Strictly Come Dancing: Week 10

Real Life kept me away from this blog, during the week of excitment and adventure. Or something. I was very sad to see Cherie go last week, though it was a fair decision, and it was a shame John Sergent decided to leave, but I'm not sad to see the back of the endless debates, arguements etc etc.

Moving on.

This week felt quite exciting, more so than last week, which felt a bit of a let down dancewise. Jodie managed a latin dance! I'm very impressed. I enjoyed it alot, though I agree with Craig that it needed a few more basic steps.

I didn't like Christine's chacha at all, it felt awkward, and she lost her footing constantly. Her overperformance in her top half only emphasised the footwork she was lacking. I agreed with Arlene - the performance was there, the steps were not.

Lisa's dance was apparently unmemorable. What did she do? Oh, a quickstep. It was not too bad, it didn't quite have the lovely gliding that other quicksteps we've seen have had. It also felt a bit too slow, mostly at the begining.

Tom and Camilla danced a decent tango, nothing too special, but he did seem to be really taking charge, even though he was leading poor Camilla about by the arm!

Rachel's foxtrot was lovely, possibly not 40/40 lovely though. I prefered her rumba last week, which was smashing. But she did manage to impress me with a Foxtrot, that famously boring dance, so well done her.

Austin and Erin's chacha was brilliant, really entertaining. I actually sucumbed to voting for them, because they are in a dangerous position and I think they deserve to stay.

(Randomly, I ended up speaking to Austin's aunt in the Post Office queue this week. It was a fascinating, though somewhat bizarre, twenty minutes.)

I'd quite like Lisa or Christine to go, but I've no idea which way the public will vote. I think Austin might end up in the dance off.

The judges bickering. Oh god, I hate Len. I HATE LEN. He thinks his opinion is the best and we should just ignore those two over there. Good on Craig for intertupting him for once I say, and absolutely spot on with Len offering useless advice. URGH. He'll come on ITT next week and be all 'oh, we have four judges for four different opinions and of course we'll disagree sometimes,' ignoring the fact that he is just rude and disrespectful of those different opinions and and and URGH.

Also, Bruce gets worse and worse.

A Collection of Sequels

I haven't read much recently. It's a bit of a pain, as my to-read pile has become a bookshelf full. Unfortuantely I got a bit stuck in my last book, which was the sequel to Rendevouz with Rama, cleverly entitled Rama II.

Sadly, I was not as captured by it as I was by the first book. It didn't help that large sections of the first part were written in a 'future history' style which is either brilliant or awful, in my opinion. I loved Last and First Men, (Olaf Stapledon,) which an entire book of future history. This time I haven't been enjoying it. It probably hasn't helped that it is following a time in our future history where, following a global boom, the global financial system crashes and collapses, leading to nearly a centuries worth of famine, death, disease, etc etc before mankind gets things sorted. It's a bit close to home. (Though at least they had colonised other planets by this time.)

Anyway, I have three more lots of sequels to read now. First I have the the third in the Heechee series by Fredrik Pohl. The first book, Gateway is one of my favourite books, and I was thrilled to discover there was a series. I enjoyed the second book, so I have high hopes for Heechee Rendezvous. (I'm doing alot of rendezvouing of late, it seems.)

Then, I have the third in Scott Orson Card's Ender series, Xenocide. Again, I loved Ender's Game, and I enjoyed the sequel, so I am looking forward to this one.

Then, I bought an entire series of books, in a bit of a mad moment. But I have a young adult book by John Marsden that I have owned since I was about 14, called Tomorrow When the War Began. It's about a group of teenagers who go camping in the wildness for a week and come home to find their country has been invaded. It ends with quite the cliffhanger and I have been waiting ten years to find out what happens. I think they were only published in Australia and America, and by the time I got to amazon they were all out of print. But they have been reprinted and now I have them all.

If I could only stumble across the third book of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series my life would be complete...

Strictly Come Dancing Week 8 and Results

I'm late with this. It's been that sort of week.


I have a great respect for Austin for keeping his Mum's anniversary private, rather than, as usually happens, letting the entire public know in the week leading up to it. Not that I suspect people of deliberately trying to get sympathy votes, but, you know. It was a nice change. I didn't think his rumba was that bad, overall, although definately worse than his usual dancing.

I think it is probably time John left the competition. After six years the judges have yet to understand that the more they berate and ridicule a contestent the more the public will vote for them. (Something Brown could remember for the next election?) Mostly, you need to make their dance as unforgettable as possible. If I were a judge I'd have said something fairly bland, like "nice storytelling, weak on technique," in a faintly bored, next-dance-please voice.

I was shocked that Jodie wasn't in the bottom two - awful, awful samba. I liked Tom's dance, especially his leaping around, although I don't understand the general fuss about him. I mean, I don't normally understand when the female population of Great Britian goes a bit mental for one of the male contestants, but it is doubly so for Tom. (Although, did you hear Kate Garraway and her comment to Jason Donovan, "he's not meant to turn you on, he's meant to turn us on." Oh, fuck off with your hetronormative, ignorant attitude.)

Cherie was beautiful, and danced beautifully too. I was even won over by Lisa's dance, and even if she turned out to be a giddy slash fangirl. (Seriously, if she was on the internet, she'd be one of those people who typed all in lowercase and txt language and used six million exclamation points at the end of every sentence.)

I thought Heather's tango was her best dance, ditto for Christine and Matthew's brilliant jive. I though Rachel's dance was okay, but I find her performance completely boring. Apparently the rest of the UK agrees with me.


It Takes Two needs to stop with the insane VTs. Today we had the composite dancer, and the crazy marriage thing (I worried about Nicole, though probably she doesn't care) and yesterday instead of amusing training clips at the end, we got some poorly made song vid. Less of that!

Book: The Other Side of the Sky, Arthur C Clarke

This is a collection of short stories, and some of them are very short. Unusually I loved every one of them. Completely unique, suprising ideas. Lots of twists at the end. And humor! I'd forgotten how much I loved sci-fi humor. Many years ago a bought a big collection of humourous sci-fi stories, poems and cartoons entitled Laughing Space in some charity shop somewhere, and it's one of favourite books to dip in and out of. Much of Clarke's stories have a humours slant, usually because humans are small, silly insignificant creatures and the universe is big and unpredicatable and awesome.

It's also many me think about my nano novel, which is scifi. Clarke can do alot of worldbuilding in a short story, and I need to think about how I'm going to do that in my novel. My worldbuilding has been very thin on the ground, despite me spending a long time ironing out the details of my settings.

Strictly Come Dancing: Week 7 and Results

Austin and Erin
Really? That hair? Okay, Erin. Anyway, a lovely, bright quickstep, glide-y but not skippy, perfect amount of rise and fall, lovely quick feet. Stunning ending. Very glad for Austin to get the first 10 - well deserved I think.

Heather and Brian
Heather needs to straighten her legs, and be alot sharper with her movements. It looked alot better in training, I think. I suspect she'll be leaving soon.

Also, Heather is in serious trouble with me for ressurecting Bruce's 'you're my favourite' catch phrase. I know he's used it a couple of times this series, but no body has played into until now. If we have to put up with the new, 'doddery I am not,' we shouldn't have to relive the past nightmares.

Jodie and Ian
I think Jodie's improving immensely, which is annoying because I don't like her. It's nice for Ian though. It was a very graceful waltz, though I agree with Craig that it was all a little too much. Particuarly the end, which was like a flashback to the cringe-worthy rumba they did. And what was with the dress? It has to be the most unflattering dress I've ever seen on anyone. The waist was too high, the neckline was too low, the squishy diamonds along her stomach made her stomach look all... odd shaped. So weird. And why where the floaty bits shiny?

Andrew and Ola
A poor choice of costume for Andrew, very unflattering shirt. Funny shoulder shimmies, looking very odd throughout. Even his 'best move' the rave step, as Craig said, looked awkward.

Lisa and Brendan
Hurrah! A nice colour dress and a nice style. However,why the costume department thought the lining should be orange is beyond me. Orange! Is that a traditional tango colour? How odd. The dance itself was actually quite good, and I always like traditional music for tangos.

Cherie and James
Oh Cherie. So many mistakes in a complicated routine. Unfortunately everytime she made a mistake she tensed up more, and as soon as you tense up, all the complicated arm tangle-y movement become impossible. I was worried for her this week, (no telling if the public have been voting for her or not) but luckily she's bak to dance again.

That said, I wish that Len would shut up about the whole 'dances suiting some people' thing. Yes, it's true, but on the other hand contestants in with a serious chance need to be at least competant at most of the dances. I can understand one dance not going well (Colin and his Jive, for example,) amongst a run of excellent dances, but when Len sas it to someone over and over, and the dances the are good at are still not outstanding, it gets a bit much.

Moving on.

John and Kristina
Bless Kristina. She is working so hard at choreographing. John's foxtro actually didn't look too bad, though I believe Len when he said it was all wrong! I'd love to see Kristina with someone with potential, I think she's shown she can choreograph well. John... well, it's nice he was saved again, but it's starting to get a bit much. I think once Heather'sgone,John will have to go. After that he'll be knocking out celebs with the potential of making the final/semis and that's annoying.

Tom and Camilla
I didn't like his face. It didn't help that mum christened him 'Desperate Dan' immediately. He was over acting it a bit, but the actual dance was good. I don't know why Len has sudden gotten in a tiff about capes - they've been using them for years and it's been generaly accepted that using the cape is a mark of a more difficult routine. Even Len has said that! Hmm.

Christine and Matthew
I spent most of the dance saying 'point your toes!' and 'extend!' and I was glad the judges picked up on that. It could have been really good, but waist down it felt all a little half-hearted. Perhaps watching the old films that looked so effortless fooled her into thinking it was effortless? Hmm. Lovely dress though.

Rachel and Vincent
It didn't wow me at all. The kicks/flicks/jumps were good, but everytime they went through each others legs or did turning, it lost energy and momentum. Which was sad.


Pro dances
... weird, weird Tina Turner dance. I don't really have any comments. The Anton-Flavia-Vincent-Erin dance was great. Stunning and entertaing. Lovely Anton and Vincent's little dance (that's the second time they've danced together now!) and Erin lifting Vincent. Now, if the girls could just dance together...maybe not Erin and Flavia. Erin and Camilla? Karen? Arlene? Claudia? A few thoughts.


Results
I predicted Heather and either Andrew or Cherie. So glad to see Cherie safe! It was a close call between Heather and Andrew, but I did think that Heather improved alot in the dance off. It was a good time for Andrew to go - for all my moaning, I have to say he was a good contestant. He worked hard and improved as much as he could. He was accepted critism and never took public support for granted. His thank you speech was lovely.

Can they stop lifting people up now please? It was sweet with Don and irritating with Mark and now it's just become habit, like in the final when, after the audience have given one standing ovation, every dance after that gets one, regardless of how good it actually was.