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shadowkatSpent the evening bugging about on ny times real estate hunting coops and condos. It's still the best site to find reasonably price real estate, oddly enough. I've tried others.
Still plodding my way through GWDT (girl with dragon tattoo) mostly because it intrigues me (the business mystery bit and the two main characters - Mikal and Lisbeth as well as the unique location (it's not in England or the US which 85% of this stories appear to be.). As for the writing style?
It's pretty much your run of the mill mystery thriller, albeit better written than the vast majority of them - in that this one requires you to have a vocabulary above the third grade reading level. (In short it requires more attention than John Grisham and Janet Evanouich - nothing against either, I've read several books by both authors. ie. It's a step above what I like to call an airplane book.)
Hmm. Brings to mind one of my favorite novels - Smila's Sense of Snow. Actually Lisbeth reminds me a little of Smila. Very weird narrative that one - since it had a sci-fi component and was told out of sequence.
The Good Wife was rather brilliant last night. I know not everyone likes or watches this gem.
CW looked at me with resigned patience when I blathered on about it on Saturday - sort of similar to the resigned patience I reciprocated when she blathered on about Criminal Minds (a show that gives her nightmares - which is I why I don't watch it. I stopped watching it early on - around the time I saw the episode with the serial killer/rapist who liked to use spiders to paralyze his victims before he raped them. If you ever want to know what I can't watch on tv? That's pretty much it. Well that and tv shows that show people's heads explode in a semi-realistic manner. Not a fan of gore. Now - Walking Dead oddly enough I could handle - because it was cheesy horror, but Bones? Just makes me want to change channels, because eww. Have the exact same problem with The X-Files and Fringe - both are the type of horror that a)gives me nightmares, b) grosses me out, and c)my mind grabs hold of and just will not let go. I remember my brother, me and Momster watching the X-Files and my brother turning to me and saying, okay, I've seen this one before and trust me - you really don't want to. Curious I asked why. He said - it has spiders in it. That was enough. I left the room and found a book to read. I've watched The X-Files - but selectively and sporadically. Fringe? I figured out within five episodes that it had the same problem the X-Files did, horror that would play with my mind - so no. Gothic horror doesn't bug me. Sci-Fi horror does - well depending. Invasions from outer space? Rarely. But the classic - Alien by Ridely Scott - haven't made it through that film yet. While oddly, I've watched John Carpenter's Halloween four times. Very odd. I have no clue why Nightmare on Elm Street still gives me nightmares, but Halloween didn't bug me all that much. Or why The Ring scared the shit out of me - kept me up for weeks, so did Poltergeist - when I was kid, but I shrug off things like The Walking Dead, War of the Worlds, and Jaws. The mind is a very weird thing.)
Anywho..back to The Good Wife - very good political drama that is disguised as a legal procedural, but isn't one. It lost all the legal procedural fans the first season, when they realized - wait, this isn't the nice episodic legal procedural that I thought it was - with a mystery solved each week and everyone laughing around the table. Instead it's a serialized drama about Chicago politics and similar in tone to the West Wing, albeit far less liberal and idealistic - more cynical actually.
Written by a husband and wife team, and produced by the Scott brothers - Ridely and Tony, who also direct on occassion, it is surprisingly on target regarding the legal bits (more so than most) and the American political bits. It also has some of the strongest and toughest women on tv. And the best cast I've seen in ages. I actually like all the characters, which is a plus. Particularly this year's newest addition to the regular cast - Eli Gould played to perfection by Scottish actor Alan Cummings, who gave up the role of the Green Goblin in Spiderman Turn off the Dark to take the role. (Smart man).
Rather loved this week's episode which featured Christine Baranski's wonderfully steely and manipulative liberal attorney Diane Lockhart and Gary Cole, as her hunky and ultra-conservative client/love interest. I admittedly have a crush on Gary Cole - who turned me on when he played in the tv series Midnight Caller, then later in American Gothic. He's a great actor - he can play creepy, hunky, funny, and straight drama. Although it was admittedly a weaker episode than the last two weeks. Yet, it gave us another angle on Eli - whose character gets more and more developed as we move forward. Rather fascinating move on the part of the writers and producers to make Eli (Peter's campaign manager a regular character) but keep Peter in the background, a recurring character much like Blake, the kids, Peter's mother, Childs, Bond, Owen and Wendy Scott - that we only see if one of the six regulars is interacting directly with him. The temptation would have been to make him a regular - I'm impressed and relieved they chose not to, which keeps Alicia the focus.
Also Eli's moment of conscience, albeit a hypocritical one, with America Ferrar's illegal immigrant nanny was rather interesting. The story was a bit too ripped from the headlines. But, it did work in how it revealed Eli's mixed feelings regarding his career of choice. In using Ferrar to take down Wendy, he hurts America more and himself. For he liked her. Even flirts with her. And we meet his daughter - who is around the same age. There's a loniliness in him that makes him interesting.
This is what I love about this show - it has no clear cut bad guys or good guys. Just a lot of conflicted and complex characters who believe they are doing the right thing. (Okay, with the possible exception of Bond and Blake who have regrettably been under-developed and tend to be largely one-note. But that may be mainly because from our six regular characters pov's Bond is a threat.
And this show is deeply in those pov's. We never leave them, or if we do it is to underline a point.
Such as Alicia's kids and what they are doing behind her back, demonstrating that she's not as on top of the parenting thing as she thinks. Also showing the difficulty of being a working mother. I'll state as an aside that I do agree with selenak and others that Bond and Blake aren't working that well - the writers have written them a bit flatly. I want to know what motivates them. Not sure why they are written flatly, while every other supporting character including Elizabeth Reaser as Will's sports journalist girlfriend gets the depth? That I'm thinking is the only flaw I've seen so far on the show. Racist? No. Since it's both of them. And other characters that are black or minority have been developed.)
Okay, late - off to bed.
Still plodding my way through GWDT (girl with dragon tattoo) mostly because it intrigues me (the business mystery bit and the two main characters - Mikal and Lisbeth as well as the unique location (it's not in England or the US which 85% of this stories appear to be.). As for the writing style?
It's pretty much your run of the mill mystery thriller, albeit better written than the vast majority of them - in that this one requires you to have a vocabulary above the third grade reading level. (In short it requires more attention than John Grisham and Janet Evanouich - nothing against either, I've read several books by both authors. ie. It's a step above what I like to call an airplane book.)
Hmm. Brings to mind one of my favorite novels - Smila's Sense of Snow. Actually Lisbeth reminds me a little of Smila. Very weird narrative that one - since it had a sci-fi component and was told out of sequence.
The Good Wife was rather brilliant last night. I know not everyone likes or watches this gem.
CW looked at me with resigned patience when I blathered on about it on Saturday - sort of similar to the resigned patience I reciprocated when she blathered on about Criminal Minds (a show that gives her nightmares - which is I why I don't watch it. I stopped watching it early on - around the time I saw the episode with the serial killer/rapist who liked to use spiders to paralyze his victims before he raped them. If you ever want to know what I can't watch on tv? That's pretty much it. Well that and tv shows that show people's heads explode in a semi-realistic manner. Not a fan of gore. Now - Walking Dead oddly enough I could handle - because it was cheesy horror, but Bones? Just makes me want to change channels, because eww. Have the exact same problem with The X-Files and Fringe - both are the type of horror that a)gives me nightmares, b) grosses me out, and c)my mind grabs hold of and just will not let go. I remember my brother, me and Momster watching the X-Files and my brother turning to me and saying, okay, I've seen this one before and trust me - you really don't want to. Curious I asked why. He said - it has spiders in it. That was enough. I left the room and found a book to read. I've watched The X-Files - but selectively and sporadically. Fringe? I figured out within five episodes that it had the same problem the X-Files did, horror that would play with my mind - so no. Gothic horror doesn't bug me. Sci-Fi horror does - well depending. Invasions from outer space? Rarely. But the classic - Alien by Ridely Scott - haven't made it through that film yet. While oddly, I've watched John Carpenter's Halloween four times. Very odd. I have no clue why Nightmare on Elm Street still gives me nightmares, but Halloween didn't bug me all that much. Or why The Ring scared the shit out of me - kept me up for weeks, so did Poltergeist - when I was kid, but I shrug off things like The Walking Dead, War of the Worlds, and Jaws. The mind is a very weird thing.)
Anywho..back to The Good Wife - very good political drama that is disguised as a legal procedural, but isn't one. It lost all the legal procedural fans the first season, when they realized - wait, this isn't the nice episodic legal procedural that I thought it was - with a mystery solved each week and everyone laughing around the table. Instead it's a serialized drama about Chicago politics and similar in tone to the West Wing, albeit far less liberal and idealistic - more cynical actually.
Written by a husband and wife team, and produced by the Scott brothers - Ridely and Tony, who also direct on occassion, it is surprisingly on target regarding the legal bits (more so than most) and the American political bits. It also has some of the strongest and toughest women on tv. And the best cast I've seen in ages. I actually like all the characters, which is a plus. Particularly this year's newest addition to the regular cast - Eli Gould played to perfection by Scottish actor Alan Cummings, who gave up the role of the Green Goblin in Spiderman Turn off the Dark to take the role. (Smart man).
Rather loved this week's episode which featured Christine Baranski's wonderfully steely and manipulative liberal attorney Diane Lockhart and Gary Cole, as her hunky and ultra-conservative client/love interest. I admittedly have a crush on Gary Cole - who turned me on when he played in the tv series Midnight Caller, then later in American Gothic. He's a great actor - he can play creepy, hunky, funny, and straight drama. Although it was admittedly a weaker episode than the last two weeks. Yet, it gave us another angle on Eli - whose character gets more and more developed as we move forward. Rather fascinating move on the part of the writers and producers to make Eli (Peter's campaign manager a regular character) but keep Peter in the background, a recurring character much like Blake, the kids, Peter's mother, Childs, Bond, Owen and Wendy Scott - that we only see if one of the six regulars is interacting directly with him. The temptation would have been to make him a regular - I'm impressed and relieved they chose not to, which keeps Alicia the focus.
Also Eli's moment of conscience, albeit a hypocritical one, with America Ferrar's illegal immigrant nanny was rather interesting. The story was a bit too ripped from the headlines. But, it did work in how it revealed Eli's mixed feelings regarding his career of choice. In using Ferrar to take down Wendy, he hurts America more and himself. For he liked her. Even flirts with her. And we meet his daughter - who is around the same age. There's a loniliness in him that makes him interesting.
This is what I love about this show - it has no clear cut bad guys or good guys. Just a lot of conflicted and complex characters who believe they are doing the right thing. (Okay, with the possible exception of Bond and Blake who have regrettably been under-developed and tend to be largely one-note. But that may be mainly because from our six regular characters pov's Bond is a threat.
And this show is deeply in those pov's. We never leave them, or if we do it is to underline a point.
Such as Alicia's kids and what they are doing behind her back, demonstrating that she's not as on top of the parenting thing as she thinks. Also showing the difficulty of being a working mother. I'll state as an aside that I do agree with selenak and others that Bond and Blake aren't working that well - the writers have written them a bit flatly. I want to know what motivates them. Not sure why they are written flatly, while every other supporting character including Elizabeth Reaser as Will's sports journalist girlfriend gets the depth? That I'm thinking is the only flaw I've seen so far on the show. Racist? No. Since it's both of them. And other characters that are black or minority have been developed.)
Okay, late - off to bed.