Geekomancer Under Glass – Fall 2014 TV (Part One)
It’s that time of year again — New TV time! Here’s a short run-down of some early thoughts about the Fall 2014 TV season based on a few pilots and season openers. Gotham Let me start by saying that I’m a big Batman fan. You might already know this. I should also say that I love the comic series, Gotham Central. Gotham, however, is is not the TV show I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be a Gotham Central show, where GCPD cops try to keep the peace in an un-governable city cursed with larger-than-life villains and a guardian angel who is more terrifying than most of the villains he fights. But it’s not that show, and it’s not trying to be that show — it seems like it’s trying to be the story of Gotham before Batman and the story of the various villains and how they become who they are when Batman emerges.
#26. In the Flesh (Season One) — A Shoot the WISB Subcast w/ Catherine Hill
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/ShootTheWISB26InTheFleshSeasonOneWCatherineHill/Shoot%20the%20WISB%20%2326%20–%20In%20the%20Flesh%20%28Season%20One%29%20w%20Catherine%20Hill.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSZombies, race allegories, and disgruntled fathers, oh my! Shaun, Julia, Paul, and Mike are joined by the lovely Catherine Hill to discuss the first season BBC3’s In the Flesh (you all need to be watching this; no joke). We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: This episode is also one of the perks for Shaun’s World SF Tour fundraiser. Catherine was selected to participate in an episode; we decided to record it at LonCon3! Spoiler Alert: the following podcast contains spoilers for the film being reviewed; if you wish to see the film without having it ruined for you, download this podcast and save it for later. Download the episode here. [audio http://archive.org/download/ShootTheWISB24SherlockSeasonOne/Shoot%20the%20WISB%20%2324%20–%20Sherlock%20%28Season%20One%29.mp3] Show notes (info about our contributors can be found on the about page): In the Flesh (BBC3)(IMDB) Catherine’s Website Catherine’s Twitter Comment away!
Welcome to Planet Freyja
Soooo…. I’m moving all my film and television posts to this site. Because… well… this column has long needed a theme and has suffered for it. I have a difficult enough time thinking of random interesting things to say about stuff for my own blog. I do best when I’ve a central theme to work with. So… Feminism, Science Fiction, and Fantasy Media it is. I don’t feel comfortable discussing fiction because I’m an author, and that brings up conflict of interest issues at once. Films and television? I can talk about those and feel relatively comfortable. So, that’s what I’ll do. I want to go all the way back to some classic films that maybe y’all haven’t seen or thought about in a while. I also want to talk about recent films as well. Hopefully, it’ll be interesting. The ‘title’ is a riff off of a Bloom County cartoon. I like that Freyja is a goddess of love and war which warps the original sexist concept into a nice knot. That said, here goes… ———————————— First, I’ve a post about Starz’s Outlander series here. Starz has made the first episode available for free for a short time. So far, they’ve done a great job of adapting the novel. I recommend seeing it. One thing I will say about it that I did not on my blog (at least not on that post) is that I very much like that Claire is of the 1940s. She’s not a woman of the 2000s stuffed in a 1940s world. I also very much like that Jamie isn’t a man of the 2000s stuffed in the 1700s. Gabaldon did her research from what I can tell, and she doesn’t pull punches in Outlander. I hate it when authors decide to rewrite history in order to make it more palatable. At the same exact time I hate it when history is used to say that previous to 1960, all men were sexist barbarian assholes (thank you HBO’s A Game of Thrones). Although some would argue the point with me, I always felt like Diana Gabaldon did a good job of walking that line. I give the first episode five out of five stars.
Geekomancer Under Glass – Knights of Sidonia Season One
When I saw the announcement that Netflix was going to be the US distributor of the anime for Knights of Sidonia, I was intrigued. I’ve been trying to keep on top of the content wars vis a vis Netflix vs. Hulu vs. Amazon Prime, etc. Adapted from a manga series by Tsutomu Nihei, Knights of Sidonia is a space opera that follows a seed ship of human survivors who have left the Earth after its descrution. Reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica, Macross/Robotech, and other stories, it also includes some elements of hard SF that enrich the fairly standard plot. And this, for me, is the nature of the whole series — very interesting conceptual work and worldbuilding wrapped around a fairly standard, if grim, space opera plot with mecha pilots and giant monster invaders.
Geekomancer Under Glass – Marvel’s Transmedia Gambit
(No, not that Gambit, Shaun :P.) Spoilers for Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ahead.) When Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD was announced, there was excitement, there was wariness, and everything in-between. An ongoing TV show as a tie-in to a powerful superhero franchise? This was something new, something different. There have been TV->film->TV movements, from La Femme Nikita to Star Trek, Star Wars, and more. The Matrix universe delved deep into transmedia storytelling, with animated shorts, video games, and comics. But Agents of SHIELD was something different — clearly designed as a bridge between movies, the show started weak. Really weak. The pilot episode showed some promise, with Clark Gregg as a compelling lead and Mike Peterson giving a voice to an interesting thematic question (is the American Dream a lie?).
Have Online Dictionary, Will Travel: AMC’s Turn (2014)
At the moment, I’m in Houston for Comicpalooza. It’s been a wonderful convention, but I’m short on sleep, so I’ll apologise ahead of time if I’m not making much sense. 🙂 Anyway, there’s a new show I’ve been watching, and it’s on AMC. If you like American Revolutionary War era history (like me,) you might give it a try. It’s called TURN, and it’s based on the true story of America’s first spy ring.
