kingandy | A Number Of Things

Am currently in Ilkley, and will be until Monday morning. I think that about covers that.

Have just watched Ocean's Twelve. (

stsquad's copy, which I bought him for his birthday. What? Mum was going to watch it on pay-per-view, and I thought this made more sense. I am sure he will not mind. Anyway I'll have it back before he knows it's missing so he'll never ohshi

It is an entertaining enough movie, with excellent performances and some very nice scenes. These are mostly the scenes which have no bearing on the plot, which itself is horribly convoluted and at times very silly. Despite this level of complexity, however, it was still possible to say "Ah, here he's going to explain how he stole it, and then he's going to explain how he stole it first", not because there was any mystery as to how the item had been stolen - in fact there was no indication that it had been stolen - but because of the hideous crushing narrative weight of it all. Hercule Poirot had invited everyone into the Accusing Lounge, and indeed all were wondering why they had been thus gathered, because a body had not previously been in evidence (so to speak); nonetheless a canny reader could easily claim, with some degree of honesty, a lack of surprise at subsequent events. Likewise, I sat with knowing certainty that, despite having witnessed everything that could possibly go wrong do so, all involved parties would later turn to camera and declare how much they love it when a plan comes together.

I am in two minds about the whole "She looks just like-" thing. I simply cannot decide whether it was a horrible, horrible, cringingly horrible embarassment, or some stroke of comedy genius. I did like the "Sixth Sense" references though.

I think to continue would be to give the movie more inches than it is really worth (something I try not to do), so I'll draw the subject to a close by reiterating that though the plot was a hideous malformed abomination and the general construction of the movie was (intentionally) confusing, I still enjoyed the acting and dialogue for the most part.

Word of the day: Hideous. Try to use it more in casual conversation.

While I am here I have been prompted to note my thoughts on the newest series of Stargate: SG-1, on the basis that they are likely to prompt the visitation of extreme pain upon my person.

Firstly I should briefly mention that in my opinion Claudia Black is a decent actress. The character she plays here is markedly different from Aeryn (which is how I gauge a good actor as opposed to a charismatic performer). Reserving judgement on Browder, though, because he may simply have been typecast - Crichton and O'Neill were always very similar in temperament, and the character Ben plays here (Cameron something?) is basically O'Neill redux. ("Redux" is a word which is here used to mean "re-done", or "re-do", which is also how I believe it should be pronounced.) There are subtle differences from Crichton's execution but I remain uncertain. Besides, the character actually didn't have any major scenes in the (few) episodes I saw; it's like now he's got the band back together he's just coasting.

So we come to the meat of the text, the point that may in these circles have me hunted down and pained: Browder != teh winz.

I'm not sure if it's because he's actually lost a lot of weight - slimming down for the part of something - or because in Farscape we never really (or often) saw him against a average human male, but he suddenly doesn't look so buff. And the haircut and costume isn't nearly so flattering, of course. In fact he's looking quite nondescript somehow, fading into the background. There was actually a scene where the poor lad was lying on a table, dying of some disease, and neither myself nor Alex recognised him (until a few scenes later when he recovered). Granted, there was a certain amount of confusion resulting from a poorly-encoded video file (there were some jumpy cuts), but still. We had not realised he was even ill.

Perhaps it's the competition. Judge and Shanks are, themselves, not small boys, and do draw the eye. Shanks particularly. The question was asked, where did a nerdy linguist get so large? Is it from hefting around all those stone tablets? (Current thinking has it that, each time he has ascended, upon returning to the mortal realm he is installed ina body generated by his own self-image; he seems to hold himself in high regard.) And he does have that chiselled jaw, the furrowed brow ... the arms.

It's still a close call, and I didn't even realise it was close until I saw them together, but if it came to a choice between Browder and Shanks^[1] ... I think I'd go for Shanks.

And that's what'll get me hurt.

[1] Yes I'm not saying it's likely.