How come the two best advice columns out there are run by a coked-up LA party girl and an imaginary alien? (Not that I suggest you snort coke or begin subsisting on spinal fluid.)

This U.S. Army Comic Guide to DADT is the strongest argument I’ve seen yet in support of the fact that DADT really, really has to go.

Advice to Young Girls from the Little Mermaid (YouTube).

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Section: Race

Stuff White People Do: Force Non-White Students To Read Great Literature That Is Also Racist. Actually, read the whole blog.

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Section: Advertising

Cigarette manufacturers substitute colors for words, article on Sociological Images.

Jailbreaking your devices is now legal in the U.S. by order of DCMA! My prediction: Operators sell fewer locked phones, and a lot of customers in countries that offer locked devices will be confused and angry that their devices suddenly cost more and that they have to figure out the difference between “SIM card”, “device”, “operator” and “manufacturer”. Meanwhile, nerds celebrate.

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Section: Geeks FTW

Westboro Baptist Church picketed San Diego Comic-Con. This was always going to be hilarious. (Link to ComicsAlliance.)

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Section: This Is Why I Must Be So Difficult

My Fault, I’m Female – anecdotes of sexism.

STFU Sexists

***~~ (3/5)

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Dorian Gray (Ben Barnes) is a young, innocent country gentleman who arrives in London and becomes the subject of a campaign of corruption and induction into cynicism by the highborn, civilly sordid Harry Wotton (Colin Firth). As Dorian commits sin after sin, a beautiful portrait drawn after he first arrived in the city begins to show the signs of his wounds, his age, and his wanton lifestyle, while he himself remains young and beautiful.

The film stays quite true to the original story by Oscar Wilde. Filmed in beautiful smothered colours, with a powerful score, it draws in the viewer much like a pretty but inconsequential painting might. Nothing in the storytelling distracts from the tale. Firth and Barnes do justice to their parts. Firth strikes the right note both as a wicked man on the edge of middle-age, and as a responsible elderly father. Barnes manages to play an innocent, a hedonist and a villain, all, though the transition between these states is not always smooth. The script fails to marry these extremes into a logical continuum, and the effect is a somewhat disjointed storyline.

In this film, Dorian’s corruption comes across as something not only created by Harry, and also for Harry. Dorian’s embracing of sexual excess (for which he seems at first downright reluctant) and cynicism, and his eventual focusing on Harry’s progressive daughter (a delightful brief turn by Rebecca Hall) as someone who can save him from himself, are tied up with Harry in what could be a fixation on Harry as a substitute father or as a longed-for lover, or both. The final conflict between them brings this into clear focus, and also juxtaposes their inverse moral (or social) development.

As it is based on a novel from a period of Victorian double morality, sex and violence are shown as equivalent sins and indelibly linked. Dorian’s first crime is cheating on and then abandoning his pregnant, low-born fiancée (Rachel Hurd-Wood), and that keeps haunting him a long time after, even when direct murder doesn’t. A life lived “for nothing but pleasure” leaves his picture gnarled and monstrous, suggesting venereal diseases, which could be construed as Mother Nature’s punishment for the Biblical sin of promiscuity. This doesn’t pack quite the punch these days as it used to, but the film does make an effort to describe the key change in Dorian as cruelty. The final message is a surprisingly Christian one: Dorian cannot be absolved while he still fails to confess his sins.

Although I found the film enjoyable and a good central moral dilemma, whether you think it’s legitimate, is always going to be fascinating to watch, the film may be too sombre for some tastes, and it is a bit too shallow considering the psychological potential of the setting. Nonetheless, it was a better than average and a fairly faithful adaptation of a classic novel in a pretty, easy-to-consume package.

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Bechdel test:
1. It has at least two female characters,
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man.

I think this may be a pass! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think a young lady and her mother talk about correct presentation at her coming-out ball, before Dorian screws them both for a bet. It would be kind of hard to have a more faily pass, though.

So I decided to make a sixth comic pitch, and THEN it’ll be over and time to vote, for reals, promise.

Each of these pitches has been based on a combination of two voted character types: geeks and dragons, 19th century ladies and space invaders/rangers, vampires and mad scientists, Greek Gods and cabaret performers, and finally Norse gods and sleuths. So who to pair pirates with?

Here’s a new quick poll in the sidebar, just in case you have an opinion about this. Closes on Wednesday.

Gods again. Norse this time (never mind the beastie). More details next week when I enlarge and recap the pitches.

Toys”R”Us scolded for gender discrimination by Swedish school children. Oh Sweden! Everything is forgiven!

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Section: Fan Creations

The Porn Battle machine has begun producing smut and will churn on till Sunday. Anyone can submit! But read the rules.

Law & Order fans have created art based on the show’s episode synopses and made it into a gallery showing in Boston. More. Not QUITE fanart, is it? Except for those among them that clearly are. HMMMMMMMM.

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Section: Oh My God Brilliant

Huffington Post’s Why didn’t I think of that? A look at the sheer brilliance of humanity.

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Section: Geekery and Gender

Male geeks reclaim masculinity at the expense of female geeks – Restructure! on GeekFeminism.org.

FinallyFeminism101′s essentialism FAQ.

Again on GeekFeminism.org, links to some articles about the game Hey Baby.

“Hardcore” (masculine) vs “casual” (feminine) gaming – article by Rowan Kaiser on Escapist Magazine. Possible rape trigger (but then this is about gaming).

****~ (4/5)

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Ever since he was a little boy, Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) has dedicated his life to mad science, inventing utterly awesome devices that nobody wants. In adulthood, he still lives with his bait-selling father (James Caan) in a little island community devoted to sardine fishing, his treehouse having grown into a high tech laboratory.

Nobody likes Flint because he’s nerdy and because his inventions tend to destroy public property. Success eludes him. Sardines taste horrible. His father is starting to talk about giving him a partnership in the bait and tackle shop. It’s at this low point that Flint accidentally makes something people actually love – a machine that hovers above the city and rains down food of whatever description ordered.

Enter Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), perky meteorologist and love interest, to cover the story, and when the island’s economy has become dependent on tourism and free food, the stage is set for something to go horribly wrong.

The plot in this Sony Pictures animation (and how refreshing it is to get a break from a steady alteration of Pixar and Dreamworks) depends on a number of near-successes that fail at the last moment, bringing on a steady shower of disasters, and leading to an ending that, while uplifting, leaves a lot yet to be done. Sure, it stopped raining giant steaks and the spaghetti hurricane has abated, but there’s a lot of destruction left behind and still no viable economy for their one-industry island.

Much of the humour, originality and gross-factor of the film is made up of all the ways that giant food can be used for purposes it was never intended for. I find this magnifies when you remember what a roasted chicken actually is: a dead bird. A bird that used to be alive. A corpse. Which is now sentient. And now, here you have the roasted and skinned zombie bird being worn like a suit by a naked man. Think about it! That alone should make this film a hit with a certain age group.

That’s not the only thing to recommend – or condemn – the film, though. It has an adorable nerd hero (the man has a Nikola Tesla poster) and heroine (all it takes is a jell-o scrunchie), the mockery of everything essentially cool such as elaborate fights, heroic cops and CSI-style sexy science montages, and a hilarious dressing-down of jock-favouring superficiality. The best character in the whole film, though, is Flint’s father Tim Lockwood, whose steady, slow, responsible persona is at odds with Flint’s chaotic high energy and scientific brilliance, and whose sorrow and perseverance are shown rather than told to heartbreaking effect.

Romance and self-actualization aside, the story was about fathers and sons, and the miscommunication, generational language barrier and underlying love – and the pain that arises from it – is pitch-perfect and almost painful to watch, but worth it just for that final coming-together.

Was it perfect? What is? Parts were predictable, even more seemed contrived just to keep up the tension and excitement and the edge-of-final-destruction scenarios, and as I mentioned before, there was the small matter of the town remaining essentially unsaved in the end. All in all, though, the film was laugh-out-loud funny, heart-warming (I know, what a word), charming, moving, somewhat infantile and immensely entertaining. What more do you want?

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Bechdel test:
1. It has at least two female characters,
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man.

There were three women with lines and names in the film, that I recall: the dead mom (by now all but obligatory for feature animations), the love interest and the police constable’s wife.

One hundredth post on AMCBlog! And what a crappy one it is. Oh well.

As we all know, Google is taking over the world, but they have also introduced me to CAD modelling, so here’s a link to their free CAD app SketchUp.

Access-Fandom has announced its first fanworks festival, looking for fanworks based on characters with disabilities. How To Train Your Dragon fic, yes/yes? :D

Art of Manliness posted covers of vintage men’s magazines, which are hilarious.

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Section: Sociology and Those Infamous Mommy Blogs

Via Lotesse: Disney Princess Recovery. A psychotherapist specializing in children’s play therapy writes about how she is trying to wean her little girl of Disney Princesses. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about trammeling a child’s fandoms, even when they’re stupid. I’d be more likely to try and subvert the original reading. Anyway, interesting blog! There’s also other stuff about commercialism and how women are perceived and presented in media.

Read this at the very least: Filling the void, which features an audience member having to provide what the lecture promised.

Contexts is a great online magazine and Sociological Images is an endlessly fascinating blog. No, really. Give them a go.

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Section: Signal-Boost

There’s a serial stalker by the name of Lohr Miller, also going by fort_kanji, targeting young women over at Livejournal, pretty much en masse. Here‘s Emigree’s full warning about this guy.

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Section: Things God Hates

God hates geeks! Westboro Baptists mean to picket Comic-Con? They’re going to be eaten alive. Link via FanGirlSays.

****½ (4.5/5)

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Andy is grown up and going to college. His once-beloved toys have spent years tucked away in a box, and are expecting to either go to the attic or to the landfill. Instead they end up donated – by accident – to the Sunnyside kindergarten. Sunnyside seems like a dream come true for discarded toys, but the dream soon turns into a nightmare.

The toys have to deal with the heartbreak of rejection as well as trying to find a place in a world where they have no owners. It seems almost cruel that they also need to fight some of the creepiest evil toys ever created by human imagination. I say that, and I have seen Akira.

What can I say? They really pulled all the breaks in this one. I laughed, I cried, and I found myself surprised and impressed by its emotional brutality. I had been expecting more of the same kind of light entertainment that we got with Toy Story and Toy Story 2; instead, this film explored themes such as loss of family and identity, the cyclical withering of love and innocence, and even the quiet acceptance of impending death. Heavy stuff – and unflinchingly delivered. And did I mention the creepy toys?

There was a lot of fun and funny stuff in this film too, from the opening live action version of playtime as it appears in a child’s imagination, to toy-like action heroics by Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) – not to mention his Spanish mode – but as my girlfriend put it: “If this didn’t make you cry, you have no soul.”

I should mention that we also meet the cutest little animated girl since Lilo, that I want a son just exactly like Andy, and that I seem to have a soul.

Dreamworks has been focusing on Ken (Michael Keaton) – Barbie’s boyfriend – in some of their promos, and he’s worth it. He got some of the biggest laughs. You could write a paper just on the film’s depiction of Barbie (played by Jodi Benson, and no longer the brainless sex object of Toy Story 2) and Ken and what it says about gender and presentation. Suffice it to say that Ken’s fabulousness is made into a running joke. Perhaps we should look into exactly why a metrosexual man is so funny. Is it because this is Ken, a picture of perfect masculinity presented to pre-teen girls, or because a man who loves glittery tuxedoes is automatically ridiculous? I’m happy to say that Ken does get to be a real character with an arc instead of just a punchline. Ken has agency, and the toys we actually like – Buzz and Woody, etc – accept him and his baby blue safari neck scarf without so much as a blink. In fact, his joining the good guys’ side coincides with his final happy acceptance of his own nature as a “girl’s toy”. Make of that what you will.

Other potentially objectionable jokes/stereotypes include the afore-mentioned Spanish Buzz, which presents a stereotypical (if not negative) Latino masculinity along the lines of Shrek’s Puss in Boots, and the continuing heteronormativity of Mr and Mrs Potato Head. The romance between Buzz and Jessie (Joan Cusack), though fun to watch, seemed as forced and pasted on as it did in the end of Toy Story 2, but then this film isn’t about them – it’s about the love between toys and their owner, and the sense of family that has developed out of years of friendship, and that packed all the punch you could hope for.

Children are strange creatures, so I can’t say how much they will enjoy this film, if it will make them scared or make them cry. Maybe that’s just us adults. If you’re an adult reading this, though, I can only recommend you see this film. Bring a handkerchief.

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Bechdel test:
1. It has at least two female characters
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man.

Andy and Bonnie’s mothers talk to each other about their children, though that conversation turns to Andy. Bonnie and her mother talk to each other, and Andy’s mom talks to his sister about her toys. There were plenty of female characters among the toys (Mrs Potato Head, Barbie and Jessie being the most prominent ones, but there were also some new female toys), but I can’t remember for sure if they spoke to each other.

That took a long time to draw, though you might not think it. This would definitely be one of those once-a-week comics at most.

I actually have done a LOT of thinking about this world and storyline, and to prove that Blue (daughter) and Frida (mother) aren’t the only characters in this thing, here are some character sketches for the others.

Click to see the full image.

Blue is our main character, Daisy is her sister, and Frida (Aphrodite) and Belle are their mothers. I have a pansexual Aphrodite, which makes a lot of sense to me, though I’m pretty sure Blue and Frida had to have that conversation too at some point.