Elijah David

I recently finished going through the Doctor Who spinoff Class , and I confess to having mixed feelings about the show. Although for the most part it scans as a DW-themed Buffy-style show about high school kids dealing with supernatural events, its failings fall into two categories of my personal pet peeves: wide open finales with no promise of renewal, and bad Narnia references. I'll deal with the first briefly before diving into the titular error. Wide Open Finales I'm not opposed to a good cliffhanger for a TV show's current season. In fact, they're often a good way to get me excited for a show again after slogging through 20-some episodes on a weekly basis. BUT using a cliffhanger in place of wrapping things up when you have NO guarantee of returning next season ticks me off. Class 's finale ends with literally no denouement. It ends with a joke. There's no time for the characters to recover from the deaths and destruction of the last hour. And the B...

Where has August gone? It seems like I was just getting ready for it to begin. Ah well. This month's been a bit more productive than July. Here are some snippets for you to enjoy. I think all this time he’s harbored a certain animosity towards magic and anyone connected to our world. It’s possible he blames people like us for his wife leaving him. Or he could just be a royal jerk , she said. I chuckled despite myself. Or that. *** “Well, that was about as effective as I expected,” Stavros said. “Better than I expected.” The wooden voice had called from inside Reese’s office. I stepped past the door, which hung aslant in the frame. “Belchor?” The place was a mess. Papers and books had been torn from the shelves and Belchor groaned from its prone position in the floor. Scorch marks traced smudgy shapes across its back. “Is there someone under the bookshelf?” Samantha asked, trying to tilt Belchor upright. “Belchor is the bookshelf,” I replied, helping her l...

Last night we introduced Samwise to his first superhero film: The Incredibles . It went over the same as almost every movie we've shown him that isn't Moana : some interest, but he spent most of the movie playing in the floor instead. In addition to reminding me why I love this movie so much, the experience got me thinking about the sequel due out next summer. We haven't heard a whole lot about the movie so far; we know that Helen (Elastigirl) will be the central character the way Bob (Mr. Incredible) was in the first film. We know that Frozone, Edna, and the Underminer will all return. And we know that the movie picks up right where the first one left off: with the Incredibles facing off against the Underminer. So, with that in mind, here's my wishlist for The Incredibles 2 : A time jump. Yes, the movie picks up with the fight against the Underminer, but that could easily be the opening fight sequence that sets the stage for the film. I'd like to see...

So this month has actually been a decent one for artwork (albeit most of the paintings in this post are due to last weekend). Commence the art-sharing! This first piece is a watercolor postcard I made for a friend's birthday this week (and this is the reason I swapped Watercolor Wednesday and ThrowBook Thursday--to allow the card to make it to its recipient). The card is a mixture of a Ray Bradbury quote and an I am the Messenger  reference. Happy birthday, Bella! The next two images are more postcards, both experimenting with some techniques and colors. The first was a chance to try out one of the brushes in my set that allows you to do fun textures (seen at the bottom). The second was trying out the browns and oranges in my pan set to see what I could/wanted to do for some of the other paintings later in this post. After my Silver Chair  binge last month, I listened to the audio book and Focus on the Family versions of The Horse and His Boy , and o...

If there's one thing I love in fiction — whether it's printed or presented in some audiovisual form like movies or video games — it's a long-haul revelation. I mean something that adds more dimension to a character than it ought to at face value because it fits into what we already know about them and builds on that knowledge in a way that is both satisfying and piquing. One example of this is the revelation about Snape near the end of Deathly Hallows ; knowing his history adds a great deal of depth to his interactions with the main characters throughout the series (and fits in with some details we might have forgotten from early on, such as his determination to save Harry in Year 1 when Harry's broomstick is bewitched during a Quidditch match). But I'm not here to talk about Snape. The title of the post is, after all, "Long Hauls and Minor Characters" —and I have a particular minor character in mind. Fasir. I'm going to assume none of you kno...

First off, my apologies for missing Monday's post. It's been a busy week and I dropped some things. I'm also mixing things up a bit this month and switching the weeks for ThrowBook Thursday and Watercolor Wednesday (for reasons which shall become apparent next week). This month's book is Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. This is the edition I first read, and the cover that comes to mind when I think of Neverwhere. If you've never heard of this book, let me give you a quick history lesson. Neverwhere  began as a TV show for the BBC. While the show was in production, Neil Gaiman worked on a novelization to bear with the cuts and changes the show made to the scripts. Now, the book is a bestseller and the show is hardly known (though it does have a cult following in some circles). When the American edition was released, Gaiman cut some things (mostly a second prologue and some humor the editor thought would go over the American audience's heads) and added others (...

I recently finished working my way through our Studio Ghibli collection, which includes every feature film the studio released between 1986 and 2011 (except for Only Yesterday ), with the addition of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind . In celebration of this, and as a result of watching so many of the movies so close together, I though this month's Top 10 could be my ranking of Studio Ghibli films. Note: I'm not going to be entirely objective with this list because some of the films I'm excluding (looking at you, Grave of the Fireflies ) due to the fact that I'm not likely to watch them again (or at least not for a very long time). Rewatchability is high on the list of qualifications for this Top 10. With that out of the way, to the rankings! 10. Porco Rosso This movie surprised me with how much I enjoyed it, considering I knew very little about it going in. But the story is very heartfelt, and the characters are lovable in their individual ways. My one quib...