Quick notes on some things I've seen or listened to in the last several weeks:

Duma Key, by Stephen King: This was my audio book for most of March and April. I thought it was a very good novel. John Slattery did a nice job reading it. I'm amazed how King can essentially tell you something bad is going to happen to a character, but it doesn't really lessen the suspense or the shock value when the bad thing actually occurs.

"The Dark Husband": The most recent Big Finish Doctor Who audio. It's a 7th Doctor story with Ace and Hex. Usually 7th audios have not been very good, but this one was excellent. Probably my favorite of all the CDs that I've heard since starting my subscription. If you just want to download one, get this one.

"Revenge of the Slitheen": I continue to be impressed with the Sarah Jane series (although I'm not impressed with SciFi for cutting the episodes in half for no good reason). And I have to admit being fans of the Slitheen, flatulence and all. It was fun to watch Sarah Jane and company work out the vinegar weakness much the same way the Doctor did in "World War Three".
 
"Partners in Crime": An improvement on Voyage of the Damned. Tennant seemed to be sleepwalking through this one, but Tate brought lots of energy to Donna. The scene of them mouthing to each other is priceless. 

We've got a couple of weeks of Sarah Jane and Doctor Who to get through now. Plus we're slowly watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow in 15-minute installments. Thank God Netflix doesn't have late fees.  

I'll just come right out and say it. I hated this episode. So much that it downgrades the entire season.

 

Tags: torchwood

Last night, we started watching the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas special around 11 PM to have something to watch while Cecil pumped. And then we just couldn't stop. It was just so nice to have Doctor Who back.

Of course, it would also have been nice to have a better episode to watch.
 

More clearing out of the TV backlog. We both liked this episode. I'm not sure I'd put it at Best Episode Ever - the premiere, "Reset", and "A Day in the Death" would go higher.

"Exit Wounds" is on tape; maybe we'll get to see it before the end of the week.

Our taped backlog was getting pretty large after recording enough 2.5 hours, so I insisted we watch something after the kids went to bed. I kept Cecil up later than I should have watching Invasion, since it was a special 90-minute episode. Sorry, sweetie. We both enjoyed it, though. I don't think I ever saw an episode of original Doctor Who with Elisabeth Sladen (somehow I missed the whole Tom Baker era). She did a nice job here, as did the kids playing Maria and Luke. I could do without Kelsey, though.

 
Hopefully tonight, we'll watch this "Fragments" episode of Torchwood everyone likes so much.

Tags: sarah jane

It's been a busy time (as I might post about later), so there hasn't been much opportunity for TV watching. It's even been a light week for Jeopardy! for me. I neglected to set the VCR for Monday or Tuesday, got it on Wednesday, and ended up taping a special report on the Pope's visit to DC yesterday. Thank goodness for the J-Archive.  We still have Sarah Jane and Torchwood from last week with more of both plus the premiere of Doctor Who in the next couple of days. 

What little entertainment time Cecil and I have had has been spent watching Michael Clayton. It took us three viewing sessions over the course of a week. I don't think the fragmentation helped me follow the plot. There are a number of aspects of Clayton's life outside the firm that I didn't understand and/or felt unresolved. I thought the acting was pretty good, especially Tom Wilkinson. I don't know if I'd have given Tilda Swinton an Oscar; maybe I was too distracted by the fact that she looks a lot like the Mount's academic dean. Anyway, while the movie held my attention, I'm not sure it would be worth recommending to anyone else. I guess I was expecting more.

Tags: movies

 
Next TV post will probably be about this Friday's premiere of the Sarah Jane Adventures (airing at 7:30 on SciFi).

Tags: torchwood

It took us a couple of nights, but we finally got through the most recent episode of Torchwood. Still current! Now we just have to get through a huge DVD backlog - Michael Clayton from Netflix, the Bourne trilogy from my sister-in-law, Ratatouille, The Wire, Jekyll, and a bunch of other DVDs we've accumulated over several holidays.

 

A pretty quiet weekend around here relatively. Yesterday was Easter dinner at my in-laws. We went prior to Ragnar's "nap". My in-laws had set up an Easter egg hunt for him on the first floor of their house. He eagerly went around looking for the plastic eggs. But the best part came afterwards. Each egg had a riddle inside for him to read and solve. Which, of course, he did happily. Ragnar has excellent grandparents. Dinner was nice too.

I mistaped last week's Torchwood, so I recorded two on Saturday. Somehow we managed to watch both of them so we're caught up with North America. I enjoyed both episodes. "A Day in the Death" was somber in parts but ultimately uplifting. Burn Gorman did another great job; I'm sorry Freema Agyeman had little to do. "Something Borrowed" was fun.

Just about a month until Doctor Who series 4! The bootlegged trailers on YouTube look very interesting.

Tags: torchwood

I put Michael Moore's documentary on my Netflix queue in an attempt to watch something "good for me". We started watching it Thursday evening. Cecil made it through about 20 minutes before she said it was too depressing to watch. She understands the insurance companies are basically evil, but she really didn't want to see it spelled out explicitly. 

I made it through almost all of the rest myself. I had to stop just before the end as Moore takes a bunch of insurance-challenged people to Guantanamo Bay where the inmates have "universal health care". I didn't really need to see him pull stunts. I thought the rest of the movie was very well done. I liked his point that we already have socialized police, fire, education, and libraries, so why not medicine? (Not that police and education don't have major problems in some areas.) I also was amazed by the health care systems of Canada, Britain, and France. He counters potential arguments - are the lines too long? Nope. Are there hidden charges? Nope. Are the doctors not paid well? Nope. Are the taxes crippling to the middle class? Nope. Of course, he makes the mistake that my discrete math students often make. His "proof" is one doctor, one family, one hospital. You really can't generalize from that. And do all French mothers get a free nanny from the government (as Moore implies), or do you have to be below a certain income level?

I also thought he had a sobering point that one of the reasons we have the health care systems we do is that we're willing to accept it and not actively fight it. Maybe we all need to stand up more often.