I shan't even attempt to pin down the weirdness into any kind of specific order, and a lot of the weirdness has been the bitty, random dream sequences I've had. There has been quite a bit of real-life weirdness, though.
First and foremost, after consulting a solicitor about the issues with my roof, I had a visit from the managing agents, the landlord - in person - and a roofer. They started out with a quick look at the state of the ceilings in my hall, bathroom and bedroom, then had a look up on the roof.
The landlord was very vocally apologetic - that is, he said he was very sorry and that he would endeavour to fix the situation as soon as possible - but this is a problem five years (or more) in the making. An apology would have been nice about three or four years ago... now, it's pretty meaningless. No plan of action was discussed in my presence, and they disappeared very quickly once they were done on the roof. I tried calling the managing agents last week but had to leave a message asking for a call back... and didn't get one. The person who's supposedly 'dealing with this' has a habit of not getting back to me where others - admittedly lower down the hierarchy - have been a little better.
The roofer had mentioned something about properly weatherproofing the roof - rather than having one tarpaulin just over my roof, he recommended a series of overlapping tarpaulins, properly joined, over the entire roof surface. This rather begs the question of why none of the other roofers have suggested that - in fact, most have said there was nothing they could do short of renewing the roof - though I guess they were offering free solutions rather than sensible solutions...
There wasn't time for them to have properly weatherproofed the entire roof during that visit, and they haven't been back since while I've been around, so I can only assume it hasn't yet been done. Weirdly, though, the last time we had heavy rain (and hail) the flat remained dry until late in the evening, when a few drips came through in the bedroom, but the hall and bathroom remained dry.
Next up, I had a job interview last week... Something like two months after I applied, and close to a month after I assumed they weren't calling me in. It's possible I got my dates confused, but I was sure they wanted someone to start at the beginning of this month...
Whatever... It was easily the most bizarre interview I've ever attended, with the two interviewers - the Production Manager and one of the Editorial folks - spending a good deal of time basically slagging off a large number of their colleagues. OK, granted, the relationship between Production/Editorial and Sales tends to be strained at the best of times, but for them to describe their salespeople as "unprofessional" and "not intelligent" is going a bit far. I've interviewed people and had to say much the same kind of thing, but I've always managed to find a better way, using less specific and negative language. I've also been able to discuss the positive elements of a job in Production, whereas these two didn't even touch on positives. I can't actually remember what the salary was, but it wasn't mentioned in the interview, so they clearly didn't think that was much of an enticement either.
What was rather interesting about the experience was that, everywhere I've worked as a temp, the general rule is that no-one ever leaves Production... unless made redundant, that is. If you're there, chances are you enjoy it, even if there is an element of masochism to that enjoyment. People only move on if they're unhappy... and they were set to lose two of their four/five Production staff, and claimed to be having trouble finding suitable candidates to replace them.
I left the interview wondering why anyone would ever want a job there - their primitive systems are likely to be the cause of many of their problems and their salespeople sounded truly terrible (I mentioned the 'time travellers' at my old place, and they reckoned they had a few of those). The only ray of hope was that the two interviewing me seemed to be on reasonable terms... so at least their Production and Editorial teams should have a healthy relationship.
At any rate, they said I'd hear from them by the end of the week, but I didn't... Not even a rejection... all the more strange because the subject of temporary work came up in the interview.
On the dream front, I had one recently which, at one point, had one of the mob folks from The Sopranos after me for a bit of 'accounting' work. All I can really remember about that one is that my first thought was that I really should have passed it on to a friend of mine who, in real life, works in Accounts. In another one, I was at a restaurant of some kind which miraculously turned into a Blondie concert... which caused me to wonder about a real-life friend of mine who's a fan. At one point, on stage, Debbie Harry turned to walk across the stage and was somehow replaced by a hollow model of her dress with only part of her head. Neat effect... There were lots more, but I haven't been taking notes and have left it far too long to write about any of them... Ah well.
This last weekend saw the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, which was all rather fun. The celebration started a week or two ago, with lots of documentaries and, last week, a dramatisation of the origins of the TV show. I need to watch the 50th Anniversary Special again, so I'll write that up separately...
Monday, 25 November 2013
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
Out Of Alignment
First off, I wouldn't be at all surprised if lots of people saw the sixth episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as further evidence that Joss Whedon has been neutered by his involvement in such a huge franchise. One of the team gets infected with an alien virus, tries to jump out of the jet to save her comrades, but is miraculously saved. I'll admit that half of me was hoping that they'd allow Simmons to fall to her death, because that would have been a welcome boot up the arse of the series... It's not just a matter of showing that 'no-one is safe' (which seems to be about the only thing that excites people about ensemble dramas these days - probably thanks to the legions of people who watched Game of Thrones without ever having heard of the books, let alone read them) to prove that Joss Whedon is back on form. I mean, let's not forget that none of the key players died in the first series of Buffy or the oft-cited, much-loved supposed pinnacle of Whedon's TV career, Firefly. Killing off one of the agents only a few episodes into the first season would just be pandering to the wrong crowd.
The half of me that was hoping for Simmons to die thought that it would be interesting to see Fitz develop without his other half - because, let's face it, the moniker 'Fitzsimmons' accurately reflects the impression that they might as well be one person.
The half of me that was certain she wouldn't - couldn't - die was more interested in seeing how the team develops as-is, rather than suddenly being either cut down or having to work in another new 'permanent' character. I have to admit that the team's current dynamic reminds me more than a little of the idiots from the first two series of Torchwood, only perhaps a little more professional and certainly not as oversexed. They're supposedly all brilliant in their fields, and they manage to solve each week's problem within the allotted 45 minutes, but they all act like students... and long-term readers of this blog will probably know my opinions on students (in terms of the general stereotype - I'm dating a student, so I know they don't all fit that stereotype). Part of it is that some writers assume 'snappy dialogue' means 'ceaseless infantile bickering' and, while AoS's writers aren't quite that bad - certainly nowhere near the likes of Star Trek: Enterprise - there are better ways of creating snappy character interaction.
Over the weekend, while the skies were clear, I suggested to my girlfriend that we attempt a little stargazing with my cheapo reflector telescope but, despite standing out in the cold on my balcony for something approaching half an hour, we never got much further than the certainty that I should properly calibrate the damned thing before attempting anything like that again. Today, I did just that.
It was an interesting process, hampered slightly by the fact that the image I get through the eyepiece is either 135° out of true or, more likely, upside down and only 45° out. Either way, the little laser pointer on the viewfinder was nowhere near whatever the telescope was looking at when I started, but now it's about as good as I can get it without turning the viewfinder into some kind of telescopic sight. With any luck and favourable weather, we should be able to see the moon fairly well when it's next in the right area of the sky.
Also over the weekend, I went to see the second Thor movie. I noted, when writing about the first film, that the biggest problem is that Thor isn't one of the most interesting characters in the Marvel pantheon. With the introduction out of the way, the film-makers had free reign to tell a proper story, delving further into the mythos. It's an interesting take on the Norse myths, but that small fact alone meant that even this film required a lengthy exposition, narrated by Anthony Hopkins, at the beginning. Just like any movie of this kind, it has its share of plot holes - for a story about the alignment of the nine realms of Yggdrasil, the fixation on Greenwich in particular was pretty bizarre, though that did lead to a couple of interesting moments of comedy, not least Thor boarding the tube (though I should have made a note of the station he boarded at, as I'm sure the directions he got were wrong!) - and much of the portal-related shenanigans were not properly concluded. For a film that weighed in almost 2 hours, it felt like a lot of the story ended up on the editing room floor, with huge great jumps from scene to scene in quite a few places. The tertiary characters had virtually nothing to do (I was particularly disappointed by how little screen time Zachary Levi had, taking over the role of Fandral from Josh Dallas, who's now occupied in filming Once Upon A Time) and Thor himself had very little to do other than hitting things... But perhaps that's about par for the course for the guy who wields Mjölnir. I had to explain the post-credits sequence with the Collector and an Infinity Gem to the friend I was with but, since I only had Capcom's old fighting game, Marvel Superheroes, as a reference, I probably didn't explain it very well. It was a fun film, just nothing outstanding...
The half of me that was hoping for Simmons to die thought that it would be interesting to see Fitz develop without his other half - because, let's face it, the moniker 'Fitzsimmons' accurately reflects the impression that they might as well be one person.
The half of me that was certain she wouldn't - couldn't - die was more interested in seeing how the team develops as-is, rather than suddenly being either cut down or having to work in another new 'permanent' character. I have to admit that the team's current dynamic reminds me more than a little of the idiots from the first two series of Torchwood, only perhaps a little more professional and certainly not as oversexed. They're supposedly all brilliant in their fields, and they manage to solve each week's problem within the allotted 45 minutes, but they all act like students... and long-term readers of this blog will probably know my opinions on students (in terms of the general stereotype - I'm dating a student, so I know they don't all fit that stereotype). Part of it is that some writers assume 'snappy dialogue' means 'ceaseless infantile bickering' and, while AoS's writers aren't quite that bad - certainly nowhere near the likes of Star Trek: Enterprise - there are better ways of creating snappy character interaction.
Over the weekend, while the skies were clear, I suggested to my girlfriend that we attempt a little stargazing with my cheapo reflector telescope but, despite standing out in the cold on my balcony for something approaching half an hour, we never got much further than the certainty that I should properly calibrate the damned thing before attempting anything like that again. Today, I did just that.
It was an interesting process, hampered slightly by the fact that the image I get through the eyepiece is either 135° out of true or, more likely, upside down and only 45° out. Either way, the little laser pointer on the viewfinder was nowhere near whatever the telescope was looking at when I started, but now it's about as good as I can get it without turning the viewfinder into some kind of telescopic sight. With any luck and favourable weather, we should be able to see the moon fairly well when it's next in the right area of the sky.
Also over the weekend, I went to see the second Thor movie. I noted, when writing about the first film, that the biggest problem is that Thor isn't one of the most interesting characters in the Marvel pantheon. With the introduction out of the way, the film-makers had free reign to tell a proper story, delving further into the mythos. It's an interesting take on the Norse myths, but that small fact alone meant that even this film required a lengthy exposition, narrated by Anthony Hopkins, at the beginning. Just like any movie of this kind, it has its share of plot holes - for a story about the alignment of the nine realms of Yggdrasil, the fixation on Greenwich in particular was pretty bizarre, though that did lead to a couple of interesting moments of comedy, not least Thor boarding the tube (though I should have made a note of the station he boarded at, as I'm sure the directions he got were wrong!) - and much of the portal-related shenanigans were not properly concluded. For a film that weighed in almost 2 hours, it felt like a lot of the story ended up on the editing room floor, with huge great jumps from scene to scene in quite a few places. The tertiary characters had virtually nothing to do (I was particularly disappointed by how little screen time Zachary Levi had, taking over the role of Fandral from Josh Dallas, who's now occupied in filming Once Upon A Time) and Thor himself had very little to do other than hitting things... But perhaps that's about par for the course for the guy who wields Mjölnir. I had to explain the post-credits sequence with the Collector and an Infinity Gem to the friend I was with but, since I only had Capcom's old fighting game, Marvel Superheroes, as a reference, I probably didn't explain it very well. It was a fun film, just nothing outstanding...
Tuesday, 5 November 2013
Unconclusions
Continuing the thread about recent episodic television rather than doing something constructive with my time, the first seasons of a couple of shows have recently either ended or reached their penultimate episodes.
Orphan Black concluded last week with the introduction of yet another clone and the revelation that the least likely suspect for Alison's monitor - the one person she conclusively eliminated in her brief investigation - is actually her monitor after all. Because, let's face it, if you send a bunch of clones out into the world to observe them, you're not going to start observing them after they hit 30, it's going to be a lifetime deal.
Still more twists were thrown in with the arrival of the protagonist's (alleged) birth mother and the revelation that the doppelgänger who's been offing the others is her biological sister, not 'just another clone'. But that's not all... Going back to the previous bit about being monitored for life, it's been hinted that the protagonist's foster mother may not be all she appears... so the 'abduction' of the anomalous daughter is most likely very much staged... And now that the Police are aware that a number of women in their current investigation look identical, things are about to get complicated for all of the clones and the groups who are tracking them.
In spite of some of my less positive comments about the series, it kept me watching. I think my main gripe is that it feels like two very different ideas for the series were just thrown together. On the one hand, there's the science fiction story about a long-term experiment into human cloning... only, by the end of series one, we still don't know anything about the purpose of this experiment, other than its connection to the 'Neolution' movement, promoted by Max Headroom (sorry, but I cannot see Matt Frewer in anything without remembering his most famous role as a computer generated TV star, back in the 80s - I think he's a great actor and it's great to see him in TV shows like this, an especially in movies like Watchmen... but I'm always half expecting him to whip out a pair of 80's sunglasses and stutter). On the other hand, there's the sub-Dan Brown conspiracy thriller with a shadowy religious organisation out to kill all the clones simply because they weren't born naturally and so aren't 'real people'. The fact that this facet of the story took a back seat - turning up for an episode or two, then disappearing till the end of the series - made it feel very tacked on. It's also a massive cliché that only seems to exist because the protagonist's birth mother made the arbitrary, and thusfar unexplained, choice to hide her twin daughters separately - "one to the church, one to the state" - almost like the separation of twins Luke and Leia in the Star Wars movies... Kinda...
The way threads started tying together in the last few episodes was a big hint that the last episode wasn't going to be the conclusion of the story, just the first chapter. It was a huge cliffhanger of an ending designed to set up the next series which, in this day and age, is a very risky proposition.
Under The Dome reached its first season's penultimate episode this last weekend, and the clichés just kept piling in. Local businessman and aspiring tyrant 'Big Jim' Rennie decides he wants the dome to stay? Check. Four teenagers (with attitude!) set up to save the day, if only they can learn to work together and trust each other? Check. Anyone who can threaten or stop 'Big Jim' mysteriously turns up dead, yet everyone still believes him when he points the finger at someone else despite the fact that half the town now knows about his dodgy dealings? Check.
Never having read any Steven King (other than the Bachman books and his 'Memoir of the Craft', On Writing), I'm not sure how typical this is of his stuff, but this TV adaptation shares the common malaise of television series, in that none of the characters behave with any common sense. Far too many people are putting their own suspicions aside and following their budding tyrant, volunteering to have their personal freedoms cast aside 'for the good of the town' (fuck... is this some kind of metaphor for how 'the free world' is gradually - and without any apparent resistance or questioning - becoming less 'free' than many dictatorships? Politics masquerading as sci-fi?). The four kids are essentially the Power Rangers, just without any apparent skills - witness their useless attempts at concealing the 'mini-dome' and its 'egg' - and one of them is basically a complete loony, and the son of the villain of the piece.
Initially, I'd thought it was going to be a single mini-series - it is based on a single book, after all, not a trilogy - but it seems that almost 900 pages of novel can be happily spread out over more than thirteen episodes. Quite reasonable, I suppose, but annoying nonetheless.
Of course, as one series ends, another will always spring back... and the BBC's Ripper Street returned last week. It's just as ludicrous as ever, but fairly good viewing. This series introduced Joseph Merrick (aka the Elephant Man) and turned him into a key player in what is sure to be this season's main story arc (Reid vs his improbably named and very corrupt nemesis, Detective Inspector Jebediah Shine) only to have him killed off (linking to his actual cause of death) in the second episode. There's also a new addition to the team at Whitechapel, played by Damien Molony, formerly Hal in the last two series of Being Human. So far, they've made much of him being "a boy" (ie. too young for the territory), but shown him to be a shrewd investigator... which is what they probably need.
Still on the subject of TV, I've been reading lots of odd things about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. lately, most of which are "it's not (as good as) Firefly". This strikes me as rather silly and very unfair, not least because it's nothing like Firefly except inasmuch as it's another ensemble cast action drama with funny bits. It may be Joss Whedon's show, but it's a Marvel property so there are likely to have been some constraints placed on the production (not least, for example, they're not allowed to use the term 'mutant' because that 'belongs' in the X-Men movie franchise!).
But here's the critical thing: Every TV show Joss Whedon has created since Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been cancelled prematurely. Buffy ran for seven seasons and, frankly, had become more than a little repetitive and silly before the finale. Angel, the spin-off featuring a piece of wood as a vampire with a soul, started out running parallel to Buffy, but only lasted for one further year - one very rushed-to-conclusion season - after its progenitor ended. Firefly turned up alongside both, but was cancelled before it finished its first season. Dollhouse came about long afterwards and limped through two seasons with very little actually happening.
All this focus on Firefly is all very well - it was an excellent series and deserved to carry on. Not only that, but I was deeply unsatisfied with the open ending of the cinematic 'conclusion', Serenity. However, fixating on it as a template for success - even within the fandom - is counter-productive. It's highly unlikely, even following Whedon's success within the Marvel movie franchise, that Firefly will ever come back. It's a sad fact, but a fact nonethless. So rather than fixating on that, surely it's better to view Agents with fresh eyes, and take it for what it is - another entry into Marvel's TV history, alongside the likes of the Amazing Spiderman and Hulk series I watched as a nipper. Personally, I'm enjoying it immensely... though the revelations about Skye were predictable. It hasn't done anything outstanding it terms of human drama but, considering its pedigree (on the Marvel & ABC sides, specifically) that's not exactly a surprise. Besides, something tells me there's a big revelation to come about Coulson.
Orphan Black concluded last week with the introduction of yet another clone and the revelation that the least likely suspect for Alison's monitor - the one person she conclusively eliminated in her brief investigation - is actually her monitor after all. Because, let's face it, if you send a bunch of clones out into the world to observe them, you're not going to start observing them after they hit 30, it's going to be a lifetime deal.
Still more twists were thrown in with the arrival of the protagonist's (alleged) birth mother and the revelation that the doppelgänger who's been offing the others is her biological sister, not 'just another clone'. But that's not all... Going back to the previous bit about being monitored for life, it's been hinted that the protagonist's foster mother may not be all she appears... so the 'abduction' of the anomalous daughter is most likely very much staged... And now that the Police are aware that a number of women in their current investigation look identical, things are about to get complicated for all of the clones and the groups who are tracking them.
In spite of some of my less positive comments about the series, it kept me watching. I think my main gripe is that it feels like two very different ideas for the series were just thrown together. On the one hand, there's the science fiction story about a long-term experiment into human cloning... only, by the end of series one, we still don't know anything about the purpose of this experiment, other than its connection to the 'Neolution' movement, promoted by Max Headroom (sorry, but I cannot see Matt Frewer in anything without remembering his most famous role as a computer generated TV star, back in the 80s - I think he's a great actor and it's great to see him in TV shows like this, an especially in movies like Watchmen... but I'm always half expecting him to whip out a pair of 80's sunglasses and stutter). On the other hand, there's the sub-Dan Brown conspiracy thriller with a shadowy religious organisation out to kill all the clones simply because they weren't born naturally and so aren't 'real people'. The fact that this facet of the story took a back seat - turning up for an episode or two, then disappearing till the end of the series - made it feel very tacked on. It's also a massive cliché that only seems to exist because the protagonist's birth mother made the arbitrary, and thusfar unexplained, choice to hide her twin daughters separately - "one to the church, one to the state" - almost like the separation of twins Luke and Leia in the Star Wars movies... Kinda...
The way threads started tying together in the last few episodes was a big hint that the last episode wasn't going to be the conclusion of the story, just the first chapter. It was a huge cliffhanger of an ending designed to set up the next series which, in this day and age, is a very risky proposition.
Under The Dome reached its first season's penultimate episode this last weekend, and the clichés just kept piling in. Local businessman and aspiring tyrant 'Big Jim' Rennie decides he wants the dome to stay? Check. Four teenagers (with attitude!) set up to save the day, if only they can learn to work together and trust each other? Check. Anyone who can threaten or stop 'Big Jim' mysteriously turns up dead, yet everyone still believes him when he points the finger at someone else despite the fact that half the town now knows about his dodgy dealings? Check.
Never having read any Steven King (other than the Bachman books and his 'Memoir of the Craft', On Writing), I'm not sure how typical this is of his stuff, but this TV adaptation shares the common malaise of television series, in that none of the characters behave with any common sense. Far too many people are putting their own suspicions aside and following their budding tyrant, volunteering to have their personal freedoms cast aside 'for the good of the town' (fuck... is this some kind of metaphor for how 'the free world' is gradually - and without any apparent resistance or questioning - becoming less 'free' than many dictatorships? Politics masquerading as sci-fi?). The four kids are essentially the Power Rangers, just without any apparent skills - witness their useless attempts at concealing the 'mini-dome' and its 'egg' - and one of them is basically a complete loony, and the son of the villain of the piece.
Initially, I'd thought it was going to be a single mini-series - it is based on a single book, after all, not a trilogy - but it seems that almost 900 pages of novel can be happily spread out over more than thirteen episodes. Quite reasonable, I suppose, but annoying nonetheless.
Of course, as one series ends, another will always spring back... and the BBC's Ripper Street returned last week. It's just as ludicrous as ever, but fairly good viewing. This series introduced Joseph Merrick (aka the Elephant Man) and turned him into a key player in what is sure to be this season's main story arc (Reid vs his improbably named and very corrupt nemesis, Detective Inspector Jebediah Shine) only to have him killed off (linking to his actual cause of death) in the second episode. There's also a new addition to the team at Whitechapel, played by Damien Molony, formerly Hal in the last two series of Being Human. So far, they've made much of him being "a boy" (ie. too young for the territory), but shown him to be a shrewd investigator... which is what they probably need.
Still on the subject of TV, I've been reading lots of odd things about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. lately, most of which are "it's not (as good as) Firefly". This strikes me as rather silly and very unfair, not least because it's nothing like Firefly except inasmuch as it's another ensemble cast action drama with funny bits. It may be Joss Whedon's show, but it's a Marvel property so there are likely to have been some constraints placed on the production (not least, for example, they're not allowed to use the term 'mutant' because that 'belongs' in the X-Men movie franchise!).
But here's the critical thing: Every TV show Joss Whedon has created since Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been cancelled prematurely. Buffy ran for seven seasons and, frankly, had become more than a little repetitive and silly before the finale. Angel, the spin-off featuring a piece of wood as a vampire with a soul, started out running parallel to Buffy, but only lasted for one further year - one very rushed-to-conclusion season - after its progenitor ended. Firefly turned up alongside both, but was cancelled before it finished its first season. Dollhouse came about long afterwards and limped through two seasons with very little actually happening.
All this focus on Firefly is all very well - it was an excellent series and deserved to carry on. Not only that, but I was deeply unsatisfied with the open ending of the cinematic 'conclusion', Serenity. However, fixating on it as a template for success - even within the fandom - is counter-productive. It's highly unlikely, even following Whedon's success within the Marvel movie franchise, that Firefly will ever come back. It's a sad fact, but a fact nonethless. So rather than fixating on that, surely it's better to view Agents with fresh eyes, and take it for what it is - another entry into Marvel's TV history, alongside the likes of the Amazing Spiderman and Hulk series I watched as a nipper. Personally, I'm enjoying it immensely... though the revelations about Skye were predictable. It hasn't done anything outstanding it terms of human drama but, considering its pedigree (on the Marvel & ABC sides, specifically) that's not exactly a surprise. Besides, something tells me there's a big revelation to come about Coulson.
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