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Sunday, March 24, 2024

Links and Updates

I know it’s been quiet on this blog for a while, but I really am trying to pull together my Twelve Best Scenes for 2023! Until then, let’s discuss the fact there’s been an insane amount of trailers for blockbuster material released in the last couple of weeks, including from the Big Three Franchises (Game of Thrones, Star Wars, MCU).

Let’s take a look...

Friday, March 1, 2024

Woman of the Month: Queen Margrete

Queen Margrete from Margrete: Queen of the North

Three months into 2024 and I’m already struggling to fill these posts. But luckily, I watched this film just last night and Queen Margrete more than met the qualifications for a worthy Woman of the Month.

There are plenty of stories out there concerning women who have to chose between their careers/personal ambition and their families/pursuit of love, but seldom has that conflict been placed in the context of a 14th century queen who rules subtly but firmly behind her adopted son, King Erik, and has worked her entire life to form a lasting peace between Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Now at age fifty, her life’s ambition is about to come to fruition, with leaders of all three countries pledging support for the Kalmar Union. I honestly can’t think of another film that revolves around a woman of her age and power, in a (relatively speaking) accurate historical setting, grappling with a moral crisis like the one presented here. Because just as the treaty is to be consolidated, a young man returns to court, claiming to be Margrete’s long-dead son Oluf.

If true, this would make him heir to the Danish throne, and a threat to Margrete’s life’s work.

Should she act as a mother or as a queen? Emotional complexity is derived from the fact that after fifteen years, she barely recognizes the man claiming to be her son, and has since replaced him in her heart with her great-nephew Erik, who is himself starting to act on the resentment he’s long harboured against her for uprooting him from his childhood to become her heir, not to mention the power she still holds over the court.

Trine Dyrholm delivers a fantastic performance as Margrete: she’s authoritative but not overbearing; unsentimental but not cruel. Poised, self-contained, shrewd and charismatic, she walks and talks like a queen, yet interestingly, never comes across as ruthless despite what she’s called upon to do. She is a mother, but she is also a leader, and the struggle to balance the two states never ends.

Thankfully, she’s spared any anachronistic “girl power” moments in which she vents her frustration at the oppressive nature of the patriarchy – instead, the film shows us how she has to tread carefully so as to not emasculate her adopted son, to continually stroke the egos of the men that surround her, and to never come across as too weak or emotional during the public trial of her supposed son. The difficulties of being a woman in a man’s world is apparent in every scene she moves through, and it’s all demonstrated without being commented upon.

When she makes her final choice, it’s to protect her true child – not Oluf, not Erik, but the Kalmar Union. But there’s nothing triumphant or “yaas queen!” about it. The last words her son speaks to her are: “you weren’t strong enough,” to which she replies: “no, I was too strong.” Despite the conflict and regret in her heart, she’s uncompromising, and the film makes sure we’re aware of the aftermath: that the Kalmar Union lasted over one hundred years, and that the bond between the three countries that lasts to this day can be largely attributed to Queen Margrete.

But like a lot of rulers, she (or at least this fictionalized account of her) had to pay a bitter price for it.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Reading/Watching Log #99

I had three weeks off and tried to stuff them with as many books, shows and activities as possible, though I’m not entirely sure I succeeded. That is, I didn’t get as much reading done as I wanted to. Look, I even brought out all the books I own written by my favourite authors and took a not-very-good picture of them:

Yeah, it was wishful thinking that I was going to get through all THIS in three weeks, especially on top of all the activities I had planned (I may have to do a separate post on what passes for a wild time in my life – it involved train rides, wandering around the city, various forms of street food, catching up with friends and buying expensive boots, then feeling guilty about it).

The break also gave me the chance to catch up on some shows that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while now – even though all of them have since been cancelled, or are approaching cancellation. Nancy Drew has already aired its fourth and final season (I’ve just finished the third), The Great ended after its third season (there was room for more, but thankfully it went out on a fairly conclusive note), Perry Mason was unfairly cancelled after only two seasons, and Evil is finishing after its not-yet-aired fourth and final season. All goods things come to an end, I suppose, and aside from Perry Mason, they got a better run than most these days.

This month I also read a book called The Lost Kingdom of Lantia by Maggie Hamilton, which I haven’t included here since I want to do a blogpost for it on its own. It was one of my absolute favourites as a preteen, so I’m taking the opportunity to do a deep-dive.

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Recommendations: The Best of 2023

2023 was a year of change for me, what with a move from working at my local library to a larger, further-away one, but I surprised myself by eventually realizing that I’ve enjoyed the switch. There are younger families and more children there, and far less elderly folk who consider you a repository for their endless complaining (of course, there’s also more swaggering little shits who roll their eyes at you when you point out that a library is not a good venue for their shouting/wrestling/posturing matches).

Working full-time means less time for writing, as you can see by the stats in the right-hand column of the page. This is the lowest number of posts I’ve written in any year since starting this blog in 2014, so thanks to all of you who have kept reading and commenting over the last decade. I write this blog mainly for my own enjoyment, but it’s always gratifying to get comments and feedback.

This was also the year I met my nephew for the first time, and even as I write this, my sister is in hospital giving birth to her second child, my niece. Or at least, she’s trying to. The baby isn’t particularly interested in joining us any time soon, so my sister has been put into induced labour – and that’s still not working, so keep her struggle in your thoughts as you peruse this list of my personal recommendations for 2023.

I ended up reading a lot of children’s books this year, partly because it’s my job and partly because they take less time to get through than the massive fantasy doorstoppers that never reach an actual conclusion. I also ploughed through my Slavic Fantasy reading list, which is still an ongoing project, though I’ve only got eight more books to go. I’ll be very relived once all that’s under my belt. 

For the second year in a row I didn’t get the chance to write up any meta, probably because my episode reviews for the third season of His Dark Materials and the second season of Legend of the Seeker took up a lot of free time. Xena Warrior Princess, not so much, as I wrote out those reviews for a message board years ago... but it’s been so long since I watched the episodes that I no longer recall the context of a lot of what I’ve written. Which means a rewatch is in order, which takes up even more time.

I did manage an in-depth look at the prematurely cancelled second season of Shadow and Bone, and two more playthroughs for games in the King’s Quest series: Romancing the Throne and To Heir is Human. Hopefully I’ll get to The Perils of Rosella during my break, which is a big deal in computer gaming history.

Below are the books, films and television shows I enjoyed most this year, and it’s interesting to compare this to my lists of 2021 and 2022 in order to see what medium I favoured. It was an incredible year for children’s graphic novels (books like Wingbearer, Cat’s Cradle and Lightfall are only omitted because they’re not completed yet) but not so much for television (probably because I spent a lot of time watching enjoyable but hardly must-see long runners such as Spooks and Sailor Moon).

By the time you’ve read through it, hopefully another little member of the human race will have joined us in the world.

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Woman of the Month: Toph Beifong

Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender

Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Avatar the Last Airbender is imminent... which makes this the perfect time to go back and watch the original animated show instead.

Besides the compelling plot and beautifully realized world, the show offered a range of lovable, three-dimensional characters – many of which were women (or girls). In fact, it’s an absolute buffet of fascinating female characters, from the ostensible lead Katara, to the terrifying villain Azula, to the supporting cast of Suki, Ty Lee and Mai. Even minor characters like Ursa or Kyoshi or Aunt Wu are brimming with life and vitality.  

Which meant I was rather torn on who to pick for this entry, especially since Katara is so woefully (or wilfully) misunderstood by vast swaths of the fandom... but there’s no denying there’s something special about Toph. Simply put: there are very few female characters like her.

In fact, she leaves such an indelible mark on the story as a whole that it’s almost a shock to recall she’s only in two-thirds of the show’s episodes; not appearing in the first season at all. Not only that, but she was initially conceived as a very different sort of character. Remember the introductory sequence that showcases the four types of elemental bending? Water is Pakku, fire is Azula, air is Aang, and earth is... some guy. Well, that was Toph’s original design before Aaron Ehasz pitched the idea that the Avatar’s earth-bending teacher might work better (or be more interesting) as a girl. And the rest is history.

Toph is first glimpsed in a vision Aang has while traversing the swamplands, which depicts her as petite, elusive, and finely dressed. When we eventually see her in the flesh, it’s in quite a different context: as a contestant in a pro-bending tournament where she effortlessly takes out fighters that are twice her size. And there’s room for one more surprise: she’s known as the Blind Bandit on account of the fact that she literally can’t see.

Aang knows she’s destined to be his earth-bending teacher, as someone who can “listen to the earth” and moves with immense control and grace. Toph, however, is reticent – not least because she’s living a double-life. It turns out she’s the only daughter of the Beifong family, and because she’s been blind since birth, her parents are convinced she’s a helpless and delicate invalid. Her earth-bending she learnt in secret from the badger-moles; her talents have been kept completely hidden from her parents.

It's only when Aang is taken captive that Toph is spurred to action, prevailing over an entire team of pro-bending wrestlers single-handedly. She runs away from home to join Team Avatar, and for the first time in her life – she’s free.

Of course, there are some growing pains when it comes to integrating herself with the others. She is, after all, a poor little rich girl with something to prove. This means she’s going to look after herself – and ONLY herself, foregoing any communal chores (that she probably doesn’t know how to do anyway) and tending to her own needs. Naturally she clashes with Katara, and when it comes to train Aang in the art of earth-bending, she’s not exactly a wise and patient teacher. Her mentality is one of tough love, and she’s going to throw as many rocks at her pupil as can until he learns to stand up for himself.

There’s also the issue of her father sending a couple of bounty hunters after her, convinced that she’s been kidnapped. They manage to track her down and separate her from her friends, but in her time of utmost need, she concentrates on the metal enclosure surrounding her, honing in on its natural ores and shaping them to her will. Girl just invented metal-bending.

Toph is just one greatest hit after another: storming the Earth King’s palace, taking on the entire Dai Li, holding up a building as it’s sinking into sand, dismantling a Fire Nation airship mid-flight, and my personal favourite: the full body metal shield. I’m going to have to post the scene here because it’s Just. So. Cool. 

Along with poking fun at her own blindness (though she’s so capable that her friends can forget it’s even a thing) and being the only one emotionally removed enough to point out that Zuko is Aang’s best chance at getting a suitable fire-bending teacher, she’s also a pretty great shit-talker. For all the show’s brilliance before she turned up, it’s her introduction that really makes you feel that the secret ingredient, the elusive X-factor, the je ne sais quoi, has ARRIVED.

There’s even some fun gender commentary at work, from the discrepancy between her diminutive appearance and awesome strength, to her frank enjoyment of gross-out jokes. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a female character prank her friends with fake armpit hair before or since Toph did it.

She even gets the last line of dialogue in the show (“well, I think you all look perfect!”) though the comic books and sequel series The Legend of Korra explore what happened to her in the years to come. Toph eventually opens an academy in order to pass on her skills in metal-bending to others, before – rather controversially – pursuing a career in law enforcement after ennui sets in. A cop... really?

Much of her adult life is still something of a mystery, having given birth to two daughters with different fathers (maybe the upcoming animated films will shed more light on things) but as an old woman she’s living as a hermit in the swamplands. She’s as crotchety and sharp-tongued as you’d expect, and yet she’s clearly grown in wisdom and compassion – traits she no doubt picked up from Aang. Helping restore Korra to full strength and rescue her family from Kuvira’s captivity is her grand swansong, and she departs the show with the words: “at some point you got to leave it to the kids.”

I could write more about her, but this entry is already long enough. In summation, Toph Beifong is a force of nature, a prodigy, a mould-breaker, and in her later years, something of an enigma. She was one of the most remarkable aspects of what was already a remarkable show: a girl from a sheltered background who is nothing like anyone expects; someone who has raised herself up from profound vulnerability and made her disability her greatest strength.

Her impact cannot be understated, which means one of my favourite scenes in the whole show is when Aang is fighting Lord Ozai in the grand finale, and for a moment we see the world in “Toph vision” – that is, the visual representation of how she uses her feet to feel seismic vibrations in the earth. It gives Aang the upper hand in the fight – making Toph instrumental in defeating Ozai when she’s not even there.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Reading/Watching Log #98

No, your eyes don’t deceive you, there are only books on the log this month – no films or shows save for the Doctor Who Christmas Special. This just sort of happened rather than being something I planned out; I’m still racing to catch up on all the posts I usually do for the end of the year, and there wasn’t much free time for anything else.

The two shows I am watching (Elementary and The Adventures of Robin Hood) are probably going to stretch into March, because February is when my annual leave kicks in, and I’m going to use it to finally get the quartet of Evil, Nancy Drew, The Great and Perry Mason under my belt. Three weeks of freedom to make up for my Covid Christmas!

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2023

It is now my mission to write up all the end-of-year posts that I usually have finished by this point in time, but which I’m running behind on thanks to that pesky Covid-induced delay.

As ever, this is my annual post of female characters I watched or read about during the course of the year who didn’t make the cut for Woman of the Month, but were still engaging and noteworthy. It also works as something of a retrospective concerning female characters in general for 2023, specifically in the realm of mainstream pop-culture entertainment.

As ever, there were the usual problems: women getting fridged to motivate a male character, writers being blatantly terrified of any complexity or shortcomings in their depictions of women (which inevitably leads to accusations of girl-bossing or Mary Suedom) and women who are genuinely spunky and charming, but who never actually get to impact the plot in any meaningful way (Marion Ravenwood, Kitty Softpaws, Cara Dutton...)

Plus, there is still that pervading assumption that women have to be relatable role models – which means that when characters like Evelyn Quan Wang or General Nanisca come along, it feels like a genuine (and glorious) shock to the system.

But my main issue with female characters in 2023 is simply that there wasn’t much to get excited about. With one obvious exception (she’s blonde and shares her name with an outdoor cooking device) it was a fallow year for female characters – at least in the media I consumed.

Part of that had to do with the fact I simply didn’t watch as many shows or films this year. Because I’ve been burned so many times with unceremonious cancellations on streaming services, I ended up sticking with shows that aired decades ago (Spooks, Sailor Moon, Elementary) which left me with a much smaller pool of female characters to choose from. For the first time ever, I had to skip a Woman of the Month post and write it out later, simply because I had so few options.

And more generally speaking, there just didn’t seem to be many compelling female characters on display this year. I’ll have more to say about that in a bit, but for now, here are some of the women worth your attention from an otherwise not-hugely-inspirational year...