Marvel movies trump DC movies

So last night I went to see Man of Steel. In Gold Class, nonetheless, because I'm fancy like that. And I enjoyed it, despite the fact that it nearly made my ear drums explode. But today? The more I think about it, the more I have problems with it. Because there were so many things that just DIDN'T. MAKE. SENSE. And, after talking about various things with Kim via email, I figured that I'd try and put some of my thoughts into a blog post.

Warning: remainder of post may contain spoilers.

So y'all know that I loves me a superhero movie. I will watch pretty much any superhero movie, including Green Lantern. But without exception, I love the Marvel movies about a thousand times more than any DC movie. And I think what it boils down to is this: Marvel has embraced the fact that superhero movies are inherently silly in many ways. I mean, radioactive spider bites or magical hammers or gamma radiation poisoning giving you superpowers are pretty dumb when you think about it. Marvel has embraced the fact that the concepts are a bit silly, and they ensure that the scripts contain elements of that silliness.

And the thing about this is that it adds a sense of realism. Life isn't all serious all the time, no matter how dire the circumstances. And it's these moments of silliness that give the Marvel movies their heart, and that help the audience relate to the characters. Sure, not everyone is a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist (sorry, Kim. I know how much you hate that line now), but everyone can join the dots on Tony calling Hawkeye "Legolas" or saying "I'm a huge fan of the way you turn into an enormous green rage monster". Even when they're characters with huge responsibilities, they're still human and still entertaining to watch.

Source

In contrast, the DC movies are all about the seriousness, all flash and no depth. While Henry Cavill may be all kinds of hot, the script writing in Man of Steel is such that there's nothing to make the character of Superman (or Clark Kent/Kal-El, if you will) appealing to the audience. He constantly talks about being a citizen of earth, but his actions don't reflect it. In fact, there seemed to be numerous moments where they were comparing Superman to Jesus, and that was just bizarre.

I kept thinking of Edna in The Incredibles: "NO CAPES". Also, source.

Much like in The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man, the final battle of Man of Steel takes place in the city centre. Unlike the aforementioned Marvel movies, Superman's role is to defend mankind, not Metropolis. So having the fight continue in Metropolis after a certain point is ridiculous. The entire fight was painful to watch, because Superman shows no regard for the damage he's causing, no acknowledgement of the fact that thousands of people are dying as a direct result of his actions.

Instead, we get the destruction of the better part of the entire city centre and Superman causing damage to multiple buildings while flying along pummelling the crap out of his enemy, only to end with a death that could have taken place much earlier in the piece. And when he lands, the people emerge from the rubble of Metropolis to be all "OMG, Superman totally saved us! Well, some of us at least."

Source

The only human he raises a finger to save is Lois Lane. Even Jonathan Kent dies in a way that Superman/Clark could have prevented. A way, I should add, that trumps even Dawson's Creek to win the title of "Worst Death Ever".

Similarly, Batman displays little interest in the people of Gotham or the destruction he causes in the course of defeating his various foes, despite Bruce Wayne's philanthropic works. Perhaps as a businessman, he instead focuses on the fact that any damage caused will likely lead to new projects for Wayne Enterprises? Watchmen was built almost entirely around Doctor Manhattan and his giant blue wiener. And Green Lantern was more interested in showing off than anything else for a large proportion of the film.

Just get on with it, Hal. Also, source.

In contrast, the people of New York rally behind Spiderman to help him defeat Lizard. The Avengers - while they do destroy a decent chunk of New York in the process of fighting off the Chitauri - ensure that a perimeter is established, limiting the damage as much as possible. They also work to evacuate as many civilians as possible minimising the injuries and casualties. Similar things can be said of almost all the recent Marvel movies - the majority of the major fight scenes take place in such a way that civilian casualties and damage are kept to a minimum. The heroes are all flawed, despite their powers. There's witty banter throughout the fight scenes, and constant character development throughout the course of the films.

Source

Plus, Superman's latest outfit bears a striking resemblance to bubble wrap. At least he's not wearing his undies on the outside any more??

Have you seen Man of Steel? What did you think of the final battle? What's your take on the Marvel movies versus the DC movies? And - perhaps most importantly - am I the only one who thinks his outfit looks like it's made of bubble wrap??????

K xx

Whut.

You guys, Australian history is weird. I'm the first one to admit that. I mean, Melbourne was founded by a dude named Batman. Who had no nose by the time he died of syphilis only a couple of years after Melbourne was settled. And who we managed to LOSE when Melbourne's first cemetery was moved to make room for a market.

Hell, that's not all we've lost. We lost a Prime Minister in 1966. He went swimming at the beach about an hour from Melbourne and never came back. What did we name in his honour? A SWIMMING POOL.

And back in the days when Tasmania was Van Diemen's Land, it was under the control of a guy named Thomas Davey, who was basically the nineteenth century version of Captain Jack Sparrow.

He even LOOKS a little like Johnny Depp, you guys.
Also, source.

According to Robert Hughes in his (rather long-winded, but still fascinating) book The Fatal Shore, Davey

"...marked his arrival in Hobart Town in February 1813 by lurching to the ship's gangway, casting an owlish look at his new domain and emptying a bottle of port over his wife's hat. He then took off his coat, remarking that the place was as hot as Hades, and marched uphill to Government House in his shirtsleeves. Nicknamed "Mad Tom" by the settlers, he would later make it his custom to broach a keg of rum outside Government House on royal birthdays and ladle it out to passersby." (2003:369) 

And Davey is, according to Wikipedia, also known for inventing a cocktail called "Blow my Skull".

I honestly didn't think anything could beat Mad Tom Davey as my favourite bizarre thing in Australian history. But today? Today I was proved wrong.

Because in 1932, Australia went to war. Against emus. AND THE EMUS WON.

Can we just stop and process this for a second? A group of soldiers took a couple of machine guns and went into the desert to kill 20,000-odd birds. And they failed.

"Boo-ya, bitches". Also, source. 

Plus, this "war" led to some completely amazing quotes:

"The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month." - Dominic Serventy

"If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world...They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop." - Major Meredith

I don't think I really have much in the way of a point. Well. Except for these:

1. What the hell, Australian government?! 

2. Those soldiers should be super pleased that they were only dealing with emus and not cassowaries... #velociraptorsofthemodernera

3. HISTORY IS FREAKING AWESOME.

K xx

Colorado - the "apparently banana is a confusing word" edition

I'm currently sitting in a Starbucks in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I had grand plans for doing SOMETHING of interest (even if it was just checking out the TJ Maxx next door to my hotel) with my last day on the east coast, but it's pissing with rain and I don't wanna. Plus, the Starbucks is *attached* to my hotel, so I didn't even have to go outside to get here #lazinessFTW Anyway, due to the rather inclement weather and my epic laziness, I figured I'd kill the two hours until I have to leave for the airport with some kind of blogging activity!

When I last left you, I was embarrassing myself at the baseball in Denver. My trip to Colorado Springs involved me getting free food for being foreign, snow, feeding a giraffe, and Bigfoot. (Let us all pause for a moment to think about just how different that sentence could appear without the use of the Oxford comma. Thank you. #grammarnerd) 

My adventures in the Springs started with a day trip about a week after I arrived in Colorado. We got down there just in time to pick up Megan and head out for lunch to a new restaurant/cafe/thing that sold pretty much nothing but peanut butter and jam sandwiches. #onlyinAmerica I honestly don't think I'd had a peanut butter and jam sandwich since I was at primary school (HI LOR!) in Toronto a millionty years ago. So I was slightly apprehensive about the whole thing, because if I put anything with peanut butter in a sandwich? It's going to be honey. Needless to say, I was kind of thrilled when I found a sandwich that consisted of crunchy peanut butter, honey and fresh strawberries. Technically, it also contained banana. But it's gross, so I asked for it without. Which led to this:

Me: Can I get the [insert name of sandwich here] with no banana?

Serving guy: With no what?

Me: Banana

Serving guy: Ba-what?

Me: BANANA.

Serving guy: Ohhhhh, no BANANA. Sure!

(Okay, that doesn't really work when you type it. Let's just say that I pronounce it 'ba-nah-nah' and Americans pronounce it kind of nasal-y and with a shorter A sound and just generally WRONG...) 

Anyrandomsegue, the sandwich was pretty good, if a little oozy. Once we'd finished our sandwiches, we headed out to some Anasazi cliff dwellings just outside of town. Okay, technically, they're RECREATED cliff dwellings that were moved from somewhere else for some reason that totally escapes me and which I can't look up because the internet keeps crapping out on me #Starbucksfail. But given the choice between seeing cliff dwellings that were 10 minutes from where I was, and driving all the way across Colorado to Mesa Verde, I took the former. 

And hey, it wasn't a total waste because Lyndsy and I wound up buying some fudge. And when I say "some", I mean ONE AND A HALF POUNDS (700g. It doesn't sound nearly as impressive that way). Um. Whoops? (It was delicious) 

After our fudge buying extravaganza trip to the cliff dwellings, we headed over to Garden of the Gods. Holy gorgeous scenery, Batman! (by which I mean the superhero, and not the founder of Melbourne who died of syphilis at the age of 38 and had no nose. Although I'm sure he would have appreciated the scenery too... I'll stop now.) And now is about the point where I mention that if Garden of the Gods was in Australia, you'd probably have to park a 20 minute walk from any of the sites. In America, you have to try and frame your photos in such a way as to cut out the car park because you can pretty much drive up to the base of any attraction...

Ahem. How about I stop talking and show you some moody looking photos of Garden of the Gods to finish?

You're welcome. 

Next up, I find the most hideous special ugg boots of all time. Nice export, Australia... *rolls eyes*

K xx

Small children have empty heads...

So my mum was in Canberra this week on school camp. She's moved campuses this year, so it was a combined grade 5/6 camp. As per usual, they came to the museum. Mum asked me to come and give them a 5-10 minute spiel about gallery development and why museums change. That was all fine, because there's usually a visitor services host to give them an introduction to the museum and its various galleries.

But this time, they didn't book a visitor services host for whatever reason. Which I found out when I got over to the main hall and was confronted with 50-60 small children... O-kay. Fine, I'll just add in some stuff about why we don't have dinosaurs...

So I gave them the spiel that I'd planned out. Which included a description of how we're using objects to tell the stories of places as well as people. And I used John Batman as an example. Now, *I* spent very little time at primary school in Australia, but during the 18 months that I *did* do here, there was a decent chunk of time (like, a term?) in which we studied the foundation of Melbourne and John Batman and the Henty family.

I foolishly assumed that because I'd studied it in grade 3 or 4, that by grades 5 and 6 they would have too. Instead it went like this:
Me: So, one of the objects going into the new gallery is the Batman land deed. Have you guys learnt about John Batman and the founding of Melbourne?
60 small children: [blank looks]
Me: [looks around at teachers]
Teacher: Um. I don't think so. No...
Me: Oh. O-kay... *awkward pause*

I bet they were all thinking of something like this:

Cos that's TOTALLY how Melbourne was founded... Honestly, the youth of today! *sigh*

K xx

Melbourne cake - the verdict

Well, the cake turned out to be a success. Not only was everyone at work very impressed, but I got praise from a random bus company employee in the city on my way to work who particularly liked the ship. So that was nice, if slightly bizarre and unexpected!

I think the key sign of success, though, is that by this afternoon, there was only one piece of cake left. Which, of course, was when the Boss Man decided to do one of his periodic walk-through-and-chat-with-employees things. The conversation went something like this:

Boss Man: Hello! How's it going? Oooooh, cake. Is it someone's birthday?
Me and Colleague: Melbourne's!
Boss Man: Um... What?
Me: Yesterday was the 175th anniversary of the founding of Melbourne.
Boss Man: Oh. And who made the cake?
Me: That would be me.
Boss Man: Were the colours [the remaining piece had part blue, part green icing] representative of anything?
Me: Well, the cake was a map of Victoria, Tasmania and Bass Strait with the boat in Bass Strait representing John Pascoe Fawkner's trip from Launceston to what became Melbourne!
Boss Man: Well. That's quite some...dedication??...to Australian history... *slightly terrified expression*
Colleague: Sooooo... *quickly changes the topic*
Me: *sits in my corner and shuts the hell up*
[After Boss Man has left]
Me: I just became the crazy girl who represents history in cake, didn't I?
Colleague: Yes. Yes, you did... Sorry dude...
Me: Crud...

I may have paraphrased or reworded a few bits of that, but the overall gist remains accurate. In hindsight, I should have given him the last piece of cake. Then the sugar high from the icing would have made me seem less weird... ;)

K xx

Melbourne cake!

Tomorrow marks the 175th anniversary of the settlement of Melbourne. In 1835, John Pascoe Fawkner found out that John Batman and the Port Phillip Association had signed a treaty with the elders of the Kulin nation. He promptly loaded a ship with people and supplies and sailed across Bass Strait. On 30th August 1835, Fawkner's party sailed up the Yarra River, unloaded their supplies, and began to build a settlement on the place that would become Melbourne.

Right. History lesson done with. I figured that seeing as I'm curating the Melbourne exhibit in the gallery, I should commemorate this historic event in some way (doubly so considering I forgot about the 175th anniversary of the Batman Treaty in June...). And I figured I may as well do it with cake!

So I started with my standard fudge cake, baked in a 22cm square tin.

I printed out a line map from the interweb, and scaled it appropriately.

Then I traced it onto baking paper, and realised that while the template was wide enough, it wasn't high enough. So I made up about an inch of Tasmania's coastline on each side. I think I did vaguely okay!

A couple of weeks ago, I spent a ridiculous amount of money ($45) on this food colouring. My mum had a similar set when I was a kid, and our birthday cakes were always awesome colours as a result. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to give them a test run!

I cut out the baking paper template, and pinned it to the cake.

Okay, technically I needled it to the cake. Because apparently I've managed to leave my pins in Melbourne...

Then I made a crapload of buttercream icing:

I divided it between two bowls, and started with the blue:

This is the amount of Wilton colouring you'd usually need. But considering I had about three times as much icing as usual, it took way more than this. But I forgot to take photos... Also, the icing wasn't really that yellow...

Then it was onto the green:

Aaaaaand I apparently neglected to take photos of the bowls of icing once it had been coloured. Oh well...

Anyway, I iced the sides of the cake, and Bass Strait.

Then I un-needled (de-needled??) the baking paper template, and got out the piping bag. After a bit of piping to mark the edges of the green bits, I went back to the palette knife and filled in the gaps:

Then I got this stuff out of the cupboard. It's a bit scary, and I sure as hell wouldn't use it as the ONLY icing on a cake (it smells positively toxic!), but it's handy for decorating:

Then it was out with the red food colouring:

And these, which I bought at the same time as the food colouring:

I hacked off a chunk of ready-made icing, and kneaded it on icing sugar as directed.

Then it was what felt like an hour of mixing in the red food colouring. I gave up once it got to this shade, even though I wanted it to be much redder:

And cut out a couple of stars to mark the locations of Launceston (where Fawkner's party left from), and Melbourne.

The Melbourne one was bigger. It seemed important, somehow...

Then I grabbed the black food colouring and some more fondant to make a boat representative of the Enterprize (and no, that's not a spelling mistake).

I made a sail out of a a toothpick and some baking paper. The boat's a wee bit out of proportion, but frankly, if it were in proportion, it would be the size of a hundred and thousand, if not smaller. So if it has to be out of proportion, it may as well be dramatic!

And the final touch was the little white blob of fondant in the boat, which is Fawkner. I thought about making a little man out of fondant, but my hands were dyed black and red from the food colouring, so I gave up and made a blob instead.

So there you have it. A very happy 175th birthday to my beloved Melbourne in cake form!! Here's hoping it makes it to work in one piece, and that it tastes as good as it looks...

K xx

PS. The spellchecker just told me that Launceston isn't a word, but Landsteiner is. WTF??

Text writing and why it's painful...

Since getting back from Thailand, I've been spending my days writing text for the Hobart showcases. For those non-museum initiates, text means writing all the object labels, story panels, and introductory panels. You know, those little things in the showcase that say "This pot dates to 2500BCE, and demonstrates post-modernist and cubist tendencies" (Yes, I did actually see an object label that said that. It was in Peru, and it still makes me laugh - that potter must have had some hell of an ability to see the future...).

Anyway, text writing is painful for a range of reasons. When you've come into the development of a gallery this late, in some cases it's not particularly clear why certain objects were selected. And all the research about them is in ten different people's brains. So you basically have to start from scratch and hope you haven't missed a major point... And the problem then is that you have all this research stuck in your brain, and you want to use all of it. So you spend an hour constructing a 350 word slab of text describing the history of the object and the person who used it. And then you remember that the word limit for object labels is between 50 and 75 words, and you can't decide whether to scream or cry...

And sometimes...sometimes you really hope that you'll find implausible things in the course of doing that research. Like this week, when I was researching the conduct record for a convict named William Turner. I was desperately hoping that I'd find that he was transported for piracy. Or that he had a partner in crime named Jack Sparrow. Or that he married a girl named Elizabeth Swann. Not so much because I'm a giant nerd who loves Pirates of the Caribbean (which, let's face it, is true...), but because I desperately wanted to have an object label that read "This record contains details of the conduct of William Turner, who was transported to Van Diemen's Land for piracy. He was accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Swann, and his associate, Jack Sparrow.". Okay, it was because I'm a giant nerd. Shut up.

Anyway, I got ridiculously excited during my research, because I found a newspaper article relating to his trial. And in it, I came across a sentence that read "The accused was tried for forging a cheque against the bank of Messrs. Sparrow & Co". I started jumping up and down in my chair, because I finally had a legitimate reason to include the name Sparrow in the object label. Unfortunately, when I read the article more carefully, I realised that it was the guy AFTER William Turner who was tried for forging a cheque against Messrs. Sparrow & Co. My guy? Convicted for life for forging a fiver against the Bank of England *sigh* So dull in comparison...

So unfortunately, Jack Sparrow will not be getting a mention in the Hobart showcases. But this week, I'll be finishing up Hobart and moving on to Melbourne. So maybe instead I can include a reference to some bloke named Robin while talking about John Batman... I'm also secretly hoping that John Batman had a servant named Alfred ;) Keep your fingers crossed for me!!

K xx