- Scott Tobias on Fast Five:
Fast Five may be lizard-brain escapism—and there’s something unsettling about how it lays waste to Rio’s desperately poor favelas—but nonsense this well-orchestrated is a rare and precious thing.
- Genevieve Valentine on Priest:
Basically, Priest exists as an example of what happens when a team of creative people all get a concussion at once.
- John Seavey on Smallville — and, more specifically, why it is not Doctor Who:
And then, the next night, I watched “The Doctor’s Wife”. And while I won’t spoil anything, because the episode is very wonderful, very surprising, and many people probably haven’t seen it yet, I will say that it is the epitome of everything that Doctor Who is and everything that Smallville isn’t. Instead of being an “epic game-changer” that really doesn’t change anything, not even really the things it’s obligated to change…this was a normal, everyday, stand-alone non-arc episode that just happened to transform everything you thought you knew about forty-eight years of the series. And it did it almost casually.
Doctor Who is, and always has been like that. It’s never been afraid to reinvent itself, not even after forty-eight years. It’s a bold, inventive show that has no boundaries, no self-imposed rules, and no orthodoxies to uphold. That’s why it attracted a writer of the caliber of Neil Gaiman, whereas Smallville has had to content itself with Geoff Johns and Jeph Loeb. That’s why it’s still going and why I don’t think it’ll ever stop. Because it’s a show that can do anything…and one that will do anything.
- And speaking of shows that promise but don’t deliver on change, Zach Handlen on House:
It’s like a game, really. Each year, the writers have to come up with some new way to trick us into thinking that the show is moving on. And then, come next season, they have to find some way to undo all those changes, because in House-land, we can have the illusion of growth but not growth itself.
Everything I’m reading leads me to think that my decision to quit on the show at the start of this year was wrong only in that it came too late.
- And finally, Existential Star Wars [via]:
movies
Tuesday various
- Two words: yarn bombing.
- A cute comic: Superman in England. [via]
- And I thought things were uncivil on the floor of Congress. We have nothing on the Ukraine.
- I shirked my social responsibility this past weekend by not seeing Bridesmaids. I’m not really sure how I feel about this argument, although I do think it’s a sad state of affairs when the very idea of casting smart, funny women comes in a (possibly) smart, funny movie comes down to the success of one single film. [via]
- And finally, Find racist robots in Transformers 3, get $25K from Michael Bay. I’d try to collect, but then I’d actually have to watch Transformers 3.
Monday various
- Ben Stein is kind of an amoral douchebag, isn’t he? The rich are different, at least in his head; when they commit rape, it isn’t rape. More here.[via]
- There’s a lot John McCain doesn’t understand, but I’d say he probably has a good handle on torture. Rick Santorum is an idiot. [via]
- It’s not often you hear someone in Hollywood blame their sobriety for inappropriate behavior. Lars von Trier is ahead of the curve.
- High schooler challenges Michelle Bachmann to debate on U.S. Constitution. It’ll never happen, but my money’s on the high school girl. Hell, in a debate on the Constitution with Bachmann, my money would be on a potted plant. Bachmann supporters have, of course, responded with typical grace and tact. [via]
- And finally, it’s okay to be Takei. [via]
Some day
What did I do today? I had my ass thoroughly kicked by the Sunday crossword. I went to see Thor, which I quite enjoyed. And I wrote this in my semi-regular writing group:
The prophet killed the poisoned man, but the poisoned man refused to die.
Every schoolchild knows the story, has heard a thousand times how the poisoned man tricked the prophet into revealing his false god’s name and, through his magics, how evil came to be exiled from our land. There are some texts that still name the man by the old traditions, Ibrahim el Fadil, although the name of the god, whatever it might have been, has long been lost to the dusts of time. Scholars have long debated and conjectured, but, then, that is the nature — is it not? — of scholarship. You and I have no need to know the name, my little one, or in the end even to believe in the stories of the poisoned man. The shipwreck in the guarded wastes. The seven demon brides. The slaying of the giant’s sister. These may all be true, or they may just be parables, more fancies for a young mind like yours than the true history of what once was. We have no need to know the truth, so long as the laws that have grown out of those traditions continue to keep us safe. There is your truth, young daughter, the only truth you will need upon your long journey. The knowledge that, if given law, men can be good; moreover, men will strive to be good, will seek out law even as the other half of their nature may seek to undermine and escape from it. Even if the poisoned man is just a myth and you do not, as your grandmother has suggested, encounter his spirit upon the road, take comfort and strength in the existence of the law he has bequeathed to us. It is durable stuff, that law, and it is the wall that keeps evil’s exile still in place.
Though I would be remiss if I did not instruct you in at least a few additional magics…
All in all, not a bad Sunday. Though no fortune cookies.
A romantic evening awaits you in the off-world colonies
How is that Friday, the very last day in the week, was also by far my busiest?
Maybe it has something to do with the manuscript that landed in my lap, or rather my e-mail in-box, first thing this morning. I started reading through it and realized it needed more corrections — mostly typos, but some factual — than at first glance. So, aside from another project that ate into a lot of my time, I spent the day reading the book, with my red pen in hand. As I noted via Twitter, sometimes I don’t feel like I’m correcting grammar, but rather introducing it to a manuscript for the very first time. (I also realized that my life would be very different, at least in the way I think about my job and the way I do it, if I hadn’t taken that copyediting class my senior year of college.)
When I left for the day, I was about halfway through the manuscript. With luck, I’ll finish on Monday and send my corrections and queries off to the authors. It would be nice to put the book into production soon, even if at this point it’s unlikely to make the year.
And yeah, I’m fairly sure the world isn’t going to end this weekend.
This evening, after dinner, I got a fortune cookie, the one in the photograph up above. (That’s allowed even when you don’t eat Chinese food for dinner, right?) It said, “A romantic evening awaits you tonight.” So, of course, I spent the evening watching a zombie movie with friends over Twitter. Well, I had a lot of fun, even if I can’t say my feelings on 28 Weeks Later as a film are much revised from my original opinion.
Though never let it be said that zombies can’t be romantic.