Matt Ruff's Blog, page 58

Achtung, baby

Just got my copy of the German paperback edition of Bad Monkeys. According to Amazon.de the official pub. date is November 1st:

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Trick r Treat

So if you caught a preview for this and are curious, it's basically Creepshow: 2009 -- five loosely interwoven horror tales that I would call "She Should Have Listened to Tahmoh Penikett," "The Principal is Insane," "Revenge of the Short-Bus Kids," "Anna Paquin's Red Riding Hood," and "Brian Cox vs. the Halloween Midget."

"Short-Bus Kids," a morality play about the perils of mistreating special-needs children, is the best (and most tasteless) of the bunch, though that's not really saying much;...

'house and House

Elsewhere on TV this week, Dollhouse continues its death march -- I'm not even going to bother with comments -- but House did a nice job, I thought, of rebounding from last week's silliness. "Better a murder than a misdiagnosis," heh. Now if only they'd let that story arc drop and never speak of it again... Unfortunately it looks like they are going to go back to it, to drum up some relationship drama between Chase and Cameron. Still, one of the things I like about House is that even when the...

Stargate: SVU, 10/9

After a semi-promising start, the series takes a nosedive in its second episode.

THE SITUATION SO FAR: Last week, a mixed group of soldiers and civilians from Earth got stranded aboard a giant alien spaceship several billion light-years from home. The ship is abandoned and on autopilot, and it's got some problems. For one thing, it's sprung a leak, and although this is a slow leak that's apparently been leaking for a long long time, our heroes have the incredible bad timing to arrive on board ...

I'm sure James Nicoll will spot the error

Frank Rich, in Sunday's Times op-ed section:

"Those of us who love F. Scott Fitzgerald must acknowledge that he did get one big thing wrong. There are second acts in American lives. (Just ask Marion Barry, or William Shatner.)"

I need to start writing these prophecies down

Last year, when I wrote a blog post reacting to Sarah Palin's nomination as a VP candidate, I almost included a lame joke about how Palin would be great at foreign affairs, since Alaska is right across the water from Russia.

Then on Friday, when I posted about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, I thought about including a line that said, "I give conservatives 72 hours before somebody makes an affirmative action comment."

Guess what.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

First thought: Those wacky Swedes Norwegians must really want to mess with Glenn Beck's head.

Second thought: I hope the events of the next few years in Afghanistan don't make this seem horribly ironic.

Scene from a recent House story conference

Screenwriter #1: So, what should this episode's big plot point be?
Screenwriter #2: Why don't we have Chase kill Hitler?
Screenwriter #1: OK!

Stargate: SVU, part two

Caught the second hour last night. It was good -- not first-season House good, but fun. My two favorite characters are Lt. Scott and Robert Carlyle's Scientist of Questionable Morals. Still making up my mind about Eli, the video-game whiz who won the golden ticket: the character screams "fan service," but he hasn't actually gotten on my nerves yet, and he's got some good dialogue.

My one nitpick with the pilot's plot is that they seemed to be conflating two very different life-support problems...

Dollhouse season two

Two episodes in, I'm really not enjoying it. Lisa says, "It's like they painted themselves into a Stupid Corner."

Thoughts:

* Ballard's character has become totally unbelievable to me. I don't know what his motivation is supposed to be anymore. They say he still wants to bring down the Dollhouse, but there's nothing stopping him from doing that. He knows where it is now, and he's got the run of the place -- if he's free to wander into sensitive areas like Topher's lab and push random buttons, i...