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Dept of Scattershot
Short Takes
"Captain Marvel"
I had worried that I'd find this bland - blonde white hero after the strength of Black Panther - so I was happy to truly like the movie. I'm not familiar with Brie Larson's work, but I found her an excellent Captain Marvel, and certainly not "wooden," which I believe was one of the shots aimed at her. I thought the plot did a fine job of weaving the various Captain Marvel histories together, and I loved the twist at the end, which I should have seen coming, as likable as the putative villain and his buddies were. (Also, every time I saw Jude Law in this film, I had to fight the suspicion that he deserved nothing so much as a punch in the nose.) There were a few threads dangling here and there, which is almost to be expected at this, the end of this generation of MCU stories. They've all gotten so dense, multifaceted, and connected to each other that the general quality of the story telling and pacing is a bit of a minor cinematic miracle. Samuel Jackson was a joy to watch, as always, and I think that the MCU finally has a heavy hitter that can take on Thanos.
"Logopolis"
Tonight BB and I and a friend took in the special showing of the final Tom Baker Fourth Doctor adventure in the theater. It was digitally remastered, so that the bad quality I've seen when television gets transferred to the big screen wasn't a problem. Before and after the actual story (which flowed pretty well as a movie) we got to enjoy bits of banter between Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton, and separate conversations between Baker, John Leeson, and others. At the end of the story, they showed a brief little featurette in which Fielding and Sutton visited the Lovell Telescope in Cheshire, England, which was the model for the Pharos Project radio telescope in Logopolis. I was struck by a few things. 1) I'd forgotten that Baker could be a very good actor. This reminded me of that. 2) After watching Ainley's performance I wonder why anyone complained about Simm or Gomez being too hammy. I seem to remember that he came off better in some of his later appearances; perhaps it was the direction? 3) I adored the horrible production values - you can see the paint spatters around the lower half of the TARDIS console, and the paint doesn't hide the fact that the console is knocked together out of some unseemly blend of two-by-fours and balsa wood. I love the classics .... 4) I had expected the theater to be quite full; we're in a big urban area, full of fans of the show ... but there might have been 30 people in the theater. BB noticed that they were older, like us, so perhaps even a famous story about the end of the most famous Old Who Doctor couldn't coax younger fans out. It disappointed me.
Vincent
He has now been fostered out, and Opie is gradually returning to whatever is his version of stability. I miss Vincent; I wish it had worked. But I comfort myself with the knowledge that the group that took him (Precious Pets Almost Home, for those in the Chicago area who are curious) will find a good home for him, and that I will no longer have to pull a large, furry, rugby ball out of the lower reaches of my refrigerator every time I open its door.
"Captain Marvel"
I had worried that I'd find this bland - blonde white hero after the strength of Black Panther - so I was happy to truly like the movie. I'm not familiar with Brie Larson's work, but I found her an excellent Captain Marvel, and certainly not "wooden," which I believe was one of the shots aimed at her. I thought the plot did a fine job of weaving the various Captain Marvel histories together, and I loved the twist at the end, which I should have seen coming, as likable as the putative villain and his buddies were. (Also, every time I saw Jude Law in this film, I had to fight the suspicion that he deserved nothing so much as a punch in the nose.) There were a few threads dangling here and there, which is almost to be expected at this, the end of this generation of MCU stories. They've all gotten so dense, multifaceted, and connected to each other that the general quality of the story telling and pacing is a bit of a minor cinematic miracle. Samuel Jackson was a joy to watch, as always, and I think that the MCU finally has a heavy hitter that can take on Thanos.
"Logopolis"
Tonight BB and I and a friend took in the special showing of the final Tom Baker Fourth Doctor adventure in the theater. It was digitally remastered, so that the bad quality I've seen when television gets transferred to the big screen wasn't a problem. Before and after the actual story (which flowed pretty well as a movie) we got to enjoy bits of banter between Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton, and separate conversations between Baker, John Leeson, and others. At the end of the story, they showed a brief little featurette in which Fielding and Sutton visited the Lovell Telescope in Cheshire, England, which was the model for the Pharos Project radio telescope in Logopolis. I was struck by a few things. 1) I'd forgotten that Baker could be a very good actor. This reminded me of that. 2) After watching Ainley's performance I wonder why anyone complained about Simm or Gomez being too hammy. I seem to remember that he came off better in some of his later appearances; perhaps it was the direction? 3) I adored the horrible production values - you can see the paint spatters around the lower half of the TARDIS console, and the paint doesn't hide the fact that the console is knocked together out of some unseemly blend of two-by-fours and balsa wood. I love the classics .... 4) I had expected the theater to be quite full; we're in a big urban area, full of fans of the show ... but there might have been 30 people in the theater. BB noticed that they were older, like us, so perhaps even a famous story about the end of the most famous Old Who Doctor couldn't coax younger fans out. It disappointed me.
Vincent
He has now been fostered out, and Opie is gradually returning to whatever is his version of stability. I miss Vincent; I wish it had worked. But I comfort myself with the knowledge that the group that took him (Precious Pets Almost Home, for those in the Chicago area who are curious) will find a good home for him, and that I will no longer have to pull a large, furry, rugby ball out of the lower reaches of my refrigerator every time I open its door.
no subject
That was one of the first things to make me grin as I watched it. Oddly enough, the tiny figures that represented the cruelly compacted victims of the Master were actually done, it seemed to me, with care so that even their facial features (such as they could be in a tiny model) would at least faintly resemble the people they were supposed to represent. Someone on the production team was obviously a dab hand at miniature creation.
Logopolis is a weird one, though. I think mainly the good weird
It is that. The plot actually made a lot of surrealistic sense. and was written by someone who must truly love higher mathematics. And the fellow who played the Monitor was very good at carrying the plot. I'm a trifle ashamed to admit that I thought Janet Fielding's performance was very less than stellar. Mind you, she got a lot better.
no subject
The BBC had in-house departments for everything in those days, so despite the crappy quality of the video, the sets, costumes and SFX/model work were pretty amazing in general, because they had all the stuff and expertise in TV Centre already.
I'm a trifle ashamed to admit that I thought Janet Fielding's performance was very less than stellar. Mind you, she got a lot better.
I seem to remember that she says on the commentary that she's surprised she's not worse here - she was pretty young and had done nothing but theatre. (I think there was one brief guest role pre-DW, but that was it.) She learned quickly, though - she always says that Peter Davison was a huge help, just watching how he did things.
no subject