More TV. Broadchurch
May. 22nd, 2013 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quarter_to_fiveBroadchurch - British small town murder mystery/character study thing is just freaking beautiful. I mean, seriously - the coastline, the cliffs, the sea, the town, the sunsets and the dawns and the cliffs some more...it's so visual, all the time. The first few episodes I found myself a touch impatient with some of the overt stylishness of it (I think that's what I mean?) All the focus changes and the almost slow-motion bits and so on. Once or twice that kind of thing was super-effective to convey shock or detachment or what, but it felt a touch over-used. But they either stopped doing it so much or I stopped noticing as it went on thought.
Anyway, I really enjoyed all of it - the characters, the mystery, the bleakness - but mostly, man, those cliffs make the whole thing. David Tennant is the lonely, jaded cop and Olivia Colman is sort of his Manic Pixie Dream Girl, (not in a romantic sense, but she's the happy, settled one with the positive outlook making an effort to drag him back from the brink and all that) but she isn't really. The tropes are familiar, but the tone and the performances and the story, the way things fall out in the end, meant it didn't feel cliched to me. There's no great transformations or successes, just steps forward and steps back.
Also, it turns out Entourage has a season 8. Huh. Watched it, it's...ok? Kinda stale and weirdly cute? I mean, Entourage really only worked for me on sheer offensive in-your-face energy and laughs and the occasional manipulative awww moment. Who the hell cares whether they will or they won't or whether the business will succeed or what? If there's ever been a show where the plot does. not. matter, this has to be it - it's just something to hang antics on. The attempt to do plot wasn't terribly persuasive, alas, so a bit of an overly cheery, twee ending, with everyone all happy and successful, and displaying growth as human being, yet in a very unconvincing and overly convenient way. I wish they'd had the balls to go for an outrageous, conventionally-unhappy ending.
I seem to have gotten out of my reading slump a bit - i've just about finished a collection of Niel Degrasse Tyson's essays and i've got a Brief History of Time and Impossible Science out of the library and i'm looking forward to digging in over the weekend. It's the first time in weeks I feel like reading something rather than just going through the motions, thank god. I'm still not in the mood for fiction, but hopefully there's an end in sight to that.
Anyway, I really enjoyed all of it - the characters, the mystery, the bleakness - but mostly, man, those cliffs make the whole thing. David Tennant is the lonely, jaded cop and Olivia Colman is sort of his Manic Pixie Dream Girl, (not in a romantic sense, but she's the happy, settled one with the positive outlook making an effort to drag him back from the brink and all that) but she isn't really. The tropes are familiar, but the tone and the performances and the story, the way things fall out in the end, meant it didn't feel cliched to me. There's no great transformations or successes, just steps forward and steps back.
Also, it turns out Entourage has a season 8. Huh. Watched it, it's...ok? Kinda stale and weirdly cute? I mean, Entourage really only worked for me on sheer offensive in-your-face energy and laughs and the occasional manipulative awww moment. Who the hell cares whether they will or they won't or whether the business will succeed or what? If there's ever been a show where the plot does. not. matter, this has to be it - it's just something to hang antics on. The attempt to do plot wasn't terribly persuasive, alas, so a bit of an overly cheery, twee ending, with everyone all happy and successful, and displaying growth as human being, yet in a very unconvincing and overly convenient way. I wish they'd had the balls to go for an outrageous, conventionally-unhappy ending.
I seem to have gotten out of my reading slump a bit - i've just about finished a collection of Niel Degrasse Tyson's essays and i've got a Brief History of Time and Impossible Science out of the library and i'm looking forward to digging in over the weekend. It's the first time in weeks I feel like reading something rather than just going through the motions, thank god. I'm still not in the mood for fiction, but hopefully there's an end in sight to that.
