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Comments
The problem for me is that as soon as we hit mid-series 6 the episodes no matter what the occasion will have a period in which they wish to remind us how quirky-smart yet awesome and loveable the Doctor is (when he's clearly not) and how he'll never lose. It leaves me unexcited (and makes Let's Kill Hitler annoying to sit through).
I mean, of course it's implied that in 80% of stories the hero will live through but it just gets to this point where aside from being sorta kinda immortal, he's protected by an invisible barrier of plot that seems to be coddling him and telling us how awesome he is. The plot is like a soccer mom to him now.
This is true, I guess. But in terms of actual strength it's not much.
Okay, I just finished the third season of Rizzoli & Isles (which is the last season released so far, and the fourth won't start airing until June this year).
Overall, the show's fairly good. Low-key. I'm also glad to see that the second and third seasons didn't give the show a giant cliffhanger like the first season did, settling for more low-key ones.
I also note with amusement that the show really cut down with the love interests, separating Rizzoli and one of hers early in the season, and keeping the second around as a minor recurring character and having their relationship fail to take off due to his problems. (Also, all of Isles' love interests seemed to be either really shallow dudes she dumped after a while, or criminals.)
So I went to see Jack The Giant Slayer.
It was a pretty okay movie, fun. Bloodless (yet grisly) giants, out-of-frying-pan-into-the-fire adventure, and some pretty outrageous performances from the secondary cast.
Ultimately what I liked about the movie was that it was kind of self-aware regarding its source material.
Okay, I have been watching Warehouse 13 now.
It's a good show in its own right, but I just don't like it as much as Rizzoli & Isles.
I feel it hits its stride at the end of the first season, though, and it's consistently pretty cool come the middle of the second season.
Well, a friend of mine starred in some pretentious silent student film called "The Level Called Life", and I have to admit that the amount of artistic pretension used for a theme so trivial is one of the reasons why people make fun of stereotypical student films.
So, she likes a guy, but doesn't have the guts to ask him out and beat "the level called life" 'cause she spends the entire day playing Skyrim. Big deal. Let's add a bombastic classical composition blasting in the background, dramatic camera shots and make the movie silent to make it seem artsy!
Great camera work, though. It's really great from an aesthetic aspect.
So, after much insistence from my brother, I've started watching Arrested Development. Turns out that critically acclaimed and generally well loved comedy series tend to be pretty funny, so that's good. Though I'm not a big fan of the "Michael Cera is a super awkward teen, now with extra incest!" parts (I know the series came first, but I've never really liked that kind of humor anyway).
That's kind of the point, dude. Like...telling a story without using words is hard.
I do admit that resorting to ultracliche methods like classical/orchestral music makes it seem insincere, but meh, I figure that these were film students who just really wanted to show off their skills for resume purposes rather than try and do something actually meaningful to them.
So, by chance, has anyone else seen Madeinusa? I'm not really sure how to feel about this movie (especially since I only went to it because of Spanish class and had no expectations going in). On one level, it's the most discomforting thing I've seen since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, jumping right into a man's sexual intentions for his daughter, and I felt like the movie was mostly just trying to shock me. But on another level it's sort of interesting how the culture in the movie worked; it's sort of interesting, the commentary that's made here about the ways people try to reconcile Americans and Christianity. It was also pretty batshit near the end. I don't care to write a full plot summary at the moment, since I have other things I could be doing, but, y'know, just thought I'd throw this out there.
I just saw Warm Bodies, and I was quite surprised as to how good it is, and how much I would like it.
It's quite clearly a film done in reaction to things like Twilight and The Walking Dead, drawing from Romeo and Juliet, alchemizing into a film that is romantic first, a black comedy second, a fable third, and a zombie movie last.
Sure, R is the pale, impossibly-good-looking, protective, somewhat obsessive, and kind suitor that Edward Cullen is. Hell, he even watches his prospective girlfriend Julie sleep; but not because he feels a deep protective urge (he does, but that's a secondary motive), but because the dead do not sleep at all and he has nothing better to do. R is creepy and unsettling not because that's how true love shows itself, but because he's having to re-learn how to properly act in social situations. It must be mentioned that Nicholas Hoult is not only really good at dry narration, but also making slight adjustments to his body language to show R's gradual change.
On the other side are the humans, who in some respects are just as dead as the Corpses themselves. While Corpses forget to breathe, socialize, talk and walk properly, the humans in their desperation forget to hope, care, grow, and think about people beyond themselves. They send children into the preying maws of the horde to scavenge for medicine. They choose warm bodies with guns in their hands instead of workers for the ploughs. They build walls around their city and around their hearts. They form cults of personality around foolish and closed-minded individuals. They choose survival over living. They are the walking blah-de-blah-de-blah, you get the idea.
But love, love quite literally changes everything, which I believe places this movie solidly as a modern fable and a cautionary tale.
Warm Bodies is not a perfect movie. Its special effects are quite bad, some jokes fall flat, some of its logic is strained, and while Rob Corddry as R's Benvolio has perfect comedic timing and some of the best lines of the film, his attempts at playing dead are actually quite terrible. But it's certainly a fun, absolutely charming movie.
On the TV side of thing I have been really digging Parks and Rec. it has the kind of droll humor and goofiness I like from Arrested Development and Community, but without ever straying into being a live action cartoon like the other two.
Doctor Who Series 7 Part One: At least I hope it's part one since if the next thing is series 8 this was literally 7 episodes.
Okay, we start with a sort of okay premiere so I don't really want to dwell, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship had Rory's dad, I'll skip the Western episode because it was kind of bland to be honest, but I should mention that it does show off the major problem with this series so far, the monsters are just... there.
Like, okay, you want to do a monster episode? Do Blink. You want to do a relationship episode? Please for the love of whatever you hold sacred do not combine it with Blink, especially if it means cutting out half of whatever made Blink interesting.
Then we come to the three main episodes: Power of Three, The One That Should Never Have Happened (Also known as The Angels Take Manhattan but don't really because this whole episode was just really freaking dumb) and The Snowmen (Which also isn't about the Snow).
Power of Three is somewhat strong, it starts great, has little Doctorisms outside the sudden bout of "I'm the Doctor I can't stay still", has Rory's dad who is quite cool, the cubes are interesting and of course so is Rory and Amy's fast aging.
Theeeen the cubes get a really boring backstory involving the Gallifreyan versions of a less sociopathical Crayak who are about as interesting and I bet will only show up two season in the future despite them going around and murdering species whenever they want, Rory and Amy's fast aging never comes up and never needs to destroying the only emotional impact the episode could have had. And to be honest, it basically ends as it started.
The Angels Take Manhattan is quite annoyingly paced and has plots that I'd expect from a much worse show. It makes me hate River (really, cutting of your own arm and then convincing your mother that the Doctor shouldn't grow up already?). The ending is like...
Okay, what would have been so terrible about them having die after jumping off the building? Why was this a one parter (in fact, why was any episode in this set of three a one parter)? Does nobody on the writing staff even care about Amy and Rory? Are you expecting me to believe this to be part of a series and not a set of disjointed movie-like episodes?
Kay, then we have Clara, who I must admit is quite interesting and intriguing... but only because of her multiple timelines. I'm sorry, I just don't like her.
Again, we have fifty things that aren't followed up on (Why is this episode not set in a random ice-desert in the future? It could have been with the amount of not caring about the setting.) Why was it set in a mansion? Why are the kids there? Why is the dad there? Who are the kids and/or the dad? Why the maid? Why anything?
While I am being quite critical, I did sort of enjoy watching The Power of Three and The Snowmen, but only when I accepted that the writing had degraded to the point of, say, Winx Club.
I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work. I guess it'll be a period piece like Boardwalk Empire?
Probably.
My issue with the Angels Take Manhattan is well, what is so bizarre about Amy and Rory walking away from the Doctor and having a happy life? Not every companion needs a break of misery to decide they want a break from space adventures because you can only dodge death rays for so long.
In case anyone else is watching it, Game of Throne's third season starts in a little over 2 hours.
^^I agree. It's part of why Martha's the best companion because she didn't need a tragedy to be gone.
So did I miss an episode this Saturday?
Of Doctor Who? Yeah, the first actual Clara episode aired. I haven't watched it yet (and we got it a day late, so it aired Sunday for me).
The most important part of the Clara episode was the ROCKBOUND NEIGHBORS ad that appears for a split second in the cold open.
Couple this with Nana Mizuki releasing her TIME SPACE EP around the time The Wedding of River Song came out and I think we have a thing.
So this is a thing that's happening now.
Watched Evil Dead.
Really liked it. Had a few over-the-top bits, but those aside it was quite good, especially in terms of direction.
Rewatched The Brothers Bloom. Stray thoughts:
I should see that.
As far as I am concerned this movie should be taught at all schools.
So, Oblivion just went from "Movie that I was completely and willfully ignoring" to "It better screen on IMAX (hopefully without 3D)".
Krypton confirmed for space Australia.
Also, 'S' meaning 'hope' sounds kind of...lame. Is that something from the comics, or something made up for this movie?
made up for the movie.
I've gone on record about this and because I'm totally an authority on Superman stuff, I think it's dumb to try and "mystify" the logo. The S matters because he wears it, not the other way around.
Maybe the script is so old, so many languages are born from it, and there's so many definitions, that nobody can tell you for sure what the symbol means.
My issue is simply that to me, Krypton should only be mentioned once in a Superman story and it's to explain why he has superpowers.
The core aspect of Superman is that he's what we should be. There's a reason why we don't call him "Man of Tomorrow", "Man of Steel" and so forth. We almost never refer to him being an alien, because again, that's just there to explain why he can do the things he does. But the whys and wherefores, what makes him tick? Those should be tied to earth.