Another Hideously Huge Review Post

Books
A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton
This book is not a good book. No. It has the pace of tortoise and it's episodic to an insane degree. Merry Gentry is a Mary Sue of the annoying "Oh, I'm pretty but NOT PRETTY ENOUGH" type of Sue. The men are all boring. Laurell K. Hamilton takes half-pages to describe characters' hair and what they are wearing, to the point where Merry at one point asks two of the guys, "What's wrong?" but then has to stop and describe their clothes even though they ALL WEAR CLOTHES TO MATCH THEIR HAIR AND SKIN ALL THE TIME, AAAARGH! And the beta-villains are killed way too easily. Oh, and Laurell also does that annoying thing she's done in previous novels where she'll have a secondary female character who you're supposed to feel pity and scorn for because she's a victim but OMG! She's allowed herself to be a victim, so it's okay to forget about her for the rest of the series.

And yet ... I had fun reading this. No matter what her faults, it's impossible to deny that Hamilton is a great world builder and I really, really do like this world. I liked the initial plot before it ended within the first hundred pages. I really, really liked the mythology. And, while the sex wasn't great, it was at least interesting enough to keep me reading the book and integrated to the point where the sex didn't feel tacked-on. I got frustrated with the book a lot when I was reading it, but I never stepped over to outright disliking the book. Hamilton has some interesting, interesting ideas. Alas, I wish she was better at execution. I want to read the whole series, but will probably only read the second one because I hear the series falls apart at three. [sigh] What a pity ...

I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight by Margaret Cho
Let me first say that I love Margaret Cho. I thought the book I'm the One that I Want was a great mixture of comedy and memoir, and you really got a good sense of who this woman was. I thought the stage show by the same name, as well as Notorious C.H.O. were absolutely excellent. Revolution had some tiresome parts, but not enough to ruin the show for me ...

I can't say the same about this book. I read most of it rolling my eyes and when she got to her opinions on how the news media has failed so we should all just read blogs because then we only have to hear the news we want, yay I threw the copy across the room. (And I swear most of the people who say this seem to be the type who haven't read a newspaper in ever, but oh well ...)

Weirdly enough, that was the only thing I outright disagreed with Cho on. Politically her and I are very similar, but in the book she not only makes her arguments without any intelligence or wit, but she seeks to be a badass while unabashedly preaching to the converted. She's not even funny ... and some of these people she picks on (like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter) are easy targets. The Michelle Malkin one kind of came close to being witty with her saying, "Yay! The Asians have their own Clarence Thomas!" But alas, I think she was actually a bit too serious on that one for it to be funny.

But yeah, everything I liked about I'm the One that I Want: her humor, her overall message of self-love and empowerment, her tangible love yet distance from her family, are all missing here. It's just a bunch of ill-focused rants that make people who disagree with liberals think that they're all idiotic and smug know-it-alls who see everyone else as a religious freak. And you know, she could have at least been FUNNY about it, but in the book she just comes across as angry.

Such a shame, really. I bought the book used a short time ago, and now I'll be putting it up on bookmooch. I really do love Margaret Cho, but she's making herself hard to love these days.

The Dueling Personas of Kevin Smith by Matthew Miller
This book is actually a published thesis which talks about how Kevin Smith has cultivated both a "indie filmmaker" and an "mainstream-friendly fanboy" image, and it's a pretty interesting short read on Kevin Smith. It's an interesting look at how he's presented himself in interviews to the press as well as on his online messageboards, and how it may have influenced how people see his movies. There's also an interesting part which compares his Askewniverse canon to the Star Wars canon. At $10 the book is a little pricey for it's short content. I also think I caught a few factual inaccuracies. Still, it is well worth the read if you're a big fan of Kevin Smith. I would have liked to see an addendum that factors in the negative response to Jersey Girl, which all the fans (and, I think for a time, Smith) thought would be a critical darling. But oh well. Still a good book.

Stolen by Kelley Armstrong
I really like Stolen. This surprised me, because while I thought Bitten had a fun plot and some neat side characters (such as Jeremy), Elena's darque wangst past and ridiculous pseudo bad boy relationship with Clay (oh come on. I know you read that stupid scene where he subdues her and ties her up and then ASKS NICELY before he has his way with her so that all of us ladies can feel good about our rape fantasies) made me roll my eyes. However, now that Elena's over it and Clay is acting like less than a bastard, I just got to enjoy a damn good adventure story with some cool characters and a villain who gets his just desserts.

Favorite parts: Cassandra - yes, she was a bit of an antagonist but after so many emo vampires it was nice to see one who was just cool and practical. And the scene where she casually looks in the bag with the severed head was great. Writer managing to keep a relationship from a previous novel going without any majorly-forced drama - Thank you so much, Miss Armstrong. Fast pace of the book - Good. Savannah being an emotional teenager without stepping over the line into annoying - Thank you so much. And did I mention the villain getting his just desserts? That was so awesome.

My one beef with this book is that I think Armstrong fucked with her own canon a bit there. (I thought werewolves were on a monthly, not weekly cycle. I also thought mutt wolves were able to change at will ...) However, this book actually made me excited about reading Dime Store Magic where Bitten didn't make me excited about Stolen so ... yeah, I'm very, very happy with Stolen. It was a pleasant surprise. :-)

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Note to all future writers: If you want to create a nameless character in an attempt to make her seem like an everywoman, maybe you should realize that every woman does not live in New York and go to NYU for a masters degree in child development and act as a Nanny in their spare time. Also, if you're going for an everywoman thing, you may not want to bring up unnecessary secondary characters in their life, especially if you're not going to resolve their subplots by the time the book ends.

I mean seriously, what happened with Harvard Hottie? Did she ever find a new job after that one weird interview with the "We don't want white girls to help our inner-city kids?" people? Did her thesis defense go well? WHAT HAPPENED?

Oh wait, it doesn't matter. Because we're all supposed to concentrate on how funny it is that Mrs. X is such an awful parent despite being rich. Oh, ha-ha! The rich! How silly they are, thinking they're better than us upper-middle class white women! Isn't it so funny when they neglect their children while they have fevers?

I know, I know. Who pissed in my cereal, right? I will give the writers credit for at least not turning their villain into a one-note monster like The Devil Wears Prada did. The book was also far more readable than Prada - I finished it within three days. Still, I just get frustrated with chick lit defenders who call the critics anti-feminist, not realizing that their material is so specific and really geared to one type of woman. And I am really annoyed that we didn't get to know "Nanny" because the writers were so hung-up on the "everywoman" concept.

Movies
Ali G Indahouse
I kind of feel sorry for this film. It can't help but be what it is: a studio attempt to take an out-of-the-ordinary comedic character, squash him into the standard "Kind-hearted doofus hero makes good" plot and then make money. But really, stupid studio people should have realized that Ali G is not kind-hearted or a hero, just a doofus. And thus his whole making good and getting the girl come off as tiresome and outright offensive at points, because why would anyone be with this sexist dick?

Granted, it did make me laugh at points, but there was too much in there that seemed like it was made up by a bunch of guys in three-piece suits that didn't understand the character. And I am so, so, so sick of hot girls being considered the "neuter" female in comedy. The scenes with the ambassador or whatever from Thailand was particularly embarrassing and doesn't really work with Sacha Baron Cohen's usual goal of exploiting people's prejudices. When he gave her the ping-pong ball upon hearing she was from Thailand, it was funny. When she shot it out of her twat ... it stopped being funny and just became an illustration of the stereotypes Cohen claims to go against.

And it's weird, but I hadn't heard about Borat's cameo before I watched it. And seeing him made me laugh when I was on a 30-minute stretch of feminist cranky-pants-ness over this movie.

But yeah, Tivo only for this one, and even then only if you're a Cohen fan or have really, really, really low standards for formulaic movies to the point where you don't understand why the formula works.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Now this was a good movie. Heck, the fake-bootleg DVD case was about as good as the movie. This movie is truly transgressive, and it really, really makes you feel uncomfortable at laughing at it. Not because the jokes are all that sick (Well, okay, the naked wrestling scene was sick ...) but because people in this movie say such heinous things, but are really serious about it.

This is really well-made for a movie that's a gimmick, though. Unlike most "reality" programs, the director/editor/Cohen do a really good job of making a plot out of seemingly-random encounters, to the point where you really do wonder how much is real and how much isn't. Those dead-spots where everyone seems to just stare in confusion and mumble that are so common in reality TV are also absent here. (See any episode of
Survivor for an illustration of what I'm talking about. Bonus points if they go "Mumble mumble mumble [BEEP!]")

So, yeah, despite my reservations and my dislike of Indahouse, I was really impressed with this movie. It's worth watching at least once ... if you can handle the naked wrestling scene. [shudder]

Room Service
Boy, the "Zeppo" in this movie is really dumber than a bag of rocks, isn't he?

I kind of liked this film. The eating scene is genius and Harpo trying to get the turkey is great and Harpo pretending to be dead is ... Well, this is basically a good Harpo movie in general. Groucho and Chico, not so much. Chico seems rather confined and Groucho seems to spend too much time pushing the rather uninteresting plot along. ("We have to wait for a guy to get in here and sign a paper! OH NOES!") Movie is also weird in that I'm not sure if Lucille Ball is supposed to be Groucho's girlfriend or not. She doesn't ACT like his girlfriend, but then she randomly kisses Groucho and calls him "darling". Very weird.

But ... a decent way to pass the time, this movie is, yes. At least there aren't any sleep-inducing singing scenes or god forbid -- BALLET SCENES.