Entry tags:
Dept. of Media Skiffy
Good, Challenging, and Confusing
It's about time, and inhuman personages of great but fluctuating powers, battling against incomprehensible dangers that are, again, largely time-connected, and about the results on humans caught in the wash of the battles, even when they are sometimes the cause of the battles.
Nope. Not Doctor Who.
It's "Sapphire and Steel." Which is why I titled this post as I did. Because that's what I think anyone could reasonably call "Sapphire and Steel", the British ITV show from the 1970s to which the redoubtable![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thisbluespirit introduced me a couple of years ago.
It's mysterious, incomprehensible, funny, brilliant, ridiculous (a deadly pillow! An evil round patch of light!) and unexpectedly terrifying (you'll believe a pillow is deadly! And that a round patch of light is evil!) It's got Joanna Lumley and David McCallum and, from time to time (see whut I did thar), the wonderful David Collings. It's very slow, but it's slow for a reason. And so many of its shots are beautifully composed to take advantage of the slowness ....
... ahem. Yes. I rather like it.
And you should watch it. Or at least I think you should give it try.
And why do I bring this up? Because today, at the end of an afternoon spent attempting to introduce a fannish friend who is not into televised skiffy to some various aspects of same (it's a long-term project spearheaded by another friend, and entered into willingly but bemusedly by the first person), as we were clearing up, the spear-header and I were talking about favorite series, and I happened to mention S&S. Oh, the friend says, I have that collection. It turns out she was less impressed by it than I was, and she handed the entire collection to me.
*cue pictures ofkaffy_r dancing quietly in her head*
Having seen S&S only on YouTube, to be able to have my own actual collection? Well, the whole "dancing in her head bit" is quite true.
As for the rest of the afternoon, well it was good, challenging and confusing as well. The person to whom we were introducing skiffical television liked, as far as I could see, the first episode of the revived DW, "Rose" or at least was positively amused and curious about it. The person was, again as far as I could see, equally amused by "Once More With Feeling" from Buffy.
But, in what came as a surprise to me, the person seemed to be almost insulted by the first episode of Firefly, for reasons that I truly, deeply disagree with, and which appear to point to a them having a sincerely different way of viewing skiffy, SF/fantasy, or indeed the world, than I have. I shall have to think on that deeply, because I'd personally predicted that the person would like Firefly and be completely contemptuous of DW. And thus do humans continue to confound, confuse and challenge me.
Still, the person did not immediately declare that the crash course in introduction to TV skiffy was over and done with. More afternoons are therefore possible in future. I look forward to it.
(Still. Rearing back because Firefly has wooden kitchen tables on space ships, or because shipping containers in the far future look like ... shipping containers ... well, as I said, I must think on that deeply.) And you know I still love you, right?)
It's about time, and inhuman personages of great but fluctuating powers, battling against incomprehensible dangers that are, again, largely time-connected, and about the results on humans caught in the wash of the battles, even when they are sometimes the cause of the battles.
Nope. Not Doctor Who.
It's "Sapphire and Steel." Which is why I titled this post as I did. Because that's what I think anyone could reasonably call "Sapphire and Steel", the British ITV show from the 1970s to which the redoubtable
thisbluespirit introduced me a couple of years ago. It's mysterious, incomprehensible, funny, brilliant, ridiculous (a deadly pillow! An evil round patch of light!) and unexpectedly terrifying (you'll believe a pillow is deadly! And that a round patch of light is evil!) It's got Joanna Lumley and David McCallum and, from time to time (see whut I did thar), the wonderful David Collings. It's very slow, but it's slow for a reason. And so many of its shots are beautifully composed to take advantage of the slowness ....
... ahem. Yes. I rather like it.
And you should watch it. Or at least I think you should give it try.
And why do I bring this up? Because today, at the end of an afternoon spent attempting to introduce a fannish friend who is not into televised skiffy to some various aspects of same (it's a long-term project spearheaded by another friend, and entered into willingly but bemusedly by the first person), as we were clearing up, the spear-header and I were talking about favorite series, and I happened to mention S&S. Oh, the friend says, I have that collection. It turns out she was less impressed by it than I was, and she handed the entire collection to me.
*cue pictures of
kaffy_r dancing quietly in her head*Having seen S&S only on YouTube, to be able to have my own actual collection? Well, the whole "dancing in her head bit" is quite true.
As for the rest of the afternoon, well it was good, challenging and confusing as well. The person to whom we were introducing skiffical television liked, as far as I could see, the first episode of the revived DW, "Rose" or at least was positively amused and curious about it. The person was, again as far as I could see, equally amused by "Once More With Feeling" from Buffy.
But, in what came as a surprise to me, the person seemed to be almost insulted by the first episode of Firefly, for reasons that I truly, deeply disagree with, and which appear to point to a them having a sincerely different way of viewing skiffy, SF/fantasy, or indeed the world, than I have. I shall have to think on that deeply, because I'd personally predicted that the person would like Firefly and be completely contemptuous of DW. And thus do humans continue to confound, confuse and challenge me.
Still, the person did not immediately declare that the crash course in introduction to TV skiffy was over and done with. More afternoons are therefore possible in future. I look forward to it.
(Still. Rearing back because Firefly has wooden kitchen tables on space ships, or because shipping containers in the far future look like ... shipping containers ... well, as I said, I must think on that deeply.) And you know I still love you, right?)
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BTW we just got back from seeing GotG. I never thought 'Vin Diesel out-acted the entire rest of the cast' was a sentence I'd ever hear myself say, but there you go. My DB, who is noticeably less discriminating than I am about films, said that he had expected a lightweight but well-made piece of first-rate froth but what he got was a fatally flawed, poorly thought-out piece of third-rate meh. I think he's too kind, but I will say that the tree and - to a lesser extent - the raccoon were a win; they were actual characters with believable emotions and a surprisingly touching relationship. Go figure.
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I think it's a bit sad that they could get one thing - tree and raccoon relationship - so right and fall down so badly on the rest. Was painful to see Lee Pace so constrained by weak directing - compare Eccleston's turn as Malekith in Thor 2, not exactly a demanding role but he was encouraged to imbue it with true menace and he succeeded. Gillan was simply awful, and since we've seen her display acting chops on NuWho, I'm blaming the director. And has it ever been established that Glenn Close can act at all? Because here she was nothing so much as distilled essence of that horror my DB once made me sit through, namely the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. (Saldana was quite competent, but I prefer her as Fauxhura...)
Ooh, speaking of NuWho, I just found out that the opening episode will have Strax and Vastra. That's a carrot I will suffer the Moffat fanfic-cum-budget-offenses-to-the-senses for :D