Yellow gingham on the bed, remember?

BBC One's doing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

2012-12-01T08:15:19Z

So I guess you've all probably heard enough about this if you follow me on any other social platforms, but I don't even caaaaare, I'm in that floaty bubble where you mostly have not started thinking about all the ways the BBC could mess up that thing you care about.

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Game of Thrones 2.07-2.08

2012-05-22T03:53:00Z

Way too busy for ep reviews the past few weeks, hoping to get back on track with Blackwater. But this is my only episode reaction that really matters.

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On the Unbelievable Awfulness of Girls

2012-05-04T15:17:37Z

Girls is awful. It's really bad. It's just bad. It has no redeeming qualities. I watched all three extant episodes out of curiosity and also trainwreck syndrome and afterward I feel a bit dirty and regretful, like I slept with a scuzzy dude who disrespected me and was a terrible lay. Well, Girls basically does disrespect me, as it is casually racist, homophobic, and contemptuous of everyone who is not its entitled and self-pitying target audience. It was also a terrible lay. I recommend watching it if you are a giant douchebag and want passive-aggressive reinforcement that your sociopathic behavior is somehow normal, or if, like me, you enjoy pain for some reason.

It's the usual 1899-masquerading-as-2012 conservative shock-jock fare, but with tits. That's about all I have to say on the matter.

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Game of Thrones 2.04 - Garden of Bones

2012-04-23T01:54:26Z

Liveblogging this time.

( There is only one god and his name is Spoilers. And there is only one thing we say to Spoilers. )

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Game of Thrones 2.03 - What Is Dead May Never Die

2012-04-16T02:20:21Z

Brienne! Brienne Brienne Brienne! Game of Brienne! What Is Brienne May Never Die!

You have to understand, of my four favorite ASoIaF characters, one of them is in my icon, one of them is in two of my other icons having a bad day, and one of them is in one of my other icons having a really bad day. And one of them is the Maid of Tarth.

( But rises again, harder and spoiler. )

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Game of Thrones 2.02 - The Night Lands

2012-04-09T03:33:54Z

Second verse, same as the first.

( Did you pay the spoiler price or the spoiler price? )

I'm not sure all that much happened in this episode either to advance the plot, but it felt like it went faster than the last one, I think because they didn't try to cover all the plotlines (a notable absence of Robb, for one). I liked it, but I hope this goes more places next week.

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Game of Thrones 2.01 The North Remembers

2012-04-02T19:17:30Z

I love the episode title "The North Remembers," it's a fine one for the opener of Clash of Kings. Err, I mean, Game of Thrones Season 2. I mean it, though, titling in general can be a frustrating endeavor but I can't help but think that coming up with Game of Thrones episode titles must be fun.

Where to begin? Oh, we have HBO now! And the S1 box set, so I can do a longer meta post about the adaptation of A Game of Thrones to S1 of GoT if I get up the gumption and the motivation. And I have a fever, which I also had while watching the season premiere, so my memory might be... febrile.

To review, spoilers for Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire.

( Because when we've got this much exposition to cram in, the important thing is that we dedicate time to this prostitute character we made up for the show. )

Overall I thought the ep was all right, but not a lot happened in it. It was a "Meanwhile, In..." episode reminding us where we left off.

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The Walking Dead 2.10 18 Miles Out; 2.11 Judge, Jury, Executioner

2012-03-05T23:56:21Z

TWD is sort of hitting that 2-season limit I have with a lot of TV series, which is why I get bored and walk away around that time: the waterskier-approaching-the-shark point when it's starting to look like all the plot they have left to generate centers around people having stupid arguments and a terrible chain of communication. This is often my issue with television in general and the television drama genre in specific -- they're almost always about literally the stupidest and most socially maladjusted group of people you could possibly get in whatever setting (office, noble house, post-apocalyptic travel band, whatever). They're generally about as incompetent and unreasonable as a band of people could possibly be without actually all dying. Anything that can go wrong does go wrong. It's really boring. But I'm not really a TV person anyway, so.

They really need to get back on the road one way or another. The zombie post-apocalyptic genre is pretty ridiculous and implausible just in concept, and one of its big unspoken genre suspensions of disbelief is that humans could or would stay in a state of anarchy for an extended period of time, so part of this involves an empty Mad Max world they can wander around encountering new things like they're in a video game. You kind of need that, because without it there's not enough plot and the threadbare science and sociology of the setup shows through a little too much. The first season had the benefit of things like the CDC episode and other straight-up science fiction that took advantage of the world's potential for fun and creepiness; getting held up too long at Hershel's farm is turning this into a tedious HBO drama.

That being said, the last two episodes weren't bad or anything, just that they depended on Rick having the decisionmaking skills of a small goldfish, Carl's apparent demonic possession, and their walker watch system making basically no sense. I'm really not sure why Daryl isn't in charge at this point. Well, yes, I am sure, in that Daryl doesn't exist in the comics, but on a pragmatic level I really have no idea why Daryl isn't in charge, can you think of one good reason?

Eh, TV writing.

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Color meme your color, baby, color meme your car.

2012-02-13T05:23:09Z

I'm watching The Walking Dead's midseason premiere right now, though it could be that by the time I post this I'm not watching it any more. TWD is pretty much the only show I am fairly sure I can watch season-beginning to season-end without getting sick of weekly TV; I get TV'd out pretty fast, but nothing short of some serious shark-jumping (it happens) could quell my TWD addiction. It's quality. I love me some flawed post-apocalyptic survival drama, it's a nice break from all the Downtons and HBO Original Series of the world where the plot continges on the characters' selective muteness. You know I love Downton and Rome, but come on.

ETA: Wow, TWD, you give my heart my favorite chills.

Snagged a meme from metonymy:

Second, brilligspoons did a meme whereby she posted about seven topics someone gave her and then people commented asking for more topics, like unto the questions meme of old. I'm a sucker for this sort of thing and also trying to post more here instead of on tumblr, thus: rambling.

( apples, wanderlust, boots, games, piano, tattoos, snow )

Hit me up for topics if you like.

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2011 (Basically) in TV/Movies

2012-01-30T08:31:44Z

If I kept better track of the books I read, I'd do this for books too, but I read too many and in peculiar sequences. And my TV and movie standards are much lower, which helps me pass for a facsimile of a fun and easygoing person under casual scrutiny.

You know, I never was much of a film person and I'm definitely not a TV person. I'm still not much of a film person -- inasmuch as I wouldn't pass up any form of entertainment or possible art, I wouldn't pass up a film, but it's not high on my list of preferred forms of art or narrative. And never mind the television, if I watch more than 2-3 hours of that a week I start getting depressed and confused like a large shark in an aquarium tank filled with electrical interference.

I once had a friend insinuate that children who grew up without TV were doomed to being socially awkward and out of touch with culture. She was cool. I was 13. I was briefly worried. Now with some perspective I'm happy to report that this was probably one of the dumbest things that came out of anyone's mouth at the time, though some people who are insecure about how much time they spend watching TV are doomed to being out of touch with tact, apparently. But partly due to the company I keep -- and mostly due to having a comparative surfeit of time on my hands -- I have 34 entries and counting under my "TV" tag.

Also, Doctor Who played in 2011, and I wouldn't want to be socially awkward and out of touch with culture! (And there was Game of Thrones which I would've watched if I had to watch it on someone else's smartphone.)

Restricting this to a retrospective of TV/movies in 2011 with an exception or two, I am assigning letter grades for some perspective, as it occurs to me sometimes I say I like a movie and what I really mean was it was about a C on the report card but inoffensive and I was bored. Also one-sentence rundowns where they apply.

( 2011 was a decent year for TV. )

( 2011 was a shit year for movies. )

Because best is not the same as favorite:

Favorite TV: Game of Thrones, The Hour, The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, Sherlock, Downton Abbey.

Favorite Movies: Fright Night was the only one I particularly imprinted on. Sigh. O tempores, o movies.

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Downton Abbey S1

2012-01-26T06:08:16Z

So it turned out Barnes & Noble was having a buy-2-get-1-free sale when I was trying to hunt down S1 of Sherlock. It's absurdly easy to get me to spend more money under the pretense of spending less money, so I picked up The Hour and Downton Abbey while I was at it, thereby creating a shopping bag overflowing with even more white people than National Public Radio. Anyway, I'd been meaning to watch DA so I could feel like an internet cool kid again, so we did.

Okay, so I didn't really know what Downton was about before I picked it up and couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone. I think this was because no one wanted to say "it's an expensive, high-quality Edwardian soap opera." Because it is an expensive, high-quality Edwardian soap opera. The best expensive, high-quality Edwardian soap opera. I mean, seriously, if they put this much effort into actual soap operas I would never get anything done during the day again. I would watch Passions ~~more often~~ were it overflowing with scenery porn, period costume, and good actors.

( Anyway, I have thoughts on Downton, but more importantly I have feelings on Downton so I am going to talk about those instead. )

While we're at it, can we talk about my creepy and animal attraction to Thomas Barrow? I even waited to post until I could find an icon of him gossiping with O'Brien like Regina George. Never mind he's the token Depraved Homosexual that's in every single period drama these days. I realize I am attracted to practically everything, but though I cannot deny the charms of Matthew Crawley's inexplicably beautiful face or John Bates's egregiously stoic high-melodrama manliness, I can't stop staring at Thomas's evil red-lipped vampiric-Rudolph-Valentino-looking face. I can't help it. It helps that I also love O'Brien and I was thrilled every time the Gossip Girls met to scheme and bitch about things. Thomas, I would maintain the delusion that I could somehow provide you enough emotional support to mend your wicked ways until it ruined both our lives. Just for you. Just for you and your red lips. You're right, they don't appreciate you at Downton.

Cripes, this show makes me sound like a goddamn Avengers fan or something. That's probably a high compliment, though -- it says something for the je ne sais quoi entertainment value of a show if it causes me to turn off my Dave Strider personality, that doesn't happen a lot. I'm glad Hugh Bonneville was in this and caused me to watch it despite no particular understanding of why anyone liked it.

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Sherlock 2.03 - The Reichenbach Fall

2012-01-19T07:37:31Z

Well.

Spoilers, naturally.

( Feelings )

( Thoughts )

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Sherlock 2.02 - The Hounds of Baskerville

2012-01-09T18:11:20Z

Going to try for spoiler-free on this one. Overall -- that's more like it! I'm relieved it was solid. I'm really relieved it was solid. This was the ep of S2 I really hoped was going to be good, considering it was The Hound of the Baskervilles, and all in all it was a pretty decent adaptation of the theme of that story to a modern-day context; I guess it's turning out that I prefer the Gatiss episodes to the other writers, considering "The Great Game" was my last-season favorite. The pacing was just plain better than most Sherlock episodes and it unfolded something like a regular mystery rather than a Moffat Plot Twist Carnival, and didn't keep introducing new elements willy-nilly, which was good.

The character writing for Sherlock was considerably better than "Scandal" and gave BC an opportunity to give him a pretty wide variety of reactions and mannerisms -- it added to his watchability on whole. That said, uh, I realize a lot of people are jumping on Sherlock's actions this ep for being inappropriate, and it's not like they aren't, but I can't be the only one who thought John was rolled-a-natural-1-on-Diplomacy levels of mean?

Overall I agree with relia that the ep could've done better being a 120-minute movie than a 88-minute episode, so it reached about 70% of its potential as it is, but it's better than 30% or 10%. Sherlock really is the uneven series that can't decide whether it's written like a long-running show or a miniseries.

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Sherlock 2.01 - A Scandal in Belgravia

2012-01-02T05:45:43Z

This episode -- there were definitely elements I liked, especially Sherlock and Mycroft's relationship, and I think all the actors did the best by what they had, but overall: if your gender politics are more backwards than those of a short story published in 1891, you have a problem.

Moffat. Moffat Moffat Moffat.

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Finishing the Hat; AHS 1.11

2011-12-15T07:03:23Z

Things learned from browsing Stephen Sondheim's annotated libretto collection Finishing the Hat:
- "The Ladies Who Lunch" was written specifically for Elaine Stritch.
- Carl-Magnus and Desiree had a song in ALNM originally called "Bang!" which was creepy as hell. I'm not sure how it was scored, so I'm not sure what proportions creepy and darkly comic it was meant to be, but the lyrics were kind of jarringly creepy on the page. Leaving it in probably would've landed too hard on the side of "so why does Charlotte want this man back?"
- The line "Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but bad for the heart" was originally "Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but bad for the skin," but Hugh Wheeler or someone made Sondheim change it. ... yeah, I'm with them.

American Horror Story 1.11 - Birth:

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Neverland

2011-12-06T05:50:53Z

Pedo Pan. I just watched Pedo Pan. Actually, I'm surprised how much I liked Neverland by the end, or how much I was invested in it, anyway, given I was very iffy on the first half. Straight off I'm going to warn you: I've been referring to the SyFy Neverland miniseries as "Pedo Pan" for a reason, because it's chock full of undeniable codependent emotionally abusive quasi-incestuous pedophilic subtext between Peter Pan and James Hook. It's practically what the whole thing is about. It's the central spin on Barrie's story the whole thing rests on, looking at it bluntly -- the fantasy hook is cool and suits the story well, but it's really about Peter getting to realize that adults are kind of horrible and Jimmy doesn't really love him back and probably would've ditched him once he had recognizable sex characteristics and etc. If that appeals to you any, Neverland is pretty entertaining. If not, don't bother.

Aside from that -- uh, it's a SyFy miniseries, so there's no point trying to rate it based on a particularly high bar. SyFy miniseries. They were advertising Snowpocalypse during it.

The Good: Peter in general! I'm not sure why, but I found myself getting really attached to the little bugger and his pathetic love for his boss-dad-boyfriend. He really irrationally loved Jimmy, I mean really loved Jimmy, which got kind of annoying in the first half but paid off as a character flaw by the end. Also the kid actor was cute. The proto-Lost Boys in general, especially Fox and Curly. The Neverland world setup and the dragging-real-world-people-in as an explanation for it. Gentleman Starkey. Raoul Trujillo, what a BAMF. Jimmy, actually, once I was sure I was supposed to hate him I had fun hating him. The fat crocs.

The Neutral: Bonny was a fun concept, but her actor was just not very good. :( Could take or leave Tink and the fairies. The Native Americans were, surprisingly, not handled in a horrifically racist way as far as I can tell, but you don't get cookies just for that. Tywin Lannister's somewhat shoehorned role. Smee being there and not getting to do anything. Rhys Ifans' need to be creepy in everything.

The Bad: Was a SyFy miniseries, so: the pacing, the plot structure, the writing, particularly in Part 1 which seemed both too long and rushedly boring. The shoehornedness of Tywin Fludd's whole story, which got barely any attention at all. The way the whole first part seemed like it was rushed together just to set up the second part, honestly. The semi-automatic flintlock rifles. Keeping the name "Tiger Lily" for an apparent Pacific Northwestern longhouse-dwelling nation. The inexplicable dead mother plot twist. The lack of a denouement. The massive amounts of fridge logic.

Kay Jewelers sponsored the whole thing. Every man-boy kiss begins with Kay.

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American Horror Story 1.07 - Open House

2011-11-17T18:04:02Z

This ep picked up the pace a bit from "Piggy Piggy" and I'm glad they're moving the storyline along in a very un-House M.D. sort of way (Ben and Vivien actively trying to sell the house and all); I just hope we're not stuck in a new status quo with the Harmons somehow never realizing that Constance and Moira sabotage all their attempts to do anything that get them out of the house, like a never-ending loop of The Prisoner in some universe where Number Six doesn't realize Number Two keeps dragging him back and is like "wait, how did I end up in the Village again?? Weird!" If they go somewhere meta with it -- IE that the house itself is cursed that no one who moves in moves out except in a body bag and will contrive various meta ways to make this happen, including Constance and Moira's interference, other life events, whatever -- then that'd be better, making the premise of "Harmons are in fact STUCK here" explicit. I like breaking-the-curse metaplots. That assumes the show's thought through that far, though.

AHS is kind of interesting to watch because it's such a typical middle-of-the-roadly bigoted example of horror media in terms of what stuff it leans on for creep factor and scares. Which is to say, a lot of horror stories are about trotting out freakshows, and freakshows wind up featuring a lot of 'grotesques' that Mom and Pop and Bobby and Susie in front of the TV are afraid of -- cripples, crazies, queers, vengeful women, children, you name it, if your average all-American John Smith might be secretly afraid of it, then it's fair game for the horror genre. Turning marginalized people or controversial concepts into scary monsters is the backbone of horror. Xenophobia is the backbone of horror. H.P. Lovecraft is the xenophobic granddaddy of this in the United States.

( AHS, xenophobia, and bigotry in horror in general; warning for references to violence and abuse )

In other words, it's the same-ol' same-ol' bullshit. I watch because Wednesday is a boring night, the Harmon family themselves and the story are entertaining, I like to know what's going on in the horror genre, and there's nothing on TV that doesn't perpetuate the same-ol' same-ol' anyway. It's TV. It's the centrist Republicans of the media political caucuses. It's there to tell middle America what it already knows. And horror is generally there to reassure middle America that they're not bad people for locking their doors to the people they lock their doors to -- after all, strangers are scary. AHS is like a rogues gallery of that.

Speaking of Ryan Murphy, I loathe Glee with the passion of a thousand fiery suns burning the fuel of the universe's autotune machines but somehow his horrible pandering Disney Channel show has produced a cover of a song (that I normally also hate? Adele knock it off with the Whitney Houston runs) that now sounds like a haunting bitter love song from a queer person to their ex-partner they're still in love with who's chosen to settle down into a hetero life without them. Naya Rivera, why can't you be on a better show?

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American Horror Story 1.06 - Piggy Piggy; The Walking Dead 2.04 - Chupacabra

2011-11-14T17:29:00Z

American Horror Story 1.06 - Piggy Piggy: Ben and Vivien's plots are stalling a bit. Ben's plot with his "piggy piggy" patient almost seemed like it wanted to be half of a two-parter, whereas Viv didn't draw anything particularly interesting from her ultrasound storyline yet, which seems to be her reaction too. I'm wondering if it's the strain of Ben having moved out for the time being that the haunted-house format of the show isn't supporting that well: I hope they resolve that pretty soon one way or another, it's hard to do as much with characters who don't live together when the plot is premised on them living together. That was fine, though, it was mostly a Tate episode and a Tate/Violet episode in particular; oh, Tate/Violet, the Let the Right One In-ness of your relationship is morbidly adorable, you ill-fated goth babies.

The Walking Dead 2.04 - Chupacabra: This and "Cherokee Rose" marks two Daryl-centric ep titles in a row and no one's complaining; we had a pretty harrowing Daryl episode here, though, wow. Good way of working in the Merle backstory when it's hard to characterize taciturn characters on TV without constant flashbacks. ("He's wearing ears.") ("We've all wanted to shoot Daryl.") I guess the season's metaplot is shaping up to be some combination of Shane/the search for Sophia/the unfolding problem of Hershel's farm. Rick really needs to step up his game here, he's acting too much like Ned Stark and he hasn't got a Cat to crack the whip for him, just a usually-useless Lori and a phenomenally unproductive Shane. Speaking of whom, I guess Shane just loves glomming creepily on to crying people.

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American Horror Story 1.02-1.05

2011-11-09T03:21:48Z

I appreciate how addictive and breakneck this show is -- it doesn't seem to have filler episodes and already the Harmon family's doing everything you wish characters would normally do in horror films and stories. I hope it knows where it's going, considering how fast it's letting everything develop. It's like the A Song of Ice and Fire conundrum; it's fantastic and gripping to be willing to kill off your characters faster than genre trope usually permits, but also you run out of characters.

Anyway, let's see. I like Vivien Harmon and I'm annoyed that the cast is always billed "Dylan McDermott; Connie Britton" and not "Connie Britton; Dylan McDermott." Come on, they're co-stars, but if you had to pick one as the protag it would definitely be Viv -- Ben stands a much stronger risk of becoming the eventual antag, actually, considering that's what the house seems to do to pairs of partners. I realize Dylan McDermott is a bigger star, but he's not exactly an A-lister either. Is the marketing power of a supposed male protagonist really so strong?

Have I mentioned how much I goddamned love Constance? Everything she does or says is magnetic to watch. Chad is my favorite recurring non-main character, though, and I wish he'd join the regular cast. I guess Zachary Quinto's dance card is pretty full.

( Spoilers - Home Invasion; Murder House; Halloween Part 1 & 2 )

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The Walking Dead 2.04; Marie Antoinette

2011-11-07T03:37:55Z

The Walking Dead 2.04 - Cherokee Rose: This show is my favorite at the moment. Highlights of this episode were Glenn and, uh, recent developments in Glenn's life (:D) (:DDDDD) and the titular scene with Daryl and his "Cherokee rose" story. I can't underscore enough how rare it is to see an actively heroic portrayal of a young Asian man, or Asian man altogether, on Western TV, and while I'd love for him to get more screentime I'm happy for Glenn's presence in this cast. Even putting aside the copious Fu Manchu racism, I am dead tired of fictional Asian men who exist primarily as mysterious antiheroic demigods to interact with white men and women (Inception) or blocking figures for Asian women who want to be Westernized (The Joy Luck Club; Lost; fucking everything). Yeah, we get it, TV. We're evil. You're threatened by us. We know. We know. Pretty much in the marrow of our bones and every time we see an Asian face crop up in a movie and cringe wondering how hard the slap's going to be this time we know.

Anyway, Daryl keeps on being my favorite and gets some of the most compelling material, though Shane's still kind of like a beautiful composition you can't get out of your head played in a jarring nerve-jangling minor key. Dale and T-Dog's bonding is pretty much always A+ too and T-Dog could do with more screentime of his own.

~

Marie Antoinette: Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette was one of the free on-demand movies today so we decided to watch it. Given I know Coppola mostly as the cancer that killed Godfather III /b/ and the creator of Orientalist-stereotyping masterpiece Lost in Translation, I didn't really get my hopes up, but --

-- man, okay, here's the thing, Coppola does some of the worst attempts at artsy filmmaking I've seen outside of freshman film students' term projects. Just like a parrot trying to sing the syllables of "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" on YouTube, it's like she watched a film by, I don't know, someone with any filmmaking talent and tried to limply copy what they did without realizing why they did it. She's like an artist who does nothing but trace from DeviantArt stock and animu illustration and slap on Photoshop brushes. Her movies are full of these long, overdone, music-video-esque shots of random things -- pretty scenery, costumes, people doing various activities -- that don't serve any purpose but to fill up space and provide Flickr-esque screenshots, they don't provide any thematic or storytelling information, they're just there. If you chopped out all the random montages of things in Marie Antoinette and pared the film down to things actually happening and people actually saying things, the whole thing would be about 20 minutes long. Along with a bunch of hammered-in shots intended to make the viewer feel like Versailles is a foreign and surreal world, which is a cheap trick for any period film. It's like she had 1 page of content on her English paper and padded the rest out with fluff words. I don't know how this movie got made.

Even if it'd been any good as a movie, though, Marie Antoinette still would've been royalist-sympathizing cloying nostalgic historical revisionist Rococo-porn crap. It's what it set out to be. Does the world really need another Scarlet Pimpernel? Have we not cried enough tears for the poor, sad fate of the poor, sad aristocrats who were so tragically murdered? Where are the sexy period pieces about the millions of people they starved, brutalized, enslaved, raped, and murdered? Sic semper tyrannis, for fuck's sake, it's one thing to portray unfortunate Louis XVI as a hapless, well-intentioned human being far in over his awkward young head with his ancestors' mistakes (which Jason Schwarzman did a pretty good job with, considering the material), it's another to add to the general canon of English-language media portraying the French Revolution as a brutal force of nature and the Russian Revolution as a terrible tragedy and everything else telling us that royalty is romantic and popular revolution is bloodthirsty communism. I've had enough to tell me that Marie Antoinette felt pain like anyone else. I think it's pretty much impossible not to know that. I've never had Hollywood try to convince me that the people who overthrew the monarchy did too -- just the continual text and subtext that the Bourbon and Romanov families were tragic, romantic victims and that Maximilien Robespierre and the Bolsheviks were cruel upstarts who eventually got what was coming to them, and that starving people everywhere should do like good little subjects and wait for moderate, gradual change. Like one year of Terror cancels out centuries and centuries of terror.

Hell with that, you know what? Louis Bourbon and Maria Antonia were the 1%. I never see historical films about the 99% outside of HBO, where you're supposed to gawk at all the grittiness. Maybe it's because not enough of them were debutantes. I think Hollywood has cried enough tears for the Bourbon family. Let someone shed some for the people of fucking France for a change. And not just France.

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The Walking Dead 2.03; Grimm 1.01; American Horror Story 1.01; Night of the Living Dead

2011-11-01T09:34:12Z

Halloween itself turned into an informal marathon of Halloween-related programming, didn't it? Oh, well, the real festivities were Sleep No More on Sunday, and no kids came to trick-or-treat this year anyway. Now we've got this bowl of Nerds and Sweet-Tarts sitting around. It never occurred to me before that both of these candy names are technically descriptions of people.

The Walking Dead 2.03 - Save the Last One: Holy shit. The last time a piece of media took me that much aback on my unknowing expectations of boundaries of character actions and moral compass was the first time I read A Game of Thrones about eight or nine years ago. I'm not kidding. Wow. That was legitimately shocking. [REDACTED] is turning out to be a hell of a creation among TV characters.

Grimm 1.01 - Pilot: Grimm is nowhere near as bad as Once Upon A Time turned out to be, but that is some of the faintest praise you could ever damn something with, so. It's kind of like Supernatural with some vampire-mythos-like monster-and-monster-hunter interaction and overdone Flickr filters? I'm curious to see where they go with it (and cute hapless werewolf dude), so maybe we'll tune in for the next ep at least.

American Horror Story 1.01 - Pilot: Better than it looked. Looked like typical haunted house setup -- was to some degree, but the characters/some of the unsolved mysteries were interesting enough to make me want to watch the next few episodes, as well as the intermittent presence of Dylan McDermott's sculpted naked sexualized body. I really hope they didn't put in an extra dash of that just for the pilot and then hold out on us for the rest of the season, because that'd be a serious waste of an attractive actor willing to show his attractive ass.

Night of the Living Dead: Mostly heard about this movie from my dad's mentions. Was expecting some kind of cheesy 70s B-movie. Instead watched eerie Twilight Zone-esque locked-room tropemaking zombie thriller with handsome lead and depressing social commentary. Me gusta.

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The Three Musketeers; The Walking Dead 2.02

2011-10-24T05:36:01Z

The Three Musketeers: if the idea of a movie with (a) two airships being impaled like shish kebab on the spire of Notre Dame Cathedral and (b) Orlando Bloom in a fabulous pompadour cackling and draping his evil fingers all over Matthew Macfadyen appeals to you at all, then this movie is probably for you.

The Walking Dead 2.02 - Bloodletting: Spoiler-avoidant version -- Needed moar Glenn. Daryl is always the best. Shane has personal space issues. Guiltily starting to ship-not-ship Shane/Rick here, IE I'd ~~write~~ read the Yuletide fic about how their relationship is a bloody-fated slow-motion tragedy traincrash of volatile clinginess (former) and awkward repression (latter). The Atlanta Survivors and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

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This was supposed to be a review of The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

2011-10-23T05:53:30Z

This was supposed to be a review of The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. Okay, here is the story: Failbetter Games put out a promotional game for this book. Despite my reservations about another hitchhiker on the grand Oregon-bound steampunk wagon train and the unpromising description of the book, the promotional gambit inherently sold me, since, Failbetter Games, so I picked it up. I was -- am? -- was? -- am? thinking that I'd read The Night Circus, get it over with, then move on to my copy of Snuff which at least has some percentage of guaranteed entertainment value.

Unlike The Night Circus. My plan is being foiled by how fucking mediocre this book insists on being. Here's the thing: if it were really bad I'd have finished it already. Badness has a certain allure, at least for me, or the SyFy channel wouldn't be my automatic flip-to on the TV. I can get angry with bad. I can't get angry with boring. This book is just fucking boring. It reads like a hobby RPer's first attempt at original fiction after all their little friends told them their pretentious no-contractions Yuletide fic was good. I cannot think of a single turn of phrase that was anything but an attempt at beauty through descriptions that look like "A Softer World" captions.

It's also one of the worst examples of an American failing to write British English and Victorian British English in particular that I've ever seen, but you see a lot of that these days -- please, everyone, take a hint, if you think all it takes not to sound American is to excise the words "baseball" and "booyah" from your vocabulary and write like a textbook, do not write a book set anywhere but the United States. Fuck, I'm an American and I can tell. That's a bad sign. I am seriously a Yank and nothing but. I shouldn't be able to tell a Yank stupider than me wrote your book.

This book is so lackluster I can't even bring myself to go into the other ways in which it's lackluster. Bad form, publishing industry. Bad form. Fuck you, I'll finish you yet, and then I'll review you. As God is my witness, The Night Circus. As God is my motherfucking witness.

In other news, I'm not dead, just contemplating all possible meanings of the ever-90s song lyric "when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year." Uh. Well, aside from that, Rel and I have gotten into The Walking Dead! It's actually kind of good. The existence of Glenn and Daryl helps. Shane needs, um, attention. I don't mean the social kind. Like the kind that takes swearing the Hippocratic Oath to be able to administer.

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The Debt

2011-09-11T06:42:43Z

Was cool. And intense. I think it suffered from a non-linear timejump trap in that one plotline (the one in the 60s) was much more engaging than the other (the one in the 90s), which might've been fine for its own movie but paled in comparison to the spy-thriller claustrophobia of the other half. However, the 1960s plot was pretty amazing even though it easily could've been corny, and I got dragged into caring about Rachel/David like the corner of my jacket caught in a meat grinder. All the acting was tight, but Marton Csokas stood out the most for me, followed by Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain probably. Though Ciarán Hinds retains his ability to make me feel things.

I'm never sure how I feel about the morality of Nazi-hunting movies, but that's true of pretty much all of them. This one didn't really have the room to be more complicated about that than it was.

~

Have been reading and watching more stuff than I whap up here, of course, but a few one-shots: Suits finale good but not as good as the penultimate episode. I don't even know what I'd say about The Hour, too awesome. I don't even know what I'd say about Doctor Who either by this point, too... well, there's awe involved, definitely, I have experienced what you could call awe.

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The Hour; Baccano!

2011-08-14T06:57:53Z

Stuff I've watched recently. Finished Baccano!, watched the first episode of The Hour on on-demand BBC America. I was tempted to Tumblr Save any mention of The Hour to avoid spoilers from now on, but relia rightly pointed out that I might have some problems if I literally censored the word "hour" from my dash.

The Hour: I'm doing this without spoilers so I can put Baccano! behind a spoiler cut. That being said, it's intriguing as hell and I don't know why they're marketing this like Mad Men when it looks much more like some hybrid of Twin Peaks, Veronica Mars, a Hitchcock film, and a noir homage to me -- we tuned in for Romola Garai, but are staying for the creepy and suspenseful cinematography and soundtrack designed successfully to keep a viewer on their toes and some intriguing characters. I guess people like comparing anything new to anything current and successful -- Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell got comparisons to practically every popular fantasy book on the market in hopes of snagging people. The Hour also sort of reminds me of Rubicon, set during the Cold War.

( Spoilers for Baccano! )

So, yeah, watch Baccano!.

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