Most graduation speeches are optimistic, painfully so, because graduation is terrifying. You are moving into another stage of your life. The next, precarious stage. That one that doesn’t end until you have kids. And a house. And life insurance. And cable. The order is up to you. I’d go with cable though. You’re going to need a distraction.

[Trans* rights note: This article is primarily about cis dynamics because I don't have nearly as much broad experience with the reception of queer geeks into the community. Please feel free to share your own experience in the comments or contact me about guest posting!] 

There’s a couple of pressing issues here. Let’s go point by point.

1. She tried to explain how to talk about a Joss Whedon film. To women.

Jessie Heyman is teaching us how to talk about Joss Whedon’s “Awesome with a capital A” action film, something we know nothing about. How could we? It’s such a sausage fest. I mean why would an action director like Whedon be bothered with taking care of female audience members — oh.

Joss Whedon is a self-professed feminist, a writer-director who fought like hell to get Warner Brothers to make a Wonder Woman movie. And he ended that brilliant speech with a statement so simple and profound that it bears as much repeating as anyone can muster:

I’m pretty sure Joss Whedon invited ladies to the party. The Buffy fandom was heavily female, especially for a genre show. Gosh, we practically had him first, which brings me to my second point:

2. She tried to explain the Marvel Universe to a fandom that has a sizable (and vocal) female minority.

She tried to explain the Marvel universe (incorrectly) to women, a demographic group that dominates the Thor fandom, the demographic that popularized, if not invented slash fanfiction.

So when Ms. Heyman warns us:

What NOT to say:
“Do you think Scarlett Johansson is pretty?”
“Oh, so it’s like the ‘New Years Eve’ of superhero movies?”
“Who could concentrate on the story with all those biceps?”
“Boys are so weird.”

It’s not only incredibly condescending and not actually funny except for one line (Avengers kind of is the New Year’s Eve of superhero movies), it’s marginalizing. It’s alright for fanboys to rhapsodize about Scarlett Johannson’s catsuit but fangirls get laughed at for sexualizing male superheroes (and female ones)? I mean Scarlett Johannson is pretty. I’ve never met a woman who actually pulls this “I’m the only attractive girl in the world” thing. If you’ve met her and dated her that’s your own fault.

And then there’s this:

Exiled from his homeland of Asgard, the blue-eyed demi god is charged with protecting Earth from his power-hungry brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston).

Heyman wrote this guide to give us a “cheat sheet” for a movie our boyfriends would take us to but the clues she gives us are out of date and not actually true. THOR ends with Thor restored in the eyes of Asgard. He saved it after all. If he found a way back to Earth it would be either to find and stop Loki or to maintain his LDR with Natalie Portman. (Because dating Natalie Portman in a genre universe always ends well for the hero’s moral fortitude. You’ll end up killing younglings. Honestly.)

“We were aiming for satire,” Moviefone pleads. But what exactly were they satirizing / portraying for laughs and then claiming satire when the laughs fell short? The “Girls’ Guide to ‘The Avengers’” reads like a conversation between Penny and Leonard on The Big Bang Theory. It trades in a stereotype that has existed in geek culture since geek culture has existed, the “Fake Geek Girl.”

Over at The Mary Sue, Susana Polo eviscerates the misogyny behind the stereotype, namely the idea that the Geek Girl’s motives are always in question, partly because now being a geek or a nerd is okay. (As Chris Hardwicke would say “nerd rights!” *fistpump*) and partly because there’s a patriarchal belief that women are always seeking attention from men. Allow me to draw a few parallels. [TRIGGER WARNING: Misogyny, Rape]

A survey of things that have been said to me:

In a sports bar: Him: “Buy you a drink?” Me: “Ah no thanks.” “Oh c’mon why else would you be in a sports bar?” “Maybe because I grew up a Phillies fan and followed Jimmy Rollins when he was in Triple-A.” “Oh, that’s hot.” “Having to prove that to you wasn’t. Go away.”

On the quad: Him: “You okay?” Me: “Yeah. This Roethlisberger thing is really upsetting.” “Yeah she’s just doing it for attention.” (I look across the lawn, see my friend who was raped by someone she knew and has to see every day. I turn my head and see my other friend who was raped while she was unconscious and was character assassinated by the police when she tried to report it. I recall how painful it was to me to just hear these stories. No one wants that kind of attention.)

In the comics store: (My male best friend looks around a corner of shelves to see two girls dressed in Hot Topic, browsing the Hellboy collectibles.) MBF: “They shouldn’t even let them in here. They’re just doing it for attention.” Me: “They’re buying expensive figurines for attention?” “They just want geek cred, you know?”

We women, we geek girls, we have to prove ourselves. We have to earn the right to enter certain spaces because we are suspect, not just from men, but from the women who have already ingratiated themselves with those men. In a culture that’s now obsessed with authenticity, showing an interest without being the smartest expert in the room is a sign of “poserdom,” especially if you’re a woman. Never mind the fact that multiple Marvel and comic book star Chris Evans (Captain America, Scott Pilgrim) can’t remember the name of the villain in the second Fantastic Four, a movie he starred in.

Life is not a trivia contest. A good comics conversation is often about telling the story together, filling in each other’s gaps. There are very few people in the world that can afford to be an expert on all of comics. (I, for example, have a pretty high level of knowledge when it comes to DC and Vertigo but only working knowledge of Marvel, Dark Horse, Image, and IDW, even less so for graphic novels and manga. I have friends who have an encyclopedic knowledge of manga, but wouldn’t know who Jason Todd was if you shoved a red hood in their face.) If my friend got into the wrong conversation, an anti Fake Geek Girl advocate like Tara Tiger Brown might jump down her throat for calling herself a geek, all in an attempt to maintain the illusion of her own specialness. Tara Tiger Brown is a geek girl. She’s authentic. She’s okay with hating on other women who are “posing” geekdom because her geek identity outweighs her gender, which brings me to my last point.

3. “Girls’ Guide” vs. “One Girl’s Guide” They’re both terrible. You’re all terrible. Grow up, learn sisterhood, and stop hurting others to further yourself.

After the internet (or to be specific, Tumblr) exploded over Heyman’s article, the editor at Moviefone posted this:

[Editor's Note: As you can see, we've gotten a lot of heat for this article. It was meant to be a satirical piece, and obviously, it did not come across that way. There are plenty of female superhero fans, and our intent was not to make them feel marginalized. We've changed the headline to reflect the focus as we originally intended it (but did not communicate as well): One woman's perspective on the Avengers]

It was just one woman, guys! Calm down! She’s a lady, ladies! She’s okay with it. Oh, you’re not? Well it’s her fault. She said it. She said it was okay. My name’s on the masthead and I read it first but they’re her words. I just published them. How can you be mad? She’s a lady too!

Tokenism allows one individual to speak for or represent a group. The logic is that because we have one member of an oppressed group who’s okay with it, we’re not being racist, sexist, cissexist, ableist, or classist. “But my girlfriend thinks that sandwich joke is funny!” “But I have a black friend!” “But my wife is pro-life. How could she be anti-women?” Though identity politics are obviously relevant, the concept of kyriarchy shows us that there are several ways to be both blind to your own privilege and complicit in the oppression of people like you, people that you should consider allies. Having a token minority allows the powers at be to be “politically correct” but not socially progressive.

We see tokenism in the entertainment industry in blockbuster archetypes: the black guy who tends to die first, but still gives the movie “diversity points,” the lone girl on the action TV show, the gay best friend (and/or sassy drag queen) in the rom-com who doesn’t ever seem to have a role outside of approving the female lead’s fashion choices. Other than these anomalies, the casts of mainstream shows and films tend to be overwhelmingly white, cis, hetero, and male (assuming it’s a plot driven work and not a relationship driven one.)

“But most procedurals are male dominated because most police stations are male dominated!” you say. Yes. Perhaps. But most police stations don’t have a Hulk, and most police forces have at least two, if not more, female detectives and many, many more POC. “But that’s just Lena Dunham’s life experience,” you say. “It would be less genuine if she added a person of color when she doesn’t know many.” Why should creators apologize for the limits of their experience?

I now point you to Levar Burton, actor, advocate, Star Fleet Officer, and creator of Reading Rainbow in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Seeing yourself represented in the popular culture is really critical in terms of forming your own self image. I’m old enough to have been around before seeing black people represented in the popular culture in diverse ways. When I was a kid, it was a big deal to see a black person on television. So that’s why it was important in a science fiction thing — in “Star Trek” — it was huge. I read a lot of science fiction books as a kid. As a kid of science fiction, “Star Trek” was important to me and seeing a person of color in a command position was hugely important to me. My kids grew up completely different. Hip hop is the lingua franca on the planet. It’s a very different world. “Star Trek” was really important to me growing up. I embraced the vision.

Media is how we change the views of the world. Stories shape how we expect the world to be. The token, expendable black guy does not further the profile of black people in the media the same way that having a black head of a superhero team does. Having a virginal Final Girl finally manage to beat the slasher does not further the profile of women in the same way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer does. Having Rupert Everett help Julia Roberts tell Dermot Mulroney she loves him does not further the profile of queers in the media nearly as much having openly gay superheroes who lead their own titles. Having Penny ask stupid questions in the comics store on Big Bang Theory makes it genuinely harder to be a girl geek. So we have to call these people on it. The less a cultural group is represented in the media, the more likely it is that people will draw generalizations from that representation. So don’t fake it. Call bullshit, especially on people who should know better. We need to fix this now.

Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this Earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who’s confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.

- Joss Whedon, Equality Now! address, 2006

If you’re becoming catastrophically depressed, head over to io9 and read Cyriaque Lamar’s ”A Guide to The Avengers for the Extremely Confused.” It’s both informative and a hilarious example of effective satire, including this amazing gem:

The adventures of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Shaquille O’Neal are published by DC Comics, so they do not appear in The Avengers.

Similarly, other Marvel Comics characters like Wolverine and Spider-Man are not in The Avengers, even though they are Avengers in the comic books. (TWIST: Almost everybody in Marvel Comics is an Avenger at some point!) Finally, Tintin is not an Avenger; he is Belgian.

Happy assembling, Lemons. Let’s kick elitism’s butt.

There are times when writing is like trying to catch lightning bugs. It’s fun until it’s frustrating but it’s still a warm, beautiful night.

There are time when writing is like trying to catch a fish with your hands. There’s so much flowing through your fingers that all you can do is grasp and hope you got what you needed.

There are times when writing is like trying to dredge a pond. You find sludge and sludge and nothing and nothing and then suddenly you find treasure. Or a dead body. Whatever it is it’s fantastically interesting and it consumes you for days on end.

And there are times when writing is like trying to take a shit when you’re really, really constipated. It hurts and it’s not very dignified and your face is all scrunchy but you need to get this out NOW. NOW because it’s convenient and there’s a deadline and you should have thought to eat some prunes but you didn’t and now you need to shit before this meeting or you will have to shit during the whole meeting and you will lose your job because you’re focusing on your sphincter and not the task at hand.

And so you’ve forced this stuff out of your ass (because yes, you’re creatively constipated. That is what it is.) and you take a look at it.

And is it good?

You just shat it out. Why would it be?

This is why deadlines can be a pain in the butt. Literally. Err…figuratively. This is why setting several little deadlines for yourself can be much more useful than one big whomping spectre of a deadline that always looms in the distance and then pops up when you least expected it. (Despite you knowing exactly when it is.) That way you get into the habit of creating rather than the panic of “need to get this done.” Or just find a way to love yourself and your own work enough that you always want to sit down to write. Easier said than done, I know.

And remember, every single word you write adds to that stack of experience that makes you better in the long run. One of the speakers at my school, an acclaimed TV writer, said that he had an interview with a showrunner when he had just graduated film school. The showrunner asked him how high his pile was. The writer blinked. What? “Your pile. If all your finished work was in a pile, how tall would it be?” The writer shrugged, placed his hand perpendicular to his knee. “Come back when it’s above your waist.” the showrunner said. “We’ll talk.”

Feel free to substitute “creating art” for “writing.” Being a director, I tend to think of creating art as collaboration, so that has its own challenges and many, many joys, chief among them being that you can look to someone else to blame / inspire. They often overlap after all.

(Cross posted at the Lillian Lemoning Tumblr.)

“The time has come” the Lemon said, “to talk of many things. Of men and games and high concept. Of Logan L and pings. And why Gerard Butler’s smoking hot. And what the future brings.”

Gamer is pretty high concept for an action movie. Not exactly Virtuosity high concept but we can’t all be virtual serial killer films can we?

Gamer tells the story of ex-soldier death row inmate John Tillman, alias Kable, who is forced to act as a living avatar in a Halo type death match. Controlled by a teenage gamer, Kable has to last 30 fights to earn his freedom. But rivals, society, and a very creepy Michael C. Hall stand in his way.

Let me first off say that Gamer has a dream cast. Butler plays the gruff Tillman and his controller is none other than Percy Jackson himself, Logan Lerman. Kyra Sedgwick takes a surprising turn as a talk show host who sides with the anti-cyberpunk revolutionaries (led by Ludacris) against Michael C. Hall’s creepy mind control technology.

Gamer‘s strongest element is its premise, a cyberpunk nightmare where Second Life and Halo avatars are flesh and blood people with special software in their brains that allows them to be controlled by their player. Tillman participates hoping to escape his death sentence, but his wife Angie rents out her body to a disgustingly voyeuristic gamer to earn enough money to get her daughter back. (One of the most upsetting parts of the film is the way that Angie’s player uses her with a lurid fascination and terrifying lack of empathy.)

Michael C. Hall has somehow found a character that’s scarier than Dexter Morgan in this system’s terrifying architect. As the creator of said mind control technology, Hall outfits all his guards with the software as well. With his Texas drawl and vocabulary borrowed from the most obnoxious multiplayer mockers, he is having much too much fun using people as playthings. (Did I neglect to mention that he can control everyone who has the software no matter where they are?) This all culminates in a creepy dance/fight sequence that has to be seen to be believed.

The social critique is powerful, and it’s a sobering prediction of where gamer culture could take us when the technology inevitably becomes more sophisticated. The privileged manboy voices of gaming can be heard in both Hall and Lerman’s dialogue, standing in sharp contrast with working class Butler and his family, pointing out the sad truth that gaming (and movies) are for the leisure class. With its class conscious approach, Gamer was part of the vanguard of vaguely Marxist sci-fi films like the more recent In Time. 

The sad thing is that the film never quite sizzles as wonderfully as the premise and the dance sequence suggests. The pacing’s always a bit off and it feels like an 80 meter dash with a trip at the end of the course. It also doesn’t help that no character’s through-line is very well maintained. They final boss is defeated and well, that’s the end.

How to Fake Having Seen It: “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” right dude? Say no more. Creeeeeepy.

Line That Sums the Film Up: 

Kable: What are you, twelve?
Simon: I’m seventeen, thank you.
Kable: This is unbelievable! Why am I not dead yet?
Simon: Because I am a bad-ass motherf*cker.

Verdict: See it if you’re a fan of the cast. Otherwise Skip It and read some cyberpunk fiction. (I heartily recommend Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels.)

Bonus Round: In the future Cable is spelled with a K. Also there is pistachio butter. PISTACHIO BUTTER. (Yes I know it exists now but PISTACHIO BUTTER.)

Damn those ruffians.

If you’re a frequent reader, you know it’s not often that I drop the f bomb in a column. This is why I need you to fully understand how serious I am about hating anti-Stratfordians.

What is an anti-Strafordian, you say? Well, when a snooty, elitist academic and a conspiracy theorist love each other very much and really need tenure — You know what? Just watch this trailer for Anonymous.

The anti-Stratfordians believe that William Shakespeare, the son of a Catholic glove maker, wasn’t educated or rich enough to write what are pretty much the greatest works in the English canon.  Shakespeare’s incredible works range from hilarious sex comedy to heartbreaking tragedy to bloody political thriller. It’s blockbuster television written in iambic pentameter, and many academics and eccentric rich people believe that the man we call Shakespeare wasn’t smart or experienced enough to write them.

This wonderful article in the Guardian does a great job of dissecting  the historical outlook that leads to anti-Stratfordism:

Nobody doubted that Shakespeare had written his own plays until the 1850s. The first claim to the contrary is Delia Bacon’s article William Shakespeare and his Plays; an Inquiry Concerning Them, printed in Putnam’s Magazine (in 1856). Bacon thought the Complete Plays represented a deliberate attempt to spread enlightenment, modernity and progress, and that rather than being the work of a single supremely talented showbusiness professional they must have been written by an occult committee of world-designing philosophers. Its leader, she hinted, could only have been Sir Francis Bacon, who had somehow scheduled its meetings in between his other duties as attorney general and his efforts to invent empirical science.

Delia Bacon died in an asylum after failing to find a single piece of evidence in favour of her claim, but her example has not inhibited successive waves of other champions, who have credited the plays to Francis Bacon alone, to Christopher Marlowe, to the Fifth Earl of Rutland, to the Sixth Earl of Derby, to the 17th Earl of Oxford, and even to Queen Elizabeth I, among many others. The obvious truth that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, sadly, is not news, and popular journalism since the 1850s has preferred news at all costs.

Someone with a Ph.D. can probably do a better job of quickly articulating the myriad historical inaccuracies and implausibilities one has to accept in order to disbelieve Shakespeare. (The most obvious being that so many of his friends and enemies refer to him as the author of the plays of William Shakespeare, including the Queen of England, and no one questioned authorship until batty Miss Bacon, who seemed to just be writing fan fiction about her possible ancestor. There’s also the issue that none of the alternate candidates that have been suggested were alive for the length of Shakespeare’s writing career, a career that was topical in the way South Park episodes are, precluding the argument that the plays were stockpiled and then released after the “actual” author’s death in order to maintain the ruse.)

The New York TImes Magazine dissects Anonymous‘s particular historical failings and plot holes, and James Shapiro’s brilliant book Contested Will explores the broader implications of authorship doubt more fully than I ever could in this blog post (and without a Ph.D. Gosh, I would like a Ph.D.)

That said, I need to explain to you, friend, why I dismiss your conspiracy theory with the same offense that I would a Holocaust denier or someone who advocates that 9/11 was an inside job.

The primary argument that many anti-Stratfordians make focuses on William Shakespeare’s class and schooling (or lack thereof.) It’s true that Shakespeare was the son of  a glove maker and local politician who had gotten into trouble with the authorities for hiding Catholic priests in his home. Shakespeare’s father ran into a few money troubles and the family was partially disgraced because of this and the Catholic arrests. Baby Shakespeare would have attended grammar school like any local boy, where he would’ve learned to read and write by reading and transcribing classic literature in Greek and Latin.

Baby Shakespeare you are adorable but that ball is too lopsided to bounce. You’re so silly Baby Shakespeare!

He would have also studied rhetoric at this school, one of the most well funded and respected in the county. An English Renaissance grammar education is often described as being the equivalent of a B.A. in Classics at an Ivy League university.

Yet, anti-Stratfordians argue that Shakespeare’s classical education doesn’t explain the [very, very flawed] understanding of geography and history presented in his plays. These internally inconsistent knowledge bases are supposedly proof that the plays of Shakespeare were written by one of his betters. Often Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, or Sir Francis Bacon are posited.

The de Vere argument is seductive in part because it provides an Elizabethan version of the Batman story. Edward de Vere, often thought to be privileged drunkard playboy whose parents’ deaths brought him into the care of Queen Elizabeth (who is Alfred in this story), suddenly decided that criminals (errr…playgoers) are a superstitious, cowardly lot and that he could best do his work with an alter ego: Batm– err William Shakespeare. Nevermind the fact that de Vere was already a published playwright under his own name.

Yes, none of de Vere’s texts survive to this day. That could have been censorship. It could also be that we only have a fraction of the literature from the 16th and early 17th century. The texts that survive had to be the right combination of hegemonic narrative and popular hits/bestsellers. (Shakespeare’s collected works are an exception because his friends felt the need to preserve everything rather than just his greatest hits, which had been published several times in “quartos” before the First Folio appeared.) Publication depended on both commercial success and approval of those empowered to finance the printing of texts (i.e. Brecht would not have done very well.) Once published, the preservation of those texts to the present day required continued relevance, timelessness, and plain dumb luck.

De Vere also seemed to be more focused on producing plays for court than for the public, so the demand for quartos of his work would be smaller. (The English Renaissance was the time that a middle or merchant class truly began to form in the country, as the Tudors and later the Stuarts were forced to move away from feudalism. Merchants bought books. Lots of books. It was a sign of status that the middle class could afford.)

The other issue with trying to find de Vere quartos is that he probably wrote a lot less plays than an Elizabethan playwright usually did. He was a nobleman. He had to fight in wars, manage several estates, and suck up to the Queen on a monthly, even weekly basis. (That stuff takes time away from composing verse.) There are many reasons de Vere’s works could have been lost to history and only a few of them involve vast conspiracies. Guess which ones Anonymous goes with?

In that New York Times Magazine article, Stephen Marche points out that “Real life lacks narrative tension; that’s why people go to the movies.” This is a fair statement. Biopics run into this problem all the time. A full life is rarely satisfactorily dramatic.  We don’t know much about de Vere, but we know even less about Shakespeare. This is part of why the Oxfordian theory is so seductive. We love our tragic, disenfranchised princes. (Just ask Hamlet.) A lot of people love a really weird conspiracy theory.

So I shouldn’t have gotten so upset at this woman outside the movie theater, going on and on about how cool Anonymous was going to be. “It makes sense, you know?” she said to her friend. It makes sense that a poor man could never so convincingly write about kings and princesses, wars and intrigues. Never mind Euripides, Zeami, or any number of playwrights who wrote beautifully about kings, merchants, women, and demons, having never been any of those themselves. It makes sense that only an aristocrat would support the aristocracy in their work, not a middle class worker. Never mind the millions of Republican lower class voters who consistently vote for policies that elevate the riches’ needs ahead of their own, or the fact that Shakespeare aspired to nobility his whole life. (One of his major purchases once he became successful was to get a coat of arms for his family, an honor his father had applied for and been refused.) It makes sense that we only write what we know, that our imaginations are small and sad and our capacity for research pathetic. Sure it does. Suuuuuurrrreeee.

There’s something unbelievably beautiful and dramatic about a great playwright being brought before a queen or king, having never set foot in a place as beautiful as the palace before.

“So tell me about yourself, Mr. Shakespeare,” the virgin monarch says. “Where did you get your great wit?”

“I live in London, mam.” The whole court laughs at this, recalling the rabble outside, the prostitutes, pickpockets and vagabonds who make London the largest and most dangerous city in the country. Wit was in short supply when it came to Londoners. Having a brain required an estate.

“But where were you educated?”

“King’s New, my lady.”

The Protestant Queen wrinkles her nose. “In Stratford?”

“Yes mum.” Catholic country. Provincials.

“And who was your father?” The young man just smiles.

“I am the son of a glove maker mam.”

The tragic aristocracy can suck it. That’s a better story. That’s a story that inspires and challenges the status quo. Just like the plays of William Shakespeare.

So he wanted to see Wanted and you were all “You just want to see Angelina Jolie roll around on top of a car.” Boy were you wrong.

Wanted was advertised by focusing on the gifted and gorgeous Ms. Jolie, who can still can out action star pretty much everyone, but the film’s real focus is the journey of James McAvoy’s Wesley, an office drone even more impotent that Edward Norton’s Narrator from Fight Club. Dressed in ill-fitting shirts and chugging anti-anxiety medication, Wesley feels pretty worthless until a mysterious woman comes up to him in a grocery store and the next thing he knows, everyone is shooting. After being told that he’s important by Morgan Freeman (DON’T YOU WISH MORGAN FREEMAN THOUGHT YOU WERE IMPORTANT?), he is asked to join the secret Fraternity of Assassins. There are lots of plot twists and turns, many of which are genuinely surprising, so I will not discuss them here. Suffice it to say, this is not a rewarmed Fight Club remake, or a Harry Potter-style very special boy finds out he’s very special story. Sure it’s got lots of those obligatory training sequences and Jolie writhing in slow motion, but when Wesley flips a car in order to kill a mobster who’s listening to “Time to Say Goodbye,” flying over the man in slow motion, saying “I’m sorry” as he fires, or when rat bombs (as in bombs attached to rats) are a major plot device, how can you not crack a smile?

It’s McAvoy who really shines here, playing a neurotic American to the nines, avoiding the usual Brit monotone that comes with the change in dialect in favor of a willowy, wavering tremor that is both endearing and appropriately grating. (We have to want Wesley to change in order to buy into the bildungsroman, Wesley’s journey to find out who he is, to come into himself.) There’s eye candy for everyone here, and twists and turns for all. This is one movie that won’t break your relationship.

How To Fake Having Seen It: “Gorgeous fights, but so f*cking nihilist. And genuinely complex. How’re we supposed to feel about fate at the end?”

Line That Sums The Film Up: “Six weeks ago I was ordinary and pathetic. Just like you.”

Verdict: See It

Bonus Round: Ever want to hear Morgan Freeman drop the f bomb? Your wish is director Timur Bekmambetov’s command.

But first, let me explain some basic features that you’ll see in every one of these entries.

How To Fake Having Seen It: This is your cheat sheet for bars, dates, and the ever so awkward family reunion when you try to bond with your third cousins

Line That Sums the Film Up: What It Sounds Like

Verdict: See It or Skip It

Bonus Round: The extra stuff that sweetens the deal.

Without further ado…

You really haven’t seen Die Hard? Shame on you! It’s even a Christmas movie!

You didn’t know that? Oh, but you saw Live Free or Die Hard? No. No. Watch this movie now. Why? Because you will understand the 80s. And men. And Christmas. And America.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) crashes a Christmas party in a high-rise building in order to talk to his estranged wife, but Hans Gruber (the brilliant Alan Rickman) and his terrorist friends have other plans. They take all the party guests hostage, but they don’t count on John McClan–you know what it’s just Bruce Willis. This is one of the most iconic roles of all time. They don’t count on Bruce Willis being Bruce Willis.

Did I mention it’s the 80s? The soundtrack. The SOUNDTRACK:

Also, exchanges like this were allowed to happen because it was the 80s and terrorists couldn’t actually have done anything for ideals. It’s about money. Always. So that money can trickle down.

John McClane: I didn’t realize they celebrated Christmas in Japan.
Joseph Takagi: Hey, we’re flexible. Pearl Harbor didn’t work out so we got you with tape decks.

How to Fake Having Seen It: “God the glass scene. Jeeezus.”

Line That Sums Up the Film: 

Hans Gruber: Who are you? Just another American who saw too many movies as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s John Wayne? Rambo? Marshal Dillon?
John McClane: Was always kinda partial to Roy Rogers actually. I really like those sequined shirts.
Hans Gruber: Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?
John McClane: Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

Bonus Round: 

Per Favreau’s request, I’m going to avoid talking about the film’s many twists, turns, and alien designs, but he also requested a spreading of the word, a contributing to the cloud, as it were.

I’m sure they’ll be a lot of comments about the gorgeous sound design and score, the myriad invocations of classic Westerns. (In many ways it’s The Searchers with aliens and a Man With No Name for good measure. This is not at all a bad thing. In fact, if you haven’t seen the films Favreau and his team are referencing, you may have your brain broken by the distinctly different pacing and composition of the filmmaking and storytelling, especially in comparison with more standard tentpole features like the pre-Avengers movies or Avatar.

Something I do want to point out is that in many ways Cowboys & Aliens is a story about who is allowed to have catharsis, who’s allowed to kill the monster. I don’t want to give anything away, but if you’re a regular reader of the blog, go to the cineplex and bring your dialectic mind. Keep asking yourself “Who’s the monster here?” I feel a paper coming on, don’t you? Also, ummmm EXPLOSIONS + ANTHROPOMORPHIC LENS + = WINNING. (Lowbrow fangirl enough?)

A very important Daniel Craig related side note: Favreau said something that I found a little hard to believe. He talked about a new era in film, an end to the rule of the movie star. While speaking to a mostly older audience he said that a lot of young people [advertisers' primary audience] don’t come to the movies to see Harrison Ford or Daniel Craig. You can’t just use stars to sell movies anymore. As one of those young people, and as a former eight year old girl who insisted to her mother that she was going to marry Han Solo, I was a bit confused. James Bond and Indiana Jones can’t sell a film? Society is doomed.

So, as a public service, I offer Daniel Craig and Catherine Tate’s Comic Relief sketch from a few years ago, which hinges on Craig’s status as a sex symbol in the UK, yet, as Elaine (Tate), his current girlfriend, confides, “He says he’s an actor but I’ve never heard of him.”

There are cowboys guys. And Apaches. And Aliens. And a dog. And movie stars! Let’s rebuild society. I don’t want to live in a world where people don’t go to a movie like this, that harkens back to an older era, casts leading men against type, and aspires to be “a smart dumb movie” (to quote Favreau.)

Progress, regress, or just delicious? I DON’T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE.

IN THE UK THERE IS A POPSICLE OF HIS TORSO. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHO HE IS?