Man's inhumanity to man, now with extra vampires
We finished watching season one of Being Human.
We're strangely ambivalent about it - in the strict definition of the term. After we finished, we wandered around for about 36 hours, occasionally frowning and saying, "I enjoyed it, but..." Bizarre as it seems, for a show that runs those sorts of plots, the conclusion that we came to is that we feel like it took the easy option too often (which, for us, can probably be read as "ever" - we're tough, and believe if you're going to be tough, don't pull your punches).
What do we mean? Well, the most clear-cut example is the business of Mitchell's old girlfriend. I was all over her and her very Earthsea-Farthest-Shore "no, death is an intrinsic part of life" mode, but then when she sacrifices herself for Mitchell's survival, it's actually no sacrifice at all. "It's not worth starting any new books," she says, and it would've been so much stronger if, actually, she had a year, maybe even two left, but death was still a close inevitable and she chose now, and him, and this. Then there'd be something for Mitchell to actually carry. There'd be actual weight. As it was: meh.
Another candidate, that the Male feels more strongly about than I do (but I do still agree with him) is Annie's death. Don't get us wrong; they ran Owen, his bastardry, and that whole storyline extremely well, but we think it was the easy option. The Male's suggestion - which I actually really love - was that she killed herself, but because of his systematic campaign to run her down. It's a pretty small change, actually, but I just feel like it brings more, ramps it up a notch. Plus, it means that what I predicted from the first moment Annie talked about her death isn't what actually happened, and I always like it when that happens.
The recasting thing? Well, Herrick was a solid-gold win from the moment of changeover, and just got better and better. Two pointy gold fangs stars there. Mitchell I came to terms with; there were some bits that I really, really, desperately wanted to see Flanagan do, and some bits I just couldn't imagine, and all in all I quite like Mitchell. But Annie... we never really settled to her, and this is probably because of our dissatisfaction with the way they ran her storyline and not at all a casting thing, but it's hard not to miss her.
The most important other thing to talk about is ~*Nina*~. I loved her. I loved her stupid. From the first moment she snarked her way onto the screen, I was gone on her, and I was right there every single second up to her shocking finale. Hers is the storyline I care about most, and that, right there, is the biggest sign that (at least for me) they're doing something wrong with the main elements.
Then again, we also adored the pants off the cameo-vicar (and his "and I feel bad about it, but then I just forgive myself..."). This show does awesome sideline characters.
Will we watch more? I don't know. I honestly don't know. At this stage, I really do feel like Nina's the only thing I care about, though the last-minute cramming in of the Shadowy Conspiracy of Kindly Old Gents did raise some interest (and eyebrows). (But at this point, we're launching back into Leverage with glad cries and great glee, so it's going to have to wait.)
And then last night we went to see Daybreakers. Why god why? I hear you ask. Because it was date night ($10 ticket night) and we had a very limited window of opportunity between the Male leaving work and turning into a pumpkin. And I'm generally fond of non-Twilit vampires. Anyway, it wasn't as good as it could have been, but it wasn't unremittingly awful either, though I definitely seemed to enjoy it more than the Male did - as previously canvassed, my superpower is the ability to enjoy things for what they have, while still noting what they lack.
Daybreakers HAD:
In completely non-vampiric news, I have discovered Read It Later and I'm not sure how I ever lived without this.
We're strangely ambivalent about it - in the strict definition of the term. After we finished, we wandered around for about 36 hours, occasionally frowning and saying, "I enjoyed it, but..." Bizarre as it seems, for a show that runs those sorts of plots, the conclusion that we came to is that we feel like it took the easy option too often (which, for us, can probably be read as "ever" - we're tough, and believe if you're going to be tough, don't pull your punches).
What do we mean? Well, the most clear-cut example is the business of Mitchell's old girlfriend. I was all over her and her very Earthsea-Farthest-Shore "no, death is an intrinsic part of life" mode, but then when she sacrifices herself for Mitchell's survival, it's actually no sacrifice at all. "It's not worth starting any new books," she says, and it would've been so much stronger if, actually, she had a year, maybe even two left, but death was still a close inevitable and she chose now, and him, and this. Then there'd be something for Mitchell to actually carry. There'd be actual weight. As it was: meh.
Another candidate, that the Male feels more strongly about than I do (but I do still agree with him) is Annie's death. Don't get us wrong; they ran Owen, his bastardry, and that whole storyline extremely well, but we think it was the easy option. The Male's suggestion - which I actually really love - was that she killed herself, but because of his systematic campaign to run her down. It's a pretty small change, actually, but I just feel like it brings more, ramps it up a notch. Plus, it means that what I predicted from the first moment Annie talked about her death isn't what actually happened, and I always like it when that happens.
The recasting thing? Well, Herrick was a solid-gold win from the moment of changeover, and just got better and better. Two pointy gold fangs stars there. Mitchell I came to terms with; there were some bits that I really, really, desperately wanted to see Flanagan do, and some bits I just couldn't imagine, and all in all I quite like Mitchell. But Annie... we never really settled to her, and this is probably because of our dissatisfaction with the way they ran her storyline and not at all a casting thing, but it's hard not to miss her.
The most important other thing to talk about is ~*Nina*~. I loved her. I loved her stupid. From the first moment she snarked her way onto the screen, I was gone on her, and I was right there every single second up to her shocking finale. Hers is the storyline I care about most, and that, right there, is the biggest sign that (at least for me) they're doing something wrong with the main elements.
Then again, we also adored the pants off the cameo-vicar (and his "and I feel bad about it, but then I just forgive myself..."). This show does awesome sideline characters.
Will we watch more? I don't know. I honestly don't know. At this stage, I really do feel like Nina's the only thing I care about, though the last-minute cramming in of the Shadowy Conspiracy of Kindly Old Gents did raise some interest (and eyebrows). (But at this point, we're launching back into Leverage with glad cries and great glee, so it's going to have to wait.)
And then last night we went to see Daybreakers. Why god why? I hear you ask. Because it was date night ($10 ticket night) and we had a very limited window of opportunity between the Male leaving work and turning into a pumpkin. And I'm generally fond of non-Twilit vampires. Anyway, it wasn't as good as it could have been, but it wasn't unremittingly awful either, though I definitely seemed to enjoy it more than the Male did - as previously canvassed, my superpower is the ability to enjoy things for what they have, while still noting what they lack.
Daybreakers HAD:
- excellent use of the vampirism geometric progression of improbability. This is actually how I first encountered the vampire myth - as a two-page thing in a kids' book explaining how it was impossible, because if a vampire has to feed every night and someone who is fed from turns into a vampire, by the end of three weeks, the whole population is vampiric and incidentally, welcome to maths. Now, various vampiric stories get around this little problem primarily by changing how new vamps turn, so it was really interesting to see a story that took that geometric progression and ran with it: so yeah, everyone's vampiric, now whatcha gonna do?
- amazingly Australian scenery. Nice paddocks, nice corrugated-iron water tanks, nice Moreton Bay fig tree, nice shot of the centre of Brisbane looking abandoned and desolate. It was almost as good as Ghost Rider for location-spotting.
- exploding vampires! Of particular awesomeness when the advancing battle line of vampire marines was illuminated in the night by the explosions of their dying members. I'm quite fond of this trope, but it always annoys me when vamps explode when staked and then people do it by hand without any ill effects. So I really, really liked the scene where Ethan Hawke staked a vamp and then was blown across the room. TWO THUMBS UP.
- an amazing array of accents going on. It was a buffet of New World delights.
- fabulous atmosphere for the first half. Paranoia, desolation, wrongness papered over with a veneer of normality, despair... just plain awesome. The world was excellent and there was some lovely cinematography going on. Plus the first time we see the trees of farmed humans, it's a far more powerful image than the Matrix ever managed (possibly due to scale), and remains a powerful indicator of the decline of order.
- a climactic slow-motion orgy of Marine cannibalism. How do I even have to explain this point further?
- an excellent refusal to wring the sexy out of vampirism. Feeding was mundane and a chore or an act of violence. If anything, it was likened to drugs and addiction. We only ever saw blood in coffee or as an alcohol replacement, and the junkie aspect of the blood-deprived nosferatu-creatures was obvious. When the heroine gives her blood to steady the hero, she cuts her hand and wrings a couple mouthfuls into a paper cup. The one time the act of feeding/turning was given sexual overtones, it was clearly and definitively rape. And frankly, this was GRAND.
- coherence. From the excellent thematic work of the first half, it devolved into gallons of fake blood and ridiculous explosions, limping development of not-fully-explored lines and a rush to finish off that left everything pulling a funny face like they'd taken the photo half a second too soon.
- weight. There seemed to be a lot of stuff they were trying to say, but it got lost, probably in the fake blood, see previous point. Also to be filed under this point is that while Ethan Hawke did a pretty good job, there was nothing really for Claudia Karvan to do, and Willem Dafoe was great but not fully exploited. Sam Neill seemed to have signed up on the proviso that he wouldn't have to do anything more strenuous than make crazy eyebrows, but that's been the case for his last eight gigs, so we weren't expecting anything else.
- restraint. No, really, the fake blood was out of control. And even in a vampire movie, you have to draw the line on beheadings at an acceptable level. (On the other hand, set Ethan Hawke on fire as many times as you like. It never gets old.)
In completely non-vampiric news, I have discovered Read It Later and I'm not sure how I ever lived without this.