somniloquence

Someone pointed out to me that the first week of September was after Labor Day weekend in the States, so it'd be better to wait to start the Justified rewatch on September 10--so this is your one week and one day alert that we'll do the Justified pilot episode, "Fire in the Hole," on September 10! You can stream all six seasons in the US on Amazon Prime if you have that, as well as purchase on Apple and YouTube, and can find all of them on DVD. I'm sure they also probably exist on torrent sites, and if you know of outside-the-US sources for streaming, please let me know.

(I'd love to add a photo from an episode each week, but I don't want to DL them to my extremely limited storage here, except that whenever I've linked to photos they come in on DW as enormous and I've never seen a way to resize them for my postings. Does anyone know how to do that, if it's even possible here?)

Other, non-Justified stuff: I've had lots of back to back work, which is unusual for summer. It's been nice because I've had a chance to work on some non-romances for a change, so been able to take a break from some of the tropes and cliches I dislike so intensely. But everything really needs good editing at a higher level than I'm doing, and I'm working way harder than what I'm being paid for because of that. I really miss the days when book editors edited, so the copyeditors or even proofreaders weren't expected to pick up such challenging slack that they really shouldn't be doing. I'll be interested to see how both of these more lit-fic type books do, though.

I've managed to watch a lot of stuff, though, in between--caught up on this season of GLOW, which based on Netflix's ridiculous business model may well be its last, and I'm preemptively sad about that. I haaaate the men on the show (well, a couple of them, not all of them are bad) and every moment taken up by Bash or Sam that could have been spent on someone like Carmen makes me actively resentful, but I'm still really loving the show, mostly, and I don't want it to go away. I want to know what happens with Debbie and the TV station, and whether Ruth will realize that directing would be a good fit for her, since that's what she does with GLOW all the time anyway. I desperately want Carmen back, because I love her so much. I wish the whole show was about her, sometimes, but I also love Tamme and Cherry and seeing Sheila come into her own as a person. Geena Davis was a great addition to this season.

I finished Travelers, which I didn't like as much as many of my friends did, but I love me some time travel, even if I can't ever write that sort of thing, and it will surprise no one who knows me that my favorite episode was the sort of time-loopy one, where the traveler kept getting rebooted into the parachutist to try to stop the massacre of the main Traveler team. The ending was tough, again because Netflix won't keep shows long enough, so I sort of felt like "wait, that's it?" A lot of people, apparently, thought it ended on a good spot, but not me. I'd have happily watched another season to wrap things up more--but if you enjoy Canadian actor bingo, you will love this show.

Red Sea Diving Resort is terrible (well okay, not terrible but not great either), but it's terrible in the specific way that I will still consume it like my cat with his 'nip addiction. It has lots of hot people, notably Chris Evans, and more notably long-haired, bearded Chris Evans in a wetsuit and little shorts and even briefly nothing at all, so they had me at hello. It's extremely white savior, even though based on a true story, and I kept grinding my teeth over the fact that I don't think many of the cast are Jewish and would it have killed them to cast at least a few of the damn roles with actual Jewish actors playing heroic Jews. Don't get me wrong, there are great actors, like Alessandro Nivola and Michael K. Williams, but yeah, problematic. And yet, sadly, I would probably watch this bad movie again just because it presses so many of my shallow buttons.

You know what does not hold up well? Adventures in Babysitting. I used to loooove that movie, and rewatched it a few weeks ago, and oh my god, it was so painful. The misogyny and racism are kinda horrifying (of course the white kids in the black blues club win everyone over right away with their spunkiness and talent!), especially the Playboy centerfold bullshit, and the view of life outside white suburbia is objectively terrible. But at least now I think I know where my intense hatred of Bradley Whitford comes from--I had completely forgotten that that was the first time I'd probably ever seen his awful backpfeifengesicht as the terrible boyfriend and it left a lifelong negative impression on me. (I have rarely been so satisfied in a movie as when Nicole Kidman beats the living shit out of him in Destroyer--it was so id-fulfilling.) Sorry, I know a bunch of you guys worship him, but I have never been able to stand him and now I know why! So, hey, at least you're good for something, AiB, as well as the big laugh I always get at seeing blond Vincent D'Onofrio as the Thor type guy!

I also rewatched The Good Place because I've been listening to The Good Place the Podcast with Marc Evan Jackson, and it made me want to see everything again. I never used to be able to listen to podcasts, because I hate disembodied voices and would always punch buttons in the car whenever people started talking, but I listened to the outstanding Chernobyl series podcast and it made me want to try this one. Marc Evan Jackson has the most amazing voice ever, and because they started it after season two had aired, there's a lot of really in-depth discussion with other cast and crew, and of course, Mike Schur. It's so informative, and fun to listen to behind the scenes stuff, and when Season 3 finished, they picked up the slack by talking about stuff like Brooklyn 99 or having Good Place fans like Lin-Manual Miranda come on and "shoot the shirt," as they always say, with Jackson. His voice is like like buttah, I swear. (It's hilarious to hear him try to wrap his head around fannish things like head-canons; I really hope by now someone on twitter or whatever has helped him understand that.) Highly, highly recommended, especially because he ends every cast with a "what's good" question, and people talk about stuff they support or love, and it's really uplifting. (ETA: One thing that came up in the podcasts about Jackson is that he married his vet! How can you not love a guy who loves animals and marries his vet!)

Okay, so I was incredibly pleasantly surprised by the Good Place episode Thursday night, because I'd thought they were done for the season like before, and we wouldn't get new episodes till January. And I absolutely loved it, and what a showcase for D'Arcy Carden, not to mention Ted Danson (and I was absolutely thrilled by having Stephen Merchant in there). But I have a serious question: ( Read more... )