![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Back to work... erm, to the telly
Gah, but work can really make one tired! This was only the third day, and I'm ripe for holidays again. Granted, three ungodly long days, but still...
In any case, work dries up my creative juices, which means watching more television. Or more DVDs, as the case is, since there isn't much on the telly nowadays. The last thing I tried was some semi-mystic French crime story, starring Jean Reno and, much later, Christopher Lee. Wait, I'll go googling.
Okay, I'm back. It was Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse. What a tripe. And it started so good, with the two mysterious crimes of the two detectives overlapping and becoming one, the eeire atmosphere of the cloister and whatnot. And then came Christopher Lee, and by his second sentence I knew it would be that "evil Nazis try take over the world"-cliché again. And guess what? It was that. Such a wasted potential! Even though I liked Benoit Magimel who played the younger detective. What can I say? I have a soft point for French men.
Then tonight I gave a chance to the Tom Hanks movie "Cast Away". Firstly, because I like Tom Hanks, I think he's a great actor. Secondly, because I like these Robinson Crusoe-type stories. Well... after the first ten minutes I walked across all channels, then watched "Lie to Me" on a different channel, and when I went back to Tom, he has still barely landed on the lonely island. God, it was soooo boring! Perhaps I've got a lot shorter attention span than I used to be (I remember staring glassy-eyed at the screen whenever anything Robinson-related was on, a decade or so ago), but I just couldn't suffer through it. A shame, people say Hanks does a great job in it.
OTOH, I finally came around to watch "Turn Left" last night. I liked it a lot. Firstly, it was so very different from the other Dr. Who stories. Secondly, it was all about Donna, whom I love to pieces. Thirdly, there was barely any Tennant in it, who makes me itch - preferably between the shoulder blades, where I can't even scratch. Fourthly, Donna's grandfather is a true delight. The only negative aspect was the return of Rose. God, that woman was bad enough when she at least looked young and naive, but in this part she looks like a burned-out hooker. Sorry, Billie Piper fans, but that's how she came over for me. Still, despite the Rose factor, I loved the episode a lot. Especially seeing the hard-arsed, no-nonsense Captain Magambo again, and the UNIT hunk who was killed by the Sycorax.
Since I was on a roll, I re-watched "The Stolen Earth" after that, mostly to hear Ianto's (well, GDL's) "beautiful Welsh wovels" - guh, the boy has a great voice. What a shame that I could be his Mum, so drooling is strictly off-limits; it would have the vague taste of craddle robbery, I'm afraid. Oh, and to laugh about Gwen and her incompetent ways. Which I did. I can alwas (not-quite)-drool over Ianto and laugh my head off about Gwen trying to seem important.
Barroman looked a little worse for the wear, though; these boyish types don't age well, unless they have ungodly amount of plastic surgery. Botox just doesn't bring it the same way. It just makes their faces look like plastic. Loved Sarah Jane Smith, however. This is the only episode I ever saw her, but she must have been a riot as a companion.
It was a pretty crappy episode. My main problem is with the Whoniverse that it can't really do sci-fi well. Which is a hilarious thing for a series that calls itself sci-fi, but really, even for a series that's a lot less nerdy than, say, SGA, one should take the basic laws of physics under consideration. Like, whoa, pulling a planet out of orbit? Dragging it across half the universe? And nobody gets really hurt? Oh, please... It's the 21th century, even kids in the upper primary know that it's stupid. At least over here, we start teaching basic physics in sixth grade.
Oh, and did I mention how much I hated Rose and her "Doctor, why can't you see me"-whining during the whole episode? I think Gwen and Rose must be related somehow. Perhaps Jackie had a secret affair with Gwen's father or whatnot. So much self-absorbed stupidity must be genetic!
By the way, I know I represent an unpopular opinion here, but I find that the season finales of Dr. Who are just crap. There are wonderful episodes during each season, there are delightfully silly episodes in each season, they are your average "yeah-you-can-watch-them" episodes in each season, but the season finales are really Sheiße. Like killing off Nine and making Rose some sort of omnipotent goddess at the end of Season One. Like that idiotic solution at the end of Season Three (I think it was there), where world domination and other nasty things were solved by everyone saying the Doctor's name at the same time. I haven't seen Season Two at all yet, but I expect a spectacularly shitty season finale there, too. And don't even let me talk about "The End of Time".
Come to think about it, the season finales of Torchwood were fairly shitty, too. The whole Abbadon thing at the end of Season One was completely idiotic. And the end of Season Two, with nothing really solved, Cadiff in ruins, Tosh and Owen killed... well, it falls into the same category. Honestly, around the end of Season Two I was wondering why the PTB label Torchwood as sci-fi. It clearly wasn't animore, not from the point on where Owen came back from death and became a zombie. Just calling every other gizmo alien tech doesn't good sci-fi make. I still love Torchwood, though, even if I must endure Gwen in these first two seasons.
Season Three? What Season Three? That was not Torchwood. That was a really badly written, American-style... whatever, with totally OOC pod people wearing the names of certain Torchwood characters. The only thing I'm willing to accept from it is Ianto's ssiter.
In any case, work dries up my creative juices, which means watching more television. Or more DVDs, as the case is, since there isn't much on the telly nowadays. The last thing I tried was some semi-mystic French crime story, starring Jean Reno and, much later, Christopher Lee. Wait, I'll go googling.
Okay, I'm back. It was Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse. What a tripe. And it started so good, with the two mysterious crimes of the two detectives overlapping and becoming one, the eeire atmosphere of the cloister and whatnot. And then came Christopher Lee, and by his second sentence I knew it would be that "evil Nazis try take over the world"-cliché again. And guess what? It was that. Such a wasted potential! Even though I liked Benoit Magimel who played the younger detective. What can I say? I have a soft point for French men.
Then tonight I gave a chance to the Tom Hanks movie "Cast Away". Firstly, because I like Tom Hanks, I think he's a great actor. Secondly, because I like these Robinson Crusoe-type stories. Well... after the first ten minutes I walked across all channels, then watched "Lie to Me" on a different channel, and when I went back to Tom, he has still barely landed on the lonely island. God, it was soooo boring! Perhaps I've got a lot shorter attention span than I used to be (I remember staring glassy-eyed at the screen whenever anything Robinson-related was on, a decade or so ago), but I just couldn't suffer through it. A shame, people say Hanks does a great job in it.
OTOH, I finally came around to watch "Turn Left" last night. I liked it a lot. Firstly, it was so very different from the other Dr. Who stories. Secondly, it was all about Donna, whom I love to pieces. Thirdly, there was barely any Tennant in it, who makes me itch - preferably between the shoulder blades, where I can't even scratch. Fourthly, Donna's grandfather is a true delight. The only negative aspect was the return of Rose. God, that woman was bad enough when she at least looked young and naive, but in this part she looks like a burned-out hooker. Sorry, Billie Piper fans, but that's how she came over for me. Still, despite the Rose factor, I loved the episode a lot. Especially seeing the hard-arsed, no-nonsense Captain Magambo again, and the UNIT hunk who was killed by the Sycorax.
Since I was on a roll, I re-watched "The Stolen Earth" after that, mostly to hear Ianto's (well, GDL's) "beautiful Welsh wovels" - guh, the boy has a great voice. What a shame that I could be his Mum, so drooling is strictly off-limits; it would have the vague taste of craddle robbery, I'm afraid. Oh, and to laugh about Gwen and her incompetent ways. Which I did. I can alwas (not-quite)-drool over Ianto and laugh my head off about Gwen trying to seem important.
Barroman looked a little worse for the wear, though; these boyish types don't age well, unless they have ungodly amount of plastic surgery. Botox just doesn't bring it the same way. It just makes their faces look like plastic. Loved Sarah Jane Smith, however. This is the only episode I ever saw her, but she must have been a riot as a companion.
It was a pretty crappy episode. My main problem is with the Whoniverse that it can't really do sci-fi well. Which is a hilarious thing for a series that calls itself sci-fi, but really, even for a series that's a lot less nerdy than, say, SGA, one should take the basic laws of physics under consideration. Like, whoa, pulling a planet out of orbit? Dragging it across half the universe? And nobody gets really hurt? Oh, please... It's the 21th century, even kids in the upper primary know that it's stupid. At least over here, we start teaching basic physics in sixth grade.
Oh, and did I mention how much I hated Rose and her "Doctor, why can't you see me"-whining during the whole episode? I think Gwen and Rose must be related somehow. Perhaps Jackie had a secret affair with Gwen's father or whatnot. So much self-absorbed stupidity must be genetic!
By the way, I know I represent an unpopular opinion here, but I find that the season finales of Dr. Who are just crap. There are wonderful episodes during each season, there are delightfully silly episodes in each season, they are your average "yeah-you-can-watch-them" episodes in each season, but the season finales are really Sheiße. Like killing off Nine and making Rose some sort of omnipotent goddess at the end of Season One. Like that idiotic solution at the end of Season Three (I think it was there), where world domination and other nasty things were solved by everyone saying the Doctor's name at the same time. I haven't seen Season Two at all yet, but I expect a spectacularly shitty season finale there, too. And don't even let me talk about "The End of Time".
Come to think about it, the season finales of Torchwood were fairly shitty, too. The whole Abbadon thing at the end of Season One was completely idiotic. And the end of Season Two, with nothing really solved, Cadiff in ruins, Tosh and Owen killed... well, it falls into the same category. Honestly, around the end of Season Two I was wondering why the PTB label Torchwood as sci-fi. It clearly wasn't animore, not from the point on where Owen came back from death and became a zombie. Just calling every other gizmo alien tech doesn't good sci-fi make. I still love Torchwood, though, even if I must endure Gwen in these first two seasons.
Season Three? What Season Three? That was not Torchwood. That was a really badly written, American-style... whatever, with totally OOC pod people wearing the names of certain Torchwood characters. The only thing I'm willing to accept from it is Ianto's ssiter.