-- Here's what the Times has to say about Descent (not to be confused with The Descent, a 2005 thriller about scary things crawling around in caves):

...the rape's awakening of Maya's [Rosario Dawson] consciousness as a woman of color...elevates "Descent" beyond case study and into the realm of bomb-throwing polemic....[the movie] is not just about the personal experience of rape, but rape as a metaphor for sexual, racial and cultural dominance, and the inadequacy of cruelty as a response.

...Hard to watch but essential to see, "Descent" is at once realistic and rhetorical, and driven throughout by righteous anger that comes from an honest place.

-- Joss Whedon talks to the AV Club about his adaptation of Wonder Woman, which isn't getting made. My hopes for the kind of Wonder Woman movie that can get made are not high.

AVC: In movies and comics, an awful lot of female characters still fall into eye-candy/damsel-in-distress fantasy-object roles, even the supposedly strong heroine types. You've taken a strong stance toward a more empowering kind of feminism in your work -- was that ever an issue?

JW: I have no idea. Obviously, nobody ever said "Don't be a feminist." And nobody ever said "Don't be political." The politics of the movie were all more or less moral, it wasn't like we picked somebody to root against, it's just more like everybody either steps up or they don't, and this is their opportunity to do that. I think that's part of how I got the gig. They wanted her to be strong. It wasn't like Buffy was a crone. It wasn't like anybody thought I wasn't going to make Wonder Woman extraordinarily beautiful. That's part of her thing, that she's so beautiful that men can hardly bear it. I'm all about that, and power just makes her sexier. I certainly wasn't turning my back on her hottie-ness, just because of my politics. I think that's a common misconception about feminism in general.