Reviews of Media:
Dec. 14th, 2008 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skywaterblueI polished off the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman today, in one fell swoop. I thought it quite good, and the end a bit surprising. (At least, if you knew that it was inspired by the Jungle Book.) I can't say I have more advanced thoughts on it than that.
"Frost/Nixon": During the end credits, "Oh. This was a Ron Howard film? That explains a lot." Now, I generally like Ron Howard films, but he's not exactly done anything particularly special. That's okay, because not everyone can be Kubrick, you know, and there's an honesty in just getting in there, telling the story and then getting the fuck out. Anyway, everyone's very good in it, it has unexpected!Oliver Platt in a fairly big role, and the scene at the end with the Italian loafers was worth the price of admission.
And the movie doesn't dissuade me from my belief that Nixon may just have been the strangest President of the 20th Century. What a weird, weird man.
I also saw "The Duchess". Keira Knightly wears pretty, pretty clothes and giant wigs and it's a touch odd to see her do motherly since she's basically the same age as me. Ralph Fiennes is her philandering husband, an odd sort of performance that might be more interesting than hers by a lot. She's the plucky heroine, but he manages to be both a complete bastard and completely removed from life.
What else? I've also watched a metric fuckton of old Doctor Who. "The Invisible Enemy" was pretty much insane, but I liked K9's introduction. Stupid robot dog is growing on me, dammit. Also funny was seeing Cooper's reaction when I told him the plot of this one, since it involves a virus that turns into a crawdad and Leela and the Doctor going on an adventure in the Doctor's brain.
Cooper and I watched "The Invasion of Time" together, and I really liked that one. Quelle surprise, he said, for it is a known truth that I will get my panties in a bunch about politicking getting in my science fiction. Leela totally does get shipped off at the end, though, and the TARDIS interior is basically the behind corridors of a casino. Also weird is that it has the Doctor being uber manipulative and generally excellent, but it ends with a personal reset button. Also he shoots a Sontaran. Much lulz happened with this.
Then I got "The Ribos Operation" and "The Pirate Planet". Ribos was kinda boring but it did have the Doctor making friends with criminals on the planet of Soviet Russia. Romana seriously does just get dumped in his lap, yeah? And she's a bit frosty, but she warms up a lot by "The Pirate Planet" which is a much better episode where they have wacky Douglas Adams hijinks and K9 faces off a robot bird and there's an evil queen and wee shrunken planets.
"Frost/Nixon": During the end credits, "Oh. This was a Ron Howard film? That explains a lot." Now, I generally like Ron Howard films, but he's not exactly done anything particularly special. That's okay, because not everyone can be Kubrick, you know, and there's an honesty in just getting in there, telling the story and then getting the fuck out. Anyway, everyone's very good in it, it has unexpected!Oliver Platt in a fairly big role, and the scene at the end with the Italian loafers was worth the price of admission.
And the movie doesn't dissuade me from my belief that Nixon may just have been the strangest President of the 20th Century. What a weird, weird man.
I also saw "The Duchess". Keira Knightly wears pretty, pretty clothes and giant wigs and it's a touch odd to see her do motherly since she's basically the same age as me. Ralph Fiennes is her philandering husband, an odd sort of performance that might be more interesting than hers by a lot. She's the plucky heroine, but he manages to be both a complete bastard and completely removed from life.
What else? I've also watched a metric fuckton of old Doctor Who. "The Invisible Enemy" was pretty much insane, but I liked K9's introduction. Stupid robot dog is growing on me, dammit. Also funny was seeing Cooper's reaction when I told him the plot of this one, since it involves a virus that turns into a crawdad and Leela and the Doctor going on an adventure in the Doctor's brain.
Cooper and I watched "The Invasion of Time" together, and I really liked that one. Quelle surprise, he said, for it is a known truth that I will get my panties in a bunch about politicking getting in my science fiction. Leela totally does get shipped off at the end, though, and the TARDIS interior is basically the behind corridors of a casino. Also weird is that it has the Doctor being uber manipulative and generally excellent, but it ends with a personal reset button. Also he shoots a Sontaran. Much lulz happened with this.
Then I got "The Ribos Operation" and "The Pirate Planet". Ribos was kinda boring but it did have the Doctor making friends with criminals on the planet of Soviet Russia. Romana seriously does just get dumped in his lap, yeah? And she's a bit frosty, but she warms up a lot by "The Pirate Planet" which is a much better episode where they have wacky Douglas Adams hijinks and K9 faces off a robot bird and there's an evil queen and wee shrunken planets.
