watching things

[psocoptera]

Gravity was amaaaaaaazing. If you like space at all you must see this movie (in a theater, in 3D). It feels weird to say I "liked" all the nods to various ways people have died or nearly died in space exploration - fire, drowning, reentry, spinning, air problems - but, I don't know, it felt more connected to reality than some disaster movies. I liked a lot of the little touches that made it "sound right" - like having Ed Harris play CAPCOM, or using STS-157 as the mission number. (Challenger was STS-51-L and Columbia was STS-107, their final flights, I mean, so 157 sort of has the right connotations, while being plausibly in the future for there to be a Chinese station.) Also just to clarify I cried a lot and thought it was moving and powerful. I guess there is debate over whether or not it's "really science fiction" but all I can say is I will be nominating it for a long form dramatic Hugo and if my fellow voters agree it was clearly sf *enough*. (But, seriously, it takes place in space, in an alternate future in which the shuttle program wasn't cancelled, what more do you want.)

Episode 3 of Agents of SHIELD was better than episode 2, which seems like the right direction. The show still has way too much Ward, and is unfortunately channeling much of its Skye into Ward/Skye, but I continue to really like May, and Coulson making a supervillain was fun (sometimes obvious can be enjoyable, you gotta like the classics). Nitpicker's brain finding nits to pick (isn't Malta part of the EU?) and some of the dialogue is still really clumsy but it seems to more or less be doing the kinds of things I might want from a superhero/spy comic TV show, with occasional really good moments, so hey.

Comments

[cereph.livejournal.com]

I agree that Gravity was excellent, and the 3D was fantastic, I can't imagine seeing it in 2D