Home Featured TV Shows All TV Shows Movie Reviews Book Reviews Articles Frequently Asked Questions About Us

Doux News: May 26, 2013

This Week: Peter Dinklage’s Mustache -- Mia Maestro -- Here Lies Damon Lindelof (Or Does He?) -- To Hardcore or Not to Care -- Summer 2013 -- This Week in Random Recommendations -- This Week in Cats


Peter Dinklage’s Moustache

Bryan Singer tweezed (that’s a tease, via Twitter) the fandom with a picture of himself and a mustachioed Peter Dinklage, captioned “Reviewing tomorrow's work on the flight back to Montreal with #PeterDinklage #XMen #daysoffuturepast.”

Cue the uproar! While Dinkage’s role is not yet confirmed, Blastr hypothesized that everyone’s favorite Lannister might be playing Bolivar Trask. I have no idea who that is, since I don’t follow the X-Men comics, but I do know two things: I love Peter Dinklage, and I love Bryan Singer. So color me excited.

Mia Maestro

Deadline reported that Mia Maestro is slated to star in an upcoming vampire-science-high-concept drama on FX. The Strain, created by Guillermo del Toro and Carlton Cuse, is based on del Toro’s novels, in which a deadly vampire virus creates pulse-pounding drama and the opportunity for an impossibly sexy woman to kick some serious ass.

Here Lies Damon Lindelof (Or Does He?)

Grantland offered up a great interview with Damon Lindelof of Lost, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Prometheus, and a few other awesome things. The interview is worth reading in full to listen to the Great and Powerful Lindelof ruminate on his penchant for mystery (that headline “Here lies Damon Lindelof—or does he?” is his idea of what his tombstone might read), why he abandoned the Dark Tower project, and how much he likes self-flagellation. A few highlights include:

• Lindelof’s new series, The Leftovers takes place in a post-Rapture (or is it?) world—and the disappearance of Gary Busey is an important plot point.

• Lindelof also describes the series as “like a John Cheever novel with a supernatural air about it.”

• Lindelof is excited about his new film, 1952 (directed by Brad Bird). But he’s also happy not to be writing the new JJ Abrams Star Wars movie, because he worries that everyone would hate it if his name were attached to the project.

To Hardcore or Not to Care

Lindelof’s interview also included a brief but interesting discussion of the difficulty of pitching genre films and TV shows to the two audiences who care about genre films and TV shows: hardcore geeks, and everyone else. I find this fascinating, as I myself vacillate between hardcore and “everybody else.” Take Buffy—I recently had a conversation with an acquaintance about that delightful, re-watchable, show. “I love Buffy,” she cried. “Which season is your favorite?” I asked. “Oh, well, I don’t think I’ve seen Season Six. And was there a seventh, with, like, a musical episode?”

I was tempted to bite out a Cordelia-esque, “If you haven’t seen the entire run, you don’t get to claim to love a show.” (I didn’t, because I was raised right.) But I’m sure other fans of other things have bitten their tongues when I admit that I don’t read the crazy message-board theories about Jon Snow’s parentage in Game of Thrones and the Song of Ice and Fire novels, or that I don’t read graphic novels, or that I never intend to watch “old” Doctor Who episodes, or that I think most fantasy and SF novels are badly written.

Does that make me a poseur? The equivalent of the “girl who went and saw a second-week screening of The Avengers” in this mock PSA from Portlandia?



Do I care? I like to think that—having been 29 for a few years now—I’m old enough to put these types of debates behind me. But I can’t help but notice that these debates keep recurring online and in person, both implicitly (as in Lindelof’s interview) and explicitly (as in the Portlandia sketch). What do you think?

Summer 2013

I’ve updated our Summer 2013 post with information on a few new and returning shows, including The Killing (ugh), Broadchurch (David Tennant!), and the return of Inspector Lewis (hooray!). As always, feel free to add recommendations for more entries on the summer calendar, which will live on the right sidebar until we feel like taking it down.


This Week in Random Recommendations

Clarkesworld Magazine features SF and fantasy short stories each month, and many of them are quite good. But E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” is truly excellent, and I recommend you give it a whirl.


This Week in Cats

Our very own Paul Kelly not only writes wonderful Doctor Who reviews, but also curates many of the cat videos we feature here at Doux News. This week, he recommended “TV Dinner” from Simon’s Cat. I recommend that you play it near a real cat—my own were convinced a tiny kitten was trapped in my laptop.




10 comments:

  1. I've always though the "you're not a true fan unless such and such" argument was bollocks. If you love something that is all that matters. So what if you've haven't see every season of Buffy, or every version of Doctor Who or read every Harry Potter book. I haven't ready every HP book, but I still think of myself as a fan because I love the ones I did read.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with Mark. Like so much in life, as soon as we start to define who is or is not a fan, we fall into the trap of assigning labels. Never a good idea.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brava ChrisB !! Damn labels.

    I love Buffy, but I will NOT go check the comics. I might buy a book relMted to the show though. maybe.

    LOVED Simon's cat. Crap, can't see the Portlandia video : they don't like my Canadian I.P. Oh heck. (1)

    Loved the clip of the fight between Kirk and Khan : we can so clearly see the faces of the stunt doubles (drawbacks on the enhanced version) and Khan may say that he has 5 times the strength of Kirk's, but that plastic tube will be just fine. Eyes rolling.

    (1) A nice consolation prize : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lEQ_yNJTZ0

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree with everyone before me that it's stupid to exclude people from any fandom just because they don't obsess about it as much as you do. Nerds/geeks should understand the pain that being excluded causes and not do that to others. Maybe our agreement on this issue is what brings us all together at this site. We accept and support each other, rather than claim we have more love/knowledge about one show than someone else. Doux Reviews accepts the casual fan and the obsessed alike. If anything, everyone just seems to get excited when someone who came to the site for LOST (like me) starts watching and commenting on another show (like Doctor Who or Buffy). This site is about sharing not excluding.

    And that's my warm-and-fuzzy for the day.

    PS I love that cat video, Paul. I have a cat just like that. The only difference is she doesn't lay down until I really have to go to the bathroom:) It's one of her bonus senses.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree with everyone as well. A while ago, I posted a comment on an article that was discussing the possibility of resurrecting Firefly. I posted that I believe that some things have their time... and despite the fact that I am a huge fan of Firefly, I believed it was time to let it go. Whoooaaaahhh... within minutes someone fired back at me in the comments that I couldn't possibly be a true fan, that I was betraying the series by my comments. And they were quite strident about it. Sometimes it is time to move on and let something be. Doesn't mean I wasn't a fan.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm surprised no one has mentioned who Bolivar Trask is. He created the Sentinels, the purple-grey 20 ft. tall robots that are programmed to capture mutants. In the darker stories, they decide it is easier to just kill mutants, in order to protect "pure" humans. (Think of a cave troll - Terminator mixture, with just enough personality to be creepy.) The guys are just behind Magneto as the primary opponents of the X-Men.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Heather1

    While the hardcore fans were campaigning for a 8th season of the Gilmore Girls I kept telling myself a) pull the darn plug and mostly b) get real people : the 2 leads are fed up with the show anyway.

    And yes, I'm a big fan of the aforementioned show. Let go.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Celticmarc

    Right. I too was a fan of Gilmore Girls... but when she went and married Rory's dad, I said... That's it for me.

    BTW: I'm in Montreal too (well, Laval actually).

    ReplyDelete

We love comments! We moderate because of spam and trolls, but don't let that stop you! It’s never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.