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Feb. 5th, 2012 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Finished watching Justified - Harlan Roulette which was violent and hilarious. Great dialogue in that series. Snappy. Sticks with you. There's also a really good scene - that demonstrates why Elmore Leonard is at the top of the modern western/crime genre.
Vogel: Call Raylan Gibbons, tell him - you are turning yourself in. When he comes to the screen door,
shoot him through the screen door.
Wade: (through his teeth) Do I have to?
Vogel (through his teeth and as an aside, he's played by the same actor who got eaten by zombies courtesy of Shane at the school in Walking Dead, this actor gets around): You stood beside me after what I did...to JT? And you have to ask that question?
Later...
From Wades perspective. We see Raylan sitting on Wade's porch waiting for him.
Wade: You didn't go in and make yourself at home?
Raylan tells him a story about when agitators came to his home when he was a kid and his mother stood at the screen and said you don't go into a person's home unless your invited. He's broken a lot of rules, but that one for some reason stayed with him.
Wade: Can I go inside and change my shirt?
Raylan lets him. Wade continues to chatter. Then curses. Wade returns.
Raylan: You didn't change your shirt. Perhaps because...(he reaches behind him and pulls out a hand-gun) you were looking for this?
That's just one example. It's well set up, we're shown everything, there's no preaching, the violence is commented on and forwards the plot, and characters. And the characters react to it, it hurts.
Plus? Added bonus, we actually like the lead. He's not an irredeemable asshole - which is my problem with this particular trope. They usually are. If you prefer the irredeemable asshole trope - here's a list of American Television series that you can currently rent on DVD: Sopranoes,
Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, The Shield (although he may actually be redeemable, not sure - this was the first of the trope so the least nasty), Deadwood, Rescue Me. You can entertain yourselves for years. The Sopranoes alone will take that long. There's also The Wire, but that has redeemable assholes. And now, Luck is added to the trope. Quite popular right now with male critics. So expect to see more of them.
2. Half-watching Alcatraz - which I found to be incredibly dull. It's sort of an old school sci-fi anthology series. And in the sci-fi anthology series category? Person of Interest is a whole lot better, better acted and better scripted. Also with a more believable and far more interesting premise. (I say that...even though I happen to adore Sam Neill.) Neither are really my cup of tea, but if I were to recommend one, I'd go with Person of Interest - it held my interest longer and had more interesting twists and turns, and was less cliche.
3)The Popster is reading House of Lies - the book that the Showtime original series is based on, which I'll have to rent, because I am not subscribing to Showtime. Still debating HBO.
Me: Did you know there's a book about how management consultants are the root of all evil?
Momster (bursts out laughing): Your kidding.
Me: Nope. But I think it's a satire, although it was in the business section at Barnes and Noble, and a Showtime series is based on it.
Momster: (Still laughing. Popster was a management consultant for 28 years, hence the laughter)
Which firm?
Me: I kept trying to figure that out. I think McKinsey. Didn't see Dad's firm listed. Also the writer doesn't list his firm, which I found suspicious. But there's a cool tv series based on it.
It reads like a satire...not really a tell-all as far as I can tell from my flip-through.
Popster: I'm reading House of Lies. (apparently he got it on his Kindle)
Me: Did Mom tell you about this?
Popster: (Momster apparently got great joy out of relating our conversation to my 76 year old father - the former management consultant). Yep, I decided to start reading it out of self-defense. Mentions Booze Allen, Accenture, McKinsey...the top tier management consulting firms.
Me: The big organizational ones.
Popster: It reads like a satire more than anything else. A bitter satire. He rants a lot.
Me: Does it mention your firm?
Popster: Nope.
Me: But you weren't really an organizational consulting firm, you were compensation.
Popster: True. There's a line in it - he says that the difference between an IT consulting firm and a Management Consulting firm - is an IT consultant will actually be able to do something for you and add value the company.
Me: I don't know...the jury is still out on IT, from my experience.. they don't really do much...except make things worse.
Popster: They used to say the only companies who hire a management consulting firm are those companies with a lot of money to burn.
ME: Or just too stupid to know any better. (*cough*government agencies*cough*)
Me: So, you figure out which firm he worked in?
Popster: Not yet.
Me: I was guessing McKinsey.
Popster: No he just breezed through McKinsey. It's not really that realistic, more hyperbole and satiric.
Me: In his bio, he said he got burned by management consulting and felt the need to do a tell-all book. I was tempted to do that myself...but decided it was a waste of time and energy to rant about the HW Wilson Company. I mean who would care?
Popster: Probably sound like whining after a while. Much like House of Lies...actually, he does a lot of whining.
ME: They tend to in these sort of books. I was reading a similar book about the publishing industry, How I Became a Famous Novelist? Page after page of whining. But you have to give House of Lies credit - it got made into a tv series! So there's something to be said for writing these things. [Somehow I doubt anyone would be interested in doing a series about an evil library reference company and evil copyright specialists, management consultant's yes, but reference librarians? Worse people who create the books and databases that only reference librarians know about? Not so much. I can just see the marketing pitch - if you only know the true story behind the creators of the Card Catalogue, Dewey Decimal System, and Indexing in You Local Library! Truth revealed! News at 11! Considering most people haven't even been inside a library and just google everything. Hence the reason HW Wilson got acquired by EBSCO and no longer exists. It did try to get Google's attention, but Google wisely ignored it.]
Popster: Was trying to figure out how they made this into a movie. The book doesn't really lend itself -
Me: TV series, Dad, it's been made into a TV series.
Vogel: Call Raylan Gibbons, tell him - you are turning yourself in. When he comes to the screen door,
shoot him through the screen door.
Wade: (through his teeth) Do I have to?
Vogel (through his teeth and as an aside, he's played by the same actor who got eaten by zombies courtesy of Shane at the school in Walking Dead, this actor gets around): You stood beside me after what I did...to JT? And you have to ask that question?
Later...
From Wades perspective. We see Raylan sitting on Wade's porch waiting for him.
Wade: You didn't go in and make yourself at home?
Raylan tells him a story about when agitators came to his home when he was a kid and his mother stood at the screen and said you don't go into a person's home unless your invited. He's broken a lot of rules, but that one for some reason stayed with him.
Wade: Can I go inside and change my shirt?
Raylan lets him. Wade continues to chatter. Then curses. Wade returns.
Raylan: You didn't change your shirt. Perhaps because...(he reaches behind him and pulls out a hand-gun) you were looking for this?
That's just one example. It's well set up, we're shown everything, there's no preaching, the violence is commented on and forwards the plot, and characters. And the characters react to it, it hurts.
Plus? Added bonus, we actually like the lead. He's not an irredeemable asshole - which is my problem with this particular trope. They usually are. If you prefer the irredeemable asshole trope - here's a list of American Television series that you can currently rent on DVD: Sopranoes,
Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, The Shield (although he may actually be redeemable, not sure - this was the first of the trope so the least nasty), Deadwood, Rescue Me. You can entertain yourselves for years. The Sopranoes alone will take that long. There's also The Wire, but that has redeemable assholes. And now, Luck is added to the trope. Quite popular right now with male critics. So expect to see more of them.
2. Half-watching Alcatraz - which I found to be incredibly dull. It's sort of an old school sci-fi anthology series. And in the sci-fi anthology series category? Person of Interest is a whole lot better, better acted and better scripted. Also with a more believable and far more interesting premise. (I say that...even though I happen to adore Sam Neill.) Neither are really my cup of tea, but if I were to recommend one, I'd go with Person of Interest - it held my interest longer and had more interesting twists and turns, and was less cliche.
3)The Popster is reading House of Lies - the book that the Showtime original series is based on, which I'll have to rent, because I am not subscribing to Showtime. Still debating HBO.
Me: Did you know there's a book about how management consultants are the root of all evil?
Momster (bursts out laughing): Your kidding.
Me: Nope. But I think it's a satire, although it was in the business section at Barnes and Noble, and a Showtime series is based on it.
Momster: (Still laughing. Popster was a management consultant for 28 years, hence the laughter)
Which firm?
Me: I kept trying to figure that out. I think McKinsey. Didn't see Dad's firm listed. Also the writer doesn't list his firm, which I found suspicious. But there's a cool tv series based on it.
It reads like a satire...not really a tell-all as far as I can tell from my flip-through.
Popster: I'm reading House of Lies. (apparently he got it on his Kindle)
Me: Did Mom tell you about this?
Popster: (Momster apparently got great joy out of relating our conversation to my 76 year old father - the former management consultant). Yep, I decided to start reading it out of self-defense. Mentions Booze Allen, Accenture, McKinsey...the top tier management consulting firms.
Me: The big organizational ones.
Popster: It reads like a satire more than anything else. A bitter satire. He rants a lot.
Me: Does it mention your firm?
Popster: Nope.
Me: But you weren't really an organizational consulting firm, you were compensation.
Popster: True. There's a line in it - he says that the difference between an IT consulting firm and a Management Consulting firm - is an IT consultant will actually be able to do something for you and add value the company.
Me: I don't know...the jury is still out on IT, from my experience.. they don't really do much...except make things worse.
Popster: They used to say the only companies who hire a management consulting firm are those companies with a lot of money to burn.
ME: Or just too stupid to know any better. (*cough*government agencies*cough*)
Me: So, you figure out which firm he worked in?
Popster: Not yet.
Me: I was guessing McKinsey.
Popster: No he just breezed through McKinsey. It's not really that realistic, more hyperbole and satiric.
Me: In his bio, he said he got burned by management consulting and felt the need to do a tell-all book. I was tempted to do that myself...but decided it was a waste of time and energy to rant about the HW Wilson Company. I mean who would care?
Popster: Probably sound like whining after a while. Much like House of Lies...actually, he does a lot of whining.
ME: They tend to in these sort of books. I was reading a similar book about the publishing industry, How I Became a Famous Novelist? Page after page of whining. But you have to give House of Lies credit - it got made into a tv series! So there's something to be said for writing these things. [Somehow I doubt anyone would be interested in doing a series about an evil library reference company and evil copyright specialists, management consultant's yes, but reference librarians? Worse people who create the books and databases that only reference librarians know about? Not so much. I can just see the marketing pitch - if you only know the true story behind the creators of the Card Catalogue, Dewey Decimal System, and Indexing in You Local Library! Truth revealed! News at 11! Considering most people haven't even been inside a library and just google everything. Hence the reason HW Wilson got acquired by EBSCO and no longer exists. It did try to get Google's attention, but Google wisely ignored it.]
Popster: Was trying to figure out how they made this into a movie. The book doesn't really lend itself -
Me: TV series, Dad, it's been made into a TV series.