Movie reviews - Hot Pursuit and Interstellar
One advantage with air-travel, much though I detest airports, is catching up with in-flight movies. The NZ-Aussie route is about right for a feature film, although it was slightly short for Interstellar. So, I know you've probably all seen these, but here's my take on them. Some spoilers, of course, hence the cuts.
Hot Pursuit - as the title makes clear, a hectic comedy chase movie, and that rare thing, a female buddy-movie. That's mainly why I watched it, but also, Reese Witherspoon! It didn't disappoint. Sure, there's the cliche of the two women being apparent opposites at the start so as to create humor opportunities, and, equally of course, they end up best buds. It's a fun ride, though, with the amusing switcheroo of a token male who features briefly as the boyfriend for Rees's character but who's just as 2D and glossed-over as any love-interest chick in the equivalent all-male movie. I enjoyed this a lot - yes, cliches abound, but the female leads were fun and (differently) competent, it was genuinely amusing, and a good rollicking ride. I see there are two femslash drabbles and I think there'll be more - the main female pairing's crying out for fic and I was slashing them like mad throughout the movie. Just a little canon-divergence to ditch the unconvincing boyfriend, and it'd make a great AU story. I'd be sorely tempted if I wasn't hammered by deadlines. Hmmm, maybe Yuletide?
Interstellar - everyone knows this one, I assume - a sweeping near-future Earth's-dying-how-can-we-escape-to our-manifest-destiny-in-the-stars epic. I hadn't read much about it before the flight, and stayed in my seat trying to catch the last few minutes before having to abandon it and exit the cabin, but there was a Youtube clip of the ending so I've now watched it all. Being a hardened SGA fan I was cheerfully able to handwave the more ludicrous aspects of the science, and was amused afterwards to read criticism of the physics, because, c'mon, guys, even with a physicist consulting, this is fiction, and Big-Budget-Movie fiction at that. It was never going to be accurate. Nonetheless, I still liked the overall vision and that they do save humanity (so we can go on and fuck up other planets, not that that's canon of course). The parts I expected and very much didn't like were the schmaltzy sentimentality about love conquering all, yes, even physics (yawn). Also the (as usual) USA-centric America-saves-humanity crap, as with 'Independence Day'. NASA survives, and apparently the rest of the international science/space community's vanished, so all the habitats on the other worlds have baseball games underway or US flags waving bravely over them. OTOH it was quite good with the strongish female characters (although the astronaut was very daughter-of-great-man and her judgement was clouded by lurve). But it was very WASPy, with one token African-American actor who got killed off - but then almost everyone gets killed off, either dramatically or by time, leaving us with only the two astronaut leads going on into a Stars-and-Stripes-draped future in another galaxy, with their 5000 embryos. The robots were just about the best part, and huge kudos for the design which was sensible and efficient, and totally non-humanoid. I'd love fic that slashes Coop (the male astronaut lead) with TARS the robot - they have some great bonding moments!
Postscript: *scurries off to check AO3* - nope, not quite. There's a TARS/CASE gay-robot fic in Japanese, but the translation's hilariously bad. Summary: "CASE emotional argument is 100%, which hurt him like his colleague(s)." um, ??
Oh hey, and there is one CASE/Coop fic, but in Spanish goddamnit. Again, the translate function gives us sentences like: "It is assumed that there had to happen this." Whut? But as far as I can tell the relationship is angsty feels by CASE-the-robot, not y'know, fucking machine pegging or anything really nifty. Another Yuletide option, perhaps?
And that's it for this dose of "Mific slashes the movies". See ya.
Hot Pursuit - as the title makes clear, a hectic comedy chase movie, and that rare thing, a female buddy-movie. That's mainly why I watched it, but also, Reese Witherspoon! It didn't disappoint. Sure, there's the cliche of the two women being apparent opposites at the start so as to create humor opportunities, and, equally of course, they end up best buds. It's a fun ride, though, with the amusing switcheroo of a token male who features briefly as the boyfriend for Rees's character but who's just as 2D and glossed-over as any love-interest chick in the equivalent all-male movie. I enjoyed this a lot - yes, cliches abound, but the female leads were fun and (differently) competent, it was genuinely amusing, and a good rollicking ride. I see there are two femslash drabbles and I think there'll be more - the main female pairing's crying out for fic and I was slashing them like mad throughout the movie. Just a little canon-divergence to ditch the unconvincing boyfriend, and it'd make a great AU story. I'd be sorely tempted if I wasn't hammered by deadlines. Hmmm, maybe Yuletide?
Interstellar - everyone knows this one, I assume - a sweeping near-future Earth's-dying-how-can-we-escape-to our-manifest-destiny-in-the-stars epic. I hadn't read much about it before the flight, and stayed in my seat trying to catch the last few minutes before having to abandon it and exit the cabin, but there was a Youtube clip of the ending so I've now watched it all. Being a hardened SGA fan I was cheerfully able to handwave the more ludicrous aspects of the science, and was amused afterwards to read criticism of the physics, because, c'mon, guys, even with a physicist consulting, this is fiction, and Big-Budget-Movie fiction at that. It was never going to be accurate. Nonetheless, I still liked the overall vision and that they do save humanity (so we can go on and fuck up other planets, not that that's canon of course). The parts I expected and very much didn't like were the schmaltzy sentimentality about love conquering all, yes, even physics (yawn). Also the (as usual) USA-centric America-saves-humanity crap, as with 'Independence Day'. NASA survives, and apparently the rest of the international science/space community's vanished, so all the habitats on the other worlds have baseball games underway or US flags waving bravely over them. OTOH it was quite good with the strongish female characters (although the astronaut was very daughter-of-great-man and her judgement was clouded by lurve). But it was very WASPy, with one token African-American actor who got killed off - but then almost everyone gets killed off, either dramatically or by time, leaving us with only the two astronaut leads going on into a Stars-and-Stripes-draped future in another galaxy, with their 5000 embryos. The robots were just about the best part, and huge kudos for the design which was sensible and efficient, and totally non-humanoid. I'd love fic that slashes Coop (the male astronaut lead) with TARS the robot - they have some great bonding moments!
Postscript: *scurries off to check AO3* - nope, not quite. There's a TARS/CASE gay-robot fic in Japanese, but the translation's hilariously bad. Summary: "CASE emotional argument is 100%, which hurt him like his colleague(s)." um, ??
Oh hey, and there is one CASE/Coop fic, but in Spanish goddamnit. Again, the translate function gives us sentences like: "It is assumed that there had to happen this." Whut? But as far as I can tell the relationship is angsty feels by CASE-the-robot, not y'know, fucking machine pegging or anything really nifty. Another Yuletide option, perhaps?
And that's it for this dose of "Mific slashes the movies". See ya.