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Oct. 10th, 2017 03:02 pmAnyone been watching Orange is the New Black? I happened upon the first couple of seasons on DVD in a charity shop a while ago and we've just finished watching them. The rest will be going on the Christmas wish lists.
( cut for possible spoilers )
Anyway, we finished the first two seasons of OITNB a few evenings ago and have since watched some of the accumulated selection of films.
Fandom seems to have spoiled me for film watching! If it's not an awareness of the existence of women, so that when I watch, say, The Fifth Element, I'm constantly looking at the wall-to-wall male faces and thinking, Why are so vanishingly few of these characters female?
There's also the influence of writing and beta-reading on my response to film plots in which people do completely irrational things so that they can… I dunno, get to the next frenetic action sequence. Why on earth, having gone to the trouble of creating a whole new being out of remnant strands of DNA from a space crash, do the scientists stand salivating while she panics, and then send police after her when she flees, instead of welcoming her gently and kindly into the world where she finds herself and in which she is important. Did nobody notice how completely stupid that is?
I realise that's a pretty old film. (Well, if I hadn't, a blond and shapely Bruce Willis would have been A Clue.) Then, there's Lucy, for which I blame Beast. A potentially really interesting idea, that utilising more of the human brain might, say, enable a person to see electricity, or radio waves, or be telepathic… (at least, it's a nicer excuse for telepathy than most). Instead of which there was a load of fanciful and utterly ludicrous tosh. And not a shred of characterisation after the first five minutes, either. Meh.
The Quartet, by contrast, was rather lovely. I'd seen it before. It's human, and real (assuming retired musicians can get to live in the most stately home-like of old people's homes you ever did see, which would be nice) and I actually care about the characters.
*
In house news, the sitting room is now lovely! All the art is on the walls, and it looks like a real sitting room at last. Okay, my computer desk is parked in one corner, needs must, but it looks okay. We had to buy a new piece of worktop (Grandpa having basically purloined the bit that was going to be my desk), and got some nice acacia wood for a most reasonable price.
Poor Beast spent much of yesterday knocking nails into walls to hang up our family pictures in an array on the landing wall. I'm pleased with the effect.
*
I've thought for a while that it was a real pity the War Doctor was played by John Hurt (tho he is admirable, of course) instead of Helen Mirren. Imagine—the female in the Doctor's past was The War Doctor.
And now, she's been posing in her Doctor Who outfit. scroll down.
( cut for possible spoilers )
Anyway, we finished the first two seasons of OITNB a few evenings ago and have since watched some of the accumulated selection of films.
Fandom seems to have spoiled me for film watching! If it's not an awareness of the existence of women, so that when I watch, say, The Fifth Element, I'm constantly looking at the wall-to-wall male faces and thinking, Why are so vanishingly few of these characters female?
There's also the influence of writing and beta-reading on my response to film plots in which people do completely irrational things so that they can… I dunno, get to the next frenetic action sequence. Why on earth, having gone to the trouble of creating a whole new being out of remnant strands of DNA from a space crash, do the scientists stand salivating while she panics, and then send police after her when she flees, instead of welcoming her gently and kindly into the world where she finds herself and in which she is important. Did nobody notice how completely stupid that is?
I realise that's a pretty old film. (Well, if I hadn't, a blond and shapely Bruce Willis would have been A Clue.) Then, there's Lucy, for which I blame Beast. A potentially really interesting idea, that utilising more of the human brain might, say, enable a person to see electricity, or radio waves, or be telepathic… (at least, it's a nicer excuse for telepathy than most). Instead of which there was a load of fanciful and utterly ludicrous tosh. And not a shred of characterisation after the first five minutes, either. Meh.
The Quartet, by contrast, was rather lovely. I'd seen it before. It's human, and real (assuming retired musicians can get to live in the most stately home-like of old people's homes you ever did see, which would be nice) and I actually care about the characters.
*
In house news, the sitting room is now lovely! All the art is on the walls, and it looks like a real sitting room at last. Okay, my computer desk is parked in one corner, needs must, but it looks okay. We had to buy a new piece of worktop (Grandpa having basically purloined the bit that was going to be my desk), and got some nice acacia wood for a most reasonable price.
Poor Beast spent much of yesterday knocking nails into walls to hang up our family pictures in an array on the landing wall. I'm pleased with the effect.
*
I've thought for a while that it was a real pity the War Doctor was played by John Hurt (tho he is admirable, of course) instead of Helen Mirren. Imagine—the female in the Doctor's past was The War Doctor.
And now, she's been posing in her Doctor Who outfit. scroll down.