Deep thoughts, with bironic handey
Jul. 23rd, 2015 08:46 pmBook:
We are reading China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh for book club. (wiki) It's got excellent worldbuilding and a braid of engrossing character- and culture clash-driven stories, but the constant comma splices are driving me up the wall. There's at least one per page. Here is a sample passage:
TV:
Started watching Agent Carter after seeing the adorable dubsmash war clips from Hayley Atwell and James D'Arcy on Twitter/Tumblr. Have now seen the first three eps with a fellow fan's help. Quite enjoyable. High production values, unsurprisingly, and, as people like![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
no_detective promised, solid, women-driven storytelling. I'm only surprised not to be enjoying buttoned-up Jarvis more as Peggy's boy Friday. Maybe I like my D'Arcy ruffled and smiling in a t-shirt. However, I did relish the scene where he put on glasses and stitched up Peggy's leg. Peggy is fabulous. She should hang out with Phryne Fisher.
Movie:
In less exciting news, we have achieved a new low in the dwindling Paul Bettany project: Mood Swingers, apparently a.k.a. Dead Babies. Bleh. Body horror and unsexy nudity and hallucinations and recreational drugs and occasional manic editing and general grossness and I just, not my thing. A little like David Cronenberg without deeper meaning and with low production quality. No, I can't even make that comparison; I probably only watched about 10 minutes total, fast-forwarding through the rest, whereas Cronenberg's stuff is good, if hard to watch. It wasn't just the teeth falling out and the barf and the needles and the entrails and the peeing and the tedious dialogue and the boobs, it's that it wasn't good. Compare to, say, DC's Crash, or Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. Rather: no comparison.
Two decent visuals: Young, lean Paul Bettany wearing lipstick in one scene and playing badminton in another. The latter was edited in such a way that he probably only had to actually hit the shuttle twice, but his follow-through was elegant.
*shakes head at self*
We are reading China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh for book club. (wiki) It's got excellent worldbuilding and a braid of engrossing character- and culture clash-driven stories, but the constant comma splices are driving me up the wall. There's at least one per page. Here is a sample passage:
I head north up Daqing Lu, the street is lined with stores. I stop and look in windows, the prices are ghastly. I have some of my Baffin Island salary on credit plus a stipend from the University. Because I study technology, my only cost was getting here, the rest is scholarship. Getting here was expensive enough.Really not my style. It has to be deliberate style; there are too many of them to be editing errors. Although my copy does have a handful of typos as well, like "peal" for "peel" (twice), or, ironically enough, missing commas, as in "Hainandao. The name means South Sea Island. The first character, 'hai' means 'sea.'" It's enough to make it read like a self-published novel, grammatically, except for how it won the Tiptree award and was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula and was published by Tor/edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Strange.
TV:
Started watching Agent Carter after seeing the adorable dubsmash war clips from Hayley Atwell and James D'Arcy on Twitter/Tumblr. Have now seen the first three eps with a fellow fan's help. Quite enjoyable. High production values, unsurprisingly, and, as people like
no_detective promised, solid, women-driven storytelling. I'm only surprised not to be enjoying buttoned-up Jarvis more as Peggy's boy Friday. Maybe I like my D'Arcy ruffled and smiling in a t-shirt. However, I did relish the scene where he put on glasses and stitched up Peggy's leg. Peggy is fabulous. She should hang out with Phryne Fisher.Movie:
In less exciting news, we have achieved a new low in the dwindling Paul Bettany project: Mood Swingers, apparently a.k.a. Dead Babies. Bleh. Body horror and unsexy nudity and hallucinations and recreational drugs and occasional manic editing and general grossness and I just, not my thing. A little like David Cronenberg without deeper meaning and with low production quality. No, I can't even make that comparison; I probably only watched about 10 minutes total, fast-forwarding through the rest, whereas Cronenberg's stuff is good, if hard to watch. It wasn't just the teeth falling out and the barf and the needles and the entrails and the peeing and the tedious dialogue and the boobs, it's that it wasn't good. Compare to, say, DC's Crash, or Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. Rather: no comparison.
Two decent visuals: Young, lean Paul Bettany wearing lipstick in one scene and playing badminton in another. The latter was edited in such a way that he probably only had to actually hit the shuttle twice, but his follow-through was elegant.
*shakes head at self*
