{"id":3277,"date":"2008-12-29T22:52:06","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T03:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3277"},"modified":"2008-12-29T22:54:13","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T03:54:13","slug":"monday-various-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3277","title":{"rendered":"Monday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">I don&#8217;t always agree with <a href=\"http:\/\/wrongquestions.blogspot.com\/\">Abigail Nussbaum<\/a>, but I can always count on her for insightful and interesting commentary. This time it&#8217;s on <a href=\"http:\/\/wrongquestions.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/father-knows-best-thoughts-on-dexter-s.html\">the third season of <i>Dexter<\/i><\/a>, which I finally finished watching (and really enjoying) yesterday afternoon. The whole post is worth reading &#8212; provided you&#8217;ve seen all three seasons, since it&#8217;s quite heavy on spoilers &#8212; but here&#8217;s a taste:<\/font><br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/wrongquestions.blogspot.com\/2006\/07\/attack-of-sophomore-slump.html\">written before<\/a> about the qualities that separate successful multi-season novelistic TV shows from the unsuccessful kind. The key, I speculated, was formula. Not the kind that brings <i>CSI<\/i> and <i>Law &#038; Order<\/i>&#8216;s detectives back to the same starting point every week, but the kind that identifies the fundamental, ur-story the show is trying to tell and, though constantly changing its garb, retells it again and again. <i>Buffy<\/i> is a story about a girl whose impulses towards heroism and normalcy are constantly at war. <i>Angel<\/i>, the story of an ordinary man faced with the inadequacy of heroism in an imperfect world. For all the differences between its three seasons and their genres, <i>Dexter<\/i> is that kind of show, telling the same story with each of those seasons.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">And if you <i>haven&#8217;t<\/i> seen the show, the first two seasons are available on DVD.<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Speaking of <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/i> &#8212; we were, honest; read up there if you don&#8217;t believe me &#8212; here&#8217;s a terrific <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=El1QsMpT3hQ\">fan-made &#8220;trailer&#8221;<\/a> for the first season. (The one <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6vvTiO2F9-I&#038;feature=related\">for Season 2<\/a> isn&#8217;t bad at all either.) [<a href=\"http:\/\/whedonesque.com\/\" title=\"Whedonesque\">via<\/a>]<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Speaking of dolphins &#8212; which we weren&#8217;t, but we could have been &#8212; apparently some of them <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123013471543833011.html\">have started to use tools<\/a>. I&#8217;d say the invasion couldn&#8217;t be far off if it wasn&#8217;t for this:<\/font>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/WDiEXRMB-u8&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/WDiEXRMB-u8&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">I think maybe the dolphin invasion&#8217;s already here. [<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.blogspot.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\">via<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cynical-c\" title=\"Cynical-C\">via<\/a>]<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Neil Gaiman does seem to be going out of his way <a href=\"http:\/\/journal.neilgaiman.com\/2008\/12\/pondering-gaimans-law-of-superhero.html\">to not directly call <i>The Spirit<\/i> a terrible movie, doesn&#8217;t he?<\/font><\/a><br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">It doesn&#8217;t say anything about the quality of the film, I should point out. You could make a great film called <i>Batman<\/i>, in which Batman&#8217;s costume is pink and green and he&#8217;s a lawyer who works all day and into the early evening to save a small  health-food franchise from being taken over by a big conglomerate, and at night he goes on a succession of dates with odd people&#8230; and it would be a very bad <i>Batman<\/i> film.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Plenty of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/the_spirit\/\">other people<\/a> are willing, though. The AV Club, for instance, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/content\/cinema\/the_spirit\">said<\/a> it &#8220;feels like the follow-up to <i>Batman &#038; Robin<\/i> no one wanted.&#8221; Peter David, on the other hand, <a href=\"http:\/\/peterdavid.malibulist.com\/archives\/006654.html\">suggests<\/a> &#8220;viewing it as a surrealist comedy,&#8221; rather than whatever it was Frank Miller thought he was directing.<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">If Hollywood <i>really<\/i> wants make a movie about a crime-fighting spirit, they could do worse than to look <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/28205738\/\">at this news story<\/a>, about a Malaysian burglar who claims to be have been held captive for three days by a ghost. I&#8217;m just saying. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenellis.com\/\" title=\"Warren Ellis\">via<\/a>]<\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t always agree with Abigail Nussbaum, but I can always count on her for insightful and interesting commentary. This time it&#8217;s on the third season of Dexter, which I finally finished watching (and really enjoying) yesterday afternoon. The whole post is worth reading &#8212; provided you&#8217;ve seen all three seasons, since it&#8217;s quite heavy &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3277\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}