Doctor Who Christmas special and so on
Is this episode actually called A Christmas Carol: ...You have to admit, that was slightly uncanny. Some incipient crossover... To be honest I think "Sherlock is not part of the Whoniverse" is to Moffat what "Holmes and Watson are not gay for each other in all incarnations" to Gatiss i.e. more a question of not wanting to deal with the impact ripples than anything. There is a role for fanfiction on the Internet, and there it is.
I loved A Christmas Carol as a child. We're talking six, seven here?** I read it constantly, not just at Christmas, despite the fact that I had zero understanding of what was going on, eg. why Scrooge's "surplus population" comment was awful; why Tiny Tim was going to die in the first place; what any of this stuff looked like, from shillings to waistcoat buttons to mistletoe. But the emotional journey made sense. It introduced me, I suppose, to the idea that adults lose touch with their younger selves and need to be reminded, which concept recurs often in children's literature (and from the other side of the hump, I'm not sure that's a great thing - introduces an unnecessary aspect of dread to the proceedings).
Also it contained lots of loving descriptions of food... What can I say.
I downloaded the DW special and watched it on Boxing Day evening, IIRC, with a cup of mulled wine, and my mental rating of it has since gone through an inverted bell curve. It seems to have allowed everyone to pin down what their niggle with Moffat's writing is, if only because it's such an exemplary specimen - punchy, coruscating, full of fridge logic. And not particularly character-centric, in the sense of organically allowing characters to react to situations even if it creates a mess. Mind you, if Eleven is characterized as a dude who is going to focus on the given task and not simultaneously worry about freeing all the iceboxed debt slaves, fairy nuff. But I suspect Moffat just wanted to keep his structure orderly, whereas Davies would've called someone at the Beeb and been like "Tennant must give stirring speech and lead bloodless proletariat revolution, need another 15 minutes and IDGAF where it's coming from". And I am starting to experience nostalgia for those sanctimonious snitfits of Ten's. No better time than Christmas, yanno? XD;
I had a lot of fun watching it nonetheless. Amy and Rory, dying, I have seriously read this?! It was a Star Trek fic. Five times James Kirk didn't have time to pull on his uniform before rushing onto the bridge, something like that. I particularly appreciated that they were simultaneously cosplaying different eras. And I loved the fish. UN POISSON. The opera singer and the shark bit broke my cheese-o-meter; if we have to go with demagogic your-grandma-loved-it-on-Youtube music I still prefer Kylie. (To return to the book for a second - how well I remember it! - although Abigail actually was the Platonic Dickensian heroine cypher, Scrooge's love interest wasn't. She just plain dumped him because he was turning into an asshole. And she wasn't ha-ha fridged, either.)
TRON Legacy: I have never seen the original TRON, although G rewatched it in preparation and reports that it does not stand the test of time. XD; Also multiple flisters have warned that the best way to frame this one is as a two-hour multimedia Daft Punk listening party, which, well, I am down with that. I downloaded the OST afterward, and it's not particularly satisfying through iTunes and a computer soundcard - all 2:30 snippets of string arrangements, a proper soundtrack rather than a proper Daft Punk album. But in the theatre it was majestic, darkly crystalline, a perfect symbiosis with the blacklight visuals. Neon smears that shatter like glass, glass buildings that dissolve into digital arrays. I would have given a lot to have seen this projected on the wall at a warehouse party rather than a movie theatre; that's about the level of attention the "plot" needs, anyway. The fembot eye makeup was nearly worth the elevated price of entry alone.
** People my age who were in the US public school system in the 80s: there was this book catalogue. What was that? It came something like biannually, and listed all the Newberys and Victorian classics. Beverly Cleary. George MacDonald. You ticked off the books that looked interesting, your parents wrote a cheque (I assume; I never saw this part), and the books just appeared after that. I don't even remember if they came to the school or the apartment. No memory of a limit on the number of books, or reading level. If I ever heard the words reading level while in elementary school it was spoken by adults above my head.
I loved A Christmas Carol as a child. We're talking six, seven here?** I read it constantly, not just at Christmas, despite the fact that I had zero understanding of what was going on, eg. why Scrooge's "surplus population" comment was awful; why Tiny Tim was going to die in the first place; what any of this stuff looked like, from shillings to waistcoat buttons to mistletoe. But the emotional journey made sense. It introduced me, I suppose, to the idea that adults lose touch with their younger selves and need to be reminded, which concept recurs often in children's literature (and from the other side of the hump, I'm not sure that's a great thing - introduces an unnecessary aspect of dread to the proceedings).
Also it contained lots of loving descriptions of food... What can I say.
I downloaded the DW special and watched it on Boxing Day evening, IIRC, with a cup of mulled wine, and my mental rating of it has since gone through an inverted bell curve. It seems to have allowed everyone to pin down what their niggle with Moffat's writing is, if only because it's such an exemplary specimen - punchy, coruscating, full of fridge logic. And not particularly character-centric, in the sense of organically allowing characters to react to situations even if it creates a mess. Mind you, if Eleven is characterized as a dude who is going to focus on the given task and not simultaneously worry about freeing all the iceboxed debt slaves, fairy nuff. But I suspect Moffat just wanted to keep his structure orderly, whereas Davies would've called someone at the Beeb and been like "Tennant must give stirring speech and lead bloodless proletariat revolution, need another 15 minutes and IDGAF where it's coming from". And I am starting to experience nostalgia for those sanctimonious snitfits of Ten's. No better time than Christmas, yanno? XD;
I had a lot of fun watching it nonetheless. Amy and Rory, dying, I have seriously read this?! It was a Star Trek fic. Five times James Kirk didn't have time to pull on his uniform before rushing onto the bridge, something like that. I particularly appreciated that they were simultaneously cosplaying different eras. And I loved the fish. UN POISSON. The opera singer and the shark bit broke my cheese-o-meter; if we have to go with demagogic your-grandma-loved-it-on-Youtube music I still prefer Kylie. (To return to the book for a second - how well I remember it! - although Abigail actually was the Platonic Dickensian heroine cypher, Scrooge's love interest wasn't. She just plain dumped him because he was turning into an asshole. And she wasn't ha-ha fridged, either.)
TRON Legacy: I have never seen the original TRON, although G rewatched it in preparation and reports that it does not stand the test of time. XD; Also multiple flisters have warned that the best way to frame this one is as a two-hour multimedia Daft Punk listening party, which, well, I am down with that. I downloaded the OST afterward, and it's not particularly satisfying through iTunes and a computer soundcard - all 2:30 snippets of string arrangements, a proper soundtrack rather than a proper Daft Punk album. But in the theatre it was majestic, darkly crystalline, a perfect symbiosis with the blacklight visuals. Neon smears that shatter like glass, glass buildings that dissolve into digital arrays. I would have given a lot to have seen this projected on the wall at a warehouse party rather than a movie theatre; that's about the level of attention the "plot" needs, anyway. The fembot eye makeup was nearly worth the elevated price of entry alone.
** People my age who were in the US public school system in the 80s: there was this book catalogue. What was that? It came something like biannually, and listed all the Newberys and Victorian classics. Beverly Cleary. George MacDonald. You ticked off the books that looked interesting, your parents wrote a cheque (I assume; I never saw this part), and the books just appeared after that. I don't even remember if they came to the school or the apartment. No memory of a limit on the number of books, or reading level. If I ever heard the words reading level while in elementary school it was spoken by adults above my head.