you may tire of me cause our December sun is setting

[timeripple]

Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Just did some last-minute section-switching and paid for summer classes. History of American Film and Beginning Keyboarding. Summer’s looking shinyyyy, y’all.

Apparently the pain in my jaw is caused by stress, quoth my new dentist. I find this ironic since this is the least stressed-out I’ve been in years. Unless boredom counts as a source of stress. Got loads of that. My proof: I am sneaking looks at The Black Swan in my spare few minutes of library time. It is not especially good, but I want to see how the prince will get his comeuppance.

THE BLACK SWAN’S AUTHORIAL PERSONA: Behold, I re-write Swan Lake! And I am sarcastic! I upset expectations! I am ironical! SARCASM! This is awesome! This is revolutionary! This is... fantasy from the perspective of the bad guy, with sarcasm!

ME: This is totally unsubtle. Self, take note.


Saturday, May 26, 2007

Last-minute Classical Society tickets to the Getty Villa? Count me in! I carpooled with a couple of Very Protestant Malibu Barbies wearing expensive little dresses and killer heels. (Who wears killer heels to a museum, I ask you?) They were relatively nice, but I ditched them as soon as possible and went to ogle the Lansdowne Heracles and some other marble dudes, including The Victorious Youth, although he is in fact bronze not marble.

I kind of fell in love with the grave relief of Phanokrates. Specifically, with his mouth. Not only was he young, handsome, rich, and educated, his mouth- I... just... It was like he was a little bit amused, and couldn’t work out whether he should smirk or smile, and was just starting to do one or the other, and BAM. I am smitten. Sadly I could not find even a postcard. I shall return, my beloved Phanokrates! Hmm. Doesn't really have that ring to it, does it.

There was also a really cool krater with chariot-battle scenes around the outer rim and top, and sea-battle scenes along the inner rim, so that when it was filled, you would have seen ships on the wine-dark sea. AWESOME. I am constantly amazed by cool stuff like that. Sometimes I forget that these people actually could be incredibly whimsical. So cute little duck-shaped oil-flask thingies, for instance, come as a bit of a pleasant shock. I have to admit that I’m not really a vase-painting person though. Statues and reliefs are more in my line of “aesthetically uneducated” appreciation. I like the textures, the expressions, motion scenes and filled spaces. But it was a really cute duck.

The gardens were absolutely beautiful, especially the Outer Peristyle. I rounded off the visit by purchasing my very own The Victorious Youth poster. In case he does go back to Italy, it’s nice to have my own.

This week’s Ye Olde Movie Reviewes:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Movie. AHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, 1992 and your residual ‘80s stuff. And Pike was cuter before he got cleaned up for Ye Olde Highe Schoole Dance.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Er, what? I haven’t even read the graphic novel and I still thought it was kind of bad. But the costumes were nice.

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). Um. Not nearly as good as the 1982 remake. Still good, but proves that sticking too closely to original plot can be... not the best decision. Sadly it did not include the trick with the pepper-pot, which is the best part of the entire book and has not been in any adaptation that I’ve seen. That, and the Scarlet Pimpernel Fanmerchandise.

Girl, Interrupted Er, what? Watching the Token Saying Farewell at End of Movie scene was difficult for me though. Miss you guys.

Under Milk Wood. Um. I totally don’t remember all that random pointless narrator!sex being in the script. I think the play actually worked better live on a minimalist set. There’s just no way to visually do “the sleep of birds in Milk Wood” well, at least not if you can’t keep your lighting consistent. It kept bouncing around, like, sunrise! 9 am! 4 am! 9 am again! Still sunrise! Also the livestock bits (“Donkeys angelically drowse on Donkey Down”) made it seem like a documentary about Welsh farm animals. And Bessie Bighead is supposed to be a tragic character. I didn’t improvise heartbreaking music for comedy, damn it.

Snow White, the version with what’s-her-name from Smallville. It is less horrifically bad than I remember it being when it aired on television a few years ago. But only slightly.

The Little Mermaid. Unh. I forgot that this is Disney and therefore ends happily, and I kept waving my arms and yelling “No, no, bad idea!” and “Read the fine print, dammit!” and “He’ll only leave you in the end!”. Good songs though.

And then I went back out and bought pie.

ETA: Not the best picture, but: Phanokrates!

Comments

[snowqueenofhoth.livejournal.com]

First of all, do you know how I have to comment? I have to copy/paste the ENTIRE THING. >_<

American Film and Beginning Keyboarding. Summer’s looking shinyyyy, y’all.

Shiny, indeed! :D

the pain in my jaw is caused by stress

Yeah, mine, too. Very common.
Very Protestant Malibu Barbies

*snickers*

I kind of fell in love with the grave relief of Phanokrates. Specifically, with his mouth. Not only was he young, handsome, rich, and educated, his mouth- I... just... It was like he was a little bit amused, and couldn’t work out whether he should smirk or smile, and was just starting to do one or the other, and BAM. I am smitten. Sadly I could not find even a postcard. I shall return, my beloved Phanokrates! Hmm. Doesn't really have that ring to it, does it.

Never make fun of me ever. At least my people are real. You are lusting after an OBJECT. XD

There was also a really cool krater with chariot-battle scenes around the outer rim and top, and sea-battle scenes along the inner rim, so that when it was filled, you would have seen ships on the wine-dark sea. AWESOME. I am constantly amazed by cool stuff like that. Sometimes I forget that these people actually could be incredibly whimsical. So cute little duck-shaped oil-flask thingies, for instance, come as a bit of a pleasant shock. I have to admit that I’m not really a vase-painting person though. Statues and reliefs are more in my line of “aesthetically uneducated” appreciation. I like the textures, the expressions, motion scenes and filled spaces. But it was a really cute duck.

Sounds awesome. Especially the ships on the wine-dark see part.
And being equally "aesthetically uneducated," I think I'd be fond of the cute duck. Also, bird. I like those, you know. ^_^

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was atrociously bad.
Shane West was in that, right? I think he does better on ER.

Girl, Interrupted
Was weird. But I like Angeline Jolie.
Miss you guys. Aww. :(

The Little Mermaid. Unh. I forgot that this is Disney and therefore ends happily

Eh? For most of my childhood, I thought this was the most depressing movie ever and I always cried. Because she left her Daddy! :( How is that a happy ending?
Clearly, there were early signs that I am not a romantic.

And then I went back out and bought pie.
Heh.

What kind of pie? XD

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Blackberry.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Also, people in fairy tales fall in love with art objects all the time. Even The Little Mermaid - she only wants to marry the prince because a) he looks like her precious statue, and b) she wants an immortal soul too. Do not provoke me to write a fairy tale about someone who falls in love with, like, 500 jpop singers. I would SO write that. ;P

[cadragongirl.livejournal.com]

you're also forgetting pygmalion & galatea, perhaps the most famous falling-in-love-with-object story there is. there is actually also an incident of that happening in a wuxia story that i've been trying to read. this one falls more into the scenario of little mermaid. guy sees statue, really likes statue, sees girl that looks like statue, falls in love with girl & then proceeds to follow her around everywhere like a puppy-dog. ;)

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me, I'm not forgetting. :) It's just that we talked about The Little Mermaid in class the other day, and about how they both love each other because they resemble the images that they're really in love with, ie, the statue and the memory-image of the girl who found him. (This is funny because in my super-wonderful illustrated version, the mermaid and the princess look nothing alike.)

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

It's just that we talked about The Little Mermaid in class the other day, and about how they both love each other because they resemble the images that they're really in love with, ie, the statue and the memory-image of the girl who found him.

*wantz in class so much!* do you take notes, in this class? *g*

when thinking "the Little Mermaid", one is basically reduced to thinking "the original Hans Christian Anderson story" and "practically every single retelling evah". which, from my point of view, is ok, because man did I cry over that story when I was little. heck I still cry over it. angst!

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

I take notes, although I've been slacking off because I can't get to the stories that are posted on the course website, so everything after the Brothers Grimm has been either from memory (H.C. Anderson) or totally incomprehensibe (Hoffmann, ?). Would you like me to post them at some point? Some of them are illuminating. Others look like my notes from that wonderful, crazy Epics class cadragongirl and I took, which is to say, entertaining but uninformative.

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

posting them would rock!

Hoffman, eh. Robert Hoffman? he retells folk and fairy tales...

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

E.T.A, I think?

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

posting them

Abgemacht! (Done! In a "will do!" sense! I hope.)

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

Eh? For most of my childhood, I thought this was the most depressing movie ever and I always cried. Because she left her Daddy! :( How is that a happy ending?
Clearly, there were early signs that I am not a romantic.

*chortles*

I was sad about her leaving her Daddy, too. love that scene where she's on the boat in her wedding dress, and her Dad jumps up to hug her. sadness! foreshadowing on the bittersweetness of life and growing up! hanky time!
... because, you know, all the old ladies cry at weddings. *g*
(or they do in books, anyways. shall report back later this summer.)

all that aside, Disney's Little Mermaid is one of my favorite animated movies ever. I really identified with Ariel when it came out, not least because my middle name is Ariel and I've always wanted to be a mermaid. then I decided being a selkie was better because you can shift back and forth at will. *g* when I was little, I (fortunately) didn't know that the preponderance of tales involving selkies and mermaids are unhappy. I need to sit down and right happy selkie stories. Right Now.

[olivia-cochrane.livejournal.com]

The Little Mermaid. Unh. I forgot that this is Disney and therefore ends happily

Yeah, you can't watch Disney hoping for retellings of the actual fairy tales. But this is a very good thing. Do you know how traumatized children would be if the movies ended the same way as the original stories? They'd never recover. And Walt Disney was much less concerned with accuracy than with making children happy. And adults too, of course, if they were receptive.

I love "The Little Mermaid." Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle are funny, and Rene Auberjonois does the voice of Louis the cook ("Les Poissons" is awesome), and Ursula is so, so evil. Not even the woman who voiced Maleficent and Cinderella's stepmother had a more sinister voice. And I think Maleficent is the scariest Disney villain.

As for Buffy, or what finally became the awesome tv show but is best forgotten in the process... I liked Donald Sutherland. But the rest of it... agggh. Especially vampires levitating. *eye roll*

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Rene Auberjonois does the voice of Louis the cook

Oh, THAT'S who he voices! I saw his name in the opening credits and flipped out with glee.

[cadragongirl.livejournal.com]

is this the black swan by mercedes lackey? i thought it was ok, but i liked her firebird lots better, especially with the slight twist at the end & the princess being, well, NOT disney princessy-esque. still, i think i liked the talking fox best in that book. :)

btw, how's goat-girl coming along?

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. I haven't read any of her books before, so I will trust you on this one.

Goat-Girl is... not coming along at all, for the moment. But I left her eating cotton candy and chilling on the beach, so I think she'll be all right for a while.

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. I haven't read any of her books before, so I will trust you on this one.

Wow. you are lucky, F, you escaped the Mercedes Lackey stage that so many of us passed through. my early-to-mid teenage years can be remembered in large part through the overlapping Mercedes Lackey stage, Anne McCaffrey stage, and Piers Anthony stage. what's really dreadful is I can't get myself to get rid of all of them because I'm sentimentally attached! *tears hair*

I also liked ML's "Firebird" much better than "Black Swan", as well. although I have to say, I remember enjoying "Black Swan" on a purely story-of-it's-own level for fleshing out Odile. she has 5 or 6 other books that work with fairy tales (to varying degrees); the first is "Fire Rose" and I can't help it but I like it so! or, rather, bits of it. 's one of the books where I can go through and skip all the scenes told in one character's voice, and the book is much better. *roll*

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

*takes notes*

I attribute my many lucky escapes to a strange juvenile unwillingness to try new books. Although I did have a Piers Anthony phase. This ended about four pages into The Caterpillar's Question.

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

I have frequently have jaw pain from stress. I wish it was one of those things where you catch yourself when you start to do it, but I generally realize it after I've been doing it for a loooong stretch of time, and then have trouble getting myself to stay relaxed. it's hard to say what qualifies as 'stress', when it comes to body reactions. and harder to correct (if possible at all, glrg).

the Getty Villa sounds neat. especially the krater. (erm, krater?)

The Scarlet Pimpernel

I have seen neither the 1934 nor the 1982. I figure, I love the 1999 one so much, I should quit while I'm ahead. but it's more likely because dramatizations of novels in the 1930s generally make me twitch. with Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon, it could go either way. in terms of the 1982 one, all it takes is looking at a cover shot and my brain says "Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth McGovern are better, so there!". silly brain.

Snow White, the version with what’s-her-name from Smallville.

hahahahaha. so. painful. *grin*

And then I went back out and bought pie.

I like this. I really like this, as a story last sentence. *nods*

miss you. ^_^ I keep thinking back to 2005, when you and Rachel visited me and we went to the Cape, and then to Pennsylvania. that was good.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

erm, krater?

Giant wine-mixing bowl. I mean GIANT.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Aww, come on, you KNOW you want to see the 1982 version. Yes, the 1999 version is a lot more subtle, but the 1982 version combines the first book and the Dauphin storyline really well. Also, it is hilarious.

Did you see the Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister that was shown the week before Snow White? I remember really enjoying it, but it doesn't seem to be out on DVD.

Miss you too!

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

Did you see the Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

yes, I did. I really enjoyed it too. wish it was on dvd. this aired when I was a second-year at Wellesley, and I think I tried recording it through the tv in my dorm room, but my reception was ghastly. in Munger things were much easier for me to use the tv room's tv. ^_^ (as witness my faithful Alias tapings. it's really rather crazy, that I still have almost all of Alias s2 and s3 on video tape. *roll*)

the 1982 version combines the first book and the Dauphin storyline really well. Also, it is hilarious.

this is tempting. it's be a very long time since I read the stories.