Women, Boldly Going Nowhere: The Remasculinization of Star Trek
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.)
1. Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) (2008). There’s nothing in this decade that really compares to this powerful, chilling, and inventive Swedish vampire thriller. It’s a dark and compelling (not to mention gender-bending) story of unhinged adolescence and mutual need, framed with some of the best cinematography you’re likely to find in any genre. It’s the best vampire film in two decades, and it’s a major addition to horror. 
1. Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man) (1994). This amazing Italian horror film by director Michele Soavi (a protégé of Dario Argento) is a true one-of-kind: a frightening and funny movie about a cemetery caretaker (a fantastic Rupert Everett) who defends a small town from zombies that also doubles as a really sincere exploration of love, death and the meaning of it all. If that sounds a little too heavy, let me assure you that Dellamorte Dellamore is also one hell of a good time: visceral, violent, and weirdly erotic. It’s sublime. 
1. The Shining (1980). Kubrick’s very liberal adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining draws its power from being unlike most traditional horror films. It’s so quiet and monotonous (even boring, at times) that you almost don’t realize how scared you are until all hell breaks loose. In that way, the experience of watching The Shining is not unlike Wendy Torrance’s experience of sudden dread and terror when she realizes her world has been falling apart all along. What’s more, Kubrick evokes madness, ghosts, psychic phenomenon and family dysfunction in the most economical of ways, mixing the ordinary with the terrifying and then totally confusing the two. The Shining makes the banal creepy and then makes the creepy REALLY creepy. It’s the kind of film than can and does stick in your lizard brain forever. 
