| Poem for Thursday |
[Jan. 1st, 2004|11:28 am] |
( The Cossacks )
Having woken up with both kids coughing, we decided reluctantly that going to New York was probably a bad idea; I don't think either of my children is seriously ill and they're good travelers even when they're not feeling well, but they are sure to pass their colds on to my sister's three children, which is the last thing any of them need. Now to come up with some way to keep them entertained.
Gacked from ![[info]](http://www.deadjournal.com:8080/userinfo.gif) ealgylden, and yay:
You are a Folkie. Good for you.
What kind of Sixties Person are you?
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( Personal Spam ) and have just been informed by a helpful reader that it's nearly Friday again and I never did last week's Friday Five. So:
1. What was your biggest accomplishment this year?
Actually going places that I've said all my life I would get to.
2. What was your biggest disappointment?
That I did not get off my ass and work seriously on my writing. I mean, I did a ton of writing, fiction and non-fiction, for work and for play, but I was very lazy about making myself work on the stuff that really matters.
3. What do you hope the new year brings?
World peace, an electable Democratic candidate, a better economy, a wonderful job opportunity.
4. Will you be making any New Year's resolutions? If yes, what will they be?
Why, to lose the weight I said I was going to lose last year, of course. No resolutions -- I do better at doing things in their own time.
5. What are your plans for New Year's Eve?
We spent the evening at home with my mother and my children. Our plans were always somewhat along those lines...maybe watch a movie, maybe have a big meal, but we were never going out partying anyway.
One more icon via ashinae because we stumbled across these pictures of Russell knitting.
I mean, how is it possible not to squee? |
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| Movie Blather |
[Jan. 1st, 2004|11:24 pm] |
Am back from keeping the kids entertained the easiest way to entertain kids when they're sort of low-energy: the movies. Today we made it to Peter Pan, which we'd been waiting to see because both my husband and mother wanted to come, and since we didn't go to New York, they were both around and available.
The movie is absolutely gorgeous. That is, it's well-acted and quite moving in spots, but the overwhelming thing that sticks with me is how visually stunning it is -- like a two-hour Pre-Raphaelite painting, or rather a series of paintings -- some Rossetti, some Burne-Jones, some Hunt, some Waterhouse, some some Arthur Hughes, some Parrish, some Wyeth. Jason Isaacs is wonderful, though I kept finding myself thinking about how much he reminded me of Kevin Kline; I love and adore Kevin Kline, so I mean this as a compliment, but it didn't strike me as a strikingly original creation like his Lucius Malfoy.
The kids playing Wendy and Peter are phenomenal, creepily erotic considering their ages, though it doesn't feel creepy while watching; it seems very unconscious and natural, not the artifice of something like The Blue Lagoon with its sweaty pubescent bodies. The story is very fucked up Freudian psychodrama and having Isaacs playing meek Mr. Darling and Captain Hook is hugely entertaining, and even given Tinkerbell's fits of jealousy over Peter (which made me walk out of That Robin Williams Adaptation years ago), it doesn't feel sexist at all; the roles for men in that society are just as limited and limiting as the roles for women, at least unless one manages to be born in the banker's shoes.
So some of you are probably wondering why I've been nearly totally silent about The Return of the King. Even I am wondering. Part of it, I think, is that I have been so utterly spoiled at this point by the extended editions, which in both cases I thought were vastly better adaptations than the theatrical releases. I understand why some people might argue that they're not better movies; they do drag in places, there's some redundancy, and in TTT in particular there are a couple of scenes I rather dislike and am just as happy not to have to consider canon. That said, I feel like the 1/3 of ROTK that I most want to see is missing from the current release, and knowing that I will get some of it on DVD later makes me want to wait and reserve judgment on what I liked and disliked about the film until I can see the whole picture.
The other thing that I have realized, after two readings separated by two decades and two viewings of the film, is that...( I loathe the ending. Not Jackson's; Tolkien's. Don't read any further if you are avoiding spoilers or criticism. )
lotr100, the honesty challenge: Husbandry. And I howled at rohandove's The Day After, in which LOTR ends, well, differently. But not altogether badly. *g*
Also: the Terps won! That did not end badly either! Though I expect my father to return from the Rose Bowl as a very disappointed Michigan fan. |
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