“These are some of the things hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution. It has the sound of epic myth, but it’s simply a description of the evolution of the cosmos as revealed by science in our time. And we, we who embody the local eyes and ears, and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, we’ve begun at last to wonder about our origins. Star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and, perhaps, throughout the cosmos. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”
“Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Right now, the highest profile gay comic book character is probably Batwoman. But inspired by President Obama’s stance on gay marriage, DC has announced that they’ll be dragging a major “established character” out of the closet. Who is it? Let the speculation begin.
Aquaman. I’m calling it.
“Theme From Dinosaur Planet” - MJ Hibbert and the Validators. Awoo Awoo Awoo!
You Can’t Take It With You (1938)
This film is quite an interesting little gem: it’s one of the few movies which I cannot stand the first thirty minutes of, but end up liking anyway.
If you want to watch a movie about class, about poor vs. rich, about a romeo-and-juliet-esque romance in which social and economic class prevents two lovers from getting together, and the families initially hate each other but come to like each other after some bonding…wait, I just described the whole movie…anyway, this is the movie for you. Like many themes that seem cliche and overdone in 2012, the whole rich-kid-wants-to-marry-poor-kid-but-uh-oh-look-whos-coming-to-dinner! might have been quite original and inventive in its time, so I’m willing to look past that. I can name about ten films with the exact same plot off the top of my head, but this one stands out, not for its originality but it’s good sense of humor and excellent cast of characters.
Tony’s (James Stewart) family are capitalist oppressor pig-dogs. They’re obscenely wealthy and presented in a hilariously-one-sided way (the dad wants to seize property by evicting folks out of their homes, might as well piss on the graves of their ancestors and profane their gods while he’s at it, the way he goes about it), but as the movie goes on they’re given a little more charm. Alice’s (Jean Arthur) family is poor, but not the annoying please-sir-can-I-have-some-more kind of poor; just the good old-fashioned Great Depression era poor. They’re also all eccentric and wacky, which makes watching them do poor people things is actually a lot more amusing than it sounds. Tony and Alice naturally get along splendidly, but their folks, oh boy, they sure don’t! No seriously, it is a lot funnier than it sounds.
The best part of the movie is the dinner and courtroom scenes, about the middle two half-hours (the film is two hours long, and as I mentioned earlier, the first thirty minutes is boring character introduction and the last thirty minutes is hand-holding and skipping through fields of daisies). Here you get a great look at what The Office might have looked like if it were filmed in the 30s: the origins of awkard humor. Watching Tony’s dad and mom squirm as they’re barraged on all sides by wackos from Alice’s family does not get dull. Later, when they end up in court for reasons I’m still not quite clear about (Alice’s brother was printing Communist propoganda, so they arrest everyone in the house, even people entirely unrelated? Okay…), the movie takes a more dramatic turn and takes some solid jabs at social injustice and prejudices. It’s a very solid movie, and I would watch it again, but I would remember to have a few more glasses of beer before I started. 7/10
P.S.: Most unintentionally-hilarious scene: A tax collector shows up at Alice’s house and claims her father Martin (Lionel Barrymore, who plays this role perfectly by the way) owes twenty-two years of back-taxes. Martin asks why he has to pay taxes, explaining that when he goes to the store and buys something, it’s “there” and he can see it; when he pays taxes he never sees what he buys. The taxman says something along the lines of “your tax dollars go to our army and navy, and battleships that keep you safe.” Martin responds with “Battleships? We haven’t used battleships since the Spanish-American war!” The movie was released in 1938. By 1945, just seven years later, America will have won World War II, thanks in no small part to our impressive fleet of battleships and aircraft carriers.
Follow me on this. The evil guy we see in the flashbacks is the firebender that killed Amon’s parents and scarred him. Aang and Toph tried to bring him to justice in the courts (a lot of the flashback’s action seems to be set in a court-like room, maybe before the council), but the villain gets away with it. Aang then retaliates by taking away his bending. Where this might go is just a guess, but Aang’s vigilante justice may have seriously upset the balance of power in Republic City. Perhaps Aang, feeling sorry for the young Amon, trained him how to spiritbend to protect himself. Or maybe Amon, though satisfied that the man who killed his parents has been taken down by the Avatar, is afraid of the magnitude of the Avatar’s power and sees spiritbending as just another tool of oppression to cause fear; he then vows that no bender would get the upper-hand on him again, and starts the Equalist movement.
