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oiranBourbon smells like a stale cigar: The cocktail party went quite nicely, ultimately. We bought a lot of booze and all sorts of barware because we had none of either, and then suddenly we had what seemed like an embarassing excess and I became semi-paralyzed by the fear that we were trying too hard, that it was painfully apparent, and we would thus become figures of pity in the eyes of more experienced party-throwers, i.e., everyone. Also, the Mr. had insisted that we start at 7, even though I thought 8 was more reasonable. He won, and so I spent TWO HOURS worrying that everyone hated us, or maybe just me, and weren't going to show. This was stupid, since I knew all the people invited had other things they had to do before they could come to our party (like go to other parties, for which they had received timely invitations), but I was all alone with no Mr. to tell me not to be silly. Oh, yeah. See, the Mr. wasn't at our party, either. It turns out we were supposed to go to his ex-boss' retirement party at the same time our own was scheduled, so we agreed that he should go to his boss' party for a short time, thus allowing me ample leisure to spin elaborate doom fantasies that all culminated in dramatic scenes of me crying while huddled at the center of a ring of jeering "friends." Thankfully, guests showed up just before I could cut straight to the crying, and then I became very cheery and eventually delighted, as I managed to get two people to drink and enjoy mojitos, which is, for whatever reason, the thing I'm pushing this season.
See, you youngsters reading: Do NOT wait until you are 40 to have a party. Have one as soon as possible and get it over with.
We have a lot of booze that I will probably never drink myself. Bourbon was a nasty surprise, and all I did was smell it. It has a cold, morning-after ashtray stink that makes it difficult for me to imagine what would compel a person to put it in their mouth, but people seem to like it.
Liking it for all the wrong reasons: We saw this with Brilliant, Chuck and Doctor (who needs a better nickname now that he's actually a good friend) instead of X-Men III, which had been the original plan, and one I was actually enthusiastic about. Unfortunately, Briiliant and Chuck took it upon themselves to see an opening night showing and, as fans of the comic, were extremely annoyed with the storyline liberties. This was a big disappointment, since I liked the first two very much (perhaps because I have never read the comics) and had been looking forward to big explosions and even bigger sideburns. However, since we assumed that the three of them were all very enthusiastic about Da Vinci, we agreed to go, though I wasn't very nice about it once the Mr. got off the phone. I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail many years ago. If you're not familiar with this text, it's all the same information from Da Vinci in much greater detail and put together in quasi-scholarly order, although it's still fairly sensationalistic. Holy Blood brings up many interesting points, historical and religious, and also comes to a few rather rash conclusions. While I like the idea of historical Jesus very much, and it certainly makes more sense that he would have married and had children than not, I'm not terribly invested in any theories regarding a holy bloodline, or the holiness of such a bloodline, should it exist. I do think that Dan Brown has achieved something to be proud of, if not in the quality of his writing, at least in his ability to introduce "heretical"/scholarly investigations to a mass audience without provoking mass hysteria. However, I don't want to watch a movie about any of it.
From the very beginning, it was godawful. I was sitting in between the Mr. and Brilliant and, thankfully, Brilliant had the exact same eye-rolling responses to the material as I did. Tom Hanks was old, half-asleep, and topped with frightening 70s porn-guy hair. Audrey Tatou was rendered wholly without sparkle playing a cryptographer who seemed incapable of solving even the simplest Sunday paper word-search puzzle. Poor Jean Reno played an idiot and he didn't even get to shoot anyone, if I recall correctly. Paul Bettany was sexy as a crazy, homicidal, albino-ish monk who goes incognito in London in a 14th century cowl and runnels of fresh, penitent blood. Outside of the pre-flagellation shots of Paul Bettany's naked ass, the only good thing about the movie was Sir Ian MacKellan as...Lee somebody. Something with a T. Up until his appearance, the dialogue had been painfully stilted and often unintentionally hysterical. However, once Sir Ian showed up, he was allowed to ramble on most charmingly about all sorts of non-urgent things, which resulted in a strangely chatty, slow spot in the middle of some rather hectic action. All I can think is that the editors chose to keep in everything his character said so as to provide a bit of human interest and life in the midst of all the faux-tech and non-insightful god talk.
It was dumb as hell, non-suspenseful, wasted the talents of those involved, and made me laugh like a hyena. I wouldn't recommend it, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I'd expected, although certainly not for the reasons the filmmakers (presumably) intended.
As it turns out, neither Brilliant nor Doctor wanted to see it, either, so wily Chuck duped us all. Heh.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
*
*
*
If you hadn't figured out that Audrey Tatou/Sophie was the precious Jesus!Spawn early on, I have no respect for you at all.
The Proposition: Nick Cave wrote a screenplay and a score and The Proposition is the result. It's...an Australian Western and a true horror movie, and represents, among other things, a rather brilliant culmination of the themes and images Mr. C has been kicking around for nigh on 30 years. Admittedly, I don't know much of anything about European settlement in Australia, other than the foggy understanding that all such immigrants were members of what might be called the criminal class, so my timeframes might be off (and I'm not going to cheat and look things up). The film takes place probably somewhere between 1850-1870, which I would guess to be following the first wave of such immigration by a generation or so. The Austrilia portrayed here is brutal and utterly inhospitable and thus made me feel much more fondly toward Nashville than I otherwise might.
Right away, we meet Charlie and Mickey Burns in a whorehouse (or, whoreshack, really), caught in a firefight with the police. Teenage Mickey cries hysterically and throws himself around the room like a crazed animal while Charlie tries both to return fire and calm his younger brother. Once the shooting is over, the Burns brothers are captured and set before Captain Maurice Stanley. As Stanley talks to Charlie, poor Mickey sobs and repeatedly begs Charlie to explain what's happening, revealing himself to be somewhat of a blunt tip. As it turns out, Stanley wants them for a very terrible set of crimes against a family called Hopkins, but the one he really wants is their elder brother, Arthur, whom he believes (correctly) to be the leader and true menace of the three. He makes a deal with Charlie: kill Arthur, and win Mickey's life. If Charlie doesn't agree, Mickey will hang on Christmas, which is nine days hence. Charlie accepts his proposition. Really, I'm not giving anything away here.
This is one of the more complex movies I've seen in a long time, and achieves more with less dialogue than anything I can recall. You don't need to know anything about history or Australia to understand a great deal about each character as he or she is introduced. The attention to dress and manner, and the deep symbolism that can be conveyed by same, is used to wonderful effect. There is good and bad in each character (but for one who is purely bad, and it's not the one I expected it to be) and although my alliances never reversed, they did shift a great deal over the course of the film. I would caution that this is a terrifically violent movie, often painful to watch, but none of the violence is gratuitious. Rather, it seems inevitable based on all factors: time, place, coincidences and unhappy accidents. This is one of the best movies I've ever seen - but I don't know that I'd want to see it again any time soon. I think the first viewing will be informing my bad dreams for some time to come.
His Majesty's Dragon: I think a lot of people know that Naomi Novik (the author of this book) has also written fan fiction, and perhaps some of you even read it for her pre-publication. I actually had a lot of reservations about the concept for this story when I heard about it, and even after I'd read an excerpt on her website. I was not one of the people who betaed it, but what I heard from a few others made the dragon hatching sequence sound identical to that created by Anne McCaffrey in her various Dragonriders of Pern books. I then read this sequence on the pre-publication website and my concerns were definitely not allayed.I'm not a fan of either the Anne McCaffrey Dragonrider series (though I read too many of them back in the 80s), or of the Master and Commander books (which I have not read), and I am of the opinion that Ms. Novik is a far superior writer to McCaffrey, but I was half-expecting that this story would disappoint by seeming overly familar. Happily, this has not been the case. Now that I've read the final, published version, it seems that perhaps it was de-McCaffrey'ed a bit in the interim - or maybe the excerpt just needed the context of a fuller story to shed its derivative connotations.
I very much enjoyed the various Horatio Hornblower miniseries, and I even liked Master and Commander despite the constant presence of Russell Crowe, but I haven't got much interest in boats or naval battles. I don't think that I'm incapable of following the action in a battle sequence, but I usually don't - in fact, I typically skim battle scenes in books, only going back to read more thoroughly if there's any indication that something both important and non-battle-related occurred therein. Although there are battle scenes in the book, mostly aerial and involving dragons, there aren't tedious numbers of them and, actually, the readjustments necessary to fit dragon-powered bombing runs into 1820s naval battles renders them quite interesting.
The dragon of the title, Temeraire, is, by far, my favorite character, which surely is what Ms. Novik intended. The human characters are engaging, but they're also only as developed as is necessary to support the plot. This isn't a complaint - it's the way things are in genre fiction. Unlike most genre fiction, however, what is told is valuable and relevant, such that the relative paucity of detail doesn't leave the reader feeling that the characters are empty or undefined. His "handler," and the initially-reluctant hero, Will Laurence, is humanized over the course of the story by means of his growing affection for the dragon.
I very much enjoyed the book and definitely would recommend it to anyone who likes dragons, the Master and Commander naval era, or well-written fantasy. Also, if you write fan fic, or like fan fic, you might want to give it a look if only because she is/was one of us perverse creatures, and we should support our own. I probably would not have read this if it weren't for the fan fiction connection (and the 5-second nice-to-meet-you at a drunken LJ party in NYC) because of my McCaffrey-fueled dragon aversion and anti-ship sentiments, but I'm very glad I let my addled ideas about writerly solidarity guide my hand. Much to my pleasure, the second book (of three) in the series seems to have been published right on the heels of this first book, and I am making a trip to the bookstore to pick up Throne of Jade tomorrow.
That said, I have two semi-negatives to mention:
First, the facility with which dragons acquire human languages, and the manner in which they are acquired, is not addressed until quite late in the book. This gave me something of a hurdle to get over at the very beginning of the book, as the dragon speaks very proper and complete English immediately upon hatching. I would have liked to see the explanation up front, rather than a couple hundred pages after the fact, especially since the explanation was entirely satisfactory, yet merely a paragraph or two in length. I like my suspension of disbelief to feel justified, and having to take something like this on faith rankled quite a bit. Obviously, I got over it, however. Or mostly over it. Really, an editor should have caught this and suggested the move, IMO.
Second, I had heard hints that this was going to be a slashy story, but that simply isn't the case. However, it's possible for the slash fan to spot the likely intended boyfriend quite early on, so I'm inclined to think there was a m/m relationship at least considered at one point. I can understand why things may have been changed, but if this is truly the case, it's a bit disheartening, if only because I have selfish hopes for greater publishing industry acceptance of same-sex relationships in genre fiction.
Anyway, I give it many gold stars and a halo and think you ought to read it, too.
See, you youngsters reading: Do NOT wait until you are 40 to have a party. Have one as soon as possible and get it over with.
We have a lot of booze that I will probably never drink myself. Bourbon was a nasty surprise, and all I did was smell it. It has a cold, morning-after ashtray stink that makes it difficult for me to imagine what would compel a person to put it in their mouth, but people seem to like it.
Liking it for all the wrong reasons: We saw this with Brilliant, Chuck and Doctor (who needs a better nickname now that he's actually a good friend) instead of X-Men III, which had been the original plan, and one I was actually enthusiastic about. Unfortunately, Briiliant and Chuck took it upon themselves to see an opening night showing and, as fans of the comic, were extremely annoyed with the storyline liberties. This was a big disappointment, since I liked the first two very much (perhaps because I have never read the comics) and had been looking forward to big explosions and even bigger sideburns. However, since we assumed that the three of them were all very enthusiastic about Da Vinci, we agreed to go, though I wasn't very nice about it once the Mr. got off the phone. I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail many years ago. If you're not familiar with this text, it's all the same information from Da Vinci in much greater detail and put together in quasi-scholarly order, although it's still fairly sensationalistic. Holy Blood brings up many interesting points, historical and religious, and also comes to a few rather rash conclusions. While I like the idea of historical Jesus very much, and it certainly makes more sense that he would have married and had children than not, I'm not terribly invested in any theories regarding a holy bloodline, or the holiness of such a bloodline, should it exist. I do think that Dan Brown has achieved something to be proud of, if not in the quality of his writing, at least in his ability to introduce "heretical"/scholarly investigations to a mass audience without provoking mass hysteria. However, I don't want to watch a movie about any of it.
From the very beginning, it was godawful. I was sitting in between the Mr. and Brilliant and, thankfully, Brilliant had the exact same eye-rolling responses to the material as I did. Tom Hanks was old, half-asleep, and topped with frightening 70s porn-guy hair. Audrey Tatou was rendered wholly without sparkle playing a cryptographer who seemed incapable of solving even the simplest Sunday paper word-search puzzle. Poor Jean Reno played an idiot and he didn't even get to shoot anyone, if I recall correctly. Paul Bettany was sexy as a crazy, homicidal, albino-ish monk who goes incognito in London in a 14th century cowl and runnels of fresh, penitent blood. Outside of the pre-flagellation shots of Paul Bettany's naked ass, the only good thing about the movie was Sir Ian MacKellan as...Lee somebody. Something with a T. Up until his appearance, the dialogue had been painfully stilted and often unintentionally hysterical. However, once Sir Ian showed up, he was allowed to ramble on most charmingly about all sorts of non-urgent things, which resulted in a strangely chatty, slow spot in the middle of some rather hectic action. All I can think is that the editors chose to keep in everything his character said so as to provide a bit of human interest and life in the midst of all the faux-tech and non-insightful god talk.
It was dumb as hell, non-suspenseful, wasted the talents of those involved, and made me laugh like a hyena. I wouldn't recommend it, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I'd expected, although certainly not for the reasons the filmmakers (presumably) intended.
As it turns out, neither Brilliant nor Doctor wanted to see it, either, so wily Chuck duped us all. Heh.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
*
*
*
If you hadn't figured out that Audrey Tatou/Sophie was the precious Jesus!Spawn early on, I have no respect for you at all.
The Proposition: Nick Cave wrote a screenplay and a score and The Proposition is the result. It's...an Australian Western and a true horror movie, and represents, among other things, a rather brilliant culmination of the themes and images Mr. C has been kicking around for nigh on 30 years. Admittedly, I don't know much of anything about European settlement in Australia, other than the foggy understanding that all such immigrants were members of what might be called the criminal class, so my timeframes might be off (and I'm not going to cheat and look things up). The film takes place probably somewhere between 1850-1870, which I would guess to be following the first wave of such immigration by a generation or so. The Austrilia portrayed here is brutal and utterly inhospitable and thus made me feel much more fondly toward Nashville than I otherwise might.
Right away, we meet Charlie and Mickey Burns in a whorehouse (or, whoreshack, really), caught in a firefight with the police. Teenage Mickey cries hysterically and throws himself around the room like a crazed animal while Charlie tries both to return fire and calm his younger brother. Once the shooting is over, the Burns brothers are captured and set before Captain Maurice Stanley. As Stanley talks to Charlie, poor Mickey sobs and repeatedly begs Charlie to explain what's happening, revealing himself to be somewhat of a blunt tip. As it turns out, Stanley wants them for a very terrible set of crimes against a family called Hopkins, but the one he really wants is their elder brother, Arthur, whom he believes (correctly) to be the leader and true menace of the three. He makes a deal with Charlie: kill Arthur, and win Mickey's life. If Charlie doesn't agree, Mickey will hang on Christmas, which is nine days hence. Charlie accepts his proposition. Really, I'm not giving anything away here.
This is one of the more complex movies I've seen in a long time, and achieves more with less dialogue than anything I can recall. You don't need to know anything about history or Australia to understand a great deal about each character as he or she is introduced. The attention to dress and manner, and the deep symbolism that can be conveyed by same, is used to wonderful effect. There is good and bad in each character (but for one who is purely bad, and it's not the one I expected it to be) and although my alliances never reversed, they did shift a great deal over the course of the film. I would caution that this is a terrifically violent movie, often painful to watch, but none of the violence is gratuitious. Rather, it seems inevitable based on all factors: time, place, coincidences and unhappy accidents. This is one of the best movies I've ever seen - but I don't know that I'd want to see it again any time soon. I think the first viewing will be informing my bad dreams for some time to come.
His Majesty's Dragon: I think a lot of people know that Naomi Novik (the author of this book) has also written fan fiction, and perhaps some of you even read it for her pre-publication. I actually had a lot of reservations about the concept for this story when I heard about it, and even after I'd read an excerpt on her website. I was not one of the people who betaed it, but what I heard from a few others made the dragon hatching sequence sound identical to that created by Anne McCaffrey in her various Dragonriders of Pern books. I then read this sequence on the pre-publication website and my concerns were definitely not allayed.I'm not a fan of either the Anne McCaffrey Dragonrider series (though I read too many of them back in the 80s), or of the Master and Commander books (which I have not read), and I am of the opinion that Ms. Novik is a far superior writer to McCaffrey, but I was half-expecting that this story would disappoint by seeming overly familar. Happily, this has not been the case. Now that I've read the final, published version, it seems that perhaps it was de-McCaffrey'ed a bit in the interim - or maybe the excerpt just needed the context of a fuller story to shed its derivative connotations.
I very much enjoyed the various Horatio Hornblower miniseries, and I even liked Master and Commander despite the constant presence of Russell Crowe, but I haven't got much interest in boats or naval battles. I don't think that I'm incapable of following the action in a battle sequence, but I usually don't - in fact, I typically skim battle scenes in books, only going back to read more thoroughly if there's any indication that something both important and non-battle-related occurred therein. Although there are battle scenes in the book, mostly aerial and involving dragons, there aren't tedious numbers of them and, actually, the readjustments necessary to fit dragon-powered bombing runs into 1820s naval battles renders them quite interesting.
The dragon of the title, Temeraire, is, by far, my favorite character, which surely is what Ms. Novik intended. The human characters are engaging, but they're also only as developed as is necessary to support the plot. This isn't a complaint - it's the way things are in genre fiction. Unlike most genre fiction, however, what is told is valuable and relevant, such that the relative paucity of detail doesn't leave the reader feeling that the characters are empty or undefined. His "handler," and the initially-reluctant hero, Will Laurence, is humanized over the course of the story by means of his growing affection for the dragon.
I very much enjoyed the book and definitely would recommend it to anyone who likes dragons, the Master and Commander naval era, or well-written fantasy. Also, if you write fan fic, or like fan fic, you might want to give it a look if only because she is/was one of us perverse creatures, and we should support our own. I probably would not have read this if it weren't for the fan fiction connection (and the 5-second nice-to-meet-you at a drunken LJ party in NYC) because of my McCaffrey-fueled dragon aversion and anti-ship sentiments, but I'm very glad I let my addled ideas about writerly solidarity guide my hand. Much to my pleasure, the second book (of three) in the series seems to have been published right on the heels of this first book, and I am making a trip to the bookstore to pick up Throne of Jade tomorrow.
That said, I have two semi-negatives to mention:
First, the facility with which dragons acquire human languages, and the manner in which they are acquired, is not addressed until quite late in the book. This gave me something of a hurdle to get over at the very beginning of the book, as the dragon speaks very proper and complete English immediately upon hatching. I would have liked to see the explanation up front, rather than a couple hundred pages after the fact, especially since the explanation was entirely satisfactory, yet merely a paragraph or two in length. I like my suspension of disbelief to feel justified, and having to take something like this on faith rankled quite a bit. Obviously, I got over it, however. Or mostly over it. Really, an editor should have caught this and suggested the move, IMO.
Second, I had heard hints that this was going to be a slashy story, but that simply isn't the case. However, it's possible for the slash fan to spot the likely intended boyfriend quite early on, so I'm inclined to think there was a m/m relationship at least considered at one point. I can understand why things may have been changed, but if this is truly the case, it's a bit disheartening, if only because I have selfish hopes for greater publishing industry acceptance of same-sex relationships in genre fiction.
Anyway, I give it many gold stars and a halo and think you ought to read it, too.
