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Movie Review: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

What a piece of shit.  Is there anything more excruciating than the third act of a bad action movie?  Where you know exactly what’s going to happen, and who is going to win in the end, yet have to sit through an endless battle sequence anyway?

How it pains me to refer to action movies when discussing a film based on Alice in Wonderland, for christ’s sake,  a story that is meandering and exploratory – and not action oriented –  in a most pleasurable and singular way.  But this is a 2010 Disney movie and so we must have action,  a villain with a scarred face, and a lame female empowerment message to wrap it all up.  I’d rather not even mention the fact that it was directed by Tim Burton who used to make good movies, I think?  Not that this one didn’t have its redeeming qualities, but sometimes you have to take a stand.

There’s lots to hate here.  Dreary, cluttered CGI landscapes.  A pummeling music score so intent on enforcing a feeling of WONDER and AMAZEMENT that it never abates for more than a second or two.  Unattractive characters that don’t inspire even a passing interest.  Anne Hathaway embarrassing herself.

About an hour in my nine-year-old charge turned to me and said, “They’re stealing everything from other movies.”  She still liked it, but the path to cynicism is slow and sure.

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Backwoods Update

Rebel Satori Press/Queer Mojo posted my bio information on their website. Exciting! I finally signed and sent off my contract for Backwoods this past week. Word on the street is that Michael will be finished with the illustrations by July. Whenever I stop to really consider that I managed to do this, I manage to blow my own mind.

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Book Fetishism

I mentioned my latent book fetish to some friends today and it made think of the fairly brilliant credit sequence for the movie Gentlemen Broncos.

Gentlemen Broncos Titles from Reuben Armstrong on Vimeo.


Note: I have not seen this movie, nor have ever seen a Jared/Jerusha Hess movie, nor do I ever want to. I know this is a purely speculative position, but I’ve read many reviews of their films and feel almost certain that I would hate – not merely dislike, but HATE – them. I could be wrong. Probably not.

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New Story Alert!

I’ve got a new story up on Butt Magazine’s blog.

I used to write a lot more about my true-life escapades (back when I was a youngster and had a lot of true-life escapades) and I’d share that stuff now if it wasn’t so embarrassing to me (both for the dumb and dangerous things I did and for the fact that my writing was pretty weak). Maybe in ten years. Anyway, this was a story I had sitting around for whatever reason and yeah, it’s all true, except I’m pretty sure the whole “sniper” thing was more boast than fact.

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