see little, shrimpy Steve Rogers, He Who Stands Up for Everyone Except Himself, fling himself on the grenade he thinks is going to end his life? This reaction to his attempted sacrifice shows just how much we really connect with selflessness and Goodness. The grenade, of course, is a dud.
This act of heroism in spite of his small stature proves his worth to the captain of the guard or whatever he is and the green light is given to go ahead with the super serum-ing.
Rogers is taken to a back room, strapped into some sort of metal pod and injected with adamantium the super serum. The lights flicker, some sparks fly from the control panels, and the room rumbles. But then, with a “woosh” and a clatter, the pod bay doors open and out steps…
…Da-yum...
Of course there is a secret not!Nazi spy who has infiltrated the testing room, and he proceeds to shoot kindly Dr. Tucci and scarper with the last bit of super soldier serum. Flexing his new muscles, Steve Rogers leaps to the rescue, following the spy out the door and down the street.
The ensuing “New Power Discovery” sequence is one of my favorites. Mostly because it shows instead of tells. The Captain’s heart and motivations are displayed better than if someone had explained how to move about now, or the limitations on his new strength. He just leaps into action because he feels compelled to – it’s the Right thing to do.
I don’t know how he does it but Chris Evans just exults in the power that Rogers must be feeling in this moment. Like we saw in Thor, there is a deep and dark longing when your body won’t do what your heart and mind want and need for it to do. The Captain’s heart for the people was in a body that was three sizes too small (like a reverse Grinch) and he now has the physical power to go with the power of his heart.
Only...not like this at all...
The movie takes off from here, establishing Captain America as essentially a propaganda guy because he’s too important to go to the front lines. He is the first and last of the Super Soldiers because the last bottle of serum was smashed in the chase. That doesn't last, of course, and there are some awesome scenes wherein the Captain and his team (setting up a nice parallel to the Avengers by canonically establishing that Cap is a good leader) blow stuff up, ride into the sunset, and generally just cause mayhem. There is pain and sadness, but there are jokes and the pulling together of different groups. I wish the scenes with the team hadn’t been a montage, but I understand why they had to be.
Also there is a really phenomenal musical number.
But let me drop something (controversial?) here. Chris Evans, he of the cuteness and the adorable GQ magazine interview, is the best choice to play Captain America and he did an amazing job. He is hard as a rock and delectable and boyishly charming and adorable. I didn't know it was possible to keep the humility of the 90 pound weakling in the performance given by the hundred some pound strong man, but it's one of the reasons the movie really worked.
While Chris Evans as the Human Torch was funny in that kinda rapscallion way, he brought an air of wonder to his portrayal of Steve Rogers that I am not sure would have been possible by anyone else. One of the things that was really integral to the story was the fact that Steve Rogers was chosen as the recipient of the super soldier serum because he was someone that you would root for regardless of how he looked. He was one of the forgotten people, those whose hearts are twenty times larger than the shape afforded them by nature or God. It's as if the super soldier serum takes the potential for greatness found in the unabashed, loving and humble Steve Rogers and makes the outsides mirror the insides. It's like a wish fulfillment fantasy for the under-powered and the alone.
The movie is the nice little lift that we as a country needed: the good guys can win, there is hope for not only those who are weak and little and only trying to make their way in the world, but for those who are worthy, there is almost a sense of "it all gets better". Steve Rogers is a stand-in for every scrawny person who wished they could just be a little bigger and then they'd use their powers for good.
And what's wonderful about this is that he DOES. At no point does he falter in his goodness and representing what it is that he has been entrusted with. He doesn't take his new-found powers and wreak havoc on his erstwhile tormentors. He doesn't take his new strength and use it for his own goals. He submits to the authority he was willing to die to protect. He takes his new gift and uses it for the good of others rather than himself. If anyone deserves to have used new powers for a selfish reason at any point, it's Steve Rogers. And he doesn't.
Like all the flack leveled against Superman for being too much of a Boy Scout, there's a lot against the golden boy persona of Captain America. A flimsy show of American supremacy? No. A Boy Scout with no real danger or turmoil to make his character someone the layman can relate to? No. But these are things I run across pretty often when folk describe the Captain.
If there is anyone deserving of angst and despairing and railing against his lot in life and what he is now thrown into, it is Steve Rogers. The movie really impresses upon you the inherent sadness of his situation. He loses everyone he cares about, he is thrust too quickly into a world he wasn’t even allowed to glimpse at the start of the movie. And yet he just takes it, looks at the adversity he finds himself in front of, assesses the situation, and then jumps in with the right thing.
In our day of anti-heroes and fallen heroes, of villains being re-purposed and shades of grey, Steve Rogers and Captain America are the shining white light at the end of the tunnel. They stand as beacons for the rest of us. And yes, even beacons have shortcomings and even Good men have failings, but Captain America's intrinsic rightness is not one of them.
...but in the meantime, I would like to share this remarkable artist with you. Perhaps you haven't heard of Joanna Newsom, I certainly hadn't until very recently (like...accidentally...while stumbling through Wikipedia...). But I am ridiculously fond of her and her voice and her harp-playing.
The longer I spend listening to folk music, the more I find I love folk music.
I can't say a lot about her voice, the gravelly notes to it, the high ululations of it, the slow counterpoint she presents to her harp, how it sounds as if someone said, "we need a Human voice," and gave it to her. I am in love.
She speaks for herself, however. And the imagery in her lyrics is unreal.
Yes, Mr. Koontz. The 90s are a crazy time full of crazy goings on and off the wall capers. Arguable there was no "moral fiber" no "law or justice" and the youth were obviously "revolting" (in every sense of the word). Yeah. I got it. Wait 'till you get to the ots...
While I always enjoy a good paranormal horror (and Mr. Koontz's are usually top-notch) this one just had me rolling my eyes. Creepiness came from the rare moments when TickTock (our antagonist...worst name for a bad guy ever. It's like naming him 'Fluffy' frankly...) appeared in the next line where he hadn't been anywhere in the scene. When you picture it happening, it is terrifying and Mr. Koontz utilizes this device to its fullest extent. But that was one of the only creep-inducing things to come out of the entirety of this far-too-long novel.
As well, I feel like I shouldn't be noticing all the research the author has done in pursuit of realness. I don't really care about the specific plant types found in this neighborhood, or the precise medical effects of ecstasy (called 'E' now, not 'X'...sign of the change in times?).
I don't think horror books should feel dated but Dragon Tears fairly dripped of the early 90s as well as a huge dissatisfaction with the era. Plus: the whole "disparate characters seem to be completely unrelated but then meet-up and save the day" trope was not really utilized to its best potential here. The story would have read just as well without the frequent side-trips into the minds of other characters it was hard to feel anything for. In this case, these "other main characters" really only served to corroborate the sanity of the Real Main Characters. Something we knew wasn't in question.
I am pretty sure I was the only person in my family of admittedly geeky people who was excited to see X-Men Origins: First Class. Let's face it, we've been burned by the series before and my people weren't ready to give the franchise that delivered such dissatisfying fare as X3 and Origins: Wolverine another chance.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I am an eternally hopeful participant in the TV/Movie game. I will give chances and throw myself on the mercy of the writers' good graces over and over again. I was fully expecting to hate First Class. I had remarkably low expectations after the unmentionable pile of refuse that was X3.
I am glad my assumptions were so grievously wrong.
X-Men Origins: First Class is not only a great X-Men movie (one of the top two hands down) but a good movie on its own.
Even though the movie-verse messes with established character timelines and canon, a little suspension of disbelief goes a long way and it's almost worth it in this case. The storyline is intricate enough to keep you interested while still relying nicely on things blowing up and people shooting beams out of themselves. The effects are really good, the writing is fun and funny, and the actors do very good jobs.
Plus, this movie presents the fun conundrum of all prequels: how did they go from This to That? The evolution of Charles, Erik, and the entire mutant/X-men backstory was really interesting and well-handled (at least with regards to the movie-verse's continuity).
Forewarned from here: The HMS Spoiler is all set to sail because I have nit-picky, analysis-type things to get into below. If you don't want to be spoiled, suffice it to say the movie is well worth watching. Go forth! Watch!
Anyone left? Good. Let's get into the fun stuff. >=)
The movie begins in the 1940s with what I assumed was the "Adagio for Strings"(it's not, but it sounds so similar, I am just gonna keep calling it that). What a way to start the movie. At this point I am expecting some sort of heart-rending Schindler's List-type cinema and I'm not really disappointed. Poor Baby Magneto is ripped from his parents in a concentration camp and so proceeds to rip the camp's gate free of its moorings. An extremely familiar looking man pulls Little Erik into his office promising him chocolates and happiness if he can move the proffered coin across the tabletop. Oh look! It's Kevin Bacon! Looking very old and slightly stretched and kinda evil... And his status as the villain of this flick is cemented when he shoots Baby Magneto's mother in cold blood, prompting a magnetic storm to occur in Bacon's adjoining Roomful of Torture Devices. Who keeps one of those attached to their office anyways? Damn Nazis...
Look at him scream, the poor Baby Erik
"So," Evil!Kevin Bacon says, "We unlock your gift with anger and pain. You and I are going to have a lot of fun together." I got legit shivers at this point even though Baby Erik spent so much time screaming in the last scene it read as funny rather than traumatizing. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon, however, just got a whole lot easier.
This horrible reveal of Erik's powers and their Dark Side-nature is nicely contrasted with the tracking shot of what we know as the X-Mansion. Inside, Baby Charles wakes up, pads downstairs, and proceeds to Mind-bend a Baby Mystique into dropping her disguise. "Join me in my giant rambling house with missing parental figures!" he tells her in all of her adorable baby blueness. Or, you know, close enough.
Small Mystique is adorable
We skip forward in time to 1962 and the rest of the movie takes place in this halcyon time of potential nuclear disaster and really bad track suits.
The continual contrast between scenes of what Erik is doing (killing) versus what Charles is doing (studying) are...acceptable. If I hadn't felt as if the editor were trying to ram it down my throat, I'd have enjoyed it more. Nature/Nurture arguments are fun and all, but I like to have them after the movie, not in my head during the scenes where things are blowing up. We would still have seen the extreme differences in upbringing and outlook on life between these two guys without all of the overt switching.
I did, however, love the use of different languages throughout the scenes a lot. In a time that is categorized in our history as one of fear (and there is a scene later showing actual news footage that made me so glad I wasn't born yet) all of the different languages being batted around are really cool. The scene with Erik in the bar in Argentina switching languages at will is so awesome and cringe-worthy and yet serves to showcase his character really well. One of the things the constant language-switching does is really impress upon us, the Audience, how intelligent these guys are. It's one of the things that makes their break-up so interesting later: two brilliant men with vastly different opinions on something that affects the both of them... see, this is a more subtle version of the constant scene-shifts from earlier and it works a little better, in my opinion.
RE: Erik - There's a reason it's so fun to write characters motivated solely by revenge. They're a lot simpler and these characters will often push the edges of what is traditionally seen as "right" and "wrong", crossing into fun torture things while still being full of ennui and angst. Erik is so full of angst it is almost strangling him.
MAGN-ANGST-O
Charles' storyline by this point in the movie has dovetailed with Moira McTaggert's and he is in the process of convincing the CIA that mutants can be an important part of covert ops. A note on Moira, by the way: I really don't understand why the producers/writers would choose to make her an American CIA agent when her own backstory is so awesome and integral to the X-Men continuity (plus, she's Scottish! They chose to make her American, why?). They are really playing fast and loose with the canon...
Of course by the point in the movie where it was time to reconcile the two storylines (Erik's and Charles') I just kept getting "James Bond, JAMES BOND" vibes from Erik's side. I guess it's because the only Bond besides the newest ones I've seen is Octopussy and I swear that Bond wears a wetsuit just like Erik's. But the switching between the James Bond espionage scenes with Erik and the scienc-y CIA scenes with Charles are...interesting. It really kept me on my toes tone-wise and I don't know if I would have liked it if I weren't enjoying the movie so much.
Wetsuit looks like this. Pretty much exactly.
When OMG a submarine comes off the bottom of Kevin Bacon's ship, we finally reach the crossing of the storylines. While I was enjoying the movie up until this point, it was only after this that I started really liking First Class. From this point, where Erik tries to raise the sub (from underwater because he is being dragged by the magnetic pull or something) and Charles talks him down, the movie became the prequel I wanted it to be. And also, it introduced me to the wonderful bromance of Charles and Eric. I still don't understand how these guys broke up. Or rather, I do, but pretty much all of their scenes together make me want them to stay together forever.
From here on out, the movie is about finding baby mutants, training them, and putting nods to the original duology in as often as possible (X3 didn't happen, I tell you!).
A break before I analyze the heck out of character motivations: My notes just say "Beast! <3" for the introduction of Dr. Hank McCoy. ...Yeah. :)
Awww, isn't he adorable? And so full of Science and Wonder...
...and then he turned into a blue muppet...
What the movie does well at this point and for the rest of the film is really showcase the nebulousness of Charles' "goodness". He is going to be Professor X, upstanding member of society, leader of the X-Men and all around great guy, but right now? Right now Charles is a twenty-something year old who's just gotten his PhD in genetics and can't stop calling people splendid when they're uncomfortable with themselves.
He has that smug arrogance of the highly educated young adult. The "I-am-so-smart, Look-at-my-brains" proclivity with the added fun of being able to talk to people and affect their actions with his Mind. He's intrigued by the possibility of mutants and his PhD helps enable him to speak about it in a group setting. What his brains and his Brains don't do for him, however, is provide a justification for the manipulation he is doing.
Any way you slice it, telepathy is a kind of creepy power. And Charles is shown to have such great control he can literally force people to do things they don't want to do. This isn't a power to be taken lightly. And yet, while the movie goes out of its way to show the creepiness inherent in being able to control metal (Erik's initial tantrum plus his slaughter of all of the Nazis he can find come to mind) it does a lot less with the invasion and control Charles constantly exhibits.
I mean, Xavier is the guy who mind-bent Baby Mystique out of her disguise, outed Dr. Hank as Beast just by shaking his hand, psychically removed Erik from the magnetic pull of a submarine, put three soldiers to sleep while running, controlled a soldier to turn his head and look through his eyes, penetrated a fellow-mutant's mind (more than once), and physically controlled an officer on a Russian ship to do something he had absolutely no intention of ever doing. And that's just the stuff I can remember four days after I saw the movie.
Charles isn't really into this whole "gotta catch 'em all" collection of baby mutants for the good of everyone, he is pretty selfishly doing it to study mutants in their natural habitat (search your feelings, you know it to be true!) and build a family of which he is the unequivocal head. He is oligarchic at heart and while his actions reflect that, they're never cast in a Bad Light. Fridge logic at its best, right?
The training scenes really serve to showcase my idea that Charles Xavier is secretly a terrifyingly selfish force. While he builds secret bunkers for children who explode (coughHavokcough) and races Dr. Hank around the grounds repeatedly, Charles gives off the impression that he is training these children to better protect the world when it comes time to save it. But at this point in the movie the CIA base has already been destroyed, the only black character (Darwin! And he had such an awesome power and a level head!) has been killed, and the mutants have been kicked out of the government. Charles brings them all to his childhood home, outfits everyone in hideous tracksuits, and goes about ensuring that these kids are going to be competent killing machines to aid the cause of a group that doesn't want their help.
Yet he is seen as the benevolent and altruistic leader of the newly formed X-Men. I am not going to say that Professor X isn't altruistic and loving and the best and most kindly bald-headed leader for the X-Men he could be. But Charles? Charles is kind of a dick. (sorry, Mom)
In my notes I wrote that Charles is like Dumbledore only more meddlesome, which isn't right. Charles is like Dumbledore in that he thinks 3 steps ahead, but not in every direction, just 3 steps ahead in the direction he is going to force the world into. He's a formidable personality, but not a Good one.
It offers up a nice contrast with Erik, who's not Good but motivated by revenge, something typically depicted as a thing only Evil people will do. It affords the question of which is "better": selfish motivations that help other people peripherally or revenge which is pretty focused on yourself without really hurting anyone else (….except the objects of your revenge...they bite it...hard).
The training scene also presents an interesting scenario: Charles is stronger than Erik is but only insofar as he is able to provide support. He's the squishy in the Raid group, hanging back and using his mind to provide information, control the enemy, and be the leader. As a general, he plays by the tried and true "stay in the car" methodology of battle. Which is fine. You don't want your mages up in the front pulling aggro and dying all over the place. You keep them back and Charles does just that. Ostensibly, the training sequence is about showing Charles pushing all of his mutants to their full potential, but really he's testing them. And what he does to Erik, invading his mind, making him cry, sharing his memories with barely a blink of the eye, it squicked me more than made me appreciate what he was doing.
Charles may be the pin upon which the picture turns, but Erik is the heart and you feel more for his plight than that of the spoiled, manipulative Xavier.
Case in point: while everyone is running about in tracksuits, moving giant satellite dishes, and catching mannequins on fire, Charles is...not training. He is too good for it, apparently.
Sometimes Havok sets the entire ROOM on fire...
For all of his insistence that the kids are normal, he still manages to forget that they are just normal kids. Kids who are finally among people they don't have to be afraid with. His blow-up at their harmless jubilation made me angry. Possibly that's where this anti-Xavier tirade comes from... But come on! I could be onto something here! ;)
Seriously though, can I be a telepath, please? I promise to be less creepy than Charles.
But of course, we couldn't end the movie without the Chekhov's Gun (the Magneto helmet) making an appearance and the break-up between Erik and Charles is almost heart-rending. Erik as the cause of Charles' paralysis? After their chess-playing, night on the town, Russian-invasion friendship? So sad! But it nicely resolved a problem I'd been having, namely the disparate attitudes each of the men was taking toward mutant integration and place in society.
There's such nice continuity expressed by these chess games.
Charles, for all of his flaws really does want the mutants to keep living and thriving and learning (he might just want to study them, though. He did write his doctoral thesis on mutations) while Erik wants them to be Special. Both of their ideas have merit. Both of them could be construed as Right.
And so this movie did pretty much exactly what it meant to do: threw up a cloud of fog obscuring the motivations and Rightness of two characters who we have seen as diametrically opposed in the past. What side are you on? It's not as simple as the first 2 movies would have you believe. And set in a time-period where black and white was essentially the norm (Russians are bad, U.S. is good, etc, etc) such a lovely shade of grey was a brilliant contrast.
