Joss Whedon is My Master Now

Things I noticed upon 2nd viewing of "Serenity" (no, I've not had it on constant DVD rotation since September):

• The thing about Serenity's costumes isn't in the cut, it's in the detail. The operative's diagonally pieced sleeves, Zoe's weathered side zipped top, and the buttons on Mal's breech hems all serve to make the pieces more than mere "jacket", "vest", "pants", they really do :)
  
• Summer Glau was excellently cast - graceful AND predatory, vulnerable AND terrifying.
  
• Is it just me or was Jayne constantly eating something?
  
• Joss Whedon is a master storyteller, bar none! This is modern mythology, folks!
  
• Seeing a movie with an audience consisting mostly of fans is just fun on a Rocky-Horror type level - everyone gets the joke :)
  

Deeply tired and headachey now because I'm up way past my bedtime (such a lightweight, me). Time to snooze.

evolution of fashion: lower waists

I don't often shop, but went to Target today to pick up some contact lens solution and other sundries, and took a walk through the women's department. Saw something curious:

1920s style dropped waist dresses. In modern materials, of course, and only one style but it was still surprising to me - to the best of my modern costume knowledge, this style had legs only in the 1920s and maybe a VERY brief period in the early 1960s, and even then the waist wasn't quite as low as it had been ~40 years previously.

IMHO it's not an incredibly flattering look for most women (especially as modern aesthetics dictates that narrow hips are "in", and the horizontal line of a dropped waist tends to visually "widen" that area), so I'm wondering, how did we get here?

My own informal ponderings, based on nothing more than what I see people wearing in the streets:

1) First trend: low waisted jeans. Greeted with joy by some, horror by others, specifically because if you have anything but perfect abs, they're not all that flattering. Thus precipitating:

2) Shirts with longer hems to cover up less than ideal tummies when wearing said jeans. I started seeing these last year; in particular I ordered some t-shirts last fall that looked normal in the catalog but turned out to have MUCH longer hems than I'm used to. The eye adjusts to the new proportion and:

3) Someone decides to try the same thing with dresses, completely forgetting that this has been tried before (yes, some designers do know something about fashion history; I'm not convinced that ALL of them do, or that they all care).

And I suppose it's a cute dress, if you have the ideal 1920s measurements of 30-30-30 (it WAS in the junior's department, and might look good on a slim teenager). Perhaps more evidence that every shape will be fashionable/desirable at some point in history?

Anyway, those are my musings. If anyone else has insight into the progression of this unusual trend I'd love to hear it.

don't believe the hype

Nicked from the similarly named post over at betnoir's, because the responses were so interesting:

IMHO the following items just aren't all they're cracked up to be:

1) The 1980s "Batman" movies. I remember the huge fuss when they came out, and while I liked the first one, it didn't strike me as anything that great or innovative.

2) The Da Vinci Code - again, eh. I think most people were so turned on by it because they didn't read "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" 10 years ago, but really - the writing and characterization are kinda blah.

3) Ben Affleck, particularly in his "Sexiest Man Alive" judgment a few years ago - huh? This guy is like play-doh, can look "in place" in almost any movie but is never more than background.

4) Gwynneth Paltrow: see 3.

5) Most fast food: why does anyone find McDonalds appetizing? I get a headache just being in the place!

6) Gone With The Wind - so not the Great Southern Epic, and not just for reasons of historical inaccuracy/thinly veiled racism: if it had ended at intermission it could have been ok, but with the rest Scarlett is confirmed as a tedious bitch.

7) Stargate - I like it, I just don't love it. See also: Lost, Sopranos.

8) Prince (both with the Revolution and as The Artist Formerly Known As). Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with his work but I just never saw him as all that great.

9) Titanic (the movie). Never saw, would like to see the bits with the reproduction ship ONLY please, but gawd, please spare me Leonardo Di Caprio!

Though I'm sure there are 10 (or more), I can't come up with them at the moment so I'll finish with an unjustly underrated thing:

10) Pop Will Eat Itself. Intergalactic punk rock hip hop you can dance to, it's criminal that their back catalog is out of print.

What's your own list of overrated things? What about underrated things?