More Misc. Media Blogging - Buffy S-8, Dollhouse, Wheel of Time, My Summer of Love
Another round of miscellaneous media blogging. The first part is from a week or so back and I didn't get around to posting it. The rest is from this evening.
Warning: Lots of Spoilers
The rest is behind the cut
I picked up the two most recent issues from Season 8 of Buffy a couple of days ago, and finished reading them this morning. I enjoyed both of them, particularly the Willow standalone which was just very well written and shows a lot of her character growth quickly. But on reflection, I'm somewhat annoyed by one particular aspect of #31-Turbulence. Most of the script is pretty good, the art's not bad, and the Jo Chen cover rocks, but the combination of a Wiffy ship tease opening and the bit where Buffy inexplicably decides to tell Xander she's into him following her discovery that he and Dawn are involved is both bizarre and taunting.
I just don't get it, maybe there's something else going on that I've missed, but while this might have fit somewhere around issue #4 it doesn't make sense at this point. Xander actually calls her on it, by pointing out that while he would have welcomed that years before, he's not at all interested now, both because he's with Dawn, and because Buffy was with Satsu first and this drives home to him his also ran status. I'm still puzzled over Joss's thought process here as it seems very contrary to the rest of Buffy's recent arc and tackier than I would expect of this Buffy. I'm not foolish enough to expect that Joss will do more than tease us with a Buffy/Willow relationship (and that if he didn't, that it wouldn't end very badly), but it still seems to me that there have been a lot of character moments in Season 8 that hinted toward Wiffy and having her suddenly veer toward Xander instead is just weird.
On the other hand, I'm not quite as annoyed with Joss over the most recent twists in Dollhouse. Getting Closer (#2-11) had a lot of dramatic swerves, but it also had some wonderful shippy moments between Caroline and Bennett in flashbacks. Its a pity that he decided to kill Bennett off at the end of the episode, but this makes Bennett's behavior towards Echo much more logical, and at least it gave us something femslashy to work with in the back story. Poor Topher though, since he and Bennett had a lot of chemistry too.
2-12 was pretty neat as well and I'm not sure what to make of the time jump they slipped in at the end. I'm definitely looking forward to the finale too.
I'm still upset that Dollhouse got canceled, but the story and universe have become especially rich in the last couple of episodes and I'm sure that I'll be returning to it often over the coming years, particularly in fanfic where we get a chance to fix those annoying little canon details.
I ended up spending Monday in bed because my back was bothering me. Since my laptop has power adapter issues, I finally read The Gathering Storm. It was a lot of fun, not too different than I think Jordan would have done it, but the plot really moved in pleasant contrast to most of the more recent half of the series. I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes next in a way that I haven't been for years. Egwene's storyline worked really well and Rand's was pretty solid too. The rest of them didn't get as much screen time, but what they did get was good. Plotwise, I'm slightly disappointed with the abrupt nature of Rand's confrontation with Graendal, I had hoped for something a bit more drawn out and the stuff with Semirhage was also a little shorter than I would have liked, but full of interesting details. I'm shocked that the Dark One allowed Rand to use the True Power while Semirhage had him in the male a'dam, but it does open up a lot of different possibilities.
Current thoughts from here down.
I just had a chance to watch My Summer of Love for the first time. I enjoyed it a lot although I'm not yet sure how I feel about the ending. Natalie Press is lovely, and its now official that I have a serious crush on Emily Blunt. Yum. I've enjoyed her in several other movies, but this is the first one where she's seriously jumped out at me. I'm certainly going to be adding both of them to my ever expanding collection of desktop girls and downloading a lot of pictures. I was also really impressed by the cinematography and music for the film, just so many lovely moments, and such great locations.
I'm not sure how I feel about a lot of the plot elements and the ending. I suspect that it will probably click better for me after I do a rewatch or two. There are some elements that remind me of Heavenly Creatures, particularly the contrast between Mona and Tamsin's world when they are together and both her brother's current evangelical christian mileu and the rest of the townspeople. The films also share an element of fantasy (although it's much more subtle here than in HC) and a sort of slightly feverish over-intensity, plus of course the lesbian elements and a pairing between a poor girl and a very privileged one.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if this became one of my absolute favorite movies since it reminds me so much of Heavenly Creatures which I have been obsessed by for almost a decade (and seen ~35 times). A re-watch or two ought to give me a better sense of how I feel about it.
Warning: Lots of Spoilers
The rest is behind the cut
I picked up the two most recent issues from Season 8 of Buffy a couple of days ago, and finished reading them this morning. I enjoyed both of them, particularly the Willow standalone which was just very well written and shows a lot of her character growth quickly. But on reflection, I'm somewhat annoyed by one particular aspect of #31-Turbulence. Most of the script is pretty good, the art's not bad, and the Jo Chen cover rocks, but the combination of a Wiffy ship tease opening and the bit where Buffy inexplicably decides to tell Xander she's into him following her discovery that he and Dawn are involved is both bizarre and taunting.
I just don't get it, maybe there's something else going on that I've missed, but while this might have fit somewhere around issue #4 it doesn't make sense at this point. Xander actually calls her on it, by pointing out that while he would have welcomed that years before, he's not at all interested now, both because he's with Dawn, and because Buffy was with Satsu first and this drives home to him his also ran status. I'm still puzzled over Joss's thought process here as it seems very contrary to the rest of Buffy's recent arc and tackier than I would expect of this Buffy. I'm not foolish enough to expect that Joss will do more than tease us with a Buffy/Willow relationship (and that if he didn't, that it wouldn't end very badly), but it still seems to me that there have been a lot of character moments in Season 8 that hinted toward Wiffy and having her suddenly veer toward Xander instead is just weird.
On the other hand, I'm not quite as annoyed with Joss over the most recent twists in Dollhouse. Getting Closer (#2-11) had a lot of dramatic swerves, but it also had some wonderful shippy moments between Caroline and Bennett in flashbacks. Its a pity that he decided to kill Bennett off at the end of the episode, but this makes Bennett's behavior towards Echo much more logical, and at least it gave us something femslashy to work with in the back story. Poor Topher though, since he and Bennett had a lot of chemistry too.
2-12 was pretty neat as well and I'm not sure what to make of the time jump they slipped in at the end. I'm definitely looking forward to the finale too.
I'm still upset that Dollhouse got canceled, but the story and universe have become especially rich in the last couple of episodes and I'm sure that I'll be returning to it often over the coming years, particularly in fanfic where we get a chance to fix those annoying little canon details.
I ended up spending Monday in bed because my back was bothering me. Since my laptop has power adapter issues, I finally read The Gathering Storm. It was a lot of fun, not too different than I think Jordan would have done it, but the plot really moved in pleasant contrast to most of the more recent half of the series. I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes next in a way that I haven't been for years. Egwene's storyline worked really well and Rand's was pretty solid too. The rest of them didn't get as much screen time, but what they did get was good. Plotwise, I'm slightly disappointed with the abrupt nature of Rand's confrontation with Graendal, I had hoped for something a bit more drawn out and the stuff with Semirhage was also a little shorter than I would have liked, but full of interesting details. I'm shocked that the Dark One allowed Rand to use the True Power while Semirhage had him in the male a'dam, but it does open up a lot of different possibilities.
Current thoughts from here down.
I just had a chance to watch My Summer of Love for the first time. I enjoyed it a lot although I'm not yet sure how I feel about the ending. Natalie Press is lovely, and its now official that I have a serious crush on Emily Blunt. Yum. I've enjoyed her in several other movies, but this is the first one where she's seriously jumped out at me. I'm certainly going to be adding both of them to my ever expanding collection of desktop girls and downloading a lot of pictures. I was also really impressed by the cinematography and music for the film, just so many lovely moments, and such great locations.
I'm not sure how I feel about a lot of the plot elements and the ending. I suspect that it will probably click better for me after I do a rewatch or two. There are some elements that remind me of Heavenly Creatures, particularly the contrast between Mona and Tamsin's world when they are together and both her brother's current evangelical christian mileu and the rest of the townspeople. The films also share an element of fantasy (although it's much more subtle here than in HC) and a sort of slightly feverish over-intensity, plus of course the lesbian elements and a pairing between a poor girl and a very privileged one.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if this became one of my absolute favorite movies since it reminds me so much of Heavenly Creatures which I have been obsessed by for almost a decade (and seen ~35 times). A re-watch or two ought to give me a better sense of how I feel about it.