Tag: tv

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Liveblog: Ring of Fire, Part 2

All right, I’m coming back for more. Same rules as usual, I’ll be updating the liveblog every five minutes or so. Unfortunately if you want to play at home, I can’t help you at the moment. I’m watching part two on the DVR.

I know you’re terribly sad to be missing this.

WHEN LAST WE LEFT OUR INTREPID ACTORS, a volcano had just erupted because compressed magma (argh what even) and oil look EXACTLY THE SAME to their bullshit made-up technology. And now the entire world might explode because as we know, all volcanoes are actually connected, which is why every time a volcano erupts, every other one in the world does as well. (Wait, that’s not how it works?)

Oh, and the Yellowstone caldera is apparently now part of the Ring of Fire, which is news to everyone except for Dr. Cooper, the hot geologist with an aneurysm that is bad enough to be a dramatic plot device but apparently not bad enough to warrant emergency surgery.

Liveblog commencing in 10… 9… 8….

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geology liveblog tv

Liveblog: Ring of Fire, Part 1

All right, I’m going to do it. Apparently it’s THE COUNTDOWN TO MELTDOWN. Or something.

Same rules as usual – I will update the liveblog every five minutes or so. If you’re reading this on LJ or Dreamwidth you’ll need to come to the blog at katsudon.net to see the updates most likely, though I think edits are now supposed to push through so we’ll see.

If you’d like to play at home, this likely stinker of a miniseries is on Reelz. Yes, with a Z.

Liveblog commencing in 10… 9… 8…

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liveblog

Urge to liveblog… rising…

I mean. Look at it. Just look at it.

Gratuitous Mt. St. Helens reference? Check.

Ridiculous implication that somehow all volcanoes are connected and therefore THEY WILL ALL BLOW UP AT ONCE EHRMERGAHD? Check.

Gratuitous Yellowstone reference sure to guarantee a fresh crop of concerned people who will ask me when Yellowstone is going to blow up and kill us all? Check (Answer, by the way: “Soon” in geology speak. Which means chances are we’ll probably have killed our own species off before Yellowstone gets around to erupting.)

But best of all – THE ERUPTION OF A BRAZILLION VOLCANOES BLAMED ON OIL WELLS? CHECK BABY. CHECK CHECK CHECK.

Just. Wow.

Bonus for what appears to be a bomb being dropped into a magma chamber. Because everyone knows that the way you keep a composite volcano from exploding is… uh… blowing it up first.

Because science.

Well, there’s my incentive to buckle down and get lots of work done in the morning. Part 1 of this hot (har har) mess is repeating at 4 pm my time tomorrow, followed by part 2. I don’t know if I have the strength.

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tv Uncategorized

And by the way, this is how the finale of Downton season 3 should actually have ended. (SPOILERS)

Did I mention spoilers?

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If I keep following Kevin Bacon, it’ll end in a restraining order.

Because Downton Abbey sucker punched me right in the heart, I decided a serial killer soap opera chaser was an awesome idea.

So Kevin Bacon is a drunken maverick and some shit with his sister and he sort of but not really bonds with Mike the adorably scruffy FBI kid but… I actually don’t even care that much. Aside from a flashback that involves adorably drunken Kevin Bacon, the FBI people have lost my interest entirely, and I’m really just watching them for the big reveal that everyone but Kevin Bacon was a secret serial killer all along or some shit like that.

This show is truly a soap opera, and the serial killer threesome of Jacob, Paul, and Emma are where it’s at. As disturbing as it is to admit that.

“You kill Megan and I’ll make pancakes.” And this is why I find them compelling in a way that creeps me out if I think about it too much. They’re so disturbingly… domestic. And familial. And they have so much more in the way of interpersonal dynamics than Kevin Bacon being drunk and grumpy and tragic and refusing to actually have meaningful interactions with anyone he hasn’t slept with.

With our serial killer trio the huge revelation for this episode is – gasp! – Jacob’s never really killed anyone! (Paul ratted him out; I’m guessing Jacob must have confessed to him during a drunken (no homo!) makeout session.) The shock with which this is greeted by Emma is adorable, like someone being told their lover is somehow actually still a virgin. But he seemed so normal! Later we get a flashback of the story he made up about killing someone, like he was just trying to impress his frat brothers.

The poor woman Megan goes from being Paul’s problem to Jacob’s, as Emma and Paul decide this is the perfect time for Jacob to bust his serial killer cherry. And instead, Jacob ends up letting her go, which really does lend credence to Emma’s earlier question of what in god’s name he’s doing with this crew of nuts. Paul and Emma chase the girl down, roll around in the mud a lot, then go take a shower together.

And this is the bit that made the episode for me, if made is really the word I want. Jacob discovers Megan, muddy and tied up in the basement. Then goes to find Paul and Emma in the shower. They both look at him, tell him we aren’t going to give up on you and then, I shit you not, there is a group hug. Can someone please explain to me how the hell three supposed psychopaths have become the most human characters in the series?

I am now officially incapable of watching this show un-ironically. Well, I think I lost that ability somewhere during the second episode, but I’m admitting it now. Emma/Jacob/Paul has become my OT3 and I’m not sure if I can even live with myself any more.

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Uncategorized

Following Kevin Bacon on a Bender

There is something intensely awkward about, “previously on The Following…”  Maybe they should rethink that one.

So this week another little serial killer got his murder on, going after people for revenge because they made Professor Poe-Obsessed Serial Killer’s life rough. It made revenge seem very shallow and petty which, to be fair, it mostly is. Only the whole revenge aim lacked the motivating rage that makes the story of vengeance at all interesting, and so pretty much just turned into, Gosh if I kill enough people maybe daddy will love me best. The twist at the end might have been more surprising if there hadn’t been a “oh and this person is a serial killer too!” twist at the end of every episode thus far. I’m waiting for Kevin Bacon’s mom to call him up and tell him, “Honey, I just ate a sorority girl’s face.”

Anyway, is it bad that serial killer chick Emma is getting to be my favorite character in the series? I’m highly amused by the way she apparently approaches serial killing as art – “We’re supposed to find out own voice.” Murder, now a thousand times more pretentious. I’m also thinking that by now, everyone around her should know not to even look at her funny when she has a knife. She gets slashy.

Well, and in every sense of the word. In one of the more meaningful flashbacks (and there were a lot of flashbacks, many of which really didn’t seem to have much of a point) we see Emma cheering her two fellow serial killers to kiss because they have to pretend to be a gay couple. It gave me flashbacks to my first Yaoi Con. I mean, for the trying to get boys to kiss. Not the murder.

Other than Emma being disturbingly likable for a sociopathic mom-stabbing killer, the episode was basically a study in Kevin Bacon’s stubble, which sort of ranged anywhere from manly and rugged to Wall Street trader after a three day bender, and seemed to shift between these states at near randomness. Maybe the man just needs a new razor.  There’s a lot of slightly open-mouthed, dark-eyed and moody staring, accompanied by the aforementioned stubble. And another agent calls him “vodka breath” which was kind of the high point of the episode for me.

To be honest, I’m not sure why I keep watching this show. But I will be back next week for your regular Kevin Bacon stubble report.

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Uncategorized

Following Kevin Bacon Again (spoilers)

Kevin Bacon was still quite Kevin Bacon in this second episode, though he was also around a lot less, thus lowering the KBQ (Kevin Bacon Quotient) to dangerous levels.

Honestly, the best part the entire episode was when someone in a hilariously awful Edgar Allan Poe mask attacks Kevin Bacon in a creepy serial killer house (you can tell it’s a serial killer house because there’s writing all over the walls) and it was just sort of laughable and pathetic instead of worrying.

Yeah, like this but less festive.
Yeah, like this but less festive.

There was relatively little murder of pretty blonde girls this time around (just a bit at the beginning that I barely noticed) and then most of it was flashbacks of Kevin Bacon hooking up with the master serial killer’s wife, or two of the main bad guys hooking up over a romantic dinner where the lady serial killer knifes her mom in the back with great precision, having had her haircut criticized one too many times.

The most forehead-slapping bit was when Kevin Bacon and the utterly worthless police crew walked through the serial killer house and paid careful attention to all the quotable Edgar Allan Poe scrawled on the walls.  Apparently our serial killer mastermind in prison has made a religion or something out of Poe because: “…there’s a pathology to our modern internet-bred minds. It creates a vacancy in our humanity…”

All I can think of is… oh if only the antisocial sector on the internet was actually as literate as this show makes it out to be. Then: and really, we’re going to go with the “internet makes us disconnected and therefore sociopaths” thesis here? Do the writers not read anything but the frothiest of subreddits?

Kids these days, with their internets and serial killings and so forth.

The second most forehead-slapping bit was when they realized (gasp) the main serial killer wants to kill his former wife Claire! So instead of, I don’t know, getting her out of the fucking house in light of the fact that in last week’s episode someone got snatched directly from her own home and horribly killed, they just left her there so daddy’s special little serial killer could take a shot at her and gosh, you almost ended up feeling bad for him.

You’re losing me, The Following, for anything but comedy value. All you’ve got is Kevin Bacon. He’d better keep on Kevin Baconning his tush off or I’m going to give up entirely and watch Law & Order reruns on Netflix because they’re measurably less silly.

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tv

The Following (of Kevin Bacon)

Watched the pilot on Hulu because, well, Kevin Bacon. And obviously I needed a bloody, disturbing and gross serial killer show in my life, which has been empty for the last 14 years since Millenium was canceled. The show opens with the guitar from Marilyn Manson’s cover of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), which kind of tells you everything you need to know about the tone.

Kevin Bacon was appropriately Kevin Bacon throughout the entire first episode, so I guess I’ll stick with him and see where it goes. James Purefoy (as Dr. Joe Carroll) was appropriately gross and creepy as the villain. And why is it that every single time in a cop show someone says, “You’ll want to see this,” I immediately know that no, no we will not. Ever.

The concept for the show has potential to be interesting, since it’s basically Dr. Carroll the world’s most evil and Poe-obsessed literature professor convincing his weird following of – serial killer fans, I guess? – nutty people to kill for him from prison. I’m expecting a lot of bad technobabble to explain how this will all work, though if they continue to give him access to the internet in the successive episodes they’d better have a damn good reason.

At this point, though, I’m really just expecting it to be a lot of hapless and good-looking young women (mostly blonde) getting messily killed every week by awful people while Kevin Bacon is deeply wounded yet sternly Kevin Bacon at them and there are occasional hat tips to Edgar Allen Poe to prove the script writers did pay attention in their English lit class.

Prove me wrong, The Following. I dare you. Be more interesting and give me a reason to keep watching other than the unutterable Kevin Bacon-ness of Kevin Bacon.

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tv

My guilty pleasure

It’s August. It must be time to resume my weird, shameful love affair with Project Runway.

I still can’t figure out why I love this show so much, but I do. It’s definitely not the bitchy cat fights, since those make me want to hide my head under a pillow in shared human shame. I think it’s the fashion, as strange as that sounds. Because I don’t understand fashion. I never have, and I think at this point I just never will.

The part I like most about the show is watching the designers make art, and talk about it, and feeling utterly mystified because I have no idea how any of it works. I’m one of those people who really just needs a personal retainer of to tell me what clothes I should and should not wear.

Justine Larbalestier recently wrote a blog post about writers and our obsession with process porn. Writers really like talking about how we write rather than necessarily what we’re writing (because that’s a secret). Honestly, I think some writers like to talk about it a little too much, which is why I make a conscious effort to minimize that kind of navel gazing.

Perhaps the reason I like Project Runway so much is that it’s a little slice of process porn for a different kind of art, watching the designers struggle to come up with something and work through it. That’s actually the part of it I enjoy watching the most. Not the runway stuff at the end, or them saying snippy things about each other in interviews, but them scurrying around the work room and building their projects up, tearing them down, and then rebuilding them in search of their idea.

I just wish I understood the art itself. But then I remember I’m both intensely lazy and unable to feel comfortable in any clothes that aren’t specifically intended to be copiously sweated in to and I slink quietly away.

I’m loving all the female designers this season so far, by the way. My favorites are Sonjia and Alicia. I hope they stay in for a long time! (And I wish I looked like Alicia so I could dress like her. Yes. I’m aware this means fundamentally I want to dress like an adorable lesbian. I fail to see the problem with that.)

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astro stuff tv

It’s a Bad Universe out there

Finally! Phil Plait’s sooper sekrit project has been revealed! He’s been talking about this (or rather, annoyingly not talking about it other than to say that there’s a secret project) for months and I’ve been dying to know what it’s about. It looks like a lot of fun, sort of a Mythbusters with more focus on the science.

This makes me really, really wish that I had cable. Maybe I can talk Mike in to it.

I’m very entertained by the little trailer. I’m not sure if my favorite bit is Mutant!Phil shooting lightning out of his eyes at the UFOs, or Phil just saying “oh god” when he’s apparently being taken on some crazy maneuver in a jet.

(Phil has now posted about his project on his blog.)