shadowkat | Entries tagged with film

1. TKingfisher, basically a bored best-selling horror novelist trolling about the internet looking for information on lab rat studies, discovered that maybe there's an andenovirus that causes obesity in humans and lab rats? Then posts this on Twitter with no real link, and the take "did everyone know this but me?"

ME: well no. I didn't know it until you posted it. (and since you are a horror novelist) I'm not sure if you made it up - so goes to check.

I'm back. There's nothing definite. It may cause Obesity, but they aren't certain.

Honestly, I wish people who are not virologists and pathologists and endocrinologists would stop doing scientific research on the internet. You don't know enough - to be able to ascertain what information is accurate. Lab studies have to be double and triple checked. Journal articles - peer reviewed.

Folks, not to preach, but this annoys me - if your vocation is professional horror novelist or pediatrician or nutritionist? Don't post information about viruses on the internet - unless you have a reliable link. We have enough scary misinformation on the internet as it is. Stick to fiction, please. Leave non-fiction to the experts.

2. I'm obviously not watching the Superbowl. I don't like the Eagles or the Chiefs. I don't care who wins. I'm also not much of a football fan - we've been through this - the appeal is lost on me. And the fans annoy me, particularly Chiefs fans. (I'm willing to make an exception for the Giants, those fans are cool.) Also, I don't like the commercials. The half-time show isn't worth the trouble - although I do like Rhianna, so I may have checked it out if I knew she was performing.

I may be among the few in the US not watching it. I'm rather proud of that.

3. The Flash movie looks good, it does however have a problem, so addressing the elephant in the room... Ezra Miller's Problems Worsen as Flash Premiere nears.

The gist is that Warner Brothers spent $200 million on the movie. Ezra Miller is the lead and far too embedded in the movie to remove or recast or reshoot. They'd literally have to reshoot the entire film. So, it's actually better to go ahead and release it - and just recast the Flash for any films coming after it. At least that's their plan at the moment - but if Miller's legal issues (aka scandal) gets much worse - they may be forced to shelve it.

( what to do it your star's personal life is imploding in a scandalous, disturbing and public way prior to the big screen release of your film? )

Poor DC - they really have had the worst luck with their film franchise. Ever since Justice League...it's just been one scandal after another.

But hey the trailer looks good...and we get Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck's Batmans. (Christian Bale doesn't need the money that badly, also he made a deal with Nolan that he'd only do Batman if Nolan was directing it and behind it. They agreed they'd only do it with each other.)

The Flash Trailer

I only want to see it for Batman, also I've been told about the story by CJL, and am curious. But I may wait for HBO Max (ie see it for free, more or less).

Gunn's apparently planning on rebooting the film verse with "Shazam: Fury of the Gods" and "The Flash" - James Gunn's Plans for DC Film Verse. This would enable casting new people in new roles and having them appear in films across the film verse. I honestly think whomever he casts as Batman and Superman is kind of important. You get a weak one - it won't work. And it should be top tier actor.

[And I'm wondering with James Gunn gone after this film, if Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 - is the last outing? It may well be.

Marvel has over 1000 characters, and Guardians was not the most popular by any stretch of the imagination. The popular franchises are actually the X-men and the Fantastic Four.]

I'm kind of curious where DC and Marvel are going with their franchises. I got an idea of where Marvel is going, but DC? I'm clueless.

4. What's Coming in Film & Television Projects with DC

More news on Gunn's plans for the DC film and television and animation verses: Plans for Batman, Superman, Supergirl and more...

( excerpt )

Here is what is coming as part of the next wave of DCEU projects.

Film projects: [The is part of "The Gods & Monsters" Phase...I think they are copying Marvel in how they are structuring the films, which is smart.]

1. “Superman: Legacy” – Due out in theaters on July 11, 2025, this film will be written by Gunn, and focus on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing.
2. “The Authority” – WildStorm characters will join the DCU as members of The Authority take matters into their own hands to do what they believe is right.
3. “The Brave and the Bold” – Inspired by Grant Morrison’s comic series, the DCEU will introduce Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin in this new film.
4. “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” - Based on Tom King’s comic series, this film is a science-fiction adventure about Supergirl. [It will be a bit darker...apparently]
5. “Swamp Thing” – The film will investigate the dark origins of Swamp Thing [they are going the horror route with this one.]

[Depends on the writing, direction and casting. The last time they tried some of these - things were mixed. Swamp Thing bombed but it was also the 70s and 80s. Brave and the Bold - at least is a different take on Batman. Superman is a different take on Superman. [Both of which have been done to death - so finding something different is hard. There's been about ten different television and films with various folks playing the roles since well the 1930s. ] Supergirl - also will be tough - since we've had a film franchise (horrible), and done on television twice. I'm surprised they didn't go with Batgirl (which was already filmed). The Authority at least looks different - and Wildstorm - is I think characters from Image comics? So interesting. I hope they don't go too fascist - DC always swings a little bit towards the "right", while Marvel swings towards the "left". Hence the reason, I prefer Marvel. (It may not bother everyone.)

Television projects

1. “Creature Commandos” – A seven-episode animated show in which Amanda Waller creates a black ops team out of monstrous prisoners. [Going with television for Suicide Squad is a good idea, it works better in the television format.]
2. “Waller” – Starring Viola Davis as Amanda Waller this series will feature characters from “Peacemaker.” [Also smart.]
3. “Booster Gold” – Booster Gold uses basic technology from the future to pretend to be a superhero in present day.
4. “Lanterns” – A “True Detective”-style show centered on intergalactic cops John Stewart and Hal Jordan as they uncover a dark mystery [both were Green Lantern at various points...so that's actually a clever idea.]
5. “Paradise Lost” – A “Game of Thrones”-style show set in Themyscira, home of the Amazons and birthplace of Wonder Woman, this drama focuses on the genesis and political intrigue of an island of all women. [Now this could be intriguing. And a smart way to re-invision Wonder Woman.]

[I like their television line up better - it's more innovative and interesting, also with more women.]

“One of the things that’s very important for me in all of these movies and TV series is that the director’s vision and the vision of the writers and all of the creators is unique,” Gunn said.

He noted that while the projects will have different tones, they will all feed into a greater over-arching story.

Remaining on the slate for 2023 are the theatrical releases of “Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash,” “Blue Beetle” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.”

They kind of have to release the Flash - to reboot the universe.

All of these look good, dammit. The kid in me is hopping up and down in excitement. I like superhero films. I have a weakness for this stuff. Always have. It's fun and escapist. And metaphorical - and I think metaphorically.

**

5. What's Coming in Film and Television Projects for Marvel

Back to Marvel...it's not as interesting, and I'm kind of tired after reading it..What's Coming up with Marvel Film and Television Verse.

However...I did like this trailer.. Secret Invasion - which appears to have Samuel L Jackson, Olivia Coleman,Don Cheadle,Ben Mendleson, Cobie Smulders, and various others in a kind of noirish spy alien sci-fi alien invasion story.

This article even gives you the timelines of when each Marvel film aired, and dear ghod, there's a lot of Marvel films. Upcoming and Previous Marvel Films and Television Series Listed in chronological order

Personally, I think Marvel should do a television series with the X-men, live action, and hook it into the film verse. But they clearly don't quite know how. Animation is easier.

When I put on the sensor tonight - it hurt and bled. I think I pushed down too hard - because it didn't take the first go around. ( Read more... )

Also, today, I gave my bag of chocolates to Leo to add to his collection in his desk drawer. People come and get chocolate from Leo. This way, I won't have them in my desk calling to me. They can be in Leo's desk calling to me, and I'm far more likely to ignore them - and not binge. Last week, I discovered that every time I get annoyed, irritated, bored, etc - I'd grab one of the individually wrapped chocolate squares, which made these feelings worse - and resulted in spikes of temper.

I'm drinking CBD cinnamon tea at work instead, now. And snaking on nuts. So progress.

I'm rather proud of myself for giving Leo my chocolates. I did it first thing this morning, before I changed my mind.

***

Someone on Twitter asked Western Fans to provide Westerns that people would fall in love with. Bonus points if made before 1964. Then commented that this was harder than they thought.

Me: Not if you are a fan of Westerns and know the genre.

My mother agreed, she loves Westerns. People bash, denigrate, and scoff at the genre all the time. ( Read more... )

Anyhow, the films I came up with were: Red River - 1948, The Searchers - 1956, The Big Country - 1958, the Man who Shot Liberty Valance - 1962.

But I'd go with Red River (mother's favorite) and The Big Country (mine) - I think they've held up the best.

There's also Duel in the Sun - 1946, Three Violent People - 1957, The Gunfighter - 1950; My Darling Clementine - 1946; Gunfight at the OK Corral - 1957

I studied Westerns in 1986, undergrad. Also studied Gilbert & Sullivan. And Plays in London. I wrote analytical essays on all of them, except Gilbert and Sullivan, which was mostly quizzes. I was so good at them - I ended up doing a trivia contest with the traveling troupe. Shame I couldn't get a job writing meta about television shows, theater, films, and books.

**

I wondered tonight if I lack ambition. Mother told me it was partly just age. I no longer care. I looked at jobs on Linked In, and they just made me tired. I want to take courses on art restoration, mural painting, and oil painting. Or graphic novels. Maybe detecting art fraud. But I've no interest in furthering my career in the legal profession.

I also want to work on my novels. I have about ten percolating in my brain.
I'd like to take the time to write them. I do, but I steal time to do it.

***

Bit of a reading slump. I've jumped from the Magpie Lord, to the Vine Witch to My Lady Notorious. I may go back to the Vine Witch, though.

Finished ...a book that I can't remember the name of. It was by Suzanne Craig. And it was different in that it developed various side characters, and built the romance after the two people were married (this took care of the sex scenes, and anachronisms depicting them. Women didn't tend to sleep with men prior to marriage - in Georgian period, without severe consequences. The language and dialogue also was a bit more true to the period than most. Plus, the writer wasn't bad at sex scenes. The last one was. I gave up on the one before it - it was a mystery about spied, but the sex scenes kind of weighed that one down. Sex scenes are like fight scenes, brevity works best, also less is more, and the build up is important. Plus they probably should take the characters somewhere. Otherwise they are kind of boring. A lot of writers suck at sex scenes and fight scenes.

You know, it's strange, I can't remember a lot of the television series and movies that I've seen this year. Brain fog has become an issue this year. If anyone asks me about the pandemic years - I'll state, they lasted forever, most of it is a blur, it was horrible, and can we talk about something else, please?

Anyhow...of the one's I do remember? First off, I don't re-watch things that often, or rarely. If I do - it's not because it was necessarily any good. Actually - I don't think people necessarily re-watch good television shows or write fanfic about good television, so much as whatever sparks their fancy or intrigues them. Either that - or it was for a class paper or some sort of assignment.

Television Shows and Films That Worked For Me

( shows that worked for me )
**

Television Shows that did not work for me...
( Read more... )

***

Marvel or the MCU Television Series
( Read more... )
***

Films of the MCU

I've seen pretty much all of them now. Disney + is a lovely thing.
( Read more... )

***

With books, I'm once again doing better with audio books. I'm having troubles focusing on reading at the moment.
( Read more... )
I can't remember anything else at the moment. Although I know I read other things.

Off to watch more of Andor.

1. Stop Making Employees Turn on their Cameras at Work.
( excerpt )

2.) On Linked In - I saw this...which I can't find, but it said - "Be kind. It's more important to be kind to others than to be right. To see their needs, and help them."

It also had a post on how leaders - delegate, listen, encourage, and mentor. Bosses - micromanage, criticize, talk, and direct.

3). Andor is excellent. Four episodes in and I'm impressed. They have Stellan Skarsgard, Diego Luna, and Fiona Shaw.

The production scale is on line with the better films within the series.
It reminds me a little of Rogue One - which is the film that it is a prequel/spin-off from. Personally, I rank the Star Wars films, Empire, Star Wars, Rogue One, Return, Force, Last Jedi, Rise, Solo, the prequels.

It's about a man who is hunting for his sister, but he runs into trouble doing so - and ends up with the Empire pursuing him. Somewhere along the way he gets drafted by Stellan Skarsgard to help with a big heist...and we go from there.

The cast is excellent, the writing is excellent, and so is the production.

It is by far the best thing I've seen done in the Star Wars franchise since maybe Rogue One? Or Force Awakens?

4) Chidi saw Wakanda Forever a week or so ago. I asked him about it a week or so ago, I think. It was before he took off for the holiday at any rate.

Chidi: Eh, it was okay.
Me: Didn't you see it in 4D?
Chidi: Yup.
Me: What is 4D?
Chidi: you get sprinkled with water, smell things, and your chair moves around...you basically feel everything in the movie.
Me: So, an amusement park ride?
Chidi: Yeah..but frankly, if I'd not seen it 4D, I'd have gone to sleep. It kept me amused. These superhero films are all alike.
Me: And yet you loved Top Gun.

[Sorry couldn't resist. From my perspective, all Tom Cruise films are alike.]

Chidi is a film snob. And why is it all film snobs love gory horror flicks?
Wales is the same way.

I've yet to meet a film snob who isn't into horror flicks. Specifically gory slasher and torture flicks.

I wonder about humanity some times.

I plan on seeing Wakanda Forever with movie buddy tomorrow. (Note not Wales - that would be horrific. Wales can't handle loud noises. She was jumpy during TAR. She would drive me nuts during Wakanda Forever - I wouldn't be able to watch the movie.) When seeing a movie - it is very important to pick the right person to see it with. Unfortunately, we don't have our pick of movie theaters. UA Court Street closed down without warning a week ago.
I remember when it went up - there were petitions from the entitled white folks living in Brooklyn Heights against it - they were afraid it would bring in the wrong element. Wales and I argued and scoffed at them. Movie buddy, Wales, and I all loved the theater. Was it perfect? No. But it was fun to watch action flicks in - people shouted at the screen, applauded, and you had a nice diverse group. It was mainly a Black Theater, in that Black Americans came by the busload to see films there, and often went there after shopping downtown Brooklyn. The gentrification of Brooklyn is slowly pushing them further East and North.

The pandemic is probably the reason it closed. Shame. Of the two, I'd have rather kept Court over Cobble Hill, but Cobble Hill is a small art house theater, and not as pricey to maintain, so survived.

Anyhow, suffice it to say - we will not be seeing the film in either 3D or 4D. I want to see a movie, not go on an amusement park ride. If I wanted an amusement park ride - I'd go to an amusement park. Also I don't particularly want to be beaten up by my chair during a superhero film. The friend who saw Rise of Skywalker in 4D (among the first to made for that - which by the way explains my issues with Rise of Skywalker), said she didn't particularly like being beaten up by her chair during the movie. Some people do. People are weird. I'm convinced Chidi has some form of ADHD, he cannot focus on things - he has to constantly jump about.

5. Mathew Perry's Memoir...I think it's called Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Not positive. Been listening to it on audible - which I heartily recommend. It's like having a one-sided conversation or listening to someone tell you their story - with all the rambling and nonconsecutive jumping around that happens when people do that. I'm not sure it works reading it - though. He's a good writer, he just needs a good editor. I'm not sure they exist in publishing houses any longer. You kind of have to hunt them down in the wild, hog tie them, and convince them to work for you at a hefty fee.

Anyhow, what hits me about it - is how the man drank or did opioids pretty much all the time. ( Read more... )

Henry Cavill departs the Witcher in S4 - handing the character over to Liam Helmsworth

I'm not sure how that will work - the two actors look nothing alike. And Cavill is bigger.

Also...

Cavill is apparently returning to the role of Superman. So I'm guessing WB gave up on the Black Superman Movie they were flirting with?

Hmmm...turns out that I'm wrong. They are still pursuing it.

Black Superman Reboot Development

J.J. Abrams and Ta-Nehisi Coates' Black Superman reboot is reportedly still in active development at Warner Bros. Discovery. The DC brand has had a big shake-up in 2022 as Warner Bros. Discovery completed its massive merger earlier this year. On the small screen, The CW lost multiple DC TV shows as the network is getting a new majority stake owner. Over on the cinematic side for DC, Warner Bros. Discovery canceled the Batgirl movie despite the film having already finished principal photography in late March.

It's not clear, but the two people helming it do have some clout, and I don't see WB backing off a project they helm quickly. Also DC likes to do AU verses and has for some time, plus comics lend themselves to it.

1. Well, Rings of Power inspired me to buy "The Lord of the Rings" on Kindle for $15.99. Which is a bit of a deal. It's the 75th anniversary edition - and I was reading the introductory material prior to buying it. Apparently there were multiple revisions - because the publishers kept publishing it with all sorts of errors. In the US, they replaced various spellings. Such as dwarfs as opposed to dwarves, and elfin as opposed to elfven. In short they corrected his British spelling.

Tolkien was particular about his spellings - because he was creating a new language and world, and deliberately using old English spellings. But the damn publishers copy-editors and line editors felt the need to correct him.

They also abridged things. Left items out.

As a result, there were multiple versions - and the earliest editions weren't accurate. Finally, he got a corrected version - the one he wanted out, and this is apparently that one? I don't know.

I also fell down a bit of a rabbit hole - looking through the old Rankin Bass cartoon adaptations of the Hobbit and The Return of the King. The Hobbit was in the public domain - so they could adapt without the estates permission (which seemed odd to me - since the other items aren't, not sure how it fell into the public domain? Unless Youtuber was wrong about that - which would make more sense.) The 1978 Hobbit Film, and 1980 Return of the King by Rankin Bass, plus the Ralph Baski Lord of the Rings - I saw in the 1980s. Well except for the Hobbit, which I saw in 1978 - after I'd read the book. It was on ABC Sunday Night. As a child - I adored it. I don't know if the cartoon holds up well now - the animation maybe doesn't, but the rest of it does. They had excellent vocal talent - with Richard Boone as the voice of Smaug, John Huston as Gandalf, Orson Bean as Bilbo, and Otto Preminger as Thorin. Plus it follows the book very closely, far more closely in some respects than Jackson's version.

And if Rankin/Bass sounds familiar? It's because they are responsible for all the stop-motion animated Christmas specials of the late 1960s and 70s including: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Year with a Santa Clause, Santa Clause is Coming to Town, and Little Drummer Boy. (Those specials had the vocal talents of Hollywood royalty - Mickey Rooney, Fred Astair, Burl Ives, among them.) I don't know how they attracted old Hollywood Royalty to these things.

Here's an clip of the Rankin Bass Hobbit.

Watch on YouTube

The 1978 film was a musical, it had musical numbers throughout, including The Hobbit theme "The Greatest Adventure". (Return of the King adaptation was similar). Some of the songs from the 1970s film made it into Peter Jackson's film, and one of the songs, I think played over the end credits of the Jackson films.

The songs that made it into Jackson's film included "Over the Misty Mountains", "The Lonely Mountain", and the Dwarves song in Bilbo Baggin's kitchen while doing the dishes.

Here's a few examples of both versions back to back..

( Rankin Bass original version of the song )

( Peter Jackson's version of the same song in live action Hobbit )

Another one...

Original... Rankin Bass version
( Rankin Bass Version of )

( Jackson Live Adaptation of What Bilbo Baggins Hates )

Oh the "What Bilbo Baggins Hates" was actually in the book and written by Tolkien, along with Over Misty Mountains...Tolkien was a poet.

Here's Tolkien singing "What Bilbo Baggins Hates" - so this was apparently written by Tolkien not Rankin/Bass, which explains why Jackson used it.

I thought it was Rankin/Bass because Rankin Bass did songs for everything in The Hobbit, including the Spider. They even did songs to the Return of the King, which I'm not certain works, but they did it anyhow.

Old Fat Spider from The Hobbit Soundtrack

The songs sound like children's folk songs. Here's a link to them.

This is the rare original soundtrack from The Hobbit (1977) animated by Rankin/Bass. Music by Maury Laws, vocals by Glenn Yarbrough. Full track list:
( Read more... )

Rings of Power is distinctive for the strong female roles, which seem to be more in the background in Tolkien's works. In Rings, they've been brought front and center, with the male characters more in the background. Which may be why I liked it better? It had some strong female leads, and very likable ones.

Rings female characters - who are rather compelling include: Galdarial (the elfven warrior), Dia (the wife of the Dwarf Prince), Norie (the Harfoot who befriends the Stranger), and Myriel, the Numerian Queen Regent, also Browyn, who bravely leads her people in a seemingly futile battle against an orc army.

Oh and here's the Return of the King Songs by Rankin Bass, and possibly Tolkien - this was considered the worst of the films. I think they did a portion of it as an ABC special in the 1980s, because I remember watching it - I also remember it being a lot better than this.

2. Making some headway through Andy Wier's Project Hail Mary - which I'd describe as hard science fiction - or realist hard science fiction. Weir is more interested in the mechanics and how, then necessarily why or what. And I'm thinking he's an engineer or a mad science teacher.

I'm only 25% of the way through - but I feel like I've been reading forever. Yet, it is compelling. The set up? The sun is slowly dimming because a type of alien life is draining energy from it - to empower itself to go to Venus and procreate. They need to find a way to stop this mindless parasite - so they send a team to a distant star to investigate why it's not been affected in the same way the sun is - Tau Ceti. The story starts when the protagonist wakes up from some sort of medically induced coma on a space ship. His crew is dead. He's alone, and he has to figure out why he's there and what he needs to do - only one problem his brain is kind of mush from the coma. Slowly his memories seep back - and when they do, he flashes back on what happened to bring him there and why. It's a story told in flashback, with a present threat informed by those flashbacks.

Right now, he's trying to figure out what appears to be an alien space ship has sent him. It's a small, incredibly hot cylinder that stinks of ammonia.

***

It was gloomy, foggy, and in the 60s and 70s. Since my internal heating and cooling system is currently on the fritz, I wore a short sleeved shirt, a light black cardigan, and a light black LL Bean windbreaker. Then proceeded to peel them off and put them back on at various intervals during the commute. At work - it was the sweater, then the work sweatshirt and back to the shirt again for the same reasons.

Then on the way home - after going to the pharmacy - it decided to have what can best be described as a bit of a deluge. (I was woefully unprepared, because the idiotic weather person told me it would sunny this afternoon and wouldn't rain. Well, I did have an umbrella - and I bought one. Not that it made much difference.) ( Read more... )

Brain fog big time today. It was so bad, I lost track of time and almost missed my train.( Read more... )

The boredom at work (I'm in a holding pattern - waiting on other people to provide me with stuff, while trying to create boring spreadsheets and charts), also filing (which I'm procrastinating, because I hate putting files together - I'm not that clerical.). So to entertain myself - I decided to torture myself by surfing the internet hunting information on childhood friend. (Found more than I wanted on her professional life as a prestigious international avant garde design architect. She has installations in various museums, and commissioned a work in Stockholm, and in a prestigious and well known residential work in Sweden. She's also a professor at Sci-Arc.)

I informed my brother of this via text.

Brother: Stalker. Did she answer you back on Linked In?
Me: No. And she won't. I'm not in the art world.

Me: Have you heard of Sci-Arc?
Brother: Yes, I've heard of Sci-Arc.

Of course she didn't - answer me back. Would have been surprised if she did. After my research, I regretted my message and hoped she wouldn't respond. Felt kind of silly for sending it off to begin with. (I blame mother for infecting me with her nostalgic kick.)

My bit of research made it clear childhood friend never would, assuming she even sees it. ( Read more... )

***
Quote of the Day:

It is time to come to your senses. You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there you are. More will not be asked of you. - Herman Hesse

Oddly comforting.

***

1. Twitter: Do any of my US fiends fancy living in a forest in Scotland?
Me: I do. Sounds appealing at the moment. Add in a hot Scotsman, and I'm sold.

2. Twitter...

A bunch of writers posted this on Twitter and then proceeded to discuss it at length, to my amusement.

Here's the Thread

I did learn something from the Thread - whatever you do, don't mess around with Hippos.

Everyone apparently thought the tiger or the croc were the best bet. Although it depends on whether they were fed first.
( Read more... )
Most people figure they are safe with the croc (who apparently is really a Caiman, so really safe), and possibly the tiger, who may ignore them. No way in hell - regarding the hippo. And iffy on the bear. Most of the discussion was regarding the other three (tiger, bear, and croc - people were pretty much united on avoiding Hippos at all costs). And what the requirements were. (Could they climb a tree? What was the proximity? Were weapons allowed? Would they be in a cage with them? Handcuffed? Could they bring non-lethal weapons? Or any weapon? Was it combat? What type of bear? What type of Crocodile? I mean these were novelists discussing this - they have imaginations. They were rather funny though.)

Yes, this is how a bunch of bored professional novelists entertain themselves on a Friday afternoon.

3. Twitter was also posting list memes...

* Top Six Films You Can Watch at Any Time and Consider Close to Perfect.

[This made me more aware of the fact that a lot of the comedic and other types of films that most people love that do not work for me at all. For example? I have yet to get through The Big Lebowski by the Cohen Brothers. I don't like the movie. It doesn't work for me at all, and I can't get through it. Wales loves it so much, she took a day off work to honor it. And the word "Dude" gets on my nerves. Another example? This is Spinal Tape (I feel asleep during it). Wayne's World - sigh. Bill & Ted - sigh. (Let's face it movies about stupid nerdy fan boys who objectify women, tend to irritate me.) I'm also not a fan of Wes Anderson's films.

So Top Six Films...off the top of my head?

Gross Point Blank
His Girl Friday
Blade Runner
Empire Strikes Back
Jaws
Singing in the Rain

But I won't be held to that.

Stolen from another part of Twitter: 10 bands or Songwriters/Singers to know me
1 Joni Mitchell
2 Helen Reddy
3 The Beatles
4 Aertha Franklin
5. Nina Simone
6. Pink Floyd
7. Bob Dylan
8. The Magnetic Tapes
9. Elle McllWaine
10. R.E.M

How accurate that is? I'm clueless. But weirdly I found that I got most folks taste in music - better than their taste in film. I think I like a story in film.

***

Niece is definitely better - she took a beach day. After deferring her exam, she wandered about a bit today, and went to the beach. (See, that's how I should have been able to handle my recuperation from COVID. But nooo, I drug my sorry ass to work and back. No wonder I still have brain fog.)

Off to bed. To sleep and hopefully have better dreams than last night.

Hmm..I'm scrolling through my correspondence list again, and...

1. Discovered that Victorian mystery novel romance that I read several years back and actually remember, The Essex Serpent has been turned into a miniseries on Apple TV, starring Clare Danes, Tom Hiddleston, and Frank Dillane.

I may have to watch that after I finish watching Star Trek: Discovery.

2. Also, I discovered via Twitter that Stephen Moffat's take on "The Time Traveler's Wife" on HBO Max did not go over well with the critics. What worked on Doctor Who, does not work ahem elsewhere. In Doctor Who, the time traveling Doctor runs into River Song out of sequence, meeting her as an adult, then as a child. Same with Amy in a way. This works in Doctor Who for a couple reasons - mainly though, because the Doctor isn't really seen as "sexual" in the series. Nor do we ever see them kissing or having sex.
Plus it's a given that he's a time traveling alien.

Time Traveler's Wife has Henry's wife first meeting him as a grown naked man, when she's about eight years of age. And she goes to get him clothes, and no one asks any questions. In the film version - this was about five to ten minutes of screen time, in the HBO version it's apparently an entire episode - which is kind of Skeevy. Particularly when Henry is kind of hot, and portrayed to be very sexual. So the chemistry is off.

The fact that the writer is oblivious to this and lacks nuance - makes it worse.

The Guardian Review - Far Too Much Ick Factor To be Truly Great

Salon's review: The Time Traveler's Wife can't quite get past the ick factor...or would be a mess in any era

On Twitter - the reviewer stated that the production value is rather cheap, the wigs bad, and the direction off - considering the talent behind it.

I think the problematic nature of the story was easier to hand-wave in both the movie and the book, although I did not like the movie and couldn't get into the book. My mother despised the book. I have issues with the time travel aspect - it doesn't work. And I didn't think the book worked. The problem with time travel in novels - is it is linear, because we think linearally, but time isn't linear in reality or scientifically. We can't understand it. Star Trek and Marvel, and possibly DC are the only ones that I've seen handle it well on a science level - showing how traveling in time results in a temporal distortion or parallel universe. They are the only ones who delve into the science of it - everything else kind of romanticizes it or uses it as a gimmick. (I'm on the fence regarding Terminator.)

I'm still curious, so may try it - after I finish Discovery.

3. Smart Bitches provided an interesting link to a movie starring Emma Thompson on Hulu, about an older woman who hires a giglio or male escort to have sex with her - because she's never really had it and would like to experience it.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, kind of reminds me of American Gigilio, except, Richard Gere was hotter.

Mother was into art house films in the 70s, and told me about Diary of a Mad Housewife with Frank Lagenella (who she adored and saw on stage as Dracula), and we saw again with Albert Finny in a Russian Play that I can't remember the name of. Also, American Gigilio.

4. And yet another Kindle Daily Deal advertised on Smart Bitches attracted my attention...

Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim is $2.99 and another KDD! This YA fantasy was featured on Cover Awe and was marketed as Mulan meets Project Runway. Which HELLO!

Project Runway meets Mulan in this sweeping YA fantasy about a young girl who poses as a boy to compete for the role of imperial tailor and embarks on an impossible journey to sew three magic dresses, from the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Maia Tamarin dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. When a royal messenger summons her ailing father, once a tailor of renown, to court, Maia poses as a boy and takes his place. She knows her life is forfeit if her secret is discovered, but she’ll take that risk to achieve her dream and save her family from ruin. There’s just one catch: Maia is one of twelve tailors vying for the job.

Backstabbing and lies run rampant as the tailors compete in challenges to prove their artistry and skill. Maia’s task is further complicated when she draws the attention of the court magician, Edan, whose piercing eyes seem to see straight through her disguise.

And nothing could have prepared her for the final challenge: to sew three magic gowns for the emperor’s reluctant bride-to-be, from the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars. With this impossible task before her, she embarks on a journey to the far reaches of the kingdom, seeking the sun, the moon, and the stars, and finding more than she ever could have imagined.

Steeped in Chinese culture, sizzling with forbidden romance, and shimmering with magic, this young adult fantasy is pitch-perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas or Renée Ahdieh

Meanwhile, I entered a giveaway for T Kinfisher's Nettle & Bone, on Good Reads.

Meanwhile, I've decided to stick with Sarah Maas's Throne of Glass series. I'm on book one. She got the idea for it from Cinderella of all things. What sparked it was this: she felt the music when Cinderella runs down the palace stairs was rather dark and foreboding, and she wondered what if Cinderella was an assassin who made an attempt on the Prince's life and escaped - why would she do that and what would bring her there to do it?

My difficulty with it is the whole age thing - I think the lead character should be older, all the characters should be. Although it's admittedly easier to write them younger - I get that, and there's a broader audience for the younger character.

In mine, they are older - my difficulty with my novel is I suck at naming things. I should do what my sister-in-law's father did when he hunted her name - go to a library or book store and open a book of names and randomly pick them.

At any rate, I'm sticking with Throne of Glass - because it doesn't require much concentration. It's easy to read in other words, and I don't have to focus that hard. No complex description and the dialogue is fairly simple, no dialect. That's probably why its so popular, now that I think about it.
People don't like to work that hard to read stuff. And I'm reading it solely on my commute or before bed.

Meanwhile, I keep buying Regency romance novels and fantasy novels on sale on the Kindle. Everything is below $2. I've spent about $10 on ten books. LOL!

Now that I'm no longer doing the "pandemic blog" - I've no idea what to title entries.

Crazy Workplace

The head honcho of my group or rather the new BOSS, thought it would be a great idea - to schedule an office party for April 1. [They also forced all the folks with reasonable accommodation to continue working remotely - to come back into the office, with the view that there's no reason for them not to. ]
( Read more... )

On a brighter note? The punch clock now works - so I no longer have to email my manager every time I come in and out of work.

Also plus side of going to work at the crack of dawn is I get to watch the sunrise over the city every morning on my way to work. And there's less people on the train.

People are slobs though. The trains were clean for a bit - but trying to clean a 24/7 transportation system with folks who feel the need to leave their trash behind, eat on the train, drink on the train, etc, is impossible.

***

I'm concerned about my blood pressure meds. ( Read more... )

On the way home from the pharmacy, they were parking huge film trailers - which are these huge trucks - 14 wheelers, that take up half a city block. Apparently my neighborhood is now a film location set. Lovely. ( Read more... )

***

During the day and on the commute - I listen to music to calm myself and keep my focus. I put on the head phones at 6:30 am and wear them pretty much until I get home at night.

Today's song list included:

( Very long list of songs, albeit abbreviated, I got tired of writing them down after a bit.. )

There's more - but I got tired. I've created my own radio station - with over thousands of songs downloaded to my library and more added via Apple Music subscription. As you can see? I have ridiculously eclectic taste.
Inherited from my mother (not my father) and my brother who also has eclectic taste. I get curious about music - and will try it.

Also, I adore music.

Anyhow...it's late..

I'll leave you with two music videos from that very very long list of songs that I listened to today ...

1. Forest Black's Put Your Hands Up (Acoustic Folk/Indie Americana) which haunts me and reassures me at the same time. Every time I hear it, I feel less alone, and somehow connected. There's songs and music that just makes me feel connected to the universe around me - and this is one of those songs. It also makes me teary eyed - pulls at the heart.

And

2. America Dream by Willie Jones (which is Americana/Country). It's a song that pulls me into another perspective and also pulls deeply at the heart. Painful song, but a moving one. Haunting. I remember it long after. And have often rewound it.

Watch on YouTube

Apparently Daylight Savings Time is next weekend? If so? Yay! I'll take next Monday off to deal with it.

Dull headache most of the day, but dissipating now that it is clearing. It was overcast most of the day.

Watched Speilberg's Adaptation of West Side Story on Disney + today. (It's also available on HBO MAX along with the original version.)

The Skinny? I like the 1960s version better. Co-worker is correct - it does not compare to the original. [And it is nearly impossible not to compare the two in one's head. ]

Why?

Robert Wise, the director of the 1960s version was a minimalist. And with musicals, less is more. Do too much - and you overshadow the score and dance numbers - which are the whole point. Wise wisely chose to emphasize Bernstein's score, highlight Robbins choreography and dance numbers, and Sondheim's lyrics, and under play everything else. He let the music speak for itself, and aided it with the visuals.

Speilberg in stark contrast - goes the hyper-realist route. (And I don't think hyper-realism necessarily works well with musicals. Mainly because musicals are kind of fantastical to begin with. You have people bursting out in song and dancings in the middle of streets, sidewalks, stores, and daily life. It's jarring if you get too realistic about the setting.) Also Kurshner's book well thankfully slang free (no Daddy-o's to be seen), tells us far too much about the characters, and way too much about the setting.
This musical works better if you go the minimalist route.
( comparison of two West Side Story Films )
Does the film stand on its own two feet- regardless of the original. Yes, I think it does for the most part. But, I would most likely have some of the same criticisms had I not seen the original version. Tony wouldn't have worked that well for me regardless. Bernado may have worked better. Somewhere still wouldn't have worked. And I Feel Pretty would have felt jarring, either way. I'd have removed it and "Somewhere" completely from Spielberg's film, and had Somewhere play at the end credits.

Overall grade?

1961 Version? A- (for the casting of Tony and Maria)
2021 Version? B (see above)

***

Haven't done much today, outside of talk to mother, watch television, and revise my book. Slept until 8, had breakfast late...so...there you go.

Here's a picture.

We didn't really get much of the storm that hit the rest of the country. It just rained here, and it's most likely icy outside. I wouldn't know, I'm inside and have not ventured out. I'm wearing my "Culture is Ordinary" t-shirt that I stole from my brother thirty odd years ago, and blue joggers (basically light sweat-pants that feel like pajamas.)

Thought about doing the February meme, but got a headache by question five and gave up. I honestly couldn't think of an answer for over half of the questions. I don't know what the last funniest video I saw was.

The first question asks if I think our country will change if more people have access to voting, without restrictions. ( short answer? No )

After that question, I got tired. Brain fog strikes again. I'm doing that a lot lately. After scrolling through most of my DW correspondence list...I decided that Lee Pace would make an excellent Cyclops - if they ever decided to do a live action movie or series. ( Read more... )

Other thoughts the scroll inspired?

* Game Shows - my best friend when I was eight, was into Game Shows, Monster Movies, Lost in Space and Science Fiction Movies. ( Read more... )

* Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Nominees for Induction this Year

It's a weird list. I agree that it looks like a bunch of people's names you'd see on old CD's in a garage sale.

( The Complete List of 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees )

Some of them make sense to me, others..and I'm sorry, Dolly Parton isn't rock n roll, country yes, rock n roll, no. I think she's already in the country music hall of fame, not sure why she needs to be in the rock n roll hall of fame as well. Nothing against Dolly, just seems odd to me.

* More people are deleting their LJ's - now that LJ no longer permits cross-posting. It was only a matter of time before they made that impossible. ( why people should delete their ljs )

* Heavy Metal aka Metal Hurlant - saw a review on the film. And I remembered that they did a live action remake a few years back. It was called Metal Hurlant Chronicles.
( Read more... )

* Read a Review of The Last Duel, which is apparently available on both Disney Plus and HBO Max??? I didn't know it was available on Disney Plus as well. Chidi at work rec'd it, and now so has selenak (who is a history buff and adores historicals - far more than I.( Read more... )

* Would I be happy never going to a movie theater again?

No. ( why )

***

Niece is en route to Portugal. Or so I'm told. And her persistent boyfriend has made plans to travel to England in the spring and take her to Scotland.
( Read more... )
There was another question on the meme: what are you doing differently now that you are older.
( answer )
***

Working from home today, which is distracting in a whole other way than working in the office. People distract me in the office. At home? The feral cats and squirrels wandering about in the backyard, my apartment, my bed, my kitchen...

Also as an aside? The song, "Kiss the Girl" from the Little Mermaid is a horrible ear worm song. You get that in your head, you can't get it out. Hmm, I didn't realize until I watched the Sherman Brothers Documentary on Disney Plus, how many Disney songs are earworms.

Mother: Who are the Sherman's?
Me: They wrote the score for Mary Poppins (also responsible for The Bare Necessities, Chitty Bang Bang, and It's a Small World After All - all of which are ear worm songs. Oh, and "Everybody Wants to be a Cat".)

Me: Disney Plus has a treasure trove of old family movies on it. Except for Song of the South. (Although I didn't exactly look for it but according to Wiki it's not there.)
Mother: You can't find that anywhere, it's completely unavailable.
Me: Well, it's apparently problematic -
Mother: I don't remember it being problematic. It had Bre're Rabbit, and Bre're Fox, and these stories, and that song (another ear worm song - Zippe Dee Doo Da..).
Me: I don't remember it that well at all to comment on it - but I read an in depth criticism about it, so trust me it is - they went in detail.
Mother: Art (a friend of hers and former New Yorker) loves it so much he hunted down a DVD of it somewhere.
Me: I'm amazed he found one - they really did pull all copies.

Just in case you have never heard of Song of the South? It was initially released in 1946, then re-released in the early 1970s. I saw it in the movie theater when I was 6 or 7. I was very young at the time. I remember bits and pieces of it, and my father singing the song on the way out of the theater. At the time, it wasn't considered offensive or controversial at all. That's not to say it wasn't - just that we didn't know it at that time. Watching a vid of it now, I see why it's offensive and how it might promote racial stereotypes. The clip I watched definitely did. The fact that it was a children's film with a cartoon, makes it all the more problematic. Because that, folks, is how racism is ingrained in our brains and subconscious and it requires work to dislodge it. Steady, daily, hard work. I'm still working on it.

( description of the movie below - from Wiki, because I don't remember it well enough to provide an accurate one )

***

Mother: Your brother informed me that your sister-in-law has resigned from her position in the Democratic Party.
Me: Got fed up, finally, huh?
Mother: Didn't like how they were doing things, and they refused to listen to her.
Me: Volunteer and political organizations in a nutshell.

It's why I gave up on volunteering with organizations myself. Stubborn idiocy, I've only so much patience for. I can't work for it, and volunteer for it at the same time. I gave up finally on Weaving the Fabric of Diversity - church's social justice collective. Fights kept breaking out in their email threads. Mainly because they had crazy liberals who didn't research stuff prior to promoting it. One guy was beginning to annoy me - so I'm glad they addressed it finally. But I still gave up.

I think I'm burned out on the whole human rights advocacy thing. Frak human rights - I'm fighting for the environment from now on.

**

I got to go back into the office tomorrow. I'd rather work from home. ( Read more... )

**

The mask wearing has leveled off, as have the COVID cases, indicating we'll most likely end up back en mass next week. Even church is threatening to go back to in-person sessions. Honestly, why can't folks wait until it is warmer and spring to do this?

I noticed less folks wandering about with face masks. I may up grade next week in self-defense to N95 (I have them now) or KN95 at the very least. Currently wearing KF94 which has been serving me well.

I swear I've spent a small fortune in face masks.

**

On Twitter they were whinging about Biden calling some Fox News commentator an idiot. My reaction? Of course the guy is an idiot, he's a Fox New commentator - it's kind of a given.

***

I'm enjoying the new contemporary romance novel that I'm reading (for free via my Kindle Unlimited Subscription) - about to jump off to read some more of it. It came highly rec'd by Smart Bitches. Usually they are off, and often hit or miss, rarely hit, mostly miss. But this was a definite hit. It's about two surgeons, who are screwed up, and thrown into therapy for conflict resolution after an accident in the ER. They fall in love. The writing is fun. It's fluffy and amazing with hot sex scenes, but not too explicit or long.

My phone has now told me to go to sleep - it does that now.

So.. random photo of the night:

1. I finally figured out the name of this old adventure movie that I saw in 1976, as a kid. It had a scene in it where the characters were being eaten alive by mosquitos in the Florida Everglades, and took place in the 1800s, after the Civil War. For a long time, I thought I'd dreamed up this movie. I don't remember anything from it but the portion in the Everglades.

It's called Treasure of Matecumbe based on a 1961 novel by Robert Louis Taylor entitled The Journey to Matecumbe. It starred popular Disney child actor, Jimmy Doran, Billy Attmore, Joan Hackette, Robert Foxworth, Peter Ustinov, Vic Morrow, Robert Donqui, Dick Van Patten, and Jane Wyatt.
( what is about etc.. )

2. As a child, around the age of 11 or 12? I had a huge crush on Ike Eisenmann. He played Tony in the Escape from Witch Mountain films in the 1970s, and was in Fantastic Journey with Roddy McDowel, along with various other films and television shows in the 1970s.

He's long since retired from film, and became a major vocal effects consultant, then a writer.

Here's the podcast on all the Witch Mountain films.. Ike Eisnemann interview on the Witch Mountain Films.

My childhood 1970s film/television boyfriend crushes were in no particular order?

( Read more... )

I don't know what to write about tonight. I'm spent. I went from being bored at work to being overwhelmed in the space of two weeks time, thanks to cubical mate leaving crazy org. I'm kind of drowning. It's been non-stop, and I'm not sure sometimes what to do next.

Also worried about the Omicron variant interfering with my trip to Hilton Head. My brother is worrying about his daughter making it home on Friday and not getting stuck in England with COVID. She's fully vaccinated with booster (Pfizer just like me). But they've had outbreaks at her school. She gets test bi-weekly, they all do. She's at the London School of Economics, they are sending the International Students home a week earlier than scheduled. Currently under a teacher's strike - so it's not like there's school at the moment. Also, my brother isn't certain she'll get to go back next year - UK and Europe are getting dicey, apparently.

I told mother that I was worried about the Omicron variant.

She told me not to be. That there is very little information out about it.
And South Africa only has 6% of its population vaccinated. (This is a problem. My SIL (sister-in-law) was ranting about this in July. We have nitwits who refuse to get vaccinated because..."their rights" and half the world can't get vaccinated because their countries can't afford enough doses.) The other problem is that the information out there is confusing, I can see why folks are reluctant and want to wait, every few weeks the damn media tells us certain vaccines are more reliable than other vaccines. And there are so frigging many vaccines.

My family and friends (on and offline) are in a three way split between Moderna, Pfizer, and Astrezenca (if they live outside the US, Astrezenca (sp?)).

In other news... Chris Cuomo is suspended indefinitely from CNN for using his contacts, and position at CNN to strategize against the sexual abuse allegations lodged against his brother Andrew Cuomo

It's weirdly ironic. In March through roughly July of 2020, the Cuomo Brothers were America's darlings. People loved watching them spar during the Governor's live briefings. People around the world were tuning in. It was the Cuomo COVID show...

Now...almost two years later...they are brought down by a sex scandal. (I don't understand why Trump hasn't been - I know he's sexually assaulted women, maybe he has better lawyers? Or a hit squad, we don't know about?)

Oh well, Cuomo is why I'm in hell at work - so there's that. But him being taken down hasn't exactly lessened that hell any. We keep waiting at crazy workplace, but alas na da.

**

Apparently Nicolas Cage is playing Dracula opposite Nicolas Holt's Reinfeld in the film Reinfeld.
( excerpt )

AM agreed with myself and movie buddy about The Eternals. She stated that it wasn't as good as Shang-Chi, making me kind of wish I'd seen Shang-Chi in the movie theaters.

***

I don't know what I want for Xmas, or what to get anyone else. I'm at a complete and utter loss. There's stuff I need to buy myself - but I'm not asking others to buy them for me. Too expensive. I may buy some pre-wrapped things for myself and leave them here - to unwrap after Xmas. That's an idea.

I need pictures to hang on my walls - but I'm too cheap to buy any. I'm very cheap. I don't like spending money on furniture or decor.

**

Anyhow..

* ( CDC can't find the Omicron variant in the US but it keeps looking )
* ( Mark Meadows is testifying in the House Panel Investigations )

* ( Dr Oz is running for Senate Seat in PA - Ugh, just what we need another crazy Republican nitwit )

*( Supreme Court is going to look into Roe vs. Wade again )

*When Shamma Goodrich moved to New York from New Delhi in 2015, she was struck by the homelessness in Manhattan. She is now volunteering with Brooklyn Community Services’ shower bus, which helps those without reliable access to bathroom facilities. The organization is one of nine supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. [Finally, somebody worth saving, yay!]

*United Arab Emirates are one of the few ways Bedouins can sustain their traditions. And at the heart of the festival are camel beauty contests.

The ideal camel has long straight legs, a long neck, a shapely hump, pert ears, expressive eyes framed by upward-curled eyelashes, a sleek coat and elegant posture. A little jewelry also goes a long way. When Kiki Streitberger, a photographer, visited Al Dhafra in 2019, more than 24,000 camels from all over the Middle East competed for the equivalent of more than $16 million in prize money

* Tony Kushner discusses writing West Side Story Screenplay for the new film

( excerpt )

[The trailers look amazing, and it's getting good reviews, even if Soap Twitter doesn't like the guy cast as Tony. I don't know, I'm reserving judgement. Also Soap Twitter is well, Soap Twitter. Actually Soap Twitter makes me miss the Buffy fandom. I miss arguing over whether vamps should show their breath or reflections over say whether a bridge should be dedicated to one couple - on a soap opera that religiously reuses its set pieces.]

Took the day off, actually taking Monday off as well, and Tuesday is a paid holiday. Crazy Org gives us Election Day off via our Union's Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Considering watching "Dune" tonight on HBO MAX - I discovered that I still have it. Which kind of surprised me. I thought it was gone because of Amazon? Although I'd been watching it via the app, not via Amazon for a long time now.

I realized in various discussions with folks who'd seen it, that I don't care all that much whether I see Dune in the movie theater or on my 55 inch television set. Actually I might be able to pay better attention to it at home, less distractions. And...I'm not ready to go back to the movies just yet.

On Twitter - Courtney Milan said something interesting about mental health...

We are all going to handle the crushing fear and worry that comes from the moments we are living through in different ways. Those ways are not all compatible. Some people use humor. Some people vent. Some people find joy in small things.

Courtney Milan T-Rex
courtneymilan
·
Oct 26
Whatever you are doing to keep yourself sane and present and fighting in this moment—you’re doing it right. You’re okay.

After reading this - I realized I've used all of the above. I've muted people online, swung away from some folks and towards others. And others have done the same with me. I'm keeping me sane.

I am not ready to sit in a darkened movie theater with complete strangers, by myself. It's not happening. Maybe church first - that's just an hour, and has strict rules, and I know most of the people. Granted, the movie theaters also have strict rules now - you get "reserved seats" and ahead of time. Also, must be vaccinated and wear a mask. But I don't want to. It's probably worth noting that I don't live near any movie theaters any longer, and this would require a 30 minute subway ride and 20 minute walk to get to them, on semi-busy sidewalks and trains. It's not a leisurely drive with a friend, parking, and voila.

Regarding Dune? An old social media friend has been posting the following articles on it, on FB:
( Read more... )
I may watch it this weekend. But I'm ambivalent. I don't know why. I think I've just lost interest? I did read it ages ago, way back in 1981. I was in junior high at the time. It doesn't age that well, and is kind of dated. Also, from what I've read - Lucas may have been inspired by it to do Star Wars. A lot of folks think Star Wars is basically Dune, so too did Frank Herbert at the time, who attempted to sue Lucas over it. He got nowhere of course. Because honestly the basic idea isn't that original, how it is written or done is. Having read Dune, seen two adaptations, and all the Star Wars films...I don't see the resemblance, unless I squint and work hard at it. But I could do that with a lot of things.

I'm actually more excited about seeing Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on Disney Plus in November. Also the Eternals. So there you go.

**

It's raining. Or was. But stopped. Gloomy today. Gloomy tomorrow. I'm hoping to take a walk down Abmerle and Argyll street tomorrow or Sunday, to see the Halloween House, before they take everything down. I keep planning on going, and forgetting. If I do go, I'll take photos.

**

Random Photo of the Night..

1. Claudia Black on Film Set Safety - So, I started following Claudia Black on Twitter recently. Anyhow, she's been posting these amazing threads about how to handle life on a film set.

The link above is to the latest thread.

"If you’re an aspiring actor, and as my advice was good enough for a young Mcavoy I pray you’ll listen now.

When we were filming Pitch Black a producer came to give me a choice. They had a problem and needed to do a reshoot with me and a stuntie. The shoot thus far had been rough he crew was exhausted. 6 day weeks are unsustainable. Mistakes happen when crews are tired and often on the 6th day. The crew couldn’t say “no” to another Saturday but I could. I asked when they needed a decision & went to speak with some crew. I made sure that they themselves were choosing —rest vs an overtime paycheck— I would not presume to know their needs and priorities. They chose safety and rest. “Safety First,” is after all, an oft heard refrain on any decent set with its priorities in check. I returned to the producer and told him I was too tired and didn’t want to work the Saturday. He looked at me for a few seconds. I was a good actor and a bad liar. He went to say something, nodded instead and rescheduled. We do a lot of things on sets that would otherwise be illegal. It can be thrilling. It’s a privilege."

This was in response to the tragic shooting of a film photographer on a film set by Alec Baldwin. The shooting is being investigated, but so far appears to have been accidental and unintentional. AP NEWS COVERAGE of ON-Set misfiring of a gun that killed director of photography on the set of Rust

BTW there is a lot on this on Twitter - enough to demonstrate to me at least that Baldwin and his fellow producers cut some corners, and did not follow safety protocols on set, nor did they take measures to ensure their film crew was safe and well rested. There's one thread where a crew member is complaining about how crew members couldn't find a place to sleep that was close by, and that the producers refused to find one or pay for rooms, outside of a motel that was doubling as a homeless shelter. (This thread horrified Claudia Black.) Another thread made it clear that the Assistant Director wasn't attending safety meetings and pooh-poohing them as a waste of time. And wasn't taking the fire arm safety seriously. And another thread makes it clear how odd this was, and out of the norm - meaning normally strict safety protocols are followed and there's no way this would have happened if those safety protocols had been followed.

I'm in an industry where we have to take a four-hour safety training course each year in order to be near or on the tracks. And I'm inundated with safety protocols. We have Safety Meetings once a month. So I can well imagine what a film set that utilizes stunts and fire arms would require or should. Also recently the union representing television, theater, and film crews went on strike in part due to the lack of appropriate safety measures on film and television sets.

Days before the actor fatally shot Halyna Hutchins, a cinematographer on the set of “Rust,” a gun used in the production inadvertently went off at least two times, ex-crew members said. The incidents prompted a complaint to a supervisor about the safety practices on the set, which was outside Santa Fe. The crew members were among several workers who quit just hours before the fatal shooting over complaints about working conditions and unpaid work.

According to an affidavit, Baldwin was told that the gun was safe before he fired it, and an assistant director “did not know live rounds were in the prop-gun” when he gave it to him.

According to Twitter feeds, the assistant director didn't know because he didn't attend the safety course. The Fire Arm specialist, put the guns on the prop table. The AD picked up one and handed it to the actor, who then fired it, killing Hutchins and wounding the director.

Per the Times:

( here's what they know and don't know about the fatal shooting - and it kind of syncs with the twitter feeds )

[Right now various folks in the entertainment industry are petitioning that firearms be banned from film and television sets in the future, and they rely on special effects. I can't blame them. And why not? Also, it does make me wonder about the violence in our films and television series - and how easy it is for stuff to go wrong.}

2. There's two intriguing new comic series coming from BOOM! - involving the Angel and Buffy verses.

* Angel Goes Hollywood with New Comic
( New Angel Comics - Angel is in a television series by day and fights monsters by night )

Shame they can't reboot that as a television series. Honestly that's the one version of the old vampire as detective they haven't done. I'd watch it. They don't have to make it Angel. Or they could and recast with a hotter actor?

* Buffy The Last Slayer - has a 50 something Buffy fighting vampires in a dystopian future, with Spike, and a sword wielding gray-haired Xander.
( 50 year old Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

I wish they'd do that as a television series too - on Netflix. They could hire Claudia Black to play a 50 something Buffy, with Marsters as Spike, and recast Ben Browder as Xander.

BOOM! Studios - snatched the rights to Buffy, Angel, and Firefly from Dark Horse and IDW. And have rebooted the stories in new directions. I stopped with the reboots. But the above two takes look intriguing. And I may go back and sample some of the reboots.

[Note - Whedon may have been an asshole to work with, but I still like what he created with various other writers and actors. It's a universe I still enjoy. Also Stephen DeKnight, Marti Noxon and Jane Espenson along with Tim Minear - were all good writers. As were the actors involved, and crew.]

3. ( RIP Semi-Famous Folks who died of Cancer this week )

4. I wasn't going to talk about COVID, but alas...got email from my union. (I'm in an international union.) Anyhow - it is supporting the mandate for vaccines at least.
( union's stance and we've lost 48 members to the virus )

( From the Times Briefing )

[I don't tend to supply links to the articles, because most of them are under paywalls.]

Rainy, gloomy day, and the barometric pressure mixed with not sleeping all that well, resulted in a day spent writing, watching television, reading, and talking briefly to mother on the phone.

Oh well, at least I talk to someone once or twice a day on the phone.

1. Black Widow - watched this on Disney Plus last night. It's entertaining. It felt a bit like a mix between The Americans and Red Sonja to be honest. The best thing about it were Rachel Weitze, Scarlett Johannsen and Florence Pugh. And I have a feeling we may be seeing more of Rachel Weitz's Melina and Florence Pugh's characters in the films and television shows ahead.

The film is set up to accomplish two tasks - 1) explain Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanov's motivation for joining the Avengers, and sacrificing herself in Endgame. 2) setting up the next female "Black Widow".

It accomplishes both rather well. It's also supposed to work as a stand-a-alone origin story (and I'm not entirely convinced it succeeds in that department). The film takes place after Captain America: Civil War, so it is not really an origin tale. We don't get the story of how Natasha defected to Shield. ( Read more... )

That said, I enjoyed it. It was fun. And I like a film that has female action heroes at the focus, and the main fighters. Very few men are fighting in this film - it's mostly women, which is a nice change of pace.

2. Kate - kind of similar to Black Widow. It reminds me a lot of another film I saw years ago...mixed with some recent film action flicks like Harely Quinn and Gundpowder Milkshake. This is darker than both, and slightly less busy and more character centric. Very femme noir.

It centers on female hitperson - who is portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, whose excellent in the lead role. Kate is a hitperson employed by V portrayed by Woody Harrelson (whose taken over the Donald Sutherland asshole white guy mentor roles. Actually I like him better than Sutherland in the roles, he brings a snarky sense of humor to the proceedings.) They are in Tokyo. Everything is dark, gritty and rainy, with bright pink and green neon lights of Tokyo. Kate kills a man for V, but hesitates when she sees the man's daughter, Ani. Several weeks later, she get poisoned and now she has twenty-four hours to figure out who poisoned her with plutonium, before she's dead.

The film is non-stop action, with bits in between with Kate bonding with Ani (the daughter of the man she'd killed - which somehow cascaded into her day of hell, although she was clearly headed there anyhow). Kate is an anti-hero - she's a cold-blooded killer, with little honor. And her one bright spot is caring about Ani. The trope has been shook up a bit by the redeeming light being love of a child or trying to protect a child, in this case a young girl that reminds Kate of herself at one point - as opposed to a lover or vengeance on a lover. Protecting and avenging the child and herself because Kate's sole purpose and the goal of the plot.

It's entertaining. And watching Kate blow away lots of guys, is cathartic. However...much like Atomic Blonde, we get to see Kate get brutally beaten up as well. As Ani puts it - Kate's like the freaking Terminator.

3. Baking Impossible - I'm enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. It's basically baking engineering. The bakers are paired with engineers or vice versa, each team of two (baker + engineer) is tasked with designing an edible engineering concept. Examples include a boat that can float and pass a stress test, delivering a delicious desert. A robot that can go through an obstacle course and deliver a delicious desert. It's fun.
Some of the teams don't get along very well. They didn't pick each other - they were thrown together by the show's producers and lead host, Andrew Smythe (The baking engineer from Great British Bake Off).

It's all rather polite for the most part. Although I get the feeling some of the teams would love to get out of there as fast as they can. Other's really want the 100,000 dollar prize.

4. Maid - on Netflix. It's compelling, but painful to watch. I don't know if I'll make it through it. The series is about a young woman who flees her home one night with her baby daughter, with almost no funds, and no place to stay, after her husband in a drunken fury throws things at her, punches the wall, and she finds herself picking glass out of her child's hair. Unfortunately she has nowhere to go - her mother's mentally ill, her father has a new family and can't be bothered, and her friends are her husband's. It does a rather good job of demonstrating why women can get trapped in domestic violence situations. Desperate - she goes to social services, who can't really help her outside of giving her a reference to a maid service - that's out of laundromat. It's a poorly run service, or a service run on the bare minimum - the maids have to buy their own supplies, they get a vacuum, but that's about it, and they have short shifts. We see the dollar amount go down on the right side of the screen as the character is calculating how much money she'll obtain, and how much it will cost.
Also social services won't provide her with housing until she has two pay-checks and sends her to the mission (which she refuses to take her daughter to.).

It kind of goes down-hill from there. This is hyper-realism, and a bit on the depressing side of the fence. Everything that can go wrong does. There's some light moments, but not many. At the end of the first episode, the heroine has lost her car, is running from her ex, and sleeping on the ferry.

It stars Andie McDowell's daugther, with Andie playing the mentally ill mother. Rather well written, directed, and acted - but like I said before? Painful to watch. I wanted a lot of people in it to die of COVID.

5. Nancy Drew - eh last year's was better. I feel the writers are losing some oomph? Also what happened to the hot Detective? It's like they keep throwing guys at Nancy and none of them quite fly?

6. Diana: The Musical - I tried, and gave up after fifteen to twenty minutes of this. It was horrible. Honestly, the songs were horrible. How do these things get made? I'm amazed it got filmed, and even more amazed it made it to Broadway. Honestly, SMASH's Marilyn musical had better songs and more going for it. (Keep in mind that I will watch pretty much anything that is a musical. I made it through Tobe Hopper's CATS, and High School Musical. This was boring. I gave up. I'm sorry, Diana's life story just doesn't lend itself to a musical. I also tried Pride and Prejudice - the musical once, and no it doesn't work either. Some things just do not lend themselves to musical adaptations.)

I'd much rather see SIX. Netflix keeps filming crappy musicals for some reason - I'm not quite sure why.

***

Books? Still making my way through The Partner Track on Audio Book. Also, Kristin Higgins contemporary chick lit, that I can't remember the name of - about a gastinesnologist who returns to her native island off the coast of Maine, not far from Boston. (How it can be close to Maine and Boston, I've no clue...but I'm not from that area.) After suffering from a massive car accident, and being violently attacked several months prior.

And reading "My Wicked Husband" - a historical about a middle class/rich inventor/businessman/industralist (he's figured out that the way of the future is electricity) and his wife, who don't know each other, but are getting to know each other after two years of marriage - because she needs to launch her nutty younger sister into society. It's kind of an anti-artistocratic historical romance? Kind of witty.

***

Malaise continues. Watched church service on FB with various others. The choir sings with masks on. I feel for them. It can't be easy. Also they had jazz musicians there today. I rather like the music at church for the most part. Also the sermon involved a play - they managed to do a little performance on stage, complete with real baby, and props, and everyone wearing masks. It was the beginning of the Moses story - where Pharoah's daughter gets Moses, after he's placed in the river by his mother. The Minister focused on Pharoah's daughter and linked the story metaphorically to how we handle refugees and immigrants. Egypt was metaphorically the rigid rule structure that keeps out interlopers and anyone who might infringe on wealth and prosperity or power, The Jews are the immigrants, and Moses is the immigrant child struggling to have a life somewhere else. The Pharaoh's daughter is stuck making a decision - do I allow this immigrant child who is considered dangerous by my society to die, or take him in and feed him, and tread him as my own? And how her decision to do just that - turned the world around.

One small act of kindness changed everything.

The service ended with a rendition of one my favorite Harry Belfonte songs:

Watch on YouTube

For those who don't know Belafonte is a social justice activist, Calypso singer, and actor.

1. Box Office: Marvel made “Shang-Chi” with the Chinese market in mind. The government won’t allow it in theaters. [ LOL!] I should provide a link, shouldn't I? Warm Reception From Asians Everywhere - Except China

( Excerpt )
Yes, China. Proof you can be capitalistic and a fascist dictatorship at the same time.

2. Advice from Wirecutter: Consider pet insurance - Geeze, owning a pet is an expensive and stressful proposition nowadays, isn't it? ( Read more... ) See? This is why I don't have a pet - well that and I'm allergic.

3.Last week’s recall landslide in California suggests the stolen-election myth is hurting Republicans, says Rich Lowry in Politico. [ If only. I'll believe it when it happens. I'm still waiting for the Republican Party to crawl back into the cesspit from which it erupted. It's not happened yet. I'm almost resigned to the fact that it never will. We're stuck with the bloody bastards.]

4. The U.S. needs a uniform system to verify vaccination status, Dr. Tom Frieden, a former C.D.C. director, argues. [ Well, yeah. Kind of figured that out several months ago. Also, the flimsy paper cards aren't good enough. NY put in apps - two of them, the NY State Excelsior Pass, and NYC COVID Pass. You just upload your information to the app on your phone, and voila. I've also uploaded it to my doctor and my company's portal. If this was more uniform - I wouldn't have had to upload it so many times.]

5. Middle-aged sadness is behind the cancel culture panic, Michelle Goldberg argues. [ Okay. I think what's behind it is idiotic twenty-somethings cancelling professors on Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, and other social media platforms that I don't know the name of. Which is actually the problematic nature of Twitter in action. Cat Sebastian, LGBTA romance novelist, recently tweeted that part of the problem with this site (platform) is that it bullies people into speaking out about things. "We Know who hasn't Spoke out about this! Shame on you!" - they did that with the whole Joss Whedon thing, the actors, writers, etc who chose not to tweet about Whedon or speak out against him on Twitter and Instagram - got harassed for not doing so. (Poor Alyson Hannigan who was promoting a movie at the time - had her publicist handle Twitter. And her husband, Alexis Denisof just jumped off it completely.)

6.Justin Trudeau will stay prime minister of Canada, but his party failed to secure a majority in Parliament, according to unofficial election results. [ Is this good news? I think it is. But I also don't know who the opposition was.]

7. The S&P 500 index saw its biggest one-day slide since May. One reason: A Chinese real estate giant is in trouble. [Sigh. After I added money to my investments...ugh. Stupid China - they've put the damper on everything.]

8. Biden will address the U.N.’s General Assembly today. Yesterday, the boy band BTS took center stage. [ Okay, why is a boy band playing at the general assembly of the UN? I should provide a link... Boy Band BTS speaks in front of the UN General Assembly]

They apparently even performed there. But this was a speech about Corona Virus vaccines saving young adults.

9. Pfizer says its Covid vaccine is safe and effective in children from 5 to 11. It could be available to them in October. [ Yay!]

10. The U.S. will allow fully vaccinated foreigners to visit starting in November.[ Finally? ]

11. The Labor Department will draft standards to protect outdoor workers from extreme heat. [ Why wasn't this done before now?]

12. Two men from other states seem to be the first to use Texas’ new abortion law to sue a doctor for performing an abortion. [ This is a weird case - the two men are disbarred lawyers. So it could reveal the problematic nature of the law.]

13. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the border patrol’s treatment of Haitian immigrants. [The immigrants were detained in San Rio, Texas. Border patrol hunted them down on horseback and decided to deport them back to Haiti without warning. This is after they worked for years to get to the US. ]

14. The Biden administration will raise the cap on refugee admissions to 125,000 for the coming 12 months. [ They kind of have to - considering we left a bit of a crisis in Afghanistan.]

15. A glitch revealed the ballot choices of hundreds of voters in New York City’s mayoral primary — including the mayor’s son’s. [ Woopsie.]

16. Oh, there's also 31 new television shows premiering this fall, after the pandemic glut. (I disagree, there were some great shows that popped up during the pandemic. Queen's Gambit, Bridgerton...both come to mind.)

31 Television Shows to Watch - depending on what your service is of course

IDK - I am nostalgic for the days in which there were just 10. Actually, I'm guessing there's more than 31, but the critics gave up and just list the ones they managed to see. Well that, and the networks/streaming services pretty much greenlit every single pilot they saw. So.. I mean who has time to watch over 100 television shows, sixty percent of which are real clunkers?

Not to be outdone, there's also More than 125 movies to watch - basically every movie that was put on hold since 2020, that they did not want to release on streaming channels and felt needed to be seen in movie theaters. So we have a backlog of a year and a half of movies coming out. Blame the pandemic.

1. Finished S1 of Ted Lasso - which I think cleaned up at the Emmy's or maybe it was S2? The last episode made me cry and laugh, but my hormones are all over the place at the moment.

It's a feel good, warm hearted comedy, with some nice zingers or one liners about Americanisms vs. Britishisms. Ted says at one point, for example, the Dick Van Dyke's accent in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was the best proximity of a British Accent ever done. (He had an American accent in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang because his British accent in Mary Poppins was atrocious and Van Dyke refused to repeat the mistake in Chitty, insisting that he be allowed to use his own accent or not do it at all.)

That's just one example. The series is hilarious if you know the British and American differences.

2. Someone on the GH fan board complimented me on my in depth analysis of the storyline and characters. They said..."I wish others in the fandom had the same inclination and ability to analyze to this degree - it would make for some great discussions." Alas so do I. I've found a few here and there. My mother and I have done it for years. I had the same problems in the Buffy fandom - it wasn't until I stumbled upon the ATPOBTVS site that I hit analytical minds who liked to discuss storylines and characters. Everywhere else I went it was, alas, shipper wars.

3. So, Dune isn't the only big adaptation of a classic series of sci-fi novels coming out. The big one is Apple TV's adaptation of Isac Asimov's classic "Foundation", which basically influenced a lot of sci-if. Everything from Star Wars to Star Trek to Farscape, was influenced by Foundation. (Which I've never read and always intended to.)

Trailer..

Watch on YouTube

It has a good cast. Lee Pace, Terence Mann, Jared Harris, among others.

It premiers on Apple TV on Friday - I'll let you know what I think of it.

Also, Robert Jordan's classic fantasy series (possibly the longest and most extensive with 58 books, which was concluded by Bradford Anderson), Wheel of Time.

The Wheel of Time Series has been developed by Amazon.

Watch on YouTube

( article regarding the series and the recast for S2 )

See link: Recast in Wheel of Time Series

4. Mini-meme.

I am a culture junkie. Like most stuff. Have a weakness for relationship melodrama, soap operas, and super heroes.

This is all subject to change of course. It's odd though that most of the stuff on the list is old. Most new stuff I've seen doesn't appear to stick with me long for some reason or other.

( meme )

5. Today saw two covers of songs by Bruce Springsteen of all people that I didn't know he'd done...

Bruce Springsteen does the Clash - London Calling

And..

Bruce Springsteen does The Ramones, I wanna be sedated

I think he's better at the Ramones than the Clash. The Clash sound furious, Springsteen sounds exhausted.

Last day of vacation - it was a mini-five day weekend. I go back to work tomorrow - although not back to the office until Thursday.

I only have to go into the office once this week, and once next week.

I've decided the root of my anxiety is...needless worry about things that haven't happened yet and may never happen. My imagination is annoyingly vivid and active, when I don't keep it preoccupied with story telling.
I get myself all riled up over conversations and decisions that no one has made and may never be made.

I was taught this way of thinking at any early age - if you figure out the worst case scenario - you can be prepared. This is not true by the way. There's no way to prepare for something that may or may not happen, besides the way it will happen is probably not how I think it will. And I won't have control either way. All I'm doing is making myself miserable today over what may or may not happen tomorrow.

Once I realized this - which I kind of did over the weekend, I thought, okay I'm not going to waste time imagining the worse. I'm going to just think about what is happening now. The truth of the matter is - I've always known that, it's just not easy getting my brain to cooperate on the matter.
The trick - remember these are just thoughts, and I can ignore them.

***

My father is on anti-biotics for a growth on his neck that's become enlarged. Also he banged his head in his sleep on one of the guard rails on his bed - so his face was bruised this morning, and his eye was puffy. Mother is worried about him. She's also second-guessing herself after her neighbor informed her that he'd moved his wife (with Altzheimers) to a memory care/assisted living facility in Naples, Fla that was so much nicer and far more expensive than the one my father is in.
( Read more... )

**

While listening to the Robert Altman biography - I was reminded again, how multi-faceted and complicated people truly are. Altman, the television and film director (also fighter pilot and bomber) was an interesting character. People loved him, hated him, and/or were largely ambivalent. Most actors loved him - except for the ones who hated improvization and preferred having a set script and clear-cut direction.
I have a feeling a lot of producers and screenwriters didn't care for him all that much. He had no real respect for a script - he went off script, or told people that from his perspective a script was a map or an outline for how things should go, but not set in stone. In short? He was most likely a writer's nightmare.
( in depth description of the book I'm listening to, goes into old television series he directed, films, his style, and why he did it that way )

Oh, this is sad - Michael K. Williams of The Wire (you know the guy who played our favorite character? Omar?) - he died at the age of 54. Ouch. I'm 54. Just ouch. That hurts.

Michael K Williams Breaks Down His Most Iconic Roles

Mr. Williams was found about 2 p.m., according to the New York City Police Department. The death is being investigated as a possible drug overdose, the police said, and the city’s medical examiner was to determine the cause. - per NY Times.

***

I see less and less people with masks now. I admittedly don't wear them that often outside, intermittently - when lots of people are around. If I'm alone on the sidewalk and there's no one around - I'm not wearing one. And if I'm alone in the apartment building it's off. I base it on my close proximity to others.

I bought more KN94 masks for work and train travel. They are more comfortable to wear and safer than the cloth masks. Also not as flimsy as the blue surgical masks. And not as thick as the KN95 - which I find less comfortable.

Cheap on Amazon. I swear I've a collection of masks now. I've been compulsively buying masks off and on all year long.

***

Today's television roundup included:

Completing Discovery of Witches S2 on the DVR. Finished the last four episodes. Was annoyed by S2. It was harder to follow in places (possibly due to the two year hiatus), and the way it ended was painful.
Also, it got a bit cloyingly romantic in spots. Honestly my biggest problem with the vampire/witch paranormal romance trope is the whole - I must drink from you to know you, and we'll truly be mated, and the kiss of the witch shows me your soul - crap. Give me a break. It irritates me. And it's why I can't read a lot of vampire urban fantasy romances.

What If? Episode 3 - if you are unfamiliar with Marvel Comics, you probably don't know what to expect with What If? It is taken directly from the comics. There's a series in Marvel Comics entitled What If? Where the writers imagine an alternate version of events. Like "What If?" - Agent Carter became the Super Solider aka Captain America instead of Steve Rogers.

Today's episode or Episode 3 (I'm behind by one episode now) - is what if someone manages to kill off the Avengers, one by one. It's murder mystery - that Nick Fury and Loki team up to solve. Not bad, has a less than satisfying ending. But a believable one.

The animation and vocals are excellent, if a little stiff. Marvel hasn't quite gotten its animation to Disney/Anime levels yet, but its close.

***

Random photo of the day..

A Tale of two Bridges...

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Spontaneous Musings

from a curious soul

Entries tagged with film

DC & Marvel superhero flicks, not watching the superbowl, & other things of interest

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Television, Book and Movie round up

This, That and the other thingamig.

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Tolkien Adaptations and Songs...among other things

Bored today, so was on the internet

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Today's Soundtrack

Y2/D354- Review of West Side Story (it's finally on streaming)

Y2/D325 - Rainy Day

Y2/D314...

Memory Lane - 1970s..

Y2/259 ....I'll just ramble incoherently for a bit, how's that?

Y2/D227

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Year 2 - Day 208...Television & Film Reviews

News round up...

Pop Culture Stuff..and kind of a meme

Year 2- Day 174...Breath in Breath out

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