skywaterblue

-- Gallery show for my arts admin class, "Vitrine" went off really well despite being incredibly stressful.

-- Now I am stressing about my other art show, on May 8th.

-- I'm going to bum around Europe on the 15th.

-- The current plot arc on my Pern MUSH, 2pmush.net is incredibly absorbing. Also, we have a proper website now. How about that?

-- "Cabin in the Woods" - really, can Bradley Whitford be in all the Whedon things now? He fucking made that movie for me. I know I'm sad for him, but really. Bradley Whitford. Joss Whedon.

-- "The Hunger Games" - I also liked this. I thought it was very well directed, actually, to leave most of the emotional content unspoken in a huge Hollywood blockbuster is kind of a brave choice. Which speaks ill of Hollywood, but that is a film fan's prerogative, no?

-- "Game of Thrones, Season Two" - Dinklage is still awesome. Tiny dragons are awesome. Everything else about this show is barely tolerable.

-- "The Borgias, Season Two" - Honestly, I had forgotten the fine details of a lot of what happened last season. The first two episodes were a little meh, and although I'm inclined to like the Pope's newest girlfriend due to her proclivities (and I kind of ship her with Cesare as of last episode) I think she's allllmost on this side of Renaissance Mary Sue wish fulfillment. Last week's episode was a rush a minute thrill ride in terms of the plot, though. I like it better than "Game of Thrones" by kind of a lot.

-- "Mad Men" - Less Betty, slightly more filler. Highlights of the season so far have been the conclusion of the miserable "Joan's husband" arc, if only because thank fuck it seems over, and pretty much everything about Lane. And whatever Megan is wearing. I'm not entirely feeling it this season, I think, but I think Peggy continues to be my life model and I kind of ship her with Ginsberg even though my heart tells me that Peggy/Don is endgame.

-- "The Legend of Korra" - Everything about this show is fucking great. A 30 minute cartoon for tweens, but it's better than all three of the shows above COMBINED in terms of teasing a plot and then moving it the fuck forward. That is because the above three shows are the bastard children of the "Sopranos effect" whereas Korra is blissfully from another age of television. When they knew how to block an episode as an episode and not as part of a miniseries.

1. I am reading Game of Thrones, but very very slowly. It's not that interesting to me and often I will read one chapter and be like 'that was great' and then the very next chapter will have me saying 'and that was complete shit'. I think this may be one of those books where if I was LESS well-read in the genre I would be more impressed, because mainly what I keep thinking is that it's basically a Very Good YA Novel. I think many of the books fans would choose to object to me and say 'but you can't do that and that in a YA book' and a. that isn't true now and b. wasn't that true back then either.

( These aren't really spoilers, but I'm cutting for length. )

2. I am sorry to say I thought the pilot episode for the Game of Thrones TV show to be poorly done. Very adapted by the numbers. One of the big problems with adapting this show is that all of the book is written via the perspective of a character. And that character (at least at the point of the book I'm in) is an obvious authorial stand-in. They observe which characters are evil slimy bastards and the narrating character is So Obviously Correct About It. And a lot of times I find that decision authorially boring. Like, wouldn't it be way more interesting to see that wedding from the eyes of Dany's brother?

This runs into even more problems in the TV show, which has some appallingly poor edits in the pilot that break up any tension the scene was developing. More than the info dumping, what the producers of this show need to develop is a sense of POV perspective when they write and film these scenes to match (or alter) the book.

It's not like the author's great skill is in dialogue here. There's some witty lines but it's not Mamet or anything, guys. (And tragically, the script and directing fucking /dumps/ all over what wit was in the book to begin with leaving the actors stepping all over the good lines.)

So anyway. It's got some problems besides its issue with the male gaze (inherited from the book) and awkward Race pony people.

Flat, flat, flat. Moments in the book imbued with great foreshadowing importance or drama are rendered inert and the problems clearly lie in the screenwriting and later overall direction. It can only improve, one hopes.

3. Doctor Who, "The Impossible Astronaut".

So much fucking better than the pilot episode of Game of Thrones for one clarifying reason: Steven Moffat understands how to navigate the audience/character POV perspective in television. In fact, there's no one in screenwriting I can think of right now who does this better than he does.

Go back through and watch this episode. Is River Song indeed, finally as sympathetic to the audience as the reviewers claim? (I think the answer is yes, but I was never against her from the start.) Why? Go back and watch this episode again - how many of the scenes are being expressly written from River's Point of View. The answer: almost the entire episode.

( More about this and other things I liked: )

Anyway, I thought this episode of Doctor Who was structurally fabulous from top to bottom with everyone from the main cast giving a perfect performance. Great television.