Haha - Tom Williams best book review I've read in a good while. Spoiler: it's atrocious!
Oh my gosh, Herculon. That's one of those words guaranteed to take me to a very specific period of childhood, like heatilator. Cool posts, both, and the first link is smart, warm, and very in-depth about the world as some of us remember it - scratchy, brown, not always forgiving, and warm.
Strange Company has been a simmering new favorite for a while now. This post is a great example of why - a nicely written, in-depth look at one of the oddments of history - in this case, a look at the gruesome depths to which vanity can take us . Fun!
Edited to add more from Tom Williams - this post about Ely Cathredral is a wonderful piece of history. Part 2 here. Both have stunning photographs, and the architectural story, as it tends to do, is also the story of politics, people, and the land itself.
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Collection
(I)f there’s one thing women* don’t need, it’s another reason to feel unwelcome...
(*or anyone)
For all the brouhaha about political correctness, and my own grappling to find the line(s) I will not cross, and the boundaries to delineate in interaction with others, I've never found a better phrase than the now-problematic "PC" itself. Thank you to Joel Kim Booster for providing the best conceptualization: "As a human being, I find accountability to other people extremely important... I don’t think we’re really willing to do that math. Is this joke worth being an asshole?" This laser-focuses the fact of community, of the dynamics of interaction. Also, this is a nice, multifarious view of retroactive linguistics. Balance.
"The politics of a Dick Wolf police procedural are simply less visible to many—including, apparently, Wolf himself—because they mirror the politics of the privileged. For middle-class and affluent white people, a pro-police, pro-institution worldview is apolitical because it’s neutral to them. It is neutral to Dick Wolf. That worldview is not politically neutral for black men, or trans people, or victims of sexual assault, or impoverished people, or basically anyone who isn’t a wealthy white person." It is unnecessary for me to add anything to these words but the link.
Art. It's cool. It's wearable. Let's take a breather from my recent posting and look at neat wearable art - more than mere costume, here we have musings from science fiction to avant garde to "red" to under-the-microscope entries. I think my favorite is Quantum, but "shell" packs a pointed punch today of all days.
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Collection
When an article features Terry Crews and mentions Rosey Grier, I'm going to be all the way in for clicking THAT. When that article fully displays the principle and ever-perfecting manhood, well pre-dating Crews' current testimony before the Senate, and how sumptuously he expresses not only his humanity but his convictions, I all but weep. He's proving what we know - and most need to know. Additionally, he's funny as hell.
A joke I heard on Twitter once: "White people upset about BET asking, 'Why don't we have White Entertainment Television?' ... We do, it's HGTV." Worth the click because sometimes online discourse is fertile.
In other TV musing, something struck me about Pose recently. Having watched other Ryan Murphy works, I knew early on that the discussion I'd seen regarding how unrealistic Pose is was almost funny: Murphy's not interested in realism, he presents setpieces, and he does that nicely if you choose to take it on his/those terms. (Feud felt intentionally setbound; even outdoors scenes are claustrophobic and closed-in. That plays to the emotional worlds of the Crawford and Davis characters in play.) For Pose, the archness is not as visually obvious, so I've seen complaints about, say, just how glamorous the scene is made to look, or the opening sequence for the series itself, where "real" historical costumes are stolen from a museum for a gay ball. Preposterous! And duh. Here is the thing: Pose is 80s TV. Figuratively (it's set in the late 80s) and literally (its emotional beats are ALL Very Special Episode-worthy). The depth of plotting is *veeeerryyy* much like 80s TV - sitcom or drama. The pacing is extremely 80s; when TV took time to lay things out. For many, this seems slow or dry or even insulting (making the implicit explicit). But this is so, so true to its time. It takes the 80s seriously, AND it tells stories no network (remember, we really had three back then) would have told in the time itself. I kind of think that's genius, and it's not Murphy's first time reining pace enough to slow things down like this. Given his current influence, you wonder how this might bear out in others' work. Imagine a vogue for *less* cinematic TV; imagine the VSE's regaining ascendance. I've seen surprising amounts of ink on VSEs over the past couple of years. My guess is nostalgia is bringing it back, in service of subjects even the original concept never served.
Leaping from television to literature, who has read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book? I actually re-read it a year or two ago, and - forget Jurassic Park - this book will scare the willies out of you, in both its plague-ridden timelines. So reading about the extraction of leprosy from centuries-old skeletal remains ISN'T HORRIFYING AT ALL. Just as long as you haven't read the wrong books. Yeep.
Finally ... hmm, and more hmm. Yes, fella babies, it's Adventures in Science Reporting again!
I have written in the past about Penelope's ancestry, and as little obsessed as I am with pedigree, it's not beyond me to admit fascinated with the idea my beloved Pariah descending from millennia of fascinating forerunners. Oddly enough, it seems like cancer is about all we really have left of pre-contact canine breeds. Still - being a critical thinker - it is hard not to wonder about previous DNA studies, pointing to modern Amercan dogs' long history here. Hmmmm. Keep us posted, Dr. Ostrander.
A joke I heard on Twitter once: "White people upset about BET asking, 'Why don't we have White Entertainment Television?' ... We do, it's HGTV." Worth the click because sometimes online discourse is fertile.
In other TV musing, something struck me about Pose recently. Having watched other Ryan Murphy works, I knew early on that the discussion I'd seen regarding how unrealistic Pose is was almost funny: Murphy's not interested in realism, he presents setpieces, and he does that nicely if you choose to take it on his/those terms. (Feud felt intentionally setbound; even outdoors scenes are claustrophobic and closed-in. That plays to the emotional worlds of the Crawford and Davis characters in play.) For Pose, the archness is not as visually obvious, so I've seen complaints about, say, just how glamorous the scene is made to look, or the opening sequence for the series itself, where "real" historical costumes are stolen from a museum for a gay ball. Preposterous! And duh. Here is the thing: Pose is 80s TV. Figuratively (it's set in the late 80s) and literally (its emotional beats are ALL Very Special Episode-worthy). The depth of plotting is *veeeerryyy* much like 80s TV - sitcom or drama. The pacing is extremely 80s; when TV took time to lay things out. For many, this seems slow or dry or even insulting (making the implicit explicit). But this is so, so true to its time. It takes the 80s seriously, AND it tells stories no network (remember, we really had three back then) would have told in the time itself. I kind of think that's genius, and it's not Murphy's first time reining pace enough to slow things down like this. Given his current influence, you wonder how this might bear out in others' work. Imagine a vogue for *less* cinematic TV; imagine the VSE's regaining ascendance. I've seen surprising amounts of ink on VSEs over the past couple of years. My guess is nostalgia is bringing it back, in service of subjects even the original concept never served.
Leaping from television to literature, who has read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book? I actually re-read it a year or two ago, and - forget Jurassic Park - this book will scare the willies out of you, in both its plague-ridden timelines. So reading about the extraction of leprosy from centuries-old skeletal remains ISN'T HORRIFYING AT ALL. Just as long as you haven't read the wrong books. Yeep.
Finally ... hmm, and more hmm. Yes, fella babies, it's Adventures in Science Reporting again!
I have written in the past about Penelope's ancestry, and as little obsessed as I am with pedigree, it's not beyond me to admit fascinated with the idea my beloved Pariah descending from millennia of fascinating forerunners. Oddly enough, it seems like cancer is about all we really have left of pre-contact canine breeds. Still - being a critical thinker - it is hard not to wonder about previous DNA studies, pointing to modern Amercan dogs' long history here. Hmmmm. Keep us posted, Dr. Ostrander.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Collection
Fourteen-to-eighteen-year-old me would have of course DIED of this piece of news, just because: Cornwall! Tintagel! There is nothing here, of course, even theoretically pointing to a young Arthur learning literacy and practicing at a windowsill. Still I would have come up with the dreamy idea.
Medievalist intercessionality.
Tony Mattera has a beautiful piece on patriotism and our times. A short, perfect read.
The Cut has an eloquent discussion of the current Bill Clinton moment - which, as timesome as it is and he is, does bear consideration right now.
In related non-news, the Patterson brand and the Clinton/Patterson ghost(s) aren't great authors. Who knew? Absolutely everybody. Gary Sue, let'r rip. Two reasons I will not read this book - incidental and not even applicable anti-Muslim villain naming, and egregious use of the term Dark Ages. Y'all know how I feel about *that*.
BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! Also: oh, SNAP.
Medievalist intercessionality.
Tony Mattera has a beautiful piece on patriotism and our times. A short, perfect read.
Women are perpetually asked to be the cops, the police, the bosses of their bosses, the judges of their judges; the ones held responsible for patrolling and controlling and meting out punishment against — or graciously forgiving — men who trespass. And God help us if we get it wrong.
The Cut has an eloquent discussion of the current Bill Clinton moment - which, as timesome as it is and he is, does bear consideration right now.
In related non-news, the Patterson brand and the Clinton/Patterson ghost(s) aren't great authors. Who knew? Absolutely everybody. Gary Sue, let'r rip. Two reasons I will not read this book - incidental and not even applicable anti-Muslim villain naming, and egregious use of the term Dark Ages. Y'all know how I feel about *that*.
Unfortunately, the title, “The President Is Missing,” depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is.
--WaPo
BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! Also: oh, SNAP.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Collection
Dunking doughnuts outside the 54th floor, Louis and Mrs. Armstrong at the Sphinx, a woman neck-deep in grapes, Malyshka the Russian Space Dog of Sputnik II ... oh and so indescribably MUCH more. Photos from The Atlantic's amazing archive.
In fuzzy-history-we-think-we-know: did you realize that the Equal Rights Amendment passed forty-six years ago, almost to the month? But it has never been ratified. Yes, ladies - and women too - there is still a deficit of two states' ayes to enforce what even CONGRESS was able to say yes to, way on back in 1972. More than a quarter of states in the theoretically United States still don't care to accept the amendment, two generations on. I am not proud to note my home state remains a holdout.
Tom Williams has a good post, reviewing New Grub Street by George Gissing. As interesting as the work looks, one of Tom's points is meta - that the work contains the flaws it rails against. He also points out that the complaints of the fictional author in New Grub Street are still with us today. To take this one more layer of meta, this morning before I saw his post, I happened to get up and turn on The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe as my background to waking up and getting ready. I was fascinated by its repeated commentary on a writer's raw deal in publishing, out of the Poe character's mouth, and got curious about the world of publishing circa, say 1941 or 1942 (the movie came out in 1942). Little is to be found about Brian Foy, who wrote the screenplay, in a cursory search, but he seems to have started life as a child entertainer before becoming a writer - easy to imagine he was exploited in more than one way in his given professions. I leave the link to Tom's post with only the observation that there is either hope or despair in knowing that it's never been easy in publishing.
Tom has another post of interest - short, beautiful, and poignant - about the Palace of Peace, the elite, and rumors of war. Sigh.
In fuzzy-history-we-think-we-know: did you realize that the Equal Rights Amendment passed forty-six years ago, almost to the month? But it has never been ratified. Yes, ladies - and women too - there is still a deficit of two states' ayes to enforce what even CONGRESS was able to say yes to, way on back in 1972. More than a quarter of states in the theoretically United States still don't care to accept the amendment, two generations on. I am not proud to note my home state remains a holdout.
Tom Williams has a good post, reviewing New Grub Street by George Gissing. As interesting as the work looks, one of Tom's points is meta - that the work contains the flaws it rails against. He also points out that the complaints of the fictional author in New Grub Street are still with us today. To take this one more layer of meta, this morning before I saw his post, I happened to get up and turn on The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe as my background to waking up and getting ready. I was fascinated by its repeated commentary on a writer's raw deal in publishing, out of the Poe character's mouth, and got curious about the world of publishing circa, say 1941 or 1942 (the movie came out in 1942). Little is to be found about Brian Foy, who wrote the screenplay, in a cursory search, but he seems to have started life as a child entertainer before becoming a writer - easy to imagine he was exploited in more than one way in his given professions. I leave the link to Tom's post with only the observation that there is either hope or despair in knowing that it's never been easy in publishing.
Tom has another post of interest - short, beautiful, and poignant - about the Palace of Peace, the elite, and rumors of war. Sigh.
Monday, May 8, 2017
Collection
Strangely, considering how much I lean on them for content around here, it's been a while since I did a Collection post. Let's make up for that, shall we?
This post from Casey Karp is a funny bit of truism - on procrastinators, writers, and the facts of documentation. He has a nimble way with a word, go read his blog for this, or many other things!
Who watched Feud, the recent "anthology series" (we used to call these miniseries, kids) about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford? One of the things that captivated me was its production design. From the brilliant cutout-animation of the credits to the airless, sky-less sets - even the outdoors feels indoors in this film - there is a set-bound feel, for such a sprawling piece, covering decades and many cities. The returns to a single home for each star (Crawford had many over the years, but writing historical fiction does involve elision and compilation), the visitation of one windowless and symmetrically-posed restaurant booth, the sets within the sets. It's all among the most amazing visual arts pieces I've ever seen done in a movie or show; there is a realism to the details, but an overwhelming, airless enclosure about the whole.
Many of my friends and family know, I've barely ever been able to tolerate Susan Sarandon at all, but of COURSE she was almost literally born to the role of Davis, and she probably edges out Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford here. Vocally, neither of them puts in a full-time job of sounding much like the original stars, but Sarandon does provide several moments looking and sounding like Davis which are spine-tinglingly eerie. Lange never even attempts the flinty twang of Crawford, which is a shame given that Crawford's voice is so much a part of her persona for those of us who've really spent any time watching her performances, but she doesn't fail as utterly as Faye Dunaway did with her voice. The smoker's modulation she does use is at least entirely appropriate to Crawford's aesthetic, and makes sense as a character choice.
Okay, enough of that. How about the history of the American grin - and the import/export problems with it? Very cool piece by The Atlantic; nicely detailed, but not a long read.
Who doesn't love a good victim-blaming? I don't! In "the evolution of how we do things" news: aaaaahhhhh, airlines. Turns out it's all our own fault we're miserable with air travel. There is a complex web of implications here; not all of it bad, and some of the worst of it perfectly persuasive. Personally, I'm creeped out and concerned about The Uber-ization of Everything, but the wider implications could be interesting, should they actually play out. Hmmm. Lots of hmmm.
Ten high-quality products manufactured in the United States - I had no idea ANY shoes were manufactured domestically any more, and will keep New Balance in mind for my next pair of sneakers. Which may be sooner now, just because I know this.
This post from Casey Karp is a funny bit of truism - on procrastinators, writers, and the facts of documentation. He has a nimble way with a word, go read his blog for this, or many other things!
Who watched Feud, the recent "anthology series" (we used to call these miniseries, kids) about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford? One of the things that captivated me was its production design. From the brilliant cutout-animation of the credits to the airless, sky-less sets - even the outdoors feels indoors in this film - there is a set-bound feel, for such a sprawling piece, covering decades and many cities. The returns to a single home for each star (Crawford had many over the years, but writing historical fiction does involve elision and compilation), the visitation of one windowless and symmetrically-posed restaurant booth, the sets within the sets. It's all among the most amazing visual arts pieces I've ever seen done in a movie or show; there is a realism to the details, but an overwhelming, airless enclosure about the whole.
Many of my friends and family know, I've barely ever been able to tolerate Susan Sarandon at all, but of COURSE she was almost literally born to the role of Davis, and she probably edges out Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford here. Vocally, neither of them puts in a full-time job of sounding much like the original stars, but Sarandon does provide several moments looking and sounding like Davis which are spine-tinglingly eerie. Lange never even attempts the flinty twang of Crawford, which is a shame given that Crawford's voice is so much a part of her persona for those of us who've really spent any time watching her performances, but she doesn't fail as utterly as Faye Dunaway did with her voice. The smoker's modulation she does use is at least entirely appropriate to Crawford's aesthetic, and makes sense as a character choice.
Okay, enough of that. How about the history of the American grin - and the import/export problems with it? Very cool piece by The Atlantic; nicely detailed, but not a long read.
(D)ata showed that flight delays got worse as more people based purchases mostly on price. Airlines didn’t have to compete at being good—they had to compete only at being cheap.
Who doesn't love a good victim-blaming? I don't! In "the evolution of how we do things" news: aaaaahhhhh, airlines. Turns out it's all our own fault we're miserable with air travel. There is a complex web of implications here; not all of it bad, and some of the worst of it perfectly persuasive. Personally, I'm creeped out and concerned about The Uber-ization of Everything, but the wider implications could be interesting, should they actually play out. Hmmm. Lots of hmmm.
Ten high-quality products manufactured in the United States - I had no idea ANY shoes were manufactured domestically any more, and will keep New Balance in mind for my next pair of sneakers. Which may be sooner now, just because I know this.
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Television Watching 2
At the same time I am eliminating certain kinds of entertainment, I'm also analyzing what stays, and why it's worthwhile. What I'm realizing is it's simultaneously unsurprising and completely unexpected what "works" for me entertainment-wise, ethically speaking. One stupendously trashy show has struck me particularly.
Among the unsurprising keepers - and unembarrassing ones - are Luke Cage, with some of the best women characters I've seen in a long time, a killer soundtrack, and a team of black writers filling out a fully realized world it's exciting to learn about and inhabit for a while. Jessica Jones and Agents of Shield too, yeah. Trek, of course, but I won't bore anyone with the details; that's another tag entirely. On my DVD shelf are the queasily balanced Caprica (strong female characters, sure, but a creepily sexualized teenager at the center, and an entire ensemble of absolutely bat-splat crazy people all-round) and Battlestar Galactica (I am not overjoyed with the gender issues and the fact it's an overwhelmingly white, eurocentric show, though it really began to explore these things at least, which so much television fears to).
Of course, few people embarrass themselves by liking Luke Cage, a well-received entry in a Marvel Universe which has been well loved as well as blockbuster successful.
Meanwhile, few people would ADMIT what I am about to, but I have to for the purposes of this post.
I watch The Royals. I watch it gleefully, in tandem with a friend of mine whom I shall not name unless they choose to out themselves, and reveling in its soap operatics, its tonguey-cheekiness (sometimes exposing actual nether cheeks - so naughty!), and ... well, I mean. Dame Joan Collins.
Here's the thing about The Royals. Lambasted in a hurry by everyone in need of protecting their cred against its excesses, laughed at for being unrealistic (that's the POINT, rather), and avoided by all except apparently enough millions of viewers to keep it afloat, the series is on its way into a third season and shows no sign of dying on the vine.
This show is Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, it's Grand Guignol. It's sumptuously daft, and not pretending remotely to be anything else. It is stocked entirely with ham in every casting, and home to more pouty lower lips than I've seen anywhere else on TV - and that is saying something. It's actually got a bit of heart here and there, and the delirious sets and costumes and performances are just right for the madness of the politics and deception around which the whole thing swirls prettily, like a gaudy fan.
Politics and deception have always made good tube. Dynasty hasn't even got a patch on Her Joanness in this gig. Most addicting-cinematic-TV of the 21st century has traded in exactly this sort of GOTCHA plotting. Joss Whedon has made a career out of it, and everybody likes him.
Not so The Royals.
Which is a shame. Not only is the show a lot more fun than the darker takes on murder and mayhem currently on offer (it doesn't hurt your heart to watch it), it's just as valid in honest ways.
And some other ways too, where there are dark shows doing the same thing and failing in important ways.
To wit: the women.
The Royals is outright run by women. The Prime Minister, the Queen, the Princess, the scheming would-be consorts of the on-again/off-again male heir, the million thieves and killers and hangers-on and lovers and exes ... the only characters here who actually move any pieces on the board are the women.
Oh, sure, current-King Cyrus is a gas to watch, for his chin alone. He's up there with Bruce Payne for greasily gluttonous scenery sneer-chewing, and I adore him all to bits.
But it's the tragically-eye-makeupped, colt-legged Princess Eleanor who's learning her way around real power. It's her mother, Queen Helena, played (if not simply embodied) by the sounds-Patrician-to-most-Americans Elizabeth Hurley, who has the will to do literally anything. It's the Queen's secretary, Rachel, who will pop your eyes with her understated outrages.
And even more importantly: most of the men are merely sitting around looking pretty. Prince Liam is all but non-present even when he tries to look determined. Jasper, the youngest and most impressively-eyebrowed security detail, who spends his time caroming through multiple roles only hoping to be near the princess, all but has "Mr. Fanservice" written all over his wonderfully cliche'd role as would-be protector. And his chemistry with her works both on the swoony and the emotional level.
Even the older fellows, especially those security gents, are awfully nice to look at, for those of us a bit leery of leering at the twentysomethings.
And all of them exist only in relation to the actions of the women, even the king, even the craggy fall guy so dedicated to The Crown that he sticks with being the fall guy even when he's given a pass.
In terms of its gender prominence and sexual politics, The Royals is an outstandingly progressive show. It's still a bit white (some of the people of color from season 1 seem to have disappeared entirely; including a very nice pretty security guard I rather miss) - I mean, if we've rewritten the royal family this radically, why not break the Caucasian monotony - but at least it's forward-looking on something, anything, in a world where we continually regress, culturally. And it's not a small thing. Women are, after all, a significant part of the world population. At least, two key women in The Royals are Black and Indian.
In a world where embarrassing discussions abound regarding Prince Henry's girlfriend, picking apart her ethnicity as if it is in any way relevant to anything at all, it's not the worst thing to see women in the royal milieu living entirely NOT on the terms of any men anywhere.
Imperfectly acted? At times. Overheated? Yes, please, and do turn it up. Ludicrous? Indeed, and loving it. This is a hilarious show, and means to be. Yet its reputation, as far as I have seen, has been formed by people dumb enough to think it is dumb enough to take itself seriously.
It's also a good laugh, and provides a few wonderful things to guess about along the way.
Among the unsurprising keepers - and unembarrassing ones - are Luke Cage, with some of the best women characters I've seen in a long time, a killer soundtrack, and a team of black writers filling out a fully realized world it's exciting to learn about and inhabit for a while. Jessica Jones and Agents of Shield too, yeah. Trek, of course, but I won't bore anyone with the details; that's another tag entirely. On my DVD shelf are the queasily balanced Caprica (strong female characters, sure, but a creepily sexualized teenager at the center, and an entire ensemble of absolutely bat-splat crazy people all-round) and Battlestar Galactica (I am not overjoyed with the gender issues and the fact it's an overwhelmingly white, eurocentric show, though it really began to explore these things at least, which so much television fears to).
Of course, few people embarrass themselves by liking Luke Cage, a well-received entry in a Marvel Universe which has been well loved as well as blockbuster successful.
Meanwhile, few people would ADMIT what I am about to, but I have to for the purposes of this post.
I watch The Royals. I watch it gleefully, in tandem with a friend of mine whom I shall not name unless they choose to out themselves, and reveling in its soap operatics, its tonguey-cheekiness (sometimes exposing actual nether cheeks - so naughty!), and ... well, I mean. Dame Joan Collins.
Here's the thing about The Royals. Lambasted in a hurry by everyone in need of protecting their cred against its excesses, laughed at for being unrealistic (that's the POINT, rather), and avoided by all except apparently enough millions of viewers to keep it afloat, the series is on its way into a third season and shows no sign of dying on the vine.
This show is Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, it's Grand Guignol. It's sumptuously daft, and not pretending remotely to be anything else. It is stocked entirely with ham in every casting, and home to more pouty lower lips than I've seen anywhere else on TV - and that is saying something. It's actually got a bit of heart here and there, and the delirious sets and costumes and performances are just right for the madness of the politics and deception around which the whole thing swirls prettily, like a gaudy fan.
Politics and deception have always made good tube. Dynasty hasn't even got a patch on Her Joanness in this gig. Most addicting-cinematic-TV of the 21st century has traded in exactly this sort of GOTCHA plotting. Joss Whedon has made a career out of it, and everybody likes him.
Not so The Royals.
Which is a shame. Not only is the show a lot more fun than the darker takes on murder and mayhem currently on offer (it doesn't hurt your heart to watch it), it's just as valid in honest ways.
And some other ways too, where there are dark shows doing the same thing and failing in important ways.
To wit: the women.
The Royals is outright run by women. The Prime Minister, the Queen, the Princess, the scheming would-be consorts of the on-again/off-again male heir, the million thieves and killers and hangers-on and lovers and exes ... the only characters here who actually move any pieces on the board are the women.
Oh, sure, current-King Cyrus is a gas to watch, for his chin alone. He's up there with Bruce Payne for greasily gluttonous scenery sneer-chewing, and I adore him all to bits.
But it's the tragically-eye-makeupped, colt-legged Princess Eleanor who's learning her way around real power. It's her mother, Queen Helena, played (if not simply embodied) by the sounds-Patrician-to-most-Americans Elizabeth Hurley, who has the will to do literally anything. It's the Queen's secretary, Rachel, who will pop your eyes with her understated outrages.
And even more importantly: most of the men are merely sitting around looking pretty. Prince Liam is all but non-present even when he tries to look determined. Jasper, the youngest and most impressively-eyebrowed security detail, who spends his time caroming through multiple roles only hoping to be near the princess, all but has "Mr. Fanservice" written all over his wonderfully cliche'd role as would-be protector. And his chemistry with her works both on the swoony and the emotional level.
Even the older fellows, especially those security gents, are awfully nice to look at, for those of us a bit leery of leering at the twentysomethings.
And all of them exist only in relation to the actions of the women, even the king, even the craggy fall guy so dedicated to The Crown that he sticks with being the fall guy even when he's given a pass.
In terms of its gender prominence and sexual politics, The Royals is an outstandingly progressive show. It's still a bit white (some of the people of color from season 1 seem to have disappeared entirely; including a very nice pretty security guard I rather miss) - I mean, if we've rewritten the royal family this radically, why not break the Caucasian monotony - but at least it's forward-looking on something, anything, in a world where we continually regress, culturally. And it's not a small thing. Women are, after all, a significant part of the world population. At least, two key women in The Royals are Black and Indian.
In a world where embarrassing discussions abound regarding Prince Henry's girlfriend, picking apart her ethnicity as if it is in any way relevant to anything at all, it's not the worst thing to see women in the royal milieu living entirely NOT on the terms of any men anywhere.
Imperfectly acted? At times. Overheated? Yes, please, and do turn it up. Ludicrous? Indeed, and loving it. This is a hilarious show, and means to be. Yet its reputation, as far as I have seen, has been formed by people dumb enough to think it is dumb enough to take itself seriously.
It's also a good laugh, and provides a few wonderful things to guess about along the way.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Eclectic Music
I often have reason to recall the time I went to a music store in California and bought Billie Holiday, Judas Priest, and Leonard Cohen CDs. The clerk smiled something about me buying gifts, and I said no, these are all for me - pretty sure I got a gleam of respect for the breadth.
It may be a reasonable sample to illustrate just how wide-ranging my tastes are. When I was younger, I'd say, "I grew up in a house with a dad who loved classical, original Broadway musicals (circa 1940s and 50s), and used to wake us up with Switched-On Bach at top volume. My mom was into country and church music. My brother was a punk rocker."
I mean, yeah - of course the elastic broke on whatever bag it was that should have contained my musical tastes.
But I think there's a lot more to it than that. I am intensely easy to bore. Always was. But ...
I'm also easy to interest, if the right odd thing comes along. I still recall the ease with which I could become utterly absorbed in staring down the pattern of the pebbles and mica flecks in the asphalt on the playground, when they had me playing the outfield in kickball. You can get a LOT of absorption-time in when you're not the popular kid, and just what falls in front of your eyeballs (when your eyeballs are perfect and young and can focus or defocus with alacrity).
There was a time in my life I spent almost entirely with musicians. I was still in college, but dating a TOWNIE (gasp - but then, an awful lot of the frat boys were entitled, molest-y jerks), and he was in a band. The music scene where we lived in the Midwest was pretty tight, and very talented, and it was a big interbreeding soup of interesting people I still miss and think of often.
But as dynamic a crowd as we were, we were predominantly white, and pretty much centered on a certain docket of Acceptable Music. Oh sure, they felt it was varied - and I did too, as far as I had forgotten my dalliances with the Dead and disco and the soundtrack from Breakin'. But I can recall the extreme prejudice with which, say, Beloved Ex regarded rap.
Rap and hip-hop (a term we really didn't know, honestly - rap was a blanket for an awful lot of Black music) were NOT music, he felt. All he/we saw was guys posing with their arms crossed. Maybe the unfortunate white-suburban perspective on Flava Flav. Scratching.
Scratching, and sampling, were just STEALING. That wasn't music - it certainly wasn't creation.
And this from a man who was a musician himself. His feeling sprung from a common theme amongst our friends - that "music" involves playing instruments.
Last night, I was struck (not for the first time) by the thought that ... not all instruments have strings, keys, or sticks ...
PBS has been running a series - as so often is the case, excellently researched and peopled, with one hell of a soundtrack - called Soundbreaking. For almost anyone who cares about where music comes from creatively and practically, how it is actually made, its history and impact and the impulses that lead to new music and the ones that come from hearing it, Soundbreaking is immensely, essentially, worthwhile. And I'm not big on the whole "you HAVE to read this/hear this/see this" as a rule.
Last night's episode centered on hip-hop and rap quite a lot, and I was reminded of my periodic obsessions with Rakim, or Tupac, or Nas - of the enjoyment I got as a kid out of Run DMC - of an awful lot of music that wasn't supposed to be interesting to me.
And I realize, one of the million reasons I have never quite been able to lay claim to being a punk, or a goth, or a classic rocker or any one subcultural or pop-cultural thing that strongly associates with any music is that there is no music I'd be happy LIMITING myself to. Sure, I'm not the only person in the world who LOVES combinations like Grandmaster Flash and Warren Zevon and Southern Culture on the Skids (I once dated a guy who was both a huge KISS fan and also Color Me Badd - at the turn of the Millennium, no less, talk about past the sell-by date). But I'm actively, constitutionally incapable of committing to any one music above all others, because I have this stupid fear it'll define me, or I'll lose everything else.
Blame my family for raising me not only eclectic, but literalist. Bastards! :)
So last night, some old white woman bounces around her bedroom thinking, good gravy I am so wrong for this particular bouncing, and just incapable of caring.
I'm like Michael Bolton (not. that. one.).
There is something important, to me, in not accepting the music I'm supposed to be into - not limiting myself to the role of bland, frankly-past-middle-age (I do *not* wish to live to be 100, so I'm not in any sort of middle anymore) suburban woman. And I think, right now, reaching beyond boundaries is perhaps the best thing any American can do.
Where do you cross the lines, or blur them? Where can you bleed out of expectations, and understand a perspective that's not supposed to be yours?
Watch Soundbreaking and realize - or remember - one or two of the places you push your own envelope, break the bubble your everyday life leaves you in.
And maybe get a heck of a laugh at the bit with Sean Puffy Combs. Because that is a cackle-worthy damn DISS, y'all.
It may be a reasonable sample to illustrate just how wide-ranging my tastes are. When I was younger, I'd say, "I grew up in a house with a dad who loved classical, original Broadway musicals (circa 1940s and 50s), and used to wake us up with Switched-On Bach at top volume. My mom was into country and church music. My brother was a punk rocker."
I mean, yeah - of course the elastic broke on whatever bag it was that should have contained my musical tastes.
But I think there's a lot more to it than that. I am intensely easy to bore. Always was. But ...
I'm also easy to interest, if the right odd thing comes along. I still recall the ease with which I could become utterly absorbed in staring down the pattern of the pebbles and mica flecks in the asphalt on the playground, when they had me playing the outfield in kickball. You can get a LOT of absorption-time in when you're not the popular kid, and just what falls in front of your eyeballs (when your eyeballs are perfect and young and can focus or defocus with alacrity).
There was a time in my life I spent almost entirely with musicians. I was still in college, but dating a TOWNIE (gasp - but then, an awful lot of the frat boys were entitled, molest-y jerks), and he was in a band. The music scene where we lived in the Midwest was pretty tight, and very talented, and it was a big interbreeding soup of interesting people I still miss and think of often.
But as dynamic a crowd as we were, we were predominantly white, and pretty much centered on a certain docket of Acceptable Music. Oh sure, they felt it was varied - and I did too, as far as I had forgotten my dalliances with the Dead and disco and the soundtrack from Breakin'. But I can recall the extreme prejudice with which, say, Beloved Ex regarded rap.
Rap and hip-hop (a term we really didn't know, honestly - rap was a blanket for an awful lot of Black music) were NOT music, he felt. All he/we saw was guys posing with their arms crossed. Maybe the unfortunate white-suburban perspective on Flava Flav. Scratching.
Scratching, and sampling, were just STEALING. That wasn't music - it certainly wasn't creation.
And this from a man who was a musician himself. His feeling sprung from a common theme amongst our friends - that "music" involves playing instruments.
Last night, I was struck (not for the first time) by the thought that ... not all instruments have strings, keys, or sticks ...
PBS has been running a series - as so often is the case, excellently researched and peopled, with one hell of a soundtrack - called Soundbreaking. For almost anyone who cares about where music comes from creatively and practically, how it is actually made, its history and impact and the impulses that lead to new music and the ones that come from hearing it, Soundbreaking is immensely, essentially, worthwhile. And I'm not big on the whole "you HAVE to read this/hear this/see this" as a rule.
Last night's episode centered on hip-hop and rap quite a lot, and I was reminded of my periodic obsessions with Rakim, or Tupac, or Nas - of the enjoyment I got as a kid out of Run DMC - of an awful lot of music that wasn't supposed to be interesting to me.
And I realize, one of the million reasons I have never quite been able to lay claim to being a punk, or a goth, or a classic rocker or any one subcultural or pop-cultural thing that strongly associates with any music is that there is no music I'd be happy LIMITING myself to. Sure, I'm not the only person in the world who LOVES combinations like Grandmaster Flash and Warren Zevon and Southern Culture on the Skids (I once dated a guy who was both a huge KISS fan and also Color Me Badd - at the turn of the Millennium, no less, talk about past the sell-by date). But I'm actively, constitutionally incapable of committing to any one music above all others, because I have this stupid fear it'll define me, or I'll lose everything else.
Blame my family for raising me not only eclectic, but literalist. Bastards! :)
So last night, some old white woman bounces around her bedroom thinking, good gravy I am so wrong for this particular bouncing, and just incapable of caring.
I'm like Michael Bolton (not. that. one.).
There is something important, to me, in not accepting the music I'm supposed to be into - not limiting myself to the role of bland, frankly-past-middle-age (I do *not* wish to live to be 100, so I'm not in any sort of middle anymore) suburban woman. And I think, right now, reaching beyond boundaries is perhaps the best thing any American can do.
Where do you cross the lines, or blur them? Where can you bleed out of expectations, and understand a perspective that's not supposed to be yours?
Watch Soundbreaking and realize - or remember - one or two of the places you push your own envelope, break the bubble your everyday life leaves you in.
And maybe get a heck of a laugh at the bit with Sean Puffy Combs. Because that is a cackle-worthy damn DISS, y'all.
Sunday, November 20, 2016
LL Cool R
One of the reasons I love old movies is the truly bizarre things you can find in them.
Ricardo Montalban, in Latin Lovers, is a bit of a surprise to those of us who grew up knowing him from Fantasy Island; perhaps less so for those whose formative experience of his work was as the original, inimitable Khan Noonien Singh.
As he romances Lana Turner in this movie, he is one of the wittiest and most attractive men I've ever seen on screen. For anyone who likes that sort of thing, I'd give this a high recommendation!
Ricardo Montalban, in Latin Lovers, is a bit of a surprise to those of us who grew up knowing him from Fantasy Island; perhaps less so for those whose formative experience of his work was as the original, inimitable Khan Noonien Singh.
As he romances Lana Turner in this movie, he is one of the wittiest and most attractive men I've ever seen on screen. For anyone who likes that sort of thing, I'd give this a high recommendation!
Sunday, September 11, 2016
50
The Vulcan brain: a puzzle wrapped inside an enigma, housed inside a cranium.
--The Doctor, Star Trek: Voyager
Happy 50th to my fellow Trekkers, Trekkies, and Trek nerds at all levels. What'd you watch?
I enjoyed The Drumhead and Half a Life last week, and lat night watched Me TV's airing of The Man Trap and The Cage, with bonus animated ep. Fun! Today, it's been Voyager - Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy, Alice, and Riddles.
Crossing the years, crossing the series - anyone who reads here much knows I am not the biggest Next Generation fan; but Jean Simmons in The Drumhead, up against Patrick Stewart - it does make for classic Trek viewing. The philosophy, the artful production and performance, even the costuming (Simmons is perfectly garbed) are all there. But, for my money, it is Majel Barrett and David Ogden Stiers who exemplify - across all of the Trekverse, across all of the series, across all of the movies and the animated show and novels - the BEST of Trek. The reason we are fans. The exploration, the presentation of another culture, which actually seems and looks and feels like another culture (albeit, of course, and typically of TNG's general pattern entirely presented by white people). It is the sole episode of the show in which a single-hour's romance actually resonates, feels authentic. Barrett is redeemed, here, from the role of a pathetic joke about middle-aged feminine sexuality. Stiers is what makes me weep. He has a moment of such complete, genuine feeling it has stuck with me since the first airing, and makes me grateful for Trek every time I see it again. He is a revelation.
Half a Life is the episode I wish I could share with my brother, my mother; to make them understand what Trek *is*, what it strives to be and so often fails or falters or makes too easy. It's hard, and it's stunningly beautiful. I love it.
Monday, August 15, 2016
Not-Trek
A funny thing happened on my way to Star Trek: Beyond. Every other movie for the past few years.
There's long been a hallowed tradition in American filmmaking, where (especially with Ye Summer Blockbuster) shit-blowin'-up-real-good is perhaps the core of the attraction. We like watching buildings explode, continents going kablooey - we even had fun with CGI destruction of major cities for a while there. Gosh darn it, good clean American fun, where nobody gets hurt (they're all just digital ants, right) and loud noises suffice for entertainment.
Rebooting has also been a big money maker, so we've rebooted the CRUD out of, say, Spider-Man (we're on #3 in under ten years, folks), every television show known to the Baby Boomers and now even some Gen-X'ers, and ... oh yeah, Star Trek.
Three years ago, DC Comics debuted their 'verse challenge to the box office, television, and beyond domination of Marvel's stunningly successful multiverse, giving the world the grey, grimy, gloomy, and petulantly self-indulgant Man of Steel. Antithetical to almost any possible character trait of Superman as he's existed for GENERATIONS now, this movie failed to score in one very major way: its sickening collateral destruction. The hue and cry against Supes' heedless and violent smackdown of his enemies, and the resultant, ya know, complete razing of some significant areas of human habitation, were loud and lamenting.
For those who are not fans: Superman is essentially a Christ figure. He never quite dies for our sins, but the only son sent from, well space, who gives up a normal life to serve mankind: yeah, it's a bit of a parallel.
So to make him an emo jerk with zero personality and a whinging little ax to grind, and to indulge an entire grubby looking feature film to the insane amounts of damage he and Zod leave around them without the slightest nod to those people and properties they destroy? Unpopular. And the movie sucked.
The result has been Batman Versus Superman. Not greatly more loved, as far as I have heard: but wow did it backpedal on the whole collateral damage thing.
Add to this Marvel's own multiverse spending now literally *years* addressing exactly the same issues - in the Netflix series Jessica Jones, on an existential level; in ABC's Agents of Shield, almost for the run of the series; in Captain America: Civil War, one of the biggest movies of this year. And it's no accident Civil War bears Cap's name, not The Avengers. He is all but alone, of his compatriots, in all the sacrifice and service we once saw and loved in Supes. And he's not a gun-toting ass, he is a human, the most human perhaps of all the Avengers, striving for principles and fiercely moral. Cap has become one of the most fascinating characters cinema has had to offer in a long time; his portrayal at Chris Evans' hands has been pretty remarkable on multiple levels.
So. Violence, and the fact that even in America its emptiness has begun to cause backlash.
I've been on record most of my adult life as being an open-minded fan - I will take what I'm given and generally try to enjoy it. Expansions of the Trekverse have rarely struck me as a bad idea.
Now we are "Beyond" the universe.
The latest Trek is a good movie. It's got some humor, it's got characters I quite like. I was surprised when I saw Simon Pegg was a writer (I might have expected *more* humor, if I'd known; but I was fairly successful in going in - even as late as I did - with little knowledge beforehand).
Pegg's Montgomery Scott has been a wonderfully winsome, moral presence himself, through the reboots. In Darkness, he was the voice of reason asking "hey, do we really want to go hauling possibly illegal weaponry into territory we're not allowed to be wandering around in in the first place?" and lost his job for it. For a while. He had to kill at one point, which was horrible to see and made me sad, but at LEAST it was theoretically justified by the script.
Beyond ... well, goes beyond. And over the top. And so forth.
The level of CRUELTY in Beyond is something worse than merely distasteful, it is both disrespectful of the entire Trekverse (and fandom) and a betrayal of the ideals on which every franchise used to be built. It is also incredibly tone-deaf.
In a world where DC Comics has to answer for wanton destructiveness, TREK of all things has produced a story in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deaths just mean nothing. We've all joked about red-shirts, I can't pretend not to have myself. But the level of viciousness, the level of truly morally bankrupt violence in Beyond is heartbreaking.
TOS killed off the occasional redshirt, but generally to make a point about the awfulness of death - or, at the very least, the awfulness of whatever enemy/obstacle the crew were up against. TNG didn't do much killing, but they honored the redshirt tradition here and there, and stuffed up their crew's shirts with a fair amount of moral superiority along the way (I will say: not always justifiably).
DS9, long my favorite of the series, took death and allowed war itself into the Trekverse. But even the war was not a wanton reaction; it was an attrition, a defense, and tapped very much into the ideals of Roddenberry's universe. It explored with more depth, at times, the twisted moralities and allegiances born out of humanoid conflict. It was, for the most part, honest - and earnest.
There is no earnestness in Beyond. Much urgency, but little morality.
Our villain, in Beyond, is a confusing morass of magical properties. We're not supposed to recognize what he is, so he is capable of changing appearance for no particular reason. He's supposed to be scary and evil, so occasionally he's some sort of energy-draining vampire. How this works, why it is so, is not much explained; he's just BAD GUY (and a cruel short-changing of the talents of Idris Elba - and also, was nobody at all a bit squirmy about making a large black man the villain, after the racial issues attached to whitewashing Khan?). His entire motivation is, um. That he is semi-immortal and went nuts because of it? That he was abandoned (shades of Bond Reboot #2)? That he is personally offended (shades of Trek Reboot #1 or CA;Civil War)?
Trek villains are usually greedy or (sigh) culturally inferior (see also, my many issues with TNG's unrelenting smugness), not torturing madmen giving mental illness a bad name.
The villain - as we've seen so often in recent years - is merely the mechanism by which we get the story, such as it is, and the 'splosions, such as they are, into motion. I don't even mind that; many's the Bond film predicated on such red herrings.
But you have to tell a good story once you get the mechanism ticking.
Beyond ... is not a bad story. But it could have been so much better.
One friend of mine commented on the old "tech that's been lying around for centuries magically working just like that" but I stand by that as a Trek trope of long standing. Fine. And, if it bugs you, well consider that Jaylah has been caretaker of "her house" (and all its tech) for some years, apparently. So she kept things in trim.
More than anything else, I wish I could have seen even ACKNOWLEDGEMENT by the crew that people were dying left, right, and down the middle, and that was A Bad Thing. Nope. They're driven, yes, and death is bad, but there's no feeling towards the masses of people destroyed along the way.
And the Enterprise herself is killed off early in the film.
It all feels like a character is missing. And the killing-off here is done along the way to action scenes we've seen before.
The character sliding down the hull of a dying ship. Check: Khan did this in Reboot #2. The characters flying through space/midair without any craft. Check: Reboots #1 and #2 both. Exciting once, amusing twice, retreading now, and taking up time and space that could have had some sort of story going on. Spaceship rising out of the water. Check: Avengers did this a few years ago, and Enterprise did it in Reboot #2, opening sequence no less.
Trek depends upon tropes; I've made this clear right here - redshirts, and gee-whiz tech, and setpieces, oh my. But retreads are just a drag. And laziness is a killer.
I came in wanting to love Star Trek: Beyond, and knowing as little about it as I could. Reviews were sounding good, but I'd seen some doubt.
And I liked it. I liked it in parts. I liked Jaylah, a good character for a woman, something all to hard to come by. Cis-checked and Hollywood pretty of course, but still a strong opportunity in an industry not plagued with good women's roles.
I enjoyed what humor there was, and appreciated the memorial to Leonard Nimoy. Some of the nostalgia felt earned, even as strategic - and manipulative - as necessarily it was. It was respectful, and I loved the shot of Nichelle Nichols and the TOS cast.
The delving into Bones' and Spock's relationship was not merely Pure Comedy Gold My Friends, but lots of genuine fun. THAT was a great movie, braided into a couple other movies with hit-and-miss quality.
I thought Kirk was great, here. His reactions, his actions. I believed him wholly. Same with Zoe Saldana's Uhura, which has been among my favorite aspects of the reboots. This magnificent woman, played first by the marvelous Nichelle Nichols and now by the sensitive, powerful Saldana, has been wonderfully developed through the new films. Her beauty is impossible to miss, but the fact that that is only the smallest part of her has been too. Uhura has been a glorious part, character, image, story, since Abrams took the helm. She is not short-shrifted here.
And yet. And yet.
I liked it in parts. I will get it on disc, when it comes, for those parts. I'll listen for the places this film harmonizes not only with its fellow reboots, but with the Trekverse itself. The music of the spheres, Trek-style.
But oh dear me. The ways it failed are truly bleak.
There's long been a hallowed tradition in American filmmaking, where (especially with Ye Summer Blockbuster) shit-blowin'-up-real-good is perhaps the core of the attraction. We like watching buildings explode, continents going kablooey - we even had fun with CGI destruction of major cities for a while there. Gosh darn it, good clean American fun, where nobody gets hurt (they're all just digital ants, right) and loud noises suffice for entertainment.
Rebooting has also been a big money maker, so we've rebooted the CRUD out of, say, Spider-Man (we're on #3 in under ten years, folks), every television show known to the Baby Boomers and now even some Gen-X'ers, and ... oh yeah, Star Trek.
Three years ago, DC Comics debuted their 'verse challenge to the box office, television, and beyond domination of Marvel's stunningly successful multiverse, giving the world the grey, grimy, gloomy, and petulantly self-indulgant Man of Steel. Antithetical to almost any possible character trait of Superman as he's existed for GENERATIONS now, this movie failed to score in one very major way: its sickening collateral destruction. The hue and cry against Supes' heedless and violent smackdown of his enemies, and the resultant, ya know, complete razing of some significant areas of human habitation, were loud and lamenting.
For those who are not fans: Superman is essentially a Christ figure. He never quite dies for our sins, but the only son sent from, well space, who gives up a normal life to serve mankind: yeah, it's a bit of a parallel.
So to make him an emo jerk with zero personality and a whinging little ax to grind, and to indulge an entire grubby looking feature film to the insane amounts of damage he and Zod leave around them without the slightest nod to those people and properties they destroy? Unpopular. And the movie sucked.
The result has been Batman Versus Superman. Not greatly more loved, as far as I have heard: but wow did it backpedal on the whole collateral damage thing.
Add to this Marvel's own multiverse spending now literally *years* addressing exactly the same issues - in the Netflix series Jessica Jones, on an existential level; in ABC's Agents of Shield, almost for the run of the series; in Captain America: Civil War, one of the biggest movies of this year. And it's no accident Civil War bears Cap's name, not The Avengers. He is all but alone, of his compatriots, in all the sacrifice and service we once saw and loved in Supes. And he's not a gun-toting ass, he is a human, the most human perhaps of all the Avengers, striving for principles and fiercely moral. Cap has become one of the most fascinating characters cinema has had to offer in a long time; his portrayal at Chris Evans' hands has been pretty remarkable on multiple levels.
So. Violence, and the fact that even in America its emptiness has begun to cause backlash.
I've been on record most of my adult life as being an open-minded fan - I will take what I'm given and generally try to enjoy it. Expansions of the Trekverse have rarely struck me as a bad idea.
Now we are "Beyond" the universe.
The latest Trek is a good movie. It's got some humor, it's got characters I quite like. I was surprised when I saw Simon Pegg was a writer (I might have expected *more* humor, if I'd known; but I was fairly successful in going in - even as late as I did - with little knowledge beforehand).
Pegg's Montgomery Scott has been a wonderfully winsome, moral presence himself, through the reboots. In Darkness, he was the voice of reason asking "hey, do we really want to go hauling possibly illegal weaponry into territory we're not allowed to be wandering around in in the first place?" and lost his job for it. For a while. He had to kill at one point, which was horrible to see and made me sad, but at LEAST it was theoretically justified by the script.
Beyond ... well, goes beyond. And over the top. And so forth.
The level of CRUELTY in Beyond is something worse than merely distasteful, it is both disrespectful of the entire Trekverse (and fandom) and a betrayal of the ideals on which every franchise used to be built. It is also incredibly tone-deaf.
In a world where DC Comics has to answer for wanton destructiveness, TREK of all things has produced a story in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deaths just mean nothing. We've all joked about red-shirts, I can't pretend not to have myself. But the level of viciousness, the level of truly morally bankrupt violence in Beyond is heartbreaking.
TOS killed off the occasional redshirt, but generally to make a point about the awfulness of death - or, at the very least, the awfulness of whatever enemy/obstacle the crew were up against. TNG didn't do much killing, but they honored the redshirt tradition here and there, and stuffed up their crew's shirts with a fair amount of moral superiority along the way (I will say: not always justifiably).
DS9, long my favorite of the series, took death and allowed war itself into the Trekverse. But even the war was not a wanton reaction; it was an attrition, a defense, and tapped very much into the ideals of Roddenberry's universe. It explored with more depth, at times, the twisted moralities and allegiances born out of humanoid conflict. It was, for the most part, honest - and earnest.
There is no earnestness in Beyond. Much urgency, but little morality.
Our villain, in Beyond, is a confusing morass of magical properties. We're not supposed to recognize what he is, so he is capable of changing appearance for no particular reason. He's supposed to be scary and evil, so occasionally he's some sort of energy-draining vampire. How this works, why it is so, is not much explained; he's just BAD GUY (and a cruel short-changing of the talents of Idris Elba - and also, was nobody at all a bit squirmy about making a large black man the villain, after the racial issues attached to whitewashing Khan?). His entire motivation is, um. That he is semi-immortal and went nuts because of it? That he was abandoned (shades of Bond Reboot #2)? That he is personally offended (shades of Trek Reboot #1 or CA;Civil War)?
Trek villains are usually greedy or (sigh) culturally inferior (see also, my many issues with TNG's unrelenting smugness), not torturing madmen giving mental illness a bad name.
The villain - as we've seen so often in recent years - is merely the mechanism by which we get the story, such as it is, and the 'splosions, such as they are, into motion. I don't even mind that; many's the Bond film predicated on such red herrings.
But you have to tell a good story once you get the mechanism ticking.
Beyond ... is not a bad story. But it could have been so much better.
One friend of mine commented on the old "tech that's been lying around for centuries magically working just like that" but I stand by that as a Trek trope of long standing. Fine. And, if it bugs you, well consider that Jaylah has been caretaker of "her house" (and all its tech) for some years, apparently. So she kept things in trim.
More than anything else, I wish I could have seen even ACKNOWLEDGEMENT by the crew that people were dying left, right, and down the middle, and that was A Bad Thing. Nope. They're driven, yes, and death is bad, but there's no feeling towards the masses of people destroyed along the way.
And the Enterprise herself is killed off early in the film.
It all feels like a character is missing. And the killing-off here is done along the way to action scenes we've seen before.
The character sliding down the hull of a dying ship. Check: Khan did this in Reboot #2. The characters flying through space/midair without any craft. Check: Reboots #1 and #2 both. Exciting once, amusing twice, retreading now, and taking up time and space that could have had some sort of story going on. Spaceship rising out of the water. Check: Avengers did this a few years ago, and Enterprise did it in Reboot #2, opening sequence no less.
Trek depends upon tropes; I've made this clear right here - redshirts, and gee-whiz tech, and setpieces, oh my. But retreads are just a drag. And laziness is a killer.
I came in wanting to love Star Trek: Beyond, and knowing as little about it as I could. Reviews were sounding good, but I'd seen some doubt.
And I liked it. I liked it in parts. I liked Jaylah, a good character for a woman, something all to hard to come by. Cis-checked and Hollywood pretty of course, but still a strong opportunity in an industry not plagued with good women's roles.
I enjoyed what humor there was, and appreciated the memorial to Leonard Nimoy. Some of the nostalgia felt earned, even as strategic - and manipulative - as necessarily it was. It was respectful, and I loved the shot of Nichelle Nichols and the TOS cast.
The delving into Bones' and Spock's relationship was not merely Pure Comedy Gold My Friends, but lots of genuine fun. THAT was a great movie, braided into a couple other movies with hit-and-miss quality.
I thought Kirk was great, here. His reactions, his actions. I believed him wholly. Same with Zoe Saldana's Uhura, which has been among my favorite aspects of the reboots. This magnificent woman, played first by the marvelous Nichelle Nichols and now by the sensitive, powerful Saldana, has been wonderfully developed through the new films. Her beauty is impossible to miss, but the fact that that is only the smallest part of her has been too. Uhura has been a glorious part, character, image, story, since Abrams took the helm. She is not short-shrifted here.
And yet. And yet.
I liked it in parts. I will get it on disc, when it comes, for those parts. I'll listen for the places this film harmonizes not only with its fellow reboots, but with the Trekverse itself. The music of the spheres, Trek-style.
But oh dear me. The ways it failed are truly bleak.
Monday, July 11, 2016
Mondo Bond-o and Beyond(o)
Daniel Craig's Bond has been an interesting progression. Casino Royale felt, at its debut, very new and different. By Skyfall, Bondstalgia was in play, and that was kind of a lovely ride. For full pun effect:
Whether the nostalgia played SO well they decided to indulge in it to excess, or it's just been enough decades since Roger Moore that we can finally go for his era's over the toppery and sumptuousity ... Spectre brought me, at least, full circle in Bond-age.
I grew up on 70s Bond, Moore Bond, Sunday Night Movies on ABC edited and family Bond - the Bond who wore Sears Bend Over pants, the Bond whose bow tie, when he wore it, took up a fairly impressive segment of his height as a whole.
So Spectre's snowy, modernistic sets, its romping from Mexico to Rome to Austria to Tunisia and all the pauses in London in between ... I ate it all up, with a large spoon, and a smile on my face.
Craig's grittier, more realistic Bond is still good in my book. I was all aboard for Casino, and I'm one of the like three people, apparently, who liked Quantum of Solace and didn't even make fun of the title.
But Bond Guignol, the madness of some of the great entries in the franchise, the sharks-with-laser-beams-on-their-heads daft-ery that was the only way I could watch these movies as a little girl (what did I care about spies? but the eye candy was great fun!), has returned in full effect. Bond's brain is drilled, and he prevails. The bad guy dies, but we know how that can be. Craig recalls, for me, his amusing turn as Jemmie in The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. His clear enjoyment in providing the spectacle is quite a bit of fun.
In short: I'm this fan. (Hit this link, seriously, it's very funny writing!)
Why the late, late movie review? Well, for one, it runs in my family. And also, I had a Spectre re-watch last night, first time since the theater, and I just had fun so it was on my mind. And also, with other new movies coming out and glimpses forward in the franchise - Craig will do a couple more, and it looks like we might have Cristoph Waltz back as Blofeld to join him.
And then there's Star Trek. Star Trek: Beyond is the focus of a certain trepidation amongst fans.
I'm one of those fans who prefers to know as little as humanly possible before I see a new film. I don't even much like knowing there may be division or doubt; I'm a great taker-as-they-come sort of fan, particularly when it comes to Trek. I'm passive in the extreme till my butt's in the theater seat and the endless previews are over. Unless grossly offended (and I have been, by Trek - I still think we need a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says CAN WE PLEASE STOP RAPING DEANNA?), I'm not just going to watch what you make, I'm almost certain to rewatch till whatever is produced is also pretty much committed to my memory.
With Bond and with Trek, my love is deep, and less concerned with market forces or even production values than the experience of a story. Give me a good one, I'm on board for the run.
I want this Beyond to be as good as Far Beyond the Stars. I want to be as excited as the day X and I finally saw the reboot together, and (yeah, I'm tellin' on him) he got a little misty at the birth of Kirk.
So far - not there. I'm not in that seat yet.
But we shall see.
.jpg/1280px-Aston_Martin_DB5_(Skyfall).jpg) |
| Image: Wikipedia |
Whether the nostalgia played SO well they decided to indulge in it to excess, or it's just been enough decades since Roger Moore that we can finally go for his era's over the toppery and sumptuousity ... Spectre brought me, at least, full circle in Bond-age.
I grew up on 70s Bond, Moore Bond, Sunday Night Movies on ABC edited and family Bond - the Bond who wore Sears Bend Over pants, the Bond whose bow tie, when he wore it, took up a fairly impressive segment of his height as a whole.
So Spectre's snowy, modernistic sets, its romping from Mexico to Rome to Austria to Tunisia and all the pauses in London in between ... I ate it all up, with a large spoon, and a smile on my face.
Craig's grittier, more realistic Bond is still good in my book. I was all aboard for Casino, and I'm one of the like three people, apparently, who liked Quantum of Solace and didn't even make fun of the title.
But Bond Guignol, the madness of some of the great entries in the franchise, the sharks-with-laser-beams-on-their-heads daft-ery that was the only way I could watch these movies as a little girl (what did I care about spies? but the eye candy was great fun!), has returned in full effect. Bond's brain is drilled, and he prevails. The bad guy dies, but we know how that can be. Craig recalls, for me, his amusing turn as Jemmie in The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. His clear enjoyment in providing the spectacle is quite a bit of fun.
In short: I'm this fan. (Hit this link, seriously, it's very funny writing!)
Part of the pleasures of loving Bond is how the franchise provides a pocket history of half a century of the blockbuster-movie as an art form and as an ongoing concern. You watch the ’70s become the ’80s ... You watch film styles come, go, return.
--Darren Franich
Why the late, late movie review? Well, for one, it runs in my family. And also, I had a Spectre re-watch last night, first time since the theater, and I just had fun so it was on my mind. And also, with other new movies coming out and glimpses forward in the franchise - Craig will do a couple more, and it looks like we might have Cristoph Waltz back as Blofeld to join him.
And then there's Star Trek. Star Trek: Beyond is the focus of a certain trepidation amongst fans.
I'm one of those fans who prefers to know as little as humanly possible before I see a new film. I don't even much like knowing there may be division or doubt; I'm a great taker-as-they-come sort of fan, particularly when it comes to Trek. I'm passive in the extreme till my butt's in the theater seat and the endless previews are over. Unless grossly offended (and I have been, by Trek - I still think we need a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says CAN WE PLEASE STOP RAPING DEANNA?), I'm not just going to watch what you make, I'm almost certain to rewatch till whatever is produced is also pretty much committed to my memory.
With Bond and with Trek, my love is deep, and less concerned with market forces or even production values than the experience of a story. Give me a good one, I'm on board for the run.
I want this Beyond to be as good as Far Beyond the Stars. I want to be as excited as the day X and I finally saw the reboot together, and (yeah, I'm tellin' on him) he got a little misty at the birth of Kirk.
So far - not there. I'm not in that seat yet.
But we shall see.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Final Voyages and Beyond
Tonight, I finished off a sporadic Netflicking of Enterprise, which (along with all the other Trek the 'flix has to offer) is always in my queue. This finale wants to be a Trekkie/Trekker love letter, but is one of those notorious fails that cheapened what came before. Since it was early yet, I decided to finish off my *evening* with the next-up episode of DS9, "Far Beyond the Stars".
FBS has been next-up for some days, if not a week or two, because it's so damned good I don't just watch it any old time as background noise. Every time I see it, this episode is new again.
In the best possible way, this script is tight and taut. It runs like a well-oiled machine, but is not a device, is not a tool. It is story within story; one of the best frames on TV, even though it uses an unremarkable conceit to take us where it literally goes. After the cruel framing device used in Enterprise's finale, this one shows all the world how it is DONE.
Synopsis - The diverse crew of the 24th-century space station Deep Space 9 play different roles in the old "is it all madness/a dream?" scenario, through the character of Captain Benjamin Sisko. Now set in 1950s NYC, the cast are now an ensemble of neighborhood and office characters who know Benny Russell, a science fiction writer enduring racial prejudice and the question of his own sanity.
Stock setup. Stellar (har) execution.
This episode would make a perfect exemplar for a non-fan of the best of Star Trek - why those of us who love it so much, do. It's also deadly goddamned good TV completely apart from its Trek-ness. The production values are strong, the acting is wrenching (a good thing), the comedy is not neglected, and the characters each get the most fascinating workouts. Penny Johnson, who interestingly is barely noted in any of the links above for the ep (perhaps her understatement and naturalism make her work seem effortless), is marvelous, and brought me to mind of Nichele Nichols in "The Lieutenant".
Notable, too, is Michael Dorn's sole outing in all his Trek experience, playing a human being. His exceptionally warm smile and non-Klingon voice are perfect as he plays a smooth baseball hero himself up against the fact he's alone, playing in a white league.
Freed of heavy makeup, Armin Shimerman (there's a Buffy inside joke, by the way), Rene Auberjonois, Marc Alaimo, Aron Eisenberg, and Jeffrey Combs are all quite good.
Cirroc Lofton is a revelation, now no longer Sisko's son, but a savvy young man whose lines are almost the perfect commentary on the episode's racial themes. He is heart-rending and almost as innate in his character's skin as Johnson is. It probably doesn't need saying that Brock Peters is good; but I'll say it.
Those who know DS9 know the complex, maddening, yet charismatic Marc Alaimo - originator of the Cardassian species on Trek during the TNG years - and his role here is, even for those familiar with his villainous Gul Dukat, honestly bone-chilling. I say this on a 90-plus humid night in Virginia in July, sitting on a leather couch.
Rene Auberjonois has a thankless role in an alter-ego which echoes, without the comedy, his role as Clayton Endicott in Benson; unlikeable, and scarily authentic in the punctilious, officious skin of a character the actor himself, I believe, could not less resemble.
Avery Brooks' sometimes over the top performing style is harnessed here (under his OWN direction) in one particular scene of unhinged horror that is powerfully effective.
Even the music is excellent, and used practically, not just sound-tracked over scenes as an emotional instruction how we should feel. One brilliant use of a free-form so famous even I have heard it, though I cannot name it and am not going to throw more links around, uses the cacophany and melody of the instrumentation in a harrowing moment where the main character fears he is losing his mind. The moment he clings to Johnson is sublime, animal, gripping in the physical and the metaphorical sense; his eyes are hunted and his intelligence is both at its height and teetering upon madness. Live brass in the streets, the noise of mammoth crowds, the traffic and a little stock footage of NYC - even Brooks' own moment of song - are the best music Trek ever used.
The editing is a great tool in service of this story; it moves the story subtly, alarmingly, follows the overarching arc, and picks out fine detail.
Keith DeCandido and I have swapped a grin and a lie in the past about this story, either at RavenCon or on Twitter. I've had his "rewatch" essay bookmarked for yeas. I like his take on this piece.
All this is to say - this is why I love DS9 the best. This is why I love Trek. This is what I'd tell people who know me, but don't understand why I am a fan. This is where I might point someone, if they were not and were curious. This would be a hell of a gateway drug (the fact that some areas of the Trekverse might thereafter disappoint notwithstanding).
I love it. And now for bedtime.
FBS has been next-up for some days, if not a week or two, because it's so damned good I don't just watch it any old time as background noise. Every time I see it, this episode is new again.
In the best possible way, this script is tight and taut. It runs like a well-oiled machine, but is not a device, is not a tool. It is story within story; one of the best frames on TV, even though it uses an unremarkable conceit to take us where it literally goes. After the cruel framing device used in Enterprise's finale, this one shows all the world how it is DONE.
Synopsis - The diverse crew of the 24th-century space station Deep Space 9 play different roles in the old "is it all madness/a dream?" scenario, through the character of Captain Benjamin Sisko. Now set in 1950s NYC, the cast are now an ensemble of neighborhood and office characters who know Benny Russell, a science fiction writer enduring racial prejudice and the question of his own sanity.
Stock setup. Stellar (har) execution.
This episode would make a perfect exemplar for a non-fan of the best of Star Trek - why those of us who love it so much, do. It's also deadly goddamned good TV completely apart from its Trek-ness. The production values are strong, the acting is wrenching (a good thing), the comedy is not neglected, and the characters each get the most fascinating workouts. Penny Johnson, who interestingly is barely noted in any of the links above for the ep (perhaps her understatement and naturalism make her work seem effortless), is marvelous, and brought me to mind of Nichele Nichols in "The Lieutenant".
Notable, too, is Michael Dorn's sole outing in all his Trek experience, playing a human being. His exceptionally warm smile and non-Klingon voice are perfect as he plays a smooth baseball hero himself up against the fact he's alone, playing in a white league.
Freed of heavy makeup, Armin Shimerman (there's a Buffy inside joke, by the way), Rene Auberjonois, Marc Alaimo, Aron Eisenberg, and Jeffrey Combs are all quite good.
Cirroc Lofton is a revelation, now no longer Sisko's son, but a savvy young man whose lines are almost the perfect commentary on the episode's racial themes. He is heart-rending and almost as innate in his character's skin as Johnson is. It probably doesn't need saying that Brock Peters is good; but I'll say it.
Those who know DS9 know the complex, maddening, yet charismatic Marc Alaimo - originator of the Cardassian species on Trek during the TNG years - and his role here is, even for those familiar with his villainous Gul Dukat, honestly bone-chilling. I say this on a 90-plus humid night in Virginia in July, sitting on a leather couch.
Rene Auberjonois has a thankless role in an alter-ego which echoes, without the comedy, his role as Clayton Endicott in Benson; unlikeable, and scarily authentic in the punctilious, officious skin of a character the actor himself, I believe, could not less resemble.
Avery Brooks' sometimes over the top performing style is harnessed here (under his OWN direction) in one particular scene of unhinged horror that is powerfully effective.
Even the music is excellent, and used practically, not just sound-tracked over scenes as an emotional instruction how we should feel. One brilliant use of a free-form so famous even I have heard it, though I cannot name it and am not going to throw more links around, uses the cacophany and melody of the instrumentation in a harrowing moment where the main character fears he is losing his mind. The moment he clings to Johnson is sublime, animal, gripping in the physical and the metaphorical sense; his eyes are hunted and his intelligence is both at its height and teetering upon madness. Live brass in the streets, the noise of mammoth crowds, the traffic and a little stock footage of NYC - even Brooks' own moment of song - are the best music Trek ever used.
The editing is a great tool in service of this story; it moves the story subtly, alarmingly, follows the overarching arc, and picks out fine detail.
Keith DeCandido and I have swapped a grin and a lie in the past about this story, either at RavenCon or on Twitter. I've had his "rewatch" essay bookmarked for yeas. I like his take on this piece.
All this is to say - this is why I love DS9 the best. This is why I love Trek. This is what I'd tell people who know me, but don't understand why I am a fan. This is where I might point someone, if they were not and were curious. This would be a hell of a gateway drug (the fact that some areas of the Trekverse might thereafter disappoint notwithstanding).
I love it. And now for bedtime.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Questions. I have Questions ...
Re-watching Battlestar Galactica (the reboot) recently, I have questions, profound questions. They start out merely as practical issues ... but they grow, into an exploration (and note that word choice as I get comparative) ...
How is it, a world bombed about five minutes ago, with nuclear explosions we SEE engulfing most of the surface of the planet is (a) habitable by humans (yes, even with radiation meds - what are they EATING? and, in that one episode, how are they conceivably imagined to be fertile?) and (b) filled with *still-standing cities* ... when a planet bombed-out TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO is unsuitable for settlement?
In a fleet where networked computers are verboten: how do they communicate with one another by phone? Across vast distances? I know we see much made of staticky radio, but their feats of electronics and communications without wireless networking of any kind do begin to stagger the imagination - most especially with the extraordinary precision of their faster-than-light jumps through space.
There are those who think BSG made huge leaps forward in every way from all the Trek series. I'll grant, the writing is taut. But BSG depends, with a frequency none of the ST series ever quite matches, on The False Deadline. "If this person isn't recovered by X moment, we all die, or they die, or whatever - and DISASTER ENSUES" ... but recovery is made just in time - or just after time, but because we fudged the deadline. This creates tension, maybe, but the tension is false.
As to the rest, the acting is not entirely superior; only different. The major nit people pick relates to production design, and I'll grant that BSG looks "lived-in" and bears internal logic most of the time in the way things work, but there are weird set choices and usage of space, and Trek's relative slick sheen was of course intentional - the idealized look of a world originally conceived to BE ideal, pretty, perfect. But put Grace Park next to any ST castmember in any series you like, including TOS, and I'm going to call BS if you claim the acting is better. Honestly, for all he's been sainted time and again, I found Olmos pretty one-note (gravelly) and ponderous at times. Not unbelievable, but not exactly a deeply layered character - stamping "complex" on his name on a script doesn't convince me. And I have every bit as much trouble watching Kara Thrace's overly poochy pout as I do with Jolene Blalock's overly poochy pout in Enterprise.
Adama and Athena. He is profoundly betrayed by her - "throw that thing in the brig" - heals offscreen - she's his loyal, trusted sidearm - he is profoundly betrayed by her - and then he gives her her kid and lets her out, again. The reversals, I can't accept them. Not ALL of them. It's too regular. And it too-well suits the needs of one episode's plot and/or heartstring-tugging to be believed.
BSG has often been touted for its focus on humanity - no silly rubber masks and so on. But BSG's idea of "humanity" is extremely limited. Only the Greco-Roman heritage exists. There are a few faces of color, but zero culture exists but - essentially - white Western history. Anyone looking more diverse is merely assimilated, not actually representative of anything but the Greek (and LDS) traditions on display. Even the Cylons are strictly and entirely part of this tradition.
So ... in the entire universe, wherein they meet no form of life other than humans and Cylons (and what's the difference there being the final point of the whole series' arc, we really meet nothing but humans and watch them squabble) ... no form of culture exists, AT ALL, but this?
At least ST *tries* to represent diversity. Even when it fails (see also: kind of a lot of TNG), it attempts. (Though let it be said, I have diversity issues with ST; not least, the overwhelming tendency of black actors being put under layers of makeup to hide their faces altogether - ask me YET AGAIN why DS9 is my favorite series: see Benjamin Sisko and his son, and "Far Beyond the Stars", as well as *many* other episodes directly dealing with prejudice and bigotry, Earthly and otherwise. DS9 is notable for its redemptive treatment of the Ferengi, who were written as shameful stereotypes in other series.)
BSG's fleet is really just a construct. Apart from central cast and recurring characters, the forty-seven thousand (and less ... and less) survivors of humanities might as well be a pack of redshirts. Even with their avatar, "the press", they have almost no presence in the breathlessly emotional stories of Kara Thrace, Laura Roslin, the Adamas, the arbitrarily-assigned Final Five, and so on. It's a decent sized ensemble, but as a representation of all of humanity, the all of humanity part is pretty elusive. We *hear* about unrest and upheavals, but surprisingly often, we're told, not shown.
On one occasion we're shown - a young student assigned to a job he does not want because of his background, and his disgustingly contrived death because of that job - we might just as well be told, because it's insultingly badly done.
But the real question I have is ... why there must be a rivalry between BSG and Trek at all. Why people hold them up as opposites.
Ronald D. Moore alone is a major part of the DNA of all three ST series of the 1980s and 1990s, TNG, DS9, and Voyager. He's so much involved in BSG his image appears in the ending production titles on every dang episode.
The real wonder is how different they appear - or, at least , how differently they are received and perceived - given the commonalities.
How is it, a world bombed about five minutes ago, with nuclear explosions we SEE engulfing most of the surface of the planet is (a) habitable by humans (yes, even with radiation meds - what are they EATING? and, in that one episode, how are they conceivably imagined to be fertile?) and (b) filled with *still-standing cities* ... when a planet bombed-out TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO is unsuitable for settlement?
In a fleet where networked computers are verboten: how do they communicate with one another by phone? Across vast distances? I know we see much made of staticky radio, but their feats of electronics and communications without wireless networking of any kind do begin to stagger the imagination - most especially with the extraordinary precision of their faster-than-light jumps through space.
There are those who think BSG made huge leaps forward in every way from all the Trek series. I'll grant, the writing is taut. But BSG depends, with a frequency none of the ST series ever quite matches, on The False Deadline. "If this person isn't recovered by X moment, we all die, or they die, or whatever - and DISASTER ENSUES" ... but recovery is made just in time - or just after time, but because we fudged the deadline. This creates tension, maybe, but the tension is false.
As to the rest, the acting is not entirely superior; only different. The major nit people pick relates to production design, and I'll grant that BSG looks "lived-in" and bears internal logic most of the time in the way things work, but there are weird set choices and usage of space, and Trek's relative slick sheen was of course intentional - the idealized look of a world originally conceived to BE ideal, pretty, perfect. But put Grace Park next to any ST castmember in any series you like, including TOS, and I'm going to call BS if you claim the acting is better. Honestly, for all he's been sainted time and again, I found Olmos pretty one-note (gravelly) and ponderous at times. Not unbelievable, but not exactly a deeply layered character - stamping "complex" on his name on a script doesn't convince me. And I have every bit as much trouble watching Kara Thrace's overly poochy pout as I do with Jolene Blalock's overly poochy pout in Enterprise.
 |
| Image: Wikipedia |
Adama and Athena. He is profoundly betrayed by her - "throw that thing in the brig" - heals offscreen - she's his loyal, trusted sidearm - he is profoundly betrayed by her - and then he gives her her kid and lets her out, again. The reversals, I can't accept them. Not ALL of them. It's too regular. And it too-well suits the needs of one episode's plot and/or heartstring-tugging to be believed.
BSG has often been touted for its focus on humanity - no silly rubber masks and so on. But BSG's idea of "humanity" is extremely limited. Only the Greco-Roman heritage exists. There are a few faces of color, but zero culture exists but - essentially - white Western history. Anyone looking more diverse is merely assimilated, not actually representative of anything but the Greek (and LDS) traditions on display. Even the Cylons are strictly and entirely part of this tradition.
So ... in the entire universe, wherein they meet no form of life other than humans and Cylons (and what's the difference there being the final point of the whole series' arc, we really meet nothing but humans and watch them squabble) ... no form of culture exists, AT ALL, but this?
At least ST *tries* to represent diversity. Even when it fails (see also: kind of a lot of TNG), it attempts. (Though let it be said, I have diversity issues with ST; not least, the overwhelming tendency of black actors being put under layers of makeup to hide their faces altogether - ask me YET AGAIN why DS9 is my favorite series: see Benjamin Sisko and his son, and "Far Beyond the Stars", as well as *many* other episodes directly dealing with prejudice and bigotry, Earthly and otherwise. DS9 is notable for its redemptive treatment of the Ferengi, who were written as shameful stereotypes in other series.)
BSG's fleet is really just a construct. Apart from central cast and recurring characters, the forty-seven thousand (and less ... and less) survivors of humanities might as well be a pack of redshirts. Even with their avatar, "the press", they have almost no presence in the breathlessly emotional stories of Kara Thrace, Laura Roslin, the Adamas, the arbitrarily-assigned Final Five, and so on. It's a decent sized ensemble, but as a representation of all of humanity, the all of humanity part is pretty elusive. We *hear* about unrest and upheavals, but surprisingly often, we're told, not shown.
On one occasion we're shown - a young student assigned to a job he does not want because of his background, and his disgustingly contrived death because of that job - we might just as well be told, because it's insultingly badly done.
But the real question I have is ... why there must be a rivalry between BSG and Trek at all. Why people hold them up as opposites.
Ronald D. Moore alone is a major part of the DNA of all three ST series of the 1980s and 1990s, TNG, DS9, and Voyager. He's so much involved in BSG his image appears in the ending production titles on every dang episode.
The real wonder is how different they appear - or, at least , how differently they are received and perceived - given the commonalities.
Collection
Le Cinema Dreams has a guest contributor with a look at, of all things, Rocky. I understand the need for intimacy she describes.
Gawker has a hilariously straight-faced in depth report on the provenance of Donald Trump's ... let us call it "hair" ... I'm especially taken with the conspiracy-theory tinged feel of the investigation into the possible Man Behind the "Hair", right down to the detail about his name being Anglicized from Mohammed, which adds a particular whispered-schadenfreude fun to proceedings relating to the short-fingered vulgarian's racist spewings.
Who needs a little more history nerding for their TBR pile? Well, here you go - Paris, 1200. Do I need this? Why yes. Yes, I do. Worth another click: the link to a bit more about Ingeborg of Denmark. Ohhh, pre-modern European kings. When will you ever learn about this whole repudiating your wife thing?
And in local news? Redneck shit-hats take a page out of ISIS's book and loot the crap out of a national battlefield park just in time for Memorial Day. Because what could be klASSier than that?
Gawker has a hilariously straight-faced in depth report on the provenance of Donald Trump's ... let us call it "hair" ... I'm especially taken with the conspiracy-theory tinged feel of the investigation into the possible Man Behind the "Hair", right down to the detail about his name being Anglicized from Mohammed, which adds a particular whispered-schadenfreude fun to proceedings relating to the short-fingered vulgarian's racist spewings.
Who needs a little more history nerding for their TBR pile? Well, here you go - Paris, 1200. Do I need this? Why yes. Yes, I do. Worth another click: the link to a bit more about Ingeborg of Denmark. Ohhh, pre-modern European kings. When will you ever learn about this whole repudiating your wife thing?
And in local news? Redneck shit-hats take a page out of ISIS's book and loot the crap out of a national battlefield park just in time for Memorial Day. Because what could be klASSier than that?
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Setting It Right
Yesterday, I ran across a new old-TV channel on the air locally, and saw that one of the shows coming up for the evening was The Lieutenant. This show was EARLY Gene Roddenberry, before he launched Star Trek. It stars Gary Lockwood, who was in the second TV pilot of Trek (ST's FIRST "reboot" - with Captain Kirk instead of Pike), as the bad guy with the silver eyeballs. He also appeared in a little-known sci fi outing called 2001. Look it up, it's tripendicular.
I met Lockwood and Kier Dullea the first year Mr. X and I were dating. They asked us if we were “in The Business” because we were so good looking. Then we met David Carradine, which was a whole 'nother story. Oh the good old days.
Anyway, one of the eps of The Lieutenant on last night was “To Set It Right” – about racial conflict on a Marine base. It includes Dennis Hopper and Nichelle Nichols. This episode was not aired at the time it was made. Too controversial.
Supposedly, this episode’s shutdown was part of the reason Roddenberry conceived of taking the issues and themes he wanted to explore into outer space. So he could get away with it.
Watching the ep now, it almost feels like something that’d have a hard time even today, and not just because of the 50-year-old linguistics. It really is pretty incendiary; I’m fully impressed with how brave a production it was.
Ms. Nichols is terribly young, wonderfully warm, and absolutely, brilliantly intelligent – and, as she remains even today, just a breathtaking beauty. She has some meat in this part, really difficult dialogue and a couple showcase scenes in which her education is on full display. “He’s been a negro a lot longer than you’ve been thinking about his problem.” She gives the would-be liberal white boy some SERIOUS what-for without a shrill note. Without her scenes, what the script has to say would be queasily uncomfortable - dated in the awfullest way - but she provides relevance that lasts and is meaningful *right now*.
I could not find the whole episode, but if you have Get-TV, look up the schedule for "The Lieutenant".
And, if not: here are a few scenes:
This episode does use the N-word, "negro" and "boy" - but not in the casual "well that was how they *talked* back then" way, but in a pointed way, questioning the way they talked, in what was "now" at the time. It also gorgeously deconstructs the White Guy Saves The Day plan, and avoids becoming a Very Special Episode - or making things easy. It looks at the perspectives of multiple minority characters, each of whom has their own voice, and is an actual *character*. So by the time it does end with a pair of special moments, it feels more earned than a completely pat TV script.
This gets the "save until I delete" treatment on the DVR. And I'll watch more, to be sure.
I met Lockwood and Kier Dullea the first year Mr. X and I were dating. They asked us if we were “in The Business” because we were so good looking. Then we met David Carradine, which was a whole 'nother story. Oh the good old days.
Anyway, one of the eps of The Lieutenant on last night was “To Set It Right” – about racial conflict on a Marine base. It includes Dennis Hopper and Nichelle Nichols. This episode was not aired at the time it was made. Too controversial.
Supposedly, this episode’s shutdown was part of the reason Roddenberry conceived of taking the issues and themes he wanted to explore into outer space. So he could get away with it.
Watching the ep now, it almost feels like something that’d have a hard time even today, and not just because of the 50-year-old linguistics. It really is pretty incendiary; I’m fully impressed with how brave a production it was.
Ms. Nichols is terribly young, wonderfully warm, and absolutely, brilliantly intelligent – and, as she remains even today, just a breathtaking beauty. She has some meat in this part, really difficult dialogue and a couple showcase scenes in which her education is on full display. “He’s been a negro a lot longer than you’ve been thinking about his problem.” She gives the would-be liberal white boy some SERIOUS what-for without a shrill note. Without her scenes, what the script has to say would be queasily uncomfortable - dated in the awfullest way - but she provides relevance that lasts and is meaningful *right now*.
I could not find the whole episode, but if you have Get-TV, look up the schedule for "The Lieutenant".
And, if not: here are a few scenes:
This episode does use the N-word, "negro" and "boy" - but not in the casual "well that was how they *talked* back then" way, but in a pointed way, questioning the way they talked, in what was "now" at the time. It also gorgeously deconstructs the White Guy Saves The Day plan, and avoids becoming a Very Special Episode - or making things easy. It looks at the perspectives of multiple minority characters, each of whom has their own voice, and is an actual *character*. So by the time it does end with a pair of special moments, it feels more earned than a completely pat TV script.
This gets the "save until I delete" treatment on the DVR. And I'll watch more, to be sure.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
#WeNeedDiverseBlogs
As discussions at Janet's community tend to go, today's post brought on a rangy, tugging, distractable, and bracing chat as much like a cute and strong and happy puppy on a leash as usual. I need to quote Janet Rundquist in full on one of her comments today, with thanks for her permission to use this ...
ProfeJMarie (Janet Rundquist) said...
Colin,
"It doesn't help me to understand the Mexican experience, or what it's like to be Latino/Latina if I'm constantly drawn out of the story because sections of important dialog are in a language I don't understand,"
This statement is where my point is. This assumes a lot about our readers. And while it can obviously apply to many populations, I'm going to go out on pretty solid limb and say that your statement above assumes that "most" readers are white, European, English-only speakers. It also assumes that when I put Spanish phrases into my novel, you are assuming that my purpose is teach about Latino culture. It's not. My native language is English, but I speak Spanish. I am not pulled out of a story due to Spanish phrases. Maybe I am if there's lots of Amharic, but I go with it because A) I am not the only one reading that book and B) that's the nature of the story and those characters.
Malinda Lo has a fantastic series about how this kind of thing impacts diverse voices from becoming part of the mainstream. It's our ("our"=we white people in the publishing biz) unintentional bias that gets in the way. It seems like a little thing, but it actually has more impact on the systemic issue than even I realized until recent years.
Perceptions of Diversity in Book Reviews
ie: as white readers and writers, we often make the mistake of making "white" and "English" the default. For the writer who had full paragraphs of Spanish followed by English... while I agree that his approach is misguided, his motivation behind it seems legit.
And now I've veered further away from the topic of this post, prune it all to Carkoon.
I snip this out of the fuller conversation because it stands so beautifully on its own, even if you never click to see the whole thread today. Little in-jokes about prunes and Carkoon aside, this is a delightfully stated point. The Malinda Lo link (Perceptions of Diversity link) is also, as Janet sometimes describes good things, a sox-knocker too, unpacking the theory that diversity in novels is "contrived" or implausible. To which I say: sigh. However, to the shout-out to Meg Medina, an author I know personally, am honored to consider a friend, and admire both as a writer and as a woman, I say: huzzah!
I have to be honest. Almost a year on ... I actually feel better and better about putting The Ax and the Vase down for a nap. I *still* think the thing is a damned good novel. But it is ever more clearly, to me, an obvious result of my own blindness and privilege, curvatus en se, a learning tool.
ProfeJMarie (Janet Rundquist) said...
Colin,
"It doesn't help me to understand the Mexican experience, or what it's like to be Latino/Latina if I'm constantly drawn out of the story because sections of important dialog are in a language I don't understand,"
This statement is where my point is. This assumes a lot about our readers. And while it can obviously apply to many populations, I'm going to go out on pretty solid limb and say that your statement above assumes that "most" readers are white, European, English-only speakers. It also assumes that when I put Spanish phrases into my novel, you are assuming that my purpose is teach about Latino culture. It's not. My native language is English, but I speak Spanish. I am not pulled out of a story due to Spanish phrases. Maybe I am if there's lots of Amharic, but I go with it because A) I am not the only one reading that book and B) that's the nature of the story and those characters.
Malinda Lo has a fantastic series about how this kind of thing impacts diverse voices from becoming part of the mainstream. It's our ("our"=we white people in the publishing biz) unintentional bias that gets in the way. It seems like a little thing, but it actually has more impact on the systemic issue than even I realized until recent years.
Perceptions of Diversity in Book Reviews
ie: as white readers and writers, we often make the mistake of making "white" and "English" the default. For the writer who had full paragraphs of Spanish followed by English... while I agree that his approach is misguided, his motivation behind it seems legit.
And now I've veered further away from the topic of this post, prune it all to Carkoon.
I snip this out of the fuller conversation because it stands so beautifully on its own, even if you never click to see the whole thread today. Little in-jokes about prunes and Carkoon aside, this is a delightfully stated point. The Malinda Lo link (Perceptions of Diversity link) is also, as Janet sometimes describes good things, a sox-knocker too, unpacking the theory that diversity in novels is "contrived" or implausible. To which I say: sigh. However, to the shout-out to Meg Medina, an author I know personally, am honored to consider a friend, and admire both as a writer and as a woman, I say: huzzah!
Diversity is not “praiseworthy”: It is reality.
--Malinda Lo
I have to be honest. Almost a year on ... I actually feel better and better about putting The Ax and the Vase down for a nap. I *still* think the thing is a damned good novel. But it is ever more clearly, to me, an obvious result of my own blindness and privilege, curvatus en se, a learning tool.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Little Darlin'
At some point in the past month or two, I DVR'd "Little Darlings", a movie that horrified me when it came out. I was five years younger than the girls in this movie, but even by their own age, I was far too much the Good Girl to be able to stand the thought of a whole movie about a bet over losing virginity.
And so, I've never actually seen "Little Darlings."
Watching it today, as a bright and gusty warm winter Sunday wears into evening, the sight of Kristy MacNicol in her opening scene, walking through her neighborhood in jeans and a jean jacket, smoking took me SLAM back to the Marlboro Country where I grew up. (My high school had a smoking area. For students.) I dressed like that, I had the little scowl like that, I had the fluffy hair that looked different every day.
This is one of those movies I enjoy because it looks real, not production designed. Matt Dillon looks so much like the real live boys I crushed on and hung out with, his youth is almost heartbreakingly gorgeous. The girls in camp look like we did - thick-haired, thin-haired, fat, babyfaced, dorky. Beautiful.
One of the great highlights of the story is Sunshine, the hippie child who defends virginity in the end - and is, hilariously, played by Cynthia Nixon (later famous for her long run in, of all things, Sex and the City). She's rather more likable here.
The emotions, as they come in "Little Darlings", are raw and tender and bear all the importance of youth and first-ness. It's both perfectly nostalgic for those of us Of A Certain Age and acutely immediate; the performances really are good.
I recently re-watched "Valley Girl" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", which also feature kids who look pretty much like we really did back then, and have a very particular feel that is specific not only to the time but to the movies of that period, which went in for a grimy sort of sexiness that has been lost, polished over and production designed and plastic surgerized out of all humanity.
Next up from the DVR: "Smile" - an earlier still peek into teenaged beauty pageants, where you can find Melanie Griffith, Anette O'Toole, and other stars in early roles. And Barbara Feldon, whom I wanted to be when I grew up when she showed up on my TV as Agent 99 in Get Smart.
Some of the details of films from the seventies and early eighties are shocking - the extreme ease of a guy who's been accused of sex with a student; the careless way sexually obsessed young boys stalk pageant girls; sex, and abortion, and the expectations we have now versus those in play decades ago. Some of the honesty is astonishing (the judges in "Smile" are both creepy and dead-on portrayals; the way kids who've been used badly deal with and consider sex; the gender roles).
I think I need to actually collect these movies, instead of parking copies/taking up space in the DVR. Will have to look on Amazon streaming or get them on blu-ray.
And so, I've never actually seen "Little Darlings."
Watching it today, as a bright and gusty warm winter Sunday wears into evening, the sight of Kristy MacNicol in her opening scene, walking through her neighborhood in jeans and a jean jacket, smoking took me SLAM back to the Marlboro Country where I grew up. (My high school had a smoking area. For students.) I dressed like that, I had the little scowl like that, I had the fluffy hair that looked different every day.
This is one of those movies I enjoy because it looks real, not production designed. Matt Dillon looks so much like the real live boys I crushed on and hung out with, his youth is almost heartbreakingly gorgeous. The girls in camp look like we did - thick-haired, thin-haired, fat, babyfaced, dorky. Beautiful.
One of the great highlights of the story is Sunshine, the hippie child who defends virginity in the end - and is, hilariously, played by Cynthia Nixon (later famous for her long run in, of all things, Sex and the City). She's rather more likable here.
The emotions, as they come in "Little Darlings", are raw and tender and bear all the importance of youth and first-ness. It's both perfectly nostalgic for those of us Of A Certain Age and acutely immediate; the performances really are good.
I recently re-watched "Valley Girl" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", which also feature kids who look pretty much like we really did back then, and have a very particular feel that is specific not only to the time but to the movies of that period, which went in for a grimy sort of sexiness that has been lost, polished over and production designed and plastic surgerized out of all humanity.
Next up from the DVR: "Smile" - an earlier still peek into teenaged beauty pageants, where you can find Melanie Griffith, Anette O'Toole, and other stars in early roles. And Barbara Feldon, whom I wanted to be when I grew up when she showed up on my TV as Agent 99 in Get Smart.
Some of the details of films from the seventies and early eighties are shocking - the extreme ease of a guy who's been accused of sex with a student; the careless way sexually obsessed young boys stalk pageant girls; sex, and abortion, and the expectations we have now versus those in play decades ago. Some of the honesty is astonishing (the judges in "Smile" are both creepy and dead-on portrayals; the way kids who've been used badly deal with and consider sex; the gender roles).
I think I need to actually collect these movies, instead of parking copies/taking up space in the DVR. Will have to look on Amazon streaming or get them on blu-ray.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Collection
There have been some emotionally exhausting aspects to this week, and work was trying today (it is amazing to me how fatiguing it can be to be *unable* to get things done - and I was without my laptop all day long, for stressful tech reasons). So my link-tease comments aren't especially clever. But a few things I want to share ...
A Mojourner picture is worth a good 688 words, at least. This entry: fighting fire with - welp, firefighters. Trained ones & everything.
And here, Mojourner shares a really good tribal map.
Lauren at American Duchess sometimes makes me with I had a wee bit more costuming gumption. Today's special, reblocking old wool hats. I love the white recut; visually interesting and very chic!
Ann Turnbull at The History Girls shows us a hidden villa, then walks away on a summer day, to leave it perhaps for others to find again.
Tom Williams has a piece on writing book reviews; I am particularly poor about doing this. Do you remember to recognize and review?
And finally, Janet Reid in Klingonee (or something very like it - and for THAT rather in little inside joke, I want a little credit). Like she wasn't awesome enough.
A Mojourner picture is worth a good 688 words, at least. This entry: fighting fire with - welp, firefighters. Trained ones & everything.
And here, Mojourner shares a really good tribal map.
Lauren at American Duchess sometimes makes me with I had a wee bit more costuming gumption. Today's special, reblocking old wool hats. I love the white recut; visually interesting and very chic!
Ann Turnbull at The History Girls shows us a hidden villa, then walks away on a summer day, to leave it perhaps for others to find again.
Tom Williams has a piece on writing book reviews; I am particularly poor about doing this. Do you remember to recognize and review?
And finally, Janet Reid in Klingonee (or something very like it - and for THAT rather in little inside joke, I want a little credit). Like she wasn't awesome enough.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Collection
Most of these one star book reviews will make you want to shoot yourself (or, perhaps, their "authors") in the neck. Some of them are slyly hilarious, though! Thank you, Zuba, for sending me down this rabbit hole!
Kristi Tuck Austin has some words on rock stars and authors - and no patience for the reticent writers who ignore and short-shrift their fans. Me neither, lady!
18th century France is NOW - in San Francisco. A great piece again from The History Blog, with videos worth a look if you're curious about how to move your gilded historical salon across a couple continents and an ocean. The clips on gilding and wood carving are the best, short and illuminating. So to speak!
Finally: Gossamer would like to assure you, "It's all all right. You'll be okay. Promise."
Just needed to get a photo in, keep the visual interest.
Kristi Tuck Austin has some words on rock stars and authors - and no patience for the reticent writers who ignore and short-shrift their fans. Me neither, lady!
18th century France is NOW - in San Francisco. A great piece again from The History Blog, with videos worth a look if you're curious about how to move your gilded historical salon across a couple continents and an ocean. The clips on gilding and wood carving are the best, short and illuminating. So to speak!
Finally: Gossamer would like to assure you, "It's all all right. You'll be okay. Promise."
Just needed to get a photo in, keep the visual interest.
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