Archive for March 31, 2009

Tuesday Trivia: Bunch of questions

1. “Queer how the folks on the bottom looks down on the folks on the top. It was always that way.”
Solved by George (comment #12).

2. Trash can lids as dancing shoes.
Solved by Melville (comment #1).

3. “You’re dead and you’re still into party politics?”
Solved by Evn (comment #25).

4. This is the first sequel of a multi-sequel franchise. The star of the first movie would only consent to return for this movie if he was killed off.
Solved by Bill (comment #10).

5. One of the stars of this film wrote an autobiographical account of the filming process. In addition, one of the screenwriters wrote a (barely) fictionalized version of the experience. The fictionalized version was itself turned into a film.
Solved by Melville (comment #1).

6. “It’s the truth that you should never trust anybody who wears a bow tie. Cravat’s supposed to point down to accentuate the genitals. Why’d you wanna trust somebody whose tie points out to accentuate his ears?”
Solved by Melissa (comment #27).

7. This movie features a pop star who also co-wrote its theme song. Her stand-in for the film was a woman who worked impersonating her in Vegas.
Solved by George (comment #22).

Andy Hallett: Dead at age 33

I am so sad and shocked about this. Andy Hallett, who played Lorne on Angel: The Series, has died at the age of 33 after a long battle with heart disease.

He took a character who was basically a joke and imbued him with enormous soul. He was the guy you rooted for; despite being green-skinned and horned, he was the “regular guy” in the crew when everyone else was all dark and twisty. And clearly, this was Hallett’s tremendous presence.

He will be missed. May he be born again to those who loved him.

Monday Movie Review: The Hunger

The Hunger (1983) 7/10
Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie) are ancient vampires living in modern (1983) Manhattan. Although Miriam is immortal, John begins to age after hundreds of years of youth. Then they discover Sarah (Susan Sarandon), a doctor researching the cause of aging. Directed by Tony Scott.

I know I saw this movie in the theater. I remember being in a theater in 1983 or 1984 (might have been second run) and seeing this, and yet I remembered nothing about it except finding it confusing.

It is confusing, no doubt about that. The stylized use of inter-cutting is dizzying, and the mechanics of the plot are left largely to the imagination. And yet, and yet, and yet…The Hunger is something like an encapsulation of everything that fascinates about vampirism. It is sexy, artsy, and dark. It lavishly favors style over substance, and makes that a virtue. In fact, where The Hunger is weakest is in trying so hard to have a plot at all. It works best as a visual and sensory trip outside the confines of what-the-hell-is-this-anyway.

It’s kind of ahead of its time, really. It was before Michelle Belanger. It was not before Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976), but certainly before she was her own cottage industry. Yet here is The Hunger, showing a connection between vampires and a dark nightclub scene that would later morph into Goth. Miriam and John go out, listen to Bauhaus, dance with New Wavers dressed all in black, go home with two of them, have sex with them, and eat them. That there is nudity is absolutely right; this is absorption is the sensual experience.

…and depending on your tastes, you may hate this movie. Because there is all this artsy inter-cutting, and there is this stupidly obtuse plot, and a lot of veils, a lot of gauze, and crumbly corpses. This is definitely a matter of taste.

The movie mostly stumbles in showing Sarah’s side of things; her age laboratory is thinly drawn—a bunch of white coats and monkeys—and I could have done with less lab and more Miriam and John. But one scene, in which John visits Sarah’s facility, is perhaps the best and most haunting the film has to offer.

Plus there’s the sex. Because it’s definitely true that any movie in which Catherine Deneuve has naked encounters with both David Bowie and Susan Sarandon is worth seeing.

Wic-Can Fest Canada! Woohoo!

I am so excited about this event. I was just added to the schedule last night, and it gives me a way to travel in my pathetic unemployed state. Plus teach, sign books, and hang out with dear friends.

I will be teaching the full three-part Structure of Spellcasting course, which is one of my favorite things to teach. I am so excited I just feel like packing right now.

Hope to see you there!

Another corporate statistic

As of yesterday, I join the ranks of the downsized.

It hasn’t quite hit me yet. I am making plans, sending resumés, networking, thinking things through. I grieve, oddly, the products I worked on quite a lot. My products were “sunsetted” and hence, the writer who documented them had no more work. That was me.

I have to say I think it’s a poor business decision. Big corporations are responding to market changes like they have the hiccups, killing off jobs in the hopes of making stockholders happy. But there’s more to strategy than being in-the-moment. Three years from now, the crisis will be over, and the products and brainpower will have moved on. Then they’ll be hiccuping again, wondering why it’s so hard to hire the right people.

I’ll be okay. I have a wee bit of savings which will, with my severance, tide me over. I don’t anticipate a life of soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Neither do I plan on living beyond my means. Vacation cancelled, priorities reorganized. And amazingly calm throughout the entire thing.

If you know of anyone interested in hiring a brilliant, personable, focused writer/designer/business analyst, do please get in touch.

Tuesday Wednesday Trivia: All done!

It was Denzel Washington.
» Read more..

Tuesday Trivia on Wednesday

Actors:

1. A delusional northerner, an addicted teacher, the young self seen in flashbacks.
TIE: Solved by maurinsky (comment #4) and Christina (comment #5).

2. A prison warden, the First Lady, a woman accused of witchcraft.
TIE: Solved by Christina (comment #5) and maurinsky (comment #7).

3. A white outsider in an Asian family, a white member of a Native American family, a one-eyed gang leader.
Solved by George (comment #21).

4. A reporter pursuing a rodeo star, an embittered dancer, a court-appointed psychiatrist.
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #1).

5. An army surgeon, a compulsive gambler, a burlesque club owner.
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #2).

6. A baseball fanatic, a cellist, a “heroine.”
Solved by Steve H. (comment #9).

7. An Olympic athlete, an evil newspaper columnist, second in command on a submarine.
Solved by Hogan (comment #18).

Crap. I forgot.

Wednesday trivia lacks that jazzy alliteration. Forgive me.

Monday Movie Review: Things We Lost in the Fire

Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) 7/10
Audrey (Halle Berry) and Brian (David Duchovny) are happily married, but fight over Brian’s friend Jerry (Benicio del Toro). Jerry is a drug addict whom Audrey distrusts, but Brian insists on helping. When Brian is killed, Jerry and Audrey need each other’s help to mourn.

Things We Lost in the Fire is a beautiful movie, in that it is gorgeously filmed, and that it is about its characters, and doesn’t go for easy answers. The thing that is most remarkable about the script here is that Jerry and Audrey are individuals, they are not “the widow” and “the junkie,” and I think ninety percent of writers who attempted this script would make them exactly that.

On the down side, it’s also a very self-conscious movie. For every exquisite shot, there’s a look-at-me-I’m-exquisite shot. And while these look-at-me shots are genuinely beautiful, waving at the camera detracts from the story.

The same could be said for the script, with writing that occasionally underlines that the story will not play out in a conventional way. There is one conversation, between Jerry and one of the Burke children, that is more or less, “I want this story to follow conventional movie arcs.” “But it won’t.” And it was smartly written, make no mistake, but a little obvious.

And yet, I am so touched by the vulnerability of these people. Audrey, who is wealthy and apparently competent, and strong and smart, all these things, and yet broken, and not broken because her husband died, but broken because she’s a human being with parts that break, those parts we all have, and losing her husband removed all the veneer from the brokenness. Berry is at her best in these vulnerable roles. Give her a superhero or someone street smart to play and she’s flat and relies on her beauty and a certain snappiness, but give her some pain and some weakness and she sinks deep into her huge round eyes and digs in. This is her best work since Monster’s Ball.

Del Toro, on the other hand, really isn’t an uneven actor. He’s always this good. And Duchovny? I have no idea why he gets as much work as he does, but he doesn’t detract.

The pacing is slow, sometimes glacial, but it works. This isn’t an action movie, it’s a story of healing, and of not healing, and it’s lovely.

Spring Equinox

I’m having an ironic first day of Spring here, as it’s snowing out.

The equinoxes have a poorly-formed tradition in most of the Pagan community, and I don’t know if I’ve ever attended a really dazzling Spring Equinox or Fall Equinox ritual. (I’m talking community rituals, here, not oathbound Tradition stuff.) For six of the eight holidays, there is plentiful folklore and a rich and varied ritual tradition throughout Neopaganism. The equinoxes, not so much. Fall tends to be a Thanksgiving sort of thing, “Harvest Home,” but both the festival before and after are also harvests, and have other distinctive and beautiful features.

Spring equinox, which some call Ostara, tends to be a bit of a piggyback on Easter. Colored eggs and all that. Which is fine; Pagan holidays and Christian holidays are often related. But the colored eggs don’t figure prominently in ritual behavior—no egg hunts under the High Priestess’s robe, although hey, that’s a thought.

In much Western occult tradition, equinoxes are considered unlucky. Balance is always sought in magical work, but healthy balance is dynamic and fluid. Perfect balance is stasis, so on the equinox, change cannot be effective. Initiations and marriages are not performed.

Spring equinox is when we plant early seeds. Where I live, peas are ideal, as they are harvested about the time other planting is done. If you use starter seeds (rather than planting from seedlings), they should be started now in temperate climates. My normal spring equinox ritual is a consecration and planting of seeds, and this can be quite beautiful (despite my grumpiness).