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Gosh, I wanted to love this. I really did -- a documentary on the Soviet Red Army hockey team with Slava Fetisov as the main focus. If you know anything about the sport, what could be better?
( A lot, sadly. )
( A lot, sadly. )
stuff about stuff
18 Sep 2014 11:39* The baseball team is near the end of its misery for 2014, Young Master deGrom's chances at Rookie of the Year notwithstanding. Thankfully, NHL training camps begin this week, leading to 82 chances for frustration and then a playoff season of inevitable heartbreak. I love sports.
* I started this and I'm afraid it looks like I'm teasing with it because it's got more than one part and I don't have immediate plans to write more, but I've put both bits of 'Preserved' (the 'Bucky goes home and was never a Howling Commando' concept) on one page over at AO3 because they are two halves of the same thought.
I'm not saying never; I may get an idea for this next week. But I also kind of suspect that this could be the MCU version of SGA's Orpheus, which (a) took me forever to complete and (b) got me hate-mail when I did because I didn't warn for the unhappy ending. And I'm honestly not sure if I want to put up with that again if I'm not really sold on the story arc.
Because I am more active on Tumblr these days, but miss the ability to actually converse:
* Two brief comments on Outlander, which I am enjoying greatly: Claire's unstigmatized drinking and 'who got marital rape in my happy Forced Marriage trope?'
I'm not confusing Outlander with great drama or great anything, but it's fun and it's gorgeously shot and that would probably be sufficient as a diversion. But it's also the story of a woman of strength instead of a strong woman, especially a strong woman idealized by male standards, and that's something I maybe didn't anticipate enjoying as much until actually confronted with it.
* Not by me, but worth the read: a technical but readable (de)construction of the Winter Soldier's metal arm.
* Archie McPhee's Endless Geyser of Awesome. Aptly titled collection of esoterica silly and beautiful and occasionally both.
* I started this and I'm afraid it looks like I'm teasing with it because it's got more than one part and I don't have immediate plans to write more, but I've put both bits of 'Preserved' (the 'Bucky goes home and was never a Howling Commando' concept) on one page over at AO3 because they are two halves of the same thought.
I'm not saying never; I may get an idea for this next week. But I also kind of suspect that this could be the MCU version of SGA's Orpheus, which (a) took me forever to complete and (b) got me hate-mail when I did because I didn't warn for the unhappy ending. And I'm honestly not sure if I want to put up with that again if I'm not really sold on the story arc.
Because I am more active on Tumblr these days, but miss the ability to actually converse:
* Two brief comments on Outlander, which I am enjoying greatly: Claire's unstigmatized drinking and 'who got marital rape in my happy Forced Marriage trope?'
I'm not confusing Outlander with great drama or great anything, but it's fun and it's gorgeously shot and that would probably be sufficient as a diversion. But it's also the story of a woman of strength instead of a strong woman, especially a strong woman idealized by male standards, and that's something I maybe didn't anticipate enjoying as much until actually confronted with it.
* Not by me, but worth the read: a technical but readable (de)construction of the Winter Soldier's metal arm.
* Archie McPhee's Endless Geyser of Awesome. Aptly titled collection of esoterica silly and beautiful and occasionally both.
I am looking forward to this a lot. I've been a die-hard fan of the game for thirty years and am old enough to remember the reaction to the Miracle on Ice and when folks like Slava Fetisov were Them before they became 'them' (1994's Matteau!Matteau!Matteau! doesn't happen without Fetisov on the Devils) and, with the mighty Detroit Red Wings, finally Us. Except not really us, because every NHL fan knows what "enigmatic" really means.
Anyway, I think this could be of interest to anyone old enough to really remember the Cold War, especially as it applied to athletics: the rumors, the defections, the boycotts, the horror stories of the athletes... the Red Army hockey team lived in barracks, trained like soldiers, and were watched like hawks lest they defect. Their lives not their own until they were no longer useful, pawns in a bigger game until their bodies broke down. But until that point, they were the original Russian Machine Never Breaks, making it all the more historic (1972, 1980) when they did.
The end of the Red Army dominance, like the Soviet Union as a whole, was both highly choreographed and completely chaotic. The legends who'd suffered most -- Larionov, Fetisov, etc. -- weren't allowed to leave until they were far past their prime (little did Tikhonov know) while the young guns like Bure, Fedorov, and Mogilny defected rather than endure the same treatment. It was an interesting time and, if this documentary covers even half of it, it should be quite a show.
stuff about stuff
19 Feb 2014 23:01* Olympics! I am watching next to nothing of them, partially by choice -- I hate the format of 25 minutes of talking heads and sob stories, 15 minutes of competition, and 20 minutes of commercials per hour -- and mostly because I get no television reception. I have gotten to see some of the hockey games, although not the starts of most of them because I'm not getting up at 7:30am on a weekend for any non-medal game. But today was full of excitement, with Team USA winning handily and Team Canada winning not-handily -- that strong cold breeze from the north mid-afternoon was all of Canada exhaling after Weber scored -- and Team Russia imploding while Vlad Putin watched and then turning on each other like sharks in a swimming pool. The Finns are sneaky good, yo. They do this every single Olympics and then four years later, nobody remembers and we're all surprised again.
Thursday is USA-Canada in the women's gold medal game and Friday is USA-Canada in the men's semis and Canada is heavily favored on both sides and they are going to be so unbearably smug if they live up to those expectations. Everyone says that the Canadians are the nicest people and, by and large, they are. But they are also the sorest winners in hockey you will ever see. Which is why everyone not Canadian was rooting for the little Latvian engine that almost did.
* Pitchers and catchers have reported, which means it's the annual reminder that my baseball team looks incredibly promising... until the position players show up. Ah, Mets, what would we do if you were a real baseball team again?
* Watched a bunch of first episodes because there's no NHL:
1) House of Cards. Holy crap, was that good. Everyone is awful, but it the best ways. It's vicious and cold-blooded and I don't even mind Kevin Spacey breaking the fourth wall. I'm not going to stay up all night to watch the rest in one sitting, but I look forward to finishing it at a more stately pace.
2) Political Animals... I didn't really need to see Hillary Clinton fanfic and it was far too soapy for me and I didn't even finish the first episode. It's really well acted, I will admit, but that just makes it a really well cast soap.
3) Black Sails: Apparently, this series is boring all of the critics to tears because it's a pirate show set on land and has board meetings and ship-cleaning as plots. The pilot has pirate-y action and Toby Stephens -- who looks more and more like his mother every year and I don't mean that as a compliment -- but it also has Luke Arnold's John Silver and he bores me to tears and he's not pretty enough to counteract that, although clearly I am supposed to think so. I was hoping this could be Deadwood: the Pirate Years or the flip side of the Master and Commander universe, but it's really, really not.
4) Luther: been meaning to watch this forever and finally did and like it so far, two episodes in.
* Guardians of the Galaxy trailer looked good. They had to take a somewhat different tack with this than the other Marvel movies because nobody knows who they are, but that's fine and it worked. (They might have had me at "Oooga Chaka," but I'm Gen X.) And, as I said in another forum, Marvel will make a couple hundred million dollars over costs with a movie featuring a talking tree and an uncouth raccoon while DC thinks Wonder Woman is too difficult to film.
* Apparently Loki/Winter Soldier is trying to become a thing as a pairing and... good christ, why?
Thursday is USA-Canada in the women's gold medal game and Friday is USA-Canada in the men's semis and Canada is heavily favored on both sides and they are going to be so unbearably smug if they live up to those expectations. Everyone says that the Canadians are the nicest people and, by and large, they are. But they are also the sorest winners in hockey you will ever see. Which is why everyone not Canadian was rooting for the little Latvian engine that almost did.
* Pitchers and catchers have reported, which means it's the annual reminder that my baseball team looks incredibly promising... until the position players show up. Ah, Mets, what would we do if you were a real baseball team again?
* Watched a bunch of first episodes because there's no NHL:
1) House of Cards. Holy crap, was that good. Everyone is awful, but it the best ways. It's vicious and cold-blooded and I don't even mind Kevin Spacey breaking the fourth wall. I'm not going to stay up all night to watch the rest in one sitting, but I look forward to finishing it at a more stately pace.
2) Political Animals... I didn't really need to see Hillary Clinton fanfic and it was far too soapy for me and I didn't even finish the first episode. It's really well acted, I will admit, but that just makes it a really well cast soap.
3) Black Sails: Apparently, this series is boring all of the critics to tears because it's a pirate show set on land and has board meetings and ship-cleaning as plots. The pilot has pirate-y action and Toby Stephens -- who looks more and more like his mother every year and I don't mean that as a compliment -- but it also has Luke Arnold's John Silver and he bores me to tears and he's not pretty enough to counteract that, although clearly I am supposed to think so. I was hoping this could be Deadwood: the Pirate Years or the flip side of the Master and Commander universe, but it's really, really not.
4) Luther: been meaning to watch this forever and finally did and like it so far, two episodes in.
* Guardians of the Galaxy trailer looked good. They had to take a somewhat different tack with this than the other Marvel movies because nobody knows who they are, but that's fine and it worked. (They might have had me at "Oooga Chaka," but I'm Gen X.) And, as I said in another forum, Marvel will make a couple hundred million dollars over costs with a movie featuring a talking tree and an uncouth raccoon while DC thinks Wonder Woman is too difficult to film.
* Apparently Loki/Winter Soldier is trying to become a thing as a pairing and... good christ, why?
Oshie can you see....
15 Feb 2014 18:32And over in Afghanistan, the reaction to Team USA's TJ Oshie's shootout winner over the Russians:
(from here)
(from here)
