Sorry, my sparkly tiara crushed your fragile ego & caused you to lose all semblance of masculinity.

Yesterday, the intarwebs exploded with the news that Disney, the only US company that really puts out high profile movies targeted to young girls with anything like consistency, will be rewriting "Rapunzel" to appeal to boys.  Choice lines with original thinking like this are included:

Disney can ill afford a moniker that alienates half the potential audience, young boys, who are needed to make an expensive family film a success.

Funny how that half is the only half that anyone ever worries about alienating, isn't it?  Like, can you imagine a press release or note from a publisher explaining why they rewrote stories to be more female-centric because they were worried woen/young girls would lose interest if it was too much about guys?

(The sad thing is that some of what they're saying about the storyline sounds fun, but knowing it comes from fear of too many girl cooties makes it lose its shine.)

I suspect this is part of the problem.

kmovie: 4th Period Murder Mystery

Class good-boy and the top student in his school, Jeong-Sun (recognizable to some here as the younger version of the lead in Legend) walks into an empty classroom to find the corpse of the class slimeball, who he was recently seen fighting with. Like all people of intelligence, he picks up the bloody murder weapon (it’s ok, about half a dozen other people do, too) then wipes the blood off on his shirt. Saving him from a quick trip to jail is Da-Jeong, the mystery-obsessed creepy girl in the class (she’s like a mix between Nancy Drew and Sunako from Wallflower) who realizes he’ll be the main suspect quicker than he does, and says they have to find the real killer before class ends, and other people find the body. This, clearly, is a thinly veiled excuse to have teenagers frantically running all over campus and a somewhat convoluted plot that probably won’t hold up if you’re allowed to stop and think about it.

This watches a bit like the pilot of a mystery jdrama (one of my favorite genres) though the beginning is a bit odd and slow (and aspects of the final scene cause serious facepalming for me). Some parts really don’t hold up to close examination, but it’s fun to watch. Here’s the trailer. (No idea if the last part is supposed to be silent, or if it’s just this video.)