Category Archives: TV and Film

Things with wings and Angelfail

  By Alyx Dellamonica | September 23, 2011 - 10:14 am | Appearances, Photography, TV and Film, Uncategorized
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The cold I complained about last week is in the rearview, mostly, though I’ve been using it as an excuse to baby myself a bit this week. Summer, too, is almost out the door. It’s dark when I wake up at five-ish, and I’m finding that strangely welcome. I love everything about autumn here on the West Coast: the rainstorms and the gusting wind, the way the rain pounds the color out of fallen leaves, stamping their images onto the pavement. I love the way the orb weaver spiders kick into high gear… even though it means sometimes watching where you walk if you don’t want an arachnid on your face. At this time of year, we can play ‘count the spiders’ on our walk along the Cut, and marvel at how enormous some of them get.

I’m less enchanted with the big honking moths of fall, but as long as they’re on the other side of a thick pane of glass, I can appreciate how marvelously they’re put together.

Let me in!

Another sign of autumn is Vancouver’s SF convention, VCon, and I will be reading with DD Barant, Mary Choo, and Julie McGalliardon on Friday September 30th, as well as doing the writers workshop on Saturday. Are any of you going to be there? Look me up.

Turning to TV: kelly-yoyoKelly and I managed to watch ten minutes of the Charlie’s Angels reboot before it became obvious that not even the promise of a taste of childhood could offset the bad writing, acting, and directing. We tried Revenge instead, and that seemed promising. We thought we’d recognized the lead as Haley Bennett, who played Cora Corman on Music and Lyrics. It turns out, though, that she’s Emily Van Camp and we’ve never seen her in anything.

The flickering same old same old…

  By Alyx Dellamonica | September 22, 2011 - 10:00 am | TV and Film
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The new TV season is upon us and so far I’ve watched the Ringer pilot (as mentioned earlier) and two returning shows from last year. I watch Castle in spite of its scripts, because the cast and especially Captain Tightpants are funny and charming. Sadly, the premiere was a Serious Episode of Seriousness, and thus contained little of either. Next week, maybe…

Glee … mmm. I loved a couple of the numbers, and I’m always happy to hear something from Hairspray, but they were essentially pushing pieces around a board as they assemble the season three group. And while they were assembling, we had lots of Rachel–who’s not my favorite–and a bunch of noisy Will/Sue conflict, which I’d like if it ever went anywhere except the Same Damned Nowhere.

Why watch? There’s some funny. There’s some charming. There’s gay kids in love! It’s a musical. And the Tom Jones number (should we rename Daren Criss Cadet Officer Tightpants right now?) offset a lot of boredom.

Blurgh, Tube

  By Alyx Dellamonica | September 16, 2011 - 10:44 am | True Stories, TV and Film
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I rarely admit it publicly when I’m under the weather, as the primary symptom of every little bug I pick up can be characterized as “really doesn’t appreciate unsolicited medical advice.” This time is no exception, but I will say I am having my annual September go-round with germs, and it’s eaten into what I hoped would be a pocket of time and energy I’d set aside for blogging and working out. Next week, maybe, that’ll come together.

In the meantime, it’s cool enough to have the fire on, which is comforting and delightful and something of a relief.

I will say a few short things about TV, though: the best things about the first new episode of Inspector Lewis were its title (“Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things”) and Laurence Fox’s hair. The plot had about as much cause and effect as a bowl of overcooked spaghetti; if there was a Huh? award, it would rate one. Made me sad, it did. I love me my Lewis.

Doctor Who: loved “Let’s Kill Hitler,” especially all the Rory content, but felt meh about “The Girl who Waited,” which seemed to me to be an attempt to water down five minutes of potentially powerful emotion into twenty-five minutes of really coulda done something else there.

Progress through Torchwood has stalled midway, also due to plotfail.

Finally, I saw the Ringer pilot. This, I thought, had some promise: there’s enough of a plot there, at least, to get me interested, Sarah Michelle Gellar was well-cast, Ioan Gruffudd was a welcome surprise, and there were enough teeny ambiguous story elements in play to make it seem as though the possibilities are–if not endless–multidirectional. I’ve seen it characterized as noirish, and I’m not entirely sure I agree. Then again, I’m no noir expert, and I’m willing to wait and see.

Next week brings us Castle (and many other crime shows, returning and new) and the return of Glee.

What did you watch on your summer vacation?

  By Alyx Dellamonica | September 7, 2011 - 10:57 am | TV and Film, Uncategorized
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Now is, of course, the time of year when one’s thoughts turn to the new TV season… at least, they do if you’re me. The two new shows I plan to watch are Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Ringer and the fairy tale themed Once upon a Time. (Here’s the Ringer preview).

Over the summer, we tried out two new-to-us, old-to-you shows: Leverage and 30 Rock. We’re liking both: we’re midway through S2 of 30 Rock and, I think, S3 of Leverage.

Rufus, Rufus, he’s our man…

  By Alyx Dellamonica | July 20, 2011 - 9:59 am | TV and Film, Uncategorized
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The day I’ve been waiting for since Sherlock ended last fall has come: Masterpiece Mystery is back for the late summer/fall season, and they opened with “Vendetta,” which features Rufus Sewell as Roman detective Aurelio Zen. This gave Kelly and I the dual pleasure of a) getting to see Rufus play a fairly nice guy; b) in Rome! Which let me ogle important sights I plan to visit.

I enjoyed “Vendetta,” though it ended in something of a muddle. Clearly he is Up to Something, but I can’t see the greater outline of Aurelio’s plan yet, so I’m not sure what to think of it. There’s a good review here.

It looks promising, though: the setting’s great, and I like both Rufus and his love interest, Caterina Murino, with whom he has mad chemistry.


Horse tails and assorted bloggage

  By Alyx Dellamonica | May 21, 2011 - 12:20 pm | True Stories, TV and Film, Uncategorized
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I am alternating bits of blogging and correspondence with bursts of work on a big project today, so there are lots of photos going up in the usual places: my Flickr page, the Tumblr blog, all my virtual real estate. Some will come from yesterday’s dawn walk in Stanley Park.

I was at the park by 6:30 a.m., having walked Kelly to the bus so she could catch a plane to her aunt’s funeral. When I got to Lost Lagoon, it was me and about a dozen joggers, some with dogs. Later, when I picked up the lake trail, I had the entire place to myself… I saw maybe three other urban hikers in ninety minutes.

All but one of the swans seems to be off their nests but I’ve seen no cynets; in terms of photo ops, the best subjects were turtles, who were very happy indeed with the sunshine.

I don’t know Stanley Park all that well, despite having lived in Vancouver for twenty years. Now that I have a reason to be in Coal Harbor more regularly, I’m getting to know the place. I printed off a map and yesterday’s goal was to find Beaver Lake, which turned out to be gorgeous and smelly and apparently home to newts.

After three hours in the park (the herons sound like they’ve hatched, but are apparently too small to poke their baby dinosaur heads up yet) I came home and tackled the work pile in fits and starts, with naps and errands in between. It didn’t go all that well: my mind was too much on Auntie Joan, and the family, and when I embarked on a long errand I strained an already-tired muscle in my foot. But things got done; the day passed. At eight I knocked off and rewatched the first Sherlock, rang my wife, and dragged my butt off to bed.

Turtle in Bright Sun

Literary blackmail, televised DIY surgery and other lite squicks

  By Alyx Dellamonica | May 20, 2011 - 9:30 am | Articles, Resources for Writers, Reviews, TV and Film, Uncategorized
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I wrote a post this week for TOR.COM, about blackmail in fiction, and in Veronica Mars. The post is here; I hope to follow it up with some musings on other varieties of crime. Let me know what you think?

Second: I dunno how many of you have seen this past week’s new episode of a certain medical drama, so I’ll confine my comments on that to “OMG, squick! Ewww!” Either you know what I mean or that evil chuckle you hear is your DVR, waiting for you to boot it up.

Also TV adjacent, I am 3/5 of the way through watching Mildred Pierce on HBO and should probably hold my tongue until I see the conclusion, but I have to say that as viewing experiences go, this one so far has been entirely bizarre. Kate Winslet is fantastic, as usual, and her Lauren Bacall accent is a marvel to hear. And I’m always so happy to see Melissa Leo in anything.

But the story–I haven’t read the original novel–has all this peculiar class and gender stuff.

The message so far seems to be that men are useless parasites, and… um… something about social class and snobbery involving Guy Pearce’s naked bum. Seriously. The class stuff is, at this mid-point in the story, entirely murky. Mildred was a snob, but now she seems to be evolving. Unless she isn’t. It’s incredibly hard to tell.

The story is just intriguing enough to keep me watching, but it’s also very cold. Kate as Mildred seems as though she should be poised to be a source of joy and warmth in an otherwise harsh and chilly world, but she’s as icy as everyone and everything else. I am entirely baffled by it.

What kind of sexy are we looking for today?

  By Alyx Dellamonica | March 21, 2011 - 7:30 am | Process, TV and Film, Uncategorized, Works in Progress
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On Friday morning, I posted the following on Twitter and Facebook:

Trying to decide on a physical type for sexy recurring minor character. Is he a Denzel Washington? Jon Hamm? Giancarlo Esposito?

I looked at that and thought, I have no idea who the hot young guys are these days.

Rather than actually buckling down to work–I’d slept poorly–I considered Glee, because it’s got the highest profile and the youngest cast of the Hollywood Stuff I watch. Will Schuster, as I’ve recently discussed, is not my thing. Finn? Meh. Trouty Mouth, a.k.a. Chord Overstreet? Ewww, Trouty Mouth!! Kurt and Blaine are lovely and gay and this character is bait for a 24-year-old female extrovert. Burt’s too uncle-y. Kevin McHale, is adorable, I admit, and could totally play the role if I were actually casting a movie–but Artie himself is too buttoned down. And I like Puck the character enormously, but I’d call Mark Salling more charming than cute.

(I’ve also recently seen the vampire boy from Twilight on the cover of Vanity Fair, by the way, and all I can say is a world of no to that action.)

On the one hand, this is the perfect sort of question to throw to the Twitternets just for the fun of it. It was also an insufficiency of information to offer, or it would have been if I were seriously looking for help. Maggieno immediately asked what kind of sexy I wanted. Jon Hamm sexy, she pointed out, does not equal Johnny Depp sexy. She went on to ask: Sexy as in wild, hot, slam-n-g’bye? Sexy as in grab a blanket, find a cozy place, and start canoodling right NOW?

(As I was underslept and set on random that morning, I have to tell you that this made me think: “Must stop using the verb canoodling so imprecisely.” Because I use it to describe a mental process whereby I play with story ideas in my head, or sometimes in e-mails to Snuffy when I need to bounce a story problem off someone exceedingly patient. Bad writer! Wrong usage! Although, considering the uses I’m going to put this particular character to… oh, sorry!)

The thing was, the reason I was going through the mental flip-file of celebrity nom was to decide just that. What kind of sexy?

Anyway. I got suggestions, both of actors and of characters. Spike and Angel from Buffy. (Great characters, and creditably heterosexual, but they don’t rank high on my cute scale.) Hugh Jackman in a utilikilt, from Breklor. Jason Stathum whom I’d never heard of, but whose name reminded me of David Strathairn, which made me think, I really don’t know who the hot young guys are these days.

A smart-ass cousin suggested our Prime Minister, which is to gag. Thank you for that at seven in the morning, Colleen. I will have my revenge.

I do like Hugh Jackman, though. I thought: Is he a hot young guy? But no, IMDB says we were born in exactly the same year.

So far, Johnny Depp is the winner. Because yes, I am thinking rather of a grab-a-blanket now guy, but not so much a keeper. If nothing else, Johnny’s got not a keeper written all over him.

How do you solve a problem like Will Schuster?

  By Alyx Dellamonica | March 14, 2011 - 9:08 am | Reviews, TV and Film
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Glee has become a lot more loosely scripted this season, which annoys the hell out of my writer brain. It shouldn’t, perhaps. I should just buy into it as if it were opera, because really that’s what it is evolving into: a series of loosely connected, genuinely awesome emotional moments–like the Kurt/Burt scene in “Sexy”– set to music.

There’s so much good I feel bad about complaining. An out gay kid, OMG! With a supportive family! Eee! And the expanded cast has some terrific new characters… though this does mean there’s less action for the folks I love. In particular there’s less Mercedes, less Kurt and less wild-eyed ranting of Sue. Then again, there’s also less of some of the characters I’m not so keen on, characters I don’t love, and plenty of wholesome Artie content.

Anyway, with my backbrain grumbling about the plot, what plot, got plot? between viewings, I forget, sometimes, how much I am enjoying the show now that things with That One storyline, the one that was troubling me, have moved on. One thing I am liking a lot is that there are three unabashedly plus-sized women on the show (that’d be Mercedes Jones, Coach Shannon Bieste, and lately, Lauren Zyses) and not one of them is a villain or a full-time object of ridicule.

Oh, Lauren, I’m oddly in love with you! The crap you hand out to Puck, and the way he bends himself, pretzel-like, around your boundaries, give me no end of joy. Everything you do is magic. And the simple fact that an undisputed high school hottie who could be banging the likes of Santana is instead pursuing a large, proud, demanding, athletic woman… well, it’s delightful. I remember the twiglike cast of Buffy (which I adored, don’t get me wrong) and I compare it with this trio of curvy womanhood and it warms the heart.

Sadly, no amount of Lauren can keep my writerbrain from carping about Will Schuster.

Will is, was and will always be the center of the adult-themed storyline. He’s the major driver for Glee‘s Let’s set the Karate Kid to Music! overall story arc. In the first season, he had so many interesting things to push against: his attraction to Emma, the failing marriage to Terri, Sue’s multiple attempts to sabotage him and, above all, his own competitive demons. The guy had to keep figuring out that glee club was about the kids, not him. It worked, I thought, pretty well.

Nowadays he seems to be all out of push.

Matthew Morrison is such a talented performer. I was thrilled to see him tango and sing in “Sexy.” But he’s seeming underused. Is this character at a dead end? Am I the only one who misses the days when he was fighting to hold the kids together, dodging Sue/Terri attacks of utter bizarre, and occasionally even managing to teach stuff?

These days, Will flails. Sometimes toward or away from Emma, sometimes at Sue, sometimes at getting the kids to Nationals. I am loving his friendship with Shannon, but that’s frosting–it doesn’t a storyline make. Getting just a mouthful of cake now and then would make me so much happier.

I’m not asking for Whedon here, or even Shakespeare, and I am having fun, I am. What do you think, interpeeps? Is it just me?