Hi Again…

February 9th, 2010 6:25pm by rusty-halo | 4 Comments »

Um, hi. I’ve let myself get out of the habit of posting. Again. (Sorry.)

I actually have been reading my friendslist, though. (Some of you will have noticed totally random comments from me over the past few weeks/months.) *waves*

I miss being in fandom; I just don’t have much to talk about. Mostly I’m worrying about real life stuff: money, and possibly moving again, and my cats’ health, and work, and… it’s just depressing, really.

But I do have a few fannish thoughts on my mind! I have mostly been occupied with:

* David Bowie, of course. I’m up to Heathen, from 2002. It’s fantastic! I can’t believe it came so late in his career! The cover of “Cactus” is awesome, and “Everyone Says ‘Hi’” is very moving. I’m hesitant to listen to “Reality, though, because it’s the last one and (unless he comes out with something new *fingers crossed*) once I hear it, this whole Bowie odyssey will be over. *sniffle*

* I started watching White Collar. I haven’t watched a current American TV show in years; I guess I kind of missed the experience? I chose it for utterly shallow reasons: I saw the ad on the subway and thought the guy looked hot in a Brian Kinney way. (He is cute, but alas, nowhere near Brian Kinney.)

( vague spoilers for White Collar )

* Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes really was awful, despite the fantastic chemistry between Downey and Jude Law, but the Iron Man 2 preview got me madly excited. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed the first one; I ended up rewatching it something like ten times in January.

( vague spoilers for Iron Man )

Sherlock Holmes Fic Recs?

January 2nd, 2010 3:02am by rusty-halo | No Comments »

I can’t bring myself to click “Play” on the Doctor Who download.

Instead I am reading Sherlock Holmes wank. This write-up is a thing of beauty.

I’ve already seen the movie twice. It’s not very good, but Robert Downey, Jr and Jude Law are so fantastic together that it doesn’t need to be. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and the sequel will have a decent plot to go along with the gorgeous actors and their delightful chemistry. In the meantime, anyone have Holmes/Watson 2009-movie fic recs?

It’s funny, I was reading through my old posts about Robert Downey, Jr, and in 2006, I complained that “Robert Downey, Jr. films generally suffer from a dearth of explosions.” My, how times have changed!

Oh, and happy new year, everyone. :)

Robert Downey Jr/Tobey Maguire FTW

August 19th, 2008 5:11pm by rusty-halo | 5 Comments »

OMG I want this to be a real movie:

Satan’s Alley (fake trailer from Tropic Thunder with Robert Downey Jr and Tobey Maguire as gay priests in the Middle Ages)

Iron Man

May 4th, 2008 1:57pm by rusty-halo | 9 Comments »

( I went to the 1am showing of Iron Man last night )

Current Mood: cheerful

A Surprisingly Awesome Evening…

May 4th, 2008 4:09am by rusty-halo | 2 Comments »

In which jaydk came over and we:

* Watched The Sarah Jane Adventures “Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?” – by far the best SJA yet, so good it made me cry.

* Drank ridiculously good Vinho Verde.

* Watched “The Poison Sky” and were so pleased that it didn’t suck. Helen Raynor redeemed, yay! So good I’ll have to wait until tomorrow and post a proper review instead of a drunken rant.

* Drank a ridiculously good South African shiraz… super rich and chocolatey. I know it would help if I remembered the brands, but it’s 4am, sorry.

* Went to the 1am showing of Iron Man in digital projection at Union Square and it was fucking AWESOME, yay! I ::heart:: Robert Downey, Jr. so much.

* And snuck really good beer in–Blue Moon Summer Ale.

Proper reviews tomorrow or Monday… I’m totally going to pass out now. G’night!

Current Mood: drunk

randomness: star wars, nin, veronica mars, oscars, asoiaf…

February 28th, 2007 6:12pm by rusty-halo | 9 Comments »

Jeordie White is a total Star Wars nerd. This amuses me immensely.

Also amusing is the latest Meathead Perspective. I think most of the reason I keep up with NIN these days is to make sure I won’t miss any of Meathead’s jokes.

Veronica Mars last night was stunningly bad. ( not really spoilery, but just in case )

I want the organizers of New York Comic Con to die slow, painful deaths. Preferably after taking off work, waiting outside in freezing windy cold for two hours, being treated rudely at every turn, and not being able to get the autograph of the person they wasted a vacation day to meet.

Seriously, I’ve been to plenty of conventions, and I certainly never had to wait in line for hours to get in at DragonCon or San Diego ComiCon, especially in freezing weather. And I never had to arrive hours early to wait in line and get some kind of special ticket to get into an event at a convention I’d already paid for. The whole thing is a fucking mess.

I skipped Saturday and Sunday, regardless of George R.R. Martin and Stephen King. I don’t care who their guests are in the future; I am never going back.

Huh. I haven’t ranted about anything in a while. That felt good.

Back to happier things…

I watched the last half of the Oscars on Sunday night, because I was channel surfing and came across Robert Downey, Jr. I always thought of him as a really good actor who was also cute, but somehow he’s turned into a really good actor who is drop dead gorgeous. I also realized that he has a movie opening on Friday that is directed by David Fincher (Fight Club!) and is getting great reviews. I’m very excited.

It was also cool to see Ennio Morricone get an award, since those Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood Westerns are among my all-time favorite movies, in large part because of Morricone’s scores. Although, yeah, his acceptance speech was a little tedious. Whatever, he deserved the recognition.

And it was cool to see Lucas, Spielberg, and Coppola together. The Oscars are pretty interesting from the perspective of someone who is kind of fascinated by the film industry, although the movies it tends to honor are almost always the boring ones that I haven’t seen. I like fantasy and action, and “Lord of the Rings” was too pretentious for me, so, yeah. My favorite movies last year were “Pirates 2″ and “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which only got technical awards. I’m not really an Oscar person, but the ceremony itself was more interesting than I expected.

I’m re-reading A Game of Thrones. I really need to re-read the whole series and take detailed notes (there’s so many lovely bits of foreshadowing and characterization that I note in my head and then promptly forget!), but some of the thoughts that particularly stood out:

( thoughts on the Song of Ice and Fire series )

Escapism (II)

September 12th, 2006 12:58pm by rusty-halo | 6 Comments »

( Sharpe books )

( Profit: the greatest TV show ever? )

( Two Sean Bean movies, Bravo Two Zero and Extremely Dangerous )

( More Robert Downey Jr movies: Only You )

( Restoration )

( In Dreams )

Two amusing links:

Quiet Guy Mistaken For Nice Guy at The Onion. Because I love how you can be totally silent and people will project their expectations onto you and see what they want to see.

And Sharpe’s Piss Pot at Something Awful. “1813. Sharpe is tasked with rescuing Wellington’s favorite Piss Pot from the clutches of General Ennui, but a filthy new sergeant with evil schemes and a mysterious damsel with a great deal of cleavage have…”

Having just watched the entire Sharpe series, I could not stop laughing while reading this.

Fandom nostalgia, more Robert Downey Jr movies and Sharpe thoughts

August 30th, 2006 1:10pm by rusty-halo | 13 Comments »

drujan informed me this weekend that BAPS is closing, which makes me sad, particularly because they’re deleting the archives.

I haven’t been back there in years, but that’s where I entered fandom. (And my opinions have certainly changed dramatically since!) Still, the nostalgia is strong.

I’m looking through old posts now. 2001, and everyone’s wondering what’s going to happen when Riley returns. (Kelly suggests that Buffy will have to kill him to save Spike–oh, those were the good old days!) There’s drujan, 10zlaine, kellyhk, redeem147, chenanceou, ww1614, spikewriter, jerrymcl89, jaydk, shipperx, klytaimnestra, cindermom… and plenty of others, but I can’t spend all day scrolling through BAPS. To think, the different places we were in our lives back then.

It’s amazing, looking through the list of people posting, how many of those people I later met in person, and how many I still know today. Fandom is crazy. In a good way.

The weekend was fun. jaydk and I finally celebrated drujan’s birthday with a dinner at Pukk, which involved lots of their excellent sangria, and I secretly squeed over the fact that I’d gotten my two omnivorous friends to be enthusiastic over a vegan restaurant. ( seeing The Illusionist and other movies )

On Sunday I got some actual work done, and then watched my three latest Netflix movies, which were Less than Zero, Richard III (with Ian McKellen), and Wonder Boys.

( Wonder Boys )

( Richard III )

( Less Than Zero )

( Sharpe’s Honor, the book )

Oh, and I’m leaving for DragonCon tomorrow. I’m not really into anything fannish at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll find stuff to do, and I’ll definitely be seeing Godhead, the Cruxshadows, and Voltaire, and hanging out with jaydk and 10zlaine.

Fun with Netflix

August 21st, 2006 5:42pm by rusty-halo | 3 Comments »

Some thoughts on what I’ve been watching and reading lately.

( Sharpe’s Eagle, the book )

( a bunch of Robert Downey, Jr. movies, starting with U.S. Marshals )

( Air America )

( Home for the Holidays )

* And then the weekend before, I watched “The Pick-Up Artist” and “Two Girls and a Guy.” I’m going to discuss these together, because they’ve got the same writer/director and one is basically a more grown-up remake of the other.

These are both bad movies. “The Pick-Up Artist” is the strangest melding of 80s romantic comedy and mafia caper that I’ve ever seen. There was one part in particular, where Downey is off flirting with Molly Ringwald right after bringing her father to a casino filled with bunches of thugs to whom he owes money. I couldn’t possibly focus on the romance while thinking “Dude, those guys could be beating the crap out of her dad right now!” There was no sense of urgency, and the pacing was really weird.

I actually liked Molly Ringwald’s character, though (what happened to her? When I saw her in “The Stand” she couldn’t act at all, but here she was decent.) Her character was more complex than your usual “dream girl” type heroine; she was a competent and intelligent young woman who’d been betrayed one too many times and wasn’t interested in opening up romantically to a guy. Even to a hottie like young Robert Downey, Jr. (here billed as “Robert Downey” and with an adorable gap in his teeth that I really wish he’d kept).

Of course, she had to fail so that Downey could swoop in, save her dad, and woo her away. Typical. And also, how in the world did he manage to mistake Dennis Hopper for her boyfriend instead of her father? The film really had so many elements that just didn’t make sense, as if the script had been half written and then they just decided to film it without finishing.

It does have quite an interesting cast, though; nearly every little role was recognizable from somewhere (that chick from SNL, that guy from The Sopranos, Vanessa Williams, Dennis Hopper, the pizza guy from “Do the Right Thing,” etc.)

( Two Girls and a Guy )

* And finally, “Heart and Souls,” which I actually have on a VHS tape from when I was a little kid. I remember seeing this in the theater and crying throughout the entire thing; no matter how often I’d watch it at home, I ended up crying on each repeat viewing. (With the kid being abandoned, and the people trying to resolve their tragic lives, and there never being enough time, blah blah blah.) I was curious to see if it would still affect my older and more cynical self, and to my relief I found myself rolling my eyes instead of tearing up.

This is another bad movie, ridden with cliches and utterly transparent emotional manipulation. However, Downey is a true redeeming virtue in this one, and is the reason why I still have the video tape after all these years. His character gets possessed by the spirits of four very different ghosts who’ve been stalking him since childhood (the utter violation of this is never acknowledged within the text! Because he’s a business man “cut off from his emotions” it’s acceptable for them to take over his body and use it for their own ends, thoroughly fucking up his life in the process?!).

Anyway, but the point of this very offensive nonsense is that Downey gets a chance for some great acting. He gets possessed by a tough mom (Alfre Woodard), a sweet romantic young woman (Kyra Sedgwick), a shy wanna-be opera singer (Charles Grodin), and a 50s-style petty-crook-with-a-heart-of-gold (Tom Sizemore). Downey is so good at impersonating these people that you almost forget that it’s the same person behind all these roles; his actual character has very little screentime compared to his-character-possessed-by-each-ghost. Also, he sings a lot.

So, yeah, very bad movie, but worth watching for his performance. Which is true of most of these, actually, except probably “U.S. Marshals” and “Two Girls and a Guy,” which are pretty much irredeemable.

Now, why aren’t “Chaplin” and “Ally McBeal” available on Netflix!?

(no subject)

October 15th, 2003 11:02pm by rusty-halo | 23 Comments »

( thoughts on this week’s AtS and the preview for next week )

Also, I watched the preceding Smallville episode and that Lana chick is SO ANNOYING. How do the Smallville fans stand her? I really don’t think I’d be able to put up with her, even for lots of Clark/Lex subtext.

In other news, jaydk and I went to a preview screening of the new Robert Downey, Jr. movie, The Singing Detective. It was interesting–very well-made and experimental. Robert Downey, Jr. is an amazing actor, and he really shows it in this movie. Overall, I’m glad I saw it, but I probably wouldn’t want to see it again–it was very disturbing and difficult to watch. (To clarify: I don’t get disturbed by movies generally, but some parts of this film were very upsetting because they were so realistic). I liked the mix of different genres, I thought some of the psychobabble was a bit irritating, and I thought the end didn’t fit the rest of the movie. But overall–it’s good, I recommend it for Downey’s performance if nothing else.