Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (2016)

“Electra Woman and Dyna Girl are going to Hollywood!”

            Ever since I first saw Sydney Bristow on the TV show Alias fifteen years ago I wanted to be a superhero. Granted, Sydney Bristow is not in any way considered a real superhero in the general sense but to me she always will be. Since I am a huge Jennifer Garner fan I of course HAD to see Elektra and after that it was definitely set in stone I wanted to be a superhero like Elektra and Sydney Bristow! Not only were Sydney and Elektra my role models (who am I kidding at twenty-eight they still are!) they became my standards of what I look for in all female characters not just superhero ones. I like the tough chicks who can kick major ass but also have a fierce attitude, some quick wit, compassion, and passion (to name a few: Sarah Manning from Orphan Black, Agent Carter from Captain America, Elektra from Daredevil on Netflix, Jessica Jones, Amy Pond from Doctor Who, Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn Nine Nine). Fifteen years ago there was not a female character on TV like Sydney Bristow before she came along. In those fifteen years more and more female characters and female superheroes like Sydney have come along. Currently it is amazing to see how much fan support there has been for female superheroes to get their own movies and shows. Jessica Jones is beyond brilliant and dark. Wonder Woman is getting her own movie next year. Super Girl has her own show on the CW. People are petitioning for a Black Widow movie. Agent Carter and Hayley Atwell got so much love.

            All these wonderful women came from the traditional medium of TV. Today TV is not so mainstream when it comes to where the younger audiences are getting their entertainment from. One of the most popular sources of entertainment nowadays comes from YouTube and the vloggers who create content on there. I recently came upon this fantastic world of vloggers via Tumblr via Grace Helbig. Helbig and her fellow content creator and best friend Hannah Hart have millions of subscribers and video views behind them. They are part of a new wave of entertainment, celebrity, and influence. When former television producers Sid and Marty Krofft were looking to reboot their 1970s female superhero series Electra Woman and Dyna Girl for the digital space they turned to Helbig and Hart.

            Electra Woman and Dyna Girl begins with Judy (Hart) and Lori (Helbig) sitting in their small cramped apartment in Ohio. Lori is watching TV when a commercial comes on for an energy drink starring the most popular superhero Major Vaunt. Lori says out loud that Vaunt is such a sell out for making a commercial while Judy is sitting at the table working on her latest crime fighting gadget. The two of them are dressed up in their homemade spandex superhero suits sitting around. They go out to get slushies and they are just in time to stop a robbery from occurring. The two superheroes calmly walk up to the robbers with Dyna Girl saying “Well hello gentlemen” and taking out her gadget the Dyna Suction. The suction shoots out and grabs a hold of the one robbers arm and gun but it is a little bit too strong and winds up taking the guy’s whole arm off. After that they both punch the other guy out and put them neatly to the side for the police to come and get them. Electra Woman takes the one robber’s cell phone that he had been recording the robbery with and records herself saying a few things.

            That night Lori’s phone keeps going off. She gets a message that CMM- Creative Masked Management, a superhero agency- has seen their video and wants them to come to Hollywood for a meeting. Lori is all excited about their meeting while Judy is not as excited. She is hesitant because she does not want anything between them to change. Lori assures that they will always be a team and will not change.

            At CMM they meet with the head of the company Dan Dixon (Andy Buckley from The Office). He wants to completely change their costumes, create new backstories for them, and give them some updated gear. Again, Electra Woman is totally game while Dyna Girl is hesitant and also once again Electra Woman manages to talk Dyna Girl into working with the company.

            The duo become a huge hit in the superhero world… well Electra Woman does anyway. Dyna Girl is now known as Electra Woman’s sidekick when she did not start off that way. Judy gets pissed and rightly so and makes it be known to Lori. That does not go over very well and Lori tells Judy to “spin off”. When Judy does “spin off” she goes to check out a crime scene to see if she can find the new supervillain that has emerged and created the crime scene. Unfortunately, Judy gets kidnapped by the new supervillain known as Empress of Evil.

            Lori finally gets her shit together and sees how much of an ass she was being to Judy when she sees the video of Judy being kidnapped by the Empress of Evil. Lori was so close to saving Judy but she gets knocked out and tied up like her friend by the Empress. Of course they manage to get out of their holds and save the day.

            Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart were excellent. I have to say I was a little worried about how their acting would be after having watched them in their first feature movie Camp Takota (along with their other best friend and fellow YouTuber Mamrie Hart from You Deserve Drink) where their acting was alright at best. I was fortunate enough to have seen the first two episodes at StreamCon in October and all my worries about Helbig and Hart’s acting were put to rest. They were so good. In Camp Takota all three YouTubers were acting as themselves for the most part, there really was not a big stretch between their characters and their YouTube selves. But in Electra Woman and Dyna Girl Helbig and Hart were their characters and I was so happy to see that. It was great getting see Helbig as this out going character with some awesome feistiness and Hart being the conscientious superhero. Even though they were playing their characters perfectly there was still some YouTube Hannah Hart and Grace Helbig in them. Hart loves puns so Dyna Girl had some great puns. Helbig has this smirk just before she is about to say something or thinks something is funny or good. Also in the convenience store scene Electra Woman mentions she won a game of Risk which meant the gadget should have been called the Electra Suction not the Dyna Suction. Dyna Girl quips back to her friend that threatening to puke on the board game does not mean she won. Helbig made a video with her brother a few years back where she told the story about how they were playing Risk and he was losing so he tried to puke on the board.

There are two things I greatly hope for with Helbig and Hart as these superheroes: they help to push the idea forward that there is a market for female superheroes and, most importantly, they inspire young women to be tough, thoughtful, and kick ass just like Sydney Bristow and Elektra inspired me to be all those years ago. Electra Woman and Dyna Girl makes me so happy that young women today have awesome superheroes to look up.

            The costumes were so freaking amazing. Helbig and Hart in many interviews said that when they were discussing the costumes they did not want them to be sexualized they wanted them to look like they could actually fight and throw a punch in. That is exactly what the costumes looked like. If I were to be a superhero in the movies those are exactly the types of costumes I would want to wear. You can believe these women truly kick bad guy ass. I cannot thank Helbig and Hart and the costume team for making the suits the way they did.

            Electra Woman and Dyna Girl is a fun, silly, hilarious superhero movie. Being a superhero and a kick-ass-bad-ass female character fan for so many years it is just incredible to see Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart bringing these types of characters to a younger, wider audience. The whole time watching the movie I thought to myself that if I were fourteen years old watching this now I would be just like I was with Alias and Sydney Bristow without a doubt (which means pictures of EWDG all over my locker and notebooks and posters and pictures all over my room). It is not as dark as Alias or Agent Carter, but EWDG certainly has the heart of both and that is the highest compliment I can give to it. While Electra Woman and Dyna Girl is not a cinematic masterpiece it is something fun and enjoyable to watch. If you are a huge fan of Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart you will surely love the movie (and I am sure you have already seen it a million times just like I have!). If you are a big fan of the superhero genre definitely go check Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

You can download Electra Woman and Dyna Girl from these sites:

 iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/ele...

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Electra-Woman-...
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/movies/...

Also head to electrawomananddynagirl.com to buy the movie there and get some pretty awesome package deals like a limited edition EWDG t-shirt, signed poster by Hannah and Grace, streaming of the movie, bonus features and other cool stuff!

Silent Sundays: The Marriage Circle (1924)

Okay, so for the past few Sundays I have been watching and reviewing silent films who’s plots are about love and marriage. What is going on with me? I am not a mushy romantic in any sense of the word! I cannot stand stories where marriages or relationships are going down the dumps because of huge mistakes in miscommunication or some bored housewife decides to try to seduce another woman’s man for some fun. That seems to be all I have been watching lately! I watch one of those types of silent films yet again with Ernst Lubitsch’s (and yeah I do realize that I reviewed an Ernst Lubitsch comedy last week. The two films just happened to jump out at me when I went looking for some silent films) The Marriage Circle.

            Josef Stock (Adolphe Menjou) is a professor. His wife Mizzi seems to have all the nice things while he is left with holes in his socks and ripped shirt collars. From what we can see of Josef he is not cruel but Mizzi tells him he is and if he does not stop with his cruelness she will leave him. Josef would like nothing more if Mizzi were to leave him. Mizzi has left to go to her friend Charlotte’s place. She takes a taxi that had been called for someone else. Mizzi and the other passenger discuss sharing the taxi. Josef sees this exchange from his bedroom window and thinks Mizzi is leaving with another man. Later in the day Josef hires a detective to gather information on where his wife goes.

            Charlotte is a very happy woman. She is very happy with her husband Franz who is a doctor. Franz come home and as he is hugging his wife he cannot stop staring at Mizzi. Mizzi also has a thing for Franz and later on fakes a fainting spell to have him come over to check on her. She has wine on a drink trolley brought in. Franz is not stupid he knows what Mizzi is trying to do and he does all he can to try to show her he has no interest in her. Josef walks in to see his wife and the doctor alone. Mizzi tries to tell her husband that she has one of her fainting spells but he can clearly see there was wine brought in and thinks he is the one Mizzi got into the taxi with that morning. The following morning Mizzi receives a letter from Franz that she should consult with another doctor. Mizzi is not easily dissuaded by Franz’s letter. She goes to his office and immediately grabs him and kisses him.

            Charlotte suspects that Franz is cheating on her but they both decide not to bring it up and fight about it anymore than they already have. She believes he is cheating on her with a young woman named Miss Hoffer. She is one of their guests at their dinner party and whenever Charlotte sees her husband is talking with Miss Hofer. Not knowing that Mizzi is the one Franz has been seeing Charlotte tells Mizzi to keep her eye on Franz since she thinks he is cheating on her with Miss Hoffer. Franz and Mizzi are almost caught out in the garden by Charlotte later on.

            That night Mizzi tells Josef that all she needs is love. He was willing to give her that love until the detective he hired to watch Mizzi comes back with a list of who she was with which includes Franz. Josef goes to Franz to tell him that he now has a reason and a person to blame to bring divorce against Mizzi. Charlotte is upset with her husband. She tries to make him jealous by tell him that she has been with his partner at the office (which she really has) but Franz does not believe her and lets her stunts such as kissing the other man in front of him go on.

            Obviously Charlotte and Franz make up and are a happy couple again. Mizzie and Josef wind up getting a divorce.

            The Marriage Circle was alright. I got bored with the story. After a while I just wanted it to end. I am not a fan of whole miscommunication thing it drives me up a wall. The cast did a very good in their roles especially Marie Provost who played Mizzi. The Marriage Circle is worth seeing at least once if you enjoy silent films. It is currently available to view in full on YouTube. 

Joy (2015)

“Don't ever think that the world owes you anything, because it doesn't. The world doesn't owe you a thing.”

            It is amazing how much money people can make when they invent something and it takes off and possibly even gets bought by a larger company. I keep crying hearing how much money some companies pay for certain apps. They pay millions and millions and the app’s creators are living a very nice life. Besides apps and technology there are many simple inventions that have been developed over hundreds of years especially in the 20^th century. Some of these simple inventions are taken advantage of today. Before the invention of the self-wringing mop mops would have been wrung out by hand. Mops are gross and could even be dangerous. In the movie Joy we get to see how the invention of the self-wringing came to be and how much it changed the life of the inventor.

            Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence) is a divorced mother of two living in upstate New York. She can barely afford to pay the mortgage on her house, her mother just stays in her room watching soap operas all day, her grandmother Mi-Mi has been the only one who told Joy she could be anyone she wanted to be, her father has been married countless of times and comes back to her house after he latest wife divorces him, and her ex-husband lives in the basement.

            Her father, Rudy (Robert De Niro), almost right away begins seeing this wealthy woman Trudy (Isabella Rossellini). Rudy and Trudy take the whole family out on her late husband’s boat. Wine gets spilled and because Joy is walked all over she is the one left with cleaning up the spilled wine. She winds up cutting her hands on the broken wine glass as she is wringing out the mop. Joy soon gets the idea to invent a self-wringing mop. Rudy has a warehouse where he does his business from and Trudy has a lot of money so she asks them to help back her invention.

            Joy soon meet with Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper) the head of the QVC channel. She gets Walker to put her invention on the show with her showing it how it works and not a washed up celebrity the channel has on hand. With Joy explaining and showing the product herself it starts to sell.

            Unfortunately, there is an issue. Before she began production Joy had Trudy’s lawyer look into any copyright issues with the product. It was found out that a Japanese man had invented something similar and created parts. Joy uses the man’s parts in her product which she gets through a company out in California. The company starts messing with her and charging her ridiculous amounts. Rudy and her step-sister Peggy blow up any deal that could have been made by paying the company. Joy finds out the manufacturer has been fraudulently charging her for the patent. She winds up going to the manufacturer out in Texas and gets his ass good and owns her product outright.

            Several years later Joy is a very successful business woman and also invests in other people’s inventions.

            Joy was a good movie. It was not that great, I found the story a bit boring. The cast was great. I always enjoy seeing Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence together in a movie they work so well together. I adore Isabella Rossellini and I had no idea she was in this movie before I started watching it and I got so excited when she came on screen. Joy is worth watching at least once because of the cast and also because it is a bit inspiring to never give up on what you believe in no matter what life throws at you.