December Media
Jan. 1st, 2014 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiki_engI really like it when people talk about books and have long admired the Wednesday reading meme, but it is not for me. I decided that I could keep track of what I read for just a month, though, so I did! And I included films and things, too. (I think that this is all of the non-fannish media content that I finished in December.)
I sort of feel like I should have done this in a month that wasn't December so that it would be more representative of my general media consumption habits and probably slightly more detailed and things, but, I don't know, I did this and it is maybe an appropriate end/beginning of year thing to have done. So, media:
Film: Examined Life. It's a 2009 documentary that I picked up because Judith Butler is in it. The film's got ties to the National Film Board of Canada and TVO and the packaging is pretty hilarious. The cover's got hip fonts on it and the title's written to look like road paint on a street scene; the film's tagline is "Philosophy is in the streets" and the film is a series of interviews with thinkers moving about - walking down a lakeshore trail, going around a high end shopping district... It's a little bit like WE ARE IN A COMMUNITY PARK, NOW WE'RE WITH SOMEONE ELSE ON A BOAT IN CENTRAL PARK, NOW WE'RE IN A GARBAGE PROCESSING FACILITY, NOW WE'RE IN A CAR, BECAUSE PHILOSOPHY IS ALIVE AND MOVING AND VIBRANT AND RELEVANT. I think that device is hilarious, basically, and the comment of my friend who saw the DVD cover was something like wow that's going to date. The cover's cute as fuck, though, and the whole structure of the film works well enough and there are some interesting and relevant ideas in this. There's something kind of charming about having all these people I don't know talking at me about stuff that matters a lot to them, too, so I enjoyed it.
Film: The World's End. It's the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost sci-fi comedy that came out this year. I watched it because a friend passed it on to me and there were a lot of Pegg and Frost gifs on my tumblr this summer. I basically completely failed to care about this film? It was all very white middle-aged heterosexual male and thinking back on it now I'm wondering whether there were any people of colour onscreen at all? (That that's a question that I can ask myself and not know the answer to is... not good, I think.) So, yeah, this was super boring for me.
Book: The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. Feminism! (I've been working on filling in some of my background on that lately - there are a lot of feminist texts I haven't been exposed to at all. A lot of my feminist background is from fandom, and books are good?) It was published in 1970. This is is sort of unsurprisingly apparent. A number of the sort of commonly held sociological truths that Greer touches on aren't held as truths any more. I did a lot of eyebrow-raising just about whenever she touched on any kind of queer identity. She's very much writing from what she knows and her own experience - two things from that really stood out for me was that it was fairly obvious that this was a woman who had money and who had very little feeling for domestic violence. I think that the sort of landscape of feminism has changed a fair bit since she wrote it. I also think that her book is definitely still relevant today. (I feel like I am filling out a fourth grade book report on something that usually gets at least an undergrad essay; it's weird.) It made me think about the choices that I make and that the people around me make. I liked it. I'm glad I read it.
Film: Submarine (2010). I wanted to see this film because the bits I've seen of Richard Ayoade on the sort of British publicity circuit have made me interested in his work. I really liked the style of this film. I liked how it was put together. I like how it worked. I have an embarrassment squick. This film is basically like, hah, life - so awkward, so messy, set against a backdrop of bleakness and despair, awkwardness, let's pause it there (okay, I had to pause it there) let's linger (fuck, why did I pause it there?) mmm, so awkward, so gritty and it's good, actually, it works well, but (I HAVE BEEN MADE DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE BY THE TERRIBLE EMBARRASSING THINGS THAT HAVE GONE DOWN IN THIS FILM) maybe not so much for someone with a sizeable embarrassment squick. So, it was good but there was a lot of pain for me personally. I feel like I should also warn for bullying and contemplation of animal harm as well as thoughts about suicide. Those things aren't really main focuses of the film but they're there and there's not a particularly strong "Don't do this!" message attached to any of them.
TV Episode: Internal Audit (Elementary, S2E11, December 12, 2013) Alfredo was back! I like Alfredo. I find it interesting that one of the arcs of this season is that Sherlock's callousness hurts people and that that hurt has real consequences. I find it incredibly strange that this is an issue at all, that Sherlock doesn't think it logical to generally be a nice person, because that's something I believe in. I am interested in and invested in the idea of personal growth and development for him, though, so I'm interested in seeing how this plays out. I'm also interested in watching the show examine his privilege.
Book: Death Masks by Jim Butcher (2003). It's the fifth book in the Dresden Files series. I find reading these books a very strange experience after the amount of fanfic I've read; I'm aware of a lot of key points and stuff that happens in future books and I'm thrown a little to be reading those things developing, not having them as the givens that they are in fanfic. Dresden's behaviour in this book is problematic; it's rapey. He gets consent after the act, but, HOW DID YOU THINK THAT WAS OKAY? WHAT MADE THAT SEEM LIKE A GOOD IDEA? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU? I continue not to be a fan of Harry's sexism. I did, however, enjoy his interaction with Marcone - just, Harry's careful observation of him and the way, okay- these two would pass the broccoli test. It is ridiculous.
Film: North by Northwest (1959). Starring Cary Grant! Directed by Alfred Hitchcock! Rewatched for social reasons. I basically spent the first half of the film admiring the pretty (there are some really beautiful shots and architecture and clothing and people in this) and then the second hiding and waiting for the romance to be over. I wasn't invested in them at all and having just finished a Dresden Files book maybe made me have less patience for watching Cary Grant's character stumble his way stylishly through this movie and fix on Eve and decide he needed to rescue her. That is not a storyline I find particularly interesting.
Book: Redshirts by John Scalzi (2012). This won the Hugo Award for best novel this year, which was part of the pitch that made me pick it up. It's very fanfic-y, and meta. I read it quickly and it made me laugh. It also made me sort of stop a couple of times and ask, fondly, "Scalzi, is this an apology?"* Brad Wright and Joe Mallozzi are included in the dedication and Scalzi says in the acknowledgements that he doesn't think that SGU was badly written, that he thinks it was smart. It sort of feels like an apology to me, though, because - while I don't think I can fairly comment on SGU in any way - too often television is badly written and it's sloppy and characters get forgotten and I think that fanfic is sometimes an expression of all of the ways that the writers fail their universe, because fanfic is often all of those places that they don't go, that they forgot about or didn't think through or erased or whatever - it's all of those holes that they leave - and this is a book about being a better writer, among other things. I liked it.
*Scalzi worked on Stargate, SGU specifically, a show that I am still a bit angry about - for SGA being cancelled and it starting up, and for its first episode being crap. I stopped watching after that and... I remember when unhappy things would show up on my feed: SGU HAS DONE SOMETHING TERRIBLE and I think that brought me a kind of vindictive happiness.
Film: A Christmas Carol (1951). I hadn't actually watched this film previously. I think that it's always got a pretty late air time on television and it's black and white and the adult version and there are ghosts in it, and I'd worked it up in my head as serious business scary adult thing and it absolutely isn't. It is incredibly maudlin in that way that Dickens does; it is very obvious who is behind the story. Alastair Sim was fun, though, and I enjoyed watching this.
Film: White Christmas (1954). This is one of those films that I have seen over and over. It's fun and frothy, basically. Singing! Dancing! Shenanigans! I mostly focused on Danny Kaye this time around; his character is the most fun. This time I didn't feel like any of the musical numbers dragged, the way I usually do, but that may have had a lot to do with my being slightly distracted. I really love Rosemary Clooney's "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me"performance and really enjoyed "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing". I think, maybe, as I get older, I am becoming progressively more delighted by LET US DANCE numbers, and I just love how that one's framed; it makes me really happy.
Film: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). I am convinced, with very little exposure to other versions, having only - now - the 1951 version to contrast it to, that this is the best version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It has Muppets in it. It is delightful. There are jokes and meta (and meta jokes!) and musical numbers. A Christmas Carol is too sentimental for me on its own and this is perfectly balanced. It's great.
Film: Some Like It Hot (1959). This was a rewatch brought on by tumblr gifs and some really excellent yuletide fics focused on the queerness of this film - Daphne/Jerry's storyline. The fannish focus on all of the queer things in that film made me wonder if the film was way more queer than I had remembered it being; it wasn't, but it was still a really fun watch and I really liked Daphne. I watched this Christmas day, actually, and was pretty much exhausted and had basically zero mental energy and wine and I spent a lot of time appreciating Marilyn Monroe in her dresses. (They're great.)
Film: Frozen (2013). I went in with really low expectations and also somehow oblivious to the fact that this was a Disney Princess film with singing, so the first musical number was a bit of a shock. This isn't about to become one of my favourites; I think I liked both Tangled and The Princess and the Frog more than this, but there were a couple things about this film that I really liked. Hans was one of them; I had no idea what they were going to do with his character. I also really liked that the concrete, labelled, proven, whatever, true love in this film wasn't romantic. That was awesome. I love that this film is really about Elsa and Anna's relationship with each other and about the importance of supporting yourself and letting other people in. I liked Elsa a whole lot. I loved this take on the snow queen trope.
I sort of feel like I should have done this in a month that wasn't December so that it would be more representative of my general media consumption habits and probably slightly more detailed and things, but, I don't know, I did this and it is maybe an appropriate end/beginning of year thing to have done. So, media:
Film: Examined Life. It's a 2009 documentary that I picked up because Judith Butler is in it. The film's got ties to the National Film Board of Canada and TVO and the packaging is pretty hilarious. The cover's got hip fonts on it and the title's written to look like road paint on a street scene; the film's tagline is "Philosophy is in the streets" and the film is a series of interviews with thinkers moving about - walking down a lakeshore trail, going around a high end shopping district... It's a little bit like WE ARE IN A COMMUNITY PARK, NOW WE'RE WITH SOMEONE ELSE ON A BOAT IN CENTRAL PARK, NOW WE'RE IN A GARBAGE PROCESSING FACILITY, NOW WE'RE IN A CAR, BECAUSE PHILOSOPHY IS ALIVE AND MOVING AND VIBRANT AND RELEVANT. I think that device is hilarious, basically, and the comment of my friend who saw the DVD cover was something like wow that's going to date. The cover's cute as fuck, though, and the whole structure of the film works well enough and there are some interesting and relevant ideas in this. There's something kind of charming about having all these people I don't know talking at me about stuff that matters a lot to them, too, so I enjoyed it.
Film: The World's End. It's the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost sci-fi comedy that came out this year. I watched it because a friend passed it on to me and there were a lot of Pegg and Frost gifs on my tumblr this summer. I basically completely failed to care about this film? It was all very white middle-aged heterosexual male and thinking back on it now I'm wondering whether there were any people of colour onscreen at all? (That that's a question that I can ask myself and not know the answer to is... not good, I think.) So, yeah, this was super boring for me.
Book: The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. Feminism! (I've been working on filling in some of my background on that lately - there are a lot of feminist texts I haven't been exposed to at all. A lot of my feminist background is from fandom, and books are good?) It was published in 1970. This is is sort of unsurprisingly apparent. A number of the sort of commonly held sociological truths that Greer touches on aren't held as truths any more. I did a lot of eyebrow-raising just about whenever she touched on any kind of queer identity. She's very much writing from what she knows and her own experience - two things from that really stood out for me was that it was fairly obvious that this was a woman who had money and who had very little feeling for domestic violence. I think that the sort of landscape of feminism has changed a fair bit since she wrote it. I also think that her book is definitely still relevant today. (I feel like I am filling out a fourth grade book report on something that usually gets at least an undergrad essay; it's weird.) It made me think about the choices that I make and that the people around me make. I liked it. I'm glad I read it.
Film: Submarine (2010). I wanted to see this film because the bits I've seen of Richard Ayoade on the sort of British publicity circuit have made me interested in his work. I really liked the style of this film. I liked how it was put together. I like how it worked. I have an embarrassment squick. This film is basically like, hah, life - so awkward, so messy, set against a backdrop of bleakness and despair, awkwardness, let's pause it there (okay, I had to pause it there) let's linger (fuck, why did I pause it there?) mmm, so awkward, so gritty and it's good, actually, it works well, but (I HAVE BEEN MADE DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE BY THE TERRIBLE EMBARRASSING THINGS THAT HAVE GONE DOWN IN THIS FILM) maybe not so much for someone with a sizeable embarrassment squick. So, it was good but there was a lot of pain for me personally. I feel like I should also warn for bullying and contemplation of animal harm as well as thoughts about suicide. Those things aren't really main focuses of the film but they're there and there's not a particularly strong "Don't do this!" message attached to any of them.
TV Episode: Internal Audit (Elementary, S2E11, December 12, 2013) Alfredo was back! I like Alfredo. I find it interesting that one of the arcs of this season is that Sherlock's callousness hurts people and that that hurt has real consequences. I find it incredibly strange that this is an issue at all, that Sherlock doesn't think it logical to generally be a nice person, because that's something I believe in. I am interested in and invested in the idea of personal growth and development for him, though, so I'm interested in seeing how this plays out. I'm also interested in watching the show examine his privilege.
Book: Death Masks by Jim Butcher (2003). It's the fifth book in the Dresden Files series. I find reading these books a very strange experience after the amount of fanfic I've read; I'm aware of a lot of key points and stuff that happens in future books and I'm thrown a little to be reading those things developing, not having them as the givens that they are in fanfic. Dresden's behaviour in this book is problematic; it's rapey. He gets consent after the act, but, HOW DID YOU THINK THAT WAS OKAY? WHAT MADE THAT SEEM LIKE A GOOD IDEA? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU? I continue not to be a fan of Harry's sexism. I did, however, enjoy his interaction with Marcone - just, Harry's careful observation of him and the way, okay- these two would pass the broccoli test. It is ridiculous.
Film: North by Northwest (1959). Starring Cary Grant! Directed by Alfred Hitchcock! Rewatched for social reasons. I basically spent the first half of the film admiring the pretty (there are some really beautiful shots and architecture and clothing and people in this) and then the second hiding and waiting for the romance to be over. I wasn't invested in them at all and having just finished a Dresden Files book maybe made me have less patience for watching Cary Grant's character stumble his way stylishly through this movie and fix on Eve and decide he needed to rescue her. That is not a storyline I find particularly interesting.
Book: Redshirts by John Scalzi (2012). This won the Hugo Award for best novel this year, which was part of the pitch that made me pick it up. It's very fanfic-y, and meta. I read it quickly and it made me laugh. It also made me sort of stop a couple of times and ask, fondly, "Scalzi, is this an apology?"* Brad Wright and Joe Mallozzi are included in the dedication and Scalzi says in the acknowledgements that he doesn't think that SGU was badly written, that he thinks it was smart. It sort of feels like an apology to me, though, because - while I don't think I can fairly comment on SGU in any way - too often television is badly written and it's sloppy and characters get forgotten and I think that fanfic is sometimes an expression of all of the ways that the writers fail their universe, because fanfic is often all of those places that they don't go, that they forgot about or didn't think through or erased or whatever - it's all of those holes that they leave - and this is a book about being a better writer, among other things. I liked it.
*Scalzi worked on Stargate, SGU specifically, a show that I am still a bit angry about - for SGA being cancelled and it starting up, and for its first episode being crap. I stopped watching after that and... I remember when unhappy things would show up on my feed: SGU HAS DONE SOMETHING TERRIBLE and I think that brought me a kind of vindictive happiness.
Film: A Christmas Carol (1951). I hadn't actually watched this film previously. I think that it's always got a pretty late air time on television and it's black and white and the adult version and there are ghosts in it, and I'd worked it up in my head as serious business scary adult thing and it absolutely isn't. It is incredibly maudlin in that way that Dickens does; it is very obvious who is behind the story. Alastair Sim was fun, though, and I enjoyed watching this.
Film: White Christmas (1954). This is one of those films that I have seen over and over. It's fun and frothy, basically. Singing! Dancing! Shenanigans! I mostly focused on Danny Kaye this time around; his character is the most fun. This time I didn't feel like any of the musical numbers dragged, the way I usually do, but that may have had a lot to do with my being slightly distracted. I really love Rosemary Clooney's "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me"performance and really enjoyed "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing". I think, maybe, as I get older, I am becoming progressively more delighted by LET US DANCE numbers, and I just love how that one's framed; it makes me really happy.
Film: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). I am convinced, with very little exposure to other versions, having only - now - the 1951 version to contrast it to, that this is the best version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It has Muppets in it. It is delightful. There are jokes and meta (and meta jokes!) and musical numbers. A Christmas Carol is too sentimental for me on its own and this is perfectly balanced. It's great.
Film: Some Like It Hot (1959). This was a rewatch brought on by tumblr gifs and some really excellent yuletide fics focused on the queerness of this film - Daphne/Jerry's storyline. The fannish focus on all of the queer things in that film made me wonder if the film was way more queer than I had remembered it being; it wasn't, but it was still a really fun watch and I really liked Daphne. I watched this Christmas day, actually, and was pretty much exhausted and had basically zero mental energy and wine and I spent a lot of time appreciating Marilyn Monroe in her dresses. (They're great.)
Film: Frozen (2013). I went in with really low expectations and also somehow oblivious to the fact that this was a Disney Princess film with singing, so the first musical number was a bit of a shock. This isn't about to become one of my favourites; I think I liked both Tangled and The Princess and the Frog more than this, but there were a couple things about this film that I really liked. Hans was one of them; I had no idea what they were going to do with his character. I also really liked that the concrete, labelled, proven, whatever, true love in this film wasn't romantic. That was awesome. I love that this film is really about Elsa and Anna's relationship with each other and about the importance of supporting yourself and letting other people in. I liked Elsa a whole lot. I loved this take on the snow queen trope.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-01 06:20 pm (UTC)(Also hi! I suck so much at comments right now, it's terrible :(( )
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-01 09:29 pm (UTC)I have been mostly made of crickets lately, really, so Hi! back at you, basically. How are you?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-01 09:32 pm (UTC)I'm okay! I'm tempted to join in any of the Things going on right now. A January talking meme? Or the snowflake challenge? But am apprehensive, because my vacation ends today, and then will I really have time?? But tempted!
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-01 10:09 pm (UTC)