TV/Movie/Book Disappointments and Successes

[Wisp]

I felt compelled to start this thread after seeing The Incredible Burt Wonderstone a few days ago. (And extreme boredom. Always boredom with me. I should be doing an essay but that would be ridiculous.)

I have never seen Steve Carell play a charmless character before this film.

EDIT:

Now this thread has been extended to include any recent TV/Movies/Books etc. that you've recently took a shine to! Yaaaay...

[Toad]

I was a wee bit disappointed with Sharknado. Sharks. Tornados. How could it miss?

[Wisp]

For a Success... Community. I like Abed.





Seriously, I think he might be a candidate to fill the Homo Novus-shaped hole in my heart that the post season 4 monstrosities have made.

[queenoftheDales]

The Bourne Identity trilogy was by far the most boring action movie series that I've had to sit through. All the running around but nothing actually happening killed it for me. Fell asleep halfway through the second one.

The Men Who Stare at Goats- this movie was so....different. It is definitely an acquired taste.

VEEP. I think Julia Louie-Dreyfus is hilarious

and lastly there is The Goldbergs on ABC (Tuesdays, I believe). This show isn't like Community and its more family friendly, but it is so damn funny. Barry pretty much makes the show for me.

[lewstonewar]

I vented my disappointment among several formats over the weekend so I may as well do it here as well. Because of all the hoopla I decided to read Divergent (a library e-copy) I got as far as 100 pages and the plot holes were just to numerous for me to go on.

[SpaceAnJL]

Positives - Ben Aaronovitch 'Rivers of London'

Basically, urban fantasy meets police procedural. The Met has a very small section that deals with supernatural weirdness. The young copper who narrates, Peter Grant, is the kind of snarky pop culture asshole who'd fit in well around here, and his superior officer DCI Nightingale is a Badass Gentleman Sorcerer. (Ben A used to write for Doctor Who, and wants Paul McGann to do the role on telly.) It's sharp and weird and a love letter to London, all in one.

[Nutz]

I was a wee bit disappointed with Sharknado. Sharks. Tornados. How could it miss?

Oh I love a good (bad) "B" movie. The ones on Scyfi are hit or miss, but I still watch everyone.

[Louise]

So, I wanted to give a mildly-enthusiastic recommendation of this book series by Sharon Shinn:




First book in the series is "Mystic and Rider." This author has several different series and stand-alone books, so there's plenty of material if you end up liking her stuff.

Now, first of all, this is a case of "don't judge a book by its cover", because the cover is rather cheesy and doesn't look at all the way the character is described in the book. This character, Senneth, is repeatedly described as having short white hair, and she is also slightly androgynous-looking or at least doesn't care about being fashionable. As I was reading, I wondered who could play Senneth in a hypothetical movie version of this book, and I thought that Tilda Swinton could, if she were a bit younger. Wouldn't you know it, other people had the same thought:

Fan-chosen image of Tilda Swinton as Senneth:



Fan-chosen image of Kate Winslet as Senneth:



I wouldn't have thought of Kate Winslet, myself, but something in-between these two images would probably match my mental image of the character.

Anyway...this is a fantasy series which takes place in a kingdom called Gillengaria, which is subdivided into twelve smaller realms. What I really, really, REALLY appreciate is that the series, so far, is free of the various tics and tropes that tend to irritate me, about epic fantasy. The worldbuilding makes sense, the use of magic makes sense, the geography and place-names make sense. The author isn't just endlessly listing people and places for no reason; the people and places are relevant to the plot. Really good worldbuilding, IMO. Everything seems realistic and believable and well-thought-out.

The premise is pretty straightforward: some people are mystics, meaning that they have magic powers, and some people are not. Mystics are born, not made. The level of tolerance or intolerance shown towards mystics varies, from region to region and from person to person.

This isn't a stereotypical Tolkein rip-off type of fantasy series about the farm boy who becomes the Chosen One and defeats the Dark Lord. There's no equivalent of Sauron or Voldemort. There's a good-versus-evil story, to be sure, but the villains are human and their motives, while nasty, are comprehensible. The villains aren't demonic; nobody's being evil just for the hell of it. This is good, because I can't really get down with stories of Pure Evil™ where the villains are just inhuman monsters and have no understandable motive.

I'm not sure this even strictly qualifies as epic fantasy, because it's not a quest story. It's a story of political scheming and counter-scheming, with magic-related issues as a subplot. Personally, I found this very refreshing and realistic. The magic was integrated into everyday life in a highly believable way.

What's interesting and refreshing is that this is a road-trip story, but unlike, say, The Hobbit, it's not a road story with a specific destination. It's about a disparate group of characters traveling throughout the kingdom on an information-gathering mission for the King.

Senneth is a woman who can summon heat and fire. She is described as the most powerful mystic in existence. She was thrown out by her family at a young age and chooses to live as a wanderer, living by her own moral code. During the course of the book, Senneth finds a dangerous tiger-like feline animal called a raelynx and brings it along with her.

There are six main characters in all; two women and four men, and out of these six, four are mystics and two are not. Kirra is a shape-shifter and healer, Donnall is a shape-shifter, and Cammon has the ability to read other people's emotions and sense people's presence from afar. Tayse and Justin, the non-mystics, are warriors/soldiers. Senneth and Tayse are the "Mystic and Rider" of the title; and there's a romance between them, although it's handled very subtly and I would not describe this as a romance novel, at all.

The other thing I really, REALLY appreciated about these books is that there's nothing super-disturbing or offensive. There are some serious themes and moments of violence, but this is not Game of Thrones. The violence and the darker themes are relevant to the plot, not gratuitous; the author doesn't wallow in this stuff or indulge in torture-porn. There's also no rape or graphic sex.

TBH, I'd say this series is more notable for the lack of anything obnoxious than for the presence of anything super-awesome; they're good airplane books or beach/vacation books. Not the most compelling or suspenseful, although the second book of the series is immediately much plottier and more action-packed. As you can easily imagine, the first book largely exists to set the scene, introduce us to the characters, and do all of the exposition/worldbuilding. However, all of this is done very well, without being tedious.

The female characters are genuinely heroic and talented, as are the male characters. Too often, when someone tries to create "strong female characters", this seems to consist of "I kick you in the face, say a snarky line, and run away", IMO. These books aren't like that. Senneth is super bad-ass, but not cocky or arrogant. This is the story of someone who has to exercise careful self-control and self-discipline because her power is so strong that it would be devastating if she let it loose.

So, yeah. A+ world-building, notable absence of anything overly disturbing or offensive, and pretty good characters. I found Kirra ever-so-slightly irritating for no real reason; I think I'm just incapable of liking *all* the characters in any given group. There's romance, but it's very, very subtle and not drippy or cliched, and doesn't really come into play until the final third of the book. I should mention that religious persecution is one of the series' themes, so if that's something you find especially squicky, you might want to pass. It's not a fluffy story, it's just not wildly OTT-gruesome or graphic.

They're easy books to put down, but easy to pick up again.

[Louise]

Book recommendation:

If you want a very unusual detective story, I'd rec this one: 





"Seeking Whom He May Devour", by Fred Vargas. This is a detective story and a murder-mystery, like I said, but it's not your usual Agatha Christie type of thing, at all.  It takes place in rural France, which is a setting that I'm not familiar with, and it's very atmospheric and quirky and different. IMO the writing style is both a strength and a weakness. This novel was translated from French into English, and from what I can tell, the translation resulted in some awkward and choppy language. If you can read French, I'd prob. recommend seeking out the original version, because the language in the translation is clunky, but it's still a good, spooky, and very suspenseful novel.  (I can't read French, but I'm assuming the translation is the reason why the writing style is rather stilted.)  Still, it was a real page-turner, and I enjoyed it a lot.