A few highlights of Ottawa Comic Con 2013:

• I never realized how stunningly beautiful Gillian Anderson is.
  
  
• Actors were asked what would be the role of their dreams. James Marsters wants to be Iago in Othello. Gillian Anderson wants to be Iron Man.
  
  
• Got a gorgeous sexy Wolverine print from Geoff Isherwood.
  
  
• Lyn bought me a present: a S.H.I.E.L.D. T-shirt. I love it.
  
  
• There were Daleks wandering around. I saw a Dalek approach a Zombie in the dealers' room. The Zombie was standing in his way. "I suppose you want me to move," said the Zombie, challenging.
  
  "You are dead, human," said the Dalek. "You have already been exterminated."
  
  
• Will Wheaton is a funny man.
  
  
• Nathan Fillion is a very funny man.
  
  
• Jewel Staite is just like Kaylee, only older, and real.
  
  
• I got three Marvel figures from Eaglemoss Publications: Jubilee, Cannonball, and Psylocke. Discounted. I love 'em.
  
  
• I do not like Star Wars. Really, I don't. So why did I feel a tremor of excitement when I saw Luke Skywalker's landspeeder?
  
  
  
  

A review with a lot of ten-dollar words: “IRON MAN 3”: A SHELL OF HIMSELF by Richard Brody.

It took me a while to decipher this sentence: "The political import of the movie follows surprisingly on that of “The Avengers.” In both, the menace underlying the plot is the hijacking of American weaponry by the country’s enemies." What weaponry, I thought? The battle over weaponry was with Obadiah Stane in Iron Man 1. Or did he mean the nuclear bomb? It made no sense till I realized he was referring to the Tesseract - a bit of Asgardian weaponry that was in no way American, but it was in the hands of the Amercians - since S.H.I.E.L.D. now seems to belong to the U.S. government.

I liked his comment: "...As the country’s increasing population of disabled and mutilated war veterans becomes more prominent, Stark, with his panic attacks, takes his place among them. The war on terror has become a perpetual state of terror, and its weaponry (including the continuous struggle to maintain, upgrade, and devise it) has become an unbearable burden."

And the sentence: "There are critics who see in “Iron Man 3” a poster child for the studios’ failure to make movies for adults..." I checked the ink and the reveiwer cited, Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, seems to have simply missed the point of the movie - all the points of the movie - which had nothing to do with the any bombs in Boston. I confess that I did watch the whole movie without once thinking of Boston. What, all terrorism relates to Boston now?

Anyway: it looked like a movie for adults to me, by any yardstick except that of people who think superheroes are an intrinsically juvenile idea. Which makes no sense to me at all.

My tablet has been working badly since the day I got it; ordinary functions worked badly, or not at all; and when I couldn't even use it for fanfic, I got fed up. Buy a new one? Chuck it in the river?

Before doing anything so radical, on Sheila's suggested, I restored it to factory settings.

Now it's working like a dream. I am happy. I don't know what was wrong, but if it's fixed, I don't care. Mind you, I had to spend a good prat of the day restoring my apps, but that was a nice opportunity to get rid of the ones I wasn't using, and to find better ones. I've covered a few priorities - like An Archive of Our Own, Marvel Unlimited, and Words with Friends.

If you have any recommendations of good android apps, I'd love to hear about them.

Gotta be the best review of anything I have ever read... A review of Iron Man 3 by Laura Hundson and Jim Rugg. They nailed it. Sequential Stark: Wired Reviews Iron Man 3 — In Comic Book Format.

Especially the parts about identity.

A review almost as clever as the movie.

I love this time of year.



On Elgin Street.

Wired's Infographic of who's who in Iron Man 3. I think they're guessing - a lot of the characters there aren't in Iron Man 3, and there are a few who ought to be mentioned but aren't, like Hayley Keener and President Ellis.

It's fun anyway.

You know it's a good movie when you're walking down the street and more insights about it come to you.

One thought: Justin Hammer and Whiplash may have thought they were cleverer than Tony Stark, but they weren't in his league - not even close.

I could believe the villain here was Tony's equal, not in terms of sanity or morality, but in terms of brains.

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

There aren't many movies I really care about going to see these days. There was a time I liked going to a movie every week - but most of the new movies don't look interesting to me.

Least of all are they worth seeing late at night. Midnight screenings? I'm the get up at dawn girl these days; so it's the rare movie that lures me into the late hours of the night. Even when I see things, I don't often think they're worth it.

So... Iron Man 3. Worth it.

I loved Iron Man 1, mostly hated Iron Man 2. Ads for #3 made me fear it would be like #2. No need to fear: it isn't.

I just heard an IMDb interview with Robert Downey Jr.. He says, "People are happy that it's kind of clever and defies expectations." That's certainly true in my case: it's very clever and kept defying my expectations over and over. Expectations based on lot of comic book reading over the years, and a long knowledge of how these stories work.

And it isn't just changing things for the sake of changing them, randomly. It's... clever changes. Things rooted in the comic, and in the set-up of the previous movies. Surprises that all make sense, but you don't see them coming. At least, I didn't.

It was wonderful. I love surprises.

On the non-surprise front: Too many explosions. I did expect that. No big deal. If a lot of explosions sell a good plot, I'll live with them.

Mind you, some of it was due to a year or two of clever misdirection in terms of movie publicity and promotion. Those clever dogs.

Okay, ( spoilery comments now......Collapse )

Just saw Iron Man 3.

Loved it.

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

An article about Captain Jack Harkness: Captain Jack And River Song Met, Decided They Want A 'Doctor Who' Spinoff. Well, of course they do.

I'd like it too, if only because it's not likely to be the dirge to morosity that Torchwood Miracle Day was. And since the loss of Elisabeth Sladen and The Sarah Jane Adventures, there's a gap to be filled.

Now, I was never, and am not, a big fan of River Song, partly because I saw her as playing the role in Doctor Who that Captain Jack ought to have been playing. Replacing him, in other words. What did she do that he couldn't do better? Nothing that I could see.

Putting them together -- well! It would be like two peas in a pod, but why not? They'd be fun. They'd be loads of fun.

Bring it on.

As for the rest of the article: I don't want to know the Doctor's name, and I'm hoping that episode won't tell us, despite its name. And: why is Captain Jack being left out of the Doctor Who special? I had thought that since Steven Moffat was the first writer to write Captain Jack, that he'd want to include him. Perhaps he sees him as a Russell T Davies creation, and doesn't like the character.