1) Isaac has been insisting for a few days that "he is ready to watch STAR WARS", so I agreed to watch it with him today. I turned out that yes, there's a lot of guns and shooting and yes an entire planet gets blown up, but there's not much SCARY stuff in there. If anything, the "action" on Tattooine was a bit draggy for him, but once we hit the Millennium Falcon things moved at a decent clip. And he loved Darth Vader.
I do have to say that my DVDs are the "Special Edition" ones from about 10 years ago, and its really quite jarring to see all of the digital effects that Lucas had crammed into there - all of the fakey storm troopers riding lizards, the lamentable "conversation with Jabba" that makes no sense since Jabba is literally HALF the size he is in Jedi - even Bella commented "there's a bigger one of those in another movie". I am OK with the new improved "explosion rings" for Alderaan and the Death Star, but a lot of the rest of it was just painful. I am not looking forward to the further tweaks he put into the Blu-Ray releases.
Anyway, the kids loved Star Wars, and have demanded we do "The one with the SNOW" on Sunday. So we're doing that.
2) Torchwood Miracle Day ended last night, and it was just hard to gauge my feelings - I felt a bit like at the end of Falling Skies - "well that was interesting - not sure we needed 10 episodes to get there". It had a cool premise - one day humans turn immortal - just life, not healing, so people who are dead are still alive, but still suffering. And one guy who is immortal (Captain Jack) turns Mortal. But they just sort of dinked around with it and quite honestly it would have fit in a well written two episode story, or been stretched to a 5 episode series like Children of Earth was (which is still amazing - do yourself a favor and netflix that). But at 10 episodes, they just flailed around.
Let me just say that it's been very stark - I get to the end of a Torchwood, and I go "hmmm, interesting". Then I load up a Doctor Who and I'm on the edge of my seat completely enthralled (in no small part due to Matt Smith's amazing work).
I'm not sure what will happen with Torchwood - I hope if they go high-concept again that they'll do more with it than they did this time. But that's done.
3) On the recommendation of friends who know I love my Dr Who with Matt Smith, I've started watching from the 2005 beginning, with Christopher Eccelston. And I love it, and can't believe I wasn't watching this years ago! Eccelston has an impish gawkiness with great self assurance that leads very often to a very puzzled look when things aren't working out. Anyway, I'm very happy to have another 50 episodes to enjoy (just 5 more with Eccelston, then I get into the David Tennant years, and I've seen a few of his episodes and can't wait to get to know him.)
4) Alphas was renewed for next year! More David Strathairn! More "sorta-mutants"! It's all great fun.
And that's my media news, what I'm enjoying. Posts about my life will return soon enough.
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