meddow

I hate child characters in horror movies. They’re bound to do something stupid or get captured and in doing so endanger all the other characters, you know they can’t die because that’d be too grim and you feel guilty if you root for them to die.

I caught 28 Weeks Later , a movie I had been avoiding since hearing that it was being created, since I adore the original. First of all you have pseudo-zombies, something that always wins. Then you have wholesale ‘borrowing’ from one of my favourite books, Day of the Triffids. And then it has Cillian Murphy, Christopher Eccleston, Naomi Harris and Brendan Gleeson, and to top of it, the meaty message that it ain’t the zombies that are the monsters in this world. Plus Danny Boyle is one of my favourite directors.

*Loves*

Then you have the sequel, which prompted that above statement about child character, missed the opportunity to focus on something really horrific (though essentially a moral dilemma in the form of the carrier) and a plot propelled along by the characters being stupid and not sharing information. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not as good as the original.

Speaking of movies that shouldn’t be made, I’m going to now state my disgust at the Watchmen movie. I understand adapting books to a visual medium, but it was a graphic novel, it was already in a visual medium and in that medium much more layered than you could get in a movie. I read Watchmen a couple of months ago, and I know it gets its praises sung from the high heavens all the time, but it just is brilliant. It’s one of those things that you have to take a few hours to get yourself together after reading.

And while I loved Sin City, the more relevant movie to judge it by is 300, which I hated. Sure the nudity and homoeroticism was fun for the first half an hour, but by the end of it I found myself yelling “just die already!”

I’ve been keeping up what’s been happening on Heroes lately, because I do love that show, in particularly Mr. Bennet. My love of that character knows no bounds. The Heroes writers better not kill off my favourite character, or I’ll…I’ll…whinge about it (and quite possibly get bored with the show and stop watching). I’m not having a very good favourite character year, they all tend to be killed off, and not in particularly brilliant manners either (what is worse – death by stick or death by randomly inserted sentence?). On the other hand, placing HRG in jeopardy is a bloody good way to keep me tuning in every week, and they would have to be idiots to kill him off and I think the writers realise that. After all, there is one general rule to Heroes and that is the further a character is removed from the Bennets, the more boring that character is (there are notable exceptions to this rule, but it holds for the most part). So killing off Mr. Bennet, resident bad ass and father of the year, would be a bad move.

Meanwhile, SJA is having something of a negative effect on me. It’s actually making me consider watching Casino Royale. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before, but I hate James Bond movies. This is completely at odds with my entire family and my best friend who happen to all love Bond films, which is probably why I’ve stuck my heels in and have been so adamant that I will not watch them for so long. Basically, when I was about twelve I decided I despised the treatment of women in the films and haven’t really watched one since. But anyway, I found out Joseph Millson, a.k.a Maria’s lovely too-hot-to-have-a-teenage-daughter father is in it. And now I want to watch. Damn it.

Though my desire to watch Casino Royale is pretty much nothing to the fact that having seen the trailer and something about it on TV, I really really want to see Atonement. This is also somewhat artic_fox's fault, since she put it on my radar in the first place. Something to look forward too when I emerge fully of my current assessment hell, I suppose.

My flatmate has never seen The Goonies! Obviously my goal in life from this point on is to rectify this sad situation.

Anyway, I’ve signed up for tardis_bigbang which is a write whatever you want kind of ficathon, so long as it’s about 20 000 words, which should be interesting. Though my fic idea has been floating around my head for a couple of months now so I managed to get it all plotted out this morning. And when I get going, I can write 10 000 words in a weekend, I think. So hopefully it'll work out.

Also, sarahjane_fic’s running a challenge at the moment of fics less than 1000 words in celebration of The Sarah Jane Adventures and I wrote something:

Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Author: meddow
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word Count: 999
Characters: Kelsey, the Fourth Doctor
Summary: Despite her best efforts, Kelsey encounters another alien.

(Between a Rock and a Hard Place)

So Sunshine has for some time been no.1 on the list of (non fandom) movies I've been wanting to see. It's got one hell of a pedigree, with the same writer, director and lead actor as 28 Days Later, an interesting premise and today I finally got to see it, and…and…wow.

It's one of those movies where you walk out of the theatre and you really can't think of anything to say. It's stunning.

It's one of the most ambitious movies I've seen in a long time, if possibly ever. Basically, they are going to relight the sun (well, create a new sun) to save everything. Now, if the sun is the giver of life, then the crew are getting closer and closer to the true great creator of life. In that way it's a spiritual movie for atheists mixed with a big dose of good old claustrophobic horror.

The visuals are amazing. There were no CGI-cringe moments, the sun and spaceship both truly spectacular. The acting's brilliant and Cillian Murphy is as gorgeous as ever and Cliff Curtis is playing an American (half the fun of a Cliff Curtis movie is guessing where he's going to be from this time).

It is, however, flawed. It tends to go off the rails a bit in the third act, which could have worked far if there had been more build up. But screw it; I'd talk a flawed movie that's ambitious, intelligent and stunning over the vast majority of other crap released today.

I love Oscar day. All the news shows drag on one of the average looking completely non-Hollywood from random New Zealander who just happens to have more Oscars than Meryl Streep on for an interview, which I find highly amusing. The LotR effect is going to take a few generations to dwindle.

Of course, at 3am tomorrow when the free TV telecast finishes and I’m sitting on the couch half asleep, half pissed off cause some movie I didn’t like won the big one, I’ll hate myself for wasting four hours of my life watching it. But I don’t really care about that right now.

I with team Helen Mirren. I walked into The Queen a cynical republican (in the commonwealth sense) and walked out still a cynical republican, but she was just so awesome in that movie that I was rooting for an absolute monarchy till the end of the credits. Though I caught The Devil Wears Prada yesterday and Meryl Streep completely lives up to the hype. She managed to humanise her character with one line and when her back was turned to the camera. As for all the other categories, I’m rooting for Children of Men for best picture as it was the best movie of last year. But since it wasn’t nominated I really don’t like its chances.

Meanwhile, I’m loving that Addison on Grey’s Anatomy is getting her own spin-off. That means that if she takes Callie, Bailey and Alex with her then I can give up on Grey’s Anatomy all together.

1. Happy New Year!

2. This has been eating at me for the past few days - I’m against the death penalty. I think that entity such as a state, especially a democracy, should sink to the level of those that it prosecutes. It is very hard saying this in respect of a man like Saddam Hussein who was a monster and if anyone deserves to be hung, it’s him; but the events of a few days ago do not sit right with me. Also, I would have liked to see Saddam Hussein be tried for every single crime he committed and justice be served for the lot of it.

3. I never realised Hornblower was in Titanic. Ioan Gruffudd was pulling bodies out of the water in the end.

4. Watching Pirates of the Caribbean with people not involved in the fandom can be very irritating.

“So Steve is in the second one as well.”
“Yep.”
“And he turns into the bad guy.”

In fandom I could say:
“Well if you read the long piece of meta I wrote on the subject you will realise he is in fact just acting out of his own self-interest like every other character in the movies and does not have the same access to information as the viewers such as whether the Kraken and Davy Jones really exist and that the Navy is no longer a force of good and so is probably incapable of predicting the devastating outcomes of his actions. And Elizabeth Swann did far worse. So I think the phrase ‘bad guy’ does not quite apply.”

Instead I have to settle for: “Yep.”

5. The rt_challenge challenge starts today! I haven’t written any Remus/Tonks since, oh, the last challenge so I think it may be the only thing that motivates me to write the pairing these days. Thank you challenge mods, you do a brilliant job.

Here’s an exercise for all of you living in the Northern Hemisphere. First, picture houses, streets, shopping malls, basically the whole world all decked up in Christmas finery with fake pine trees with reds and gold baubles everywhere and Christmas lights and fake snow and roast dinners. All of it screaming out warmth and comfort from a harsh cold winter, when you can sit around a fire with family and brandy.

Now take all of that and put it in July with a perfect cloudless blue sky and the sun blazing down and a temperature that matches. Everyone around you in the mall is wearing singlet tops and either shorts or skirts. And then you have why I think maintaining the Christmas traditions of the Northern Hemisphere in the Southern Hemisphere is just a little bit ridiculous.

I saw Children of Men today. Alfonso Cuarón is a genius. The plot is about a world that has lost hope, since women the world over have become infertile. There’s bombs going off in coffee stores, Britain has closed its borders and is rounding up refugees like cattle, and everyone else is either going to work or sitting around and smoking pot. Except, unlike every other science fiction movie which seems to be commenting on what the world will be like if we keep heading down the same path or if x happens, it’s a comment on what the world actually is like today. It’s Iraq. It’s filmed with a handheld camera style and in once scene blood splatters on the camera lens and it just keeps going, just like that infamous footage a couple of years back of a news crew that came under friendly fire. Watching it is like being in all that footage that is on the news every night. It’s brilliant and it’s tragic and I think you should all go and see it.

And if that doesn't convince you, this will - Aunt Marge in dreadlocks. I'm not kidding.

And now I’ve had my little comment on Xmas, and my comment on world affairs, now a slightly more materialistic question. I’m giving serious consideration to buying an ipod. Thing is, all my music on my computer is in mp3 format. Will that work on an ipod? I hear all these things about not buying an apple because of something to do with file formats and I don't want to ask the store people becasue they can never seem to give me a simple answer.

I finally found the solution to my crappy local video store problem in that I cannot find any movies over five years old. It occurred to me that the University Library has DVDs. Hah! So I’ve got a copy of Cry Freedom which should keep me good tonight.

I’ve been watching a lot of Penelope Wilton movies lately because, 1. she rules, and 2. in some fandom therapy. Two weeks after having seen The Christmas Invasion I’m still devastated by what happened to Harriet Jones. She’s my favourite character, she is twenty-five different kinds of awesome and I would have probably made the same decision if I was in her shoes.

( Cue Rant that Has Been Building Up For A While )

In that vein I watched Match Point yesterday. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is bloody creepy, even creepier than Jude Law. I don’t think it’s the role either because I thought he was pretty creepy in Bend It Like Beckham. Also, Scarlett Johansson kindof bugs me.

I also caught North Country and I really want Niki Caro to direct Half-Blood Prince. She's the director/screenplay writer behind Whale Rider so she has some experience when it comes to tales of destiny and angst.

Want to know something that has been amusing me all day – the year 2008 is going to be the international year of the:

Potato

Seriously, there is a UN resolution to that effect. Now I know that potatoes are a wonderful food since they act as a stable in the diet of millions (possibly billions) of people over the world. But still – international year of the potato.

Meanwhile my local video store which is probably the crappiest video store in the whole world (but the only one in walking distance from my flat so it gets my business regardless) has just redeemed itself slightly by having the 3-disk special edition of The Frighteners in store.

The Frighteners is one of my all time favourite movies. It’s Michael J. Fox as a clairvoyant con-man vs. the Grim Reaper, which doesn’t sound like all that much, but you have to keep in mind that this is a movie by the same director who introduced the world to lawnmowers as a legitimate zombie slaying device (I also love Braindead BTW), so it's brilliantly funny. (And they let this guy direct Lord of the Rings. Was everyone in Hollywood stoned that day?)

And it contains possibly one of the greatest movie lines of all time - "I'm an asshole...with an uzi."

I cannot believe I have managed to live 21 years of life without having seen Brazil. That is until today and it’s an awesome movie. For those who may not have seen it, it’s 1984 with crazy heating pipe repairman, dream sequences and jokes about consumerism and plastic surgery. And it has Michael Palin, who I heart and since I didn’t notice that it stared Jonathan Pryce and I had a “OMFG! That’s Governor Swann!” moment fifteen minutes into it.

Michael Palin really needs to show up in a Potter movie. You can never have too many Pythons in a franchise. Oh, as a Death Eater! Death Eater Michael Palin would just rock my socks off.

And it’s Sunday night, which means for me that it’s Top Gear night. I don’t think I’ve ever expressed the love I have for Top Gear in this journal before. I have no idea why since I’m not a car person. In fact I’m rather anti-car, except for Austin Martin DB9s. I’d gladly sacrifice the environment away for my own DB9 or a red 60s Mustang *drools*. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago the presenters decided to make their own convertible people carrier and ended up setting a car wash on fire and it was one of the funniest things I’ve seen on TV.