Amethyst's Shiny Pebbles

The Editing Room has come out with the abridged script for the Star Trek movie.  Warning: do not have your mouth full of toothpaste when you get to the "yo mama so dead" part.

I have stuff that I want to write up in some serious detail, but I am way too busy to do so right now.  (And I've had other writing I have done/need to do: a brief reflection on a Biblical text for our church's Lenten meditation book, and something-or-other for a memory book that one of my paternal aunts is putting together for the other one, who turns 70 next month.)  So I'll just note here, in very brief form, the main points that I wish to make.

1.  Coraline the movie was really really good.  Coraline the book was also really really good.  The movie did some things differently from the book, but they all work surprisingly well (including the generation of an entirely new character).  But because there are some things in the book that didn't get into the movie (including my very favorite scene which, admittedly, would have been difficult to film), you should read the book as well as see the movie. 

2.  Sweeney Todd had his beginnings in a penny-dreadful serial called The String of Pearls that was recently recorded at Librivox and which we just finished listening to today.  The story is essentially a mystery - what's happening to the customers who enter Todd's barbershop and are never seen again?  The modern reader likely knows the answer already, of course, but that doesn't stop the original tale from being interesting, mildy horrifying, humorous (intentionally or otherwise, sometimes it's hard to tell), and at times even pretty well-written.  This recording is a collaborative effort, and there's a wide variety of styles and abilities of readers ranging from folks for whom English is not their first language to professionals.    The catalog page is linked above.

On the long leg of the flight back from Boston yesterday, I watched much of this year's version of Journey to the Center of the Earth. The aboveground part at the beginning looked dull, so I didn't bother switching my headphones from IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat podcast to the movie till the intrepid trio of Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, and Anita Briem were ready to fall down the rabbit hole. ( Journey to the Center of the Earth, Brendan Fraser, and Inkheart )

Someone decided that it would be a good idea to make a Zelda movie. 

IGN has the first trailer of the live-action flick here.  It... doesn't look promising. 

For starters, I really don't believe it was wise to carry the trope of Link as Silent Hero to the film medium.  Second, I have a feeling it'll look a little like a speed run of a Zelda game (or there'll only be, like, 3 dungeons).  Finally, while it's fun to watch someone else play (and to yell suggestions when they get stuck - Zelda film crossed with Rocky Horror, anyone??), it's generally much more satisfying to play Zelda yourself.


EDIT: Wooops... fooled me!
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As a lighter, better bit of humor, I offer you the short story Wikihistory.  It's about time travel and what all the new members of the International Association of Time Travelers do on their first 'trip'.  Enjoy!

The huz and I just got back from watching the Sweeney Todd movie.  For the most part, we were quite pleased with it.



 

General impressions: If I hadn't been so completely familiar with the story going into the theater, I'm certain I would have been considerably shell-shocked by it.  It's such an incredibly violent story, and most of the surviving characters are so clearly going to need serious therapy for the next several years, that an uninformed viewer could hardly help being walloped by it.

I'm taking my birthday holiday tomorrow (Friday)!  I hope to have the dress for my costume completely assembled by the end of the day - wish me luck!

Meanwhile, two bits of amusement:

IGN has an amusing article as part of its Halloween celebration on RPG Cliches That Need To Die.  The hero who starts off as a simple farmer... monsters that have no business carrying any items at all... they're all there, and roasted till very well done.

The theatrical trailer for Tim Burton's film version of Sweeney Todd is available for viewing!  Why they've moved the release date back to just before Christmas, I dunno... it's not exactly a nice, family-friendly happy holiday story.  Maybe they're hoping for an Oscar nod.  And the trailer is trying very hard not to indicate that there's lots of singing in it.  It's clear from the little that's shown that Johnny Depp is no George Hearn, but hopefully he will suit nonetheless.

We've been reading Harry Potter aloud to each other the last few nights.  Things have happened, some unexpected.  I decided that it would be both useful and fun to write up quickie summaries of each chapter as we finish them, with new mysteries highlighted.  Each chapter summary is then followed by reactions (what was surprising? what not?) and new guesses as to what will happen or be revealed later.  It's an interesting exercise, and it'll be a good record of how our thoughts change based on what happens.  Some of it will probably end up here eventually.  But given that we're only five chapters into it, that'll be a while in coming.  Do be assured that it'll go behind LJ-cuts when it does... assuming we haven't gotten confirmation by then that we are the absolute last people on the planet to finish it!

We just watched the first 40 minutes or so of the 'Director's Journey' section of the bonus material in the Lion Witch and Wardrobe Special Edition DVD set that arrived last week!  I'm pretty pleased so far.  The narration is reasonably interesting and content-ful most of the time, and the visuals are all very interesting indeed.  I'd wondered a few things while watching the film: what the carvings were on the front of the wardrobe (elements from the story of Magician's Nephew), how the heck the legs of the various hybrid creatures worked (the actors wore green-screen tights with mo-cap markers on them - it looks pretty funny), and how much of the battle sequence was CG (a pretty large fraction).  I'm impressed yet again with how good the creature models and animation are.  Clearly a lot of work was put in to get them as spot-on (plus emotive faces) as possible.  Congrats to all involved!  I'm very much looking forward to watching the rest of the bonus stuff.

As a note to myself: (1) Have a decent-sized snack before playing Zelda.  (2) When you start feeling dizzy, for heaven's sake, stop!  I don't care if it's in the middle of a mid-boss battle.  You need to stop,  then and there, otherwise you'll end up feeling very ill! 
I'm better now... don't worry.

We watched our copy of the (TV-screen-size) Lion, Witch and Wardrobe last week.  I was enamored enough of it that I went and ordered a cheap copy ($20 including shipping) of the extended edition with three discs of supplementary material on Amazon.  Early happy birthday to me!

I have just pre-ordered the 'Dragon Fossil' shirt from pandemonium_bks.  It will be purple.  Purple is good.  More early happy birthday, though I'll actually pick it up my birthday week.

We had a great time this past Saturday with orichalcum and her family up in San Franciso.  It was, somewhat astonishingly, sunny and reasonably warm weather up in the Embarcadero. 

The huz and I started reading HP Deathly Hallows aloud last night.  We finished chapter 1.

The huz is unexpectedly on vacation for a week before starting his new job next week.  He'd originally expected to start in September after finishing up the project with his current employer.  But on Monday, said current employer decided to cancel the project.  You know, the one that was only a month away from shipping, and that everyone in the group has devoted the last year and a half to completing?  Yeah, that one.  But he gets a week of unexpected (and paid-for) vacation, so that's a good thing.

I practiced singing for the first time in a week yesterday morning (I'm finally basically all better).  Tazz really liked it - he was meowing and purring, and got up on the table and made as if he wanted to jump up on my shoulders. 

I got to spend close to two hours with Zelda yesterday morning after practicing.  I hadn't intended to spend anything close to that much time on it!  I had a great time, even if I haven't yet found Ooccoo in the desert dungeon.

*thud* I feel like I've accomplished a lot in the last few weeks.

In my Travel Agent role, I purchased airplane tickets for my parents to come and visit at Christmas about two weeks ago. Then I purchased tickets for the huz and me to go to Storyreading Reunion in September. Add that to the tickets and hotel stuff that I did back in May for the trip to New York next week, and you get a lot of travel stuff.

In my Librivox Metacoordinator role, I catalogued three projects in three days. Did lots of staring at and editing of archive.org pages and creating Librivox catalog pages. A fourth project technically under my jurisdiction became ready for cataloging yesterday (of course), but kayray very graciously took care of it for me. Thanks, Kara!  (For the curious: The three projects were The Burgess Animal Book, Fabulas de Esopo vol. 4, and Time and the Gods.  Good stuff all.)

Work's been going along fine; nothing particularly exciting. I've been helping to hand-pick bacterial colonies, which is time-consuming, tedious, but useful; having less dead time at work is part of the reason I haven't been posting all that regularly. (For anyone curious about what hand-picking means: Take round agar plate with little white colonies growing on it in one gloved hand. Take one (or more) sterile toothpicks in your other hand. Apply tip of each toothpick to a single colony. Deposit toothpicks into individual wells in a 96-well bacterial growth plate. Repeat until 96 colonies have been picked into the plate. Remove toothpicks, label plate, and repeat for all plates.)

Singing stuff has been going very well indeed. I had my first voice lesson in about a month earlier this week, and my teacher was very pleased with the progress that I've made. I'm doing real bel-canto singing now: all the sound production is taking place up in my head above my cheekbones, where it's supposed to. It feels great.  Now the task is to solidify the breathing, support, technique, etc, and we can start having some real fun.  :D  The question for me, of course, is how much longer I'll continue taking lessons, given that I've kind of gotten to a Really Good Place.  I want the additional control that further lessons will give me, but at some point the rate of return is probably going to decrease to a point where it's no longer worth paying a fair chunk of money on a weekly basis.

Finally, the huz and I went to see Paprika last night.  It's a fantastic piece of anime, which may well get its own post one of these fine days.  We loved it.  If you are interested in anime, dreams, reality, and the intersection of them, you should go see it.  I would not at all mind seeing it a second time.  (Oh hey nezumiko - it looks like it's playing for another several days at the local theater, so if you missed it this week, you can still go conveniently!)

We have nothing planned for the weekend, except starting advanced skating class on Saturday.  Yay, a quiet weekend at home!