Movies of november

[oneiriad]

46. A-team season 1.
Ah, nostalgia. And it actually holds up fairly well. Oh, make no mistake, Hannibal's characters are cringe-worthy, sorry to say, and Murdock, well, I'm wondering how anyone manages to seriously think he needs to locked up as insane, it seems so obviously mostly an act. Face is fun, B.A. is, well, B.A., and mostly pretty fun. Nostalgia :-)

47. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
It's okay. Nice special effects, semi-decent plot, but nothing I feel an overwhelming need to run out and read the books for. Mind you, can someone explain how a world where the Greek myths were apparently real, can have the Minotaur and the Medusa and the Hydra and such running around? I mean, did they come back from the dead when we weren't looking? Or is this something explained in the books, because frankly, that sort of thing bugs me - as does the automatic assumption of Hades = villain, but that's old news...

48. Jericho season 1.
I sat down to watch this for two reasons: partly because after reading Under the Dome I wanted to see an isolated community manage in the face of disaster without degenerating in sheer idiocy for no good reason story, and partly because it has Richard Speight Jr. - alas, his part turns out to be pretty minor, the character not getting that much development (well, a little, though I was sad to see him side with the populistic new mayor, but still, weee, character! also, he seems to be the town's resident sharpshooter), though the scene where his character is all happy and bouncy about having fired a tank is pretty neat.

Anyway, things I liked: I like the fact that people try, that there are no real villains (except Ravenwood, but they are more like a force of nature, really - and the terrorists, of course), there are antagonists, but nobody is simply evil. I like that the main conflicts - both between characters and between communities - are rooted in the simple fact that ressources are suddenly scarce, that people have trouble adjusting to this new, less luxurious world, and that there simply isn't enough for everybody, no matter how much you'd like there to be (the episode where they almost kick out the refugees was nice, although the ending of it annoyed me - I'd have liked to see them go through with it, because the solution makes no sense to me - if going down to half rations wouldn't be enough to get everybody through the winter, how will townspeople sharing their rations be - surely the amount of food is still the same? - and moving the refugees out of their single space into several houses, surely that will require more ressources, not less? In fact, shouldn't people in general be moving together in fewer houses during the winter, not living one or two people per house? But of course, now we're back to the people having trouble adjusting part.). And I liked how in the end, New Bern provides us with a dark mirror of Jericho - a town that faced the same challenges and didn't manage to overcome them, a town just like Jericho, just that much more desperate.

Things I was indifferent to: the whole terrorist / spy / whatever plot. I get that apocalypse stories need an explanation for the apocalypse, but honestly, it was sort of boring, and the spy-guy is kind of a son of a bitch...

Things I disliked: okay, this was something I noticed gradually, and maybe I'm seeing things, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with an aspect of the emerging society post-bombs, and that's the role women are being reduced to. Every time there's a council of war or a reason for people to take up arms, it's men. A woman might be including in exceptional circumstances or if she happens to come by at an opportune moment, but not mostly. Men go do important things, women get to be homemakers and caretakers and healers (and even that they need a drunken guy to come and do better for them). Yes, there is a couple of action-taking women, I particularly like Heather, but they almost make it worse, because they're rarely present, and half the time getting distracted with family issues. And there apparently can't be a single woman household / person - they need to have a man in the house. Even if that man is a teenage boy. And the woman will be brought down from her high-and-mighty city girl position to the proper, happy life of a farmer's wife, and if she dares gainsay her man, well, she'll get stabbed in her shop before the episode ends. Not to mention the implication at Black Jack's that apparently most of the women showing up at the trading post have nothing to trade except themselves - apparently a woman's only marketable skill is between her legs. I mean, the series is quite good, but I hope this gets less - less so in the second season, because seriously...