Zompist Bboard Again

Raholeun wrote: ↑Wed Dec 26, 2018 9:09 am

alice wrote: ↑Wed Dec 26, 2018 6:26 am The SCK, of course. Why aren't you?

Because I do not own a credit card and I would need one to order it off Amazon. Recommendations or alternative paths to purchase it are welcome.

I use a debit card with Amazon.

alice wrote: ↑Wed Dec 26, 2018 6:26 amThe SCK, of course. Why aren't you?

Because I'll be darned if I can find the time to read a whole book these days and I've already had to formally study syntax for a few years.

Birdlang wrote: ↑Wed Dec 26, 2018 7:18 amJust listening to these, nice songs!

Thanks! I'm afraid I still haven't finished listening to yours, but I like what I've heard of your songs, too, and:

And Djiboutian music is similar too
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8p9XEZKxzZc
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KBTe5_Ff5h4
What language is the Djiboutian stuff in? Is that Oromo, Somali, or Afar?

I think these are both in Somali (I'm almost positive the first one is).

Raholeun wrote: ↑Mon Dec 24, 2018 3:45 am Spending the day off ploughing through Salmoneus' book review. If I ever allow myself to move out of the Russian literature section, sure I will get my recommendation from him.

That's very nice of you to say! I'm glad someone's getting some value out of those reviews - sorry they're so rambling!


Vijay: I don't recognise that "English" tune, and clearly the tune must have been localised in this performance version. However, the main melody does sound like it could be English - probably not a hymn tune, but it sounds like a folk tune. I don't know it, though.

My guess could be wrong, but I'm increasingly inclined to believe it has nothing to do with any English tune; apparently, it was composed by someone in the 1900s, possibly from the village where my dad spent his early childhood.

So anyway, having re-watched the first season of Veronica Mars, I've now accidentally watched the second season too, as well as the third season, and the film.

Short version:

S2 is an interesting contrast with S1. In terms of proficiency, it's probably better made, week to week, than S1 - a slight cheesiness or naivity has been polished out of some of the cases-of-the-week, and the small cases become less confined to the highschool. The overall mystery is more complicated and better put together than in S1, on paper.

However, the pacing is totally wrong: to be honest, other than the odd episode, the main story doesn't really get going until E18; which means there's a lot of wheel-spinning. Probably as a result, it indulges in a lot more melodrama than S1, including some plot points that are frankly silly (albeit well-handled). The failure to keep the main mystery as the lynchpin of the season parallels a loss of thematic cohesion across the episodes - if you watch an episode of S2 and an episode of S1, you may well find the former better than the latter (with a couple of exception), but across the seasons as a whole, S1 builds and builds to its conclusion, while S2 sort of meanders - it's much easier to get bored. And then the season finale just... goes over the line. It makes sense on paper, but it doesn't work on the screen - plus, it attempts to retcon an element of the first season in a way that pissed a lot of people off, justifiably. To be clear, S2 is very good TV, week to week (mostly)... but as a season it doesn't work as well as the first.

...and then there's S3. It's divisive. The main problem is that Veronica is actually quite unpleasant and annoying, and a lot of how you view the season seems to come down to whether you think this was intentional. When I first saw it, I didn't like it - rewatching it, and binge-watching it right from the start, and being reminded how early in the show Veronica was being warned about the exact problems she displays in S3, I think it works, at least intellectually; and when you watch the three seasons together, you realise that S3's Veronica is not an abrupt change, but a development from S2's Veronica. If you view it as the problematic development of a traumatised adolescent, it makes sense - and probably it would be better seen in hindsight if her development arc hadn't been abruptly cut off by the show's cancellation. Instead of a full development, we just get The Bitch is Back, the season finale - which, fortunately, is a good episode, and a fantastic (but abbreviated!) thematic conclusion at least to this era of the show. My big regret in this regard is that it really feels as though this episode is a conclusion to a three-season arc that never really happened - everything it says about class and power and about Veronica's ultimate nemesis perfectly fits the show it should have been, but not the show we actually got on the screen.
In any case, even if you can go along with the problematic aspects of the character arc, the season has issues. The decision to split the season into arcs, rather than a single mystery, has its pros and cons; but spending half the season on the most troubled arc on the show is a bad idea. S3 has to introduce us to an entirely new setting (as Veronica moves from school to college) and several new characters... and it does so through a nine-episode story about rape, rape culture, false rape allegations and so on. As a noir, in which everyone from college fraternities to feminist activists have hypocrisy and hidden ulterior motives, it's likely to piss off pretty much everybody at some point, and while everything it does is individually justified (and the conclusion is a thrilling episode), it's fair to say it probably needed to put a lot more effort into making some of its points less confrontationally. Not to mention that, even well done, it's not an easy way to start what's basically a reboot of the show. The second arc works a lot better, though it's a bit too clinical; the last run of episodes just sort of meander around, which actually works pretty well, though it would have been irritating if it had lasted any longer.

The worst thing in S3, though? Veronica's haircut. Veronica, who was introduced as the social exile, with utilitarian hair and somewhat grungy but bland fashion, was transported to the CW network, who insisted at a high level that she start wearing sexy, seductive clothing all the time - which can SORT of be defended in a college-experimentation way (Veronica is inherently overconfident about her own maturity, and confrontational, and increasingly arrogant). But they also demanded that her hairstyle be a ridiculous, wavy moviestar thing that looks like it's been sprayed in place by a team of stylists between scenes, which is inherently silly (there's a lot of running around on this show) and completely out of character. Fortunately, Kristen Bell is beautiful, so....

Anyway, S3 isn't as good as S2, but it is interesting for Veronica Mars fans, particularly if you know going in that it's not going to be a breeze. There are some really good episodes, and some weighty character development (though it does dip a bit too far into CW relationship drama a couple of times).


And finally there's the film. Which is... actually pretty brilliant. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not great cinema. It's not even as good as Veronica Mars the TV show at its best - taken as a thing in its own right. But it's a brilliant kickstarter fan film. It takes up the characters nearly a decade later, respects what happened in the series, projects plausibly across the intervening years, and delivers characters that feel truly believable as the same characters from a decade earlier. Aided by some really good performances, of course. Which is harder than it seems (I remember how slightly-off the acting and writign was in the Farscape revival, for instance). It delivered a lot of nostalgia, but just the right side of becoming exploitative, and a bunch of lines that are good in their own right. The central mystery of the film is weak - not so much the narrative motor of the film as just the narrative excuse for everything else - but it's enough to hold the film together. If this were an episode, you'd say it wasn't one of the most 'important' or 'serious' episodes, but you might say it was an all-time-great in terms of just having fun watching the characters be themselves. It also actually may do a better job than most of the series in terms of setting the themes of the show.

[sidenote: LOTS of American reviewers cite Veronica Mars as one of the most sustained and incisive critiques of the American class system to be found in mainstream US TV. But I'm British, so this is a bit weird to me, due to different calibrations - almost everything on TV here is more interested in the class system than Veronica Mars is (or any other US show is). I always kind of feel that VM treats the class system the way most socially conscious Americans do - it says its interested, and points at it occasionally, but most of the time gets easily distracted by other things... anyway, the social critique and the noir and the commentary on families and parenting, and the other thematic stuff, sometimes seems to fade into the background on the show, and the film does a pretty good job of recentreing it.]

In terms of the future of the show: the film does a decent (if sadly abbreviated and a bit strained) job of letting future writers explain how we could have a seemingly regressive set-up for future seasons (i.e. with Veronica as a private detective in Neptune), while still understanding and appreciating all the development that took place in the first three seasons (a lot of which was ultimately about Veronica wanting to escape from that setting).


I guess I probably should get the books now, for the sake of completeness, since apparently they'll be canon (though non-compulsory) for S4 when it comes out...

Vijay wrote: ↑Wed Dec 26, 2018 6:04 pm My guess could be wrong, but I'm increasingly inclined to believe it has nothing to do with any English tune; apparently, it was composed by someone in the 1900s, possibly from the village where my dad spent his early childhood.

It may be that "English tune" in this context originally meant less "specific tune from England" and more "tune that sounds to people as though it were from England". In the same sense that lots of "Celtic" music was never actually played by Celts until recent years...

Usually, when they say a hymn is "English," it really does have an English equivalent (I'm not aware of any other examples like this yet), but yes, it could be that this sounded English to the author.

I have been rereading Fables lately! It's a really excellent comics series, one of my favorites. For the unfamiliar, the basic premise is that characters from various fairy tales, fables, etc. are all real and live in a variety of magical worlds. When an evil emperor known only as the Adversary begins conquering their worlds and killing people off, the "Fables" escape to our world, which is non-magical and thus mostly escapes the Adversary's eye. They end up living in the middle of New York City in a neighborhood they call Fabletown. It's got a shifting cast of main characters, but some of the most prominent are, weirdly enough, Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, and Little Boy Blue. It's good fun, and despite being about fairy tales, is definitely not a children's series!

(also Cinderella's a secret agent and is hands down the best character)

I watched Finding Dory earlier this week. I bought yesterday a book of Dykes To Watch Out For. I've never read it before, but I'm like 66% sure I'll enjoy it based off what I've heard about it.

So, the new Poirot: no.

It was, of course, lavishly decorated and very attractively directed and shot (other than the terrible CGI now and then). And although it will be divisive, I thought Malkovich was a very good older Poirot - a faded version of, as it were, a real-life inspiration for Suchet's more unreal (though definitive) character.

But the writing is just bad. I think Sarah Phelps lucked into something with And Then There Were None, and has been promoted to be Goddess of Christmas but doesn't really know how to recapture that. This is her third attempt, and all three I think have been hamstrung by her terrible writing.

ATTWN is already an almost hallucinatory horror story on the page: ten people trapped on an island being brutally murdered by a serial killer whom none of the characters, nor the audience, have any realistic hope of identifying before it's too late, and as a result going mad with fear. Any one of the characters could be the killer - until they're shown to be a victim - and they all have terrible secrets in their past. In that context, it makes sense to emphasise the interior psychology of the characters - lots of tantalising flashbacks to slowly-revealed dark secrets, lots of hallucinatory daydreams as everyone goes bonkers (if they weren't to begin with). ATTWN actually overdid it a bit, but in general it worked. Everyone hallucinates for a bit and then they die.

But that's NOT how most Agatha Christie stories work. It's certainly not how The ABC Murders works. It's pointless spending 20% of the running time on hallucinatory flashbacks to Poirot's terrible secret, because he doesn't have one. You can't do that for Cust, because that would give away the ending far too early. The other characters are relatively dull and peripheral - and while it's fine to want to develop that, you need to do that by giving them actual characterisation, and things to do, rather than just having them stare at things while dramatic music plays. The need to spend half the running time BEING DRAMATIC (staring, engaging in tangential masochism, flashbacking, making weighty statements and then staring, etc) means that the actual plot is squeezed dramatically. That's fine in ATTWN, because there is no plot - everyone just gets killed - but ABC has a lot of plot to get through.

Instead, Phelps wants to have Messages, like "Brexit is bad", "immigrants are good". Which is fair enough, and there's certainly something to be made out of the 1933, blackshirt-sympathising time period. But it's all handled utterly cack-handedly - not only is there no subtlety in the message, there's no subtlety in the messaging. Every few minutes, Poirot sees someone wearing the flash, and STARES (and sometimes flashbacks). There's dialogue like "Why did you come to me if you are a fascist?" - "oh, it's not you we hates, it's all the other foreignerses! they're so dirty!". A Daily Mail (presumably) supporter shouts out "is the killer even English?" and the camera fixes on his smirk as the writer waits for applause...

[sidenote: in ATTWN, everyone has a sinister past and isn't what they seem and might be the murderer. Thus, it makes sense that they're all shifty and weird. In ABC, the whole point is that these are (or seem to be) ordinary people, a cross-section of normal society, and so having everyone act like they're the villain in a hammer horror is just a distraction]


Admittedly, ABC poses a major challenge in terms of structure, for obvious reasons; it's a challenge she fails to meet. The last episode is flaccid, and relies too heavily on coincidences and after-the-fact explanations. And can we PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE retire the "latent homoerotic connexion between detective and serial killer, who truly need one another and will miss one another and are mirror images of one another, and the serial killer thinks they're friends" trope? It made sense a few times, but it doesn't need to be inserted into every damn murder story. There's very little that can be added to that by now - it's hard not to roll the eyes and fastforward through those villainous speeches.


And finally: what? I'm not outraged by Phelps retconning the whole of Poirot's life-history. I just think it's pointless. There's nothing revelatory about Poirot's new past here. It ends up seeming as though the entire three-hour murder mystery was just set-up for the origin story of one of his catchphrases, and that's really not what anyone gives a shit about in a Poirot story.



I wouldn't mind seeing Malkovich in the role again... but I hope the writer moves on to other pastures, more suited to her interests and talents. Next time, we could perhaps have a writer who doesn't boast about never having read anything by the author she's adapting...

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 8:07 amThis is her third attempt, and all three I think have been hamstrung by her terrible writing.

Remind which ones the others were, in case I've seen them?

In other news I've recently started to get into Carnatic as well as Hindustani forms of Indian Classical music. Mostly I've just been listening to recordings of T.M. Krishna, such as this composition in Hamir Kalyani. I'm quite enjoying noticing the differences, notably in the instrumentation, particularly the prevalence of the violin almost as an echo to the main singer (which I've heard is what the sarangi is for in Hindustani music but I don't think is anywhere near as common), and additionally the common feature of having multiple percussionists, generally mridangam plus either ghatam or kanjira, though this performance features four such performers.

The only Thyagaraja composition I know (at least off the top of my head) is this (I probably listened to this a lot when I was two since I apparently used to watch this movie over and over again at the time).

I watched that Bird Box Netflix film last night... that's two hours I'm not getting back.

I didn't watch Bird Box last night.

That's two hours that I'm not getting back either.



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frislander: she did And Then There Were None, and then the next two years were Witness for the Prosecution and Ordeal by Innocence, but I'm not sure which way around they were, and this year it was The ABC Murders.

I listened to parts of two songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym6INBDT_Eo (a Tamil Carnatic song) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IBTSowojtM (a Malayalam movie song; not sure whether it can be classified as Carnatic music or not, but it certainly seems to resemble it), read a bit about a few types of bread in Kashmir and Iran (Kashmir has some that, according to Madhur Jaffrey, "are not widely known outside Kashmir but certainly deserve to be"), attempted to find some Kashmiri renditions of Habba Khatoon poems that had disappeared from YouTube (with partial success), puzzled over where the videos in this channel were filmed (apparently a Sinhalese village in Sri Lanka), and watched this, this, and this, which was difficult to watch/listen to for me (I had to pause a little past the halfway mark after reading the video description a bit and have a good cry).

I'm going through a serious Mongolian folk metal phase.

The Hu - Wolf Totem
Nine Treasures - My Hulunboir
Tengger Cavalry - Battle Song from Afar

Lust by KMFDM. (Which is in German, aside from the single word baby as in baby sei mein.)

A North Korean soldier defecting across the DMZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYKNJ--GHGU

Risla wrote: ↑Tue Jan 01, 2019 10:24 pm I'm going through a serious Mongolian folk metal phase.

The Hu - Wolf Totem
Nine Treasures - My Hulunboir
Tengger Cavalry - Battle Song from Afar

yesssss I love Mongolian folk metal. One of those genres where you tell someone you like it and they sort of turn their head to the side and you know they'll never think of you the same way again.