I’m still surprised of how much writing I am getting done this month, even with the Christmas season and the originally planned break! I didn’t expect to get any new chapter done for my book after November, until January. Here I am halfway done with the second of the month! Sure, they are the shorter chapters in Women in Science Fiction Television, but they’re getting written nonetheless. The chapter I am working on now about Cameron in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is taking a slightly different direction from what I originally had in mind, and I think it gives better structure to it and makes it more interesting, especially in light of the other chapters.

In the past while, I also got around to see some movies which came out this year: Riddick, Gravity and Elysium.

To be fair, I never had much of an interest in the Riddick movies but I wanted to see this one because of Katee Sackhoff co-starring in it. To say that it was a painful and boring watch would be an understatement. It was slow, and annoying and even with Katee being awesome as ever, I just disliked that movie a lot. That comforted me in my lack of interest in movies in that universe. I hope that Katee gets to play in better movies in the future.

Gravity was one that made me quite curious since there started to be talks about it. I’m not a big Sandra Bullock fan, but she blew me away in this movie. She did an outstanding job at conveying this woman’s journey and the emotional rendering was impeccable. I loved how the movie really makes you care for the character and worry with her. It was beautifully executed. And it was a treat in term of spatial adventures. I was thrilled to see how they used the space shuttles, ISS, Soyouz, and so on. The only side note I have is that as much as I liked that movie and will watch it again with pleasure, I don’t think it is as revolutionary as some said. I am always happy to see an interesting female character in a central role, but Gravity didn’t feel as a milestone to me either.

Elysium was a movie I expected a bit from, because it looked like a good Science Fiction movie, and I really like Matt Damon and Jodie Foster as actors. I wanted to like the movie, but I was disappointed. I just feel that they could have done so much better, on all accounts, visuals, story, character development. I didn’t feel compelled to really care for the characters as I could have. Everything just felt too predictable (which doesn’t always bother me to be honest) and it just kept going and I was kind of waiting for the end to happen. I think that the one thing that really stood out for me was Jodie Foster’s performance, but that wasn’t surprising, as I really don’t know whether she knows how to act badly.

One thing that also bothered me a lot in Riddick (and to a similar degree in Elysium) was all the swearing. I understand that it makes sense at given points in dialogs (I mean it happened in Gravity and in many movies I like) but I just don’t understand the need to have curse words in a huge portion of dialogs. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I don’t see what it adds to a movie (or television show, or video game or book). It can have its place at certain times, for certain characters, but I find that swearing is too present in some productions.

Besides those movies, I was happy to see the trailer for How To Train Your Dragon 2 released. I loved the first movie (though wasn’t big on the cartoon made  afterwards) and have been waiting for the sequel. The visuals look great as in the first one, the characters seem true to themselves and I still love Toothless to pieces. I can’t wait to see the movie next summer.

I also realized (better late than never) that the official trailer for Pompeii was out. I loved this trailer. I had already been interested in the movie, but after watching the trailer, I am even more eager for it to be released in 2014. The visuals look great and there are many actors I like in it. I enjoy period pieces of many kinds, so this is another aspect of Pompeii that draws me to this movie.