Category: Reviews
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The Bechdel test is sometimes presented as a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for a movie or tv show to be not sexist. For example, in this blog post, “the opinioness” subjects the new Avengers movie to the test and gives an explanation of its importance as a test. The Bechdel test is explained there…
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Saturday night saw me at Ikebukuro Chop, a tiny underground live venue, to see a couple of bands. My partner’s friend’s friend’s husband is the singer for the band pictured above, The Lechery From Mars, whose style clearly begs to be described as Cthulhupunk. The music is a kind of raucous light metal, not really…
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The chart above shows hits on my old blog post A Game of Thrones and the Misogyny of Imagined Worlds between 23rd February and 19th May 2012. The second season started on 1st April, and there’s a clear series of weekly peaks in views on my post, that occur between Tuesday and Thursday each week…
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John Carter came out late in Japan, but I got a chance to watch it last night after a day of role-playing, and while I was impressed by the authenticity of its representation of Barsoom, I wasn’t so impressed by its general cinematic properties. It was a fun romp but it suffered from what seems…
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Six Against the Stars is a two volume space opera adventure by Stephen Hunt, whose work I have reviewed many times before. Six Against the Stars has an unlikely crew of adventurers thrown together against their will to try and prevent a rebellion in a far future stellar confederation. The main character is a useless…
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The Artist is superficially a silent film about a love affair between two movie stars in the 1920s. On a deeper level it’s an exposition of neo-liberal, or even Randian, industrial policy. Essentially the movie charts the entrant of a new company into an established industrial sector. The new company offers a new production mode,…
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As a holiday location Hakone is a little over-rated, but as a zombie survival spot it has some good points. It lacks the defensibility of Mount Takao, but its relative remoteness, inaccessibility, climate and water features offer some survival opportunities. It’s also quite a beautiful spot to be torn apart by zombies in, though that’s…
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I’ve started watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, an Australian TV show based loosely on the series of Phryne Fisher murder mystery novels by Kerry Greenwood. The basic idea behind these novels and the TV show is simple, effective and fun: Phryne Fisher is a young (28 year old) Australian woman who has returned to Melbourne…
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In comments on my review of Mt. Takao as a zombie survival spot, commenter’s Claytonian and Paul raised the complex and controversial issue of Zombies and water. Claytonian even went so far as to raise the radical (but in my opinion very interesting and challenging) notion that zombies might retain some human instincts: come to…
Compromise and Conceit 