Down & safe in Bishkek
I arrived in Bishkek a few hours ago. Er... 15 hours ago? I arrived at 5am local time, but it was only midnight on my body clock. By the time I arrived at the hotel, half-dead with exhaustion (the stop-over in Moscow was for some reason particularly grueling this time around), it was already breakfast time. So... I ate breakfast, and then went to bed. I went to the office in the afternoon, so now my brain is telling me that it's lunchtime, and my eyes are telling me that it's dinner time. Either way, I had a very delicious meal. I'm staying in some standard chain hotel, but the nice thing (as well as the frankly palatial room) is that there is a rooftop terrace with a view across the city. Of course, it's an ex-Soviet city in the throes of a construction boom, so the view is mostly of half-finished towering buildings, but I suppose we can't have everything.
This month is going to be one solid block of travel time. I'm only in Bishkek for a few days, before I have to head back and go on to Germany. After that, the US (DC and NYC). I'm half excited about being on the move again, and half terrified of the inevitable jetlag.
That said... I'm not tired? I don't know if this is because I had a vitamin B12 shot a few hours before getting on the plane. My arm is bruised and swollen but I feel rested and awake. And like I could sleep well this evening.
There is a not-so-small part of me that is wondering if this is because I have left the anxiety of my job in London, and all I have to be anxious about when out and about is not getting lost. (My Russian stretches to asking for directions, but not necessarily understanding the answer. Although I have been told that I have an absolutely beautiful accent when asking for Krassnaya Ploshit, so if I ever need to find Moscow's Red Square, I'll be able to do so with impeccable diction. And the set off in the wrong direction.)
Anyway, small fandom note, when I was on the plane I watched Deadpool as the in-flight film.
Deadpool
And I really liked it? I was fully prepared to hate it, on the strength of a few not-so-great reviews, which I think primarily objected to how it felt a bro film. I don't actually have a problem with puerile idiocy in my films (I like Kevin Smith's films, after all, which are arguably 100% dick jokes), I just object if the film has any pretensions of universality. And this didn't seem to be the case with Deadpool. It felt like a small, niche film, aimed at a small, fairly niche market.
Stuff I liked -
- How unapologetically rubbish everything was! He forgets his bullets (budgetary constraints), their relationship is terrible and trashy and they're so happy, his friends are terrible and bet on his death and yet back him up (and are then useless), and the X-Men are on holiday (except for 2 seemingly chosen at random).
- Morena Baccarin! Who is an age-appropriate girlfriend! Who is pretty fucking awesome! Who makes me want to draw cartoon pink hearts and songbirds!
- I wanted to see more of Deadpool's blind old lady flatmate! Who is she? Why does she carry guns everywhere? How did she know he was trying to wash out blood? This lack of detail annoyed me a bit - it felt like her part was originally much bigger and was then chopped out. So I liked it, but was also a bit frustrated that we didn't get the background I felt had been promised.
- NTW, who was 100% surly teenager stereotype and I am all for that. Especially as Deadpool treats her like a surly teenager and not as someone he is sexually interested in. (I am 100% done with 30-40 year old superheroes being 'magnetically drawn' to 18 year old girls. Stop it, stop it, STOP IT.)
- Deadpool himself! I mean he's terrible as a hero in that he's not interested in actually being a hero, all he wants to do is marry his girlfriend and not die, but you know, that's pretty relatable. And the fact that he messes up in the middle of his posing is also strangely adorable.
- the happy ending! I am 100% a sucker for happy endings.
Stuff I wasn't so keen on:
- the baddie was sort of cardboard cut-out. I got that he was experimenting on people because... money, I guess. But wouldn't collaring Deadpool have made sense if that was an option? Why keep trying to kill someone mostly indestructable? Just put the collar on him. It just felt like that part hadn't been well thought through.
- Colossus. I did like that he was very paternal and suchlike, but the CGI didn't quite work for me.
- the evil lady, whose name I never did catch. I mean she was hot, but again, I didn't quite see what her point was. I guess she was supposed to be the muscle? But she mostly stood behind Ajax/Francis and scowled, and then when it came to the fight she just sort of petered out. Was she carried away by Colossus? We see him carry her away from the fight, but nothing after that. Did he arrest her? I presume she's a mutant so they can - what? Detain her? Hand her over to the police? It's not really made clear.
- the taxi driver - again, I kind of get the joke, but it felt like this wasn't really resolved. I don't know, maybe it was cut from the revised version that I saw (because it was definitely edited for the plane). I feel like we could have had this expanded a bit more and it would have been funnier/more charming.
- the random blurred pixel bits. Were they there during the original film or just added for the plane version? Some of them were during the naked fights, but they also cropped up during the credit animated portions, which seemed a bit odd.
But overall? I liked it enough to consider watching it outside of the charming atmosphere of a cramped airplane seat.
This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth. There are
comments there. Comments are welcome at either journal.
This month is going to be one solid block of travel time. I'm only in Bishkek for a few days, before I have to head back and go on to Germany. After that, the US (DC and NYC). I'm half excited about being on the move again, and half terrified of the inevitable jetlag.
That said... I'm not tired? I don't know if this is because I had a vitamin B12 shot a few hours before getting on the plane. My arm is bruised and swollen but I feel rested and awake. And like I could sleep well this evening.
There is a not-so-small part of me that is wondering if this is because I have left the anxiety of my job in London, and all I have to be anxious about when out and about is not getting lost. (My Russian stretches to asking for directions, but not necessarily understanding the answer. Although I have been told that I have an absolutely beautiful accent when asking for Krassnaya Ploshit, so if I ever need to find Moscow's Red Square, I'll be able to do so with impeccable diction. And the set off in the wrong direction.)
Anyway, small fandom note, when I was on the plane I watched Deadpool as the in-flight film.
Deadpool
And I really liked it? I was fully prepared to hate it, on the strength of a few not-so-great reviews, which I think primarily objected to how it felt a bro film. I don't actually have a problem with puerile idiocy in my films (I like Kevin Smith's films, after all, which are arguably 100% dick jokes), I just object if the film has any pretensions of universality. And this didn't seem to be the case with Deadpool. It felt like a small, niche film, aimed at a small, fairly niche market.
Stuff I liked -
- How unapologetically rubbish everything was! He forgets his bullets (budgetary constraints), their relationship is terrible and trashy and they're so happy, his friends are terrible and bet on his death and yet back him up (and are then useless), and the X-Men are on holiday (except for 2 seemingly chosen at random).
- Morena Baccarin! Who is an age-appropriate girlfriend! Who is pretty fucking awesome! Who makes me want to draw cartoon pink hearts and songbirds!
- I wanted to see more of Deadpool's blind old lady flatmate! Who is she? Why does she carry guns everywhere? How did she know he was trying to wash out blood? This lack of detail annoyed me a bit - it felt like her part was originally much bigger and was then chopped out. So I liked it, but was also a bit frustrated that we didn't get the background I felt had been promised.
- NTW, who was 100% surly teenager stereotype and I am all for that. Especially as Deadpool treats her like a surly teenager and not as someone he is sexually interested in. (I am 100% done with 30-40 year old superheroes being 'magnetically drawn' to 18 year old girls. Stop it, stop it, STOP IT.)
- Deadpool himself! I mean he's terrible as a hero in that he's not interested in actually being a hero, all he wants to do is marry his girlfriend and not die, but you know, that's pretty relatable. And the fact that he messes up in the middle of his posing is also strangely adorable.
- the happy ending! I am 100% a sucker for happy endings.
Stuff I wasn't so keen on:
- the baddie was sort of cardboard cut-out. I got that he was experimenting on people because... money, I guess. But wouldn't collaring Deadpool have made sense if that was an option? Why keep trying to kill someone mostly indestructable? Just put the collar on him. It just felt like that part hadn't been well thought through.
- Colossus. I did like that he was very paternal and suchlike, but the CGI didn't quite work for me.
- the evil lady, whose name I never did catch. I mean she was hot, but again, I didn't quite see what her point was. I guess she was supposed to be the muscle? But she mostly stood behind Ajax/Francis and scowled, and then when it came to the fight she just sort of petered out. Was she carried away by Colossus? We see him carry her away from the fight, but nothing after that. Did he arrest her? I presume she's a mutant so they can - what? Detain her? Hand her over to the police? It's not really made clear.
- the taxi driver - again, I kind of get the joke, but it felt like this wasn't really resolved. I don't know, maybe it was cut from the revised version that I saw (because it was definitely edited for the plane). I feel like we could have had this expanded a bit more and it would have been funnier/more charming.
- the random blurred pixel bits. Were they there during the original film or just added for the plane version? Some of them were during the naked fights, but they also cropped up during the credit animated portions, which seemed a bit odd.
But overall? I liked it enough to consider watching it outside of the charming atmosphere of a cramped airplane seat.
This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth. There are
comments there. Comments are welcome at either journal.