TV and movies and trailers and stuff
Two TV shows I like ended this week. Life on Mars was really enjoyable even though I don't think they got everything possible out of the high concept. The ending of the show was great, except I would have ended it about five minutes earlier, at the roof top (or maybe about three seconds after the rooftop...), before the happy reunion. Or maybe that would have been more annoying than open end, I don't know. Ashes to Ashes starts at fall. Based on the trailer they've shown I'm a bit skeptical but I'll give it a go.
The other show that ended was british 6-episode thriller State Within. I really like this sort of thrillers where people are scheming behind the curtains and talking a lot and seriously instead of just running around chased by bad guys. There is explosions and shoot outs and such a plenty, but they are not the main point of the story, which is nice. Plus, there's Jason Isaacs and Ben Daniels. It's always a pleasure to watch Isaacs and it was great how not-annoying he managed make his character, who was so good he could have been awful in somebody elses hands. My favourite character was Ben Daniels' Brocklehurst, who was delightfully ambiguous, morally. And kinda hot. The plot was a little confusing, but I like the structure where we start with many seemingly unconnected events and plots that then weave together into a coherent story.
We went to see The Dark Knight. Wow. Wow wow wowity wow. Everybody is raving about Ledger's Joker, and he was amazing but not the only good thing in the movie by the long shot. It was maybe a bit too long and there was some silly CSIness, but on the whole it was pretty damn good. I think I'll go see it again at some point.
I watched the trailer of the new Brideshead Revisited movie. I know that movies and books are a different media and when adapting a book the screenwriter will have to interpret the source material and make changes in order to make a functional movie. Actually, I really admire the movie makers who have courage to make the necessary changes and don't just settle with slavishly illustrating scenes from the book. This admiration of course only goes as far as their interpretations concur with mine. RB looked awful! I've generally liked the adaptations written by Andrew Davies but this was just wrong! I realize it's unfair to judge a movie based on trailer and just because I don't like Julia Flyte, other people might and they may have a good and functional reason to make the movie focus on realtionship of Julia and Charles, but no, it's wrong!
I also watched the trailer of Twilight. Meh. I don't understand why I keep tabs on this project, everything Twilight related just annoys me (if I was still 13, I would probably love this but as I'm not I think it's pretty dumb and silly and can't get into it. I'm getting old...)
Eh, I should get back to work. My two weeks of summer holiday went by super-quickly and were wasted on moving, blah. But in September I have more holiday, about week and a half, so yey, something to look forward.