girlofprey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
girlofprey) wrote2013-08-02 01:45 am
girlofprey) wrote2013-08-02 01:45 am
Entry tags:
- actors,
- bethesda softworks,
- books,
- colonel autumn,
- computer games,
- dave franco,
- electro swing,
- f!courier/benny,
- fallout,
- fallout 3,
- fallout: new vegas,
- fandom,
- films,
- games,
- hannibal/newt,
- holidays,
- hyperbole and a half,
- jack wilder,
- kaijus,
- music,
- now you see me,
- pacific rim,
- pairings,
- podcasts,
- recs,
- slash,
- the internship,
- video games,
- vince vaughn,
- welcome to night vale
(no subject)
And in fandom news from the past few weeks:
And I was going to talk about some of the animals my cat has been bringing in as 'presents' lately, but I remembered in my last post I said I wasn't going to make another post about animal death for a while. Suffice it to say, I'm half horrified and half impressed.
And in the last few weeks, I saw three films. Three whole films.
The first two weeks ago was The Internship, which I saw mainly because it had Vince Vaughn in it and he looked like he might not be a dick to people in it. Which I was correct about! Although there were some slightly odd things in the film, overall he and Owen Wilson were both quite nice, and quite nice to other people. It was a slightly odd film - a lot of the scenes sort of felt like they were ad-libbed, and maybe they should have done more ad-libbing until they got something better/funnier. And the ending was basically a big ass-kiss to Google. But overall I enjoyed. And I somehow got a fluff pairing out of it. It wasn't my fault! HE AND OWEN WILSON WERE PARTNERS, AND APPARENTLY KNEW EACH OTHER FROM CHILDHOOD, AND WHEN VINCE VAUGHN WANTED TO TRY TO GET A JOB AT GOOGLE THERE WAS NO QUESTION ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT HE WANTED OWEN WILSON THERE WITH HIM. Also, I guess because they applied together for a place in the internship programme, they had to share a bed in their Google-supplied housing. And when there was a dramatic separation later in the film, one of the ways they showed this was a shot of Owen Wilson lying in the bed by himself, looking sad and lonely. It was beautiful. Which is not to say that I didn't want Vince Vaughn to have rough hatesex with the 'villain' after the end of the film when Owen Wilson's character was busy with his female love interest, sometimes. But still.
Anyway. There were some things that were odd about the film, like the way the young characters found out how to enjoy life by accidentally going to a strip club, and a running joke about hilarious child abuse. But overall I did enjoy it. It was nothing special, but I quite liked it.
Unfortunately, Vince Vaughn has turned out to be the latest actor I liked who disappointed me horribly, mainly by having fairly shady politics. It's nothing that would make me want to stop watching him, but apparently he's agreed to make a conservative TV show about his politics. So the night is young!
Speaking of which, I'd forgotten that the next Mark Wahlberg film I was looking forward to also featured Denzel Washington trying to do a comedy role for once, which I wanted to support. I may go see it. For Denzel.
Anyway. Then last week, I went to see Now You See Me and Pacific Rim.
Well. This was an odd one. I did enjoy it, and the cinema I was in was way more packed than I was expecting. But again, it had a lot of moments that were really odd. Mostly coming from Woody Harrelson's character. He was a mentalist, and the film began with each of the main magicians doing some trick to show how good they were and why they were involved in the heists later on. Woody Harrelson's character began by hypnotising a woman to not be able to move or speak much, then read her husband to find out about an affair he'd been having with her best friend, then got the man to pay him money to HYPNOTISE HIS WIFE SO SHE DIDN'T REMEMBER FINDING OUT ABOUT IT. He threw in a random thing about the husband not being able to be turned on by the best friend anymore, but overall, it was pretty awful. Then later on there was a joke involving the word 'tranny'. There was a scene where Michael Caine threatens Morgan Freeman with "better lawyers and more money", which wasn't odd in itself, but really brought home to me the fact that Morgan Freeman was the only character of colour in the film. In the same scene, Morgan Freeman also made some odd references to the 'dark mysticism' of the Deep South, too. Then there was a scene where the main male character got weirdly angry and physical with another main female character, for a fairly prolonged moment. She responded by slamming his head into a bar, because hey, it's okay so long as the woman can fight back! Later events in the film sort of threw a different light on the moment, but it was still really uncomfortable and weird. And there were also a few scenes where the male sleight-of-hand magician had to explain to the others - including a female escape artist - that locks can be picked! So yeah. They went in for some slightly weird moments.
But I did also enjoy it. Especially Dave Franco's character, and his AMAZING FIGHT SCENE. PUT HIM IN ALL THE TEAMS. I wasn't sure about the ending, mainly for one of the reasons I stated above. I did guess it, but just because this was a film about magicians and being tricked, so I knew there was going to be some sort of twist. I wasn't definitely sure about it. So yeah. It was fine and sometimes pretty good, if you can put up with some of the bad stuff.
And the big one. I finally watched it. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW INTERNET? And I really enjoyed it. I think because it had the guts to kill people and have things seem hopeless, which you don't get with a lot of things nowadays. It genuinely felt like the world was ending in that film, and not just because the characters were stupid. And granted, some of the characters who died I was probably only invested in because I'd seen people getting fannish over them beforehand. But still. It was properly good.
Pretty much the one character I wasn't spoilered for was Chuck Hansen, so I was genuinely suprised and pleased when Sean Slater from Eastenders turned up and proceeded to be in a whole film. I think maybe because I was distracted by him being Sean Slater, I didn't pay a lot of attention to his character. But after some of the scenes and some of the backstory I've learned from fandom, I ship him pretty hard with his dad. Hurrah.
Also Idris Elba was pretty great, natch. And - well. I really thought I'd ship the scientists together, and I did at the beginning, and it was lovely. But then Newt ran into Hannibal Chau, the black market guy who knew as much about Kaiju parts as him, if not more. And who tried to kill Newt, sort of, and then was sort of impressed when he didn't die. And I didn't. Hannibal/Newt is the best. Mostly it's annoying though, because Hermann also begins with a H, so skipping through prompts on the kinkmeme is slightly more complicated. And then there's Herc Hansen. 3 H's in one fandom. It's too many.
So yeah, I really enjoyed it. Hurray for good films. And robots. And Kaijus. I sort of also ship Newt with Kaijus. Because obviously.
Mostly the film left me with a few logic problems though. Including:
I don't understand Kaijus well enough. Is probably the answer to those questions.
I think that's all my fandom news. Also I have started listening to Welcome To Night Vale, but I think I mentioned that in the last post. Also a few other things. But these are the main ones I think.
I'm going to Leeds tomorrow with my mother, because we are going on holiday with my two oldest nephews in less than two weeks. I need some holiday clothes. But I don't know exactly what I need or want. So tomorrow will probably be interesting, to say the least.
- Allie Brosh's book is apparently available in October. I assumed, what with how ill she's been, that she just wouldn't have been working on it, but no, apparently it's coming soon. Which pleases me. I haven't seen anyone else talking about it, so in case you're interested and hadn't heard, there's the link.
- I'm getting on with the main plot in Fallout 3 again, and you know, the more I think about the storyline, the more annoyed I am about what a wasted opportunity I think Bethesda had. I genuinely prefer Fallout 3 to Fallout: New Vegas as a game, just because as a post-apocalyptic scenario it felt more Wasteland-y, whereas New Vegas with all its casino/mafia/cowboys/Romans stuff just felt a little gimmicky. Which makes sense, since Washington was the capital and Las Vegas was partially protected by Mr House, so obviously Washington would have been bombed to shit and have less civilisation going on there.
But the main plotline of New Vegas involved a bunch of different factions trying to win the 'jackpot' of ruling New Vegas and Nevada, which fit in with the setting of Las Vegas. Whereas in Fallout 3, the setting obviously lends itself to the idea of government, which is why having the Enclave back makes sense - but they're basically there as Bad Guys in a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense, and as many other people besides me have pointed out, you don't really get any other choice than siding with the Brotherhood. It would have made so much more sense to have a number of factions you could side with, some better than others put probably all flawed, because power is messy, trying to take over what used to be the capital of the United States. But I guess that wouldn't work, because if you had the Enclave take over the capital wasteland with their superior weaponry and armour, better tech and medicine, and a source of clean water, it would only make sense for them to go on from there to take over the rest of post-nuclear America, which would mess with the continuity of future games.
And I feel like in a way Bethesda did try to do this, in little things like the Brotherhood of Steel not really being that good, it's Elder Lyons that's good and most of his underlings basically just do what he says, and in the split between Colonel Autumn and President Eden in the Enclave. But it's not really enough to make a good story out of, and you still end up pigeon-holed in who you have to side with, in a game that basically becomes about pointless self-sacrifice. Which is especially odd in a game that lets you be a genocidal maniac in almost every other situation. A lot of this is probably just coming out of my obsession with Colonel Autumn though. Tl;dr, they should have written it better. - I have been listening to this fanmix, and I want to rec it, because it makes me really happy. so maybe it would make you guys happy too. I didn't even know Electro Swing was a thing, but apparently it is. Also, it's a fanmix for Benny/F!Courier from Fallout: New Vegas, so if you ship that, you may love it doubly hard. NB: I cannot be held accountable if you don't love it.
And I was going to talk about some of the animals my cat has been bringing in as 'presents' lately, but I remembered in my last post I said I wasn't going to make another post about animal death for a while. Suffice it to say, I'm half horrified and half impressed.
And in the last few weeks, I saw three films. Three whole films.
The first two weeks ago was The Internship, which I saw mainly because it had Vince Vaughn in it and he looked like he might not be a dick to people in it. Which I was correct about! Although there were some slightly odd things in the film, overall he and Owen Wilson were both quite nice, and quite nice to other people. It was a slightly odd film - a lot of the scenes sort of felt like they were ad-libbed, and maybe they should have done more ad-libbing until they got something better/funnier. And the ending was basically a big ass-kiss to Google. But overall I enjoyed. And I somehow got a fluff pairing out of it. It wasn't my fault! HE AND OWEN WILSON WERE PARTNERS, AND APPARENTLY KNEW EACH OTHER FROM CHILDHOOD, AND WHEN VINCE VAUGHN WANTED TO TRY TO GET A JOB AT GOOGLE THERE WAS NO QUESTION ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT HE WANTED OWEN WILSON THERE WITH HIM. Also, I guess because they applied together for a place in the internship programme, they had to share a bed in their Google-supplied housing. And when there was a dramatic separation later in the film, one of the ways they showed this was a shot of Owen Wilson lying in the bed by himself, looking sad and lonely. It was beautiful. Which is not to say that I didn't want Vince Vaughn to have rough hatesex with the 'villain' after the end of the film when Owen Wilson's character was busy with his female love interest, sometimes. But still.
Anyway. There were some things that were odd about the film, like the way the young characters found out how to enjoy life by accidentally going to a strip club, and a running joke about hilarious child abuse. But overall I did enjoy it. It was nothing special, but I quite liked it.
Unfortunately, Vince Vaughn has turned out to be the latest actor I liked who disappointed me horribly, mainly by having fairly shady politics. It's nothing that would make me want to stop watching him, but apparently he's agreed to make a conservative TV show about his politics. So the night is young!
Speaking of which, I'd forgotten that the next Mark Wahlberg film I was looking forward to also featured Denzel Washington trying to do a comedy role for once, which I wanted to support. I may go see it. For Denzel.
Anyway. Then last week, I went to see Now You See Me and Pacific Rim.
Well. This was an odd one. I did enjoy it, and the cinema I was in was way more packed than I was expecting. But again, it had a lot of moments that were really odd. Mostly coming from Woody Harrelson's character. He was a mentalist, and the film began with each of the main magicians doing some trick to show how good they were and why they were involved in the heists later on. Woody Harrelson's character began by hypnotising a woman to not be able to move or speak much, then read her husband to find out about an affair he'd been having with her best friend, then got the man to pay him money to HYPNOTISE HIS WIFE SO SHE DIDN'T REMEMBER FINDING OUT ABOUT IT. He threw in a random thing about the husband not being able to be turned on by the best friend anymore, but overall, it was pretty awful. Then later on there was a joke involving the word 'tranny'. There was a scene where Michael Caine threatens Morgan Freeman with "better lawyers and more money", which wasn't odd in itself, but really brought home to me the fact that Morgan Freeman was the only character of colour in the film. In the same scene, Morgan Freeman also made some odd references to the 'dark mysticism' of the Deep South, too. Then there was a scene where the main male character got weirdly angry and physical with another main female character, for a fairly prolonged moment. She responded by slamming his head into a bar, because hey, it's okay so long as the woman can fight back! Later events in the film sort of threw a different light on the moment, but it was still really uncomfortable and weird. And there were also a few scenes where the male sleight-of-hand magician had to explain to the others - including a female escape artist - that locks can be picked! So yeah. They went in for some slightly weird moments.
But I did also enjoy it. Especially Dave Franco's character, and his AMAZING FIGHT SCENE. PUT HIM IN ALL THE TEAMS. I wasn't sure about the ending, mainly for one of the reasons I stated above. I did guess it, but just because this was a film about magicians and being tricked, so I knew there was going to be some sort of twist. I wasn't definitely sure about it. So yeah. It was fine and sometimes pretty good, if you can put up with some of the bad stuff.
And the big one. I finally watched it. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW INTERNET? And I really enjoyed it. I think because it had the guts to kill people and have things seem hopeless, which you don't get with a lot of things nowadays. It genuinely felt like the world was ending in that film, and not just because the characters were stupid. And granted, some of the characters who died I was probably only invested in because I'd seen people getting fannish over them beforehand. But still. It was properly good.
Pretty much the one character I wasn't spoilered for was Chuck Hansen, so I was genuinely suprised and pleased when Sean Slater from Eastenders turned up and proceeded to be in a whole film. I think maybe because I was distracted by him being Sean Slater, I didn't pay a lot of attention to his character. But after some of the scenes and some of the backstory I've learned from fandom, I ship him pretty hard with his dad. Hurrah.
Also Idris Elba was pretty great, natch. And - well. I really thought I'd ship the scientists together, and I did at the beginning, and it was lovely. But then Newt ran into Hannibal Chau, the black market guy who knew as much about Kaiju parts as him, if not more. And who tried to kill Newt, sort of, and then was sort of impressed when he didn't die. And I didn't. Hannibal/Newt is the best. Mostly it's annoying though, because Hermann also begins with a H, so skipping through prompts on the kinkmeme is slightly more complicated. And then there's Herc Hansen. 3 H's in one fandom. It's too many.
So yeah, I really enjoyed it. Hurray for good films. And robots. And Kaijus. I sort of also ship Newt with Kaijus. Because obviously.
Mostly the film left me with a few logic problems though. Including:
- If the Kaijus are all clones, and they know enough about their biology to fertilise fields with their poo, then why can't the scientists just come up with a poison that will take them down? That will take them all down? Without needing to risk their multi-billion dollar robots, or at least make it easier for them to win their fights?
- If the Kaijus and the aliens share a hive mind, why was that one at the end pushing in front of the others to get a better view? Did they have a hive mind, or a hive mentality? I'm guessing mind, because Newt and Hermann knew ALL THEIR PLANS from drifting with them. And I'm guessing it was the aliens and Kaijus both who had a hive mind, not just the Kaijus, because why would the Kaijus know their master's plans? But then, did the aliens know and see all the battles the Kaijus had with the Jaegers before they died, since this hive connection is still there when Kaijus go through the breach? Why didn't they start changing their tactics sooner? What?
- If they're all clones, how did that Kaiju get pregnant? Was it because the plot required an undamaged brain? Do the Kaijus just have a lot of free time on the other side of the breach, before they're sent through? What?
I don't understand Kaijus well enough. Is probably the answer to those questions.
I think that's all my fandom news. Also I have started listening to Welcome To Night Vale, but I think I mentioned that in the last post. Also a few other things. But these are the main ones I think.
I'm going to Leeds tomorrow with my mother, because we are going on holiday with my two oldest nephews in less than two weeks. I need some holiday clothes. But I don't know exactly what I need or want. So tomorrow will probably be interesting, to say the least.
no subject
I'm really enjoying welcome to nightvale, I normally bypass radio things, but I like them when I'm crocheting.
no subject
I love the idea of you crocheting while inter-dimensional horror is happening in a podcast nearby. I have slight trouble listening to Welcome To Night Vale, just because if I just listen to it I find myself tuning out and missing bits, and if I do other things while listening to it I get distracted and miss bits. Also, with everything that's going on in my life at the moment, I'm not always in the mood for horror, however comedy-flavoured. But I do love it, and it's nice that it's genuinely good. Not always the case with the things fandom at large loves.
no subject
Indeed.
And about the bit where you say you tune out, I was half way through reading this comment before I realised I hadn't paused the episode I was listening to and the weather had ended and I wasn't listening. That happens quite a bit, but I'm okay with missing bits of it because it's a bit bitty in its very nature, so I'm being relaxed at it. I know that's not probably easily done for you.
I think all of hollywood/america/television and film everywhere NEED MORE SCRIPT EDITORS. It's so easy to just make a film better when someone's done the basic writing it down for you, isn't it? It feels like it would be.
I love the idea of you crocheting while inter-dimensional horror is happening
It feels a very well matched activity for it somehow.