Star Trek, which is being released on DVD and Blu-Ray today, was an official sponsor of Sunday Night Football this past weekend. E. was watching the game, and I was putzing around online, but when we heard that official endorsement, we both stopped and said, “Whoah!”
Star Trek sponsoring the NFL. It looks like J. J. Abrams’ re-branding of the science fiction franchise is complete. Star Trek has been remasculinized. It’s too bad that women lose out in the bargain.
(Minor spoilers ahead.)
ok
The Book: Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2009)
The Goods: Half the Sky is both an investigation into women’s oppression worldwide and a moving call to action to economically and socially empower women in developing countries – not just because it’s the morally correct thing to do, but also because the authors believe that it’s the most effective way to fight poverty and extremism. To make their case, Pulitzer-Prize winning authors Kristof and WuDunn focus on three major issues facing women around the world — forced prostitution and sex trafficking, gender violence, and maternal mortality — blending grim reportage and ample statistics with individual stories of women who are triumphing over their circumstances and making real change for their families and communities. The authors also observe and report on the pros and cons of varied international development/aid strategies and argue that grassroots, ground-up activism and support is the most effective way to fuel change. ok
Jennifer’s Body suffers mightily by comparison to its thematic/genre contemporaries: it’s not as smart or sophisticatedly feminist as Ginger Snaps; it’s not as sure-footed in its satire as Heathers; it’s not as exhilarating of a revenge fantasy as Teeth; it’s not as campy-fun as The Faculty; it’s not nearly scary enough to overcome its pomo like the Scream series; and on and on… There are better horror films and genre-benders out there, for sure, but despite the panning it’s getting from critics, it’s not total crap. It’s a decent little B-movie with a few surprisingly chillingly moments, a couple of big laughs, a bunch of near misses, and a wildly uneven tone and pacing. In other words: it ends up being about as good as most of the above-average horror films being made today.
Warning: Very mild spoilers ahead.
The problem with Jennifer’s Body is that it declares a far more ambitious agenda than your average horror movie, and then falls short. The film opens with Anita “Needy” Lesnicki observing, “Hell is a teenage girl,” which becomes shorthand for the work the film is clearly trying to do: exploring the problems of female adolescence and friendship, and subverting horror film cliches about sexuality and, especially, relations between women and men. Unfortunately, it’s just not successful at creating coherent stories around these issues, and the film ends up being a series of disappointments – albeit, really interesting disappointments. ok
I won’t dwell on the fact that I’m not much of a Tarantino fan, mostly because that’s the kind of the claim that seems to require a few posts’ worth of explanation (and Ehren is ever-so-slowly getting me to lighten up and reconsider Tarantino’s most recent films with more of an open mind, anyway) but it’s worth noting because it serves to underscore just how much I enjoyed Inglourious Basterds. I loved it, in fact. It’s a marvel: light years beyond anything else he’s ever made, and one of the most astonishing films about film that I’ve ever seen. ok
