Sunday!

Jaybird 28 Comments

We planned a night out with some friends where we’d go out to see Oz The Great And Wonderful after a nice little meal. Of course, the movie was *NOT* showing at the time the internet said it’d be and nothing else was showing within a half hour of where we were. My suggestion to go out to eat a second time was dismissed without discussion. So instead of talking about the new Oz movie, I’m stuck saying that I’ve bought my box set of Babylon Five and will probably be watching the first episode tonight. (And I’m still in the middle of Solzhenitsyn.)

So… what are you reading and/or watching?

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

More Posts Twitter

28 Comments

  1. The week’s The Americans was maybe the first truly weak ep they’ve had; but even a weak ep. is better than 95% of what’s on TV (note to the writers: this is twice now you’ve over-utilized flashbacks to retroactively limn characters’ relationships, so as to build additional plausible motivation for acts that have already occurred. It’s much more organic, effective and less-manipulative-feeling if you show us the timeline of events more-or-less linearly) .

    Almost caught up on Orphan Black – if you can suspend enough disbelief, it’s worth watching for the lead alone. She’s terrific.

    I really, really planned to ignore Hannibal; despite loving the book Red Dragon, and liking both the book and movie Silence of the Lambs, it has long felt like the whole thing was played out, not only in the Harris-originated stories, but in all the other frankly-inferior serial-killer TV & movies & media (Se7en, Dexter, The Following, etc.)

    But I saw a couple good reviews (AVClub and Sepinwall) and once I realized Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, et al) was behind it, I decided to check it out.

    I watched the first 2 eps. on-demand last night, and boy am I glad I did.

    As is Fuller’s wont, the visuals/compositions are amazing. You won’t see better on TV anywhere. I am surprised that NBC is showing this kind of gore & unsettling imagery (even if seriously, artfully composed) but I guess NBC figures what the hell, they gotta do something, before the acronym starts to mean “No-longer Broadcasting Corporation”.

    Mads Mikkelson (Danish actor who starred in one of the amazing Pusher films) is Lecter, and as great as he is (completely underplaying it where Hopkins went full-if-fun-ham), the Will Graham character/actor (Hugh Dancy) is the actual lead so far, and is awesome.

    Basically, even though it is set in current-day, the series is the backstory that occurred prior to the book Red Dragon – before Graham caught Lecter, Lecter was working with the FBI in his capacity as a psychologist.

    One of the best parts about Red Dragon was the exploration of the psychological toll of Graham’s “gift” of being able to empathize with serial killers, and Hugh Dancy is totally selling what a complete mess Graham is. And he doesn’t even realize yet who he’s working with! Lecter and Graham in the same room, just talking and feeling each other out, is already riveting.

    If anyone else is watching, I found a hilarious recapper here this AM:

    http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/1040206.html

    • I started watching The Americans on your recommendation.

      I’ve been rushing through the series over the last week. It’s really good.

      So thanks!

      • Sweet!

        Though if we both enjoy it, it’s probably doomed!

    • So I am caught up now on Orphan Black and while I continue to have some issues with suspension of disbelief and the acting from some of the secondary characters, particularly detective Art Bell (ha!), Tatiana Masly is the bomb.

      The show in general strikes me as sort of the sci-fi thriller with questions of identity and nature/nurture that Dollhouse wanted to be but couldn’t quite manage (sorry – it’s the one truly bad series Whedon has done), due to deep structural flaws with its dramatic premise – with a protagonist who was necessarily a blank slate (and moreover, kept changing personalities, so it took way too long to dole out any sense of who “she” really was) at the series’ start, the show was forced to spend too much time focusing on secondary characters who weren’t likable enough for their own supposed ethical conflicts to matter much to the audience, and consequently there wasn’t anyone to root for, or balance out the deeply-unpleasant (in-show) “Dollhouse” concept and the people who were in charge of administering it.

      Black corrects for this by giving us a resourceful character with a defined personality before putting her through the wringer (also, Masly’s about 100x the actor Eliza Dushku is).

  2. I’m wondering why, with over a dozen Oz books available for never-before-adapted material, they wrote a brand-new story instead.

      • That’s a fair point. All of Baum’s Oz books are PD. Though I’m not sure how important that is; there seem to be new movies based on Dumas stories every few years.

        • I think the more elements you create, the harder it is for others to do something that they might appear to have gotten from you rather than the PD source material.

          MGM owns the red slippers. It’s hard to make Wizard of Oz movies without red slippers, even if they weren’t in the source material. Disney now owns the origin of the Wizard and the witches, as near as I can tell (I’m not as familiar with the entire series, so I guess I could be wrong about that).

  3. On the subject of things we’re watching…

    Is it just me, or does Dr Who suddenly suck since the break and new companion storyline?

    • Is he really just a shadow of the man that we once knew? Has she finally got to Who?

    • Oh good, it’s not just me. Frankly, this whole season/series/whatever has been a bit lackluster. (How can you take something titled “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” and make it boring?)

      Haven’t seen yesterday’s ep, though.

  4. So… what are you reading and/or watching?

    Reading the weather forecasts, and thinking, “What? Again?” Snow starting Monday afternoon and continuing until sometime Tuesday morning. Up to nine inches down here in the western Denver suburbs, maybe a couple of feet up in the mountains. I’m getting tired of shoveling snow. OTOH, this one should bring the northern third of the state pretty much up to 100% of average snow pack for the date.

    Watching whatever basic cable TV channels have something vaguely interesting in the little window on the computer screen. I’ve started digitizing the (surprisingly large) collection of cassette tapes in our house, starting with “family” tapes: my wife’s great-aunt from 1977 talking about life growing up in rural Kansas; tapes from 20+ years ago of our kids playing the piano and singing; that sort of stuff.

  5. I’ve just realized that B5 isn’t streaming on Netflix. That’s problematic. Hmm. So I’m looking around for other sources.

    Saw Wreck-It Ralph last weekend. Fun movie.

  6. Not too much TV this weekend. I Started the 2nd season of Arrested Development, and I got in another episode of Battlestar Galactica (original).

    I also started rereading American Gods, which will be the next book my friends and I will be discussing at our next book club.

    • Arrested Development is such a treat. Looking forward to the last season.

  7. Still watching Quantum Leap. Reading the same stuff as last week too, mostly. (And a crapton of homework stuff.)

    School’s over on the 9th… nothing too exciting expected before then.

    Oh, I’m still listening to Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series on audio, and the 3rd one, High Wizardry, is my favorite so far. Reminiscent of Asimov and Heinlein and L’Engle all at once.

  8. Watched the first episode of B5. “Blood calls out for blood!”

  9. Gaining culture points:

    Watched “Sex is Zero” It’s like Lemon Popsicle mixed with American Pie. HIGHLY recommended. I missed half the context, and it was head over heels hilarious anyhow. Left wondering whether the martial art portrayed in the movie is something Koreans actually do.
    [note: if you haven’t seen Lemon Popsicle, what is WRONG with you! Go watch, now!]

    Watched “Journey to the West: A Sex Adventure.” Missed most of the context, but it STILL wound up making more sense than Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

  10. Game of Thrones Episode 4.

    Dany is awesome beyond the ability of words to describe.

    Brienne’s speech to Jaime is my second-favourite thing.

    • Had company last night, and it took all our willpower not to just ignore them for an hour, or watch it once they went to bed.

      Tonight!

    • I’ve been watching it with a friend. We did episodes 2 and 3 on Saturday (together with a bottle of Bulleit), and it worked so well we’re going to do multiple-episode nights for the rest of the run.

      Still curious what Pod’s secret was.

      • Be careful – GoT marathons with friends seem to go exceptionally-well with drinking.

        Or so I hear.

Comments are closed.