Doctor Who Goes Out to Fright Night for The Thirteenth Tale
In Movies:
Fright Night: Just the right amount of scary! (Not enough of Mr. Tennant looking hot, but that's just my opinion.) And I admit that I can see why people swoon over Colin Farrell, because when his character wasn't being a creepy jerk, he sure was easy on the eyes. There was some good fighting in this, too, and I mean that in the best possible way of a RPG character with very few stats in those areas doing the best he could and thinking outside of the box. And, courtesy of Marti Noxon, I'm sure, there was one extremely funny and well-timed Buffy joke that made me squee quietly. This is good fun, with a few in-your-face scares, but nothing so horrible that it will ruin your dreams or make you regret you saw it. (Although I suppose people who have no tolerance for gore need not apply--there was some, but nothing approaching my squick level.) This is the kind of summer movie that I like: fun, even silly in parts (Mr. Tennant's stage production as Vegas magician Peter Vincent is thing of cheeseball beauty), just a little bit of creepiness and a lot of suspense that adds up to a well-told story.
In Books:
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield: Speaking of creepy in parts, this is the kind of ghost story I love, and Setterfield knows exactly how to parcel it out, piece by mysterious piece. I'm only halfway through, and cannot wait to finish. (Although that will mean the book is over, which will be sad. Also, duh.) I also love that I'm having a very hard time placing the main plot's era. I assume post-WWII, but it really could be anytime after about 1800, and that keeps changing my impression of the characters. Nonetheless, I like the continual guessing, and I love the book references, and I love... hell, I just love this book. I sincerely hope others do as well so that we can talk about it when I'm done!
On TV:
Doctor Who: The Rather Crazily Titled, "Let's Kill Hitler": So, even though the line, "I've got a gun, you've got a time machine, let's kill Hitler" was tremendously funny, I am glad that the episode got away from Hitler as quickly as possible. In general, I find Doctor Who to be an extremely optimistic show, and I don't like it getting mixed up with some of earth's completely depressing history. yebisu9 kept insisting that there's a British tendency here to fixate on all things WWII (Hitler in particular) and we did see that last season, too, with the Churchill episode. (Spitfires in Space!!!) But, honestly? The fact that we literally cannot change history and undo the Holocaust is so depressing that I don't want my inherently optimistic and fun show to go anywhere near it. So, yeah.
But, the rest of the episode... so, Moffat's really making it up as he goes along, and that's not a good thing. I mean, it has the potential to be awesome, I really do think so. But it also has the chance of horrifically overbalancing and looking really, really dumb. And the plot of this whole thing was pretty convoluted, like one of the bad episodes of Lost. Let me see if I get this straight. Baby Melody was kidnapped by the Silence and raised in their crazy orphanage in Florida to assassinate the Doctor (which she accomplished); then she regenerated, skipped through time and space, and wound up growing up with Amy and Rory, as a best friend we'd never heard about? Uh... what? And she's *still* so programmed by the Silence that the first thing she's going to do as River was try to kill the Doctor again? I know she's not pure Timelord, but surely she remembers her previous incarnations, right? Right? And why can't the Doctor take Amy and Rory and rescue her as a little girl from the orphanage and raise her then? That's what he promised to do, isn't it? And we've had hints in other episodes that River and the Doctor go off on a set of adventures, just the two of them, and that he sort of swoops in on her without warning--"Hey, baby, let's go on adventures through space and time!" Why can't he do the same thing and prevent his own demise?
Argh. I don't want to say that I didn't like this, because I did. It was fun, and I like the idea of the time cops with the shape-shifting robot dispensing justice on history's greatest villains. River busting up the cabaret was a pretty great sequence, as was the Doctor's frantic talk with the TARDIS interface. In general, I want to hold back on any further criticisms and wait for the rest of the season to unfold, since it looks like there's lot of great, scary stuff to come. I just hope that at the end, I'm impressed by Moffat's ability to hold up a storyline this complicated, not disappointed at a cop-out or vague ending.
Fright Night: Just the right amount of scary! (Not enough of Mr. Tennant looking hot, but that's just my opinion.) And I admit that I can see why people swoon over Colin Farrell, because when his character wasn't being a creepy jerk, he sure was easy on the eyes. There was some good fighting in this, too, and I mean that in the best possible way of a RPG character with very few stats in those areas doing the best he could and thinking outside of the box. And, courtesy of Marti Noxon, I'm sure, there was one extremely funny and well-timed Buffy joke that made me squee quietly. This is good fun, with a few in-your-face scares, but nothing so horrible that it will ruin your dreams or make you regret you saw it. (Although I suppose people who have no tolerance for gore need not apply--there was some, but nothing approaching my squick level.) This is the kind of summer movie that I like: fun, even silly in parts (Mr. Tennant's stage production as Vegas magician Peter Vincent is thing of cheeseball beauty), just a little bit of creepiness and a lot of suspense that adds up to a well-told story.
In Books:
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield: Speaking of creepy in parts, this is the kind of ghost story I love, and Setterfield knows exactly how to parcel it out, piece by mysterious piece. I'm only halfway through, and cannot wait to finish. (Although that will mean the book is over, which will be sad. Also, duh.) I also love that I'm having a very hard time placing the main plot's era. I assume post-WWII, but it really could be anytime after about 1800, and that keeps changing my impression of the characters. Nonetheless, I like the continual guessing, and I love the book references, and I love... hell, I just love this book. I sincerely hope others do as well so that we can talk about it when I'm done!
On TV:
Doctor Who: The Rather Crazily Titled, "Let's Kill Hitler": So, even though the line, "I've got a gun, you've got a time machine, let's kill Hitler" was tremendously funny, I am glad that the episode got away from Hitler as quickly as possible. In general, I find Doctor Who to be an extremely optimistic show, and I don't like it getting mixed up with some of earth's completely depressing history. yebisu9 kept insisting that there's a British tendency here to fixate on all things WWII (Hitler in particular) and we did see that last season, too, with the Churchill episode. (Spitfires in Space!!!) But, honestly? The fact that we literally cannot change history and undo the Holocaust is so depressing that I don't want my inherently optimistic and fun show to go anywhere near it. So, yeah.
But, the rest of the episode... so, Moffat's really making it up as he goes along, and that's not a good thing. I mean, it has the potential to be awesome, I really do think so. But it also has the chance of horrifically overbalancing and looking really, really dumb. And the plot of this whole thing was pretty convoluted, like one of the bad episodes of Lost. Let me see if I get this straight. Baby Melody was kidnapped by the Silence and raised in their crazy orphanage in Florida to assassinate the Doctor (which she accomplished); then she regenerated, skipped through time and space, and wound up growing up with Amy and Rory, as a best friend we'd never heard about? Uh... what? And she's *still* so programmed by the Silence that the first thing she's going to do as River was try to kill the Doctor again? I know she's not pure Timelord, but surely she remembers her previous incarnations, right? Right? And why can't the Doctor take Amy and Rory and rescue her as a little girl from the orphanage and raise her then? That's what he promised to do, isn't it? And we've had hints in other episodes that River and the Doctor go off on a set of adventures, just the two of them, and that he sort of swoops in on her without warning--"Hey, baby, let's go on adventures through space and time!" Why can't he do the same thing and prevent his own demise?
Argh. I don't want to say that I didn't like this, because I did. It was fun, and I like the idea of the time cops with the shape-shifting robot dispensing justice on history's greatest villains. River busting up the cabaret was a pretty great sequence, as was the Doctor's frantic talk with the TARDIS interface. In general, I want to hold back on any further criticisms and wait for the rest of the season to unfold, since it looks like there's lot of great, scary stuff to come. I just hope that at the end, I'm impressed by Moffat's ability to hold up a storyline this complicated, not disappointed at a cop-out or vague ending.