MCU Phase One boxset: COOLEST LIMITED EDITION EVERApril 14, 2013 by

I think I might be in love.

I could explain why, but instead I'm just going to let the contents of the Avengers Assembled Limited Edition boxset speak for themselves.

Because come on, this thing comes in an actual S.H.I.E.L.D. briefcase. That lights up.

With a real-life Tesseract inside (which also lights up when you hit it SERIOUSLY IT'S SO COOL).

Then there are the files on S.H.I.E.L.D. employees and the Tesseract and an ACTUAL PHIL COULSON BUSINESS CARD

All Steve Rogers' files, including the newspaper cutout he kept of Peggy and one of his sketches and some actual Captain America trading cards


Oh yeah, there's also Tony's official declaration that Stark Industries will no longer manufacture weapons:

Some information that's probably about Bruce Banner but it's a little hard to tell with all the censorship:

THOR'S ACTUAL DRAWING OF THE NINE REALMS and fake driver's license, plus his hospital wristband (which is admittedly a little creepy but still)

And last but not least, SUPER-SECRET CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS which came in an actual sealed envelope, including a card key with a "Field Agent Access Code" for a secret URL.

And I haven't even gotten to trying out any of the DVDs or Blu-rays yet to watch the new deleted scenes.

Yep, I'm in love.

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What's Your Number?March 1, 2012 by

My housemate and I are terrible influences on each other. We've now encouraged each other's shallow, objectifying tendencies so far that we're more than willing to sit down and watch a movie solely to ogle the attractive men in it. Case in point: a 2011 romantic comedy called What's Your Number? Now, I make no secret of my general loathing of the genre, but Anna sold this film to me under the alternate title Chris Evans Gets Naked A Lot, so I agreed to see it with her. We did consume two bottles of wine and the better part of a bottle of tequila while forcing ourselves to sit through it, but at least on the Chris Evans front I certainly wasn't disappointed. Oh Captain, my Captain. Wait, where was I?

From what I remember of the plot, the film centred on a woman who was freaking out over the fact that (a) she had slept with 19 different men, and (b) some magazine had told her that women who've slept with 20 men have trouble finding serious relationships. Or something. What's Your Number? refers to your number of previous sexual partners; the crux of the matter was that she was making a big deal about her sexual history.

To the film's credit, Chris Evans' character was there to show that he didn't care about her sexual history and that she was being kind of ridiculous for obsessing about it. But a few days later the number-of-previous-partners topic came up again in some TV show we were watching. At this point Anna and I looked at each other and wondered, "Wait, do people actually care about this?"

Because it honestly doesn't bother me in the slightest if a man has had sex with three, or thirteen, or thirty different women. So long as he's honest with me, I don't give a damn what he's done in the past. One of my best friends has slept with over fifty women, but when he's in a long-term relationship, he is one hundred percent committed and unshakably loyal. I see nothing at all wrong with that.

And I expect the same understanding in return. I've talked to some people who say that a person who's had multiple sexual partners would make them jealous. To me, that smacks of a sort of insecurity that I'm not sure I could put up with in a relationship.

But as always, I'm curious to hear what everyone else thinks. Have you ever lied about your sexual history? If so, why? Does it bother you if a potential partner has had significantly more or less sexual experience than you? And if you're willing to share... what's your number?

Mine is 10.

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500 Days of StupidityFebruary 14, 2011 by

Spoilers here for 500 Days of Summer.

I make no secret of the fact that I've never been a fan of romantic comedies. Nobody in my family was; I don't think we ever rented one, throughout my childhood. The only times I had to sit through them was when I was dragged along to movies with friends, or subjected to one at a sleepover party.

I logged on to Tinychat the other day and found everyone discussing some film I'd never heard of, 500 Days of Summer. Based on what I understood from the conversation, the storyline followed some guy who fell head over heels in love with a girl who only ever wanted a casual relationship. There was some discussion about whether he or she was in the wrong, and since everyone wanted to hear my opinion I promised I'd check it out.

It was only after I'd gotten five minutes into the film that I realised I'd been duped: I paused to Google the title and, sure enough, it's a romantic comedy. But I'd made a promise, and my fellow Tinychatters know I keep my promises. So I grit my teeth, opened up Notepad to keep track of my thoughts, and hit play.

I've rewritten most of the scathing ranting that constitutes the notes I typed up, in favour of keeping this post somewhat coherent.

Right from the start of the film, the male lead, Tom, is presented as having no understanding whatsoever of how a healthy relationship works. One of the first bits of narration describes how he decides, based on a few fleeting impressions, that this girl Summer is the one for him. I laughed out loud when he went all doe-eyed after finding out they had shared tastes in music; any xkcd fan will understand why. As Randall Munroe puts it, "I'm not sure why we romanticise 'young love'. Or love in general, for that matter. It just leads to the idea that either your love is pure, perfect, and eternal, and you are storybook-compatible in every way with no problems, or you're LYING when you say 'I love you'."

Massive emphasis, here, on 'young love'. Tom's attitude to relationships is that of a preteen girl. I swear to god there is an entire song-and-dance musical scene right out of Disney, complete with an animated bird sitting on his finger, after they first sleep together. I think my favourite part of the film was towards the end, when we're shown a side-by-side comparison of the pie-in-the-sky expectations of Tom's mind, and what actually happens in reality. Because the same crap has obviously been going through his head for the entire film.

I'm well aware that most of us go into our first relationship with unrealistic expectations: we see only the good in our partners, and are so overwhelmed by how amazing love is that we convince ourselves it was meant to be. We wrap ourselves in a suffocating blanket of confirmation bias that makes it impossible to see the end coming until it blindsides us with all the force of an 18-wheeler.

The first heartbreak is always the hardest, always feels like the end of the world. I've been through it and I'm sure most of you have. But most people move on. Most people realise that they can either keep deluding themselves with this rainbows-and-sparkles, Disney-romance worldview, or realise that love does not in fact conquer all.

Tom never learned this lesson. His teenaged little sister is more clued-in than he is. There's one very telling exhange between them, when Tom has convinced himself that Summer feels as much for him as he does for her, despite her repeated and explicit protestations that she sees their relationship as nothing but casual. Here I'm just going to paste exactly what I typed up while watching the film:

- "So what should I do?" "You should ask her." THE LITTLE SISTER IS THE ONLY ONE WITH ANY FUCKING SENSE. Oh wait, this gets better. "Why rock the boat? I mean things are going well!" Yes, why risk exposing your fantasy for the self-deception it is?

- OH MY GOD AND THE SISTER COMES THROUGH AGAIN. "You're just afraid you'll get an answer you don't want, which will shatter all the illusions of how great everything's been these past few months." HIGH FIVE, LITTLE SISTER. HIGH FIVE. "If it were me, I'd find out now." "Just don't be a pussy."

In the end, the only blame I can place on Summer is for not realising sooner that Tom was totally incapable of behaving like an adult. She made the mistake of taking him at his word when he said he was fine with a casual relationship, and probably should have cut things off earlier.

As for Tom: again, I understand what First Love is like. I realise that heartbreak is something you can only learn the hard way. But I find it hard to be sympathetic here because Tom quite obviously doesn't learn. When his mates call his little sister over to help him cope with his break-up with Summer, they tell her, "It's Amanda Heller all over again." This isn't the first time he's blinded himself to reality only to be burned by it in the end.

Even worse, the film leads us to believe that it won't be the last. As he starts to get over Summer, Tom finally starts sounding like an adult, realising that he has skewed and unrealistic expectations of what a relationship should be: "It's these cards, and the movies and the pop songs, they're to blame for all the lies and the heartache, everything. We're responsible. I'M responsible." I actually read an interesting article on the BBC a while back that said exactly the same thing: that romantic comedies give people unrealistic expectations about love, which are nothing but trouble for actual relationships.

But Tom's epiphany lasts only until his next chance meeting with a pretty girl. Right after the narrator finishes describing how Tom has learned not to "ascribe great cosmic significance to every earthly event", Tom stops in his tracks and goes back to ask the girl her name. Which is Autumn.

He hasn't learned a damn thing. He's still the naive idiot he was at the start. And this is supposed to be endearing?

Also, I just realised that I watched this film alone on Valentine's Day night. Shoot me, please.

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Paranormal Activity: Tokyo NightDecember 6, 2010 by

A.k.a. the other Paranormal Activity 2. Yes, Japan has its very own, fully-licensed, fully-legitimate sequel to the original Paranormal Activity, which I went to see with my friends tonight. It's not a remake or a Japanese version of the American sequel, it's an entirely different movie. Here's the trailer:

The protagonists of Tokyo Night are college-aged Koiichi Yamano and his older sister Haruka. The premise is basically the same as the first film - some camera footage has been found after an as-yet-undisclosed incident in a small Tokyo home.

The film begins with Koiichi, a bit of an AV geek, checking out his new camera in the mirror. He then runs downstairs to greet his sister and father at the door - Haruka has just returned to Japan, her trip to the USA having been cut short because of a nasty car accident. She has compound fractures in both her legs, and tells her brother that she won't be able to walk for at least half a year. She uses a wheelchair to get around the house, and must be carried up and down the stairs.

Although the siblings' father helps them get Haruka's bags into the house, we soon learn that he's constantly away on business trips, and they effectively live alone. The film then progresses much in the same way as the original Paranormal Activity, albeit with a Japanese flavour. For example, the first time Haruka complains of strange happenings in the night, Koiichi builds a 盛り塩 (morijio, lit. salt-pile) on the floor, a superstitious practice meant to purify an area, or ward off evil spirits. Unsurprisingly, the morijio is flattened by morning.

Haruka initially resists her brother's attempts to set up cameras in her bedroom, but relents as the hauntings get worse. At first only Haruka's bedroom is monitored, but later in the story Koiichi sets up a camera in his own room as well. The audience is then shown the views from the two cameras simultaneously, which several scenes make use of to fantastic effect. In one, [[Haruka is dragged out of bed by her hair, screaming in terror while Koiichi is trapped in his bedroom; the split-screen cameras do wonders for the mounting tension as Koiichi throws himself futilely against his door, and Haruka slides inexorably under her own bed.]]

In a lot of ways, Tokyo Night is very, very similar to Paranormal Activity - the same basic plot outline of escalating hauntings, the same kinds of effects used to disturb the audience. But I feel it stands above the original in some small but important ways. For one thing, the relationship between Haruka and Koiichi, as siblings, felt far more powerful than that between Micah and Katie in Paranormal Activity. Whereas Micah and Katie's relationship is severely strained by Micah's intransigent machismo, Haruka and Koiichi's initial arguments soon fall by the wayside as events become more serious. Their affection for each other is obvious, and Koiichi's distress over the danger his big sister is in is so palpable it's impossible not to empathise with him.

Tokyo Night also gets kudos for including a scene so gruesome in its implications that I almost couldn't bear to watch it. As the plot moves towards its climax on the final night, [[Haruka wakes up in the middle of the night, moving like a puppet on strings, and swings one leg then the other over the side of her bed. She then proceeds to stand up on her broken legs. We hear the creaking of damaged bones and tendons grinding and tearing before she collapses on the bed - only to get up and try again, propping herself up on her plaster casts. She sways unsteadily on her feet before beginning a shuffling, staggering gait out her bedroom door.]] As is typical of Japanese horror, you don't actually need to see anything explicitly for the scene to to be outright ghastly.

In the car on the way to the cinema, I said I was optimistic about Tokyo Night. In my experience the Japanese are good at this kind of horror, where all the nastiness is imagined rather than displayed. I wasn't disappointed; despite having seen Paranormal Activity just the night before, with all the tricks and details fresh in my mind, I found Tokyo Night was more involving and scarier.

That said, if you didn't enjoy the first film, you're unlikely to enjoy this one. (If it ever sees an English-language release.)

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