Looking forward to: Dollhouse (from Joss Whedon)

Joss Whedon has done a lot a great things for pop culture in the last 15 or so years - from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Toy Story to Angel to Firefly and a bunch of other geekosphere stuff.

Good news is that he has a new show coming up called Dollhouse, starring Eliza Dushku - Faith from Buffy (you know, the hotter, bad-girl slayer).

This is the gist of it.

In Dollhouse, Dushku plays a young woman named Echo; one of a group of men and women who can be neurally imprinted with "personality packages"; encompassing things such as memory, muscle memory, skills, and language. Sheltered in a secret futuristic dormitory/laboratory named the "Dollhouse"; these individuals are imprinted with customized personas for performing any of a wide variety of assignments—that can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, illegal, etc.—and mind-wiped into a child-like state with no memories after completing an assignment. The series follows Echo as she begins to develop a persistent memory and self-awareness across imprints and wipes.

hurrah.

Reserving judgment on: The Librarians

The first episode of any tv comedy is always the hardest - you need to make an impression straight away but you also have to establish all of your characters, your underlying storylines and hopefully throw in a few killer gags as well. A good part of the humour in many shows comes from character traits (though preferably not catch-phrases, which are generally lazy comic short-cuts in my book) that need to be establised over a number of weeks.

For this reason, it's hard to make a call on last nights opening episode of The Librarians. (You can watch the whole thing online here)

The main word that comes to mind is low-key, which I guess works thematically with the whole library thing but I got the sense that it was only a step or two away from timid.

Which is interesting as one of the key themes that emerged was the head librarian's darkly cheery anti-Muslim racism. The fact that this was largely accepted by the other library staff I think was meant to suggest that they are all cowed by her and afraid to speak up but there really wasn't anything to suggest why they might find her scary (other than the fact that they're all, well, rather timid).

A few of the characters veered pretty close to 2D stereotype - now I think that an essential part of good comedy is exaggeration but this is something to be careful with too. The tarty good-time girl with the gangster boyfriend is one to watch here.

The main point of the episode was - as you would expect - establishing the characters and their relationships and setting up the introduction of a new character. Not much going on in terms of story though there was a hint that things might be building. To be honest, few of the characters really stood out - though not surprisingly, Bob Franklin did well with his moments on screen and Wayne Hope enjoyed a flashback cameo having an American Beauty shower moment. There were actually a lot of flashbacks now that I think about it - being the first ep this makes a certain amount of sense.

Stylistically, it has promise and will hopefully hit it's stride by the 2nd or 3rd.

Looking forward to: The Librarians

The new show tonight taking the slot from the highly overrated Summer Heights High on the ABC looks like a beauty.

It's called The Librarians and the website is well worth a look - rather schmick and full of nice book related gags. I'm leaning towards "Nothing can so easily transport you to a far away land as a book or a mental imbalance" - which appears to come from the character played by Bob Franklin, one of Oz's best comedy imports ever.



It kicks off tonight at 9.30 on the ABC

Struggling: to make progress on uni work

The finishing post is in sight, only four more assignments and I'm done for the year - unfortunately 3 of them are due in 5 days, on Monday.

Two of them should be a big old barrel of fun - building on the games I've been working on (mentioned previously) but before I get to those, I feel like I should get the duller, research and writing based one out of the way. Not entirely sure how this prioritisation works - something along the lines of no dessert until you eat your greens I guess - but it doesn't really seem to make sense.

Oh well, nothing to do but to do it really.

Watching: Architecture in Helsinki guest programming rage

Flicked on Rage on Saturday night as you do to find a weird and wonderful Hall and Oates clip followed up directly by one of the oddest, most cult-like videos I've every seen by The Jacksons. Turned out that quirky Melbourne band Architecture in Helsinki were programming the night and a fine job they did too. Check out their full list here and here are some of the choice selections they made. I really liked the Yo La Tengo go to rock school clip as well.

PWNing: The ANU Film Group movie trivia night

At the risk of sounding a little full of myself, the PC and I rocked the house on Saturday night at the ANU Film Group movie trivia night, with a 10 point victory over a bunch (at least 100) of some very nerdy film types.

Credit should of course go to most of the rest of our team as well (Team "How's the serenity?"), who, like us, hadn't organised a table but lobbed up assuming we'd be able to join one.

As far as quiz nights go, I think it was one of the best organised and most fun ones I've been to - well paced, entertaining and with an imaginative variety of questions and mini-activities.

Table games included an image containing picture clues to the titles of 20 movies (including a large, black bird soaring in the sky which a number of table members had to be convinced was The Crow rather than Black Hawk Down) and a series of story synopses which had been translated to another language and back again online (apparently most of the table - including several film students - haven't heard of that obscure indie flick Citizen Kane).

Question rounds included observation tests for clips, work out the theme of three selected soundtracks (eg all from franchises, all scored by John Williams, etc), a very tricky Catchphrase word puzzle round where you had picture clues which gave you actors or movies or whatever which then gave you the answer to a bigger listed puzzle (e.g Blade Runner & Black Hawk Down for Ridley Scott)

Nice to have some quiz night activities that were out of the ordinary. My taking-the-quiz-night-a-tad-too-seriously side only came out briefly a couple of times (well we were leading and our scribes were misspelling/not recognising every other name) when I had to fight the table for a couple of answers (leaf for Joaquin Phoenix's real name and Showgirls as a Golden Razzie record holder - over Gigli) - fortunately I was right after getting all insistent.

All up an entirely fun night and very well put together. (and prizes are always nice - books and privileges cards - it was an added bonus to see a former housemate - the taskmaster - come second, particularly after she rather rudely pushed in front of me in a line earlier on)

And now the PC is a little geed up about quiz shows (which I think she could do pretty well on)

Playing: Songs for Sunset

Staring Through My Rear View 2Pac 5:14 The Prophet
Dawsons Creek Sarah Sarah 3:05 The Kids Who Kill For Sugar: Popboomerang Records 5th Birthday Sampler
When The War Is Over Something For Kate 5:19 Standing On The Outside (The Songs Of Cold Chisel)
Khe Sanh Paul Kelly 4:17 Standing On The Outside (The Songs Of Cold Chisel)
You Say You Lie The Raveonettes 2:55 Pretty In Black
Ladykillers Lush 3:14 Lovelife
Let's Get Lost Chet Baker 3:44 A Selection From 25 Best Albums
Fire Fire Fire Dappled Cities 3:48 Granddance
War Still A Run Zenzile 4:20 Modus Vivendi
Us Amazonians Kirsty MacColl 4:09 Tropical Brainstorm
Caravan Trash The Fuelers 3:23 Hot Dang
Show Me Dexy's Midnight Runners 3:25 Uncut The Playlist - March 2007
The Illustrated Man Konrad Lenz w/The Henchmen 4:01 One of the missing
Velvet Girl Howling Bells 3:22 VARIOUS Now Hear This! - February 2007
The Lion & Albert Jarvis Cocker 3:10 VARIOUS Now Hear This! - February 2007
Panther Dash The Go! Team 2:45 Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Know You Too Well Minimum Chips 2:52 Kitchen Tea Thankyou
The Old Man Can Talk Bit By Bats 3:30 Bit By Bats
Sharkfin Blues The Drones 4:32 Single
This is Not a Love Song Nouvelle Vague 4:33 Versions
Twin Lakes Sodastream 2:12 Reservations