plaid wallpaper

maura @ 10:07 pm

So as I mentioned, we’re watching Mad Men. It’s been both good and bad to be working our way through a pile (3 seasons!) of TV. The good is that there’s always something to watch, which is particularly good since none of the other shows we watch are back on yet. Which is of course the bad, too, esp. when it’s 11:30pm on a school night and that tiny evil voice is saying “just one more…”

It’s definitely making me feel kind of weird. I mean, it’s a great show, but I feel conflicted about it. It’s kind of depressing (Jonathan: “it’s a drama!”) — I guess I hadn’t realized that so much of our other TV viewing is comedy. Except Fringe, which doesn’t count because it’s scifi. And House, which is much too funny to be a real drama.

I have a antagonistic mental relationship with the 1950s. Yes, I know the show’s set in the early ’60s, and that all of the in-your-face sexism and racism is pretty much the whole point. But watching it makes me annoyed that the whole myth of the perfect postwar 1950s even existed in the first place. And still does today: I read a great book on the subject a few years ago by family studies professor Stephanie Coontz called The Way We Never Were.

Even with eyes wide open, though, the myth of the 50s is powerful stuff. Because who doesn’t want things to be that way, at least on some level? The (theoretical) good parts: the dream of the middle class. A nice backyard and a Girl to come clean up the dishes. Jonathan made us a Delmonico steak for dinner the other night while drinking an Old Fashioned, and it was tasty.

It would be easier for me to ignore the myth if I weren’t so madly in love with the style. The mid-century modern furniture, the awesome skirts + blouses, even the mustard-yellow appliances: it all makes me swoon. Jonathan remarked that the set and costume designers must be having a ball. How can an era that invented brown plaid wallpaper be all bad?

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still here…

maura @ 10:13 pm

…but so veryverybusy. The Fall semester (and the class I’m teaching) started last Thursday (13 students this semester, yay!). Gus’s school doesn’t start until next Wednesday, and even then it’s only 1 day back before they’re off for 2 days for Rosh Hashanah. I keep meaning to blag at night, but by the time chores + bedtime are finished it’s late–Gus is still on his summer schedule even if I’m not–and all I want to do is watch season 1 of Mad Men (which we finally started watching last weekend) and go to sleep.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Bye!

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he has a lot to learn before he’s ready to save anyone

maura @ 2:42 pm

So even after all that blaggy bluster about whitewashing, we went to see The Last Airbender. In the end we just couldn’t resist, plus it was a nice confluence of kid through teen through adult love of the show (we went with Jonathan’s aunt, uncle and teenage cousins). Of course it wasn’t as good as the TV show, but how could it be? But, you know, I so wanted it to be good that even though I’ve seen the bad reviews I couldn’t make myself entirely believe it wouldn’t be good.

I get that it’s hard to adapt a 20-episode TV show into a 2 hour movie, really I do. There’s lots of character development that needs to get shortened, and some stuff needs to be left out. But as someone said (can’t remember who) it was like M. Night Shyamalan had never actually *seen* the show. There didn’t seem to be any attempt at all to distinguish between the important and unimportant bits, and the movie felt kind of slapped together willy nilly. I can’t imagine how it would feel to someone who’d never watched the show before, but my guess is that they’d be completely lost.

That was the biggie. Two minor, nitpicky points:

1. For an expensive movie, the effects were just not all that special.

2. And for heavens sake, WHY did they change the pronunciation of several of the main characters’ names?! This isn’t like when you see a movie based on a book and think, “oh, I didn’t realize his name was pronounced like that.” This film is based on a TV show! With audio! So very annoying, and seemed like it was especially designed to get under the skin of hardcore fans.

That’s about all I have to say, but these funny/sad fan reviews are pretty hilarious, if you’re interested.

And in *good* movie news, last night Jonathan and I watched the Swedish version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Which was a GREAT example of how to take something very very long (600+ pages) and make it into a 2 hour(-ish) movie. I’ve read all 3 of the books so of course my brain filled in the missing bits and added story around the characters, so it was difficult for me to tell if the movie was hard to follow. The whole way through I kept asking Jonathan, who’s read none of the books, whether there was stuff that he didn’t understand or jumpiness or things that didn’t connect, but there wasn’t. Maybe M. Night should contact the screenwriter for some tips?

I don’t think I’ll want to see the American version of the movie, the Swedish version did a great job. But that doesn’t prevent me from having a pretty strong opinion about who should play Lisbeth: Natalie Portman (obvs!).

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soon we’ll be swimming

maura @ 10:07 pm

Time for the end of TV season finale wrap up! Pull up a chair and join us, won’t you?

(P.S. Spoilers ahead! Duh. And anyway these were all aired over a week ago so they really shouldn’t be news to anyone.)

House:
Man, this finale was intense, with a capital TENSE. Nothing tweaks me like watching the aftermath of a building collapse. I’m not claustrophobic, but there’s just something primal fear-ish about being trapped in a small space; I was literally squirming during the entire show. Add to that a commando, disaster-scene IV in the tibia — yowza! (Also: OUCH! The tibia is no trivial bone, I tell ya.) This episode was pretty near perfect, really. My only complaint is that there wasn’t enough Wilson. But the ending was nice, esp. the way they pulled a hallucination fakeout on us. Have a good summer, Hugh!

Fringe:
Ah, the two-part finale. It often starts out so well, and then…

Fringe has been much better since they’ve gotten back to the main storyline in the second half of this season, and the pre-finale episode made great strides in pushing that plot forward. I love the alternate universe: zeppelins docking at the Empire State Building (so fun!), random buildings + people encased in that weird temporal solidifying amber goo, Walternate is creepy, and Charlie’s alive (yay!) Badass tattooed alternate Olivia is a bit precious, but what can you do?

So things were moving along just fine, and then they had to go mess it all up by sending the badass Olivia back instead of the real one. I guess we should have expected it: really where can anything go once there’s been a scene in which you’ve punched your own self out? Fighting with your alternate universe double is such a cliche. Let’s hope they wrap this up quickly at the beginning of next season. Does anyone actually believe that the real Olivia would sit in the dark blubbering about her fate?

The Office:
Meh. I mean, kind of funny, but not laugh riot funny. Except for Woof, Ryan the Temp’s social media service. That was awesome.

30 Rock:
Also a two-parter. Overall, much more consistent than Fringe. I’ll miss Julianne Moore’s stupid Boston accent. Matt Damon was pretty funny, too.

I know the finale-est finale last week was for Lost, but I abandoned that show years ago so don’t ask me! Jonathan watched, though, and reports: “I liked it.” So there you have it.

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two unrelated things

maura @ 9:36 pm

1. Yesterday I spent an oddly large amount of time talking about cats. Not just any old cats, but mine and the cats owned by the other people I was with. First the subject came up at a meeting I was in, though I can’t quite remember how. Then cats came up again last night, when Jonathan and I were hanging out with some pals from my old job. Both conversations were pretty much the usual cat suspects: complaining about all the annoying stuff they do, wondering whether we’re giving them too much/too little/wet/dry food, interactions in multi-cat households, etc. I do love our cats, but still I was happy to hear that many folks had similar complaints to us about the weird stuff cats do. In the past sometimes I’ve gone looking on the internets for answers to cat questions, and you KNOW that is just a mistake.

As a cat-related aside, here is Gus + my most favorite kitten video on YouTube: kittens on a roomba! Guaranteed to cheer you up whenever you’re crabby.

2. Only 2 episodes of Dollhouse left until the bitter end, and it’s making me sad. (We haven’t watched last night’s ep yet, will tonight.) It’s intense and even kind of exhausting to watch a show that’s been canceled. There’s no filler at all, just episode after episode featuring hard-charging mythology plots.

(Not that the occasional monster of the week episode is at all bad; one of the best Buffy episodes ever was a one-off [The Body, when her mom died -- so amazing]).

I’m still pretty bummed out that Dollhouse was canceled. The episodes since the cancellation have been a little whiplashy as they try and get things wrapped up before the end of the series. But they’ve also been great, relying much more on the ensemble cast than just Echo, and bringing back teh awesome guest stars (Amy Acker! Summer Glau!).

Sigh.

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tv rant, part the second

maura @ 10:14 pm

Well, now Dollhouse is canceled, so I guess I won’t get to complain about it anymore. Stupid Fox, have they done anything right since the X-Files?

Last night I forgot to complain about House. Strong start this season with House in the institution (yay for creepy gothic buildings) and we loved his awesome spazzy rapping bipolar roommate. Who apparently rapped the life story of Alexander Hamilton at a White House shindig recently (see video at Tenured Radical, one of my favorite faculty blogs).

But then, just like everything, apparently, the season’s gone downhill. Why were 13 and Taub taken off, exactly? And the whole Chase/Cameron tension is Not Very Tense At All, since we all know that Jennifer Morrison’s leaving the show. Meh. There have been some good scenes with Wilson this season, so that’s a plus. Maybe I am still mad at them for not taking the fullest advantage of Kal Penn leaving last year. The suicide was a great plot point, but they totally dropped the ball afterwards.

Is there anything good on TV these days? 30 Rock is still awesome, thankfully. Get Tina Fey on the horn — maybe it should be on every night.

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in which i rant about telemavision

maura @ 8:32 pm

I’m really disappointed with TV this fall. We don’t even watch that many shows these days (since BSG ended, and I’ve lost all patience with Lost [though Jonathan still sometimes watches it]), and it’s a total drag when they’re not so good. Esp. on long teaching days when all I really want to do at night is watch TV and drink a beer.

So, what do we watch? You may remember that over the summer we watched all of last season (the first) of Fringe, that JJ Abrams X-Files kind of show. It ended up being pretty good, and I was really excited for the new season.

This season has been really eh. Too many monster-of-the-week eps, not enough story arc. And what happened to Dunham’s sister (played by the drunk friend from Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist)? Just whisked right off the show without so much as a how do you do. But what really got to me was when they killed off Charlie, the average-guy FBI partner. I don’t know, I really liked him — he was a nice balance to all the pretty folk on the show. And it was totally implausible the way they made him get taken over by that weird future guy and his partner didn’t even notice (?!). Lame.

Next up: Dollhouse. Okay, I had a bit of doubt when we watched last season over the summer, but I persevered and it got much, much better. So much better, in fact, that this season has paled in comparison. Part of it is over-reliance on Echo, I think. Some actors are strong enough to be a show’s lead and some aren’t. This show would really benefit from becoming more of an ensemble piece, like the last ep with Sierra’s breakdown.

The other issue is that the show kind of wrapped itself up last season, at least if you watched the extra, unaired episode “Epitaph One” (which we had to watch because Felicia Day is in it and we <3 her). I mean, okay, it’s set in the future, but it pretty much ties all of the loose ends of the plot up in a neat little bow. And even though I try to convince myself that there’s more good stuff in between the time of this season and Epitaph One, I’m having trouble believing it.

I will give it this: great guest stars this season from the Buffyverse and BSG. But I miss Amy Acker.

I could say more about TV but now it’s time to watch House from the other night, so you’ll have to wait til tomorrow.

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make a cup of tea, put a record on

maura @ 10:12 pm

We are having a weird home-screen-viewing summer. Should have been catching up on movies, but instead we watched the whole season of Fringe. Which ended up being pretty good. I mean, it’s an unabashed X-Files wannabe, but it’s always nice to see Pacey getting work, and the plots are interesting and full of weird stuff that is sometimes gross but not too much. Also the location titles floating in the sky are pretty nice (though a friend finds them ominous).

Continuing the catching-up-on-TV-we-missed-last-season trend,* this week we started watching Dollhouse. Finally! Yes, I know, what took us so long? Partly it was self-preservation: it’s so hard to get really into a show only to have it canceled. But now it’s been renewed so I feel like we should watch it before the new season starts.

* When we really should be watching The Class, which Netflix sent us ages ago and which I really really want to see. But sometimes it’s hard to commit to 2 hrs of watching, esp. when we can’t guarantee that our wee sleephater will be asleep before 9:30 these days. Maybe after school starts. Say it with me: 8 more days!

Okay, Jonathan warned me that the first 6 eps. have been widely acknowledged as Not That Great, and that it gets better. Thanks to Twitter I know that Felicia Day is in ep. 13, too, yay! But we’ve watched 2 episodes so far and I have to say that I am wavering on whether to continue. It’s just so mysoginistic. Of course Buffy was hilarious and moving and sad and bleak, and the main character was female and bad things happened to her. Some of those bad things happened because she’s a girl. But bad things happened to other people on the show, male people. And, you know, Buffy kicked ass, so that was cool.

Echo gets to do some strong stuff too, some fighting, etc. But overall she is just being used, man. The violence in ep. 2 really threw me; it was so hopeless and bleak. And mean. It’s so confusing — Joss, what are you doing?

Of course I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s great to see so many of the Joss regulars and the BSG refugees too (Tahmoh Penikett kind of looks like my brother, so I like him). I’m sure I’ll become a convert in the end: Jonathan referred me to the blogosphere which is full of commentary on feminism + Dollhouse + Joss (and which I’m not reading yet for fear of spoilers). But geez, til we get there, it’s hard to watch. We’re cuing up ep. 3, which I hope helps me shake off ep. 2.

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how’d you get on the ceiling?

maura @ 8:41 am

I’ve had a hard time keeping up with leisure reading this semester. I think it’s partly because I’ve been reading lots for a research project I’m starting soon, and also trying to keep up w/general library + higher ed news. Or maybe it’s TV — there seems to have been much more good stuff on lately (and we haven’t even started watching Dollhouse yet).

Another reason for the leisure reading drought is probably because the last piece of fiction I read was Neil Stephenson’s latest 900 page bruiser “Anathem.” It was intense + awesome: compelling and academic scifi with lots of good plot twists in all the right places. I haven’t been so sad about finishing a book since “Time Traveler’s Wife” (which still hurts to think about, actually).

A couple of weeks ago I finished 2 disappointing nonfiction books. And afterwards I experienced an incredibly intense need for fiction, it was really weird. Now I’m reading “Never Let Me Go,” courtesy of our building’s ad hoc basement lending library. It’s pretty good so far, creepy + atmospheric + engaging.

Next up I think I’ll read an old collection of Kelly Link stories, “Stranger Things Happen.” Jonathan recently reminded me that it’s available for free for Stanza, the awesome iPhone ebook reader. And I have a bunch of meetings in Manhattan coming up this week so it’ll be convenient not to have to carry an extra book with me.

One of our recent TV diversions was this 6 hr miniseries that ran on the Scifi Channel a few yrs ago called The Lost Room. The intriguing premise is that there’s a hotel room that disappeared 50 yrs ago, no one knows why. The objects that were in the room have weird powers, and the key makes any door open into the room (and when you leave you can come out of any door that you can envision). It was a good ride for the first 5 episodes — the plot moved fast + hung together well — but the last ep was kind of weak, as if the miniseries had been a pilot for a show that wasn’t picked up.

When we finished watching the show Jonathan proposed that it was kind of like reading Borges or Donald Barthelme or Steven Millhauser or Kelly Link: “They’re all working on the same project. I don’t know what that project is, but clearly they’re all involved.” Which is what made me remember that Kelly Link book in the first place.

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cause the days change at night

maura @ 10:38 pm

Woah, has it really been 2 weeks since my last post? Time flies when there’s teaching teaching teaching and then bam, Spring Break. Now the teaching is over (though Spring Break isn’t quite yet) and I’m a little sad, just like last semester. Curious, it is (see Yoda reference below).

Thanks to the spring non-secular holidays, Gus’s Spring Break was extra-long this year, so we hightailed it to Our Nation’s Capital for a few days to reprise our vacation 2 yrs ago. We even stayed at the same hotel! It was nice to be sort of familiar with everything. And we finally figured out the metro. Such a weird system, with the whole pay when you exit thing and how 2 people can’t use the same card and the fares are different between locations. Duh!

The trip was pretty fun. We did a few new things: Lincoln Memorial, which I found so moving (realized I had never been there), Vietnam War Memorial (ditto), pedal boats in the Tidal Basin to ogle the Jefferson Memorial (tho someone w/short legs was a pedal slacker), and the Museum of American History (which had been closed 2 yrs ago). Gus was tired + crabby for the latter so we let him play his DS while Jonathan ogled Julia Child’s kitchen and I grooved on Within These Walls, a reconstructed historic house with info about 6 families that lived there from the late 18th-mid-20th c. Go, historic house nerds!

We also hit a few of our old faves from last time. The cafeteria of the National Museum of the American Indian has dee-licious food (mmm, fry bread. and fiddlehead ferns!). Maybe one of these days we will have time to visit the rest of the museum, too. And it’s right next door to the Air + Space Museum, which you may have heard is the most visited museum IN THE WORLD, a fact which I could not help myself from mentioning about a jillion times as we slowly swam through the ridiculous crowds of people inside.

Gus reeeeeeally wanted to see the planetarium movie about black holes, so we did. It was narrated by Liam Neeson and I spent the first part of the show feeling really bad for him. But then his voice got all spooky and he told us that many galaxies have black holes at their centers and Gus said “does our galaxy have a black hole?” and I said “uhhhmmm…” and Liam said “there is even a black hole at the center of our own galaxy!” and Gus grabbed my arm so tight it hurt. So Liam Neeson, I am sorry for your loss, but thank you very much for freaking out my child. Stupid black holes.

After that we had to get ice cream, even though it was 50 degrees and raining, because we wanted to drag Gus to the Hirshhorn to see some modern art, which we <3 and he despises (”I hate art!”). The pin book wasn’t on display, but we stumbled (literally, as we had to piggyback Mr. Crabby + Scared of Black Holes throughout the museum) upon a great exhibit of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois’s work. My most favorite of her pieces were the little rooms made up of wire cages or spirals formed by wooden doors joined together with cool furniture and other weird stuff inside, sometimes only visible through a window or via a mirror. Red room (child) was the neatest, with spools of thread and wax hands. Creepy.

Gus was mostly happy just to swim in the hotel pool, eat Frosted Flakes at the free hotel breakfast and watch cable (he discovered Clone Wars on the Cartoon Network — see, there’s the Yoda reference!). It was kind of weird to see real TV (esp. Fox News at breakfast, ugh), but it’s good to experience it every so often if only so we have the chance to engage in what passes for media literacy education in our house. When loud obnoxious kid commercials come on (like a horrible one for a card game called, appropriately enough, Chaotic), Jonathan and I mock it loudly and whine to Gus to buy it for us. He’s also started reading advertising claims to us (from all media): “Mom, is this really the best yogurt you’ve ever tasted?” which is hilarious.

Also one night in a totally hilarious, Bart Simpson moment, Gus called Jonathan “farty fart mcweiner butt.” And we completely blew it by laughing until we cried. Oh well.

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