Rise of the Silver Surfer
… was really, really crap. I liked the premise of the Surfer himself, but they really didn’t develop that very well – and even if he’s just a herald, they could have made more of that aspect. I even quite liked the idea of exploring their tension-filled relationship with their fame, but that was done quite poorly too. And except for a few moments between Reed and what’s-her-face, Alba, and some angsty moments between the whingy Human Torch and his sister, there was pretty much no real interaction between the Fantastic Four themselves. Essentially, it was SFX driven, and the plot – not to mention the dialog – really suffered as a result.
Fun to watch though, as long as your credulity is taking a long, long holiday.
More than meets the eye
We didn’t go to see Transformers at the flicks. I really wanted to, but my love had heard varying reports. Personally, I trusted ‘s assessment, and agitated for going, but we somehow never got around to it. So we got it through BigPondMovies, and every half an hour or so he was then heard to exclaim “This is fantastic! Whoever didn’t like this had no sense of humour!” Duh. Imagine how much more awesome it would have been on the big screen! I’m sure there were aspects that I missed, due to not being an afficiando, but that’s ok – the plot didn’t rely on them, I did get the “more than meets the eye” reference, and I’m happy for uberfans to get some smug enjoyment that I missed – because I like doing it when I can, too.
Things I really liked:
The fight scenes. Woohoo!
The CGI transformations. Very nice.
The dry sense of humour.
Josh Duhamel!  =]
The incongruity of the plot. Yes, there are several bits it’s best not to think about, but when it’s done in such an entertaining way I’m generally disposed to forgiving leaps of logic. After all, we’re talking about giant alien robots…
Things I got annoyed at:
Sam, the main human; especially at the start, very painful.
The Autobots being made to seem a bit lame. Optimus Prime, in particular, sometimes came off as less than heroic.
The bits that were blatantly put in for teenage boys – like Mikaela doing the stretch to look under the hood. Pft.
For those people who thought the movie was crap: we’re talking about aliens, robot aliens, who by all accounts were the indigenous life forms on their planet. So… what is your problem with the rest of the movie?!
Oh, and for a final touch, we two really were destined to be together: turns out we both owned a toy Bumblebee as kids. How sweet!
Aussie Spec Fic Carnival
Ladies and gentlemen and others, here it is…
NaNoWriMo:
Andrew Macrae flunked out early, Stephen Dedman didn’t quite make it, but Martin Livings actually did it – and offered it for viewing.
Writing:
Ben Peek has posted a few episodes of Nowhere Near Savannah, this one being a favourite so far – reasons not to write science fiction.
Glenda Larke delivers her musings on staying true to your art, and being balanced; meanwhile mikandra has something of a writing crisis.
Cassiphone (aka Tansy Roberts) had a sneak peek of her latest novel, Power and Majesty, available for perusal (and made a rather wild claim to boot).
Gillian Pollack makes a very generous offer, should you be interested in experimenting for a travel scene in your next novel (no vegos allowed).
Tehani reflects on Andromeda Spaceways as it was in 2007.
Dirk Flinthart shares a his take on the story of the Ugly Duckling. Heart warming, but you can just imagine what’s coming at the end…
and another Stephen preens a little about the covers of some random books…
Publishing:
That old Punkrocker announces that Worker’s Paradise came back from the printers, and Karen Miller announces the publication of The Riven Kingdom (as well as keeping us up to date on the progress of her next); Girlie announces the impending arrival of Shiny 2.
Jennifer Fallon also gets into the shamelessly plugging friends act as well.
Seems obvious to me, but apparently “Kiss of the Lily” – which is wanting stories with romance – haven’t been getting what they want.
Margo discusses the new Datlow Del Rey antho, including herself; also comments on some reviews she’s received, as does Kaaron Warren on The Grinding House.
Reading:
That Ben Peek again has some interesting things to say about the Aussie military reading list.
James T Kirk School of Plot Development is elaborated by Gillian.
Matt discusses William Burroughs.
The token Kiwi has caused some stir with a variety of posts, on chronotopicality (also here) – sparking lots of comments, worth reading.
Last Short Story keeps doing their (OK, I admit, our) crazy thing, attempting to read the short specfic published in 2007.
Jonathan S reflects on re-viewing Star Wars (as well as thinking about feedback).
Also seen:
Chris Barnes gets all dressed up and fights some folks, progressing up the career ladder of Sword Fighting.
Cat Sparks posts some of her photos from World Con.
Girlie is rounding up support to help support ASiF! – a worthy cause if you like reviews, and there are even prizes! (She’s also had ideas about improving said website. Plus, Martin is offering to name characters after donaters.) Plus, some silly writing stunts.
Justine Larbalestier and partner Scott star in a podcast (there’s also a second half).
Paul continues his incredibly personal and humbling recount of his experience with cancer (that’s just one entry, of course).
Finally, there’s no show without Punch – or, in the case of the Aussie specifc scene, the Aurealis Awards, the list of which appeared a week or so ago now; it’s even scored itself a big fat sponsor. Numerous people blogged about, like those who got nominated (and while you’re there, check out Rob eating brains).
Star Trek Generations
I think Picard is my favourite. He’s just more… refined. Kirk makes Jon Mclean look like a choir boy. The thing that’s particularly funny about those lists (and there were quite a few that I didn’t get) is that a number of them are the same, word for word – yet on one list it’s bad and on the other, good.
So I’ve watched Star Trek Generations tonight. I don’t think I’d seen it before – although it’s possible that I saw it at my first O’Week party, back in the day (the cinema at uni was showing movies all night; I know I saw a Star Trek at maybe 1am – with the kir part of kirmish, as I recall – but don’t remember it at all; and no I wasn’t drunk, because the Melbourne Uni security team, in their wisdom, wouldn’t accept NT proof of age – only Victorian). What can I say? The effects are definitely better. I don’t like Riker much, Troi is a pain, and while Crusher is good she ain’t no Bones. Geordie (oooh, it jut occurred to me that that’s another UK slang reference, like Scotty… yes, I’m a bit slow) is ok, but no Scotty, and Data is a lesser version of Spock without the interesting reason for being all logical and cold. I think what I’m saying is that I want Picard with the original crew; that would be my ideal Star Trek!
Soren was a worthy adversary, with a very interesting reason for being a prat. It was fun seeing Kirk and Picard together (they’re in one other together, I believe?). Overall, quite a satisfying plot, I thought.
My final question, though: why is such a nice-looking planet as Viridian 3 uninhabited??
Star Trek VI
So all that stuff about odds and evens of Star Trek movies is, I have decided, crap. I just watched VI (man I love BigPond Movies!), and it was great. Right from the start it was obvious that it was made much more recently than V, because the effects were infinitely better. And the plot – there was one! And it was a good one! No faffing around at the start; an unexpected double-cross (for me to be surprised by a double-cross is quite unusual); and the acting was probably a bit better than it had been previously.
Kirk got emotion and a turn-around, Spock got devious, Bones got insulted… and Sulu got his own ship.
This one I am happy to recommend to most scifi buffs.
Oh – and Klingons quoting Shakespeare – brilliant! An interesting touch to make them more civilised, which throws the whole Klingons-as-brutes questions into the air and pushes Kirk, and the audience, into questioning the relationship between ‘civilised’ and not, and indeed what ‘civilised’ means.
I liked it.
And there’s a new Star Trek coming out next year, with Karl Urban as Bones! It’s set in the space academy, as a prequel – the original gang learning how to be the insubordinate types we know and love. I’m not entirely convinced, but I’ll probably go and see it.
Star Trek V
As part of my ongoing effort to watch all of the Star Trek movies, I finally saw this one a few days ago. I think I’ve mentioned before the odds/evens thing with them, and after the craptacular nature of IV I had hopes for V, although with some trepidation. Fortunately, it was most certainly better than IV – although that wasn’t hard. What felt like about the first third was a weird, let’s-get-to-know-the-characters-outside-of-the-ship thing… maybe their audience polling said that would play well? Me, I don’t need to hear Kirk and Bones singing “Row, row, row your boat.” And am I the only one who thought the suggestion of romance between Uhura and Scotty just a bit weird??
Anyway, the storyline was bearable; I quite liked the emotion-mad Vulcan, although most of the twists were predictable. I thought he was a good character, and they used him well. I also liked the way they managed to get yet another ego-tripping maniacal Klingon in there (and all the while reading subtitles, I couldn’t help but think of those people who ‘speak’ Klingon – figuring out syntax from subtitles is hard work!!). As always, I think Bones was my favourite. His acerbic wit and delight in calling Spock out as a nutter are highly enjoyable.
Probably not one for the casual movie viewer. You have to be a bit nuts to watch it, I think.
Daughters of Earth
I got my copy today from Amazon – hurrah!* So excited. I’ve been looking forward to reading this ever since cassiphone raved at me about it at NatCon in June. It has a very nice cover…. It’s been a while since I read any feminist theory or lit crit, so I’m itching to start. Of course, I have been somewhat remiss with my duties, so I have to get back to that… and send some hard copies out to collaborators, before they lynch me. So it might have to wait until my resolve weakens.
*Don’t know it? It’s edited by Justine Larbalestier, and includes scifi stories written by women throughout the 20th century – from every decade, I think – as well essays about them and their place in the scifi tradition.
Farthing Magazine: a rant
As in far-thing, not an old coin.
As part of Last Short Story, we’re obviously trying to cover all the paying markets. At the start of the year in particular, we had to buy any copy we wanted because very few people knew about the crazy idea and review copies were few and and far between (and always warmly welcomed). Now, things are getting a bit easier, and we’ve got a few more review copies coming in (generally warmly welcomed, with only a very quiet groan of: ‘what, more?’).
One of the magazines I volunteered to buy was Farthing Magazine. I thought it looked cool – they have a great quote from Ursula le Guin on the site! – and some interesting-sounding stories. I eventually managed to pay by Paypal, which was a bit of a saga in itself, and then… nothing.
That was June.
They definitely took my money – can’t even remember how much now. I’ve sent a number of emails to the editor’s contact email address. There is no way postage from the UK should take 4 months. Is there?
I’d love to hear from anyone who’s received Farthing – so that I know it can be done, and to know whether it’s something I should bother with chasing up. I really don’t want to just put zeros in its columns, on our little LSS spreadsheet…
Not reading Slaughterhouse 5
* I never have in the past. I know! Oh! the shame.
As a consequence, I borrowed it from the library for the holidays.
* I didn’t read it at the start of the hols because my sister was.
* I didn’t read it over the rest of the hols because the demands of Last Short Story were getting to me.
Now, it’s no longer the holidays. But that’s not why I’m still not reading the book….
* I managed to lose it. A library book!
Randomly Yours, Alex 