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26. Captain America: the First Avenger
Awww, Steve.
27. Return to Cranford
Not the most exciting period drama, but Tom Hiddleston is always a nice sight (and such a lovely smile he has).
28. En kongelig affære
You know what I find really, really annoying about the Danish movie and television industry (such as it is)? That when they finally - finally! - get around to making a actual period drama movie, then it's good. Quite good. Oh, it has its flaws and the writing was a bit too anachronistic in places (though in RL Struensee didn't speak Danish, so really, concessions must be made), but mostly, I quite liked it - it centers around the gradually evolving relationship between Struensee, the mad king Christian VII and Caroline Matilda, and how it comes together perfectly only to go straight to hell in handbasket. Oh, there's some of the politics, but mostly, it's Struensee and Christian making friends by playing with Shakespeare quotes, and Caroline and Struensee taking daring horseback rides, and that sort of stuff. But back to my original line of thinking - what really annoys me about the movie industry? Is that they can make perfectly decent period dramas - when they feel like it. And I'm sure they can make perfectly decent fantasy and science fiction as well - so, why oh why do they always insist on social-realistic dramas and so-called comedies and romances and suchlike (and I know the answer, and the answer is money, but still - dammit)?
29. A Game of Thrones season 1.
What to say of this series - visually, it's alright - I wonder at having snow south of the Wall in what is supposed to be summer, I really wonder at the architecture at King's Landing considering that winter will be coming eventually - anyway. As far as the characters - mostly I like the ones I liked in the book and I disliked the ones I disliked in the book, for better or worse. And the actors are great - Peter Dinklage snarking, Aidan Gillen smirking. I would have liked to see the wolves more - mostly, they only seem to appear whenever the plot specifically requires them, rather than following the Stark children around all the time. And I find myself disliking Sansa, a character I sympathized with in the novel - mostly because of the age-up (and yes, I get why the tv series would choose to make her older, considering what's coming), because honestly? What in an 11 year old girl can be excused with naivity and youth, in a what? 16? 17 year old? Can't. I can't. She should be old enough to know better.
30. By Day and By Night
I find myself rather liking this science fiction movie - it's very quiet, sedate, where something more Hollywood would have tangled a lot more guns into the plot, probably. I like the world, with its day and night shifts (though the argument of overpopulation in the dome is kind of undermined by how empty most places are), and I like the plot of the two people finding each other across the border between day and night because of the child, and that it's the child that is the core of that relationship, and the twisted, tragic Ladyhawkish end of it all.
31. Twixt
So, this is a ghost story. Except it's a murder mystery. No, it's a vampire story. No, it's the somewhat melancholy and slightly surreal tale of a B-list author coping with his daughters death. With goths and their goth vampire biker leader and ghosts and a weird clocktower and a sheriff with a Barbie-doll-model of a vampire-executing-machine. And it's quite fun, actually.
32. Avengers (twice)
Uhm. Yay? (Seriously, I could write post upon post about this movie and the yay-ness of it - I'm not even going to try here...)
***
33. Haven season 1.
So, your standard mystical small town with a standard stranger arrives to be POV character and a standard the stranger becomes part of the local law enforcement (honestly, those three elements tend to coincide an awful lot). And it's fun, even if it slightly worrying to consider that Salem's Lot is somewhere not that far away and that there is a ball of glass buried under the Twin Towers somewhere and all that. Quite worrying, really. Also, to talk about something else: this is my theory, as it developed over the first few episodes, and yeah, the last couple kind of speaks against it, but here it is anyway: I think Duke and Nathan used to be together, and then someting happened, and it was nobody's fault, or maybe it was Nathan's, but Nathan blamed Duke, and so it goes...
34. Iron Sky
Okay, so - this generations Dr. Strangelove this isn't. The worldbuilding is awesome - the Nazi colony on the moon looks great and the airships-spaceships are lovely. And the story has it's moment (such as when all the other nations reveal their spaceships and not!Palin throws a hissyfit). Alas, the characters - well, the heroes - are quite frankly dull. Seriously, when my favourite in the movie gets to be the aspiring Nazi-führer and number two is the fashionista media bitch, somethings wrong...
35. Downton Abbey season 2.
Okay, so the dowager is still awesome, and actually, I like Sir Richard (yes, I know he's a bit of a bastard, but for that while, he was Mary's bit of a bastard). And Thomas - the war seemed to mellow him. But quite frankly, it felt too - compressed? Too many years and too much plot pressed into too few episodes (like Thomas blink-and-you-miss-it-was-apparently-supposed-to-be-romantic-interest-in-the-blind-guy-who-committed-suicide). Which is a shame.
36. Smash season 1.
My first thought when sitting down to watch this was "oh no, not another round of Debra Messing and her gay best friend". I'm not a fan of DM. I watched for Jack Davenport at first (and he makes a lovely bastard, but doesn't he always?), and then for Anjelica Huston as well, and her bartender. Sadly, I never got into watching it for the Broadway behind-the-scenes dynamics - mostly because they got drowned out in relationship dramatics between all the characters that I couldn't care less about - and of course, it didn't help that most of the music numbers wasn't really that fantastic. Decent, but never more.
37. Dark Shadows
I like Johnny Depp. I like Tim Burton. I like vampires. I like stories about people from the past coming to the present (or the 70s) and experiencing culture shock. So this movie should be perfect for me, right? Wrong. It was - well, predictable. I mean, nice Alice Cooper guest starring, but the visuals where all standard Burton, Barnabas was - well, I suppose the audience is supposed to root for him, but the whole "casually massacring innocent people with barely a token pretense at guilt" doesn't endear him to me (Barnabas is not nice or good, he's just all about family). Mostly, I'm left with a feeling of a movie that is really intended for the people who watched the original series and are capable of getting the subtle references and not feel that stuff like the moody teenage daughter turning out to be a werewolf came a bit out of the blue...
38. Psycho
I wonder how it must have been to watch this without knowing the end. Still, even knowing, it's quite good - and I still find it intriguing how tight the storytelling actually is in these movies, how a modern movie would have added fifteen subplots along the way, and how this does just fine without.
39. Supernatural season 7.
I liked Crowley. I liked Death. I liked the occasional guest character. I quite liked the Bobby-as-ghost story arch. Sadly, I find that the Leviathans are really out of the boys' league as far as villains go. And that the series is still not that good at balancing overall season arch with monster-of-the-week episodes. And honestly, they need to think up a new sort of season cliffhanger, something other than "one or both of the boys die, leaving each other all alone". It's getting old. (And I find it annoying that Gabriel was never mentioned with a single word, despite the myths about him killing the original Leviathan...) Anyway...
40. Christmas at Downton Abbey
And we're back at Thomas plotting and being sneaky and mean...
41. House season 8.
I disliked the prison episodes - partly because yes, House did wrong, but I maintain that Cuddy was at least 50% to blame for that whole fucked-up affair (and she didn't even bother to come to the funeral), and anyway, it just seems extreme to lock someone up in Oz for what he did. I liked his new team (especially Park), I liked his wife, I quite liked the end of him and Wilson riding off into the sunset together.
42. The Almighty Johnsons season 2.
Oh, boys. Boys, boys, boys. Still completely and utterly fucked up, aren't you. Let's see - this season. Well, it certainly had more of a special effects budget than the last. Anyway, first there was Ty and Eva and Colin and Agnetha and oh, and then that ran it's course and then there was Gaia and prophecies and Maori gods and Anders with his useless-stick-of-uselessness and cock-of-destiny and god-hunters following him home and oh, fuck. And I really, really hope for a season three. I want Mike dealing with Colin (and I suspect that Colin likes Mike - I mean, he gave him a bar (sort of)! He saved his life! Come on, surely he likes him a little? (and not just in a creepy watching-him-while-he-has-sex-way...)), I want Ty coping with having gotten what he always wanted, I want to see Axl and Anders and Gaia figuring things out - or not. Considering. I want more goddesses being awesome, more Olaf - his past (the guy is 93 years old, he must have loads of stories - how about a flashback episode or two?), more Maori gods (especially George who is Punga), I want to know what really happened with Agnetha (because honestly, you really think she went to be a tree where Colin could find her? Because I don't), I want to maybe get around to finally meeting the boys' father (or maybe Njord went and got a little Maori girlfriend and then Bryn came along and that's why nobody's heard from him in years and years?). I want more (I need to get ahold of Outrageous Fortune, don't I, to see what else the people behind this series are capable of?
Awww, Steve.
27. Return to Cranford
Not the most exciting period drama, but Tom Hiddleston is always a nice sight (and such a lovely smile he has).
28. En kongelig affære
You know what I find really, really annoying about the Danish movie and television industry (such as it is)? That when they finally - finally! - get around to making a actual period drama movie, then it's good. Quite good. Oh, it has its flaws and the writing was a bit too anachronistic in places (though in RL Struensee didn't speak Danish, so really, concessions must be made), but mostly, I quite liked it - it centers around the gradually evolving relationship between Struensee, the mad king Christian VII and Caroline Matilda, and how it comes together perfectly only to go straight to hell in handbasket. Oh, there's some of the politics, but mostly, it's Struensee and Christian making friends by playing with Shakespeare quotes, and Caroline and Struensee taking daring horseback rides, and that sort of stuff. But back to my original line of thinking - what really annoys me about the movie industry? Is that they can make perfectly decent period dramas - when they feel like it. And I'm sure they can make perfectly decent fantasy and science fiction as well - so, why oh why do they always insist on social-realistic dramas and so-called comedies and romances and suchlike (and I know the answer, and the answer is money, but still - dammit)?
29. A Game of Thrones season 1.
What to say of this series - visually, it's alright - I wonder at having snow south of the Wall in what is supposed to be summer, I really wonder at the architecture at King's Landing considering that winter will be coming eventually - anyway. As far as the characters - mostly I like the ones I liked in the book and I disliked the ones I disliked in the book, for better or worse. And the actors are great - Peter Dinklage snarking, Aidan Gillen smirking. I would have liked to see the wolves more - mostly, they only seem to appear whenever the plot specifically requires them, rather than following the Stark children around all the time. And I find myself disliking Sansa, a character I sympathized with in the novel - mostly because of the age-up (and yes, I get why the tv series would choose to make her older, considering what's coming), because honestly? What in an 11 year old girl can be excused with naivity and youth, in a what? 16? 17 year old? Can't. I can't. She should be old enough to know better.
30. By Day and By Night
I find myself rather liking this science fiction movie - it's very quiet, sedate, where something more Hollywood would have tangled a lot more guns into the plot, probably. I like the world, with its day and night shifts (though the argument of overpopulation in the dome is kind of undermined by how empty most places are), and I like the plot of the two people finding each other across the border between day and night because of the child, and that it's the child that is the core of that relationship, and the twisted, tragic Ladyhawkish end of it all.
31. Twixt
So, this is a ghost story. Except it's a murder mystery. No, it's a vampire story. No, it's the somewhat melancholy and slightly surreal tale of a B-list author coping with his daughters death. With goths and their goth vampire biker leader and ghosts and a weird clocktower and a sheriff with a Barbie-doll-model of a vampire-executing-machine. And it's quite fun, actually.
32. Avengers (twice)
Uhm. Yay? (Seriously, I could write post upon post about this movie and the yay-ness of it - I'm not even going to try here...)
***
33. Haven season 1.
So, your standard mystical small town with a standard stranger arrives to be POV character and a standard the stranger becomes part of the local law enforcement (honestly, those three elements tend to coincide an awful lot). And it's fun, even if it slightly worrying to consider that Salem's Lot is somewhere not that far away and that there is a ball of glass buried under the Twin Towers somewhere and all that. Quite worrying, really. Also, to talk about something else: this is my theory, as it developed over the first few episodes, and yeah, the last couple kind of speaks against it, but here it is anyway: I think Duke and Nathan used to be together, and then someting happened, and it was nobody's fault, or maybe it was Nathan's, but Nathan blamed Duke, and so it goes...
34. Iron Sky
Okay, so - this generations Dr. Strangelove this isn't. The worldbuilding is awesome - the Nazi colony on the moon looks great and the airships-spaceships are lovely. And the story has it's moment (such as when all the other nations reveal their spaceships and not!Palin throws a hissyfit). Alas, the characters - well, the heroes - are quite frankly dull. Seriously, when my favourite in the movie gets to be the aspiring Nazi-führer and number two is the fashionista media bitch, somethings wrong...
35. Downton Abbey season 2.
Okay, so the dowager is still awesome, and actually, I like Sir Richard (yes, I know he's a bit of a bastard, but for that while, he was Mary's bit of a bastard). And Thomas - the war seemed to mellow him. But quite frankly, it felt too - compressed? Too many years and too much plot pressed into too few episodes (like Thomas blink-and-you-miss-it-was-apparently-supposed-to-be-romantic-interest-in-the-blind-guy-who-committed-suicide). Which is a shame.
36. Smash season 1.
My first thought when sitting down to watch this was "oh no, not another round of Debra Messing and her gay best friend". I'm not a fan of DM. I watched for Jack Davenport at first (and he makes a lovely bastard, but doesn't he always?), and then for Anjelica Huston as well, and her bartender. Sadly, I never got into watching it for the Broadway behind-the-scenes dynamics - mostly because they got drowned out in relationship dramatics between all the characters that I couldn't care less about - and of course, it didn't help that most of the music numbers wasn't really that fantastic. Decent, but never more.
37. Dark Shadows
I like Johnny Depp. I like Tim Burton. I like vampires. I like stories about people from the past coming to the present (or the 70s) and experiencing culture shock. So this movie should be perfect for me, right? Wrong. It was - well, predictable. I mean, nice Alice Cooper guest starring, but the visuals where all standard Burton, Barnabas was - well, I suppose the audience is supposed to root for him, but the whole "casually massacring innocent people with barely a token pretense at guilt" doesn't endear him to me (Barnabas is not nice or good, he's just all about family). Mostly, I'm left with a feeling of a movie that is really intended for the people who watched the original series and are capable of getting the subtle references and not feel that stuff like the moody teenage daughter turning out to be a werewolf came a bit out of the blue...
38. Psycho
I wonder how it must have been to watch this without knowing the end. Still, even knowing, it's quite good - and I still find it intriguing how tight the storytelling actually is in these movies, how a modern movie would have added fifteen subplots along the way, and how this does just fine without.
39. Supernatural season 7.
I liked Crowley. I liked Death. I liked the occasional guest character. I quite liked the Bobby-as-ghost story arch. Sadly, I find that the Leviathans are really out of the boys' league as far as villains go. And that the series is still not that good at balancing overall season arch with monster-of-the-week episodes. And honestly, they need to think up a new sort of season cliffhanger, something other than "one or both of the boys die, leaving each other all alone". It's getting old. (And I find it annoying that Gabriel was never mentioned with a single word, despite the myths about him killing the original Leviathan...) Anyway...
40. Christmas at Downton Abbey
And we're back at Thomas plotting and being sneaky and mean...
41. House season 8.
I disliked the prison episodes - partly because yes, House did wrong, but I maintain that Cuddy was at least 50% to blame for that whole fucked-up affair (and she didn't even bother to come to the funeral), and anyway, it just seems extreme to lock someone up in Oz for what he did. I liked his new team (especially Park), I liked his wife, I quite liked the end of him and Wilson riding off into the sunset together.
42. The Almighty Johnsons season 2.
Oh, boys. Boys, boys, boys. Still completely and utterly fucked up, aren't you. Let's see - this season. Well, it certainly had more of a special effects budget than the last. Anyway, first there was Ty and Eva and Colin and Agnetha and oh, and then that ran it's course and then there was Gaia and prophecies and Maori gods and Anders with his useless-stick-of-uselessness and cock-of-destiny and god-hunters following him home and oh, fuck. And I really, really hope for a season three. I want Mike dealing with Colin (and I suspect that Colin likes Mike - I mean, he gave him a bar (sort of)! He saved his life! Come on, surely he likes him a little? (and not just in a creepy watching-him-while-he-has-sex-way...)), I want Ty coping with having gotten what he always wanted, I want to see Axl and Anders and Gaia figuring things out - or not. Considering. I want more goddesses being awesome, more Olaf - his past (the guy is 93 years old, he must have loads of stories - how about a flashback episode or two?), more Maori gods (especially George who is Punga), I want to know what really happened with Agnetha (because honestly, you really think she went to be a tree where Colin could find her? Because I don't), I want to maybe get around to finally meeting the boys' father (or maybe Njord went and got a little Maori girlfriend and then Bryn came along and that's why nobody's heard from him in years and years?). I want more (I need to get ahold of Outrageous Fortune, don't I, to see what else the people behind this series are capable of?
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