X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class
seen @ Green Acres Cinemas, Valley Stream, NY
6.7.11

SPOILERS

I was gonna wait until later this month to write about X-Men: First Class; in fact I was gonna pair it with Green Lantern because I figured I used up my "A" material in writing about the first X-Men movie. As it turns out, however, I do have something important to say about this movie - something that can't wait.

First, I should say upfront that this was very well made. Director Matthew Vaughn is the real deal, and seeing this makes me wonder what X-Men: The Last Stand would've been like in his hands. James MacAvoy and Michael Fassbender are superb as Xavier and Magneto, respectively, and Vaughn did the right thing in making their relationship the focus of the movie. At one point I found myself thinking that this is what the original movie should've been - not so much in terms of casting, but characterization. And the cameo appearance by you-know-who was AWESOME (and an actual surprise!). Ultimately, though, I was let down in a big way, and here's why.

There are a lot of new characters in First Class, some I recognized from the comics, some I didn't (Nightcrawler has an evil twin brother now?). One new character is a guy named Darwin, played by Edi Gathegi. Don't know anything about him. IMDB says he's from Kenya, he was in the first two Twilight movies and he was even in Atlas Shrugged (god help him). So this movie was definitely a step up.

Darwin's power is to "adapt" to any threat to his survival (get it?). We see him stick his head in a fishtank and grow gills to keep from drowning, for instance. That sounds like a really useful power. I didn't know this character was even going to be in the movie. I'm not one of those fanboys that has to follow every single aspect of movies like this up until opening day. Still, I figure, fine. Didn't give it another thought once he was more or less established. So what happens?


He dies. The only good-guy character to die and OF COURSE IT'S THE TOKEN BLACK GUY. His death makes no sense, either: Kevin Bacon and his minions track down Xavier's new recruits and they try to fight him. One of the new mutants can project energy blasts from his chest in concentric rings, but Bacon's character's power is to absorb energy and project it back, which is exactly what he does. He takes that energy and shoves it down Darwin's throat, which explodes inside him and kills him. If Darwin's power is to take on whatever traits he needs to survive... then why didn't he survive? A power like his should make him impossible to kill. Maybe he gets seriously hurt and it takes him a long time to recuperate, but that didn't happen. And of course, he's forgotten about for the rest of the movie.

I saw it happen and I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that in 2011, Hollywood movies are still using this tired cliche. It took me right out of the movie for a moment and it made me mad. Minorities in general have become even more marginalized in the movies today than ever before, so there's a tendency to want to latch on to them even closer in movies like this because one never knows how long we'll get to see them. Darwin's death is ridiculous because he didn't have to die, and it's insulting because it continues a long and frustrating trend that has been going on for decades.

But wait. Darwin's not the only character of color in the movie. Another new character is a chick named Angel, played by Zoe Kravitz, daughter of singer Lenny Kravitz (and Lisa Bonet). IMDB says she's been in a few things, including Jodie Foster's The Brave One and the TV show Californication. Her character's mutant power is to fly with insect-like wings and to spit globs of energy (ew). She joins Bacon after he gives the new mutants the "Why fight for a world that fears and hates you" speech. Maybe it's a ruse and she'll betray them in the end, I thought. She doesn't. She sticks with Magneto through the rest of the movie.

So let's add it up: two characters of color - one dies and is quickly forgotten, the other is an unrepentant turncoat who has no qualms about fighting her former friends. Great! Thanks, First Class! Thanks a lot.


The irony is that ever since the late 70s, when writer Chris Claremont took over the comic book, the X-Men have been known for their diversity. Mutants from all different parts of the world have been part of the team at one time or another. And as for the original trilogy of films, well, say what you will about Halle Berry as Storm, but she was front and center in all three movies and she mattered.

I can't stress enough how frustrating it feels to have a movie that I was genuinely looking forward to be ruined in this way. And like I said, everything else about First Class was good (except Emma Frost; how can you take such a strong, sophisticated character and turn her into vanilla pudding?). I'll probably be the only person to even bring this up, but if I am, then so be it. I'd rather that Darwin wasn't in the movie at all than to see him disposed of and tossed aside so cavalierly, to join the great big pile of disposable black characters in movies.

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Related:

Avengers
Captain America
Iron Man 3

Spider-Man
X-Men

X-Men: Days of Future Past
Guardians of the Galaxy

Who will preserve the treasures of film history?

The exhibits at The Cinema Museum are linked in very personal ways to the lives and experiences of the people who run the museum. Tours of the collection are interwoven with stories of where objects were found and how they were obtained and collected, how much they cost, how they were used, when they were in use. These are not just artefacts, or curiosities from the past. These are living, breathing objects that have a history, a present and a future. This is not just a collection of exhibits but a form of communication that speaks to us about cinema and why we love it.

This is from a piece at the British film site Film International about the Cinema Museum in London. In addition to an interview with co-founder Martin Humphries, writer Deirdre O'Neill provides a thoughtful meditation on the role of museums in society, and the uniqueness of the Cinema Museum in how it actively works at maintaining and preserving film history.

This is a timely article, coming as it does in the wake of the news about actress Debbie Reynolds selling off her substantial collection of Hollywood memorabilia due to her inability to start up a similar museum here in America. The heartbreaking quote from Profiles in History auction house president Joe Maddalena says it all: “Hollywood never cared. They never wanted to help her. They didn’t really care a whole lot about their heritage. And she does.”

O'Neill reiterates this point in her article, where she talks about how the Cinema Museum's collection was built up:

...during the 1960s and 1970s, cinemas were being closed down, converted into bingo halls or demolished: no more proof is needed of the low esteem in which cinema was held and how its status as popular culture resulted in its artefacts being considered transitory and disposable.

This is very revealing of how we, as a culture, value certain artefacts/pastimes considering some of them to be worthy of protection and preservation whilst others we consign to the rubbish tip, literally. It also demonstrates the role of museums in legitimizing some cultural forms whilst ignoring others.

It's a mighty poor reflection on Hollywood that Reynolds was the only one interested in creating a public venue for such a remarkable collection of items that not only represent an art form, but connect us to our cultural past. Such a place would have been a treasure for generations to come. It's a shame such a dream has to die like this.

That said, Reynolds' collection is breathtaking, to say the least. To see stuff from black and white movies in color is especially thrilling, because it's easy to take the craft of the costumers and prop makers for granted when you can't see it in color, the way the cast and crew did. If I had money to burn, here's what would make my wish list:

- Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat
- Laurel & Hardy's Model T Ford
- Harpo Marx's top hat and wig
- Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes overcoat
- Gary Cooper's Sergeant York uniform, rifle and pistol
- Claude Rains' Casablanca suit
- Lena Horne's Stormy Weather dress
- Edward G. Robinson's pipes and slippers
- Glenn Ford's saddle, cowboy boots and hats
- Bette Davis' Virgin Queen throne
- Yul Brynner's The King and I robe and whip
- Stephen Boyd's Ben Hur armor, tunic and short sword (and one of the charioteer helmets too)
- Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra headdress
- Charlton Heston's Planet of the Apes rags
- Planet of the Apes male gorilla costume
- Peter Boyle's Young Frankenstein tailcoat
- Mike Myers' Austin Powers outfit

You can download the PDF of the catalog here.

Thoughts?

Paris is Burning

The Queer Film Blogathon is a month-long event celebrating gay cinema presented by the site Garbo Laughs. For a complete list of participating blogs, visit the host site. The final list of blog posts will go up June 27, 2011.

Paris is Burning
last seen online via YouTube
6.5.11

Head west down Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, past the West Side Highway, and you'll reach the Hudson River Park, which is part of a huge greenway going up and down the west side of Manhattan. I like this park. I come here every so often (sometimes for movies in the summer), in fact I was briefly there last weekend. If you stand out on the piers, you can practically reach out and touch Hoboken across the river. In this particular section of the park, in the vicinity of the water fountain, you'll find young African American and Latino gays hanging out. This is their territory, and has been for a long time, even before there was a Hudson River Park.

Though it isn't talked about, you can clearly see this area - long before it was renovated into a park - in the documentary Paris is Burning. The difference is striking: there's much more bare concrete, and it's not terribly inviting, particularly at night. Yet I imagine it must have seemed like more of a refuge to the gay youth of the 70s and 80s than it does now, overrun with people like me biking or picnicking or jogging or what have you.

I suppose there's an ironic sociological statement to be made about minority gay youth literally being on the fringe of mainstream city life. That actually ties into the movie, in a way, which explores the heyday of New York gay "balls," glamorous competitions combining elements of fashion, dance and performance art into something unique. It was a world unto itself where, as the subjects reiterate throughout the film, you could live out your fantasies and be whatever you want to be in a way the real world would not permit if you were gay...


...especially if you were black or Latino and gay. In Paris, we see some of the subjects talking about idolizing white movie stars or models and wanting to be part of the world that they occupy. For them, the balls were the way to do it: even if it was a minuscule world, it was still one they could call their own. Over twenty years later and minority gay role models in mainstream pop culture are still few and far between, though the fringes appear to have their fair share - in hip hop, for example.

As an unrelated aside, Paris briefly talks about "voguing," the dance that Madonna made popular with her hit song "Vogue." I can't see that without thinking about my high school prom, which was in 1990, the same year of the song. We were all voguing on the dance floor, even those of us too nerdy to know better. Of course, I suspect most, if not all of us, had no idea that Madonna's tune was inspired by young black gay kids "striking a pose" on the floors of the balls. Madonna championed gay subculture not unlike the way Lady Gaga does these days, only the difference seems to be much more explicit. For black and Latino gay kids, I suppose that makes them role models as much as anyone else.

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Previously in the Queer Film Blogathon:
The Children's Hour

Soundtrack Saturday: Mashups

I've become addicted to mashups. I've got several different YouTube playlists of nothing but mashups. These are from my "collection," if you will, with the caveat that one of the songs being mashed up is from a movie soundtrack.

"You Should Be Dancing" by the Bee Gees (from Saturday Night Fever) vs. "Roxanne" by The Police

"You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra (from You Only Live Twice) vs. "Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles

"Maniac" by Michael Sembello (from Flashdance) vs. "Somebody Told Me" by The Killers

It (1927)

It (1927)
seen online via YouTube
6.2.11

So if you're a hardcore film buff, chances are you've heard of It, even if you haven't seen the movie, so you might think I'm gonna talk about how awesome Clara Bow was. Not so. Well, she was awesome, but I'm not here to talk about her. Instead, I want to talk about Elinor Glyn. Who was Elinor Glyn? The opening credits for It indicate that the screenplay was based on a story by her, and she makes a cameo appearance as herself. Characters within the movie read her writings and are well acquainted with her reputation. But who was she?

Wikipedia says Glyn was a British erotic fiction writer who wrote some scandalously sexy (for the early 20th century) novels, then came to Hollywood and was influential in the careers of not only Bow, but Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. It was a novella of hers, as well as a series of articles in Cosmopolitan, and the movie quotes Glyn:

"IT" is that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With "IT" you win all men if you are a woman—and all women if you are a man. "IT" can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.

So... "it" is charisma? Coolness? That's sure what it sounds like. Within the context of the movie, Bow's character aggressively pursues the man of her dreams - her boss (another can of worms entirely), but if I understand this definition properly (which I probably don't, but whatever), if she's got "it," she shouldn't need to do anything in order to get him. Instead, she makes him spend all his money on her, plays head games with him, changes her mind about him, and changes it back again in the end. That's a lot of work for someone who "draws all others with [her] magnetic force" (maybe she's a mutant!).


Glyn, it turns out, was a high society chick who married a dude she didn't really connect with, so she started fooling around with other dudes. Her big hit novel from 1907, Three Weeks, was supposedly based on one of these affairs, and it got everybody all fired up. She wrote some more books, and when Hollywood came calling in 1920, she answered. (By that time her old man was already dead.)

Glyn had some unique (again, for the early 20th century) ideas about love and romance which she expressed through her books. Role-playing, erotic observation, dominance and submission, passion restrained by Victorian manners - these were recurring themes in Three Weeks, which was adapted into a movie four times (including the 1924 version which Glyn oversaw herself), and would come to shape her ideas about sex in general, especially for women. She thought women should be able to have sex for fun and not just mere procreational purposes, and that making money was blinding people to the pleasures of the flesh.

Glyn would go on to adopt a public persona inspired by her Three Weeks protagonist, the "Tiger Queen." She dyed her hair red, gave herself "cat's eyes," decorated her Hollywood suite in a Middle Eastern style, and gave interviews on a tiger skin rug, alluding to a famous seduction scene in Three Weeks. She still came across as a classy British lady, however, even though her books made her persona non grata amongst actual British high society, and that made it easier for her to spread her ideas about sexuality.


It was a marked change in Glyn's sexual philosophy when compared to Three Weeks. The Tiger Queen of that novel was a sophisticated older woman tutoring a young aristocrat in the ways of the flesh, whereas It's Betty is a young, vivacious, working-class "flapper" going after an older man. Glyn had originally defined "it" in masculine terms, the "savage beneath the grace" that her protege Valentino personified.

What happened was that It producer B.P. Schulberg wanted the movie to be a vehicle for Bow, and Glyn's contract specifically stated that she had to promote Bow as the "It Girl," before they even met! As a result, Glyn reworked her definition of "it" so that it could accommodate Bow as well, however vaguely. Even though Bow's Betty is a departure from Glyn's version of "it," the movie turned her into a star. Other actors and actresses would soon get the "it" label, diluting the definition to the point where Glyn was the only one who really knew what "it" was (she maintained it was about more than just sex appeal).

If you want to know more about Glyn, check out this terrific essay by Laura Horak, from which most of the information here comes from.

The Children's Hour

The Queer Film Blogathon is a month-long event celebrating gay cinema presented by the site Garbo Laughs. For a complete list of participating blogs, visit the host site. The final list of blog posts will go up June 27, 2011.

The Children's Hour
last seen online via YouTube
5.30.11

On more than one occasion, I've tried to imagine what it's like to be gay. In my life, I've had little luck with the ladies, and it's made me not-so-idly wonder every once in awhile whether I'm playing for the wrong team, so to speak. They say that sexuality is genetic, so perhaps it's not as easy as flipping a switch in your head, and anyway, I've never been curious enough to take that chance. I'm reminded of the rationale used by Joey Lauren Adams' character in Chasing Amy: she fooled around with girls in addition to guys because she didn't want to take the chance that she might miss out on The One, even if The One was another girl. I have no idea how much credibility this holds amongst gay people in the real world.

It seems to me that homosexuality comes with many of the same hopes, fears, risks and rewards as heterosexuality. There are profound differences, of course, but I think we put too much emphasis on them. In watching The Children's Hour, I see Shirley MacLaine's character Martha as gay, of course, but I also see her as a woman who loves someone she knows she can't have. It's irrational, but she can't help it because it's how she feels, and that is without question something I can easily relate to.

Martha's story is a tragedy, but the real tragedy is that little has changed fifty years later. As we saw last fall, young gay people are still being made to feel shame over what they are, and they are killing themselves over it, which is why support networks, whether online or off, are so important. I have no doubt that Martha felt all alone, even in the presence of Audrey Hepburn's Karen, her best friend - who was getting married. If Martha had someone she could rely on who understood what she was going through, things might've worked out differently for her.


I first saw Hour when I was working video retail. It was Bill who played it, whom I've talked about before. I cried at the end, of course. Eventually I bought a used VHS copy of the movie, which I would've played the other day except my VCR died awhile back. I suppose I could try to find some place that still fixes VCRs, but even if I did, then what? I've only got so many VHS tapes and it's not like there's ever gonna be more - and I really hate having to re-buy the same movie over again in a different format. I may have to, though.

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Look for more posts in this series here at WSW later this month.

Five books I read after seeing the movie

I've stated it here before, but when you've got a movie based on a book, I believe it's better to wait until after you see the movie before you read the book. You're less likely to be disappointed by the movie that way. Whenever I do so, often it's because the movie intrigued me enough that I wanted to know more of the story and/or the characters. There's rarely any kind of time frame for this; it could be days after I've seen the movie or months or years. Used book stores are best for this sort of thing. I love them. The first time I walked into a Half Price Books when I lived in Columbus I knew I'd be shopping there often, and I did. And New York, of course, has used book stores all over the place.

This is by no means a complete list, but it'll give you an idea of what kinds of stories I dig.

- American Splendor. I had read one or two American Splendor comics prior to seeing the movie, but at the time I didn't think a great deal of them. I was still relatively new to independent comics, and didn't know (and probably didn't care, to be honest) about the history behind Harvey Pekar's long-running series. Then I saw the movie and loved the hell out of it. So afterwards, I went out and bought an AS collection that was released around the same time, along with his Our Movie Year, which chronicled the making of the movie. Pekar, of course, worked with a wide variety of artists, and the styles ranged from great to decent.

I still think Pekar is an acquired taste. He didn't always write with a theme in mind, or a point to make; he'd just tell a story that he thought was interesting, no matter how esoteric, and lay it out there. He wouldn't try to dress it up with storytelling gimmicks, nor did he have a particularly lively writing style, yet the movie captured the essence of AS and turned it into a fascinating film that never let you forget its source material. So this is one case where I thought the movie exceeded the book.

- High Fidelity. I'm a total Nick Hornby nerd now, but believe it or not I had to be dragged to this movie. The girl I was with wanted to see this and I wanted to see something else and she won, of course. She loved it; I thought it was just alright. Then, years later, I picked up the book out of curiosity and my entire attitude changed. I was gobsmacked at Hornby's writing style: witty, hip, and self-aware, yet with a great sensitivity and tenderness at its heart. It made me look at the movie differently, and before long I came to like the movie as well.

Now I have all of Hornby's novels (picked up Juliet, Naked in paperback a few months ago). I love how they all occupy a shared universe; a character from one book will often make a cameo appearance in another. I think my favorite Hornby novel might be How To Be Good, though if it were to be made into a movie it would require an exceptional screenplay.

- Johnny Got His Gun. Ugh. I found the 1971 film boring - the best bits are all in the Metallica video for "One." (Never saw the 2008 version; I'd like to one of these days.) I picked up the book years later after learning more about author Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood blacklist.

Am I glad I did. I have never read a better book about war, before or since - and frankly, it's better than most war movies! It's absolutely heart-wrenching to read at times, but well worth it, because it exposes the futility of war brilliantly. I realize Trumbo himself directed the 1971 film, but I dunno, for me it didn't have half the impact of the book itself.

- Mystic River. I'd never heard of the name Dennis Lehane prior to the Clint Eastwood-directed movie. Here's a case where I liked the movie a lot and it made me want to get the book as well. The book expanded on certain plot points and characters, naturally, but otherwise much of the story remained intact. I'm normally not a big one for crime novels, but Lehane appealed to me and still does. I've since read Shutter Island (before the movie this time) and Darkness Take My Hand, but not Gone Baby Gone, even though that's also a Kenzie & Gennaro story. I've still got some catching up to do. (And how lucky is Lehane to have three of his books turned into great movies?)

- The Namesake. The trailer looked interesting, so I figured I'd try the movie, and I liked this one too, and based on what I had read about Pulitzer-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, I thought I'd look at her books as well. I actually bought Interpreter of Maladies first. I was in a Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn and I was struggling to remember Lahiri's name when I asked a clerk there who the author of The Namesake was (this was days after I saw the movie).

He told me, of course, and then pointed to a table displaying books by Brooklyn-based authors, of which Lahiri is one. Namesake wasn't there, but Interpreter was, and when I saw that this was the book that won her the Pulitzer, I figured I'd read it before Namesake. Like the movie, I found both books insightful looks into Indian and Indian-American culture. I also read Unaccustomed Earth; I thought it was okay, but not as good as the first two.

Thoughts?