Sucker Punch misses
Sucker Punch
What happens when you mix Heavy Metal (that episodic, 1981 sex, rock and violence fantasy movie) with teenage boy fantasies of girls in mini-skirts kicking ass with automatic weapons and samurai swords, and a treacle-infused revenge and sacrifice plot about escape from mental institutions?
You get the chaotic, seething, psycho-nonsense that is Sucker Punch.
The premise had some promise. In the unnamed 1960s, the doll-faced Babydoll, played by Emily Browning (The Uninvited), accidentally shoots and wounds her evil, molesting step father. No problem; she acts in self-defense. But a stray bullet also offs her little sister. Ooops. Off Babydoll goes to Victorian, thunderstorm-swept Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, hilariously located in Brattleboro, Vermont (where I once lived). Here, dozens of other girls have been incarcerated, and like Babydoll, her compatriots inexplicably have hot-sounding pseudonyms perfectly suited for our Age of Madonna and Days of Lady Gaga. There’s the not-so-sweet Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish of Bright Star), the chummy Rocket (Jena Malone from Into the Wild), and two others with microscopic roles, the non-blonde Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens, who appeared in the High School Musical films) and the near-invisible Amber (Jamie Chung of Sorority Row), They’re all possibly insane or, like Babydoll, just abandoned by wicked step-parents.
The big, scary Lennox House is full of nut house clichés, from rusty doors, peeling paint and white tile, to the oblivious orderlies, the lecherous cook (who of course is obese), and the doctor (Jon Hamm of “Mad Men”) who administers the lobotomies. A megalomaniac lech heads up the institution (Oscar Isaac from Robin Hood). There’s one understanding psychiatrist, Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino from Watchmen), whose play-therapy shtick equates imagination with freedom. “That world you control,” she says with her Slavic accent. “That play can be as real as any pain.”
Lovers of games and genre “escapism” already get the point of fantasy: We enter these realms when, sometimes, real life’s crap bears down too hard on us. High expectations also weigh on director Zack Snyder, whose past movies Watchmen and 300 mostly pleased his fanboy and fangirl audiences. (A recent profile in the New York Times Magazine plumbs Snyder’s sudden surplus of geek cred). Clearly, he loves his graphic novels and his Dungeons & Dragons, and for Sucker Punch, he unfurls that well-trodden path of a quest for something—honor, courage, freedom—by an ordinary-person-with-extraordinary-and-hidden-gifts.
But here, more so than his other outings, Snyder is preaching, even pandering, to the converted, with wild and disappointing results.
First, you have to swallow this: More than half of the movie takes place in BabyDoll’s mind. Supposedly, to keep her sane in the loony bin, our Snow White begins to have fantasies of being a hooker trapped inside a Moulin Rouge-like whore house run by the creepy pimp (Isaac again; everyone plays at least two roles in the film). Apparently, in the girl’s mind, being a whore is a step-up. But Babydoll inserts another fantasy layer inside the first (I know, but stay with me here): a quest to obtain five items—a map, fire, a knife, a key and a fifth thing TBA. If she succeeds, she can escape the institution and bring her friends with her. This second fantasy she can only access when she revs up her erotic dance routine for the voyeuristic men. (Cleverly, Snyder never lets the audience see her sexy moves.)
When BabyDoll embarks on quest Part One, a solo adventure set in feudal Japan, she meets an unnamed “Wise Man,” the veteran actor Scott Glenn, who’s been wonderful in movies ranging from The Right Stuff, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs and The Bourne Ultimatum. Here, his grizzled, grandfatherly Wise Man character is Master Po/Yoda to Babydoll’s Grasshopper/Luke. “What are you looking for?” he asks, before handing over some serious firepower. “A way out,” replies the stoic Babydoll, who doesn’t break a smile all movie. Emily Browning’s wide, inviting, snow-white face, punctuated by two giant eyes, is an anime artist’s wet dream.
After defeating a trio of troll-like, giant armored samurai, Babydoll invites her ragtag galpals to join her on the next installment of heroic derring-do. Like in the Rupert Holmes song, she wants them to “Come with me and escape.” And they do: first to the zombie-infested trenches of World War I, then into a WW II–medieval castle-siege mash-up scenario, and finally on a bomb-defusing mission on some craggy rock next to what looks like Saturn. Luckily, for the viewer, the babes march off into battle, often in slow-motion, dressed like “slovenly trulls” and “brazen strumpets” from Babydoll’s Prostitutes & Pimps role-playing game. (Check the “Random Harlot Table” from your Dungeon Master’s Guide for details). This set-up permits the young ladies to wear fishnet stocking and high heels as they fight undead German infantrymen and shiny robots from the future. The Wise Man reappears in each fantasy episode as quest-giver, instructing the gals where they’ll find the particular item on their wish list. He also offers advice like “Don’t ever write a check with your mouth that you can’t cash with your ass.”
In shooting his asylum/brothel scenes, Snyder composes his shots with a painstakingly, almost achingly overthought attention. But at least these shots are mostly quiet. Once the fantasy ass-kicking begins, the bloody camera can’t stay still, sweeping, pivoting, dipping, swooping, all the while shooting with jerky, “Hey, aren’t we missing a few frames of film here?” look-and –feel that’s all the vogue these days. Adding to the head-throbs are the blaring remixes of classics like Eurhythmics’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and “I Want It All,” and Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Each fight episode feels like a video game level sponsored by a record label. Advil, anyone?
Meanwhile, the production design and digital landscapes have been steeped—OK, soaked—in a sea of sepia. Some of it is stunning. We see some cool cross-pollination of genres. Those big samurai dudes wield “naginatas” (a pole arm with curved blade on the end, much like a European glaive) but also primitive machine guns. In that siege scene, the ruined castle is swarming with orcs and foot soldiers in plate mail; into this mess the gals air drop from a bomber plane, then kill a sleeping dragon. Back in WW I, there’s zeppelins but also zombies and an anime-inspired, jet pack-powered bipedal armored fighting machine emblazoned with a pink bunny. That’s piloted by Amber, who handles all the flying duties. At one point, when Wise Guy barks at the ladies, “They’re using steampower and clockwork!” I half expected a subtitle to pop up: “Hey Steampunk Fans: We get it!” followed by, in smaller type, “[Hey Newbies: Steampunk is a genre the uses anachronistic technology or futuristic inventions as Victorians like Jules Venre might have envisioned ...]”
That first action scene, where Babydoll faces the giants with glowing red eyes (they glow, therefore they are evil), has its pleasures. But here’s where the major flaw of Sucker Punch is revealed. There’s nothing at stake. We know each mission is a fight of fantasy. The girls are imbued with awesome superpowers—with their blades they deflect bullets from nasty German undead; they leap, slow-mo, over the crude weapon blows dealt by Japanese trolls; they are thrown across temples and train cars and tossed through stone walls; they are pummeled by shiny robots. Nary a scratch on their milky cheeks. The audience figures out these gals are impervious. So where’s the danger? Babydoll has as many lives as a video game avatar. Only towards the end do we see real death, but the moment is laughable.
Sucker Punch aims to work on the level of universal heroic fantasy epic, but it barely functions as pulp. The Sweet 16 set may get off on the “grrrrrl power” theme, and not a few boys will dig the upskirt action shots mixed with oodles of cartoon violence. But the cocktail of comic book clichés is too sour to swallow. Strong female heroines are welcome, but their impact as role models is diluted when we see their exploits are simply fantasies nested within further fantasies, like level 60 Russian Night Elf dolls.
So what are we left with? Men are horrible, predatory pervs? That they “silence” a young woman and her “voice” via real or imaginary lobotomies? That, as the film’s PR material touts, the only resort is her “dream world” which “provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality.” Or that we should thrilled by the ambiguity of it all, because the filmmakers say, “her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary.” Sucker Punch, meet Jacob’s Ladder, A Beautiful Mind, Fight Club, Psycho and about a hundred other movies with imaginary characters or unreliable (or insane) protagonists and narrators.
Yes, a lobotomy would be the ultimate bummer. But so is that “What chains us? Who holds the key?” voice-over doggerel right before the credits roll. “You get out there and live for all of us,” are Babydoll’s final words before her own grim ending begins.
I think even teenage girls will have more fun playing a couple hours of World of Warcraft, Halo or Portal.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures that the Huffington Post calls “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky." National Public Radio described the book as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.
Is steampunk the new goth?
Is steampunk the new goth?
By Ethan Gilsdorf, December 29, 2010
(links to images on the Christian Science Monitor site)
A Steampunk mantel clock by Roger Wood of Ontario is valued at $1,500. It’s part of an exhibition titled (with Steampunkish ornament), ‘Steampunk, Form and Function, an Exhibition of Innovation, Invention and Gadgetry’ at a Waltham, Mass., museum. [photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/Christian Science Monitor Staff]Some pop culture genres such as Tolkienesque fantasy imagine a magical past of strange races and global quests. Others, such as hard-core dystopian science fiction, warn against a future marred by apocalyptic meltdown.
Then comes steampunk, a hybrid vision of a past that might appear in the future – or a future that resides, paradoxically, in the spirit of another age.
No, you're not stuck in some goofy concept album by The Moody Blues. Steampunk is a fantasy made physical, made of brass and wood and powered by steam, born of the Industrial Age and inspired by the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. It takes form both as an aesthetic movement and a community of artists; role-players; visionaries; and those who use the tools of literature, film, music, fashion, science, design, architecture, and gaming to manifest their visions.
"[Steampunk is] drawing on actual history. You can pull into it what you're into and put your spin on it. It's accessible yet expandable," says Jake von Slatt (real name: Sean Slattery, of Littleton, Mass.), who likens the philosophy behind steampunk to the open-source software movement. "There is a real focus on sharing, exploring things together, building community."
Steampunkers gather in conventions to exchange ideas – plus, they know how to dress to the nines and party like it's 1899.
Mr. von Slatt, who came of age in the era of punk rock, new wave, and Goth, has always been a tinkerer. Steampunk lets him "revisit youthful enthusiasms," he says. Now he creates intricately crafted anachronistic objects: for example, computer keyboards taken apart and rebuilt with brass, felt, and keys from antique manual typewriters. He's transformed a 1989 school bus into a wood-paneled "Victorian RV," which he uses to travel to steampunk conventions.
Currently, he's "steampunking" a fiberglass, 1954-style Mercedes kit car, tricking it out with salvaged gauges and lights from other cars and gold filigree trim. Drawn to steampunk's "do-it-yourself, making something from nothing" mantra, von Slatt scavenges most of his components from the dump.
Roots in a 1960s TV series
Steampunk was first introduced as a literary subgenre. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1990 novel "The Difference Engine" popularized the idea of an alternate history where the Industrial Revolution-level technology of pistons and turbines, not electricity, powers modern gadgets, as Victorians might have designed them. But even way back in 1960s, the television series "The Wild Wild West" helped define the genre. The sci-fi western featured a train outfitted with a laboratory and featured protagonists who were gadgeteers.
Today, steampunk's reach has exploded, from Boston to San Francisco's Bay Area, to Britain, New Zealand, Japan, and beyond.
"Steampunk is definitely growing in popularity," says Diana Vick, vice chair of Steamcon, an annual convention in Seattle that doubled its attendance when it held its second meeting in November. "I believe it is due in part to the fact that it is a rejection of the slick, soulless, mass-produced technology of today and a return to a time when it was ornate and understandable."
This year, Steamcon celebrated what its website called the Weird Weird West. It notes: "Imagine the age of steam on the wild frontier ... roughriders on mechanical horses, mad inventors ... mighty steam locomotives ... airships instead of stagecoaches."
Every culture that embraces steampunk seems to make it their own. Patrick Barry, a member of New Zealand's League of Victoria Imagineers, has seen myriad international examples. "All have a different flavour, world vision and cultural base for the artists and writers to draw from and it shows," he writes via e-mail. Even in his tiny hometown of Oamaru, steampunk has taken off. Three groups have recently mounted an exhibition, a fashion show, and run several events. "Oamaru has a population of about 13,000 people. We had 11,000 people visit the exhibition over its six week [run]."
Previously, most works in the genre would have been set only in the Industrial Age. Over time, explains Dexter Palmer, author of the novel "The Dream of Perpetual Motion," the term "steampunk" has undergone "definition creep." "Nowadays the label's much more comprehensive, and seems to refer to any retrofuturistic or counterfactual work that features machines with lots of gears, or lighter-than-air flying craft, or similar sorts of things."
Some works have been retroactively embraced as part of the genre. For example, Terry Gilliam's dystopian satire, "Brazil," is now considered steampunk even though the film was not called steampunk when it was released in 1985.
In Mr. Palmer's novel, a greeting-card writer who is imprisoned aboard a zeppelin must confront a genius inventor and a perpetual motion machine. The author created a set of rules for his fictional universe: While things might be "scientifically implausible" to the reader, they would be "self-consistent and plausible to the inhabitants of the imaginary world." He based his ideas on source materials that predicted life in the year 2000 and then designed gadgets that seemed modern, but used turn-of-the-century tech. For example, there's an answering machine in the novel that functions by recording to a wax cylinder.
'It wants to teach us things'
"One of the really wonderful things about Steampunk is that it, more than any other subculture, seems to want to teach us things," von Slatt wrote on his blog at steampunkworkshop.com. And, like the punk and Goth movements before it, steampunk teaches another way of looking at the world.
Ms. Vick adds that another appeal lies in its largely optimistic and romantic, not dark and cautionary, outlook. "We also embrace and foster good manners and dressing up, which are both sorely lacking in society today," she says.
Indeed, dedicated steampunkers are lured by fashion. To dress up as a privateer and pilot flying machines powered by "lift-wood," or play a mad scientist who meddles in alchemy, the required accouterments include corsets, top hats, and lace-up boots; military medals, parasols, and aviator goggles.
Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum aren't particularly into costuming, but when attending an event they will break out period garb. Their businesses, ModVic and SteamPuffin, offer home remodeling and design services for steampunking Victorian-era homes, an idea they applied to their own 1901 house in Sharon, Mass. They loved the turn-of-the-century fantasy but, Bruce says, "you don't want to live in the 19th century in terms of conveniences." So they retrofitted modern appliances or hid them behind facades of functional art. Combining old and new, their living room sports a plasma TV framed by an antique wooden mantel.
Upstairs, Bruce's attic office incorporates portholes, a bank vault door, and computer workstation made from an antique desk and pipes from a pump organ. You can almost see the ghost of Jules Verne hammering out a few e-mails.
"How much more fun is it to make something ornate and beautiful, rather than boring and unadorned?" asks Melanie. The couple is working on a book project, and recently curated two exhibits in the Boston area.
Tom Sepe, an artist exhibiting in one of them, the "Steampunk Form & Function" show at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham, Mass., shipped his "Whirlygig," a "steam-electric-hybrid motorcycle," from his workshop in Berkeley, Calif. The circus performer discovered steampunk via the Burning Man art community, and looks at his life as art. "Every choice we make is part of a performance," he says. "Every object we make or touch becomes an artifact of who we are and how we have been."
For Mr. Sepe, "three crucial elements" keep him engaged in the steampunkmaker culture: the "warmth factor" of its handmade materials, its functionality, and whimsy – "free thinking imagination and fun." Unlike other art forms, he says, "It doesn't take itself too seriously."
And whereas other genre fans can niggle over the small stuff, steampunk tends to be more open-ended. Jeff Mach, one of the partners behind New Jersey's Steampunk World's Fair, remembers Goths back in the 1990s sniping at one another for not being "Goth enough." No so with this latest, more inclusive cultural mashup. "It's not starting from a single point but many points," he says.
Many suggest steampunk is the next Goth, or even bigger. "I think this is the beginning of steampunk as a new sort of thing, as a pop culture phenomenon," says von Slatt. "I think it's the tip of the iceberg."
Picking up steam: Why is Boston the hub of steampunk?
Picking up steam
Mashing modern days with the Victorian age excites role players, artists, and other fans of steampunk
When Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum bought a 1901 home in Sharon, they wanted to restore it top to bottom. And rather than force a modern interior design, they remodeled it with a Victorian twist.
In the kitchen, an antique cash register holds dog treats. A cast iron stove is retrofitted with a Miele cooktop and electric ovens. In the family room, a wooden mantle frames a sleek flat-screen TV, and hidden behind an enameled fireplace insert, salvaged from a Kansas City train station, glow LED lights from the home-entertainment system.
Unknowingly, the Rosenbaums had “steampunked’’ their home, that is, added anachronistic (and sometimes nonfunctioning) machinery like old gears, gauges, and other accoutrements that evoke the design principles of Victorian England and the Industrial Revolution.
“When we started this three years ago, we didn’t even know what steampunk was,’’ said Bruce, 48. “An acquaintance came through the house and said ‘You guys are steampunkers.’ I thought, ‘Wow, there’s a whole group out there that enjoys blending the old and new.’’
It’s not just the Rosenbaums cobbling together computer workstations from vintage cameras and manual typewriters. Local enthusiasts are mounting steampunk exhibits, writing books, creating objets d’art, and dressing up in steampunk garb for live-action role playing games.
To be sure, steampunk has been part of the cultural conversation for the past several years, as DIY-ers embraced the hand-wrought, Steam Age aesthetic over high-tech gloss. But recently, it seems to be gaining a wider appeal, especially here.
“Boston lends itself to steampunk,’’ said Kimberly Burk, who researched steampunk as a graduate student at Brandeis. “You have the MIT tinkerers, the co-ops in JP, the eco-minded folks.’’
Both a pop culture genre and an artistic movement, steampunk has its roots in 19th- and early-20th-century science fiction like Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’’ and H.G. Wells’s “The Time Machine.’’ Its fans reimagine the Industrial Revolution mashed-up with modern technologies, such as the computer, as Victorians might have made them. Dressing the part calls for corsets and lace-up boots for women, top hats and frock coats for men. Accessories include goggles, leather aviator caps, and the occasional ray gun. And there’s a hint of Sid Vicious and Mad Max in there, too.
Still, steampunk defies easy categorization. It can be something to watch, listen to, wear, build, or read, but it’s also a set of loose principles. Steampunk attracts not only those who dream of alternative history, but those who would revive the craft and manners of a material culture that was built to last.
“The acceleration of the present leaves many of us uncertain about the future and curious [about] a past that has informed our lives, but is little taught,’’ said Martha Swetzoff, an independent filmmaker on the faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design who is directing a documentary on the subject. “Steampunk converses between past and present.’’
It also represents a “push back’’ against throw-away technologies, Swetzoff said, and a “culture hijacked by corporate interests.’’
For Burk, steampunk is more akin to the open source software movement than a retro-futuristic world to escape into. “Steampunk isn’t about how shiny your goggles are,’’ she said. “It’s about how cleverly you create something.’’
The urge to rescue and repurpose forgotten things led the Rosenbaums to spread the steampunk gospel. They’ve founded two companies: Steampuffin and ModVic, which infuse and rework 19th-century objects and homes with modern technology. They’re working on a book about the history of steampunk design. And, hoping some steampunker might want to live in a pimped-out Victorian crib, they purchased a second home in North Attleboro, restored it using their “back home to the future’’ philosophy, and put it on the market.
Bruce is also curating two steampunk exhibits. One will be displayed at Patriot Place’s new “20,000 Leagues’’ attraction, an “hourlong, walk-though steampunk adventure,’’ scheduled to open in December, according to creator Matt DuPlessie.
Meanwhile, “Steampunk: Form and Function, an Exhibition of Innovation, Invention and Gadgetry’’ recently opened at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham, a former textile mill already filled with steam engines and belt-driven machines.
“Form and Function’’ includes a juried show of steampunked objects (many by local artists) like a steam-electric hybrid motorcycle called “the Whirlygig,’’ an electric mixer powered by a miniature steam engine, and a flash drive made with brass, copper, and glass. Perhaps the most impressive piece is a rehabbed pinball machine whose guts look like Frankenstein’s lab — down to the colored fluids bubbling through vintage glass tubes.
“I like giving things a new life,’’ said Charlotte McFarland of Allston, exhibiting her first-ever steampunk creation, “Spinning Wheel Generator.’’
Such functional art objects tap into a nostalgia for a mechanical, not electronic, age. Unlike the wireless signals, microwaves, and motherboards of today, the 19th century’s gears, pistons, and tubes were visible and visceral. While the workings of a laptop can seem impenetrable, we can fathom the reality of moving parts.
“As the world becomes more digital, the world less and less appreciates machines, which will be lost,’’ said Elln Hagney, the museum’s acting director. “We are trying to train a new generation to appreciate this and keep these machines running.’’
Some of the most committed local steampunkers dress up in period garb and take part in live-action role playing games. Most “LARPs’’ (think Dungeons & Dragons but in costume) are swords and sorcery-based, but Boston’s Steam & Cinders is one of only a couple of steampunk-themed LARPs anywhere.
Once a month, some 100 players gather for a weekend at a 4-H camp in Ashby. The game’s premise? A crashed dirigible has stranded folks at a frontier town called Iron City, next to a mysterious mine. Engineers, grenadiers, and aristocrats vie for supremacy. There are plenty of robots to fight (players dressed in cardboard costumes sprayed with metallic paint), and potions to mix (appealing to the mad scientist in us all). Players stay in character for 36 hours straight.
“Yes, it’s a fantasy world and it’s not England,’’ said Steam & Cinders founder Andrea DiPaolo of Saugus. “But getting to dress in British garb and speak in a British accent is something I enjoy.’’
Meanwhile, publishers are striking while the steampunk iron is hot.
“We can tap into the enthusiasm of a reader who can imagine an alternative version of the 19th century,’’ said Cambridge resident Ben H. Winters, author of this summer’s mash-up book “Android Karenina.’’
Winters steampunked Tolstoy’s novel by re-envisioning Anna Karenina in a 19th-century Russia with robotic butlers, mechanical wolves, and moon-bound rocket ships. Sample line: “When Anna emerged, her stylish feathered hat bent to fit inside the dome of the helmet, her pale and lovely hand holding the handle of her dainty ladies’-size oxygen tank . . .’’
“Hopefully,’’ explained Winters, who also wrote 2009’s “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,’’ “we’ll be adding to the fandom of the mash-up novel by introducing a new fan base: the sci-fi crowd.’’
Climb to Bruce Rosenbaum’s third-floor study and you feel as if you’ve entered one of those mash-ups. The attic space feels like a submersible, packed with portholes, nautical compasses, and a bank vault door. His desk is ornate and phantasmagorical, ringed with pipes from a pipe organ. It’s a place where you can imagine Captain Nemo banging out an ominous dirge.
“There’s freedom with steampunk,’’ Melanie added. “Almost anything goes.’’
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A Steampunk Primer
Not sure who or what put the punk into steam? Here’s a quick-and-dirty intro to some of the culture’s roots and most influential works, plus ways to connect to the steampunk community.
Books
Jules Verne: “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865), “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1869)
H.G. Wells: “The Time Machine” (1895), “The War of the Worlds” (1898), “The First Men in the Moon” (1901)
K.W. Jeter : “Morlock Night” (1979)
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling: “The Difference Engine” (1990)
Paul Di Filippo: “Steampunk Trilogy” (1995)
Philip Pullman: “His Dark Materials” trilogy (1995-2000)
Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill: “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (comic book series, 1999)
Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, editors: “Steampunk” (2008)
Dexter Palmer : The Dream of Perpetual Motion (2010)
Movies and TV
“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1954)
“The Wild Wild West” (TV series: 1965–1969); “Wild Wild West” (movie: 1999)
“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (2003)
“Steamboy” (anime film: 2004)
“Sherlock Holmes” (2009)
“Warehouse 13” (TV series: 2009-)
Steampunk info/community on the web:
The Steampunk Empire: The Crossroads of the Aether, thesteampunkempire.com
Steampunk magazine, steampunkmagazine.com
“Steampunk fortnight” blog, tor.com/blogs/2010/10/steampunk-fortnight-on-torcom
The Steampunk Workshop, steampunkworkshop.com
Other resources:
computer/console games: Myst (1993); BioShock (2007)
Templecon convention (Feb 4-6, 2011; Warwick, RI), templecon.org
Steam & Cinders live-action role-playing game (Boston), be-epic.com
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation (Waltham, MA), crmi.org (“Steampunk: Form and Function” exhibit through May 10; Steampunkers “meet up” Dec. 19; steampunk course March, 2011; New England Steampunk Festival April 30-May 1, 2011)
Steampuffin appliances and inventions and ModVic Victorian and steampunk home design (Sharon, MA), steampuffin.com, modvic.com
--- Ethan Gilsdorf