DVD rambles: Coupling and The Dancer Upstairs
I love Steven Moffat and Jack Davenport so much. I haven't listened to all the Coupling season 3 commentaries yet, but what I've heard already has some lovely gems. My two absolute favourites so far (from memory):
"Doesn't it bring you back to... all those months ago?"
"It brings me back to the last time I was employed."
"He's lying. He's been messing about with Johnny Depp on a boat."
"I've had complaints for fetischists about this. It seems the one wearing the mask would be the one to be tied up."
"There are no rules in the murky lands of S/M."
"No, apparently there are."
As with s2, I watched my s3 with axa, and she really loves it. Though she claims not to be sure if she wants to see s1, since it won't have the Patrick/Sally romance. She's a big Patrick/Sally shipper, that one.
I am wondering if perhaps I can ease her into Press Gang - it's the same writer after all. The trouble is, I don't quite know how to start. The first few episodes just aren't that good - it's not bad, but it's pretty clear the actors are still finding their footing. I keep thinking "Julia, Dexter, Paul" instead of "Lynda, Spike, Colin" and that's not a good thing. But starting later means that a lot of plotlines don't make any sense - I tried to convert D. through A Night In, and it just fell flat. *sigh* The Lynda Day loving is so hard to spread...
Well, in any case, there are two seasons left of Coupling that I haven't bought yet - one of which I haven't even *seen*.
Moving on to The Dancer Upstairs, which I bought at the same time as the Couplings season (it's entirely the fault of rhiannonjk's icon), I have had some trouble reconciling my inner fangirl with my inner film critic.
See, my inner fangirl is very very happy. As I'd already learned through photo evidence, Juan Diego Botto has grown up very nicely, and there was quite a bit of him in this film. And unlike on Zorro, here he also had quite a few lines. To make things even better, those lines were mainly in the form of foul language, ranging from a simple "What the fuck is that?" to "Should I ask him if he wants to borrow my penis?" and the more subtle "I hate it when my baretta is showing when I do a pirouette." The only way my inner fangirl could have been happier would be if he had, at some point, spoken Spanish.
My inner film critic, on the other hand, is going "yeah, whatever."
I'm not saying it was a bad film, mind. The actors were good, and there were some pretty nice shots, as well as some good scenes. But the plot was totally unengaging (I actually found myself thinking that even Once Upon a Time in Mexico did a Latin American coup d'etat better than this film) and the love couple had so little chemistry that it's like they ended up in some sort of negative chemistry zone. I couldn't fathom why and how they even fell in love, much less why he was willing to sacrifice not only his ambitions but the good of the people for her. Please.
As for the extra material... "You have to listen to the commentary," rhiannonjk said. Except it turned out that the Swedish version has no commentary. What it has is a three-minute behind the scenes film that most of all resembles that scene from Being John Malkovich where John Malkovich enters his own head. There was footage of John Malkovich talking to the actors, John Malkovich wearing a silly hat, John Malkovich's chair saying "John Malkovich" in capital letters... there was so much John Malkovich that I'm actually copy-pasting the words "John Malkovich" as I write this. If he actually said anything important during those three minutes, I didn't hear it, since the sound was mostly reduced to a mumble.
In my opinion, stuff like that is actually worse than no extra material at all.
...But hey, you can't please everyone, and at least I've pleased my inner fangirl.
"Doesn't it bring you back to... all those months ago?"
"It brings me back to the last time I was employed."
"He's lying. He's been messing about with Johnny Depp on a boat."
"I've had complaints for fetischists about this. It seems the one wearing the mask would be the one to be tied up."
"There are no rules in the murky lands of S/M."
"No, apparently there are."
As with s2, I watched my s3 with axa, and she really loves it. Though she claims not to be sure if she wants to see s1, since it won't have the Patrick/Sally romance. She's a big Patrick/Sally shipper, that one.
I am wondering if perhaps I can ease her into Press Gang - it's the same writer after all. The trouble is, I don't quite know how to start. The first few episodes just aren't that good - it's not bad, but it's pretty clear the actors are still finding their footing. I keep thinking "Julia, Dexter, Paul" instead of "Lynda, Spike, Colin" and that's not a good thing. But starting later means that a lot of plotlines don't make any sense - I tried to convert D. through A Night In, and it just fell flat. *sigh* The Lynda Day loving is so hard to spread...
Well, in any case, there are two seasons left of Coupling that I haven't bought yet - one of which I haven't even *seen*.
Moving on to The Dancer Upstairs, which I bought at the same time as the Couplings season (it's entirely the fault of rhiannonjk's icon), I have had some trouble reconciling my inner fangirl with my inner film critic.
See, my inner fangirl is very very happy. As I'd already learned through photo evidence, Juan Diego Botto has grown up very nicely, and there was quite a bit of him in this film. And unlike on Zorro, here he also had quite a few lines. To make things even better, those lines were mainly in the form of foul language, ranging from a simple "What the fuck is that?" to "Should I ask him if he wants to borrow my penis?" and the more subtle "I hate it when my baretta is showing when I do a pirouette." The only way my inner fangirl could have been happier would be if he had, at some point, spoken Spanish.
My inner film critic, on the other hand, is going "yeah, whatever."
I'm not saying it was a bad film, mind. The actors were good, and there were some pretty nice shots, as well as some good scenes. But the plot was totally unengaging (I actually found myself thinking that even Once Upon a Time in Mexico did a Latin American coup d'etat better than this film) and the love couple had so little chemistry that it's like they ended up in some sort of negative chemistry zone. I couldn't fathom why and how they even fell in love, much less why he was willing to sacrifice not only his ambitions but the good of the people for her. Please.
As for the extra material... "You have to listen to the commentary," rhiannonjk said. Except it turned out that the Swedish version has no commentary. What it has is a three-minute behind the scenes film that most of all resembles that scene from Being John Malkovich where John Malkovich enters his own head. There was footage of John Malkovich talking to the actors, John Malkovich wearing a silly hat, John Malkovich's chair saying "John Malkovich" in capital letters... there was so much John Malkovich that I'm actually copy-pasting the words "John Malkovich" as I write this. If he actually said anything important during those three minutes, I didn't hear it, since the sound was mostly reduced to a mumble.
In my opinion, stuff like that is actually worse than no extra material at all.
...But hey, you can't please everyone, and at least I've pleased my inner fangirl.