Buys
Foiled at the comics shop this week. I only collect two series and I guess they didn't order enough of either. So no Booster Gold or Suicide Squad for me unless I can move my ass to another store in time. Should I open an account? That's been a trap for me in the past, and does it even guarantee I get my books these days? Whatever. In similar though unrelated news, Amazon finally sent me a back-ordered Torchwood novel (Another Life). I'm not reading those yet, but I might have a look in the ramp-up to Series 2.
After I bought all those Planescape .pdfs on DriveThruRPG last week, I thought I might look at their catalog a little closer (still missing On Hallowed Ground, after all). Didn't find it, but since I'm a big fan of the Complete [class] Handbooks, I couldn't help myself and got the Druid's (we were thinking of recruiting someone to play that class), and the Gladiator's (though technically for Dark Sun, there's a lot of nice stuff for our resident Gladiator, Korf, in there).
"Accomplishments"
Well, the big thing is that I finally finished The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. I don't remember the last time I finished a book and immediately wanted to go back to the first page and start again (not advised on my schedule). The novel has floored me, amused me, informed me, brought me to tears, tickled my aesthetic palate... I have such a backlog of reading material that I hardly ever talk about rereading a book. Kavalier&Clay just made my list of rereadables along with Hamlet and Ficciones. That's some pretty illustrious company. Now to take a second look at the Escapist comics (I finally understand the Weird Date feature)!
Autumn always puts me in a Shakespeare mood, so I decided to flip what few Shakespearean DVDs remained unflipped in my collection. First up was the BBC series Shakespeare Retold, which doesn't use the language, but the plot structures of the Bard to retell four of his plays. This could have been disastrous given that plot wasn't a Bardian gift, but it holds up amazingly well. Much Ado About Nothing set in a television newsroom is the best of the lot for me, zany and funny, the wit of Beatrice and Benedick is still on show. The only included tragedy, MacBeth set in a 3-star restaurant, shows why this format works better for comedies because it starts out as unduly funny (the Gordon Ramsey reference is hilarious). There's a patent ridiculouslessness to setting these stories in contemporary settings and it hampers the story, though extremely strong performances do save it eventually. It works as a piece of Shakespearean film noir. The Taming of the Shrew, with Kate cast as Opposition leader, is probably the weakest of the lot (it's the weakest of the plays used, so that's not a surprise). It's played as a farce with plenty of panto moments, but the director got the message when it came to the end's controversial speech about female subservience. This is not a play about breaking a woman, it's about a woman breaking a man by letting him believe he wears the pants in the family. Midsummer Night's Dream, for its part, is set in a holiday resort and solves the problem of magical fairies by simply playing it straight. There ARE fairies and love potions in this world, let's just move on. Where I think it succeeds is in fleshing out Theseus and Hippolyta a lot more than any stageing of the play I've ever seen, and Oberon too.
I followed that up with Michael Radford's Merchant of Venice, which features some extremely strong performances by Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Lynn Collins and Joseph Fiennes. The film has little trouble reconciling the darker aspects of the play with the comic bits, though it perhaps focuses a bit too much on the darkness, and Jessica's subplot is hard to follow. The commentary track by Radford and Collins is quite charming and the making of documentary is a nice surprise, discussing interpretation of the text and character choices rather than production issues.
My personal rule is that before putting a DVD into the machine, I must flip the previous one. I broke that rule with Star Trek: Insurrection because I was trying to go through the sequence quickly for my reviews on this blog, but I finished it this weekend. As discussed in Insurrection's review, the extras are disappointingly missing Frakes' commentary (a production note option is a lame alternative, especially when compared to the extremely rich Doctor Who production notes) and some deleted scenes that commentary describes (like Quark's). But that's been my experience with Paramount: Overpriced DVDs with disappointing bonus features.
I finished cards for my WhoCCG dealing with City of Death (15 news cards), and even made a few "reject cards" (3), which are a sometimes humorous subset, this time including an homage to Outpost Gallifrey, of which I am a proud Patron.
Next up is The Evil of the Daleks, of which only 1 episode remains. I'll be pouring over the script and the BBC's photonovel for this one.
Website Finds
My brother in arms Bauble set me a link to nadshot.com, a very specific, daily version of Friday Night Fights. So if you're a fan of comic book violence AND painful crotch hits, this one's for you.
Foiled at the comics shop this week. I only collect two series and I guess they didn't order enough of either. So no Booster Gold or Suicide Squad for me unless I can move my ass to another store in time. Should I open an account? That's been a trap for me in the past, and does it even guarantee I get my books these days? Whatever. In similar though unrelated news, Amazon finally sent me a back-ordered Torchwood novel (Another Life). I'm not reading those yet, but I might have a look in the ramp-up to Series 2.
After I bought all those Planescape .pdfs on DriveThruRPG last week, I thought I might look at their catalog a little closer (still missing On Hallowed Ground, after all). Didn't find it, but since I'm a big fan of the Complete [class] Handbooks, I couldn't help myself and got the Druid's (we were thinking of recruiting someone to play that class), and the Gladiator's (though technically for Dark Sun, there's a lot of nice stuff for our resident Gladiator, Korf, in there)."Accomplishments"
Well, the big thing is that I finally finished The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. I don't remember the last time I finished a book and immediately wanted to go back to the first page and start again (not advised on my schedule). The novel has floored me, amused me, informed me, brought me to tears, tickled my aesthetic palate... I have such a backlog of reading material that I hardly ever talk about rereading a book. Kavalier&Clay just made my list of rereadables along with Hamlet and Ficciones. That's some pretty illustrious company. Now to take a second look at the Escapist comics (I finally understand the Weird Date feature)!
Autumn always puts me in a Shakespeare mood, so I decided to flip what few Shakespearean DVDs remained unflipped in my collection. First up was the BBC series Shakespeare Retold, which doesn't use the language, but the plot structures of the Bard to retell four of his plays. This could have been disastrous given that plot wasn't a Bardian gift, but it holds up amazingly well. Much Ado About Nothing set in a television newsroom is the best of the lot for me, zany and funny, the wit of Beatrice and Benedick is still on show. The only included tragedy, MacBeth set in a 3-star restaurant, shows why this format works better for comedies because it starts out as unduly funny (the Gordon Ramsey reference is hilarious). There's a patent ridiculouslessness to setting these stories in contemporary settings and it hampers the story, though extremely strong performances do save it eventually. It works as a piece of Shakespearean film noir. The Taming of the Shrew, with Kate cast as Opposition leader, is probably the weakest of the lot (it's the weakest of the plays used, so that's not a surprise). It's played as a farce with plenty of panto moments, but the director got the message when it came to the end's controversial speech about female subservience. This is not a play about breaking a woman, it's about a woman breaking a man by letting him believe he wears the pants in the family. Midsummer Night's Dream, for its part, is set in a holiday resort and solves the problem of magical fairies by simply playing it straight. There ARE fairies and love potions in this world, let's just move on. Where I think it succeeds is in fleshing out Theseus and Hippolyta a lot more than any stageing of the play I've ever seen, and Oberon too.
I followed that up with Michael Radford's Merchant of Venice, which features some extremely strong performances by Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Lynn Collins and Joseph Fiennes. The film has little trouble reconciling the darker aspects of the play with the comic bits, though it perhaps focuses a bit too much on the darkness, and Jessica's subplot is hard to follow. The commentary track by Radford and Collins is quite charming and the making of documentary is a nice surprise, discussing interpretation of the text and character choices rather than production issues.
My personal rule is that before putting a DVD into the machine, I must flip the previous one. I broke that rule with Star Trek: Insurrection because I was trying to go through the sequence quickly for my reviews on this blog, but I finished it this weekend. As discussed in Insurrection's review, the extras are disappointingly missing Frakes' commentary (a production note option is a lame alternative, especially when compared to the extremely rich Doctor Who production notes) and some deleted scenes that commentary describes (like Quark's). But that's been my experience with Paramount: Overpriced DVDs with disappointing bonus features.I finished cards for my WhoCCG dealing with City of Death (15 news cards), and even made a few "reject cards" (3), which are a sometimes humorous subset, this time including an homage to Outpost Gallifrey, of which I am a proud Patron.
Next up is The Evil of the Daleks, of which only 1 episode remains. I'll be pouring over the script and the BBC's photonovel for this one.Website Finds
My brother in arms Bauble set me a link to nadshot.com, a very specific, daily version of Friday Night Fights. So if you're a fan of comic book violence AND painful crotch hits, this one's for you.
Comments
They were already "flipped", so even if I do watch them again (and I will, as soon as I get a little time off, I like to watch each series in one sitting), I won't be calling it an "accomplishment".