Lady Agnew
Jan. 31st, 2007
Jan. 20th, 2007
03:32 am - Reading Log
The Towers of Trezibond by Rose Macaulay. It's one of those slight, batty, slyly funny British novels that are terribly amusing, until there's a sharp turn to quietly devastating and deep. A quote:
"The fact was that Father Chantry-Pigg would not really have liked the Byzantines much had he encountered them, though he would have preferred them to Turks and other Moslems. He was not actually a sympathetic clergyman, and, had he been with his ancestor for the great attack on Constantinople in 1203, he would have been amongs those who, brandishing the cross above their heads, massacred and pillaged and looted in the name of Latin Christendom, helping to put to flame the great libraries whose loss he now deplored. He was better at condemning than at loving; aunt Dot used to wonder what Christ would have said to him."
The tone is sly, batty, faux-naive, very British. A seemingly slight novel, but the further I read, the more depth it displays. I'm only a third of the way into it, and I can best descibe the subject matter as a meditation on religion, on the inseparable foolishness and profundity of religious sentiment, as well as a charmingly eccentric travalogue of the exotic East -- the Trezibond of the title being in Turkey.
The Heartbreak Kid by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
astolat. Eric/Vince, Entourage. *yay* It's as fabulously written as anything you'd expect from astolat, with the funny, the perfect plot developments and the hotness, but I loved this story for how perfectly she captures the show -- the characters, the world, the relationships -- and shape them into a kick-ass slash story. They could film this story and make it the third season finale; heck, even the explicit gay sex is so something HBO could air.
Fair by minnow1212. McKay/Sheppard, SGA. So beautiful, a descriptor I don't throw around lightly. The highest compliment I can pay is that after I finished reading, I didn't want to leave the headspace this story had put me in. Lyrical and lovely, minnow1212 takes a crack!fic idea and makes it into something as gleaming and precious as a gem.
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calmOct. 22nd, 2006
11:38 pm - Sisyphus toiling
Oh Jesus God -- this is ridiculous -- I'm too young to be hunched over the keyboard wincing and whimpering because my back feels crap and my neck won't bend left without *screaming pain*. In other related news, I've decided to name my laptop (only ONE YEAR after buying it) "Back Pain". It gets along swimmingly with my pillow, "Neck Pain". Together, they form an unbeatable "Pain in my ASS" club of destruction.
er: my life has been work - work - homework! - homework! - homework! for the past few weeks, and the only thing keeping me sane is that I don't have the flu. I do currently have a cold, though.
I'm also:
* reading like mad (re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn again last week and it still makes me want to cuddle Huck until he can't breathe; he is seriously the most adorable character in all of great American literature),
* watching Scrubs on DVD,
* did go to see Beach Blanket Babylon last Friday (according to wiki, the longest running cabaret show in America, having "sold out every performance for 32 years, with close to 12,000 performances") and commiserated with a friend over sinfully fattening dessert the miserable state of our respective love lives -- he got depressed, while I remain Zen.
* and decided to dub Congressman Don Sherwood with a new nickname: I think "Congressman Choke-a-Bitch" is very fitting. Also dashing and quite appealing to this young "hip hop" generation.
Aug. 10th, 2006
03:26 am - Music Video Rec
I'll be upfront and admit that I don't like most music videos. I think the ones that aren't actively offensive (boobies flying and ass-shots and jiggling girl bits) or pretentious (Hello, indie bands of the emo!) are boring (the rest of them). They rarely work as more than a fancified showcase for the song, rarely have the kinetic energy of a good movie even, but sometimes someone gets it right:
Here It Goes Again by OK Go. The song is cute and energetic, but the video rocks. It's a single shot, one-take (no cutting), with a totally static camera in front of which the bandmembers do this incredibly witty dance on treadmill. It reminds me of those routines Fred Astaire did with props, a casually picked-up umbrella or a coat hanger that turned deftly into a dance partner in his hands, where the wittiness of the initial idea is fully utilized and it becomes more than a gimmick. Something that could be really cheesy or stupid-looking is instead delightful; I literally cannot stop smiling every time I watch this video. Four guys doing a complicated, coordinated and syncopated dance on the movie surfaces of two rows of treadmills: oh-so awesome.
Aug. 8th, 2006
03:11 am - X2 recs
I am so bad! I haven't posted fannishly in a long, long time, maybe because I've been missing the new season of SGA and not really caring, and just generally out of squee right now. I'm squee-deficient. I thought -- was really looking forward to -- Superman Returns stuffing me full to bursting of squee, but yeah, that didn't work out so well. I'm still struggling to articulate my responses to the move, both positive and negative, but what I did, after seeing the dismal X3, was re-watch X2 to see if it was really that much better (YES IT TOTALLY WAS!!!) and hunt up stories to go with my jiving-to-X2 mood:
Overture by wax_jism, Bobby/John
This is a story I read years ago and loved forever. Wax captures John's inner voice so perfectly that he's fleshed out from a character with maybe 15 minutes of meaningful screentime to this boy saddled with a bushelfull of thorny, teenaged issues. She gives John an inner life that the movie only suggested, and her vision is so believeable that it influenced the way I saw his character when I re-watched the movie. It feels that powerfully true. The story also does one of my favorite slash tropes (*koff* boarding school boysex, yes!) to perfection.
For the Kingdom of Heaven by c_elisa, Hank gen
Harsh, insightful and clear-eyed look at the true meaning of what the Cure could mean in the world of the X-Men. Both the movie and the comics could learn from this story; it takes the Cure storyline from the world of politics and mutant wars and makes it achingly personal. Gorgeous in a low-key way.
His Terrible Sword by [Unknown LJ tag], mostly gen with pairings
There are things I dislike about this story (Logan/Marie is wrong, wrong, wrong) but the good things far outweigh the bad. This is just good storytelling; careful character development, delicate managing of the relationships and emotions, and everything working under the mastery of the plot. I just sat back and admired her craft, because it's a 400 KB story with the perfect blend of romance, action and character-building.
The bigger problem I have has to do with the juice of the orange; in the intro to A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess explains the significance of his title: "orange" is Malay slang for human being, a "clockwork orange" meaning a mechanical human, and Burgess's meaning is that the point of a human being is the juice of the orange -- without that sweet, pulpy tartness, you've only got a clockwork orange, something mechanical and programmable. I think "His Terrible Sword" is a good story, but I don't know if it has any juice inside.
going down series by astolat, Erik/Charles/Mystique
Chock full of the juice of the orange. Erik and Charles with Mystique their conduit in-between: this series of short stories reminds me of Hitchcock's best movies, of possessive, undeniable love that's been bent out of true and made even more compelling because of it. It's a love that's been repudiated and denied, but overwhelmingly powerful. And the best part of all is Mystique's slightly detached viewpoint as the outsider; she has her own feelings and thoughts about what exactly is happening, and her clarity is chilling.
Feed Me To The Tabloid Monster by apocalypsos, Bobby/Marie
ahahahahahaa!!! Crack-fic! Mpreg! too fucking funny:
"Once upon a time, Frosty the Snowman and the original Mutant Hose Beast got hitched and decided to try making a very small person who cried. But seeing as how the original Mutant Hose Beast tended to shut down internal organ systems with a kiss, making a baby the usual way would be difficult. And to be honest, really painful to Frosty.
So Frosty's best friend, Hefty Smurf, suggested that the loving couple do something very gross with a turkey baster. This didn't go over well."
Jul. 29th, 2006
06:56 am - Weather breaking; drifting from SGA
Living in San Francisco has many advantages (one of them: fabulous burritos) and one of the best ones has to be the fog. Oh, how I have missed you, you great gray beast on little cat's feet. The heat wave never got too bad here; it topped off around 90-ish degrees, and even with the heat, it was never truly unbearable because of the breezes coming off the ocean. But still, native-born and -bred San Franciscans recoil from actual hot weather; when it hits the eighties, everybody goes about in tank tops and pale arms, complaining about the heat. We're not built for this!
When I was in high school, I read an essay by E.B. White lamenting the advent of air conditioning in New York, how it robbed the summer days and nights of their tropical flavor, when the whole city was transformed into a simmery, heated urban jungle. In my naivete, I thought his sentiments romantic and sweetly nostalgic because I had never experienced searing summer heat. I sincerely thought that propping open a window on the side of the house not facing the sun and staying in the shade adequate for anything summer could throw at one; it wasn't until I lived outside of S.F. that I really understood the pernicious effects of heat. I want to go back and kick my own stupid backside. I also never ever want to live any place that isn't right by the ocean (or without great burritos).
But yay! the fog is back, and beautiful and it even began drizzling a little tonight as I was driving home after midnight. Tonight was also the third time since the SGA premiere that I've gone out on Friday nights, and the third time I haven't bothered to set the VCR. Or download the ep. I'm drifting from the show something fierce, and I don't care. Instead, I got home by 2am, ate a very late supper and watched Midnight, an extremely charming 1939 romantic comedy (in the French farce/Continental style) starring Claudette Colbert and co-written by Billy Wilder. It's not out on DVD, but should be; it's sparkling and funny and surprisingly sexy.
Jul. 22nd, 2006
06:24 am
Bryan Singer announced at Comic Con that he's to direct a sequel to Superman Returns, slated to arrive in 2009, and color me shocked. Given the huge cost of Returns (upwards of $200 million plus marketing costs) and its lackluster b.o. take ($170,967,498 domestically according to boxofficemojo.com, 3 weeks after release, I don't know if it will hit $200m), I seriously didn't think a sequel was in the offing. If he's announcing it at Comic Con, then he has to be at least 60% sure that the movie will get made; it does not pay to mislead your hardcore, and vocal! fanbase. But I doubt that this movie is absolutely green-lit and go: SR's underperformance makes me doubt the studio is absolutely 100% behind the sequel.
Though -- a sequel which I sorely want. I don't think SR is a great movie, or even perhaps a purely good movie, but it has these intriguing elements in it that make me want to see more of the universe. I think Singer has it in him to do something very interesting with a second movie, something looser and more playful, with more humor and less of a solemn, lugubrious tone. Like how X2 improved upon the first movie.
Watching SR for the second time, I realized that my problem with the movie is that though it's faithful in tone and action, it doesn't really work as a dramatic narrative. There's an odd lack of urgency to the movie, possibly because of how passive Routh's Clark is. Nothing seems to be driving the movie forward dramatically -- nothing seems to matter, and that's something that the X-Men movies he directed also had issue with, a strange sense of aimlessness. Watching the movie a second time felt a lot like watching the waves crash into the shore at sunset: hypnotically lovely but with no meaning behind the motions. If only he could shake off the overly respectful tone of the Richard Donner Superman movies, he might be able to do something interesting and electrically alive in his next movie while still keeping his lyrical visuals.
Jul. 4th, 2006
10:55 pm - Serenity Again!
A REVIEW of the longer, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink script of Serenity, which apparently reads as mostly the same beast only far less tragedy and much more like a 2-hour long episode of the show. Some bits I would've liked kept in:
You were in that same war. But
you live almost like a person
might; you have an actual
relationship — a marriage. You
didn’t turn into some… Gorgon…
ZOE
I’m career Army, my whole family
is. I was already in when the war
started. Mal volunteered. He
joined the fight because he
believed. He believed his planet
should be left alone. Believed we
would win if we gave our hearts to
it, that his generals wouldn’t lay
down arms while his men were still
dying around him… that God would
help us in our darkest place.
She cinches a knot tight, moves to the next body.
ZOE
(continuing)
See, that’s the difference between
Mal and me. All I ever lost was a war.
-- as well as more Inara, Book-on-the ship and more humor at Jayne's expense (best thing, ever!). Reading the review makes me appreciate the movie as it turned out.
and a gloriously satisfying interview of Joss Whedon by Brian Michael Bendis. The topics range from the movies (Bendis' favorite movie of all time is Reds directed by Warren Beatty, and Stan Lee's is My Fair Lady, which fucking boggles my mind!) to comics to music and the writing process.
Jun. 21st, 2006
12:26 am - Rec, "The Third Man"
purna posted a new story, The Third Man, 20,000+ words long, a few days ago and I'm dying to read it but can't yet: it's SGA AU of the 1949 movie and I don't want to spoil myself (it's one of those classic movies that you tell yourself you'll eventually get around to and now I have incentive). So this is strangely a rec for a story I've yet to read, but from previous knowledge of purna's work (and OK, I fell to temptation and read part of the first section), I can confidently rec it.
I love her writing; she always writes characters that are adult and sane, and very appealing for their sanity. It was probably some dead Greek who said that drama is based on conflict, and conflict is easily manufactured with characters who act juvenile, insecure, unstable, crazy. This especially holds true with crack!fic: characters in crack!fic act with the and cognitive faculties of very bright, hyper bonobos -- the very nature of the genre requires cracked-out behavior from its characters. But purna's characters act and feel with a moral seriousness and decency that permeates all of her stories, a kind of maturity, that I find insanely appealing. Her stories are balanced, delicate and sincere, featuring grounded characters in extreme situations, bringing out the subtle best in them. Her Rodney is still kinda hyperbolic and excited, but he's given a fundamental base of decency that's unshakeable. And her Zelenka in Three Graces is a gorgeous characterization of a decent, morally alive man trying to be brave in dark times.
Jun. 11th, 2006
08:56 am - X3; Hellboy 2
Just came back from X3 (finally! but Brett Ratner directing and the very lackluster response from everybody I know who saw it kept me from watching) and came online to see that Hellboy II has been dropped by Sony, its studio. Well, damn. I know this might be a slightly controversial position to take, but I think Hellboy was the best superhero/comic book movie in the past ten years. It was a movie that served its source beautifully and was a thoroughly stirring and lovely cinematic experience, which is so hard to accomplish. Perfect actor, beautiful, lushly colorful visuals, affecting romance and -- OK -- cheesy action sequences, but I'm willing to take a little bit of cheese in the action sequence in exchange for a smaller budget and greater directorial control. But then, my opinions of recent superhero movies can be listed thusly:
Spiderman 1: slashy, but somehow just an overall dull film. I liked a lot of the actors, but it felt oddly paced and the action was all flat. The only moment that really stuck with me was the upside down kiss in the rain... yum.
Spiderman 2: lots more fun, and I loved all the hints of Sam Raimi's diabolical humor, and it felt a lot freer and looser than the first movie, but none of the big emotional moments hit, and well, the audience deservedly giggled during the "quiet moment of solemnity" and so did I. Raimi! you can't do solemn to save your life, and also, employing Bruce Campell in ALL your movies is a moral and artistic obligation to society! Dude!
X1: interesting adaptation of the ideas and characters, but somehow doesn't feel like The X-Men. However, I liked the direction, and the story was clean, brisk and ably directed.
X2: much less tight storytelling, but also a lot more fun than the first movie. Freer, more full of personality, and some gorgeous images (liquid silver tears, Mystique's antics) and acting choices (this is essentially the movie I began crushing on the sweetness of Shawn Ashmore's Bobby) but the story was barely more than a sketch, wasn't it? But silkily, gracefully directed.
Batman Begins: once you strip the element of fantasy from a comic book movie, I'm not interested. Add in how terribly blurry the action was filmed, the flat gray look of the film and Christian Bale in a major role (I'm sorry! he seems like a nice young man, but every time I see him act, all I see is the strain of him acting -- there's no naturalness to his emoting, only a slick, robotic facsimile of "emotion") and I opted out in a major way. On the other hand, a chilling and compelling performance by Cillian Murphy which I purely enjoyed.
which brings me finally to X3: which combined the story and character weaknesses of the first 2 movies (tell me, can anybody really say they understand any of the X-Men just from watching the movies?) only with Ratner's visual and rhythmically inept direction. I was surprised at how... ugly this movie is. The colors looked over-bleached and garish, instead of Singer's usual cool blues and grays, and grainy. And Singer -- even when he served a weak story -- always directed with a rhythm, a natural grace, totally missing in this movie. Each scene segued into the next without feeling finished, and absolutely NONE of the big emotional moments registered worth a damn. Such a disappointment, but not a surprising one.
Now I'm pinning all my hopes on a decent summer popcorn movie season on Bryan Singer and Superman Returns.
May. 28th, 2006
02:10 am - House, 2x24, "No Reason"
House, 2x24, "No Reason" season finale, some thoughts:
I had a strange reaction to the ep, not entirely positive. As it was playing out, I actually liked it less and less as it was going on. The recovery of his leg was being treated willy-nilly with the Duckling barely reacting, the wannabe murderer was yanking House's guilt chain was deeply unrealistic (House is right: you can either ask for an apology or shoot first, NOT BOTH) and the hallucination trope -- what is real, what's not -- is not something I have a great deal of liking for. But then House figuring out it was ALL a hallucination, slicing the patient open at the guts and popping awake to reality and asking for ketamine: I loved the last 5 minutes of the episode when I realized what David Shore had done.
( Read more... )
May. 25th, 2006
11:53 pm - hearting on Joss Whedon, Firefly fandom and Equality Now
God, I adore Joss Whedon. Not only just as one of my favorite popular artists working in any medium right now (the others are Haruki Murakami, Alan Moore, Terry Pratchett, um, Aimee Mann and maybe the Flaming Lips) but he says things in interviews like this:
Everybody knows there is a little girl inside of Joss. I literally grew up wishing that I were a woman. That doesn’t necessarily give me any great insight into women — in fact, many women I know have gone, "You’re an idiot for wishing that!" But I’ve always felt a great affinity for women on various levels. In particular, I think, a level of sensibility, in that I was raised by a very strong, smart, delightful, extraordinary woman.
and this
Well, I had lovely long red hair — less and less of which I have every day — and delicate features. I was quite cute! Something went horribly wrong somewhere, but that’s OK. But there was a sense of oppression, of not being taken seriously, of physical fear; there were certain things that I had in common — I was very close to my step-sister as well, she was the best friend I had in my family growing up. Plus, I’m super-gay, something my wife has come to accept and even enjoy. It’s just something that has always been a part of me. And so I have, I think, a kind of a feminine sensibility.
Joss got feted and honored by Equality Now, an organization that "was founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world. Working with national human rights organizations and individual activists, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and mobilizes international action to support their efforts to stop these human rights abuses."
He was a special honoree at their New York benefit "honoring men on the front lines" and all for pretty much telling Firefly/Serenity fandom that this was a cause very dear to his heart, very special to his mother's memory, and encouraging us to support the organization; in a little, humble way, the fandom has adopted the organization with the special logic of, well nothing we can do can save the show, we might as well put our love into something productive and honorable. When fans raised $8,000+ to buy the original browncoat Mal wore on the show for Fillion and lost out on the bidding, Fillion directed us to give the money to Equality Now. And on June 23rd of this year, which happens to be Joss's birthday, there are planned benefit screenings of the Big Damn Movie to raise money. It's kinda crazy and just -- fandom doing something in the cause of feminism? I kinda love it.
I kinda love it a whole lot.
May. 18th, 2006
07:41 pm - VM recs
Two Veronica Mars recs, two stories that should be silly but execution redeems them something fierce:
Dark Places Where Monsters Dwell by apocalypsos
author's summary: For lack of other options, Mac and Dick try to survive together in a post-apocalyptic world.
and The Liberation of Katie Holmes by buffyx and missdeviant
in the authors' own words: The Liberation of Katie Holmes (Or: How Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring Saved The World From Crazy Scientologists) -- OK, this story is self-styled crack!fic and still very much with the silly, but it's carried off with such insouciance, I kinda love it.
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sleepyMay. 17th, 2006
02:31 am - top ten sga gender-bending stories
My list of top ten Stargate: Atlantis genderfuck stories here. I had entirely too much fun formulating and writing this list of recs. Something about SGA has made me embrace the crack, and I fear I will never let go.
May. 9th, 2006
02:44 pm - veronica rox, 2x21
My feelings about the penultimate ep, 2x21, were mixed. Some interesting revelations, some good character moments, but oddly choppy, as though they were trying to fit in too many divergent stories and plot threads into 42 minutes. More in-depth look as follows:
( Read more... )
07:34 am - anthony lane reviewing MI:3
New Yorker reviewer Anthony Lane is such a catty bitch:
Since the last installment of “Mission: Impossible,” Cruise has found somebody to marry him for real, and to bear his child. This scarcely unusual news would hardly be worth rehearsing, were it not for the kinks and wavers that have been observed in the arc of his stardom—and “M:I:III,” like many blockbusters, would be nothing without its star. The Cruise fan base has been shaken by a number of public pronouncements, although some of us have merely been confirmed in our original suspicions that there was something about this actor that was not quite of this earth. The stiff-necked jerk of his motions; the grit of his bared teeth; the eyes switched to perennial full beam but never quite blinking, even during tears; his ability to remain totally upright when sprinting, as if carrying an invisible egg and spoon—what are these, if not the techniques of an alien life force who has just graduated summa cum laude in advanced human behavior? Just who was scared of whom, precisely, in last year’s “War of the Worlds”?
The movie did sub-standard box office this weekend, and all the speculation on the reasons why are firmly on the spectre of Cruise's unfortunate and public antics. All of which bring out the sharp satisfaction of schadenfraude and make me want to have The Liberation of Katie Holmes (Or: How Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring Saved The World From Crazy Scientologists)'s BABIES.
May. 5th, 2006
02:29 pm - quick rec
Best proof that SGA is the best! fandom! evar!: 400% by Pares, in which many characters adore Rodney as I adore him -- totally, ecstatically, completely and for the same reasons too -- he's annoying, mouthy, complain-y Sex God composed of pure id and impulse.
Best proof that Teyla is the smartest character on SGA: 3 Lovers by Speranza. Teyla is sexy, everyone knows, but better is that she is all the whip-smart Earth Mother of our dreams, in a leather halter and split skirt. This story is a little like therapy -- the working out of all the rest of the team's issues -- by way of polyamorous sexin', and really, that is how I like my therapy in fiction: sexy. It also echoes a theme that Speranza has played with before, the reaching for life in the midst of death, a very primal idea in her hands. It's like "Scrabble" all over again, only in the ways it's not.
Apr. 27th, 2006
02:19 am - veronica rox, 2x20
a.) I'm finally getting over the migraine hangover from last night. And it wasn't even a full-blown migraine! But I suppose the whole day of nausea, headache and flinching from bright lights was worth not actually puking yesterday.
b.) the strange this is, I blame TV. Tues night's my TV night, with both House and Veronica Mars and I think the emotional rollercoaster of 2 great eps tipped me over into migraine-land. Or at least I started noticing after watching House, "House vs. God". oh, TV, I love you so but all you give me is PAIN.
lots of VM thoughts: ( Read more... )
Apr. 25th, 2006
11:17 pm - fanfic's validity
Blogging here about the artistic and legal validity of fanfic, and while I have nothing to say about legal standing (if George Lucas's lawyer knocks on your door tomorrow, no matter how good or bad his case, you will most likely go quietly along with the cease and desist orders), the claims of fanfic's artistic invalidity (particularly the claim that only the originator of the universe has anything valid to say about it) irritated this response from me (like a pearl made from an oyster's cranky secretions):
( Read more... )
Apr. 24th, 2006
05:50 am - Caged Heat, 1974
Did everyone else know that Caged Heat -- an exploitation movie that's cultishly famous for being one of the best lesbians-in-underwear priston movies ever -- was written and directed by Jonathon Demme? The same Demme who directed the charming mob comedy Married to the Mob and the multiple Oscar-winning Silence of the Lamb? Did everyone else know this but me?!? and if so, why didn't you tell me??
And scarily enough, the short clip I saw of it was surreally intense & good in that way that some disturbing cult movies are. Like John Waters without the feces. yikes.
*small voice* now I totally have to track this mother down and watch it... the one clip I saw was of one scary woman screaming her head off at this soft-looking blonde for stealing her cigarettes and backhanding her while she whimpered that "she couldn't help it" and the toughie snarked back (with a shred of empathy!) "and you don't even smoke"... both of them of course in their underwear.
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