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Nov. 27th, 2012 03:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* Yes, I'm aware of the latest maneuvers in Egyptian politics. I have no predictions and while I'm hearing a lot of opinions, I see nothing definitive. Obviously, I'm against Morsey's move. However, I'm aware of enough of the nuances to know I don't know enough to say how best things should be handled from here. Best to see if the negotiations work out.
* No, I haven't forgotten Syria either. The genocide continues. Assad's latest "victory" involves slaughtering a playground full of unarmed children with cluster bombs in retaliation for the Opposition taking an airport. After all, unarmed children at play are a serious threat in Assad's mind, hence his history of having them tortured and mutilated. Hence in previous assaults on apartment blocks of civilians the murdering of infants along with their parents. Similarly, he prefers to destroy hospitals than people capable of fighting back. You know how I feel about armed men making war on children and the wounded and you know how I feel about Assad.
* "Enrico Dandolo and the way history overlooks disability:" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20415127
* "Greenland's viking settlers gorged on seals:" http://phys.org/news/2012-11-greenland-viking-settlers-gorged.html
This is a direct contradiction of the previous dominant theory of the Greenlander diet and the failure of the settlement.
* I know the History/Archeology round up has been sparse lately, but it's mostly an issue of the sort of items I'm interested in being sparse so there isn't much to distill.
* John Stewart does a surprisingly good job of talking about the Gaza Strip:
* Stephen Colbert demonstrates why making all second hand selling illegal is a terrible idea:
* "When right-wing blather killed:" http://www.salon.com/2012/11/26/when_right_wing_blather_killed/
* "Why Marco Rubio Needs To Know That The Earth Is Billions Of Years Old:" http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/11/19/why-marco-rubio-needs-to-know-that-the-earth-is-billions-of-years-old/
* What I wanted to do to day: Slap on a mask and go see the Lincoln movie. (I've heard they are featuring my favorite all time Pennsylvania politician, My beloved Thaddeus Stevens. Seriously, growing up in Philly, one got used to being ashamed of our politicians. Having one character as glorious as him was a big deal, and or nation owes him a debt that can neve be paid. Bonus points, for the casting).
What I actually did: A couple medical things, library, Post office, and Skyfall. I was pretty clearly doomed today. It took ages to get going. The Doctor forgot to put diagnostic codes on my tests, so they had to wait for her to finish with a patient, look me up, look codes up, etc.. It added an extra fifteen minutes to the blood taking and as I was last that day held up the poor phlebotomist also. Then there was the super long wait for my appointment, as I lost my slot waiting for the blood taking. Then there was a glitch with my library account so I had to wait in a long line only to get THE WRONG LIBRARIAN. *sigh* I'll have to go back. So that added fifteen minutes to a five minute in and out. I did slide in at the last minute to my favorite post office and that went smoothly, but I needed to have been finished twenty minutes previously to go see Lincoln. Note that I could have easily made it if one or two things had gone a little more right. Sigh.
* I have thoughts about SkyFall. First though, I'd like to talk about Bond a little. I've never been much of a Bond fan. Like my parents, my taste runs more to LeCarre than to Flemming. My Mother's serious reading was mostly history, but her light reading ran to mysteries and periodically spy thrillers. Being born when I was, Bond movies came out regularly and the older ones played endlessly on TV. My parents watched them, so my sister and I absorbed them while playing in the living room. When I got older, I went to them with friend and lovers because one does, just like one goes to romantic comedies if that's what the boy is into. At some point I was with a lover ho was going through a Sean Connery phase, so I've actually seen those more recently than the Moores and Daltons. I've even seen that mess of movie they made with Peter Sellers. The ones past Moore, I've only seen once in theaters.
I want to be clear, I've seen all of them at least once, but they are pretty forgettable as a group in my opinion, a fantasy about as realistic as Spiderman and generally pretty fucking sexist and problematic in a wide variety of ways. I am that strange person who prefers Timothy Dalton's diamond hard beauty to Mr. Connery's furry silliness, though not enough to bother watching them again. Similarly, I felt like Peirce Pierce Brosnan was the best of the silly old campy Bonds, sort of the eidos of the type, the clear and natural end of an evolution. I liked the way during his set, they started to deconstruct it a little, to point out that Bond "is a cold war Dinosaur." I like Dame Judy Dench as M.. The plots were still silly and forgettable, but I found them more watchable than the old ones that never seemed to be aware of how stupid the whole thing was. This isn't a strong endorsement; Bond doesn't do that much for me and I didn't bother watching them again.
Daniel Craig's Bond, though, I like. I might like them enough to go back and watch the others now that I've seen this one. It's still action hero silly, but this Bond is more interesting and less two dimensional. It's still pervasively sexist and periodically racist as a franchise, but Craig and Dench together were doing some really interesting things together and I liked them stripping in all back to Flemming basics, then updating it and making it action movie silly instead of Adam West Batman silly. (I love me some Adam West Batman camp, don't get me wrong; but Bond villains were never as fun Eartha Kitt's Catwoman, Burgess Meredith's Penguin, or Cesar Romero's joker, and yet their plots were just as silly). The Craig incarnation is on the opposite end of the continuum you can be and still be Bond, if that makes sense, a different evolutionary branch with a common ancestor in Flemming, but going a whole different way. Am I ever going to love Bond like I love Smiley? I doubt it. Grey folk who fade into the background, have quiet conversation, and do research between sudden short, necessary bursts of violence simply make more sense to me than an operative telling people his real name and doing flashy stunts.
This is my caveat: that I'm knowledgeable of the genre, but not the target audience. My memory of the plot of even the previous Craigs is a touch hazy as I watch them and forget them almost immediately.
So Skyfall. I can' figure out how to do this without spoilers, so huge spoilers ahoy! I'm not kidding, I'm going to spoil the end.
I really like the new Q and Miss. Moneypenny. I loved the way this repeatedly referenced the old school Bonds without doing so many of the ludicrous things old school Bond movies did. I liked Bond aging. I loved the acting, I truly did. A bunch of things were predictably problematic and I need to chew them over some more. (Ex: Sévérine in totality and particularly the Flemming style loss of her. Disposable sex worker trope and Asian stereotype or commentary on Bond as being fundamentally as destructive as his enemies? I'm thinking both, honestly. I was also thinking that the sex on the boat was not okay, because it couldn't be truly consensual given her situation, although you can counter argue that it's the only expression of agency she had. Counter argument or not it made me queasy. See? Needs more chewing but definitely problematic.). It was unexpectedly Gothic, which I did not expect, but enjoyed, just like I loved the references to out of genre films like Bruce Lee movies. This is not my usual favorite kind of villain but it made more sense than average and they hired the acting talent to mostly sell it. (Javier Bardem can sell just about anything, really). I saw a lot of things coming, like I always do, having sharp eyes for Checkov's gun and good narrative sense. (Ex: Me: This is way to easy. Clearly he wants to be captured and taken to your head quarters. Yep! There he goes!)
This said, I have one fundamental insolvable problem. This is that this felt like a logical end. Everything in it seemed to be leading up to closure, especially the stuff with M.. How much better to call it a trilogy and cash it out here. I say this even though Craig is excellent and I have nothing against Mr. Fienne's acting. I know the franchise makes to much money ever to stop, but I still wish they'd pulled a Nolen. I honestly don't particularly want to know what happens next. The three together make a satisfying character arc. The whole sitcom style reset for the next movie at the end of this one felt stupid and cheap. Again I get that this is about money and it's stupid to expect art in a Bond film, but they got close enough that it hurt a little when they sprung back to the inevitable status quo. I feel like it would have been better to either retire the franchise for a while and rest or to at the end of this one have a new 007 like they had a new M.
I also am uncomfortable with them replacing the powerhouse that was Dench's M with a man. Given the long running sexism of the franchise, having a powerful woman at the top of the hierarchy helped make the whole thing easier to take. Having Moneypenny be the secretary with a male M, Q, and Bond feels like going backward, despite me liking this Moneypenny and this Q, and again Mr. Fiennes is an excellent actor. Again, I'm not sure I want to see what happens next and am inclined not to pay to see the next one. I know it sounds like a back handed compliment to say, I liked this one enough not to want to see another, but it's true.
* It makes me sad that the three hour commercial that is the Macy's parade gets broadcast every year, yet the wild homemade all day whatthefuckery that is the Mummer's New Years Parade is nigh impossible to see online and never on TV.
* George Lucas long ago murdered my childhood love of star Wars, but I have to admit this is some genius merchandizing: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ed08/
* Be a Doctor Who companion: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/games/graske/geoip/host.shtml
* The Battle of Hastings/Sexyback:
* FTW: http://xkcd-rss.livejournal.com/287117.html
* O.o http://www.etsy.com/shop/organbank?ref=top_trail
http://pinterest.com/pin/37014028158769898/
* No, I haven't forgotten Syria either. The genocide continues. Assad's latest "victory" involves slaughtering a playground full of unarmed children with cluster bombs in retaliation for the Opposition taking an airport. After all, unarmed children at play are a serious threat in Assad's mind, hence his history of having them tortured and mutilated. Hence in previous assaults on apartment blocks of civilians the murdering of infants along with their parents. Similarly, he prefers to destroy hospitals than people capable of fighting back. You know how I feel about armed men making war on children and the wounded and you know how I feel about Assad.
* "Enrico Dandolo and the way history overlooks disability:" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20415127
* "Greenland's viking settlers gorged on seals:" http://phys.org/news/2012-11-greenland-viking-settlers-gorged.html
This is a direct contradiction of the previous dominant theory of the Greenlander diet and the failure of the settlement.
* I know the History/Archeology round up has been sparse lately, but it's mostly an issue of the sort of items I'm interested in being sparse so there isn't much to distill.
* John Stewart does a surprisingly good job of talking about the Gaza Strip:
* Stephen Colbert demonstrates why making all second hand selling illegal is a terrible idea:
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* "When right-wing blather killed:" http://www.salon.com/2012/11/26/when_right_wing_blather_killed/
* "Why Marco Rubio Needs To Know That The Earth Is Billions Of Years Old:" http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/11/19/why-marco-rubio-needs-to-know-that-the-earth-is-billions-of-years-old/
* What I wanted to do to day: Slap on a mask and go see the Lincoln movie. (I've heard they are featuring my favorite all time Pennsylvania politician, My beloved Thaddeus Stevens. Seriously, growing up in Philly, one got used to being ashamed of our politicians. Having one character as glorious as him was a big deal, and or nation owes him a debt that can neve be paid. Bonus points, for the casting).
What I actually did: A couple medical things, library, Post office, and Skyfall. I was pretty clearly doomed today. It took ages to get going. The Doctor forgot to put diagnostic codes on my tests, so they had to wait for her to finish with a patient, look me up, look codes up, etc.. It added an extra fifteen minutes to the blood taking and as I was last that day held up the poor phlebotomist also. Then there was the super long wait for my appointment, as I lost my slot waiting for the blood taking. Then there was a glitch with my library account so I had to wait in a long line only to get THE WRONG LIBRARIAN. *sigh* I'll have to go back. So that added fifteen minutes to a five minute in and out. I did slide in at the last minute to my favorite post office and that went smoothly, but I needed to have been finished twenty minutes previously to go see Lincoln. Note that I could have easily made it if one or two things had gone a little more right. Sigh.
* I have thoughts about SkyFall. First though, I'd like to talk about Bond a little. I've never been much of a Bond fan. Like my parents, my taste runs more to LeCarre than to Flemming. My Mother's serious reading was mostly history, but her light reading ran to mysteries and periodically spy thrillers. Being born when I was, Bond movies came out regularly and the older ones played endlessly on TV. My parents watched them, so my sister and I absorbed them while playing in the living room. When I got older, I went to them with friend and lovers because one does, just like one goes to romantic comedies if that's what the boy is into. At some point I was with a lover ho was going through a Sean Connery phase, so I've actually seen those more recently than the Moores and Daltons. I've even seen that mess of movie they made with Peter Sellers. The ones past Moore, I've only seen once in theaters.
I want to be clear, I've seen all of them at least once, but they are pretty forgettable as a group in my opinion, a fantasy about as realistic as Spiderman and generally pretty fucking sexist and problematic in a wide variety of ways. I am that strange person who prefers Timothy Dalton's diamond hard beauty to Mr. Connery's furry silliness, though not enough to bother watching them again. Similarly, I felt like Peirce Pierce Brosnan was the best of the silly old campy Bonds, sort of the eidos of the type, the clear and natural end of an evolution. I liked the way during his set, they started to deconstruct it a little, to point out that Bond "is a cold war Dinosaur." I like Dame Judy Dench as M.. The plots were still silly and forgettable, but I found them more watchable than the old ones that never seemed to be aware of how stupid the whole thing was. This isn't a strong endorsement; Bond doesn't do that much for me and I didn't bother watching them again.
Daniel Craig's Bond, though, I like. I might like them enough to go back and watch the others now that I've seen this one. It's still action hero silly, but this Bond is more interesting and less two dimensional. It's still pervasively sexist and periodically racist as a franchise, but Craig and Dench together were doing some really interesting things together and I liked them stripping in all back to Flemming basics, then updating it and making it action movie silly instead of Adam West Batman silly. (I love me some Adam West Batman camp, don't get me wrong; but Bond villains were never as fun Eartha Kitt's Catwoman, Burgess Meredith's Penguin, or Cesar Romero's joker, and yet their plots were just as silly). The Craig incarnation is on the opposite end of the continuum you can be and still be Bond, if that makes sense, a different evolutionary branch with a common ancestor in Flemming, but going a whole different way. Am I ever going to love Bond like I love Smiley? I doubt it. Grey folk who fade into the background, have quiet conversation, and do research between sudden short, necessary bursts of violence simply make more sense to me than an operative telling people his real name and doing flashy stunts.
This is my caveat: that I'm knowledgeable of the genre, but not the target audience. My memory of the plot of even the previous Craigs is a touch hazy as I watch them and forget them almost immediately.
So Skyfall. I can' figure out how to do this without spoilers, so huge spoilers ahoy! I'm not kidding, I'm going to spoil the end.
I really like the new Q and Miss. Moneypenny. I loved the way this repeatedly referenced the old school Bonds without doing so many of the ludicrous things old school Bond movies did. I liked Bond aging. I loved the acting, I truly did. A bunch of things were predictably problematic and I need to chew them over some more. (Ex: Sévérine in totality and particularly the Flemming style loss of her. Disposable sex worker trope and Asian stereotype or commentary on Bond as being fundamentally as destructive as his enemies? I'm thinking both, honestly. I was also thinking that the sex on the boat was not okay, because it couldn't be truly consensual given her situation, although you can counter argue that it's the only expression of agency she had. Counter argument or not it made me queasy. See? Needs more chewing but definitely problematic.). It was unexpectedly Gothic, which I did not expect, but enjoyed, just like I loved the references to out of genre films like Bruce Lee movies. This is not my usual favorite kind of villain but it made more sense than average and they hired the acting talent to mostly sell it. (Javier Bardem can sell just about anything, really). I saw a lot of things coming, like I always do, having sharp eyes for Checkov's gun and good narrative sense. (Ex: Me: This is way to easy. Clearly he wants to be captured and taken to your head quarters. Yep! There he goes!)
This said, I have one fundamental insolvable problem. This is that this felt like a logical end. Everything in it seemed to be leading up to closure, especially the stuff with M.. How much better to call it a trilogy and cash it out here. I say this even though Craig is excellent and I have nothing against Mr. Fienne's acting. I know the franchise makes to much money ever to stop, but I still wish they'd pulled a Nolen. I honestly don't particularly want to know what happens next. The three together make a satisfying character arc. The whole sitcom style reset for the next movie at the end of this one felt stupid and cheap. Again I get that this is about money and it's stupid to expect art in a Bond film, but they got close enough that it hurt a little when they sprung back to the inevitable status quo. I feel like it would have been better to either retire the franchise for a while and rest or to at the end of this one have a new 007 like they had a new M.
I also am uncomfortable with them replacing the powerhouse that was Dench's M with a man. Given the long running sexism of the franchise, having a powerful woman at the top of the hierarchy helped make the whole thing easier to take. Having Moneypenny be the secretary with a male M, Q, and Bond feels like going backward, despite me liking this Moneypenny and this Q, and again Mr. Fiennes is an excellent actor. Again, I'm not sure I want to see what happens next and am inclined not to pay to see the next one. I know it sounds like a back handed compliment to say, I liked this one enough not to want to see another, but it's true.
* It makes me sad that the three hour commercial that is the Macy's parade gets broadcast every year, yet the wild homemade all day whatthefuckery that is the Mummer's New Years Parade is nigh impossible to see online and never on TV.
* George Lucas long ago murdered my childhood love of star Wars, but I have to admit this is some genius merchandizing: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ed08/
* Be a Doctor Who companion: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/games/graske/geoip/host.shtml
* The Battle of Hastings/Sexyback:
* FTW: http://xkcd-rss.livejournal.com/287117.html
* O.o http://www.etsy.com/shop/organbank?ref=top_trail
http://pinterest.com/pin/37014028158769898/