Month: December 2011

Going fourth

Another terrifically unexciting day. A trip to the post office, a trip to the bank, then capping the evening with Dial M for Murder, which is delightful, if by the end just a little silly, in its convolutions and deceptions.

Just two short weeks left in this vacation. Where does the time go?

Tuesday various

  • “The days of aliens spouting gibberish with no grammatical structure are over…” Creating a new language for A Game of Thrones
  • Along the same lines, 20 awesomely untranslatable words from around the world. I particularly like

    Yagan (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego) – “the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start” [via]

  • Are we truly living in the age of fanfiction?

    What’s been truly bizarre, though, is the way the mainstream has slowly headed in the same direction, and without anyone noticing it, we seem to have handed over our entire industry to the creation of fanfiction on a corporate level, and at this point, I’m not sure how we’re expecting the pendulum to ever swing back. I know people love to blame Spielberg and Lucas for creating the modern blockbuster age, but at least when they decided to pay tribute to their inspirations, they did so in interesting ways. Spielberg has talked about how his frustrations at hearing that only English filmmakers could direct James Bond movies led to the creation of Indiana Jones, and Lucas was working out his love of Flash Gordon when he created “Star Wars.” Those are healthy ways to work through your love of something, and absolutely make sense as important pieces in the creative process. What’s scary is how these days, filmmakers wouldn’t bother with that last step, the part where you take your inspirations and run them through your own filter. Now, instead, we live in an age where we are simply doing the source material again and again and again, and where original creation seems to be almost frowned upon as a “risk.” [via]

  • See also: they’re re-making Starship Troopers. And The Munsters. As a “dramatic re-imagining.”
  • It’s so sad to see Monty Python members fight among themselves.
  • Blackwater is changing its name. This is like if the Devil started asking us to call him Gus.[via]
  • David Milch to adapt William Faulkner? I am so there.
  • They’re coming to crowd-fund you, Barbara… ‘Living Dead’ Fans Digging Up Funds to Keep Chapel from Going Under
  • Bruce Wayne’s medical records [via]
  • And finally, I haven’t seen the new Tintin movie, but this fan-made opening sequence is really quite wonderful. [via]

    The Adventures of Tintin from James Curran on Vimeo.

Day three

Out of the weekend and into the proper start of my vacation, today was something of a lost day, actually. I didn’t do much more than watch a few episodes of 30 Rock and The Vampire Diaries. (I’ve never been good about keeping up with the former, and I’ve heard some good things about the latter, though I’m not quite sold on it just yet.)

This evening, before dinner, I took the dog to the vet to have a chronic ear infection looked at. And then, after dinner, I watched Conversations With Other Women. It’s an interesting movie, not quite what I expected, and if I’d been made aware of the fact that it’s a split-screen, following a long conversation between Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter from different angles and moments, I had forgotten that. As Tasha Robinson writes:

The effect is distracting, but it’s also strikingly intimate and voyeuristic, like studying a series of X-rays taken from all sides of a subject’s body.

Which makes it sound, by the end, much less appealing that it really is. The two leads, who are on camera for most of the running time, which is really just the two of them talking and flirting and remembering, are quite good and good together.

That was Monday, anyway.