Today, Maribou and I are going to go to the brunch place she discovered last week and then to two separate movies. I’m going to catch the new Mission Impossible, she’s going to catch Trainwreck.
If you folks out there in relationships have not done this, you seriously need to. Instead of discussing about compromising about which movie you’re going to be watching, you just have to compromise about movie start times. (Added bonus: occasionally you’ll hear the other person say “I saw a real cruddy movie. I would have had a better time watching yours instead.”)
What this means, on a practical level, is this:
The reviews are pending. I’ll be able to get my take on Mission Impossible out later today.
Here’s a best guess for Mission Impossible in the meantime: “Amazing special effects, silly (nigh-incoherent?) story, cardboard cutout characters whose main skills involve being “charming”, I can’t wait for the next one”. I may or may not still be confused as to how we found ourselves in the alternate timeline where Tom Cruise consistently puts out the best action movies.
My best guess for Trainwreck will be something like “Judd Apatow… this is going to be a ‘raunchy’ comedy that serves to make some fairly straightforward socially conservative arguments in the form of demonstrating that normal…ish people are merely unhappy but the people who draw outside the lines are grotesques who are pathologically alienated from even the possibility of happiness.”
But those are just best guesses based on the last few films of theirs that I’ve seen.
In television news: Person of Interest: Season 4
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Photo is “Movie Night“, taken by Ginny, used under a creative commons license.)
Finishing up Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky. After that, either another Asimov or I might move to some podcasts about the French Revolution. Probably another Asimov.
I finished Revenge, which was ridiculous but nonetheless fun. I cannot think of another TV show where a protagonist got a happy ending they so clearly did not deserve.
Still working on Flash/Arrow. It’s been a bit stalled, but hoping to get moving on that again. After which… Gotham, maybe? I used Fortitude to test the new TV set and my interest in it is again renewed, though there is still so much from last TV season I need to watch. And… accents.Report
By the way, I’m about halfway through a reread of Psychohistorical Crisis, an unauthorized sequel to the Foundation books, set much later during the Second Empire. It’s more a read than a reread, since I remembered almost nothing about it. I’d definitely recommend it.
If you’re sticking to Asimov proper, have you read The End of Eternity or The Gods Themselves? Both excellent. And skip The Stars Like Dust. Everyone including Asimov agrees that it’s horrific.Report
@mike-schilling On your advice, I skipped The Stars Like Dust, which I was about to start.
Right now I have only read the Foundation books (including prequels) and Pebble. And a couple of the robot books. (The anthology and Caves/Cages of Metal/Steel the one with the title I can’t stop screwing up.)Report
The two I suggested above are quite good. If you want to stay closer to books you’ve read, so are The Naked Sun (the sequel to Caves of Steel) and The Currents of Space (the third early Empire book, in addition to Pebble and Dust.) Nine Tomorrows is another excellent collection of his stories.Report
Started Currents when I skipped Dust. The accents are weird. “We’ll use southern for this working class character and then Irish for the other one from the same town….” but not too distracting.Report
Huh. I’d forgotten that, or perhaps missed it. There are a couple different ethnicities on the planet, but I think they split along class lines, so that wouldn’t explain it.Report
I just finished watching the national day parade. It’s I think one of if not the best I’ve seen so far.Report
I started reading Darkmans…
Holy Cow is it good, and I try to give a synopsis here, but it is so much that this little space just do it. No, its because you are too stupid, turnip
Oh, you are here… Well, there goes this writi…Report
I loved Darkmans. Easily my favorite of Barker’s books, which is saying something.Report
Cool, and when I am done I will write it up, as it is fantastic.Report
Almost done with POLITICAL ORDER AND POLITICAL DECAY. Looking forward to the TRUE DETECTIVE finale this evening. Searching for something to watch earlier this week, I hit JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL on BBC America. Had been meaning to check it out, and have found it quite diverting – now up to episode 5.
I wish someone had tipped me off to DEUTSCHLAND 83 when it was premiering. Am reluctant to start it midway, so will have to wait for a re-start or marathon or something.Report
I really liked BBC’s Strange & Norell, and I found the book tedious.Report
Hey, someone else who didn’t care for the book! I also found the book a slog.Report
Never got around to the book, though often meant to do so. Have a feeling if I had more time on my hands (not being spent watching trash TV, for example), I might enjoy it if it evokes the British fiction of and about that approximate period. The odd breaks – fade outs and ins for I think commercials or other interruptions – are distracting, and occasionally the production values slip and start feeling like old BBC rather than nouveau cinematic TV, but it still works for me. I am also quite with “The Gentleman” as to Mrs. Strange and do hope she makes out alright in the end! No spoilers, Kelly!Report
I am intrigued by a book that has (apparently) 200 fictitious footnotes. That’s not nothin.Report
Guys. We might be in a commercial.
I watched the yahoo fantasy football commercial before the movie and the guy held up his phone and, smack dab in the middle of it, I saw “league of ordinary gentlemen”.
Dude.
That was seriously weird.Report
He had a two-year-old+ phone?Report
Hey, I’m just saying what I think I know I saw.Report
Was he a bowling fan?Report
Dunno. He was talking about “his sites” and we saw his phone for about half a second and the string “league of ordinary gentlemen” (which, I assure you, is a string that is etched upon the apple of my heart’s mind’s eye) was there smack dab in the middle of the phone.Report
Well, that was the only other thing with that name I could think of…Report
I was exceptionally confused because my first thought was some paranoid “are they targeting movie ads now?” and then I realized that that was *CRAZY* but then I was stuck thinking that either I was mistaken or that I wasn’t mistaken and, there in the moment, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t mistaken which is only slightly less crazy.
I’ve been looking online for the ad but, of course, I can’t find it.
Anyway, if you (or anybody) finds themselves in the theater at some point in the next couple of weeks, the commercial is the one where the guy is talking about how he was the commissioner and the other guy was talking smack about how the commissioner denied a trade for no reason.
Of course, that happened *AFTER* the one guy showed his phone.
But if you see yourself watching a Yahoo Fantasy Football ad at some point in the theater, please perk up a bit and scan when you see the guy’s phone and let me know whether or not I seriously mis-scanned something.Report
This is it: it totally does say “League of Ordinary Gentlemen”
https://vimeo.com/135283163Report
yep, 5-7 second mark.Report
George, thank you for finding that.
Now.
I AM FREAKING OUT, MAN.Report
Oh, it wasn’t his sites. It was his league’s teams.
Okay.
Maybe that’s just the weirdest coincidence ever.Report
Anthony Atwood?Report
Mission Impossible Review:
I pretty much nailed it above, but I have a musing about the whole “Conspiracy” thing.
The idea of a Conspiracy that is so deep, so well-hidden, so well-funded, and so competent that it is capable of terrorist acts that look like accidents or incompetence or acts of God that can only be fought by another one that is only slightly less deep, slightly less well-hidden, and approximately equally well-funded is something that I’m noticing more and more these days.
Are there more of these things around than there used to be or am I just now seeing the fnords?Report
Perhaps you are pining for the fnords.
Also, we have the returns of Bush, Clinton, and the X-Files upon us. It’s 1990s conspiracy time all over again!Report
Wait, is the X Files returning?Report
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/03/24/x-files-returnReport
It does beg the question… what is the purpose of a terrorist attack that everyone assumes is an accident or act of God?Report
Destroy opposition to this or that or the other and have it not only not tied to you, but not likely to be investigated.
If a guy shoots a prime minister as he drives to a meeting, someone’s going to ask “who benefits?” And if, oh, Russia is fingered, they will deny it, I suppose… it’s not like they can prove that it wasn’t them… but they might investigate to find out who it was and then that might bring investigation down on the guy.
If a prime minister’s car is overcome by a mudslide? It’s a mudslide. Mudslides happen.Report
Is it terrorism if the purpose isn’t to terrify or intimidate? I though that was fairly integral to the definition. If it looks like an accident, then it doesn’t create terror; it seems like that would be better described as black ops (though there is overlap between those two things).Report
I’m not entirely certain that the terminology that the movie was using maps accurately to how real agencies use the terms.Report
@katherinemw
I agree, killing someone and making it look like an accident is assassination (or mass murder if you do it to a lot of people at once), but not terrorism.Report
Trainwreck positives: Amy Schumer is funny, adorable, hot, and ever so likable, and large parts of the movie were funny as hell. John Cena was unexpectedly hilarious (and I say that as someone who watches wrestling). The subplot about her dad was bracing, touching, and – weirdly enough – reassuring (because my dad is so very much worse than that, which provided a needed bit of reinforcement of the evergreen realization that yes, my childhood really was *that* fucked up, and yes, it really does make sense to have cut him out of my life).
Trainwreck negatives: THE PLOT WAS EVEN MORE ANNOYING THAN JAYBIRD PREDICTED. BRAIN-HURTINGLY ANNOYING. FACE-PUNCHINGLY ANNOYING. Which I blame more on our culture than on the individuals involved because, you know, it’s the sort of plot that society-at-large eats up with a spoon, but which makes me so uncomfortable that I end up feeling kind of sad and alienated. Also, less importantly, I do not find Bill Hader attractive *at all*. Which in a different kind of movie wouldn’t even matter, but in a romantic comedy, I prefer to swoon at least a *little* over both the leads.Report
I’ll bet you’d find Bill Hader attractive here.Report
@mike-schilling heh heh heh.Report