It's YuuuuleTiiiiide!
Belated Yuletide greetings to all.
Here is a moment of intense excitement from the holidays - we watched the Yule Log in HD on the new telly:
Here is a traditional Japanese candy called kompeito that my sweetie got for us in her J-List order. They look like little WW II sea mines made of pure sugar. They are displayed here in one of a pair of light-up glasses that Carolyn bought us. She's the 10-year-old daughter of our friends Jill & Steve from Boston.
Immediately following this we encountered kompeito twice in manga and then again in the anime Stelvia. Despite the different colours, they all taste the same - pure crystalline sugar.
We saw the movie The Golden Compass last week with Terry & the Pirates, and Sweeney Todd tonight with Chris & Terry (flying solo this time). Visually both were stunning, though there could have been less spurting in the latter one. TGC definitely suffered from the lossy compression in character & plot. Once again all the chasing & fighting was emphasized and there was little sense of time passing or depth of character. We hope it was successful enough that the follow-up movies get made because the imagery was gorgeous. ST was a great interpretation of the broadway production we had seen on Broadway in the late '70s with Len Cariou. This Tim Burton version could have used several fewer barrels of stage blood and several dozen fewer cockroaches. Other than that, it was great - Depp's singing was as good as Cariou's and the visuals were fabulous. The addition of the obligatory beach episode (anime reference) was brilliant and reason enough for us to get the DVD when it is released.
Here is a moment of intense excitement from the holidays - we watched the Yule Log in HD on the new telly:
Here is a traditional Japanese candy called kompeito that my sweetie got for us in her J-List order. They look like little WW II sea mines made of pure sugar. They are displayed here in one of a pair of light-up glasses that Carolyn bought us. She's the 10-year-old daughter of our friends Jill & Steve from Boston.
Immediately following this we encountered kompeito twice in manga and then again in the anime Stelvia. Despite the different colours, they all taste the same - pure crystalline sugar.
We saw the movie The Golden Compass last week with Terry & the Pirates, and Sweeney Todd tonight with Chris & Terry (flying solo this time). Visually both were stunning, though there could have been less spurting in the latter one. TGC definitely suffered from the lossy compression in character & plot. Once again all the chasing & fighting was emphasized and there was little sense of time passing or depth of character. We hope it was successful enough that the follow-up movies get made because the imagery was gorgeous. ST was a great interpretation of the broadway production we had seen on Broadway in the late '70s with Len Cariou. This Tim Burton version could have used several fewer barrels of stage blood and several dozen fewer cockroaches. Other than that, it was great - Depp's singing was as good as Cariou's and the visuals were fabulous. The addition of the obligatory beach episode (anime reference) was brilliant and reason enough for us to get the DVD when it is released.