TV's James Moran

James Moran is one smart dood. Seriously. Tell your friends. Particularly if they have a genuine desire to write film and/or television for a living. Chock full of good advice, common sense, and one instance of Questionable Taste Theatre regarding Patrick Swayze that makes me love him^* even more than I already did.


^* Platonically, without puppets.

The Long Game

Here's the thing: I love capers.

Not the salty little pickled bud of the Capparis spinosa plant that you get when you order smoked salmon or caviar (tho I love those too). No, I mean stories of elaborately planned thefts, involving crews of thieves and grifters, pulling the wool over greedy marks' and plodding policemen's eyes and getting away clean.

I think it stems from my childhood adoration of a blink-and-you-missed-it 6 episode series from 1987 called Shell Game starring Margot Kidder and James Reid. Reid plays a grifter who has gone straight and is trying to live a normal life has his world thrown into disarray by his ex-partner (who is also his ex-wife) showing up to throw all his order into chaos, while trying to tempt him back into the life. Unlike Remington Steele, where Steele's life as a grifter only surfaced in those rare episodes where his mentor Daniel showed up, Shell Game presented the life as not nearly as glamourous (and quite a bit more frightening) but always in a frothy, 1930s screwball comedy kind of way. It also made me fall in love with female trickster types (which explains a lot about why I loved Amanda from Highlander) who don't need men to save them. In fact, they tend to come out on top using their own smarts, which made a deep impression on me as a 13 year old girl.

I have a collection of caper films I return to in times of stress, that go from London gangsters (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch being the obvious two) to slick remakes of 1960s classics like The Thomas Crown Affair remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo which adore madly. Tommy Crown is like Bruce Wayne without the childhood trauma, and Russo's Catherine Banning is clever, dangerous, brilliant, fierce, and possibly one of my all-time fave female leads in a genre picture. Their relationship is like a grown-up version of Batman and Catwoman. Plus I love Dennis Leary as her conscience and his foil. I have deep love of Ocean's 11, even though the sequels weren't nearly as satisfying, I could actually watch Danny, Rusty, and Linus scheme all day, every day. Linus lifting Danny's wallet is the best meet-cute ever.

So it should be no huge surprise to any of you that I've fallen hard for TNT's Leverage, which wraps up its first season this Tuesday.



Leverage is the story of Tim Hutton's former insurance investigator Nate Ford, who is hired to head a crew of degenerates to steal a McGuffin from a highly secure building. The crew includes Eliot (Christain Kane), who doesn't like guns but is adept at extricating himself or anyone else from any situation that involves causing pain, Hardison (Aldis Hodge) as the fixer who is a hacker extraordinaire and not to mention a hardcore Old Skool Doctor Who fan, and Parker (Beth Riesgraf), a cat burgler who lives for the adrenalin rush of leaping off a 30 storey high-rise on a zip line but when placed into any situation where she has to interact with a normal human being panics and shuts down. Nate, who takes the role of both boss and the roper, then brings in Sophie (Jekyll's Gina Bellman) to be the inside man. Back when Sophie was working full-time as a grifter and thief, Nate chased her across the world, and they share both a past and an attraction. Everything goes wrong, and that's where the fun starts. Because over the course of "The Nigerian Job" five people who have always worked alone realise they had fun working together. And one man realises that a bunch of bad guys can in fact harness and use their powers for good instead of evil. And become a family while doing so.

So basically, it's the A-Team, by way of Hustle.

And it's fabulous. I cannot stress how much, even with the wacky airing order (check out creator/producer John Roger's blog, Kung-Fu Monkey for the whys and wherefores and actual production order) every week is like a mini-movie and the character relationships are like crack to me. Parker, Hardison, and Eliot are seriously hardcore OT3 (that's "One True Threesome" for those of you not hip to the Livejournal fandom parlance) and Sophie and Nate have fantastic chemistry as the dysfunctional "parents" of the wacky kids. The characters are all fascinating, as are their relationships. Parker in particular I adore, and "The Juror #6 Job" made me make high-pitched squeaky sounds of glee only dogs could hear. Likewise, Hardison is clearly of my people, and "The Mile High Job" is a tour de force for geek joy. Hardison is, in fact, made of awesome. If airports had awesome-sniffing dogs, then he would have to take trains. That's how awesome he is. And I could go on and on, breaking down what I love about every single ep, but I trust you get the idea. Leverage has become my fave new series (now that The Middleman is currently hibernating in a high-tech vat pending DVD sales which will determine its fate).



I actually have been watching Leverage paired with Hustle for the last month, because like steak and red wine, or brie and apples, they compliment one another perfectly. I had actually given up on Hustle last series, when Adrian Lester chose not to return and Danny Blue (the ubiquitous Marc Warren) took over the crew. Maybe it was kicking off last series in California, far from Eddie's bar and the familiar sites of London, which made me tune out. Maybe it was just the fact that I could deal with Danny a lot better when Mickey Bricks was there to balance him out. Either way, I'd just thought "that was a great ride, but I think I'm ready to get off now." So I did.

But this year, Mickey Bricks is back, and while Danny and Stacie are gone, their slots in the crew have been filled by Emma and Sean, a brother-sister grifting team Albert first spotted (much the same way he brought Danny to Mickey, back in the day) and Mickey recuits. It's been fresh and fun, and while it hasn't been as break-the-fourth-wall wacky as earlier seasons, it has been frothy slick fun that I've consistently enjoyed for all of its 6 episode run this year.

I know in real life, grifters, con men, confidence scams and schemes hurt innocent people. But in fiction, generally the only marks who lose are the ones trying to get something for nothing. And so con men like Mickey Bricks, or crusaders like Nate Ford, can count on their greed to bring them down. What I love to watch is the game. The way the con is put together, the roles are assigned, and how quickly the inside man (or men) think on their feet. But even when you're not looking at the long con, I am fascinated by the process.

I remember after I had moved back to Chicago, in 1997 or so, being on an El train headed downtown on a sunny Saturday. The trains were all packed--either with people going shopping, or to a baseball game at Wrigley. And I was fascinated by a guy running a shell game. He had two shills with him, and what they would do was, at one stop, get on the car before him. Then he'd join them on the next stop. He had a newspaper balanced on his lap, and was using 3 plastic Coke caps for shells. And the shills would do what they were supposed to--bet $20 to try and fool the yuppies into believing they could double their money. And he'd walk up and down the car, trying his luck. When he got to me, I think I said "Do I look like a mark?" and his eyes just slid off me and he kept on going like I wasn't even there--unfazed. And at the next stop, he got off to join the shills in the next car.

I actually did report them to the station when I did get off. Not because I had actually seen any idiots get taken (and I genuinely do believe that if you are idiot enough to bet on a shell game, then you deserve to lose). But it was a matter of principle. But because they'd been so damned obvious about it. They were clearly riding the same red line train all morning, back and forth from 95th to Howard, and they had been so obvious about it--everything from the shills being shills, to how badly he palmed the pea) that I figured, if they got caught, it was because they weren't clever enough not to.

In short: I want my thieves to be clever and moral and occasionally make out with each other. So far, fiction has totally provided for me.

I am thrilled that both Leverage and Hustle are coming back next year, because while I often joke that unless a series has time travel, robots, sword fights, or aliens, I'm noy that interested, the part of geeky me that collects pulp crime novels from the 1930s through the 1960s and grew up wanting James Reid to chuck it all and head off into the sunset with Margot Kidder adores them madly.

Give me the long con any day.

Gallifrey One: 20 To Life

I need to find a word to use other than "awesome".

I say this as someone who fears she may have completely diluted its impact, due to over-use during Gallifrey One last week-end. Because, genuinely, it was awe-inspiring in so many ways. And I don't just mean the joy of gathering with friends and socialising for 6 straight days, often until the wee hours of the morning where you know you have a 10am panel, but you still allow people (and by "people" what I mean is "Tony Lee") to keep you at a table in the lobby talking chatting until nearly dawn because despite knowing you're gonna be oh just so utterly useless the next day, you can't bear to leave while the party is still going on.

No, what I adore most about Gally is walking the halls and seeing hundreds of people having the time of their lives. Whether it's the kareoke-singing dalek, Kai Owen on a serious high after Wales slaughtered England in a rugby match, Bryan and Mette in dead-on accurate spacesuits from "Silence in the Library" complete with skeleton masks scaring tiny children in between posing for photos, Phil Collinson tending bar, or the lovely and talented Toby Hadoke making Simon Guerrier cry (again), there's an energy that permeates the LAX Mariott during Gally. It hits you like a wall of goodwill the second you step through the sliding front doors. That's why I love it so. Robbie and Shaun and the entire Gally staff put together an amazing show, and this year it was bigger than ever, with 5 tracks of programming, over 1300 attendees, and chock full of surprises.

My panel schedule was light this year, and I unfortunately had to miss one that I was really looking forward to, due to me not being able to correctly read the schedule. Hence me being completely invisible during the late night Sexuality panel, owing to my inability to bilocate. And I don't even have Toby Hadoke's fantastic show as a properly fannish excuse. I was in fact at the Hotel Café, grooving to the tunes of The Brendan Hines. Which, if you're a fan of The Middleman a completely valid excuse, but a poor one for my Doctor Who and Torchwood-loving brethren. I promise, we'll discuss the Third Doctor fancying Jo and the Ninth Doctor fancying Rose, Jack Harkness fancying everything, and the Tenth Doctor's thing about licking everything next time.

(Tho I'll say this about The Brendan Hines gig: it made me stupidly happy. They had A DOUBLE BASS AND ALSO SOME MANDOLIN THINGIE WHAT WAS AWESOME! And being me, I ran into the Brendan immediately upon entering the venue. I confused him a lot, but gave him a tiny wee O2STK badge. He will for years to come probably think some deranged middle-aged Man From U.N.C.L.E. fan just wandered in off the street, as I was so startled to run into him 15 seconds into the evening, the words "Dood. I loved you on The Middleman" only happened inside my head. If you are in LA and have a chance to see The Brendan Hines live? GO. You will not be sorry.)

However, the panels I did make it to on time and everything on were nifty, peachy keen.

Journey's End: Doctor Who Series Four In Review
We basically went down the line, giving high points and low points. For me the high points were Donna, Wilf, and "Midnight". Sadly, the low point for me was bringing Rose back not to warn the Doctor of impending universe-threatening doom, but because she really really missed him. However, there was much discussion of each episode in turn, and how many really wonderful moments they had, and how the dynamic between the Doctor and Donna was different from what we'd seen before in the new series. Also, I think Catherine Tate was a high point with every panelist. Also, we adored Keith Temple's Ood two-part story. I don't think Keith gets enough love. Having successfully encouraged fandom to hug James Moran and Paul Cornell at every opportunity, I think it's time for fandom to embrace Keith. Literally.

Girl!Fandom: It Isn't New, and It Isn't All Squee!
I actually call this panel the "Chicks Dig Time Lords" panel inside my head--not just because of the book (coming in 2009 from Mad Norwegian Press!) but because to me that sums up a lot of what seems to elude the darkest corners of fandom nicely. Chicks, in fact, of all ages--not just girls, not just Mums who watch for David Tennant in the fine tradition of "the Dads" watching for Louise Jamison's short leather skirts, but all kinds of women-folk--do dig Time Lords, and have since 1963. The new series has brought mainstream female viewers in in record numbers, but it hasn't always been a boys club. In the States, media fandom was actually a girls club all through the 1980s and 1990s, and that included American Doctor Who fandom. And we had a fantastic time discussing how female fans love a lot of the same aspects of the show as the male fans, in the same ways and in different ways, and how many of the fannish behaviours do fall along gender lines, and many do not. We deconstructed some of the most often repeated fallacies, and also examined how much is truly Boy!Fandom vs. Girl!Fandom, versus how much is Internet vs Convention-going, as well as different forums on the 'net, such as Livejournal vs Outpost Gallifrey, or even LJ comm-reading, anon-meme-reading, and fandom-wank-reading LJ fans versus folks who partake in fandom only their own journals and flist (and we discovered that not all of us surf LJ via their flist, but instead follow the daisy-chain of links from their own comments, which is another panel all unto itself). And no-one died. Not even Paul, who seemed possibly worried when it began that, as token dood, he might be ritually sacrificed and his shrunken head taken to Wiscon as a trophy.

When Did Vampires Become Trendy?
I admit, when I saw the title, my first reaction was "Erm... the 19th century?" which sparked Steph and me to sort of jump into the panel before we were properly started and introduced, due to being mic'd. However, we did have a really interesting (occasionally in the Chinese curse way) panel about how the commercial success of the Twilight YA novels has created opportunities for other (better) creators both in print and in film. And how there is a dearth of stories where the vampire is the monster you're trying to escape rather than the Byronic love interest, as since the 1960s, the Sympathetic Vampire has dominated the scene in the States, with the exception of 30 Days of Night, while the UK has fantastic stuff like Ultraviolet, and the Swedish film Let The Right One In was touted as one of the best recent stories (which I still need to see). Vampires are entering the mainstream in the US right now mainly through romance and teen fiction--in part because those are the segments of the midlist that continue to grow, building on what began with JKR's Harry Potter series successfully introducing genre fiction to mainstream audiences, and Twilight and its ilk rushing in to fill the void when JKR finished (in part due to clever marketing departments recognising the newly created niche of "event fiction" hence Twilight release parties following the model of the Potter parties around the world). I plugged Robin McKinley's Sunshine, Steve Brust's Agyar, and Claudia Gray's Evernight and Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series as much as humanly possible. And I think Tony Lee and I bonded for life. He is working on the original graphic novel Harker for Markosia, and it sounds like amazing stuff. But in the end, we decided that vampires fiction has always been produced--it's only just now that the mainstream has discovered it (again). Hence after nearly 200 years of pulps and gothic horror and literature and comics and television and film, the tween market has made vamps 'trendy' in the eyes of the media.

(However, I should at this point mention my fave new vamp is Mitchell from Being Human. Particularly the original pilot version, for taking all the 21st century cliches and tropes and turning them on their heads. Also, for Guy Flanagan's ability to loom, and his emo hair.)

The Liars Panel: Doctor Who at the Crossroads
Dear God, people. It was 10am. I apologise for being rubbish. However, my fellow panelists were hysterical. Points both to and off for Tony Lee for abusing the awesome power of a microphone to force audience members to do his bidding, and I am still vaguely terrified by Paul Cornell performing "The Gary Russell Dance". This is what happens when you don't do the Brunch. HUGE love for Sam closing the panel with a beautiful rendition of "It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time".



Other hight points included "Just a Minute" where Toby Hadoke reigned supreme, a fantastic dinner Friday with Paul, the beautiful, talented, and most of all much-smarter-than-me Caroline Symcox, and the Fourth Incarnation of Javier Grillo-Marxuach (sporting a seriously high-quality Tom Baker scarf above), followed by stops at the Volcano Day party and then dangling our feet in the pool before being rousted by hotel security. We then wandered back inside in time to hear Kai Owen sing (not knowing it was Kai Owen) and hang out in the corridor chatting with Jon Arnold and Simon Fernandes and failing to actually sing anything ourselves. Next year, there will be Queen and the Doors.

Saturday was panels and hanging out with Javi until the Kremlin demanded his presence across town. Also spent vast chunks of the week-end with my new Partner-in-Crime, Sam, and occasionally showing up at Big Finish panels just to stare intently at Mark Wright and make him wonder if he had food on his face (he didn't). Also got to hug on Laura Doddington Sunday night, who is one of my most favourite people on the planet. No lie. If you haven't checked out her performances as Zara in Big Finish's Key 2 Time series, then I'll wait here while you go do that. Don't worry, I'll be here when you get back.



Handsome Timmy D, Rhonda the Gin Fairy, my amazingly awesome con-roommate Susan Garrett, and the always lovely Karen Baldwin made sure the lobby was still packed with inebriated attendees well past last call. There would be no Lobbycon without them. I avoided the dealer's room for the most part except for one trip with Sam and one trip with Javi. I swore I wasn't going to buy anything, but of course I caved, and now have River Song's sonic, and the journal of impossible things. However, I made up for it by eating hard-boiled eggs and PBJ most of the week-end. PBJ is how I survive conventions, seriously. Also, by drinking water. But even drinking gallons of water didn't save me from having no voice left by the end of the festivities. This would be what 6 days of non-stop talking will do to me.

I made all sorts of new friends and my Facebook has sort of exploded. How did I never realise before now I had a seriously lack of both Mark Wright and Tony Lee in my life? These boys are awesome, and Lobbycon would not have been Lobbycon without them. Ditto John Williams, Toby and Katherine, and Phil Ford, with whom I could happily geek about obscure genre telly of the last 30 years for probably the next 30 years.

Alas, the vidshow I put together didn't get screened either between panels or in the video room due to tech issues and time issues in the end. But Shaun took the disc home with him, and I think next year in addition to all the new cosplay panels, I am going to beg ask him if we can to do a vidding panel and a vidshow. Which means I am so totally kidnapping local vidders to come with me, as I am utterly useless at vidding, even tho I used to do it the old fashioned way with two daisy-chained VCRs. The art form has evolved so far beyond its low-tech beginnings, and as a way to tell stories in collage form, that I can't begin to tell you. I really am looking forward to getting to watch an audience see some of the vids next year.



Monday was a very damp trip to the Happiest Place on Earth (that would be Disneyland, tho I know a 2nd group went out to Amoeba Records, and for them, I think the name fits as well) with Rob Shearman, Susan Garrett, LM Myles, and The Anghelides Boys, and Disney Goddess Vicci for dalek sorbet, miles of walking, smelly plastic rain slickers, and getting to watch the world's coolest 12 year old build a lightsabre. And then Monday night was the last hurrah, as I had to fly back relatively early Tuesday.

So, who's up for Hurricane Who in October, then?