Charlie's Angels

Charlie's Angels was so much fun! I like it when women get to be badasses and get to be funny. I will freely admit this is not a profound cinematic exploration of the human condition, it's escapist fantasy, but it made me laugh and had some good action sequences and never pissed me off and can't that be enough? Apparently not, according to the box office. Which annoys me... feels like dudes get endless Bourne & Furious movies and their ilk even if one does poorly but the next women-led action movie is going to have to climb this hill. Anyways, if you are like me and your favorite movie formula these days is "but with women" (Ghostbusters, but with women; Terminator, but with women; superheroes, but with women; etc) then I think you will enjoy this movie. (As "spies, but with women" goes, this is probably closer tonally to "Spy Who Dumped Me" than "Atomic Blonde", but the closest parallel might actually be Bond back when Bond movies were sillier?)

Also we got the trailer for the new Top Gun and I have to say the only Top Gun movie I want to see in 2019 is one that addresses the Secretary of the Navy getting fired because the president intervened to protect a war criminal. (Or I guess the Top Gun movie about US massacres of civilians with drones, that's been timely for awhile...)

Shatter the Sky

Shatter the Sky, Rebecca Kim Wells. Solid, enjoyable YA fantasy - in my cynical middle age I'm pleased now whenever I find YA that doesn't fuck up the pacing and emotional beats, and while nothing here was super innovative, there were some nice turns of plot and details in the worldbuilding. This has dragons and an oppressive empire and might appeal to fans of Yolen's Pit Dragon Chronicles or Karen Healey and Robyn Fleming's Empress of Timbra. I'll read the sequel, and I'm pretty sure Wells works at Porter Square Books, so yay local authors.

However. I want to talk about some stuff related to shipping and queer content, which I'm going to put behind a spoiler cut, although, for me personally, I think I would have liked to have had more of an idea about this going in. ( Read more... )