Amazing the things you think you'll need - recipes, unanswered mail - that you can either discard, file, or simply do the right thing and reply to so you can finally archive the bloody things.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
En garde! Tis good to be back again.
Well, I've started fencing again. Just one night a week, I think, with maybe a couple times coming on Thursdays, but once a week is a lot better than none. We shall see - I did pretty well tonight - but I want to build up everything.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Castle in the Sky
So, I just watched this film (which seems to be very buggy, since my computer won't play it properly), but tis still heartbreakingly lovely in conclusion (despite anti-soldier sentiments that bother me about many of Miyazaki films). Something that really stood out to me is how many films seem to be influenced by Miyazaki - having just watched Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, I thought that The Matrix Revolutions stole the final imagery of Neo being crucifixed by the machine tentacles nearly directly from that film (and to significantly lesser effect). Now I notice that the climax of Castle in the Sky seems to have heavily influenced the climax of Stardust. And thus I put up the musical cues that accompany both scenes. Not exact copies, obviously, but similarities, I feel. 
Anyone know of any other borrowings from Miyazaki?
The Collapse Of Laputa by Joe Hisaishi
Download now or listen on posterous
13-the-collapse-of-laputa.mp3 (1879 KB) Download now or listen on posterous
Monday, January 18, 2010
Back! Hooray!
Well, my month-long break is over, and I am back in DC. It's really good to be back driving my old van again.
Anyway, over the past month I watched/read the following, which I hope make it into several blogs:
Ender's Shadow: Battle School (comic book adaptation of novel by Orson Scott Card)
Shaun of the Dead (film)
Burn Notice season two (tv series)
Truly Madly Deeply (telefilm)
Sweet Land (film)
parts of Dickens the Novelist (literary criticism by the Leavis couple - unfamiliarity with the texts discouraged me, but I was amused by their vitriol and sheer cheek in attacking other critics by name)
Fire and Hemlock (YA novel by Diana Wynne Jones)
The Way We Live Now (miniseries adaptation by Andrew Davies, directed and composed by the team that did the most recent Harry Potter films)
Graceling (YA novel by Kristin Cashore)
Vampire Darcy's Desire (P&P vampified by Regina Jeffers)
Mr. Darcy, Vampyre (P&P vampified by Amanda Grange)
rereads of six Tamora Pierce YA novels - Squire and Lady Knight from The Protector of the Small quartet, and the Immortals quartet (Wild Magic, Wolf Speaker, Emperor Mage, In the Realm of the Gods)
Wiloughby's Return (sequel to S&S by Jane Odiwe)
The Graveyard Book (Newberry and Hugo winning YA novel by Neil Gaiman, reworking of The Jungle Books)
Snow Crash (cyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson)
Sherlock Holmes (film starring Robert Downey and Jude Law)
The Queen (film starring Helen Mirren)
The Incredible Hulk (film starring Edward Norton and Liv Tyler)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Coraline (rewatch, stop-motion animated film adaptation of Neil Gaiman YA novel)
Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure (CGI animated movie)
The 39 Steps (1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock)
The Way We Live Now (novel by Anthony Trollope)
Well, that's 12 films and 15 plus a bit books. Not as much as I'd have liked (I'd have liked to finish Bleak House, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, and Our Mutual Friend), but at least I got through the Trollope.
Hopefully more to come! For now, it's really good to be back, even if all two to five of my readers no longer care! I shall try to check your blogs soon!
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