Xenon's Seventh Circle

I moved house in 2004. This is probably my main memory of the year. Up a hill in the middle of nowhere. Windswept, desolate, silent - if it weren't for the fact that the whole of Gloucestershire seemed to use the local roads as a race track, it would have been damned near perfect. Well - that and if the local landowners hadn't had some kind of psychotic hatred of wildlife. I used to go for long walks with my sister's dog, and spend them disassembling snares and counting illegally shot badgers. It was a nice place to live though. Illegal fox hunts notwithstanding. Got stranded up there every winter, and the power used to go off at the slightest excuse, but the middle of nowhere is definitely the best place to live. Internet speed sucked, mind.

Other than that, 2004 was a quiet sort of year. Sad one too though. It was the year that Christopher Reeve died. Richard Biggs from Babylon 5 too - and he was young and healthy, and had just said good morning to his wife, when he dropped dead. Just goes to show! It was also the year when I rediscovered pop music, by unexpectedly becoming a McFly fan. They brought out their debut album this year, and I've followed them ever since.

Angel came to an end this year, a year after Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It should have lasted longer. Frasier ended too, although that one at least had had a chance to run its course. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet aired its final episode in this year as well. It had come and gone since... 1984? Always worth watching. The Magnificent Seven were two men down by that final episode, and they found a lovely way to end that really did the show and cast proud. And it was the year that Lost began. Hmm. Now there's one that went on much longer than it should have! I think it's the year that The OC and Nip/Tuck both started in the UK too, though they'd probably started earlier than that in the US. The OC was a teen drama that hooked me completely, despite me being a good fifteen years above the target age group! It lost me after a bit, but that first season was bloody good. And I fell hard for Nip/Tuck. That tailed off too when the showrunner bailed, and went off to do Glee instead, but for several years I thought it was the best thing on television. Properly clever stuff.

Cinema! This was the year of Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow. I love that film so much. It was a flop, which was a hell of a shame, as they'd intended it to be a new franchise. I could have had lots and lots of Sky Captains, but clearly nobody else wanted them. No fair. It's a glorious film, full of giant robots, and vintage touches that hark back to the weekly cinema serials from the pre-war days. And I wanted a sequel. I shall go away now and sulk.

( ... )

So, a rubbish season of True Blood ended rubbishly, which I suppose was predictable. Then I nearly forgave it for being so bad when the last five minutes hinted that I'll be getting Russell Edgington back for season five, as well as Eric and Bill going on the run together from their vampire overlords. An undead road movie would be good. Or an undead "Road" movie, even. Eric can be Bing, and Bill can be Bob, and Sookie can be Dorothy Lamour. It could work. I hope they give Pam something decent to do in season five though, as this is getting ridiculous.

And then a new series started, which stars Richard Alpert and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although so far it's perilously thin on vampires. This probably isn't supposed to be a surprise. Buffy plays two sisters. Sister 1 accidentally killed Sister 2's young son, then turned alcoholic and ran away to become a stripper, before witnessing a murder. Sister 2 then pretended to forgive her everything, and invited her over for tea, before faking her own suicide on the assumption that Sister 1 would immediately take over her life (Why? They're identical twins. Why would the hugely entertainingly evil-looking murderer not easily get them mixed up? The whole point is that everybody else has). Then Sister 2, who hasn't forgiven Sister 1 anything, puts a hit out on Sister 1 so that everybody will think that she herself is dead, and then she'll be free to skip off into the sunset and get murdered by the hitmen who are after Sister 1. At least I think that's what's happening. There seem to be an awful lot of hitmen running about, anyway. Also, since when was Ioan Gruffudd old enough to have a daughter Buffy's age?! Or the age that my brain tells me Buffy is, anyway, which isn't quite the same as the age that Buffy actually is. She's not called Buffy in this, by the way, but her name begins with a B, which is practically the same thing. Richard's not called Richard, either, but then you can never trust him to tell the truth, so he might just be pretending. Although his surname in this is Machado, which is an island. Not a secret one housing a sparkly magic pixie who lives in a big stone foot, admittedly, but still. And I haven't seen any polar bears yet.

In two minds about this one, then. It's insanely stylised so far, both sisters have spectacularly wooden boyfriends, and in the first ten minutes it managed some of the worst back projection that I've ever seen. Except it's not back projection anymore, but I'm not as good on the technicalities of modern SFX, so bear with me. Either way, it was truly awful. It's like directors think that they can throw CGI around willy-nilly, and it will always look real. It never does, though. It always, always looks like CGI, wherever you put it. And this was two Buffies on a boat that was bouncing around in front of some hilariously unreal sea. I don't know what it was that Buffy 1 dived into, but that wasn't the sea either. I think it may have been a small tank floating in some cartoon water. It looked rubbish, whatever it was. They also relied far too much on computers for the scenes where the two Buffies interacted. The entire room that they were in looked fake. Split-screen worked perfectly well sixty years ago, but they can't pull it off realistically now?! Seriously, enough with the CGI.

So. Yeah. On the one hand, interesting plot and potential for good action. On the other hand, it really needs to stop trying to win art design awards for every single shot. Also, pretending to be your identical twin sister when there's a killer after you has to be the silliest plan ever. And since it's the premise for the entire series, this could easily become an issue.

Have to wait and see how it unfolds, I guess.