jade_sabre (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jade_sabre) wrote2010-06-04 12:25 pm
jade_sabre) wrote2010-06-04 12:25 pm
Entry tags:
media consuuuuuuuuuuuuumed post
So I haven't posted in a while, and I've been meaning to. You'll notice I'm still avoiding making a graduation post. One day I will feel secure enough that that is Behind Me and that I am going on to Something Else, but right now the future is still pretty blank-slate-y and I am loathe to let go. So instead, a book/movie/TV post, mostly spoiler-free (spoilers will be noted). Maybe in that order. Maybe not.
Actually let's get the television part over so that people who don't care can skip it.
Oh God, this post is going to be much longer than I meant. Maybe I will do a book one after
Glee
Do I have to warn for spoilers? It's frickin' Glee. The only surprises are the non-sequitors, which pretty much comprise the entire show.
So my friends all got me watching this show and promptly abandoned me, except for Quark, whose enjoyment still seems firmly surface-level, sparing her from the agony through which I go every time the show goes out of its way to screw itself over. As I've been saying in various places, I think part of my problem is that I came to the show in a very roundabout manner: watching the first episode while skipping all the musical numbers, being lured into watching Mash-Up because of the infamous Puckleberry, then reading a ton of awesome Puckleberry fic. You know what fic does? It has consistent characterizations. It develops relationships and remembers to keep them around. Puckleberry fics even gives Mike Chan lines, for crying out loud.
(Side note: This Guster song--"Airport Song"--is the first thing I've listened to on Pandora in a month, and it is awesome. Distractingly so.)
So I've seen about four episodes of the pre-mid-season-break set, and all of the "back nine" that have aired so far, and I filled in the gaps with fic (mostly Puckleberry, one disturbingly awesome Puck/Quinn and a sprinkling of Puck/Santana). Every time the show wanders back into acting like Rachel is the savior of the club, I remember why I didn't like her, because that (along with Finn/Rachel and Will/Emma) feels like railroading. We can see that she's not the only one (and we can also hear, very clearly, that Finn is not the star male singer of the club), and you cannot watch the show without seeing that Will/Emma is a trainwreck if they don't take time to go through their issues (which they have kind of done, but have we noticed that since calling Will a slut, Emma has basically disappeared, except for her one AWESOME scene in Dream On where she was like an actual honest-to-goodness counselor, with reasonable understandings of how the world works for both scientists and teenagers! And it was awesome! Please don't have her go back to Will, if that means a return to pamphlet!Emma).
Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that everything good Glee fic has is everything Glee doesn't have, because either the writers are fighting or they don't care about their characters or they're all drunk and think they are making logical connections when in fact events are vaguely related by the fact that they don't follow at all. (So why are you still watching, you ask? Because I kind of love the characters and I want Will to be given some kind of balance because his character potential is as screwed up by the writers using him as a bicycle as the character potential of the women around him and I want Rachel and Jesse to make it and when Glee gets it right, it gets it so right, both comically and seriously.)
Things I have liked about the past few episodes, in no particular order:
--"Bad Romance," esp. the way they dished out the solos, because Santana's was perfect
--Their arrangement of "Pokerface," though not their use of it. (Seriously, though, who thought that was a good idea? You cannot desexualize Pokerface. It just doesn't work.)
--Tina's interactions with the principal
--Finn's Goggles of Intuiting Relationship-Type Motivations. Sure, he couldn't figure out the baby wasn't his, but that was science, and it's not like Quinn started making googly eyes at Puck. It's like the one thing his character does really well, and it always makes me go "aw" when he makes a connection. (Low Int/High Wis scores, I'm guessing.)
--Puck's pick-up lines. And "The Lady's a Tramp." And pretty much anything Puck, except for that weirdly tacked-on "name the baby Beth!" subplot, although I do approve of the name Beth.
--Sue's return! And Sue and Will having Caring Teacher moment. And Will speaking Spanish, to remind us of what he used to do. (Sue I missed you.)
--Internal Monologues of every sort
--the fact that the only reason you could tell that Joss Whedon directed an episode is that a) NPH was in it and b) it had internal coherency and some kind of...overall vision. Which, while the word of the week was "dream" and they did use that word a lot, was somewhat more subtly put together than just having everyone say "dream." (No one died!)
okay back to pretending I (am really just waiting for the second installment of this fic) don't (need to catch up on the televisionwithoutpity recaps) care.
Alice
The SyFy version, which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rashaka talks about eloquently all over her journal so that I can just be like SQUEE! HATTER! ALICE! KARATE ALICE! (which they could have used more of, but I'm just excited they had it at all.) LOVE TRIANGLE! COMPLETELY ENGAGING CANON SHIP! FLYING FLAMINGOS! THAT ONE CLUB/DUCHESS! hooooooooly crap Patrick O'Brien has gotten old. Creative use of Wonderland imagery and ideas! Brief Tim Curry appearance! An immersive, interesting world I was incredibly reluctant to leave! Witty banter! Hot Britishness! Slightly hit-you-over-the-head moral, but still downright science-fiction-y exploration of it!
It's not, like, Russian black bread with all the nuts or something, but it's definitely many steps above white bread. And above white-bread-with-added-fiber. Like the lighter end of wheat bread. Not incredibly deep, but still enjoyable. I highly, highly recommend it.
Bones, Law and Order, Top Chef Masters
So the thing about Bones is I think I just need to get all the seasons and start marathoning them, but I don't think I could do that many episodes in a row to justify renting them, because I am incredibly squeamish and also tend to have nightmares if I watch too many crime shows in a row. They replayed the Nightclub AU episode again the other night on TNT, though, and it was still awesome, and the final scene still broke my heart.
LAW AND ORDER HAS BEEN CANCELED, WHAT THE EFFING EFF. EFFING. EFF. I don't watch any of the spinoffs. What am I going to do without Jack McCoy in my life? I mean aside from what TNT marathons on Memorial Day, which is like the most dangerous thing ever. I just can't stop watching. (And then I have nightmares. Go figure.)
As for that last one, well, we all have our reality show weaknesses, and it's only like, half a step down from just watching Food Network for hours at a time. (Which I have yet to do, but Malone makes it hard sometimes.)
On another totally shameful-TV-watching note, iCarly was marathoning the other day, and I had forgotten how much I ship Sam/Freddie. (Judge away, at least it's not Disney Channel? :-b)
OKAY MOVIES. I WILL DO TWO OF THEM.
Iron Man 2
SPOILERS BELOW
So I went to see it before rewatching Iron Man, which I had only seen once like a year ago, and so I was really concerned when Tony was popping the Mini Arc Reactor out of his chest because I thought it was his heart. And then I was really super-excited when Pepper got made CEO, but after that I got a nagging feeling that she disappeared from the movie and that that wasn't quite right, but I figured she couldn't really have been in the first movie that much.
And then I rewatched Iron Man and discovered a) yes, Tony is sleeveless a lot more in that one, b) it's not his heart, it's a magnet!, and c) Pepper is all over that movie. Which highlighted the fact that Scarlett Johansson's role in IM2 is completely superfluous and in fact detracts from Pepper's screen time. Which I seem to recall being a complaint of Gwyneth Paltrow's, way back when, and I have to say I think she's completely justified. I kind of didn't like that she and Tony got together in this one, because there was such a hole where she should have been for chunks of the movie.
Things I did love: MICKEY ROURKE. Occasionally I start trying to mimic his beautifully done accent. It was really bad right after I'd seen the movie the first time. Also Hammer. Also Don Cheadle. Also Tony building a particle accelerator thing in his basement. Actual conversation:
Me: I was like, no way, he's not, OH MY GOD, HE IS, HE'S BUILDING IT, THAT IS THE HOTTEST THING I HAVE SEEN IN A LONG TIME.
Ariel: Yeah. It was like, I don't know, when he started working on his house it just spoke to some kind of primal "gr, man do work" instinct in me, and then he was sleeveless, and it was hot, and then it was like HE IS NOT BUILDING, HE IS, THAT IS SO HOT.
Also Flushing! I've been there!Where were all the Asians?
Overall, a solid effort, but it did itself a disservice by cutting down Pepper's screentime.
END SPOILERS
Also I saw it a second while gallivanting around the over-21 section of the ritzy movie theatre on the other side of town while a friend of mine going into the Navy was treating us ("because hey, it's all taxpayer dollars!"), and it was ridiculously fun.
Soapdish
Speaking of Robert Downey Jr., only like twenty years ago, and add in Kevin Kline (who I love, so very very much), Sally Field, Whoopi Goldberg, Carrie Fisher, and Teri Hatcher, among other people, and then stick them in a movie about what goes on behind-the-scenes at a soap opera. Granted, I watched it on the TV Guide Channel (which occasionally shows movies at the expense of telling you what's on TV), so it was seriously chopped up, but it is still my newest favorite movie. It contained nearly all of my favorite tropes ever, and Kevin Kline, and it was SO FUNNY, and I don't know where you're going to find it to watch it, but please do, and then tell me how you did it so I can buy a copy, because I kind of want to sleep with it under my pillow.
AGH IT IS SO GOOD.
okay, books are going to have to wait, but not too long. I think I only have like three days to read The Curse of Chalion, so we'll see how that goes.
so what about everyone else? also, though I can't really talk, where did my flist go? Y'all can't be doing things. I'm certainly not.
Actually let's get the television part over so that people who don't care can skip it.
Oh God, this post is going to be much longer than I meant. Maybe I will do a book one after
Glee
Do I have to warn for spoilers? It's frickin' Glee. The only surprises are the non-sequitors, which pretty much comprise the entire show.
So my friends all got me watching this show and promptly abandoned me, except for Quark, whose enjoyment still seems firmly surface-level, sparing her from the agony through which I go every time the show goes out of its way to screw itself over. As I've been saying in various places, I think part of my problem is that I came to the show in a very roundabout manner: watching the first episode while skipping all the musical numbers, being lured into watching Mash-Up because of the infamous Puckleberry, then reading a ton of awesome Puckleberry fic. You know what fic does? It has consistent characterizations. It develops relationships and remembers to keep them around. Puckleberry fics even gives Mike Chan lines, for crying out loud.
(Side note: This Guster song--"Airport Song"--is the first thing I've listened to on Pandora in a month, and it is awesome. Distractingly so.)
So I've seen about four episodes of the pre-mid-season-break set, and all of the "back nine" that have aired so far, and I filled in the gaps with fic (mostly Puckleberry, one disturbingly awesome Puck/Quinn and a sprinkling of Puck/Santana). Every time the show wanders back into acting like Rachel is the savior of the club, I remember why I didn't like her, because that (along with Finn/Rachel and Will/Emma) feels like railroading. We can see that she's not the only one (and we can also hear, very clearly, that Finn is not the star male singer of the club), and you cannot watch the show without seeing that Will/Emma is a trainwreck if they don't take time to go through their issues (which they have kind of done, but have we noticed that since calling Will a slut, Emma has basically disappeared, except for her one AWESOME scene in Dream On where she was like an actual honest-to-goodness counselor, with reasonable understandings of how the world works for both scientists and teenagers! And it was awesome! Please don't have her go back to Will, if that means a return to pamphlet!Emma).
Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that everything good Glee fic has is everything Glee doesn't have, because either the writers are fighting or they don't care about their characters or they're all drunk and think they are making logical connections when in fact events are vaguely related by the fact that they don't follow at all. (So why are you still watching, you ask? Because I kind of love the characters and I want Will to be given some kind of balance because his character potential is as screwed up by the writers using him as a bicycle as the character potential of the women around him and I want Rachel and Jesse to make it and when Glee gets it right, it gets it so right, both comically and seriously.)
Things I have liked about the past few episodes, in no particular order:
--"Bad Romance," esp. the way they dished out the solos, because Santana's was perfect
--Their arrangement of "Pokerface," though not their use of it. (Seriously, though, who thought that was a good idea? You cannot desexualize Pokerface. It just doesn't work.)
--Tina's interactions with the principal
--Finn's Goggles of Intuiting Relationship-Type Motivations. Sure, he couldn't figure out the baby wasn't his, but that was science, and it's not like Quinn started making googly eyes at Puck. It's like the one thing his character does really well, and it always makes me go "aw" when he makes a connection. (Low Int/High Wis scores, I'm guessing.)
--Puck's pick-up lines. And "The Lady's a Tramp." And pretty much anything Puck, except for that weirdly tacked-on "name the baby Beth!" subplot, although I do approve of the name Beth.
--Sue's return! And Sue and Will having Caring Teacher moment. And Will speaking Spanish, to remind us of what he used to do. (Sue I missed you.)
--Internal Monologues of every sort
--the fact that the only reason you could tell that Joss Whedon directed an episode is that a) NPH was in it and b) it had internal coherency and some kind of...overall vision. Which, while the word of the week was "dream" and they did use that word a lot, was somewhat more subtly put together than just having everyone say "dream." (No one died!)
okay back to pretending I (am really just waiting for the second installment of this fic) don't (need to catch up on the televisionwithoutpity recaps) care.
Alice
The SyFy version, which
rashaka talks about eloquently all over her journal so that I can just be like SQUEE! HATTER! ALICE! KARATE ALICE! (which they could have used more of, but I'm just excited they had it at all.) LOVE TRIANGLE! COMPLETELY ENGAGING CANON SHIP! FLYING FLAMINGOS! THAT ONE CLUB/DUCHESS! hooooooooly crap Patrick O'Brien has gotten old. Creative use of Wonderland imagery and ideas! Brief Tim Curry appearance! An immersive, interesting world I was incredibly reluctant to leave! Witty banter! Hot Britishness! Slightly hit-you-over-the-head moral, but still downright science-fiction-y exploration of it!It's not, like, Russian black bread with all the nuts or something, but it's definitely many steps above white bread. And above white-bread-with-added-fiber. Like the lighter end of wheat bread. Not incredibly deep, but still enjoyable. I highly, highly recommend it.
Bones, Law and Order, Top Chef Masters
So the thing about Bones is I think I just need to get all the seasons and start marathoning them, but I don't think I could do that many episodes in a row to justify renting them, because I am incredibly squeamish and also tend to have nightmares if I watch too many crime shows in a row. They replayed the Nightclub AU episode again the other night on TNT, though, and it was still awesome, and the final scene still broke my heart.
LAW AND ORDER HAS BEEN CANCELED, WHAT THE EFFING EFF. EFFING. EFF. I don't watch any of the spinoffs. What am I going to do without Jack McCoy in my life? I mean aside from what TNT marathons on Memorial Day, which is like the most dangerous thing ever. I just can't stop watching. (And then I have nightmares. Go figure.)
As for that last one, well, we all have our reality show weaknesses, and it's only like, half a step down from just watching Food Network for hours at a time. (Which I have yet to do, but Malone makes it hard sometimes.)
On another totally shameful-TV-watching note, iCarly was marathoning the other day, and I had forgotten how much I ship Sam/Freddie. (Judge away, at least it's not Disney Channel? :-b)
OKAY MOVIES. I WILL DO TWO OF THEM.
Iron Man 2
SPOILERS BELOW
So I went to see it before rewatching Iron Man, which I had only seen once like a year ago, and so I was really concerned when Tony was popping the Mini Arc Reactor out of his chest because I thought it was his heart. And then I was really super-excited when Pepper got made CEO, but after that I got a nagging feeling that she disappeared from the movie and that that wasn't quite right, but I figured she couldn't really have been in the first movie that much.
And then I rewatched Iron Man and discovered a) yes, Tony is sleeveless a lot more in that one, b) it's not his heart, it's a magnet!, and c) Pepper is all over that movie. Which highlighted the fact that Scarlett Johansson's role in IM2 is completely superfluous and in fact detracts from Pepper's screen time. Which I seem to recall being a complaint of Gwyneth Paltrow's, way back when, and I have to say I think she's completely justified. I kind of didn't like that she and Tony got together in this one, because there was such a hole where she should have been for chunks of the movie.
Things I did love: MICKEY ROURKE. Occasionally I start trying to mimic his beautifully done accent. It was really bad right after I'd seen the movie the first time. Also Hammer. Also Don Cheadle. Also Tony building a particle accelerator thing in his basement. Actual conversation:
Me: I was like, no way, he's not, OH MY GOD, HE IS, HE'S BUILDING IT, THAT IS THE HOTTEST THING I HAVE SEEN IN A LONG TIME.
Ariel: Yeah. It was like, I don't know, when he started working on his house it just spoke to some kind of primal "gr, man do work" instinct in me, and then he was sleeveless, and it was hot, and then it was like HE IS NOT BUILDING, HE IS, THAT IS SO HOT.
Also Flushing! I've been there!
Overall, a solid effort, but it did itself a disservice by cutting down Pepper's screentime.
END SPOILERS
Also I saw it a second while gallivanting around the over-21 section of the ritzy movie theatre on the other side of town while a friend of mine going into the Navy was treating us ("because hey, it's all taxpayer dollars!"), and it was ridiculously fun.
Soapdish
Speaking of Robert Downey Jr., only like twenty years ago, and add in Kevin Kline (who I love, so very very much), Sally Field, Whoopi Goldberg, Carrie Fisher, and Teri Hatcher, among other people, and then stick them in a movie about what goes on behind-the-scenes at a soap opera. Granted, I watched it on the TV Guide Channel (which occasionally shows movies at the expense of telling you what's on TV), so it was seriously chopped up, but it is still my newest favorite movie. It contained nearly all of my favorite tropes ever, and Kevin Kline, and it was SO FUNNY, and I don't know where you're going to find it to watch it, but please do, and then tell me how you did it so I can buy a copy, because I kind of want to sleep with it under my pillow.
AGH IT IS SO GOOD.
okay, books are going to have to wait, but not too long. I think I only have like three days to read The Curse of Chalion, so we'll see how that goes.
so what about everyone else? also, though I can't really talk, where did my flist go? Y'all can't be doing things. I'm certainly not.
no subject
As for Glee, I apologize for abandoning you. I just really haven't been feeling the back nine, at least it's not MUST WATCH NOW/MUST SAVE ON DVR television for me anymore and I heard what happened in the last episode between Rachel and Jesse and I was just saaaaaaaaad.
And I must find this SyFy version of Alice because omg, you had me at hot britishness!!! And as soon as I'm done marathoning Dr. Who/unpacking, I shall find it.
I <3 Bones and Law & Order, and there's usually a block of two or three episodes of both on TNT everyday if you can't do marathons in huge chunks (although seasons 1/2 shall forever be my favorites). And don't feel ashamed of watching Top Chef Masters! As far as reality tv shows go, the ones on Bravo tend to be the classier ones that you don't have to be ashamed of because they typically don't focus on the stupid drama between people and focus on you know, their actual talent, and Top Chef Masters is just awesome in general. AND THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH WATCHING THE FOOD NETWORK FOR HOURS AT A TIME, OKAY????
I also had no idea that you'd even seen an episode of iCarly and that kinda makes me laugh (I ship Freddie/Sam, too, mostly because I can't stand Carly because they try to make her come off as so freaking perfect and like omg all the boys want to date her and i'm just like really??? maybe it's because I don't like how Miranda Cosgrove portrays her? or maybe it's because i just have a tendency to like the female sidekick more than the female lead?)
I MISS YOU.
no subject