Writercon, Farscape, True Blood, and Real Life $!%#@

August 7th, 2009 7:42pm by rusty-halo | 25 Comments »

* I came home from Writercon to find my computer dead. The motherboard is fried. I just spent $350 on replacement parts. (There goes my half-fantasized Labor Day beach vacation.) My brother is going to help me put it back together via phone, which… well, cross your fingers for me. I’m a software person, not a hardware person. He thinks there’s an 80% chance I’ll be able to get my old system working with the new hardware–otherwise I’ll have to buy a new hard drive, install a new operating system, reinstall all my programs, and copy over all my old files. Here’s hoping for that 80% chance.

( and the next day the fuse that powers my entire apartment blew and it was insanely stressful )

* And actual Writercon. Gah, I don’t even know what to say. It was wonderful and stressful and my feelings are so mixed and complicated. I will say that it was good to reconnect with people (especially the other concom members who I adore but haven’t seen in years) and to meet so many awesome new people.

I want to write more but I’m really still working out my feelings (mostly about how/whether I fit into the Writercon community and how/whether Writercon fits into my life). So I’ll save that post for some future moment when I’m capable of being coherent about it.

( I finished the first season of True Blood and really didn’t like it )

( I’m watching Farscape and enjoying it so far )

* I feel kind of bad about dissing John Hughes in a post the other day. Despite my reservations about a lot of his work, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of my all-time favorite movies. I give Hughes major props for that if nothing else. (And, okay, The Breakfast Club is a total guilty pleasure, even though I want to scream and break things every time Ally Sheedy gets that horrible “makeover”).

Current Mood: stressed & stressed

Tags: apartment, farscape, movies, nyc, true blood, writercon

My Vampire Weekend

July 13th, 2009 7:18pm by rusty-halo | 10 Comments »

jaydk was supposed to visit this weekend for the purpose of drinking red wine and watching the ends of Robin Hood and Torchwood (you understand why the wine would be a necessity). Alas, the MTA thwarted our plans: the L train wasn’t running and jaydk didn’t want to deal with fighting to get on a sweltering, overcrowded, unbelievably slow shuttle bus. So we’ll save the bad TV for next weekend.

Dear MTA: I fucking hate you.

So, I stayed home and had a bit of a vampire-themed weekend. Netflix isn’t worth it when you keep the movies around for months, so I finally forced myself to watch The Hunger. This movie wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be based on the abominable reviews. It’s visually stunning, just gorgeous. The reviews complain that it’s “style over substance,” but film is a visual medium and isn’t the ability to create such incredible images something to be lauded? Yes, it doesn’t lead you by the hand narratively (there are very few words in this film at all), but you can piece together the meaning based on the images. And you end up with something a lot more ambiguous and impressionistic when most of the meaning comes from images; it slips past the verbal part of your brain and gets into your subconscious in a way that’s more similar to music than to your typical movie. I wasn’t surprised to hear Tony Scott on the commentary saying that he was inspired by Nicolas Roeg.

( more on The Hunger )

So, yeah. Don’t watch this movie for the plot, just enjoy the pretty and you won’t be disappointed.

Then I watched the first two episodes of True Blood, which… wait, people said The Hunger was just an excuse for softcore porn? ‘Cause… yeah. But to be fair, True Blood wasn’t awful or anything. Anna Paquin is immensely talented, several of the characters seem like they could be interesting (I’m initially drawn to Tara and Lafayette), the setting is incredibly well-done and intriguing, and the opening credits are awesome. It didn’t blow me away, though, and in particular I can’t figure out why everyone seems to thinks Bill, the vampire, is supposed to be hot. That guy is hideous. So far none of the characters are standing out as the type of OTC that would make me fannish, but I’ll give it until the end of the first season to hook me.

Tags: david bowie, movie reviews, true blood