Television and books
Oct. 9th, 2018 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Situation Comedies continue to be hit or miss affairs with me. My sense of humor is admittedly along subtle absurdist lines, which means I've little or no tolerance for "broad" humor or repetitive jokes.
While the pilot episode of The Neighborhood made me laugh, I couldn't make it past the first ten minutes of the second episode. And Murphy's second episode also made me cringe, although I do enjoy Candice Bergen, so lasted longer.
2. The Gifted -- is moving into far more interesting territory this season. Having convinced their government trackers that they are dead and killing off the mad-scientist villain, we've moved on to the Hellfire Club. I prefer the Hellfire Club. It's less repetitive and not quite as frustrating. Also the female villain, Reeva, and the Stepford Sisters Cuckoo...are rather interesting, and their talent is playing with minds.
So now we've got two opposing super hero teams. The Hellfire Club, and the Underground Resistance/Refugee Squad. The two would most likely leave each other alone if it weren't for the fact that two of the Refugee Squad's members decided to take off with The Hellfire Club (mainly because they were fed up with playing footsie with the Government that kept grabbing them and performing heinuous experiments on them whatever chance they got, which makes sense.)
At any rate the show got a bit more interesting.
3. I'm more of an X-men fan than the standard super-hero trope fan. I like my heroes, reluctant, and a bit more gritty. Also I adore the emphasis on personal relationships, instituional and personal prejudices and discrimination, the outsider focus, etc. The Avengers are sort of the popular kids, the privileged, hero-worshipped group -- while the X-men and the Mutants are the outsiders, who never get any credit, and help -- but try not to be seen.
Marvel tends to show The Avengers as being ever so slightly fascist, most likely a direct critique of DC's Justice League and heavily criticizes them for it. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were dissenters, apparently. The Marvel comics are...interesting in how they continuously question their world and their characters. DC does too, just differently.
There's a heavy political commentary in Marvel Comics that the non-fan of the genre never really sees. It's not just a bunch of super-powered action sequences, regardless of what may have been advertised.
On the X-men front? There's rumors that they may bring back my favorite character from the dead. The much maligned Cyclops, who apparently does have a fan following and right now is the top ranked character on Twitter. (People finally got tired of Wolverine, apparently. Gee, wonder why. It's not like he hasn't been in every X movie, and just about every X comic on the planet. Talk about over-done characters.) So..part of me hopes he doesn't return, because as long as he's gone, I'm not all that interested in the comics.
I do like Jean, however, whose also come back from the dead. And the renewed focus on Storm, Rogue, and Gambit, along with the return of Charles Xavier. I haven't read any of them though...because, really, it can get costly. It's cheaper watching the TV shows and movies.
I happen to like the graphic novel/comic book medium, more so than some. In part, because I think the idea of telling a story with pictures and not just words is rather cool. Particularly hand drawn and painted pictures of characters. It does not bother me that they aren't necessarily realistically drawn, just as long as it's better than I can do.
I may have to try web-comic series -- but I can't figure out how to download webcomics to my Amazon HD Fire. Until I do...I can't read them. Too small on my Mac.
4. Knee is better. So is back. Apparently it wasn't money troubles or not volunteering to save the world...but weather, barometric pressure, and possibly cramping pinching a nerve. I don't know. It's still there, just not as bad.
5. Making headway in Kate Daniel's series finale, Magic Triumphs. I may finish it by the end of this week -- which is a record. Lately it either takes two-three months to make it through a book or I don't finish it at all. (Mainly because I only have time to read on my commute and before bed at night...and I will often use that time to write instead. Particularly if I'm bored with the book in question. A bored co-worker keeps updating me on his progress through the tome "Gotham: A History of New York City" which is over 1500 pages long. I have it too - courtesy of my brother, who is in the habit of giving me huge hard-back books from Christmas which can double as door stops.)
That said, Magic Triumphs has issues. Obviously the writers are more interested in talking about the woes of parenting a toddler than having other key character interactions. Also, there's too many characters for such a short book. They walk on stage, say a few words, then leave. Several of which...the writers aren't quite sure what to do with, so their stay is rather brief.
Then we have Hugh D'Ambray, who the writer has chosen to redeem. Okay. Wish you'd worked on that sooner or put in a few more books in the middle to work up to it. IRON & MAGIC didn't cut it -- mainly because it read more like a steamy medieval pot-boiler romance than an urban fantasy.
I don't dislike Hugh, necessarily, but I am struggling with the ret-con. I'm not sure it plays. Particularly since it was clear from previous books that Roland had not wanted Hugh to do what he was doing with Kate, and Hugh was doing a lot of it without Roland's knowledge. So if Hugh was Roland's pet dog, who Roland's blood magic had worked it's thing on -- why did he do all of that? I think my mind my be too logical and analytical for the story?
I want more -- scenes between Julie and Kate (there's next to nothing), Andrea and Kate, Raphael and Kate, Jim and Kate, Hugh and Kate, etc. What I have a lot of is Kate, Curran and baby. I find the baby boring. I really hate it when characters have children in these types of books. The writers never seem to be clear on what to do with the kids. Here the kid is a sort of damsel they are constantly worried about. Julie and Asciano have left the damsel status, for the baby to take their place.
Oh well. I've yet to see an urban fantasy series in which the last books in the series worked. You can tell the writers get burned out after the first five. Note to writer's -- don't decide to do a series that's more than five books. You will get burned out.
6. Too late to vote for Dancing with the Stars again. Also haven't seen all of it yet. Finally figured out who the Zombie Teen is, and why Camryn Manneheim from The Practice among other things was in the audience. Milo is Camryn's kid. And he's a professional dancer -- he danced his way through the Disney Zombie movie, and has been on Broadway at the ripe old age of 16 and 17. Also has connections due to Mom.
So we have at least four ringers on this show. Hardly fair. It's a show that is supposed to be about ballroom dancing, but since ballroom dancing is clearly too boring -- they've jazzed it up with people who can do backflips.
Will admit it was an entertaining routine. I'd have given it a 9 too. Haven't seen any of the others, except Retton's which bored me.
While the pilot episode of The Neighborhood made me laugh, I couldn't make it past the first ten minutes of the second episode. And Murphy's second episode also made me cringe, although I do enjoy Candice Bergen, so lasted longer.
2. The Gifted -- is moving into far more interesting territory this season. Having convinced their government trackers that they are dead and killing off the mad-scientist villain, we've moved on to the Hellfire Club. I prefer the Hellfire Club. It's less repetitive and not quite as frustrating. Also the female villain, Reeva, and the Stepford Sisters Cuckoo...are rather interesting, and their talent is playing with minds.
So now we've got two opposing super hero teams. The Hellfire Club, and the Underground Resistance/Refugee Squad. The two would most likely leave each other alone if it weren't for the fact that two of the Refugee Squad's members decided to take off with The Hellfire Club (mainly because they were fed up with playing footsie with the Government that kept grabbing them and performing heinuous experiments on them whatever chance they got, which makes sense.)
At any rate the show got a bit more interesting.
3. I'm more of an X-men fan than the standard super-hero trope fan. I like my heroes, reluctant, and a bit more gritty. Also I adore the emphasis on personal relationships, instituional and personal prejudices and discrimination, the outsider focus, etc. The Avengers are sort of the popular kids, the privileged, hero-worshipped group -- while the X-men and the Mutants are the outsiders, who never get any credit, and help -- but try not to be seen.
Marvel tends to show The Avengers as being ever so slightly fascist, most likely a direct critique of DC's Justice League and heavily criticizes them for it. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were dissenters, apparently. The Marvel comics are...interesting in how they continuously question their world and their characters. DC does too, just differently.
There's a heavy political commentary in Marvel Comics that the non-fan of the genre never really sees. It's not just a bunch of super-powered action sequences, regardless of what may have been advertised.
On the X-men front? There's rumors that they may bring back my favorite character from the dead. The much maligned Cyclops, who apparently does have a fan following and right now is the top ranked character on Twitter. (People finally got tired of Wolverine, apparently. Gee, wonder why. It's not like he hasn't been in every X movie, and just about every X comic on the planet. Talk about over-done characters.) So..part of me hopes he doesn't return, because as long as he's gone, I'm not all that interested in the comics.
I do like Jean, however, whose also come back from the dead. And the renewed focus on Storm, Rogue, and Gambit, along with the return of Charles Xavier. I haven't read any of them though...because, really, it can get costly. It's cheaper watching the TV shows and movies.
I happen to like the graphic novel/comic book medium, more so than some. In part, because I think the idea of telling a story with pictures and not just words is rather cool. Particularly hand drawn and painted pictures of characters. It does not bother me that they aren't necessarily realistically drawn, just as long as it's better than I can do.
I may have to try web-comic series -- but I can't figure out how to download webcomics to my Amazon HD Fire. Until I do...I can't read them. Too small on my Mac.
4. Knee is better. So is back. Apparently it wasn't money troubles or not volunteering to save the world...but weather, barometric pressure, and possibly cramping pinching a nerve. I don't know. It's still there, just not as bad.
5. Making headway in Kate Daniel's series finale, Magic Triumphs. I may finish it by the end of this week -- which is a record. Lately it either takes two-three months to make it through a book or I don't finish it at all. (Mainly because I only have time to read on my commute and before bed at night...and I will often use that time to write instead. Particularly if I'm bored with the book in question. A bored co-worker keeps updating me on his progress through the tome "Gotham: A History of New York City" which is over 1500 pages long. I have it too - courtesy of my brother, who is in the habit of giving me huge hard-back books from Christmas which can double as door stops.)
That said, Magic Triumphs has issues. Obviously the writers are more interested in talking about the woes of parenting a toddler than having other key character interactions. Also, there's too many characters for such a short book. They walk on stage, say a few words, then leave. Several of which...the writers aren't quite sure what to do with, so their stay is rather brief.
Then we have Hugh D'Ambray, who the writer has chosen to redeem. Okay. Wish you'd worked on that sooner or put in a few more books in the middle to work up to it. IRON & MAGIC didn't cut it -- mainly because it read more like a steamy medieval pot-boiler romance than an urban fantasy.
I don't dislike Hugh, necessarily, but I am struggling with the ret-con. I'm not sure it plays. Particularly since it was clear from previous books that Roland had not wanted Hugh to do what he was doing with Kate, and Hugh was doing a lot of it without Roland's knowledge. So if Hugh was Roland's pet dog, who Roland's blood magic had worked it's thing on -- why did he do all of that? I think my mind my be too logical and analytical for the story?
I want more -- scenes between Julie and Kate (there's next to nothing), Andrea and Kate, Raphael and Kate, Jim and Kate, Hugh and Kate, etc. What I have a lot of is Kate, Curran and baby. I find the baby boring. I really hate it when characters have children in these types of books. The writers never seem to be clear on what to do with the kids. Here the kid is a sort of damsel they are constantly worried about. Julie and Asciano have left the damsel status, for the baby to take their place.
Oh well. I've yet to see an urban fantasy series in which the last books in the series worked. You can tell the writers get burned out after the first five. Note to writer's -- don't decide to do a series that's more than five books. You will get burned out.
6. Too late to vote for Dancing with the Stars again. Also haven't seen all of it yet. Finally figured out who the Zombie Teen is, and why Camryn Manneheim from The Practice among other things was in the audience. Milo is Camryn's kid. And he's a professional dancer -- he danced his way through the Disney Zombie movie, and has been on Broadway at the ripe old age of 16 and 17. Also has connections due to Mom.
So we have at least four ringers on this show. Hardly fair. It's a show that is supposed to be about ballroom dancing, but since ballroom dancing is clearly too boring -- they've jazzed it up with people who can do backflips.
Will admit it was an entertaining routine. I'd have given it a 9 too. Haven't seen any of the others, except Retton's which bored me.