From the Land Of Fiction
Being Human finished on Sunday night; I watched it on the iPlayer last night. It was awesome. After the penultimate episode, I was a little concerned that it was heading in a rather narm-y direction (not that the penultimate episode wasn't great. It just laid on the emotion a bit thick). Thankfully, the final episode was, on the whole, pretty restrained and littered with excellent performances. Russell Tovey is always great as George the lovable werewolf, of course, but the show was very nearly stolen by Jason Watkins as Herrick, who managed the rare trick of being affably chilling (or chillingly affable). Set up for a sequel, of course... let's hope they keep up the high standard.
I recently read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. Really, really, really good. Alan Moore moves the League's world forward to the 1950s, before using the titular dossier as an excuse to go ransacking literature and myth from Shakespeare to Orwell. I'm quite sure there were a load of jokes I didn't get- after all, when there are incidental allusions to The Man In The White Suit, you know you're in the hands of an author for whom obscurity holds no fear. The high point was probably the lost Shakespearean folio, with the comic gatesmen Master Pysse and Master Shytte. the low point was the PG Wodehouse-meets-HP Lovecraft pastiche, in which Moore makes the uncharacteristic error of fumbling the characterisation (Gussie Fink-Nottle raiding Aunt Agatha's drinks cabinet? I think not!), and also fails to be anywhere near funny enough. The plot is a bit thin too, compared to the full-on alien invasion of volume 2, but then that's not really the point; the point is the breadth of the world Alan Moore has created rather than any specific events. Oh, and the 3D finale (shame the green in the 3D glasses doesn't quite match the green ink, but it works well enough).
I also finished A Season With Verona this evening on the tube. This anthropological travelogue charts Tim Parks's journeys across Italy supporting Hellas Verona, and explores the soul of Italy and the nature of fannish obsession along the way. Oddly for a non-football fan, I loved it; Parks's observations are equally as applicable to a Doctor Who obsessive such as myself as to a rabid Italian football racist. Recommended.
I recently read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. Really, really, really good. Alan Moore moves the League's world forward to the 1950s, before using the titular dossier as an excuse to go ransacking literature and myth from Shakespeare to Orwell. I'm quite sure there were a load of jokes I didn't get- after all, when there are incidental allusions to The Man In The White Suit, you know you're in the hands of an author for whom obscurity holds no fear. The high point was probably the lost Shakespearean folio, with the comic gatesmen Master Pysse and Master Shytte. the low point was the PG Wodehouse-meets-HP Lovecraft pastiche, in which Moore makes the uncharacteristic error of fumbling the characterisation (Gussie Fink-Nottle raiding Aunt Agatha's drinks cabinet? I think not!), and also fails to be anywhere near funny enough. The plot is a bit thin too, compared to the full-on alien invasion of volume 2, but then that's not really the point; the point is the breadth of the world Alan Moore has created rather than any specific events. Oh, and the 3D finale (shame the green in the 3D glasses doesn't quite match the green ink, but it works well enough).
I also finished A Season With Verona this evening on the tube. This anthropological travelogue charts Tim Parks's journeys across Italy supporting Hellas Verona, and explores the soul of Italy and the nature of fannish obsession along the way. Oddly for a non-football fan, I loved it; Parks's observations are equally as applicable to a Doctor Who obsessive such as myself as to a rabid Italian football racist. Recommended.