Doctor Who Cheesorama

I am watching the TV movie from 1996 which is filled with awesome cheesiness ('You can call me...master' followed by glowing green eyes. Wonderful stuff).   Yes, Grace did kill Seven, but she didn't mean to.  Poor woman, I bet it traumatized her endlessly.   

ETA: Oh, I'd forgotten the windmill arm acting!  Paul McGann got in some great moves there.   

ETA 2: Do they ever explain anywhere why the Doctor has a sudden fondness for living in a psuedo-Gothic cathedral?  Other than a sudden church fetish, that is. 

ETA 3: The master coming down the steps is so very excellent.  All lovely posing and hugging of the wee boy he has picked up. It is so very wrong and somehow so very right at the same time. 

ETA at this point I am no longer counting: Why does the theme music of the TV movie sound like the bastard child of the original theme by way of a Nazi marching band? Why?  


And regarding fanfic for X-men universe (there is no connection here, but just go with it) - why would anyone want to imagine Wolverine writing a poem?  I bet he'd shred anyone who ever came within 50 feet  of him even bearing a poetry book.  Also I encountered baby fic; that is so many shades of wrong.  Why must babies pervade everything, including the lives of semi-feral mutants?*

*not that I hate babies or anything: they just have a time and a place. 

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

cil_ros just posted an interesting link that discusses reactions to Ken Loach's latest film The Wind that Shakes the Barley.  (It's at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1791178,00.html for anyone who is interested.)

I haven't seen the film myself, though I will when it hits here, so I can't say if it is the evilest film ever or a fair account of a miserable historical period, but the reactions that the piece quotes annoyed me every bit as much as they did her.  The film (about the Black and Tans in Ireland in 1920-1) apparently is horrific because it drags the "the reputation of our¹ nation through the mud," etc, etc. Of course, the people who say most of these things haven't seen the film, but why let that interfere with criticizing a film for documenting history?  How foolish of Ken Loach for not rolling over and realising that those 2 years represent the most marvellous period in British rule over Ireland.  And making films where he would celebrate that fact.

You know, if you want to see a film about the wonders of colonialism and its effects, perhaps you should go out and make one.  And, obviously, you could pay some people to dance in festive ethnic costumes saying how lovely it is have their houses burned from over their heads.  Why, the film would write itself. Actually, now I think of it, you could probably just rewatch some nice films made in the 30s which would comfort you with the knowledge that people really, really enjoy being governed by other people who despise them and torture and shoot them. 

¹In the interests of clarity, 'our nation' = Great Britain. 

Completely bonkers post on fanfic

I'm going to preface this by saying that I know that a lot of what I like and and don't like is all about my taste.  But it's my LJ so I am about to do the mad egomaniac thing and talk about it anyway.  (Also, as a person who doesn't actually produce fanfic beyond the odd tiny rubbishy story, it is a bit cheeky of me to complain about other people's writing).

( Cut for bonkers talk about X-men fanfic and whether it is canon that the Doctor likes to be covered in jam )