wildcat

1. I did not turn my phone on yesterday. I did not check my Facebook. I did not check my email. I didn't log on to Barbelith, browse anything in wikipedia (though Michael did while I was in the room, checking for cooking instructions for Yorkshire pudding), or anything else like that. I didn't even use my iPod. Those are all things I do on a more-than-daily basis and it's strange to think I went twenty-four hours without dipping into that kind of information. I read Matt Fraction and Andy Kuhn's pleasantly infantile Annotated Mantooth graphic novel, collecting the adventures of a billionaire super-spy gorilla.

2. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was a big, dumb movie. There are spoilers here, but I can't imagine their terribly significant and frankly have very little to do with the plot mechanics. It didn't really do its job with regard to the tension between the family dynamics of the Four and the big cosmic adventuring; Jessica Alba's Sue spends the first half of the movie as an unrealistic shrew who seems to prioritize her wedding over the fate of the planet; it isn't until the end when we finally see the family -- particularly Sue -- acting in a more adventurous fashion, speeding through the sixth and final attempt at a wedding (this time in Japan) so they can go stop Venice from dropping into the Adriatic; they're a family unit and the cosmic stuff is important, they know it is, even as they start to treat it with a certain banal disregard. The first movie placed Ben Grimm, the Thing, into his Long Dark Teatime of the Soul; in the second movie, Johnny Storm gets to walk the deep black corridors. Well, as deep as a character like Johnny is capable of, anyway.

There does seem to be a creepy subtext running through the Marvel movies; Spider-Man's Norman Osborne, X3's Jean Grey, and FF2's Sue all die or nearly die after torso-splitting metal penetration. And only Sue is really saved from this fate, thanks to a silver-slick metal porn-star atop a surfboard from the stars -- touching her forehead. They didn't even bother with any spiff Special Effects visuals for that resurrection scene, even after we've established that, of course, the alien super-porn Surfer's power all comes from his phallic board of beyond. At least she didn't suffer from psychic nosebleed this time 'round.