I went home last weekend to visit the family, and as usual, I tried to clean up a little of the driftwood of my young life that remains in the house, so that eventually it will stop looking like a teenager with no social skills lives in their house. (Now she lives in New York, where no one even notices social skills because they’re too busy avoiding being hit by cars. Upgrade!)

There are some really telling things in that house, some of which indicate I had taste (a silk kimono owned by my great-grandmother) and some of which indicate I had, well, questionable taste. (Uh, no comment.)

The thing I took back from this trip was my box of comics.

When I was, oh, 11-ish, I got into the X-Men in a major way. I read up on Uncanny, I devoured X-Men, and my passion for them lasted until one of those impossible crossovers a few years later where I was trying to get hold of 15 books a week just to find out who won the Shi’ar gladiatorial games when some mutants were kidnapped and something something Savage Land something and Genosha whatever and five THOUSAND people got involved. I was young, and I had no money. Eventually you just cannot cross over one more time, you know? EVEN IF ROGUE IS INVOLVED. (Sorry, Rogue. Nobody loved you more than me, I promise!)

To be fair, though, my comic-book habit was greatly aided and abetted by my dad, who tended to swing by the comic shop on a regular basis and bring home a comic for me. (At the time I assumed it was because of my grades, but looking back on my childhood I think he just wanted to prevent me from going outside and hurting myself, which is also good parenting, so, well done Dad!)

He knew X-Men was my book, and he knew I loved Rogue, so he was always on the lookout for her. Unfortunately, he never quite grokked what exactly Rogue looked like (the ever-changing costumes probably did not help), so my white storage box is about 70% X-Men comics and other random comics featuring Rogue, and about 30% old X-Men reprints that featured Kitty Pryde, in whom I had no interest, but about whom I ended up knowing quite a bit, just by accident! (Brunette X-Men Unite, I guess!)

I had forgotten the Kitty Pryde books, but when I got home there they were, filed quietly in the back of the box, bearing the evidence of one read before they were taped back in their sleeves and hidden away. I saved them even then, because I thought my dad was pretty cool for supporting my comic book habit, and when I opened the box, it was confirmed.

Uh, in other news, I will be carving out time this weekend to slap some Roxette on the tape player, shove my hair into a scrunchie, and read some comics.

My Fantasy Magazine article for this week is What YA Fantasy Means for Movies. Technically this could be summed up with a single dollar sign (or, really, three: $$$ looks greedier!), but I tried to actually write a little about patterns and trends and look slightly less cynical than I am.

A couple of things stood out to me during this, though. One of them is that really solid YA fantasy movies based on novels have been a bit thin on the ground until about ten or fifteen years ago. I mean, in the 90s, a whole year could go by without one. I can’t even imagine that now! (Nor would I want to; the fantasy movies tend to have better costumes. Also other reasons, I’m sure, but let’s keep it real.)

The second thing is that it is really easy for young ladies to get the short end of the stick here (and everywhere else, but that’s a whooole other article). I know on the YA lit front that’s not so much the case, but looking at a movie marquee, you have Ramona and Beezus and a lot of supporting parts in dude stories. I mean, when DISNEY is changing the plot of a DISNEY PRINCESS MOVIE to appeal more to boys, we have a problem, you know? It will be interesting to see how that one pans out; I’d reserve judgment and hope it’s just some minor plot tweaks, but when they’re afraid of calling the movie Rapunzel and change the title, it’s kind of a red flag.

Of all the reasons this bothers and confuses me, it’s most inexplicable because the YA movie franchise right now that is straight-up aimed at teen women is making money so fast they do not even know what to do with themselves except make character lip gloss for characters whose makeup was laugh-out-loud terrible and wait for hundreds of thousands of young women to buy it. I mean, you know they’re out there, you know they have money, and you know they’ll see something more than once. Why do you feel like they’re not a good enough audience for you to court, Disney? Damn.

There’s something ceaselessly awesome about silent films. They’re a living time capsule of social mores, markers of technological leaps, proof of humankind’s deep affinity for storytelling, employer of piano-players everywhere.

The great ones are fantastically evocative and moving. The bad ones are hysterical.

Conveniently, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is both!

Also apparently a little judgey!

The story is straightforward: Dr. Jekyll is virtuous and awesome. Then he goes overboard with the science and ends up as villainous stringy-haired Hyde, until the love of a beautiful maiden redeems him and he kills himself. Though the film has some fancy techniques, including a flashback to Ye Olde Italy, the strength here is the cast, which is 100% Grade-A veteran muggers.

As with most movies she was in, the best thing about this movie is Nita Naldi:

Her intro card. I kind of wish we could still get away with these. You got ten words of exposition right up front!

Unfortunately, with Nita they were a waste, since she did a pretty good job conveying “world-weary dance hall girl who faces her world alone” all by herself:

However, when she sees Handsome Barrymore, she perks right up and slithers on over to introduce herself.

The movie’s conceit is that this one moment is enough to make the engaged Jekyll want to separate himself into two personalities, purely so that one of them can make out with this chick. I buy this.

Sadly, it’s hard to mack on a lady when you are about 70% less handsome than the last time she saw you. (A+ Pained Expression, though, Nita!)

Even though Nita Naldi is the screen siren of my heart, Barrymore is no slouch in this, either. There’s a makeup change between Jekyll and Hyde, but Barrymore being Barrymore, the transformation is mostly attitudinal:

This is pretty much how all the Jekyll scenes go: thumping around, mugging into the camera, waving at hookers. Shine on, you hammy diamond.

Though my favorite scene is still the pervy old aristocrat at the opening dinner party, and John Barrymore’s priceless facial expressions as the morals are discussed.

Subtext: approved!

Two writing updates today:

1. My story “Things to Know About Being Dead” will appear in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s anthology Teeth! If you follow the link to the full TOC, you’ll see I am in some seriously great company. I’m thrilled.

2. My short story “The Zeppelin Condocutors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball” will be forthcoming in Lightspeed! And glancing at that list of names, this is also going to be a pretty exciting project when it launches this summer.

And with the fun stuff out of the way, I return to cleaning and bad-movie-watching. (This is not true; the bad movie stuff is just as fun.)

[This is the first of three movie reviews that were won in the auction, which assists fans of color who want to attend SFF conventions, principally WisCon.]

So, when won one of my movie reviews, I can only assume she picked Hong Kong action flick Vampire Effect (aka Twins Effect, for reasons unknown to me) because she thought it was the worst movie ever and she wished, more than anything else in her whole entire life, to make me suffer.

She must not have been aware that I have been working on getting “shitmazing” into wide usage, as the word to use when something is so spectacularly bad that it passes all descriptions of “awful” and eventually becomes its own sort of surrealist masterpiece that makes you question an objective universe.

With this word in hand, I was more than ready to tackle Vampire Effect: The Twins Effect (even the title’s shitmazing). It’s a breathtaking kaleidoscope of wonder about a mysterious world in which defeating vampires requires liberal application of banana extract.

For serious.

This is vampire prince Kazaf and his vampire butler Prada (for serious). Here, Prince Kazaf wants this movie to promise something it just cannot promise.

There is, in fact, endless sucking in this movie.
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