TeeVee and movies
1. Madam Secretary is back, which makes me very happy. The politics are still very "whatever" at best, but the characters and relationships are great. Granted, having watched the entire awful first season of State of Affairs might be making it look better than it would otherwise.
2. I watched the first two episodes of Secrets and Lies and will watch more, but in part because so many of my shows have wrapped up for a while. I mean, it was ok and all, but the first 2 episodes pretty actively didn't care about any PoV aside from that of Ryan Phillippe's character.
3. The first season of Star Wars: Rebels is over, and apparently I got invested along the way. And curse Star Wars: The clone Wars for making me excited about certain things coming in season 2.
Ahsoka is Fulcrum! Which I know was the most popular theory, but still! Like most people, I'm really looking forward to seeing how things go down between her and Vader. Until canon forces me to accept otherwise, I choose to believe that Vader deliberately chose to to seek her out. Not only is she the only person left alive (as far as he knows) who he loves and hasn't lopped off any of his limbs, but she's also someone who was used and betrayed by the Jedi council. I mean, I'm sure she his herself well, but I like to think that whatever Anakin is left in there didn't want to go after her. In addition to juicy Ahsoka/Anakin stuff, I hope we also get something with Ventress. In particular, I hope she and Ahsoka met up again after Order 66 and did some adventuring together until Ahsoka joined (started?) the rebellion.
And she's working with Bail Organa! Maybe she somehow helped keep Leia being force-positive hidden? And why didn't Kanan recognize her? I mean, he may not have been one of the children she worked with, but I'm pretty sure her trial was big enuogh news that he would have seen plenty of images of her.
I'm not sure what I think about her redesign, though. Her facial markings and hair things are fine and the changes are easily explained with age, but I don't like how her facial features have changes. They used to be broader and she had much fuller lips, but now they're much more...delicate, I guess? And her head is much narrower. Some of it is differences in the animation styles of the two shows in general, but not all of it.
I hope season 2 doesn't get too obsessed with the Kanan/Ezra relationship (season 1 almost did, but mostly managed to reign itself in) and that Hera remains the leader (Also, no Hera/Kanan reunion makeout? Pft.) and also that Sabine and Zeb get more development, and we learn more about Sabine's family.
I'm currently reading Star Wars; a New Dawn, which is a repquel to the series about how Kanan and Hera met. The book ships them to an absurd degree, and Kanan is spending most of his time mooning over Hera when he isn't busy internally chanting "I am an angsty loner, a looonnnneeeerrrr!" while Hera occassionally tries to decide whether its amusing or annoying as she Does Important Stuff.
4. This week's Empire both proved that Lucious is the worst and most abusive father on TV (well on TV that I'm watching) and that Trai Byers really needs to win Best Supporting Actor next year. (Best Actress needs to be determined by having Taraji Henson and Viola Davis go up on stage and argue their cases for why they should win in character as Cookie and Annelise. That way, everyone wins.)
5. I watched all 31 episodes of The Fosters that Netflix has. It's very good, but also very stressful to watch at times. I'm kinda glad that I ran out, so I can take a bit of a break.
6. And then there's MTV's Eye Candy, which is about a hacker who is working with the police to catch a cyberstalker and serial killer. There are I think 8-9 episodes aired, but hulu only has the first 5. I really like Lindy, the main character (and that the character, like the actress, is biracial, when a lot of shows would have made the character white) and her friends and that Lindy is out to singlehandedly rescue all the missing/abducted people in the world singlehandedly. I don't like the stalker's voiceovers, which are ucky, don't actually add anything useful to the show, and make me want to fastforward through parts of every episode, or how the internet is apparently and evil, evil place full of nothing but stalkers and liars and creepers, and Lindy is apparently the only person ever to use it for good. It also has the typical issue I have with procedurals which is that the camera is much fonder of lingering over female corpses and death scenes than male ones.
7. I also watched some good movies recently. The new Annie was really adorable. Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart is a gothic steampunk fairy tale about a boy born on the coldest night ever, and whose heart is replaced with a cuckoo clock, because his real one was frozen, and his journey's through life and love. It's strange and surreal and very engaging, but probably not for kids. The Book of Life was a fairy tale of another sort entirely. I really liked it and how it went about the narrative structure (it's certainly not the first to tell a story that way, but it did it well) but I wish I hadn't felt like it was shouting "STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER" at me in all of Maria's scenes. I mean, I liked Maria, I just kept thinking the movie wanted me to pat it on the back and tell it what a great job it'd done a lot of the time.
2. I watched the first two episodes of Secrets and Lies and will watch more, but in part because so many of my shows have wrapped up for a while. I mean, it was ok and all, but the first 2 episodes pretty actively didn't care about any PoV aside from that of Ryan Phillippe's character.
3. The first season of Star Wars: Rebels is over, and apparently I got invested along the way. And curse Star Wars: The clone Wars for making me excited about certain things coming in season 2.
Ahsoka is Fulcrum! Which I know was the most popular theory, but still! Like most people, I'm really looking forward to seeing how things go down between her and Vader. Until canon forces me to accept otherwise, I choose to believe that Vader deliberately chose to to seek her out. Not only is she the only person left alive (as far as he knows) who he loves and hasn't lopped off any of his limbs, but she's also someone who was used and betrayed by the Jedi council. I mean, I'm sure she his herself well, but I like to think that whatever Anakin is left in there didn't want to go after her. In addition to juicy Ahsoka/Anakin stuff, I hope we also get something with Ventress. In particular, I hope she and Ahsoka met up again after Order 66 and did some adventuring together until Ahsoka joined (started?) the rebellion.
And she's working with Bail Organa! Maybe she somehow helped keep Leia being force-positive hidden? And why didn't Kanan recognize her? I mean, he may not have been one of the children she worked with, but I'm pretty sure her trial was big enuogh news that he would have seen plenty of images of her.
I'm not sure what I think about her redesign, though. Her facial markings and hair things are fine and the changes are easily explained with age, but I don't like how her facial features have changes. They used to be broader and she had much fuller lips, but now they're much more...delicate, I guess? And her head is much narrower. Some of it is differences in the animation styles of the two shows in general, but not all of it.
I hope season 2 doesn't get too obsessed with the Kanan/Ezra relationship (season 1 almost did, but mostly managed to reign itself in) and that Hera remains the leader (Also, no Hera/Kanan reunion makeout? Pft.) and also that Sabine and Zeb get more development, and we learn more about Sabine's family.
I'm currently reading Star Wars; a New Dawn, which is a repquel to the series about how Kanan and Hera met. The book ships them to an absurd degree, and Kanan is spending most of his time mooning over Hera when he isn't busy internally chanting "I am an angsty loner, a looonnnneeeerrrr!" while Hera occassionally tries to decide whether its amusing or annoying as she Does Important Stuff.
4. This week's Empire both proved that Lucious is the worst and most abusive father on TV (well on TV that I'm watching) and that Trai Byers really needs to win Best Supporting Actor next year. (Best Actress needs to be determined by having Taraji Henson and Viola Davis go up on stage and argue their cases for why they should win in character as Cookie and Annelise. That way, everyone wins.)
5. I watched all 31 episodes of The Fosters that Netflix has. It's very good, but also very stressful to watch at times. I'm kinda glad that I ran out, so I can take a bit of a break.
6. And then there's MTV's Eye Candy, which is about a hacker who is working with the police to catch a cyberstalker and serial killer. There are I think 8-9 episodes aired, but hulu only has the first 5. I really like Lindy, the main character (and that the character, like the actress, is biracial, when a lot of shows would have made the character white) and her friends and that Lindy is out to singlehandedly rescue all the missing/abducted people in the world singlehandedly. I don't like the stalker's voiceovers, which are ucky, don't actually add anything useful to the show, and make me want to fastforward through parts of every episode, or how the internet is apparently and evil, evil place full of nothing but stalkers and liars and creepers, and Lindy is apparently the only person ever to use it for good. It also has the typical issue I have with procedurals which is that the camera is much fonder of lingering over female corpses and death scenes than male ones.
7. I also watched some good movies recently. The new Annie was really adorable. Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart is a gothic steampunk fairy tale about a boy born on the coldest night ever, and whose heart is replaced with a cuckoo clock, because his real one was frozen, and his journey's through life and love. It's strange and surreal and very engaging, but probably not for kids. The Book of Life was a fairy tale of another sort entirely. I really liked it and how it went about the narrative structure (it's certainly not the first to tell a story that way, but it did it well) but I wish I hadn't felt like it was shouting "STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER" at me in all of Maria's scenes. I mean, I liked Maria, I just kept thinking the movie wanted me to pat it on the back and tell it what a great job it'd done a lot of the time.