(no subject)
Listening to Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs' You Can't Buy A Gun When You're Crying makes me think of Supernatural, so here are some spoilers for the last ITV2 episode
I liked the last episode, but it sat unhappily over the hommage/theft line, plot-wise. They blatantly stole MOST of the plot from Assault On Precinct Thirteen, which is an amazing film with an even more amazing score that I must have watched, oh, a gazillion times. So yeah, guys, I noticed that. Not that every seige in a police station (that involves the cops having to free the prisoners, who were supposed to have been moved anyway, both for their own safety and in order to help everyone else get through the night, including a nice young receptionist lady who's terrified of guns and violence) has to be a rip off of Precinct Thirteen, although it is the masterwork. No, it was just that this episode was so obviously ripping off, not only the basics of the plot but much of the nuance and even entire shots! The moment when the possessed masses mutely approach the building could have been cut straight from the film. As could almost the entirety of the section in which they realise they're under seige.
I don't want to complain too much, because it was a nice spin (or should that be SPN hehehehe- sorry) on a classic thriller, but it was a little too blatant. I felt like one, definite nod to the original would have been better. I mean, Dean always makes pop culture references anyway! As it was it was just another example of SPNs frequent wholesale theft of the plots of genre staples.
Angel did this in an episode that had the gang under seige in the hotel, but it was nowhere near as in-your-face. It had the basic seige plot elements, yes, but nothing distinctively Precinct Thirteen until one moment, where Wesley and Gunn are brandishing their weapons and squaring up to the barricaded doors, during the calm before the storm moment (which also appears in SPN). This is the Jossverse, though, so the guys reveal which movie hero they are channelling for the upcoming battle. "Who are you?" Wesley asks. "Austin Stoker," Gunn replies. "Assault on Precinct Thirteen". So I guess even the hommage of this film has been done to death.
The last run of SPN episodes has been so good, though. There's been so amazing writing and acting on display (the less said about the appalling Bela, though, the better). Also more Bobby, and muchos exciting threads to be picked up in the future. I'm excited.
If I can swallow my "seen THIS before" anger, I actually did enjoy the episode. It had some good lines and I enjoyed the return of Agent Henriksen. Although will every FBI agent on their case discover the reality of what they do and fake their deaths? Really?
I liked Ruby's turn as Ambiguous Ally as well. She was... eviler in this episode. And Sam was too, which was interesting. Dean and Sam have pretty much traded places entirely from the beginning of the show, when Dean was the fuxed up, bloodlustin' brother and Sam was the "ohnoes, someone DIED!" brother. Now Sam's grabbing timid virgins through the bars of his jail cell!
Also, tattoos? Clever boys. Although the reveal of those was too funny, for some reason.
Ohhhh and what's Bela up to? Huh? HUH? And Bobby is the greatest. LOVE LOVE LOVE. And Lilith is a bit shit (another creepy little girl?) but the idea of Lilith as the big bad is super cool... I hope it's actually Lilith, patron saint of First Wives, and not some lame-ass SPN version of Lilith that just isn't as exciting. I'm not inspired by the little girl manifestation though. That would be too disturbing if the demon inside her is a filthy succubus a la Crowley's Lilith...
Ooh, which gives me the perfect opportunity to leave you with a poem from the Wickedest Man (no longer) Alive!(TM):
Lilith
The stench of the gross goat is in my nostrils instead of
the perfume of Artemis.
I plucked the Virgin by his broidered chlamys....who
could have guessed that hairry horror hidden ?
I have got gall to be my drink, who mingled my wine
with myrrh and musk and ambergris.
I made my bed of silk and and furs; and waking I found I had
swooned to sleep upon the midden.
Ah! Were those virgin lips of thine polluted with some
rank savour of Sabbatic lust ?
What spell turned thhe, the maiden, to a monkey jibbering
antiphonal blasphemies
To those chaste chants I woeed thee by, the moment that
touching thee, my fruit dissolved to dust,
Fair-seeming Sodom-apple ! Yet thy kisses smote all my
spine to shuddering ecstasies !
So strode the fool upon the mountain ridges, crying; One
step, and I attain the crest !
Lo! The loose cornice tricks him, and he tumbles, a
mangled nothing, to the glacier.
So the nun cries: One effort and I conquer; I pass the
gate, I win the appointed rest !
And passing it discovers the foul body of Sin that waits to
set his teeth in her.
So in my dreams, escaping from a monster, I turn one
corder; "there is refuge -there!"
Nay, there he lurked who never had pursued me....'twas
I who chased him to his proper holt.
Then, O thou vile adorable, my lover, my master, catch me
backward by the hair !
Fasten thy fangs upon my mouth's gasped anguish, and
split my dream-clouds with thy thunderbolt !
Though thou be God or Satan, do thaou master my death-
pand with thy life-pang, and possess
All that I am with all thou art, my Vampire, my Siren
that I thought a nightingale !
Abase me! Spit upon me! Scourge me ! Murder me !
Take thy wolf's meal of my loveliness !
Give me the reek of thy foul breath, and show me the
leper's face behind the shining veil !
Yae! Though I sink through measureless abysses, I trace
the incommensurable curve.
Thy foursqure wedge that rages in my circle shall match
it at the infinite period.
Polluted body, violated spirit, corrupted soul, stunned brain
and tortured nerve:-
These merge into thy bloody maw, Echidna, that shall
emerge the lone white flame of God.
I liked the last episode, but it sat unhappily over the hommage/theft line, plot-wise. They blatantly stole MOST of the plot from Assault On Precinct Thirteen, which is an amazing film with an even more amazing score that I must have watched, oh, a gazillion times. So yeah, guys, I noticed that. Not that every seige in a police station (that involves the cops having to free the prisoners, who were supposed to have been moved anyway, both for their own safety and in order to help everyone else get through the night, including a nice young receptionist lady who's terrified of guns and violence) has to be a rip off of Precinct Thirteen, although it is the masterwork. No, it was just that this episode was so obviously ripping off, not only the basics of the plot but much of the nuance and even entire shots! The moment when the possessed masses mutely approach the building could have been cut straight from the film. As could almost the entirety of the section in which they realise they're under seige.
I don't want to complain too much, because it was a nice spin (or should that be SPN hehehehe- sorry) on a classic thriller, but it was a little too blatant. I felt like one, definite nod to the original would have been better. I mean, Dean always makes pop culture references anyway! As it was it was just another example of SPNs frequent wholesale theft of the plots of genre staples.
Angel did this in an episode that had the gang under seige in the hotel, but it was nowhere near as in-your-face. It had the basic seige plot elements, yes, but nothing distinctively Precinct Thirteen until one moment, where Wesley and Gunn are brandishing their weapons and squaring up to the barricaded doors, during the calm before the storm moment (which also appears in SPN). This is the Jossverse, though, so the guys reveal which movie hero they are channelling for the upcoming battle. "Who are you?" Wesley asks. "Austin Stoker," Gunn replies. "Assault on Precinct Thirteen". So I guess even the hommage of this film has been done to death.
The last run of SPN episodes has been so good, though. There's been so amazing writing and acting on display (the less said about the appalling Bela, though, the better). Also more Bobby, and muchos exciting threads to be picked up in the future. I'm excited.
If I can swallow my "seen THIS before" anger, I actually did enjoy the episode. It had some good lines and I enjoyed the return of Agent Henriksen. Although will every FBI agent on their case discover the reality of what they do and fake their deaths? Really?
I liked Ruby's turn as Ambiguous Ally as well. She was... eviler in this episode. And Sam was too, which was interesting. Dean and Sam have pretty much traded places entirely from the beginning of the show, when Dean was the fuxed up, bloodlustin' brother and Sam was the "ohnoes, someone DIED!" brother. Now Sam's grabbing timid virgins through the bars of his jail cell!
Also, tattoos? Clever boys. Although the reveal of those was too funny, for some reason.
Ohhhh and what's Bela up to? Huh? HUH? And Bobby is the greatest. LOVE LOVE LOVE. And Lilith is a bit shit (another creepy little girl?) but the idea of Lilith as the big bad is super cool... I hope it's actually Lilith, patron saint of First Wives, and not some lame-ass SPN version of Lilith that just isn't as exciting. I'm not inspired by the little girl manifestation though. That would be too disturbing if the demon inside her is a filthy succubus a la Crowley's Lilith...
Ooh, which gives me the perfect opportunity to leave you with a poem from the Wickedest Man (no longer) Alive!(TM):
Lilith
The stench of the gross goat is in my nostrils instead of
the perfume of Artemis.
I plucked the Virgin by his broidered chlamys....who
could have guessed that hairry horror hidden ?
I have got gall to be my drink, who mingled my wine
with myrrh and musk and ambergris.
I made my bed of silk and and furs; and waking I found I had
swooned to sleep upon the midden.
Ah! Were those virgin lips of thine polluted with some
rank savour of Sabbatic lust ?
What spell turned thhe, the maiden, to a monkey jibbering
antiphonal blasphemies
To those chaste chants I woeed thee by, the moment that
touching thee, my fruit dissolved to dust,
Fair-seeming Sodom-apple ! Yet thy kisses smote all my
spine to shuddering ecstasies !
So strode the fool upon the mountain ridges, crying; One
step, and I attain the crest !
Lo! The loose cornice tricks him, and he tumbles, a
mangled nothing, to the glacier.
So the nun cries: One effort and I conquer; I pass the
gate, I win the appointed rest !
And passing it discovers the foul body of Sin that waits to
set his teeth in her.
So in my dreams, escaping from a monster, I turn one
corder; "there is refuge -there!"
Nay, there he lurked who never had pursued me....'twas
I who chased him to his proper holt.
Then, O thou vile adorable, my lover, my master, catch me
backward by the hair !
Fasten thy fangs upon my mouth's gasped anguish, and
split my dream-clouds with thy thunderbolt !
Though thou be God or Satan, do thaou master my death-
pand with thy life-pang, and possess
All that I am with all thou art, my Vampire, my Siren
that I thought a nightingale !
Abase me! Spit upon me! Scourge me ! Murder me !
Take thy wolf's meal of my loveliness !
Give me the reek of thy foul breath, and show me the
leper's face behind the shining veil !
Yae! Though I sink through measureless abysses, I trace
the incommensurable curve.
Thy foursqure wedge that rages in my circle shall match
it at the infinite period.
Polluted body, violated spirit, corrupted soul, stunned brain
and tortured nerve:-
These merge into thy bloody maw, Echidna, that shall
emerge the lone white flame of God.