(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Just finished watching the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz flick Knight and Day - which came out last summer - and, it made me miss the 1980s romantic action/adventure films such as Romancing the Stone and Raiders of the Lost Arc.

There's really no dialogue. Just a lot of strung together chase sequences. And every time I thought it might get interesting, that we might get a conversation or witty banter or dialogue, another chase scene happened.

The plot? eh, it's an episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King or Remington Steele, except those were better written, which I guess is saying something?

Oh, well Zombieland is in my queue for next weekend. Then I think it's The Towne.

Also saw this week's episode of Being Erica courtesy of SoapNet (by the way ABC is developing a US version - which I doubt I'll watch, because I adore the Canadian version). Really loved this week's episode. It resonated. It was about the break-up of a friendship. Erica's long-time friend Jenny pops up again. Jenny is a "free spirit", she does what she wants, takes weird risks, and never thinks about the consequences. Lots of fun for the moment. But you can never count on her for anything. And she always needs saving. This round, she's out of a job, and Erica gives her one, chaos ensues - resulting in the loss of a client, work, and slamn to Erica and Juliet's business. And Erica realizes that she's getting nothing out of this friendship, except pain. Jenny isn't going to change. Erica can't help her. She's Sisphysis pushing the friendship up the hill. Staying friends with Jenny was hurting Erica. I cried during this episode. Because about two years ago, I had the same thing happen more or less to me. Except in real life it never ends quite as neatly as it does in tv shows. In real life it is messier and more open-ended. Me and Jenny, who like Erica and Jenny knew each other for well on 25 years, didn't sit down and discuss our breakup. We just stopped talking and then we never saw each other again. Also, unlike Erica, the only person who got hurt was me. Jenny hurt me, no one else thankfully. And it was painful. Very painful. But what they say at the end rung true...friendships end. They don't last forever. People grow apart either by circumstance or interest or just because. While at the time it happens - it hurts, like a sledgehammar to the gut, the pain fades and we move past it. I found this episode to be very comforting. Much better episode than the last two weeks. Maybe it's just me? But the Adam Centric episodes suck.


Not sure what I'm doing this weekend. Church is putting on the play Mother Wove the Morning by Carol Lynn Pearson, tonight and tomorrow night. Have decided to check it out tomorrow night. Too exhausted tonight to do it. Mind was mush. It's a play about finding the feminine in religious text and mythology that we've forgotten. Agent is in Conneticut this weekend, so I may do the open-house apt search on my own on Sunday. Which in some respects is a better idea, anyhow. More control. Trying not to give up on my dream, but it is very hard. Sometimes wonder if it is worth it, feel like I've been putting money aside forever. Also need to do laundry and clean my apartment, plus, sigh, do my taxes - which I've been procrastinating - not because I owe money (don't) but because it's a headache (albeit made easy with Turbo Tax). I've always done my own taxes. All my finances, I handle myself. And I really need to work on editing my novel and getting it out there. Sigh. Yet, all I really want to do is read pulp thrillers, write on my lj, read my lj, munch, and watch tv. Isn't that pathetic? I think it is pathetic. Doesn't mean I won't do it and hate myself on Monday...

Being on Facebook is teaching me a lot about my father's family - most of his brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews are on it. Quite a few of them are frustrated writers like myself - with blogs or finished novels or self-published novels.



Also learned a lot bad news online today - I cried watching the Japan footage. Seriously cried. Tears and everything. It's so heartbreaking. And there isn't really anything I can do (outside of donating money at some point - which doesn't really go anywhere unless you know someone personally you can help, been there done that). Speaking of.. I hope the person on my flist who lives there is okay. Also hope the Navy Nurse I used to correspond with a very long time ago is okay or better yet, not there and in the States by now.

Then I wandered off to watch Rachel Maddow vids, only to realize I can't watch them...well not without my blood-pressure going through the roof and this overwhelming and somewhat insane desire to Strangle dismantle the Republican Party. Discussed this with Momster - she has the same problem. We can't watch Maddow, even though we agree with her, any more than we can watch Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly or Keith Oblierman or any of these guys without wanting to kill the Republican Party- she sends our blood pressure sky-rocketing through the roof and makes us hate the Tea Party and Republicans (actually they all do, regardless of who they are for), which is not a good idea or very productive - considering we both have quite a few friends, family members, and co-workers respectively who are Republicans and Tea Party members and we love them dearly, we just wisely avoid discussing politics with them. Because of the overwhelming desire to ahem, strangle. I really wish that the media would stop making money off engendering hate and discord amongst its viewership or eliciting rage - it can't be good for anyone. Even advertisers. I mean do you really want to go out to Burger King after watching Rachel Maddow or Bill O'Reilly? Or buy a car? I think not. You want to go out and buy a gun or maybe an asprin, better yet - some prozac. So, hmmm, maybe it's helping Walmart and the pharmaceutical companies? Which actually would explain our current economy, come to think of it. Not to mention the upsurge in violent deaths of late.

Not that we shouldn't be informed. We should. But I'm wondering if there's a way to do it without all the fire and brimstone inducing emotion? Oh wait, there is - McNeil/Laherer, PBS, and BBC World News, and NY1 provide this type of objective journalistic reporting, without all the needless showmanship and editorializing. I forgot. This explains why the only newschannel I watch is NY1 (I avoid everyone else including the Newspapers, outside of maybe the MEtro which is free and is slowly becoming little more than a gossip rag - we had more articles on Charlie Sheen this week than on what was happening in Japan or Libya. I get that people love Two and a Half Men, but come on.)

Hmm, I wonder if I can convince Time Warner to cut me a deal on HBO if I ask them to remove FoxNews, MSNBC, and all the news/ESPN channels? Don't watch them anyway. Not that I have time to watch HBO either for that matter. Am taping or DVRing Fringe and Merlin tonight, we'll see if I watch Fringe, I keep taping and deleting it. See? I'm not sure I can get into the show this late in the game, also there's a very good chance Fox will cancel it. Fox does not have a good track record for saving shows that aren't pulling in high ratings and are different, particularly science fiction shows (*cough*Firefly*cough* - not to mention Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, Tru Calling, Drive, Wonderfalls...sigh..the list it is endless.). Glee pulls in high ratings and is a critical and Pop Culture darling much like Nip/Tuck was - so it is safe (also it helps that it hit the mainstream American Idol audience like Whoa, the majority of the cult audience has either lost interest and/or rants about it off and on.). Fringe is science-fiction and no one knows about it but the cult audience. I'm guessing it's dead show walking unless someone else picks up (unlikely since Fox is the producer/distributor). Surprised it lasted this long.

Dang, it's past midnight, how'd that happen? Last time I looked up it was only 10:30. Ugh. Off to bed.

Comments

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I thought that was an outstanding episode of Being Erica. It's such a real, resonant thing that happens, but we so rarely see. Maybe it's because it's such a female/female friendship POV?

With Fringe, even if they do cancel it, I have confidence that they'll go out well. They're clearly building toward a chame-changing climax this season that, I suspect, could work as a finale if it's not picked up.

And, honestly, as much as I want that climax, it's really all about the relationships for me. They've managed three characters and their relationships that I care about.

Olivia has had such a crap life (her mother died, she was abused by her step-father as a child, then she was usesd as a guinea pig in (Walter's) scientific experiments in the early 1980s which changed her (She can walk between universes and the drugs gave her eidedic memory). WHen I first watched the show I thought that something was off with the actress's performance because the character was so cool and distant but seeing her play the alt_Olivia -- who is quite different-- it became quite clear that it was a careful choice that totally works for the long character arc. And I liked EW Ken Tucker's article about the show today:

At its big, red, throbbing heart, the show tells the story of a love so powerful, it crosses universes: When Peter was a child, he died. His brilliant-scientist father, Walter, having discovered that there was a parallel universe containing doubles of everyone here, transported himself to that Other Side and brought back that universe’s Peter, to love and to cherish. In doing so, he created not just a rift in the universes (which are now dangerously, explosively out of balance), but also a rift between father and son (when Peter discovered who he really was, and grappled with the idea that he belonged to another Walter, a “Walternate")

And this was all entangled with Olivia's past and the reason that she was a guinea pig in Walter's loathesome experiments (that he is now horrified by), and that too informs her relationship with Peter.

You can skip a lot of Season 1 (though it works kind of like Farscape in that in retrospect they even use some of that throw-away stuff) as the juicy stuff really arrives in Season 2 and they've been going gangbusters in Season 3.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's because it's such a female/female friendship POV?

So rarely done on TV. In so many cases - it focuses on the guy. Or the discussion is about the guy. Or the breakup is about the guy.
Here - while Jenny did mess up because she hooked up with Brett and
took him to the office - the reason Erica breaks up with Jenny has absolutely nothing to do with Brett. And he isn't really mentioned.
This makes it more real.

You can skip a lot of Season 1 (though it works kind of like Farscape in that in retrospect they even use some of that throw-away stuff) as the juicy stuff really arrives in Season 2 and they've been going gangbusters in Season 3.

I think the same thing happened for me with both Farscape and Fringe. 1) I tried watching the first two-five episodes and gave up. 2) no time to watch it - due to other things I liked better directly opposite which conflicted. (When Farscape was on - something else was on opposite it that I liked, can't remember what it was and no time. Now with Fringe? It was on Thursday's opposite shows I liked. The only season it wasn't opposite shows I liked better was the first season, when I tried watching it and it felt too much like a rip-off of The X-Files (and I was not a fan of The X-Files, weird I know, but there it is.). Now - that it is on Friday's not really opposite much of anything (I can tape two shows airing at once now but not three), it's in its 3rd season.

I think a lot of sci-fi shows have this problem - they take a while to get rev'ed up or take off. A lot of people online have said the same thing about Whedon's shows - they didn't like Buffy S1, but Buffy S2 got them hooked or Buffy S3 did. Or they didn't like Angel S1 - but whoa, after that. The problem is we have too many options now - if you can't hook the audience in the first five episodes, you are dead. OR if you do hook them in the first five then go off in a direction they don't like and they leave, you are dead. (Very happy I'm not working in TV. Must be quite stressful.)

With Fringe, even if they do cancel it, I have confidence that they'll go out well. They're clearly building toward a chame-changing climax this season that, I suspect, could work as a finale if it's not picked up.

From what I've read...it appears JJ Abrahms unlike Rockne O'Bannon (Farscape) actually knows that the series could end this year and isn't writing a two-year arc but is revving it up for a climax and conclusion. (There's a rumor that he plans on killing off Peter, although I don't know if that's true, which would end the series.)
This reminds me a lot of Joss Whedon who knew they were canceling Angel in S5 and that there was no way they could save it - so chose to go out with a bang.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I really loved that it wasn't actually about Brett either. It was really about hers and Jenny's relationship.

---

My theory (based on nothing other than simply watching) is that the Observers -- who we know don't quite understand human relationships -- are overlooking the obvious. They're being so careful to be sure that Walter will allow Peter to die this time (because he didn't the last), that they're overlooking that it's not only Walter who would risk everything to prevent Peter's death. Olivia would as well (and there are two of her).

I think it's going to be a bit of BtVS "The Gift" where at the crucial moment one of the Olivias figures out that there's a third way. (It could have huge implications either way) They've already set up that Peter's and Olivia's (and Alt_Livia's) relationship, while romantic is also something more than that. I really thought that was the point of the 'ghost' episode recently where a woman who lost her husband and the alt_dopple_husband who lost his alt_dopple_wife formed a connection bridging universes... that started a cascade effect endangering both. That MOTW screamed "this information will be important later" to me. Albeit, most episodes this season have seemed to be that or a metaphor for what's going on in the relationships).

I'm still uncertain how they're going to deal with the death of an entire Universe (that on further exposure we've learned that neither is 'evil' per se, just struggling to save their world from destruction. Okay, by any means necessary which... isn't 'good.' But still, not exactly evil.) There seems like there should be a way to preserve both universes, but they've yet to present that as a viable option.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

And on second thought... I think it may be whether Fringe is going for 'game changing' or 'the end.' Olivia is more of the protagonist of the show than Peter is. And Peter, who is in the 'wrong' universe for him, is the cog that's out of place and the most obvious connection to cut that might actually preserve both universes. But Olivia can pass between universe's without harming the fabric of the universe, and Fringe has very strongly hinted that it's not a dual universe but a multi-verse, so I can see an option where Peter dies and yet they carry on next year with Olivia deals with not only the ramifications of Alt_Livia but of the possibility of there being another Peter in a 3rd verse...

Heh. Science fiction, it never runs out of possible options. :)

I've only seen one episode...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Okay you lost me. ;-)

I've only watched one episode of Fringe since the first season and that was this week's episode. No way to catch up - without renting them via netflix and no time.

This may be Fringe's problem. How do you attract new viewers if you are so serialized that the new viewers are hopelessly lost? (actually this is the problem with all serialized sci-fi shows. Buffy through Lost, which is why networks hate them - they have a double-edged sword - the cliff-hanger gets people sucked in to watching each week and obsessive to the point of buying the DVDs and rewatching continously, but it turns off viewers who don't have time to invest in it or come too late to the party - so you can't add viewers, also reruns are difficult to do because you can't show them out of order.).

(Okay, I wasn't hopelessly lost, from your comments - I more or less figured out that Walter had screwed up the universes by bringing Peter across and they were breaking down as a result. He was trying to get William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) back to help him and instead of Nimoy possessing Claire (as he thought) - he possessed Olivia. Meanwhile Peter has figured out that the way to fix things is to sacrifice himself in some way.)