Busy, Busy & Disappointing TV

[furtech]

These last two weeks have been interesting. Tortuous, self-revealing and insightful in the way that vivisections are. Not all bad, though: the last three days have been spent working the Border Collie Rescue booth at the Pet Expo. Twelve hours (times 3 days) of pimping dogs, running them around the fair grounds and matching up two-and-four-legged buddies. Exhausting work both physically and emotionally, but I'd take this any time over the stuff that came before.

I sat down this evening and am watching the second run of "Riverworld" (based on the P. J. Farmer book of the same name). I don't remember the book being so interminable. I'm hoping that they will have some of the creatures from the books, but I suspect that even if they do, they will be lousy computer generated things. So far my impression is mixed: there are some decent production values and casting, but a lot of boring and one of my big pet peeves: casting a caucasian actress in the role of a Japanese monk. Only high school video projects should have to resort to yellow-face, not big budget production pieces. Are they saying that they couldn't find an Asian actress to play the role? Do they believe that audiences are so stupid that the producer could cast his girlfriend in the role? Her accent sounds like she got it from watching badly dubbed anime.

Before I left for the expo this morning, I caught a few (blessedly few) minutes of the 1991 remake of Dark Shadows. If ever there was a guide on how -not- to remake the series, this is it. Horrible. Bad, canned music. A "gothic" mansion that looks like it was shot in a suburban housing development. Somehow the director mistook wide-eyed pauses for gothic suspense. Awful.

More later when a few more brain cells regenerate. The next few weeks are going to be interesting!

EDIT: I *hate it* when people make oblique, tantalizing posts and here I am doing exactly that. The week before the BCR adoption event my day job underwent a massive restructuring performance review creating a new business plan. Everything was laid bare: people got laid off and the relaxed atmosphere was revealed to be more lackadaisical than smooth and now there will be more structure and discipline in the business. This sounds terrible (it was), but we knew it was coming and had prepared for it. We did a good job getting ready for this series of meetings, but it's kind of like preparing for a slap in the face: there's only so much you can do and it's still going to sting. Overall, it's a good thing and once we get through this transition we'll be in good shape to move forward (and it sure beats going out of business), but the next few months will be interesting times.

Comments

[lironess.livejournal.com]

I was deep into my vampire phase in 91 I taped all of the episodes. But as a costumer I always have an excuse to record stuff no matter how bad the movie. They had pretty good costumes.

But, I loved the series so much that the tapes all sat in a drawer and rotted LOL.

Is Riverworld on tv? I vaguely remember the books....maybe I can rent it if it is a series....

I do not have a working tv...sigh.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Riverworld is showing on the SciFi (SyFy) Channel. I'm not sure if it's the entire first book, but they're running it in a 4-hour block. Aside from my pet-peeve mentioned above, it's not bad. The pacing is slowed to a crawl by the artsiness of the director (not a storyteller, that's for sure). It's kind of like those Hallmark made-for movies they used to make in the 90's: definitely a cut above the typical SciFi Channel fare.