Lucy Lawless count: 1

You know what's fun about watching those old Hercules/Xena shows? Seeing the actors who go on to be important characters showing up as bit players. Like when Lucy Lawless shows up in Hercules And The Amazon Women as Amazon no. 3?

I'm not going to do a full review, since it's about what you'd expect from something called Hercules And The Amazon Women. The only real insight I have is that it's interesting that the first story the makers tell with "their" Hercules is a retelling of Hercules' run-in with Hippolyta. It wasn't one of the mythological Hercules' proudest moments, so I can see how they would quickly want to "disassociate" themselves from that. Here, Hercules starts out as a sexist, but over the course of the TV movie learns that girls are awesome, with some help from a time travel-y sexual harassment seminar. See, he gets turned into a baby, and that makes him flash back to getting a lecture on women from Zeus… "If a girl doesn't like you, turn into a beam of sunlight. Ladies love that!"… and then getting trained to fight alongside Iolaus. Their mentor tells them they have to be strong and manly and repress their emotions, except for special occasions like when Bruce Willis dies at the end of Armageddon. Sniff.

Oh, and in the "reasons this was made" category, the Amazons pretty quickly capture Hercules and march him back into town with his shirt off, wherein we meet...






Hi, baby Lucy!

Okay, see, there's this village where the men are being threatened by these strange monsters and Hercules goes to kick some monster-ass, but then it turns out that the monsters are the Amazons, who are the estranged housewives of the villagers that have reinvented themselves as fearless warriors with some help from Hera. Because when it's playa-hating on a grand scale, you know it's Hera.

In the other 'reason this got made' moment, the Amazons ride back into town to… ahem… start the next generation, and I'm not talking 'bout no Star Trek spin-off. (Make your own joke about Lady Gaga music and Cosmopolitans.) This, obviously, entails busting in on dudes and telling them to get their clothes off and make with the penises. This is, depending on how you look at it, either a horrid violation or a pretty sweet deal. Still, I suppose it must suck for the gay villagers. But hey, how many homosexuals can there be in ancient Greece?


Well, I know three hundred guys who definitely aren't gay.

However, Hercules has set the clever trap of making the dudes sensitive, so they ask for the ladies' names and sing them love songs and walk cute dogs and offer to watch The Notebook with them and stuff. Depending on how you look at it, this is either a clever stratagem or my God, man, you aren't Captain Kirk! You can't just bust in and ruin utopia! Meanwhile, Zeus is crossing Not!Xena's path, so for all his faults, he at least has good taste. "You, uh… want me to turn into a swan or something?"

And thus, the crisis was entirely averted by respecting women. Which is all well and good, but perhaps next time, Hercules could punch something?

ETA: Legend of the Seeker would've been a lot better if Tabrett Bethell just showed up at random throughout the first season. Like, if there were a townperson with two lines or a pretty Sister of the Light in the background, you'd be rewatching it and go "OMG CARA!" In fact, this goes for all forms of media. Tabrett Bethell, start showing up in random podcasts. Please?

The goddamn Lois Lane

So on tumblr, I saw a photo manipulation of Jon Hamm and Tina Fey as Clark Kent and Lois Lane (it's here, if you're interested) and obvious, Hamm as Superman, win. But I don't as much like Fey as Lois, and not just because expressing that thought puts me on grammatically unsound ground. Her humor seems a bit too self-effacing for Lois, who is pretty much the exact opposite of self-effacing. If she were on the Golden Girls, you would call her brassy.

So then I started thinking of alternatives. Okay, obviously you need a mature women, not only to capture the sizable MILF hunter demographic, but because she's a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter. She should at least be in her thirties. And if you're going for a forty-something Superman (yes, please), then Lois should be at least as old as he is if not older, since by most origins she was already a seasoned reporter by the time he started out... hence the condescending to "Smallville." Fortunately, there are a lot of great actresses in their forties and fifties, because by that timeframe, if you haven't learned to act, you're not getting heard from. So there's Carla Gugino, Geena Davis, Lena Headey... all very attractive women who could pull off "eats Presidents for breakfast" reporting.

But the first thought I actually had was Sandra Bullock, and even though I kept going "no, that would never work, there must be a reason this would be the worst thing ever," I couldn't come up with anything. I know she's a very mainstream kind of actress, but what's wrong with that? Superman should be Americana and even a little pop music. There's no reason we need a deep, dark look into a man who flies around with his underwear on the outside. There's also no reason a summer blockbuster can't be populist and fun as well as smart and clever. I can't be the only one tired of these dumb, dreary summer movies like Clash of the Titans and Terminator Salvation, where a parade of generically anguished angry men fight against hordes of dark, depressing monsters so they can win a little winsy-betsy victory against the forces of evil. Ideally, a Superman movie should be something like Star Trek--just lots and lots of fun.

And with an A-lister like Bullock, you could bet the Lois and Clark relationship would be front and center, probably with a generous lack of any bullshit like "and then Doomsday kills Lois, because Superman is SRS BUIZNESS!"

ETA: Sigourney Weaver would work too, as long as you cast a really strong Luthor, because if you didn't, she would smack him around like a ping-pong ball.

ETA2: Yeah, she's a little old now, but if Superman Lives had gotten off the ground, "Galaxy Quest" Weaver would've been an awesome Lois. And Dennis Quaid as 90s Superman, final answer!

ETA3: I was about to say Val Kilmer would also be good, but then, he was Batman. But if there were a World's Finest movie... and Joel Schumacher was nowhere near it... a Kilmer/Quaid/Weaver team-up would've been 90stastic!