It's fortunate you laughed

inspired by true events on movie screens

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 08:35:25 GMT

So I went to the movies tonight and did the double-feature thing; I went and saw the 8:50 Hancock and the 11:00 Wanted. I have . . . thoughts on them, in some cases rather extensive thoughts, so here they are. Spoilery, of course.

I really, truly, cannot understand what Hancock is doing at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, or why people have seemed to prefer the first half of the movie. I actually liked the second half better; I can only imagine that people are confused, or disappointed, by having gone to see a movie that actually made them think a little. Me, I like nothing better than going to see what looks like a nice light action-comedy and getting something more than I expected. I got that a couple months ago with In Bruges, and I got it tonight with Hancock.

The closest I could get to a serious problem with this movie is the pacing; the two halves are really two separate stories. The first half of it was pretty much what I expected-- Hancock gets drunk, insults people, smashes stuff up, until Ray the PR guy comes and reforms his image. This only takes up, I dunno, half the movie, at which point I started wondering what the hell they we going to do with the rest of it.

karra’s theory on this movie was that Hancock would fall in love with Ray's wife-- her name is Mary-- and Ray would turn out to be the Big Bad of the movie. She was . . . about a third right. See, Hancock's not the only one of his kind; Mary's one too. They're immortal heroes, created in pairs to keep order in the world three thousand years ago. So technically, they're already married, and have been for millenia. The catch is, even though they're fated to always find each other, if they stay together too long they become mortal.

To be honest, unlike the rest of the world, I would have liked Hancock better if it consisted entirely of the second half. It's urban fantasy romance with no sop, and yet still got an emotional reaction out of me; it gave me someone who takes out frustration by literally jamming one guy's head up another's ass, and made me want to give him a hug. Strangest of all, it set up a love story, with a genuinely fun pairing, and gave it a happy ending where the principals don't even end up together.

. . . reading back on all this, it may sound like I'm reading a bit too much into the movie. I'm not saying Hancock is a perfect movie, or ~*art*~, or anything. But I enjoyed the hell out of it, and it gave me characters I got invested in and a glimpse at a world I want to see more of, and that's plenty for me.

In fact? This is the last movie I ever expected to say this about, but I want Hancock fic. I want to know who made these immortals and why and how and where. I want Hancock/Mary fic. I want Hancock/Mary/Ray fic, hell. I want Hancock and Mary kicking ass and taking names everywhere and everywhen people can think of. GIVE ME HANCOCK FIC, INTERNET. RIGHT NOW.

To be honest, unlike most people, I was not terribly impressed with Wanted. I can even tell you where it started losing my interest, about three whole minutes in: it was where Wesley specified that his kitchen table was from Ikea. I almost expected a product name and price tag to start popping up on screen above all the furniture, David Fincher-style.

I sort of want to find the people who made this movie and give them each a pat on the head and a lollipop. Congratulations, you bred Fight Club and The Matrix into a single movie and it didn't actively suck. Have some candy. But I didn't have to, and didn't really want to, go watch a movie with a guy pretending to be Edward Norton when I could've gone down the hall and seen actual Edward Norton with the same dramatically amplified heartbeat.

Actually, maybe I will go rewatch The Incredible Hulk tomorrow before seeing Wall-E. This is a thought. Moving on.

The thing is, with Wanted? I didn't feel like I was seeing anything I hadn't seen before. Sometimes two or three times. I've seen Fight Club with its cynical narration from a jaded cubicle worker, I've seen The Matrix with its green-tinged slow-motion stylized action sequences; all the best parts of the action were things I'd already seen in the TV spots, and I see about five of those a day; even the car chases were set on pretty much the same streets I walked along to get to the movie theater, though that at least is not the moviemakers' fault. (Though usually I love it when movies are filmed in Chicago. Batman Begins, for example.) The TV spots quoted a critic saying that Wanted would make me "sit up and go 'Whoa, I've never seen that before.'" I went in expecting that, and I don't think it happened to me once.

Admittedly, I don't think either Hancock or Wanted were supposed to be the most thoughtful movies on earth, and the fact that the first did get my brain going may have fouled up my viewing of the second. Maybe Wanted only works with my brainpower entirely devoted to "oooh, shiny." But the Loom of Fate, a very creative and positive concept, seemed kind of a silly-- not ironic, just silly and incongruous-- way to be setting up a plot that's so based on destruction. And while I didn't predict the Big Plot Twist it didn't really surprise me either. The ending even bothered me; I was expecting it to end more uncertainly, with Wesley slumped on the sidewalk by the ATM. Instead we got him assassinating Caine, which-- okay, fine, the plot got tied off, and it's nice to see our main character has apparently learned absolutely nothing from the entire last six weeks of his life.

As for the acting-- I'm usually very fond of Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, and especially of Malcolm McDowell, and while I don't think I've seen anything with James MacAvoy before I know kaichan thinks very highly of him. So I pretty much thought they were all kind of wasted in this movie. The only character I really felt attached to was the guy Wesley ends up killing by mistake, and that gets robbed of all its intended emotional impact anyway when we find out that he was a bad guy.

Things I especially liked: the scene where Wesley quits his job, Morgan Freeman saying "motherfucker" (I have no idea why that was fantastic, it just was), and Angelina Jolie naked. Oh, and that was a great moment with Wesley apologizing to someone right before shooting him. I think I could've done without the rest.

But, you know-- Hancock was a lot more than I expected, and Wanted rather less. I guess it balances out.

And in conclusion, the trailer for Quantum of Solace pretty much made me wet my pants, and I am too tired and cheerful to care about the TMI. Damn you, Daniel Craig, I didn't even like Bond movies until you started playing him. >:|

There is stuff to be said about my own life and fandom/RP/creative things-- a lot of stuff, actually, much of it important-- but that is coming tomorrow when I can think again. I might sleep, or I might watch Doctor Who; I'm not sure if I'm burned out on Watching Things for the night, and the spoilers I've heard aren't exactly making me eager to check it out.

meeeme.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:20:12 GMT

From karra and nai_is_not!

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullma
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
~~37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini~~
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
~~96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute~~ (I hated this book when I first read it for school, but that was six years ago and I've grown into a taste for romance since then. Just a tiny bit. >_>)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:52:38 GMT

Things that are awesome:

1) I made my own breakfast and nothing caught on fire! I screwed up an egg, but I got that cleaned up okay >.>
2) Sci-Fi is showing Dark Angel from 7-3 Central today, and USA is showing NCIS from noon Central until . . . sometime, I dunno. A WHOLE DAY OF MICHAEL WEATHERLY ON TV, GUYS.
3) There is a large orange catloaf on the kitchen table watching TV with me :D
4) Apparently we have a CPU and a keyboard hooked up to the TV, so that I can actually browse the Internet on the TV and watch stuff from Sidereel and Watch-Movies on the TV. Also, we have an Atari for some reason.
4) Homework is getting done.

Things that are not awesome:

1) The orange catloaf is inexplicably permanently angry :( she keeps trying to stalk my hands and pounce on them when I type.
4) Homework exists.

Someday I will make a post in actual paragraph form. SOMEDAY.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:28:22 GMT

Wow, there's really nothing better to brighten my morning than an article link from my mom about how my dream job is becoming obsolete.

OH GOD

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:51:08 GMT

OH GOD, MY CHILDHOOD.

extremely nsfw lyrics.

because I'm too lazy to rewrite things in full sentences

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:39:26 GMT

[cp_studying] and I've decided I'm pretty much doing no homework the rest of the day
[cp_studying] I /should/ because I have this heap of paper-writing left
[cp_studying] but I'm gonna do some cleaning-and-packing stuff and just do a little paper-writing work, and then go to bed early and write the hell out of everything tomorrow
[cp_studying] and whatever bits I don't finish I can do Saturday evening
[cp_studying] I will be exhausted and hate myself by then but I'll need to be awake and online for RP plotz anyway, so.
* cp_studying HAS A PLAN though, everyone be in awe now pls

fifth verse, same as the first and second and third and fourth

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:09:40 GMT

It's official, I'm the most useless person on the planet.

I owned my econ final this afternoon, and then went and got almost fifty unexpected dollars reselling the textbook. I got home, I got my Detective Fiction paper started-- only five days late!-- and I had a good topic idea about Auguste Dupin and I felt productive and I was gonna just write the hell out of that paper.

And then I pulled up the prompt and discovered that Dupin wasn't one of the detectives I can write about, because he's Victorian and not Golden Age. Because, you know, this was a class about Golden Age Detectives.

So there goes all my momentum for the day. Lovely.

Somehow, all this stuff is going to get done, but I can't imagine how right now. Someday I will actually manage to tag people for RP; someday I will even manage to tag that damn lyrics meme, if anyone still remembers or cares about that. (And emglyph is getting a new response, because the one I wrote her was crap.)

Meanwhile I ordered some food I don't deserve, and I'm gonna take a crack at writing an outline for a totally new term paper, and then maybe I will take a nap that I also don't deserve and can't actually afford.

. . .

The string line-- I think it's viola?-- at the beginning of this track sounds the same as in the Pirates of the Carribean theme. Just saying.

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:56:09 GMT

No matter how many plain white socks I own, I can never seem to find two at a time that match. Discuss the economics of all this. (3 points)

don't you worry

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:28:38 GMT

So tired. Cooler weather and lower humidity not helping. Sleep and caffeine, alternately, not helping. Cutting self off from Internet did not help.

I have infinity papers (makeup work woo) and two exams to get through by Friday evening and I cannot focus to save my life, no matter what I do. (I do have a huge sack of library books, though, in case I do ever figure out how to write easy research papers on subjects I like.) I'm not even getting RP tags done (and massive apologies to those of you I owe).

advice encouragement motivation. or just do my hw for me. pls.

PS: some advice for you guys: I don't care what anyone says, Fatal Equilibrium is a horrible fucking mystery novel.

rosencrantz can be texting guildenstern

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:56:08 GMT

A thing somebody said on fandomsecrets:

I don't think anyone fails out of college because of fandom. I think they fail out because they don't want to be there and fandom is fastest way to distract themselves from that. If it's not fandom, it's parties and if it's not parties it's something else. If you don't want to be in college, don't go. There's lots of people out there who are active in fandom and do very well in college.

Story of my life, in a nutshell.

My parents think I should just push through two more years of school and get it over with. And yes, I acknowledge that there are things in life that are hateful and must be pushed through. But that's all the more reason, honestly, when something (like, say, university) can be put off for a bit until it's easier to cope with, to actually go ahead and put it off.

I used to love learning, and I guess I still do, but I didn't like my high school and I don't like my university and it's consequently been getting increasingly hard, for six years, to separate learning, a thing I enjoy, from school, a thing I loathe. Learning means my major, British history, a field I'm pretty damn sure I love and would like to stick with. (If I end up going to school in Cardiff, I might well switch to Welsh Studies, but that's not exactly a huge shift in subject area.) School means, pretty much, surviving from paper to paper. I'm tired of this school, of its ideas about the life of the mind overruling all else and the way it translates very literally into the workload taking over your life if you let it. It's worked for plenty of other people, obviously; it's not working for me.

Yeah, yeah, I don't have a job. But I'm working on that-- and, to be honest, plenty of people I know who do have degrees don't have jobs either. I'm pretty sure I don't have the confidence or optimism right now to burn two more years and thousands more dollars, hating school and hating myself for not being able to cope, on the off-chance it might get me a better job. I can't cope with academics and job-hunting and myself (all of which are pretty shitty right now) so, easy solution, I'm not going to. Once I get through this week, I will have no obligations except to myself-- to move, unpack, get my room neat and keep it that way, try and get my life a little more orderly while I job-hunt. And then I will find a job and work that in, and then, eventually, probably, I will go back to school. And be a functioning human again.

Goals for summer: draw more, paint my nails more often, watch lots of TV, maybe teach myself some Welsh. The hell with deadlines; I count myself lucky at this point if stuff gets done at all.

and to my listening ears

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:13:47 GMT

Hey.

Hey, flist.

My school has finally gotten wise and blocked .torrent files from downloading over its network.

I'm moving out in a week anyway, but in the meantime: would anyone happen to have the soundtracks from Brazil or Collateral and be able to upload them for me? I'll owe you a cookie or a favor or something.

♥

it's an unspecific stage

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:47:35 GMT

I am tired. Of course. It's the end of tenth week. I owe a paper I need to make up, I owe a second now because I spent today being alternately sleepy and heatsick (It was only in the low nineties and 90% humidity. I'm a wimp. I know.) instead of doing the research paper I had due this afternoon.

I interviewed yesterday for a job; they said they'd probably call me today. They didn't. I think I screwed up the interview, because I was nervous and stupid and started talking about my old bosses. I know better than that. But now I look catty and unprofessional and aaaauuugh I'm so not gonna get the job.

I really, really hate being in school. The next week looks to be either far too long or not nearly long enough.

Next year is gonna be a year off. I'm pretty sure of that, now. I keep thinking "well, but three out of the four classes are classes I want," but that isn't strictly true; they're the classes I want assuming I am taking classes. I'd rather not be in class at all. So that's what I'm gonna try for a year.

One more week of slogging through this crap, and I'm done for fifteen months at least. I'll have a place to live, a nice affordable place with central air and cable and a large grouchy cat, and hopefully soon I'll have a job. There'll be time to RP and catch up on TV. I think I might try and write a trashy romance novel, since that's the only thing I'm sure I'm remotely any good at. There are a lot of books I want to read, or reread, and maybe I'll get to those. Eventually. Because nobody will be holding my free time to deadlines. Think about that.

That job I'm waiting on? It's a pretty good job. It's twenty hours a week, but pays enough for me to live on that by itself, and it's office work with people who seem really nice. They liked me; I haven't heard back yet; I still have a chance.

I'll have to wait till the end of tomorrow to find out, though, since I can't go answering my phone in the library. which is where I'll be, goddammit. It's about 5:30; the weather forecast says it's due to rain from about noon till 8 PM tomorrow. I'm gonna nap (or possibly just have ice cream and sit around uselessly) till 9, shower and grab a cold coffee, and then go to the library and write the shit out of some papers until they close at 10. At which time I will come home and either collapse, or else finish writing and then collapse.

Saturday through Wednesday morning are free, ignoring any potential work scheduling, for econ and art study and for the rest of my makeup work from last quarter. (Hi, I fail at life, this is old news.) Wednesday afternoon is my econ final, Wednesday night and Thursday morning are for mass quantities of art history memorization, Thursday afternoon is my art history final.
Thursday night and Friday morning and afternoon are for cleaning and packing and whatever of last quarter's work is left. Friday evening is The Incredible Hulk. The rest of the night, through Saturday morning, will be more cleaning and packing. Saturday is moving day.

Next Saturday night, the 14th, I'll be moved into my apartment, I will have AC, and RP plots will start.

I cannot fucking wait.

PS: I will still be online tomorrow, because if I totally broke off contact with the world I would explode. I might even be tagging. But I will get stuff done, dammit.

didn't know how to take it

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:49:31 GMT

HELLO CHILDREN. It is storytime. Or something. Because I want to tell the minor yet epic-- definitely epically annoying-- tale of how I didn't actually get a job.

I have been answering job listings on Craigslist like mad, and was pleasantly surprised to actually hear back from a guy. His name was D*****, and he claimed to be a high-volume payroll accountant working out of NYC. He was going to pay me $1500 a month, plus expenses, to work from home printing off checks and envelopes and mailing them out; not a bad gig. I thought it was a bit high, but I figured a) for someone doing the kind and amount of work he said he was it could easily be pocket change and b) he wasn't making me pay for anything, which is usually the biggest tipoff that a job is a scam. And I need work pretty badly.

So I email the guy back accepting the job, give him my cell number-- which was admittedly a bit dumb of me, but I figured and figure there's only so much shit someone can pull over the phone-- and my current mailing address, which i relatively safe since it's campus housing and I'm moving out in two weeks. He says his "business associate" is going to send me $4500 and I should buy the equipment needed and let the rest of it sit till I get further instructions, which is where I start to get honestly suspicious. I email him back for details regarding what those instructions will be, and he doesn't answer for a while. So I figure I'm not going to hear from him again.

Except! Last week I got a check in the mail from a guy named P*** in Texas, drawn for some reason on the Bank of New York, and for not $4500 but $5000. By now I am mightily confused and very suspicious, and I email the guy saying I'm very sorry but I can't take the job after all. He answers in a panic ("DO NOT SHERD THE CHECK"), telling me to take $300 for my trouble and send the rest Western Union-- now there's a warning sign-- to his poor auntie's oncologist J****. (There was no Dr. in front of his name. Nice going. And is there even a Newark in Delaware?)

So there goes that job, and also $5000. And I've been getting phone calls all day from an "unavailable" number, and got hung up on the one time I picked up this morning. So I'm pissed as hell and really freaked out, and taking all my emails with him and the check (which I have cut in half to resist temptation) to the police in the hopes it's some use to somebody.

The End.

born to make me cry

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 04:02:32 GMT

I fail at memes lately, but.

Leave a comment and I will:
1) tell you why I friended you,
2) associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.,
3) tell you something I like about you,
4) tell you a memory I have of you,
5) ask something I've always wanted to know about you,
6) tell you my favorite user pic of yours,
7) in return, you must post this in your LJ

I never knew you fell so hard

Fri, 30 May 2008 11:10:08 GMT

Good things:

> Finding a good place to live.
> Finding spare money and a good cheap delivery place on the same night :9
> Invisible Man series two.
> stjudehigh
> Fresh flowers in the window to go with the nice weather
> Ultimate Fantastic Four

Bad things:

> Getting the days of the week mixed up and realizing something I thought I had to do tonight was actually due twelve hours ago.
> Actually, everything in the two whole weeks of school left.
> Actually, school, period.
> Unemployment.

Incomplete things:

> A paper now late. As always.
> This meme. No, I haven't forgotten about it.
> Iconmaking for emglyph.
> My app for buggedboy, still. Also theycant_getcha and oldest_one, but those aren't as urgent.

Things to buy despite unemployment:

> A folding screen, since the closet doors are gone from the room I'm moving into.
> Fishing with John.
> A haircut.

All in all, I'm far more cheerful than I really deserve to be. There's a post to be made more specifically about the summer and beyond, and my vague excuses for plans, but. Later.

TOTALLY IRRELEVANT EDIT: This is a great article about how Powerpoint presentations affect the way people think and communicate.

he's also very desexualized

Thu, 29 May 2008 20:35:02 GMT

Round Two is now closed! You can all has a round 3.

View Poll: Cinematic Supervillain Showdown, Round 3

CINEMATIC SUPERVILLAIN SHOWDOWN, ROUND TWO.

Wed, 28 May 2008 21:45:37 GMT

Round One of this is now closed! With no ties, thank God, because I have yet to figure out a tiebreaker system. Thank you guys for playing along with my madness so far >:D

Somehow in making this poll I put bracket 2 in first, but the brackets didn't actually get mixed up, so I don't feel like changing it. I promise all the options that should be here are, and are matched up properly.

These are some epic battles already, you guys. Holy crap.

View Poll: Cinematic Supervillain Showdown, Round 2

In totally unrelated news, I love you all for putting up with me.

as wondrous as peru

Wed, 28 May 2008 00:58:00 GMT

There is good news and there is bad news.

The good news is: I have found a nice place to live for the summer. Depending which room I get it'll be $425 or $550 a month-- I'm hoping for the smaller one-- including all utilities, plus there's a cat. And it's in a condo, rather than an apartment, so . . yeah. Should be pretty nice. In theory.

The bad news is: I'm broke and unemployed. Consequently I need to get hold of a steady income, or at least five hundred dollars, by June 14 or I won't have a way to pay for this room. Which would be, y'know. Bad.

MTurk won't make me that kind of money; neither will the amount of stuff I have around that I can sell, which isn't much. I'm applying to jobs like mad, but I can't exactly force people to answer, let alone hire me.

So. Do I give up and just go back to PA for the summer or indefinitely? Because going back to PA guarantees me a place to live, and I can probably work out a long-distance arrangement for the work I need to make up to a professor over the summer, and I will get to see people. But it also makes me feel like sort of a failure, and it's even harder to find a job in Bethlehem than it is in Chicago.

Alternatively, I could stay here and keep job-hunting like mad, not flunk out of college, and work on the assumption I will find a job successfully; this actually worked for me when I got fired last May. And I could probably get living expenses out of my college fund (through my parents) for a month or two if necessary; I'd need to, y'know, talk to them.

So, uh. Advice on money and/or general life management? D:

EDIT: My mother is glorious, except when I am living with her, so she is extra-glorious in permitting me not to have to.

. . . did that make sense?

Take apartment, we will help if necessary- since, well, school.......

xomom

CINEMATIC SUPERVILLAIN SHOWDOWN

Tue, 27 May 2008 20:43:34 GMT

So I was poking around the Internet, like you do, and found pretty much the best chart ever. And nai_is_not and I think that, clearly, we need to all vote on this and figure out the ultimate winner.

So here's a first-round poll for you all to vote in. I'll put up the second round in a couple of days, I think. Because this is just way more fun than actually studying for finals. What.

View Poll: Cinematic Supervillain Showdown, Bracket 1 Round 1

View Poll: Cinematic Supervillain Showdown, Bracket 2 Round 1

GO ON. VOTE. TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO VOTE. BECAUSE YOU LOVE ME.

meme, from everyone ever

Sat, 24 May 2008 12:12:43 GMT

What sort of character would you like to see me play? It can be a stereotype, it can be a general description, OR you can choose a specific name (I'd like to see you play _____). Then, tell me why!

all very well and good

Sat, 24 May 2008 03:08:47 GMT

Sorry for all the moviebitchery lately, but I wanted to finish off with a couple of chatlogs to explain more clearly what I didn't like about Indiana Jones, and why I simply don't like the Narnia movies so far.

custardpringle: . . . here, I finally figured out a good way to explain to Nai why I don't want aliens in that movie
custardpringle:
[22:43] [custardpringle] I'm not comfortable with a fantasy universe that lets the Holy Grail exist without explanation outside the Bible, and then decides the Inca gods were aliens from flying saucers.
[22:43] [custardpringle] It doesn't ring true to me.
izzyryu: See, for me it was too much of a crossing of the streams, genre-wise. Before the indy movies had it's feet firmly in pulp. This yanked it too hard over to the sci fi side of things.
custardpringle: exactly.
custardpringle: The main dividing line between fantasy and scifi is, IMO, that in fantasy things like magic and telepathy and gods simply are and are accepted; scifi only allows for those things with some kind of explanation behind them. So pretty much, what that movie did was turn the canon from fantasy to scifi, and I think it was a lot more fun just saying "these things happen, because they do."
izzyryu: Strangely enough, the introduction of psychic powers kind of bugged me too. >_>
custardpringle: But it was handled as a scifi thing, not a fantasy thing.
custardpringle: If that makes sense.
izzyryu: Hm. I think you're right, actually.
custardpringle: If it had just been that the woman turned out to be psychic, that would've messed up a whole different thing I think is crucial to the series, which is the general idea that humans shouldn't interfere with powers greater than themselves.
izzyryu: And really, the woman didn't really need to be psychic at all.
custardpringle: She didn't.
custardpringle: I don't even know what that little hand-gesture-thing was at the beginning.
izzyryu: In fact, the whole "psychic weapon" nonsense could have been dispensed with. Just leave it as "bringing the skull will bring power." No need for specifics.
custardpringle: Hey, that worked with the Ark of the Covenant.
izzyryu: Yep!

[22:22] [custardpringle] also, since you are the film student: have you seen either of the narnia movies?
[22:22] [Nai] but they want to see the mini-series now, in increments, so that's a good sign
[22:22] [Nai] I've seen the first?
[22:23] [custardpringle] because I saw the first recently and am watching the new one now
[22:23] [custardpringle] and I'm trying to figure out why I get /no/ feeling of suspense or excitement from them
[22:23] [custardpringle] at all
[22:23] [custardpringle] it's not just because they're from kids' books, because Spiderwick Chronicles and Harry Potter are both good movies with that
[22:24] [custardpringle] I'm just like "oh hey, there's dramatic music and excitement going on, why don't I care."
[22:24] [Nai] I remember thinking the first movie was decent, but not seat-of-the-chair material
[22:24] [custardpringle] It's like someone took an epic fantasy movie and wrapped it in gauze or something and I can't figure out /what/ about how these movies are made makes me feel like that.
[22:24] [Nai] I think it's... the lighting.
[22:25] [Nai] either that, or you're too used to movies with better suspense
[22:25] [Nai] but yeah, I remember the lighting be abnormally bright
[22:25] [custardpringle] that might be part of it
[22:25] [custardpringle] even this nighttime battle scene I'm watching seems . . . oversaturated somehow
[22:26] [Nai] It's been a long time since I've seen the first movie, though.
[22:26] [Nai] I heard the second one was supposed to be darker? (...not lighting wise.)
[22:26] [custardpringle] I haven't noticed that so far :D
[22:27] [custardpringle] but I also heard that there is caspian/susan for some reason
[22:27] [Nai] Daarn.
[22:27] [custardpringle] so I disliked it before I even started watching
[22:27] [Nai] I haven't actually read the book.
[22:27] [custardpringle] The books aren't much for canon pairings at all iirc
[22:28] [custardpringle] in fact the only one I can think of is mr. and mrs. beaver
[22:29] [custardpringle] they're trying to make this look like Helm's Deep and failing /horribly/
[22:29] [custardpringle] it's really kind of sad
[22:29] [Nai] Actually, I think that's why
[22:29] [Nai] so much of it screams OTHER FANTASY MOVIE
[22:30] [custardpringle] XDD
[22:30] [custardpringle] that's a great way of putting it
[22:30] [custardpringle] I thought at first it might be to do with the fact that there is /constant/ music through the whole music
[22:30] [Nai] Ooh, I didn't notice that.
[22:31] [custardpringle] but Dark City does the same thing, and it's ill-advised but not actually annoying until someone mentions it to you and you listen for it.
[22:31] [custardpringle] here it's just like DRAMATIC FAKE HOWARD SHORE MUSIC. ALL THE TIME.
[22:32] [Nai] Yeah, it's got the knock-off effect

[22:37] [custardpringle] oh hey, this bear is actually marginally interesting
[22:37] [Nai] An interesting bear????? UNHEARD OF.
[22:38] [custardpringle] "I am hunger. I am thirst. I can fast a hundred years and not die." this scene is actually slightly /not/ failing at creepy
[22:38] [Nai] oooeo.
[22:38] [custardpringle] there is a halfbird half old lady thing waving a sword around, idk
[22:39] [custardpringle] OH they're trying to resurrect the white queen
[22:40] [Nai] DUN. DUN. DUN.
[22:40] [custardpringle] XDD
[22:40] [Nai] We all know how that will turn out.
[22:40] [custardpringle] kjghakj is this even cgi
[22:40] [custardpringle] she's reaching out from inside a block of ice and it looks like fucking saranwrap
[22:41] [Nai] XD
[22:41] [Nai] I take it you don't recommend this movie?
[22:41] [custardpringle] Not especially, no.
[22:41] [custardpringle] It's pretty pointless afiact

[22:54] [custardpringle] wow, I just entirely forgot I was watching this movie
[22:54] [custardpringle] for like ten minutes
[22:54] [custardpringle] that's a really good sign for how exciting it is
[22:54] [Nai] XD
[23:11] [custardpringle] oh great
[23:11] [custardpringle] the only actually scary thing in this movie
[23:11] [custardpringle] and it's supposed to be on the good side
[23:12] [Nai] What is it?
[23:12] [custardpringle] the trees came to life
[23:12] [custardpringle] and are grabbing people and dragging them around
[23:12] [Nai] Oho.
[23:16] [Nai] Poor bad guys.
[23:16] [Nai] I imagine that sucks.
[23:17] [custardpringle] I'm sure it does.

Done now. Honestly. With apologies. *hunkers down*

a great black pit, and it's filled with people who are filled with shit

Fri, 23 May 2008 09:09:58 GMT

So, contrary to popular opinion, I actually liked Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. There were some weird things about it, but it was fun, and-- like I said-- well worth paying eleven dollars to get home at 3:30 AM on a school night.

Then I decided, after five months, to finally summon the courage to watch The Seeker instead of hating it blindly. So now I hate it even more. And not blindly.

I like to think, generally, I am not the kind of person who hates on movies just because they're not like the book. But the Dark is Rising books are pretty important to me and I barely even recognized the source material in this movie and I am, in short, extremely upset.

I don't think I'm the be-all and end-all of opinion about the differences between British and American culture, but I am an American studying British history (because of these books, incidentally) who's seen a decent amount of British television, and it's painfully clear to me that this is British source material adapted by Americans who didn't know what to do with it.

The people writing The Seeker didn't like The Dark is Rising; only one of them would even admit to having finished it, their general opinion being that it was tremendously boring and that American audiences wouldn't want to identify with a dreamy British eleven-year-old. This is why we get an almost offensively normal fourteen-year-old American transplant for Will Stanton instead, and why I decided sometime around last October I had no intention of ever paying money to see this movie. I'm gratified and horrified to see I was absolutely right to think so.

There's a sense of timelessness, of perpetuity, that Susan Cooper plays with very easily in her books-- in TDiR, but also in Victory and King of Shadows; her characters tend to slip back and forth very fluidly between points in time, and sometimes hover in between, as if they belonged in both at once. This isn't something exclusive to British writers; Madeline L'Engle did it just fine in A Swiftly Tilting Planet. (Which was, admittedly, set partly in ancient Wales.) But it's certainly very suggestive to me of the way that British history traces back far further and far more steadily than American history-- the people writing this movie didn't know how to work with that. Will jumps back and forth abruptly, usually into scenes of violence just because the writers felt like making it exciting, and they never play at all with Cooper's tactic of immortals being able to step outside time, which personally I thought was pretty awesome.

I'm having a good laugh at the movie writers' expense over here-- an angry laugh, but a laugh nonetheless, because they thought this book was boring. And because they thought it was boring and didn't pay attention, they missed out on a lot of things that would have worked really well cinematically. Being able to step outside time, for example. (Another thing that's been done perfectly well, in Cashback.) Herne and the Wild Hunt-- I would have paid a lot to see that entire storyline put on film at all, and to see that carnival mask Stephen sends Will in the book. The Book of Gramarye would've been pretty glorious, too. The filmmakers didn't like these things, because apparently they were too stupid to grasp any kind of visual interest that doesn't involve violence and destruction and explosions, or thought their audience was too stupid, so that's what we get instead.

What I missed most in this movie-- besides, oh I don't know, the entire plot of the book-- is the Stanton family. I've read TDiR plenty of times-- just finished rereading it again yesterday, in fact-- and I never remember it primarily as an Epic Battle Between Good And Evil; what sticks with me is Will and his family, and the overpowering sense of a big bustling loving family that's comfortably established in their house, with each other, and in the village where they live. The Stantons in the movie are barely recognizable as the same family; wrong siblings in the wrong order, for one thing, Will's brothers share their names with the boys in the book and pretty much nothing else, one of his sisters is missing entirely, and the other is inexplicably younger than him (and it's a big deal in the books that he's youngest, too). It doesn't make much of a difference, in any case, since Will's siblings are pretty much invisible through most of the movie until they're needed as plot devices. Worse still, they're newly transplanted to England; I suspect this was meant to enhance Will's sense of alienation and Things Changing, but instead it entirely loses the most disturbing aspect of the book: the way that the rising of the Dark threatens familiar, beloved places and people. There's no reason for the viewer to care about Will's family, and no reason for Will to care about the place where he lives.

Speaking of the Stanton family: Tom. What the shit did they do to Tom. In the book and movie both, Will is the seventh son of a seventh son, because he had an older brother named Tom who was lost as a baby. In the book, Tom would have been the oldest, but he died, and no one in the family had known about it, which makes sense. In the movie, he was Will's twin, and vanished during a storm when they were two weeks old, and if anyone can give me a good reason why none of their older siblings-- if not their parents-- would have ever told Will this I'd love to hear it. What's more, when I heard "twin who vanished" I guessed he was going to come up later in the plot as a hostage (instead of Mary, who isn't in the movie at all) and I was right. And it is simultaneously totally senseless and totally predictable, and totally stupid. Will feels slightly alone, slightly removed from his family; he's supposed to. He's an Old One. It wrecks that, giving him a Convenient Twin. (Though I noticed that Tom showed up wearing Maggie's red scarf. Maybe I'll write fic where he turns out to be an agent of the Dark.)

And on that subject: Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone. Six Signs. What, precisely, is difficult about this concept, let alone wrong with it? And yet, apparently, the Sign of Fire isn't good enough for Hollywood. The sixth Sign is apparently Will's soul. I can't find the words for what utter bullshit this idea is, but if I could you can bet there would be a whole lot of them. It's like an angsty Harry Potter fanfiction. It sets him up as a hero figure, which I don't think he is in the book; he's not a savior, he's one of a Circle, and he has a crucial task to complete but that's no different from any of the rest of them. The other Old Ones, in this movie, seem to exist primarily to show up and rescue Will when he needs it. They're still his elders; what happened to respect? Where's the Lady?

The Walker is also missing entirely, which irritates me, because I think he's very important to the original story; he's a sort of bridge between the Light and the Dark, having betrayed one for the other, and his subplot helps provide some characterization and background for Merriman and is really wonderfully tragic for both of them. (I'm horribly biased about Merriman, because I'm planning to RP him somewhere, but still.) And speaking of Merriman: I didn't much approve of the way he was written here at all, or of the description of the Old Ones as "warriors." Merriman, in the novels, is a scholar, not a square-jawed cropped-haired soldier. The conflict in The Dark is Rising is between ideals and emotions and pure power, and almost never devolves into physical violence-- or even threats of violence-- except when it serves a purpose of emotional manipulation. In The Seeker, a lot of stuff gets smashed up and set on fire and people get beaten up and nearly impaled. Oh, and some of the Old Ones get buried in a lot of snakes. What.

For yet another example: the idea that the battle between Light and Dark can be described in equations. (On which Will's father has conveniently written a dissertation.) This might be a good idea, used by itself somewhere else-- but it would have to be handled carefully, and has nothing to do with The Dark is Rising, and in any case the people who wrote this movie have pretty well proven themselves totally incapable of putting any thought into anything at all that doesn't involve blowing shit up. The rules Susan Cooper did set up for this world, on the other hand, get ignored in some really irritating ways. The Black Rider shows up in church, for example (impersonating a doctor, which considering the casting was really the last straw for me)-- what's the good of a church, a good old-fashioned long-standing bit of holy ground, if it can't keep the Dark out? What's the good of Will being an Old One, in fact, if he can't even tell that Maggie's a witch? Even the powers he's granted in this movie are more physical and violent than the ones he has in the books. And not nearly as useful.

I will say this, and only this, for this movie: the cinematography's pretty good (it turns very horrorish at times, and starts looking like Saw or Silent Hill for some reason) and the casting and acting I did like. I still think Ian McShane was too young-looking a Merriman, but he did well with what he had and did remind me very satisfyingly, at times, of the version in the books; and in any case he and Christopher Eccleston are both pretty much awesome by default. I still say, though, that having the Black Rider impersonate a cheerful dorky doctor was awfully low.

I never thought I'd say this, but considering what's been done to some of my favorite YA fantasy, I hope to high heaven there aren't any more The Dark is Rising movies. I'd love to see the Narnia franchise go away, too, but I don't think I'll be that lucky. And I've heard rumors of a film version of The House With A Clock In Its Walls, too, and I definitely don't trust Hollywood to go near John Bellairs.

. . . I think I'm done now. I wish I could say I felt better for dumping all this out, and I'm sorry it's not quite as coherent and thought-through as it probably could be.

On the plus side, tofu_vamp gave me the Sweeney Todd soundtrack and it's fantastic for writing angry ranty LJ posts to :D

i've got a bad feeling about this

Thu, 22 May 2008 09:51:14 GMT

I went to see Indiana Jones tonight, promptly at midnight. It was an interesting experience-- not a bad movie exactly, and definitely worth paying eleven dollars to get home at 4 AM on a school night, but, uh.

Y'all get bullet points, because I'm tired.

> The trailer for Australia confused me. It looks suspiciously like a movie adaptation of A Town Like Alice-- which I didn't like much when I read it for school in ninth grade, but that was before I started liking romance novels. Anyone know anything about this?
> Shia Le Boeuf was awesome in this. He is in fact Indy and Marion's son-- Henry Williams, known generally as Mutt-- but he is a) a greaser who b) is amazing with a sword, c) gets punched by girls a lot, and d) gets a whole scene of swinging around on vines. And he spends a lot of the movie with this really hilarious expression of OH GOD THERE'S AN OLD GUY SNOGGING MY MOM MAKE HIM STOP.
> The whole nuclear test bomb thing was totally unnecessary. At first I thought it was just gonna be Indy running around and dodging through people's actual back yards, Bueller-style, which honestly would've been pretty damn funny. Instead there's a nuclear blast-- which was nicely done, admittedly, but totally unnecessary. izzyryu was cranky about Indy taking shelter in a lead-lined refrigerator, but then again these movies have never exactly been scientifically accurate anyway.
> Indy has a military record now, which surprised izzyryu a lot more than it surprised me for some reason. Possibly I'm so used to canons spanning the first half of the twentieth century-- I'm thinking of Lord Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion here-- that it seems relatively natural to me that he'd've done intelligence work during WWII. It's not stated what he was doing, but that's what would make sense to me.
> I forget what college it is that Indy's supposed to be teaching at, but he went to University of Chicago and the campus getting smashed up in this movie looks suspiciously like it was based on ours. It was a very satisfying thing to watch towards the end of the quarter. *eyeshifts*
> There was a quicksand scene, during which I took a nice leisurely bathroom break. There was also a scene with a guy getting dragged underground by enormous fire ants, though, which is sort of the same thing.
> Possibly I have been working too hard on RP applicationing, but Jack Hodgins would love this movie.

And finally:

> . . . aliens. What the hell does Indiana Jones canon need with aliens? Psychic interdimensional aliens, and I don't think the concept of a "hive mind" even existed in 1957 the way the term was used. I think Sturgeon or Heinlein invented it, but I could be hallucinating and Wikipedia won't help. (Though it does already use this movie as an example of one.)
ANYHOO
They were actually, I thought, pretty neat aliens. They just need to GTFO of the Indiana Jones movies. Immediately.
That was, also, a very familiar ending. I've seen it before. When I was ten. With David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. (Okay, fine, there wasn't a wedding, but I wanted there to be.)

I probably had other things to say. That I have forgotten. Maybe I'll make another post later.

he will beat you up

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:11:18 GMT

Thoughts on last night's Bones episode!

This is an email I sent someone, originally, but I'm up for discussion here too.

hi :D have some semicoherent thoughts. I've been watching a ton of this show the last few days, for RP research purposes, and it was interesting seeing this episode on the tail of having recently watched a lot of this canon a lot more closely than I usually would have.

I actually, when I saw the trailer for this episode, totally forgot about Sweets; I figured if it was gonna be a lead character it was likely to be Zack, because the writers aren't gonna touch Booth or Brennan, Angela's devoted to Brennan and Hodgins is devoted to Angela, and Zack seemed far more likely than Cam. I didn't want it to be him, though, so I'm ashamed to say I sort of latched onto Sweets as a red herring, because he admittedly was being kind of a creep last night.

I've had a bit of time, since I saw Sal's post (which is spoilery for last night's House, f everyone's i), to think about how emotional investments play into this, and I find it interesting that this episode played with the viewer's emotional investment in the show's premise character dynamics by forcing us to question the characters' emotional investments in that work and those relationships. I think it was a nice way to go about it, as opposed to House going OMG CHARACTER DEATH BAAWW.

I spent this morning poking at the fox.com boards, which I normally wouldn't do, and it doesn't seem to be a very popular episode; my own problems with it are mainly that it seemed too dense to really be coherent. I think it would really have hung together a lot better if it had been done in a three-episode arc as was apparently originally planned: an episode to deal with Booth's shooting and faked death, another ending on a cliffhanger where we think Hodgins or Sweets is the killer, and a third to work properly up to the reveal. The essential premise seemed pretty sound and believable to me; I just think it was brought up far too abruptly if you don't realize it along with Hodgins, which I'm ashamed to say I didn't. (Has it been mentioned since early s1 that Zack lives above Hodgins' garage? Because that was kind of key here, and I'm not sure how many viewers would've remembered that right off the bat.)

I'm immensely grateful, btw, that a friend of mine-- who knows I've been working on an application to play Jack Hodgins in a LiveJournal RP-- saw it first and warned me it wasn't him. It would've been beastly for my app to have him turn out to be the bad guy :( but I find it interesting that he was clearly the first to figure out the truth and, while he didn't hide anything pertinent from his colleagues, was obviously reluctant to say it out loud or to let Zack do so.

AND FINALLY. *deep breath* As I discovered entirely by accident, watching "The Woman in the Car" after this episode is really, really awesomely creepy. You should try it.

SO HEY GUYS

Mon, 19 May 2008 14:29:43 GMT

For those of you who didn't already know, or don't know my friend Tod (ninjahijinx) at all, he is doing free icon requests today. Go here, request, and send on a Paypal donation if you can, because Tod is awesome.

:D