Archive for the Category »Popular Culture «
Yesterday I went to see Enron – the play. I had slightly misread description and thought it would be a more musical affair than it was, but that’s something I get over, I’ve misread descriptions before and ended up being surprised by something I didn’t fully know what was. But the play didn’t seem to quite know what it was either, which was a problem.
As their website say, Enron the play is “Inspired by real-life events and using music, dance and video, ENRON is directed by Headlong Theatre’s Artistic Director Rupert Goold”, which sounded like a winner to me. I thoroughly enjoyed Goold’s Six Characters in Search of an Author last year, which was an intense and unsettling experience.
But while I enjoyed the acting and dancing as crafts, I fully failed to be intrigued by the story as presented in the play. Enron is Serious Business, and the parts that could’ve been dramatic and intense were instead made silly and comedic. Was the play a comedy or a serious drama? The best plays are a bit of both, and this one didn’t seem to be either. The Leehman Brothers as Siamese twins? Nerd stereotypes with combed back hair, framed glasses and social issues? Two executives at Leehman having sex on a table? What was the point of these artistic steps? There was so much that didn’t add to the story or flow at all. The dance sequence with Light Sabers was funny for about two seconds before it got tedious. The frequent fast music clips didn’t work for me, and the relationships between the characters had no firm grounding and didn’t come across as realistic, with one exception, the relationship of Skilling and Fastow.
I will give props for the minimalistic staging and how the trading room was turned into a very interesting dance number. The video work was very clever, and I liked how the stock price of Enron was displayed to the audience. Corey Johnson as Jeff Skilling was impressive in his performance, despite the character himself being so uninteresting it was mostly sad. He got strong support from Paul Chahidi‘s Fastow, the interaction between the two characters was the only parts of the play that really held my attention. There was a lot I could like in the play, but it was too fragmented to fit together as a whole strong enough to keep me interested.
It’s not that I think the Enron scandal is boring, far from it. I’ve seen the documentary and I have the book. It’s a thriller of a story, but on stage it lacked tension. I agree with the New York times review of the Broadway staging of the play that it was all show and little substance. It looked great on the surface, and Lucy Pebble has guts trying to make art out of Enron, but all in all I just didn’t care about anyone in the play, not even the poor people who lost everything for believing in their workplace. Not sympathising or disliking anyone in a play makes watching it very tedious, because you go to the theatre to get engaged in a story and I was hoping that the drama of Enron in real life would play out just as gripping on stage. Sadly, it was not to be.
Very, very disappointing.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Okay, look. It’s very silly. It’s teenagers becoming vampyres. Oh yes, with a ‘y’. And yet, it’s like a high school book, because the house of night is a school for kids going through the change to become vampyres. Or die, whichever.
The lead character has mary sue written all over her (she’s the bestest and most talented wampyre to be (aka fledling) in the history of ever! she has a million talents and the most popular guy in school instantly loves her!) and I admit it – it is utterly moronic. But it’s fun! And the lead character isn’t a Bella, as in her life doesn’t revolve around some dude, and she can stand up for herself just fine.
Good, simple fun. I like it.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
It had so much potential. A girl narrowly escapes death of a car accident and ends up hearing people’s thoughts and seeing their auras. There was so many places this could go, but in the end it ended up being a hybrid of Twilight and GloomCookie, only more Twilight than GloomCookie due to the absolute bastardisation of the Goth character (did you know that if you skip instead of skulk, you’re not REALLY into the Goth scene? No, me either) and descending into really boring stereotypes.
I read the book in one evening, praying for it to improve, and I was bored. Bored bored bored. And I will read the next one because I already bought it and clearly I am a masochist. Plus I do kind of want to know where they go from where this book ended (no spoiler), because it doesn’t seem like it really needs a sequel. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone I know because even though it was a quick and easy read, it just made me annoyed.
Hi Voltaire,
I brought my lovely Deady not bootleg figure (attached to my bag) to see rage against the machine last night. Somehow, through the magic of mosh pits, I elbowed some dude in the face (or rather, he jumped into my elbow..), I sprained my finger and Deady disappeared. I am sorry to say he was probably trampled to deathA fitting way to go, sure, but I mourn his passing.
While no Deady can replace the one you sold me in person in Oslo, I do really want a new one. But merchdirect is lame and has none of your stuff on it. Where can I go to replace my poor lost (trampled, sniff) Deady? My bag looks all wrong without Deady.
Help?
Last night was really cool. We got there late because I am trying to revise after all, and only caught the end of Gogol Bordello. But Rage Against The Machine was so much fun! And yes, I at one point could not resist any longer, I thrust my handbag into Mr Pharmacist’s arms and hurled myself into a circle pit, where I pushed and showed like the rest of them. AWESOME. Of course, I hurt my finger in the first jump in, someone fell on me, on my finger, and it was Holy Owwie. But I satisfied myself that it was not broken, and went back in. I’m surprised I’m not covered in bruises, and that the finger was the full extent of my injuries. I’m pretty sure someone else lost a tooth.
It feels highly appropriate to have a minor injury after seeing Rage Against The Machine. Afterwards I felt knackered, with a sore throat from all the shouting and I was drenched in sweat. It felt amazing. I feel like I’ve gotten in touch with my Inner Badass again. And while my finger hurts, and I have to cover it in cold patches to try to reduce the swelling, every second of ache is absolutely worth it. I felt so alive last night, like something in me resurfaced that’s been buried for a long time.
Pixies and Rage Against The Machine in one weekend. Man, I feel so alive. I needed this kick in the face (no actual kicks in the face ocurred) to shake me out of my funk.
This Thursday and Friday, the mighty Pixies played two fan exclusive shows at The Troxy in London, a venue I’d never even heard of before. It’s in Limehouse, which is surprisingly close to where I’m living and quite easy to get to from here, thanks to the magic of the new London Overground service.
The venue was a cute, old fashioned style theatre. We were upstairs in unassigned seating, and though we arrived before the support came on, it was fairly full already. There was a section of reserved seats in front of us, which had tables. I wonder how you got those seats, they weren’t on sale on the pixies website.It was warm in there. I was sitting, like everyone else (the upstairs crowd only got to their feet at the encore) and I was drenched from just dance-bouncing in my seat. And I wasn’t really expecting all that much, but I was blown away. Hit after hit, and then they played Caribou, by far my favourite Pixies song. It was just like I dreamed it would be live, intense and powerful. I was beside myself with joy. I loved every second of the gig.
On my way home, @nikki randomly came up behind me and said hello, I turned to face her and had a “oh shit this person seems to know who I am and I have forgotten them who is it come on brain come on brain” moment before she revealed her identity and I blurted out “you look nothing like your picture!” – that came out wrong Nikki, so sorry! You know what it’s like with people you know online sometimes, you have an idea in your head of what someone looks like, and some times these ideas are utterly wrong. Case in point – this time! And those seconds before nikki revealed who she was, I was racing through my mind trying to find something that fit the person in front of me. Funnily enough, her boyfriend looked entirely like what I thought he would.
All in all, a pretty good night!!
Setlist
1. Cecilia Ann
2. Rock Music [aborted]
3. Bone Machine
4. Monkey Gone to Heaven
5. Gouge Away
6. Hey
7. Velouria
8. Dig for Fire
9. Allison
10. Debaser
11. Planet Of Sound
12. Alec Eiffel
13. Caribou
14. River Euphrates
15. Cactus
16. Is She Weird?
17. Break My Body
18. The Sad Punk
19. Head On [The Jesus and Mary Chain]
20. U-Mass
21. Tame
22. Isla de Encanta
23. Broken Face
24. Wave of Mutilation
25. Nimrod’s Son
26. Holiday Song
27. Gigantic
Encore
1. Where is my Mind?
2. Here Comes Your Man
In case you haven’t noticed, Mr Pharmacist doesn’t have much of an online presence. I kind of cover that for the both of us. Sure, he’s on facebook, and I tried to get him on LJ once, but he just doesn’t seem to enjoy being on the computer after work at all. He’s a telly watcher, and his thing is sc-fi. It’s something we bonded over when we started dating, and he’s particularly been watching variations over the themes of Star Trek and Stargate in the last 3.5 years that we’ve known each other.
He doesn’t like being talked about on the internets, but I think it should be fine to post this because hey – he ain’t gonna read it. And I’m trying to win a piece of a motherfucking actual Stargate prop for him.
Here’s my plea on the site, grammar and spelling errors intact (that’ll teach me to type something big at 1am):
I don’t care about Stargate but I want to get this so bad. But not for me.
Here’s the thing. I have this boyfriend who I live with who I love to absolute pieces, and he is a massive Stargate fan. He’s watched it all, I don’t know how many times. And it was just his birthday. Because I changed jobs and had a salary drop (long boring story), he didn’t allow me to get him a big present for his birthday. I was distraught, because my favourite thing in the world is to give presents to people I love, and being denied running up a massive credit card bill to spoil the man of my dreams was veto’ed and then some, which he can when it was his birthday after all.
So you can see, I need to make this right. He’s got me to promise that I won’t go out and buy him something big, but if I can present to him a piece of the actual mothereffin stargate of glory, then I am not only the best girlfriend ever, and forever and ever, because who could resist a girl that manages to procure a piece of the mothereffin stargate of glory? Just imagine how many disney blu-ray dvd purchases he’ll let slide (and I’m an addict of the fairy dust of Disney, I admit it).
But most importantly I’ll see that massive surprised smile on his face that I adore so much. He’s a little boy in a man body and he lights up like a Christmas tree. Oh, and partially sighted, so he’s got a rough deal in life to begin with, and then now he has me to deal with as well, and I’m high maintenance, baby. But I just want to make him smile. I can’t think of anything that would make him smile than a real goddamn piece of the mothereffin Stargate. As a fellow geek, who just happens to not care for Stargate much, I know what joy that sort of present must bring.
Now, how do I get my hands on some BSG stash for myself.
My readership is limited and I’m sure all of you know me personally. So you know all this is true. I did take a pay-cut, I love giving presents, and Mr Pharmacist is a massive sci-fi geek. And he’s a loving, caring boyfriend who means the world to me. So if you’re registered on io9, please go add a +1 or something to my comment to help me make Mr Pharmacist a shiny happy pie. I’ve tried and failed to get into Stargate, so there’s no doubt that this? Not for me.
Also, if I get this, he’s stuck with me for life, dudes. Who could ever leave a girl who procures a piece of a motherfucking Stargate? No one would ever manage to measure up. Ever.
I admit it, I rarely watch actual television. I’m hardly ever in our lounge, the television set is Mr Pharmacist’s domain. I’m a show downloader, and not by choice.
About ten years ago, I was a passionate Friends fan. Shut up, I loved it. I still kind of do. Chandler and Monica are totally my OTP. But I knew they would get together before the showed aired in Norway, because it was printed in a mainstream newspaper article. If you don’t know me in real life, you probably don’t know my reading speed, which is at a level where I sometimes glance at a page and before my mind registers the spoiler warning, I’ve already read the next line and the spoiler is there. I was very, very vexed about this, because I really, really hate show spoilers. I know lots of people who love to theorize, discuss and find out as much as possible about a show, including reading spoilers, and fair play to you, that’s just not my thing. I need my story to unfold like it’s intended, not by skipping to the end. The emotional pay-off is just so much greater if you’ve followed the character every step.
..oops, that wasn’t the blog post I had intended to write. Anyway, I was so pissed off at being spoiled that I started downloading Friends, so that I could see the episodes as soon as possible after airing time. It’s a habit that’s stuck with me. By now, that’s how I watch television. I am completely incapable of keeping track of show air times on local television, but I know which days my favourite shows air in the US, and look for them the day after. I justify this practice by buying a lot of TV DVD box sets, especially of stuff I really liked, even though I might never watch the DVDs, at least then I’ve paid for the enjoyment. I think that’s only fair, and if I could legally use a service like Hulu, I would happily pay for it. HAPPILY. I already pay for the streaming music service Spotify after all, and I am glad legal streaming music exists here in Europe now.
All that above is simply back story to the true nature of this post (although I bet I’ll be writing about the above in more detail in the future), which is that this week, TV is killing me. Because of the Olympics (I guess), there are no shows.
The Daily Show is on hiatus this week. And then there’s all the other ones:
| Show name | Last episode air date | Next episode air date |
| How I met your Mother | 8/2/2010 | 1/3/2010 |
| The Big Bang Theory | 8/2/2010 | 1/3/2010 |
| Vampire Diaries | 11/2/2010 | 25/3/2010 |
| Cougar Town | 10/2/2010 | 3/3/2010 |
| Gossip Girl | 7/12/2009 | 8/3/2010 |
| True Blood | 13/09/2009 | June?? |
| Stargate Universe | 4/12/2009 | 2/4/2010 |
I don’t actually watch Stargate Universe, but Mr Pharmacist does – although he once called it Stargate Octopus when he couldn’t remember the name, so Octopus is the house name for the show. I don’t know either, people. And I’m sure readers will put their noses up at a few of these, to which I can only offer a big whatever, dude.
Anyway! Television has effectively STOPPED until March! Dollhouse is over, so is Battlestar Galactica, there’s nothing like Veronica Mars (oh, how I miss you, feisty blonde one) and Heroes stopped being interesting in season 3. At this point I may get desperate and start watching Lost from the beginning – I’ve only seen season 1.
Or I might actually manage to get on top of my studies with all the non-watching of tv show time I have available, GOD. Anything but that! At least Daily Show will be back next week, so at least there’s snarky goodness in my near future. The rest of you, I’ll see you in March. If I don’t die of withdrawal symptoms by then.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was recommended to me by a bookshop girl in Oxford Street, who I need to go back and thank. I could not put this book down – I ate through this in a day.
Glass Houses is yet another YA novel with vampires, but the vampires are scary beasts who you need to hide from, not creatures to have meaningful or co-dependent relationships with. Our Heroine, Claire, is in Morganville to go to college when she is pushed down the stairs of the dorms by the dorm bully who has it in for Claire after Claire made her look stupid. Claire survives, and escapes into a house share in the town, which it turns out is run by vampires. If you’re not under vampire protection in Morganville, it’s open season on your blood. And in this house, no one is under protection. Claire, having made an enemy who has powerful friends, is in big trouble.
I was honestly scared by the book. Okay, I’m a wimp, but I was on the edge of my seat (so to speak) the entire time. Well written, great world building, good characters, and one entirely unbelievable Goth girl (see the Eve diaries at the end for maximum eye-rolling effect) – could’ve researched that part a bit better. But fair enough, the world doesn’t revolve around me and my gothness, and it was delightful to have a heroine that was young, strong and very smart.
Of course this is a series, and I’ve already ordered the next three books.
In a fit of spontaneity Mr Pharmacist and myself decided to go to the cinema when we were supposed to go grocery shopping. For no good reason we decided on Daybreakers, and I was informed by the guy who checked my tickets that it was “very scary”. I answered “It’s only a vampire movie,” and I was right.
The guy probably thought I was a Twilighter who thought vampires are cuddly fluffy stuff, but I’m not a n00b to vampire movie and I can tell you right now they hardly ever scare me. Zombies are totally creepier than vampires, and in this movie they made the vampires creepier by, err, letting blood withdrawal turn them into creatures that seemed like zombie bat ish things. I don’t know either.
Plot: It’s in the future, vampires have taken over the earth and there’s too few humans to feed on. Ethan Hawke is a vampire named Edward (no, seriously) who is working at a blood facility trying to manufacture synthetic blood, while the company’s main business is draining humans of blood in a very matrix-like facility that our Edward stares at broodingly every time he has to pass it. See, Edward doesn’t like to be a vampire, and he feels bad for the humans.
I think you can already tell where this is going. Edward meets some humans, there’s a Revelation that changes everything, and basically he’s like Neo in the Matrix but everyone else are Vampires rather than Agent Smith. It starts of very bleak and interesting and goes hardcore into gorefest at the end. It of course has a totally open ending that sets the stage for the unavoidable sequel. Basically it’s a bit like Zombieland if Zombieland was about vampires and not meant to be funny. It’s unintentionally funny several times, not to Van Helsing standard as that’s a hard trick to pull off, but in the end I thought it was a laugh and it held my attention the entire movie. The best thing about it was Willem Dafoe, and how much time had clearly been spent thinking about how a vampire society would look and act like.
I’d give it about a C+.
This year I’m not going to separate between cinema and home viewings, but keep a tally over what I see overall. I’m not going to aim to beat 2009′s number as I did in fact see 52 films in the cinema last year and that’s high enough to feel satisfied
- Daybreakers
- The Wall
- Nixon
- Girl on a Motorcycle
- The Assassination of Richard Nixon
- Galaxy Quest
- The Road
- Superbad
- Good hair
- Up in the Air
- Species
- Sweeney Todd – Concert version
- It’s complicated
- Avatar (3D)
- Gattaca
- Jumper
- Youth In Revolt
- Watchmen
- Cloudy with a chance of meatballs
- The Proposal
- Alice in Wonderland
- Robot Chicken – Star Wars
- Julie & Julia
- Get Smart
- Frequently asked questions about Time Travel
- The secret of Kells
- Heavenly Creatures
- Inglorious Basterds
- The Princess and the Frog
- Capitalism – A love story
- Whip It
- Guys and Dolls
- Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
- Hot Tub Time Machine
- A Single Man
- How To Train Your Dragon
- I love you Philip Morris
- Kick-Ass
- An Education
- The Blind Side
- The September Issue
- Ironman 2
- The Real Cabaret
- Blood Diamond
- L.A. Confidential
- The Fountain
- Taken
- Zack and Miri Make a Porno
- Blood Diamond
- Fiddler On the Roof
- Harry Brown
- Sex and the city 2
- Prince of Persia
- Get him to the greek
- The A-Team
- The Karate Kid
- Toy Story 3
- Knight and Day
- Twilight: New Moon
- Twilight: Eclipse
- The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
- Inception
- Ponyo
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Synecdoche, New York




