Media update

[bironic]

Couple of "meh"s:

The Martian was all right. I'm glad I read it, especially if it's as popular as the internet suggests. As a hard-SF thought experiment on how an American astronaut might survive being left behind on Mars using near-future technology, it worked well. I liked not knowing whether he was going to make it. It was also fun to follow the author's sort of wry but hopeful depiction of how huge bureaucratic government organizations might pull together and actually function while attempting to solve a crisis. And there were a few chuckle-out-loud lines. ("Godspeed, little taters.")

However, the structure quickly grew tiresome:

Problem
Solution
Problem
Solution
Problem
Solution
Big problem!
Brief panic
Solution
Problem
Solution
Etc.

While there was enough narrative to pull me through the science and engineering details, I'd say there was just enough narrative to do that -- and I am a person who enjoys space program science and engineering. What this book needed badly was more psychology. You get a sense of Mark's personality, his resourcefulness and ingenuity, his optimism and certainly his sense of humor, but you never see him tackle real crises of the mind rather than of technology. He's alone on Mars for over a year, and no bouts of serious depression; no periods of panic or despair; very little attention paid to the likelihood that working all day every day is the only thing that keeps him going. Those sorts of existential explorations are what make man vs. space stories truly great.

It also would have been nice if the NASA characters had been more fleshed out -- especially the two women, ugh, where were all the women and why did the only two in the whole organization have to be stereotypes -- and while they were markedly better, the shuttle crew as well.

Heard/read about Ridley Scott adapting it into a movie starring Matt Damon. I think it will make a better movie than a book. It's easy to depict the action. We can maybe read in the actor's face the sort of psychology I was missing. Or maybe they'll develop it more.


Finally got around to watching Stoker, the one with Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode and Nicole Kidman. Mia Wasikowska: still great. Matthew Goode: able to do creepy very well. I didn't find the movie as compelling as I'd expected/hoped, especially after watching chaila's beautiful Paradise Circus (warning: spoilery). The style was different.

It was alternately beautiful, obvious, sexy, disturbing, confusing, dull, compelling. It was more like watching the young woman version of Dexter as her latent psychopathy awoke. Loved the scene on the piano bench where India and Charlie test each other out while playing a duet that was as much a duel (and the way she's aroused by his proximity and intensity, incest schmincest), and the scene in the shower where she half falls apart and half gets off on what happened in the woods, and the line in the flashback about sometimes needing to do something bad to stop yourself from doing something worse. Would have liked a movie about India's father raising her knowing what she could become and trying to manage it, still loving her, but then again, maybe it's better for us to imagine it.


That's all right. Plenty of other media fish in the sea.

In the meantime, DS9 reruns the last couple of evenings as I put together bookcases and hung curtains. Second half of season four. I didn't realize how many episodes were in that stretch that I didn't remember well. Like, um, where was I when mirror!Worf led around mirror!Garak in chains and a collar?? We all know the mirror universe is the kinky universe, but seriously, you'd think I'd have remembered something like that. Guess my teenage self was too busy mooning over Odo and Bashir that season.

.

I uploaded my Festivids treat, so that is done. I like the treat. The assignment itself is... okay. We'll see how it goes over. Now to wait a week and a half for golive. Really looking forward to finding out how many vids are in the collection this year, and discovering the gems, and delighting in whatever was made for me, and seeing what sort of feedback my own contributions might get.

Going to visit deelaundry this weekend, hurrah, and will have a guest the following weekend, plus work is keeping me busy, so at least the wait won't seem so bad.