With great employment comes great mundanity
What I want - what I really want - out of life at the moment is a pair of red tights. I like scarlet or vermillion, but I'd settle for blood or even burgundy. But can I find them? HELL NO. This season's colours are apparently pink, purple and blue, which for someone like me leaves no options once I've bought the requisite Gabe-Saporta-purple (and it is; it matches my hoodie perfectly, and the Male says, "There's an outfit just waiting to happen"). Anyway, sulk.
Further media-consumption updates! All may include spoilers.
FLCL
We finished it. Opinions are divided. I felt like it reconciled both strands of its story (the outward "aliens and robots" one, and the metaphoric "puberty and coming of age" one) in a satisfactory but not overly neat way. The Male feels that it failed to take it to the requisite level and round it out. Looking back at it, I'm really quite happy with it. That said, I don't want to rewatch it. It was just plain too weird and Japanese in its execution. I'm glad I've seen it, though.
Dollhouse
Now we've started watching Dollhouse. The friend who specifically pimped this at us (as opposed to the general pimps I've seen all over my flist for a couple years now) warned that the first few episodes were shit (his words). Actually, we're quite enjoying it so far (up to the third ep), even if we did spend half the pilot going, "Who's the cop? OMG, we know him," before figuring out he was Helo from BSG.
And yeah, about the whole pilot business. Did that never screen on TV? Should we not have watched it? Because they seem to be covering the same ground again, using precisely the same footage in some instances. I was pretty impressed when I thought that the series had just jumped back to pre-pilot to fill stuff in and move us forward, but now it seems that's not the case at all and I'm a little sad.
I'm having my usual issue with glib-Whedonisms (Willow girls and Xander boys) and the Male's having his usual issues with cheap storytelling mechanisms that rely on unrealistic weaknesses in the world. Specifically, we had a vehement half-hour agreement (it's like an argument, only not) about how we would run the facility if we were in charge, including monitoring actor behaviour at all times, such that little glitches like Echo making the psychopath-Middleman salute would be picked up. (Seriously. It's not like they lack resources. It's not like they know everything about this and there's not still infinite learning to be achieved from gathering the huge amounts of cutting edge raw data that the actors represent. And it's not like they don't have a proven survival motivation in ensuring all of their actors remain within the acceptable parameters. JUST SAYING.)
Iron Man 2
I obviously saw this at the right point on the critical-response wave, because I enjoyed the hell out of it. (We all know about this, yes? How if you see a movie after all the press/reviews have been good, you're disappointed, but if you wait for the backlash and people saying it sucks, then when you see it, you'll be pleasantly surprise. Whatever.) I loved the Pepper-and-Tony rambling, over the top of each other, snarktastic arguments. (I just love Tony's rambling at all times, especially when technology is involved.) I loved Mickey Rourke with the character arc and motivation of a bullet. And I particularly loved the hell out of Agent Coulson, especially when he was snarking with Tony (yep, I'm a one-trick pony, but it's a damn shiny trick). Black Widow was candy, but didn't particularly move me. The highlights for me were "I want one" / "No" and Tony's relationship with his father. Sure, there were no surprises there, but they did it so well.
Mostly, I love this franchise and think it wins at comicbook-adaptation-movie because it's based in character. And they're good, solid characters, and they're delivered with great skill. I mean... Tony's fear. Just WOW. Pants off, RDJ; you're brilliant.
Further media-consumption updates! All may include spoilers.
FLCL
We finished it. Opinions are divided. I felt like it reconciled both strands of its story (the outward "aliens and robots" one, and the metaphoric "puberty and coming of age" one) in a satisfactory but not overly neat way. The Male feels that it failed to take it to the requisite level and round it out. Looking back at it, I'm really quite happy with it. That said, I don't want to rewatch it. It was just plain too weird and Japanese in its execution. I'm glad I've seen it, though.
Dollhouse
Now we've started watching Dollhouse. The friend who specifically pimped this at us (as opposed to the general pimps I've seen all over my flist for a couple years now) warned that the first few episodes were shit (his words). Actually, we're quite enjoying it so far (up to the third ep), even if we did spend half the pilot going, "Who's the cop? OMG, we know him," before figuring out he was Helo from BSG.
And yeah, about the whole pilot business. Did that never screen on TV? Should we not have watched it? Because they seem to be covering the same ground again, using precisely the same footage in some instances. I was pretty impressed when I thought that the series had just jumped back to pre-pilot to fill stuff in and move us forward, but now it seems that's not the case at all and I'm a little sad.
I'm having my usual issue with glib-Whedonisms (Willow girls and Xander boys) and the Male's having his usual issues with cheap storytelling mechanisms that rely on unrealistic weaknesses in the world. Specifically, we had a vehement half-hour agreement (it's like an argument, only not) about how we would run the facility if we were in charge, including monitoring actor behaviour at all times, such that little glitches like Echo making the psychopath-Middleman salute would be picked up. (Seriously. It's not like they lack resources. It's not like they know everything about this and there's not still infinite learning to be achieved from gathering the huge amounts of cutting edge raw data that the actors represent. And it's not like they don't have a proven survival motivation in ensuring all of their actors remain within the acceptable parameters. JUST SAYING.)
Iron Man 2
I obviously saw this at the right point on the critical-response wave, because I enjoyed the hell out of it. (We all know about this, yes? How if you see a movie after all the press/reviews have been good, you're disappointed, but if you wait for the backlash and people saying it sucks, then when you see it, you'll be pleasantly surprise. Whatever.) I loved the Pepper-and-Tony rambling, over the top of each other, snarktastic arguments. (I just love Tony's rambling at all times, especially when technology is involved.) I loved Mickey Rourke with the character arc and motivation of a bullet. And I particularly loved the hell out of Agent Coulson, especially when he was snarking with Tony (yep, I'm a one-trick pony, but it's a damn shiny trick). Black Widow was candy, but didn't particularly move me. The highlights for me were "I want one" / "No" and Tony's relationship with his father. Sure, there were no surprises there, but they did it so well.
Mostly, I love this franchise and think it wins at comicbook-adaptation-movie because it's based in character. And they're good, solid characters, and they're delivered with great skill. I mean... Tony's fear. Just WOW. Pants off, RDJ; you're brilliant.