Links and Updates

It’s the season of the witch, which means that my Tumblr dashboard is filled with photos and images of autumn, despite the fact that here in New Zealand, we’re heading into summer.

The spectre of Covid-19 is still hanging over all of us, and much of the team spirit that defined our first experience with the pandemic last year is on the wane. The anti-vaxxer crowd are making their voices heard, and plenty of selfish assholes are flouting lockdown rules in order to exercise their right to “freedom”, even though their behaviour is only going to limit freedom in the long run.

If there was any justice in the world, they’d be the ones that catch the Delta strain and spend the next few weeks gasping for breath, though they’ll probably just pass it on to others. What I wouldn’t give to see a certain religious leader/nutter hooked up to a ventilator.

But I got my second jab this morning from a walk-in centre so I can tick that off my to-do list. And there’s some interesting stuff coming up...

First of all, I originally posted this on Tumblr but am putting it here as well: a Blu-ray DVD set of all three films in Cartoon Saloon’s Irish trilogy: The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea and Wolfwalkers, plus a bonus disc featuring concept artwork, commentaries, interviews and even a Gaelic dub. Even the box itself looks gorgeous.

I’ll have this for Christmas, thanks!

Speaking of Cartoon Saloon, some concept art was recently released concerning a proposed Winnie the Pooh reboot, a collaboration with Disney that would have seen the One Hundred Acre Wood transposed to an urban setting. The pilot wasn’t picked up, so it’s a moot point anyway, but I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, I want corporate Disney to stay far, far away from an independent studio like Cartoon Saloon, and I’m not totally sold on the idea of a Winnie the Pooh in the suburbs. On the other hand, it does look like it would have been rather charming, and yes, I would have totally watched it.

From Laika, that other incredible animation studio comes a first look at Wildwood, based on the book by Colin Meloy (also part of a trilogy). I’ve had my eye of these books for a while, so on hearing about this project I immediately ordered them from the library, and the material looks like a perfect fit for that distinctive stop-motion aesthetic: a little dark, a little creepy, and deeply gorgeous.

And from Aardman (the other stop-motion studio) is Robin Robin, which looks like completely charming Christmas viewing. It feels like it’ll vibe with Christmas specials of my youth, like The Snowman or The Angel and the Soldier Boy.

One of my favourite authors, Garth Nix, is returning to his signature series (the Old Kingdom, elsewhere known as the Abhorsen Chronicles) for a sixth instalment. Called Terciel and Elinor, it’s a prequel that explores the lives and relationship of Sabriel’s parents – Sabriel being the protagonist and title of the very first book set in this particular world.

And the cover art is to die for. There are three variations, as well as a whole new reprint of the series in its entirety, designed to match the third option. I already own all the previous books, but oh how I covet a brand new matching set.

It’s also a timely reminder that I own, but have not yet read, three of Nix’s most recent novels. Now was not a good time to fall off the “no library books this year” wagon.

Over on television, it appears that Russell T. Davis is returning as showrunner to Doctor Who after Chris Chibnall steps down from the role, and that Babylon 5 is being rebooted on the CW with original creator J. Michael Straczynski at the helm. Um... okay?

I have to admit I’m a little bemused at both these announcements, the former because it feels like a step back rather than forward (though I suppose after such a long hiatus, he’s got some fresh ideas to contribute?) and the latter because... was anyone asking for this?

Given how Babylon 5 was screwed over by the network back in the nineties (they essentially cancelled the show, forcing a quick wrap-up of its major plot-threads in season four, only to un-cancel the show, leading to a strung-out and largely superfluous season five) and how Straczynski had to keep working around quitting cast members, limited budgets and other dramas, I can see why he might leap at the chance to do the whole thing over from scratch... but at The CW?

(Though I suppose it’s not quite as bewildering as the reboot of The 4400, a show which never got to finish its first attempt at a story during its initial run).

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I’ve been pulling together a retrospective of the BBC’s Robin Hood (2006 – 2009) and one of my comments was that its complete lack of a cultural footprint meant that we would never get any cast reunions or follow-up commentary from its creators, especially not over a decade after its cancellation... so of course, Radio Times releases an interview with creators Foz Allan and Dominic Minghella and actors Jonas Armstrong and Lucy Griffiths (who played Robin and Marian).

The most important bit of information to be gleaned from it is that we get confirmation – clear and unambiguous confirmation – that the fridging of Marian at the end of season two was not brought on by Lucy Griffiths’s decision to leave the show, but a deliberate creative decision made by writer Dominic Minghella. He’s still infuriatingly pleased with himself over that call, but fifteen years on, I finally have some semblance of closure on that issue.

But that something bizarre was happening behind the scenes is undeniable, as at the time there was a widely-circulated press release from the BBC that blamed Lucy Griffiths for Marian’s death, citing her decision to seek new opportunities in Hollywood. Clearly they were in damage control after the audience backlash, and had no issues in throwing Griffiths under the bus in order to save face (and it makes me wonder if this passing of the buck was detrimental to her career). Alas, the linked interview provides no further insight into any of this, and Griffiths is as closed-lipped as ever as to just what the fuck was actually going on.

(I can’t imagine she was happy to have been written out of her first big gig, and given that the show’s only other female character/actress – Anjali Jay – was permanently written out at the same time as Marian, I can’t help but wonder... is there a #MeToo story in here somewhere?)

I suppose they were right to be panicked, as the show’s ratings fell exponentially and season three is generally considered to be incoherent shit. To this day I’ve never seen anything as counter-productive as a Robin Hood adaptation killing off its heroine – specifically one as iconic and beloved as Maid Marian – partway through its run (most shows wait until the finale to drop that particular storytelling turd) and the third season’s pathetic attempts to set up for a fourth shrivelled on the vine.

If you enjoyed this incredibly bitter mini-rant then stay tuned, because my God, there’s a much longer one coming!

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Plenty of trailers have dropped for upcoming films and television shows, particularly The Matrix: Resurrections, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, the third and final season of Lost in Space, a brand-new take on Macbeth, an adaptation of The Wheel of Time, and Cyrano... the musical.

I certainly didn’t see that last one coming, and had no idea that Cyrano de Bergerac even had been adapted into a stage musical. Heck, apparently it’s been done three times already, and I couldn’t tell which one is being used as the basis for this film. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure how the original play ends. Does Cyrano get the girl? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t and I find that I don’t want to spoil myself.

Speaking of musicals... holy shit...

Yup, definitely going to have to make time for this one. Perhaps I could make it a double feature with this year’s woke Cinderella musical.

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With the twenty-year anniversary of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings coming up (twenty years??!!) I found this article/confession from a former Orlando Bloom fangirl to be very funny and charming, and an interesting look at how fandom has changed over the last two decades.

This particular trend has died down a bit by now, but here’s an interesting look at how fandom (as is its way every time an initially-useful but soon-to-be misused term comes along) seized the phrase “character-coding” and – you guessed it – applied it to white male characters. The mentality behind it seems to be a way of elevating the stanning of said characters into a form of social justice, by insisting that the likes of Loki and Kylo Ren are actually coded as minorities, leading to insane arguments that actual Black characters are the bad guys in any given conflict between them and the white male villains. Oof.

‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ Is A Hell Known Only To The Undead. This review of the Space Jam sequel made me laugh out loud – several times.

An essay on the subject of Sore Winners. What I found interesting was how it links in nicely with fandom’s current “don’t critique, just let people enjoy things!” mentality, and the pitfalls of that.

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For now, I’m about to embark on The Craft double-feature (the original nineties flick and 2020’s quasi-sequel) and write that meta I promised you last year, and get back to playing The Colonel’s Bequest on a retro-gaming site that I found a couple of days ago. It feels so good to play the games of my youth, and this one is perfect October fare.

Still haven’t gotten to Squid Game, but hopefully soon!