Recent watching
Sep. 18th, 2024 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeAs you know, I am very relevant and always keep up to date on new media released this year, and so I've just finished watching the new series of Doctor Who and We Are Lady Parts. Spoilers ahead!
I loved Doctor Who during Russell T. Davies's first run, the Nine and Ten years, when I was still at the hiding-behind-the-sofa age; drifted away after Steven Moffat, whose writing I have never got on with, took over; returned for part of the Chibnall-Thirteen period and enjoyed it but felt it wasn't really what it used to be and lost interest towards the end; and now hearing that Davies was returning as showrunner, thought I'd give it another try again. I started with the Christmas special and could just about have cried at the end of it. There it is: this is the Doctor Who I loved—all the joy, weirdness, adventure, warm-heartedness—just how it would be and look and feel now instead of nineteen years ago. (Time is a funny thing: it occurs to me that Ruby was born just a few months before Nine met Rose, how weird is that???) Ncuti Gatwa is so completely the Doctor—that's really the only way you can put it for any actor who's right for the Doctor—I love his energy and enthusiasm, his smile, his accent—and Ruby is a great companion, and they work so well together. Aww, I am glad. :)
Anyway, the series continued really good! '73 Yards' may have been both my favourite and least favourite episode, I think, in that I loved the concept and development but was really frustrated by the non-explanation of an ending. (Yes, it's weird fantasy and won't necessarily have clear rules or logical explanation; but weird fantasy still needs some kind of internal logic and consistency—see below about The Owl Service—and I felt that was lacking.) I am conflicted about Fifteen changing costume every episode; I miss having one or two iconic Doctor outfits, but OTOH all his costumes are so good. :D I did feel that the series was too short and suffered from going too quickly for the 'unconventional structure' episodes—not that '73 Yards' and 'Dot and Bubble' weren't both excellent, but I think we needed to see a bit more of normal travelling life and adventures with Fifteen and Ruby first. I LOVED 'Rogue' and Rogue himself, and I trust that we'll see more of him.
Part of what I like about RTD's writing has always been the warmth and meaning and significance he finds in ordinary human lives, and so I was a bit dismayed by the building up of the mystery around Ruby's origins and the apparent implication that she was going to turn out to be Special in some way. So I really rather liked the reveal that actually it was all totally mundane! But apart from that I think the finale, while loads of fun in many ways, really didn't make enough sense... and I was dismayed to see that Ruby is apparently leaving after so little time! Really too short a series, unfortunately. Maybe they'll go back to 13 episodes in future?
(And in the meantime I could go back and watch the pre-series specials—I gather there's some good Donna stuff in them??)
Aww, We Are Lady Parts is so much fun and so lovely, and I think I liked the second series even better than the first. The relative lack of Amina/Saira material was a bit disappointing... OTOH, there is a canon f/f ship, and Ayesha and Laura are very cute and I wish them every happiness now they've overcome some challenges together. I like the character development all the leads got, perhaps especially Bisma and Momtaz both getting to strike out a bit and find themselves personally and professionally, and I like that even Noor gets a bit of a redemption arc. I love Amina's villain era and am cheering her on. In general I really liked how this series, in both the Amina/Billy and the record label plots, showed how... sometimes you have to make the wrong choice, so you can realise it's wrong, go back on it and return to the right choice more deliberately and with greater knowledge, knowing it really is what's right for you. ('Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving...', perhaps?)
Also I've only belatedly realised that the soundtrack is available to listen to, including all the songs written and performed by the band in the show. Speaking of which the songs are great! I love 'Villain Era' (of course) and 'Glass Ceiling Feeling' in particular (the music as well as the lyrics of the latter—those harmonies in the chorus are gorgeous).
And in among those two new shows I've also been watching the 1969-70 Granada TV adaptation of Alan Garner's The Owl Service, which I happened to find on Youtube and eagerly plunged into. It's reignited my love for the book, which I must re-read soon.
It is very good, and it's exactly what you'd expect a very good screen adaptation of an Alan Garner novel to be like, if that's imaginable. The theme tune is a mashup of traditional Welsh harp music, motorcycle revving noises and what is apparently water flushing through a cistern, which gives a fairly accurate summary of what the viewer is getting themselves into. (The motorcycle is plot-relevant and very solemnly meaningful, actually.) Garner wrote the script himself, and it is a pretty faithful adaptation—there are some cuts (I missed Gwyn's CH4 marsh gas! but perhaps that would have been too much of a special effects challenge) and some things are rejigged a bit but there are no huge changes, and many of the lines are verbatim from the book. According to the series's Wikipedia page the little 'the story so far' summaries at the beginning of each episode were added due to concern that viewers would struggle to follow the story, which amuses me; yep, you might just struggle to follow the story... (Why do I mind that so little about Garner's writing, even see it as a strength, when similar non-explaining-things has bothered me so much about some other books? Perhaps Garner is just brilliant enough to make it work; perhaps it's that it never feels like he should be explaining more, or thinks he is.)
It's interesting to see how the dialogue is interpreted, given the original very minimal description of tone and manner, and the series uses some interestingly weird camera techniques that fit the feel of the book beautifully. I loved the final scene between Alison and Gwyn before Gwyn runs off, the 'Stop looking at me like that!' bit especially; OTOH I thought Huw's final dramatic revelation was a bit over-dramatic (though Huw was otherwise very good). I liked Clive's accent, crisp RP with bits of northern poking through—really illustrates Nancy's 'doesn't know how to eat a pear' thing, and hearing it like that makes it more obvious that this is the same thing Gwyn is trying to do... The Alison/Gwyn relationship was rather more overt than in the book, which wasn't really to my taste (though again, the book is so minimal with details that you can't really say they weren't kissing in an ellipsis, Renault-style). Somehow the significant absence of Margaret felt more noticeable and deliberate than it did in the book—perhaps never seeing a character, even in the background, does stand out more than words on the page referring to them but never showing them actually there in a scene? It's an interesting choice, anyway. I still ship Gwyn/Roger just a little bit. I have made some icons from the series, as you can see!
Doctor Who
I loved Doctor Who during Russell T. Davies's first run, the Nine and Ten years, when I was still at the hiding-behind-the-sofa age; drifted away after Steven Moffat, whose writing I have never got on with, took over; returned for part of the Chibnall-Thirteen period and enjoyed it but felt it wasn't really what it used to be and lost interest towards the end; and now hearing that Davies was returning as showrunner, thought I'd give it another try again. I started with the Christmas special and could just about have cried at the end of it. There it is: this is the Doctor Who I loved—all the joy, weirdness, adventure, warm-heartedness—just how it would be and look and feel now instead of nineteen years ago. (Time is a funny thing: it occurs to me that Ruby was born just a few months before Nine met Rose, how weird is that???) Ncuti Gatwa is so completely the Doctor—that's really the only way you can put it for any actor who's right for the Doctor—I love his energy and enthusiasm, his smile, his accent—and Ruby is a great companion, and they work so well together. Aww, I am glad. :)
Anyway, the series continued really good! '73 Yards' may have been both my favourite and least favourite episode, I think, in that I loved the concept and development but was really frustrated by the non-explanation of an ending. (Yes, it's weird fantasy and won't necessarily have clear rules or logical explanation; but weird fantasy still needs some kind of internal logic and consistency—see below about The Owl Service—and I felt that was lacking.) I am conflicted about Fifteen changing costume every episode; I miss having one or two iconic Doctor outfits, but OTOH all his costumes are so good. :D I did feel that the series was too short and suffered from going too quickly for the 'unconventional structure' episodes—not that '73 Yards' and 'Dot and Bubble' weren't both excellent, but I think we needed to see a bit more of normal travelling life and adventures with Fifteen and Ruby first. I LOVED 'Rogue' and Rogue himself, and I trust that we'll see more of him.
Part of what I like about RTD's writing has always been the warmth and meaning and significance he finds in ordinary human lives, and so I was a bit dismayed by the building up of the mystery around Ruby's origins and the apparent implication that she was going to turn out to be Special in some way. So I really rather liked the reveal that actually it was all totally mundane! But apart from that I think the finale, while loads of fun in many ways, really didn't make enough sense... and I was dismayed to see that Ruby is apparently leaving after so little time! Really too short a series, unfortunately. Maybe they'll go back to 13 episodes in future?
(And in the meantime I could go back and watch the pre-series specials—I gather there's some good Donna stuff in them??)
We Are Lady Parts
Aww, We Are Lady Parts is so much fun and so lovely, and I think I liked the second series even better than the first. The relative lack of Amina/Saira material was a bit disappointing... OTOH, there is a canon f/f ship, and Ayesha and Laura are very cute and I wish them every happiness now they've overcome some challenges together. I like the character development all the leads got, perhaps especially Bisma and Momtaz both getting to strike out a bit and find themselves personally and professionally, and I like that even Noor gets a bit of a redemption arc. I love Amina's villain era and am cheering her on. In general I really liked how this series, in both the Amina/Billy and the record label plots, showed how... sometimes you have to make the wrong choice, so you can realise it's wrong, go back on it and return to the right choice more deliberately and with greater knowledge, knowing it really is what's right for you. ('Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving...', perhaps?)
Also I've only belatedly realised that the soundtrack is available to listen to, including all the songs written and performed by the band in the show. Speaking of which the songs are great! I love 'Villain Era' (of course) and 'Glass Ceiling Feeling' in particular (the music as well as the lyrics of the latter—those harmonies in the chorus are gorgeous).
And in among those two new shows I've also been watching the 1969-70 Granada TV adaptation of Alan Garner's The Owl Service, which I happened to find on Youtube and eagerly plunged into. It's reignited my love for the book, which I must re-read soon.
The Owl Service
It is very good, and it's exactly what you'd expect a very good screen adaptation of an Alan Garner novel to be like, if that's imaginable. The theme tune is a mashup of traditional Welsh harp music, motorcycle revving noises and what is apparently water flushing through a cistern, which gives a fairly accurate summary of what the viewer is getting themselves into. (The motorcycle is plot-relevant and very solemnly meaningful, actually.) Garner wrote the script himself, and it is a pretty faithful adaptation—there are some cuts (I missed Gwyn's CH4 marsh gas! but perhaps that would have been too much of a special effects challenge) and some things are rejigged a bit but there are no huge changes, and many of the lines are verbatim from the book. According to the series's Wikipedia page the little 'the story so far' summaries at the beginning of each episode were added due to concern that viewers would struggle to follow the story, which amuses me; yep, you might just struggle to follow the story... (Why do I mind that so little about Garner's writing, even see it as a strength, when similar non-explaining-things has bothered me so much about some other books? Perhaps Garner is just brilliant enough to make it work; perhaps it's that it never feels like he should be explaining more, or thinks he is.)
It's interesting to see how the dialogue is interpreted, given the original very minimal description of tone and manner, and the series uses some interestingly weird camera techniques that fit the feel of the book beautifully. I loved the final scene between Alison and Gwyn before Gwyn runs off, the 'Stop looking at me like that!' bit especially; OTOH I thought Huw's final dramatic revelation was a bit over-dramatic (though Huw was otherwise very good). I liked Clive's accent, crisp RP with bits of northern poking through—really illustrates Nancy's 'doesn't know how to eat a pear' thing, and hearing it like that makes it more obvious that this is the same thing Gwyn is trying to do... The Alison/Gwyn relationship was rather more overt than in the book, which wasn't really to my taste (though again, the book is so minimal with details that you can't really say they weren't kissing in an ellipsis, Renault-style). Somehow the significant absence of Margaret felt more noticeable and deliberate than it did in the book—perhaps never seeing a character, even in the background, does stand out more than words on the page referring to them but never showing them actually there in a scene? It's an interesting choice, anyway. I still ship Gwyn/Roger just a little bit. I have made some icons from the series, as you can see!
no subject
Date: Sep. 18th, 2024 08:40 pm (UTC)So I have not written about it because it became immediately clear that I needed to hold off on the rest of the series until I have real brainspace for it, but I tried the first two episodes while recovering from writing about To Kill a King and immediately had feelings and opinions about them, tl;dr thanks for that.
It's interesting to see how the dialogue is interpreted, given the original very minimal description of tone and manner, and the series uses some interestingly weird camera techniques that fit the feel of the book beautifully.
It produces a lot of the same effect as Garner's habit of leaving important lacunae between lines of dialogue. You can't always see what characters are doing or how they get, literally, spatially, from one shot to the next. The editing is itchy. The sound design has also impressed me from the start: not just the motorcycle in the credits along with that radiophonic swoosh so that the entire story is compressed there if you know it, the fragmentation of sound from source is essentially uncanny and feels like double-speaking when it's used to bind actions at a distance together. I know it's standard for the period, but the use of electronic sound effects for ancient weird stuff is really in keeping with the hydroelectric reservoir of myth.
I liked Clive's accent, crisp RP with bits of northern poking through—really illustrates Nancy's 'doesn't know how to eat a pear' thing, and hearing it like that makes it more obvious that this is the same thing Gwyn is trying to do...
Yes! And how much that clarifies Roger's meanness about the records, which is still unforgivable, of course, and still a betrayal that the myth can use, but makes it less reflexive snobbery and more defensive: he's just a generation away from having to polish up his accent himself. His father could put him through school for it. Their voices aren't the same. Actually I like TV Roger very much; the character is inherently tricky because he has to be able to pull off that eucatastrophe of compassion at the end without obviously signaling his bent for it in advance and the actor is doing a very good job with his teenage uncertainty and bluster (even though all three principals are obviously older than their casting) rather than just obnoxiousness. He's more interestingly vulnerable than he looks.
And I am so far finding their Huw superb, which really could have been make-or-break with this series for me. His flickery, unstable quality is even stronger in performance than on the page, the degree to which he is tuned in or out of realities seems much less misdirection than dislocation: if the power burned through him in his time, it blew a lot of his fuses on the way out. I love how he's characteristically seen leaning on his rake, like the iconography of a spear—like the plug-wiring colors distributed among the principals, an early hint of his position in the myth if you have the key of it; there's even a nod to the rivalry with Bertram long before he's mentioned by name. The series seems more aggressive than the novel about compacting its layers of time and patterning which makes everything interpersonally tenser and more overtly supernatural from jump, but it's not not working for me.
The Alison/Gwyn relationship was rather more overt than in the book, which wasn't really to my taste (though again, the book is so minimal with details that you can't really say they weren't kissing in an ellipsis, Renault-style).
It took actual factual years for it to occur to me that we are almost certainly intended to read them as kissing, at least, between Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen: "Shh. Don't be frightened. Listen."
The sexuality in the series feels more overt in general, which could be partly a factor of Alison/Gwyn/Roger all being older than written, but also a choice with Alison's brief outfits and honestly Roger running around in swimming trunks. I am mordantly entertained that I had just been complaining to
I have made some icons from the series, as you can see!
I like your one of Roger in Alison's sunglasses a lot. That's such a weird and haunting shot: he looks like the owl himself for a moment.
no subject
Date: Sep. 20th, 2024 04:50 pm (UTC)I agree about how well TV!Roger pulls off interpreting the trickiness of the book character; I like him very much (in the way one does like a fictional character who's just a bit of an ass). And I like the idea of Huw's rake as another reflection of the original spear, also. Hmmm....
That's such a weird and haunting shot: he looks like the owl himself for a moment.
I confess I was mostly thinking it made an amusing-looking out-of-context icon image, but I like this idea a lot too. I wanted to make one for each of the three main characters, but haven't yet come up with a nicely icon-able Gwyn moment. (I might do 'let's climb this metamorphic Welsh mountain' if I was better at text.)
no subject
Date: Sep. 22nd, 2024 05:57 pm (UTC)I am! You will almost certainly hear from me when I have watched the rest of it, apologies in advance!
I agree about how well TV!Roger pulls off interpreting the trickiness of the book character; I like him very much (in the way one does like a fictional character who's just a bit of an ass)
I have a lot of fictional characters I like in that fashion.
And I like the idea of Huw's rake as another reflection of the original spear, also. Hmmm....
May I ask?
I confess I was mostly thinking it made an amusing-looking out-of-context icon image, but I like this idea a lot too.
It seemed to fit as an image with the textual way that the owls or flowers are decided between all three vectors of the myth: "You have made this together." Before he steps out of the pattern, Roger certainly contributes his share of scratches to the owl-side of the scale.
I wanted to make one for each of the three main characters, but haven't yet come up with a nicely icon-able Gwyn moment. (I might do 'let's climb this metamorphic Welsh mountain' if I was better at text.)
If you manage to make it work, I like that choice.
no subject
Date: Sep. 23rd, 2024 04:57 pm (UTC):D
Seriously: your commentary is insightful and has really added to my appreciation of the series. I'm glad to hear it!
May I ask?
Ask what, sorry? (That was a general thoughtful 'hmmm'; I wasn't not saying something in particular.)
no subject
Date: Sep. 23rd, 2024 06:44 pm (UTC)Gotcha! Sorry.
no subject
Date: Sep. 18th, 2024 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 20th, 2024 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 24th, 2024 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 26th, 2024 05:08 pm (UTC)