Cleolinda everywhere

New Narnia Heroine Addict icons. As a Sagittarian, I'm a teensy bit obsessed with archers, so... sorry about that. But there are Lucy icons in there as well.

The official Narnia movie site has some fun 360-degree walkthroughs and games. You get to play Tumnus's flute and try to save Edmund and read excerpts from the book, all in the search for "tokens" (which will unlock bookmarks and wallpapers and blah blah I'm not sure all what, but pretty pictures whee!). Also, one of the tokens? Unlocked a recipe for Turkish Delight. I have to say, the movie succeeded in making it look less nasty than I've heard. If you are in the mood for something that looks like Turkish Delight but doesn't taste "like soap," you might try Fruit Jewels over at Swiss Colony, which basically sells gifty-basket food. I think it's the same principle as TD, only with fruit. This is an innovation whose time has come.

(Or... you can buy real Turkish Delight here.)

(Also, Skandar Keynes [Edmund] is apparently the great-great-great grandson of Charles Darwin. Both anne_jumps and I think this is hilarious.)

(Also, more on Tilda Swinton, who is... well, "rebel" doesn't quite cover it. If you want to look into more of her work, start with Orlando [omgsogood] and The Deep End. You've probably seen her in Constantine, Vanilla Sky, or possibly The Beach and not realized it.)

You know, I have to say, I think we've had a really great year for movies. I mean, even the summer movies were better than usual, or at least Batman Begins certainly was. Either last year or the year before I tried to make a top ten list, and realized that not only could I not come up with a top ten I'd seen, I couldn't even come up with an any ten I'd seen--I bottomed out at nine. This was mostly a function of my not getting out much; now that the Lovely Emily is back in town, we tore it up this year. Assuming I do go see King Kong next Wednesday and the earth isn't destroyed by the mighty hand of Xenu first, here's what I've seen this year:

( Read more... )

and then King Kong next week. That's right: twenty movies. *flexes* I'm not going to try to do any kind of recreational ranking until after Christmas, though.  

Speaking of Kong, reader Isaac emailed me the other night and said he and his wife were going to a preview, and would I like him to report back afterwards? I'm never one to turn down a movie report, so here's part of what he said: ( Read more... )

I didn't read the rest because, as he warned me, it was something of a blow-by-blow full-length spoiler, and I feel like I know so much about this one--it being a remake and all--that if there really are twists and surprises, I'd like to save them for the theater. I have, however, suggested that he send the spoiler on to The Movie Spoiler, which would either be glad to have it or will have one already, so those of you who are kicking me for not sharing it, you'll have access to one either way.


More linkspam:

RIP Richard Pryor.

Damon and Barroso Expecting -- And Married Too.

Photographer Hits Back at Aniston. AKA "Hello, I am an asshat."

'King Kong' sixth most expensive Hollywood film. (Note, if you will, that the top three most expensive involved large water sets. I maintain that water sets, particularly water battle sets, are the leading cause of runaway expenses in filmmaking.)

Katrina Deaths Lead to Real-Life 'CSI'.

Trailer for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst. It's set to the music of... New Order. ("Age of Consent." I actually feel like there is nothing wrong with this trailer that could not have been fixed by using "Regret" instead. I'm kind of a famous queens buff, and after reading Antonia Fraser's MA bio, I feel like Dunst is actually pretty good casting. Jason Schwartzman doesn't seem... hapless enough, but I guess we'll see. Norma Shearer's Marie Antoinette is pure romantic fantasy-fluff [and yet... not entirely without basis], but that movie's Louis is really, really good, going by what I've read of him.)

Pictures from the set of Lost taken earlier this week.

Satirical blog comment picked up as news.

Barbra Streisand cancels newspaper subscription. Why is this news?

Pat the Bunny for the 21st century. I think the article's work-safe, but the concept certainly isn't.

barrelgoddess: "Ack, some disturbing news that relates to the Sony rootkit thing. Since you've been posting stuff about/following this, I thought I'd let you know. Apparently, they've been caught in another DRM snafu."

Lucky (my English cocker spaniel) seems to have ingested something--something dropped on the floor, I guess; as best we can figure, it was either a Halloween candy bar or one of Sister Girl's Adderall, because he could not sit still last night. But in a really freaky way. Like he would sit there, and he would look at you, and then he would run across the room, sit down, and stare at you again. He kept me up all night jumping on and off my bed, trying to dig through the bathroom tiles (SCRITCHYSCRITCHYSCRITCHY), and breathing really, really fast. Not panting; it was normal breathing. It was just really, really--oh my God. You know what it was like? It was like when you give a GoPet coffee and they get sped up. That was exactly what it was like. And Lucky's smart, I give you that, but I don't think he's tall enough to make his own coffee yet.

He seems to be okay today, but I still don't know how he found something bad to eat in the first place, and I'm really upset over this. I mean, whatever it was probably could have killed him if he were a smaller dog.

Anyway, that's why you kinda got The Riot Act earlier today, because my dog was chasing his own tail at five in the morning. On my spleen.

Speaking of GoPets, I can't get the client to work, for no particular reason. It very helpfully tells me that it's a bug in the client and no fault of my computer or operating system, however. 

I also can't get through Melville's Pierre for class--I'll probably just have to sack out with it tomorrow and wrestle it into submission--and my eye twitch is coming back. Also, the cat knocked a plant cutting in an old vase into his litter box. Twice. It's that kind of week.

I will say that the professor handed out a brief compilation of Pierre's bad reviews, and that kind of made my day:

The amount of utter trash in the volume is almost infinite--trash of conception, execution, dialogue, and sentiment. Whoever buys the book on the strength of Melville's reputation will be cheating himself of his money, and we believe we shall never see the man who has endured the reading of the whole of it. [...] A hundred times better if he had kept ["his really fine talents"] in a napkin all his natural life. A thousand times better, had he dropped authorship with Typee [his first book]. [...] As it is, he has produced more and sadder trash than any other man of undoubted ability among us.

Dude, Total Film let me off easy.


Re: the recent alchemylab saga: Did anyone get scammed? Make sure you go report what you ordered/lost if the mizz_ann_thrope or whatever person got you.

Happy birthday to particle_person, who brings two links: "A list of CDs (not necessarily a COMPLETE list, just a list) affected with the rootkit disease and similar" and "A really great essay by Ursula Vernon on why NaNoWriMo is like throwing pots, and how quantity can be a virtue":

Then you take it out to the dumpster, and you dither for about thirty seconds, and your chest feels tight, and finally you grit your teeth and take the very worst one, the one that looks like a dog turd with a lid, and you wind up and you pitch it into the half-empty dumpster and you listen to it smash and something happens in your head that falls about halfway between a cry of anguish and an orgasm. And you pick up the next one and smash it, and the next one, and the next one, and by the end you're grinning like an idiot and you feel as clean and sleek and hollow as a Hamada tea bowl.

I would have to say that quantity is a virtue simply because you can't sculpt without clay. When you write for quantity, you're acquiring the clay from which you'll sculpt the finished product.

More on the Sony debacle:

sigma7: "The EFF has a list of CDs with the Sony rootkit. Subject to change, of course. New Trojan uses Sony rootkit. One more quick Sony link: open letter to the programmer responsible for the rootkit."

wumbawoman: "Since this is your journal, you had asked that if anyone saw anything about this to let you know. The New York lawsuit is going to be a class action lawsuit."

fxchip: "California Suing Sony Over Rootkit DRM (Slashdot) (Washington Post). A list of CDs with Sony's DRM (EFF) and Slashdot user xtracto's list."

saadiira: "Raised an eyebrow and had to wonder about the Sony thing, but then checked it out over on Symantec. (I verify/debunk stuff like this. Urban legend email forwards, etc., irk me.) What Symantec had to say. Apparently, it's for real, classes as a low priority threat, can't be removed without damaging the OS, but can be patched so as to end the threat part, and comes from their protected music CDs. Nasty."

dwg: "Well, at least you didn't have someone trying to pass themselves off as a police officer. A real police officer. I called the number, and the cop at the other end was entirely pissed at hearing what had happened. I kinda had to talk him down from sending a squad car to my work and taking the harddrive for analysis."

I want to say this so very, very often.

'Go-getter,' 18, ousts mayor in Michigan.

For those of you who missed Lost last night (WARNING MAJOR GIANT SPOILER HEADLINE ZOMG), InfinitesimallyYounger!Boone's awful, awful hair. 

An interesting theory about new Lostaway Libby. Season 2 spoilers.

Coldplay Announce Tour in Ridiculous Manner.

Fox Shelving 'Arrested,' 'Kitchen' for Sweeps. The good news is that they will be replaced with repeats of Prison Break. The bad news is that I'm hearing Prison Break may be moved to the Death Slot opposite Lost and Veronica Mars. I think their next show should be an adaptation of The Producers called The Executives, about a group of suits trying to sink a network on purpose for... I don't know, a tax write-off? I still can't figure out why they're so hellbent on sucking.

New Jessica Simpson song is not good. "Look, no one wants to have sex with Jessica Simpson more than I do, I don’t think anyone is here to argue that. So if anyone was gonna pretend this song was good, it was gonna be me. But god is it awful. It even takes a while to figure out that you're not listening to a Britney song, and that's probably not that most flattering thing in the world." Reply: "They'll put up a vid with her boobs jiggling all over the place and it'll be a hit." Touché.

Miller bids adieu to the 'Times'. "New York Times reporter Judith Miller left the paper Wednesday amid concerns about her reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and lingering questions about why she spent 85 days in jail protecting a source, only to come out and identify him."

Schoolgirl blogger poisons mother in homage to Teacup Poisoner.

There's got to be a better way to end an entry than with "I'm done," right?