Festivids and Restaurant Week
1) It's Festivids time! There's another slew of vids for various small fandoms. Here are my favorites to date:
We Built This City - Being familiar with the song, I wondered how well it would suit a vid for The Expanse given it is often a grim show. But it fit so much better than I expected. I loved this focus on life going on within the verse (with all the trappings that make it scifi) as well as the wonderfully apt moments (Marconi, corporation games, etc.) which tie us into the overall plot.
Blonde - This vid reminded me of why I so enjoyed Atomic Blonde and still feel it was overlooked last year. I'd sure be glad to see another film with Lorraine Broughton though I'm guessing it's unlikely to get a sequel.
Get Free - Crimson Peak was really only a visual success IMO, but I liked the way that the focus on Edith and Lucille in this makes the central conflict clearer. Also, the way it focuses on hands and objects makes it particularly stylish.
Unwritten - I think an awful lot of people are excited about The Good Place but I don't know as it has much in the way of fanworks about it. This vid focuses on Janet and is a fun way to see the developments of the show through one of its most enjoyable features.
2) I was happy to see Festivids move to an AO3 collection since that makes it easier to incorporate recs into my bookmarks there. Also, it's easier to browse all the past years by fandom which led me to discover a bunch more videos I'd originally missed. That includes one for my beloved Black Sails, Miss Fisher (all enjoyable), and what amounts to a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend speedball.
I'd love to see someone do Dirk Gently next year.
3) I've been enjoying Restaurant Week in our area. A reasonable number of restaurants are participating but most don't have much on their menus (much less the specific RW items) that I want to eat or find worth going out for. And as a local blog pointed out, too many are either not offering new items for the event nor are they offering their usual items at a discount. I suppose they just want the publicity of saying they're participating but that seems pointless to me.
Both the restaurants we went to are chains but one is usually too pricey to eat at and the other not very conveniently located for us. But both offered a good deal on their food and the meals were good, so I feel it was a win-win in that it got us to go to places we usually don't visit. At one we had a potato soup and a plate of sea scallops, risotto, asparagus and arugula for $9, and at the other a cup of chicken corn chowder, beef medallions, mashed potatoes, petite green beans, and a large piece of chocolate cake for $19 (Mike had the same only with salmon). I rarely eat beef but it was tender, lean, and flavorful - I was really tempted to go back again.
4) I saw the movie Trance last week. I can't say much about it because the plot is a twisty one where most discussion could be considered a spoiler. But I do like to be surprised by stories and this one had layers.
5) A researcher is studying emoji use in news posts: “The question I’m asking is very basic - it’s what emojis are people using and what are their emotions around these events. But I can definitely see this informing data journalism in a more powerful way…Something like this allows us to get out of our own bubbles and allows us to get access to a broader swath of human experience.”
Comments at Dreamwidth
.
We Built This City - Being familiar with the song, I wondered how well it would suit a vid for The Expanse given it is often a grim show. But it fit so much better than I expected. I loved this focus on life going on within the verse (with all the trappings that make it scifi) as well as the wonderfully apt moments (Marconi, corporation games, etc.) which tie us into the overall plot.
Blonde - This vid reminded me of why I so enjoyed Atomic Blonde and still feel it was overlooked last year. I'd sure be glad to see another film with Lorraine Broughton though I'm guessing it's unlikely to get a sequel.
Get Free - Crimson Peak was really only a visual success IMO, but I liked the way that the focus on Edith and Lucille in this makes the central conflict clearer. Also, the way it focuses on hands and objects makes it particularly stylish.
Unwritten - I think an awful lot of people are excited about The Good Place but I don't know as it has much in the way of fanworks about it. This vid focuses on Janet and is a fun way to see the developments of the show through one of its most enjoyable features.
2) I was happy to see Festivids move to an AO3 collection since that makes it easier to incorporate recs into my bookmarks there. Also, it's easier to browse all the past years by fandom which led me to discover a bunch more videos I'd originally missed. That includes one for my beloved Black Sails, Miss Fisher (all enjoyable), and what amounts to a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend speedball.
I'd love to see someone do Dirk Gently next year.
3) I've been enjoying Restaurant Week in our area. A reasonable number of restaurants are participating but most don't have much on their menus (much less the specific RW items) that I want to eat or find worth going out for. And as a local blog pointed out, too many are either not offering new items for the event nor are they offering their usual items at a discount. I suppose they just want the publicity of saying they're participating but that seems pointless to me.
Both the restaurants we went to are chains but one is usually too pricey to eat at and the other not very conveniently located for us. But both offered a good deal on their food and the meals were good, so I feel it was a win-win in that it got us to go to places we usually don't visit. At one we had a potato soup and a plate of sea scallops, risotto, asparagus and arugula for $9, and at the other a cup of chicken corn chowder, beef medallions, mashed potatoes, petite green beans, and a large piece of chocolate cake for $19 (Mike had the same only with salmon). I rarely eat beef but it was tender, lean, and flavorful - I was really tempted to go back again.
4) I saw the movie Trance last week. I can't say much about it because the plot is a twisty one where most discussion could be considered a spoiler. But I do like to be surprised by stories and this one had layers.
5) A researcher is studying emoji use in news posts: “The question I’m asking is very basic - it’s what emojis are people using and what are their emotions around these events. But I can definitely see this informing data journalism in a more powerful way…Something like this allows us to get out of our own bubbles and allows us to get access to a broader swath of human experience.”
Comments at Dreamwidth
.