Friday Fun Times

Okay, you have absolutely no idea how many times I heard the opening notes of this song while searching down this video for you. But it was worth it, my friends -- so worth it.

Enjoy the charmingly unselfconscious Jensen Ackles. And have a great Friday while you're at it.

very very hot things (pt 1)

anna's introduction...

Summer has well and truly arrived in Boston, which means days at a time where the humid heat rises into the 80s and 90s (Fahrenheit) and even after the sun goes down continues to radiate heat up from the ground where we've "paved paradise and put in a parking lot." We don't have a/c in our apartment, so weather like this means breaking out the fans, taking cold showers long and often, downing gallons of iced tea, and falling asleep with damp washclothes on our foreheads like I used to do as a child back in Michigan. The kind of weather that always makes me think of the passage on Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird in which Scout observes:

Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

How to combat the teacake-y feeling? Or at least distract when there's nothing to be done but wait it out 'til the next thunderstorm blows through? (again: I'm reminded of Garnet in Elizabeth Enright's Thimble Summer who lies in her bed every night listening to the distant echoes of thunder in the mountains, from rain that never makes it down to the shriveled plains) Why, watch movies, of course! Movies in which characters suffering from heat and humidity to a greater degree than you are suffering from heat and humidity (a little schadenfreude never hurt anyone, right?)! Movies in which characters are freezing their asses off and can only wish for the warmth you are currently enjoying in surfeit! And of course, for prolonged, multi-part distraction, television shows in which characters suffer heat and cold (sometimes both at once and more besides!)
Hanna and I have, accordingly, drawn up a four-part list of one hundred movies and television shows from which you can choose your distraction in the sweltering months to come. We'll be delivering it to you in four installments over the next month broken down thusly (links to come as posts go live).

Week One: Movies Wherein Characters Are Hotter Than Blazes
Week Two: Movies Wherein Characters Are Totally Chill
Week Three: Television Shows Wherein Things Happen Which Are Hot
Week Four: Television Shows Wherein Things Happen Which Are Cold

Crandall's Savoy Theatre

Photo from the Library of Congress Flickr Stream.

Obviously, as with previous such lists, the movies and/or television shows are chosen completely at our discretion and we reserve all rights to bend, twist, knot, reverse and otherwise alter the criteria of each week and the meaning of each movie to fit our desired titles on said list. We make no claims to comprehensiveness or gravity of thought -- these lists pretty much end up on paper (er, web pixels) as they pop into our heads, with little by way of composition or editing.

Please feel free to add those titles which you feel we have unjustly overlooked -- or merely those which you find help you out in an effort to beat the heat. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy!

Movies Wherein Characters Are Hotter Than Blazes

Jaws (1975)
H: jaws must be right up there in the ...oh, the top three, i'd say, for "quintessential summer movie watching." this first list is supposed to be "movies to watch when you want to feel hot" and this should do it for you. just when you're thinking, "gosh, that water does look nice and cool---" nope, not so much. that water looks nice and sharky. yeah, i know the shark kinda sucks -- it bounces and the teeth don't look right and the tail is a little weird but if you don't at least twitch when it rears up out of the water beside roy scheider, i think you're probably wrong in the head on some level.
A: Hanna finally made me watch this on a warm night last summer during which, if I remember correctly, they were performing horrendous road construction activities outside the window. Luckily, the dialog isn't all this has going for it -- though Richard Dreyfuss does a thoroughly charming turn as the enthusiastic shark expert from out of town, brought in on consultation that quickly turns deadly.






Star Wars (1977)
H: well, the first third takes place in a desert. i think that's reason enough, yes? beyond, you know, just everything else that's right with the movie.
A: Apparently, being of the female persuasion, we're supposed to be watching Sex and the City 2 this summer as the girl equivelant of the dudely Star Wars. Since I was pretty much hooked on the original trilogy the first time Leia appropriated Luke's gun, I cry "foul!" and suggest re-watching all three episodes back to back on a hot summer weekend.
H: everybody remember that scene on the death star when luke approaches chewie with the cuffs and says, "now, i'm going to put these on you---" not his wisest move, right? yeah, picture my reaction to anyone trying to get me to watch s&tc. at least without a healthy dose of irony on hand and, probably, a bottle of wine.

The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994)
H: "Oh, Felicia. Where the fuck are we." you want to know a fun way to make someone's mind bend? find a genre fan; make sure this process won't make them physically ill and then show them star wars: the phantom menace. then show them priscilla. then ask who they recognize. :) it also works with lord of the rings fans, but often not quite so well.
A: I was introduced to the soundtrack of this movie back when I was about twelve and spent at least one summer listening to it fairly incessantly -- on cassette tape no less! Likely on the Sony walkman I thought (when I got it for my ninth birthday) made me look like a totally cool teenager. Hanna (where would I be without her?) finally sat me down to watch the film last fall and I'm so completely glad I did. Really.

Sexy Beast (2000)
H: "But you're dead. So shut up." i'm tempted to say that i'd pay for someone to explain the bunny in this movie to me but...you know what? i'm not sure i want someone to explain the bunny to me. it's weird and grisly and psychotic and kind of haunting and i think it's fine just the way it is. i never fully realised how creepy the bunny is until i saw this movie on the big screen last year. not to mention how creepy ian mcshane is. ray winstone comes across as quite cuddly by comparison. ben kingsley as don logan is just so far out in left field it pretty much beggars description. really, the best description of his character is the chill that goes over the dinner table when h -- not me -- reveals logan's imminent arrival. there's a table of four adults who have been chatting about their approaching evening and the mere mention of this man who is coming the next day is enough to change all their expressions, body language, voices, the whole nine yards. to say nothing of the scene in ray winstone's house in spain where kingsley and winstone are in the kitchen -- kingsley is out of shot most of the time, an unseen harangue of profanity and accent from which winstone is physically flinching. he's the bigger man -- he outweighs kingsley by a solid 50 pounds; he has weapons all around himself; and he's in his own damn house and he is flinching back as though kingsley is hitting him. it's like watching a badly one-sided boxing match.
A: And Ian McShane is in it! Although only in the London bits. But his character is slightly more understandable than the character he played in the recently-released 44 Inch Chest which was good excepting we aren't quite sure what the title refers to, what happened to the dog, or what the movie was about, really. So back to Sexy Beast which I promise I really did enjoy except that Hanna took me to see it in the Coolidge Corner theatre back when we were first dating? And to be honest, although I remember thinking the movie was brilliant, thinking back on it I mostly remember how thrilling it was that she let me hold her hand in the dark while we watched it.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
A: This was a "me" addition to the list, and I added it mostly for the quote I referenced in our intro -- since it takes places in the hot summer of the South, although that summer stretches into autumn. And when you ask children what they remember about the film, according to Robert Coles, what they remember is not the legal case or the commentary on American racism but the children's relationship with Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbor next door whom they are frightened of and drawn to and who -- in arguably one of the most gripping scenes in the story -- rescues Scout on a stormy Halloween night.
H: to be honest, i've watched this movie only once, many years ago, and i remember very little about it. i remember the courtroom scene -- i remember the last scene with boo radley -- and that's about it. um. this may make me a bad person.

The Fast and the Furious (2001)
A: I defer to Hanna on this one since she has a relationship with cars that, while I thoroughly admire and stand slightly in awe of, I do not intuitively share.
H: i have a theory about movies. it isn't much of a theory but as far as it goes it runs as follows: every movie has a moment that makes it worthwhile. if you run across a movie that doesn't, then you have found a true piece of cheese and you should be able to erase it from your brain. excellent movies, of course, are made up of more of these moments -- you can see how the rule expands or contracts according to need or personal opinion. f&f has several such moments: brian's lunch problems in the first half of the movie; dominic's reaction to the car brian dumps in his garage ("i retract my previous statement."); and much of the end of the movie. it's cheesy, yes; it's simple, yes; but, hey, there's something likeable about these characters; there is something to watch for other than the tricked-out cars.

The Proposition (2005)
H: what a movie. hot. every frame of it leaches heat. it's hot, it's dry, it's desert-baked in a way lawrence of arabia never thought of. it is hard to watch. the acting is sharp -- there isn't a dud note in it, down to the extras that populate the half-horse town. strange, violent, strangely violent, depressing, and hopeful.
A: Yeah, I'm with her on the hopeful, though you really, really have to hang in there till the end to get there. Through a really graphic rape scene (for those of you who can't watch them) and brutal, brutal violence. It's a movie that pulls no punches, but offers some really fascinating moral dilemmas for its characters to deal with -- and refuses to let them off the hook. At all. Meathooks. And you can't get away from the scenery, which is really a character all its own.
H: well, really, if you can't handle the first scene, just don't go further. really. honest advice here, folks. this movie is bloody. nasty. unpleasant. unpicturesque violence. the characters and the story coming through all of that are worth it in my book. the reaction of the townsfolk to the public punishment of an arrested boy alone makes much of the blood, sweat, and tears worthwhile, but there is no use in torturing yourself to get there.

Do the Right Thing (1989)
H: never seen it. er. sorry.
A: This was my pick! My brother Brian, if memory serves, introduced me to this Spike Lee movie a handful of years ago. I've lost the specifics now, but remember the contours involving heat, heat in the city, and the short tempers that inevitably break when the heat is so damn hot you can't remember what it felt like to be cool.

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
A: Mary Louise Parker is kick-ass, and really the reason to watch this movie. I mean, okay, there are lots of reasons to watch this movie, but as a young adolescent I mostly watched it to watch Mary Louise Parker kick ass. And cook the bad guy and serve him up for dessert.
H: oh! and there's that great bit where the tiny little cook whangs the awful rapist child-thieving mean dude with the frying pan! i love that bit! so satisfying! plus the bit where ruth dies in the book made me cry when i read the book in college and understood what was actually happening.

Wizard of Oz (1939)
A: To be honest, Oz scared me as a child -- it comes from the same genre of out-of-kilter children's fiction as Raggedy Ann and Andy stories, in which unhinged characters do things you really wish they wouldn't, and punishment is meted out unpredictably and by some sort of foreign logic known only by the story creator themselves. L. Frank Baum was not a well man (possibly he spent too much time holed up in his summer cottage located in my home town, writing about the denizens of Oz). I'm with Gregory Maguire on this one: the Wizard of Oz is not a benevolent man, Oz is not a happy place, and the Wicked Witch of the West is not the one we should be frightened of. That having been said: it's a classic MGM musical with all the bells and whistles, which starts and ends with a tornado in Kansas. What could be more summery than that? Just settle in with a emerald-colored Mojito and enjoy.
H: who wasn't scared by oz as a kid? seriously -- put up your hands so i can fail to believe you. if it wasn't miss gulch, it was the tornado. if it wasn't the tornado, it was the munchkins -- or glinda -- or the trees -- or the witch -- or -- or -- or -- you gettin' my drift here?

The Mummy (1999)
H: there is rachel weisz. there is brendan fraser. there is john hannah. there are just so many things that make this -- and pretty much every other -- stephen sommers movie a great ride. i've never been able to understand why so many people seem to hate what sommers does -- why spend all that time and energy hating something that's so much silly fun? and so good into the bargain? yeah, he clearly loves him the old universal monster classics -- and what's wrong with that? hell, if they really are going to go ahead with a remake of the gillman, i'd vote for sommers to do it any day. at least i could have faith that he's seen it! A: What she said. There's a librarian who (at least some of the time) saves the day, And John Hannah whom I will pretty much follow to the ends of the earth regardless of what he's in, and Brendan Fraser who always looks like he's having so much damn fun. And when you've finished this homage, go read Elizabeth Peters' first installment of the Amelia Peabody mysteries, Crocodile on the Sandbank from which so much of these chracters were so obviously and lovingly pilfered.

Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)
A: Strictly speaking, this a a film suitable for any season as it is set in four parts, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. but again with the pull-all-the-stops MGM musical genre and it opens with an ice wagon, which is how people used to get ice for their refrigerators (ice boxes) way back when, which is fun. It pedals nostalgia like scalpers selling tickets, but as long as you know that's what you're getting it can be fun. And as a bonus, you get the winter bit too--so snow and ice and silly Christmas songs as well.
H: um. never seen this either. but i have seen the trolley song on some documentary about musicals somewhere! that counts, right? A: It totally counts -- the trolley song is one of the best things about it. Oh, and little Margaret O'Brien doing soft-shoe.

Twister (1996)
H: "we got cows!" oh, what a silly movie. what a deeply silly, very wrong movie. and yet somehow so deeply, deeply watchable. not least for helen hunt in a frequently soaked tank top but also for the group dynamic and the kind of cheerfully paced action movie that, lets face it, jerry bruckheimer does so well. does it make sense? well-- -ish. does it follow established scientific fact? well, there's that bit where-- does a lot of shit go fast? and explode? yes. absolutely yes. and there is philip seymour hoffman. and, bewilderingly enough, cary elwes. and the guy from george of the jungle. explain that one.
A: I was traumatized by Cary Elwes being run through the head by an iron T-bar and can now never, ever drive behind trucks carrying long slender things which might fly off the back of said truck and through my windshield. Other than that, great summer fun and some totally adorable Movie Science(tm), including, if I remember correctly, something beautiful involving lots of ping-pong balls taking flight.
H: you do realize, anna, that you cobbled that scene together in your own head, right? it's his driver who gets impaled. And it's through the chest, if memory serves. A: Oh bah.

Fire (1996)
H: i'm out.
A: Oh, sweetheart, I should really sit you down and make you watch this one sometime :)! It's the first of a triptych of films by Indian director Deepha Mehta (Earth and Water being the other two, more historio-political, installments) and tells the story of a woman in a traditional Indian family who falls in love with her brother-in-law's new wife. It's a good messy family drama with, ultimately, a fairly happy ending. 
H: oh, i've heard of it. i've just never watched it.

Murphy's Romance (1985)
H: a romantic comedy from before the days when "romcom" had become one of the worst slurs in film reviewing. A: And at the end of that brief, sweet-sweet era in which gutsy women characters (in this case a woman who's trying to make it on her own with her teenage son after walking out on an unhappy marriage) could win the man without losing the independence that made them great characters to begin with. Oh whither the day?
H: in all fairness, she hasn't "walked out" -- there has been a divorce. it isn't like she's hiding out from "Bad Husband (tm)." A: Hehe. True, I was mostly remembering how he showed up later wanting to hang around and patch things up. The ex-who-would-not-leave...

French Kiss (1995)
A: There's sunshine, I remember that, and cheese. I'm leaving the rest to Hanna.
H: this isn't a very "hot" movie. yes, there are some lengthy walks in the countryside of the south of france where our two protagonists -- kevin kline and meg ryan -- do look very warm, but that's about it. no slogging across deserts; no thirst-defying treks. but it is a very sweet, very funny romantic comedy -- absolutely perfect for a disgustingly hot evening in the real world when you just about have enough energy to get brie, crackers, and a cold beer (or glass of wine, if that's your preference) and lie down in front of the tv with a fan blowing on your head. oh, and did i mention there's a kick-ass soundtrack? and that kevin kline has a french accent? and a black leather jacket? now i have. :)

American Graffiti (1973)
H: god, i love this movie. i really should have been more suspicious of my last ex when i realised she didn't care for it all that much. this should have been a clue. a lot of the people who started out in this movie now own large chunks of hollywood. really, very large chunks. you get to watch george lucas indulge his antique car fetish; his thing with the '50s (which he doesn't try to indemnify or make into a harmless place and time (entirely)); and his fascination with growing up, something i'm not entirely convinced he's ever done which probably makes him a very happy, contented person.
A: It's Wolfman Jack, really. Hallie Flanagan, one-time director of the Federal Theater Project during the great depression once said "The power of radio is not that it speaks to millions, but that it speaks intimately and privately to each one of those millions." Somehow, Lucas makes that point through film, which really deserves a gold star.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
H: everyone in this movie is hot, almost 99.99% of the time. if there's a frame where richard dreyfus isn't sweating, i can't remember where it is. A: Maybe they filmed in Texas in August?

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
A: This is a hard, hard movie to watch, but absolutely breathtaking in its brutality and (yes) hopefulness, I think. Hopefulness that despite all the overwhelming evil in the world there will be people -- often unexpected people -- who continue to perform small and courageous acts of kindness, justice, and bravery. "Heat" in this context could, I guess, stand for both the intensity of the situation and the burning passion of those survivors who carry on.
H: um. yes. that. go with that.

Hellboy (2004)
A: I'd say it was wrong of us to pack the list with two del Toro films, but really, can't have too much of a good thing and aside from the unmistakable stylistic markers, it really is a world away from Pan's Labyrinth in tone, though I suspect the same underlying fairytale morality underlies both films. Anyway, how could we possibly skip a film that involves a character who's a demon from hell and a young woman with a talent for bursting into flames?
H: and the cats. don't forget the cats. and john hurt. oh! and the seriously creepy clockwork bad guy. can't forget him.

Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)
H: god bless this strange little remake. if i hadn't gone to see it -- in the theatre, no less -- then when christopher eccleston was announced as the 9th doctor, i wouldn't have been able to say: "wait -- but wasn't he the bad guy in gone in 60 seconds?" and thought: "oh my god we are so screwed." and then have to eat both words and thoughts within, oh, approximately, 15 seconds of him showing up on screen in "rose." anyway, the point here is not to hymn the wonders of christopher eccleston as doctor who (although that is always fun!) but if you're in the mood for cheap one-liners, great cars and some unexpectedly good acting -- mostly from eccleston, giovanni ribisi, vinnie jones, and angelina jolie ("hello, ladies---") -- see this. it is hot -- it's so-cal in the summer time: how much hotter do you want? -- and there's also timothy olyphant playing a gleefully numbskulled cop which, after watching him play an entirely ungleeful law enforcement man in deadwood is worth watching the movie for all on its own. there's also a kick-ass soundtrack ("flower," by moby; "too sick to pray," a3, and "painted on my heart," by the cult top the list, definitely) and more leather than you know what to do with. oh, and cars. did i mention the cars? this movie cemented my love affair with mustangs and the shelby. god bless eleanor. :)
A: I'm out on this one...Hanna hasn't caught up with me on my delinquency yet!

Apocalypse Now (1979)
H: i'm out.
A: I'm in, mostly because of Martin Sheen whom I will follow to the ends of the earth in necessary (oh, President Bartlet, I do miss you!) and also because I associate Heart of Darkness with this incredible history of the Belgian Congo I read in undergrad, by Adam Hochshield (Leopold's Ghost) and the two together pushed me to finally watch this movie -- which is basically a remake of Conrad's novel set in Vietnam. With the heat and the subtropical humidity and the sick, twisted imperialism.
H: well, i'm only "out" because vietnam films make me uneasy. what i know about apocalypse i know from film documentaries and jarhead which is deeply disturbing.

Predator (1987)
H: as far as atmosphere goes, note-perfect stifling, hot, and sweaty. about as macho as a movie can reasonably get without knotting itself up so tightly it can't move. i haven't seen rambo which i suspect might out-testosterone this. but this movie also has one of the all-time great, classic, world-beating creatures. who the hell puts together a sci-fi action thriller where you can't see the monster for 3/4 of the movie?! john mctiernan and stan winston. of course, they also incidentally created a franchise with a 20+ year span, but we can't hold them responsible for the second avp abortion. (and i use the word "abortion" advisedly. yuerrgh.) also, this movie falls under my previously mentioned movie rule -- the key moment here is, i think, between, bizarrely enough, schwartzenegger as dutch, the nearly-mindlessly tough commanding officer and bill duke as mac, whose sidekick blain has been killed in an encounter with the predator. dutch, trying to make mac feel better, says of blain: "he was a good soldier." mac pauses for a minute, thinks, looks up at dutch, and says, "he was my friend." A: I remember lots of jungle and rain and cool hunting sequences.

The Painted Veil (2006)
H: out.
A: It's a curious film, adapted from a 1925 novel by English author W. Somerset Maugham. It's a story about an abusive, desperate marriage (adultery on her side, autocratic control on his) between an English debutant (Naomi Watts) and a doctor (Edward Norton) who takes his wife to a remote part of China where they encounter a cholera outbreak and are forced to come to terms with the expectations each of them brought into their hasty marriage. Toby Jones and Liev Schreiber do solid turns as secondary characters, and there is a wonderful cameo appearance by Diana Rigg, who plays a mother superior at a mission school.

probably more well-balanced than the master. maybe.

and since john simm did, to my mind, such a fantastic job as the master -- particularly in end of time -- and more than made good any doubts i had about his ability to walk in the footsteps of roger delgado and anthony ainley, anna and i decided to check out the other series we knew him to have been in, a time-travelling police procedural called life on mars.

i know there's a u.s. remake of this starring, i think, harvey keitel. which only goes to show that american networks will rip anything and convert it to a u.s. cast to try and make ratings. which is sad, really, when you think about it, because then a lot of people miss the really good original versions of shows like cracker. (really. if you've only seen the u.s. remake -- just -- forgive yourself and then go watch the robbie coltrane original.)

so, yes, anyway, john simm, life on mars:

[

"the doctor. doctor. fun." (spoilers a-plenty!)

honestly, i think you could probably get him for false advertising with that opening line. the first, say, 5-10 minutes of waters of mars are, indeed, faintly punch-drunk fun as we've come to expect from the last 3 seasons of david tennant's work as the doctor. i would have said that he's a little tired but whether it's just outright exhaustion -- consider his last two years, really! -- or he's ready to be done with dw, i can't say. if he is tired of the part, he's doing a better job hiding it than, say, tom baker, whose last few episodes were almost totally ruined by his absolutely self-evident bad attitude.

as i say, the first minutes of the episode are fairly typical of doctor who as it has been -- and then things start to go odd. the "aliens" -- in this case, an infection transmitted via water which takes over human hosts -- are great; i really liked their look, their sound, their otherness was nice in a series which tends very much to depend upon aliens that are basically humans with funny heads. okay, yes, these were still humans with funny mouths, but i liked them, all right?

i should note, too, that whoever directed and/or decided on the photography/cinematography for this episode loves danny boyle. i tried to find youtube clips to illustrate my point but youtube failed me. if i feel technically ept after getting some work done later, i may attempt to upload my own cut scenes. we'll see. anyway, the opening is pure sunshine and the infection of roman is 100% 28 days later. not that either of these are bad things; it was just funny. there's a lot of homage going on in this episode, to other genre films (the above-mentioned danny boyle, not to mention 30 days of night, and, though i hate to admit even having seen it, possible shades of john carpenter's absolutely egregious ghosts of mars?) and to old episodes in the series right up to the penultimate dedication to the episode to veteran doctor who producer and writer, barry letts, who died in 2009.

i don't think letts would ever have written an episode like mars, though; maybe he wanted to, i don't know. but mars quickly changes from being a fairly straightforward "locked room murder mystery" to being something rather darker. david tennant, as one of my friends commented, does some quality scenery-chewing in the last third, but caps it off with some terrifying moments as the doctor decides that, instead of being the final survivor of the time wars, he is the winner. as he says himself, the laws of time are now his to adminster and the final decision is his.

this is not a good thing.

in fact, this is deeply fucking disturbing. watching the doctor go off the deep end is -- awful. i've been a doctor who fan for almost as long as i can remember; my first episode was the robots of death -- a classic tom baker -- and, if i could have gotten behind the couch to watch it, i would have adopted that venerable position for the younger dw fan set. as it was, i was too terrified to move, but couldn't wait for the next episode. doctor who was my introduction to recreational adrenalin spikes.

lord only knows, the dw universe has been subject to more circular logic, chronic hystereses (full points if you recognize what episode that's from), internal contradictions, outright lies, and 'well, yeah, it worked that way last week but this week---'s than most shows. despite all this, there have been some constants: the companion will always ignore the doctor's instructions to "stay right here"; the tardis door can only be opened by the doctor or a companion (this wasn't always the case; early seasons were slightly different); the daleks always say "exterminate!"; cyberman are awkward to the point of foolishness; the sonic screwdriver solves all problems; and so forth.

one of these constants has, oddly for a character who changes so damn much and can (see colin baker's regeneration) be totally unpredictable bordering on the outright psychotic, been the doctor. there are rules; time travel and responsibilities as a time lord (last thereof or not) require certain responsibilities; he insists on them. watching him break them is, therefore, really worrying! watching him glory in breaking them is worse. this is what the master does; this is what he's there for; this is not what the doctor does because the doctor has to be, to some extent, reliable. one way or another, he is the rules. his insistence over the last 4 seasons that the proper chronology of events not be disturbed in even the smallest way is pushed aside in two or three scenes at the end of mars and, god bless david tennant, he makes it work. i can't say i didn't want to grab the doctor and shake him hard, but it worked. (and lindsay duncan did a fantastic job of standing up to his scenery-chewing. her last scenes are wonderful. she tells him off in a way donna would be proud of.)

and, i have to say, david tennant has done a marvellous job at putting the doctor through some of the cruellest things he has ever done (and i say this as someone who cried at the end of earthshock -- which is watchable on netflix insty for those of you who have that and haven't seen the episode) and not making it either cringe-makingly melodramatic or turning the doctor into an outright villain. donna's return to earth in "journey's end" and the death of captain brooke in mars are two of the nastiest things the doctor has done. i'll put them up against adric and sara kingdom any day of the week. the darkness is welcome, but we're verging into some truly nasty territory at the end of mars and i kind of hate to think what the wake-up call is going to be.

but i'll be able to comment on that later in the week -- or possibly early next week -- because the pbs stations around me are all pledge-breaking like little fundraising bunnies and, with no masterpiece theatre to watch or tape, i'm going to ignore the oscars tonight and watch hunger and the end of time. we'll see how that goes.

"don't ever link those two things again..." (2 of 4)

a quick review from last week saturday: in the spirit of "don't complain about something if you're not prepared to do it better," i noticed over the past couple of weeks two lists -- one from wired and one from a blog i know not of called ink-stained amazon which i have to say is beautiful to look at it -- that both purport to be 'essential lists' of 'geek culture' quotes.

ahem.

okay, so the wired list starts off with monty python and the holy grail and the amazon list includes the sarah jane adventures -- but i'm still not wildly impressed with either one.

i figured i could do better.

then i thought about it and realised that, on my own, i didn't have the time to do better so i roped in my ever-patient girlfriend to help me do better. :)

first off, a couple of notes:

1. this is for fun. if you're not amused, go read something else. i won't be offended, promise. that being said, suggestions and additions (politely phrased!) are welcome in the comments. but keep in mind this is installation 1 of 4! not everything will fit in here.

2. these are probably mostly going to be dredged out of my memory, anna's memory, imdb, or official show/movie sites. inaccuracy is, therefore, almost inevitable. not to mention repetition of shows or characters. if this annoys you-- well, make your own list. :)

3. i'm not aiming for some kind of "worst to best" or "best to worst" list. they're here because the two people making the list think they're fun or because one of us was able to strong-arm the other into including them. brief context is provided where anna or i thought it was necessary.

5. i am aiming for 4 posts of 25 quotes each over the next 4 weeks. tune in each friday/saturday for your new installment! and here's the link to the first post way back there last week saturday. or sunday. or something.

okay, and that being said...

1. Evelyn Carnahan: "I -- am a librarian!" The Mummy.

2. Stormtrooper: "Look, sir -- droids!" Star Wars: A New Hope. [and a freebie 'cause i always think of it now when i have to find the sw movies by number -- Eddie Izzard [re the Lucasian number scheme]: "He's fucking with us numerically, you realise that, right? 'Kids, count to 10!' '4 5 6, 1 2 3, -- uh --'" Circle.]

3. Luke Smith: "I think I may have made a social blunder. I showed them how to destroy the world." The Sarah Jane Adventures, "Revenge of the Slitheen."

4. The Doctor: "Because I'm very clever." , "Midnight."

5. Dutch [to the Predator]: "You are one ugly mother-fu---" Predator.

6. Ellen Ripley: "This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off." ALIEN.

7. Red Queen: "You're all going to die down here." Resident Evil.

8. Mercedes [to Captain Vidal about his infant son]: "No. He won't even know your name." Pan's Labyrinth.

9. Captain Jack Sparrow [to Kraken]: "'Ello, beastie." Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

10. Eddie Izzard [re: the British Empire]: "We ruled the world through the cunning use of flags." Dress to Kill.

11. John McClane: "Yippee-kay-yay, motherfucker." DieHard.

12. Malcolm Reynolds: "Were there monkeys, Kaylee? Space monkeys?" Firefly, sorry, forgot which episode. second or third, i feel...?

13. Chancellor Palpatine: "The Sith had many powers, some considered to be unnatural." Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

14. Neo: "Whoa." The Matrix.

15. The Doctor [immediately prior to regenerating]: "The end has come -- but the moment has been prepared for." Doctor Who, "Logopolis."

16. Jozef Kastan: "You seriously drink this stuff? What is it -- like, non-fat, vegan, soy blood?" Moonlight, no idea which episode.

17. River Tam: "I can kill you with my brain." Firefly, no idea which episode. whoops.

18. James Bond [when asked how he would like his drink prepared]: "Do I look like I give a damn?" Casino Royale.

19. Alice [to the White Queen computer about the Red Queen]: "I knew your sister. She was a homicidal bitch." Resident Evil: Extinction.

20. Capa: "When a stellar bomb is triggered, very little will happen at first -- and then a spark will pop into existence and it will hang for an instant, hovering in space, and then it will split into two, and those will split again, and again, and again... detonation beyond all imagining - the big bang on a small scale. - a new star born out of a dying one... I think it will be beautiful. No, I'm not scared." Sunshine.

21. Captain John Hart: "Did I mention I'm armed?" Torchwood, "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang."

22. The Doctor [on Rose pointing out that he sounds North of England]: "Lots of planets have a north!" Doctor Who, "Rose."

23. Riddick: "Anybody not ready for this?" Pitch Black.

24. Rygel: "I am Rygel the XVIth, dominar of over six billion people -- I don't have to talk to you!" Farscape, no idea which episode. something in the first season, i feel.

25. Buffy Summers: "You forgot about dawn. It's in about six hours, idiot." Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Welcome to the Hellmouth."

"if mine's mines, what's yours?"

nanowrimo and new thesis chapters between them leave little time for blogging, but i did notice on one of my news feeds from england the other day that timothy bateson has died. while i realise that he was a well-respected and immensely skillful character actor with a really really really long resume with all sorts of roles in there, the first thing i thought was, "oh, binro died." and this is why:

this scene comes in about -- oh, three-quarters of the way through an episode of doctor who called the ribos operation which is the first episode in a 6-episode arc called the key to time which made up the entirety of one of tom baker season. the young man is named unstoffe; he's a conman, working with a partner named garron, and binro has been kind enough to hide him from searching guards.

the key to time arc is great doctor who, by the way; if you're looking for an intro to the original series, you could do way worse. tom baker is on top of his game; he has great companions in romanadvoratnalundar, played with great spirit by mary tamm, and k9; and the stories are just linked enough to make a decent over-arching story without being totally driven by a single element. and there's two of my favorite episodes of all time -- stones of blood and the power of kroll -- and an episode written by douglas adams, the pirate planet.

so in memory of timothy bateson and of an family friend who also died in the last week.

a sort of fly-by post...

taking a brief blogging break between writing blog post -- hah! -- for ebooks blog and working on the brandy-new context chapter for the thesis; i promised two highly intelligent professors that i could summarize approximately 200 years of irish history in something under 20-25 pages. hm. perhaps this was not a good idea? too late now!

but i have "in a nutshell" thoughts about a few recently watched/read things that i thought i'd toss up here for your amusement.

1. terry pratchett, unseen academicals. i posted a review of this earlier from the tor.com blog and i'm pleased to support pretty much everything that ms. jericho wrote. academicals is awesome. while i agree wholeheartedly with the idea that pratchett is, at his best, a whip-smart social commentator, i really don't think this is the best way to read his books. in fact, i think it might rank with the worst ways to read them -- right up there with trying to read them back-to-front or through a reversing mirror. going into a discworld novel looking for comment on earthly events is really not a good idea. the best discworld novels -- jingo, maskerade, the truth, thief of time -- are so clever and slick at making their points that, honestly, it's just better to take a deep breath, get some tea, and enjoy the lunacy. academicals is like that, too; the ending is great -- pratchett back in his proper form again after the somewhat leaden thud! and overly polemical monstrous regiment which is fun until you start to realise you've been hit over the head with the same damn joke 15 times and you're starting to get sore. my only piece of advice with academicals is keep your eye on nutt, glenda, and the patrician. keeping your eye on the patrician is always good advice, by the way. :)

2. iron man. i had a whole extra-ranty-goodness post all ready to go about the waste of space iron man turned out to be...and i just don't have the heart to go through with it. it wasn't that bad -- but it wasn't that good, either. i was thinking about it while walking to class the other day and i figure they could have done the film an immeasurable amount of good by doing a couple of simple things:

1. fire gwyneth paltrow. the woman is a black hole and not in a fun way. she comes on screen -- and the scene turns up its toes and dies because it knows nothing is going to happen. at all. ever.
2. give jeff bridges more to do. the man can be brilliant, but you need to give him something to work with
3. decide who your villain is.
4. oh, and please don't nick scenes directly from anime series (i'm thinking of vision of escaflowne here) 'cause, y'know, some of us have seen them.

3. the cave. i got this for halloween 'cause...well, i could. and it took me a minute to remember why on earth i thought it was a good idea -- it's because cole hauser is in it. and, on the whole, it wasn't a bad flick. predictable -- as all 'b' grade horror movies are -- but fun. the monster was -- okay. too obviously influenced by the alien in its first scenes but, on the whole, how is a creature designer going to step out from under that as a shadow? and the designer did go on to do the underworld films and those are really quite nice, so we'll forgive a momentary early slip. ;)

okay, back to describing the central importance of the rising of the united irishmen in 1798 to the later generations of irish republican nationalists. i'm considering setting up a macro to automatically fill in "Irish Republican nationalists" because, wow, am i tired of typing it!

"i'm out of it for a little while and everyone gets delusions..."

okay, i really do have zero (0) time to be blogging this week because i have a draft of a thesis section due friday and the little fucker is just refusing to sit down and co-operate and be written.

but.

during my daily sifting of rss feeds and websites that i look at every morning, i caught this blogger's rant about the l.a. times and san diego comic con. and i thought, "gosh. what the hell can the l.a. times have done that's so bad? and comic con? aren't they pretty much niftyness on a stick?"

(and i have to admit i also thought, "wow, it's a bad week to be a newspaper ending in the word 'times', because the london times got forced to out some poor blogger from the lancashire police force and the judge in the case is affected with loony virus." possibly more deadly than h1n1. there's also a really good reaction to the case verdict back there at that link you just passed.)

anyway. not the point. ahem.

i clicked into the link, read it, and thought things, well, things that i won't write here because they are very profane and, as the internets might describe it, "nsfw." mostly i thought, "what the fuck? aren't we all over this now, children? why, oh, why are we going back to the dark days of the late '80s? i thought we were all over this 'girls only like scifi with hot guys in it' crap. aren't we? c'mon, guys -- aren't we?"

and so, because i like io9.com -- unlike ign.com which, after the absolutely insane contest they chose to co-sponsor can just "bite my shiny metal ass" -- i clicked into the link of their article.

after a few minutes spent in taking the glory of the quotes they chose to excerpt from the times, i swallowed about half my cup of coffee, hung grimly on to the second half, and clicked into the primary source as it were.

let me say first off that anywhere there are squealing twilight fans, i will not be. i haven't read the books; i haven't seen the movies; i plan to remedy neither of those defects. the fans scare me, honestly, and i feel i've heard and read quite enough about them; i'm not a ya librarian; and i have a long reading/viewing list already (which does include true blood, because it was recommended to me). even michael sheen, wonderful though he is, will not bring me to watch the new twilight movie.

there are 23 pages of this rubbish starting off with a long paragraph about all the male celebrities currently considered attractive who may -- or may not -- be present. it's set up like a slideshow: publicity photos -- for the most part -- captioned with little snippets by bloggers from sites like zap2it.com, and latimes.com. and just for the record, i have no desire to do jake gyllenhaal's laundry. none. at all. i assume he can either hire someone or buy a washing machine.

take, for example, this representative piece of text illustrating a still from the upcoming film version of the time-traveller's wife:

"Picture the wonderful sappiness of "The Notebook," replace Ryan Gosling with equally appealing Eric Bana, and inject a different hapless conflict to keep him from Rachel McAdams. In this case, Bana's character's got a gene that causes him to leap through time without the wife. Oh yes, bring on the bittersweet tears."

thank you for informing me neatly and succinctly that i should avoid this movie at all costs. when's 9 coming out again?

while i am pleased to see that alex o'loughlin found work post-moonlight and that sounds like a movie i will see, this

"What more do you need than the hunkiest Aussie to ever play the undead ... alive and in the flesh? And as long as he uses his real accent, he can talk all about this murder mystery set in Antarctica. Male lead Gabriel Macht isn't too shabby either."

really just doesn't sell it for me and i feel bad for o'loughlin being described in these terms. he's better than that and the review reduces him to his physique, much as the snippet on prince of persia and the one on benicio del toro in the wolfman reduces gyllenhaal and del toro to theirs. a shame in all cases since all three men deserve better.

i really got bogged down around slide 10 or so after i was told that the only reason i would go to see tim burton's new alice in wonderland was because johnny depp was in it. lovely photo to illustrate a totally moronic point. the photos which don't actually have the caption text suggesting the male actor in question will be mobbed like the beatles by female fans are for children's movies -- where the wild things are, toy story 3 -- which suggest that women will be interested in these either because they can take their kids or because they're fluffy, happy fun; or they're looking for a chicklit/flick-style experience with a witches of eastwick adaptation that sounds like charmed-redux. (if you miss charmed, go rent the dvds. better yet, watch early buffy. better yet, watch firefly, farscape, or torchwood. don't thank me; it's all part of the service.)

did it ever occur to anyone writing this rubbish to check with an actual female person who was actually going to the con and ask why she -- or they! find a group! make some friends! -- were actually going? i mean, i'm sure people -- of all genders, sexes, or personal convictions -- show up because jake gyllenhaal is hot or alex o'loughlin has a cute accent, but i'm equally sure that more people show up because they want to hear about the shows or the movies or the books or the comics. that being, y'know, the point of the thing.

the con didn't sell out because brad pitt might show up to push a quentin tarantino movie.

clearing out the irritations of a long day...

...by blogging. therapeutic, right? far better than plotting how to do damage to the town office of the miniscule town i went to high school in. demands for money should be both carefully timed and, ideally, not phrased as though the recipient is a blithering idiot and this one was neither of those things.

anyway, the amusing thing about this article, "in defense of distraction" by sam anderson is that i did have to follow the advice he gives in the first paragraph. i had, in fact, forgotten a brief but important email i had to send to a friend so i went and did it and then returned to read the rest of the article with, it has to be said, two interruptions to deal with other emails. which is fair, i think. i don't think the article covers anything particularly groundbreaking in terms of internet distraction -- or other kinds of distraction, for that matter -- but mr. anderson writes well and he makes some interesting points although i'm not sure if his conclusion is that great; it seems kind of like a cop-out to "the internet generation is just different. woooo." and it works as an interesting counterpoint to the bishop of paisley's outburst against twitter.

i sent jeremy clarkson's article about the honda insight to my mother because she and my father are talking about getting a new car. not that i seriously think they will buy a hybrid -- and if nothing else, the insight is far too low to work on our gravel road without getting the bottom torn out of it regularly -- but because clarkson writes excellent snark, describing the car as "Biblically terrible" at one point. this is quality snarking, guys.

i've watched the trailer for the road a couple of times now in the hopes that i will become more convinced. but it just isn't happening. the book is awesome; i read it in one sitting last summer after wandering across it in the bpl's immensely date-flexible "new fiction" section and thinking, "what the hell." great stuff -- really; but you should probably wait for a nice cheerful sunny day before you read it, make sure you have a kitten (or puppy, if your tastes swing that way) close to hand, and maybe some alcohol to go with it because it is not cheerful. not even a little bit. the closest thing to cheer that you can really find in it is that not quite everyone dies. although this is a pretty good thing, i have to say. anyway, just in case you haven't seen this video nineteen times already, i'm putting it here, too, just so i can consider it again later:



i was still tired enough before work this morning that, having arrived about half an hour early as usual (it's either that or be ten minutes late), when i wandered over to the guardian website to check out the uk headlines, the picture of john barrowman leading this article completely baffled me for a minute. now of course i'm linking the article because john barrowman is awesome and i'm marking time 'til torchwood season 3 but i also don't really dare check out much of the text of the article due to fear of spoilers. still, i don't doubt that any re-staging of la cage aux folles will be improved by his presence!

lastly, a dailyom post from a month or so back that i find helpful.

"people are dead."

so i should probably preface this brief five-cent review of wolverine by saying that my total experience of x-men can be summed up as follows: x-men, x2, x3. i regret x3 -- i regret it deeply. i hope someday to meet bryan singer so i can hit him with a large fish and make him regret that idiotic superman thing he dumped x3 for.

but i digress.

needless to say, i was deeply unthrilled with x3 and probably the only thing that would've gotten me to go back to another x-men movie was hugh jackman. and look how things just happened to work out!

that said, i thought wolverine was an excellent way to spend two hours. (by the way, there are very minor spoilers below; if you are absolutely and totally allergic, go and see the movie then come back and read this.)

i have no idea how well or badly the movie fits into the graphic novel/comic canon -- i can't say i have the time right now to go and find out although i am somewhat curious. the two fanboys sitting next to me and anna who were debating the logic of film vs. print as the end credits rolled have something to do with this -- mostly, i would just like to know that they were as foolish as they sounded. 

the teasers/trailers did their usual job of being just misleading enough that i had to readjust my ideas of who was going to be a main character and who was cannon fodder quite quickly within, say, the first 20-30 minutes of the film. loved the opening montage, though; nice way to condense time and establish relationship at the same time. 

liev schreiber definitely stepped up to the plate as an action hero. i was kind of baffled about his casting when i first heard about it; i seem to remember thinking it was a joke for a bit. but he managed to come across as creepy, unstable, almost charming, and threatening all at once. the coat helped. the nails just looked painful.

gambit could've had more screen-time for my money; i realise that wolverine has about as much use for sidekicks as he does for fluffy bunnies, but still. his tricks were really spiffy to watch and he was quite cute; i think he might be the only one of the boys from the covenant who i've ever seen in anything else!

the end fight sequence was very impressive -- not spoilering it for the sake of friends who have yet to see it but very nice. i'm even willing to let them get away with the rip of phantom menace. ;) (and i know, i know -- george lucas ripped it off from about nine other people before him.)

there are the usual sort of gaps: the girlfriend was a less than inspirational. she was very pretty but i can't say i felt very invested in her. as always, it's interesting to see the steps that go into building the character you already know: here's where he picks up the jacket, there's that phrase, there's the dogtags, etc., etc. i have to say, it was deeply alarming to realise while walking towards coffee after the movie that the actor playing stryker had looked familiar because he was the lead vampire from 30 days of night. i kept looking at him and thinking, "but there's something wrong with his mouth..." 

and yes, there was -- it should have had fangs in it.

lists and yet more lists---

okay, so i'm not quite sure what is wrong with this list, but i know that something is: robert pattinson named hottest movie vampire.

it might have something to do with this editorial on twilight that i found on the guardian.co.uk a couple of days ago. i've been mulling it over since then but i'm still not entirely sure i understand the author's point: she wants to celebrate that she felt free to go see a movie with young men in it? she approves of said young men? she's sad other people didn't go see said film?

in the interest of full disclosure, i should say that i have neither read nor seen twilight although i've been amused and baffled by the furore surrounding both. i suppose if i understood exactly why people went crazy either for or against somewhere i'd own my own publishing house or be head of collections development somewhere by now!