It's nice to find old favourites.
Many years ago, my favourite book was this red-bound hardback volume of Russian fairy tales. Not only were the stories totally awesome - Baba Yaga, flesh-eating horses, magic apples and so on - but the illustrations were these incredibly lush, full-page watercolours in this kind of art nouveau style. Anyway, the cover was disintegrating even when I was little, and I think we lost the book somewhere in the move between Fiji and England or England and the UAE, and since I'd never remembered the name of the author I could never find it again.
Then last week, we had an assignment due for scriptwriting: a folio of writing exercises. Since I'd spent most of my time on this one particular exercise, it meant I had to spend the night before the assignment was due in the library, banging out a few short pieces. One of them was an all-dialogue piece in which an irritable grandma retells Vasilisa the Beautiful (always my favourite) to her grandkid, and in looking it up for details I stumbled across the writer - Alexander Afanasyev - and I'm pretty sure the gorgeous illustrations I remember were by Ivan Bilibin. I found a book I never thought I'd find again! Well, okay, I didn't find the physical book, but I found the author, so I can track it down, which is almost as good.
Another unlikely find: I'm currently drinking a bubbly glass of Green Goblin, the cider I always get at my sister's local. You know, in Edinburgh. I don't know why the supermarket at the end of Courtney Place has decided to import all the British things it possibly can, but this last month I've been guzzling Dandelion & Burdock and jaffa cakes and Pascall's sherbert. I never want it to stop.
On a completely different note, here is a fake trailer that I have been waiting for someone to make, ever since halfway into Inception they started explaining how projections work and I started imagining them holding censor stamps and shouting "NO". It's part Inception, part Psychonauts - it's Inceptionauts!
Then last week, we had an assignment due for scriptwriting: a folio of writing exercises. Since I'd spent most of my time on this one particular exercise, it meant I had to spend the night before the assignment was due in the library, banging out a few short pieces. One of them was an all-dialogue piece in which an irritable grandma retells Vasilisa the Beautiful (always my favourite) to her grandkid, and in looking it up for details I stumbled across the writer - Alexander Afanasyev - and I'm pretty sure the gorgeous illustrations I remember were by Ivan Bilibin. I found a book I never thought I'd find again! Well, okay, I didn't find the physical book, but I found the author, so I can track it down, which is almost as good.
Another unlikely find: I'm currently drinking a bubbly glass of Green Goblin, the cider I always get at my sister's local. You know, in Edinburgh. I don't know why the supermarket at the end of Courtney Place has decided to import all the British things it possibly can, but this last month I've been guzzling Dandelion & Burdock and jaffa cakes and Pascall's sherbert. I never want it to stop.
On a completely different note, here is a fake trailer that I have been waiting for someone to make, ever since halfway into Inception they started explaining how projections work and I started imagining them holding censor stamps and shouting "NO". It's part Inception, part Psychonauts - it's Inceptionauts!
Click to view