Media Diet

UberBacklog

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 05:01:11 GMT

"The Girl in Question" - This was confusingly bizarre on watching, but my opinion of it's mellowed considerably; it's not Angel, but it's not bad. I love Spike and Angel's jealousy of the Immortal over the centuries, and Italy, while portrayed bizarrely and as bizarre, is still more nuanced here than Belleville in the Triplets of Belleville.
Kill Bill - This film can produce a very strange worldview. Non . . . violent . . . entertainment? You mean, where heads only get chopped off a little?

41 Stories, O. Henry - The item on mediadiet that went the longest before being started and being finished; I think I got it sometime in late 2002. Then I read 40 stories, didn't feel like writing about it on mediadiet, so skipped the last story; I read the last one as part of an ongoing effort to clean off my shelves just recently. O. Henry's neat stuff. Hard to talk about, because of the twist endings, but I can do broad generalizations - I think I preferred his city stories to his Westerns, but it's all good.

Wonderfalls - "Lovesick Ass" and "Muffin Buffalo" finally turned up. Excellent episodes; "Muffin Buffalo" was a little iffy, but "Lovesick Ass" was top-notch. Wonderfalls toes a thin line. Its plots are often based around tapestries of coincidences, and it depends on making them magical rather than contrived. "Muffin Buffalo" is an episode based around coincidences to an extreme extent, and like "Pink Flamingoes", it sometimes feels too predictable. "Lovesick Ass", though, is just top-notch. I'm glad the DVDs are coming out; I understand the urge to give them to all your friends for Christmas.

Angel: "Power Play" - This one annoyed me. It's based on a plot twist that they show in the teaser, so to me, it was frustrating, because I had big blinking lights in my head going "Plot twist ahead!" through the whole episode. Then, too, he's joining an evil organization and it's the second-to-last episode; what the plot twist would be was fairly limited. Nicely executed, though; the speech was rather good.

Love Fights - This really should be a graphic novel rather than an ongoing series. I wish the economy of comics could support that sort of thing. I mean, romances don't have the same sort of cliffhangers that a series really wants, so it's odd to see them in here. Still, it's an excellent comic; just sadly incomplete. Until, hopefully, December.

Justice League: A New Beginning - I seem to be focusing on predictability a lot recently. This is, perhaps, a standard to hold things to based on my upbringing as a sci-fi buff, where half the point is novelty, at least sometimes. Still, the first few Giffen/DeMatteis issues of JL don't particularly stand out; they're clearly trying for something new and different, but it isn't there yet; the battles are standard superhero fare and take up too much time. I hear that later issues improve; Formerly Known as the Justice League was good enough to make me willing to believe that. The second collection is due to be reissued this year; we'll see how it goes.

Songs and More Songs by Tom Lehrer

Invisibles - Bloody Hell in America : Good stuff. It's been a while since I last bought Invisibles; two years or so, I guess, because I knew starting another volume would force me to buy the rest. Looks like I'll be doing so.
Astro City/Arrowsmith special : A little on the prologuey side, which is a little annoying, even though it's two prologues, because the things they're prologues to, I won't be getting for a good while.

Invader Zim - I complained about the obvious computer-aided animation on Triplets of Belleville; Zim does similar things, but it's much less egregious; they use it to do things that otherwise couldn't be done, expanding their capabilities rather than limiting their costs. The high-speed flybys and swarms of ships are a much better use than the way Belleville used it basically for moving scenery.

Angel: "Not Fade Away" - Goodbye, Angel. There was fanfic very shortly after that went "And then Buffy came and saved them all!", but that really is jarring to me; it's such a cop-out, and backslides on so much the show stood for. It'd rob them of their self-determination and ruin the whole finality of the plan. Angel's about helping the helpless; those who can help themselves need to do it themselves. It's a good ending, I think; it took a while to get over the suddenness, but it closes the season nicely to have them killing their clients, and it's very much in character for the show. Angel and Buffy were both very much about the consequences of things, and in this especially, where the consequences were part of the plan; bringing in Buffy to fix everything would, among other things, make another show all about Buffy.

Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie - Good comics. Ends a little abruptly, but it takes half the series to get her hired. I still have issues with the end fight scene; the layout is unclear and I have difficulty figuring out what's going on, but I look forward to whatever Lea does next.

Spirited Away - Mumble, mumble frame rate. The main character spends a good portion of the movie being whiny and nasal and annoying; I'm glad she gets over that, even if it does take a while. I really shouldn't pay too much attention to the DOC poster; I spent a fair portion of time wondering "What's the 'positive ethical message'?". I'm still not sure. Maybe something about . . . not throwing bikes into rivers or something. Another distraction was near the end, where a touching conversation was ruined by my mind screaming "You're FALLING! Don't you want to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?" Otherwise, quite good, especially after the whining is over. Someone seems to have had very odd dreams.

Firefly - Pilot - Yes, the Reavers make a whole lot of no sense.

Freaks and Geeks - These would be better if I could watch them without cringing, without continually worrying that something's going to explode or they're all going to get eaten by vampires. On the plus side, things generally come out better than I fear.

Firefly: "Out of Gas" - Still a really excellent episode.

Sun, 02 May 2004 21:31:49 GMT

Thought I posted; maybe not. In any case, summarizing previous post:

Angel: "Time Bomb"
"Cause and Illyria". Illyria+Wesley was "Silicon Avatar", now maybe "Deja Q". Memory-hacking="The Inner Light" Star Trek is an inexhaustible reserve of plots.
Thesis in Literature: There are only really three plots: "Silicon Avatar", "The Inner Light", "The Best of Both Worlds".

Triplets of Belleville:
Foreigners get non-children's animated films, but lower frame rate, fewer unique cels. Maybe. Mirrormask ?= animated film? Computer-generated cel-shaded 3D objects questionably good; they stand out and don't move like other things do. When Pixar leaves its Disney contract, can we get adult-oriented animated films too?

Thu, 22 Apr 2004 05:00:30 GMT

Angel: "Origin"
Do I want Angel back?

"No. Yes! Can you repeat the second part?"
Well, wrong show, but still. There's part of me going "Wooo! Drew Goddard! Connor! Angst!" and another part of me feeling like "Y'know, I'd react like this to any return-of-Connor episode; they're just spending all their capital in one final five-episode burst." That voice should hopefully get resolved upon rewatching, or is already resolved in that I want to rewatch. Besides which, the non-Connor scenes were quite excellent too. Illyria is confusing, though; I wanted Wesley and Illyria to break off and betray Angel or somesuch, but that's possibly expecting too much initiative on the part of Illyria. Last episode she was hanging around with Wesley on rooftops being philosophical; this episode she beats up Spike. And eats a Petri dish. Next episode, she'll read the phone book. Not that I actually mind her beating up Spike; that was hugely entertaining. Adam Baldwin as liason is great; wonderfully straightforward about things.

I think my current viewpoint is still what it's been; better to end it now, after an uneven season, than to end up with seasons six and seven to match Buffy's, but on the other hand, it's getting better; if the rest of the season is as good as this, the cancellation will become a disappointment. Maybe more topical comments after a second viewing.

Muppet Show: Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radner
Martin: Sort of dull, really; Steve Martin's bits weren't particularly entertaining; the best parts of the episode were throwaway/running gags. And the singing and dancing food, I suppose.

Burnett: Excellent. Plenty of violence; the Muppets are always very good at violence. I was a little disappointed that the dance marathon ending with Carol singing people to death rather than flying felt("It ends when they can't move any more"), but it was an excellent asparagus costume.

Radner: I actually don't remember a lot of this episode. Glue was involved, and violence, but less than in Burnett's. Solidly done, though apparently not particularly memorable.

Fables: The Last Castle: My first time seeing P. Craig Russell's work in something other than Sandman; it's distinctive, but I don't know how I feel about it. It's occasionally distracting; with lines like his, one slightly off can distract. Hopefully I can find the remainder of the Fables TPBs at libraries; it's good, but not good enough to want to spend money or space on.

1602 #8: How do I feel about this? Ultimately, I think it's a little unsatisfying; generally too much or too little going on. Many of the characters, however, are excellent; Fury and the Stranges, Queen Elizabeth, Daredevil. If I were doing it again, I might wait for the trade, but I'd still end up buying it.

Formerly Known as the Justice League: Excellent book. It's a group of second-rate superheroes teaming up and bickering. And bickering and bickering and bickering. Then the current JLA shows up so they can bicker with them. I loved it. It's not just bickering, I suppose, but it's very funny.

Courtney Crumrin and the Coven of Mystics: Interesting choice of life lesson for a slightly gothy comic: you must engage with the world to survive. Wonderfalls seems to have a similar message at times, but that's okay, it's a good message and a somewhat rare one. Adam Cadre touched on a variation, I think, in _Ready, Okay!_, when Allen talks about drugs, but maybe that's just in my head. On the other hand, it's an odd shift after the somewhat amoral first book. I don't know why I'm fixating on this. I suppose that could be the tagline for a lot of this journal.

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 02:54:36 GMT

Firefly: Ariel
It's very sad that Firefly got canceled; I'm down to only four episodes left that I haven't seen, two of which are currently nominated for Hugos. Nathan Fillion is very good in Firefly, much better than in Buffy S7. Adam Baldwin's guest starring on Angel now, shaven, soft-spoken, and in a suit; it's going to be interesting juxtaposing those over the next few weeks.

AbFab: Have I mentioned that these are scary, scary people? They sort of wander around, sucking goodness out of the universe. We're already short enough on goodness for people to fly off to New York to find a doorhandle. They fail to meet any standards of rationality or contribute anything to the world and then beat up people around them. Icky.

Princess Mononoke: Very gooey. I'd have preferred more frames and a better projectionist, but that's being picky. The voice acting was very odd and uneven; some of the voices sounded like stereotypical anime characters(Ashitaka, Eboshi, Toki and her husband whatshisface) and some of the voices sounded completely out of place(mainly Billy Bob Thornton). For a while, I was expecting it to turn out like a console RPG; hero fights first boss, gets kicked out of home village for random reason, then wanders the country. When that failed, I waited for them to start repeating the Philosophy-of-the-Day(in Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicle, NPCs in the street will tell you about their memory problems. Continually. setzerg gets annoyed whenever I say anything related to forgetting and that game.), but that had only limited success. The problem with all this is that it isn't as easily stereotyped as I was trying for; neither the anime voices nor the out of place voices really help either. Frankly, I was surprised that it had a much more balanced attitude toward industrialization than most fantasy(LotR, anyone?) I still feel slightly odd about the plot; it feels like it's Ashitaka ending up in the middle of a war or three, just in time to, well, what? The boars ignore him, he had nothing to do with the attack on Irontown, and the hunters ignore him. In any case, Thursday's anime night at DOC this quarter; should be interesting.

Queen and Country: Operation Morningstar
Still very solid, very good stuff.

Heavy Weather, P. G. Wodehouse
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, P. G. Wodehouse
For a while I thought I'd read the second of these before, because all the plot points seemed familiar; then I concluded that, in fact, I had read it before, but then went ahead and reread it anyway. Ah, well.

Angel: "Underneath"
Mild distaste at the "layers" repetitions, especially since we _just had_ an episode entitled "Shells". Also very grumpy that they couldn't afford a real rooftop for the Wesley/Illyria rooftop scene. Random sidenote: a math professor recently had a baby named Ilaria Kim. Never mind, very random. In general, the Wesley/Illyria scenes seemed weak; there are all of these words and sentences that don't mean anything and don't advance the plot, because Wesley's already tried, has been trying to convince Illyria to leave with no success. Stepford Hell was entertaining, though; automatic weapons are fun. Poor, guilt-ridden Gunn; they can't just leave him like that, especially since Lindsey's information hasn't really been that helpful so far. Overall, it seemed like there were too many things that were just there to slow down the plot; Wesley/Illyria scenes, Eve/Harmony/Lorne scenes. Generally well-written, just rather slow in places. Also, I'm really against synchronized girlish screams. Five episodes left, hopefully this was just setup. And Adam Baldwin's around to be menacing; good fun.

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 03:58:37 GMT

Wonderfalls: Pink Flamingos I was going to mention that though the plot of this episode was a little predictable, Wonderfalls has little moments of exquisite comic timing, but then it got canceled. Here's hoping that the people buying the press kits on eBay for $200 bootleg the DVDs and that the rest of the episodes leak somehow and that the DVD gets put out(vote at www.tvshowsondvd.com if you think it'll do any good), but only time will tell.

Strangers with Candy: I saw one episode before, with a blind person; these episodes included Alan Tudyk, later Wash on Firefly and were very odd. It's an excellent concept; the execution can be a little lacking, but it's a fun show.

LWC:
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, P. G. Wodehouse

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 03:13:51 GMT

Fables, Vol. 2
Groo: Death and Taxes
Bone, Vol. 7
Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things - Harry Potter for people who enjoyed school less and harbor deep resentment toward WASPs. Maybe the WASPs part is just Wonderfalls shading in. And the Family Learning Channel!
Last Chance to See - I read some of Adams's travel/nature writing in _The Salmon of Doubt_; _Last Chance to See_ is good stuff.
Word Freak
The Botany of Desire - I have a great deal of interest for obsession; picking something random and then just tracking obsessively through its interconnections; this and Word Freak satisfy this craving. Botany is a little soft for my taste -- maybe I should be reading James Burke. The central conceit of the book, looking at the other side of the relationship between man and plant is interesting, but it smacks of the pathetic fallacy and doesn't have much meat too it; the book's body is largely an exploration of four species of plant. I hadn't realized how often monocultures arise, for one reason or another; the four plants Pollan focuses on- apples, potatoes, cannabis, and tulips are all largely spread as clones -- apples planted from seed are too different from their parents to be tasty, potatoes grown from eyes are clones, cannabis is often cloned so that only female plants arise, and tulips similarly don't share the right traits of their parents. I'd seen the apocalyptic articles about the death of bananas, and the later caveats that it applied to a single genotype, but didn't realize it was so universal. Also, more impetus to go organic more often. One of these days I'm going to have to talk about my philosophy in terms of organic food and vegetarianism and such, but it isn't really a very interesting philosophy.
The Fisher King - Much less effect-laden than the Munchausen I was looking for; the beginning, with the sudden scary insane homeless people, was a little off-putting, but ultimately a good movie. I'm looking forward to Grimm in November.
My Dinner with Andre - Where did I hear about this movie from? I need to listen to that source less. An interesting concept for a movie(two people have dinner and conversation), but incorrectly billed as a "comedy" rather than a "long, eventually boring conversation" and, well, long and eventually boring. Eventual may vary; if eventual for you means >110 minutes, go right ahead; I started watching the clock around 50 or 60. It's got the Sicilian from The Princess Bride in it, that and a lot of expository text-dumping at the beginning. I suppose it's a talky movie overall, but introducing your character through internal monologue is sort of annoying.
A Saucer of Loneliness - I very much support, in spirit, if not in wallet, publishing Theodore Sturgeon short stories.
Carpe Jugulum
Ergodic Theory and Semisimple Lie Groups - Not quite what I was looking for, but interesting; would have preferred a more geometric, group actions approach.
Firefly, assorted episodes - Woohoo, getting setzerg to watch!
Wonderfalls - Woohoo, getting setzerg to watch! Generally less manic than the pilot, but still bizarrely fun.
1602, #6,7
Astro City: Local Heroes #5

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 03:40:24 GMT

Wonderfalls: Pilot
I was wondering if I'd have any desire to watch television after this season; Wonderfalls doesn't really answer the question, since there's high likelihood that it gets canceled, but it's nonetheless cool. There's a little wax lion that sings "Hello, My Baby" when people aren't looking; this is my kind of obscure cultural reference. My main quibble is the sudden appearance of a happy ending(with Gratuitous Symbolism Anvils); I like these characters too much as dysfunctional to be at all comfortable with them suddenly becoming functional. Thank you, Tim Minear, for unanswering my quandary. It does seem at least a little derivative in concept, but it's still well-written. As far as I can judge these things; I've had bouts of bad taste before.

1602, #6,7: Is Reed Richards always this . . . authorial-surrogate-ish? I mean, I suppose that since we're in 1602, you can make him seem centuries ahead of his time, but it seems Mary-Sue-ish to take it too far.

LWC:
Bone, Old Man's Cave
Assorted Blackadder III
Astro City: Local Heroes #5

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 04:04:59 GMT

Firefly: "Jaynestown"
Not as bizarre as I'd hoped from Ben Edlund, but still decidedly odd. And a song!

Lost in La Mancha: A documentary about how Terry Gilliam failed to make a movie. With Johnny Depp. There's a certain feeling of "Here's a very pretty movie _that you'll never get to see_." Unfortunately, the documentary doesn't rise much above merely chronicling the failure of the movie(with plenty of foreshadowing), though I learned that Orson Welles also attempted an ill-fated version of Quixote. It makes me want to go buy Gilliam films.

Coupling: A very good sitcom; a little bit single-mindedly sex-obsessed, but such is life. I prefer "Inferno" and "Sex, Death, and Nudity" to "The Girl with Two Breasts", mainly because the latter was a bit repetitive and predictable, but it's interesting.

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 04:07:07 GMT

Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Good clean fun. Except maybe for the clean part. The ending definitely had a bit of a "And then they were all run over by a truck" feel, but a good movie.

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 03:53:58 GMT

Angel: "Shells"
This plotline having avoided repeating last season, I will scream if this turns into a Princess Diaries/several other movies which I decline to think about where wackiness ensues from introducing an alien to modern-day-America cliche. Lots and lots of speechifying. Good episode, but lots and lots and lots of speechifying; better written, mostly, than S7 Buffy, but still a bit wearying. So I'm naive and think that this could actually be in earnest, and that the real hubbub is going to occur when everyone else finds out that there's an Old One around; we'll see what happens.

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 05:25:02 GMT

Angel: A Hole in the World

I have moderate issues with the suddenness of "Everyone loves Fred!", but let that pass. I have more issues with sending Lorne, Angel, and Spike to check on someone's _residence_, because of the whole invitation thing, but apparently they're ignoring that rule. Some nice pieces in the episode; Gunn in the White Room, Gunn's plotline, Angel and Spike in the CGI well was sort of entertaining, too; I suppose my main issue with the ep would be the Fred-centeredness. And the cavemen. The cavemen were very Jossian, but so very irrelevant.

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 05:27:26 GMT

Sluggy Freelance, books 7, 8:

I was wondering a little how Pete would put this comic into book form, but the answer seems to be pretty directly; it's eight pages long. The color looks really nice, too.

Jay's Journal of Anomalies:
It's a book about performing oddities and other interests of Ricky Jay; like the Browser's Dictionary, its contents can best be described as the various interests of the author. So, flea circuses, people walking on ceilings, bowling scams, fat people, learned dogs, and dentists abound. It's also the only book I've ever had recalled from me; the University of Chicago library has a system where if someone else has a book you want, you can recall it and they get sent a message that they have a week to return it. Who so desperately needed to know about professional fasters is beyond me.

Thu, 19 Feb 2004 03:36:16 GMT

Angel: Smile Time
Angel gets turned into a puppet. A very angry, bitter, violent vampire puppet, in an episode with Valentine's Day overtones. And a song about self-esteem. I suppose it is written and directed by Ben Edlund. Of all the Buffyverse writers, his style's the most distinctive, possibly excluding Joss's high-concept semi-plotless episodes. The shift in tone to corporate-land was expected for this season; the sudden bizarreness came out of left field, but it seems to be great fun. It's sort of very astounding that the episode actually wasn't horrible. I'm pretty happy. Edlund wrote an episode of Firefly, too, "Jaynestown"

All this and subplots, too; cool.

Firefly: Our Mrs. Reynolds
purpleprimate and I tried to figure out where else in sci-fi the wife-suddenly-appearing plotline occurs; our best guesses were "Future Perfect", "Sub Rosa", and "The Child", all TNG episodes. I wouldn't be surprised if most sci-fi plotlines could be traced back to Star Trek.

Joy Ride, Carol Lay
Story Minute is ubercool. Some of the dialogue in the longer story seemed off, but the plotting is always well-done.

LWC:
Firefly: Safe

Thu, 12 Feb 2004 03:40:16 GMT

Angel: 1943
So, Lawson comes back after sixty years so that he can . . . flashback at Angel? Don't get me wrong; the 1943 plot was a lot of fun, but the storyline was sort of completely random. Ah, well.

LWC:
Firefly: Shindig

Thu, 05 Feb 2004 04:09:08 GMT

Zoot Suite, Andrew and Roger Langridge:
Roger Langridge is great. No More Mrs. Nice Nun was a little disappointing and gratuitously gratuitous, but Zoot Suite is amazing. Bizarreness and excellent comic timing.

Angel: Damage
For ten or twenty minutes, this was one of the darker episodes of the season; then Andrew walked in with his pipe and strangely accented syllables on vam-PYRE. The tone of Angel has been bizarre this season, and this didn't really help, but it was a good episode, if you ignore a few Andrew scenes.

Angel: You're Welcome
It's nice to see Cordy back, if only briefly, and to see the show acknowledging the past four seasons; so much was rebooted for the fifth that it's a nice surprise to see some of it again. On the other hand, I hope that's not the end of Lindsey's involvement in the plot; that would be a waste. The departure scene reminded me of Sheep in the Big City's perpetual "And now I have to go away on a cruise for a very long time" departures for characters who could be inconvenient to an episodic format, but I'm glad to see it wasn't quite like that, even if I'm annoyed that they let it seem like a cliche at all.

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 03:00:22 GMT

The Animation Show:
Meh. Good overall, but very mixed; some very good shorts mixed with filler like Mike Judge's pencil tests and the painful "The Adventures of Ricardo". The theater staff repeatedly warned us about gratuitous violence, but there wasn't all that much. Interesting overall, even if there was a bit too much self-promotion by the producers.

Peanutbutter and Jeremy's Best Book Ever, James Kochalka: James Kochalka grows on you; I'm not too fond of Fancy Froglin, but his other work is charming, I suppose.

Queen and Country: Operation Broken Ground
Good stuff. I'm anxious to see the story drawn by Carla Speed McNeil.

The Browser's Dictionary, John Ciardi:
Mainly a not to say that I've finally read it after a year or more; also to say that, like The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris, having snarky people write reference works is good fun.

LWC:
Blackadder II: assorted episodes

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 03:26:58 GMT

Angel: "Soul Purpose"
Ooh. More confirmation that Angel dreams stupid. Indiana Jones stuff last season and now this bit of weirdness; it could have been better, especially the awful dialogue of the apocalypse scene, and I'm not particularly happy with Lindsey's acting in faking his visions. My big problem is that nothing happened, or at least not much; the episode has a bunch of dream sequences, then the perpetrator is confronted, and everyone stands around while she walks away. Ah, well.

LWC:
Firefly: "Serenity"
Firefly: "Bushwhacked"

Thu, 15 Jan 2004 03:13:35 GMT

Angel: Harm's Way

Um. Harmony-themed episode. I got my new watch today; I was sufficiently excited by moving my watch band from one watch to another that I didn't really pay attention. Yeesh. Why a Harmony episode, of all things?

Forgotten in the backlog:
P{irates of the Caribbean

Break backlog:

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 02:40:57 GMT

Looney Tunes: The Premiere Collection: Good cartoon content, but features are in the other collection
The Aleph and Other Stories, Jorge Luis Borges: Having always heard about Borges, what he actually writes is different from what I'd heard he wrote; strange fantasies, occasional self-reference and attempts to create truly random lists, but also a great deal about Argentina; I'll probably look for more.
The Terminal Beach, J. G. Ballard: Partially read; deep strangenesses abound
The Great Book of Amber, Roger Zelazny: For ten books, it finally seemed a little incomplete; the last book goes off on a completely different plot than the rest. It's hard to keep up a consistent level for a ten-book series, but the good parts of the series are quite good.
Complete and Utter Failure, Neil Sternberg: Failure occurs in many forms. Everest is actually quite fascinating.
Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett
The City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer: I'd heard about "The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris"; this collects it and three other Ambergris stories; apparently, the hardback edition has more. Excellent stuff. For whatever reason, I was reading a lot of slipstream fantasy over the break; this was some of the best of it.
This is Spinal Tap: Good to rewatch; I have a great fondness for the archival footage.
Kangaroo Jack: Dear lord. When I first saw the commercial for the DVD, I was, frankly, scared; I'd thought it had mercifully fallen into oblivion, and I'd never have to see the kangaroo again. I annoyed setzerg for quite a while by repeating "I thought it was gone, I thought it was GONE, I thought it was GONE" whenever the commercial appeared. Then Mom brought it home from the library; awful, awful movie. Take the bad things about 80s movies for kids, with their uplifting deus ex machinas and lovable losers, and add the ability to have a CGI kangaroo, then add huge amounts of PAIN.
The Lion King: Special Edition:
Me: I hear they added a new song for this edition.
setzerg: What song?
Me: "Oops, I Did It Again."
setzerg: Oh.

Then, of couse, where are you without this. I'm a little annoyed by the special-editionification; there's a part of me that starts to sympathize with the Star Wars fans annoyed by Lucas's rampant revisionism.

1602: The diagonal lines get a little annoying, but I suppose I can deal with that.
The Sweet Hereafter: Bus crashes and class-action lawsuits and waiting for a lot of people to die. Adam Cadre lists this as his favorite movie; I'd looked for it at the library once, when they didn't have it, and thus at Blockbuster, looking for a movie to rent to use up a coupon, there were a limited number of movies that I thought the library wouldn't have. They apparently do have it now, but I'm still glad I got it. Bleak and wintry and very good.

Fray: Set in Future Dystopia #3, but still interesting, and a nice distance away from recent Buffy. The miniseries(8 issues) started in June 2001, which begs the question of whether Joss could write better Buffyverse without the time constraints of a series. On another hand, we'll have more data next week.

Tru Calling, and other assorted things(in bold):
setzerg and I: He's gonna give her the knife. What? Pez? No!

The stereotypical time travel story goes for the Things Man Was Not Meant to Know angle - you can change the past, but it just creates misery, or you can't change it at all, or, as a variant, you can set up loops. And this is all well and good and narratively satisfying.

Others just use it as a plot device for a fun story: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court or Lest Darkness Fall, L. Sprague de Camp, or The Men Who Murdered Mohammed, which does both.

Tru Calling has the message "Man can change the past, but is incompetent at it, except when plotful."

Tru saves the Victim of the Week(yay!), but the vase still breaks and the relationship still breaks up and it's all very pointless. It's not even forces beyond our ken, or strange coincidences -- the vase just breaks, or the neighbor had a knife. I _like_ magic rings being thrown into the sea, then turning up in your can of tuna, but here the coincidences are just stupid; they don't act to keep the world running on track; they act so that Tru has a chance to save the victim at the last minute. The plot hinges on the shakiest of threads, and while that can work, it doesn't here.

Holes, Louis Sachar is interconnected, and Tru Calling tries to interconnect its yestertodays and todays, but fails; the connection of someone being someone else is spectacular, while the connection of an event being itself on the same day is spectacularly dull.

Knuckles the Malevolent Nun, Vol. 1: No More Mrs. Nice Nun
Roger Langridge is an excellent artist; though I prefer Fred the Clown, Knuckles is still entertaining.

Firefly: The Train Job(thanks, purpleprimate
This may have been the first television I watched in Chicago; before I'd figured out the whole antenna thing, so it was on the blurry side, and it was difficult to recognize people. Exposition-heavy, or perhaps it just seems that way on second viewing, but Firefly's neat. Perhaps overly literal in its use of the term "space western", but neat.

LWC:
Several Twilight Zone episodes
Blankets, Craig Thompson
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
Hsu and Chan, Norm Scott
Little Lit Vol. 3 - It was a Dark and Silly Night
Assorted other stuff(Tick, Fairly OddParents, anything I've forgotten)

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 22:47:23 GMT

A fixed number of words tempts; today's number is 10.

The Tenacity of the Cockroach: Happy, angry people great fun; skipping musicians is efficient compression.
Krazy Kat 1929-1930: A Mice, a Brick, a Lovely Night: High quality comic archiving; if only the covers were durable.
Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees: Not particularly educational, brazen world music bad, but primates good.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 03:51:50 GMT

Angel: Lineage
The next stage of "Hey! I've seen this before!" Now they're copying "Revelations" but adding cyborg ninjas. Drew Goddard still writes good stuff; a lot of continuity porn, though. I'm glad that, with any luck, Wesley's Fred fixation is over.

Angel: Destiny
Oooh. They brought back ______. The plot thickens. But, given that that's the standard 5-seconds-at-the-end-of-the-show-to-annoy-you, the rest of the episode.

How broody is this show? Spike and Angel fight over who gets to drink from the Cup of Perpetual Torment. It took a bit of time to get started, but I was perhaps overly happy that Spike and Angel were in a car chase through Nevada to fight over the Cup of Perpetual Torment. Because, um, Spike's suddenly corporeal. But yeah, they had the inevitable fight over Buffy, which annoyed me far less than I'd anticipated. Also, the implication that there will actually be a _plot_, and that there's a reason behind occasional things? That makes me quite happy.

Eve is starting to annoy me. At least her default personality; I enjoyed her conversation with Fred, but it doesn't look like she's going to continue like that. These people are ridiculously trusting. Not that I'm any less trusting, but that's different.

Oh, yes. "ToNeR".

Red Dwarf: The End
Red Dwarf: Future Echoes
Red Dwarf: Balance of Power

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:46:23 GMT

Finding Nemo:

Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

Um. Yeah. Here's to obscure Gambit jokes. And fish. Like salmon. Mmm. Salmon.

It was tempting to order fish at the Thai restaurant we went to after, but I resisted.

SPX 2002: Biographical Comics
An anthology of alternative biographical comics. Extremely various; there's a certain proportion of alternative comics styles that I like and another proportion of people whose lives I find interesting, and the combination of the two makes for a limited number of really interesting works: in my case, Banting, Barnum, Blake, Borges, Cassady, Harryhausen, "Invisible Scratch Piklz", Jane, Keene, Lamarr, Machiavelli, Michaux, Nakajima, Rasputin, Schiele, Stravinsky, Tim. Which is about half. So, well, they're short.

I have a vague discontent with any genre that sets itself up as "alternative"; there's a certain elitism there that I don't like, and all too often, it can be so busy trying to prove what it's not that it lacks in other areas. So, yeah, I lack hipster-cred, but I think I still get good comics.

The Storyteller: A Story Short, The Soldier and Death
Henson is great. Fairy tales can be exceedingly strange, but Henson is great.

Angel: The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco
Another weird episode. At this point, I suppose my main gripe with the season is that the episodes just move so slowly. I'm a little disappointed that they're backpedaling on the issue of Angel believing in the Shanshu prophecy; I was fairly happy to see it go because it didn't make much sense when it first came out, Angel having already rejected that sort of reward twice that season.

Oh, yes, Holland Manners cameo. W00t. The cameo was just his name appearing on a card, so it's not that much of a cameo, but I'm easily amused. Sometimes.

Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
A nuclear-war farce; huh. I'm not a big Kubrick fan, but I feel better disposed toward him than after seeing only Clockwork Orange. It's interesting that the two lines that I'd heard before - "You can't fight here! This is the War Room!" and "Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!" weren't particularly funny; I enjoyed Mandrake's scenes more.

LWC:
Red Dwarf: Thanks for the Memories
Red Dwarf: Queeg

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 05:25:57 GMT

V for Vendetta
It's neat to compare Alan Moore's current stuff to what he was doing in the '80s, because it's hardly the same person. V is this odd little dystopia thing. I'm glad that modern dystopias are different; fascism is out of style, in favor of occasional strange cyberpunk things and heavy weather. V has similar properties to Bugs Bunny; in control of the world to whatever extent is necessary to the plot.

It's also odd to contrast my taste to pessimysticism's; he's been reading dark DC stuff from the 80's, while I go for light, contemporary stuff, with a strong tendency toward humor; Kyle Baker and such. Not bad; not to my taste, and I can't give it the time that it deserves, but not bad. I wonder why my current taste is what it is, not that my taste was really ever not toward Adams and Pratchett and Wodehouse and ilk.

Angel: "Life of the Party"
Ben Edlund writes weird episodes; he wrote Mr. Skitters's episode too. He has great potential; the teaser was great stuff, but much of the episode seemed a bit slow, and any sexual tension between Eve and Angel was non-existent.

Red Dwarf: "Kryten"
o/` Annndroids! Everybody needs good anndroids o/`
Red Dwarf: "Better than Life"
This was better than "Kryten", but I am sort of glad that the episodes of Red Dwarf I saw before this were all from after Season 3.

Thu, 23 Oct 2003 15:48:07 GMT

LWC: Lenore, Vol. 1

Thu, 23 Oct 2003 15:47:44 GMT

X-Files: Bad Blood
Hee. Sunflower seeds. Pizza. Magic Fingers.

I don't know how I feel about the fundamental X-Files plot structure, - Scully and Mulder find something, investigate, investigate, then they get away and the plot is left unresolved; too many things end up being pointlessly unresolved. I mean, after seven seasons, they end up with a few hundred random spooky things running around the country.

Angel: "Hellbound"
Fun. An episode that isn't entirely dull. After the last three, that's _such_ a relief, to know that they actually can still make a good ep. The explanation of why Spike's been fading out was a little anti-climactic, but that's okay, because I never really liked that plotline anyway. And it's also good to hope that this season's random non-corporeal character who pops up behind people and annoys them to death is going to take a different path than Buffy's. And not just because he has a souuuul now. Here's to optimism; may it serve me better than it did for S7.