Two Random links..

1. Leave Leonard Cohen's Halluejah alone already! - sigh so true, when every tv show, film, including a daytime soap opera and a cartoon uses this song to provide emotional mood, you know it's been over-done.

2.Out of the Night - an Interview with the Mockinjay by a thousand winds - don't normally read or rec fanfic outside of the Buffy fandom, but this was quite good. Only read, if you've read Suzanne Collins the Hunger Games, because it takes place 25 years later and is filled to the brim with spoilers for that series. It is an excellent coda though, underlining what made me fall in love with that series.

Speaking of The Hunger Games series - Collins does something interesting with that romantic pairing in it. It's in some respects the exact opposite of what Joss Whedon did with Buffy and Angel. Whedon intrigues me with Buffy/Angel, makes me root for them in S1-2, then slowly, gradually, and increasingly convinces me not to want these two characters to ever get together again - he manages to convince me that they don't work and their love is not and can never be "real", it is a fantasy. Collins does the exact opposite - her epic romance is not one I'd root for, if anything I rooted against it, it felt manipulated, about the cult of celebrity, the star-crossed lover cliche, and then she gradually, manages to convince me that these two characters do belong together and why they do, and that the epic romance is what is not real, the charade, who they are beneath all of that is real. What it comes down to, I suspect, is what questions we are asking and which ones we want answered.

Off to make breakfast, watch tv. And oh the sun is poking out a bit, it's no longer so bloody gray, dark and gloomy - okay still gray but with sun. I hate January. It's a month that I always have a desire to curl up and hibernate during - methinks I must have been a bear in a past life. Or I just envy them. Sleep for four months. And frolick in the Spring. Not a bad idea.

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Finished watching and thoroughly charmed by Toy Story 3 - which I actually cried at the end of, which for me is sort of rare. It takes a lot to get me to cry during a tv show or movie, generally speaking.

The story is basically about being put out to pasture, or being outgrown and what to do next. How we redefine ourselves. In short, the mid-life crisis seen through the eyes of a working class toy.
Followed by the equally charming short - "Day & Night".

What hit about Toy Story is how tightly plotted it is. Over time, and after having read and seen quite a few stories that are poorly plotted - I've begun to appreciate to well-written plot. It's harder than it looks. A good plot is a beautiful thing. And by good plot, I mean something that utilizes all the characters, furthers all their arcs, is thematically organic to them and asks new questions about each - while being interesting and thrilling, and quickly paced. That's hard to do.
Want to see a well-plotted film? Watch Toy Story.

If you haven't seen it? highly recommend.

AVI? WTF??

Anyone know how to read an AVI DVD on an US DVD player? I know nothing about tech stuff of this sort, I'm proud of being able to figure out financial databases. AVI vs. whatever DVD's that are sold in the US which my Sony can play are beyond me. Also as an aside, you'd think the DVD players in the US would be able to play the same DVDs sold elsewhere in the world and vice versa? This makes no sense to me.

[Frustrated - because I can't watch the Misfit DVDs - because they AVI and AVI isn't compatible with my DVD player or the DVD player in my computer - yes, I tried both.]