Weekly reading/watching meme
Jun. 12th, 2013 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaLook, so far this month I've:
* Done MUTEK, all five days of it
* Attended a conference in Toronto for three days (and had dinners, one at an izakaya and the other at a microbrewery, both lovely, with MJJ and Ian Mathers from Tumblr)
* Moved into new condo (now at the "where are all my 7"s and how do I work this oven" stage)
* Interviewed for a new job (second round)
* Planned most of my vacation in Greece
* Gone to the doctor twice and the dentist once (plus allergy tests to schedule, now). Endless insurance forms!
* Fed my sister's cat, she being also on vacation
...I haven't mentioned work. XD; And in three days I leave on said vacation, for two weeks.
My point is, there has been no reading. My books are in boxes. I have been writing in snippets, with the goal of posting the new chapter before I take off. I went to see Now You See Me, which is basically a meta Vegas magic show, and fantastically entertaining as long as you go in 1) unspoiled, and 2) in the same frame of mind you'd bring to a Vegas magic show, meta or not. The script becomes terrible as soon as it ventures into "dialogue" or "characterization." The sub-plot between Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent's manic pixie dream French Interpol agent is particularly painful. Mostly, what salvages that aspect of the thing is a great cast treading water and Doing Their Schtick (I'm fond of Zombieland). Morgan Freeman seemed slightly more interested than usual? Anyway, this is actually great because literally every character is an asshole, but you don't have to care. In fact they are terribly written in a fandom-friendly way e.g. not unlike Weiss Kreuz. I'd expect a good Yuletide showing for this one.
Also watched three episodes of Hannibal. The storytelling is weird? Eg. sense of time is farked -- I couldn't tell if two days or two months has passed between episodes 1 and 2. Supporting characters and antagonists are not intro-ed in the way you'd expect of a procedural, somehow, even a mystical and impressionistic one. And so forth.
It's a world in which there are serial killers, and people who catch serial killers. This is like saying that Hellsing or Trinity Blood is a world in which there are vampires who prey on humans, and nameless ones who prey on vampires in their turn. That's the level of reality on which this show operates. But then, I had a long online conversation recently re: how vampires always struck me as a class fantasy (originally feudalistic, eventually capitalistic), and Hannibal Lecter is definitely a class fantasy. FTR, I thought the original Silence of the Lambs was a good movie, a very long time ago; never tried to read the books. I'm not particularly scared of serial killers IRL -- actuarial science wins out -- but I have thought a lot about the morality of cannibalism. My guess is much more than most people consider this particular topic. XD If I keep watching the show I'll explain why eventually (a story from early childhood, of course...).
By the by, I can definitely see how ppl might find all this sexy (anyway, this is the Internet XD), but it's a no-fly zone for me. I've mentioned this but I don't find vampires sexy either, because, yanno. They eat you. I feel sorry for the main character Will and hope he'll eventually get a therapist who isn't a psychopathic killer, which is a standard of mental health care you'd expect of an advanced industrialized nation. One imagines sex/dating is just another giant minefield for him (if his reactions vis attractive female colleague are any indication).
* Done MUTEK, all five days of it
* Attended a conference in Toronto for three days (and had dinners, one at an izakaya and the other at a microbrewery, both lovely, with MJJ and Ian Mathers from Tumblr)
* Moved into new condo (now at the "where are all my 7"s and how do I work this oven" stage)
* Interviewed for a new job (second round)
* Planned most of my vacation in Greece
* Gone to the doctor twice and the dentist once (plus allergy tests to schedule, now). Endless insurance forms!
* Fed my sister's cat, she being also on vacation
...I haven't mentioned work. XD; And in three days I leave on said vacation, for two weeks.
My point is, there has been no reading. My books are in boxes. I have been writing in snippets, with the goal of posting the new chapter before I take off. I went to see Now You See Me, which is basically a meta Vegas magic show, and fantastically entertaining as long as you go in 1) unspoiled, and 2) in the same frame of mind you'd bring to a Vegas magic show, meta or not. The script becomes terrible as soon as it ventures into "dialogue" or "characterization." The sub-plot between Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent's manic pixie dream French Interpol agent is particularly painful. Mostly, what salvages that aspect of the thing is a great cast treading water and Doing Their Schtick (I'm fond of Zombieland). Morgan Freeman seemed slightly more interested than usual? Anyway, this is actually great because literally every character is an asshole, but you don't have to care. In fact they are terribly written in a fandom-friendly way e.g. not unlike Weiss Kreuz. I'd expect a good Yuletide showing for this one.
Also watched three episodes of Hannibal. The storytelling is weird? Eg. sense of time is farked -- I couldn't tell if two days or two months has passed between episodes 1 and 2. Supporting characters and antagonists are not intro-ed in the way you'd expect of a procedural, somehow, even a mystical and impressionistic one. And so forth.
It's a world in which there are serial killers, and people who catch serial killers. This is like saying that Hellsing or Trinity Blood is a world in which there are vampires who prey on humans, and nameless ones who prey on vampires in their turn. That's the level of reality on which this show operates. But then, I had a long online conversation recently re: how vampires always struck me as a class fantasy (originally feudalistic, eventually capitalistic), and Hannibal Lecter is definitely a class fantasy. FTR, I thought the original Silence of the Lambs was a good movie, a very long time ago; never tried to read the books. I'm not particularly scared of serial killers IRL -- actuarial science wins out -- but I have thought a lot about the morality of cannibalism. My guess is much more than most people consider this particular topic. XD If I keep watching the show I'll explain why eventually (a story from early childhood, of course...).
By the by, I can definitely see how ppl might find all this sexy (anyway, this is the Internet XD), but it's a no-fly zone for me. I've mentioned this but I don't find vampires sexy either, because, yanno. They eat you. I feel sorry for the main character Will and hope he'll eventually get a therapist who isn't a psychopathic killer, which is a standard of mental health care you'd expect of an advanced industrialized nation. One imagines sex/dating is just another giant minefield for him (if his reactions vis attractive female colleague are any indication).
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no subject
Date: 2013-06-12 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-12 07:30 pm (UTC)It's the one about the hen. IDK, maybe I told you already? I know I told this one to canis.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-12 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 12:14 pm (UTC)I'm not a shipper, and I don't find Hannibal sexy. His fashion sense is, of course, great. His plates of food are freaking ridiculous, and I could go on to an embarrassing degree about how much I love the food. His office is unbelievably awesome.
But sexy? No. I'm in the same camp as you, in also not finding vampires sexy because of the whole "they see you as food" thing. Go fig. XD
no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 02:49 pm (UTC)I'm probably going to write a big long thing about this on Tumblr (and I'd be surprised if the show doesn't address this head on at some point), but I feel like I grok Hobbs' thought process a lot better than I grok Lecter's? Like I keep thinking, if you find humans gross and awful why would you eat them? Kill them for kicks, sure, but I wouldn't eat someone I found gross and awful! You are what you put in your body! I'd be afraid that if I ate rude ppl all the time I'd become rude.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-14 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-16 01:24 pm (UTC)In the books, this gets amped up to a ridiculous degree by the book "Hannibal," where he is buying Clarice fancy-ass bottles of wine from her birth year (and breaking into her car to lick her steering wheel, etc XD) and is able to get a job as a curator in a Venetian museum by pulling a art history lecture out of his ass. It seemed to me early on that he was meant just to be this amoral killer who did awful things just to see if anything fun happens happens, and then later on he was this lifestyle pornstar who happened to kill people, mostly people who needed to die anyways. Hannibal the series seems to be hitting both buttons with their portrayal, so I'm like, eh, sure, plausible, why not!
Bryan Fuller, besides retweeting all the good fanart, seems to be dedicated to making sure Hannibal won't stop being a murderous dick just because he is getting fond of his toys - as he put it, #HANNIBAL IS LIKE A KITTEN STICKING ITS PAW IN MILK. So that's really reassuring to me XD