Tag: star wars

Film & Television Opinion

Sex, Gender and the Thirteenth Doctor

David Stringer

The casting of Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor has predictably caused a venting of fury, and mocking of the furious. It’s sad, because it should have been a cause for excitement at casting such a talented actor.

I’m one of the few people in the UK not to have seen either Broadchurch or Downton Abbey, but I’ve been a fan of Whittaker since seeing her in Attack the Block and Venus. Her performance in Venus is probably one of my favourite ever performances – as a young, chavvy girl she has a weird quasi-romantic relationship with an elderly actor, played by Peter O’Toole. At various times Whittaker’s Jessie is warm-hearted, funny, sympathetic and vulnerable, exploitative, emotionally indifferent and tender. Taking aside the question of her sex, Whittaker is clearly qualified for the role. While there were justifiable questions around the lesser-known Matt Smith when he was cast, Whittaker clearly has the CV to take a major role like The Doctor, and I’m excited to see what she’ll bring – probably more so than any of the new era of Doctors.

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Film & Television Opinion

Bryan Singer on Superman Returns

David Stringer

Bryan Singer made a few headlines last week when he blamed the box office failure of his film, Superman Returns, on the fact that it was targeted at a female audience – who didn’t turn out to watch it as highly as he’d hoped:

It was a movie made for a certain kind of audience. Perhaps more of a female audience. It wasn’t what it needed to be, I guess. I think I could lop the first quarter off and start the movie a bit more aggressively and maybe find a way to start the movie with the jet disaster sequence or something. I could have grabbed the audience a little more quickly. I don’t know what would have helped. Probably nothing.

Singer’s quotes have been taken out of context slightly, but the idea that the film was targeted at women is his most solid definition of the “certain kind of audience” he was chasing, and he thinks that there was “probably nothing” different he could have done.

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Comedy

The Phantom Menace? In Three Dimensions? Wow!

David Stringer

I’m going to do something I’ve been planning to for a while – recommend some videos.
I still don’t really know what I’m doing here with the blog, so I’m throwing everything at the wall in the hope that some things stick.

The first is from ‘Honest Trailers’ – they do alternate trailers for films that are…well, more honest.
This is from the 3d release of The Phantom Menace. It’s decent, with one or two good jokes (mainly later on), but not hilarious.

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Egotism

My use of NaNoWriMo

David Stringer

Like many across the world who want to be writers but keep putting it off, I’ve been taking part in NaNoWriMo.
But rather than using the month, as intended, to get an entire novel written, I’ve used the thing for two different purposes – to get a short story written, and to get started with writing a blog.
The blog so far has been a partial success I’d say – got a fair few things down there, starting to get into a rhythm.

The short story, a science fiction story set on a space ship in the distant future (I never said it was anything profound) is something I’ve went back to on and off for a few years.
I’ve had greater problems with this. Mainly around self-consciousness – I tend to feel, when I’m writing, ‘did I do this right? Does this work?’
So I’ll obsess over whether jokes are funny, action sequences are exciting enough, and so on.

The taxation of trade routes to outlaying star systems is in dispute!

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