Although movies about women rose to meteroic box office success via Bridesmaids and The Help, they certainly aren’t represented in the Best Picture nominations. There is only one movie on the Best Picture roster that would pass the Bechdel test for women or race. It manages to accomplish both. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only movie I’m even pulling for. Yeah, I’m talking about The Help.

Usually this time of year I’m in a mad scramble to view all the Oscar nominated films before the big day, but I can predict from this vantage point who is going to win based on all the politicking that comprises these awards ceremonies. Please be advised, these are my knee jerk reactions.

Best Picture: The Artist (Hollywood is predictable in it’s love and lavishing of praise upon feel good “foreign” films)

Best Director: Martin Scorsese – Hugo

Best Actor: Brad Pitt – Moneyball

Best Actress: Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor: Jonah Hill – Moneyball

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer – The Help

Best Original Screenplay: Bridesmaids – Annie Mumolo, Kristen Wiig

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Ides of March – George Clooney

Perhaps I will watch The Artist, which is the only flick with the potential to shake up the predictable picks. Also, I reserve the right to completely change my mind by Oscar air date, so friends and family who usually bet in our Oscar party pool, don’t go getting any ideas.

My favorite films of the year were all comic book or science fiction related, and those will never be deemed worthy of Oscar material. No bitterness here, right? Really, there is a bit of bitterness. I don’t expect anyone to give loads of love and credit to all my super nerdy interests. But I hoped for at least a nod to Young Adult.

Is anyone else over the George Clooney and Brad Pitt bromance? Clooney’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes was kinda barfy. We get that you guys are the hottest thang in Hollywood right now. Good work.

There is a twinge of sadness for the dudes who got shut out. What about Leonardo DiCaprio who’s been in a string of good films in the last five or six years while going completely un-noticed? Or Ryan Gosling who has busted his butt in independent flicks and whom you couldn’t possibly ignore this year if you were living or breathing in the world. Also Michael Fassbender, my favorite sharp tooth Magneto who stole the show in X-Men, Jane Eyre and apparently flopped his wang out for Shame (on my “to see” list). Poor guys. Don’t you know Clooney and Pitt will never gracefully share the spotlight? They are like the Jay-Z of their medium. While they exist, very few others can rise in the game, unless given the blessings of royalty. Even then, it’s tough competition.

Am I wrong in these assertions? What are your Oscar picks? 

My birthday is rolling around (March 14th) and every year about this time I make up a list of things that have their awesome turned up to 11. You can expect random, expensive and amazing tech gadgets to follow:

#1. NFC Micro SD Card

http://moneto.me

Retail: $75ish (Price not final from Moneto)

My current phone is a LG G2x. Great little device, lots of power, great screen but no NFC. And I want Google Wallet.  The NFC SD card from moneto debuted at CES 2012 and gives any iPhone/Blackberry/Android phone access to all the NFC goodness you could want! In case you are wondering the device is still an SD still has storage, only 4gb currenlty but they are working on more.

Finally! I can pay for a Big Mac with my phone!!

#2. JawBone Up

Http://jawbone.com/up

Retail: $99.99

I think this year is going to see a lot of devices that start to take advantage of your ubiquitous internet connection via your phone. I am speaking of watches that connect to you phone via Bluetooth and tell you who’s calling without having to take your phone out your pocket, or piloting a quadrocoper via remote video and your phone as the controller.

The Jawbone Up is a bracelet you wear, it works as a pedometer, tracks your location, and your sleep patterns (via the accelerometer), it uses your phones internet connection to upload this data and compile it into a readout that will help you better understand how you live and work. In addition it has a really cool wake feature. Since the Up is able to see and understand what level of sleep you are in, it can pick just the right time to wake you feeling refreshed and awake, it does so with a series of vibrations. I am excited to try this out and review the metadata it is able to collect on myself.

Creepy computer monitoring me from afar: Check!

#3. Bluetooth Headphones:

Amazon Link

Retail: $47.99

A wireless headset is a pretty basic idea. I like the foam ‘earplug’ style, it’s like noise cancelling, but cheaper. I go through my $10.00 Target bought Skull Candy headphones about one pair a month. The reason is the damn jack, it’s ALWAYS BREAKING. So I have decided I want something without a jack. And here we go.

Now I can talk to myself like a crazy person walking down the street!

#4. Nest:

http://nest.com

Retail: $249.00

Mindy (TinyHeroes) loves to have the heat on at night. In the bedroom we have a small in-wall cadet heater, it’s thermostat has gone crazy in it’s old age and now is either on pumping heat out all night or off. This means every night I wake up in a 300 degree bedroom and have to go and turn the damn thing off, and another hour later, it is freezing in the room. Welcome to my special hell.

The Nest add the smarts of a smartphone to a thermostat. It is connected with wifi, has a motion sensor and learns your movements and habit. I will, for example, turn the heat to the desired temp right before we come to bed, turn the heat down a bit after we fall asleep, and back up when we wake. IT IS AWESOME AND I WANT IT IN MY HOUSE.

Also, it looks like HAL9000 and glows red when the heat is on. Will my Nest dream…?

#5. Motorola Xoom:

Xoom Site

Retail: $499.99 (but much cheaper on craigslist)

This is an older tablet but it is already updated with ICS and can be found used for a discounted price. It has a front facing camera and is nice and fast. I am always looking for new tablets. I am excited about the future of Android tablets, and this would allow me to use and experiment. The possibilities are endless. Hhmm.

#6. Roomba:

Roomba Site

Retail: $349.99 – $599.99

This one I’m not really expecting to get. But IT’S A ROBOT THAT CLEANS YOUR FLOOR. How cool is that?? I have two pugs and with all their hair it would be nice for a little robot to clean all that crap up for me. And I would feel like the Jestons.

#7. AR Drone:

http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/usa/

This thing is too cool, I’ve hinted at it before. You can control this thing from a remote camera on it via your phone. You can also record HD video from it, your own aural shots!! The downside is you only get a 12 minute runtime

:*(

But just think of what you could do!

Well there we go. If I was independantly weathly I would own all of this junk. But hopfully I can come away from this birthday with one or two of these

Any tech gadgets you can’t live without? Comment Below!

These were created in less than an hour, because I had a freaking deadline to meet. The Boba Fett in pimp attire received quite a bit of mileage. Did I mention it’s a Beginning Photoshop class?

Boba Fett Superstar

It’s hard to improve on Pimp Boba Fett, but I think pink glitter stars are pretty close.

The Trouble with Tribbles

My folks are Star Trek loving nerds. The tribbles were an added bonus. Also – that guy photo-bombing.

Boba Fett Beach

I imagine that Pimp Boba Fett uses a lot of hearts to punctuate his exclamation points.

Don’t worry, this won’t become a crappy Photoshop photo-journal. These were simply the highlight of an entire day spent fighting software (teeth gnashing, hair pulling, tear inducing). They brought joy to my heart and made me giggle.

Here they are world. For your LOL pleasure. 

This year old Beauty and the Beast Blu-Ray looks like shit. 20 years ago this seemed like the very zenith of animation. I remember the ballroom dance scene taking my breath away. Belle was gorgeous and had the most exquisite complexion and perfect brown hair. In 2012, no matter what medium I’m viewing it on – it looks horrid. The colors are so blown out, bright and the animation is so quickly sketched, I had to call Dan in from the other room to make sure it wasn’t mine eyes deceiving me. The first few minutes I was watching an 8-year-old DVD, so swapped it out for a year old Blu-Ray. It looked the exact same, even though Disney was claiming it was digitally remastered or some shit.

How about no? It looked pretty on the movie advertisement I just watched for the 3D theatrical release. The black lines are less harsh. It was all in the black lines – there was white bleeding through all over the place. And in general, it looks like some second-rate bullshit.

Granted, I’ve been fed a steady diet of CGI loveliness for the last 10 or so years, but come on – The Princess and the Frog is beautiful and not so harsh on the eyes. Am I alone in thinking this particular film has some of the shittiest animation in the Disney cadre (not counting all of the sequels)? It looks like something Don Bluth was putting out at the time – it has none of the depth or quality that The Lion King or Aladdin did. Granted, The all these flicks referenced came out post-Beauty. But it was also post-The Little Mermaid, which looks better as well. *shrug* I dunno.

Random Thought #2

One of the biggest complaints in feminist circles against the movie/story is that Belle sacrifices her dreams for a grander life by shacking up with the Beast and falling in lurve. Uhm, guys? The story book she most fondly remembers (nay, even sings about) is a tale about a chick meeting Prince Charming. Sure, she doesn’t want to settle down and marry the chauvinist and manipulating Gaston. But she does want to find her Prince Charming. If folks are looking for a feminist heroine in Belle, they will end up disappointed every time.

Actually, on the heroine spectrum – I would say Belle most resembles Bella. And along that same vein, I would suggest that Twilight and Beauty and the Beast have some eerie similarities. There’s even a magical transformation in the end. Beast is kind of a dick, like Edward. He is overbearing, stalkerish and harsh. Belle is willing to sacrifice her entire life for her Dad. She falls in love with a violent, scary dude who imprisons others and threatens to starve her.

So yeah – that’s all weird. Is my reading off? At least the first Twilight book has Beauty and the Beast trappings, no?

Random Thought #3

I liked Beast better than Prince Whatever Big Nose. For looks and general attitude. Even as a kid I remember being totally charmed by the angry, yet comically bumbling bull/wolf creature and strongly preferring him to the creepy white guy who arose in his stead.

The messaging is all wrong. I know – the magic rose and the poor servants trapped as inanimate objects – but damn, Beast was kinda hot. I mean, hotter than the unattractive white dude he becomes. Also, what’s with the servants singing songs about preferring to serve? “Life is un-nerving for a servant whose not serving.” Huh. These folks would rather serve a bitchy master hand and foot than you know, have a twenty year staycation as a clock or candlestick? That’s a stretch for me.

I would have rather kept Beast in his Beast form. The servants could have changed if they liked. And maybe, as a show of gratitude, Beast could have released them from service since they did endure weird magics on his behalf. Just sayin’.

Final Thoughts: While this movie has some of my favorite musical numbers, it generally gets a bad rap for being creepy (imprisonment, forced engagements, and talking feather dusters) and that’s well-deserved. One of my favorites, with reservations.

It was Raising Hope by a longshot. Weeds, while clever, sardonic and often-times morbid, just doesn’t have the grace, spirit and ludicrous details that makes Raising Hope much more enjoyable to watch. Weeds is bitter and skunky. Hope is happy and sentimental.

Weeds gets a small reprieve from my ire in the form of timing. The first season aired in 2005, pre housing crash, pre economic depression and pre layoffs in my immediate family. Back when times were still looking good and the upper middle class thought their bubbly gated communities would never burst or crumble to the ground.

Sadly or happily, depending on how you feel about rich folks, all that has changed for the most part. It’s no longer insane to think that a comfortable wealthy family would fall on hard times and self-destruct or turn to illegal means to maintain their plush existence.

The only thing that leaves a sour note? Many families did meet this sad end in the last four years and didn’t think that turning to crime was the best answer. They walked away from their Range Rover, McMansion, In-ground pool and live-in-maid to rebuild their lives by doing something most of us have to in order to sustain ourselves. Work.

I should love Weeds because Mary Louise Parker is so bad ass and the show revolves around a sistah doing it for herself. But I just freaking don’t. Her socio-economic status over-rides gender at every turn. There are no likable characters, they are all self-involved and self-indulgent.

There was some promise in the first season when I thought she was going to turn her business front into a legitimate enterprise. That could have been an interesting plotline a single mother involving juggling a bakery and marijuana distribution – “baked” goods. Maybe this was the dark comedic response to Desperate Housewives? Whatever the case – I finished up season one dutifully and can’t say that I’ll be returning to Agrestic anytime soon.

I don’t have sympathy or empathy for Nancy. When faced with the notion of losing her fancy house, car, and luxurious lifestyle she did not choose to sacrifice any of those things, or even trim down her budget. Sell her house. Lease a cheaper car. Do her own housekeeping. Make her teenage son get a part-time job. She doesn’t do anything that makes me care about her as a person. She is, point of fact, a negligent mother whose children desperately need some attention (hello, her youngest starts fires, bites other children and makes terrorist movies for fun).

Neither child is especially endearing either. The zany/slutty brother-in-law is shallow. For some inexplicable reason every man on the cast has a huge crush on Nancy, including all the prominent minority males. Huh. Celia, the neighbor, is only nice when she gets cancer. The single person I was rooting for by the end of the first season was Celia’s overweight, lesbian daughter. The only pleasure I could derive from this series is watching all of their lives fall apart. And that’s the lowest form of entertainment imaginable.

And then, there’s Hope. The characters, on the outside, should seem equally despicable. They are from the opposite end of the spectrum – the kind of seedy individuals Nancy rubs elbows with outside of her gated community. BAD people, right?

Not really. I found more to like in these characters who have, by and large, made “bad choices,” but then stuck around to deal with the consequences of their actions. The Chances are not high-class. They essentially squat at the home of senile Maw Maw waiting for her to gift them the house when she passes, taking care of her while working blue and pink collar jobs like landscaping and housekeeping. Hope’s father works two jobs, landscaping with his father during the day and bagging groceries in the evening.

In comedic turns – Martha Plimpton far out rivals Mary Louise Parker, but I don’t see Martha winning any awards for her work. Garret Dillahunt who many of you might remember for multiple roles on Deadwood (largely dramatic roles) is equally hilarious, with some of the best delivery of the entire cast.

Raising Hope, at times, strains a little too hard for quirky (like its big brother My Name is Earl) but is immensely more relatable than something like Weeds, which is more about voyeurism into a lifestyle few of us enjoy but are terribly curious about.

I’ll stick with my people: landscapers, housekeepers, daycare workers, grocery checkers and their like. Even when Hope makes shallow attempts at humor based on class, I can easily ignore them because ultimately, the Chances are good people. The same can’t be said for Nancy and her brood.

In Conclusion: I’ll take Hope over Weeds any day.

LINK LOVE:

- Use of stereotypes in Weeds

- On Weeds race problem

- Drug Dealing and Gender: Breaking Bad vs Weeds

- Raising Hope: Examining Class

- Bringing up Baby: Raising Hope vs Modern Family

Unwittingly opened my browser this morning to a storm of controversy about whether or not having a sexy female slave in a shock collar and being able to punish her at will is problematic or not. And yes, I do think Twi’leks are sexy. Those brain tails man. Unf.

So here goes – slaves are problematic. Women as slaves are deeply problematic. 

If you can shock this beautiful blue face, you're a monster. Just sayin'.

Do fangirls feel uncomfortable with another female being forcibly enslaved and brutally punished? Yes.

Does this hurt fanboys feelings because it’s all in good fun and you’re an evil Sith killing loads of people anyways? Yes.

Can fangirls just get over it? No.

Can fanboys just be OK with fangirls NOT being OK with it? No.

*I would have included “some” or “many” here as qualifiers but that should be obvious.*

So there are female attempts at explaining their reactions to this information and then men start to mansplain and then men-apologists back up their assertions and then people who’ve never played the game chime in with their two cents. I’d like to pretend that I care more. But today is a sad day because I really don’t. Fairly certain men and women of all ages will mistreat this poor imaginary creature and fap all over themselves while they do it. There is nothing to stop them.

Do I wish the game developers had been a bit smarter about all of this? Of course. It would be nice to have the female perspective considered when games are being put together.

Just last night I had to endure the most wince-worthy few hours of gaming yet because someone told the creators of Gears of War 3 they should include female characters. So I get to hear dude banter about “a woman serving with the COG” for two hours, in which she has to be called ugly, etc, etc and run down by the Baird character I was playing. You know –  instead of interesting game play or dialogue.

Not that Gears of War is known for stunning dialogue. It’s mostly known for it’s bro-mance and fun alien first person shooter tactics. It’s Left 4 Dead with aliens and no playable women characters – and also some semblance of a coherent plot line. I’m fine with all that. I really am.

When it comes to first person shooters – I am willing to sacrifice the potential of playing a character of my gender for the free-wheeling fun of blowing shit up and taking glorious head shots at non-humanoid targets. This is cathartic and grand.

If I didn’t love the Kiwi voice acting for the Sam Byrne character so much, I might simply insist they not have bothered with female characters at all because I can’t stand the exceptionalism and mansplaining when a token female enters a sausage fest FPS. We get it. She has a vag where her dick should be. Nothing to see here folks, let’s move along.

Thank the lord it just seemed to be my character Baird who had the most problems with Sam’s presence. I didn’t really get his complaints – she was immensely helpful on the battlefield (as helpful as an NPC can be) – she revived my ass several times in the heat of battle, and therefore I stuck close to her. I’m hoping an interesting plotline evolves with her beyond the verbal sniping with Baird. We’re only on Act One of the campaign, so there’s loads more storytelling to go.

In Conclusion: The video game industry is still lousy with lame attempts to seem “inclusive” when in practice said attempts wind up being either alienating (heh, aliens) or kind of gross. C+ for effort.

LINK LOVE:

- Kotaku article where a man admits he likes to shock Twi’lek slave companion, but it still makes him feel dirty inside

- Daily Mail article where Brits think you’re stupid for playing video games anyway. More tea, Vicar? 

- So maybe including a shock-collar wearing female slave in SWOTR wasn’t the best idea?

- Even Forbes thinks it’s “a little sexist” – whoa. 

Yes, I’m on a Diablo Cody binge right now. Decided to give it a spin after having mixed feelings regarding Young Adult and to a certain extent – Jennifer’s Body and Juno. I just might be the only person on the internet that didn’t really have a problem with Jennifer’s Body. In fact, as a horror fan, I thought it was spoofy and high fun. It seemed to both mock and alternately love the horror genre in ways few flicks manage to get right.

The Ginger Snaps comparisons are lost on me. I’ve seen both and didn’t once think of Ginger Snaps while watching Jennifer’s Body. If anything, I thought of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. All the goobery dialogue and tongue-in-cheekness there.

Also – how hard does a female writer have to work to get some respect up in H-Town ya’ll? She won a damned Academy Award and at least two characters she helped script have either won major awards or been nominated (possibly a third depending how Young Adult fares). And still, she gets a ton of e-hate and bitchy comments cause she stripped for a year or something. I don’t even know. But it totally has nothing to do with her gender or anything. Carry on.

Back to United States of Tara: The show is about a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) leading a suburban life in Kansas, raising two children with her husband who is a self-employed landscaper.

Cody’s skills as a creator and writer are on fine display here. I was wary approaching it – a bit burnt out on mental illness as comedy fodder, or reality TV fodder, or fodder in general.

What struck me? In the same way that Juno struck me? The mid-west normalcy. The harkening back to classic TV shows that I identified with in my youth, like Roseanne. A family living together using sarcasm, humor and love to sustain themselves. Only mental illness fills the role of economic hardship as the main struggle in the lives of the Gregsons.

There seems to be a strong emphasis on Cody’s work recently towards examining mental illness in a comedic way. Dark humor around these topics still seems a bit iffy, but I can’t see how it’s much worse than something like Dexter. That dude actually kills people. Tara doesn’t do much other than harm herself and assault the people around her. One is certainly worse than the other, but I’m sure some will try to argue the point.

As far as the main complaints against the work of Diablo Cody – yes, there are some creative dialogue exchanges, but they are far more tamed and tempered than the Juno days. United States of Tara isn’t all witty reparte – there is a foundation of real love running underneath the family. I’m hard pressed to think of many other TV shows that depict this love/hate relationship with families with as much honesty (again, Roseanne).

Toni Collette playing as many as seven different people is phenomenal. The Emmy and Golden Globes she won for this role are well deserved, and she is my new actress crush. Also appreciate that the show features three well written female leads, without demeaning the roles the males play in their lives. In fact, the father figure is central to the survival of the family on an emotional level. Patton Owsalt as the sister’s baby daddy isn’t too bad either. I secretly ship him and Diablo Cody.

Sadly, the series is short lived. Only 3 seasons to its credit. Even more depressing given it was one of the few shows on air created by a woman, written (mostly) by a woman and produced by two women (Cody and Collette). 

LINK LOVE: 

- Diablo Cody on the cancellation of United States of Tara

- Toni Collette straddles gender roles in United States of Tara

- Tara gets mental illness right

- Tara gets mental illness wrong

Bechdel Test: “United States of Tara” features more than two female characters with names who converse about something other than men and therefore DOES PASS the women test, DOES PASS the men test and does not feature more than two minority characters who have names, and speak to one another about something other than white people so it DOES NOT PASS the race test.

THE GOOD

Charlize Theron is phenomenal in this role. She swaggers across the screen in her Uggs and sweatpants, chomping up the scenery with her ice-cold glare and washing it down with giant swigs of Diet Coke. Her moments of extreme cattiness, minus the awkward attempts at seduction are gleeful rather than off-putting. I would watch an entire movie of mean Mavis and love every minute of it. I’m sure that’s wrong, but I don’t care.

Other good bits? Matt and Mavis had chemistry. Patton Oswalt is such a lovable curmudgeon. While they glowed together in their general dislike of the world, I would hate to be drunk in a bar with them. Their level of bitter and hate is best viewed from a distance.

I was also thrilled by the little scenes with Mavis planning out her outfits, packing/unpacking, getting mani/pedis, putting on her hair and makeup. Those simple daily ritualistic acts that often define the female gender but are usually never displayed in films except for comedic effect. These scenes had a completely different tone. For Mavis it was like putting on a suit of armor to head out into battle. The calculation and effort with which she went about it was strangely compelling.

THE BAD

Unfortunately, we are largely treated to small, shining moments of mean Mavis and then long, extended periods of uncomfortable tension. Awkward scenes of wooing a clearly disinterested and skeeved out ex-boyfriend. Another horrible scene around her parents dinner table where she waxes effusive about her high school days and then promptly announces she’s an alcoholic. Her parents react with blank stares. Oh poor BBZ. Mavis is lacking a serious amount of love in her life.

We’re all meant to sympathize or connect with this character, but I found her to be genuinely despicable, while simultaneously taking joy in some of her tamer exploits. The thing with most great flawed protagonists is that there are also some decent, humane elements to connect you with the characters. I didn’t see much about Mavis to like. Even Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher had some moments where she obviously gave a crap about others.

Mavis, at 37, is unable to advance beyond her own limited self interests. As a character study she is intriguing, but as the plot of an entire film – it is less than inspiring material. Why should we care about Mavis when no one else does? When she clearly doesn’t care about herself or anyone else? It would be a bad argument to classify her as a charming anti-heroine because of her poor behavior. Being a bitch only makes for good film fare when taken in moderation. It also makes your supposedly flawed, realistic character more of a study in mental illness via alcoholism and narcissism.

IN CONCLUSION

I loved this film for what it did, what it almost did and what it tried to do. It tried to make that mean girl from High School a human being instead of a caricature, and it almost succeeded. Everyone knows in order to remain a lovable, relatable anti-hero – the man-child or depressed alcoholic needs to have some kind of redemptive arch.  But there was far more anti to this hero and she never showed any real self-awareness or self-knowledge.

An example to all those Young Adults out there of what not to be when you grow up.

Bechdel Test: ”Young Adult” features more than two female characters with names who converse about something other than men and therefore DOES PASS the women test, DOES NOT PASS the men test and does not feature more than two minority characters who have names, and speak to one another about something other than white people so it DOES NOT PASS the race test.

LINK LOVE:

- Interview with Diablo Cody about Young Adult

- The implicit double standard of complex female characters

- “Young Adult” breaks all the rules for women in film

- Mavis as anti-heroine

North & South

The plot itself is a bit Pride and Prejudice mixed with some Dickensian characters and commentary on poverty and the Industrial Revolution. It’s four episodes long, but very beautifully shot. Beautiful for BBC – who isn’t notorious for having the most crisp or clean-looking productions. But I can’t get the images of the white fluffs of cotton blowing around in the factory out of my head.

Features some spot-on acting by Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe, who both do fine jobs portraying smoldering romance with fluttering eyes and lips. Other actors worth mentioning are Sinead Cusack as the crotchety but sympathetic mother foil, Brendan Coyle as union rabble rouser and Anna Maxwell Martin as a town girl with a chronic illness.

Be sure to watch this fan-vid after you view the series. It’s perfect.

Downton Abbey

It struck a cord immediately – reminding me of a serialized Gosford Park and both of which I assume owe some kind of nod to Upstairs, Downstairs which is a series I’ve never seen myself. Either way, I much prefer Downton Abbey because it is visually quite a bit nicer than most of the other BBC television productions. Probably because it’s ITV. Oh snap. J/K BBC, I still love you.

Perhaps it’s not breaking any new territory in terms of focusing on the lives of nobility and their household staff, but I was immediately drawn to it – recognizing  Brendan Coyle from North & South, as well as Joanne Froggatt from Robin Hood. And of course – Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton. Hugh Bonneville is wonderful too – though I didn’t immediately recognize him from something, his face was very familiar.

My only beef with this show is that the passage of time is not obvious (all the sudden the characters were like “well, it’s been two years”). The Titanic sinking was a great series opener and ended with World War I kicking off. Only eight episodes available on Netflix right now. I know there are at least sixteen.

Middlemarch

Might not be as charming if you haven’t read the book.

Unfortunately, this depiction of Middlemarch a 1994 jam, so the production value is low and you won’t recognize many well-known actors – aside from Rufus Sewell or perhaps Jonathan Firth, the younger, blonder brother of Colin Firth. Juliet Aubrey looks like she plays a bad-ass in current BBC productions, so go her.

What I love about this book/series? The characters aren’t all perfect but no one is really a villain outright – they all are just victims of themselves, their circumstances or bad choices. Like real life.

Runner Up: Robin Hood. Only three seasons long. A pointless main character death in the second season took a lot of wind out this series sails. And the dialogue was sometimes a bit off for the time period depicted. But it featured lots of sexy young things and a skinny hipster hero in Robin of Locksley. Worth watching if you’re unemployed. Or love Richard Armitage as much as I do.

The consistent focus on writing + winter break with no job or school to consume my thoughts led me to mull over the future of the blog. It’s been a rocky four years. Yep – Tiny Heroes will be four years old in March 2012. Kinda crazy. I’ve had slow success and then popularity and then failure and then slow success again with this venture.

I’ve had some time to consider what posts on Tiny Heroes were popular, appropriate, on theme…and what the holy hell the theme of this blog is.

The blog theme of Tiny Heroes is whatever the DH and I are passionate about. And that will change as our interests change. But largely it’s nerd stuff – comic books, genre entertainment, tech, and geek events. 

Coupon info and hiking pictures and other mullings don’t really belong here. That’s why I’ve moved them to Melinda Not Mindy.

Tiny Heroes deserves a new layout. It’s had the same tired look for the last four years – and has become increasingly clogged with all sorts of social networking trivia. It was high time we cleaned it up.

Here are the 2012 blogging resolutions:

1. All blog posts on theme.

2. 600 word maximum posts.

3. Posts three times a week.

4. Weekly comic book/book/movie review

5. Monthly guest post

These aren’t promises. More like…guidelines. These goals are what I’d like to achieve in the coming year. Hope you’ll stick around for awhile. Think you might like it.