(no subject)
Back to the old icon, what? I'll miss the TARDIS. Oh, what the hell? It's time I got a new default icon anyway. I'll keep the TARDIS one up until I go find another or give up and go back to the Cowboy Bebop one. Just ignore the bits about Christmas, alright?
Speaking of the TARDIS...
I'd gotten my sister, Devin, as far as the second episode of the Ninth Doctor's season before we traveled out to San Francisco, and while we were waiting for an hour in the airport (stupid short security line!), we watched the third. Amazingly, she was up for more on our five-hour flight out of DC, and she retained stuff from it. Devin's a bit like me in that respect; she has pretty good recall of stuff she watches (amazing Futurama recall, as well as Harry Potter, books and movies) when she really enjoys it. I went to the lav on the plane and passed a girl wearing a shirt with "UNIT" emblazoned on it, and I came back and geeked out a bit about that. I realized she probably didn't know why that was exciting to me, and I started to explain only to have her cut me off! She knew! SO PROUD!!! ^.^
Then, in San Francisco, on my brother-in-law's giant projection screen, we watched all the way up to episode ten. Got in a bit of trouble with my mother over that (she said we were ignoring people to watch the show, but, in our defense, they weren't doing anything we wanted to join in, and if I have to change my habits because Jotham's mother can be a bit passive aggressive when she thinks she's being ignored, I'll end up killing her and going back to Doctor Who, thanks), but it was fun, overall. arcfox7 rained on the parade a bit with the talk about paradoxes of time travel, but, really, as far as that goes, I think Doctor Who does the right thing to play around and basically ignore paradoxes save when they're dramatically relevant. Consistency has never been a serious staple of the show anyway. He and Drew both watched, intermittantly, so they weren't exactly opposed, for all the poo-poo paradox talk.
It was really fun to watch the family's reaction to Captain Jack. arcfox7 got it, Devin a little less so, though it didn't really matter to her as she loved Captain Jack. She got all giggly whenever he was onscreen, and I loved her bestest for it because she's adorable and her reaction was basically the same as mine. "Ooh, he's cute, flirty, and easy! I can't see why any of those are bad things." We stayed up late one night to finish the series, and she looked heartbroken by the end of it, though she's really keen to watch the next season. So, I think I know what my Best Buy gift cards are going towards, now.
I liked "The Runaway Bride" well enough, mostly because I liked the eponymous character a lot. A surprising lot, actually. Long before the awfulness of her story arrived, I pitied her muchly. Donna was older, sort of settling for romance where she could get it, and there was the potential to mock her, but, aside from the montage revealing how her engagement had really gone down, she wasn't the butt of the cosmic joke, and I really appreciated that. She was forceful and resourceful, which are never bad qualities for a Companion, and I would have loved to have her alongside the Doctor, especially given the absolutely eerie finish with the evil spider queen lady.
That...freaked me out a lot, and I'm not even talking about the spider part. I'm talking about the Doctor's face as he watches tons of gallons of water drown an entire race of creatures. It made me miss Nine a lot. Ten is too far from the Time War. He doesn't have the scars and the suicidal death wish, but he also loses the lessons the War taught him. There was a time where he wouldn't even kill the scourge of the galaxy because he couldn't bear to be the one responsible for the genocide of their race (and we're talking about the friggin' Daleks here). In a year's time, the Doctor who would have died not to kill, who destroyed Harriet Jones because she would kill, had become the man who washed the spider out and didn't stop when the job was done. Hail the Doctor, the Great Exterminator. ::shiver:: I never really got the same sense of anger and danger from Ten as Nine, mostly because Christopher Eccleston had a physical presence and menace that David Tennant, at his most ruthless, could never have. It's there, it's just not directed in the same way. Ten is the destroyer again, and he's divorced enough from the memories of the consequences of that destruction that he goes there without stopping and considering first. ::shiver::
But Donna was awesome, and the fact that she wasn't at all in love with the Doctor after their brief engagement together is amazing and refreshing. So many people who hang with the Doctor love him or hate him. Few people look at him and his life and go, "Oh, um, okay for a bit, but only as long as I have to, cheers." It was something I loved about Jackie and Mickey, that they could understand the amazing nature of the Doctor and his life and still not exactly jump at the chance to be a part of it (Mickey did, later, sure, but he jumped ship fairly soon after, suggesting maybe that the better adventure is one that's more, shall we say, responsible?--ooh, thanks for that meta, Donna!).
And, from the previews alone, I'm less disposed to hate Martha. I might even like her. I liked Rose so much, I was ready to hate Martha on spec just for not being Rose. But I already don't and, come the spring, might even like her a wee little.
And, fittingly, Doctor Who is the first TV show I've watched in the new year. Finished the "key to time" series. Still not enamored of Romana I, looking for more come Romana II. But, that's this year. Gotta do my wrap-up of 2006 before I get much more into 2007.
I started a spreadsheet last year to mark how many movies I watched, how many TV shows I got through, and what books I read. Not surprisingly, the last category is the shortest. When I lost my commute and picked up a baby niece on the way, I lost a lot of dead time I committed to reading. I only got through seventeen books. I think a fair resolution for 2007 is to at least double that.
Part of the problem besides losing dedicated periods of reading time like I had on my half hour commute is that I upped my Netflix subscription to get two discs at a time and that I discovered TV shows on DVD in a major way. In 2006, I watched about twenty seasons of TV, including all of Red Dwarf and all of the new series of Doctor Who. I've counted each episode arc of Doctor Who from the older series as an individual unit/season, but even setting those aside, I did watch a lot of TV. I picked up several new series that I hope to complete in 2007, including The 4400 and Spooks. I caught up with Smallville again, revisited Lois and Clark for two seasons, and finished the WB-version of Batman the Animated Series. The year truly did belong to British TV, but I see that, on my list, I failed to take account of series that finished in 2006, like LOST and House's second season. I'll be making note of their third seasons in 2007. So, really, I watched even more TV than I've credited here. Wow.
Movies are less of a surprise. I've watched eighty movies for the first time in 2006. I marked off where I'd seen them, too, just out of curiosity, and as a way to track my spending habits on entertainment. It's a travelogue, too, which is interesting; four movies I'd never seen before 2006 I watched on airplanes (The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Rumor Has It; Fun with Dick and Jane; and The Producers). Only three movies were on my parents' satellite service, which is indicative not of how much time I've spent there but of how much time I spend there watching stuff I've already seen. Fifteen movies were on DVD, either owned by myself or others, so that saved me a few clicks on the Netflix rental wheel, and which is indicative of my Dad's DVD-buying addiction, as all but Casanova and Horatio Hornblower were movies that my family owned (oh, sorry; Howl's Moving Castle and Eddie Izzard--Dress to Kill were mine, too). Still, eleven!
I wish I had a record for 2005, but I have a feeling that fifteen movies in the theaters is up from the year before. There were a lot of great movies out this year, and fewer repeat viewings (2005 saw four shows of Batman Begins for me). It's sixteen if I count the IMAX 3D of Superman Returns as a separate film from the regular version. Looking over the list, almost all of them were wonderful. The only exception was X-Men: the Last Stand. I didn't like Saw III much, if at all, and the ending of Silent Hill was terribly disappointing and confusing and stupid, but nothing truly sucked as much diseased donkey cock as X-Men: the Last Stand (pardon my French there, but it was so bad I couldn't even call it "X3" and not hate myself). But there were some really fun movies this year (Inside Man, V for Vendetta, Snakes on a Plane) and some genuinely good as well as enjoyable ones (The Illusionist, The Prestige, Casino Royale). I'm not going to hold my breath for 2007, though, as there's little yet to pique my interest. I will be there for the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, if only to file it away with my fuzzy, drunk memories of the second one. I have to see the Fantastic Four sequel because, stupid-as-all-get-out or no, the first one was adorably silly and I had a great time with the actors in it (even Jessica Alba--she didn't suck quite as much as her usual!). Oh, and, there's this love-hate-fear-for-my-poor-childhood thing going on with Transformers. What all else is coming out?
And, of course, I watched half the movies I saw this year via Netflix, before the TV shows took over my queue. They range all over the map--movies I missed in the theaters (Something New, Fantastic Four), to ones I've always meant to watch (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Carrie), to ones I got on a whim because I liked an actor in them or it had gotten interesting/good reviews (Stark Raving Mad, The Woodsman, Layer Cake), to pieces of shit I wish I could erase from my brain (Yes, Underworld: Evolution, Bloodrayne, and The Dukes of Hazzard, I mean you).
Some of the other highs (all of which I recommend if you've not seen them):
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Inside Deep Throat
Good Night, and Good Luck
The Boondock Saints
Last Holiday
Slither
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Some more lows (AVOID THESE AT ALL COSTS):
Suicide Club
The Legend of Zorro (OTHERWISE KNOWN AS Underworld: Evolution LEVEL OF BAD!!!)
The Aristocrats
Reservoir Dogs
Before anyone jumps to defend that last one, no, I don't love Tarantino films. This was just a meandering, pointless bunch of male posturing bullshit. It's like my problem with The Grifters--when there is no one who is at all likeable in a film, the director and writer are doing something wrong. It's possible to make an entire cast of characters be entirely reprehensible people but still have one or more of them be sympathetic. And Tarantino has no excuse because he is capable of writing ruthless, awful, murdering, lying, sons-of-bitches who are nonetheless worthy of respect and empathy. I loved both Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2; I even loved the first installment, with all its pointless, awful violence more, so it's not that I'm just squeamish either.
Is it possible there is a film where not a single character manages to win my sympathy and I could still watch it and say, "I liked this movie. It was good"? Sure, it's possible. If anyone knows of one to suggest, I'll add it to my queue at Netflix, no questions asked. This is a challenge, issued to you all. I'm just saying that it's my experience as a person who likes to enjoy a movie and also to pick it apart with meta that movies where "heroes" or "anti-heroes" aren't able to align themselves, their goals, or their emotional states with those of the audience are basically failures as narrative works. You can hate a main character or even the protagonist and still enjoy the film/show/book so long as he/she is empathetic at some point or someone else in the story is. A great example that comes to mind is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have never liked Buffy in the TV series. She's whiny, insecure, angsty, and just generally depressing for no good reason. But she is surrounded with a supporting cast that kept me loyal to the show. If it were just Buffy, all the time, it wouldn't be worth anything to keep watching. And I think it goes without saying that Battlestar Galactica has (or had) the market cornered on conflicted, awful characters that you didn't like but have to love. Reservoir Dogs had none of that, and it was just artsily done for the sake of showing off. I haven't seen Pulp Fiction in its entirety, but I'd be willing to bet it's either much better or not yet there. Dunno, don't really need to find out (unless that's an answer to my challenge).
Shorter version of 2006 wrap-up, entertainment-wise: watched a lot of Brit TV, more TV in general, and DVDs, DVDs, DVDs. Need to read more, but when isn't that true?
Speaking of the TARDIS...
I'd gotten my sister, Devin, as far as the second episode of the Ninth Doctor's season before we traveled out to San Francisco, and while we were waiting for an hour in the airport (stupid short security line!), we watched the third. Amazingly, she was up for more on our five-hour flight out of DC, and she retained stuff from it. Devin's a bit like me in that respect; she has pretty good recall of stuff she watches (amazing Futurama recall, as well as Harry Potter, books and movies) when she really enjoys it. I went to the lav on the plane and passed a girl wearing a shirt with "UNIT" emblazoned on it, and I came back and geeked out a bit about that. I realized she probably didn't know why that was exciting to me, and I started to explain only to have her cut me off! She knew! SO PROUD!!! ^.^
Then, in San Francisco, on my brother-in-law's giant projection screen, we watched all the way up to episode ten. Got in a bit of trouble with my mother over that (she said we were ignoring people to watch the show, but, in our defense, they weren't doing anything we wanted to join in, and if I have to change my habits because Jotham's mother can be a bit passive aggressive when she thinks she's being ignored, I'll end up killing her and going back to Doctor Who, thanks), but it was fun, overall. arcfox7 rained on the parade a bit with the talk about paradoxes of time travel, but, really, as far as that goes, I think Doctor Who does the right thing to play around and basically ignore paradoxes save when they're dramatically relevant. Consistency has never been a serious staple of the show anyway. He and Drew both watched, intermittantly, so they weren't exactly opposed, for all the poo-poo paradox talk.
It was really fun to watch the family's reaction to Captain Jack. arcfox7 got it, Devin a little less so, though it didn't really matter to her as she loved Captain Jack. She got all giggly whenever he was onscreen, and I loved her bestest for it because she's adorable and her reaction was basically the same as mine. "Ooh, he's cute, flirty, and easy! I can't see why any of those are bad things." We stayed up late one night to finish the series, and she looked heartbroken by the end of it, though she's really keen to watch the next season. So, I think I know what my Best Buy gift cards are going towards, now.
I liked "The Runaway Bride" well enough, mostly because I liked the eponymous character a lot. A surprising lot, actually. Long before the awfulness of her story arrived, I pitied her muchly. Donna was older, sort of settling for romance where she could get it, and there was the potential to mock her, but, aside from the montage revealing how her engagement had really gone down, she wasn't the butt of the cosmic joke, and I really appreciated that. She was forceful and resourceful, which are never bad qualities for a Companion, and I would have loved to have her alongside the Doctor, especially given the absolutely eerie finish with the evil spider queen lady.
That...freaked me out a lot, and I'm not even talking about the spider part. I'm talking about the Doctor's face as he watches tons of gallons of water drown an entire race of creatures. It made me miss Nine a lot. Ten is too far from the Time War. He doesn't have the scars and the suicidal death wish, but he also loses the lessons the War taught him. There was a time where he wouldn't even kill the scourge of the galaxy because he couldn't bear to be the one responsible for the genocide of their race (and we're talking about the friggin' Daleks here). In a year's time, the Doctor who would have died not to kill, who destroyed Harriet Jones because she would kill, had become the man who washed the spider out and didn't stop when the job was done. Hail the Doctor, the Great Exterminator. ::shiver:: I never really got the same sense of anger and danger from Ten as Nine, mostly because Christopher Eccleston had a physical presence and menace that David Tennant, at his most ruthless, could never have. It's there, it's just not directed in the same way. Ten is the destroyer again, and he's divorced enough from the memories of the consequences of that destruction that he goes there without stopping and considering first. ::shiver::
But Donna was awesome, and the fact that she wasn't at all in love with the Doctor after their brief engagement together is amazing and refreshing. So many people who hang with the Doctor love him or hate him. Few people look at him and his life and go, "Oh, um, okay for a bit, but only as long as I have to, cheers." It was something I loved about Jackie and Mickey, that they could understand the amazing nature of the Doctor and his life and still not exactly jump at the chance to be a part of it (Mickey did, later, sure, but he jumped ship fairly soon after, suggesting maybe that the better adventure is one that's more, shall we say, responsible?--ooh, thanks for that meta, Donna!).
And, from the previews alone, I'm less disposed to hate Martha. I might even like her. I liked Rose so much, I was ready to hate Martha on spec just for not being Rose. But I already don't and, come the spring, might even like her a wee little.
And, fittingly, Doctor Who is the first TV show I've watched in the new year. Finished the "key to time" series. Still not enamored of Romana I, looking for more come Romana II. But, that's this year. Gotta do my wrap-up of 2006 before I get much more into 2007.
I started a spreadsheet last year to mark how many movies I watched, how many TV shows I got through, and what books I read. Not surprisingly, the last category is the shortest. When I lost my commute and picked up a baby niece on the way, I lost a lot of dead time I committed to reading. I only got through seventeen books. I think a fair resolution for 2007 is to at least double that.
Part of the problem besides losing dedicated periods of reading time like I had on my half hour commute is that I upped my Netflix subscription to get two discs at a time and that I discovered TV shows on DVD in a major way. In 2006, I watched about twenty seasons of TV, including all of Red Dwarf and all of the new series of Doctor Who. I've counted each episode arc of Doctor Who from the older series as an individual unit/season, but even setting those aside, I did watch a lot of TV. I picked up several new series that I hope to complete in 2007, including The 4400 and Spooks. I caught up with Smallville again, revisited Lois and Clark for two seasons, and finished the WB-version of Batman the Animated Series. The year truly did belong to British TV, but I see that, on my list, I failed to take account of series that finished in 2006, like LOST and House's second season. I'll be making note of their third seasons in 2007. So, really, I watched even more TV than I've credited here. Wow.
Movies are less of a surprise. I've watched eighty movies for the first time in 2006. I marked off where I'd seen them, too, just out of curiosity, and as a way to track my spending habits on entertainment. It's a travelogue, too, which is interesting; four movies I'd never seen before 2006 I watched on airplanes (The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Rumor Has It; Fun with Dick and Jane; and The Producers). Only three movies were on my parents' satellite service, which is indicative not of how much time I've spent there but of how much time I spend there watching stuff I've already seen. Fifteen movies were on DVD, either owned by myself or others, so that saved me a few clicks on the Netflix rental wheel, and which is indicative of my Dad's DVD-buying addiction, as all but Casanova and Horatio Hornblower were movies that my family owned (oh, sorry; Howl's Moving Castle and Eddie Izzard--Dress to Kill were mine, too). Still, eleven!
I wish I had a record for 2005, but I have a feeling that fifteen movies in the theaters is up from the year before. There were a lot of great movies out this year, and fewer repeat viewings (2005 saw four shows of Batman Begins for me). It's sixteen if I count the IMAX 3D of Superman Returns as a separate film from the regular version. Looking over the list, almost all of them were wonderful. The only exception was X-Men: the Last Stand. I didn't like Saw III much, if at all, and the ending of Silent Hill was terribly disappointing and confusing and stupid, but nothing truly sucked as much diseased donkey cock as X-Men: the Last Stand (pardon my French there, but it was so bad I couldn't even call it "X3" and not hate myself). But there were some really fun movies this year (Inside Man, V for Vendetta, Snakes on a Plane) and some genuinely good as well as enjoyable ones (The Illusionist, The Prestige, Casino Royale). I'm not going to hold my breath for 2007, though, as there's little yet to pique my interest. I will be there for the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, if only to file it away with my fuzzy, drunk memories of the second one. I have to see the Fantastic Four sequel because, stupid-as-all-get-out or no, the first one was adorably silly and I had a great time with the actors in it (even Jessica Alba--she didn't suck quite as much as her usual!). Oh, and, there's this love-hate-fear-for-my-poor-childhood thing going on with Transformers. What all else is coming out?
And, of course, I watched half the movies I saw this year via Netflix, before the TV shows took over my queue. They range all over the map--movies I missed in the theaters (Something New, Fantastic Four), to ones I've always meant to watch (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Carrie), to ones I got on a whim because I liked an actor in them or it had gotten interesting/good reviews (Stark Raving Mad, The Woodsman, Layer Cake), to pieces of shit I wish I could erase from my brain (Yes, Underworld: Evolution, Bloodrayne, and The Dukes of Hazzard, I mean you).
Some of the other highs (all of which I recommend if you've not seen them):
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Inside Deep Throat
Good Night, and Good Luck
The Boondock Saints
Last Holiday
Slither
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Some more lows (AVOID THESE AT ALL COSTS):
Suicide Club
The Legend of Zorro (OTHERWISE KNOWN AS Underworld: Evolution LEVEL OF BAD!!!)
The Aristocrats
Reservoir Dogs
Before anyone jumps to defend that last one, no, I don't love Tarantino films. This was just a meandering, pointless bunch of male posturing bullshit. It's like my problem with The Grifters--when there is no one who is at all likeable in a film, the director and writer are doing something wrong. It's possible to make an entire cast of characters be entirely reprehensible people but still have one or more of them be sympathetic. And Tarantino has no excuse because he is capable of writing ruthless, awful, murdering, lying, sons-of-bitches who are nonetheless worthy of respect and empathy. I loved both Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2; I even loved the first installment, with all its pointless, awful violence more, so it's not that I'm just squeamish either.
Is it possible there is a film where not a single character manages to win my sympathy and I could still watch it and say, "I liked this movie. It was good"? Sure, it's possible. If anyone knows of one to suggest, I'll add it to my queue at Netflix, no questions asked. This is a challenge, issued to you all. I'm just saying that it's my experience as a person who likes to enjoy a movie and also to pick it apart with meta that movies where "heroes" or "anti-heroes" aren't able to align themselves, their goals, or their emotional states with those of the audience are basically failures as narrative works. You can hate a main character or even the protagonist and still enjoy the film/show/book so long as he/she is empathetic at some point or someone else in the story is. A great example that comes to mind is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have never liked Buffy in the TV series. She's whiny, insecure, angsty, and just generally depressing for no good reason. But she is surrounded with a supporting cast that kept me loyal to the show. If it were just Buffy, all the time, it wouldn't be worth anything to keep watching. And I think it goes without saying that Battlestar Galactica has (or had) the market cornered on conflicted, awful characters that you didn't like but have to love. Reservoir Dogs had none of that, and it was just artsily done for the sake of showing off. I haven't seen Pulp Fiction in its entirety, but I'd be willing to bet it's either much better or not yet there. Dunno, don't really need to find out (unless that's an answer to my challenge).
Shorter version of 2006 wrap-up, entertainment-wise: watched a lot of Brit TV, more TV in general, and DVDs, DVDs, DVDs. Need to read more, but when isn't that true?