Avengers- Why it was Frackin’ Fantastic

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Saw The Avengers late last night and twelve hours later… I’m still catching my breath! The movie was fantastic–frackin’ fantastic. I’ve been pretty cynical lately about comic book flicks. With the stellar exceptions of Watchmen and The Dark Knight series, I’ve placed recent comic or graphic novel remakes into three categories: decent, lackluster or WTF? Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, ranked among my decent. These were okay movies with all the required action, though they didn’t rise above my expectations. I walked out feeling I’d gotten my money’s worth, but wasn’t itching to see either again. The Hulk and X-Men First Class, I found rather lackluster. There were superheroes so that was nice, but otherwise the storyline and plot earned a rating of “meh.” Wolverine, Green Lantern and Ghostrider were so god-awful, I left the theater wondering how a few screenwriters could so mangle a winning popular comic book? I mean, straight up guys, WTF!?! So what made the Avengers different? What did the film seem to “get” that so many of their recent counterparts hadn’t? More, after the jump. But be warned…there be SPOILERS!

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Speculative Art- Kehinde Wiley

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I first saw the work of artist Kehinde Wiley at the Brooklyn Museum. It’s still there. You walk in, and on the left wall is an immense mural of a figure that looks somewhat like Tony Starks (Ghostface, not Downey Jr.), on horseback crossing the alps–a reworking of Jacques-Louis David’s 1800 oil-painting, Napoleon Crossing the Alps or Bonaparte at the St Bernard Pass.

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The United States of Hoodoo

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The United States of Hoodoo is an upcoming documentary film by Oliver Hardt and Darius James. Originally picked this up from Aker Futuristically Ancient’s blog and was just going to reblog, but wanted to add my few thoughts. The blurb on the documentary’s official website describes it as an exploration “about how African based spirituality has informed America’s popular culture” that “shakes up traditional and stereotypical ways of thinking about race, religion, rationality.” The West and Central African syncretic religions that traveled to the New World via the trans Atlantic slave trade have indeed informed much of American popular speculative culture, but unfortunately in not so commendable ways.

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The “Other” Histories of Fantasy

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This morning, as I was thumbing through the hordes of #OWS tweets from yesterday (Happy Post May Day!), I came across one from Orbit books. “Read about how fantasy authors steal ideas from history,” it said, and directed me to an article by author Karen Miller (KE Mills) of the Rogue Agent series titled, “Stealing from the Fantastic Past.” Great, I thought! I’m a historian-apprentice, I like fantasy, don’t mind a little theft, this should be interesting. And it was.

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GOT- “The Ghost of Harrenhal”

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Another Sunday, another episode of Game of Thrones. As usual, warnings of kinda-spoilers–kinda, because unless you’ve read the books the clues I give won’t make a lick of sense. This offering, titled “The Ghost of Harrenhal,” spent actually little time in Harrenhal, dizzily transporting us from The Wall to Essos and back. We start off with Stannis’s and Melisandre’s freakish shadow baby teaching Renly, and all newcomers to ASOIAF, the dire meaning of “valar morghulis.” This leads to a case of “guilt-on-first-sight” by several guards who implicate Brienne the Beauty in the crime, and pay for their sloppy detective work on the sharp end of her sword. Nice fight scene. Lady Stark urges the lovesick king’s guard (who was seriously barking up the wrong tree) to flee with her, as Renly’s forces sail away, disintegrate into mass confusion or start lining up for Stannis. Later Brienne takes an oath of vengeance and swears her fealty to Lady Stark, in a touching Thelma & Louise moment that we all know is going to end in a brutal hanging. (see? no sense. not a lick.)

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