Is it bad when my chief thought on the season finale of a show about a strong female character is "You could've at least let her shoot herself"?

As if starring in a remake of a Charles Bronson film isn't enough, Jason Statham continues his streak of being the new Charles Bronson by now starring in a movie with a cute little Asian girl. But don't get him wrong. This isn't a Kindergarten Cop or a The Pacifier situation. He means business. Just cuz he lets her watch cartoons and stuff doesn't change his feelings on intact criminal body parts (he's against them).

Frankly, I like Statham being the new Charles Bronson. Sure, sometimes it's nice when a serious actor decides to play a badass, but other times, you see Leonardo DiCaprio pretending to be a tough-as-nails military commando and it's just… c'mon, dude, we all know you weren't training to kill Ruskies when you were eighteen. You were telling Rose your heart would go on.

So having a badass actor who moonlights as a dramatic actor instead of the other way around… that's good. We could do with a few more. I think Gina Carono should be the female version of Jason Statham (the female version of this dramatic actor/badass actor being the "hot actress/badass actress" divide. I think Carono nicely straddles that line, and then puts a wrestling hold on it and chokes it out).

This, Statham's latest, tries to switch things up. I don't know if this is how Statham picks scripts, but a lot of his films seem to do that. The Mechanic had a surprisingly effective relationship going between Statham and Ben Foster. Killer Elite had the interesting concept that Statham couldn't just assassinate his targets, he had to make it look like accidents, until the very end when he decided he could just kill a guy and say "yeah, he got mugged or something, whatever." And the Crank movies are, well, Crank movies.

This time, the movie's a bit more self-aware than usual. It knows it's a B-movie, so it goes over-the-top in places, and it skips around the exposition to get to the point instead of drawing things out. I don't think they even cast someone as Statham's dead wife. They just have him call her on the phone saying "Honey, someone's going to kill you!", then later he looks off-screen and goes "Someone killed you!"

So what we end up with is a typical three-star Statham movie that's trying to be a four-star Statham movie, but it's a little too clever for its own good. It overthinks stuff, and that makes it dip toward two-star range. For instance, the movie ignores Chekov's well-known Law: If the Russian Mob kills the hero's wife in the first act, the hero must kill the Russian Mob in the third act. Instead, Statham lets the main Russian guy get away to stop the cycle of violence so he and the little girl can live in peace. I get what they're going for, showing that protecting the girl is more important than vengeance, but Statham never seems that interested in vengeance. They say out loud that he could've gotten his revenge at any point, he just didn't. So it seems more like Statham didn't really care about his pregnant wife who the bad guy killed and then bragged about killing.

Also, the bad guy sets it up so anyone Statham gets close to will get killed by the Russian Mob, which you'd think is the kind of thing that would immediately put Statham in roaring rampage of revenge mode, just to stop people from getting killed. Look, turn the other cheek is great and all, but that would apply more to someone killing Statham's wife in a car accident or something. This is more like Statham forgiving a serial killer. At the end, Statham even gives the criminals their money back instead of stealing it to donate to charity or something, so it seems like all this craziness really accomplished was inconveniencing the bad guys some.

Another thing is that for a movie that's trying to be four-stars, they half-ass it on the movie's central relationship. See, Statham is getting ready to commit suicide when he sees the little girl getting hassled, which moves him to intervene, save her life, beat up her pursuers, and in general star in an action movie. He takes her to a hotel room, they have one scene together which is mostly her giving him exposition, then the bad guys attack and capture him, so the rest of the movie is Statham trying to get her back.

See, that feels half-assed to me. I was expecting something more like Terminator 2, where there're a lot of scenes between the Terminator and John Connor, building the relationship and exploring that stuff. But they spend most of the movie apart, so it comes off a little presumptuous when Statham talks about how this girl saved his life and gave him a reason to live and stuff. Like, you knew her for five minutes. Don't make up your mind so fast. She might suck. You never know.

It almost becomes Nabokov-y, the way he assumes they have this deep, spiritual bond. Luckily, it turns out that her life sucks too and her parents are dead and she really does need a full-time guardian. But can you imagine if she was just a happy little schoolgirl who was nabbed off the street? He'd beat up the bad guys, she'd thank him, then she'd go back to her parents. Would he still be reading this big connection into her?

I know they were probably worried about having an annoying kid character gumming up their lean, mean B-movie script, but they should've risked that to get us really caring about these characters and their relationship.

There are two big villains the movie builds up, either by having them specifically having killed Statham's pregnant wife or by having a lot of characters talk about how there's only one guy who can kill Statham and this is the guy. In both cases, instead of a showdown, there's more of a subversion. Again, get what they're going for, kinda an Indiana Jones shooting the scimitar guy thing, but what makes something like that work is that it happens during, after, or before a larger action scene. It's not like promising the audience a big fight and then telling them a dick joke. It's like "oh, we've given you one big action scene, you're stuffed, you don't want another, so we're going to give you a joke instead, so it's an action scene and a joke."

Like in Spider-Man 2. First, they had the really big Spider-Man/Doc Ock train fight. Then they spent a couple minutes on talking. Then it was time for another fight, only instead of another big, drawn-out fight, they changed things up and gave the audience a short, sweet fight and then a dramatic confrontation between Peter and Octavius. It worked pretty well. Less is more, but less is still something. You can't say 'nothing is more'.

I did like that Jason Statham's character isn't just an ex-cage-fighter, but also a cop who played by his own rules and a vigilante who took the law into his own hands. A lot of these B-movie clichés are so stale that they should pull a Glee and do mash-ups instead of just straight covers. Like in Lockout. That would've been a much better movie if, instead of Guy Pearce just being "the best agent we've got… but he's a loose cannon," he'd also made a vow to lose his virginity before he graduated high school. And he's dressing up like a woman to get custody of his kids!

One funny thing: two of the villains in the movie (there are about seven) are gay. Like, for each other. And it's just a thing. The movie doesn't play it as being creepy. No one says "After I beat you, Jason Statham, I'm gonna track down your brother and give him a blowjob!" or anything. They're just two guys in love who happen to be corrupt public officials. I think they would've been treated the same way if one of them were a woman. Jason Statham seems pretty accepting too, possibly because he played a bicurious man in the Transporter movies. He does call them "boyfriends" in a somewhat insensitive way, but one of them called his dead wife a cow. Those gay villains, so catty.

So apparently there's a male stripper movie, Magic Mike, which is based on Channing Tatum's work as a male stripper. I can't help but think... really, Hollywood? Channing Tatum? That's the guy you're making a movie about? Not for nothing, but how's this sound.

Michael Fassbender as Christopher Lee. We follow his work in Special Operations during WW2 (where he killed Nazis with knives, c.f. Lord of the Rings), then cover his work at Hammer Films (although Lee's work campaigning on behalf of The Wicker Man should merit a subplot; amazing stuff). Benedict Cumberbatch plays his best friend and fellow horror legend, Peter Cushing. And the financing takes care of itself, as we can just go on tumblr and ask for five dollars from every fangirl who wants to see Fassbender and Cumberbatch play heterosexual life partners.

So with the news of a third male masseuse accusing John Travolta of gropery, this news story has reached the all important comedy rule of three and is now ripe for satire. I will give you, the audience, the choice of which quip to accept.

A. I know women have it bad, but at least they don't have to worry about John Travolta.

B. Not a good week for gay men. First North Carolina, and now they can't even trust male masseuses to keep their big mouths shut.

C. A classy and socially just refusal to look humorously at the situation.

D. Nothing I say will ever be as funny as Community.

Just plain news: NBC has ordered a shortened season of Community. I think we'd all agree that less Community is better than no Community at all. So alright, NBC. I'll release one of the children, safe and sound. But only one!

Bad news: The e-book I was going to publish through Fempop has been delayed to roughly November. I've been trying to peg that down to November 2012, but it's actually been very hard to get a hold of my editor. It would honestly be simpler if I had a phone number or a mailing address. Who knew the internet would make it harder to stalk someone? But, on the bright side...

Good news: This gives me more time to make my e-book more like Fifty Shades of Gray. Sorry haters, I gotta go where the heat is. But don't worry, I think this excerpt will prove it stays very true to the characters.

Atlin brushed a lock of hair away from Tabreth's face. "I've... I've never done this before," she said, restraining the urge to fidget in his strong arms.

He planted a chaste kiss on her lips. The first, and least, of many. "Neither have I. I guess we'll just figure it out as we go."

She nodded. "By the way, have you ever wanted to put on nipple clamps and spank someone with a rusty shovel?"

"Whoa! It's like you read my mind!"

Good news: Okay, kidding. Actually, my book has always been something of a commentary on that kind of story... the gothic romance, Fifty Shades of Gray, any book with Greek Millionaire in the title... it's always about a powerful, almost paternal Manly Man and the innocent, virginal maiden he sexes up. And these are female fantasies. In fact, how many urban fantasy series featured a powerful, domineering, even sinister male as a love interest? (Possible male counterpoint: Shota? You'd be surprised how many people apparently ship Power Girl with a twelve-year-old boy...)

So my book was something of a reaction to that. Not a satire or even an affectionate parody, since I hadn't read enough of those kind of stories to form a real opinion and it doesn't seem fair to hate-read my way through some Harlequin romances to tear them down. I mean, easy target much? But it is a subversion, recasting it so the powerful, sinister, domineering figure is a woman and the helpless, naive virgin is... yeah.

So I thought, while I wait, I'd read some Shadow Male books and get a bit more specific idea of what I'm kinda-sorta satirizing. So, folks, any good (or good-bad) "Oh Mr. Darcy!" books you'd care to recommend?

Title: Girlfriends
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,112
Characters/Pairings: Cara/Kahlan
Previous: Frenemies
Summary: When Kahlan has something to tell Cara, it's not always what she wants to hear.

( Don't take this the wrong way, but… could you not talk for a bit? I don't mean to be rude, but I have something to say—something that I really need to say—and it would go best if it were a speech, not a conversation. )

Title: You're just another entry in the ledger, but you get the most ink
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,804
Characters/Pairings: Clint/Natasha
Summary: Clint doesn’t know when Natasha started watching him sleep. But it's nice to know he won't get up and kill anyone in the middle of the night.

( Natasha didn't touch him. She didn't take his hand in a clandestine moment or clap his shoulder or say anything, really. They weren't that kind of people. By standing in the room she was there for him. There was no need to repeat herself. )

Presented for your consideration... you know how Indiana Jones and Star Wars have LEGO sets? Sure, we don't know how it happened, but it led to the LEGO video games that are pretty fun. But have you ever asked yourself a terrifying question... what if you stapled LEGO to a property without the appropriate pop culture cache that would impress a child enough to want to play with a LEGO set of it? What if whatever anonymous, thankless Swedish wizards who protect the innocence of the LEGO brand were replaced with some foul genetic mixture of Mark Millar and a morning host on FM radio? Is it possible for something to not only be charmless, not only aggressively charmless, but to be some sort of anti-charm weapon, capable of shorting out a Deschanel sister from forty yards out?

Ladies, gentleman, I give you Kre-O Battleship.



Yes. Just as Battleship is a malformed clone of Transformers, it has now mated with a malformed clone of LEGO and formed an even more fearsome hybrid, an Uruk-hai of branding, if you will. There is so much wrong with that video that to enumerate all of it would summon the Beast and make human blood flow as rivers, so I will confine my bile to one section. The humans need time to rearm, so they pretend to surrender, saying "We surrender! We give up!" and displaying a white flag.

Ignoring the ability of humanity and hostile alien to communicate well enough to display the intent to surrender, which in all likelihood would instead be interpreted by extraterrestrial life as "readiness to anally mate in exchange for Richard Matheson's fax number," humanity then turns around and un-surrenders, actually saying "You fell for that? It's go time!" (because Kre-Os can only speak in obnoxious catch phrases. Oh God. Oh God. Is that what the LEGOs are saying in their magical gibberish language? Is that what the SIMS are saying?)


Are you really regurgitating a reference to Rob Schneider's time on SNL? You sons of whores. YOU SONS OF WHORES!

Ignoring that, fake-surrendering is pretty much a war crime. It means that the next time someone tries to surrender to the aliens, it's only common sense for them to assume it's a trick and just kill them to the last man. So, if the aliens came across a boatful of nuns, orphans, and kittens, and they tried to surrender... yeah.

Are you proud of yourself, Kre-O Taylor Kitsch? Is this, at last, what Kre-O Coach Taylor taught you?

Title: Frenemies
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,657
Characters/Pairings: Cara/Kahlan
Previous: Roommates
Summary: Cara wishes she weren't in love with Kahlan. Wishes she weren't on her doorstep.

( Do you want me to wear kid gloves or do you want me to talk to you like an equal? Because if you want someone to hold your hand and say you and Richard will work things out, that's not me. )