I had it first! But...am confused!

So, on his famous and much more popular than mine will ever be journal, Neil Gaiman (journal.neilgaiman.com) has been posting pictures and comments on the state of the weather in my beloved home state (note: while there is much irony in my comments here, I do love being Minnesotan.  For one thing, it means I can drive and walk in the snow without complaining about it all the time.)

And he is calling the blizzard (which snowed somewhere around 19 inches, collapsed our iconic sports arena's roof, and had my siblings shovelling and making snow forts like there's no tomorrow - hah - that's a funny coincidence, given my next sentence fragment) "Snowmageddon."

But I already lived through that.

In Virginia.

So I'm confused.  Should I be jealous, that Minnesota gets it this year (and it wouldn't be as much of a problem, since unlike the pathetic snow equipment here, they know how to deal with it)?  Should I take umbrage at the stealing of our terminology?  Should I turn green with envy at all the comments he'll get on his post, while maybe one person will google "Snowmageddon" ten years from now and laugh at how pathetic this entry is?

Or should I just look at the pretty pictures of snow?  Yeah, I think I'll do that.

Posted via email from We read to know we're not alone

So...

I should be working on my papers and thesis outline, but am reading blogs.  Yiss yiss.

Anyway, I am reminded again that I wish many, many things, but in particular, the three things I wish for most are at this precise moment:

1) That I had the temperament to be in the military.  I don't.  Pretty sure I'd think I knew better than the officers and get myself courtmartialed or dead very, very quickly.  But I love the discipline, hierarchy, and duty of it all.  Plus it would be pretty cool to attain a nice rank, like Lieutenant or Major or Captain.  My uncle's a Lieutenant Colonel, which is pretty cool all by itself.

Plus: guns and airplanes.

2) I wish I were married.

3) I wish I had kids.

Note: this is not a list of wishes I should have, such as "I wish I loved God more" or "I wish I loved people more" or "I wish I wasn't a selfish overcritical angsty stubborn lazy arrogant moron."

Posted via email from We read to know we're not alone

5 Arts/Artists who changed my life/mind/words

5. Batman Begins.  Not, perhaps, the most powerful and important of life-changing or mind-shaping or word-giving, but this film really had a Eureka moment for me when the character of Rachel articulates why I've always hated revenge dramas - "Revenge is about making you feel better.  Justice is about harmony."

4. The Man Who Was Thursday - G. K. Chesterton.  A 1911ish thriller which is engrossing (I read it in one night at 14 in Switzerland), and at the same time extremely thought-provoking.  Convinced me that instead of embracing the prevailing cultural rebellion against standards, structure, and heirarchy, I would be a rebel against rebellion.  Not quite standing up for "the man," but in a weird backwards way doing exactly that.

3. Little Dorrit.  While I had undergone a significant reversal when I was 17, falling in love with Jane Austen after thinking she was stupid since I was 13, my long-standing hatred of Dickens' ridiculously unbelievable and unlikeable characters and silly plot devices melted in the face of the passionate sincerity and loveable nobility of this amazing, dual-climaxed epic.  A monument to the fact that if I don't love something now, there is a chance (however slim) that I won't always hate it.

2. Sherlock Holmes, as played by Jeremy Brett.  Until I was 13, I hated dressing up, my hair, and thought colors were cool.  When I was thirteen, I began watching this amazing series of adaptations of stories I'd been reading since I was about ten, and those three things changed.  I loved dressing up, began forcing my hair to be combed, and thought black was the best color ever.  In addition to these elements, I developed a lasting and life-shaping interest in adaptation and film directing.

1. Jane Austen.  You didn't know?  I mean, she's only the person who I think has the most beautiful writing style, most loveable and admirable characters, and most satisfying combinations of characters and situations/structures/plots.  Plus, she really is my entry into my chosen profession of literary criticism, theory, and teaching.

Posted via email from We read to know we're not alone

10 Thoughts on animated movies, with a particular focus on Tangled (because it's lovely)

10. It's a fairy tale.  It's Disney.  Why complain about how it's predictable or done before?  Why not note how lovingly and wittily and beautifully those tropes are used instead?

9. Those who think it doesn't do things as well as the "great" Disney films - well, I think it does things just as well, we just have 20 years of nostalgia making those old films (which really are great) perfect.  They're not.  Neither is Tangled - but I think it's pretty darn close.

8. I love Charlotte from Princess and the Frog.  While the movie lacked the sweetness that pushed Tangled over the edge into Loved for me, Charlotte's character walked the fine line of the rich, spoiled girl (like a blonde, southern Emma) without falling over into annoying sugar or moronic evil.  From her sweet idealism as a child chasing her dream, to her unselfish love of Tiana in giving her a dress and sincerely admiring it on her friend, to her final, sacrificial giving of her dream to Tiana in the end.  And then she is willing to wait twelve years for a new prince!  I think I have a thing for what TvTropes calls "genki girl" - the short, perky, cute, very very energetic character who sweeps the protagonist all over the place - sort of the good side of the evil shady friend who sweeps the protagonist into drug addiction.  Alice from Twilight, Coraline, Asokha from Clone Wars, Olivia from Twelfth Night, Rosalind from As You Like It, Kaylee from Serenity all share elements of this character, and I tend to love them all muchly.

7. Why was Tangled rated PG, when the much, much darker and creepier Princess and the Frog was G?  Is CGI scarier than 2D?  Because I was much, much more creeped out by the voodoo shadows than the realistic psychological horror of Mother Gothel.  Though the small girl behind me in the theater thought she was pretty terrifying in the climax of Tangled.  Poor thing.

6. Voice acting was really, really nice.  Mandy Moore and Donna Murphy were spot-on, the former singing cleanly (if a bit lacking in high range) and speaking sweetly, the latter being quite different than her nice, T. S. Eliot-loving wife from Spider-man 2.  But Zach Levi, Christian actor best known as TV's Chuck, really brings his sweet-awkward-suave-hilarious vocal mannerisms to the show.  From his awesomely moronic "smoulder" to the don't-freak-out-I'm-not-freaking-out-which-is-why-I'm-talking-so-fast-like-I'm-totally-freaked-out voice when he finds out about Rapunzel's hair, Levi really enhances the character and the movie as a whole, while not showboating and trying to steal the movie away from the rightful center of Rapunzel.

5. The songs - well, yes, Alan Menken is stealing liberally from his own work - but he does so much more coherently than the last major Disney fairy-tale-type film, Enchanted, which aside from the annoying over-the-top-ness and the unworkeable blend of cynicism and sentimentality, was musically incoherent, all over the map from the banal Snow White "True Love's Kiss" to the delightful but out of place "That's How You Know."  The songs for Tangled are catchy, energetic, sweet (an important missing element from Princess and the Frog, for all it's strengths), and fit very well together.

4. Hmm.  Well, I'm not sure what to say here.  This is the last point I'm writing, since I filled things in the way I felt they would make a nice list to read.  Er.  Um.  Oh, right.  Silly me.  THE ANIMATION IS AMAZING!  From the brilliant texture of the cast-iron frying pan, to the hair (of course), to the beautifully rendered skin, to the amazingly precise cast-backs to the way 2D animation from famous movies in Disney's legacy - from Ariel's feet, to Pegasus, to the Beast's redemption - it's all there - but not in the cynical, ugly, disgustingly cheap way of the Shrek films, but in a loving, witty, humorous, lighthearted by completely sincere and genuinely moving way.

3. When I saw the trailers and read the early articles, both of which emphasized the male main character, I was really, really worried that it would turn into a movie about the male character.  I don't care if it's called Tangled.  I don't care if there is a strong male character - after all, Beauty and the Beast really benefitted from a strong male character.  But like the earlier masterpiece, the male character serves the journey of the female character, rather than the other way round.  Rapunzel is unquestionably the main character, with full perspective, development, and utterly likeable character.  Am unbearably relieved.

2. I get quite misty in the floating lights scene.  The combination of utter imaginative creativity with genuine romantic beauty is very, very moving to me.  Plus, though the song shamelessly rips from Aladdin's A Whole New World, it's very nicely sung, and I was shocked to hear Zach Levi's voice ring out so clearly and cleanly.  I like singing the song to myself as I walk around campus.  A lot.

1. GO SEE TANGLED.  Embrace innocence.  Embrace a love of beauty.  Embrace catchy, sweet songs.  Embrace long, long hair.

Posted via email from We read to know we're not alone

BBC Dramas, from 1980 to present, incomplete list

The Last Dance by Samuel Sim  
Download now or listen on posterous

19 the last dance.mp3 (4032 KB)

1980 – Pride and Prejudice
1981 -
1982 -
1983 – Mansfield Park
1984 -
1985 -
1986 – Northanger Abbey
1987 – Lord Peter Wimsey – Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night
1988 -
1989 -
1990 – House of Cards
1991 – Adam Bede
1992 -
1993 – To Play the King
1994 - Middlemarch
1995 – The Final Cut, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice
1996 – Tenant of Wildfell Hall
1997 -
1998 – Our Mutual Friend
1999 – Wives and Daughters
2000 -
2001 – The Way We Live Now
2002 – Daniel Deronda
2003 – State of Play
2004 – North and South, He Knew He Was Right, Charles II
2005 – Bleak House
2006 – Jane Eyre
2007 – Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity Shop, Cranford, Ballet Shoes
2008 – Sense and Sensibility, Miss Austen Regrets, Tess of the
D'urbervilles, Little Dorrit
2009 – Emma, Return to Cranford
2010 – Upstairs Downstairs
2011 – South Riding

Posted via email from We read to know we're not alone