This was entertaining, much more so than most superhero or pseudo-superhero movies.  It's not particularly subversive, and the humor is kind of slapstick, but oh well.  The bad guys (to the extent that there even are bad guys...) are all aliens, so at least there's no demonization of human cultures going on.  The parts that take place on Earth are ( Read more... )

What I immediately thought of after I heard The Big News (I was watching Cupcake Wars on the Food Network, which did not cut away to any breaking news report, so I heard it from fengi on LJ first) was "what now."  Is the war on terror over?  I think your answer to that depends on what you think "causes" terrorism, or why you think terrorism exists ( Read more... )

This is why racism remains a "thing" in my novel, which is post-apocalyptic (and I don't even have the apocalypse coming from across borders - it's just part of social organization in Junction Rally, as it has been for all its years of existence).  The Yellow Plague: Asians and Asian Americans in Post-Apocalyptic and Zombie Fictions by Bao Phi:
But ( Read more... )

Chuck Klosterman has this interpretation for why we're living in a zombie moment (I remarked upon this a couple nights ago, when I noticed two different zombie video games being advertised on TV):
In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning or filling out paperwork that only ( Read more... )

I finally got with the internet and tuned in to The Walking Dead last night.  It is certainly a tension-filled show.  But for the most part I was left feeling sort of turned off - I think maybe I've just overdosed on too many immediately-after-the-apocalypse scenarios.  I used to be really, really into the genre, back when I first saw 28 Days Later ( Read more... )

I mentioned a while back that I got a free copy of The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, through a give-away at SF Signal.  I've finished it.  It is one of the worst books I have ever read - but maybe I'm the wrong reader for it, because I don't read the action thrillers that this thing is modeled on.

I suspect that a lot of readers ( Read more... )

I sort of recognized the name Daniel Drezner, though I'm not sure what I've read by him.  He seems to be that extremely rare rock star poli sci theorist, at any rate, Samuel Huntington for the digital age.  In any case, he has written a book called Theories of International Politics and Zombies, and he has a little bite-sized tidbit up in Foreign ( Read more... )

Context:  I saw the first Iron Man because our passes didn't work on Speed Racer (I was one of those crazy people who liked Speed Racer, btw), and I must confess that it was a little much for me.  I know, "too much" is basically the definition of a superhero movie, but the whole uber-American rock star CEO thing was just not something I could get ( Read more... )

1.  Tatjana Soli [The Millions]: Legacy of a Photo.  AP headquarters at first rejected the photo for the indecency of frontal nudity, rather than focusing on the bigger indecency of children being burned alive. Ut and head of the department, Horst Fass, argued that napalm had burned off her clothes and refused to crop the photo. Finally an ( Read more... )

Some thoughts about the guy who flew a plane into an IRS building, killing himself and an IRS worker.  On the one hand he's a "hero" to the Stormfront people (natch) and random people on Facebook who quote Thomas Jefferson and say he's a real American patriot, etc.  On the other hand, he finishes his "manifesto" not with the line that the ( Read more... )