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19 February 2015 at 08:36 #38102
he was born a bit too late to be part of the Romantic era. He might have aspired to be one of the Aesthetics
Yeah, I was aware of that actually. Probably should have made that clear in previous posts on the subject. But you’r right. The poetical period fits quite well with, as you say, William’s repression. What was the Aesthetic/Victorian era but essentially defanged Romanticism, prettified, and with all the scary revolutionary stuff and madness taken out? (Appropriate too, as if the era of the worst Bloody Awful Poetry doesn’t like William then he must be doing something right.) But yeah, William probably did aspire to a Swinburnian or Arnoldian sensibility but Spike goes to the heart of what is repressed and excised from that sensibility. And it’s probably more Shelleyan than Byronic too. The late Victorians really idolised Shelley, but prettifying him, venerating the nature poetry and the work dense with Classical allusion and conveniently forgetting about all that pesky anti-monarchy, atheist and free love stuff. William strikes me as being cut from the same cloth while Spike is very much a Shelleyan hero — near-insane, chaotic, destructive, in thrall to the extremes of their emotions.
@purofilion — Whedon did indeed work as script doctor on Waterworld and many other movies. But part of the work of a good script doctor is not to leave your fingerprints all over it but to go in, fix what needs to be done and then get out again. I don’t think the mess that is the final film can be blamed on him. That honour must go to Costner who has fine history of interfering in and bollocksing up the films he’s involved in.
19 February 2015 at 00:49 #38091@pedant and @purofilion–
I have rarely been as shocked at a single scene as the flaying of Warren Mears.
Have to agree. That, the shooting of Tara and the atttempted rape of Buffy, all within a few episodes of each other showed an incredible fearlessness on the part of the writing team.
And Amy. As I think we talked about in the s1 blog, Amy introduced in the second episode (which also brings in the witchcraft thread that leads us here) is a pivotal character in Buffy. She could so easily have been a Scooby but her path ends up being a lot more destructive, a lot more petty, and a lot more chaotic.
RE. Normal Again. As with @pedant, I’ve seen an awful lot of hostility to the episode online — for many of the same reasons that I love it, the ambiguity of the ending that brings Sunnydale itself into question and the whole idea that Sunnydale itself might not be real in the first place. It reminds me of the same sort of debates you see on the Guardian about how AG Who is somehow a betrayal of BG. (And Normal Again is definitely one of the few Buffy episodes that you could adapt for Who and it’d still work.)
19 February 2015 at 00:36 #38090@purofilion — that’s a terrific post. Love your interpretation of Spike’s and Angel’s character. Your idea of Spike’s Classical personality is extremely interesting. I’d still argue that Spike is textbook Romantic though — I don’t know from music really and I’m coming more from poetry/prose (specialised in the Romantics for pretty much all my honours years as an undergrad, so probably kinda biased). I’m pretty sure he’d subscribe to the chaos and “spontaneous overflow of strong feelings” of the Romantics.
However:
Horrifying. And I admit to having nothing pleasant left in my heart towards him. What did we expect, really?
Yes, horrifying. But don’t forget we’re not nearly done with Spike’s arc yet. There are still a few twists and turns on this road yet.
And on Petrie and men dancing in cages, it’s possibly worth pointing out that he originally wanted the “punishment” to be for the two guys to magically end up making out with each other but was overruled by Joss who thought that homosexuality being portrayed as some kind of punishment was not such a great idea.
I look at the general aura of Angel and see him as quite the ‘modern mind’ (unlike Spike): generous, good hearted, solid and tough, stubborn and intellectual. He has the streetwise mind too but it’s more juvenile in Spike and far less reassuring.
I fear that you may have to revisit some of your ideas about Angel after we get to s2 of his series.
And on that, I’ll do Buffy s6 this weekend and then we’ll do a few seasons of Angel. Which will, to be honest, a nice change of pace. Buffy and Angel are different pleasures but I think when everything is weighed up, I slightly favour Angel. (Although to be fair this is another point where Mrs Fish and I violently (not literally though) disagree.) Buffy will put you through the emotional wringer, make you laugh, make you cry like a baby, but Angel somehow has more, I dunno, more weight to it. For me anyway.
And it’s really worth looking at the finales at both shows together, I think.
18 February 2015 at 17:08 #38081@pedant — yeah, we’ve still got a ways to go with Spike’s arc so too much speculation at this point might end up being a bit misleading. But I’d definitely agree that his actions are far from selfless — but I’d also argue that for a large amount of the time the same is true of Angel.
Spike’s actions have been and continue to be (up to and including the finale of s6) driven almost exclusively by self-interest but it’s not now the conscious and gleeful evil of the Spike of old (or of any other run-of-the-mill vamp). If anything, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing and is spiralling as much out of control as Willow is at the same time.
His relationship with Buffy — whether that is in fact love or merely just obsession, something which I’ve never been able to satisfactorily answer in my own mind — has taken him part of the way towards change but it can only take him so far before he’s going to bump up against the brick wall of his demonic self. And largely he’s just let himself be carried along by it. But now he’s at the point if he wants to be more than he is now, he’s going to have take direct action himself. It’s late in coming — too late, in fact — but yeah, he thought he could change but just thinking that isn’t enough. He now realises that he has to go out there and do it.
A key question now is why he does so. Because surely it must be obvious to even him that even the remote chance he might have any kind of romantic future with Buffy has now been totally destroyed. I’m not convinced he gets his soul back for Buffy as he constantly claims but rather for himself, to claw back some of his now-damaged sense of himself. If he defines himself as the tortured Romantic lover, that conflicts directly with the knowledge of being a would-be rapist. He can’t accept that this would be a part of him (compare with Warren who has never shown any indication that the’s not cool with it). So again with the self-interest from Spike.
Of course, it’s difficult to tell with Spike. Even in his pre-vamp days, he’s essentially wrapped in layer upon layer of delusion. I’m not sure there are many other characters in the Buffiverse who don’t really know themselves to the extent that William does(n’t).
As to how he now compares with Angel — lots of ground to cover there but that, I suspect, will have to wait just a bit longer.
18 February 2015 at 15:45 #38079he had no hesitation or qualms and did all he could to pull her into the dark and away from her friends. And yet William’s tone of self-pity is still there
I think that’s slightly unfair. He was always just evil on a leash, for sure, but I think he definitely had some qualms. And he was as shocked as anyone when he went too far. To the extent that he realises that he has to do something and leaves immediately on his soul quest. He’s certainly not acting with the lack of pity which you would have seen in say s2 Spike. But yeah, definite kudos to Noxon for having the guts to go where they did. With that and Tara’s murder, this season really ups the ante in the final episodes.
Also Normal Again is in my view an episode that never gets the kudos that it really deserves.
I really like the extended finale to s6. I think partially because you’re taken to some dark places in the preceding episodes, the ultimate triumph of the Scoobies is all that sweeter. Although I don’t think we’ve ever been left with so many open questions and doubts at the end of a season of Buffy. And as @pedant says, Dark Willow is an arc that had been bubbling for a long, long time. Though Chris Claremont should really have been getting royalties for how it ultimately manifested itself.
Sorry you found it so bleak @purofilion and not sure you’re going to find much light relief in Angel, particularly when you hit seasons 3 and 4. On that, I was going to suggest a change in order of the blog-age if it would be more convenient. Was going to do s2 of Angel this weekend but might now switch to doing s6 of Buffy and then doing s2-4 of Angel in the following weeks and then we can look at the two finales of each series together for a compare and contrastey kind of deal. Let me know what y’all think.
18 February 2015 at 09:57 #38076@pedant — yeah, As You Were is bad. But I’d say it’s generic Petrie bad. But all in all, it’s no worse than any other handful of the Initiative episodes, which this is kind of a throwback to. Mrs Riley is kind of cardboard cutout — but is she really any more so than Forrest or replacement commander dude whose name I now can’t even remember?
As to the plot hole above, yeah, it’s bad but not as bad in my book as the Scoobies’ convoluted plans to convince the demon world that Buffy is still alive while at the same time erecting a highly noticeable tombstone to perform dark rites around. If we’re expected to overlook that in a significant arc-defining two-parter, then I think we can overlook a little not-thought-through expobabble.
And for all its faults the episode does have its plus points. As @purofilion says, it’s kind of nice to see Riley again and gives us a bit of closure to see that his life has improved again and he’s moved on from the dark place he was in when left. And this also provides a promise of light at the end of the tunnel for Buffy – ‘wheel keeps turning’. I think she (and the viewer) kind of need it at this point.
The thing that bugged me most about this episode is Spike as custodian of the eggs thing. I have no problem with Spike doing the wrong and evil thing but this just didn’t strike me as the sort of thing he would do. Mind you, he can’t attack people anymore so he’s probably going to have to get money from somewhere. It just struck me as a moment of sacrificing character on the altar of plot convenience to me.
So, no, I’d say Beer Bad still comfortably holds the mantle of Worst Episode Ever. Mind you, I have just been watching the Pylea episodes of Angel s2. Nothing’s going to seem quite so bad after that.
And yeah, after Hells Bells — necessary but bit patchy ep, I think — it’s a rocking run right to the end now. I predict some late-night watchage chez @purofilion.
18 February 2015 at 00:00 #38069@purofilion — Dead things is a fine episode I think and the real darkness is the “shit just getting real” for The Trio. For all their previously geek-shtick, the Bond/Star Wars/Star Trek chatter, the boys just graduated from adolescent comic-book fantasies of power to becoming rapists and then murderers in pretty sharp succession. And this being Buffy, it’s going to have serious repercussions further down the line. As has been pointed out by the showrunners on the extras, in this season Life is the Big Bad.
Good point about all the manifold habits and addictions of the various characters. It means that no one, save Tara, can really speak from a position of authority on the problems of the others. No one has the moral high ground here. And Tara has almost taken the place that Joyce once held. The nurturing centre of reliability for Buffy’s extended family.
17 February 2015 at 16:25 #38061@adt1957 — actually there really isn’t. Political issues, social issues. It’s all the same thing. They’re both manifestations of the human condition in relation to the others around it. There’s absolutely no reason why there can’t be a non-causasian, non-male Doctor. It’s entirely dependent on the stories that the showrunner of the time wants to tell and relative talent of the Doctor being cast. A great female Doctor is still far preferable to a mediocre male one.
And on the other hand, it might benefit the show in general if it makes such a move on its own steam and on its own terms rather than sticking its head in the sand and finding itself hopelessly anachronistic and dated looking. If the show had gone by what certain strata of the more stuck-in-the-past fandom wanted — megalomaniac monsters, dated sexual politics, as little character-based drama as possible, the reboot wouldn’t have lasted three years, let alone the 10 it will be celebrating this year.
Fortunately, there’s no danger of that happening.
17 February 2015 at 14:27 #38059@adt1957 — Sorry, you’re wrong. Doctor Who is choc-full of social themes. Always has been, always will be. The show’s second ever show is clearly an anti-nuclear parable and has a few things to say on pacifism too. The Peladon stories are very specific satires on British industrial relations of the time. You could argue that the portrayal of Time Lord society is trying to say a few things about class structure. It’s a show constantly reacting to its social environment and influences.
It’s always there, whether it’s oblique and metaphorical, done as satire or even done straight on the nose. Which is as it should be. Because it’s actually impossible to do drama that’s not in some way engaging with society. Society is people and people are drama.
So, no the show did not survive all this time by standing still. It did it by evolving and changing. And it will continue to do so. And that means that we will undoubtedly get a female or black Doctor when the time is considered right.
17 February 2015 at 11:29 #38055@pedant — Dead Things very dark indeed. But utterly vital arc-wise.
Gotta admit I’m totally bemused by your W.E.E.
17 February 2015 at 10:29 #38053@purofilion — is the writer in question Drew Z Greenberg? If so, yeah, he’s quite annoying and Hollywood self-obsessed, although personally it’s Doug Petrie that grinds my gears the most.
Yeah, in terms of design the show has gone really dark. The clear contrast between light and dark, the sunlit world and the demon-filled night seem to have gone now. Again, I suspect the Angel influence. s6 seems to have a very Angel-ey colour scheme.
I suspect Gone or Doublemeat Palace must be @pedant‘s worst episode ever and I must admit I really don’t love them but I was always involved enough in the Spuffy/Trio/Willow arcs to enjoy them well enough. Gone especially does try my patience somewhat though. Invisible Buffy, kind of lame really.
I must admit I had big problems with s6 when I first watched it and didn’t really appreciate it until the second or third rewatch. It is definitely dark and rather one-notey. I think part of the problem is that Joss is distracted elsewhere. S5 went to some very dark places but it had texture and contrast. After the joy of Once More With Feeling and Tabula Rasa, we have to get through a long stretch of darkness. There is still humour in there obviously, but it’s woven so deeply into the tapestry of gloom at the moment that it’s providing less of a contrast.
And yeah a lot of Smashed/Wrecked is not subtle in the slightest and probably could have been done better. I feel the Willow addiction stuff was handled a bit clumsily but is still effective (and affecting) enough. I think Alyson Hannigan really helps to sell it.
I think part of my problem on first watch was firstly I was still missing Giles. It was time for him to go definitely but his absence is definitely felt and I guess that is part of the point of the arc. With Giles and Joyce (and Tara) gone, the Scoobies start to spiral out of control. Also by this time these are people I’ve come to love. It hurts to see them in so much pain, seemingly without respite.
But don’t worry. It’s got a kick-ass resolution.
17 February 2015 at 00:52 #38040Personally I don’t think the Giles arc has been handled badly here at all. His departure has being seeded throughout the show since s4 and s5. His departure is a bit of a wrench but in s4 and s5, both of which times it looked like a possibility, his story didn’t feel done. But now I’d say it felt logical for him to go. And as @pedant says, he’s grieving the loss of his Slayer, then finding she’s alive again. Plus he’s recently just committed murder. I think we’ve got to cut the English guy some slack.
Not sure I’d say that the middle of s6 lacks polish so much as it was undergoing a tonal change. Joss is undoubtedly being distracted by both Angel as well as getting Firefly off the ground at this point so the other execs are getting to make more of a mark on the show. You can see it in everything from the writing to the even the production design, which is much more sombre now.
And worst episode ever? S6 might have a few mis-steps but it’s got nothing of Beer Bad levels of awfulness. I wouldn’t even say that there’s anything of Bad Eggs levels of eeughh either. It’s a quite dark ride, tonally it gets a bit samey and some episodes definitely work better than others but this time around I’ve come away considering s6 to be pretty tight-ish overall.
16 February 2015 at 22:39 #38036@purofilion — too bad you got slightly spoiled. I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that Spike is a fixture until season 7 but it’s the journey of how he gets there that’s the interesting thing. (James Marsters btw was also in a band called Ghost of the Robot and I believe still knocks out occasional solo musical projects.)
The commentary to OMWF is well worth a listen, as always, and isn’t particularly spoilery. Gives a nice insight into the episode’s writing and also the sheer terror that Joss put many of the cast through.
And you’ll so get Noxon’s ‘mistress of pain’ epithet by the end of the season, I guarantee it.
16 February 2015 at 11:54 #38032@barnable, @purofilion et al-
OMWF is incredibly layered. Look at Giles’s ‘Standing in the Way’ sequence. It’s not just the lyrics telling you the place Giles is in at that moment and foreshadowing his departure in the following episode, but the staging tells us lots about where Buffy is, reinforcing her denial. And on top of that you get ASH brilliantly selling Giles’s pain and reluctance at going. And all the other set-pieces are as similarly layered. It’s brilliant, brilliant story-telling.
16 February 2015 at 10:13 #38030@purofilion — I’m sure there were haters out there but I think the overall reaction to Once More With Feeling was overwhelmingly positive. It also spawned a host of copycat — and not as good — episodes in a few other shows (Zach Braff, I’m looking at you) but they did kind of miss the point. It’s not a musical episode just because that would be cool, but every song propels the narrative and character arcs.
And its real genius is that Whedon avoids revealing a major plot pivot point in what would otherwise have been an incredibly melodramatic way. By presenting Buffy’s reveal of where she’s been in song, it gets the emotional impact across without miring the arc in too much angst and pain too early on. It means we can progress on to dealing with other aspects of the over-encompassing season arc, like Willow’s addiction and later the Trio.
And Tabula Rasa is a fine episode as well. Too many priceless moments to mention but I love Giles and Anya as a bickering married couple and Spike and Giles’s Oedipal rivalry. Also the digs at Angel are quite fun too. And yet it ends with real sadness again as Tara and Willow’s relationship hits the rocks. But all in all it’s a great end to ASH’s time as an ongoing regular in the show.
15 February 2015 at 23:53 #38017@pedant — you don’t think you’re getting a wee bit spoilery? We both had the luxury of letting the show unfold at our own pace. Think it’s only fair to let @purofilion enjoy the same thing as much we possibly can.
@purofilion — yes, I definitely think s6 is very much about friendship and the ways that friends (and lovers) can often act in totally selfish and destructive ways towards each other.
12 February 2015 at 22:58 #37978@craig — saw this today (the trailer) and I have totally mixed feelings about it. It doesn’t look like it’ll suck and I have to admit to quite enjoying Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies. But Henry Cavill just ain’t Robert Vaughan and Hammer just ain’t David McCallum. These guys were a couple of total heroes for me when I was young so it’s going to be hard to get over my prejudices on this one.
But having said that, I’m kind of looking forward to seeing it.
11 February 2015 at 15:25 #37945@purofilion, @pedant and @scaryb–
Yes, The Body is a brilliant, brutal, life-changing piece of TV and I wouldn’t be above arguing that it’s the single best piece of TV drama in a continuing series ever. It’s worth nothing that despite itself reaching moments of sublime near-genius, Six Feet Under never once captured the experience of bereavement or grief half as well as this.
And @purofilion, it’s probably the last thing you want to revisit at the moment, but The Body has a really excellent commentary by Joss that is spoiler-free and pretty illuminating about the episode.
Oh, and s5 blog will be up this weekend. Took a week off so you didn’t feel pressured into constant catch-up…..
9 February 2015 at 22:52 #37921RE. Red Shirts. It’s a good point and Whedon shows do better than most by the expendable cannon fodder. But even they don’t manage it all the time, especially when they continually bang on about the dire consequences of “taking a human life”. I noticed it a lot when rewatching s1 of Angel recently. There was more than one occasion when a human character looked to have been taken out and I was left wondering about it. It’s dire to take a human life — but not those guys.
Mind you, it’s kind of hard for any genre show to get around this completely. And to try is to run the risk of looking slightly ridiculous. (As in bad guys who walked away from helicopter explosions and the like in 80s shows like the A-Team etc.)
And, oh yeah, the Big Pain is imminent.
9 February 2015 at 21:23 #37918I think one thing’s for sure and that’s that @purofilion will find some of the developments next season very interesting indeed…
9 February 2015 at 11:28 #37914@pedant — to be honest, you all sound like that to me anyway. I’ve always assumed JL was going for uncanny realism. 🙂 But to be fair, Mrs Fish, who is born-and-bred Londoner has similar gripes about Dru and the portrayal of the Watchers’ Council as well.
9 February 2015 at 10:20 #37912@purofilion — score another hit for Team Spuffy!!
@pedant — pish, tush, tosh! I’m loving the Drusilla action.
8 February 2015 at 19:07 #37902@purofilion — I used to have a friend who would argue that the UK was at a literary disadvantage because of its topography. There are no wide open places. No wildernesses. And therefore you’d never get anything epic. No Kerouacian picaresques and so on. I used to disagree but am beginning to concede that he may at least have a partial point.
7 February 2015 at 15:52 #37882@purofilion — Infinite Jest is a bit (actually more than a bit) on the tricksy side but it’s got some of the most breath-taking prose of the last 20-odd years in there too. Foster Wallace’s short stories are pretty good too and probably the best way to read him. His prose is pretty dense and best taken in small, contained doses.
Richard Powers can be a bit patch but when he’s good, he’s brilliant. My favourite I think is Galatea 2.2. Some big questions about AI and free will and the power of literature being asked in there but still a great read.
Most recently I’ve really enjoyed The Interestings by Meg Wollitzer, which I actually found quite Franzen-esque, especially when exploring the issues of what happens when you don’t fulfill your early creative promise, especially when your friends do.
I’ve read a couple of Lodge’s critical works which I remember finding useful at the time – liked Consciousness and the Novel – and also enjoyed Thinks. But again, pales slightly when compared to the equivalent campus novels coming out of the US at the same time.
7 February 2015 at 15:31 #37881@pedant —
What’s interesting in this arc is that Spike knows he is a monster, revels in being a monster – but thanks to the chip is having to grasp the unintended consequences of being that thing. But he doesn’t have what Angel had – a soul – and the clear question at this point is ‘does the chip create a quasi-soul’?
Good point but such a Season 7 discussion, I suspect. But I think it’s safe to say that Spike has a much more nuanced redemptive arc than Angel, even despite the depth Angel is given in his own series.
And on Foyle. Michael Kitchen is probably the greatest member of the Watchers’ Council we never had.
7 February 2015 at 14:02 #37869@pedant — it never twigged that was who Sandy was till now. Damn.
@purofilion – yes, James Marsters is doing fine work here and I have to say I think his best is yet to come. On the whole Bangel vs Spuffy debate, I come down firmly on the side of the peroxide one. Fool for Love is a great episode too. Some of Dru’s best stuff in there too. And I don’t think it’s spoilery to say that it’s one of those eps that will best be understood when it’s put into the context of its companion episode in Angel.
Haven’t seen the latest Foyle’s War run yet so no spoilers please. But it’s another one of my favourite shows.
7 February 2015 at 10:04 #37864@purofilion — To be honest, I haven’t read that much SF/fantasy since my 20s either. I find that while the ideas often brilliant, the lack of work put into characterisation and style is often off-putting. Mind you, the same is increasingly true of mainstream fiction in the UK of late. It certainly seems to me that for the past 20-odd years, it’s America that’s produced all the best novelists by a country mile. Our most lauded — Mantel, Faulkes, Barnes, McEwan, Boyd, etc — they come nowhere near the likes of Chabon, Franzen, Meg Wollitzer, Foster Wallace or Richard Powers. I can’t think what the reason might be except that US publishers might be more discerning or that the US university system is far better designed for producing creative writers.
With regards to Chabon’s influences, it’s tricky as I don’t think they’re really obvious. I think there’s a bit of Updike and Roth in there but I think there’s a far more eclectic pop-cultural mix there too — everything from comic books, to Hollywood screwball comedy to pulp detective fiction to Conan Doyle.
7 February 2015 at 09:51 #37861@purofilion — take your time. There’s no rush. Do it at your own pace. It is, after all, meant to be fun.
Family is one of my all-time favourite episodes. It serves the double role of making you love Tara, if you didn’t already, and showing the renewed bond between the Scoobies. The fact that Riley is absent and Spike is not speaks volumes.
6 February 2015 at 18:01 #37845@pedant — according to the interwebs (so it must be true) it’s been in common currency since the 1950s. I was never really aware of it until Buffy though and it seems to so appr0priate to the show that it made wonder if they came up with it. Apparently not tho….
6 February 2015 at 11:07 #37839@purofilion —
Agree totally about Chabon. He’s a brilliant writer — possibly one of the best English-language novelists around today but he does need an editor on occasion. Wonder Boys, the book, would be perfect without the Passover stuff which goes on too long and almost kills the book’s screwball, road-trip momentum. Steve Kloves saw that and that’s why he essentially excised it from the screenplay. Similarly Kavalier and Klay trundles to a halt — and at the most pivotal point in the narrative — for an extended and ill-fitting sojourn in the Arctic.
Having said that, sometimes his digressions are awesome. I always feel slightly uncomfortable about Telegraph Avenue – a sprawling take on black American culture — taking in the civil rights movement, the blues and Motown, the Black Panthers, Blaxploitation, the rise of the OJ-style sporting superstar — all written by a white, Jewish bloke. But all the same the extended passage — really just one really, really long sentence — describing the flight of Cochise Jones’s parrot is just amazing.
6 February 2015 at 10:53 #37838@ichabod — it’s a while ago now but I think at the time Sea of Souls was broadcast as two full series and then a third series of a couple of extended filmic one-offs.
Here’s a question for the Buffiandos — Does the expression ‘Bite me’ originate from Buffy or was it something that existed beforehand?
5 February 2015 at 23:16 #37825@barbaralefty — Sea of Souls was a short-lived X-Files-ey style Scottish show starring the mighty Bill Paterson. Never really lived up to its potential but the second series was better than the first I seem to remember.
@purofilion — I never realised that was Jeremy Renner in Somnambulist until this year. Boy done good. Also for my money a film that improves on the source book, I’d have to give a shout-out to Wonder Boys. And it’s a pretty great book to begin with (I’m a big Michael Chabon fan) but the film tightens up some of the flabby edges of the novel (like getting rid of the interminable Passover sequence in the middle). The film is one of my all-time favourites. Definitely Michael Douglas’s best performance.
Have to say I quite liked The Man in the High Castle. I’d definitely watch that if made it to a full series. And Dick’s best book for my money too.
4 February 2015 at 22:52 #37813Poor old @purofilion — doomed to watch DVD boxsets until the end of time…..
1 February 2015 at 20:17 #37748@scaryb — I have one in the, er, pipeline. I’ll try and get to it once all the vampage is done and dusted (arf)….
1 February 2015 at 20:16 #37747@scaryb — I think I’ve said this before but my top 3 consoles are:
1. Smith v1
2. McGann
3. Hartnell
1 February 2015 at 16:02 #37741I’d also like to add that the whole fan-fiction debate is fascinating and is surely ripe material for a blog at some point. Not me though. My times is being firmly spent commuting between Sunnydale and LA at the moment.
Volunteers form an orderly line….
1 February 2015 at 10:03 #37735@nick1235 — sad to hear things have been rocky. Take care of yourself (and your family).
@purofilion — rather out of touch with Oz politics these days but that’s a heartening result. With regards to the wider global context, I think the cracks are beginning to show in what was briefly a depressing consensus among the Left and Right towards a neocon world view. I’m glad it didn’t last and we’re starting to see things like the events in Greece and the surge in parties like the Greens in this country. But the fact that its happening against a backdrop of a general drift rightwards is a cause for concern though.
@craig — that’s a good piece on Kermode. He was especially good on the changing nature of the business of film journalism and the increasing freelance-isation of the job. And also on the effect of the internet in general. I remember his little spat with Will Self and I have to say I was kind of sympathetic to Self’s point of view as well. I think it was one of those cases when both sides were not entirely wrong, or entirely right.
29 January 2015 at 17:48 #37671@pedant and @bluesqueakpip — yeah, that’s really quite unbelievable. Looks like someone failed Design 101: Introduction to the Bleedin’ Obvious.
29 January 2015 at 13:24 #37668Oh, and not sure where to put this, but I thought this was kinda fun.
29 January 2015 at 13:07 #37667@lisa — very interesting video. Thanks for posting. I think he’s largely right about where publishing is going but as to his own stuff, he strikes me as … how does one put this diplomatically … being utterly bereft of originality. Mash-ups and fanfic are fine if you bring something to the mix but the 30-odd pages I managed to read of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies didn’t strike me as remotely having that. (In fact, I was reminded of Dorothy Parker’s ‘This is not a book to put down lightly. It should be hurled across the room with great force’ when I was reading it.) And from that talk, I’d say he’s now moved on to
ripping offer, mashing up Scott Snyder’s American Vampire series. (Which incidentally is well worth checking out, especially the earlier volumes.)29 January 2015 at 12:25 #37666@bluesqueakpip — I’ve been looking for an excuse to quit the Graun for a while but always ended up falling off the wagon. Now looks like a good opportunity. Design-wise, it’s an absolute travesty. Looks like they’ve let the Nathan Barleys all over it and abandoned what remaining vestiges of usability the site had left.
26 January 2015 at 12:40 #37621@pedant and @purofilion — no reflection on Strong whatsoever who brings some nicely disarming to Jonathan. I just don’t have nearly as much love for the character as many seem to have. Especially Espenson.
@bluesqueakpip — yeah, he’s going great guns at the moment. Especially with the scripts for the Hunger Games movies. I seem to remember him also being in the TV spin-off from Clueless many moons ago. He clearly fits that US high school profile….
25 January 2015 at 22:07 #37608@purofilion — have oddly fond memories of Australia Day back when I lived there. It’s oddly schizophrenic for a Scotsman as you don’t know whether you should be celebrating Australia Day or Burns’ Night or some weird amalgam of the two. Haggis and snags don’t tend to go together all that well….
25 January 2015 at 11:28 #37603@purofilion — hate to say it but I think Superstar is my most hated episode after Beer Bad. I really don’t like Jonathan and don’t really understand Jane Espenson’s infatuation with him as a character. And that’s probably all I can say on him for the time being.
New Moon Rising is pretty damn good actually. One of the few up sides of s4 is that Oz has a pretty good run.
Who Are You/This Year’s Girl one of the definite highpoints of the season and don’t forget that it’s essentially one half of a four-parter with Five by Five/Sanctuary over on Angel.
23 January 2015 at 20:47 #37534@juniperfish — apologies for the mis-attribution.
And Wide Sargasso Sea. That’s surely fanfic too.
23 January 2015 at 16:09 #37511A very interesting conversation with lots of great points. Particularly the one from @barbaralefty that Sherlock is essentially fanfic of a kind. (I wonder if you could stretch the point to saying that Nu-Who is fanfic too. Probably not.)
I’d agree with @pedant that there’s a lot of awful out there and that the worst of it is an attempt to redress some imbalance they perceive in their show. (But as @ichabod says, sometimes these are imbalances that do need to be addressed.) But by and large the ‘make it better’ brigade do tend to be rubbish.
However, that’s not the whole story and I tend to think there’s room for the ‘make it different’ writers, the ones who want to play around with the alternatives, the roads not taken. With the blogs I put up last year, my starting point was the brief talk of a total reboot that was mooted a few years back. What might the show look like if such a thing were to happen? If you were using the source material of the first Hartnell stories and remaking them today, with a modern sensibility and the (partial) benefit of hindsight. That to me is an interesting and worthwhile avenue to explore.
22 January 2015 at 12:41 #37469@pedant and @purofilion
agreed. And you definitely need to watch Restless last in s4
22 January 2015 at 10:49 #37467@purofilion — don’t listen to the leather trouser-obsessed one. It’s a great book. Some good essays in it covering some interesting topics.But you’ll just have to be mindful of spoilerage.
21 January 2015 at 20:57 #37462@purofilion — yes, it’s quite spoilertastic. Probably best left until you’ve finished Buffy. And Angel. And Firefly. And the rest.
21 January 2015 at 13:43 #37457I’m a big fan of the Alice Zhang stuff. So pleased the BBC has picked up their stuff.
@whisht — there are are still old-school tablets available but their new Cintiq pressure-sensitive screen range is the dog’s danglies — if you have the cash for them. The price is starting to come down though and they’ve just released a new range. They’ve also brought out an iPad-like Companion tablet with a pressure-sensitive screen that runs Photoshop on Windows and is meant to be very nice too. You can have a nice drool at them here.
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