2012

I knew that 2012 was bad but I didn’t realize the full depth of its awfulness until I went to see it. I just figured that the poor were reviews were genre related rather than being a more than accurate representation of the steaming pile of horse poo that that this film is. Before I lay into it I feel that I need to hold up my hands and admit that I love disaster movies in all their CGI loving glory. Armageddon is one of my all time favorites. But, this film is so bad on so many levels that it makes a really disappointing disaster flick.

Where to start?The plot is like plastic wrap. In fact it is like the crust of the Earth – super thin and prone to cracking.  In a nut shell:

• Scientists in India discover that the earth’s core is heating up so much that it will cause the crust to destabilize, and the White House it alerted
• Super secret plan is launched to save the super rich & powerful as well as all the art & other trinkets that make humanity civilized
• Everyone else dies bar a smattering of Mandarin speaking Tibetans who were building the arks & John Cusack

All the way through the film I was waiting for the other shoe to drop that there would be a solution in the data models The Geologists kept running or a clue in the book The Failed Novelist (John Cusack) had written. But, there was nothing.  We the people, the huddling masses, were buggered. Also, I have never seen continental drift happen so quickly which as a geology major (in another life time) I found annoying.  There is a review by a real geologist here and another good one by the folks at the Slate Magazine.    My hope from the movie is that when the arks rock up to the African continent (which is apparently not flooded & actually got more land mass now so there could have been an evacuation to the cradle of life) the African nations come together & tell them to bugger off because they didn’t give them a heads up!

Oh and best product placement opportunity missed was when one of The Geologist revealed all he brought was a bag full of books because you must save books if you can’t save people. Surely a bag full of Kindles and e-readers would have made more sense & contained more books!

Brooklyn

My mum arrived last week for a Thanksgiving visit, and I’ve been trying to show her different parts to the city. On Saturday we took a Context Travel walking tour of Brooklyn which was was fabulous. Learnt a lot about the history of Brooklyn and its relationship to Manhattan. The weather was so good we were able to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and Alex took a few nice snaps.  Sunday it was a trip to WholeFoods in Tribeca as I needed to run a few errands, mum enjoys looking at all the fresh produce  (Wholefoods turns produce into an artistic displays that lure you in to spending so much more money) and then a Mad Men marathon. Today is my only day in the office this week (yippee!) but I have managed to schedule 5 hrs of meetings and I have a to-do list as long as my arm. We shall see how much I manage to get done but I can’t wait for the rest of week and sightseeing with mum. Lots of cool things planned like lunch at Balathazars, walking the High Line, Chelsea Markets, Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA, and an off-off Broadway production of Agamemnon (okay that’s more a me thing). Hopefully we’ll have some time for a few films as well.

MI:5 Slash Spooks

I got all excited when I saw that season 6 of MI:5 (or Spooks as it is known in the UK) was available through Netflix but two discs in and I am in yawnsville. This is season is so dull not even the edible Rupert Penry Jones can hold my interest.  It looks as if trying to weave one plot thread through the whole season but I just don’t CARE. There is a Brit actor pretending to be a CIA agent with the worst US accent ever and he is too pale for an American. Something about Iran. Ros joining a covert agency to spy on the covert agency she works for, and Adam is sleeping with everyone (and his son appears to have been erased from history).

The only reason I am plowing through it is that I want to be able to watch season 7 which has Richard Armitage (Guy of Gisborne from Robin Hood) as a recently released spy who spent a few years working on his Russian . Hello Cold War, Regan economics and legwarmers – the 80s are back baby!

 

Things on Tuesday: Chicago Edition

Good

• Getting to mooch around the Art Institute of Chicago and Millennium Park taking photos
• American Gothic – the city is crazy for it!
• Architecture River Cruise was fascinating but freezing
• TWers are a fun bunch
• Enterprise 2.0 key note speech was surprisingly interesting

Not-so-good

• They don’t call it the windy city for nothing
• Not enough time with Alex which was compounded by us flying out of different airports
• Didn’t study enough *sigh*

Hello from Chicago

I’ve skipped out of town for a few days to hang out with Alex in Chicago. He’s here for a ThoughtWorks gathering and I am here to listen to NPR in a hotel room (joke). This morning I ventured out for a stroll in Milenium Park before heading to the Art Institute of Chicago for a lecture on Hadrian. (The gods will that where ever I go on vacation there will be a lecture for me to attend.) I was disappointed that there are no longer bunnies in the park but the squirels look very healthy. I am not saying that the bunnies dimise was at the hands of the squirels but they are about twice the size of New York squirels.

Les Choses Mardi

Bon

• Managed to speak to both parental units today
• FlashForward
• Ordered the cutest Christmas cards ever from Etsy.com
• Trip to the Windy City this weekend
• AM yoga
• Maternal Parental Unit will be here next week

 

Pas Bon

• Am very bad about phoning family unless I need to get the Maternal Parental Unit to proof read stuff for work
• Will barely see Alex in the Windy City (unless I sneak into his techie conferences)
• Still tired from the weekend & it can only get worse
• Everyone is leaving (apart from moi)
• Freaky fall weather can only mean harsh winter ahead

Nice Things To Say About Stargate Universe

Things are tough for Stargate Universe. It’s not dark enough to fill the void left by Battlestar Galactica, too slow paced for normal Stargate fans and even reviews of V are slagging off SG:U.  I ran across an article that said the cast and crew were upset by the poor reviews so I decided to do my bit to cheer them up with five nice things that I have to say about SG:U. And, I will not refer to it as Stargate: Voyager once!

1. The cast make great wallpaper. In my post BSG world I needed new wall paper for my work PC, and since there wasn’t any for Caprica (yet) I decided to go with SG:U. A light sprinkling of Syfy in my working environment really lifts my days as a corporate slave
2. I am not going to deny that the show is slow to find its feet but last week’s episode “Earth” was pretty darn good.  The tensions between Col. Young and command back on Earth really came to a head. Young is almost the benevolent dictator who wants to run things by his “crew” especially when it is a fool hardy way to bring them home. Plus Col. Young’s wife is up to some twisted high jinx
3. The “crew”.  I am hoping for some episodes that delve into what makes the “crew” tick as there is potential amongst the huddled masses
4. The magic communication stones. I like that we are not just trapped on the ship but that there is a way to not only communicate with earth but also come for a visit
5. And finally the morally ambivalent Dr. Rush, played by Robert Carlyle with an alarming restrained and manicured Scottish accent. Can we trust him? What is he really up too? And should I add Hamish MacBeth to my Netflix list

WWND?

My office has started doing pot lucks, and today was my turn. I picked November 5th as Bonfire Night is a wonderfully macabre celebration and I miss it. The bonfires, the sparklers, the Guy Fawkes effigies and rose-tinted childhood memories of being forced out of the house on cold November nights to watch fireworks on Blackheath.  I decided to make parkin because I remember reading about how parkin was a traditional cake to be eaten on Bonfire Night. Parkin is the work of the devil. It is meant to be a gingerbread-oatmeal concoction but it really is the work of the devil. I made a batch last night and it tasted awful. AWFUL. I went to bed hoping that somehow overnight it would morph into something edible. When I got up at 6am and it was still gross I had a What-Would-Nigella-Do moment? Nigella for one would not have made parkin – there is a reason why it does not feature in any of her cook boos. Nigella would have made yummy gingerbread. If parkin is kind-of-like gingerbread then why not make actual gingerbread. So that is what I did at 6am, and it was delish.

Thank you Nigella.

Square Eyes

So I should be drafting up answers for my Greek drama seminar but after the day I’ve had (breaking a website, loosing a button) I needed to unwind first, and what better way than by mulling over about this fall’s tv shows.

The schedule so far…

Mad Men: Lovin’ it! In the 3rd season all our favorite characters’ lives are spinning out of control & they just threw in the JFK assassination. (And I just spelt assassination correctly first time round!) I am storing up all the episodes on the DVR so my mum can blast her way through them when she comes over for Thanksgiving.

House: They got rid of Thirteen – woo hoo!!! And they cropped Hugh Laurie’s hair so they don’t have to creatively hide his bald spots. And we are getting lots of cute Odd Couple scenes since House is rooming with Watson. Just as long as they don’t drag out Chase’s guilt over bumping off Darth Vader then all will be well in Princeton Plainsboro.

Lie To Me: At the end of the day this is a so-so procedural crime show about body language (sorry mirco-expressions) that is lifted from mediocracy by Mr. Orange.  Last week’s show had lots of scenes in a warehouse and I found myself cringing as Mr. Orange didn’t come off too well the last time he was in a warehouse.

NCIS: It’s the pork pie of the TV schedule. In the UK millions of pork pies are sold but no one owns up to eating them, & that’s the same with NCIS.

The Good Wife: I watch this show and it makes me want to go to law school. It’s like LA Law all over again but with Christine Baranski.

Eastwick (Witches of): It’s light.  It’s fluffy.  It’s candy floss! Not sure how sustainable the ongoing mystery of who Daryl is is but everyone appears to be having fun hamming it up.

Supernatural: It’s criminal that more people aren’t watching this show. So far this season they are managing the right balance between stand alone episodes and the ones moving along the show’s mythology about apocalypse. We’ve not had too many episodes featuring Lucifer so we are still hungry for him but they could do with cutting back on Bobby. As much as I love Bobby, for maximum effect we need him in small doses but could do with more Cass.

Fringe: Like Supernatural they are balancing the monster of the week episodes with the ones that move on the mythology, and the big carrots of the show are Spock and Walter. We get tiny nibbles of Spock in the alternate world but we don’t know what he is up to, and Walter. Oh Walter we love his mad experiments & self medicating. Now we know that Peter is possibly alternate Peter all those scenes with Walter reminsing about Peter’s childhood are all the more poignant. My only complaint is because they moved filming the show to Vancouver they had to changed the Massive Dynamic building, so we no longer get the eerie shots of the building that Alex use to work in near WTC. Maybe Alex needs to get on a project in cylon occupied Vancouver.

FlashForward: I really want to like this show a lot but I’ve only watched two episodes so far. The rest are jamming up the DVR. May be this weekend we will tackle they and find out what Jack Davenport is up to.

Dollhouse: The most annoyingly inconsistent show that I am currently watching. I think there are two Josh Whedons. One is submissive and gives in to producing crappy stand alone episodes with Apollo as an arms dealer and Echo lactating.  The other Josh (“Uber Josh”) manages to whip up character driven episodes that move the mythology along so that it is more in line with ‘Epitaph One’.  The last episode about how Sierra ended up in the Dollhouse was well above average. Summer Glau is going to be doing some episodes and I am worried that unless they are “Uber Josh” epis she will be a wasted opportunity like Apollo.

Sweet treats

I’d like to say that I am up late because of studying or waiting up for Alex, but it is because I just finished baking and now I need to defrag. Watch a little bit of The Mentalist and catch-up with what is going on in the bloggie-verse.  It looks as if I have once again over baked for the office’s Halloween bash. As well as the pumpkin spice muffins and red velvet cupcakes in the photo below I made brownies. I just couldn’t stop myself. I was on a roll and tomorrow I get to wake up at 6am to decorate them.