March Media
So I wrote an entry like this back in December and apparently enjoyed it enough to repeat the experience sooner than I had originally planned, so, this is all of the non-fannish media content that I finished in March.
TV Episode: The Fox and the Wolf (Teen Wolf S3E21, March 3, 2014). I didn't really like this episode. It felt really heavy-handed? Teen Wolf is always a little clumsy, I think, but I think this time it didn't give me enough things to make me happy to overlook that. I like Nogitsune-Stiles' hand-walking and general creepiness in the first scene. I like that they're covering Japanese internment camps at all, but something about the way that that has been put together made me feel uncomfortable; I think maybe that it didn't feel real? Like, I think that everyone's clothing was too crisp, maybe? Things felt a little cardboard-like? I didn't really connect to the characters in any way and so none of it was real to me. I think maybe I'm just not used to seeing this kind of subject matter dealt with in this way, that I'm not used to the internment not being the focus. I liked that there was a werewolf lady there and I liked the Sheriff's comment about Allison being like a cop - it'd be cool to see that show up in future fic and more about Kira's mom and her werewolf would be neat.
Book: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955). So, I saw two film adaptations of this over ten years ago and it's been vaguely on my to-read list for a while. One of my friends told me that it was their favorite book recently, so, I finally read it, and the prose is really great, and I liked it. I made some really rage-filled facial expressions when I was reading it, I am pretty sure, because I have pretty strong feelings about not molesting children, and Humbert is such a piece of shit. I'm a little curious about how they made films of this, because this book is so clearly intended to be a book and it is so grounded in that, but I think it's going to be a while before I'm up for a re-watch of the films because the subject matter is sort of exhausting and it makes me angry because it sends me to that yeah, let's talk about rape and incest and child abuse place and I am furious.
Film: Cronos (1993). I picked it up because it was directed by Guillermo del Toro and when I glanced at it I figured it was going to be about robots, but no, no, I was wrong, this is a film about vampires, and it is amazing. It's pulpy and it took me about 20 minutes to get into it and then I was completely riveted because the whole thing's basically this long slow burn and I hadn't seen the vampire thing done like this before and it's kind of awesome. It's also sort of adorable? Agh. I mean, it is violent and terrible, and if blood or needles are a bad place for you you might want to stay away, but- I do not want to spoil this. It's an interesting take on the vampire trope. It is also very, very early 90s - Ron Perlman wears this turtle-neck and pinstriped suit ensemble at one point and it's sort of just generally a film that sits pretty firmly in its era. If it passed the Bechdel test I somehow missed it, but I really enjoyed this anyway.
TV Episode: De-Void (Teen Wolf S3E22, March 10, 2014). Agh, the flies. I liked Kira and Allison teaming up. I liked Lydia and Scott working together. I enjoy Peter - he's an awesome villain - but I pretty much just want everyone to be happy and braid lots of friendship bracelets. (Well, except the twins. I don't like the twins, because, look, if you actually want to redeem them you need to do so much work and that isn't happening. They haven't grown. There's nothing that makes me feel sympathy for them at this point, and they can leave, please.) On the bright side, season three is over soon and then fandom will rebuild after, unless Jeff Davis decides that now is the time for cliff hangers. I just- okay, it's a gang of teenagers that tackle supernatural nastiness in a small town in California, and yes, Scott is totally the hot girl (Scott is absolutely Buffy; he is the true alpha/chosen one.), but the thing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer was that there were bits of ordinariness and domesticity and Teen Wolf is all running, constantly, the episodes run into each other and they are all TERRIBLE THINGS ARE HAPPENING and basically I want them to all hang around in a kitchen and drink tea and joke around a little, because how are they surviving this? Everything is terrible. Like, we are not really seeing them coping or reacting to a lot of things, either - the Lydia/Peter trauma that Jeff Davis forgot about and Ian and Holland had to improv is a good example of this, and like, Scott. Did I miss the scene where Scott is freaking the fuck out and basically completely destroyed because his best friend, who he does dumb shit for and loves, fiercely and deeply and completely, has had his body and his hands and his mouth stolen by a murderer and, like, where are the ugly frustrated tears or that scene where he has dinner with his Mom and he ends up just clinging to her? While Teen Wolf gives me a lot of feelings I feel that it is basically terrible at feelings.
Book: Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (1993). This is another book that I read, having first seen the film adaptation, which is quite different. There's a kind of distance in the book that's at least partially born of it having been written in the past tense whereas the film is sort of a chaotic now and also wanders off and does it's own thing a bit. (It's been a number of years since I've seen it.) This was a really fast read for me, and, I don't know - I watched the movie when I was much younger and in school and it was part of this, introducing kids to the concept of mental illness and wrapping their heads around it and I'm older now and have lived a bit more and while the film was sort of oh. the book was yeah, like, yes, I know this, this is real to me.
Film: Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). Directed by Mel Brooks! Starring Cary Elwes, and other people! This was a re-watch for me, though I hadn't seen it in a long time and apparently wrote myself an additional scene in the interim where someone tells Robin off for thinking that the super important key would open that. I continue to really like the "walk this way" gag. The meta is great. I basically burrowed into the couch and giggled this film.
TV Episode: Insatiable (Teen Wolf S3E23, March 17, 2014). Deaton's outfit in the first scene is sort of bizarre, like, I feel like hellotailor has commented on this to some extent, that she wrote that the men on the show don't have distinct styles and, the buttons on the shirt Deaton is wearing! I feel like that is a shirt that they could have anyone on the show wear and, okay, I was at someone's house looking at their laundry drying a couple days ago because it was completely awesome because they had a colour palette, a really nice one, and, WHERE ARE THEY GETTING THESE PEOPLE'S CLOTHING FROM? IS IT MACY'S STILL? DOES EVERYONE SHOP AT MACY'S? IS THAT WHY THE CLOTHING IS SORT OF TERRIBLE? It feels unnatural and it is creeping me out. Parrish reminds me of Noshiko's beau, but I can't quite decide if that's because they are both rocking the wholesome American boy thing in the same way, or if sinister plots are afoot. There are a lot of mental health slurs in here, though they're framed as that. (The sinister mental health institution bothers me, because while some reasonably terrifying shit has gone down and, I am sure, continues to go down despite advances, it's a trope that I think is damaging, that keeps people from seeking treatment, that makes people hide.) The answer to violence being violence and Finstock wielding that taser is upsetting. The final battle, the stirring, rallying speech, TERRIBLENESS; I didn't get drawn in emotionally, except for getting pissed about Allison's death, because that shit is not okay, because if you kill her, I'm just- women and people of colour are not fucking tissues Jeff Davis, stop fucking throwing them away like they don't matter, because all of the white dudes are so much more interesting or whatever the fuck.
Book: The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings by Amy Tan (2003). I loved this. It's non-fiction, a collection of short pieces that Tan's written for a bunch of different reasons over the course of her life (there's a short piece from when she was eight) and there are things that she keeps coming back to, that she keeps touching on, and reading it, I felt like I was getting a sense of who Amy Tan is, which was really lovely. I like getting a sense of who people are through things like this, how words can pile up and shed little slivers of light on who someone is; it's kind of magical and delightful to me.
Comic: Black Widow #4 by Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto (March 12, 2014). I really like the colours and how soft this is. I really like the top of this page a little over halfway through where they establish the setting as Cape Town - the blue and orange and that inset panel; it's lovely. I like that Maria Hill is the director of SHIELD here (the only other comic I'm reading is Hawkeye so, I don't really know how all of this fits in with the Marvel Universe, where the connections between the titles are) and that it passes the Bechdel Test. I like Natasha and I like how there are things she has in common with Clint; it's nice, like, I can see them being friends.
Book: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002). I hated this book. It contains a kind of religious (I guess?) view of the world and grieving that I'd already processed before I read this? That I'd already seen people carrying around and, I just- walk away from, because it means a lot to some people and I just can't with them and this, that I reject. I'm an atheist and I don't want to talk about this too much because I try to be respectful of people's beliefs but there is just something desperately sad and terrible to me whenever someone says that they sense the spirit of their loved one in the room or in the cat or whatever. (They're hurting so much, a lot of the time, and it isn't a thing that's real to me, but it's real to them.) That was what this book was for me.
Book: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (1967). A play! I'd seen the film around ten years ago and it is a fair bit different, from what I can remember, but YES! This was silly and delightful and so meta, and just- fun to read, the staging directions are pointed and great and I really enjoyed this in written format, and now also want to go and see this live and also watch the movie again.
Book: Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943). I reread this because of Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat's free dance at the Olympics, I think. I know a lot of people love this book and there are all kinds of adaptations and reworkings of it, but it's too bittersweet, for me, for me to love it like that; it makes me sad. I love the beginning, those drawings, that kind of commitment to not being confined by adulthood. I actually really don't like the rose, because of her relationship to established gender roles and stereotypes. The fox is my favorite. I think if I ever requested fanfic for this novel I would just want the fox, having adventures, trying unsuccessfully to steal chickens.
TV Episode: The Divine Move (Teen Wolf S3E24, March 14, 2014). I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes and, also, cringing. There was a lot of cringing. ...and then there was Malia/Lydia and Danny! ...and apparently next season is all of Derek's pain, all of the time. I hate this. Okay, I liked that little interlude of happiness and people coping with things emotionally, but everything else about this episode. Like, I feel like this is so bad that I do not know that I can do this to myself again, because, okay, Teen Wolf is not quality television. It is never, ever, ever, EVER, going to win any writing awards. No one is ever going to say, "wow, that was such a clever episode". ..and that's okay. I have loved a lot of terrible sci-fi and fantasy shows, but I don't think I've ever felt so acutely that the thing that I was watching was terrible since that time I accidentally got hooked on The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, and, okay, I think that show was better than this, I could have kept watching that, I think, it was mostly that I was just too old for that show and it was very simplistic, whereas Teen Wolf is actively terrible within its niche. (I don't know, maybe I just need to accept Teen Wolf for what it is, and write that Slings & Arrows crossover - because I think that existing would maybe help me cope. Or, alternatively, I could methodically work my way through The X-Files and the Buffy verse, and accept nothing.) It is very tropey, which is appealing, but I'm not sure that there are enough good things in it for me to make up for the bad.
This entry was originally posted at http://kiki-eng.dreamwidth.org/97252.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
TV Episode: The Fox and the Wolf (Teen Wolf S3E21, March 3, 2014). I didn't really like this episode. It felt really heavy-handed? Teen Wolf is always a little clumsy, I think, but I think this time it didn't give me enough things to make me happy to overlook that. I like Nogitsune-Stiles' hand-walking and general creepiness in the first scene. I like that they're covering Japanese internment camps at all, but something about the way that that has been put together made me feel uncomfortable; I think maybe that it didn't feel real? Like, I think that everyone's clothing was too crisp, maybe? Things felt a little cardboard-like? I didn't really connect to the characters in any way and so none of it was real to me. I think maybe I'm just not used to seeing this kind of subject matter dealt with in this way, that I'm not used to the internment not being the focus. I liked that there was a werewolf lady there and I liked the Sheriff's comment about Allison being like a cop - it'd be cool to see that show up in future fic and more about Kira's mom and her werewolf would be neat.
Book: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955). So, I saw two film adaptations of this over ten years ago and it's been vaguely on my to-read list for a while. One of my friends told me that it was their favorite book recently, so, I finally read it, and the prose is really great, and I liked it. I made some really rage-filled facial expressions when I was reading it, I am pretty sure, because I have pretty strong feelings about not molesting children, and Humbert is such a piece of shit. I'm a little curious about how they made films of this, because this book is so clearly intended to be a book and it is so grounded in that, but I think it's going to be a while before I'm up for a re-watch of the films because the subject matter is sort of exhausting and it makes me angry because it sends me to that yeah, let's talk about rape and incest and child abuse place and I am furious.
Film: Cronos (1993). I picked it up because it was directed by Guillermo del Toro and when I glanced at it I figured it was going to be about robots, but no, no, I was wrong, this is a film about vampires, and it is amazing. It's pulpy and it took me about 20 minutes to get into it and then I was completely riveted because the whole thing's basically this long slow burn and I hadn't seen the vampire thing done like this before and it's kind of awesome. It's also sort of adorable? Agh. I mean, it is violent and terrible, and if blood or needles are a bad place for you you might want to stay away, but- I do not want to spoil this. It's an interesting take on the vampire trope. It is also very, very early 90s - Ron Perlman wears this turtle-neck and pinstriped suit ensemble at one point and it's sort of just generally a film that sits pretty firmly in its era. If it passed the Bechdel test I somehow missed it, but I really enjoyed this anyway.
TV Episode: De-Void (Teen Wolf S3E22, March 10, 2014). Agh, the flies. I liked Kira and Allison teaming up. I liked Lydia and Scott working together. I enjoy Peter - he's an awesome villain - but I pretty much just want everyone to be happy and braid lots of friendship bracelets. (Well, except the twins. I don't like the twins, because, look, if you actually want to redeem them you need to do so much work and that isn't happening. They haven't grown. There's nothing that makes me feel sympathy for them at this point, and they can leave, please.) On the bright side, season three is over soon and then fandom will rebuild after, unless Jeff Davis decides that now is the time for cliff hangers. I just- okay, it's a gang of teenagers that tackle supernatural nastiness in a small town in California, and yes, Scott is totally the hot girl (Scott is absolutely Buffy; he is the true alpha/chosen one.), but the thing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer was that there were bits of ordinariness and domesticity and Teen Wolf is all running, constantly, the episodes run into each other and they are all TERRIBLE THINGS ARE HAPPENING and basically I want them to all hang around in a kitchen and drink tea and joke around a little, because how are they surviving this? Everything is terrible. Like, we are not really seeing them coping or reacting to a lot of things, either - the Lydia/Peter trauma that Jeff Davis forgot about and Ian and Holland had to improv is a good example of this, and like, Scott. Did I miss the scene where Scott is freaking the fuck out and basically completely destroyed because his best friend, who he does dumb shit for and loves, fiercely and deeply and completely, has had his body and his hands and his mouth stolen by a murderer and, like, where are the ugly frustrated tears or that scene where he has dinner with his Mom and he ends up just clinging to her? While Teen Wolf gives me a lot of feelings I feel that it is basically terrible at feelings.
Book: Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (1993). This is another book that I read, having first seen the film adaptation, which is quite different. There's a kind of distance in the book that's at least partially born of it having been written in the past tense whereas the film is sort of a chaotic now and also wanders off and does it's own thing a bit. (It's been a number of years since I've seen it.) This was a really fast read for me, and, I don't know - I watched the movie when I was much younger and in school and it was part of this, introducing kids to the concept of mental illness and wrapping their heads around it and I'm older now and have lived a bit more and while the film was sort of oh. the book was yeah, like, yes, I know this, this is real to me.
Film: Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). Directed by Mel Brooks! Starring Cary Elwes, and other people! This was a re-watch for me, though I hadn't seen it in a long time and apparently wrote myself an additional scene in the interim where someone tells Robin off for thinking that the super important key would open that. I continue to really like the "walk this way" gag. The meta is great. I basically burrowed into the couch and giggled this film.
TV Episode: Insatiable (Teen Wolf S3E23, March 17, 2014). Deaton's outfit in the first scene is sort of bizarre, like, I feel like hellotailor has commented on this to some extent, that she wrote that the men on the show don't have distinct styles and, the buttons on the shirt Deaton is wearing! I feel like that is a shirt that they could have anyone on the show wear and, okay, I was at someone's house looking at their laundry drying a couple days ago because it was completely awesome because they had a colour palette, a really nice one, and, WHERE ARE THEY GETTING THESE PEOPLE'S CLOTHING FROM? IS IT MACY'S STILL? DOES EVERYONE SHOP AT MACY'S? IS THAT WHY THE CLOTHING IS SORT OF TERRIBLE? It feels unnatural and it is creeping me out. Parrish reminds me of Noshiko's beau, but I can't quite decide if that's because they are both rocking the wholesome American boy thing in the same way, or if sinister plots are afoot. There are a lot of mental health slurs in here, though they're framed as that. (The sinister mental health institution bothers me, because while some reasonably terrifying shit has gone down and, I am sure, continues to go down despite advances, it's a trope that I think is damaging, that keeps people from seeking treatment, that makes people hide.) The answer to violence being violence and Finstock wielding that taser is upsetting. The final battle, the stirring, rallying speech, TERRIBLENESS; I didn't get drawn in emotionally, except for getting pissed about Allison's death, because that shit is not okay, because if you kill her, I'm just- women and people of colour are not fucking tissues Jeff Davis, stop fucking throwing them away like they don't matter, because all of the white dudes are so much more interesting or whatever the fuck.
Book: The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings by Amy Tan (2003). I loved this. It's non-fiction, a collection of short pieces that Tan's written for a bunch of different reasons over the course of her life (there's a short piece from when she was eight) and there are things that she keeps coming back to, that she keeps touching on, and reading it, I felt like I was getting a sense of who Amy Tan is, which was really lovely. I like getting a sense of who people are through things like this, how words can pile up and shed little slivers of light on who someone is; it's kind of magical and delightful to me.
Comic: Black Widow #4 by Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto (March 12, 2014). I really like the colours and how soft this is. I really like the top of this page a little over halfway through where they establish the setting as Cape Town - the blue and orange and that inset panel; it's lovely. I like that Maria Hill is the director of SHIELD here (the only other comic I'm reading is Hawkeye so, I don't really know how all of this fits in with the Marvel Universe, where the connections between the titles are) and that it passes the Bechdel Test. I like Natasha and I like how there are things she has in common with Clint; it's nice, like, I can see them being friends.
Book: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002). I hated this book. It contains a kind of religious (I guess?) view of the world and grieving that I'd already processed before I read this? That I'd already seen people carrying around and, I just- walk away from, because it means a lot to some people and I just can't with them and this, that I reject. I'm an atheist and I don't want to talk about this too much because I try to be respectful of people's beliefs but there is just something desperately sad and terrible to me whenever someone says that they sense the spirit of their loved one in the room or in the cat or whatever. (They're hurting so much, a lot of the time, and it isn't a thing that's real to me, but it's real to them.) That was what this book was for me.
Book: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (1967). A play! I'd seen the film around ten years ago and it is a fair bit different, from what I can remember, but YES! This was silly and delightful and so meta, and just- fun to read, the staging directions are pointed and great and I really enjoyed this in written format, and now also want to go and see this live and also watch the movie again.
Book: Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943). I reread this because of Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat's free dance at the Olympics, I think. I know a lot of people love this book and there are all kinds of adaptations and reworkings of it, but it's too bittersweet, for me, for me to love it like that; it makes me sad. I love the beginning, those drawings, that kind of commitment to not being confined by adulthood. I actually really don't like the rose, because of her relationship to established gender roles and stereotypes. The fox is my favorite. I think if I ever requested fanfic for this novel I would just want the fox, having adventures, trying unsuccessfully to steal chickens.
TV Episode: The Divine Move (Teen Wolf S3E24, March 14, 2014). I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes and, also, cringing. There was a lot of cringing. ...and then there was Malia/Lydia and Danny! ...and apparently next season is all of Derek's pain, all of the time. I hate this. Okay, I liked that little interlude of happiness and people coping with things emotionally, but everything else about this episode. Like, I feel like this is so bad that I do not know that I can do this to myself again, because, okay, Teen Wolf is not quality television. It is never, ever, ever, EVER, going to win any writing awards. No one is ever going to say, "wow, that was such a clever episode". ..and that's okay. I have loved a lot of terrible sci-fi and fantasy shows, but I don't think I've ever felt so acutely that the thing that I was watching was terrible since that time I accidentally got hooked on The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, and, okay, I think that show was better than this, I could have kept watching that, I think, it was mostly that I was just too old for that show and it was very simplistic, whereas Teen Wolf is actively terrible within its niche. (I don't know, maybe I just need to accept Teen Wolf for what it is, and write that Slings & Arrows crossover - because I think that existing would maybe help me cope. Or, alternatively, I could methodically work my way through The X-Files and the Buffy verse, and accept nothing.) It is very tropey, which is appealing, but I'm not sure that there are enough good things in it for me to make up for the bad.
This entry was originally posted at http://kiki-eng.dreamwidth.org/97252.html. Please comment there using OpenID.