beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Today I watched Singing in the Rain
because it is their Lucky Day
(good morning, good morning)

It's fun but it's weird because the good bits version in my head doesnt keep all the songs?
Most of them though.

I keep reading the Yuletide fic though because those three were
very obvious
which is fun.

I felt like this extended edition had a little more room to breathe in several moments and I liked it quite well
but I liked least when I was most sure it was doing something new.

When it got to the bit featuring the character in the title, mum kept interrupting to ask what was going on and why they were doing that.
Which as I said to mum is probably why the ordinary version cut those bits out.

I think we're pretty likely to watch the familiar version in future, but, it was a success watching this one today
and my brother said next week Apocalypse
so he liked it well enough to make plans.

Win.

Today I watched the movie 'Valerian'.
The cover blurb says "visually astonishing"
and yes, I agree, they went all out on the visuals, that was a whole lot of cool pixels that gave you a visual extravaganza at all times.

Problem is it had ten, maaaaaybe twenty minutes worth of story, and the other two hours were a whole lot of whoosh boom to give you a tour of those visuals.

It never mattered that these were alien races. It was a very basic story. You knew what had happened and what was going to happen, plot wise, from the first five minutes.

Also there were basically two characters and I found them both obnoxious. Which never helps.

I watched this film sped up and still felt like it was far too long.

Which is a pity, because the background pretty was a whole lot of work in every moment.

I have been thinking on the Black Widow movie, which I watched at the weekend, and trying to think why it was not the fun I was looking for.

... the backstory is very upsetting, I expected that, but I was expecting different things once Nat was an adult.

Black Widow is a movie we wanted made... but possibly not exactly like this?
She was fun to watch because she could plough through whole crowds of opponents, mostly guys much bigger than her, she could manipulate anyone, mostly guys much more powerful than her, and she... basically knew what she was doing? Better than anyone?

She freed herself from the worst circumstances. Having been raised by people full of hate, she made a choice, and became her own person.

I feel like the movie didn't give us any of that.

spoilers under the cut
( Read more... )

There's a story to be made about a whole school of Black Widows, raised and trained to believe wrong things, and how the one who left first can help the others get out.

It would require writers to make some decisions about what that wrong stuff was, and what the right things were, and be persuasive in both directions, with the good stuff winning.

Thesis, antithesis, fight!

... this was a whole set of fights without a thesis, I feel.

It wasn't even about fighting for freedom ina way that maps to the real world.

It was just... empty.

So I did not like Black Widow in the way I liked the stories Black Widow could have been.



And then of course the tag scene is there to just... draw a hard cut off on the whole thing we just watched, and remind me why I hated that other movie.



So the overall experience is like... being sold advertising.


I did not quite enjoy it.

I've had this on DVD for a while but I thought it would be most fun to watch with my brother, but then he keeps choosing other things so today I watched for the first time.

That totally deserves its Hugo.

( Read more... )

So now I'm being enthusiastic but not articulate, and I'm behind as usual so everyone has been squee already.

But this was an excellent movie and it did stuff with its medium it couldn't have done elsewise.

solid ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ out of 5

Had a nice day today, mum did visit and we watched one of the Ealing Studios Collection I bought, Passport to Pimlico. A bit of paperwork and some treasure get discovered when an unexploded bomb finally went off, and it proves that this one street in Pimlico is actually a whole country of its own, and also, because treasure, rich. It was nice, bits of funny, kind people, and all the situation rolled from the initial silly idea. It's from post war when rationing was on, and most of the fun comes from people finding a way to tear up the ration books for a while, and how that doesn't quite work out.

Also we ate some foods, we can both eat the Amy's Kitchen trays, so we both had Pad Thai.

And when we were chatting at the start I was all :-( about my laundry being out of control, but I realised I could in fact start a laundry right that minute, so I did, and we had an intermission when the drying needed sorting. So that was helpful and productive. :-)

it was wet when it was go home time but mum had an umbrella.

so that's a pretty good day.

Today we watched The Last Jedi. I hadn't watched it yet and had heard Many opinions on it, and also knew what would happen, which I'm pretty glad of because then I could look forwards to the good bits.

There were good bits. It wasn't the movie I would have made but if I was editing it I'd keep many bits. I like Rose, saving what we love. I was mostly annoyed at Poe. ( Read more... )


All in all it has some proper mythic stuff, good people, interesting bits.

I'll keep the bits I like.

This didn't suck.
... I'd like to be nicer to it because gay lead character played by gay actor
but
nazis
I hate Earth X and everything about that storyline
just
nazis.

Ugh.

Also this one seems to have the Earth X version of The Flash in it, and I do not want.

Ray is fine though. ( Read more... )


If they're going to use the multiverse I would have really preferred they didn't use it this specific and particular way.

But Ray as a character is fine and I'd probably watch more if there was more.

Today mum and my brother visited and we ate foods and then watched Aquaman.

Aquaman is plenty good. Whoosh and boom... or sploosh and crunch. Visually very imaginative and impressive.

But I liked best that he won by ( Read more... )

I liked many parts of this film and the story and the spectacle supported each other and it did a grand job of making a whole alien world that's just under water.

Also it's one superhero movie with a good answer for why he just doesn't ask his superhero friends: they can't breathe down there. He has a whole world of his own. Pretty cool.



I am very impressed that they made me impressed and invested in an Aquaman movie when I've been reading comics and being a DC fan for so long and just, like, barely paid him any mind. That sounds mean but I mean, whatever wasn't working for me before, they've fixed it. Pretty cool.



So that was a pretty good day.

I watched Venom and then read https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/79396.html Rydra Wong's Walked Right Out Of The Machinery, and so now I have Thoughts about parasites and symbiotes and civilisation. Not on the whole new thoughts, but I thought I'd write them down again anyway, since I keep going silent around here.

Stargate set up the goa'uld to be very alien and very limited, in their unbonded forms. The Tok'ra were living with the same biology, but made different moral choices about what to do with it. The Venom parasite has different constraints, not least that it eats its hosts. And then there's Jadzia Dax, treated very differently than all of the above, since the Dax symbiote doesn't stay a seperate voice in the host, an old being taking over a new life, they just conjoin completely, becoming together an entirely new being, or so the legal argument went.

We don't know much about the reproductive biology of Trill symbionts, or at least I don't. I hear there's stuff in the comics about Venom and his lot, but I don't know it. And that's a bit frustrating because you can go from the goa'uld's biological constraints to explaining their whole society. ... no I don't know how much the writers intended, and I haven't watched canon recently, but still, thoughts can happen. ( Read more... )


The thing is, Stargate wrote goa'uld as profoundly limited, biologically speaking. Impaired, compared to humans. Limited senses, no fine manipulators, possibly even limited capacity for thought. They are utterly dependent on their hosts for most functions.

And then Stargate presented them as evil because of this.

( Read more... )


What would be a fair arrangement, for two minds in a single body?

Answer that, preferably with an array of choices, and you've got a solution to the raised problem, rather than just a Biologically Evil Species.

True symbiosis, instead of parasites.




It's frustrating when the story doesn't want the same answers.

Just a more efficient war.




Of course another answer is what Baal did, to create more bodies that didn't have their own minds. Cloning technology opened up a whole new vista of possibilities for his species. ( Read more... )


Whether the symbiote needs the body or the mind of the host changes a lot about how they'd structure their society.

It's the difference between getting an exoskeleton and getting a friend, or teacher, or student.

The Tok'ra made a start, but they weren't great at it, and didn't take the symbiosis idea far enough. Individual, still not cultural. They could have magnified their ideas through far larger groups, but they were too constrained by secrecy to avoid being wiped out in that war.

... I feel like if they'd just bought a bunch of slaves and set up an experimental world somewhere they'd have done much better in the long run.




See the stories I'd tell, starting from the same biology, wouldn't so much be about the nukes and the shooting. That's the Problem. The solution is a lot about learning to be good neighbours, which means everyone getting their needs met. How they understand those needs is part of that. And they'd come up with a lot of different answers.

( Read more... )




I haven't watched most of the source texts for this for a really long time. Rewatch long overdue. So I'm sure I'm missing or misrememering a bunch of stuff.

But I had a thought to take for a walk, about parasites and symbiotes and the societies you'd need to build to make those lives work for everyone in them.

They'd need to work out a balance of priorities so both species had freedom to pursue personal projects and could improve the conditions for their own species and their own children.

The human ideal of attachment to a small group or an individual presents a model for a healthy relationship between symbiont and host.

But potentially the goa'uld greater good of improving the environment for the support of all future generations could present a model to improve how humans manage their worlds too. I mean, if you wanted to write them that way. They'd changed their whole way of life and engineered civilisations to support a far lower infant mortality rate for future generations and spread from one world to many. That was all good stuff.

It was just unfortunate that by making it more comfortable for the individual goa'uld parasite they'd cut themselves off from the data source that could let them understand how to make the whole thing work for everyone.



It would be way more interesting to write about sorting out that civilisation and working through the rebuilding than it is to write just blowing it up. Blowing it up is the same every time, figuring out how to mesh very different sets of needs is different.



I should write stories some time.

I have watched Venom.

I read a review just before watching that was like, this is a terrible superhero movie. Look at this, scene by scene, none of these are the beats of a superhero movie.
And I was like
if none of it a good superhero movie
possibly
it is not
a superhero
movie.

But somehow the reviewer didn't go there.

( Read more... )

That is not a superhero story. That is something else. And I guess (re)viewers who cannot roll with that are not going to like this movie.

I liked it fine. Did what it set out to do.

( Read more... )


So I had fun watching that. Can see what it was doing, liked it. Not a big fan of the ultra violence parts, can see how the two symbiote fight was kind of a mess visually, but okays, fun movie.



... but I had way more fun watching the like five minutes of Into the Spider Verse at the end than I'd had with the whole movie before it, so, think that might be more my speed.

Shall look forwards to it.

I went with mum to see subtitled showing of Captain Marvel
:-D :-D <3

That was excellent
I was looking forwards to it for years
and now I want to go again :-D

I do not have particularly complex thoughts on the movie righr now
just like whoosh! boom! Higher further faster!
which is awesome
but I think it will reward further thought.

Also the time it was set was fun.

Also, cat!



So I had an excellent evening
even if it took between 1545 & 2200 to go see one film.

tired now
but, whoosh! boom!