Thorns

I vaguely recall someone saying this was crap.

*get bored, stop watching, am thus stalled on Farscape for about a month*

*read blurb to remind myself*

Oh god that sounds like Avatar minus the moral and every other "white man is taken in by simple native people, local girl falls for him, thuggish native boyfriend objects" plot.

*start rewatching*

It is Avatar minus the moral.
( Cut for spoilers and aaaargh )

So, on the whole, Kick Ass was exactly my sort of film. It's both a straightforward geek-becomes-superhero wish fulfillment and a subversion of it, and the violence was glorious (I quite like violence done right). I agree with those saying that the violence and swearing really aren't worth complaining about, and aren't even extra specially celebrated compared to many other films (the violence looks like it hurts, for good guys and bad). But.

I kept hearing it was good in an over the top puerile sort of way, and was ok with that, but just before watching it found out it was based on a comic by Mark Millar. As it started I was reminded of this, and of how I felt about Wanted.
( Read more... )

These are two Marjorie M Lui "Dirk and Steele" supernatural romance novels.

So far there are two common themes in this series:
1)The love interests are soul mates and are drawn to each other pretty much the moment they meet, thought they tend to fight against it out of a mix of cynicism and hard-won self defense based on Bad Past Experiences.
2)To some extent the male love interests tend to feel like they're fulfilling different ever-so-slightly-furry-ish supernatural creature fetishes.

Soul Song was sexy fish-man
The Wild Road is basically sexy Goliath from Gargoyles
The Last Twilight is sexy black African man who turns into a cheetah (which is imo a bit problematic)

The Wild Road
So clearly I wasn't the only teenage girl watching Gargoyles thinking "You know, he's kind of cute for an animated non-human."

This was fun. I liked the protagonists, though both rather hardened by difficult circumstances they weren't as irritatingly angsty as the previous lot, and I found the plot quite engaging and thrilling. The female protagonist has lost her memory, and I thought the "redefining and rediscovering yourself when you don't know who you are or were" thing was done pretty well.

Note:This is explicitly set after "Soul Song" and has some spoilers for it's plot.

The Last Twilight

I started reading this at the shop and ended up buying it because I wanted to know what happened next. The main character is a CDC disease specialist, and her life dealing with epidemics was quite engaging if rather gross for a romance. Being a Marjorie M Lui book the plot quickly shifted, and it was a bit less engrossing in the middle, but overall quite an enjoyable fantasy thriller and I liked the relationship between the two leads.

I'm not the best judge of this sort of thing, but I've seen enough criticisms of the way people of African descent are associated with animals/predators etc to be a bit uncomfortable with the way the male lead was exotified by the female lead, although he is a quite well rounded and engaging character.

On the plus side we got lots of interesting African characters, and distinctions were made between different African countries and cultures (eg the male lead is Kenyan, and misses the plains while in the jungles of the Congo).

After being persuaded by this Hoyden about Town post I'm currently 2 episodes in to "True Blood", the TV adaptation by Alan Ball of "Six feet Under" of the Sookie Stackhouse books. After a slightly rocky start I'm really liking it, like the book it tries to actually charcaterise real people and situations which happen to involve vampires and murder in the south rather than being a shiny fetishised cliche like Every Other American Vampire TV Show Ever(*).

They seem to have turned "Dead Until Dark", the first book, into the first season so it's more drama than mystery and goes at a measured, atmospheric pace.

I've heard complaints about the vampire love interest being kind of old looking but I like it: it should feel a bit creepy for a 100+ year old guy to be interested in a young girl, and the actor does a good job of coming across simultaneously as a regular 30ish guy and Very Old.

Oh and it is FULL of sex. Lots and lots. But not in a very sexy way afaict, it's more just..there, this thing people do which impacts on and is impacted by their characters and lives. Most vampire romance equates death with sex, this goes the other way too, so it's all very visceral and bloody and grimy. The credits are intense.

Lot of vampire shows at the moment though aren't there? I still haven't gotten around to trying "Being Human".

(*)The english do a bit better :)

Continuing my mystery streak, I just read Devil in a Blue Dress which was very good for what it is (noir), longer review here.

I also read The Lady Tasting Tea, a history of the way statistics has affected society and vice versa. It was an interesting topic not quite as well written about as I would have liked: the author is a statistician, which means he has a personal connection with and understands his story, but it was a bit clunky and unclear in parts. I would have preferred either less wordy explanations or more maths, as it was he gave just enough information that I felt like I should understand what he was saying on a deeper level, but not enough that I actually could (there was not one single equation. Yes, that is a bad thing! To me, anyway :)). I may have to go and read an actual stats textbook now(*).

(*)Further evidence of what a bad influence sanguinity is on me.

sanguinity has recced me a bunch of books recently, and the first I've finished is The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life by Michael Warner.

Overall I enjoyed this book, it was informative and readable and made me think which is all you can really ask for. I wrote up some notes as I went but keep feeling too sleepy to write them out properly, so instead you get vague meandering thoughts. Or you could just read the Wikipedia article :)
( vague meandering thoughts )

So I and Cam were watching "State of Play" (the original BBC miniseries, not the new american movie) It's a taut political thriller with lots of twists and turns. We were halfway through the last episode, heading towards a major revelation..and the disk stopped.

Argh! So we put it in my laptop. And it worked! Yay!
Cue impatient seconds waiting for the BBC logo to load, menu to come up etc and we go to chapter selection. And there on the screen, on the preview image for the last scene? Was a closeup up of a headline SAYING THE FINAL TWIST.

ARGH!!!

Still, overall quite good, just don't look at the frigging chapter selection. Very much a story of Flawed Manly Men doggedly pursuing a story/case/justice etc with women tending to either be background or The Secretary, The Wife, The Feisty Girl Reporter In Peril etc (non white characters tend to just get to be background and the less said about the gay characters the better) But once I resigned myself to that it was quite enjoyable and the characters well written within their bounds.

My body is reacting to the stress of the last week by shutting down and making me very sleepy, so I finally got around to watching "Vexille", an anime someone recced on my "Anime for sff nerds" discussion.

I wasn't looking forward to it, since it was cell-shaded 3D (which I find distracting) and about robots and mecha etc. Also not my thing.

But I just watched it and it's great. Not fetishing robots in a "Here's a straightforward war story but with giant robots for no logical reason" way, it's actually about robots, it's almost like a prequel to the Matrix. With a few obvious differences of course, but it feels very much like a good slightly philosophical western sf/action movie, except in japanese and more emotionally complex (I cried a little, I am not ashamed to admit) Since I had a headache I watched the first half hour or so in the english dub, and I'm glad I did, since it's set in America with american characters (the last 2/3 is in Japan with mostly japanese characters) I'm pretty sure that an american movie with an equivalent premise wouldn't flesh out the japanese characters anywhere near so well, let alone make one of the them the lead and title character! If anything it felt a little too american, certainly some plot points felt lifted from other sf movies.
( More thoughts, no spoilers )

I've been hearing people going on about Scooby Road, a series of Buffy vids to the entire Beatles album "Abby Road" by Luminosity, ever since I got into fanvids. I was always too shy to ask for a copy but eventually decided to buck up the courage, and she sent me the link. She also asked what I thought, and I decided that if I was going to review it I might as well do so here :)

So, it was great. The only problem I have with Luminosity as a vidder is that she's really good, but her taste/POV is somewhat different to mine, so a lot of her very popular vids don't quite work for me (although others totally do, she has several entries on my previous post) even though I can appreciate them on an intellectual level. That was somewhat the case here if you take each vid individually, and to begin with I thought "Oh, this is ok, but it's just like watching a random sequence of Buffy vids to Beatles songs". But about halfway through the second vid it kind of clicked for me and I started thinking of each vid as a facet of a larger picture of the show, and being the total sucker I am for long-form multiple-facet connected storytelling was hooked. It's not that it tells a single narrative (other than that of the show) in any obvious way, and it doesn't even quite follow the chronology, but somehow they all tie together and follow on from each other, and the finale was very satisfying in an "end of a novel not a short story" kind of way.

Also there's a Faith vid. With sing-a-long-lyrics! *is easily pleased*

If you want a copy her email is on her site.

I used to think I didn't like anime and refused to watch any, but then realised I was just watching the wrong stuff and found lots I adore, and in general think there's something in anime for pretty much everyone: "Anime" just means "animated films made in japan" after all, and covers a huge range of styles and genres. So I decided to put together a Swancon panel about anime series/movies I think would appeal to people at the con who don't consider themselves anime fans, and being me am making a post about it first. The aim is not to convert people into becoming anime fans, just to give them a chance to watch some stuff they might like even if anime in general is not for them. The panel may not end up happening but hey, chances are more people will read this than would have come anyway :)
( Read more... )( The recs )