The costumes of Pacific Rim.

N.B. If you're here via Bleeding Cool, here is the masterlist of my costume design posts. I know a lot of my recent posts are about Teen Wolf, but I promise that most of the time, this is a costume design blog. ;) 

Dress For Success – An Analysis Of The Pacific Rim Costume Designs, for BleedingCool.com.


Pacific Rim may come across as a live-action anime, but the costumes are relatively down-to-earth. Set a little over a decade in the future, Guillermo del Toro ignored futuristic styles in favour of a mid-20th century aesthetic.

As an outspoken pacifist, del Toro was keen to remove any militaristic overtones from the movie. Hence the Jaeger crews all having ranks like “Marshall” and “Ranger”, and the general lack of a military aesthetic. The overall look of the movie is more wartime than warlike, with people bustling around either in civilian clothing or the grubby overalls of an airport hangar. Any uniforms we see are generally more like those worn by the crew of the Nostromo in Alien, rather than a military uniform with obvious ranks and a dress code. [READ MORE]

Teen Wolf: "Motel California".

Previously on Teen Wolf: "Frayed".

If there was an award for "most arbitrary reason for a shirtless scene", Teen Wolf would be a shoo-in. This was a genuinely good episode, but I couldn't help but LOL at all the ab-cameos. While there were a couple of relatively legitimate shirt-removals (ie, for sex), some were... less so. Like for example, when Boyd tried to drown himself in the bathtub, but stripped his shirt off first. (But not his pants.) Even in the flashback to Uncle Moustache's 1970s suicide, we got an ab shot. WELL DONE, TEEN WOLF. Well done.

Anyhow, this was a really great episode of Supernatural. Luv cursed motels. Luv cameo appearances from Stephen King's creepy old aunt. Luv totally arbritrary reasons for every character in a TV show to be in a new location. "Athletics meet"?? Since when is Lydia an athlete? Is everyone an athlete? Why do they have to take an overnight trip, and why does Chris Argent barely seem to know where his daughter is, and why? Oh, it doesn't matter. For Reasons, everyone had to stay overnight at the Scooby Doo Haunted Motel, chaperoned by the world's worst authority figure, Coach Finstock. "No sex, kids! But if I hear screaming during the night, I won't notice or do anything about it, because that would interfere with the plot!" Repeat after me: Just Go With it.

Teen Wolf: "Frayed".

Previously on Teen Wolf: "Unleashed".

The title refers to the frayed nature of the shirts worn by most of the main cast. Scott, Boyd, Derek and Ennis all suffered a severe clawing, while Ethan and Aiden avoided the issue by showing up to the fight shirtless and then twinsforming into the werewolf megazord again. In case you're still curious about what happens to their pants when they stick themselves together with magical morphing werewolf glue, Jeff Davis has given us an answer. Kind of.
This episode featured what felt like decades of flashback footage of yet another werewolf showdown. As usual, everyone ran at each other while yelling -- a prime martial arts technique, if you are three years old. Happily, this scene catered to my neverending fascination with Beacon Hills' urban planning, because it took place in a heretofore unmentioned post-apocalyptic abandoned shopping mall. Which Scott and Isaac rode into on Scott's new motor scooter. (It's unclear whether this was at ground level or not, because Derek and Ennis fell at least three storeys down from there. WHATEVS.)

Sadly, most of those flashback scenes were kinda pointless, because we already knew what was going to happen. And @snazdoll pointed out on Twitter, all that slow-motion glowering gave us ample time to consider the bafflingly confused character continuity.

Behind the quest to build a full-scale Millennium Falcon.

[I don't usually crosspost my other writing to this blog, but this interview was too interesting not to share.]

Behind the quest to build a full-scale Millennium Falcon.

Here’s one to cheer up your inner 8-year-old: In the next few years, you may be able to visit a real-life Millennium Falcon.

Since 2005, Chris Lee’s Full Scale Falcon project has been one of those Internet curiosities that seems so epically ambitious that you can’t quite believe it’s actually real. Well, it is. All 114 feet of it, currently waiting to be assembled in a field just outside of Nashville, Tenn.

Although when we say “a field”, what we actually mean is, “This guy bought 88 acres of land for the express purpose of building a full-scale replica of the most iconic ship in Star Wars.” [READ MORE]

Teen Wolf: "Unleashed".

Previously on Teen Wolf: "Fireflies".

This was a great episode for Teen Realism. First, we open with a 27-year-old high school senior wandering down a dark alley --  always a good idea in Beacon Hills. The positive outcome of his brutal murder is that we now know the druidic serial killer is small enough to hide under a dumpster. I'm thinking were-puppy? Later, we move on to a truly beautiful combination of actual Teen Realism (ie, the sense of complete impotence one feels when teachers and adults have complete control over your life), and high school scenes written from the perspective of someone who may not have ever been in an actual real-life high school.

Yes, Murder Suspect Derek Hale was wandering around on school property again. Yes, someone was able to drive a motorcycle through the hallway during school hours without anyone noticing. Yes, two guys ripped off their shirts and turned into a 7-foot-tall Alpha Twin Megazord at like 5pm on a school day -- leaving their shirts and schoolbags behind when they left. No, nobody bothered to keep the crowd of kids away from the corpse on the running track until the Sheriff showed up, an absolute minimum of fifteen minutes later. Shhhhh. As always: Just go with it.

Teen Wolf: "Fireflies".

Previously on Teen Wolf: Chaos Rising.

This episode was mostly about people running around and doing unnecessary backflips, but was still highly enjoyable because Morgan Leigh and I were briefly in the same country, meaning I got to watch it with her! True Internet Friendship is when you're happy to meet someone from Twitter at the house of a complete stranger in order to watch a show about teen werewolves at 9.30am on a Tuesday.

Anyhow, in lieu of a "real" "review", you're going to get an itemized list of all the things that were super-awesome about this week's Teen Wolf. Because let's face it: at least 50% of this episode was slow-motion shots of people snarling at each through pointy dentures. (The other 50% was Isaac Lahey's snood.)

Man-Child of Steel.

This isn't gonna be a review so much as a written depiction of my gradual descent into a nervous breakdown while watching Man of Steel -- an experience I shared with the two five-year-olds sitting in the row in front of me. Definitely introduce your children to Superman via this movie, because it contains all sorts of child-friendly features! Such as a childbirth scene, Superman snapping a dude's neck in the middle of the vaporized ruins of Metropolis, and a complete lack of humour or a sense of fun. (HAHAHA NO SPOILERS THOUGH LOL no.)

Everyone spends the entire time stating the obvious. I'm not joking. 80% of the dialogue in this movie is like a masterclass in how to break the first law of writing: "Show, Don't Tell". Before anyone does anything, they tell everyone what they're about to do. And once they've done it, someone else explains what just happened. Sample scene:

"I'm very strong, and have no morals!" growled Zod. "I don't care about anything except Krypton!"

"But I will stop you," Superman replied. "Because I grew up on Earth. I'm going to defeat you!"

Superman punched Zod. Zod punched Superman. "Oh my god!" screamed a nameless extra. "They just punched each other! They are both aliens!" 

"I hate both of them," said another extra. "Because aliens are a new and confusing thing, and we humans are afraid of things we don't understand."

Then a building fell and crushed all the extras, killing them and everyone they knew. Sadly, Superman did not know or care about this, because he was busy listening to someone explain why Zod was a very dangerous man who needed to be stopped.

Teen Wolf: Chaos Rising.

Previously on Teen Wolf: Tattoo.

Character 1: I just had a really terrible idea.
Character 2: Great! Let's do it!

-- Teen Wolf

On the bright side, this episode showed us that most of Teen Wolf's main characters are learning from past mistakes. I say "bright side" because as always, everything in Beacon Hills is terrible.

The main thing Allison has learned is how to be genre-savvy about living in a horror movie. Like for example, if the bruise on your arm looks like a mysterious symbol? Chances are it's a mysterious symbol. Lydia is doubtful, but that's mainly because she's a very rational person, and isn't used to the kind of gut feelings that Allison, Stiles and Scott have honed after two seasons of exposure to weird supernatural bullshit. Too bad Derek doesn't listen to Allison -- he's the one character who NEVER LEARNS, both in this episode and in general. Which is probably because he's a 50/50 split between "traumatised teenage boy" and "30-year-old hardened criminal": he never got a chance to, you know, learn how to think things through and make sensible decisions like a real adult. More on that later.