House of Cards Reviewed
I really love the show and thought this might be a nice place for a talk-back on it!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Started with the first episode last night,
hoping to finish up with #13 by midnight.
I LOVE IT
Here's an egregious example, where the writer (vastly overrated) makes the actor go on and on, telling us what we already know:
"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be."
You're right; an aside is less jarring in the theater. What's less jarring in movies is a voice-over representing the thoughts of a character.
"House of Cards" violates the rules for movies. I like that.
It's not my fault. The devil makes me write stuff like that. 
Having my head bitten off would have been bad enough, but having the crunchy bits spat out would have been truly awful. It's lucky for me that you have reverted to your usual easy-going self. 
I agree about Kevin Spacey. Another movie of his with voice-over is "The Usual Suspects".
Another great movie IMO is "LA Confidential", in which Kevin Spacey's role is truncated during a scene in which the main bad guy does something particularly evil.
so that I can be normal out in the world of normals. But I'm finding it less fun. Your thing just wasn't snarky enough to get my goat and it was a good point.
