the letter is of course from you.
So, in terms of my to-do list, this weekend was TOTAL FAIL and I don't want to talk about it. :P
But! I did lots of RL things, including a volunteer shift at a local clothes sale and making (more) brownies and having lunch with K, and also saw movies!
On the one hand: Aaron Sorkin script = well-paced, funny, with the occasional sweet or significant moment sneaking in. On the other hand: straight white man breaks rules, astounding and impressing many other straight white men! Wake me when it's over.
I think the most interesting thing for me was the - silliness is not quite the word I'm looking for. The tautology of it, maybe? When you take a step back and look at the premise, it is, essentially, that putting players who score points on your team will help you score more points. ... My mind, it is blown! I mean, in context, it makes perfect sense, because the premise isn't that in and of itself, so much as that even with something that seems that obvious, it's still a hell of a time to go against the prevailing wisdom and the intuition and truthy gut feelings of many generations of straight white men. And it's easy for me to say it's obvious when I already know it worked.
So it wasn't bad, but it also wasn't especially magnetic for me. I don't care much about baseball, and the most significant female presence was Billy's daughter, who was sweet and adorable but did not have a hugely important role. I liked all the guys on the team, but not much time was spent on most of them, so. It wasn't a bad way to spend an afternoon, and my dad might appreciate it if we Netflixed it, but it didn't really blow me away.
And then my mother's Netflix was XMFC. SOOOOOOO MANY CONFLICTED FEELINGS. Charles and Erik were definitely the philosophical old guy ship of my heart in the other movies, and I love James McAvoy to a really ridiculous degree, and there were many small things in this movie that were great in a nerd way.
But the plot seemed weirdly disjointed, they did not spend nearly as much time on character/relationship development as I would have liked, they killed Darwin, and boobs everywhere. I mean, look, I like boobs fine, but Moira took her clothes off within about a minute, we meet Angel when she has most of her clothes off, Raven's powers essentially strip her clothes off, Emma's diamond thing essentially strips her clothes off, and was there any good reason Alex had to practice his powers on naked lady mannequins? Because I couldn't think of one. It seemed weird and excessive.
Also, they wrote Charles like a thoughtless asshat. Which I realize everyone has already said, mostly because I read their reaction posts when they said it, but wow. I wish I thought the writers were doing that on purpose, but my impression was that they didn't understand the conversation the characters should have been having well enough to write it with any kind of - depth? idk, my mental thesaurus is failing me today. By the end, I wanted to slap nearly everybody over the head and tell them all the things they should have been saying. And, btw, I am not impressed with the fictional CIA - not on a moral level, obvs., but also if you employ a guy specifically because he has the ability to manipulate metal with his mind and he's really really good at it, and you feel the plot-convenient need to kill him, DON'T DO IT WITH REGULAR MISSILES.
... However, for two characters with about five lines each, one of whom did not even live through the whole movie, Darwin and Alex were awfully slashy. I looked up at exactly the right moment to catch that stomach-caress at the pool table, and the death scene was stupid and awful but there was quite a bit of agonized staring at each other. So that was nice. (I assume Charles and Erik's amazing gayness does not need further comment.)
Mostly, it didn't surprise me much at all; thanks to fandom osmosis, I knew a lot going in. (My mother: "-and Kevin Bacon was good-" Me: "Kevin Bacon's in this?!" My mother: "Yeah, he's the Nazi guy-" Me: "Shaw, Mom. His name's Shaw." My mother: "I thought you hadn't seen this.") Sometimes I wonder why I don't just give up on source material entirely, and interact with media solely through fandom - some things would be so much easier! I would probably like all the characters better!
And then the sequel to God's War arrives in the mail, and I remember. \o/ YAY THIS IS PROBABLY GOING TO BREAK MY HEART YAY.
[crossposted; original at Dreamwidth]
But! I did lots of RL things, including a volunteer shift at a local clothes sale and making (more) brownies and having lunch with K, and also saw movies!
On the one hand: Aaron Sorkin script = well-paced, funny, with the occasional sweet or significant moment sneaking in. On the other hand: straight white man breaks rules, astounding and impressing many other straight white men! Wake me when it's over.
I think the most interesting thing for me was the - silliness is not quite the word I'm looking for. The tautology of it, maybe? When you take a step back and look at the premise, it is, essentially, that putting players who score points on your team will help you score more points. ... My mind, it is blown! I mean, in context, it makes perfect sense, because the premise isn't that in and of itself, so much as that even with something that seems that obvious, it's still a hell of a time to go against the prevailing wisdom and the intuition and truthy gut feelings of many generations of straight white men. And it's easy for me to say it's obvious when I already know it worked.
So it wasn't bad, but it also wasn't especially magnetic for me. I don't care much about baseball, and the most significant female presence was Billy's daughter, who was sweet and adorable but did not have a hugely important role. I liked all the guys on the team, but not much time was spent on most of them, so. It wasn't a bad way to spend an afternoon, and my dad might appreciate it if we Netflixed it, but it didn't really blow me away.
And then my mother's Netflix was XMFC. SOOOOOOO MANY CONFLICTED FEELINGS. Charles and Erik were definitely the philosophical old guy ship of my heart in the other movies, and I love James McAvoy to a really ridiculous degree, and there were many small things in this movie that were great in a nerd way.
But the plot seemed weirdly disjointed, they did not spend nearly as much time on character/relationship development as I would have liked, they killed Darwin, and boobs everywhere. I mean, look, I like boobs fine, but Moira took her clothes off within about a minute, we meet Angel when she has most of her clothes off, Raven's powers essentially strip her clothes off, Emma's diamond thing essentially strips her clothes off, and was there any good reason Alex had to practice his powers on naked lady mannequins? Because I couldn't think of one. It seemed weird and excessive.
Also, they wrote Charles like a thoughtless asshat. Which I realize everyone has already said, mostly because I read their reaction posts when they said it, but wow. I wish I thought the writers were doing that on purpose, but my impression was that they didn't understand the conversation the characters should have been having well enough to write it with any kind of - depth? idk, my mental thesaurus is failing me today. By the end, I wanted to slap nearly everybody over the head and tell them all the things they should have been saying. And, btw, I am not impressed with the fictional CIA - not on a moral level, obvs., but also if you employ a guy specifically because he has the ability to manipulate metal with his mind and he's really really good at it, and you feel the plot-convenient need to kill him, DON'T DO IT WITH REGULAR MISSILES.
... However, for two characters with about five lines each, one of whom did not even live through the whole movie, Darwin and Alex were awfully slashy. I looked up at exactly the right moment to catch that stomach-caress at the pool table, and the death scene was stupid and awful but there was quite a bit of agonized staring at each other. So that was nice. (I assume Charles and Erik's amazing gayness does not need further comment.)
Mostly, it didn't surprise me much at all; thanks to fandom osmosis, I knew a lot going in. (My mother: "-and Kevin Bacon was good-" Me: "Kevin Bacon's in this?!" My mother: "Yeah, he's the Nazi guy-" Me: "Shaw, Mom. His name's Shaw." My mother: "I thought you hadn't seen this.") Sometimes I wonder why I don't just give up on source material entirely, and interact with media solely through fandom - some things would be so much easier! I would probably like all the characters better!
And then the sequel to God's War arrives in the mail, and I remember. \o/ YAY THIS IS PROBABLY GOING TO BREAK MY HEART YAY.
[crossposted; original at Dreamwidth]