Not Exactly Reviews
Jan. 2nd, 2003 04:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaThe LA crowd has headed back to sunny (and mudslide-ridden) Cali; it was a short trip this year. "Still not king," as it were, and we had a couple of conversations that veered dangerously close to there. *argh* OTOH, got to discuss interesting film stuff with both JG and CI, and got fitted for the RenFaire outfit by AK (it is *so* going to Rock, and she is *so* patient with me and my futzing and kvetching). Little F. is darling, as usual, although he had Too Much Sugar and got rather rowdy with PB. P. has enough coordination to roll around on the floor and not break things; F. is a bit young for that yet . . .
DG is still in town for another couple of days; hope I have a chance to have a good talk w/him before he leaves. He's been making noises about teaching, and I think he'd be good at it - but his principles are still freshly hammered, and might not take well to the battering of Real Live Students. Then again, I may be underestimating him - I certainly have before.
D. and I wanted to go see _Drumline_, and AK and JG ended up going along with us. I was reasonably impressed; the performances kicked brass all over the place, and the cinematography was good enough I noticed it. I was a little ticked by a few goofs for the sake of the plot - how did this kid get through six years of junior-high and high school band without at least learning how to read beat patterns? I mean, notes, okay, he doesn't play quads, kettles, or melodic percussion, I can see that, but surely by now he's had enough exposure to sheet music to figure out what an eighth-note represents? And why does the inkjet printer make the LPR noise? And the romantic subplot just sucks - Our Protagonist is a recto-cranially inverted jerk for the first three-fiths of the movie; what on earth does she see in him? But his personal growth makes sense in the context of the story, his support of Affirmative Action makes great sense and a great scene, and the end isn't made too easy on him. (I do feel sorry for the tenth-chair snare who didn't get to march for the final showdown, though.)
Of course, we saw _LOTR: TTT_ as soon as the G/K family hit town. Excellent, although we lost some of the cooler slow parts of the book, and (of course) there wasn't enough of Merry & Pippin for my tastes! (I am _highly_ annoyed, now that I've finished the trilogy, that we won't get to see "The Scouring of the Shire" filmed, as it's the strongest M&P sequence in the books and I would *love* to see how Monaghan and Boyd played it; I only hope the extended dance remix DVD for _TTT_ gives us a littel more of Fangorn Forest.) The re-write of Faramir concerns me, I must admit. I've heard Boyens's explanation of why the change was made, and it makes sense, and they have a chance to sell me on it in _ROTK_, but I'm still uneasy - what we have so far is too much like Boromir, Part Deux, and - sorry - Sean Bean already did it better.
Legolas is bishy as always.
Speaking of these two movies, how did we end up with two popular actors named Orlando at once? It's not that common a name . . .
Random movie crossover trivia: We all know, of course, that Ian Holm, who plays Bilbo in the current LOTR films, voiced Frodo in the BBC radio play of LOTR in the late '70s. Who was his loyal Samwise? Answer: Bill Nighy, better known to us in his role as the lead singer from _Still Crazy_. (The comment from a Sean Astin/Sam Gamgee fan page: "Bit tall for a Hobbit, what?") Further random trivia: the character Bill Nighy plays in _Fairy Tale_ has the last name of *Gardner*. : )
I can't find any LOTR hetfic, except for a couple of Eowyn/Faramir stories. This is not a *problem*, per se - a tale with this many male characters with such deep samurai-love bonds is going to lend itself to mostly slash, and most of the hetfic will be Mary Sues or, at best, author-self-insertions that manage to avoid Mary-Suedom. You'd think there'd be more Rose stories. (Then again, my work-in-progress, given that I'm *completely* blocked on my Snapestory, is a Rose story that's also semi-slash, but there's a little bit of self-insertion going on there, too.)
PB gave us the extended dance remix of _FOTR_ for Yule. I love him more every week. ; ) The Spouse thinks he'd found a used copy of the fifth disk that comes with the Argonath version. I love him even more. : ) How did I become a total fangirl in a year's time? (Then again, it took even less time to get positively obsessed with _HP_ and _Mahou Tsukai Tai!_, and I'd read _The Hobbit_ in its proper time. I'm doing about as well on _CardCaptor Sakura_, and the Spouse bought me my very own Clow deck (I really need to charge that, actually).)
Four days until school starts back. I haven't done anything useful. I do need to write some lesson plans . . .
DG is still in town for another couple of days; hope I have a chance to have a good talk w/him before he leaves. He's been making noises about teaching, and I think he'd be good at it - but his principles are still freshly hammered, and might not take well to the battering of Real Live Students. Then again, I may be underestimating him - I certainly have before.
D. and I wanted to go see _Drumline_, and AK and JG ended up going along with us. I was reasonably impressed; the performances kicked brass all over the place, and the cinematography was good enough I noticed it. I was a little ticked by a few goofs for the sake of the plot - how did this kid get through six years of junior-high and high school band without at least learning how to read beat patterns? I mean, notes, okay, he doesn't play quads, kettles, or melodic percussion, I can see that, but surely by now he's had enough exposure to sheet music to figure out what an eighth-note represents? And why does the inkjet printer make the LPR noise? And the romantic subplot just sucks - Our Protagonist is a recto-cranially inverted jerk for the first three-fiths of the movie; what on earth does she see in him? But his personal growth makes sense in the context of the story, his support of Affirmative Action makes great sense and a great scene, and the end isn't made too easy on him. (I do feel sorry for the tenth-chair snare who didn't get to march for the final showdown, though.)
Of course, we saw _LOTR: TTT_ as soon as the G/K family hit town. Excellent, although we lost some of the cooler slow parts of the book, and (of course) there wasn't enough of Merry & Pippin for my tastes! (I am _highly_ annoyed, now that I've finished the trilogy, that we won't get to see "The Scouring of the Shire" filmed, as it's the strongest M&P sequence in the books and I would *love* to see how Monaghan and Boyd played it; I only hope the extended dance remix DVD for _TTT_ gives us a littel more of Fangorn Forest.) The re-write of Faramir concerns me, I must admit. I've heard Boyens's explanation of why the change was made, and it makes sense, and they have a chance to sell me on it in _ROTK_, but I'm still uneasy - what we have so far is too much like Boromir, Part Deux, and - sorry - Sean Bean already did it better.
Legolas is bishy as always.
Speaking of these two movies, how did we end up with two popular actors named Orlando at once? It's not that common a name . . .
Random movie crossover trivia: We all know, of course, that Ian Holm, who plays Bilbo in the current LOTR films, voiced Frodo in the BBC radio play of LOTR in the late '70s. Who was his loyal Samwise? Answer: Bill Nighy, better known to us in his role as the lead singer from _Still Crazy_. (The comment from a Sean Astin/Sam Gamgee fan page: "Bit tall for a Hobbit, what?") Further random trivia: the character Bill Nighy plays in _Fairy Tale_ has the last name of *Gardner*. : )
I can't find any LOTR hetfic, except for a couple of Eowyn/Faramir stories. This is not a *problem*, per se - a tale with this many male characters with such deep samurai-love bonds is going to lend itself to mostly slash, and most of the hetfic will be Mary Sues or, at best, author-self-insertions that manage to avoid Mary-Suedom. You'd think there'd be more Rose stories. (Then again, my work-in-progress, given that I'm *completely* blocked on my Snapestory, is a Rose story that's also semi-slash, but there's a little bit of self-insertion going on there, too.)
PB gave us the extended dance remix of _FOTR_ for Yule. I love him more every week. ; ) The Spouse thinks he'd found a used copy of the fifth disk that comes with the Argonath version. I love him even more. : ) How did I become a total fangirl in a year's time? (Then again, it took even less time to get positively obsessed with _HP_ and _Mahou Tsukai Tai!_, and I'd read _The Hobbit_ in its proper time. I'm doing about as well on _CardCaptor Sakura_, and the Spouse bought me my very own Clow deck (I really need to charge that, actually).)
Four days until school starts back. I haven't done anything useful. I do need to write some lesson plans . . .
