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2009 was the year that bit back. It seemed as though just about everybody in my family got diagnosed with something horrible this year. Happily, for the most part it went okay, but blimey, 2009. What did we ever to do you?!
Elsewhere, it was the year of Children Of Earth, the Torchwood mini series that broke the fandom. Some loved it, some hated it, some were baffled at how completely it reimagined everything. I think it's great, but it's so far removed from the first two series that I have trouble seeing it as the same show. It was also the year when White Collar started, hurrah! I do love that show. I probably didn't see it until early 2010 though. I know I had several episodes to catch up on anyway.
FlashForward also happened this year. And then stopped abruptly. It was one of those shows with a lot of promise, but a production staff who clearly didn't know what to do with a twenty-two episode season. Nothing happened for weeks, half the audience stopped watching, it picked up, but too late. A shame, as I should dearly have loved to see where it was all going! Another one to add to the list of sci-fi shows that got bashed over the head by the networks. It wasn't alone. This was also the year when the BBC aired Paradox, a wonderful show starring Emun Elliott and Tamzin Outhwaite as a scientist and a detective investigating weirdness from outer space. Outer Space!! I rewatched it only recently, and it turned out to be even better than I remembered, annoyingly. Why can't they let me choose which shows to axe and which to save?!
Talking of ending, this year also saw the final episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien, the chat show/Pythonesque comedy series that had been a hit for NBC since 1993. I only watched it for Max Weinberg, but it was a lot of fun over the years. I still rather miss it. Still, sixteen years is a good run for any show.
Some good films at the cinema this year. None of which I saw this year, or in the cinema, but whatever. The Hangover, which I love (and didn't see until around 2012), Sherlock Holmes (the RDJ/Jude Law version), which I think I also saw in around 2012, and The Brothers Bloom, which nobody saw in 2009. Which is a shame as it's extremely good, and I recommend it highly. So yes. Not so much "cinema in 2009", as "on DVD just the other day", but never mind.
Oh, and politics, world events, things that make me look brainy, etc, etc. Yeah.
( ... )
Elsewhere, it was the year of Children Of Earth, the Torchwood mini series that broke the fandom. Some loved it, some hated it, some were baffled at how completely it reimagined everything. I think it's great, but it's so far removed from the first two series that I have trouble seeing it as the same show. It was also the year when White Collar started, hurrah! I do love that show. I probably didn't see it until early 2010 though. I know I had several episodes to catch up on anyway.
FlashForward also happened this year. And then stopped abruptly. It was one of those shows with a lot of promise, but a production staff who clearly didn't know what to do with a twenty-two episode season. Nothing happened for weeks, half the audience stopped watching, it picked up, but too late. A shame, as I should dearly have loved to see where it was all going! Another one to add to the list of sci-fi shows that got bashed over the head by the networks. It wasn't alone. This was also the year when the BBC aired Paradox, a wonderful show starring Emun Elliott and Tamzin Outhwaite as a scientist and a detective investigating weirdness from outer space. Outer Space!! I rewatched it only recently, and it turned out to be even better than I remembered, annoyingly. Why can't they let me choose which shows to axe and which to save?!
Talking of ending, this year also saw the final episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien, the chat show/Pythonesque comedy series that had been a hit for NBC since 1993. I only watched it for Max Weinberg, but it was a lot of fun over the years. I still rather miss it. Still, sixteen years is a good run for any show.
Some good films at the cinema this year. None of which I saw this year, or in the cinema, but whatever. The Hangover, which I love (and didn't see until around 2012), Sherlock Holmes (the RDJ/Jude Law version), which I think I also saw in around 2012, and The Brothers Bloom, which nobody saw in 2009. Which is a shame as it's extremely good, and I recommend it highly. So yes. Not so much "cinema in 2009", as "on DVD just the other day", but never mind.
Oh, and politics, world events, things that make me look brainy, etc, etc. Yeah.
( ... )
Tags:
1994 was a big year for me. I went to university, and also got online for the first time. Access was a bit limited to begin with; they were still installing the equipment to properly get the place Netted up. But it was there. Instant communication with the entire world! Okay, okay - a little bit of it, mostly in other colleges. The internet was a lot smaller in those days! But communication, without that troublesome face-to-face nonsense. It was quite the revelation.
Lots happened before I got there though. My local area got turned on its head at the start of that year, when the Fred West saga was uncovered (literally). He'd been murdering young women for years, and burying them in his back garden. One of a number of jobs that I had that year was delivering newspapers, and I had strings of little old ladies sitting by their front doors every day, desperate for the latest bit of news! One of the victims, who had disappeared in 1973, was local, and they all remembered the search that went on for her at the time, in fields round about. That turned into quite the major story - and Gloucestershire was collectively most put out when Harold Shipman turned up a few years later, and Yorkshire stole the "home of the country's most prolific serial killer" title. Granted, it's generally held that West killed more people than was proven, but he's highly unlikely to have hit Shipman's total. Although, do we win on points for having a violent one, when Shipman did it all with a quiet voice and a syringe? A vital point of order, I think...
Happier news in South Africa! Nelson Mandela was elected President in this year, which was good to see. A long, long time coming. Good for two reasons. One, he was the best man for the job - and two, his amazing shirts instantly brightened up any gathering of international leaders. I loved those shirts.
Elsewhere though, it was one of those years. Pretty much anybody I'd ever watched on telly seemed to die in '94. George Peppard! Farewell, Hannibal Smith. Telly Savalas (so long Kojak). And whilst I'm on the subject of policemen - how'd I forget to mention Raymond Burr yesterday?! Cameron Mitchell, who had had a long film career, but who I remember best as good old Buck Cannon in The High Chaparral. And of course Roy Castle lost his cancer battle this year. Nick Cravat and Burt Lancaster both went in '94 as well - together until the end. And Kurt Cobain of course.
John Smith, the admittedly dull leader of the Labour Party, also died this year, very suddenly. I don't know if he would have stood much chance making Prime Minister come the next election (he really didn't seem to have a personality at all), but his death saddled us with Tony Blair. Heaven only knows what might have happened had he lived. Iraq? Afghanistan? It's hard to believe that he'd have gone down that route. But, inevitably, there's no way of knowing that now.
Good year for music. Britpop was well underway. Blur's third album and Oasis's first one both went stratospheric. Pulp's ninety-ninth (or whatever it was) finally made them stars. M People were gigantic for five minutes, and the Manics came out with the critically acclaimed The Holy Bible. Don't know that it was a big commercial success at that point, but it made their name as a band to watch out for.
Lots of big stuff from America as well. REM released Monster, with songs What's The Frequency, Kenneth? and Bang & Blame; Jeff Buckley released Grace, which featured the ubiquitous Hallelujah. Was there a TV show in the 90s that didn't feature that somewhere?! Arguably the big song of the year was Springsteen's Streets Of Philadelphia, from the previous year's film Philadelphia. It won just about everything going in '94 and '95 - and (far more importantly!) when he played it live at the Grammys, he did so with Max and Roy. The E Street Band was on its way back!
( ... )
Lots happened before I got there though. My local area got turned on its head at the start of that year, when the Fred West saga was uncovered (literally). He'd been murdering young women for years, and burying them in his back garden. One of a number of jobs that I had that year was delivering newspapers, and I had strings of little old ladies sitting by their front doors every day, desperate for the latest bit of news! One of the victims, who had disappeared in 1973, was local, and they all remembered the search that went on for her at the time, in fields round about. That turned into quite the major story - and Gloucestershire was collectively most put out when Harold Shipman turned up a few years later, and Yorkshire stole the "home of the country's most prolific serial killer" title. Granted, it's generally held that West killed more people than was proven, but he's highly unlikely to have hit Shipman's total. Although, do we win on points for having a violent one, when Shipman did it all with a quiet voice and a syringe? A vital point of order, I think...
Happier news in South Africa! Nelson Mandela was elected President in this year, which was good to see. A long, long time coming. Good for two reasons. One, he was the best man for the job - and two, his amazing shirts instantly brightened up any gathering of international leaders. I loved those shirts.
Elsewhere though, it was one of those years. Pretty much anybody I'd ever watched on telly seemed to die in '94. George Peppard! Farewell, Hannibal Smith. Telly Savalas (so long Kojak). And whilst I'm on the subject of policemen - how'd I forget to mention Raymond Burr yesterday?! Cameron Mitchell, who had had a long film career, but who I remember best as good old Buck Cannon in The High Chaparral. And of course Roy Castle lost his cancer battle this year. Nick Cravat and Burt Lancaster both went in '94 as well - together until the end. And Kurt Cobain of course.
John Smith, the admittedly dull leader of the Labour Party, also died this year, very suddenly. I don't know if he would have stood much chance making Prime Minister come the next election (he really didn't seem to have a personality at all), but his death saddled us with Tony Blair. Heaven only knows what might have happened had he lived. Iraq? Afghanistan? It's hard to believe that he'd have gone down that route. But, inevitably, there's no way of knowing that now.
Good year for music. Britpop was well underway. Blur's third album and Oasis's first one both went stratospheric. Pulp's ninety-ninth (or whatever it was) finally made them stars. M People were gigantic for five minutes, and the Manics came out with the critically acclaimed The Holy Bible. Don't know that it was a big commercial success at that point, but it made their name as a band to watch out for.
Lots of big stuff from America as well. REM released Monster, with songs What's The Frequency, Kenneth? and Bang & Blame; Jeff Buckley released Grace, which featured the ubiquitous Hallelujah. Was there a TV show in the 90s that didn't feature that somewhere?! Arguably the big song of the year was Springsteen's Streets Of Philadelphia, from the previous year's film Philadelphia. It won just about everything going in '94 and '95 - and (far more importantly!) when he played it live at the Grammys, he did so with Max and Roy. The E Street Band was on its way back!
( ... )
Tags:
Jeepers. I watched Arrow, because it was a Constantine crossover. (Everybody's crossing over lately. Sleepy Hollow just did it last week, with Bones (which, it turns out, is awful). And now Constantine with Arrow (which, it turns out, is awfuller). Don't even try to tell me that that isn't a word. It totally is). How does Arrow get to be on its fourth season, when Constantine didn't even make it to one full one?! It was like watching amateur hour. Still, it did show up nicely how great a character John Constantine is. I shall now procede to sulk in the corner over good TV that doesn't get what it deserves.
Actually no I won't, because there was another reason for posting. The Long, Long Trailer! This means absolutely nothing to anybody, I know, but it's a 1954 film starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and is basically I Love Lucy: The Movie. They don't play Lucy and Ricky, but they might as well do. It's about a married couple who buy a caravan instead of a house, and decide to see America before settling down. Of course it's an absurdly long one, and leads to much caravan-based hilarity. It's not as good as I Love Lucy, as the writing isn't so snappy; and also it's a movie, so Desi didn't have creative control. Retakes, for goodness sakes! It's far less fun when you can't see him giggling. Desi knew this; Hollywood apparently didn't. It's still good fun though. All the same, it's hampered by one particular failing. It's in colour. I've seen both Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in colour before, so I'm not hugely traumatised by the experience, but in Desi's case not until his guest appearance in Ironside in the seventies (I love that episode. More than it should probably be allowed to love an episode of Ironside). And seeing them both together, in colour, in the midst of the ILL era, just looks weird. Boy did they want to make the most of the colour, too:
Yikes. And that's a heck of a way to drive a car! Especially when you're towing a forty foot, three ton caravan. I know it's 1954, but they had traffic accidents then too. Although at one point they speak of 35mph like it's a terrifying turn of speed, so possibly they only had really slow accidents. Anyway, sorry. This was an entirely pointless post. But if anybody out there is in charge of television even a little bit, now that we've conclusively proved that Constantine is much better than Arrow, can we have it back please? I'll be very good.* Honest I will.**
Okay, now I shall procede to sulk in the corner over good TV that doesn't get what it deserves.
*whimper*
* This is a lie.
** So is this.
Actually no I won't, because there was another reason for posting. The Long, Long Trailer! This means absolutely nothing to anybody, I know, but it's a 1954 film starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and is basically I Love Lucy: The Movie. They don't play Lucy and Ricky, but they might as well do. It's about a married couple who buy a caravan instead of a house, and decide to see America before settling down. Of course it's an absurdly long one, and leads to much caravan-based hilarity. It's not as good as I Love Lucy, as the writing isn't so snappy; and also it's a movie, so Desi didn't have creative control. Retakes, for goodness sakes! It's far less fun when you can't see him giggling. Desi knew this; Hollywood apparently didn't. It's still good fun though. All the same, it's hampered by one particular failing. It's in colour. I've seen both Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in colour before, so I'm not hugely traumatised by the experience, but in Desi's case not until his guest appearance in Ironside in the seventies (I love that episode. More than it should probably be allowed to love an episode of Ironside). And seeing them both together, in colour, in the midst of the ILL era, just looks weird. Boy did they want to make the most of the colour, too:
Yikes. And that's a heck of a way to drive a car! Especially when you're towing a forty foot, three ton caravan. I know it's 1954, but they had traffic accidents then too. Although at one point they speak of 35mph like it's a terrifying turn of speed, so possibly they only had really slow accidents. Anyway, sorry. This was an entirely pointless post. But if anybody out there is in charge of television even a little bit, now that we've conclusively proved that Constantine is much better than Arrow, can we have it back please? I'll be very good.* Honest I will.**
Okay, now I shall procede to sulk in the corner over good TV that doesn't get what it deserves.
*whimper*
* This is a lie.
** So is this.
Tags:
In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you did not create. Drop a link to your post in the comments. See if you can rec fanworks that are less likely to be praised: tiny fandoms, rare pairings, fanworks other than stories, lesser known kinks or tropes. Find fanworks that have few to no comments, or creators new to a particular fandom and maybe aren't well known or appreciated. Appreciate them.
( Beneath the cut because of fan viddage taking up space )
( Beneath the cut because of fan viddage taking up space )
Tags:
So, I've got this gadget now, and I plug one end of it into an old VCR, and another end into the computer, and I can watch old video tapes again. I like this gadget. It opens up whole new worlds of geekery, and has been reintroducing me to things on tape that I'd forgotten I had. Some of these things are good, some are bad, some are just baffling. Why do I have an entire episode of Neighbours on tape? I have never watched Neighbours. I suppose I may have taped it for my sister, but why that led to me keeping it for the next nine or ten years, I have no idea. Or longer. There was Paul and identical twins, but he thought they were just one person. I could probably look it up on an episode guide or something, if I cared. So anyway. Naturally I have decided that the entire internet needs to know what I find on my old VHS tapes as I abandon them. I'm just naturally kind like that.
( ... )
( ... )
Episode 1x01: "The Beginning"
I like sixties TV. Sixties TV is fun. It gave us... well, it gave us the abomination that was Roger Moore's Saint, but you can't hold that against it. That wasn't television's fault. It gave us lots of other things, though. Department S, Ironside, Adam Adamant, The Adventures Of Sir Lancelot, The Men From UNCLE, Doctor Who... they all came out of the sixties. And yes, Ironside is rather the odd man out in that equation, but I couldn't miss it out because it's brilliant. Anyway, sixties TV is good. It may have been cheaply made, and some people may mock the FX and production values nowadays, but it's important to remember that those are stupid people. Sixties TV seems to have more imagination than just about anything made nowadays, and frequently a lot more personality too. Hence Doctor Who would give us cardboard aliens that tripped up and head-butted the camera, but frankly who cares? Well, some people do. But I don't care about them.
Anyway, I've been watching The Champions again. I like The Champions. It's fun.
( Waffle, waffle, waffle... )
I like sixties TV. Sixties TV is fun. It gave us... well, it gave us the abomination that was Roger Moore's Saint, but you can't hold that against it. That wasn't television's fault. It gave us lots of other things, though. Department S, Ironside, Adam Adamant, The Adventures Of Sir Lancelot, The Men From UNCLE, Doctor Who... they all came out of the sixties. And yes, Ironside is rather the odd man out in that equation, but I couldn't miss it out because it's brilliant. Anyway, sixties TV is good. It may have been cheaply made, and some people may mock the FX and production values nowadays, but it's important to remember that those are stupid people. Sixties TV seems to have more imagination than just about anything made nowadays, and frequently a lot more personality too. Hence Doctor Who would give us cardboard aliens that tripped up and head-butted the camera, but frankly who cares? Well, some people do. But I don't care about them.
Anyway, I've been watching The Champions again. I like The Champions. It's fun.
( Waffle, waffle, waffle... )
Tags:
Ironside Christmas fic, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seal_girl.
Fandom: Ironside
Characters: Chief Ironside, Ed Brown
Gen, c. 2000 words
( Cut for length )
seal_girl.Fandom: Ironside
Characters: Chief Ironside, Ed Brown
Gen, c. 2000 words
( Cut for length )
Tags:
Was browsing in a second-hand bookstore the other day, and came upon an Ironside book. A quite colourful-looking, chunky, hardback affair, that looked like it was written for children, which was something of a surprise. Why write a children's book based on Ironside? Still, I thought that I'd give it a go, and I was quite glad that I did. Sure, the plot is a bit simplistic, and the language is hardly sophisticated; but that's true of many a TV tie-in book, so I can't just blame the fact that it's for kids. It turned out to be a pretty good read, anyway.
( Or for the most part it did. )
( Or for the most part it did. )
.
