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ectively invisible by choice or by accident people who become unable to find their way home and roam along canals and towpaths becoming gradually less real isolation dislocation and disconnection are routine here so that works for 2020 i ve been in this house alone teleworking since march widowed since may of last year isolation and disconnection are my life these days there s a certain resemblance to some of jg ballard s work as stories sometimes seem like they re replaying the same basic sets of ideas in slightly different ways but more vaguely and less clinically than ballard foxx is a musical and visual artist much more than a prose writer and some of the ideas and phrases here have been used in song lyrics going back to the late 1970s so the book is an extension of the experience of listening to foxx s music hearing lyrics looking at record covers reading interviews with him seeing his visual art picking up on recurring threads the quiet man the grey suit the shifting city london overgrown consequently reading this as a newcomer would be a very different experience from mine and possibly a frustrating one there are no technobabble explanations no plots just repeating images playing out still if the anthology series the best weird fiction of the year hadn t ended after only four or five volumes there are stories here that would work well in that sort of context the way the book s been published though as a slightly expensive hardcover from a publisher that specializes in books about musicians with cult followings will probably keep the quiet man from reaching an audience beyond foxx s existing fan base it d be interesting to read reactions from outside the bubble but i m not sure that will happen it s a shame mark fisher isn t around any more to review it as his interests in foxx ballard hauntology and psychogeography would all come into play and he might be able to bring some new readers in i m glad to have this book but i look forward to revisiting it at some point when it isn t so much of the moment when life is vibrant and i m not a grey figure dissolving into the dusty furniture of a quiet house life december 27 2019 posted by sjroby in life in general uncategorized add a comment yeah i still feel like i d like to keep this going but a year and a half ago my wife laura had surgery then had chemo then had surgery then was told to start doing bucket list stuff and then she died so i haven t been in the mood so how about that twin peaks revival huh february 26 2019 posted by sjroby in tv tags twin peaks add a comment it s about a year and a half since the twin peaks revival ended and i m still not sure what i think i ve watched most of it only once as it aired and i know some reactions will firm themselves up or dissipate with a couple more viewings of the whole season but i think it ll always boil down to this it s a terribly self indulgent mess that was rarely less than compelling and a show that lost the original series essence by spending so little time in the location the series is named after if there is anything the 2017 series makes clear it s this david lynch was much more interesting in following up fire walk with me than much of anything in the second season of the original show it s also clear that this isn t blue velvet lynch it s barely even mulholland drive lynch this is all over the place lynch i know mark frost was involved too but his two tie in books well they tied in a lot less than i expected there are things that don t fit perfectly well together in the old series and fwwm so it s not too surprising that a filmmaker whose work has been becoming steadily more hard to follow wouldn t be consistent or tie things up neatly the books might have helped in that respect they didn t but it now seems like we now less about bob and mike the black lodge and all the other supernatural elements of the show than we thought we did meanwhile we also have new supernatural elements that don t quite fit in or seem frankly goofy like freddie s glove then there s the whole dougie thing episode after episode of dale cooper not being dale cooper though at least we had two not dale coopers to watch there s also just not enough twin peaks in twin peaks the return the original series generated a wave of quirky series set in quirky towns and while there was a lot more to the show than that it gave the show a unique atmosphere to set its genre mashing in there s a lot to be frustrated about and yet i was glued to the screen utterly fascinated by what was going on there are some outstanding performances it looks great it does often progress in a reasonably linear manner enough to generate suspense about what s coming next and there are moments of alien beauty in the other realms the final episode raises way more questions than it answers but the final scene with laura s doppelganger carrie hearing sarah calling laura i heard it but some people apparently missed it and screaming was genuinely chilling i doubt we ll get any more if we do i doubt it ll give us any answers do we need it maybe not but i d watch it let s talk about star trek february 25 2019 posted by sjroby in star trek tv tags star trek the orville 1 comment so far there s a new tv series it s like star trek the next generation all over again a brightly lit show of mostly standalone episodes about the crew of a very comfortable looking ship the humans aliens and artificial life form work together on the nice big bridge many of them hang out in the nice big lounge after hours the captain s got a kind of thing with one of his officers the security officer is an alien and hell the doctor used to be on deep space nine the main character of course is the captain a white guy and many people with star trek connections work on the show from writers to directors to guest stars and there s another new tv series one that doesn t look a lot like star trek of any generation one that started out pretty damn dark and got darker before the new season lightened up quite a bit one that is heavily serialized and has some new elements that seem hard to fit into canon as we thought we knew it no i m not talking about the third and fourth seasons of enterprise though it fits just as well the main character isn t the captain or even a white guy it doesn t have too many people who worked on past incarnations of star trek either obviously i m talking about the orville and star trek discovery i ve seen a lot and i mean a lot of disgruntled star trek fans proclaiming that the orville is the real new star trek and discovery is an abomination and you know what they re wrong star trek the original wasn t like much of anything else at the time star trek the animated series was different from the original in several ways being an animated half hour show for one but it also introduced new regular characters and new technology life support belts and an early version of the holodeck then in 1979 live action trek returned but everything looked and felt different uniforms the ship relationships between characters and holy cow the klingons then the very next movie changed the look again with a more military feel and new uniforms and a new character with some kind of history with spock and suddenly kirk has a son and spock dies 1987 a whole new ship a whole new crew a whole new look and feel and some significant changes to what we knew about the federation and starfleet meanwhile in the movies suddenly spock has a half brother 1992 a tv show not even set on a ship but on a starbase where instead of seeing something new every week we see a smaller number of things but in much more detail and supporting characters evolve and become as important as the regulars then voyager takes us away from the federation and all that s familiar and plops us a long long way from home and enterprise is a prequel series that doesn t look like the original series at all and suddenly the vulcans are a lot different and do you get where i m going with this every time star trek comes back it s different it tries something new it changes its format it changes its balance of continuity arc elements and standalone stories it brings in new people behind the scenes even if it doesn t quite go as initially planned voyager and enterprise had a tendency to do tng retread stories too often they started with the goal of going where no star trek series had gone before which brings me to the orville and discovery discovery is unmistakably going where no star trek has gone before in many respects despite frequent nods to canon from using characters like mudd pike spock and sarek to revisiting previsiting the mirror universe the orville is a retread of tng from its look and feel to its supporting characters too obviously drawn from tng characters to its plotlines to well at least the focus on dick jokes was new if immature but the orville is bound and determined to go exactly where star trek has already been before seth macfarlane knows and loves star trek but instead of taking the next step into the final frontier he s stepping back he s making a show in 2019 that looks like 1989 discovery on the other hand is moving forward making star trek that looks and feels like 2019 the orville is a lot of fun don t get me wrong but it s like watching tng reruns with someone cracking jokes discovery on the other hand has me wanting to see what comes next the characters matter a lot more to me and so do the ongoing arc elements the real star trek is the one with star trek in the title not just because it s in the title but because it s doing what star trek has always done and how cool is it that it s doing well enough that we know we re getting several more new star trek series review life on mars novels part two july 16 2017 posted by sjroby in book reviews uncategorized tags life on mars add a comment make sure you ve read part one below and that you ve seen all of life on mars and ashes to ashes spoilers actually i don t want to say too much about these two if you care enough to read this just go read the books now borstal slags and get cartwright increase the continuity and the suspense the former does things in a somewhat annoying way though same gets some very important things very very wrong he has some pieces of the puzzle but not as many as he thinks he does and makes things more complicated than they need to be in typical early episode fashion he jumps to conclusions about who s a villain and who s a poor misunderstood soul putting everyone in danger but that s mostly been sorted out by get cartwright by then it s clear who the real enemy is who s on sam and annie s side and what exactly happened in annie s real life annie is remembering and she is having a hard time with it she disappears sam has to find her before it s too late it s a suspenseful trip out of manchester that puts the characters on less familiar ground ashes to ashes never really gives us all that much information about sam and annie so there s room for suspense overall though the book ends in a satisfying way neatly tying up the story threads built up in previous volumes giving a few characters chances to shine and i m glad to have read it it also works well with ashes to ashes i recommend this to fans of the two series review life on mars novels part one june 30 2017 posted by sjroby in book reviews tv tags life on mars tom graham add a comment life on mars blood bullets blue stratos why you may want to read this there are four books that tell what happened to sam tyler after the end of the tv series might as well start with the basics life on mars was a british tv series about sam tyler a modern day police officer who s hit by a car and wakes up in 1973 there were two series of eight episodes each followed by a sequel series ashes to ashes in which a police officer who studied the tyler case is shot and wakes up in 1981 meeting some of the same people tyler reported meeting then there s the us tv remake which lasted one episode longer than the uk version in a single us season which had the courage to resolve things in a very different fashion but by then it barely mattered due to miscasting and frequent changes of tone and direction a few years ago a set of four life on mars tie in novels were released almost surreptitiously even people who reviewed things like that in magazines managed to miss the news apparently they were originally ebook only no doubt part of the problem and only later released in paperback in the uk all four were written by tom graham apparently the brother of the show s co creator whether the creators of the show had any input into or control over the books i have no idea in other words don t ask me if these are canon so far i ve read the first two books reread actually i read those two books as soon as i knew they existed but for some reason didn t finish the set at the time now coming off a rewatch of life on mars i decided to get back to them rereading the first two books because i didn t remember much about them at all tom graham sets out to follow up on the tv series sam s made his irrevocable decision to stay in 1973 but graham s writing with the knowledge of how ashes to ashes ended which made some big revelations that affect both series so while the plots of the first two novels blood bullets blue stratos and a fistful of knuckles are pretty similar to regular episodes of the tv series with tyler involved in cid investigations in manchester with plenty of action violence and gene hunt dialogue there are other developments that move the story forward the test card girl who occasionally appeared to sam has changed her appearance becoming more overtly sinister dressed in black and carrying black balloons sam s seeing her when he s wide awake not just dreaming or half awake in his miserable flat he s also sleeping badly having nightmares and it turns out annie cartwright is having nightmares too similar to sam s speaking of annie the relationship between sam and annie continues its slow progress with significant conversations and occasional kisses but not much more so far anyway the test card girl tells sam there s a devil in the dark coming for him and annie he s having nightmares and visions of something ominous something that becomes more overtly active in the second book it looks like it s going to keep building in the next two books leading to well that remains to be seen but in ashes to ashes gene hunt tells alex price that by 1981 tyler s dead and there s no mention of annie another touch of ashes to ashes there s the occasional hint that there may be more to nelson than meets the eye the books aren t perfect the cop story plots feel a bit familiar the named cid regulars gene annie ray and chris appear but all those other guys the older bearded guy the ray davies lookalike and the rest may as well not exist sometimes the tension between sam and the a division lads feels more like the early first season than later in the show...
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