DVD Logging
Nov. 9th, 2016 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckCold Comfort Farm - Eh. I got about twenty minutes into this one and gave up. I was hoping that I’d like it better than I did the book it’s based on, but I still pretty much wanted to smack the heroine with a rotting carp.
Doctor Who: Kinda - Fifth Doctor with Tegan and Adric. I was most interested in the eerie stuff going on in Tegan’s head while she was asleep. Adric’s efforts to keep the crazy/paranoid people convinced that he was on their side (while he also tried to escape) amused me. I watched a bit of one of the extras that talked about how the author of the episode was really, really into Buddhism and was trying to do something with the script that didn’t make sense to anyone else. Well, the people being interviewed talked around it, but it seemed to come down to none of them having any idea what the hell he was getting at.
Doctor Who: The Sun Makers - Fourth Doctor with Leela and K-9. This DVD didn’t play very well. It would freeze and then skip forward over who knows how much material. I was mainly using it as background while I tried to write, so I didn’t pull it out and see if I could fix the problem until it completely locked up, and then I realized it was only three minutes from the end. It didn’t seem to be a story with surprises/twists, so I didn’t feel like I had to see those three minutes. Anyway, this was a very usual plot with the Doctor finding a dystopia and getting people to do something about it.
Great American Bestsellers: The Books That Shaped America - Series of twenty four half hour lectures, each focused on a different book, by Professor Peter Conn of the University of Pennsylvania. The box the set came in says the series is copyright 2009, but I think it must have been recorded earlier because the lecturer talks about big box bookstores, including Borders, as wonderful things and about Amazon being ‘unproven’ as a business model.
Kirikou and the Sorceress - I enjoyed this animated movie set in western Africa somewhere. It was a very mythic/fairy tale sort of thing. There weren’t any subtitles, so I had to go with the English dub. Kirikou is a baby who was able to speak even in the womb and who was able to walk and run immediately after birth. He’s strong and highly intelligent but still baby sized. He doesn’t automatically know all the answers, but he doesn’t give up and is creative in seeking solutions. I think the movie is child appropriate, but some parents may disagree because there’s constant non-sexual nudity (none of the children wear clothes at all, and none of the women wear shirts. Kirikou’s birth is also shown, sort of, with him crawling out from under his mother’s skirt as she sits, leaning against the wall).
The Last Unicorn - I think that I read this book at the wrong time for me, so I didn’t bond with it at all. That means that I was pretty much indifferent to the movie, too. I felt like it was all surface. I haven’t reread the book in about thirty five years, so maybe if I do that and then try the movie again, I’ll like both. I don’t know though. It seems like a lot of effort.
London Has Fallen - This was one of the most ridiculous movies I’ve seen. Sadly, it wasn’t ridiculous in a way that made it fun, given that I’m not amused by gunfire and explosions. Scott and I kept nearly shrieking over the logistics of the terrorist attacks and wondering how many thousand terrorists there were and how they had bombs ready in exactly the right places to get specific world leaders. Scott admitted to me that he couldn’t tell the Secret Service guy from the President, and I laughed and told him I was glad I wasn’t the only one. They were two kind of generic looking white guys fighting a gazillion brown guys. Oh, and the mole in the British government was nowhere near high level enough to make all of this work. So ridiculous and racist and… Yeah.
Murder She Wrote season 1 - This is mostly a rewatch. I think I only ran into one or two episodes I hadn’t seen previously, but it had been so long that I only vaguely recognized the stories and characters. Watching was mostly very soothing background noise. I did wonder about all of the police handling evidence without gloves on (and letting other people do so as well).
Only Yesterday - This DVD didn’t have captioning with the English track, and there were some characters I couldn’t consistently understand. Cordelia originally said she wanted to watch this with me and then changed her mind after watching about fifteen minutes. I think she was hoping for magic and that the main character being older didn’t appeal to her. I found the farming stuff very interesting and was more interested in the stuff about Taeko as an adult than her as a child.
Spectre - I got this from the library for Scott but ended up in the room while he watched. I’m not keen on the violence, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Mostly, I thought the whole thing was ridiculous (and I say this having come to James Bond during the Roger Moore era). Scott seemed to agree, so it wasn’t just me. I didn’t watch much of the last half hour, just listened while Scott watched.
Sidekick (2016) - This is a short (15 minutes, including credits) that can be found on YouTube. I watched it on my phone, and I think that was a mistake because a good bit of the movie was too dark for me to see what was happening. This is a father using a story about superheroes as a way to talk to his young son about something difficult and unhappy.
Star Trek: Beyond - Scott has watching this about three times since he bought it. Once was adequate for me. I didn’t dislike the movie or anything; I’m just not as passionate about movies/shows with ‘star’ as part of the title. Star Trek is part of the mythology of my adolescence, but it’s not something I ever connected with as powerfully as many of my friends did. Cordelia thinks we’re nuts to be interested in such things at all. At any rate, there was a lot of action and things blowing up and people being reasonably clever and quite brave. The villain didn’t entirely work for me.
Transformers Prime: Beast Wars: Predacons Rising - One of my good friends is really into Transformers fandom, so I thought I’d dip my toes in and see what I thought. Sadly, our library doesn’t have much of this subseries, and Netflix’s DVD holdings are even spottier. I can stream some of it, though; it’s just that I know that I don’t reliably finish things that way. At any rate, this wasn’t a terrible way to spend an hour. I had trouble tracking which characters were which and didn’t have context for their relationships, but the basic conflict seemed to make sense, and the various factions were complicated enough to intrigue me.
White Collar season 1 DVD 2-4 - This series grew on us once we gave it a second chance. I was more interested in the FBI agent than in the conman, and I’m not completely convinced that the folks making the show wanted that. I liked that both characters were good at what they did and clever in different ways. The music box plot kind of irritated me because I couldn’t figure out how it could possibly be worth all that trouble. I mean, I doubt that it’s a WMD or a gate to Narnia or the Philosopher’s Stone or a way for ET to phone home. Sure, it’s obviously valuable in terms of artistry and materials, but… That valuable? Really?
Doctor Who: Kinda - Fifth Doctor with Tegan and Adric. I was most interested in the eerie stuff going on in Tegan’s head while she was asleep. Adric’s efforts to keep the crazy/paranoid people convinced that he was on their side (while he also tried to escape) amused me. I watched a bit of one of the extras that talked about how the author of the episode was really, really into Buddhism and was trying to do something with the script that didn’t make sense to anyone else. Well, the people being interviewed talked around it, but it seemed to come down to none of them having any idea what the hell he was getting at.
Doctor Who: The Sun Makers - Fourth Doctor with Leela and K-9. This DVD didn’t play very well. It would freeze and then skip forward over who knows how much material. I was mainly using it as background while I tried to write, so I didn’t pull it out and see if I could fix the problem until it completely locked up, and then I realized it was only three minutes from the end. It didn’t seem to be a story with surprises/twists, so I didn’t feel like I had to see those three minutes. Anyway, this was a very usual plot with the Doctor finding a dystopia and getting people to do something about it.
Great American Bestsellers: The Books That Shaped America - Series of twenty four half hour lectures, each focused on a different book, by Professor Peter Conn of the University of Pennsylvania. The box the set came in says the series is copyright 2009, but I think it must have been recorded earlier because the lecturer talks about big box bookstores, including Borders, as wonderful things and about Amazon being ‘unproven’ as a business model.
Kirikou and the Sorceress - I enjoyed this animated movie set in western Africa somewhere. It was a very mythic/fairy tale sort of thing. There weren’t any subtitles, so I had to go with the English dub. Kirikou is a baby who was able to speak even in the womb and who was able to walk and run immediately after birth. He’s strong and highly intelligent but still baby sized. He doesn’t automatically know all the answers, but he doesn’t give up and is creative in seeking solutions. I think the movie is child appropriate, but some parents may disagree because there’s constant non-sexual nudity (none of the children wear clothes at all, and none of the women wear shirts. Kirikou’s birth is also shown, sort of, with him crawling out from under his mother’s skirt as she sits, leaning against the wall).
The Last Unicorn - I think that I read this book at the wrong time for me, so I didn’t bond with it at all. That means that I was pretty much indifferent to the movie, too. I felt like it was all surface. I haven’t reread the book in about thirty five years, so maybe if I do that and then try the movie again, I’ll like both. I don’t know though. It seems like a lot of effort.
London Has Fallen - This was one of the most ridiculous movies I’ve seen. Sadly, it wasn’t ridiculous in a way that made it fun, given that I’m not amused by gunfire and explosions. Scott and I kept nearly shrieking over the logistics of the terrorist attacks and wondering how many thousand terrorists there were and how they had bombs ready in exactly the right places to get specific world leaders. Scott admitted to me that he couldn’t tell the Secret Service guy from the President, and I laughed and told him I was glad I wasn’t the only one. They were two kind of generic looking white guys fighting a gazillion brown guys. Oh, and the mole in the British government was nowhere near high level enough to make all of this work. So ridiculous and racist and… Yeah.
Murder She Wrote season 1 - This is mostly a rewatch. I think I only ran into one or two episodes I hadn’t seen previously, but it had been so long that I only vaguely recognized the stories and characters. Watching was mostly very soothing background noise. I did wonder about all of the police handling evidence without gloves on (and letting other people do so as well).
Only Yesterday - This DVD didn’t have captioning with the English track, and there were some characters I couldn’t consistently understand. Cordelia originally said she wanted to watch this with me and then changed her mind after watching about fifteen minutes. I think she was hoping for magic and that the main character being older didn’t appeal to her. I found the farming stuff very interesting and was more interested in the stuff about Taeko as an adult than her as a child.
Spectre - I got this from the library for Scott but ended up in the room while he watched. I’m not keen on the violence, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Mostly, I thought the whole thing was ridiculous (and I say this having come to James Bond during the Roger Moore era). Scott seemed to agree, so it wasn’t just me. I didn’t watch much of the last half hour, just listened while Scott watched.
Sidekick (2016) - This is a short (15 minutes, including credits) that can be found on YouTube. I watched it on my phone, and I think that was a mistake because a good bit of the movie was too dark for me to see what was happening. This is a father using a story about superheroes as a way to talk to his young son about something difficult and unhappy.
Star Trek: Beyond - Scott has watching this about three times since he bought it. Once was adequate for me. I didn’t dislike the movie or anything; I’m just not as passionate about movies/shows with ‘star’ as part of the title. Star Trek is part of the mythology of my adolescence, but it’s not something I ever connected with as powerfully as many of my friends did. Cordelia thinks we’re nuts to be interested in such things at all. At any rate, there was a lot of action and things blowing up and people being reasonably clever and quite brave. The villain didn’t entirely work for me.
Transformers Prime: Beast Wars: Predacons Rising - One of my good friends is really into Transformers fandom, so I thought I’d dip my toes in and see what I thought. Sadly, our library doesn’t have much of this subseries, and Netflix’s DVD holdings are even spottier. I can stream some of it, though; it’s just that I know that I don’t reliably finish things that way. At any rate, this wasn’t a terrible way to spend an hour. I had trouble tracking which characters were which and didn’t have context for their relationships, but the basic conflict seemed to make sense, and the various factions were complicated enough to intrigue me.
White Collar season 1 DVD 2-4 - This series grew on us once we gave it a second chance. I was more interested in the FBI agent than in the conman, and I’m not completely convinced that the folks making the show wanted that. I liked that both characters were good at what they did and clever in different ways. The music box plot kind of irritated me because I couldn’t figure out how it could possibly be worth all that trouble. I mean, I doubt that it’s a WMD or a gate to Narnia or the Philosopher’s Stone or a way for ET to phone home. Sure, it’s obviously valuable in terms of artistry and materials, but… That valuable? Really?
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no subject
Date: 2016-11-10 11:55 am (UTC)I love your options for what constitutes a major find on WC. Someone should write the fic where they encounter all these objects. Actually, a Drabble series with 10 different iconic objects would be really fun, I think. It would work outside of WC, too
no subject
Date: 2016-11-11 01:43 pm (UTC)Kinda was very out there, definitely. I also had to laugh-- The actress who played Nyssa must have been ill or on vacation or something because she was in the first two minutes of the first episode then disappeared into the TARDIS to rest and didn't emerge until the last two minutes of the final episode.
The White Collar thing is a common problem I run into with TV shows that try to keep ratcheting up the tension/stakes while still staying in the mundane world. I find myself going, "Do you know how much that would cost? What could be worth that and those other things we know they did?" The music box thing doesn't seem to be isolated collectors competing but rather a person or organization dedicating vast resources to getting it and then tying up loose ends in the most final way possible.
(Which was kind of stupid. If Neal had left at the end of season one, Peter wouldn't have been happy, but he'd have let him go. If Neal died violently, Peter was never, ever going to let it go, and Neal had other friends who would help him.)
no subject
Date: 2016-11-10 11:05 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed the first season of White Collar. I tend to like crime shows in all their iterations, though. I still kind of want to finish the series, but I stalled out in the 3rd or 4th season. The show insists on playing up the drama between Neil and Peter, even when they've been working together for so long, and it irritates me. I still enjoy the characters enough that I'll probably keep trying though. Just intermittently, so that I have time to deal with my issues with it. :)
no subject
Date: 2016-11-11 01:35 pm (UTC)We're getting White Collar one DVD at a time from Netflix, so we have time between DVDs. From what I gather, pretty much everyone was unhappy with the last season, so I'm kind of inclined to skip that.
animated Doctor Who reconstruction
Date: 2016-11-14 04:45 pm (UTC)The Beeb has prepared an animated reconstruction of "The Power of the Daleks," which is (I think) Patrick Troughton's first story. This uses the original soundtrack (all Doctor Who soundtracks were recorded on audio tape by fans). I'm oddly excited about this, as Troughton is one of my favorite Doctors and I have seen so little of him (because so little of his work escaped the BBC archive purge).
This will air on BBC America originally, which I suspect you don't get, but eventually it will come out for home media, I presume.
http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2016/09/bbc-america-brings-destroyed-doctor-who-episodes-back-to-life
Re: animated Doctor Who reconstruction
Date: 2016-11-25 09:28 pm (UTC)Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2016-11-14 07:29 pm (UTC)Didn't see the "Star Trek:Beyond" movie either. I know this sounds silly after my Doctor Who comment above, but I am really getting tired of movie series going on and on. (I didn't watch the last season of Nu "Who" either.)
The Onion had a piece reporting on a new MPAA rating, "Rated "O" for Original," to warn movie patrons when they might encounter novel characters or plots they had not seen before.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 09:33 pm (UTC)Scott really liked Star Trek: Beyond. I enjoyed it, too. A lot of people I've talked to consider it the first movie in the reboot series that actually felt like Star Trek. But, you know, I don't think that's necessarily a reason to rush out to see it.