HSU IT Department

We saw A Wrinkle in Time today. Visually it was gorgeous, and it definitely had the bones and the heart of the original book. I loved the girl who played Meg, the family dynamics were well done (her missing her father, acting out at school because of cruel comments, etc.), and the positive message for young girls was clear and uplifting (if a wee bit heavy-handed for adult viewers). I also liked the way they worked in the larger message about the many different ways that The Black Thing can affect people (fear, anger, cruelty, etc.), even to the point of showing that the girl who bullies Meg is dealing with her own issues, and a tentative move towards friendship.

On the other hand, they changed a few things for no discernible reason (e.g. instead of the winged horse we get a weird leaf-creature, and Camazotz is a weird hallucinatory kind of place, less cold war and more LSD). The storyline/script was a bit of a mess: erratically paced, oversimplified (for example, Meg's math and physics gifts are underplayed), and too many things glossed over or info-dumped instead of organically revealed. I wanted to like it much more than I did; on balance I have to say that it was just OK. I think perhaps it's aimed at viewers around age ten, vs tweens.

On the letters front, I got a real letter in the mail -- you know, the kind with multiple pages and coherent thoughts and everything! As a bonus, it was sealed as shown below :) Now I love getting letters, and it happens so seldom these days that I was enormously pleased/excited to receive it. I will be writing back. One is never too old for a pen pal, is one?

(click to embiggen)

Forget the candy and costumes -- give me vintage horror movies! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

TCM is doing a marathon today through Monday. We just finished watching "The Blob" (1958) and now "Village of the Damned" (1960) is on, squeee!!! Also on the schedule, among others: House of Wax, Cat People, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, To the Devil a Daughter, The Mummy, Black Sabbath... I can hardly contain my glee :) I may have to call in sick to work on Monday lol

Saturday lineup
Sunday lineup
Monday lineup

Well hello there, LJ, long time no see!

I have been AWOL for quite some time lately. Partly this is because Fearless Leader of my dept is leaving has left and we are all busy sorting out who does what until we get a new Fearless Leader, partly it's because the semester has started up again so I suddenly now have lots of editing clients beating a path to my door, partly it's because the deadlines for minerva_fest and luciusbigbang are LOOMING HUGE on the horizon, and partly it's because I got my grubby little hands on the third in Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy (squeee!) and I decided that I wanted to re-read the first two before getting into the third one so I wouldn't miss anything. So I've been submerged in The Magicians and The Magician King for the last four days (and WOW I'd forgotten how good they are!) and as of yesterday am deep into The Magician's Land. Yay!

While my dad was here a couple of weeks ago, we saw Lucy, with Scarlett Johansson and a VERY sexy French guy. Has anyone else seen it? All three of us thought it was just tremendous (probably because it's not a Hollywood movie, therefore has some originality to it). I only wish that it had been based on a book so that I could have had a deeper/longer version of it. An intriguing exploration of what a superintelligent being might be like and what they might choose to do. It has some similarities with Ted Chiang's novella Understand but the main character makes a very different set of choices.

On the fandom side of things, I've signed up for the always-fun low-stress mini_fest (yay!), but does anyone know what's happened to hp_holidaygen? It appears that reveals were never posted last year, and the comm has basically been silent since last December. I hope it has not been abandoned.

Finally, I am VERY happy to say that we have 46 participants for the inaugural sshg_giftfest!! We have not only attracted some experienced "old salts" to the ship but some new sailors as well, and I look forward to the wonderful stories, arts and crafts that will result :)

Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing has a release date: June 7, 2013. Exactly 38 days from today. Tick, tick, tick...

And there's a new trailer. yay!!


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During filming of The Hobbit, Ian McKellen had an angsty moment over the fact that he was acting with thirteen dwarves and yet not a single actor was there on camera with him -- all he had were 13 photographs of the dwarves on top of stands with little lights; whoever he was "talking" to their light would flash, but the actual actors did all their camera time separately and were filled in later by the computer techs. "I cried, actually. I cried. Then I said out loud, 'This is not why I became an actor'. Unfortunately the microphone was on and the whole studio heard..."

I sympathize with him. Much as I love special effects and amazingly realistic goblins, dwarves, dragons, monsters, spaceships, etc., there's something missing when 90% of what you see was produced inside a computer. The best, most memorable performances I've ever seen are live: Phantom of the Opera, Les Mis, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Mikado, even the junior high musicals I was in (under protest) and the high school musicals I worked tech crew on were magical in a way that movies can't be. When you know there are no second takes...when the actors are responding in real time to the audience...there's a wonderful feedback loop that gets going, and its remarkable. Light years different from what happens in a movie theater, where your reaction makes no difference at all to what's playing on screen.

This is also why I'm very excited about the movie version of Les Mis that's coming out next month. Instead of the usual approach, where the singers do all the singing in the studio months ahead of time and then have to time their acting to what they did weeks earlier, this production is allowing them to sing in real time, while they act. It's an interesting middle ground between live performance and movie-musical, and the actors are pretty excited about it.

We've already bought our Hobbit tickets; may have to snap a couple of these up as well.

We attempted two unusual movies over the weekend. One was an utter failure and the other a rousing success. The first was Stalker (warning: link has spoilers), a subtitled (strike 1) 1970s (strike 2) Russian sci-fi flick which appeared from it sepia tones to have been filmed in the 1940s (strike 3) and which had not a single line of dialog for the first ten minutes (Yer out!!). The premise ("an expedition led by the Stalker to bring his two clients to a site known as the Zone, which has the supposed potential to fulfill a person's innermost desires") sounded intriguing but the execution left a lot to be desired. Plus we weren't in a subtitley mood, so after 15 minutes we called the game on account of "Meh."

The second, however, was intriguing and I highly recommend it. It's called Ink, and came out in 2009. Visually it's unusual and striking -- overexposed in parts, strange fades in and out, abrupt scene shifts back and forth in time, and events are rather subtle in that you have to be patient but also pay close attention to comprehend events. Very much like a dream, which is apt since the story is about two factions, one group that brings good dreams and another that brings nightmares. The story concerns a little girl who is kidnapped by the scrofulous raggedy-robed Ink, who intends to give her as payment to a mysterious group known as The Assembly (they're the ones that bring nightmares), in exchange for beauty, wealth and happiness.

There are also Storytellers and Pathfinders -- one of the best scenes is one in which the Pathfinder "conducts" a series of coincidences to create the situation they need. They travel by means of doors, which they open by playing rhythms on small drums. And the child who plays the little girl is extraordinary: both adorable and fierce, like a tiny Gryffindor.

There's a psychological element to the movie as well, because what's happening in the real world and the dream world interact and affect each other. I don't want to say to much more for fear of spoiling it, but it's a wonderful and thought-provoking movie. (As you might guess, it never made the mainstream theatres but played the art house and film festival circuit.)

Anyway, I highly recommend it. It's not a traditional movie where the storyline is blatantly obvious, but it's well worth the time and patience to experience it.

I can't wait LOL!!!

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Joss Whedon has apparently filmed, secretly, in 12 days, his own version of Much Ado About Nothing! So it's my favorite Shakespeare ever + Joss = ♥ ♥ ♥ It's a perfect one for him to do: the dialog is fast and clever and witty, much like his own. He cast a bunch of Whedonverse folks in it, including Captain Tightpants (aka Nathan Fillion), Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker. (Sadly, no Giles though.) He filmed it as indie flick but I really hope it gets picked up for wide distribution. Must! See! So excited!!!

I've always liked this movie (Joan Crawford and Eve Arden) and only found out recently that it was based on a book, so of course had to read it. It wasn't really what I expected -- in some ways it was better than the movie, in others worse. Better in that we get a fuller explanation of why Veda is the way she is, and why her mother puts up with it, but worse in that Mildred comes off as much stupider. The ending is completely different from the movie, much less dramatic; it ends -- literally -- not with a bang but a whimper. Cain apparently also wrote Double Indemnity (another favorite movie of mine) and The Postman Always Rings Twice. His writing isn't anything terrific -- the characters are two-dimensional and cliche, for the most part; maybe that's why they did better as movies where that doesn't matter so much. Bottom line: meh. May have to see the Winslet version, just so I can compare.

1) If you go to a movie at the mall at 2pm on Thanksgiving Day, there will be no one else in the entire theater. Even if the movie is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Which was made of awesome, by the way.

2) Surprisingly few people actually travel by train on the day after Thanksgiving, if my observation of Union Station in Chicago right now is anything to judge by. All the hordes of people must be flying. Or too comatose from yesterday's overdose of tryptophan to move.