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Apr. 17th, 2016 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Neil Gaiman continues to touch my heart with his blog posts. In the latest one he writes about breaking down into uncontrollable sobs while discussing his friend Terry Prachett, who died recently, with documentary filmmaker, Charles Russell. Russell at the completion of the interview offers him a hug, which he accepts. Gaiman -- is my role model for blogging. He stays out of the fray, rarely complains, and is kind, always incredibly kind. He may well be my favorite fantasy writer. (And it helps that I enjoy his wife's music, which often feels more like performance art.)
2. According EW, they have made a book that I violently despised into a movie. (Pfft, we shall not mention it by name or speak of it no more, pfft). Oh well, it doesn't matter, since there are so many movies made at the moment and coming out that I can easily ignore it. There aren't many, just maybe a handful of books that I've come across in my lifetime that I've truly despised. So much so, I wanted to strangle the writer and all the poor deluded souls that loved the horrible nasty thing. I remember joking with fellow book club members back in the 1990s about American Psycho. We'd been tasked to read it for book club, only one person finished the book. The rest of us joked about how we wanted to grab the book from people on the subway and hit them over the head with it. We also discussed how far we each made it into the book, before we got fed up and decided to throw it across the room. (Which you really shouldn't do with a Kindle or e-reader). This was before there were e-books, smartphones, ipods, etc, and people actual read books and magazines on the subway, and everyone knew what they were reading. Now, people mainly play video games, listen to podcasts/music, or play with their smartphones. If they are reading, it's usually an e-book, and you just can't tell. Although, a few years ago, I did see a few people reading the book that replaced American Psycho on my evil books that must be destroyed list, and had to restrain myself from ripping the hard-cover from the women's hands and rapping her over the head with it. Evil book! Evil! You mustn't read!
I call this phenomenon - book rage, akin to road rage, except...well against someone reading a book that you hate.
Of course, I don't give in. I'm not a crazy person. Also, against censorship. I've read and enjoyed books that are on other people's "evil book lists or book-rage lists". (*Cough*50ShadesofGrey*cough*)
(Why is it that books that inspire "book-rage" are always on the best-seller lists?)
On the bright side? Out of the million or so books that I've read in my lifetime (okay, it might be less, it's not like I keep track or anything)...there's really only four or five that I'd put on the evil book list or books that must be destroyed and should never have been published. And they don't always stay on the list. Eat Pray Love and Elizabeth Gilbert is gradually jumping off the list. As is American Pyscho, which I now have mixed feelings about. But I don't think book that must not be named will anytime soon - I feel about it, much the same way a lot of people felt about 50 Shades.
Ironically, both the book that shall not be named and American Psycho were runaway bestsellers, and have been made into movies. Now American Psycho is a musical. I admit to enjoying the movie which poked fun at the book and was a pure unabridged satire. The author hated it, which made me enjoy it even more. While I was tempted to see the musical -- it's written by the same guy who did Spring Awakening, not sure I want to deal with the subject matter.
Books can inspire strong emotions in me apparently. And judging from the best-seller lists, Amazon and Good Reads reviews in others as well.
3. Movies that I do want to see:
* Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - which apparently isn't popping up until the fall.
* X-Men Apocalypse - because it has a marvelous cast and they are finally doing the Jean Grey/Scott Summers origin stories and romance. My two favorite and underdone comic book characters are Jean Grey and Scott Summers - who never really got the movie treatment. (Oh, by the way, they were Joss Whedon's favorite too -- where do you think he got Buffy's last name from?)
* Ghostbusters -- starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wigg, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones.
* A Bigger Splash - Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes
* The Suicide Squad - DC comics villains try to save the day, while avoiding the Joker, who is having a twisted love affair with one of them, his former psychiatrist/protegee, Harley Quinn.
*Free State of Jones - starring Mathew McConaughey and Mahershala Ali - this is about a Missippi farmer who led poor whites and local slaves in a biracial uprising against the Confederacy during the Civil War.
* The Legend of Tarzan - Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie, Christoph Waltz -- Alex Skarsgard plays Tarzan, it's not the origin tale. It picks up later, when Lord Greystoke is lured back to the Congo as a trade emissary and drawn into a colonialist conspiracy that threatens his new life and his old home.
* Star Trek Beyond
* The BFG
* Kubo and the Two Strings..."The essence of a classic Kurosawa film as a stop motion David Lean epic" which Matt McConaughey enjoyed so much that he read it as a bedtime story to his kids.
* Captain America: Civil War
A lot of movies...
4. I'm losing track of television shows again. There's too many. I deleted a couple and I still have 60 some hours on the DVR. Plus more added, and that's not including Netflix and Amazon streaming.
I keep forgetting when new one's appear.
Newest is the Night Manager - on AMC, April 19. Based on John Le Carre Novel and starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie (which are reasons alone for watching). It's a BBC miniseries that got great reviews. I'll probably try it, but Le Carre doesn't always hold my attention for long. Except for the Spy Who Came in From the Cold and most of Little Drummer Girl, I've never been able to make it through his books, while my father eats them up like cotton candy. I think my father has read everything he's written. My favorite of the movies was Tailor of Panama, with Russia House and Constant Gardner a close second.
And on the CW, Containment by the show-runner of Vampire Diaries, Julie Plec. It looks a bit too much like Stephen King's The Stand or various other disease films out there. But I admittedly have a weakness for this particular horror/thriller trope. I like disease thrillers. Andromeda Strain is one of my favorite thrillers/movies/books. It's why I watched the Walking Dead, well, until it became a zombie violence fest...and I had to give up. Not a fan of zombie horror trope. I liked World War Z better - because it focused on combatting the horrible disease angle, more than the fighting nasty zombies angle. So I'll probably try it. But I have a feeling it will go down the horror trope and not the science, hunting a solution to the puzzle trope which I prefer. (I preferred Andromeda Strain to Stephen King's the Stand. Also, Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, which was loosely based on a true story about scientists trying to contain the ebola virus.
I don't have time to watch these television shows. The one's that I do make time to watch, no one on my livejournal seems to be into...and I'm hardly fannish. Actually, my mother is into them, so we discuss them over the phone. It works.
Oh, and Outlander and Game of Thrones are starting up again. Ugh. They can't wait until the summer?
I can only save up to 75 hours on the DVR. I have to keep cleaning it up every once and awhile. My test is usually..."who am I kidding, I'm never going to watch this...haven't in the last three months and can't seem to care now", either that or, damn, I didn't click save all episodes, just save the last five taped. And in the case of American Crime Story, sort of impossible to catch up.
2. According EW, they have made a book that I violently despised into a movie. (Pfft, we shall not mention it by name or speak of it no more, pfft). Oh well, it doesn't matter, since there are so many movies made at the moment and coming out that I can easily ignore it. There aren't many, just maybe a handful of books that I've come across in my lifetime that I've truly despised. So much so, I wanted to strangle the writer and all the poor deluded souls that loved the horrible nasty thing. I remember joking with fellow book club members back in the 1990s about American Psycho. We'd been tasked to read it for book club, only one person finished the book. The rest of us joked about how we wanted to grab the book from people on the subway and hit them over the head with it. We also discussed how far we each made it into the book, before we got fed up and decided to throw it across the room. (Which you really shouldn't do with a Kindle or e-reader). This was before there were e-books, smartphones, ipods, etc, and people actual read books and magazines on the subway, and everyone knew what they were reading. Now, people mainly play video games, listen to podcasts/music, or play with their smartphones. If they are reading, it's usually an e-book, and you just can't tell. Although, a few years ago, I did see a few people reading the book that replaced American Psycho on my evil books that must be destroyed list, and had to restrain myself from ripping the hard-cover from the women's hands and rapping her over the head with it. Evil book! Evil! You mustn't read!
I call this phenomenon - book rage, akin to road rage, except...well against someone reading a book that you hate.
Of course, I don't give in. I'm not a crazy person. Also, against censorship. I've read and enjoyed books that are on other people's "evil book lists or book-rage lists". (*Cough*50ShadesofGrey*cough*)
(Why is it that books that inspire "book-rage" are always on the best-seller lists?)
On the bright side? Out of the million or so books that I've read in my lifetime (okay, it might be less, it's not like I keep track or anything)...there's really only four or five that I'd put on the evil book list or books that must be destroyed and should never have been published. And they don't always stay on the list. Eat Pray Love and Elizabeth Gilbert is gradually jumping off the list. As is American Pyscho, which I now have mixed feelings about. But I don't think book that must not be named will anytime soon - I feel about it, much the same way a lot of people felt about 50 Shades.
Ironically, both the book that shall not be named and American Psycho were runaway bestsellers, and have been made into movies. Now American Psycho is a musical. I admit to enjoying the movie which poked fun at the book and was a pure unabridged satire. The author hated it, which made me enjoy it even more. While I was tempted to see the musical -- it's written by the same guy who did Spring Awakening, not sure I want to deal with the subject matter.
Books can inspire strong emotions in me apparently. And judging from the best-seller lists, Amazon and Good Reads reviews in others as well.
3. Movies that I do want to see:
* Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - which apparently isn't popping up until the fall.
* X-Men Apocalypse - because it has a marvelous cast and they are finally doing the Jean Grey/Scott Summers origin stories and romance. My two favorite and underdone comic book characters are Jean Grey and Scott Summers - who never really got the movie treatment. (Oh, by the way, they were Joss Whedon's favorite too -- where do you think he got Buffy's last name from?)
* Ghostbusters -- starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wigg, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones.
* A Bigger Splash - Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes
* The Suicide Squad - DC comics villains try to save the day, while avoiding the Joker, who is having a twisted love affair with one of them, his former psychiatrist/protegee, Harley Quinn.
*Free State of Jones - starring Mathew McConaughey and Mahershala Ali - this is about a Missippi farmer who led poor whites and local slaves in a biracial uprising against the Confederacy during the Civil War.
* The Legend of Tarzan - Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie, Christoph Waltz -- Alex Skarsgard plays Tarzan, it's not the origin tale. It picks up later, when Lord Greystoke is lured back to the Congo as a trade emissary and drawn into a colonialist conspiracy that threatens his new life and his old home.
* Star Trek Beyond
* The BFG
* Kubo and the Two Strings..."The essence of a classic Kurosawa film as a stop motion David Lean epic" which Matt McConaughey enjoyed so much that he read it as a bedtime story to his kids.
* Captain America: Civil War
A lot of movies...
4. I'm losing track of television shows again. There's too many. I deleted a couple and I still have 60 some hours on the DVR. Plus more added, and that's not including Netflix and Amazon streaming.
I keep forgetting when new one's appear.
Newest is the Night Manager - on AMC, April 19. Based on John Le Carre Novel and starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie (which are reasons alone for watching). It's a BBC miniseries that got great reviews. I'll probably try it, but Le Carre doesn't always hold my attention for long. Except for the Spy Who Came in From the Cold and most of Little Drummer Girl, I've never been able to make it through his books, while my father eats them up like cotton candy. I think my father has read everything he's written. My favorite of the movies was Tailor of Panama, with Russia House and Constant Gardner a close second.
And on the CW, Containment by the show-runner of Vampire Diaries, Julie Plec. It looks a bit too much like Stephen King's The Stand or various other disease films out there. But I admittedly have a weakness for this particular horror/thriller trope. I like disease thrillers. Andromeda Strain is one of my favorite thrillers/movies/books. It's why I watched the Walking Dead, well, until it became a zombie violence fest...and I had to give up. Not a fan of zombie horror trope. I liked World War Z better - because it focused on combatting the horrible disease angle, more than the fighting nasty zombies angle. So I'll probably try it. But I have a feeling it will go down the horror trope and not the science, hunting a solution to the puzzle trope which I prefer. (I preferred Andromeda Strain to Stephen King's the Stand. Also, Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, which was loosely based on a true story about scientists trying to contain the ebola virus.
I don't have time to watch these television shows. The one's that I do make time to watch, no one on my livejournal seems to be into...and I'm hardly fannish. Actually, my mother is into them, so we discuss them over the phone. It works.
Oh, and Outlander and Game of Thrones are starting up again. Ugh. They can't wait until the summer?
I can only save up to 75 hours on the DVR. I have to keep cleaning it up every once and awhile. My test is usually..."who am I kidding, I'm never going to watch this...haven't in the last three months and can't seem to care now", either that or, damn, I didn't click save all episodes, just save the last five taped. And in the case of American Crime Story, sort of impossible to catch up.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-17 07:09 am (UTC)starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie (which are reasons alone for watching)
AND OLIVIA COLEMAN! (I'd watch her read the phone book.) Also Hugh Laurie is excellent as The Most Evil Man in the world. Tom Hiddleston is nice (of course) but they could swap him and I wouldn't care. I'm there for the two others. <3
(If you want to see them talk about the show, there is a DELIGHTFUL episode of Graham Norton, which also features Ice Cube & Kevin Hart. It's a fabulous mix.)
Oh and agreed on Neil Gaiman. :)
no subject
Date: 2016-04-17 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-17 03:10 pm (UTC)(Follow the link, and you'll see why.)