Monday 28th September 2009

Bit of a slow day for telly, as I'm still catching up with my backlog of shows and trying to squeeze in the first season of ER, too. Alien Trespass is pretty duff despite starring Robert Patrick, who I normally like in stuff, and Merlin 'something something something' starring Baltar out of the BSG remake in the title role was unsurprisingly utter pish to the point I've forgotten the name of the actual film.
Reasonable amount of drawing done today, though, so that's something.

Sunday 27th September 2009

Smallville returns with a reliably awful season opener: "You were the one who went Thelma and Louise with the Creature From the Black Lagoon!" and "Attacked by a ninja-clad assassin!" as possibly my standout favorite bad dialogue of the episode, if not the year so far. The mixed-metaphor of film references no-one under forty would make is hilarious enough, but the idea of someone dressed in ninjas is possibly the most awesomest thing ever.

Saturday 26th September 2009

Lightning saturday tv roundup:
Vampire Diaries: emo.
Mercy: smug.
Monk: Monk.

That's as insightful as I get when I haven't watched much tv through babbysittin', gymin' and laying on my arse without booze. This is not how you day off!

Friday 25th September 2009

Telly season starting in earnest now, with new shows debuting and old favorites/habits returning. In no particular order, the current viewing season has brought us House, Community, Glee, Eastwick, Greek, NCIS: Los Angeles, CSI: Miami, Crash, Modern Family, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fringe, Heroes, Mercy, Flashforward, the Forgotten, the Good Wife, the Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, Castle, Melrose Place, Bones, 90210 - pretty busy watching period for me. The only new show I'm wary of is Mercy, as me and medical dramas haven't got on since I tried to watch the first season of Grey's Anatomy and found it an aggressively smug and hateful show full of unlikable characters I would have little hesitation in punching in the mouth. Melrose Place I'm not sure what to make of, as I've never seen the original, though the name - via pop-cultural osmosis alone - brings up assumptions of glossy Los Angelinos and soap operatics about their privileged never worked an honest day in their life problems, but it started with a murder and that was enough to intrigue me, even if the rest actually is glossy Los Angelinos and soap operatics about their privileged never worked an honest day in their life problems - all it needs is a naive actress who swings both ways and it'd be complete trash. As it is, it's just kind of trashy and lacking in substance.
NCIS: Los Angeles is trash, however - absolute, unapologetic trash of the first order. I've never watched an episode of the parent series, so I'm at a loss why I gave this one a shot, but the credits revealed that it starred both Chris 'Batman And Robin' O'Donnel and LL Cool J, so my ass was watching this bitch just to see what kind of car crash occurred, and it was just terrible enough to be compelling in the same way that CSI: Miami and Bones are.
Good Wife is typical courtroom stuff but inoffensive enough that I'll probably watch another episode, while Flashforward is laughably derivative and stiff Sci-Fi Channel reject material that pads out the minutes with leaden plotting and shameless lifts of the establishing moments of Lost, and I honestly can't think why I'd watch another episode - none of it is particularly terrible, it's just that none of it is particularly good and there's not an ounce of originality on display.
Modern Family is cynical on the surface, but has a happy ending up it's sleeve in the form of a face turn for the homophobic dad played by Married With Children's Ed O'Niell, and while happy endings were once played-out on tv, they're now so rare that this comes across as a welcome bit of schmaltz that makes the rest of the cynicism and misanthropy more palatable in much the same way that House's season opening happy-ending moment of rare euphoria for the title character was.

All in all, the new season is off to a good start, but we'll see what I'm still watching in a month's time.

Thursday 24th September 2009

Minus color and a couple of white-out clean-ups, that's pages 6-7 in the bag. Not a stunning pace considering I started last monday, but I am at least sitting down and getting into the work. Possibly once I cut the booze, late risings and lie-ins till 1 playing Oblivion and mainlining cheap energy drinks I'll get more done in a day, though for the moment I'm enjoying the slower pace of life away from the routine of a regular job.

As regards Oblivion: good game, but I still prefer Fallout. The main quest is far too easy and most of the fun is in the side missions like the Dark brotherhood assassinations or the Thieves Guild tealeafing, though I've been told that level 10 is quite high for someone running through the game and not deliberately leveling-up - I suppose it's entirely possible that the game version of me may be just as awesome as the real thing, but it makes things too easy, and while that's great for getting laid back, sometimes I want my games to be a little exciting and frustrate me now and then. Only a little, mind.

Wednesday 23rd September 2009

Just finished Crash season 1, and while I've never seen the film upon which the series is based (though my brother's one-line review was "We are all racists"), I can only hope it was a little less dipped in cliche than the televisual iteration. Not that it was bad per se, but it felt like the whole thing wandered off the reservation around episode 10 and fell too easily into cop show tropes, forgetting the more interesting periphery characters - though their plotlines weren't the height of originality, either.
All in all, an above-average drama, but not the apex of the form suggested by the Oscar-winning pedigree.

Watching: Crash (but I'm done with that, I suppose) Lincoln Heights, CSI Miami

Tuesday 22nd September 2009

Watching: Crash s1, Big Bang Theory, Castle
Listening: War Rocket Ajax, Everything Comes Back to 2000ad