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Finally found time to watch this. I wasn't going to cut it, but it turned out longish...
( There's no spoilers: Hamlet dies at the end. )
In conclusion: I enjoyed watching it, didn't pause it to pee break or anything so it moved at a good pace and kept me involved. I think I like the modern dress Hamlet in 'Slings and Arrows' a little better? I hope no one from the RSC reads this and is insulted by that, because c'mon, 'Slings and Arrows' is a tough act to follow.
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Beauty and the Beast (Disney)
Bittersweet - this one goes out to all the people who think the movie would have had a better ending if the Beast had stayed a monster and not become a man. It's tragic.
The American President
I liked Of Old and New Beginnings for the way it focused on the secondary characters of Shepard's staffers, and told their stories with an eye towards the story it would become on 'The West Wing' - not just in terms of the characters themselves becoming CJ and Josh, but the actual nods to Bartlet.
Love, Actually
Speaking of politics, Impropriety is a terrifically cute story from 'Love, Actually', about Natalie's adjustment to being the Prime Minister's girlfriend. It's laugh out loud funny, and told with a lot of verve and spirit. And a lot of curse words. If you liked this segment of the film, I think you'll really enjoy this.
Body Worlds Exhibition
What a WEIRD fandom to be suggested. You gotta read it for the this-could-only-be-Yuletide factor. I enjoyed both stories, but In the bleak midwinter has one of the strangest, most memorable and heartwarming Nativities ever made to bend electrons.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The fic in this fandom this year is focused on making Mr. Yunioshi an actual character of color, and not just horrible yellowface. This story, Mr. Yunioshi's Photographs, gives him a Japanese background appropriate for the time period, and is sticky enough that I'll think of it the next time I see the film, and feel a little more at ease. (The book is better, though.)
My Little Ponies
Every year there's one of these brain bendingly serious takes at a children's fandom. I loved Another Rainbow in Another Sky for the serious attempt at making the humans in the my Little Pony fanchise interesting and for the completely unexpected fandom crossover at the end. Oh, and the cursing.
Breakfast Club
Most Likely To features a dot-com washup Brian forced to move back home, where he runs into Bender. The story is of excellent length and build-up, really good work as a gen piece until it brings out some achingly sweet slash towards the end. I enjoyed it a lot.
Firebringer Trilogy
asdfgh someone requested Firebringer fic and then someone wrote it omfg.
Silver Feathers and Golden Hair is a perfect Firebringer story. It opens with Jah-lila's narration and a fairly flawless imitation of Meredith Ann Pierce's writing style, with the opulent descriptions of the world that characterize her stories. This is the story of Lell and Illishar, possibly the biggest hanging edge left over from the original trilogy. I think anyone who loves these books will enjoy this one.
Casablanca
Casablanca is a perennial Yuletide favorite, and always seems to turn out really interesting novella-length stories. This year was Sam's turn to shine.
Sentimental Reasons is the story of Sam meeting Rick in 1930s Harlem, told in rich detail. I especially liked the development of Rick's employment, his disillusion, and the two of them leaving off to explore the world together. The crush that Sam has for Rick is built up slowly, so slowly I almost missed it at first. This also has an unexpectedly happy ending, which I appreciated.
Sam in Casablanca, on the other hand, starts immediately after the close of the movie and details what happens to Sam after Rick's left his life. I think I like this one a little more for its disillusionment and focus on the re-definition of self, for the way it uses the secondary characters who worked for Rick (oh Karl), and for its look at Ilsa and Laslo after the war, which I found convincing.
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Anyone fancy joining me for a weekend walk around the Monopoly board?
View Monopoly in a larger map
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"As someone who has purchased or rated Palestine by Joe Sacco, you might like to know that Female Force: J.K. Rowling will be released on 30 December 2009. You can pre-order yours for just £4.79 (20% off the RRP)"
Actually, no. I really, really wouldn't.
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I always do this as we head towards the end of the year, and as always there have been more than a few new people reading this since the last time in December 2008.
This whole thing started in 2004 when there was a meme going around about pictures when you were younger. I did it... and then have continued to update it every year or so for more recent pics...
(As always, if you've seen these posts before, then yes, you've seen most of these photos before, although I've removed a couple of shots where two were taken very close together.)
( So, here they are, bringing the photos up to date, as of the end of 2009. ) |
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Next week I am going to "promote" the charity sponsorship more widely.
http://www.justgiving.com/walk100days
If you are going for a penny a mile, on current form you'll be paying no more than £5, although I have a small number of epic walks planned.
Vital Stats 27 days in:
Just over 90 miles walked, walking for 34.6 hours (mean per day = 1 1/4 hrs).
Thanks very much to Cheryl for opening the sponsorship !
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As mentioned, that hiatus came into play. In fact, I didn't have time to walk on 23rd due to travelling to Brum, and then torrential snow (the largest flakes ever!) while we were visiting the family.
Instead, I walked into Bromsgrove with my Dad on the morning of 24th and then walked from Southport to Ainsdale in the afternoon.
The walk with my Dad was in parts precarious due to some frozen snow on the ground, but a good time - even if Mr B commented "Walking's not going to get you fit " !
Oh yeah? Well the near 5 mile hike from Southport's out of season "Pleasureland" to Ainsdale later the same day says otherwise.
Last minute shopping didn't really amount to much to carry, and most of the walk was along cycle tracks in the twilight. The least comfortable part (besides the now familiar need for the loo!) was the noise of cars speeding past on the road, thankfully my walkman was well-charged with XX and Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra CDs.
Christmas day was my first accompanied walk, as Karen decided to compensate for missing out on the gym!
We walked around Antony Gormley's Another Place for an hour, mostly clear sky on the beach. For those who do not know, this is an installation of 100 life sized cast iron replicas of himself on the beach up to 1km out to sea. It's remarkable to see the differences now, as three years ago when we first visited, they were fairly new, but now the ones higher up the beach are beginning to corrode while the deepest (and this was the lowest tide we've seen here) are completely encrusted with barnacles and even seaweed.
 
On Boxing Day I had to walk early as we were off back to Bromsgrove, but there was also the small matter of Birmingham Vs Chelsea on the telly. So I set off at 1145 for a trip around Ainsdale beach (actually it was too waterlogged to bother so I stuck to the dunes and duckpond.
And ended at the Railway pub (which is, I feel too far from the station to have this name).
As I set off, the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.
But Frosty had popped off ...
Back in London by 27th, I kept to the local area (another route around Pimlico-Victoria-Westminster).
The Moon was on show, but I probably should take that plastic cover off the lens.
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Handmaid's Tale
Sisters of Bilhah is a brilliant look at Gilead from the other side of the pond. In post-WW3 Britain, a young social worker takes a job at a center for former-American refugees. There are definite shades of Children of Men in this, but even if you've never read the book, or seen the film, I think you would appreciate it on its own. It's a stunning example of when fanfiction can do it right.
Sandman
A Lesson in Manners has my favorite hard-ass witch Thessaly perturbed at Dream, post-series. She decides to teach him a brutal, and effective lesson. One which his own sister might have advised.
Recoil and Grace features the sort of ending I'm normally loathe to enjoy, but for this character I'll make an exception. Post-series, Delirium has another mission for Lucifer, one which draws him out of his nightclub and into the taverns at World's End. There he must exchange some stories of him and the Dream King... pretty slashy though safe for work.
Historical RPF
Il'uomo d'oro, or Five people thought they knew Cesare Borgia. The veil of history has drawn itself over the Borgias, so that only entrenched history majors care about the excess of the Italian Renaissance. Despite that, this fic features the perspective of two notables that you HAVE heard of: DiVinci and Maccavelli. And it's very brilliant, bringing to life someone you may have forgotten in all his diabolical glory.
Addams Family
Charming Women Grandmama Addams makes dinner, in a normal day for the Addams household. Which is to say that there's several disturbing stories imparted to the other Addams women along the way. (I especially like the part where she ate Santa.)
The Way to a Woman's Heart One of the few canonical couples who enjoy BDSM and powergames, Morticia reminisces on toys that she has known and used, and training her daughter in the dark arts.
Disney Princesses
Mortal Kombat: Disney Princesses is a fic of the purest crack known to mankind. Disney Princesses enter the ring, and only one will come out! I feel bad for the others, actually, as the fic's protagonist is Fa Mulan, but the ending is hilarious with a dollop of slash.
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From Monty Python:
And from the Animaniacs:
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First viewing: my brother and I adored the shit out of this. I was spoilered out to all ridiculousness - but RTD did a really good job concealing at least some of this material so that I didn't really know how it all fit together.
Anyway, only episode of TV that had me and my brother slackjawed and gaping for about ten minutes after the end. So in honor of that, I'm going to rewatch it right now and write down whatever seems to interest me in this rewatch.
( Hey, it's a review of The End of Time: Part One! )
( Things about the trailer, and why the next episode will suck? )
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So that I can close tabs and also mark which ones to leave feedback on, as the comment tab hasn't been working at all for me.
Pern
This year brought a bumper crop of Pern fics, interestingly a lot of femmeslash between Mirrim and Menolly. And Stinging As a Well-Aimed Dart is one of those, from Mirrim's perspective. There's a lovely bit on Pernese girls playing Mirrim-fights-Thread games and of course, a firelizard flight to provide the Pern universe's version of Pon Farr. The author does a lovely job balancing the fanon tendency to make the dragons sassier, while still making Path sound as Pernese dragons should do.
I also really enjoyed The Ballad of Mirrim and Menolly's Ride, which is not femmeslash but rather an adventure fic in which the two girls fight an unexpected Threadfall, and Path keeps accidentally betweening them to worse and worse alternate universes in an attempt to warn Pern. The idea that you can between to an alternate universe is one I haven't seen done before and the author chose some really interesting ones to explore.
Perspective is a short fic which peers into Pern's very far future. I enjoyed this one because the author obviously has the same problem with the dragons as I do.
Fifty Years After the Fair is a story of Benden Weyr in the First Pass - a time period with interesting characters established by Anne McCaffery but sort of forgotten and/or ruined by her son's continual attempts to inherit the franchise. This one I feel is a very Pern story, compressed for Yuletide: it's generational, following the children and granchildren of one of the background goldriders. And it also features some unusual plot twists - family resentments over who Impresses and what color, abrupt deaths due to Thread and other maladies, basically things which should occur more often in the series but do not.
His Dark Materials
like gold to ayery thinnesse beate I enjoyed very much and I was surprised by that - I very rarely enjoy Will/Lyra reunion fics because most of them are silly tosh. But this one is quite clever in that it features adult Will and Lyra, both of whom have had interesting careers. And I quite like the indomitable spunk in which an adult Lyra, having suddenly arrived on our Earth, set about to finding Will again. The author revels in the little details which make up the massive change between going from a mid-Edwardian universe, to ours with google and airports and national ID cards. There are two sequels for your instant gratification as well.
By far my favorite though, and possibly going to be my favorite of the year, was Dinosaurs in the Architecture. The main character is a young woman with a paleontologist father, whose daemon has inadvertently settled as a dinosaur. In a world where the Church has forced Darwin into exile, this spells problems for our heroine. I adore this, as I adore all long looks at Lyra's world and the concept of having your soul on the outside. If I didn't know better I would think I knew the author for this. Dinosaurs! Angels! Quasi-Victorian Steampunk Adventure!
Young Wizards
But Rather Darkness Visible, the one that Aria got, is a crossover between Doctor Who and Young Wizards... which is actually canon for that universe! (No, really. These two characters have in canon met.) In this one, Dairine is tasked with having a friendly chat with Ten post-Waters on Mars. It's quite lovely and smooshes the two canons together effortlessly. What I wouldn't give to see the Tenth Doctor greet a wizard-on-errantry with "Dai stiho" onna telly.
I also liked and the city stood in its brightness for the lovely vignettes, and the errand Dairine is sent to run is the Wizardry series at its best: cutting edge science fiction.
Finally, I really really enjoyed A Matter of Choice in which Dairine notices something off with her Twilight-obsessed schoolmate and enlists Ronan's help in a brief battle for her soul. But not in the way that you would think! Twilight is surprisingly not bashed in this story as silly, but rather something bittersweet. It broke my heart, a little.
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Well, I woke up, scratched, swung my legs out of bed, put one foot in front of the other, etc etc.
Yeah. You don’t actually need all the detail, do you?
I’ve had a bloody lovely day. Bucks Fizz and a croissant, the company of my family, a phone call with my grandmother, a turkey dinner, a walk at dusk and a bit of TV – The Gruffalo and then Dr Who. The former was excellent, the latter was saved by John Simm quite literally chewing the scenery and Bernard Cribbins being exactly as good as I’d hoped. Really very frustatingingly part one of two, and the big reveal at the end had virtually no shock value at all.
Notable gifts: a stock pot, and a copy of Larousse Gastonomique. Next year: soup!
I am fighting the tempatation here to gush about Miranda and my family, because it’s them that put my festive spirit back, but the rest of you don’t need my vomiting up joy and rainbows everywhere.
So instead, one last set of holiday wishes for you all. Hope yours was a good as mine.
This entry was originally published at Black Ink
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The holiday season is in full swing, and while you’ll hear all about my day in full boring detail later, because that’s the next topic, I thought I’d use this “whatever tickles your fancy” to talk about the holiday season in general, and what it means to me.
I’m not religious in any sense that Christmas or any other midwinter festival could possible have any meaning for me. But I do love this time of year. I like that it’s been around in one form or another for thousands of years, like a groove etched in our collective psyche that says “it’s dark and bloody miserable out there. Take a bit of time to remember be good to one another, why don’t you?”
I feel like the days between Christmas and New Year are a time when we hit the collective pause button, and spend a bit of time with our nearest and dearest without any particular obligation to do anything but vegetate collectively. Work can sod off, plans that aren’t “let’s stay in and eat and drink, and maybe watch a bit of telly” can be paused. Everything else is window dressing – the family gatherings, the gift exchanges, the lights and the tinsel they’re all lovely, but really they’re just how we dress up a collective rest period to make it a bit more special. Remind me at some point to talk about the Lancastrian tradition of Wakes weeks in Summer, and why we really ought to make them apply to office work all around the country,
Honestly, by the point in the year, I’m ready for a few days of dead time, and battery re-charging. I’ve been having to fight to sustain a good mood a bit for the last month – November and December always kick the shit out of me a bit at work, and things have otherwise been a bit busy and stressful. One of my resolutions for next year is to have a more relaxed November and December, with less social run-around, because I don’t think I’ve had a week with less than three social engagements since October, and while I love you all, I don’t feel I’ve had much “me” time, and more time off work, because I’ve worked up to the last minute the last two years, and when your major clients are large pub chains, that means there’s a lot to do, and it’s put a crimp in my festive spirit.
So come back later today, to hear all about how I got it back.
Compliments of the season to all of you. May your holidays be filled with cheer.
This entry was originally published at Black Ink
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Dec. 24th, 2009 @ 05:58 pm
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My mother went to church. She was terribly disappointed to learn I am no more a believer today than I was last month.
Instead, I found myself watching this video a couple dozen times. Amazing. The part where it zooms out to map all the known galaxies and there are those big black patches? Blows your mind.
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