MyrdemInggalaArchiveFebMarApr2004You are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. Up? 02 April 2004On Tuesday, we went to see Pieces of April with FirstFallen? and Philip. It was cool. However, as ElfBoy? pointed out, up to a certain moment it's one kind of movie, and after that it's an entirely different, and not as good, kind of movie. It pursues a realistic, although unfortunate, course of events... and then it cops out instead of finding a resolution that isn't trite. Firefly is awesome. The DVD day at Reuel's was cool; the DVDs are definitely the first thing I will buy from overseas When I Am Fabulously Wealthy. I have found a ]] with a complete (and correctly ordered) episode guide and lots of information about the 'verse. The Firefly movie, Serenity, looks set to have the complete series cast. Hooray! Curse Fox. May its subsidiaries be plagued with boils and locusts, yea, unto the seventh generation. Also, here is an interesting blog about ]] - apparently it's a booming industry, and lots of them are South African. Later... Well, from the mercenary blog I went to ,]] which he claims is the First Blog Ever, and may well be right about. I recently read a bunch of his science articles in Destinies (a short-lived paperback sf magazine from the late 70s / early 80s), and I'm reading A Step Farther Out now. I'm glad to see he's still got it. :) And from Jerry Pournelle's blog I went to ,]] the Global Network of Dreams. It's a system which tries to learn things about books, movies and music and determine what things are like what other things. It's very shiny. 10 March 2004I saw Underworld today (well, actually yesterday). It's not bad. Overall I don't think it deserves all the bad press it's been getting; it is by no means a horrendous movie. It's one of those movies that is frustrating because you know it could have been better - everything needed to make a really good movie was there; the fault lay in the somewhat sloppy presentation. If only the director had ensured that the acting was a little more polished; if only the dialogue had been pruned and reworked slightly; if only someone had revised the script and reorganised the way information was revealed; if only the soundtrack were better... etc. There is an elaborate plot, which unlike many other elaborate plots is coherent and solid. The way in which successive parts of the plot are revealed to the audience could have been handled better - several major revelations have no real impact since they are not preceded by sufficient foreshadowing or indeed sufficient prior information about the relevant matter. The acting varies from very good (Bill Nighy as the vampire elder; Michael Sheen as the leader of the werevolves) to really bad (Shane Brolly as the interim leader of the vampires (ElfBoy? vehemently disagrees with me, but I maintain that the man was hamming it up horribly*)), with a wide plateau of average performances in between. I liked the special effects. Some people had issues with the Obvious Wirework, but it didn't bother me particularly. The werewolf transformations were the best I've seen in any werewolf movie so far. I was pleased by the way the movie handled two things that are my personal bugbears in modern vampire settings - vampire elders and modern weaponry. In Underworld, vampire elders are in fact immensely powerful and can beat the crap out of younger vampires and werewolves**, and both vampires and werewolves use modern weapons (and can actually shoot their way out of a paper bag), and constantly improve them***. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie and I recommend it. As long as you don't expect perfection, you shouldn't be disappointed. It is certainly better than Blade and Blade II (although admittedly one would be hard-pressed to find a movie worse than Blade II). *Because of the extremely thick accent he affected, and the multi-national nature of the production, I was convinced during the movie that this guy was a cheaply acquired Eastern European performing in what was obviously not his first language. But he's Irish, so he has no excuse. **Well, except for that one apparently very young elder on the train. She really should have put up more of a fight. ***The use of ranged weapons makes even more sense in this particular movie, given that we are told that a single vampire bite can be fatal for a werewolf, and vice versa. 3 March 2004Well, I have nothing to add to FirstFallen?'s description of Monday, which shall henceforth be known as The Day Your Head Esplode. Except to mention once again how much I like Brotherhood of the Wolf, and to emphasize that it absolutely must be watched with the subtitles, not with the dubbing, which is craptastic. So don't bother to get it on VHS; it will suck. The DVD version differs from the cinema version; the part where a fake Beast is caught by the King's men and stuffed by Fronsac to be sent to Paris has been cut. It's been replaced with a shorter collection of footage about Fronsac and Marianne (I wasn't going crazy when I thought I had never seen it before). A really cool surreal nightmare scene in the bordello was also cut. Apparently you can see the film in its original glory if you import a set of collectors' DVDs from Canada or France. Foo. Undeterred by Monday's misfortunes, ElfBoy?, Philip, FirstFallen? and I had another go at Love, Actually earlier tonight (er, Tuesday). The pre-movie dinner-at-home plan fell through, so we decided to eat at the V&A. For the love of all that is good and holy, the next time you find yourself at the Waterfront, do not get food from the place in the food court between the schwarmas and the halaal food (where the Happy Wok used to be). Philip got a very small amount of very bad calamari with chips slathered in pink. Jo got vegetarian curry which amazingly tasted like nothing. Simon and I had matching rubbery fish with selectively undercooked chips slathered in red. Eugh. Hopefully this atrocity will go out of business soon - since the disappearance of the Happy Wok, the location seems to be cursed. Love, Actually was quite good, actually. Definitely one of the world's funnier romantic comedies. I no longer despise Hugh Grant. In other news, an amusing link: Safe For Work Porn!. 1] March 2004Mmm. Satisfactory last-day book haul. I also have a sari. It is turquoise. Currently reading Figments of Reality, a popular science book by Stewart & Cohen (the guys who wrote the science part of Science of the Discworld) on loan from d@vid. 27 February 2004Went to Maynardville on Wednesday. In spite of having been beaten to the book stall by both Jessica and Tracy & Patrick, found a bunch of cool stuff. Scored shiiiiiiny new editions of Otherland volumes 2 and 4 (Tad Williams). Already have 1; therefore only one to go. http://gluon.za.net/confluence/images/conjurewife.jpg Scene from a stall: Oh, boy. My monthly piece of inexplicable commentary from a random nutcase. I really don't understand the mentality of people who are compelled to make cryptic remarks about the wardrobe, reading tastes or other lifestyle choices of complete strangers. Are they trying to deliver scathing criticism? Are they ineptly attempting to make conversation? Do they not realise how stupid it makes them look? Do they live in such homogenous worlds that encountering people who don't like what they like, think like they do or give a flaming crap about their opinions falls utterly outside their realm of experience? Aaaanyway. I'm intending to join the Saturday expedition as well, of course. And then there will be more books. Mmmm, boookssssss. Yesssss, my prrrrreciousssss. Currently reading Gateway (Frederik Pohl; new SF Masterworks edition). 20 February 2004Damn, I don't update this often enough. Yesterday I cancelled my university registration. Why? I realised on Wednesday that returning to undergraduate study after honours and a bit of work is a massive step backwards in terms of independence and freedom of time management (not to mention income and available computer facilities). The prospect of committing the next three years of my life to early-morning lectures, frenzied hand-ins and exams was making me extremely miserable, and my unhappiness with the situation was too great to be alleviated by the prospect of learning something interesting along the way. So, goodbye, UCT. O-week was cool, I get to be an officially registered CLAWmember for one more year (although I will need to get my R30 to the committee through alternate channels), and I ordered t-shirts for Simon and me with the cash I got from returning my one hastily-purchased engineering textbook. I don't regret attempting this bizarre venture - I needed to actually try it in order to know that I didn't want to do it. Now I have free time again (at least for the moment). Yay! |
