stuff about stuff
non-Freezer Burn edition:
* Neflix suggested that since I'm working my way through the old GI Joe cartoon, I would really like to see GI Joe: Renegades, which I thought was completely missing the point about why I was watching GI Joe, until I realized that Renegades is an AU A-Team fanfic. So it's '80's nostalgia but with stylized animation.
Netflix's deal with Disney seems to have included adding some classics to the streaming service. Dumbo is up there, as is The Aristocats, which I have fond memories of because I recently found a movie review I'd written for it in kindergarten. (It must have been re-released, since the film came out in 1970 and I was in kindergarten a decade later and I don't think we had the Betamax by that point.)
* In the theater: Skyfall: good fun, although I think I might have liked Casino Royale more. But it's hard to top watching Dame Judi making IEDs.
* Books: A surprisingly sprightly book about a dictionary; a rollicking true tale of Nazi double agents that relies a little too heavily on cricket terms; the latest Alan Furst, which was far better than the penultimate Alan Furst, which I don't think I even finished because it was so recycled. And a couple of Hamish Macbeth novels. I love that NYPL has an ebooks division.
* Comics: My apathy for the DCnU has reached the point where I don't give a crap who carks it in 'Death of the Family.' I don't care about these strangers. The DC books seems to fall into two categories these days: boring and unreadable. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, 52 books and nothing on....
I'd feel worse about Gail Simone's getting fired off of Batgirl if I were a real fan of her writing, but I'm not. She did okay on Secret Six, but I have tended to really not like her work on female-driven books like BoP and now Batgirl and, back in the day, I thought she got too many brownie points for simply being a female writer not Devin Grayson. Marjorie Liu, Alex de Campi, and Kelly Sue DeConnick do far better work as ladies in the business.
Over at Marvel, I'm reading Daredevil, both Waid's book and Bendis's End of Days, and sampling some of the reboots, but most of them are either offensive or eye-glazing. I am a little curious about the Avengers reboot, but if it's going to be a B-team for a while, I'm gonna end up passing because I have never been enough of an Avengers fan to care about a B-team.
* The Man of Steel trailer: I liked it. It's got the Nolan palette without the accompanying gloom -- Supes just ain't that kind of boy. I also suspect that that discussion with Pa Kent will be a little more fleshed out and nuanced in its actual context and what we saw was some clever editing.
But even if it's not, I am not going to get worked up about it because it still won't be the most disturbing Kent father-son discussion recently (that would be the JMS-written one where Pa actually says "Man of Steel, woman of tissue paper" and proceeds to turn Clark into a sexual neurotic). And, let's face it, compared to all of the wonky updating they're doing over in the books these days, whatever they end up doing, this won't rate as 'the worst, by far.' I think at worst it ends up being the Ed Norton Hulk to Brandon Routh's Eric Bana Hulk.
Or maybe I'm just intrigued by the fact that they cast an actor who didn't wax his chest and they aren't dressing him like a hipster.
* Neflix suggested that since I'm working my way through the old GI Joe cartoon, I would really like to see GI Joe: Renegades, which I thought was completely missing the point about why I was watching GI Joe, until I realized that Renegades is an AU A-Team fanfic. So it's '80's nostalgia but with stylized animation.
Netflix's deal with Disney seems to have included adding some classics to the streaming service. Dumbo is up there, as is The Aristocats, which I have fond memories of because I recently found a movie review I'd written for it in kindergarten. (It must have been re-released, since the film came out in 1970 and I was in kindergarten a decade later and I don't think we had the Betamax by that point.)
* In the theater: Skyfall: good fun, although I think I might have liked Casino Royale more. But it's hard to top watching Dame Judi making IEDs.
* Books: A surprisingly sprightly book about a dictionary; a rollicking true tale of Nazi double agents that relies a little too heavily on cricket terms; the latest Alan Furst, which was far better than the penultimate Alan Furst, which I don't think I even finished because it was so recycled. And a couple of Hamish Macbeth novels. I love that NYPL has an ebooks division.
* Comics: My apathy for the DCnU has reached the point where I don't give a crap who carks it in 'Death of the Family.' I don't care about these strangers. The DC books seems to fall into two categories these days: boring and unreadable. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, 52 books and nothing on....
I'd feel worse about Gail Simone's getting fired off of Batgirl if I were a real fan of her writing, but I'm not. She did okay on Secret Six, but I have tended to really not like her work on female-driven books like BoP and now Batgirl and, back in the day, I thought she got too many brownie points for simply being a female writer not Devin Grayson. Marjorie Liu, Alex de Campi, and Kelly Sue DeConnick do far better work as ladies in the business.
Over at Marvel, I'm reading Daredevil, both Waid's book and Bendis's End of Days, and sampling some of the reboots, but most of them are either offensive or eye-glazing. I am a little curious about the Avengers reboot, but if it's going to be a B-team for a while, I'm gonna end up passing because I have never been enough of an Avengers fan to care about a B-team.
* The Man of Steel trailer: I liked it. It's got the Nolan palette without the accompanying gloom -- Supes just ain't that kind of boy. I also suspect that that discussion with Pa Kent will be a little more fleshed out and nuanced in its actual context and what we saw was some clever editing.
But even if it's not, I am not going to get worked up about it because it still won't be the most disturbing Kent father-son discussion recently (that would be the JMS-written one where Pa actually says "Man of Steel, woman of tissue paper" and proceeds to turn Clark into a sexual neurotic). And, let's face it, compared to all of the wonky updating they're doing over in the books these days, whatever they end up doing, this won't rate as 'the worst, by far.' I think at worst it ends up being the Ed Norton Hulk to Brandon Routh's Eric Bana Hulk.
Or maybe I'm just intrigued by the fact that they cast an actor who didn't wax his chest and they aren't dressing him like a hipster.