 | Cary Elwes (@Cary_Elwes) |
Holding the infamous sword for the first time in 27 years! @EMPmuseum #asyouwish #princessbrideexhibit pic.twitter.com/rzDpIppNSY | |
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Tuesday, December 16, 2014
This makes my heart grow three sizes - Tweet from Cary Elwes (@Cary_Elwes)
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The Hobbit 3: Battle Of The Five Armies - Five scenes I hope are in the extended edition
Beware, here be spoilers, so if you don't like em, don't go looking for em!
1. This was a pretty great movie, and it'll hold up to the rest, but as per usual, it's kind of a sausage-fest, so my first scene I'd like to see is some if those ladies fighting beside their men. Battle-ladies, and not the shield-maidens that were trained for it, but just women who wanted to defend their families.
2. I want to see how the Orks got the goblins and trolls and worms to work with them. Like, were they coerced? Were they enslaved? Did they make promises or truces, or call in ancient loyalties?
3. I really want to see Tauriel taking that runestone back home to Killi's mom, and telling her the tale--and then the mom taking her in because she's sad and lost and needs a new sort of home. And then I want to see a whole movie of her living with the Dwarves and defending them.
4. I want to see the funerals at the end! I want to see how Dwarves deal with their dead, and how the Elves think it's barbaric and weird, and I want to see how the Humans handle it. And I want to see the Dwarf women coming from nearby to reclaim their husbands and sons--or to reveal that they were right their by their sides, because surely Dwarf women are as tough as the men!
5. I want to see something of Bilbo's journey home. He gets there with stuff he doesn't leave with, and even just a montage of that would be cool.
Bonus! I wanna see what they did with that huge dead dragon. Like, what do you do? Mount the skull on your parapets? Turn the scales into armor? Is there a dragon-stone inside it? Or did it just poison up the whole lake?
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Geeky Holidays - From Tumblr
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Friday, December 5, 2014
Sleepy Hollow is severely jacked up, but it's not yet unsalvageable
Once upon a time, there was an awesome little show that featured women and multiracial men in prominent roles, built on what made Supernatural addictive but in it's own way, and was delightfully bonkers. Like, super-bonkers, but anchored to reality in this world full of lots of different characters with lots of different points of view. Also a lot of factions, that you're not sure where on the good-evil spectrum they lie, and a rich mythos based mostly in biblical stuff with with a fresh sideways slant.
It was a hit immediately, and by the second episode had a strong and vocal fandom, and because of that, there was a second season the writer hadn't expected.
Red flag #1, because it's rarely a good idea to expand a show just because the network says so.
It started cool, with Ichabod and Abbie fighting together to get Abbie out of Purgatory and back to the goal of stopping the apocalypse. But, apparently, there were issues behind the scenes--writers let go, new writers brought on, a newshowrunner. And within two or three episodes, the difference was like night and day.
Hessians, Masons, those two warring witch covens we barely met? Gone, as if they never were. Guidance from Ghost Corbin? Gone without even ever deciding whether he was actually a ghost or if Abbie is cracking under the strain. Frank and Jenny, two strong, interesting, and awesome characters with complex interactions with the rest of the cast and the world, who were only just promoted to full cast members? Shuffled off and hardly in any scenes, with the thinnest slips of story to barely hang on to. Ichabod's weird and useful historical information, that both informs the case, illustrates his life, and shows the way he used to live is often in unsettling contrast with how the modern world works? Traded for this weird place where a) Ichabod knows everything, but at the same time b) Ichabod didn't actually know anything, and c) any actual historical context is removed entirely, so nothing is being recast in a new light anyway.
Hell, even the multifarious and constant threat from the otherworld? Headless was defanged, losing his threat and his spookiness, Moloch was normalized, losing the weirdness that made him so different and strange, and every single other villain we met was directly related to him--meaning every other evil they'd faced had somehow disappeared without comment, leaving only Moloch. And Henry, who had been neat and reluctant and powerful in a tragic way, and is now doing his best to act through the pile of one-dimensional "my daddy who didn't know I existed was a bad daddy" BS they've given him. I mean, he's War, but he's also physically separated from his power by remote control, and that seems symbolic of what has happened to the show.
Worst, though, than everything else, is that they've taken the core out of the show: the way two wildly different people come together to face impossible odds because literally no one else can. Abbie and Ichabod were the heart and soul, her teaching him about the modern world, him teaching her about the weird history she didn't know about. Now, Ichabod keeps talking a good gave and then totally disregarding Abbie at every turn. Abbie keeps rolling over and letting him. And Katrina, who could have been very helpful, keeps walking face-first into stupid situations without any hint of the power or knowledge she should have, and because he's her husband, Ichabod keeps ditching his own common sense to go along with it. Even the one time when she goes without his permission--something she shouldn't need anyway--he goes along with it, negating the need for her to have not told him, and leaving Abbie with this bad news that shouldn't have been dropped on her anyway.
Plus, with Corbin gone, and Frank in the assylum just when she was starting to trust him, Abbie is without guidance, and she hasn't looked elsewhere for it. Her relationship with Jenny was just starting to repair and is now, except for the one episode with their mother, almost entirely off screen because Jenny is off screen. Andy is dead again and has never even hinted at coming back, or even yet been mourned or reconciled, just ignored. Luke, who she once loved, is also dead and unmentioned. The new Sheriff is still entirely a blank wall, as far as how she even matters to the story. All interpersonal relating has been sacrificed to Ichabod coddling Katrina and Katrina continuing to say a lot of stuff she isn't proving.
And that doesn't even get into the new white guy who was supposed to be a needless love triangle, then took over most of Jenny's role without her arguing it or even working with him, and now is just sort of floating around having not much character. Or how Katrina was literally used in one of the grossest and most overdone bad tropes, just to make Moloch less interesting.
Ratings are down, and fans are pissed.
But! It's not dead yet!
At least, it doesn't have to be. There's still some episodes left this season, and it might yet turn out that this was all part of a long con on the part of the story--a gamble that they're hoping pays off with a huge season end.
It might be too late for that, but the story is only a little over half way through one bad season, coming off of one really good season, and it can be resurrected. Here's some ideas how:
Behind te scenes:
- Stop the writers from pi locally patting themselves on the back for the dumbest, grossest storylines that force the characters to act like they don't even know who they used to be.
- Make them pay more attention to the criticism.
On the show:
- Jenny back in the near-center of the story, working on her relationship with Abbie--including how, this season, she was ignored an awful lot.
- Frank, somehow not stupid, back from the dead--in a way that works with the plot: he's now the new War, and they have to make him remember who he is, or he's turning into a demon and they need to save his contested soul, or he's a ghost because of that contested soul and can't rest--and doesn't want to, because he has a job to do.
- Follow through with Jenny's promise to take care of his family--they've only just discovered that the supernatural exists, his daughter was possessed with no chance yet to process it, and now they've lost their dad. That's a chance to build the story, to give Jenny her own life, AND to make Frank's death matter, whether he comes back or not.
- Katrina is a whole other post in herself, but to start, give her actual power--or reveal that she's been actively hiding it; stop making her a ties up useless princess without some indication that she's doing it on purpose, or playing everyone, or at least learning that women don't allow themselves to be used like that anymore.
- Make Ichabod realize that he's been an ass all season, and actively try to repair all the friendships he's sacrificed for this wife who just causes trouble.
- Give Hawley something substantial to do, that involves character arc without shoehorning him in as a needless love interest no on has time for. Or, if he's going to be one anyway (though I think that got scrapped), give him enough story and development that he earns the right to be one. Let Jenny use her skills, though; he was a flipping full on Tomb Raider, and she's used none of that since he showed up.
- Bring back the whole rest of the world. The local Masons were all slaughtered by Headless, so who took their place? What are the Freemasons themselves doing about that? What about the Hessians who are hiding in plain sight all over the town, being a sleeper cell of evil? What about the good witches and bad witches that were established in the first episode, but that we've never met modern examples of? Who are they? What do they think about these Witnesses? How has magic-using changed in the two hundred years Katrina was in Purgatory? And what about the Native American wiseman and Big Ash? Are they another side to this battle, or aligned with one of the main powers? What about Templars? What about psychics? What about priests like the one from the first episode, who know what's what and are guarding the truth?
- Give Ichabod other context. His dad was a piece of work that he had to try to escape--did he never try to get his son back? What happened to his mom? Who were his friends and fellows who were not historical figures? And while we're at it, if she's determined to stay around and not be evil, let's get Katrina learning about the modern world and having opinions about it, her catching up on arcane lore, her making contact with local magic users and being amazed at how hippy-dippy it all is, her having friends and a life and flashbacks that don't involve only how she impacted Ichabod's life--give her a life and a history of her own. Tell us whether she was born magic or found it? Apprenticed or stole the knowledge? And once and for all whether she's good, bad, or on some unknown third side she would then speak for.
- Make the flashbacks useful again--not just explaining, but contrasting the old world and the new.
- Expand (or start to expand) on the whole Witness thing. Like, Ichabod and Abbie are a whole history of a country apart. Why are they the pair? Did each of them have a match in their own time that died, or was never called because they met each other, or was corrupted by evil? If the mantle of the Horsemen can be stripped, can Witness be stripped and given to someone else, too? If actual real demons are behind the Horsemen, are actual real angels behind the Witnesses, and are they the weird kind from the Old Testament, with too many faces and eyes and stuff? Are there two other Witnesses or Witness-likes who are supposed to evenly match the Four Horsemen, as opposites, and are they still out there? Have Abbie and Bod even started to access their power as Witnesses?
- Bring back Corbin. We barely scratched the surface of this guy who mentored both Abbie and Jenny in very different ways, while keeping them both separate and ignorant of each other's training. Why? How? What else does he know? Can he be their Jedi-Force-Ghost mentor, making them stronger and better? I think he can.
- Give us other villains. Opportunistic ghosts and spirits. Other demons with no shared plans who step up now that Moloch is deposed (if not actually dead). Old gods who have something to say about all this broo-ha-ha going on these days. Native creatures and creatures brought over from Europe with the settlers. New monsters made by the modern world. Back of on the main villain to every thre or four episodes, so the cast can learn and develop skills, and so his movements come as actual surprises, not a sort of "what the crap is he doing now" sort of annoyance because we're sick of him. Give him his mystery back. Give evil in general their mystery back. Remember how spooky those black-oil Harry-Potter-looking ghosts in the church looked?
- Bring it back to the biblical apocalypse and back off on the famous white guys history--flesh it out with other ideas of apocalypse that maybe Abbie knows more about, or that they have to find new experts on, and make friends with. And give us more of Grace and her tragic descendants--and maybe more like her, people who were or had been slaves, but had a secret mission. Native Americans (ancestors of the current dudes?) who knew about this stuff, too, and had to preserve their knowledge through the genocide of their people. Unrelated people through the last two hundred years who guarded history and were ignored by it, who saved sacred artifacts, who recorded weird events that can help our heroes, who tried to be Witnesses--and who were, but who died anyway, like when Buffy met the old Slayers and had to figure out how not to do whatever they did.
- Take all the opportunities to comment on historical idiocy while also staying light and cheerful and optimistic and active--instead of ignoring those chances while being heavy and angsty in a bad way, and walking in circles without making any headway.
Me too, Ichabod! That's the dream of how the show could be, and that, I think, should be where it aims.
Barring that, cancel it now, but sign te whole mess up for Amazon Kindle Worlds or whatever it's called, and let the fans write how it should be, and get paid for it, and make it something amazing and powerful and world changing--since Fox, yet again, seems incapable of doing it. Or sell it to another channel that will allow it to be what it is--charming, cheerfully off the rails in the way that means they're doing unusual things and commenting on story tropes, not the way that means they don't know what they're doing, full of complex emotions and interactions, diverse characters moving through and impacting a complex and detailed world, and all the good stuff that a supernaturally-based story can bring, and that very few shows have, to date.
Give me that.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange!
(Shamelessly cropped from my own IG feed, replayed from @TheNerdTruth, which is a fun IG greeky news account)
It's official!
http://marvel.com/news/movies/23754/benedict_cumberbatch_to_play_doctor_strange
And here's why I think it will be AMAZING:
- Benedict takes roles he knows he can inhabit and just, like, roll around in-- look at how richly he played Khan*. Or anything.
- He's very good at being super-smart people in a way that's full of arrogance, but also flawed and human and relatable.
- He's friends with Tom Hiddleston, so I'm sure he has heard what it's like, and he tried out for and took the role, so he feels like he can do it.
- He's Shakespearean--he can make anything work, and you need that sort of gravitas to make something that's probably going to be a third in an alternate magical hell dimension work.
- Guardians of the Galaxy was bonkers, and it worked.
And I mean
- Imagine that voice intoning magical phrases.
- I really want to see him in that cape.
::waits until eyes stop dilating::
Ahem.
I am excited. Even if the movie is mediocre, he could elevate it--but really, I think the time for mediocre MCU movies is past. They're too far into the story now to put up with that mess.
So what do you think?
NOTES:
*He can't help that he's not Indian, and yes, they could have hired an Indian dude, but that's not what we're talking about here. This is be acknowledging the problematics and saying it's Not Okay, and then coming back to the point I'm making here, which is that he chewed up all that scifi scenery like a king. Chris Pine tried so hard and was just totally out-acted in all their scenes.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Look at this amazing Netflixery I found on Tumblr!
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Tuesday, November 11, 2014
MCU - Found this post for you on Tumblr
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Monday, November 10, 2014
Interstellar (so Spoilery)
My very first idea of this movie was that I liked it a lot. It was flipping gorgeous--like real, awe-inspiring space vistas and stuff. It was also complex without being too confusing (well, I wasn't confused, but my dad was, so...). There was some play with the form of scifi movies so that the robots never even hinted at being evil and were honestly the best characters (sorry big name actors), and the whole giant-plan-to-save-everyone thing is questioned some. It was exciting and entertaining and had amazing special and sound effects. And, at the bottom of it all, it was optimistic, something that the current crop of big scifi movies has come back to, and that I fully support--I was so tired of scifi movies that ended in gloom or ambiguity or that spent the whole time making everyone a villain.
I'll most likely get it on DVD, and I definitely want to see it again.
But it wasn't perfect.
Like I said, the robot was a more fun and entertaining character than the main characters. Coop is such an all-American dude that I sort of wanted to punch him sometimes. Poor Anne Hathaway didn't have a lot to work with and was the only woman through a lot of the movie--and the fact that she didn't know some of the things she should have known (cough huge tidal forces near a black hole cough) sort of makes her place,ent on the team look like nepotism, no matter how smart she is.
It's way white-male, and the only non-white dude on the team gets left behind, then dies stupidly. Plus, in a world where America is crippled by environmental collapse, its still the only country that can save everyone? Not China or India, who already have space programs working better than ours, and way more population and scientists to run them? Not even a mention of an attempt that failed for a program that's taking too long without the time-warping main plot-mcguffin?
And the actual science was questionable at best (I mean, the whole black hole thing was basically ridiculous and they should have been shredded down to atoms and spaggettified). These are problems that need to be talked about and addressed by critics and other writers and reacted to through the construction of future scifi movies.
But I still liked it. A lot. It has this view that we can fix this problem that we've put ourselves in, that there are ways that individual people willing to sacrifice a lot can save everyone because they love each other. That following love is a better way than following money or domination, which caused all the crazy they're saving people from.
And I loved how they handled the time dilation as a plot device. That was probably not great science either, but as a plot device, it allowed a whole lot of really neatly-built story, and I loved that so hard. It made a multi-generational space story work on a single-generational scale.
There were things in it that reminded me just a little of Gravity, but less bound to strict modern reality. And there were things that felt like old, big-budget, mind-bending 60s and 70s scifi like maybe 2001, before the AI went wonky, or like Contact, but without the aliens.
It was, and I'll say it again, gorgeous. And, I think best of all, it looked like it was possible. The tech looked a little on the old side, as if it had been abandoned for a while and was being reused--as it should, the way the story is built. It looked like people could actually live in the bases and the big spinning (endlessly spinning, we get it) ship and the people-saving cities they were working on as they bet that the pioneers would find something useful.
It was definitely a very American story. It was "things are crap back home, let's pack up and move to the frontier", the same story-base as, like, any Western-expansion tale. But it was I to a galaxy where we were the only people, so it could be optimistic about that expansion and colonization, though it probably should have at least had a line or two about it as an idea. Maybe if there's a novelization, they'll take the time to debate it better.
So. Final word. It had problematics, but overall I found it to be beautiful and optimistic, and it was worth the watch and the standing in line for al OST two hours to get there opening night.
What did you think? Was it entertaining enough to balance the things they were willfully ignoring, or we're the problems too much for your enjoyment?
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Found this video for you on Tumblr
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