Derpy musings

So a show associated with Joss Whedon (but which apparently isn't "a Joss Whedon show") got a massive quality boost after turning one of its main characters evil.

Buffy Season Two?  Dollhouse Season Two?  (Come on, Firefly would have done this with Book, except, y'know.)  Angel...  Well, the closest Angel got to turning one of its main characters - as opposed to a character who showed up in the main credits for a year but was honestly never part of the "family" - evil was when Wesley got kicked out of the group towards the end of Season 3.

Now, I'm not saying this is Joss's most overused trope. Because it's not. "Team breaks up and then comes back together" is Joss's most overused trope. Exhibit A: (Marvel's) The Avengers. But of his shows that did this... they tended to do it right when those shows grew the beard.

Coincidence?

There's a moment in Moon where Sam-5 wakes up in the medbay and Sam-6 is watching him, and Sam-5 looks down to the burn on his hand and everyone in the audience goes OMFG I forgot about that.

There needs to be a word for that sort of thing.

Here's a terrifying thought experiment

Imagine a world where you could only have one window on your computer open at a time.

Gabberfraky. I realized that I never actually did a review of Moon. I wrote about it very, very briefly back in 2011.

So that's on the menu for summer break.

A sure sign that, at 25, my childhood is finally over.

I own a Nintendo 64, a GameCube, and what until recently was a Wii and is now a very expensive brick.

I have no intention of buying a Wii U.

...okay, granted, I have a gaming PC. Never mind, folks, the party's still on.

Totally not a review of The Third Man

Obligatory:

Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Also obligatory:

On to more substantive materials.

I quite liked it.

At some point I will feel compelled enough to do a post that's nothing but comparisons between stuff in this film and stuff that The Living Daylights lifted from this film - by the way, if you like Daniel Craig but have never heard of Timothy Dalton, go watch The Living Daylights Right. Now.

I will say, however, that this film has a problem. It's the same problem as That Other Film What's Got Orson Welles In It That I Done Seen Oooh Okay Not Casino Royale 1967 Let Us Never Speak Of That One Again, and that's that the ending falls heavily into, um, It Was His Sled territory. And it's a bigger problem here than it was in Citizen Kane.

But more on that in a moment. There are a couple of things I want to praise this movie for.

1) the cinematography. Dear sweet lord, the cinematography is utterly stunning. Well-deserved Oscar on that one. In particular the wonderful chiaroscuro from The Reveal basically through the end of the film. A bit less so the sewer chase, which does drag a bit and - awkwardly, since it was actually filmed in real sewers - keeps looking like they're trying to pass off the same set as different locations. (Update: Ah, Orson Welles apparently refused to go down there, so any time you can see his face, it is a set.)  Still, Dutch Angles For Life.

2) Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. (It's not Kane and Leland, it's Harry and Holly.) Especially Orson Welles - who apparently wrote the cuckoo clock speech himself - but also Joseph Cotten. Oh, and that's Bernard Lee, the original M, as Sgt. Paine. Let me back up a second here. Orson Welles has about 10 minutes of screen time and is utterly enthralling in every second of it. Even when he's foofing around in the sewer at the end.

3) The Ferris wheel scene should be required watching at film school from here to kingdom come. Welles mesmerizingly, effortlessly, switches back and forth between Your Best Friend and Complete And Total Monster.

Hokai. SPLOILERS. (C'mon, it's The Third Man. You know this one already.)

Can't stand io9's new comment feature.

Actually, can't stand io9's pretense at being apolitical, but wah wah troubling right-wing goose-stepping creeping about advancing behavior.

The comments, as redesigned probably six months ago, just don't work well. Used to be clear where the breaks were between topics.

Now... on this article the comments go from talking about The Spy Who Loved Me (starring Roger Moore) straight to a comment that says "I wish Moore would stop bitching." The Moore in the second comment being Alan, not Roger.

Change it baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 51) Sansa IV: Be Careful What You Wish For

Previously on A Game of Thrones, one Stark girl managed to escape (with a lot of luck/help/reluctance). How'd the other one do?

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 50) Arya IV: Still Less Ridiculous than Yoda With A Lightsaber

Previously on A Game of Thrones Littleprick was a little prick.

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 49) Eddard XIV: Well, I Didn’t Vote For You

G'day.

If you are reading this brubbery you have less sense than Eddard Stark in a Small Council meeting. We all know what happens - it's a very short chapter -  and my comments tend to be less snarky and more meligrubrious. The Oxford English Dictionary has not yet come up with a definition for "meligrubrious," so let me coin one: Pointless, hate-fueled frippery, or: what Democrats think of every Republican talking point.

Previously on I HATE SAM HE SLOWS DOWN THE PLOT AND ADDS NOTHING OF VALUE, AND THIS IS DOUBLY TRUE ON THAT "ADAPTATION" PORNO HBO IS DOING, Ned Stark continued to bungle his way through a succession crisis.

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 48) Jon VI: “Obey Orders” is Curiously Absent From That Oath

Previously on A Game of Thrones, King Robert developed a sudden and entirely unforeseeable case of boar-tusk-through-the-jamberbellies.  Previously in a Jon Snow chapter, we learned that King Leonidas Jon Snow is not.