| Torchwood: Children of Earth (no spoilers) |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|10:30 pm] |
I liked the first two series of Torchwood. I enjoyed watching them, and I bought the DVDs. I admit it was flawed and had some lame episodes, but there was a lot to like there.
But Children of Earth... this is on a whole other level. It's still not perfect; there are some convenient plot and character contrivances here and there, but it's like another show entirely.
So naturally I'm worried about tomorrow night's episode. Is it going to be a Galactica-style damp squib of an ending? Or will it be as good as the first four parts? Given RTD's way with endings, it's hard not to worry. On the other hand, it seems pretty damned unlikely that this one's going to be resolved with the help of the Doctor and Sarah Jane and her friends. It's hard to imagine how the story can be resolved without a Doctorian deus ex machina, though. And the show is set in the Whoniverse, so I can't imagine it going for the darkest possible ending ( Read more... ).
Boy, I hope tomorrow night isn't a disappointment. And anyone who tried Torchwood before and didn't like it -- give this a try. Well, maybe wait a day or two and see if everyone's blown away or disappointed... |
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| Compuserve is dead -- what, it was still alive?! |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|04:44 pm] |
Well, CompuServe Classic was apparently shut down a few days ago. I haven't been a CIS user since 1995 or so, I think, but I still remember that my user ID was 76217,1455. Ah, those pre-web days when being able to use the Compuserve Packet Network via a local phone call and access all those services and forums was so exciting. All that time spent on the Star Trek and Science Fiction forums, where writers like Carmen Carter, Diane Duane, David Gerrold, J. Michael Straczynski, and even Outpost Gallifrey's Jim Shaun Lyon (then a young sysop) were regulars. The first news about DS9, the first news about Babylon 5, thousands of posts about Gene Roddenberry's death, the first news about Richard Arnold losing his job (and writers celebrating), the flamewar over the official Roddenberry biography between David Alexander, David Gerrold, and others. Using CIS to connect to the Well. Getting a work account for a little while to see if it would be useful (not so much, when we already had access to more specialized information services, but handy once or twice).
And then in 1992 came the National Capital Freenet and by the end of 1993 the first graphical interface for the web and everything changed. Hard to believe we haven't always had this web thing. Hard to believe we haven't always had computers on our desks. Hard to believe that something that seemed as cool as Compuserve did when I first got my account hasn't even been on my radar for well over a decade now. |
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| On watching DS9 reruns |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|08:29 am] |
I've finally managed to get back to watching my DS9 DVD box sets (left off ages ago early in the third season). I've watched most of the third season and am a few episodes into the fourth season now. And it's so damn good, and it's so not what the new movie is. I like the new movie, I think it did a lot of interesting things and took some risks that appear to have paid off, and I'm glad it's a hit. But... DS9 is just the peak of what Star Trek used to be.
There's not much action at all. Instead, there's believable and interesting characters who have intelligent conversations. And what a great bunch of characters, too. All the regulars have their parts down perfectly, and the recurring characters get so many great moments. Winn, Garak, Dukat, Kasidy, and more to come....
You could have a brilliant DS9 episode with no real plot, just scenes with the right combinations of characters talking. And now Worf is added to the mix, and it's obvious that the writers are actually thinking about the character and how he'd deal with this different environment (as in his frustration over how Odo deals with Quark in "Hippocratic Oath").
Damn, this is a great show. |
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| Denise Mina |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|10:09 am] |
There was a mystery writers' con in town yesterday (meant and priced for people in the biz rather than fans), with readings open to the public for free. Most of the writers are Canadian writers I've never heard of, with a couple of local exceptions, but there was an international guest as well: Denise Mina, from Scotland. Laura and I have both read and enjoyed her three (so far) novels about Glaswegian reporter Paddy Meehan, and Laura's reading one of Mina's standalone novel, and I've read her run on DC's Hellblazer comic, so we decided to go.
For the benefit of anyone who's read Mina: she's as entertaining a speaker as she is a writer. She talked about the inspirations for the Paddy Meehan books and her first books, the Garnethill trilogy. She mentioned that there will eventually be two more Paddy Meehan books, but changing publishers is delaying that a bit. She has a new series starting that sounds like more of a police procedural series with a larger cast of characters. Sounded pretty good. Oh, and a forthcoming graphic novel from DC, A Sickness in the Family, with art by Antonio Fuso.
And if you haven't read her... well, I can only talk about the Paddy Meehan books, but they're great. They're as much about being poor and Catholic in Glasgow during the Thatcher years, and about changes in the newspaper industry over the last couple of decades, as they are about murders and other crimes. Really good characterization and a very strong sense of place and time. And the kind of grimness without glamour that UK crime fiction writers seem really good at (see, for example, Derek Raymonde or David Lawrence). |
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| Desktop theme meme |
[Jun. 6th, 2009|09:10 pm] |
Swiped from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tiggerallyn
01. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their livejournal.
My current wallpaper.
02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
Saw it on io9.
I love futuristic cityscapes.
This is a good example of the style.
I was tired of the previous wallpaper, which was from a John Foxx album cover (My Lost City -- a reworked black and white NYC skyline photograph).
I was tired of the wallpaper before that, which was a shot Laura took of the Enterprise-D at the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas a few years ago.
03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!
I've been using this for a few weeks now.
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| Well, this is annoying |
[May. 28th, 2009|08:03 am] |
Suppose you're a fan of a TV show. Let's call it TV Show. There's one really big forum that everyone interested in the show goes to. It used to be called something else, but now it's called TV Show Forum. Thousands of fans post in a variety of subforums. People involved with the official TV Show Magazine post there. People who write and produce TV Show audio dramas post there. People who write TV Show novels post there. Even some of the people who write TV Show itself have posted there, and they mention TV Show Forum sometimes in books and interviews and TV Show Magazine columns.
( Read more... )
There hasn't been much fuss about it online at all. Several people on my LJ friends list hang out there, but I haven't seen any of them post anywhere about it. I don't know if I'm missing something that makes the actions of the moderator and the owner look more reasonable, or if it's just that most of this happened in an endless and insane canon thread that no sensible person was still reading. But from my possibly limited understanding of events, it looks to me like the owner and moderator should do some serious hard thinking about their actions.
Apropos of nothing whatsoever, I ordered the latest Doctor Who semiauthorized spinoff book a few weeks back, and it should be available pretty soon. It's called Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus, starring Iris Wildthyme, as created by Paul Magrs for the BBC Doctor Who novel line. She's also had a few Big Finish audios and a Big Finish hardcover anthology, Wildthyme on Top. More information here.
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| Anniversaries |
[May. 22nd, 2009|09:39 am] |
Laura said this morning, did you notice that your Company X anniversary was last week? (I used to make a note of the anniversary of my first day at Company X. Started there May 16, 1988. Finished there January 23, 2008 because the Americans now running what used to be a proudly Canadian organization figured our group was unnecessary. I may still be a tad bitter. Not just about losing my job, but about Canada giving up control of a strategically vital company. But anyway...)
No, I hadn't noticed. There are anniversaries on my mind, though. I don't remember the date of the day Laura and I first met, but it was in April of 1999. We hung out a bit, usually with my sister and her husband and sometimes others, but we took a little time to progress to actual dating. On June 19 we had our first really datelike excursion (a beer or two at the pub, dinner at a nearby restaurant, a movie, coffee afterwards). On June 22 we realized we were both definitely interested in being more than friends and officially became a couple. Which means that pretty soon we'll have been together for ten years. Wedding anniversary's not until September, and that'll only mark eight years of marriage; ten years of being together feels more important to me.
So that's the anniversary that's been on my mind. The happy one. The one I won't forget.
(ETA: dropped the actual company name. No point having anyone stumble across the post by googling the name, unlikely though that may be.) |
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| Twin Peaks |
[May. 17th, 2009|07:22 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Angelo Badalamenti: Twin Peaks - Season Two Music and More | ] |
Finished watching Twin Peaks on DVD earlier today. I missed it during its original run on TV; saw a bit of one episode and was mystified, so I passed on it. I first watched it in daily reruns circa 1995, wondering how people had managed to wait weeks or months between episodes. It was all I could do to wait a day, sometimes. The scene in which the Giant appears to Cooper at the Roadhouse saying "It is happening again" while Maddy is attacked still gives me chills. When the Laura Palmer storyline ended I watched a video of the movie Fire Walk With Me, and despite the self-indulgence of the first part of the movie, I found it as enjoyable as a horribly depressing, creepy, and disturbing movie can be. I found the show went downhill after the Laura mystery was resolved, so a few years later, when I watched it over again with my Laura, who hadn't seen it, we skipped the last several episodes of the show.
Watching it again, there's no denying that the show did lose its direction a bit after the end of the Laura Palmer mystery. The storyline involving James being caught up in a plot to kill a woman's husband really didn't work at all, being too generically soap opera-ish, and the crazy Ben Horne Civil War storyline was, conversely, too quirky. But those last few episodes I skipped the second time around were a lot better than I remembered, as the Windom Earle story picks up speed and combines with the Black Lodge thread. Seeing several characters finding redemption or love just as something very terrible is about to happen really cranks up the tension. The last episode is as disturbing as the show gets, with a minimum of physical violence.
Back in 1995, on my first run-through, I didn't think that the movie being a prequel that essentially retold a story we knew was a bad idea; this time around, I have to think of it as a lost opportunity to carry the story forward. It's been some time since I watched FWWM . I'm sure I'll still like it when I get around to it this time, but I'll be regretting that the chance to tell us what happens next wasn't taken.
Overall, though, damn, what a show. It's one of my all-time favourite SF/fantasy TV shows, even with relatively little fantastic content. Great cast, great characters, great music... |
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| Star Trek: the new movie |
[May. 8th, 2009|06:33 pm] |
Saw it this afternoon. There is so much that is wrong with this movie, and yet it's still a lot more enjoyable than several other Star Trek movies I could name. There were even some surprises that hadn't yet been spoiled.
( Spoilers! )
In a way, this does to TOS what the new Galactica did to the old, giving it that jittery feel. Except that the original Star Trek didn't suck, and the new Galactica, flawed though it was, showed evidence of putting more thought into things.
And yet: though it just got by on speed and enthusiasm and a few good performances, it was fun. The problem is, this is an origin movie. We won't know what this team is really capable of until they make another movie that has to stand on its own. Oh, and I'm glad that they explicitly made it an alternate timeline, though even that doesn't necessarily account for some of the changes from the old canon in this movie.
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| Star Trek movie time |
[May. 6th, 2009|01:51 pm] |
 See the guy at the left, who's blocking all but part of the head of a taller guy? I'm the taller guy. The two guys in front of me weren't even there for the movie; they were guys I knew from school who happened to be passing by shortly before the Edmonton Journal photographer took a shot of the lineup for the movie premiere. I've tried to make it to all the Star Trek movies on opening day; I was in small towns when Star Trek II and III came out, so I was a bit late for those two.
This time the movie premieres on a Thursday, with no matinees, and I just don't want to deal with the crowds and craziness of an evening show. And I want to see it with Laura; we met not too long after Insurrection came out, so the only Trek movie we've seen together in a movie theatre is Nemesis. So Friday afternoon it is. One day late, but hell, it feels like everyone else has already seen one of the preview showings... |
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| Life on Mars US |
[Apr. 11th, 2009|01:32 pm] |
Watched the US series finale this morning. Spoilers for LoM US and UK below.
( Read more... ) |
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| Still here! |
[Apr. 10th, 2009|07:39 pm] |
Haven't really posted here because this is the place where I talk about life, as opposed to Star Trek or music. And life could be better. Still, things may be picking up. I've had a couple of job interviews in the last month and a couple more coming up. That's a lot better than the previous several months. But it's also tax season. And I had to get in touch with the company that laid me off last year to get them to correct some of my paperwork.
On a cheerier note, it was in April 1999, ten years ago (though I don't recall the exact date), that I first met Laura. My sister Nadja was working on her master's in anthropology and she told me about a classmate of hers who might be just the woman I was looking for. Tall, attractive, Star trek fan, old movie fan, smart, funny... I knew I had to meet her but I didn't want it to seem like some obvious fix-up, so I suggested Nadja and Bryan, her husband, invite me and Laura and a bunch of their other friends (people I knew) to go for a casual beer and movie night. So we did. After the movie (Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett), when Nadja suggested going for coffee, it ended up just being Nadja, Laura, and me. And it was fun. Laura had to work on her degree, and go back home to London, Ontario, for a little while to see her family, so we didn't see a lot of each other right away, but by June we were officially an item and there was no turning back. I couldn't imagine the last ten years without her. I really don't want to think what the last year would have been like without her. Love is good. |
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| Music |
[Feb. 26th, 2009|08:54 am] |
You know that 20 albums that shaped my life meme that Kevin Dilmore, Allyn Gibson, and Geoff Trowbridge (and probably others I haven't seen yet) have been doing? I've posted mine on another blog. I don't have a lot of musical interests in common with the folks here on the flist, so music posts here don't generate any discussion. On my new music blog... well, no discussion there either, yet, but at least I'm not clogging your friends pages.
Anyone who's vaguely interested can click on the banner below. It's a random kind of blog, just dealing with stuff that interests me: Richard Hawley, Raphael Saadiq, Frank Sinatra, Vangelis's Blade Runner soundtrack, Dälek, The Big Takeover magazine, etc.
(Anyone recognize where that photo was taken? Laura took it a few years ago.) |
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| Music meme |
[Feb. 7th, 2009|05:38 pm] |
Snurched from wyldemusick, who assigned me the letter B.
1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload, if you feel like it (or link to youtube videos)) 5 songs that start with that letter
1. Babooshka by Kate Bush
2. Born Under a Bad Sign by Richard Hawley
3. The Boy With the Thorn in His Side by the Smiths
4. Blinded by the Lights by The Streets
5. Broken Home by Burial
Bonus: Bedsitter by Soft Cell
youtubes beyond the lj-cut.
( Read more... ) |
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| 80s karaoke meme |
[Jan. 29th, 2009|11:40 am] |
As seen chez popfiend. Not a bad result. I think "Love Like Blood" might have been a better song pick than "Love Shack," though, because the latter is from the tail end of the '80s and was a massive pop hit rather than a relatively underground hit, whereas the former is one of my all-time favourite songs, and was very popular with the goth and alternative crowds.
You Are "Love Shack"
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If you were transported back to the 80s, you would enjoy anything and everything underground.
You love the alternative aspects of 80s culture, and you're a bit disappointed that they've been forgotten over time.
You'd be goth, punk, new wave, or a rapper. Just not a yuppie, a preppy, or a jock!
You would relish living in a time where identifying with a subculture actually meant something.
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| The Guardian's novels everyone must read: SF and fantasy |
[Jan. 27th, 2009|08:18 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Harold Budd: The White Arcades | ] |
I was thinking this Guardian article could make a good meme (bold the books on this list you've read, etc), but now that I actually know which books are included in the list, I'm not sure it'll catch on. It's essentially a litsnob attempt at a canon of great SF and fantasy, part of the Guardian's 1000 books you must read series. What's interesting about it, though, is that it rejects the usual litsnob approach of saying "this book is of literary merit and therefore cannot be labeled anything as lowbrow and worthless as science fiction" and instead opts for a widely inclusive approach, putting Mikhail Bulgakov and Larry Niven in the same list. Anyway, here's the list, and I've bolded the ones I've read.
( Read more... )
There are a lot of writers in the list for whom I could say, well, I haven't read that one, but I've read several others by him or her, but I don't suppose that really counts...
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