Sally's Journal

The Time Traveller's Wife. I am watching the Theo James/Rose Leslie mini series version of this in what is increasingly a state of fixed horror where I feel I must see this through, despite the nausea in my belly.
I'm just gonna say it. Adding a gentle veneer of soft sci fi with the time travel thing does not take away from the essential awfulness of a plot in which a 7 year old girl meets an adult man and is groomed to be his perfect wife for her entire life. It is not romantic. It is never romantic. And all the scenes with 30-something Theo James (who is a very attractive and charismatic actor, doing his best with the horror that he is being given) playing board games with his tiny child future wife just reinforce the essential wrongness of the whole story.

There's another plot going on too about how he sees his future death and is haunted by his mother's death but it's frankly overshadowed by the deeply creepy child bride plot. I will see it through to the end. And then I shall add this show to Twilight as 'troubling narratives around children and romance that somehow still exist in this world'.

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Uglies.

It is a film. On Netflix. I know it is a film because it has moving pictures on a screen and actors who say stuff. This makes it a film.

Things it does not have:

A plausible premise
Realistic world building
Convincing characters
A compelling narrative

Extra note - if your entire plot is '16 year olds are taken away and given massive amounts of surgery to make them beautiful but a few rebels run into the woods to live free and ugly' then you might want to maybe cast your super attractive actors as the 'pretties' and the plainer ones as the 'uglies' and not the other way round.

Also, the massive surgeries you're doing that kills people and leaves lesions on the brains seems to only actually provide the pretties with a blonde dye job, contact lenses, and a lot of bronzer/foundation/shonky contouring. Well, except for Laverne Cox who is kind of genius casting as the chief baddie as she's both very attractive, but obviously has had a bunch of plastic surgery and so has a very 'created' look.
Finally, the 'rustic forest encampment' where the rebels live is clearly beautiful modern architecture. No one built that with their hands. It's super swish. They also get fancy Boden style clothing as to the weird cheap polyester futuristic clothing via Temu that the Pretties get. I feel like what you're actually secretly setting up is a dichotomy between 'rural old money' and 'trashy working class club kids' and I don't think that's what you meant to do.

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1899.

Better on a re watch.

My rage at Netflix for denying me my basic human right to a second series of this show has not abated.

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The Crow Girl.

Why is Wales now the 'go to' for gritty cop dramas? I don't know when this happened but this is the third I've recently seen.

I mean, I'm not objecting. All have been quite good shows. It's just an unexpected trend.

So, it’s now morning and I’ve slept on it and I’ve decided to try and pin down a little more why exactly the Solo film left me so completed unmoved. As ever, there are some spoilers within, and you may wish to skip.

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Vague ponder.

The “not like the other girls” trope is actually weirdly linked to sexual purity and male control, while desperately pretending to be the reverse. Yes/no?

My answer, by the way, is a sort of ‘maybe, but I might be overthinking it’.

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So, that was Sense8.

I meant to live blog it, but instead I binge watched the entirety of season 2 instead. I now, of course, review, with loads and loads of spoilers. If you’ve not seen it, you should look away.

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Following on from a conversation I was having elsewhere, I figured I’d put this up here – my top five TV shows of 2016. As a note, these are shows I’ve watched in 2016. They may have been made earlier, but due to the wonders of Netflix, only came to me this year.

I have also, in a bout of negativity, added the five TV shows I found to fail me the most in 2016. And then I think we should trade recommendations. And one that was just confusing.

So, without further ado.

The Good – Five best TV shows of 2016.

1)      Westworld.
This may yet be a mistake. It might be. I’ve not watched all of season 1 yet, but dear gods, it’s been amazing so far. It’s subtle and complex, and discusses issues about memory and identity and humanity that I’ve been wanting a TV show to ask ever since I first encountered the holodeck on Star Trek. It has amazing writing and a stellar cast that could probably make the phone book compelling but instead are given this astonishing world to work with. It is big and beautiful and has cemented my conviction that TV, and HBO in particular, have stolen cinema’s crown when it comes to in depth and high value exploration of fictional worlds. This is amazing.
2)      Glitch.
I am told this is a bit of a marmite choice. It’s a six part Australian TV drama that’s on Netflix and follows a similar premise to ‘The Returned’ with the dead coming back to life for unexplained reasons. It’s a slow burn show, with very little dramatic happening for most of the first season, but it has some beautifully detailed characters and a real sense of place with the characters from Australia’s history. It ended on a cliff hanger and I’m terribly excited about season 2 in 2017.
3)      Game of Thrones.
The very predictable choice, but it really has exploded this year. It turns out that George RR Martin may write amazing novels, but holy crap, the show runners make amazing TV, and it’s gotten even better since they overtook GRRM and got to have their heads a bit more. Sansa, my beautiful Sansa, grew as a person. Arya got back in the game. And they repeatedly outdid themselves. I thought nothing could top the Battle of the Bastards which was flat out the best battle sequence I think ever shown on screen, but then came the Winds of Winter. Oh Yara and Dany – please stick together. The worlds needs you two, you know.
4)      Gotham.
Again, I think this may be a marmite choice, but Gotham has really grown on me lately, to the point where I feel like it may become my favourite Bat-screen-representation. Sean Pertwee is amazing as Alfred, I think I prefer the kid Bruce Wayne to Christian Bale and the bad guys continue to steal the show every time. Oh Penguin, I wept when you murdered your family. DC can’t write a movie to save themselves, but they can do TV.
5)      The Man In The High Castle.
Amazon Prime’s greatest success – an alternate history America in which the Nazis won. And it’s amazing. I’m not sure who the good guys are. I think there may not be good guys. But I want the second season, and I am still thinking about it month’s later.



The Bad – Five TV Shows that failed me in 2016.

1)      The Night Manager.
A little controversial, I know, but this show vexed me. I wanted to like it. I really really wanted to like it. I adored at least one of the characters – Olivia Colman – and I like spy thrillers. But instead I spent increasing amounts of time wanting to throttle Roper for being so ridiculously naïve about Pine, who always radiated dodgy, and even more time wanting to throttle the writers for their conviction that while men needed many character traits, a woman only needs to be beautiful.
2)      Once Upon A Time.
I loved this show once. I really really did. I watched it faithfully through the ups and downs, I endured the Neverland plot and the ridiculous appearing backstory and family trees. I even supported Rumple and Belle up to Season 4 when I should have given up long before. But I have finally accepted that this show just needs to die. The Disney rip offs have become too much, too blatant. Rumple’s fake out near redemptions for Belle and immediate relapse just looks abusive at this point. And Henry isn’t cute, he’s well into puberty, and it’s just not working any more. Please…just lie down.
3)      The Killing.
Again, I loved this show all the way through series one when it was a tense cat and mouse nourish thriller. I struggled through season 2 because it felt like filler, but I was resolute. I would keep going. Now…I am just out of steam. I think the show invested way too much in Jamie Dornan, for way too long, and wouldn’t admit that basically, he wasn’t a glamorous figure. He was just kind of seedy.
4)      Homeland.
This show hurts me because I still want to love it. There are very few highly functional bipolar heroines on TV. Um. By which I mean one. There’s Carrie. She’s great. She is. But dear gods the racism. Oh yes, the racism.
5)      The Good Wife.
This is here mostly because I gave up watching it before the end. Somewhere along the line, I realized that none of the characters were nice people. Alicia wasn’t the nice woman making it in a harsh world. She was just a shark. And I really missed Shalinda. So I drifted away. Goodbye, Good Wife. I loved you once. But you turned mean.


The Ugly – I don’t understand this TV. It leaves me all befuddled.

1)      Shetland.
I just worry whenever I watch this. Shetland is such a tiny place. Yet the murder rate is uncomfortably high and looks set to keep growing with series three coming soon. And there’s only about three people in the entire police force. I just don’t think they can stay on top of this, as evidenced by the old murders that keep resurfacing. I fear it may end up like Midsomer, that horrific hellhole in southern England, where your survival chances are low and the odds of a painful and exotic demise are higher than Mogadishu.


So, those were my top shows. What about yours?

I'm in work on a half day today and itching to get out of here. But I've got three hours to go. So, I'll fill it in with a film review.

As a note, this review contains spoilers for Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, so if you really want to be surprised, astonished, and aghast at everything in this film, don't read this review. And don't say I didn't want you.

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So, last night jez and I went to see Byzantium.

It was a bit of a spontaneous cinema outing, but I'm really glad we went, for it was a gloriously good vampire film.

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