With the influx of new people, I'm seeing a lot of introductory posts on my reading page. Here's me:

• Liz
• Thirty-six years old
• Apparently that makes me part of the "Oregon Trail generation", except I had never heard of that game before the 2000s
• Active in online fandom since age 17
• Oh God, that's nearly 20 years
• I got an invite to my 20 year high school reunion last month
• I'm so old
• I used to have so much mercy
• Me thinking about other people: "Thirty-six is really young!"
• Thinking about myself: "SO OLD."

Anyway, here's some stuff I've read and watched lately.

( TV, movies, podcasts, books ... a couple of books. )

I paid $50 to see an advance screening, which netted me:

- Cap-themed 3D glasses (also available: Winter Soldier, Falcon and Black Widow themed glasses -- alas, the bags were given out at random);
- a limited edition Captain America poster which I haven't unrolled yet;
- a small Guardians of the Galaxy poster;
- a Cap bobblehead, or maybe one of those vinyl figurines that look like bobbleheads but without the bobble;
- a large popcorn;
- oh, and a movie ticket.

Note that there was free popcorn, but no free drinks. CUNNING. Also thrown in was being shouted at by security guards to turn off our phones for piracy resents. suburbannoir was stopped and made to pull her phone out of her bag and switch it off in front of them, which was strange, since no one else got that treatment, and it created a bit of a bottleneck. Later, coming back from the bathrooms, I had some trouble explaining that my (switched off) phone was in my bag in the cinema, and not on my person at that moment.

There was also a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long wait for the movie to start. FINALLY -- followed by a warning that security guards EQUIPPED WITH NIGHT VISION GOGGLES (entire cinema laughed) would be watching us.

Trailers: Uhhhhm, there's apparently another Spiderman movie? Is that a thing? And an interesting bit of sci-fi called Edge of Tomorrow, which totally would have intrigued me if it hadn't starred Tom Cruise. LUCKILY, then I found out it's a whitewashed adaptation of a Japanese novel -- well, partially whitewashed; the heroine is an American woman in the book. It's been translated into English, so stay tuned.

Amusing bit: a trailer for a chick flick starring Cameron Diaz and Jaime Lannister was followed by a suggestion that ladies could make it the centrepiece of girls' night out. The majority-female audience for the superhero movie laughed quite loudly.

Finally, the movie. ( Spoilers. )

Without getting into spoilers, I thoroughly enjoyed Iron Man 3, which may not mean much since I also liked Iron Man 2 the first time I saw it. I predict that Tumblr will have lots of feels, some of them hair-related (stay past the credits as usual), and some of them outrage that a plot development confidently being predicted on the basis of three seconds in the trailer doesn't go as expected.

( One small spoiler for the cast, one hint at a spoiler for the plot. )

In conclusion, this was great, where is my Black Widow movie?

I observed Australia Day by seeing a British movie, then watching the episode of Babylon 5 with the racist Australian, and finally reading a teen novel set in Port Adelaide during the 1928 wharfies' strike.  So that was patriotic. 

Setting out, suburbannoir and I found ourselves with the choice of going out to a suburban multiplex, or heading closer to the city to the trendy independent cinema.  We chose the 'burbs on account of how the food court options were superior, but then it turned out that the multiplex's best-value (for us) popcorn deal came with a free Muppet, so obviously we made the right choice.  (And we have the Fozzie to prove it!)

Hoyts may ahve misjudged the audience somewhat -- we were the youngest people in the cinema by about 15 years, but all the pre-trailer ads were aimed at school-leavers.  The trailers themselves were terrible -- we got:
- Clive Owen versus his moustache
- Liam Neeson versus WOLVES
- something about a CIA agent who's shocked and amazed that his bosses are doing something a bit sketchy
- something about two CIA agents competing for Reese Witherspoon, and breaking various international laws in the process.  I'm not sure, but I think this last one was meant to be a comedy.

After all that, Tinker Tailor was pretty amazing.  I'm really glad I saw it at the cinema, not because it was full of amazing special effects that needed to be seen on a big screen, but because it was really intricate and demanded my full attention, and if I'd been watching at home I'd have been reaching for my phone or looking up the cast on Wikipedia or making a quilt, or doing something other than concentrating.  And that would have been a shame.

Of course, one reason why it demanded so much attention is that I have trouble telling middle-aged white men apart.  That's an exaggeration for comedic effect: I'm not very good with faces in general, but generally I can tell women apart by their hair and clothes.  Put me in a situation where you have lots of people of the same race and roughly similar ages, dressing alike -- men in suits, basically -- and I'm a bit lost.  Until I was actually in the cinema, I believed that all the Tinker Tailor ads on bus shelters around the city featured Bill Nighy, not Gary Oldman.  And I know and like Bill Nighy's face!  (I'd know and like Gary Oldman's face, too, if it didn't keep changing!)  (And suburbannoir pointed out that if Bill Nighy had been in it, the entire film would have exploded from an excess of concentrated Britishness.)

In short, for me the cast went:  Smiley aka Gary Oldman In Glasses, John Hurt, Benedict Cumberbatch + Benedict Cumberbatch's cheekbones and floppy ginger hair, Colin Firth, Caesar from Rome, the Dream Lord, that guy who isn't Jared Harris Mark Strong, and someone who I intially thought was Billie Piper in drag, but he turned out to be Tom Hardy. 

The women were a million times easier, since there were fewer of them and they all looked completely different from each other:  Belinda the Blonde, Beautiful Russian Lady, Random Kathy Bates, Lady Edith Crawley. 

Lots of unheralded flashbacks ("Which glasses are Gary Oldman wearing in this scene?  Oh, those.  Flashback, then."), which I think is why people found it hard to follow?  It all made sense, you just had to pay attention.  (Of course, one Amazon reviewer didn't realise it wasn't set in the present day, so.)  The climax was very low-key, but I had somehow expected that.  One for the DVD shelf -- even if the movie itself had been rubbish, the costume design made it a keeper.

Saw it last night with baggers and indeed. This was especially nifty has baggers had only read the first third of the book, so once the tent was up, she was in totally new territory.

We did make two mistakes, and since I booked the tickets, I'm responsible for both:

1. We saw it at Northlands, suburbialand, in the early evening on a Saturday night...
2. ...in the smaller, cheaper cinema with no leg room, inadequate air conditioning, a worryingly sticky floor and a peculiar smell.

So we were uncomfortable and surrounded by children and teenagers. Including five teenage girls behind us who talked loudly through the whole thing and very badly needed a smack.

The actual movie:

( 'We're older now, the light is dim, and you are only just beginning' )

If anyone else is in the mood to have dreams crushed and funny bones tickled, the first trailer for the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes is up.

It looks outrageously bad. I, for one, am so outraged that I downloaded it and put it on my iPod, so I can watch it and be outraged three times a day. (If anyone else wishes to do the same, they can grab it here.) I plan to further demonstrate my outrage by seeing it multiple times. Sorry, but it looks almost as funny as the Twilight movie, and I loved that one.

...Then, of course, I shall change my name and go into hiding, as cesario will inevitably come after me:

I got home late from Watchmen.  The downstairs neighbours have been playing '90s alt-rock all night.  I had to get up at five, for an early shift at work.

SEND ENERGY DRINKS!

This is relevant to the post that follows:

Anyway, yes, Watchmen.  I liked it, lots.  I'm not a purist regarding any film adaptation, except possibly ... no, I can't think of anything.  I thought the cast and effects were great, I had no sense of time passing, and I just loved it.  However.  ( Spoilers. )