galax-arena

I wasn't able to see this movie over the weekend for various reasons, but purchased a ticket online anyway. Consider it a donation to the "make entitled male nerds cry" fund. I plan on actually watching this weekend! Re: Paul Feig's confirmation that Kate's character is supposed to be gay, I saw the following comment on another message board that cracked me up: "To add insult to injury, not only are there women cast in this movie to ruin your childhood, but there's even one who wouldn't want to fuck you." Ha!

Reverse sexism! Tone argument! I think I got it. Well, I can't speak for the others, but I don't think people missed that. They're just objecting to you drawing a false equivalence by referring to our response as "the same sexist bullshit that men have been using on them for years." Not even close. The two aren't mutually exclusive. A bunch of us have said that we weren't even interested in the movie to begin with, but are making a plan of going to the theaters to watch it because the manbabies (oops @ my misandry) were pissing us off. We can spend money AND use invective, it's a lot easier than you think. No one's encouraging the latter at the expense of the former because we all know that in the end only the box office receipts matter. I think someone even said that she wasn't going to watch the film, just pay money for a ticket and go see a different movie instead. It's what I've been encouraging people to do when they lament that they want to support the movie and piss off the disgruntled fanboys, but have zero interest in the movie itself. Already got several folks on board with that plan. See, my cold black misandrist heart is perfectly capable of multi-tasking. ETA: To put my own money where my mouth is, I'm going to buy a ticket for tonight, even though I can't go to the movies at all this weekend because ~reasons. And then I'll buy another ticket next weekend when I actually can go to the movies.

Well yes. If it were a war, I'd be calling them much worse things than manbabies or whiny fanboys. The anger that women are directing towards all the sexism on display seems perfectly apropos to me.

‘Ghostbusters’ Is A Perfect Example Of How Internet Movie Ratings Are Broken: Earlier this year, I also looked at IMDb’s user rating skew for television shows. Essentially, male users were more likely to rate television shows with a female-heavy audience lower than female users would rate male-centric television lower. Men were tanking the ratings of shows aimed at women. Yeah, I don't think women's ~hostile feelings toward men are the problem here...

Cry more. (No, I mean it, please cry more. The tears of whiny fanboys keep me young.)

And before anyone brings it up - because this always comes up - yes, white people can have olive skin tones too. Italians, yada yada yada. The problem was that the casting department explicitly limited the casting call to white people only, even though Katniss was at best described as racially ambiguous and Suzanne Collins herself implied that it was likely the character was multiracial because this was a future where there'd been a lot of ethnic/racial mixing. (Of course then she backtracked because she wasn't about to bite the Hollywood hand feeding her.) I think if people get super-defensive about not watching shows with female leads, then it's a bit telling. How does that saying go? Thou dost protest too much. "But everyone's saying that I'm a misogynist!" Well, no. Literally no one's saying that not caring for a movie like Ghostbusters or the Star Wars reboot (with a female Rey as the lead) in and of itself makes you a misogynist and if that's what you hear, then it sounds like a personal problem to me. You know, I didn't gaf about the Ghostbusters movie either (until the misogynistic dudebros finally pushed me too far and now I'm going to see it come hell or high water) or the Star Wars reboot and yet I didn't get my feelings hurt when people talked about how a lot of the criticism was sexist. Because it was. I recognized that I wasn't a part of that and I didn't get defensive about it and was willing to acknowledge that it existed. (I know Star Wars didn't receive nearly as much of the blowback as Ghostbusters has - probably because men aren't completely sidelined in the former - but I distinctly recall a number of fanboys complaining that TPTB were pandering by putting a white woman and/or black guy as the leads.) ETA: Apparently if you look at the IMDB rating stats, apparently 53.5% of male voters have given it 1 star. But no, sexism has nothing to do with anything.

It was the stuff of nightmares. Honestly, if this Ghostbusters reboot has a similarly creepy villain I might get excited about watching the movie for its own sake and not because I'm a petty asshole who wants to bathe in people's tears. According to this guy, Ghostbusters now has a higher RT score than Interstellar, the Prestige, the Boondock Saints, Ghostbusters 2, Batman v. Superman, Warcraft, the Hateful Eight, Space Jam, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Man of Steel. Some movies don't really fit in with the others but I think he chose movies that fanboys like jerking off to.

The bros are so pressed. I wasn't planning on watching this film because the only thing I really remember about Ghostbusters is that creepy-ass portrait villain from the second movie. The franchise in general is something I'm pretty meh about. But much like how the people whining about Lucy Liu's casting in Elementary made me give the show a chance, looks like I'll be giving this one a shot too. Preemptive disclaimer: NO, I don't think you're necessarily sexist/misogynistic if you just so happen to not like the movie for other reasons blah blah blah. Relax. But if you're getting THIS angry that the critics don't agree with you, to the point where you want to manipulate/brigade message boards to sink any positive reviews? That's telling. Like, I think Star Wars is overhyped to hell and back but I'm not pissy that the critics like it.

Not that I don't think that the international excuse is bullshit for other reasons, but since when does "international" translate to white lead? And notice how Scarlett's character's mother is still being played by a Japanese actress...

I don't know if the Duggar boys have any excuse, but as far as the women go, the idea of "stay-at-home daughterhood" is a thing. When Patrick Henry College first opened its doors, there was some controversy when Michael Farris decided to let women enroll. And then there was that nauseating "Return of the Daughters" documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJjQ1nViS_0 I think it's been mentioned here before, but one of the women in that documentary, Lourdes Torres, later brought a lawsuit against Doug Phillips, the leader of the now defunct Vision Forum, for sexual abuse. She was represented by.... David C. Gibbs III (!). The lawsuit was either dismissed or settled out of court. ETA: I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of Return of the Daughters, but from reading a recap, it sounds like even the girls featured in that documentary at least have some level of ambition and curiosity, even if they're being stifled thanks to their religion. Jasmine, for example, says that she wants to be a screenwriter and go to NYU. Too bad she had the bad luck to be born to a control freak like Voddie Baucham. The Duggars, otoh, seem to lack even that sort of basic ambition.

I saw his tweets and to me it was unclear whether he had completely changed his views and regretted writing the book itself, or simply regretted that so many Christians had taken it to the extreme. IIRC, someone tweeted at him that due to his writing, her school decided to not have prom, and Harris said sorry about that. Someone else tweeted that his book had been used against her as a weapon and he apologized for that too and said that he was planning to delve more into that later. Haven't really heard anything else beyond that, though.

Not sure if someone has posted this article yet, but Chicago Mag recently published a long write-up of the Gothard/IBLP scandal: The Cult Next Door. Haven't read it yet, and I doubt there will be anything in there that surprises people who have kept up with this forum or Gothard news, but definitely pleased to see this getting more attention.

Oops nm, I was getting this ep mixed up with last week's.

Well, last night's finale of Jane the Virgin was... something.

Haha I don't have the quotes on hand but I can say that nah, that wasn't it. My post was brought on by a) getting into an argument with someone who insisted that I was wrong for not thinking that JLM's Sherlock was the titular character of Elementary and b) people insisting that a Beckett-less Castle would be fine because "the show is called Castle, not Beckett." I guess the latter didn't actually use the word "titular" but... yeah. I don't even watch the show so honestly I can't say whether Castle qualifies as the main character, the protagonist, AND the title character - I mean he's obviously the last one - but I guess I'm tired of people pointing at titles as trump cards as to which characters are the most important.

I haven't been able to watch this ep yet but I was keeping up with a discussion post elsewhere so I've been spoiled on the major plot twists. Anyway, a lot of us here had already guessed that Rose wasn't really dead so that wasn't super-shocking, but I'm still bummed that Susanna turned out to be shady after all because I just wanted her and Luisa to be happy, dammit. Although, I'm a bit confused on when Rose took over Susanna's identity. Was she masquerading as Susanna the whole time? Did Susanna never technically exist? Guess I have to hurry up and watch this ep. Poor Petra. And Michael, too. ETA: I guess this article answers my queston. There never was a Susanna. I'm annoyed.

I'm tired of people acting like "titular character" is the same thing as "main character." There might be a lot of overlap between the two, but they are NOT the same thing. "Titular" = having to do with the title. That's it. No, Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock is not the titular character of Elementary. Rebecca is the titular character of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, but she is not the main character. Julia Roberts' Erin Brockovich is both the titular AND main character of Erin Brockovich. And so on.

Heh, I actually don't watch the show so I can't really say whether a Beckett-less Castle would work or not. It's just that after seeing how Stana Katic and Tamala Jones were treated and all the BTS messiness we were hearing about, I'm glad that it's all blown up in the show's face. Now for the E! True Hollywood story... but only after we get one for The Good Wife!

Aaaaaaand Castle has been cancelled. I'm cackling.

He's tweeted before about how it's bullshit that Hollywood keeps whitewashing Asian characters.

Ooh, ooh, I know this one! A lot of people I know don't like him because back in the day - before he really blew up - he used to be a regular on some other celebrity gossip sites (like ONTD) where he would often make shitty dismissive comments about race (which, as an aside, were sometimes honestly hilarious in how pompous and clueless they were). I think Tyler's learned a lot since then and a couple of years ago he wrote a long post on tumblr apologizing for his previous racism, but a lot of people still aren't aware of that apology, I think.

Yeah, there is really no connection between the Ohlmans and the Duggars other than the fact that they both believe that birth control is teh evil. I think the media has just been assuming that since Ohlman believes in basic Quiverfull ideology - although I'm not sure if he's ever referred to himself as Quiverfull - that there must be some sort of connection with the Duggars. But the truth is Vaughn Ohlman most likely thinks that the Duggars are unbiblical wusses because the latter practices courtship instead of betrothal, consent be damned. ETA: FYI, this is Ohlman's personal blog. ETA 2: Just to give an example of how extreme Ohlman's beliefs really are, he thinks that Michael Pearl - of all people! - is too loosey-goosey.

Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden (based on Sarah Waters' Fingersmith): ETA: Someone mentioned that they edited out the f/f kissing for the South Korean trailer. LOL, I can imagine people going to see the movie because ~~Park Chan-wook~~ and then being taken aback by all the gay. Like when people went to see Carol for Cate Blanchett and had no idea that the movie was about lesbians.

My comment wasn't directed specifically at yours.

Heh, I'll take your word for it, Joe, since I don't really follow Marvel too closely. I'm still mad regardless, especially as this is coming in the wake of all the Lexa fallout, where several pertinent issues re: intersectionality came up, with gay WOC essentially being told to choose between our sexuality and our race. I can count the number of major Asian lesbian characters on American tv/movies on my hands. So to have this taken away from us pisses me off.