whatho | Screen. (Reply)

(Note: the formatting in this post is a bit dreadful, because I hate rich text and I forgot. Sorry.)

I've found an LJ post-in-progress from two years ago. It's about Voyager. I have no idea if I ever posted it, but I checked when it was written and on the same day I posted a massive rant about how boring DS9 is. That's basically what the Voyager post was descending into, so probably it never really saw the light of day. Though I do remember fretting publically about the rights of sentient holographic beings. So maybe it did. I don't know. This is a representative paragraph:

'I love Janeway. I love her caffeine addiction and her hair and her voice, and I especially loved the way she relieved Chakotay of duty the other day because he didn’t like her torturing another crew member and then promising to hand a starship over to some folk who wanted to destroy it. Chakotay was very much in the right here, but if you had the opportunity to relieve Chakotay of duty at the expense of your own morality, you probably would as well. She threatened to do the same to Tuvok, but he decided to put his morality aside because on balance there was a lot to be said for a ship on which Chakotay was no longer second-in-command. He didn’t say that out loud but we all know what he was thinking. I love Tuvok quite a lot.'

That's actually quite representative of the entirety of 2010. I haven't seen an episode of Voyager in forever, 'cause that channel disappeared, and I loved it awfully much. Great days. Ish. I have a few episodes on VHS and should probably watch them before I have to get rid of all my stuff (or whatever), except right now I'm watching series 1 of Whose Line is it Anyway? I could do several paragraphs of Tony Slattery/Mike McShane worship now. Or I could get the same effect by rereading everything I wrote in 2009.

I've not been watching anything like enough proper telly of late. Quite a lot of Blockbusters. But nothing new. Or narrative. I can't be that scarred by Lost, surely. I've been watching the new episodes of Time Team. That's also not narrative. I was going to say it also lacks a fandom, but on reflection I bet that isn't true. Someone will have written Mick/Phil. Possibly my mother. Oh! I've been watch the telly version of Just a Minute. My father said he didn't think Just a Minute ought to be a televised, in a way that suggested he felt quite strongly about it. I think if you feel that strongly about it you can just close your eyes. I like the televised version 'cause last Tuesday Paul and Julian were sitting next to one another and they interacted. Lots. With their eyes. And you wouldn't get that on the radio. So it's worth it just for that. Good.

I've been watching DVDs sometimes, including Fifteen Storeys High, which

slemslempike introduced me to in February. I rather took to it: in some ways (Paul's being awfully rude to Josie in this episode) in both its set-up and its tone, it's quite reminscent of Nightingales. But I can't make my brother take to it (I put it on while he was in the room but by the second episode I noticed he had earphones in), so I have to watch it when he's not around. And also I finally got hold of the DVD of The Trip (I don’t know why I say finally as though I’ve been actively hunting it down for endless months, but anyway, that) and then watched it all in two days, which seems silly in retrospect. I should’ve watched an episode a day for a temporally realistic experience. But I didn’t. There we go. I’ve been enjoying it lots, possibly moreso than when I saw it properly on telly, and that’s maybe due to surrounding myself with unofficial supporting material, like the fic and the interviews and the terrifying online menus. Also I have oddly fond memories of the time it was originally screened (the bit of 2011 before my cat fell ill). But yes. I enjoyed it as a whole and as episodes and many individual scenes, and also I enjoyed the noises on the menu screens. This is a list of highlights:

The bill at Holbeck Ghyll is addressed to Mr Coogan/Brydon.
When Steve’s saying goodbye to his parents and explaining that Rob isn’t taking the place of his girlfriend, sort of, and Rob’s standing by the car just sort of looking at him.
I watched all the rushes of the 'Gentlemen, to bed' sequence, which was quite hypnotic, and I was really, really impressed at how fresh the improvisation seemed in the final cut, even though it clearly wasn't. There was rehearsed laughter in there that sounded utterly spontaneous. (I'm vastly more impressed by convincing rehearsed material than successful improvisation: I very much, admire, for example, the kids from Outnumbered now they've got to an age where they have to be self-conscious about what they're doing and can't really improvise as spontaneously as once they could, but they still manage to make it reminscent of when they could.)
Any moment in which Rob forces genuine laughter from Steve.

Obviously that last point’s nonsense because genuine’s a meaningless description in this context. As are 'Rob' and 'Steve'. You know what I mean though. Any moment when the last bullet point possibly erroneously appears to be the case. I love it a fair bit anyway. I might watch it again next week. In a temporally appropriate way.

There endeth the Trip highlights. What else can I put in this SCREEN BASED POST? I know.

I saw The Hunger Games yesterday. I haven't read the books but sort of want to now 'cause I'd like to know what happens next and the books exist and the films don't. Also I want to see if the missing social commentary's present in the books. I don't mind that elements of that world went rather unexplored in that film because I could imagine they were considered in the backstory and not everything can survive the transcription process - but I do want to know how the hell those fashions came to be and what Hadley would say about it, and why during the 74th games birth rates seem unaffected by the horrendous possible fate of every child born in the district when Katniss and Gale both said they wouldn't have kids given their living situation, and why the dickens no-one in the Capital's openly rejecting this process, and what's happening on the other channel. I thought it was great anyway, and strangely affecting. I was saying elsewhere earlier today that I have a tendency to experience unwarranted nostalgia for fictional adolescences that don't in any sense resemble my own (it's FAIRLY safe to say that my childhood was nothing like Katniss Everdeen's), so that's partly it. Also the games themselves are basically every third dream I ever have: I'm in a forest and everyone wants to kill me. And I'm torn between 'climb a tree', 'stay here; freeze; never move again' and 'RUN RUN RUN ALL THE RUNNING'. That's also why I loathe Quasar. So basically it was the most effectively claustrophobic film I've ever seen. And more moving than I expected: when Katniss saluted District 11 after Rue's death (somehow I knew Rue was for the chop all through the film, but I don't know if I was spoiled by a review or she just had a look of scrawny childhood martyrdom about her) and they saluted her back and then rioted. That bit was very. I just found it very convincing, mostly, in its portrayal of terror and despair and all those jovial things. I might see the Aardman film next. I don't know.

That's it anyway. That's me and visual entertainment for the time being. Maybe I'll watch something with an active fandom one day. HA HA HA. Well, maybe.

And now, gentlemen, to bed.