strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Dec 27 07: the avenging virgo goes to the movies
I have had a couple of movie dates recently. Yes, they were very nice, thank you. One of the films was Enchanted, which is a great date movie, funny and sweet and not particularly taxing and full of great New Yorky stuff; and the other was Sweeney Todd, which is… well, it’s a better date movie than The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, which I saw on a (rather awkward) date many, many years ago. Actually, hell, I enjoyed Sweeney Todd very much. Totally worth your $12, and if you’re a fan of the show then you’ll certainly have things to discuss over dinner afterwards. But be aware that it’s also unflinching in respect to the violence. Tim Burton seems to have been hanging out with David Cronenberg lately. Eesh.
Wait, I’m getting off track. (Because this is what happens when you suddenly decide to bang out a blog post at 1 in the morning instead of going to bed like a sensible person.) I just needed to say something: a little shout-out to the producers of Enchanted, and any other movie types who may be listening.
If your Big Romantic Costume Ball Scene hinges on having two characters dance together to a song introduced as “The Kings and Queens Waltz”?
Please, please, please at least have the cheesy lite rock ballad that follows be in three-quarter time. You know. Make it a waltz.
Thank you.
AV
Dec 26 07: that banana feeling
Two things in The New York Times almost made me cry on the train this evening: first, the idea that there’s an immigrant kid at a school in Decatur, Georgia named Bill Clinton — because this story about educating the children in a town full of refugees was so full of hope, and of people being, y’know, good to each other for once; and second, this little piece of fiction by Roddy Doyle, ‘The Box,’ just because.
It’s been a weird year, and I think on balance I’ll be glad to see the back of it, and it has been full of moments of almost crying in public, out of joy or sorrow or some emotion so far from articulability that you might as well call it banana. It’s had mania and flatness and hope and regret and laughter and anxious fretting and all kinds of stuff. Too much ill health and disorder. Not enough writing. A periodic sense that odd and ancient artifacts of unknown significance lie just beneath the soil, waiting for one good storm to expose them to the light at last. The occasional elliptic and self-indulgent blog post, even.
Anyway, I hope that as the world tilts back toward the light you can feel it carrying you along as it goes. Whoever you are.
Dec 16 07: no, wait
Or maybe not.
Last night’s enthusiasm was unwarranted: it was ultimately more shiny, risk-free, pointless worldbuilding. Right now I’m not sure why I do this at all.
the stone begins to move, again
Have been dancing yet another iteration of the Writer’s Block Tango, and this story needs to be done by break of day Monday or I’m sunk. But finally, finally, after watching attempt after attempt blow up on the launch pad over the last several weeks, I found my way in tonight. I think. It has a main character who makes decisions. It has characters with conflicting needs. And it contains the phrase “psi-active vegetables.” Please let this still all make sense in the morning, when I pick up where I’m about to leave off for the night.
Dec 13 07: ny moment #44,201
Good evening, intrepid NYC eaters-of-food! Tonight’s cooking-at-home question: if you’re jonesing hard for Tater Tots1, but all your grocery store carries is Kineret Mini Potato Latkes2, are you bound for glory or disappointment? Stay tuned, because we’re going to find out!
UPDATED: Oh yes. Glory, my friends. Glory.
1 I love it that Tater Tots have a Wikipedia entry. But how could they not?
2 I’d really love to call these latkitos, because they’re, y’know, mini. But perhaps that’s getting a little too great-American-melting-pot-y. I dunno. I may just do so inside my own head.
Dec 5 07: dust. wind. dude.
Saw a preview of The Golden Compass on Saturday night. Short review: Yes!
For those who want more detail, some notes (which arguably include a couple of mild spoilers):
- They don’t pull any punches on the themes of religion and free will, although really, the Catholic League is still getting its knickers in a twist over not a hell of a lot. Although the Magisterium is churchy, to say that this film is some sort of an outright attack on Christianity is a gross oversimplification of what Pullman was doing with this particular volume. They should have waited until later in the series, when they’ll at least have more to be upset about.
- The movie is otherwise laudably faithful to the text, save for a biggie: it ends early. The last act of the book has been saved for the next film, for reasons that those who have read the thing will probably be able to figure out on their own. It was, however, filmed, and at least partially finished out — and stills from the act in question have even been posted to the net if you want to see them.
- I had forgotten about how the battle for supremacy between the two panzerbjörn played out, but my companion assures me that its resolution, which had a whole lot of audience members (including me) gasping, was entirely true to the book. Whoa. (The guy next to me spent a full two minutes muttering, “Duuuuude….”)
- Dakota Blue Richards, the actress who plays Lyra, is fabulous. Daniel Craig (Lord Asriel) and Eva Green (Serafina Pekkala) are both quite good, although neither gets much screen time. I was wary going into the theater of Nicole Kidman (Mrs. Coulter), but liked her a lot — she did a nice job handling the creepy reversals between nice-lady-you-want-to-like and terrifying-bitch.
- Watching the kids’ dæmons flow rapidly from animal shape to animal shape is a total gas. By and large, they did a really nice job with the CG rendering of the animals — very few moments where your brain sits up and says, ‘Hey, there’s something really wrong with that thing.’ Even when the thing in question is a ginormous polar bear thundering through the middle of a town and breaking shit up.
- The art directors did a stunning job. The tech of Lyra’s Earth is stunning, steampunk brass-and-glass mixed with these beautiful dunno-what-they-are-but-they’re-so-cool sparkly blue engine-globes; there’s fantasy-Oxford (now with eleventy-seven more Dreaming Spires™!); there’s a silver Art Deco tea set that I’m sure I’ve seen at the MOMA that seems right at home. The airships and horseless carriages and ocean vessels are all lovely. Much to ooh and aah over.
- Ditto the costumers. I should note that geek knitters will observe many quite-nice Gyptian handknits, particularly the cranberry-red-with-flecks-of-gold-and-other-colors coat that Lyra wears for the middle third of the movie. That coat may be this year’s version of Jayne’s hat, although finding the right yarn will be a challenge.
- The visual effect of the Dust is striking, and the sudden burst of sparkly lights as a dead character’s dæmon disintegrates is always both beautiful and strangely moving — when you see one in during a fight scene, whether close up or in the distance, the awareness that ‘oh, somebody just died’ is unexpectedly poignant.
- Where the operation of the golden compass itself is concerned — another expository challenge — I thought they did a nice job finding a middle ground between explaining what Lyra was doing and letting the images speak for themselves.
- Huh. New Kate Bush song in the closing credits. I had no idea it was in the works! And sure, that’s always a reason for celebration, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d just heard a very long intro, and the actual melody had been left out of the film. It seemed to be lots of etherial Kate-noodling-around and singing “Lyraaaa, Lyyyraaaaaaaaaaa, Lyyraaaa….” But no, that seems to be the whole thing.
Anyway, I thought it was totally worth your $11.75.