Messages

"Zippy Couriers
Shauna McCullough is a zippy courier [see title], but it's difficult to make that career interesting, however you dress it up. Transporting thing A to thing B can be viscerally exciting, though. Take notes."

I thought The link would be to FUTURAMA.

I suppose some Soap Opera writers will be saying "We're over here. Thanks for catching up with us".

But you know, their shows don't tend to have set piece action, heists, dragons, epic battles as well.

So I'm on Season 5 of the Americans and just got to a total wtf moment where they take [spoiler]Paige[/spoiler] to meet [spoiler]Gabriel[/spoiler]. Like, how much will that change things? Wow!

Anyway, me and Mrs Tips counted 12 different plot/relationship threads running through the last two episodes. (Not every thread referenced in every episode but at least ten). And half a dozen tied together at least thematically even if they don't connect directly via plot tissue.

It struck me just how much long form story has come on and television in general from the  "A plot and B plot And everything resets at end of episode". When you come across series like that (e.g. The Mentallist), they just seem almost childish now.

No real point to make other than, it's fucking great, isn't it?

[Zenith playlist]

Zenith playlist
I had it in my head that all of the chapter titles in Zenith were songs and I thought it would be cool to make a playlist of them.

But looking through my collected Phase I hardback, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Or was it the "Next Prog:..." which aren't printed in this version?

What I read was brilliant.

DREDD is a lot of fun and looks like it will continue to be.

HOPE continues to enthrall me. Evil John Wayne indeed.

BRINK continues to be comic story telling at it's best.
Sure there aren't giant splash pages and explosions and superteam line ups, but it is great comics nonetheless.

Reminds me of Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW in the expert way it tells a story brilliantly using the cinematic form (try telling that story without the edits, the POV and he frsming unique to cinema and it would be flat as hell) but, you know, for comics.

I struggle with the art on DEADWORLD and DEFOE so I'm going to save them and do them four episodes at a time.

I'm always amazed at the number of widely regarded fan movies on YouTube that are just fights. So I'll give that one a look.

Some absolute corkers in here.

Somebody suggested the term "fancy-dan" might not be treating people respectfully the other day. I couldn't find anything about it's use other than overly ostentatious. Turns out his father-in-law uses it in a very derogatory manner.

I'm with Tordels on decimated but I too have given up.

I still correct people on imply/infer and electrocuted/electric shock.

But imma prolly give up on "It's a big ask!".

No, it's a "big thing to ask". The evil that emerges from sports journo desks.

[The Reef]

The Reef
I've been partial to a shark movie ever since the summer of '75 when a copy of JAWS did the rounds at our school with all the dirty parts earmarked.

I mean, if I was ever eaten by a shark, you could genuinely say "It's what he would have wanted!"

I'm trying to think of a creature that has had more movies made about it which also fit in different sub genres (survival, horror, action, monster movie, adventure). Very versatile as 100 million years of evolution does for you.

I'd started watching THE MEG  when I was on holiday but only got forty minutes in before giving up.

But this, presumably low budget, Aussie film does the job. It favours suspense and tension over shocks and gore but keeps you on the edge of the seat for it's short 85 minute running time.

The shark is cleverly realised by pasting real shark footage into the same frame as the victims.

If I had to complain, they don't really give you enough character to care too much about; sure you sympathise with their plight but you aren't exactly rooting for them... more hoping for them. And they are just victims, this is a survival movie so doesn't have the cod heroics of, say The Shallows.

And if the dilemma the characters find themselves in is a metaphor for relationships, then the writer/director must have been dealt a shitty hand.

But overall, I liked it.

Plus Rambo III gets extra points for the giant Spetznatz kill; simultaneously exploded and hung.

I haven't watched 2008 for in an age so while it gets props for the themes of the cyclical nature of violence (particularly like the use of the bomb from a war long gone), it's a hard watch because there is too much slaughter  of innocents at the beginning.

 

I hear the 'Eastenders' theme in my head, every time I see the rear of that cover....

Reeekyyy!

While it occasionally came to life with wit and style, ultimately, it bored me.

Yeah. Cheese is as bad as bacon. Tempeh, Seitan, Quinoa; that's left wing.

I never see character A bumping into character B and them both having something in common as a problem. Isn't that how life and friendships work?

You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally you become heroes.

Love the bomber sequence too. Particularly "ten bloody minutes ago". Not the space battle I was expecting.it was better.

It put me in mind of the simarly awesome opening to Star Trek reboot which had everything in that beautifully rendered first ten minutes that you'd have to have been Vulcan not to have a lump in your throat. Born on a battlefield, indeed.