Tag: movies

On Clark Kent

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, movies2 Comments

We just got back from Superman, the first movie I’ve seen in theaters in a good long while and the first superhero movie I’ve seen in theaters in longer than that. If I write a review of this movie right now it’s going to come off as completely unhinged, because I don’t remember the last time I loved a movie as much as I loved this one. Y’all know what I’m like about this stuff. I need to give it a day or two to cool off before I try to write a review. That’s assuming I don’t see it again tomorrow, which isn’t off the table, and which might reset the clock.

It’s fucking fantastic. Go see it. But let’s set that aside, and talk about TikTok for a minute.

This is KJ and Trinity Blair. They’re TikTokers. They’re also identical twins. KJ has about a quarter million followers and Trinity has 1.6 million. Before I say another word, I wanna be real clear that I have no intention of saying anything negative about either of them and since both of them are way more famous than I will ever be it’s not like they have a reason to give a shit what I think anyway.

Trinity Blair’s main account is here and KJ’s is here. Trinity also runs a podcast, I think, but I don’t really know anything about it. Go ahead and look at any of their videos. I guarantee you will see a comment where someone asks if they know about each other, and anything where both of them show up you will have someone who will ask if they are twins. I only know they exist because they ran a little … joke, if you’re being generous, publicity stunt if you’re slightly less generous, or “scam” if you’re not generous, where they pretended to not know each other existed a while and actually brought their parents into it where each of them confronted a parent about her “secret” twin sister.

Now, through this whole thing, there were people posting comments and linking to videos of the two of them together, because it’s not like they purged their accounts before they did it. But one way or another they probably realized that they’d be able to convince a whole lot of people that they hadn’t previously known about each other, since every single time one of them posts they get a dozen comments about it anyway.

You know what you don’t ever see in their comments? “Hey, are you two secretly the same person?”

And maybe you see where I’m going with this, and what the connection to Superman is.

I have long been willing to die on the hill that everyone in the world not knowing that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person is not remotely the high bar to suspension of disbelief that people think it is. Clark Kent and Superman have been seen together. They live in a world with shapeshifters, for God’s sake, and there are photographs of the two with each other. Clark Kent, while an influential journalist, is just a journalist, and a print journalist at that, and unless you think most of the world can pick Josh Marshall or Jamelle Bouie out of a lineup he isn’t close to being famous enough that most people know his face. And you know what people would do if they thought the two of them looked alike?

They’d say “Man, you and Superman really look alike,” not “Man, you and Superman are clearly the same guy!” Trinity and KJ Blair are literally identical and people regularly question whether they’re twins. That’s the reaction– people looking at twins and questioning what they’re seeing. Every set of identicals on the planet has the experience of someone seeing them with their twin and asking if they’re identical twins, and I suspect most same-gender fraternals have been asked the same thing.

Superman shows his face. There’s no reason for any random person to ever have the idea that he had a secret identity in the first place. And I’m sorry, it’s a hell of a leap to just randomly decide that he is this other dude who’s busy with a journalism job even if he does get to interview Superman a lot. You would absolutely have people using the interviews as proof they’re not the same person.

There was a great comic where Lex Luthor programmed a computer to figure out who Superman was, and the computer told him the truth– that Superman was Clark Kent. And Lex completely ignored it, as the idea that anyone with that much power might masquerade as a normal person was so completely unimaginable to him.

Corenswet’s Clark doesn’t get as much screen time as I might have hoped, so you don’t get a ton of data about what his Clark acts like– although the scenes with his parents are absolutely stellar. There’s no moment like this, though:

So yeah. This character gets superpowers from Earth’s yellow sun, can shoot fire out of his eyes, and regularly lifts skyscrapers when he isn’t busy flying over them. The idea that the whole world doesn’t just automatically know that he’s some other random human out of eight billion who sort of looks like him is far from the most unbelievable thing about this story.

Okay, look, Marvel …

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, moviesLeave a comment

You’ve got me, you bastards. I’m in. The last of your fucking movies I saw in a theater was I don’t even remember but it might have been Endgame, weeks after it came out. I also don’t remember which of your movies was the last I saw at all. Maybe Black Widow.

I am going to see Fantastic Four: First Steps in a theater. I am not back and I have no plans to see any other forthcoming Marvel movies. I’m gonna see Superman, but that’s not you. That’s two superhero movies in a month which will be more than I’ve seen in the last several years.

Please don’t fuck this up.

Anybody know anything about flies? We have a mystery infestation in about a room and a half in the house. Our dining room has a big glass sliding door leading to a screened-in back porch. I have killed, and I swear I’m not shitting you, well over a hundred house flies crawling around on that screen door in the last two days. Well over a hundred of them. I have absolutely no idea where they’re coming from. There is no obvious source of flies in my dining room. There is a vent right in front of the sliding door; I have pulled the grille out of it and vacuumed inside it extensively, and it’s not big enough to be hiding a dead animal or something, plus if there was something in there we’d be able to smell it. Plus, if they were coming from the vents, they’d be in every room in the house, not concentrated by the back porch.

They are not on the outside of the sliding doors. Plus, again, there’s no source of flies out there and it’s screened in. They have to be coming from inside the house and they also have to be coming from somewhere very close to that sliding door, and there just isn’t anything. Flies don’t just spontaneously generate! That would mean that there’s something in my dining room that is rotting and was covered in maggots and zero of the four humans and three cats in the house noticed it?

I’ve sat and watched and waited to see if I could spot them crawling from somewhere, and of course, because they’re flies and flies have turning invisible as a class ability, I’ve had no luck on that. If I leave the room for half an hour there will be between five and seventeen (the current record) on the sliding door when I come back. I’ve been using the vacuum cleaner to kill them because it’s faster and more effective than a Goddamn flyswatter.

Somebody help me out, this is gross and I’m tired of it.

(Oh, and I made a flytrap with a Sprite bottle, some apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap because the Internet told me it was an effective cheap flytrap. Pff. It has not caught a single fucking fly. There’s an indoor zapper coming Friday.)

We are out of town

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

We are out of town, and since my brother doesn’t want pictures of his kids on the internet, have a frame from Mega Shark Vs. Crocasaurus, which we are watching, because why not.

#REVIEW: SINNERS (2025)

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, ReviewsLeave a comment

I don’t remember the last time I wrote a movie review. It’s been a while, I can tell you that.(*) The thing about me reviewing movies– and if you’ve been around, you’ve seen me say this before– is that I have to guard against my own enthusiasm a lot of the time. There are plenty of times when I’ve written a movie review quickly after watching the movie and in retrospect it’s been more positive than maybe it would have been if I’d waited a few days.

Last night, after watching Ryan Coogler’s new film Sinners, I commented to my wife (and posted on BlueSky, I believe) that I’d have been more positive about it had I never seen From Dusk Till Dawn. And since FDtD is easily the movie’s most obvious point of comparison, let’s go straight at this: the two movies are similar enough that you could tell me Sinners was deliberately meant as a remake and I wouldn’t be surprised at all. That might feel like a slam; it’s not, as From Dusk Till Dawn is a great movie. But that’s where I was; I enjoyed Sinners quite a bit but I felt like in large part I’d seen it before.

I’m sitting here right now, fifteen or so hours later and having slept on it, wishing I’d bought the thing instead of renting it, because I want to watch it again.

Sinners is that rarest of things: a movie that’s growing on me. I think I’m just going to assume that everything Ryan Coogler makes for the rest of his life is going to be gold; Michael B. Jordan is amazing playing two of the three leads in twins Smoke and Stack,(**) and the entire supporting cast ranges from solid to outstanding– I haven’t seen Delroy Lindo in anything recently, and I could watch that man read the phone book. I’m not familiar with Wunmi Mosaku, but her Annie is tremendous, and Hailee Steinfeld disappears into her role thoroughly enough that it took a good 2/3 of the movie before I realized who she was.

(A quick word about that: apparently there are people mad about Steinfeld being cast as this character, who says at one point that her “daddy’s daddy was half Black,” which makes her an eighth Black. The fact that Americans have a word for someone who is 1/8 Black is part and parcel of how fucked up this country is, and light-skinned Black people moving away and quietly passing into the white community has been a real thing for going on two centuries in this country. Steinfeld herself is literally an eighth Black. She is the exact race of the character she portrays. Pick up a book, Goddammit.)

Anyway, I always forget to talk about the plot so let’s do that: it’s 1930-something, somewhere in Mississippi, and Jordan’s Smoke and Stack have returned to their hometown after leaving years ago, loaded with cash and guns and planning on opening a juke joint. The first half of the movie is getting ready to open, pulling everyone else into their orbit, including the actual main character, Miles Caton’s Sammie, himself an extraordinarily talented blues musician. Sammie is Smoke and Stack’s younger cousin. They open up the joint to a successful first night, and then everything goes directly to Hell in more or less exactly the same way it did in From Dusk Till Dawn, and if you haven’t seen FDtD and don’t know the twist (although they haven’t done much to hide it) I’m not going to go any further than that.

Other stuff: everyone’s praised the music, for good reason, although Buddy Guy’s 88-year-old voice coming out of Sammie’s mouth is a little odd. Guy actually shows up in person in a stinger at the end of the movie, so don’t turn it off when the credits roll, although you probably won’t be in enough of a hurry to turn it off that you’ll miss it. The movie is almost a musical but not quite. There are numbers, but they make more sense in context than, say, Alexander Hamilton randomly bursting into song.

(Okay, yeah, it’s a musical, but it’s not the type of musical that people who don’t like musicals should avoid. Just fuckin’ trust me, please, plus blues musicals are amazing, as it turns out.)

So, yeah. Two thumbs up. Check it out. But it’s only five bucks more to buy it from Amazon Prime than to rent it, so buy it; you’ll want to watch it again.

(*) It was over a year ago, and ludicrously enough, it was Abigail, which I also compared to From Dusk Till Dawn.

(**) I would not have called myself an MBJ hater, but I’ve never quite gotten the hype about the guy? I mean, he’s good, but he’s got the reputation of the second coming of Denzel Washington or something, and I haven’t seen that from him yet. Okay, y’all. I get it now. Plus, not for nothin, he’s insanely sexy in this movie. Do what you want with that information.

This, goddammit

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, moviesLeave a comment

This. This. This is Right and Correct and if I go see this movie and it disappoints me I am done with DC movies for the rest of my life. I talked some shit about the costume when we got our first look at it and I’m still not a hundred percent on board with some of the decisions they made there, but it looks like Gunn has gotten the core of the character right after decades of on-screen misrepresentation, and if that’s actually Superman on the screen they can put him in a French maid’s outfit for all I care.

I had like four different posts planned for tonight and seeing the trailer knocked all of them clean out of my head.

You’ve got me back in theaters for a superhero movie, DC. Don’t fuck this up.

Set it all on fire and salt the earth

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Pictured: Not my TV.

I think I am entirely giving up on the idea of television. It’s been a minimal part of my life for years, but I don’t even want the concept around any longer. I don’t give a shit about the Super Bowl but I’d kind of like to watch Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, and it appears to be completely impossible to watch the Super Bowl on the television in my office without either purchase of additional equipment (the TV is not currently hooked up to any sort of antenna, since it’s almost exclusively for gaming) or signing up for something. I tried to download something called Fubo, where apparently the game is being streamed for free, and my TV told me that I had to sign into it– as in sign into the television— in order to download the software.

No. I’m not signing into my television. No thank you.

So, yeah, fuck it. I’m going to hit “publish,” make a very cursory attempt to stream the game on my computer instead of my TV, and if I don’t have it up and running in under a minute, it’s YouTube tomorrow for me. Things were better when you could just turn the Goddamned TV on and watch one of the five things that were on. I don’t give a fuck if that makes me a Boomer or a Luddite or whatever; television is so thoroughly enshittified at this point that I’m simply opting out of it altogether. I’m tired of idly thinking that maybe I’d like to watch a certain specific thing and then inevitably discovering that despite the ten fucking million options out there and the fifteen things we’re already signed up for, I can’t watch that thing because Reasons. It literally happens every time I decide I want to watch something specific.

I absolutely refuse to create a login for my television. That’s the line, apparently.

Fuck it.

More Veepery & some other nonsense

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics, Reviews10 Comments

If you had asked me more than four or five days ago, I would have told you that, at least for me personally, Bluesky (follow me!) was beginning to approach the levels of usefulness of pre-Nazi Twitter, but had yet to even come close to pre-Nazi Twitter in its ability to be funny.

This JD Vance couch-fucking shit has absolutely put that concern to bed. It’s been going on for days, and it’s still funny. It may literally never stop being funny.

This might not be true, but I’m pretty sure it is: every single time in the history of the human race someone has asked “But where’s the ______ for white men?” that person has been a racist asshole. This fact made me at least a little nervous about trying to find out if there was, in fact, a White Men for Kamala Harris group. Why was I wondering so specifically? Well, in the last few days we’ve seen a number of other identity-based groups getting off the ground, and White Women for Kamala Harris broke Zoom, and damn it, I wanna play too! And frankly, given that white men are the other guy’s biggest demographic, I think it’s probably perfectly reasonable to suggest that those of us of that persuasion who are very much not in favor of the fascist felon and his merry band of dipshits should be loud and proud of it.

I’m happy to say that White Dudes for Harris is a thing, and our Zoom call is Monday at 8:00 EST, and Pete Buttigieg is gonna be there, and if you’re also a white dude you can sign up for it here. And you should. We’ve got some numbers to live up to, dammit.

The more I hear about Josh Shapiro the less I like him, and Bloomberg is claiming that the Veepstakes is down to him, Mark Kelly, and Tim Walz. Of those three, I am 100%, unreservedly, whole-chestedly, full-throatedly on Team Walz. Let’s do this right, damn it.

You have at least one book review coming and possibly two, but just in case I don’t get to one or either of them: R.J. Barker’s Tide Child trilogy is really damn good, and unless it utterly fails to stick the ending– I’m about 100 pages out– Rachel Caine’s The Hunter is an absolute return to form on her part and I’m happy as hell to see it.

Also, despite previous reservations, I may actually be seeing Deadpool and Wolverine in theaters tomorrow, marking my first in-theater Marvel movie since 2019. That will almost certainly receive a review if I manage to actually get out to see it.

How’s your Saturday going?

In which I am unbelievably petty (WARNING: Superman opinions)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy, movies6 Comments

Let me begin with some Statements which are Generally Known to be True:

  • That I am insanely, irrationally protective of Superman, and do not believe the character has been done right in live action since the Reeve era, with the possible exception of Tyler Hoechlin in Superman & Lois, which I really enjoyed for about five episodes and then mysteriously stopped watching;
  • That I am fully aware that a set picture is not the best way to evaluate a superhero costume;
  • That I have been loud and wrong about iconic superhero costumes before;
  • That I absolutely hate it when nerds do exactly what I am about to do, although I will attempt to mix in some positives;
  • That I am probably not going to see this movie, not because I am boycotting it but because I don’t see movies any longer, and I feel like maybe that’s could give me an out about having an opinion, an out that I am currently not taking; and
  • That David Corenswet’s performance is going to be infinitely more important than his costume, as will other minor details like the fucking script, and I know literally nothing about how he’s going to move and act as the character. I do know I’m not terribly interested in Ultraman or Mr. Terrific, one of whom was also in the leaks but one of whom is still technically a rumor.

That said!

Wait. No. Let’s do this first:

Two things are Correct about this costume.

  • The colors, for the first time in years, are correct, and this says good things about the direction the film is going to take;
  • Putting the S-shield on the back of the cape in yellow is also Correct.

I hate every single other fucking thing about the fucking costume.

  1. The collar. They’ve clearly drawn inspiration from the New 52 costume, which I hated, and part of the reason I hated it was the fucking collar. Every other and I mean every other live action iteration of Superman’s suit has done the cape/shoulders/neck area better, including Tyler Hoechlin’s, which dropped the cape into prominent gold grommets and still looked better. I hate the collared look. It is, in fact, the thing about the costume that I hate the most.
  2. The S-Shield. This is a version of the Kingdom Come shield, which was fine in Kingdom Come, which was set in the future and involved a Superman who had gone through intense personal loss, and is not fine here. Just use the fucking regular S-shield, Goddammit. This is not a place where we fucking need to innovate. Also it could stand to be a little bigger– if it was right, at least– but that’s not that big of a deal.
  3. The texture. This may not survive the transition into the actual film, but I hate all the little lines and shapes everywhere. The cape looks like it’s made from microfiber, which also sucks.
  4. The belt. Yes, the costume needs the belt, and I’m happy it has a belt, but that belt looks like Batman’s belt. It looks chunky and rubbery for no clear reason.
  5. It’s fucking baggy. Superman wears his costume under his clothes and it needs to be tighter. This also may not survive the transition onto the actual silver screen. In fact, I really doubt it’ll be noticeable on the screen. I hate it anyway.
  6. The wrists. Also borrowing from New 52, and perhaps more obvious in other pictures than in these, they’re pointy, and they look fucking stupid. You also can’t conceal pointy wrist cuffs under a dress shirt.
  7. The briefs. Shut up, Goddammit, the word “petty” is right in the title. Yes, I’m happy they’re there, and I’d rather have them than not have them, but those are fucking boyshorts, not Superman briefs. It’s wrong and it’s wrong for no reason.
  8. The boots. Actually, the boots are fine. I have no beef with the boots.

Do not get me started on Clark’s hair:

(Actually, the hair is whatever; I think Clark would have a more conservative haircut than that ramen-looking GenZ mop bullshit but it definitely makes him look less like Superman, so I’ll deal.)

Okay. I’ve got that out of my system now, I hope. I have seen a couple of images today that I can’t find now where someone took the Corenswet suit and basically Photoshopped in the edits that I suggested above, and it looks perfect, and I’ll update if I find one again. And I will get over it, especially now that I’ve written this. It’s not the most important thing about the fucking movie. All the same: blech.