Reviews
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s8 Supernatural
So I watched s7 Supernatural because they introduced Amanda Tapping as a character in s8 and I wanted to know how they got there, and they’ve just done it, but my God, s8 has been a snoozefest so far. I mean, I’m one of those who thinks the show ended with s5 and that they’ve been beating a dead horse, pretty boy style, since then, but this is worse than s6. Particularly since the meta commentary with the classic rock has apparently been canned (Laura Anne says this is themeatically appropriate with s8’s development, which may be entirely true, but since I gather they have licensing issues with the music for Netflix and have to change it anyway I’m pretty well feeling that they said “oh, forget it,” which obliterates half the remaining fun of the show for me).
Furthermore, in a twitter discussion about all this, somebody got genuinely incomprehensibly shitty and insulting toward a friend of mine for expressing a different opinion, and now I’ve got an extra-bad taste in my mouth about it all. :p
Anyway, people are telling me the back half of the season is better than the front half, so I might keep slogging through, but gawd.
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Picoreview: White House Down
Picoreview: White House Down: Ted and I went to White House Down (after much debate, starting first with the idea of going to About Time or the equally romantic date movie Elysium, then deciding we’d see Rush and then finding White House Down was starting earlier and sounded more fun) this weekend. It was a colossal flop, costing $150m to make and having made $73m domestically, though it’s made another $100m overseas (apparently people who don’t live in American enjoy watching the White House blow up more than people who do, and they apparently like Americans blowing themselves up more than foreigner), but I gotta say: I loved it.
First off, it did what it said on the tin, to a perfectly ridiculous degree. Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx and Maggie Gyllenhaal were fine in their roles, and Gyllenhaal had the glad job of being all business and no romance, which is offensively rare in fillum, as we say here. There were preposterous stunts and exploding White Houses and
There was also the most awesome 11 year old girl this side of ever. Huge, huge, major TOTAL spoilers behind the cut, because I can’t even talk about how awesome she is without spoiling most of the movie. If you do not want to be spoiled–and I repeat, there are major spoilers behind the cut, let me just leave you with this: Know what the action genre needs? The action genre needs a team-up between Lucy McLane and Emily Cale. That is what action movies need. And I would be there with bells on.
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revision and review
Revisions on SHAMAN RISES are taking a ridiculously long time, because I have to keep looking up details–names, aura colors, locations–in other books. I have only had to resort to Twitter twice, although it might in general be faster to ask Teh Intarwebs instead of searching my own manuscripts. :)
I also finished watching the first season Downton Abbey last night. I think…that I will probably not continue on. The final episode left me disgusted with the two older sisters, I loathed the Lady Grantham/O’Brien story, and generally don’t think I like enough characters in the show well enough to bother watching to see what happens to them. I can read their fates in a plot summary a great deal more quickly than I could watch it.
The costumes, though, were *magnificent*. swoon
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We Will Rock You
So my friend
won tickets to see “We Will Rock You” in Dublin and put out a call on FB to see if anybody wanted to go with him. I said, “Me, me!” and so we went. Let me make this clear: “We Will Rock You” is pretty awful…and yet by the end of it, even I, who knows better, went away feeling like I’d seen a great show. I’m a tough audience; most people are not going to have the problems I had with the show, and my frequently scathing review is not meant to belittle those who really love it, because I can see why people would. :)
More behind the cut, because this will spoil the stage show.
