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alexsarllThe saga of my doppelgangers continues - now we have one who's definitely not the one someone thought I was in conversation (because he's deeply Glaswegian) or the one who was chased after in the belief he was me (because he would have responded, because he's also called Alex).
To my total unsurprise, the trailers were right and the critics were wrong; Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is all kinds of awesome. To have a Disney film open with a child being hanged? I love it! And that runs right through the film as we see the genuine horror and brutality of total war the East India Company way, as opposed to the swashbuckling fun of the pirate-on-pirate fights. It's a story about one paradigm trying to replace another, and if the happy ending is historically dishonest...well, so was the whole damn series, wasn't it? That's not why we're here. We're here for monkeys with rockets, Bill Nighy Is Cthulhu and of course, Captain Jack Sparrow. Which reminds me, the scenes in the Locker - I guarantee you, if that vision of Hell had been reproduced entire with someone ugly in the lead and the whole thing had been in an Iranian or Polish film, the critics would have fvcking creamed. Ditto the plot in general, which would then have been 'breathtakingly complex' as opposed to 'convoluted'. There were a couple of plot points where![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angelv and I needed to put our heads together to unravel it, but it does all make sense if you're paying attention - more than can be said for an awful lot of films (and I include in that some I like, such as 28 Weeks Later). Even if this had been, like that, a film of moments and images - Elizabeth Swann taking a line from the other Captain Jack's book when it comes to concealeed weapons, Keef, the best pastiche of action/love scenes I think I've ever seen - it would have been worth watching. As is, it's far more than that, it's a story about the (non-)passing of an age, and one with appropriate emotional weight to it.
Though if they make a sequel, they're fools.
The pilot for the first His Dark Materials film beforehand looked extremely promising too, bear CGI excepted.
Some thoughts ofalexdecampi's crystallised vague musings of my own - namely, that the explosion of Facebook seems to have left Myspace slightly tumbleweedy. A month or two ago, I was getting a minimum of ten Myspace bulletins a day (at least half from 586, but still). Now...two or three most days, sometimes only one. Is this just novelty value, or a long-term shift?
Comics recommendation: Gutsville, by Simon Spurrier and Frazer Irving. 2000AD fans will recognise that as the Simping Detective team, but elsewhere Irving is probably best known for Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers: Klarion. Which may mean he's at risk of getting typecast as the go-to artist for sunless netherworlds in which lost Puritan colonies battle human weakness as well as unnatural threats, but hey, he does do them very well. This time the setting is the interior of a giant sea-beast which swallowed their ship. The tagline: SEDITIONISTS WILL BE DIGESTED.
(And outlandish though the setting of Gutsville may be, I can intuitively understand what is going on, why the creators created it, and why people are expected to wish to read it. None of this can be said for issue three of New Avengers: Illuminati, quite the most bafflingly bad comic I have read since...ooh, Rann/Thanagar War?)
""I've fallen a little bit out of love writing songs in recent times... the interest for my own songs becomes less and less as years go on. I've written so many songs, and you find yourself re-treading the same ground," explains [Marc Almond]." One could be cruel and wish that this had occurred to Marc Almond a couple of albums sooner, but there are plenty of performers who've been in the business longer and still not come to this level of self-knowledge.
To my total unsurprise, the trailers were right and the critics were wrong; Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is all kinds of awesome. To have a Disney film open with a child being hanged? I love it! And that runs right through the film as we see the genuine horror and brutality of total war the East India Company way, as opposed to the swashbuckling fun of the pirate-on-pirate fights. It's a story about one paradigm trying to replace another, and if the happy ending is historically dishonest...well, so was the whole damn series, wasn't it? That's not why we're here. We're here for monkeys with rockets, Bill Nighy Is Cthulhu and of course, Captain Jack Sparrow. Which reminds me, the scenes in the Locker - I guarantee you, if that vision of Hell had been reproduced entire with someone ugly in the lead and the whole thing had been in an Iranian or Polish film, the critics would have fvcking creamed. Ditto the plot in general, which would then have been 'breathtakingly complex' as opposed to 'convoluted'. There were a couple of plot points where
angelv and I needed to put our heads together to unravel it, but it does all make sense if you're paying attention - more than can be said for an awful lot of films (and I include in that some I like, such as 28 Weeks Later). Even if this had been, like that, a film of moments and images - Elizabeth Swann taking a line from the other Captain Jack's book when it comes to concealeed weapons, Keef, the best pastiche of action/love scenes I think I've ever seen - it would have been worth watching. As is, it's far more than that, it's a story about the (non-)passing of an age, and one with appropriate emotional weight to it. Though if they make a sequel, they're fools.
The pilot for the first His Dark Materials film beforehand looked extremely promising too, bear CGI excepted.
Some thoughts of
alexdecampi's crystallised vague musings of my own - namely, that the explosion of Facebook seems to have left Myspace slightly tumbleweedy. A month or two ago, I was getting a minimum of ten Myspace bulletins a day (at least half from 586, but still). Now...two or three most days, sometimes only one. Is this just novelty value, or a long-term shift?Comics recommendation: Gutsville, by Simon Spurrier and Frazer Irving. 2000AD fans will recognise that as the Simping Detective team, but elsewhere Irving is probably best known for Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers: Klarion. Which may mean he's at risk of getting typecast as the go-to artist for sunless netherworlds in which lost Puritan colonies battle human weakness as well as unnatural threats, but hey, he does do them very well. This time the setting is the interior of a giant sea-beast which swallowed their ship. The tagline: SEDITIONISTS WILL BE DIGESTED.
(And outlandish though the setting of Gutsville may be, I can intuitively understand what is going on, why the creators created it, and why people are expected to wish to read it. None of this can be said for issue three of New Avengers: Illuminati, quite the most bafflingly bad comic I have read since...ooh, Rann/Thanagar War?)
""I've fallen a little bit out of love writing songs in recent times... the interest for my own songs becomes less and less as years go on. I've written so many songs, and you find yourself re-treading the same ground," explains [Marc Almond]." One could be cruel and wish that this had occurred to Marc Almond a couple of albums sooner, but there are plenty of performers who've been in the business longer and still not come to this level of self-knowledge.
