Low-key but good

I accomplished incredibly little this weekend except for some social time with friends and catching up on some show marathons. I think I'm just fine with that.

I escorted Saturday morning with C, and then she came over to hang out for the afternoon. We got her totally addicted to the Ninja Crack! Ha! Bad Influences 'R' Us!

On Sunday S came by, and we watched Shortbus, which I've known I would most likely love, but hadn't gotten around to seeing in the theatres (I'm very bad about getting out to see anything in the theatres -- I like DVDs and pause buttons and comfy couches and cheap snack food). Since it was available used on Netflix, I went ahead and bought it. Oh, am I thoroughly pleased with that purchase! What a phenomenal, beautiful movie. I think the way Mitchell approached the entire process was fascinating and brilliant, and what he achieved looked more like real sexuality as I recognize it than almost anything I've seen previously. And I think he was spot-on when he commented that actual sex has been used in european movies for years, but generally in very dark, bleak movies, and he wanted to do something different. He shows sexuality as complex, and sometimes painful and frustrating (all of which are certainly true), but there's no sense that it's a lead-up to karmic punishment (it's particularly refreshing to see kinky and poly sexualities shown without melodrama and karmic retribution). Just beautiful. And fascinating DVD extras. And lots of fun playing "spot the sextras and bit players", especially if you follow the queer indie scene at all (having just rewatched Hung, we spotted two actresses from that in the "women's room" scene, for example). I truly hope more filmmakers follow his lead on this one, but I rather suspect it'll be hard to do -- he committed a huge amount of extra time and energy to creating the right energy and dynamics for the project, and I can easily see others trying to follow the basic idea without getting that underlying concept, and creating something much more like regular porn (it'd probably be pretty good regular porn, but it'd miss the magic that this has). In general, I just feel a little warm glow of love for everyone who helped make that movie happen.

The rest of the weekend was mostly Doctor Who, in an especially schizophrenic combination. I had a couple of Netflixed older eps at home that I hadn't watched yet (Genesis of the Daleks, my first Tom Baker episode, and The Caves of Androzani, which rather surprised me by being Peter Davison's final episode, and also the transition to Colin Baker). I'd forgotten that I hadn't fleshed out the latter parts of theferrett's one-day marathon suggestion in my netflix queue, so I hadn't been anticipating the fast changeover (I was using his one-day "Doctor Who introduction" marathon as a starting point so I didn't miss the extra-good bits). I've since gone back into Netflix and started going through as many eps as they have available, while attempting to remain mostly chronological. I'm now in for a bunch more William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton coming up (I'd already watched all available Jon Pertwee, because I adore him), and then I'll get back into the Tom Bakers again. It's frustrating that some episodes are gone forever, and plenty more simply aren't out on DVD yet, but at least it's making this project somewhat more manageable for the moment. Still, the first 28 disks in my Netflix queue at the moment are all Doctor Who. Oh, dear.

I also had most of 2 eight-hour marathons of the David Tennant Doctor from SciFi, which I've been anticipating for ages, due to the whole bizarre screw-up with the rental disks (halfway through the first disk it turned to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so they pulled them from circulation, and they've remained unavailable for the past 4 months, which has been especially frustrating, since heron61 burned me Torchwood, and I wasn't going to watch that until I'd seen the first David Tennant season). So, now that I finally have all those episodes on my DVR? It's finally available on Netflix again. I'm not sure whether to be excited or infuriated (ok, excited -- special features!). Now I've got Netflix alternating old Who and new Who. I think it might break my brain. However, I did get a head start on about six episodes (Tooth and Claw through Idiot's Lantern). As much as I adored Christopher Eccleston, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Tennant, but I'm quite, quite happy with him. In actuality, I have yet to develop a real unadulterated loathing for any of the Doctors yet, and I've kind of surprised myself at taking to the character-switching throughout the show -- I'd wondered going in whether that'd mix badly with my tendency to get very attached to specific characters and actors, and it doesn't seem to have.

I've noticed that in general I'm a marathon and theme kind of person in terms of media. I tend to wait til a show comes up on a marathon, or until the season is released on DVD, or at least released in daily syndication (the advent of my Buffy fannishness). I hate watching one episode a week. Just not my thing. Part of my love for the DVR is that I can do a similar thing -- right now I have about six weeks of The Riches waiting for a personal marathon. And I do something similar with movies -- I'll do a run of zombie movies, or Terry Gilliam movies, or queer indie movies, or what-have-you. It's partly my own obsessive streak, and my tendency toward completism (although I'm gradually getting better at keeping that from forcing me into truly horrible entertainment choices), and partly the fun of really immersing myself into a specific little subgenre for a while, and exploring how different people do it.


Incidentally, I'm working the late shift at work all nights this week except Wednesday, and I'm going to be patient-instructing then.