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Nov. 7th, 2019 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Well, Twitter did not like "The Little Mermaid Live", but then Twitter generally doesn't like most things. Twitter is very whiny. It thinks it's snarky, but it's just whiny. Of course I make fun of some things on it -- but they are usually related to the comic book fandom. And no one notices me anyhow. I rarely post, and I have maybe 20-40 followers, and I'm proud of that. I do NOT want a lot of followers on Twitter or FB. I want to lie beneath the radar. FB and Twitter are not places in which you want to be popular, well not unless you are trying to sell a book. And even then...no. Twitter has a lot of frustrated and bored novelists on it. Who all suck at haiku.
Anyhow...like I said before, I think the Little Mermaid Live works well for kids.
And how much you like it -- has a lot to do with how much you liked the animated film. Because it's basically sixty percent animated film and forty percent live song and dance performances, which is a clever idea but doesn't work for people who don't like animation or wanted a fully live performance.
Was curious to see how they'd pull it off. Did I like it? Eh. I played on DW while listening to it in the background. Since I'd forgotten most of the story -- I'd pause for longer periods to see what happened. But, unfortunately, the animation doesn't quite hold up. And the best animated bits -- are overtaken by the live action ones. There's some really good performances in there. And at least three of them included stage craft that was rather cool.
I remember liking the animated film better when I saw it in the 1990s, now it feels a bit dated and stodgy.
2. NY Times Parasite Review -- this film is really doing well. It's at both the Cobble Hill and the UA Court Cinemas in Brooklyn, which rarely happens with subtitled films from Korea.
My co-workers have seen it -- or rather the progressive 20-something/30-something childless and fancy free set, who meet in a little three-some near my cubical and mutter about it. Two have asked if I've seen it yet. The older bunch, and the 30 -40 somethings with kids have not. Reminds me of when I was in my 20s and 30s -- I saw a ton of movies back then. Now? It's rare. In fact I don't go unless I REALLY want to see it, or someone drags me to it. I have a large screen tv -- can watch it on it. (The sound could be better -- but it's not bad. I may splurge and get a sound-bar at some point.) The subtitle thing makes me want to wait -- because subtitles can be hard to read in a theater -- heads get in the way and no rewinding. Plus, the sound on my tv won't matter. (I do close-captioning a lot at home, because I can't always make out what people are saying. There are a lot of actors who mumble. Not helped by sound editors who like to layer music, voice over's and other things on top of dialogue.)
Here's the Trailer
And here's what the critic states:
Midway through the brilliant and deeply unsettling “Parasite,” a destitute man voices empathy for a family that has shown him none. “They’re rich but still nice,” he says, aglow with good will. His wife has her doubts. “They’re nice because they’re rich,” she counters. With their two adult children, they have insinuated themselves into the lives of their pampered counterparts. It’s all going so very well until their worlds spectacularly collide, erupting with annihilating force. Comedy turns to tragedy and smiles twist into grimaces as the real world splatters across the manicured lawn.
The story takes place in South Korea but could easily unfold in Los Angeles or London. The director Bong Joon Ho (“Okja”) creates specific spaces and faces — outer seamlessly meets inner here — that are in service to universal ideas about human dignity, class, life itself. With its open plan and geometric shapes, the modernist home that becomes the movie’s stage (and its house of horrors) looks as familiar as the cover of a shelter magazine. It’s the kind of clean, bright space that once expressed faith and optimism about the world but now whispers big-ticket taste and privilege.
Added bonus, the director breaks down how he went about staging a scene in the film.
3. X-Force #1 (The Hickman Reboot) -- can't remember the artist and writer off the bat. But it was better done than the other three -- more gripping, more happened, and the art was unique -- less comic book style, and more illustrative.
Although I feel like we're still recycling old storylines and plots -- with the secret evil human group banding together to take out the mutants by force as a means of defending themselves. Yes, yes, this has been Marvel's storytelling arc for the last twenty years. I'm sort of bored of it. Get back to the soapy relationship drama writers...
Oh, and we got a major character death. Geeze, the no-character death bit was short-lived. Apparently this new croup of white guy writers is just as blood thirsty as the prior set. They killed off a pretty mom, who was minding her own business and doing nothing, and Professor X. Now, I figure both will be resurrected. Prof X certainly will -- he's only been killed off about ten times now. Which was why it was hard to take Cyclops killing him all that seriously -- although the Phoenix possessed Cyclops killing Prof X was admittedly the most interesting and most permanent, it was hard for Prof X to come back from that one.
As an aside -- does Wolverine have to be in every comic? Don't get me wrong, I find him entertaining, but every comic? I think the only one that he wasn't in was Excalibur -- mainly because that one appears to be aimed at kids, plus they have Gambit. More Cyclops, less Wolverine, please. At least we got Kitty and found out what happened with Colossus.
Outside of the fact that the villains are about as cliche and redundant as we can get, not a bad comic.
Ranks?
X-Force (art/writing)
X-men #1
The Maruders
Excalibur (which I probably won't continue with unless necessary)
When I read on Twitter that Hickman was against previews and spoilers and answering questions on such...I tweeted, "Oh come on, where's the fun in that?" (Something like that, don't really remember the exact wording. I was snarky.) 90% of the fun of being into a long-running soapy serial is finding and reading spoilers, also previews and trailers and teasers...this way you can know if you should continue or give up, if annoyed. And just wait for the new writing team to take over. Because you know there will be a new writing team eventually. Writers get burned out after about five or six years. In comic books, they barely last ten-fifteen issues, sometimes they'll make it to twenty issues (which is approximately two years if that). Back in the 1960s-1990s, they hung around much longer. Now? Lots of turn-over. So if you don't like a writer in comics, not to worry, he'll be gone soon. If you do...eh sorry about that.
4. I'm in another reading slump. And struggling with my writing. But mainly reading slump. The book I'm reading now is ...sluggish, yet I can't let go of it or find anything else. I may start reading a paperback at night.
Anyhow...like I said before, I think the Little Mermaid Live works well for kids.
And how much you like it -- has a lot to do with how much you liked the animated film. Because it's basically sixty percent animated film and forty percent live song and dance performances, which is a clever idea but doesn't work for people who don't like animation or wanted a fully live performance.
Was curious to see how they'd pull it off. Did I like it? Eh. I played on DW while listening to it in the background. Since I'd forgotten most of the story -- I'd pause for longer periods to see what happened. But, unfortunately, the animation doesn't quite hold up. And the best animated bits -- are overtaken by the live action ones. There's some really good performances in there. And at least three of them included stage craft that was rather cool.
I remember liking the animated film better when I saw it in the 1990s, now it feels a bit dated and stodgy.
2. NY Times Parasite Review -- this film is really doing well. It's at both the Cobble Hill and the UA Court Cinemas in Brooklyn, which rarely happens with subtitled films from Korea.
My co-workers have seen it -- or rather the progressive 20-something/30-something childless and fancy free set, who meet in a little three-some near my cubical and mutter about it. Two have asked if I've seen it yet. The older bunch, and the 30 -40 somethings with kids have not. Reminds me of when I was in my 20s and 30s -- I saw a ton of movies back then. Now? It's rare. In fact I don't go unless I REALLY want to see it, or someone drags me to it. I have a large screen tv -- can watch it on it. (The sound could be better -- but it's not bad. I may splurge and get a sound-bar at some point.) The subtitle thing makes me want to wait -- because subtitles can be hard to read in a theater -- heads get in the way and no rewinding. Plus, the sound on my tv won't matter. (I do close-captioning a lot at home, because I can't always make out what people are saying. There are a lot of actors who mumble. Not helped by sound editors who like to layer music, voice over's and other things on top of dialogue.)
Here's the Trailer
And here's what the critic states:
Midway through the brilliant and deeply unsettling “Parasite,” a destitute man voices empathy for a family that has shown him none. “They’re rich but still nice,” he says, aglow with good will. His wife has her doubts. “They’re nice because they’re rich,” she counters. With their two adult children, they have insinuated themselves into the lives of their pampered counterparts. It’s all going so very well until their worlds spectacularly collide, erupting with annihilating force. Comedy turns to tragedy and smiles twist into grimaces as the real world splatters across the manicured lawn.
The story takes place in South Korea but could easily unfold in Los Angeles or London. The director Bong Joon Ho (“Okja”) creates specific spaces and faces — outer seamlessly meets inner here — that are in service to universal ideas about human dignity, class, life itself. With its open plan and geometric shapes, the modernist home that becomes the movie’s stage (and its house of horrors) looks as familiar as the cover of a shelter magazine. It’s the kind of clean, bright space that once expressed faith and optimism about the world but now whispers big-ticket taste and privilege.
Added bonus, the director breaks down how he went about staging a scene in the film.
3. X-Force #1 (The Hickman Reboot) -- can't remember the artist and writer off the bat. But it was better done than the other three -- more gripping, more happened, and the art was unique -- less comic book style, and more illustrative.
Although I feel like we're still recycling old storylines and plots -- with the secret evil human group banding together to take out the mutants by force as a means of defending themselves. Yes, yes, this has been Marvel's storytelling arc for the last twenty years. I'm sort of bored of it. Get back to the soapy relationship drama writers...
Oh, and we got a major character death. Geeze, the no-character death bit was short-lived. Apparently this new croup of white guy writers is just as blood thirsty as the prior set. They killed off a pretty mom, who was minding her own business and doing nothing, and Professor X. Now, I figure both will be resurrected. Prof X certainly will -- he's only been killed off about ten times now. Which was why it was hard to take Cyclops killing him all that seriously -- although the Phoenix possessed Cyclops killing Prof X was admittedly the most interesting and most permanent, it was hard for Prof X to come back from that one.
As an aside -- does Wolverine have to be in every comic? Don't get me wrong, I find him entertaining, but every comic? I think the only one that he wasn't in was Excalibur -- mainly because that one appears to be aimed at kids, plus they have Gambit. More Cyclops, less Wolverine, please. At least we got Kitty and found out what happened with Colossus.
Outside of the fact that the villains are about as cliche and redundant as we can get, not a bad comic.
Ranks?
X-Force (art/writing)
X-men #1
The Maruders
Excalibur (which I probably won't continue with unless necessary)
When I read on Twitter that Hickman was against previews and spoilers and answering questions on such...I tweeted, "Oh come on, where's the fun in that?" (Something like that, don't really remember the exact wording. I was snarky.) 90% of the fun of being into a long-running soapy serial is finding and reading spoilers, also previews and trailers and teasers...this way you can know if you should continue or give up, if annoyed. And just wait for the new writing team to take over. Because you know there will be a new writing team eventually. Writers get burned out after about five or six years. In comic books, they barely last ten-fifteen issues, sometimes they'll make it to twenty issues (which is approximately two years if that). Back in the 1960s-1990s, they hung around much longer. Now? Lots of turn-over. So if you don't like a writer in comics, not to worry, he'll be gone soon. If you do...eh sorry about that.
4. I'm in another reading slump. And struggling with my writing. But mainly reading slump. The book I'm reading now is ...sluggish, yet I can't let go of it or find anything else. I may start reading a paperback at night.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-08 12:28 pm (UTC)Re: subtitles. We do the same thing. Get the soundbar. You will not regret it. We upgraded ours last year so that we could listen to music on our Bluray player. I prefer watching movies on a big screen for the communal experience but ticket prices have gone through the roof here. Mostly we wait for the DVDs so we can request them from the library. It does mean I never get caught up with fandom, not that I'm really trying anymore...
no subject
Date: 2019-11-08 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-08 05:29 pm (UTC)I can do it the weekend of the 22nd. But that's the weekend before Thanksgiving.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-08 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-09 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-09 07:01 pm (UTC)Whoops!
23rd will be fine.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-09 11:07 pm (UTC)It's also playing at both Court UA and Cobble Hill -- which is surprising. UA Court seldom has art house foreign films, particularly ones with subtitles.