THE WOLVES!
Oct. 23rd, 2010 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
As I'm writing this I have "The Tournament" on, which looks terrible, just terrible, but I'm watching it because Ian Somerhalder and bonus, Kelly Hu, are in it. OMG there's a scene in a diner in the UK and there's a bottle of HP sauce on the table. Awesome. OMG WHAT the way Kelly Hu just took out that guy in the church was badass.
If anyone else is keeping count:
Bed curtains - 1
Rag of chloroform - 1
Arthur - 0
I wanted to like this episode more than I did. :( That's not to say that I didn't like it, we got a number of good scenes, but overall I thought it was kind of weak. The premise was way stronger than the execution -- as in, it was too ambitious for the way it was resolved. Not that I don't like seeing Arthur as a BAMF, he IS one, but the ease in which he and the others are able to escape from Cenred and Morgause just make them seem really weaksauce.
I am also not a big fan of Gwen as the damsel in distress. It's okay sometimes, but in this ep, I really wanted to see her to do something other than get the rest of them in trouble. When the OT4 are together, it becomes super obvious how useless Gwen is when you've got 2 powerful sorcerers plus a BAMF. It's not like I want her to turn into Buffy...or Willow, for that matter...but she needs to be more than someone Arthur has to save all the time, or who can be used against him. That'll get old, fast. I like that in previous episodes, she was able to bring something to the table by providing advice, sympathy, whatever, to help make Arthur into a better person and one day better king than his father.
Morgana looked especially gorgeous in this ep. She's normally gorgeous, so that's saying something. Other than looks, however... I'm just going to need more from the writers about Morgana's character. I don't mind that she's totally evil, I think she's way more interesting this way, but I need more about her motivations, particularly for her awful behavior toward Arthur and Gwen. Arthur has never been anything but good to her -- why would she not feel one iota of remorse for killing him or having harm come to him? After all, regardless of what Uther's done, ARTHUR isn't to blame for any of it. He has no idea Morgana is his half-sister. Then there's Gwen, who REALLY hasn't done anything. She's not in Morgana's way for the throne of Camelot. She's never poisoned her. Why would Morgana, who used to care SO MUCH about Gwen, suddenly just see her as nothing? And I *guess* you could say that this is partly out of self defense, because Arthur could be a magic hater like Uther, but come on, anyone who knows him remotely (and Morgana knows him better than that), knows that he's no Uther. Surely both he and Gwen deserve more benefit of the doubt than she's given them. Or is she that enamored of being Camelot's queen, which she's never shown any interest in before?
OK, all that said, I loved the early part of this episode. Loved Arthur's concern when Morgana said that Gwen hadn't turned up for work. Loved their little road trip, especially when they were setting up camp and Arthur was being so incredibly subtle about wanting to be alone with Gwen, and Merlin was being his usual observant self. And goddamn, I loved the confrontation betwen Merlin and Morgana -- that ship is becoming more and more interesting to me. (I know, why do I always love it when a pairing is at odds?) Morgana hating Merlin, I can totally understand.
Wasn't so crazy about Morgana twisting her ankle and the little weird moment she and Arthur had (his concern was familial!), and then later him carrying her out of the tunnels. Hello, this was supposed to be an Arthur/Gwen episode, not Arthur/Morgana! (Though I suppose in that way, it's kind of nice that she seems to have no sentimental feelings for him whatsoever -- "Why haven't you killed him yet?") I did love, though, that Gwen didn't flee with the horses as she'd promised Arthur. Better to break a promise than desert the one you love, I say. And yes, there is a direct comparison of this scene with Lancelot, in which Gwen *did* do as he asked and ran.
The last scene was nice. I liked that Arthur told Gwen he loved her in a roundabout way, but he's done that before -- at the end of "Sweet Dreams," he says, "I've never loved another." IMHO that was a pretty strong implication that he DID love her already. So another roundabout "I love you," is cool and all, but I actually would have preferred something stronger from Gwen, not from Arthur. Arthur pretty much proved throughout the episode that he cared for her and was doing this for her -- we actually needed more from GWEN than just a "thank you" after dragging them all into this mess (not that it was her fault) and really doing nothing whatsoever to help.
I guess I'm just annoyed because this should have been a strong Gwen ep, and instead it felt more like a weak Gwen ep. :(
And I can't end this without saying -- INTERRUPTED KISS. ARGH. But I saw it coming so it wasn't quite as devastating as it otherwise might've been, plus I enjoyed Morgana's smirk about it. Still, are we ever going to get another one? They're averaging about 1 kiss a season, which is sort of ridiculous.
Also, I finally finished The Hunger Games trilogy.
What a huge disapointment Mockingjay was. I was kind of expecting it to be, because Catching Fire was already much weaker than the first book, and I didn't care about what was coming next by the end of that novel, but wow, talk about going out with a whimper.
This should never have been a trilogy. It should have been one long novel, with the events of books 2 & 3 condensed.
Basically, until the last 50 pages, NOTHING HAPPENS in Mockingjay. The Hunger Games was strong because Katniss was a strong character, a survivor. We get to see none of that in the final book. She's just a pawn, and allows herself to be used as one. It was all the pomp and ceremony of being a television personality, without the skills and charm of being an unlikely heroine Katniss demonstrated to us that she had in the first book. All we saw her do was get made up and pose for pictures. And god, those cheesy, horrible little speeches she'd make, that supposedly came from the heart, were so awful! I really can't imagine that if she'd just read off a teleprompter, it could have been much worse.
It was pretty obvious from the start of this book that she was going to end up with Peeta. I actually like Peeta a lot, and don't have anything against him. The only reason I wanted to see her end up with Gale is because I honestly thought that's where the books were going. The way he was introduced, the role he played in her life, etc. So I held part of myself back from liking Peeta fully, because I thought he was basically fodder, the "other" guy, who would be Kat/Gale's obstacle until they had a book in which they could grow their romantic love (I thought that was going to be book 3). Instead, from the start of Mockingjay, we see Kat and Gale at odds and barely interacting. Meanwhile, Peeta is being tortured by Snow for the good of the Districts. Between the two, WHO is more sympathetic? Yeah. Anyway, any disappointment I feel is from being wrong, not because I don't think it's believable that she chose Peeta (or that he was the right choice). :)) Jade called it! Though part of me does wonder, in the aftermath of the Twilight phenomenon, whether that had any influence on how this love triangle turned out -- was Suzanne Collins trying to be 'unpredictable'? I just don't know if she planned for this all along -- if she knew at the start of THG that Kat was going to end up with Peeta (whereas in Twilight, it was obvious Stephenie Meyer intended Bella to end up with Edward).
I will say, the most interesting part of the book was actually when Peeta came back "hijacked." That was interesting AND meaningful. I wish we could have seen more of that. And while I am perfectly happy that Katniss ended up with Peeta (other than the being wrong thing), I didn't like how it happened or how it was handled. She turned away from Gale because some idea he had got used -- NOT BY HIM -- and Prim accidentally died from it? LAME. SO LAME. By the end of Mockingjay, I didn't like Katniss at all. It'd always been kind of iffy, but in THG I admired her for her skills and tenacity, if not her thought processes and attitude. In CF that waned a bit because I thought she was kind of being a cocktease with Peeta. Then in Mockingjay, when she showed NONE of the abilities that had kept her in my good graces before, my dislike of her was cemented.
Finnick's death was probably the thing that made me the saddest. :( He was one of my favorite characters, even if the story he told about being "sold" by Snow was really eyeroll inducing. I suppose to tweens who are reading this, that would be an incredibly shocking and horrific revelation... for me, it was, wow, how unoriginal and melodramatic. Also was not a big fan of his romance with Annie.
BTW, if Katniss was going to end up with Peeta? It would have been way more awesome if she'd seen Gale's pleas for her to kill him and she'd done it. That would have been so emotional and intense. Instead, Suzanne Collins took the easy way out. And you can't say that it was because it would have been too shocking for a teen book. This teen series has teens KILLING other teens. Kat's younger sister gets lit up like "a human torch" for pete's sake. A merciful arrow through her best friend's heart because he's being captured would have been less shocking than some of the other things we've seen.
Saw her killing President Coin from a mile away. Did NOT see the cheesy epilogue talking about her and Peeta's kids coming. But maybe that was Suzanne Collins' way of telling us, "Really, there are no more books in this universe," in which case, I can only be thankful.
Edit: Oh, what the heck.
How to Train Your Dragon: Very cute. Enjoyed it more than I thought I would when I first heard of it. But I find it hard to believe that the dragons they kept in cages would be so ready to help them!
The Tournament: I had super low expectations, so it was better than I'd been expecting. Ian's character was Crazy with a capital C. The ending was super predictable and cheesy, but the rest of it was fun mayhem.
Iron Man 2: Well, as everyone who'd seen it told me, not nearly as good as the first one. I had fun with it, but unfortunately it falls victim to what so many action-movie sequels suffer from: convoluted plotlines and too much focus on the shiny. The shiny being special effects and big celebrity stars. The first movie is successful because, at its heart (even with all the shiny-ness), it's a simple story well told. For some reason, with sequels, they feel like they need to add extra villains, extra plotlines, and just extra crap that detracts from the heart of the movie.
If anyone else is keeping count:
Bed curtains - 1
Rag of chloroform - 1
Arthur - 0
I wanted to like this episode more than I did. :( That's not to say that I didn't like it, we got a number of good scenes, but overall I thought it was kind of weak. The premise was way stronger than the execution -- as in, it was too ambitious for the way it was resolved. Not that I don't like seeing Arthur as a BAMF, he IS one, but the ease in which he and the others are able to escape from Cenred and Morgause just make them seem really weaksauce.
I am also not a big fan of Gwen as the damsel in distress. It's okay sometimes, but in this ep, I really wanted to see her to do something other than get the rest of them in trouble. When the OT4 are together, it becomes super obvious how useless Gwen is when you've got 2 powerful sorcerers plus a BAMF. It's not like I want her to turn into Buffy...or Willow, for that matter...but she needs to be more than someone Arthur has to save all the time, or who can be used against him. That'll get old, fast. I like that in previous episodes, she was able to bring something to the table by providing advice, sympathy, whatever, to help make Arthur into a better person and one day better king than his father.
Morgana looked especially gorgeous in this ep. She's normally gorgeous, so that's saying something. Other than looks, however... I'm just going to need more from the writers about Morgana's character. I don't mind that she's totally evil, I think she's way more interesting this way, but I need more about her motivations, particularly for her awful behavior toward Arthur and Gwen. Arthur has never been anything but good to her -- why would she not feel one iota of remorse for killing him or having harm come to him? After all, regardless of what Uther's done, ARTHUR isn't to blame for any of it. He has no idea Morgana is his half-sister. Then there's Gwen, who REALLY hasn't done anything. She's not in Morgana's way for the throne of Camelot. She's never poisoned her. Why would Morgana, who used to care SO MUCH about Gwen, suddenly just see her as nothing? And I *guess* you could say that this is partly out of self defense, because Arthur could be a magic hater like Uther, but come on, anyone who knows him remotely (and Morgana knows him better than that), knows that he's no Uther. Surely both he and Gwen deserve more benefit of the doubt than she's given them. Or is she that enamored of being Camelot's queen, which she's never shown any interest in before?
OK, all that said, I loved the early part of this episode. Loved Arthur's concern when Morgana said that Gwen hadn't turned up for work. Loved their little road trip, especially when they were setting up camp and Arthur was being so incredibly subtle about wanting to be alone with Gwen, and Merlin was being his usual observant self. And goddamn, I loved the confrontation betwen Merlin and Morgana -- that ship is becoming more and more interesting to me. (I know, why do I always love it when a pairing is at odds?) Morgana hating Merlin, I can totally understand.
Wasn't so crazy about Morgana twisting her ankle and the little weird moment she and Arthur had (his concern was familial!), and then later him carrying her out of the tunnels. Hello, this was supposed to be an Arthur/Gwen episode, not Arthur/Morgana! (Though I suppose in that way, it's kind of nice that she seems to have no sentimental feelings for him whatsoever -- "Why haven't you killed him yet?") I did love, though, that Gwen didn't flee with the horses as she'd promised Arthur. Better to break a promise than desert the one you love, I say. And yes, there is a direct comparison of this scene with Lancelot, in which Gwen *did* do as he asked and ran.
The last scene was nice. I liked that Arthur told Gwen he loved her in a roundabout way, but he's done that before -- at the end of "Sweet Dreams," he says, "I've never loved another." IMHO that was a pretty strong implication that he DID love her already. So another roundabout "I love you," is cool and all, but I actually would have preferred something stronger from Gwen, not from Arthur. Arthur pretty much proved throughout the episode that he cared for her and was doing this for her -- we actually needed more from GWEN than just a "thank you" after dragging them all into this mess (not that it was her fault) and really doing nothing whatsoever to help.
I guess I'm just annoyed because this should have been a strong Gwen ep, and instead it felt more like a weak Gwen ep. :(
And I can't end this without saying -- INTERRUPTED KISS. ARGH. But I saw it coming so it wasn't quite as devastating as it otherwise might've been, plus I enjoyed Morgana's smirk about it. Still, are we ever going to get another one? They're averaging about 1 kiss a season, which is sort of ridiculous.
Also, I finally finished The Hunger Games trilogy.
What a huge disapointment Mockingjay was. I was kind of expecting it to be, because Catching Fire was already much weaker than the first book, and I didn't care about what was coming next by the end of that novel, but wow, talk about going out with a whimper.
This should never have been a trilogy. It should have been one long novel, with the events of books 2 & 3 condensed.
Basically, until the last 50 pages, NOTHING HAPPENS in Mockingjay. The Hunger Games was strong because Katniss was a strong character, a survivor. We get to see none of that in the final book. She's just a pawn, and allows herself to be used as one. It was all the pomp and ceremony of being a television personality, without the skills and charm of being an unlikely heroine Katniss demonstrated to us that she had in the first book. All we saw her do was get made up and pose for pictures. And god, those cheesy, horrible little speeches she'd make, that supposedly came from the heart, were so awful! I really can't imagine that if she'd just read off a teleprompter, it could have been much worse.
It was pretty obvious from the start of this book that she was going to end up with Peeta. I actually like Peeta a lot, and don't have anything against him. The only reason I wanted to see her end up with Gale is because I honestly thought that's where the books were going. The way he was introduced, the role he played in her life, etc. So I held part of myself back from liking Peeta fully, because I thought he was basically fodder, the "other" guy, who would be Kat/Gale's obstacle until they had a book in which they could grow their romantic love (I thought that was going to be book 3). Instead, from the start of Mockingjay, we see Kat and Gale at odds and barely interacting. Meanwhile, Peeta is being tortured by Snow for the good of the Districts. Between the two, WHO is more sympathetic? Yeah. Anyway, any disappointment I feel is from being wrong, not because I don't think it's believable that she chose Peeta (or that he was the right choice). :)) Jade called it! Though part of me does wonder, in the aftermath of the Twilight phenomenon, whether that had any influence on how this love triangle turned out -- was Suzanne Collins trying to be 'unpredictable'? I just don't know if she planned for this all along -- if she knew at the start of THG that Kat was going to end up with Peeta (whereas in Twilight, it was obvious Stephenie Meyer intended Bella to end up with Edward).
I will say, the most interesting part of the book was actually when Peeta came back "hijacked." That was interesting AND meaningful. I wish we could have seen more of that. And while I am perfectly happy that Katniss ended up with Peeta (other than the being wrong thing), I didn't like how it happened or how it was handled. She turned away from Gale because some idea he had got used -- NOT BY HIM -- and Prim accidentally died from it? LAME. SO LAME. By the end of Mockingjay, I didn't like Katniss at all. It'd always been kind of iffy, but in THG I admired her for her skills and tenacity, if not her thought processes and attitude. In CF that waned a bit because I thought she was kind of being a cocktease with Peeta. Then in Mockingjay, when she showed NONE of the abilities that had kept her in my good graces before, my dislike of her was cemented.
Finnick's death was probably the thing that made me the saddest. :( He was one of my favorite characters, even if the story he told about being "sold" by Snow was really eyeroll inducing. I suppose to tweens who are reading this, that would be an incredibly shocking and horrific revelation... for me, it was, wow, how unoriginal and melodramatic. Also was not a big fan of his romance with Annie.
BTW, if Katniss was going to end up with Peeta? It would have been way more awesome if she'd seen Gale's pleas for her to kill him and she'd done it. That would have been so emotional and intense. Instead, Suzanne Collins took the easy way out. And you can't say that it was because it would have been too shocking for a teen book. This teen series has teens KILLING other teens. Kat's younger sister gets lit up like "a human torch" for pete's sake. A merciful arrow through her best friend's heart because he's being captured would have been less shocking than some of the other things we've seen.
Saw her killing President Coin from a mile away. Did NOT see the cheesy epilogue talking about her and Peeta's kids coming. But maybe that was Suzanne Collins' way of telling us, "Really, there are no more books in this universe," in which case, I can only be thankful.
Edit: Oh, what the heck.
How to Train Your Dragon: Very cute. Enjoyed it more than I thought I would when I first heard of it. But I find it hard to believe that the dragons they kept in cages would be so ready to help them!
The Tournament: I had super low expectations, so it was better than I'd been expecting. Ian's character was Crazy with a capital C. The ending was super predictable and cheesy, but the rest of it was fun mayhem.
Iron Man 2: Well, as everyone who'd seen it told me, not nearly as good as the first one. I had fun with it, but unfortunately it falls victim to what so many action-movie sequels suffer from: convoluted plotlines and too much focus on the shiny. The shiny being special effects and big celebrity stars. The first movie is successful because, at its heart (even with all the shiny-ness), it's a simple story well told. For some reason, with sequels, they feel like they need to add extra villains, extra plotlines, and just extra crap that detracts from the heart of the movie.
