Sometimes I shouldn't use words

Onwards and upwards

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:00:08 GMT

I finally finished remastering my TSCC vid Nobody Loves You. You can download the new shiny by right clicking here or streaming (YouTube allowing):

I still really miss the show and rewatching the vid only makes it more so but there’s some potential good news on that front. Josh Friedman (show runner for TSCC) has written a pilot, which Fox have picked up with a decision to be made on it in May 2011. Originally he was going to produce, he may still be show running but now it has Spielberg and some guys who produced the New Star trek Movie and Fringe as executive producers whatever that means. It’s based on a comic book (sorry, graphic novel) series called Locke and Key about a family (the eponymous Locke’s) moving back to their ancestral spooky mansion in the aftermath of the father’s murder and horrible wackiness ensuing. I haven’t read the books, they say the art is interesting, but they seem to focus on the 6 year old boy, his teenage brother and occasionally their sister Kinsey while the mother hangs around in the background in a haze alcohol-fuelled grief. But that the book. When Friedman did Terminator it was supposed to be all about John but he brought back the Sarah of it and added Cameron and Weaver and Ellison and that Derek guy. And the first character they’ve cast is the mother, Nina - Miranda Otto (Eowyn) and then the daughter, Kinsey ( Sarah Bolger). It could be good. Or never happen. Whatever. Happy New Year!

comments

All will love her and despair

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 18:02:19 GMT

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown had an article on The Awl about the awsomeness of Ripley and Buffy and Marti Noxon and River and Summer Glau which was totally heartwarming except the (very small) part where she dismissed Sarah Connor in order to elevate Ellen Ripley to mother of all fictional mother figures.

I do love Ripley, I do. Even though I think the only Alien film I’ve actually seen all of in one sitting is Aliens I love her. In the 80’s I loved “Get away from her” Ripley almost as much as I loved “No living man am I” Eowyn a decade or so before. Alien hybrid Ripley is the one bit of awesome in a very strange broken movie. Ripley in maternal mode is the mother little girls wish for but not, I think, the mother to speak for them when they grow up when and if they have daughters of their own. Sarah speaks.

It’s a constant of Terminator 2 discussions that someone will claim it’s really a John Connor origin story but even in the movie (which is less Sarah than the show) who gets the voiceover? I generally hate them but what other female character gets the voiceover? I’m coming up Clueless. Eye roll. Whatever. Sarah speaks.

There are two scenes I remember from first seeing the movie. The dream sequence where her nightmare was the world burning (see, Sarah has to save the world) and another, much quieter scene when she’s watching Arnie with John and thinking how the machine will never let him down, never be angry with him, always be there. She can’t compete. In the show this theme is revisited in the parallels between Sarah and Weaver. Aliens has the classic good-bad mother dichotomy in Ripley vs the Alien queen. Its bad mother is a giant pulsating mass of teeth and venom, a maternal nightmare dreamed by people for whom mama will never be the name they call themselves (Sigmund I’m talking to you). Weaver isn’t bad. She’s cold, fluid metal, all things to all people; a beautiful quicksilver mermonster; the perfect other mother; the one who takes John away when he’s ready. Sarah lets him go. I think that’s the part that speaks to me. Much deeper than “Get away from her you bitch!”

One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky

But until that morning
There's a'nothing can harm you
With your daddy and mammy standing by

comments

New Summer Glau meta vid

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:22:02 GMT

Title: The Fear
Artist: Lily Allen
Fandom/Characters/Pairings: River, Cameron, Bennett, Summer
Warnings: Violence. Also nudity.
Format: DivX
Size: 49.7 MB

Summary: Make me a star

Download from here (Right/control click and save target as)

Feedback and I’ll dance for you

( Notes )

( Lyrics )

comments

Belle choses

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:22:53 GMT

Riot Act by thuviaptarth is a character study of T:SCC’s Riley. It cuts at you with her fracturedness while also celebrating her courage and capacity for life. God, I miss that show. It ended so well I was almost happy about the cancellation at first but that feeling has passed and now it’s just gone. In its place we have Dollhouse. Which is very different.

( Subtlety is for little men )

comments

Viddy thoughts

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:30:04 GMT

I have some thoughts on some vids. First thought is about sisabet’s Comfortably Numb , which I am discomforted to have to admit to not recognizing as a cover of a Pink Floyd song (seriously, listening to prog rock was practically illegal in the peri-post punk era). Suddenly it makes so much sense (and I wish I’d seen it on a big screen because that grid work needs scale to fully appreciate – it’s a *big* vid).

Second though is about Land by sweetestdrain. Because the sea of possibilities isn’t just about the in-story, no fate but what we make, but also about this being a story that’s constantly retold. Harlan Ellison successfully sued Cameron for allegedly basing the first movie on two episodes he wrote for The Outer Limits (Demon with a Glass Hand and Soldier) but the only connection I can see is that they all use the idea of soldiers (who may or may as well be robots) traveling back in time. I don’t think that counts any more than the JC allusions, maybe the apostles should sue. By contrast, the second story directly transforms the central conceit of first. The third and the TV series both do the same for the second – it’s growing exponentially. And the vid weaves them all together and makes its own retelling in the process. It feels as if there’s also something being said in the way the first half of the vid, before Sarah enters left, while it’s still just a John story, is actually quite linear. As if *his* story, the hero/saviour myth, has been retold so often that it’s worked itself into a rut but her story, Mary’s in the New Testament source, is something still new and alive and diversifying in infinite combinations.

My third thought is a rewrite of some old thoughts on another sisabet vid Icebound Stream. The original post was made for the Tea at the Ford site but that’s been down so long I thought it might be an idea to back it up here.

( Cut for past ramblings )

comments

Link dilemmas

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:42:34 GMT

First some links:

One to chaila43’s two TSCC vidlets done for the Itty-Bitty Viddy Ficcy Thon challenge. Small is beautiful!

The other to thuviaptarth’s commentary on kiki-miserychick’s fabulous Sarah Connor vid Ding!Dong!

The latest challenge in vid commentary is for vidders and viewers to do paired commentaries on their own vids. I’m in two minds about this, at least the vidder part. I'll happily put myself forward to comment on other people’s vids but the prospect of signing up to do something in depth and illustrated on your own work feels much more presumptious. I mean I’ve babbled on at length about some of my vids but that was just text and text is cheap. Screencaps would be taking self-involvment to a whole new level. One alternative would be to do an audio commentary but that would involve listening to recordings of myself and again a world of not worthy. Sometimes it’s hard being raised English. There is one vid of mine that I think could bypass the self-screencapping issues. I could do a commentary on Babies illustrated mostly by Biology textbook scans. Yeah, that would work.

comments

22 VVC 09 vid recs

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:22:44 GMT

Disclaimer: I suppose these are more (entirely subjective) reactions than recs as such. But words are hard and a vid has to get under your skin for any to come. There is no bad. There is much good. Links to all vids and vid shows are here.

( Non-attending Premieres (3 vids) )
( Club Vivid (9 vids) )
( Premieres One (6 vids) )
( Premieres Two (4 vids) )

comments

VVC vid recs part the first

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:34:35 GMT

I’ve been on holiday all through Vividcon and its aftermath hence radio silence. I hardly know where to start but these are the two vids that stood out for me most during the first frenzy of downloading.

Land by sweetestdrain
( Johnny Rotten is full of it )

Bachelorette by obsessive24
( I'm the branch that you break )

comments

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:48:48 GMT

Long time no post but some vid recs:

Fever by sweetestdrain
When you kiss me I want to die. Twilight.

I've been to a marvelous party by charmax
Like the periodic table of party.

DLZ by bop_radar
Like the show, this T:SCC vid is hard to condense down to a single phrase. It has density, it has layers. After multiple rewatches my abiding impression is of how inimical the state of perpetual war is to human life. Machines inhabit the drowned, post-Judgement Day world like fish, like eels, while the humans struggle for breath and lose everything they once held dear.

Order in the Sound by chaila43
Although this is based on Battlestar Redactica it works quite independently. It’s a beautiful, strange synthesis of women and architecture, bodies and buildings, music and mathematics in which Bob Dylan is not God.

comments

BSG and T:SCC vid recs

Sun, 17 May 2009 13:39:30 GMT

In spite of its failings, or maybe because of them, I think the BSG ending rather lends itself to vidding. A vidder can work around all the darns and duct tape holding the original together and weave the good threads back into one small but perfect tapestry.

Follow Me into the Darkness by threezerotwo
To me, one of those small perfect things was the penultimate chapter of Kara’s story. Not the ultimate because Kara is no angel (and certainly not a bloody pigeon) but Kara as not quite Kara, who had her memories but hadn’t had to live through them. I liked the way it seemed to give her the distance to finally piece together the puzzle of herself. This vid’s subdued colouring and fragmented images express that Kara beautifully and gives her an ending that feels just right. With fire, not fade away.

Slow Down Gandhi by obsessive24
The Cylons had a plan but there never did seem to be much of one for the civilians on the show. The two-part mutiny in S4.5 was one of the few times they got to play centre stage and even then the focus was on the leaders and the dice clearly weighted - Zarek’s murderous ambition was hammered home from his killing of Laird. It’s all there in this vid. Gold lit decadence aboard Colonial One while the masses lurk in the shadows. The egocentric anger driving the men who would be Ghandi. Throughout the people remain a blur, camera pans over hands and feet, only coming face to face with the viewer when the show’s over and still nothing has changed.

Unnatural Selection by charmax
Terminators and cylons are very different kinds of robots. But both were made to be perfect and in both cases their first free act was to destroy their maker. They enter the evolutionary process by trying to end it only to find that perfection is incompatible with survival. They adapt, they change, they die and in dying live. Who’d have thought classic Darwinism could be so visually striking or bust such a beat?

Lost at Sea by halcyon_shift
The tragedy of Jesse. The strong smooth movement through water that eventually draws her down, a strange counterpoint to the clatter of jagged images from life on land.

comments