"don't ever link those two things again..." (4 of 4) - finally!

a quick review from...well, the last time this was on a 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, and the second, and the third.

okay, and that being said...

1. The Doctor: "Allons-y!" Pretty much any episode of the new series with David Tennant (we'll miss you, Mr. Tennant, sir.)

2. Gareth Blackstock: "I am Gareth Blackstock; I am seriously unpleasant!" Chef!, can't remember which episode. Something in Season 1, I feel.


3. The Player [to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern]: "Until next time." Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.


4.  Leela [to someone attempting, foolishly, to grab her]: "Touch me again and I'll fillet you." Doctor Who, "The Sunmakers."


5. Lola: "Burgundy. Dear God, tell me I've not inspired something burgundy." Kinky Boots.


6. Cat: "I'm lookin' nice. My shadow's lookin' nice. We're a great team!" Red Dwarf, again, something in the first season.


7. Spongebob: "I came over to see if you wanted to go jellyfishing, but I can see you're busy having an episode." Spongebob Squarepants, something in the first season...er. I can't admit to remembering the name of this episode but nothing from Chef! or Red Dwarf -- I just can't!

8. Han Solo: "Hey -- it's me." Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.


9. Jared Grace: "I was reading in a footlocker!" The Spiderwick Chronicles.


10. Sarah Connor: "Do I look like the mother of the future? I can't even balance my checkbook!" Terminator.


11. Danny Archuleta: "It has not been a nice day!" Predator 2.


12. Ianto Jones: "Because I know everything. Also, it's written on the bottom of the screen there." Torchwood and I am ashamed to say, but I have no idea which episode it's from. ... Second season? Maybe? Oh, help.


13. Son of Mine: "He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing - the fury of the Time Lord - and then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he had run away from us and hidden. He was being kind." Doctor Who, "Family of Blood."


14. Sarah Jane Smith: "There are two types of people in the world. There's people who panic -- and then there's us. Got it?" The Sarah Jane Adventures, "Invasion of the Bane."

15. Eddie Izzard: "I have penis nonchalance, really." Live at Wembley.


16. Sam Winchester: "You're...afraid of flying?" Dean Winchester: "Why do you think I drive everywhere!" Supernatural, "Phantom Traveler."


17. Willy Wonka: "Everything in this room is edible. Even I'm edible. But that, children, is called cannibalism and is frowned upon in most societies." Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


18. Dr. Frank N. Furter: "But isn't it nice!" The Rocky Horror Picture Show.


19. Willow Rosenberg: "The library. Y'know -- where the books live?" Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Welcome to the Hellmouth."


20. Reverend H.W. Smith: "This is God's purpose, but not knowing the purpose is my portion of suffering." Doc Cochran: "If this is His will, He is a son of a bitch." Deadwood. Sometime around the end of the first season.


21. Carmen Ghia: "May I take your hats? And your swastikas?" The Producers.


22. Protagonist: "My name? Well, if you knew that, you'd be as smart as---" Layer Cake.


23. Nina Conti: "That's a sweet voice on a monkey but with breasts it's bloody sinister."


24. Arthur Burns: "You shot me, Charlie. What're you gonna do now?" The Proposition.



25. Norman: "What about me?!" The Dresser.


And I know I strayed a bit from my original self-issued mandate with 22, 24, and 25. 


But...sue me, really. :)


They're all amazing movies. If you haven't seen them -- why the hell are you still sitting here reading this? You have watching to do!

"it's attack of the one-eyed squiddy things!"

i've gotten behind on prepping posts to go up through the week, so this week and, probably, next week are going to be a bit catch-as-catch-can. i'm hoping to have something exciting and meaningful to post about the new hunger movie that just arrived in the post from netflix, but i don't have the strength to deal with ira hunger strikers tonight, so that's not going to be happening.

instead, i offer up some thoughts about the end of the second season of the sarah jane adventures which anna and i watched last night after putting it off for an ungodly amount of time due to the presence in the second to last episode of one of the nastiest villains -- named the trickster -- the series has produced.
it says a lot that, for most of the first and second series, i have total faith that sarah jane can handle just about anything. she's on top of pretty much anything the who universe can throw at her -- and as soon as this guy shows up, i'm praying silently for the doctor to show up and save the day so i will never have to see the trickster and his creepy little sidekick ever ever again.

the trickster has a whole bunch of nasty, well, tricks up his sleeve, but the most unpleasant is his habit of erasing people from time. he's rather like a more proactive version of the blink angels -- with a little handyman, the graske there on the left, to run around and find victims for him. and he looks like that dude down there from pan's labyrinth. which is not okay with me. eyes should be visible at all times. not in palms of hands or hidden behind veils of skin. or whatever it is the trickster has going.

anyway, the second season of sarah jane is pretty kickass. one of our original team members leaves which is very sad, but the new girl, rani, is very awesome. clyde is stepping up in a big way and i'm very glad that he's stayed on as a regular character. luke, too, is turning out to be a great kind of lesser ianto -- i also wish the doctor would show up to meet him. i think they'd probably get on like a house on fire.

if the show has a fault, it's that it tends to get a tad didactic. each show has a message. the quickwitted viewer can pretty much figure it out in the first ten to fifteen minutes and it's never a bad message -- trust yourself; listen to people who love you -- but sometimes it gets a bit heavyhanded. there was an episode with clyde and his father -- heretofore an absent character -- this season which just got to be quite leaden with moral heartiness.

still, for all that, there's often a lesser idea behind the "I learned something today..." lesson that's valuable, too. the episode with clyde, for example, featured his hitherto absentee father turning up and suddenly deciding that he wants clyde's attention and respect -- and manages to inveigle his way into sarah jane's attic and steal a bit of alien tech to do it. this doesn't end well, but it doesn't end awfully either -- it could have been worse. and inside the "your parents love you no matter what" idea was also the "you can rely on yourself, too" idea. it didn't get the premiere place in the show, but it was there.

and, on the whole, the show is a blast to watch. it's fun; it's shiny; it's fast; there are some great villains -- in the sense of being campy fun; and there are some great villains -- in the sense of being quite frightening, too.

"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."

"don't ever link those two things again..." (1 of 4)

okay, so 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. i also tried to find links for character images that were from the episode/scene/moment where the quoted line was spoken. this isn't always possible but i'm fairly pleased with myself for getting as close as i did! fair warning: links may contain spoilers, particularly links to doctor who or torchwood episodes.

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!

okay, and that being said...

1. Tim Latimer [talking about the Doctor]: "He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and can see the turn of the universe...and... he's wonderful." Doctor Who, "The Family of Blood."

2. Captain Jack Harkness: "Torchwood: outside the government, beyond the police. Tracking down alien life on Earth, arming the human race against the future. The twenty-first century is when everything changes. And you gotta be ready." Torchwood, Season 1 opener on all episodes.

3. Brother Justin Crowe [talking about his upcoming radio broadcast]: "In a single coast-to-coast broadcast, I will speak to more souls than our Lord did in his entire lifetime. It's going to be breathtaking." Carnivale, "Ingram, TX."

4. Dominic Toretto: "I retract my previous statement." The Fast and the Furious.

5. Murtagh [in reference to a stone wall he and Eragon have run up against in their attempt to join the rebels]: "Tell me your vision looked something like this." Eragon.

6. The Guide: "Don't Panic." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

7. The Doctor: "Don't blink." Doctor Who, "Blink."

8. M [to James Bond as he almost says her real name]: "Finish that sentence and I'll have you killed." Casino Royale.

9. Captain Jack Sparrow [in reference to almost anything]: "Not good -- not good!" Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

10. Alice [before killing the monster that used to be her work partner and "husband"]: "I'm missing you already." Resident Evil.

11. Riddick: "If you can't keep up, don't step up. You'll only die." Chronicles of Riddick.

12. "I'm going to curl up in his sock drawer and sleep for days." MST3K riff in MST3K: The Movie: This Island Earth.

13. Dean Winchester: "Well, that's healthy." Supernatural, Pilot.

14. C-3PO: "Shutting up, sir." Star Wars: A New Hope.

15. Dr. Frank N. Furter: "What ever happened to Fay Wray? That delicate satin-draped frame...how it clung to her thigh as I started to cry... 'cause I wanted to be dressed just the same..." The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

16. Jim [wandering in an empty London]: "Hello! Hello -- hello! Hello!" 28 Days Later.

17. Temperance Brennan: "I don't know what that means." Bones, multiple episodes.

18. Plankton: "Well, goodbye, everyone. I'll remember you all in therapy!" Spongebob Squarepants, "The Algae is Always Greener."

19. Wesley Gibson [talking to Sloan who may, or may not, be trying to induct him into a secret brotherhood of assassins]: "So do you make sweaters or do you kill people?" Wanted.

20. Toshiko Sato: "Because you're breaking my heart." Torchwood, "Exit Wounds."

21. The Doctor: "Well, progress is a very flexible word. It can mean just about anything you want it to mean." Doctor Who, "The Power of Kroll."

22. Michael Corvin: "Are you fucking kidding me!" Underworld.

23. Mme. de Pompadour [talking to/about the Doctor]: "Such a lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now." Doctor Who, "The Girl in the Fireplace."

24. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker: "We're smarter than this!" "Apparently not." Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

25. Marvin the Paranoid Android [about life in general...]: "I have this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side..." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

"i may have made a social blunder. i showed them how to destroy the world."

a few passing thoughts for your sunday morning on the first episodes of the second season of the sarah jane adventures.

you will definitely need to have watched the first season to be au courant with events since the season opener doesn't even bother with a brief "detective exposition and sergeant plotpoint" sort of recap. (i did some desultory searching for a first season trailer to post here and had no luck; no time to search further! try the bbc america website if you're really keen.)

the adventures, for those of you not in the octopus-like grip of russell t. davies, is his third reboot of the doctor who series and the second successful spinoff -- torchwood being the other one. i can only say that if you're not watching torchwood you're missing something very special. but i say that a lot when it comes to doctor who-related things.

sarah jane herself -- the eponymous character of the adventures -- is an old-school companion; she travelled with the 3rd (jon pertwee) and 4th (tom baker) doctors back in the 1970s-1980s. she's one of the absolute all-time knock-down drag-out top ten best companions ever and they tried to give her her own show before in the mid-'80s with k9 and company:

K9 and Company - A Girls Best Friend (1)
Uploaded by DoctorBrownCoat. - Explore more science and tech videos.

that's the first nine minutes or so of the one episode it got. if you want the rest, it seems to be mostly present between google video/youtube and dailymotion. it isn't a bad way to spend an hour or so but you can pretty much see -- with doctor who at the time still going strong -- why the show didn't go too far. if nothing else, k9 was something of a sensitive point with fans; a lot of people -- including some of the crew of the show! -- hated him and wanted to see him thrown into the nearest collapsing star. presumably this is why, in the new adventures, k9 is barely present, being busily occupied repairing the damage done by a runaway physics experiment and only accessible when he spins past earth every few weeks. i hear rumours that he will get a spin-off of a spin-off of his own, based out of australia? but i think that might be too spin-off-y even for me.

regardless of all that, the new adventures is a blast. elisabeth sladen (if you watch the new who, you saw her in "school reunion") is clearly having one hell of a time playing sarah jane but with some of the doctor's best tricks up her sleeve (sonic lipstick!). her companions are three young teenagers: her adopted son luke, and two schoolfriends of his, clyde and maria. maria's dad, alan, also gets in on the show in the later episodes of the first season; his ex-wife and maria's mum, chrissie, has a disturbing habit of waltzing in at odd minutes and anna and i took to shouting at her to go away because she's just dreadful. but the first episodes of the second season seem to hint that perhaps, just perhaps, she will improve.

i thought that, with doctor who as the angst-fest of the millennium and featuring some remarkably angry, violent, and difficult episodes with torchwood not far behind in tormenting its fans by doing awful things to their favorite characters (russell, you and i still need to talk about that season 2 closer!), that the adventures would be more aimed directly at little kids -- originally doctor who's target audience! and it is noticeably gentler than the davies's other two series, but i can't say he pulls a lot of punches to gather in a younger audience. the first season features episodes where parents are possessed and try to harm their children; a rearrangement of the space-time continuum such that people are randomly plucked out of their proper time and forgotten by everyone except one or two people; and some gripping depictions of the consequences of childhood actions in later life. (not to mention a great guest star turn by phyllida law playing a woman suffering from the effects of age-related memory loss who has forgotten the importance of a piece of critical alien tech she has hidden among her jewelry.) while the adventures aren't, for example, doctor who's "turn left" or "midnight" or torchwood's "meat" or "countrycide," they're not dumbed down fare to make kids feel happy. some of this stuff would have scared me stiff as a child; i would've watched anyway, probably with my mouth hanging open, but the prospect of your parents being taken over and controlled by something you can't see and them coming after you? not okay!

and, while i couldn't find teaser trailers for either season, i did find the first section of the first episode, invasion of the bane from season one which may, if you're into this sort of thing, make your netflix queue longer by a few discs (the rest of bane, at least, also seems to be up on youtube in 9-10 minute chunks if you're into watching things that way):

study break!

or, more realistically, rewriting break. i went home last weekend and, as is my habit when i go home, i watched a lot of movies.

• night watch. okay, this one i didn't watch at home. but it's really good. my only problems with it were more technical than anything else -- it took me about the opening 7 minutes to wrestle my dvd player into the proper combination of russian audio and english subtitles without any additional commentary, "for the hard of hearing" indications, or anything else tricky. once that was done, however, the movie was totally worth it. loved the ending. we'll leave it at that.


• brotherhood of the wolf. watched this one in boston, too, and, wow, i wish i hadn't. what a waste of 2+ hours. the disc sleeve said something about it being "luminescently filmed" or words to that effect and, yeah, it sure was pretty. note to filmmakers: i'm pretty sure no-one in the 18th century would have volunteered for a fullbody wax by contemporary methods which is the only way those guys would have been as shiny as they were. it was about as historically accurate as a lump of cheese and as involving as dustbunnies. i originally rented it because i thought it might be about the same collection of werewolf legends and witchcraft trials in france that neil gaiman has written a couple of short stories about and that i have seen referenced elsewhere but no such luck. then i thought it might be a rather clever political allegory about power in france prior to the revolution -- but it wasn't. then i just hoped for a good beastie -- and there wasn't one. give it a miss, is my vote.


• my blueberry nights. great stuff -- good cast, good music, nicely balanced plot. i described it to someone as being like love, actually without quite as much comedy. it doesn't have quite the same setup of being layers of co-incidental interlocking stories -- it's more like a sequence of three or four stories told by one or two narrators, but it works along kind of the same lines. and it has a completely satisfying and very sweet ending.


• in bruges. nothing at all like love, actually. far more like sexy beast or layer cake. it felt a little like a stage play -- which i don't believe it ever was; there was a very small cast, the action took place in a fairly circumscribed area ("in fuckin' bruges?!" as one of the characters remarks regularly), and the characters are telling the story rather than the effects. it's actually a very quiet movie -- quite literally -- but i thought it packed a fairly intense emotional punch. oh, and be sure you watch the gag reel and the "fuckin' bruges" reel after you see the movie. the second one especially is hilarious.


• blow-dry. alan rickman, bill nighy, natasha richardson (rip), rachael griffith, rachel leigh hunt, josh hartnett. the latter with a yorkshire accent. okay, yes, they should have cast jamie bell but since they must at one point have hallucinated about getting an american audience for this, i can see their point and he does really well with the accent. there's a heavier story underlying the comedy in this, but the whole thing is very well-balanced and the wider story -- a u.k.-wide hairdressing competition finals being held in keighley in yorkshire -- is completely hilarious. some of the things done with hair in this movie are unbelievable.


• greenfingers. i'm not a huge clive owen fan, so i actually had rented this movie before and turned it off about ten minutes into it 'cause, frankly, he just kind of stands there and i didn't know what to do with it. the supporting cast, though, makes it worthwhile -- david kelly, paterson joseph, and helen mirren being the notables although the rest of the prisoners make a good showing, too. it's "based on a true story" about prisoners in an open-prison in england who took up gardening as part of their rehabilitation and ended up successfully competing in the major garden shows in england. it probably borders on the heartwarming so, fair warning.


• the sarah jane adventures. i was a little loath to try this since i remember the original attempt at the doctor who spin-off for sarah jane smith called k-9 and company back in 198....something or other. i actually have it on tape, more fanpoints to me! and -- it isn't that great. credit to liz sladen for making it work as well as it did, but k-9 was clearly having major technical issues and nobody else seemed to have put a lot of thought into it. but now, with the ground beautifully cleared for successful dw spin-offs by torchwood, i think maybe giving it another try was a very good idea. the first episode, "invasion of the bane," was very fast-moving, funny, sarah jane has gained a nice sharpness without losing any of her essential sense of humor and kindness, and her new "companions" will be, i think, good additions to the widened dw canon. oh, and everything is better when it's sonic as captain jack would, i'm sure, be pleased to know.