First, the warning: this film includes a fairly graphic, though short, rape scene. It's also graphically violent in a way kung fu is often not.

The basis is this: Madame M (Almen Wong Pui-Ha) runs a high-end assassin business. At the beginning of the film, she kidnaps a load of young teenage girls with special martial arts and athletic talents, taking them to remote island to train them up to become the next generation of assassins. This is not your friendly Kill Bill-style assassin school, though--the girls are pretty well tortured, culminating in a competition in which they have to kill each other or be killed, with the winner(s) coming out as the new top killers.

The film's lead, Charlene (Maggie Q), a martial arts prodigy who was abducted from her politician mother in Hong Kong, develops a very close friendship on the island with an orphan street boxer, Katherine (Anya, called Kat). When it comes down to it, Charlene and Kat, as well as one other girl, Jing (Jewel Lee), are the only ones left standing.

The fairly plot-less film follows Charlene and the other two assassins through a few kills, interactions with Detective Jack Chen (Daniel Wu), who is investigating the "China Dolls" assassins, and Charlene's brief reunion with her mother. All the things you expect to happen do: the romantic relationship between Charlene and Jack; Charlene being forced to kill Jing; Kat's death and Charlene's avenging it; Charlene's struggle with who she was and who she has become; and so on. And then it ends.

As far as plot and acting are concerned, I have nothing good to say about this movie. It's bad. The martial arts, too, are something less than I'd have expected, especially since the director, Siu-Tung Ching, is a former choreographer who worked on Hero and Shaolin Soccer. There are some good fights, but the best one takes place in the film's first scene, so you spend the rest of the movie waiting for the next great one and coming up disappointed.

The women in the movie aren't treated terribly, though. The assassins are basically slaves, and at first I was indignant about that, but now that I think about it, the trope is used in male-centered action films regularly as well (that horrible movie Unleashed comes to mind), and at least the captor is just as female as the captives. I hated the romantic relationship between Charlene and Jack, but Charlene is totally the one in charge of it, and in charge of walking away from it, which is a pleasant change. I am also always a fan of friendships between women being highlighted, and that happens here, with Charlene and Kat.

Racially, the film is about as diverse as could be expected. The group of girls that Madame M gathers on the island are supposed to be from all over the world, and that seems to be the case. The major characters are all Asian, and they are a fairly diverse representation. Maggie Q is a Hawaiian native of Polish-American-Vietnamese descent; Almen Wong Pui-Ha is Chinese; Daniel Wu is Chinese-American; and Anya is Taiwanese. Sadly, the only black person I saw in the film is one of the men who gang rapes the new assassins as part of their training, which I could have lived without.

I had to really give some thought before I decided on the rating for this film. Ultimately, I'm going to give it two stars, one for cool female martial arts, which somehow never gets old, and one for the relationship between Kat and Charlene. If it were a better movie, or didn't include an unnecessary gang rape scene, or had somebody black in it's multi-racial cast who wasn't a rapist, it might get one more.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
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While everyone's busy tearing up Book of Eli, one of the comments did bring something to mind.

In our reviews, would it be necessary / appropriate / appreciated that if there is a scene involving sexual violence, for us to disclose that in our review?

In both Watchmen and Book of Eli, I have not commented on those scenes because for various reasons they weren't major factors in forming my overall opinion of the films. However I'm finally starting to catch the clue train here, several years late, and realize that this may be information that our readers would want to know before they watch a film based on our recommendation. If anyone actually does that.

Thoughts?

Posted by Skye in Odds and Ends
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When we got home from seeing The Book of Eli Friday night, my husband got on the web and started reading critics' reviews. I wish he hadn't, or that I hadn't sat behind him looking over his shoulder, because now all I want to write about is why Peter Howell of Toronto's thestar.com is a jackass for calling the two main female characters in this movie "hot hookers."

Allow me to sketch out a few things for you, so you can understand my annoyance, and then I promise to move on.

The title character, Eli, is played by Denzel Washington. He is traveling across post-Apocalyptic America (as directed by God) with the last surviving Bible. After introducing us to his character's amazing ability to hack up bad guys, the filmmakers start off the film's conflict by bringing Eli to a dusty small town controlled by Gary Goldman's Carnegie. Carnegie's control over the town is based on his knowledge of water sources and willingness to pay thugs to use violence against people who oppose him. His female companion, Claudia, played by Jennifer Beals, was born before the Apocalypse just like Carnegie and Eli. She is blind. Her daugher, Solara, played by Mila Kunis, works in Carnegie's bar.

Carnegie routinely uses physical violence against Claudia to control Solara, including ordering her to seduce Eli to gain his cooperation despite Claudia's pleas for mercy. Solara also seems to live with constant low-level harassment from Carnegie's chief henchman. Later in the movie, Carnegie uses her as a bargaining chip to secure the cooperation of said henchman.

So Peter Howell calls them "hot hookers." Gee, I wonder what he thinks of non-fictional women who are in abusive relationships, or who are forced into prostitution by threat of violence?

We now proceed to the actual movie review.

The Book of Eli wasn't a terribly original movie. I'm not very good at guessing the ends of movies, but I could pretty much see where this one was going once it got underway. Good guy, bad guys, etc. It was, however, a well paced story with engaging characters in a reasonably solid post-apocalyptic setting. From a Heroine Content perspective, it also offered a couple of treats: Eli himself, and the eventual transfer of his quest/calling to Solara.

Washington's Eli is not the typical "omg he's so deadly" action hero. His moves are mind-boggling, but they aren't filmed the same as the hero-worshipping action scenes I'm used to. My point of contrast was the initial shooting scene in The Replacement Killers, where the point of the choreography and the soundtrack is to make the shooting beautiful, to make Chow Yun-Fat this almost supernatural being, gorgeous in his deadliness. With Eli, what we get instead is efficiency, and a sense that the violence basically happens to him, as a distraction from the real story of his life. It's something to avoid, or if it happens, to end quickly.

Instead of a killing machine, Eli is a person. He nurses his somehow still-surviving IPod, tries to keep himself clean in an environment where water is scarce, feeds a tidbit of his precious food to a mouse. He's been alone for a long time, we think, but he still has social skills. When he and Solara begin traveling together, he starts to loosen up and show some of who he might have been before the war. He quotes Johnny Cash. He makes jokes. He starts to remember that making the world a better place is something that needs to happen along the path of his journey, rather than just being the prize at the end of the road.

Solara, whom Robert W. Butler of the Kansas City Star called "a local wench," is (in my unpaid non-professional film critic opinion) an actual, full-fledged character who also finds her meeting with Eli a turning point. She was born after the war, so this is the only life she knows, but she knows that the way Carnegie runs things is wrong. Her fear for her mother's well-being is part of what keeps her at Carnegie's beck and call, but part of it must also be the lack of anywhere else to go. Post-apocalyptic wastelands are difficult that way. When Eli leaves town, her mother sends her after him for her own safety and she gladly takes the opportunity to get out from under Carnegie's domination. Something in her also responds to the religious message Eli is carrying, and she wants to learn.

Solara also goes from being someone who stands there and cries while her mother is being abused to someone who throws a grenade under an oncoming vehicle and then goes to drive off with a dead body in the passenger seat. (She doesn't even scream when it comes back to life, which I totally would have.) I was pretty impressed. When it comes time for her to make a choice between safety and risk, at the end of the film, she chooses risk and the chance to "change it" as Eli had challenged her when she first set out on the road with him and complained that she hated her town. She takes on his mission.

In my ideal world, there would now be a sequel where Solara is the lead. Apparently I'm the only one, because there was a lot of laughter in the theater when she suited up to head back home and kick some ass. The couple behind me commented that she would last two minutes, and the first person who came up to her would just kill her. Y'all know that I have derided the supposed ass-kicking qualities of faux heroines before, so I am willing to call that out when I see it. But given the revelations about Eli towards the end of the film and what that implies about the source of his abilities, I have no problem believing that a transfer has taken place, of a sacred duty and the accompanying skill set from one man to his successor. Usually I roll my eyes when a woman's ass-kicking ability is granted from an external source, a la Red Sonja, but in this case that puts Solara on an even footing with Eli and it builds on some strong raw materials so it's fine by me.

I will fault the film for lack of casting diversity. Beals is of both African-American and white background, which I didn't know before. Mila Kunis is Jewish, originally from Ukraine, though my guess is that many people assume something else, or a variety of something elses. There are a couple of people of color here and there in the background, but even with an African-American lead, the rest of the world looks awfully white. As usual. Can I just write a stock paragraph now and start including it a review by default, and then strike it though when it doesn't apply?

Without spoiling, I'm also sensing an issue with those revelations about Eli, and how they could be construed to reinforce a prejudice about the capabilities of individuals with certain characteristics. This question becomes even more disturbing if you agree with Cynthia Fuchs at Pop Matters in the third paragraph of her review about the filmmakers' construction of Claudia. I disagree that the filmmakers were using that tired trope but I do appreciate her monitoring for it. If that was the filmmaker's intention, then it would make me more suspicious about their perspective on Eli. THIS IS SO HARD TO DO WITHOUT SPOILING. In any event, I don't believe that Eli's innate capability is diminished by the revelations but I think some people would. See the film and let me know what you think. If you can make any sense of this at all.

I give this one three stars. Since our focus here is on women, and Solara comes to her ass-kicking fairly late in the game, I can't rank her up with our other faves. However, the pairing of this origin story of an action heroine (as I see it) and the strong performance by African-American Washington are a great mix.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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I thought it was bad when I was seeing films that were adapted from video games. Then I saw Mutant Chronicles, which was adapted from a role playing game. So not good.

Mutant Chronicles takes place on some kind of 28th Century steampunk Earth that feels like it's an alternate World War II. Corporations rule the world and spend all their time fighting, until they are unlucky enough to break open an ancient machine from space that turns human beings into zombie mutants with primitive scimitars grafted to their right arms.

What's not to love?

In short order, these mutants, who are basically infantry, overrun the corporations' infantry, who are equipped with machine guns. Which means the corporations pretty much suck, in my opinion, because how hard is it to mow down infantry with automatic weapons?

Corporate leaders decide to send as many people as they can to other planets, because Earth is totally fucked. Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman) belongs to a sect that has preserved the legend of the machine and he wants to go blow it up. Of course, he needs some badass military folks who don't mind dying to come along for the ride. "Do you think they will stop with Earth?" he says, "No way! We need to fuck their shit up!" Constantine (John Malkovitch), one of the corporate lords, gives him a ship and some evacuation passes to use as bribes, and Samuel is off to collect his team.

Two of the team members are the reasons why I wanted to see this film in the first place: Devon Aoki (previously in D.E.B.S.) and Anna Walton (previously in Hellboy II: The Golden Army). So far, we've got two women in combat roles, and one of them is a woman of color. The other members of the suicide squad include Steve Toussaint (British, of African descent), Luis Echegaray (British, family is Peruvian), and Tom Wu (British, born in Hong Kong). There are a few white guys, too, including Our Hero who is played by Thomas Jane, a man with no charisma of any kind.

Is anyone disagreeing with me that the worse the action film, the more diverse the cast?

This brave (and doomed) expedition sets off in their ship, which is almost immediately attacked by a ship flown by mutants. Yes, they can fly planes. That's not good.

The first casualty of the mission happens when they're landing in the escape pod. Wait for it... it's Steve Toussaint's character! The black man!

WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE FILMS WHERE THE BLACK MAN DIES FIRST!

Shall I say it again?

WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE FILMS WHERE THE BLACK MAN DIES FIRST!

Seriously, we're full up. Plenty. A surplus, in fact. It's been done, it's been covered, we need to move on. He seemed like the smartest one of the whole crew, and he doesn't even get to do anything!

So. Getting back to the review.

The next casualty occurs when Tom Wu's character - just as cool as Toussaint's character IMHO - stays behind to watch the entrance while the others descend into the ruined city where the machine is buried. Strangely, a bazillion mutants show up and he falls to his death while fighting one in a plummeting elevator. Oh no, wait, he's still alive, and manages to detonate a grenade to save everyone else. Awwwwww, how sweet.

With two pesky people of color out of the way, they proceed. Have I mentioned yet that Anna Walton's character doesn't talk? Nope. Not at all. Until the whole team decides to go rescue one of their own, who fell off a bridge into a pit of mutants, because (as Devon Aoki's character puts it) "we're still human." Human, as in, who gives a fuck about saving humanity and honoring our two colleagues who have died so far, we're all going to get killed to save this one guy right here. Which doesn't work. OF COURSE. Only Anna Walton's character and Thomas Jane's character are still alive. Jane's character is alive because he had abandoned the team earlier to save one of his former comrades who was being dragged still alive into the mutant machine, so he only shows up at the last minute.

Walton's character starts talking now, and we find out she can't read.

They keep going into the machine and find Aoki's character and Benno Fürmann's character (from the German corporate army) being dragged into the machine. They get saved, then we lose Fürmann, and it's down to one white man, one white woman, and a woman of color.

Who do you wanna bet survives?

I had really hoped Walton's character would rock, and I was so disappointed. She should have been awesome, especially with the whole two-sword thing, but she chokes at the last minute on killing the mutantized Brother Samuel. Bye bye, white girl. Aoki's character, a young single mother of two children she sent off on a ship to Mars, is basically just outnumbered, but to add insult to injury she's chopped in half by a giant fan blade as she falls. Jane's character inserts a mysterious device into the machine, which the monks said they thought was a bomb. Instead of blowing up, the machine becomes a spaceship and flies away.

I had just asked my husband what exactly the mutants were going to do when they ran out of people to turn into mutants. What is their evolutionary strategy? Apparently, they convince a bunch of really stupid people to bring them the keys to their spaceship back so they can go ravage other planets - the closest of which have a bunch of human refugees arriving on them as I seem to recall from earlier.

Sometimes I feel that a female character is good, but trapped in a movie where she's treated badly. In this case, we've got two women, neither of whom are particularly interesting, and three men of color, two of whom are wiped out before we get a chance to see them in action. The movie is terrible. Everyone in it is powerfully stupid. And they act like they saved Earth, but really all they did was push the problem into someone else's backyard.

Losers!

No stars.

Posted by Skye in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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The live action Blood: The Last Vampire was released on Blu-Ray October 20th. It was never released in theaters in Austin, and I did not manage to see it when I went to Chicago in July, so I felt like I had been waiting a loooong time for that red Netflix envelope to show up in my mailbox.

The film is set in Japan during the Vietnamese War. South Korean actor Gianna Jun plays Saya, a vampire-human hybrid whose mission in life is killing the demon who destroyed her father. Onigen, the demon, is played by Koyuki, who is Japanese. Aiding Saya in her pursuit is Alice McKee (played by white actor Allison Miller), the daughter of a military base commander whose run-in with the shadowy organization Saya collaborates with does not turn out well for anyone.

So far, that's already a big bunch of differences from the original animated film Blood: The Last Vampire, made in 2000. The introduction of Onigen gives us another powerful woman of color. Unfortunately, though, for most of the film she is just the scary thing in the background. Pretty, young, skinny, white Alice replaces the character of the grownup, plump, Japanese nurse who becomes Saya's unwitting accomplice in the animated film. To me, it's an obvious effort to make the film more American, sexy, and accessible than casting the Japanese equivalent of Kathy Bates. (Now that I think about it, Qiu Yuen from Kung Fu Hustle would have been awesome in this movie.) Alice does a lot more than the character she replaced, but I was put off by the remodeling of the role.

Overall, many of the things that I liked about the animated film suffered a similar fate. Eerie pale little girl who doesn't talk and levitates before turning into a demon becomes trash-talking, bitchy high school girl with a sword. Three terrifying and possibly unstoppable demons become hordes of fairly disposable demon-looking people chasing Saya and Alice down alleys. The creepy, almost breathtaking reveal of Saya's past at the end of the first film does not happen. Instead we are given cues early on as to her nature. Everything is more and bigger, but in the process becomes more prosaic. In the animated film, I got the enjoyable feeling that there were far bigger things going on and we only caught a glimpse. Not so much in the live action film.

To turn a 48 minute animated film into a feature length movie requires adding, so there is plenty of additional subplot and extra characters. The implied shadowy organization from the animated film becomes The Council, with lots of white male personnel. The Council's front as CIA operatives does necessitate them sounding American when they talk, but despite the historical setting of the film, I would have appreciated a tiny nod to people who speak American English being not just white and male. (Especially since in the animated film, one of the guys was black.) We also spend time with Alice's father and his staff, all of whom are white. One of the demons is an instructor at the school, and he's played by black British actor Colin Salmon. Saya's guardian from her childhood, Kato, is played by Japanese actor Yasuaki Kurata, and Onigen's henchman is played by another Japanese actor, who I am having the most difficult time identifying from the IMDB credits.

The animated film felt like it was about an event that happened to two women, since the third main character was a man who functioned mostly as Saya's sidekick. The live action film feels different. We spend so much time away from either Saya or Alice, and there are so many male speaking roles. But Saya is a strong, fierce character, and the film is paced very well. Watching the "Behind the Stunts" feature on the disk gave me a lot of respect for Gianna Jun, too. This was her first action film, and she spent a ton of time in a harness doing wire work and most or all of her own stunts. It easily passes the Bechdel test since Saya and Alice spend a lot of their time talking about demon killing. Neither character is particularly sexualized, and there is no romantic plot or subplot. Alice does scream. A lot. Eventually, though, she gets useful.

This iteration of the Blood story is a straight up action film, though, not dark and haunting like the animated film. Saya is more of a person than an enigma, and even when she battles Onigen her fights don't have that desperate quality that characterizes her fights with the demons in the animated film.

Due to the two women of color as lead and big bad adversary, both of whom kick ass, the casting of three men of color in speaking roles, and the fact that Alice's character finally stops screaming and does something useful, I'm giving this three stars. I wish I hadn't seen the animated predecessor first, so I wouldn't have kept comparing the two, or it might have scored higher.

Now where's my Saya action figure?

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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At Adventures of a Young Feminist, Laura writes "I'm not even going to try to pretend I didn't love this movie, because I did." You and me both, Laura. It's been a long time coming, my friends, but the Hollywood woman-hating machine has presented us with something that is both fun and not an insult to our collective intelligence. Whip It is really good.

Juno it-girl Ellen Page plays Bliss, a small-town Texas misfit stuck between her own quirkiness and her mother's (the amazing Marcia Gay Harden) insistence that she fulfill her potential as a beauty queen. She's sarcastic, confused, and disenfranchised, like any good teenager. The only person she seems to really connect with is her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat). Then, she discovers derby.

The bulk of the movie takes the viewer through Bliss' discovery of and excellence in roller derby. She falls in love with it. However, it isn't presented as some sort of magic solution to all of her problems. As she builds new relationships with her teammates (an excellent collection: Kristen Wiig, Zoe Bell, Eve, and Drew Barrymore), her relationships with Pash and her parents fall apart. To complicate things, she also picks up a boyfriend at the derby, Oliver (Landon Pigg).

There are several remarkable things about this movie.

Posted by Grace in 4 Stars: Greatest Hits
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Jennifer's Body was not on my must-see film list. I saw the previews, was skeptical, and agreed to take it on because I love Heroine Content. Then I started reading other people's reviews--lots of mentions of Heathers, even a few of Buffy-implications that it was self-aware, if a bit thin, farce. I can handle that, I thought. I liked writer Diablo Cody's Juno well enough, and loved director Karyn Kusama's Girlfight (reviewed here). By the time I actually saw Jennifer's Body, I was almost excited about it.

That excitement was so very misplaced. This movie is terrible. The Willamette Week review called Jennifer's Body "Heathers as a Maxim photo spread," and I'd say even that is too kind. It's not just the stupid teenage sexuality that the film centers around that makes it so bad--I was expecting that. And it's not just the fact that Megan Fox (Jennifer) can't act at all, not even a little bit--I was expecting that, too. But that farce I was promised? It never showed up.

Posted by Grace in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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I thought I'd take a look ahead at 2010 and see what may be coming down the pike. IMDB's list of action films slated for 2010 is undoubtedly a hazy look into the future, but I did find some items of interest while going through it. Here are some notes, and I'll probably check the list again late this year to see what else has emerged. If you know of anything I missed, let me know!

Films with a scheduled release date:

• The Book of Eli, January 15th: Post-apocalyptic. I think I saw a woman wearing a sword in the trailer, so I'm putting it on the list. Here's the official site with the trailer.
• Takers, February 19th: Bank robbery film, Zoe Saldana is in the cast, no idea what her role is but I'm hopeful.
• Legend of the Red Reaper, March 10th: "For a thousand years, the Reapers guarded mankind from the demons that wait in the dark. Now, at the beginning of a new age, the Reapers are betrayed and slaughtered. Only one Reaper remains - Red, and she's out to exact revenge." Here's a really terrible trailer on YouTube. I like it when the blood spatters on the camera lens. Does anyone use the term C-Movie?
• Clash of the Titans, March 26th: With all the goddesses around, here's hoping at least one of them is actually badass.
• Iron Man 2, May 7th: Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow.
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, May 28th: A prince and a princess (theoretically) working together to save the world. No sign of the princess in the trailer on YouTube, though. [Update 9.24 - see Zahra's comment below about the race issues here.]
• Broken Blade, June 4th: There's a hint of a female assassin in the brief plot summary for this one.
• Resident Evil: Afterlife, August 27th: I can't imagine this series is going to get better on Heroine Content criteria.
• Red Dawn, September 24th: Remake of the 1984 film.

Films without a scheduled release date:

• Agustina: "Agustina de Aragón, (1786 - 1857) was a famous Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Spanish War of Independence. First as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Army." Adapted from a graphic novel, here's the official site.
• Armed Robbery: Lesbian lovers rob a bank and run for the border.
• Arena: "A group of soldiers find themselves transported to a strange, terrain-shifting landscape where they must fight the best warriors from different eras and histories in a gladiatorial, kill-or-be-killed battle." Surely there's a woman in here somewhere.
• Dead in the Head: Bounty hunters and zombies. one of the bounty hunters, known as The Babe (haaaack) is played by a woman.
• Her Vietnam: A nurse serving in Vietnam when her base is attacked.
• Jennifer Government: "Welcome to paradise! The world is run by American corporations [...] Jennifer Government, a legendary agent with a barcode tattoo, is the consumer watchdog from hell." I know i read the book, but for the life of me I can't remember anything about it.
• Kick-Ass: Superhero movie (kind of), adapted from the comic book written by Mark Millar who also wrote Wanted. Chloe Moretz plays "Hit Girl." You can find io9's coverage here. I suspect this one will be a bit much for me.
• Kungfused: Some kind of action comedy, there are a lot of women in the cast.
• Maximum Ride: "Six kids who are pretty normal - except that they're 98 percent human and 2 percent bird. They grew up in a lab, living like rats in cages, but now they're free." Adapted from a young adult science fiction / fantasy series.
• Opponent: Alien crash lands in junkyard, owner of junkyard offers a reward for someone to kill it, mayhem ensues. A lot of women in the cast.
• Red Sonja: Still shows a release date of 2010, although news reports say filming won't start until then. The posters are horrifying.
• Roadkill: Female assassin is mentioned in the plot description. Supposedly an action comedy, the guy who directed Blue Crush is slated to direct.
• Sin-Jin: No information, just a couple of visuals on the IMDB page that I find intriguing. Chinese film.
• The Assassin: Taiwanese film about a female assassin in eighth century China who wants to retire.
• The Story of Bonnie and Clyde: Hilary Duff leads. Oh my.
• Witchblade: The television show almost came together for me, we'll see if the film ever appears.

Posted by Skye in Odds and Ends
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I saw Whiteout by myself, in a nearly empty theater, in the afternoon. My perfect film-viewing experience. I'm likely giving it a more positive review than it's getting in most forums, and that may be why.

Whiteout's main character is U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko, played by Kate Beckinsale. That would make her the heroine (it also makes her the only woman in the film). Her first scene, for absolutely no plot-driven reason, features her stripping out of full cold weather gear and taking a shower. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.

It does get better. The beginning shower scene is very much in the same vein as Sigourney Weaver's stripping down to her underwear at the end of Alien--a single gratuitous moment for a character who is otherwise nearly completely sexless. Beckinsale spends the majority of the film in her parka. She is, after all, at the South Pole, and she's working. She's the law in these parts, and she's got murders to solve. No argument from me there--there isn't a ton of physical fighting, but Marshall Stetko does her job, puts herself at risk to keep other safe, and performs in a generally admirable way. I just wish she could have done it without the survivor flashbacks from the botched job that sent her to the South Pole in the first place. Without those moments, she'd have been cool and competent--something like Ripley, or even a bit like Frances McDormand's Marge from Fargo. With them, she's not entirely trustworthy and seems just a second away from needing rescue.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
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A few tidbits to share with y'all today.

Obviously we're behind on this one, but the Avatar teaser trailer is up at the official site. I am afraid of the CGI. (Hat tip to The Park Bench for the link, check out their blog if you haven't.)

One of my favorite new discoveries is Mary Robinette Kowal's Reel Fantasy blog over at AMC. I particularly liked Off With Her Head? Why Fantasy Hates Good Queens and The Worst-Dressed Women Warriors in Fantasy.

I disagree with his rejection of Lara Croft (while accepting some of his criticisms), but I Miss Sarah Connor is a good piece over at new blog The Guy's Guide to Feminism.

Real life "Stiletto Spy School" for women. Hmm. (Hat tip to guest poster d for this one and the next.)

Thanks to Entrepreneur Goddess for uploading video of this panel to YouTube: "Comic Con 2009. Sigourney Weaver, Elizabeth Mitchell, Zoe Saldana, Eliza Dushku on being female and breaking the glass ceiling in the entertainment world." I think Zoe Saldana is amazingly generous in her comments about how sexism isn't "on purpose" and "education" is the solution. You can find additional recordings of this panel as you're viewing this one. YouTube is magic that way. Or dangerous. I can't tell.

Skinny vs. Strong: Who Wins? at The Great Fitness Experiment. So interesting to read while thinking about casting of women in action films.

Faux Action Girl at Television Tropes and Idioms.

From 2001: Badass girls on film: Is it a good thing when women beat the crap out of men at the movies? by Gina Arnold in Salon.

Posted by Skye in Linky Goodness
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