Thems the documentaries

It's that time of the year again. But due to time and money, I won't be going to as many as last time. But here's a list of all the films I might be going to at the Documentary Film Festival:

Features:
9 Muses of Star Empire
Bikes for Africa
Brooklyn Castle
Dance for Me
Detropia
Her Master's Voice
The Invisible War
The Island President
Last Call at the Oasis
Mr. Cao Goes to Washington
A Place at the Table
Pretty Brutal
Propaganda
Rafea: Solar Mama
Reportero
Shadows of Liberty
Soldier on the Roof
Tales from the Organ Trade
Trashed
Unraveled - The 750 Million Dollar Thief
The Waiting Room
The World According to Dick Cheney

Shorts:
Abuelas
Cutting Loose
The Green Chain
Hens' Night
Mondays at Racine
Outlawed in Pakistan
Pouters
Saving Face

As I will only be going to a subset, I'll be posting them as normal blog posts, not as bonus ones.

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DW: Episode 7.2.6

Pro-tip: when the reaction to the dead body is laughter, you might be doing something a little bit wrong. Oh... and it's a "comedy"... strap in!

There are unusual things happening in Yorkshire, and aliens are involved and... you know what? I'm not saying I foresaw every revelation before it happened (although a lot of it was incredibly obvious), I will say that no revelation surprised me. The Doctor was red! Yep, already guessed. Big rocket! Not surprised. Alien was attached to her body! Well obviously! And it was made all the more painful by the inclusion of the Veiled Lady, et al, as they tried to play up the comedy. Especially Strax. And what the hell was the point of Thomas Thomas? Let alone that fainting guy (was he supposed to be Lovecraft or something?). A lot of this just didn't work, either because we've seen it before or because it made no sense.

It's been... about an hour since I watched the episode, and I've already forgotten a lot of what happened. So much so, that I'm going to end this early, and let that forgetfulness stand as the final point of this episode.
Next week: Sudden visions of Picard-Borg for some reason...

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The numbers whatever

If you ever decide to watch this movie, don't worry, get around to it at some point, take your time. The movie won't mind.

We start with John Cusack being unable to shoot a teenage girl, and so the government can't make any use of him any more (you know, when you phrase it like that...). And so he is moved to a numbers station, which sounds impressive because they sound mysterious, but when you see it is just some woman spouting numbers into a microphone, it becomes less impressive. After arriving back on shift, they find out the place has been compromised -

And that's the main problem with this movie. It's exceedingly low key. The attack happens in flashback, we already know the outcome, so the 'attack' is robbed of all tension. It's not like there's a great mystery around it, so we see events unfold that we already know about, and.. yeah... yep, that's what happens. Exactly as we already knew.

- but Cusack and the woman actress I haven't seen before, get around to foiling their evil plans, escaping and have a final confrontation with the villain... you know, if that's all right with you. The movie doesn't want to make any kind of big deal about any of it, the complete lack of tension continues over to the 'how will the heroes win' moments of plan foiling and villain confrontation. It's all very casual and... completely fails to engage the audience at all.

It does keep the cast small (there are more people listed on the cast page than I remember seeing), and it's mainly about the atmosphere of the numbers station itself. Only there isn't one as it's mostly a base under siege movie so the pair aren't in trouble while in the base. And certainly Cusack isn't presenting any sign of acting that makes you think there is any danger.

So yeah, it's an action movie with energy turned down to 2.

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Received Terminal Prose

Yes, in the mail box this week: RTP #30. And, as Alex himself points out, there's a lot of endings in this issue. On the other hand, that does nicely clear the deck for #31 and its fiftieth anniversary spectacular... assuming the usual suspects submit material in time.

In this issue, we get three, count 'em, three Erato strips! I can't say I got all the references, but I definitely got some that people wouldn't. And speaking of strips, the Tower of Angum ends, with extreme finality. Keeping with fiction, we also see out Weapon of Choice... and here is were the gap between issues means I have no memory of who any of these people are (aside from Doctor and Donna of course). Hopefully Dave wrote the story in one go and didn't suffer from the same problem.

And we've got articles too. Aside from my own pieces (take that Eternity Clock! And, btw, yes it was cancelled delayed), we have a look at interpreting a DW story as interactive... in the same issue I bash the computer games. And a bunch of whiners who whine about being old (for example, me!). Making the most interesting piece in this issue being Peter's look at the village of Stockbridge as presented in the audios... that man knows far too much about Stockbridge, and I admire that.

A paper 'zine in the world of online reading, I appreciate that. But with that issue gap, would need to dig up past issues to get a full sense of those stories.

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DW: Shroud of Sorrow

It's the third book. We've had Daleks. We've had Cybermen. What other representative of the general view of Doctor Who can we have? How about... really bad fan fiction? I'm certainly suffering under a Shroud of Sorrow by Tommy Donbavand.

Everyone (well, most Doctor Who fans) know of the 23rd November 1963 the start of the series. But that's an entirely meta-date that is only significant to the viewers, so... of course we must set a story there! And, everyone (possibly less) knows that the first episode was delayed due to the assassination of JFK. So why not base a story around that? Well... it can be done. But not like this.

JKF died... and everyone was sad... and so the Shroud decided to feast on the grief. They do this by appearing as faces that represent people who died and make the viewer sad... and eat! Apparently no-one is capable of looking at these faces and going 'nope, that's wrong'. Mental powers! Fortunately, the Doctor and Clara are around to find out their exposition, then set about defeating them. (I won't reveal the latter part with the other people coming in... but suffice to say you don't see it coming, and wish you still didn't after you do.)

Hey, yeah, the previous two books are Doctor solo, this is with Clara. And indeed you will believe that there is a person in this book called Clara. I'm doubting Tommy got all the inside skinny on her, so don't be surprised if she is fairly generic. As is the Doctor, but you definitely know he's the 11th Doctor. Because, as this is fanfic, we get references to the previous Doctors and stories.

This reads like someone came up with a bunch of (what they thought were) cool ideas, and stuck them all in a story. The editor should have spent more time on this, or gone with something completely different.

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Does whatever an Iron can?

Of course I was building up to this. The big movie that America is only just getting to see. (Always sounds odd when we get a release date earlier than them.) Be interesting to hear if they get a different post-credit sequence again.

Well, I can definitely confirm there's a lot of Extremis in this. And I think it does it far better than the comic did. But... But. The story is just... there. It start, goes on, and then finally finishes. It's nearly 'the superhero loses his powers and has to gain them back', but it's not even really that. The most character arc Stark goes through is dealing with what happened in New York and even that doesn't really go anywhere other than just being there. Also, it feels like it goes on too long (possibly because it wasn't doing anything). I wasn't at the watch watching stage (because, you know, in a cinema), but I definitely wasn't getting engaged and letting time slip by. [For this, I decided to stick with 2D. Aside from not being bothered by annoying glasses, I didn't feel like it was a loss of any kind.] (I was going to talk about the end in a hidden section, but... I don't have anything to say other than it didn't surprise me.)

Along with the story, the acting felt like they were all running in place too. Everyone was largely playing one note: Downey is manic, Paltrow is caring, Pearce is maniacal, Kingsley is sporting a weird accent... And the CGI was... a lot of CGI. I felt like I was watching a CGI battle, not a character piece.

In the end, and this is an unusual thing to say about this, it was a bland movie. Maybe if this had come out without the previous movie, it might be more exciting, but... meh.

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Iron Man is a Technovore

That's right, I'm talking about the movie... the animated Iron Man movie that is. It's anime. Moreover, it is aggressively anime.

Stark launches a new satellite that can watch over the entire earth... while just being one satellite on one side of the planet... wait, what? Anyway, an organic armour kid turns up, fails to destroy it, but wipes out the facility. So SHIELD want to hold Iron Man because... it helps pad out the movie? I really don't know. And included bonus Punisher, Hawkeye and Black Widow, to also help pad the movie. Iron Man finds the kid, who attacks everything, then turns into some weird alien creature and... a big gun solves everything. [It looks like the story could fit after the first movie, but I'm not sure if it is supposed to be in that continuity or not.]

There is a lot of static shots of people sitting around in empty environments, while spouting philosophical writings... yep, it's an anime. In fact, outside of the Marvel characters, all the other designs are straight out of the typical anime character art book.

That clash... causes problems. It is really obvious when it is western style and then anime style. Clearly it can be done, but... it doesn't really work. Still, they did get the irreverent personality of Stark down pretty well.

If you don't get around to seeing this, then don't like you missed out on anything.

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