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March 31, 2011 02:11Hollywood Hates Women. Still.The past week has seen Hollywood misogyny taken to a whole new level. Within just a few days, they managed to fuck up Wonder Woman’s costume, cast Jennifer Garner as Miss Marple (!?!), and release Sucker Punch, perhaps the single most crass and inept attempt to sell adolescent male wank-off fantasies as pseudo-feminist girl-power.
You can stop staring now. I don’t know which is worse, the awful Halloween costume or the five-dollar-whore makeup. I understand with this new Wonder Woman, instead of having a magic lasso that makes you tell the truth, she has an enchanted stripper pole that makes you stuff dollar bills down her painted-on pants. Personally, I would have voted for the 1940s costume, complete with cape and skirt. Sure, the skirt was a bit short for its era, but compared to what the chicks in Sucker Punch are wearing, it’s a nun’s habit. Which reminds me: when is Hollywood going to give us a new nunsploitation movie? There’s a genre that’s truly girl-empowering. March 23, 2011 16:22White Dudes In Black MasksCalgary just had its annual white pride parade. If you’re not familiar with Alberta in general or Calgary specifically, they’re like our little slice of the south, tucked up in a barren stretch of the north that is so cold the people there go crazy over the winter and emerge from their cabins in the spring whistling Dixie and looking to blame black people for the defeat of Confederate forces in the Yankie war of aggression. Luckily, they never find any because there are no black people in Alberta. They’re too clever to move there.
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As far as I’m concerned, Bill Hader is one of the most awesome cast members Saturday Night Live has ever had. I always figured he was a big movie buff considering his string of black-and-white Vincent Price skits about the long-suffering Mr. Price trying to host a creepy talk show in the early ‘60s despite the disruptions of period celebrities (who behave just as poorly as our contemporary celebrities). Hader has earned new movie-geek street cred by writing a top-ten list for the Criterion Collection. Added points go to him for cheating and making his choices double features so he could bump the list up to a top twenty. And they’re all smart choices. Sure, Criterion specializes in art house films, so it’s hard to look like a dumbass picking anything from of their collection. But there are still a few landmines of shit to be sidestepped (some Michael Bay, a Kevin Smith). Bill Hader currently has a role in Paul alongside the likes of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. And speaking of those guys, I quite enjoyed this clip of them recreating one of the great homoerotic tension scenes from Star Wars. March 05, 2011 17:38The Best Little Moviehouse in Texas (Or Montreal For That Matter)Last night, a stone’s throw away from the crater where the Seville repertory theatre used to stand, I attended the opening night of a movie at the local AMC franchise, built where the Montreal Forum used to stand. Shifting the topic away from ruined Montreal landmarks for a moment, the movie in question was The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom. It was a big event. And not just because it was a Canadian movie showing in a real movie theatre and taking up an entire screen next to such worthy luminaries as The Green Hornet, No Strings Attached, and Big Mammas: Like Father Like Son. This was the unofficial world premiere of the new Rebecca Croll film, and all her friends and family turned out.
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Good old Rich Johnston continued to tout my aging comic book work (indirectly this time) by submitting Andrew Goletz’s article about The Gathering anthology to Bleeding Cool. Turns out enduring the Eisner Awards with him was the best bit of schmoozing I ever did. It’s still paying dividends fifteen years later, which is more than I can say for any of the film and television gatherings I’ve gone to (though they do have better catering). Andrew Goletz, the actual author, is an old associate I used to deal with back in the glory days, when Dave Sim was the pied piper of do-it-and-publish-it-yourself comics. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should do some more comics. But I’m so comfortable resting on my laurels like they’re a Barcalounger, stuffing my face with Tostitos and watching Jersey Shore. Writing and drawing comics takes actual hard work and where’s the deliciously artificial spicy quesadilla reward in that, I ask you? |
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The theatre was nearly sold out, full of well-wishers who confused the real patrons by hooting and cheering at Becky’s credit. I was having none of that rubbish. My job at these sorts of events is to show up and make a bunch of snide in-joke comments because I’m incapable of speaking in clichés like “congratulations” and “this is your moment” and “you’re so richly deserving.” I’m too cool for that, you see. Instead, I say a few funny things that make me seem like a detached asshole, when what I really want to say is something heartfelt along the lines of “You bitch I’m so insanely jealous you have a movie out and I’m going to do everything in my power to sabotage your career in a Phantom-of-the-Opera-esque way including but not limited to dropping a giant chandelier on your head ha ha ha you’ll never see it coming unless I let the cat out of the bag by writing about it on a blog or something oops.”© Eyestrain Productions & Shane Simmons  
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