(no subject)
Sunny and cold today. It's 47˚F, but the wind chill is at 41˚F. We could have snow showers tonight.
Yesterday I did precisely 1,000 words on the third chapter of Cherry Bomb.
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Here on this day, marked as it is as an observance, I have this thought: America has now reached a point where there are thirteen-year-old children who have not ever known their country when it was not at war. Thirteen years, going on fourteen.
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Last night we finally got to see Neil Jordan's Byzantium (2012). It had such a very limited release, we were never able to see it at a theatre. It's an extraordinary film, certainly deserving of far more attention than its received. I wish my head were clearer at the moment, so that I could perhaps articulate why I found Byzantium so sublime. An island of raw stone jutting up from the Irish Sea. Red waterfalls cascading down black rocks. A decrepit amusement park by the ocean, aging boats on the sand. A dead hotel, surely filled with ghosts and gone bitter in its solitude, forced back to life as a brothel. A mother and a daughter. A tiny wooden box with a secret inside. A storm of black birds whirling against a stormy sky. And all of this captured by the camera's eye. As I said last night on Facebook, Byzantium makes for a nice companion, tonally, to Jordan's Ondine (2009). See it. And if you've not seen Ondine, see it, as well.
I've spent the last two nights watching Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). It's been the better part of a year since I'd seen it. What a truly stupendous achievement. But seeing it again only underscores my disappointment in the first third of The Hobbit. Will I see the second installment? Sadly, yes. I know I will. December 11th will roll around, and it won't matter how much I've bemoaned brain-rattling 48fps and cheap 3D tricks that, together, made the first film almost impossible to sit through. I actually had to spend minutes at a time looking away from the screen. Still, I'll be there.
Ought To Know Better,
Aunt Beast
Yesterday I did precisely 1,000 words on the third chapter of Cherry Bomb.
---
Here on this day, marked as it is as an observance, I have this thought: America has now reached a point where there are thirteen-year-old children who have not ever known their country when it was not at war. Thirteen years, going on fourteen.
---
Last night we finally got to see Neil Jordan's Byzantium (2012). It had such a very limited release, we were never able to see it at a theatre. It's an extraordinary film, certainly deserving of far more attention than its received. I wish my head were clearer at the moment, so that I could perhaps articulate why I found Byzantium so sublime. An island of raw stone jutting up from the Irish Sea. Red waterfalls cascading down black rocks. A decrepit amusement park by the ocean, aging boats on the sand. A dead hotel, surely filled with ghosts and gone bitter in its solitude, forced back to life as a brothel. A mother and a daughter. A tiny wooden box with a secret inside. A storm of black birds whirling against a stormy sky. And all of this captured by the camera's eye. As I said last night on Facebook, Byzantium makes for a nice companion, tonally, to Jordan's Ondine (2009). See it. And if you've not seen Ondine, see it, as well.
I've spent the last two nights watching Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). It's been the better part of a year since I'd seen it. What a truly stupendous achievement. But seeing it again only underscores my disappointment in the first third of The Hobbit. Will I see the second installment? Sadly, yes. I know I will. December 11th will roll around, and it won't matter how much I've bemoaned brain-rattling 48fps and cheap 3D tricks that, together, made the first film almost impossible to sit through. I actually had to spend minutes at a time looking away from the screen. Still, I'll be there.
Ought To Know Better,
Aunt Beast