Media week... month... day?: quarantine edition #3

[thistlechaser]

Books

I dropped one book, Wolf Code, need to make a post about it. Wasn't bad, just wasn't hooking me, and after trying to stick with Ancillary Justice for multiple months, I'm not going to force myself to read something that doesn't hold my interest.

I started Imperium Lupi, which very oddly is a book about furries, but has really really good reviews. I'm enjoying it so far.

TV

Since I didn't have TV service at the time, I missed last year's showing of NBC's live version of Jesus Christ Superstar. They showed the second hour of it this year (odd decision, it just started right in the middle), so I was able to check it out. It's easily my favorite musical, so I was glad to be able to see it, even if I didn't like this version much at all. I never use the phrase "cringe worthy", but that fit Alice Cooper's performance in it. Ugh. I'll watch even a bad version, but NBC's made me long for PBS's 2000 version.

Still enjoying Community so so so much and Major Crimes warms my heart (the characters are so wonderful). I kind of dropped the ball on Battlestar Galactica though, sadly. I watched an episode of Clone Wars today for the first time in weeks, but the clones haven't been in an ep in so long, my interest wanders a lot.

I started marathoning a new-to-me show, The Good Fight. Supposedly it's a follow up to The Good Wife? I never saw an episode of that though, and I can follow it just fine. Love the characters, love the storyline. Only on ep 4 (of four seasons I think).

I tried out a new show called Noughts & Crosses. The setup sounded like every bad YA book out there: Society is split into two groups (Noughts and Crosses), and a boy from one group loves a girl from the other, they can't be together, they try to change society, blah blah blah. I've seen that plot used more times than I can count. The show (and book series) got great reviews though, so I checked the show out. It had sort of an interesting twist: It was an alternative history, African people colonized the European people instead of the other way around (the Africans made the Europeans their slaves, and slavery didn't end long ago). The first ep wasn't bad, but didn't do anything for me, so I moved on to something else.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

This past weekend I started bingeing Community (which I'd previously seen some scattered episodes of, but never watched properly), and it's a very handy show for the present times, I find -- sizable ensemble, low stakes, goes down easy. I watched like 15 episodes in one day, and there's still plenty left :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah! And generally positive, which I appreciate. It has good rewatch value, too.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I watched the JC Superstar on Hulu last year and had the same reaction to Alice Cooper's completely random cameo. But I was pretty happy with the rest of the performances, all things considered.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

The Jesus actor didn't work for me so much, which was why I think my overall opinion wasn't too high. I did like the Judas fellow though!

I really appreciated that they didn't put their own twists on the songs, that when I expected a voice to rise it did. Things like that.

The production (sets and such) were pretty meh, but that's probably because it was live TV.

Alice Cooper was just so out of place. Not just that it was him, but that he looked maybe 70 years old and still had black makeup around his eyes.