TV whorage
Sep. 16th, 2008 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkWhite rabbit moment. Happy Birthday ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heyiya, ann1962 and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
vonnie_k!
Seem to have watched a lot of terrestrial TV last week. Including the final of Maestro, the BBC’s “Strictly Come Dancing” for conducting (music not buses). Not being great with the classical music appreciation it shouldn’t have worked but it was fascinating to watch the competitors in their very different ways struggle and learn, to hear the difference between even the best of them and the professionals and to observe the subtle interactions going on between the panel judges and the orchestra (who got to decide who was to be eliminated each week). I wanted Goldie to win because although it was clear that Sue Perkins was more consistent and more in tune with the musicians, Goldie just every so often was able to produce what I’d call a George Best moment. Something to make someone like me (classical music mostly goes over my head) suddenly sit up and listen. He was obviously the judges’ favourite but the audience (and I suspect the orchestra) went with Sue.
Lost in Austen is something else that also shouldn’t work unless you’re a really big Bridget Jones fan. But it does, it takes the ridiculous, totally self-indulgent premise just seriously enough and like good fanfic gives some unexpected characters a chance to shine.
I’ve been earworming ‘Samson and Delilah’ all week and if you listen to the lyric it’s a very strange song. The verses jumble up excerpts from Samson’s life but Manson hurries past them eager to return to the refrain.
“If I had my way, I would burn this whole building down.”
In its original conception these are Samson’s words but with a female vocalist that connection breaks and the line stands alone as an unfulfilled desire for destruction. It’s there in Weaver’s character too, in her parable of the red lights how she savers the thought of the rogue human walking into the traffic and being crushed. She talks Zen or that’s how her ex-employee heard it, Koans and Kabalah. She talks as maybe a machine would imagine humans talk, loaded up with uneccessary metaphors. Babylon she calls herself, the hi-tech embodiment of modern capitalism but with her near albino colouring recalls more the pale rider on the pale horse whose name is death.
Not much sign of Weaver this week and a much more disjointed offering. They seem to have dropped the voiceovers but without them the story can’t seem to quite hold itself together. The very speed of the plot unravels the world. I could believe in them regrouping finding new jobs, having the run of the plant, being hazed by the supervisor over a couple of weeks but in two days the place comes across more Springfield than Sellafield.
Still the Sarah of it was good, the ability to connect with people, that awesome move taking out the gunman, the visceral fear of her body’s inevitable betrayal connecting her with Cameron for the first time. The Cameron also good, doubt maybe making her more human but vulnerable, slower – she was losing that fight with the unreconstructed T888. Is it better to be betrayed by software or by hardware?
heyiya, ann1962 and vonnie_k!Seem to have watched a lot of terrestrial TV last week. Including the final of Maestro, the BBC’s “Strictly Come Dancing” for conducting (music not buses). Not being great with the classical music appreciation it shouldn’t have worked but it was fascinating to watch the competitors in their very different ways struggle and learn, to hear the difference between even the best of them and the professionals and to observe the subtle interactions going on between the panel judges and the orchestra (who got to decide who was to be eliminated each week). I wanted Goldie to win because although it was clear that Sue Perkins was more consistent and more in tune with the musicians, Goldie just every so often was able to produce what I’d call a George Best moment. Something to make someone like me (classical music mostly goes over my head) suddenly sit up and listen. He was obviously the judges’ favourite but the audience (and I suspect the orchestra) went with Sue.
Lost in Austen is something else that also shouldn’t work unless you’re a really big Bridget Jones fan. But it does, it takes the ridiculous, totally self-indulgent premise just seriously enough and like good fanfic gives some unexpected characters a chance to shine.
I’ve been earworming ‘Samson and Delilah’ all week and if you listen to the lyric it’s a very strange song. The verses jumble up excerpts from Samson’s life but Manson hurries past them eager to return to the refrain.
“If I had my way, I would burn this whole building down.”
In its original conception these are Samson’s words but with a female vocalist that connection breaks and the line stands alone as an unfulfilled desire for destruction. It’s there in Weaver’s character too, in her parable of the red lights how she savers the thought of the rogue human walking into the traffic and being crushed. She talks Zen or that’s how her ex-employee heard it, Koans and Kabalah. She talks as maybe a machine would imagine humans talk, loaded up with uneccessary metaphors. Babylon she calls herself, the hi-tech embodiment of modern capitalism but with her near albino colouring recalls more the pale rider on the pale horse whose name is death.
Not much sign of Weaver this week and a much more disjointed offering. They seem to have dropped the voiceovers but without them the story can’t seem to quite hold itself together. The very speed of the plot unravels the world. I could believe in them regrouping finding new jobs, having the run of the plant, being hazed by the supervisor over a couple of weeks but in two days the place comes across more Springfield than Sellafield.
Still the Sarah of it was good, the ability to connect with people, that awesome move taking out the gunman, the visceral fear of her body’s inevitable betrayal connecting her with Cameron for the first time. The Cameron also good, doubt maybe making her more human but vulnerable, slower – she was losing that fight with the unreconstructed T888. Is it better to be betrayed by software or by hardware?
no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 09:52 pm (UTC)visceral fear of her body’s inevitable betrayal That was a great scene.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 08:34 am (UTC)