Affinity [novel]

In short, if you haven't read it, you should. Get it from the library, borrow it - something. You will be amazed, whether you like it or not (this falling into the 'mindfuck' category).

From Wikipedia: Margaret Prior (also called "Peggy" and "Aurora"), an unmarried woman from an upper class family, visits the Millbank Prison in the 1870s Victorian era England. The protagonist is an overall unhappy person, recovering from her father's death and her subsequent failed suicide attempt, and struggling with her lack of power living at home with her overinvolved mother despite being almost 30. She becomes a "Lady Visitor" of the prison, hoping to escape her troubles and be a guiding figure in the lives of the female prisoners. As she peers through a flap in the door, entranced by the sight of a girl with a flower — she is reminded of a Carlo Crivelli painting. Of all her friendships with prisoners, she is most fascinated by this girl, who she learns to be Selina Dawes, medium of spirits.

It is a Sarah Water's book, so you know that there is a woman/woman relationship involved in the character development. This story slowly unfolds, teasing the reader along. The setting is wonderful, you feel like you're going behind the scenes of a Jane Austen story to see what life was REALLY like beneath the frills and pomp - gritty and real.

DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS POST unless you have read the book. I'm serious - you'd be so spoiled, it wouldn't be worth reading. It'd be like knowing the entire mystery and how it works BEFORE you read the mystery. In other words, there'd be no suspense, no wonderment - it'd be ruined. This means YOU.

~==~
Ok. I hope if you are reading this, you have read the book.

Hope, you were, by the way, correct in that I want to stab the author. And hug her at the same time, though, for writing so craftily what she wrote.

I feel so... gullible and tricked. It's so amazing - right at the beginning of the book, we see signs of why Selina Dawes isn't to be trusted. I was hesitant to believe her, but as surely and slowly as Miss Prior fell for her, so did I. It was SO slow and so elegant, the way the reader is drawn in - it takes over half the book before anything huge happens. Very realistic to the end in how we think everything is as it appears to be, right up to the moment the mirror is shattered, the curtains taken away and we see the world for how it really is. And in that split moment, everything seems foriegn - everything we were doing just a moment before seems like it's from another life completely - a life lived in a dream world that never counted for anything. We're left so stunned we don't know what to even THINK. We want to believe in the illusion so badly because what we felt for it was so genuine... What Margaret felt for Selina was so beautiful and true, how could it of been for nothing?

Now I feel like I'm pointing out the obvious - how unbelieveably crafty Selina was. What an actress... It was even hinted at in the beginning, but I chose to believe... like Margaret, with each movement of the spirits, I chose to believe rather than try hunting down an obvious answer. It was too easy.

Even right up to the night Margaret stayed up til dawn waiting for Selina to appear - I was right there with her. I had my inner doubts - maybe she won't come. Maybe Selina was indeed delusional from her stay in the prison. Maybe the spirits simply won't be able to do it and the two will kill themselves rather than be apart. Maybe maybe maybe... But never that maybe Selina would have other plans alltogether. Even once Mrs Jelf arrived at the house and began telling of her part in Selina's escape, I thought maybe the concentration on the spirit was just a way of distracting Margaret from negative thoughts til Selina could arrive and explain everything. Then I thought, as Mrs Jelf was revealing what SHE felt of Selina - that maybe Selina really was in love with JELF and that Selina was going to arrive and there'd be a confrontation and the two would go off together.... But in the end, I really thought that Selina was going to appear and go off with Margaret. So I was just as shocked AS Margaret with each revelation of every piece to the puzzle.

And the whole time it was RUTH VIGERS?!? I couldn't even make a sound, couldn't shake my heads. I wasn't anything yet I was everything all at once, I was so stunned. Because I should of known. Somehow, I should of seen it all along.

And I feel SO gullible. Gullible. I mean, I like to be suprised in stories - books and movies and TV shows. I try NOT to guess at what is going on. Of course, often, TV and movies are easier to guess at than books. And I think, maybe I COULD of remained objective... maybe I wouldn't of fallen for it. But Selina was too good; I was drawn in and I fell for it, too.

Now I don't know what to do with the book itself. Laugh at it, glare at it? Put it on my bookshelf with my collection? I do re-read books, but this... this isn't a story to be re-read, a world to be re-visited. This book WAS an experience. And like most life experiences, things one cannot repeat. Something one cannot go back in time and recapture. It's one of those "first time" things - the first time is always the best, full of wonder and suprise. And once that's over with, even the anticipation of the end result in subsequent experiences cannot capture that naive suprise.

Anyway. Like I said, I'm a book collector - I love my books. But I honestly dont think I'd ever be able to re-read this one. Who to pass it to, then?

I'm serious... I was just BUZZING during the chapters leading up to Selina's escape.... When she got put in the darks... I was just fluttering inside. I HAD to see what happened. I couldn't stop reading. And it built and built and built -- then... It was like jumping into a glacial lake. Solid cold came over me, slowly dripping, coating me, like a giant egg cracked over my head. And all time stopped as I found out the truth to Selina's plans.

In the end, as much as I want to throttle Sarah Waters, I want to praise her as well for such a good job. To write something like that, that can DO this to a reader - that's just amazing. *shakes Sarah's hand and thanks her for holding my heart to the light, warming it, then quickly lacerating it and stomping upon it before handing it back*. I almost feel BAD for appreciating the book - like a dominatrix who suddenly realized she liked being a bottom, liked being abused all a long.

Ok, weird analogy, but it's what came to mind. :P

Strangers in Paradise

The Official Strangers in Paradise website

The best thing about SiP is that it isn't necessarily a comicbook-readers book. It's the book for people who DON'T read comics.

SiP is about the not-quite average lives of three people (to start with). It's got everything from humour to pages black with blood. Love, angst, drama, fun-times, art, gangs, murders, cops, Texas, lesbians!, snipers, mafia, drugs, and characters we CARE about. Hell, we even want to know more about the antagonists to the point of liking THEM, too.

Terry Moore, the author, used to work in TV as an editor, and he sets up each storyline like a storyboard with text so it reads like you're watching a really great TV show. And of course, if you've never read an independant title, the series HAS an ending we're heading toward. So everything is serving a purpose and WON'T be repeated again the way that regular superhero titles do.

Also, Terry Moore has a beautiful line style (the books are in black and white), very art-nouveau inspired (think Quinton Hoover, if you know who he is). And lastly, it's totally queer/queer friendly. The way it deals with issues, it just makes them part of the story the way if YOU actually stumbled across it in real life. In so many TV shows, they deal with things like, say, AIDS in a one-time episode or story arc and then you never hear about it again. But the way they show it, they're FOCUSING on it which makes it surreal. "She's dying of AIDS... let's show all the minutae of what that's like". There's a time and place for that, but in a larger story it comes off like a lesson rather than part of the story.

Queer themes are like that as well in the story in a lable-defying sort of way. Thus the more main character of the three - Katchoo. "Everyone calls her a lesbian. But she's been with guys. Is she bi? But she HATES men, she prefers women. (But she still says there might be guys out there who are still bad). So she's bi?" - Katchoo doesn't lable herself and refuses to be political about it. I think that'd be the ideal place for our society to be and I know some individuals who ARE like this. So in a way it's kind of refreshing - we don't need to see Katchoo pushing LGBTI issues. Just her being who she is is somehow enough. And no, it's not a half-assed gay-character thing. I've read solidly GAY comics and I just don't like being drowned in my own issues all the time.

It's hard to describe Strangers in Paradise without giving everything away. Every issue is full of suprises and you never know how Terry is going to twist it all with the unveiling of each TPB. You just have to sit there and read and trust that he knows what he's doing since he's already had this thing planned out for years. :D

http://www.strangersinparadise.com/issues.html -- go here. This shows the covers of all the trade paperbacks to date. The first volume is only three comics long - Terry did them for fun, not expecting SiP to take off so it FEELS really short and not so permanent. So I highly HIGHLY reccomend you try out SiP somehow (they had them at our library in Portland) -- but get the first two TPB's - volume 1 and 2. (Amazon.com sells them used, by the way). :D

By far one of my favorite stories of all time in any medium (books, films, anime, graphic novels, etc).

The House of Sand and Fog [film]

The House of Sand and Fog starrs Jennifer Connelly and Sir Ben Kingsley ("Gandhi"), primarily. I've always kind of tip-toed around Jenniffer Connelly films due to the whole stigma she carries from earlier 80's films. But she was very good in this movie. The entire cast of the five main characters are just phenominal in their acting. The cinematography alone makes it one of the top three most beautifully filmed movies I've seen lately, and the story...

The imagery, the story, the characters are all so filled and entwined in symbolism, nothing is left un-thought of but it feels so natural. Apparently they filmed the whole thing without storyboards and just went with the flow, which is amazing because you'd think just the opposite - but it does feel very natural and organic.

Without giving anything away, it is a drama that kind of rips you open, stomps on you, but doesn't come off as trite at all, definetly not a rehash of anything I've seen before. And after, you don't necessarily feel DOWN. It's definetly more... "down" than, say, Eternal Sunshine... but I felt better about life after watching this film than I did ES. Strange.

And just to give a hint of how good the cinematography was, I've never been so compelled to rip a DVD out of the player and immediately go cap it. ;) Go watch it!

The Well of Lonliness [novel]

I guess a lot of folks disregard The Well of Lonliness because it's the "stereotypical lesbian life ending in tradgedy". But I think they forget that this book was written in the 1920's and was the first of its kind. It hits home in so many ways - I kept writing down page numbers to take notes from but the entire book is just so smart. Once you get past the [older] style of writing and remember the era it reflects, and really look into the metaphors and descriptions, boiling it down this novel is saying the same thing the queer community is saying today.

I want everyone to read it to know how I felt growing up as a kid - not just what I was like, but what I thought, how I felt -- THIS is what this book gets to the heart of. Not WHY we're gay, not why it's such a difficult topic for much of society. It goes beyond the superficial and the arguments and really digs down to personal things I've never been able to put into words. And to SEE everything actually written down, and written WELL. It's stunning. If anything, I think this book is just as valuable today if not more, as I've yet to read another novel that better cuts down to how a lot of us feel deep inside.

I warn you that it isn't a happy novel. I really felt lonely and depressed after reading it (doesn't help that I am single) so be prepared.

Underworld [film]

First, I went into this film with a LOT of apprehension.
1) Sony got their asses sued by White Wolf who created the "Werewolf: the Apocalypse" and "Vampire: the Masquerade" World of Darkness, a world that was HEAVILY stolen from in the making of this film. I'm not sure what the outcome of the lawsuit was, but there were 40 some instances of legal infringement on the films part. I, being a fan of the "Werewolf..." collectable card game (CCG) "Rage", was thus wary of the film and its treatment of the subject of the vampires and werewolves.

2) I have always been a werewolf fan and have always really disliked vampires. Don't know why, it's been like that since I was a kid. It didnt' help that when I became a fan of the Werewolves from White Wolf's World of Darkness that it turns out the werewolves and vampires hate eachother. I don't know the vampire's reasons for hating werewolves, but I know the werewolves' reasons and totally agree. ;P

There ARE differences, however. In the film...
...The reason the werewolves and vampires don't get along is different.
...The historical relationship between the two is different.
...Werewolves are called "lichens" instead of "garou".
...There appear to be no active female werewolves
...one can become a werewolf simply by being bitten by one (don't know about the vampires)
...werewolves are compelled to change during a full moon
...both werewolves and vampires are such due to complex viruses.

In the World of Darkness...
...there are TONS of active female werewolves
...you are born a werewolf and cannot make a human into one
...werewolves can easily change forms at will
... memories are not transferred in a bite

Things that are the same:
• werewolves are allergic to silver
• both species regenerate
• vampires don't deal well with light
• the two species hate eachother and often war
• a werewolf doesn't know she's a werewolf until her first change, which is often painful and uncontrolled
• werewolves often won't use as much technology but do, and often are seen as brutal and primitive, something some strive to change and some revel in.

As this relates to the film
There were enough differences to delinneate the two worlds in my mind, though I cringed at a few things. These things didnt' affect the overal strength or weakness of the film, though.

I liked the world of the film. The mood was perfect - the decadence of the vampires and the slums of the werewolves. The night time of it all. The mood was consistant and believeable -- the way that the gothic punk world of "the Matrix" worked and the way the gothic world of "Van Helsing" didn't work. ;) And it wasn't a rehash of this world, either. The shots were creative and composed well. Visually, it was a treat to look at and very real.

Effects wize, the werewolves could of been better. They weren't very graceful and moved in a hulky way. There's no way they ever could of been the equals to vampires or survived this long with this many all out confrontations if they were seriously that physically impaired. Of course, I may be drawing too much from the World of Darkness on this one, where many werewolves ARE these berzerkers, but many more are graceful hunters and martial artists. *shrugs* They weren't THAT bad - the part that bothered me most about them was when they were running on the walls. If you really concentrated on them, it looked really WRONG. Even if you'd used the same animation for them on the floor it would of looked WRONG.

Characters and plot. Compared to Van Helsing, I actually CARED about the characters. I cared what happened with Michael and Selene [sp?]. I even cared about what went on with Viktor, between he and Selene. The plot was a bit TOO confusing in the beginning. Personally, I'm pretty tenacious when it comes to sticking it out to see what happens, even if I'm not sure it's going to come together well in the end in a coherent plot. So on one hand, it made a mess of the beginning and I had no clue what they were talking about, but on the other, it made it a bit more realistic in that the viewers are just thrown into the middle of this thing that's been going on forever.

Compare that to some of the other films that have been out lately - like Van Helsing or DareDevil - where there is a history to the characters. In Van Helsing makes it out to be mysterious but that we'll find out more. And we never do, and by the time we find out that we will never know, we really don't care. With DareDevil, we care, and it's very humanistic, but it's packaged *so* nicely and neatly, almost like they're brainwashing us to like this character, in a way. ;) Though, in DareDevil it works because it's a movie of a comic book and is supposed to FEEL like a comic book and suceedes well at this.
[/TANGENT]

So I liked that this is a slice of a much larger story and I like that we may be in for a sequel. Or not. It would work fine the way it is, leaving us to imagine what happens, since the beginning was so open, the ending can be that way, too. We just happened to observe that two hours of their lives or whatever.

I've lost my train of thought. Anyhow. I was pleasantly suprised by this film. I went into it thinking I'd get angry at a negative portrayal of werewolves. I went in expecting to have no compassion for any of the vampire characters. But it was a good story with interesting characters and I actually want to know what happens with them in their lives.

Van Helsing

Van Helsing could of been a really great story but the plot was kind of loose. There was nothing really driving us to care about the characters, especially the main character. I almost didn't care that they had to kill Dracula, either. Some things were too obvious, and other things were too obscure and it didn't really lead you along very well, so I felt like I was just drifting through the film in a very unattatched way. The effects were very cool for the most part - I especially enjoyed the werewolves (I'm a werewolf fan and picky and thought they did a neat job). The acting was okay - some people needed to choose an accent and KEEP it. And those female vampire sidekicks were just weird. They reminded me of the Furies from Xena or something - their clawed hands and movements were the same for every emotion.

All in all I totally didn't care about the film and having watched it, leaves me with nothing. *shrugs* I've definetly seen more entertaining films.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Let us keep in mind that this is a movie based on a video game and that thus far I can't think of a game-based movie that has been absolutely fantastic -- these movies are meant to appeal to folks who have played the games and, like games, just be something entertaining to watch with belief suspended. Movies like these aren't here to make us cry or think or inspire us, really. That said...

It was an entertaining film and I found it far more enjoyable than the second "Matrix" film, actually. "Apocalypse" feels much more like the games than its predecessor. The city, the piles of cars, the trolleys, the old church, the crawley mutant zombies... they all felt like they did in the games, as did the characters and their action-figure cool 2-dimensional personalities. So, while none of that is even thinkable as Oscar material, it's dead-on for a video game-to-screen flick.

The original film had a better air to it - more mystery, though they really could of done better by really playing up the Alice in Wonderland thing they kinda half-heartedly had going. Sorta. There was no mystery with "Apocalypse" - especially with Nemesis. First of all, Nemesis wasn't scary at all - he's heart-pounding, piss-your-pants FREAKY in the games. You DREAD meeting him in the games. Here? He's just some monster we KNOW Alice is going to whup. :\ Also, I had totally forgotten that Matt had been captured along with Alice in the end of the first movie. So they totally could of tried to fake us out and played out the true origin of Nemesis like a mystery. If it didn't fool the folks who watched the first film it at least would of fooled people who HADN'T seen the first film. Because we knew from the start, all the flashbacks became tedious and pedantic. They really could of done better.

The ending was a bit drawn out. 2 hours later, 2 days later, 3 weeks later... geez! It looks like there are plans for a third movie, so why not just have shown them crashing, shown the Umbrella soldiers hauling off with Alice's body and be done with it... leave it on an uncomfortable, unfinished note. Instead, it was like they tried cramming the first half of the third film into the last 10 minutes and I just feel like they told us too much. I can guess what the third film would be about easily.

now for the good stuff.

Alice had a much better outfit - rather, a bit more practical if still a bit stylish than practicality would have demanded in realistic circumstances. But this isn't a realistic film, so -- she did look hot in the first film but I liked the netting shirt and all the buckles and the semi-dreded hair. Jill looked like she did in the game so I guess that's her excuse for a skimpy outfit but her attitude really went with it - I hope they have more of Jill in the third film (assuming there is a third). Kinda missed that there were NO "knowing glances" and heart rending moments between Alice and anyone like there was between Alice and the mercenary woman in the first film, which really caught me off guard when I first saw it. It's not just me and wishful thinking, these woman felt something there...

I liked how Alice and the girl both had the T-virus and how that seems to of started a bond of some sort between them, the fact that they both have it and aren't zombies. Maybe they'll use that in the third film the way they used Matt (Nemesis) and Alice's mutations to pull them into an alliance at the end of this film. I like the injustice and I really hope that's the point of the third film - revenge for the injustice done to so many.

And of course, Milla is a joy to watch. Not her best performance, though. :\ I don't think she had much to work with. Alice in the first film at least had amnesia and was slowly coming out of her foggy fake 'i'm just a wife' haze and having her head of security mode kicking back in... she got to work with more emotion (as much emotion as one can have in a game film). This time, though, her character has been there, done that and is pissed off in a single minded way. Like I said, not much to work with. Ah, well.

Oh, gaping plot hole -- the zombies that come out of the graves. I think they do that in the games, but there's no logic to how that would work. This whole thing started with the shattering of the container that held the virus, which spread through the air and contaminated all the lab workers and people inside the Hive. They all turned into Zombies who can pass on the virus by biting their victims. When the first team went into the Hive to shut it down, there was no more T-virus in the air, just in the zombies. Our heroes sort of escape and the Hive is locked up. Then in "Apocalypse", scientists open the hive back up and zombies get out. If there was no more virus in the air in the FIRST film, then the T-virus could only have been spread by zombie-bite to the citizens of Raccoon City. So how did the corpses end up reanimating? And all at the same TIME, too. :P

The only other major thing that bothered me was the weird cinematography of the fight scenes. Up-close and really blurry to save bucks on actually training the actors and showing really cool REALISTIC fight moves. Even MOREso than Xena (and I love Xena...). Other than the fight scenes, most of the framing was actually not bad and they used interesting lighting (for an all-night movie) and the angles weren't static.

Ohh! I TOTALLY didn't see the reporter dying when she did - it caught me off guard the way she went in such an easy way. I thought she'd be grossed out by the kid and run, but nope, that was her demise.

That lunch lady was perfect.

[Edit:] hallalundi mentioned that there are interesting paralells between Resident Evil and Alien - between what happens to Alice and what happens to Ripley, the way they both start out just doing their jobs, are thrust into fighting terrible creatures and then BECOME the monsters themselves. Heck, there's even the two outsiders bonding - Ripley/Call and Alice/the girl.

I'm glad I went to see it in the theatre anyway, because it was fun and there's lots of things you'd only know if you played the games - and I used to watch Eric play the games and I'd play RE: Survivor, and Trey, Eric and I watched the first film on the computer together, and Eric and I have been anticipating the sequel since January... :P AND we knew what to expect ahead of time. If I'd had high expectations, I would have been disappointed, but I didn't so all was well. I just watch these films seeing all the POTENTIAL and I think that makes me kinda forgiving.