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shadowkat1. DB hints at a 20th Anniversary Reunion Special for ATS -- I bet it's just a panel. But DB's Seal Team is on the chopping block at CBS, and he apparently loves the character of Angel (now, a decade or so later, after refusing to discuss it for years).
I admittedly wouldn't mind an Angel Reboot. Prefer it to Buffy, actually. That series had a few loose ends. Also, I could happily watch the Angel and Spike and Illyria series...
2. Sci-Fantasy Co-worker rec'd this book to me the other day. The Ruin of Kings - anyone read it? If so, what did you think? The reviews on Amazon are somewhat funky. One compares it to LOST (they hated Lost and thought the character development on Lost was lacking...hmmm.) Another says it's really fun. And a third compares it to the Lies of Lock Lamora...which is not necessarily a good thing.
3. This review of Captain Marvel makes some excellent points.
In particular:
Although this for the most part goes without saying...culture is subjective. And film/art criticism for the most part is subjective. People also get rather emotional about art and tend to react to it accordingly.
That said, however, one can make objective critiques regarding it. I found Captain Marvel to be unevenly directed and jarring in places. It also drug. The writers seemed to be trying to make three separate movies and couldn't decide which to make. I wouldn't say it was a bad film or poorly acted, just not a film that stands out or deserves much notice -- such as say Black Panther and Infinity War did.
YMMV. But it always does, regardless of what we are discussing.
I do however agree with the reviewer for most of her review. Where she points out that it sets up a huge emotional conflict, but doesn't really do anything with it and breezes right past it. Making the film basically just "a power fantasy and a well-executed one". (While I agree it is a power fantasy. I am on the fence that it was well-executed. It had pacing issues and drug. Sorry, it did. I know -- the theater got chatty. Also the power isn't really Carol's but from an external source, while she owns it...it's not real clear what it does or what it's detriments are. And her powers are a bit over the top. I don't know if it was well-executed. It had to accomplish three things -- which it does, rather well, but.. )
The film didn't quite work for me either -- because I felt it lacked an internal character conflict -- I didn't feel nor could I relate to Carol's struggle. For the reasons this reviewer suggests -- there's all this emotional conflict and the writers just ignore it in favor of...well, the power trip. I need a central character's emotional arc to pull me into a story -- otherwise my attention begins to wander and I start analyzing and critiquing the film's inherent flaws to amuse myself. Which is what I did here. If it doesn't pull me in or grab my emotions early on....we're in trouble.
What can I say? I don't find the whole power trip thing that relatable.
4. Study states Women with Male Twins are More Likely to Face Sexism at School and Work
I admittedly wouldn't mind an Angel Reboot. Prefer it to Buffy, actually. That series had a few loose ends. Also, I could happily watch the Angel and Spike and Illyria series...
2. Sci-Fantasy Co-worker rec'd this book to me the other day. The Ruin of Kings - anyone read it? If so, what did you think? The reviews on Amazon are somewhat funky. One compares it to LOST (they hated Lost and thought the character development on Lost was lacking...hmmm.) Another says it's really fun. And a third compares it to the Lies of Lock Lamora...which is not necessarily a good thing.
3. This review of Captain Marvel makes some excellent points.
In particular:
So I can't say this is exactly criticism of the film - it does precisely what it sets out to do, and very well, too! It's just that that's not what I personally prefer.
(One of the things I find most frustrating in media criticism - within fandom and without - is calling things bad for not achieving something they were never trying to achieve, for not being something they never wanted to be. It's not bad writing if a story doesn't go where you want it to go! It's not bad acting if it's an acting choice you don't like. Those things are completely orthogonal to whether something is well written or acted or filmed!
Although this for the most part goes without saying...culture is subjective. And film/art criticism for the most part is subjective. People also get rather emotional about art and tend to react to it accordingly.
That said, however, one can make objective critiques regarding it. I found Captain Marvel to be unevenly directed and jarring in places. It also drug. The writers seemed to be trying to make three separate movies and couldn't decide which to make. I wouldn't say it was a bad film or poorly acted, just not a film that stands out or deserves much notice -- such as say Black Panther and Infinity War did.
YMMV. But it always does, regardless of what we are discussing.
I do however agree with the reviewer for most of her review. Where she points out that it sets up a huge emotional conflict, but doesn't really do anything with it and breezes right past it. Making the film basically just "a power fantasy and a well-executed one". (While I agree it is a power fantasy. I am on the fence that it was well-executed. It had pacing issues and drug. Sorry, it did. I know -- the theater got chatty. Also the power isn't really Carol's but from an external source, while she owns it...it's not real clear what it does or what it's detriments are. And her powers are a bit over the top. I don't know if it was well-executed. It had to accomplish three things -- which it does, rather well, but.. )
The film didn't quite work for me either -- because I felt it lacked an internal character conflict -- I didn't feel nor could I relate to Carol's struggle. For the reasons this reviewer suggests -- there's all this emotional conflict and the writers just ignore it in favor of...well, the power trip. I need a central character's emotional arc to pull me into a story -- otherwise my attention begins to wander and I start analyzing and critiquing the film's inherent flaws to amuse myself. Which is what I did here. If it doesn't pull me in or grab my emotions early on....we're in trouble.
What can I say? I don't find the whole power trip thing that relatable.
4. Study states Women with Male Twins are More Likely to Face Sexism at School and Work
no subject
Date: 2019-03-21 04:50 pm (UTC)I wanted to like it a lot more than I did, and really wish they'd invested in a more seasoned director, someone like Patty Jenkins who did Wonder Woman, or Kate Bigelow.
The problem though with Captain Marvel - is unlike Black Panther and some of the other heroes, previously done, the source material is all over the place. She's been rebooted several times now in the comics, and her origin story ret-conned. So...she's harder to adapt well to the screen (which is why I handwaved some of it.) If you're reading Captain Marvel, there's a good reboot out there entitled Ms. Marvel with Kamala as Captain Marvel, who has slightly different powers.
My friend and I left the theater wondering how they were going to incapacitate her in Endgame because right now she's got so much juice it's hard to imagine there'd be anything that could stop her.
Well, in Endgame -- it's not a physical fight that requires winning, but a way to undo what Thanos did. Carol's powers can't undo things. But she be able to help them go through the Quantum universe to get back in time -- early enough, to stop Thanos from getting the Infinity Stone, which was in the Tesserect that Goose swallowed and then coughed up on Fury's desk. Carol knows how Fury got the Tesserect and more important when. There were two clues dropped in the films post Infinity War - 1) Antman was stuck in the Quantum Realm -- why he wasn't removed from existence. 2) Carol acquired the Tesserect containing the Infinity Stone from Wendy Lawson, and hid it from the Kree inside Goose, who coughed if up on Fury's desk.
If you go through the Quantum Realm back to the 1990s, and manage to get the Tesserect from Goose before Fury does...win.