Review of Unleashed

*Two minor spoilers: one rodent-related, the other only relevant if you've read the Epic of Gilgamesh

These are just a few scattered thoughts:

1. The basic story is as old as Enkidu and Shamhat, and that's pretty old. I think Jet Li a pretty good impression of a man who had been raised like a dog - first beaten and then very clingy, cheerful, and loyal. He did interesting things with body posture and so-forth.

2. Morgan Freeman exudes fatherliness, avuncularity, and warmth. He's also very tall. I suspect that both of those aspects led to his getting this part. If nothing else, he made Mr Li look short and fragile. He's also a convincing person to bond with.

3. Jet Li is a very graceful man. In most of the movies his fighting style shows that. That's one of the interesting things about Unleashed - when he fought it was very short and savage blows, and you saw the grace only when he leaped and dodged.

4. It was nice to see a perky skinny chick as the heroine. I liked her.

5. There Were No TVs. In any scene. Not even the bad guy was so crass as to have an idiot box in his lair. I can't help but feel there's a moral there...

6. I loved the production values and set-dressing. The colouring of the movie was lovely. There was comfortable clutter in one house and dank dark greys in the villain's lair, a woman singing in a shower, a little mouse scuttling across one of the frames... there was a lot of attention to detail from the movie-makers.

7. It's odd how many violent movies are mushily sentimental, and how many action heroes will, at some point in their lives, make a movie in which they play a character with a very vulnerable side: Jean Claude van Damme in Replicant, all those warm fuzzy movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger's, even the scene in The Saint where the hero gets dunked in an ice-covered river and goes spoggly with hypothermia for a while. I think it's King Kong Syndrome, myself.

Also Quoted Without Permission

Someone of my acquaintance once told me a story about how Sean Connery was first chosen to play James Bond. The interview with the producers went sort of okay - they liked his style but the accent was a bit off-putting. In other words, he was only one of several prospects. Then, after he had left, they looked out the window and saw Mr Connery heading down the street. "He walked," they said (according to my friend), "like a panther. We had to have him."

My... acquaintance then said, "Y'know, I want someone to say that about me."

The acquaintance shall remain nameless.

Quoted Without Permission

'First name?'

'Otto,' [Tibbit] replied, then added by way of explanation: 'Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times would Scrabble champion. When he died we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score. He spent the greater part of his life campaigning to have respelt those words that look as though they are spelt wrongly but aren't.'

'Such as--?'

'Oh, skiing, vacuum, freest, eczema, gnu, diarrhoea, that sort of thing. He also thought that "abbreviation" was too long for its meaning, that "monosyllabic" should have one syllable, "dyslexic" should be renamed "O" and "unspeakable" should be respelt "unsfzpxkable".'

from:

Fforde, J. (2005) The big over easy. Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton.

More details at:

Jasper Fforde's Home Page

Look at the Nursery Crime division for the book, but the whole site is good...

The High Life.

So, one flatmate is off at NAAMA and the other is visiting his dad. I had thought that I'd have a very quiet weekend, but ended up visiting assorted relatives in Waikanae with Mum and John.

Some of the highlights:

- Portioning out the cream-covered sponge-cake, a business that took three people: one to cut, one to lift, and one to steady.

- Being a fly on the wall at dinner and listening to older rellies talk about their wilder youths. The time Grandad set a house on fire :-D Mum as a teenager going clubbing :-D The nuns, the box of liqueurs, and the window :-D

- Walking on the beach.

- Just plain hanging out with people I hadn't seen for a long time.

I Have Speed!

A workmate fixed my bicycle for me - the thing with the brakes, plus oiling it and fixing the gear levers. He even put a new battery in the light and gave me his spare dayglo helmet.

It works, it works.

Woo hoo!

My Bid for Waterhouse

Right. Here are two piccies with the proper underdress. I'm afraid I look a little wild-eyed in the second. (The foot in the foreground is a little unfortunate, too).

But back to the dresses: Both inner and outer need some hemming. I'm trying to decide on almost-ankle-length or mid-calf. Thoughts?

The Girl in the Striped Shirt

Yay! My uploading worked this time!

It needs hemming, and I'm not wearing the proper underdress in the picture, but that's it.

I'm not even wearing a petticoat, but look how full the skirt is. Man - hope it doesn't make me look fat...

Dresses

I finally caved and put a zip in the back of the outer dress instead of trying to do lacing. I'm just test-driving the finished bodice now. It's a little snug, and I would want to do sword-fights or tumbling, but it's good. I'm wearing the outer dress over a striped black and white t-shirt, and the whole thing looks seriously cute.

//TODO: Hemming, hooks and eyes at the top, attach underdress skirt to bodice, closure for underdress.

Wahey! Almost done!

Words for the Day

Careen - to tilt sideways like a ship, sometimes on dry land

Career - to travel wildly in one direction

And my new favourite phase:

"And then it'll all be sweet as honey from the rock"

(Purloined from my sister, who nicked it from Christina Rossetti's "The Goblin Market".)

Because...

I can't be bothered writing anything new, but felt I should post something:

THE HAPPY DIABLERIE SONG
by Carol-Jo Phillips and Cat Pegg

I love to go a-wandering
My Sire for to whack
And as I go, I love to sing
The blood hunt’s on my back!

Diablerie, diableraa,
Diablerie, diable-bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Diablerie, diableraa,
The blood hunt’s on my back!

He never should have sired me,
Right before my wedding day.
Now my organs are all shrivelly:
That bastard’s gonna pay!

Diablerie …

But do not think I’m squandering
The Legacy of Cain
O rather I’m recycle-ing
His loss shall be my gain!

Diablerie …

I’ll track that sucker to his lair
In tomb or town or tower.
I’ll sup his blood both rich and rare,
And siphon off his power!

Diablerie …

O that was my first Kindred kill,
But my Sire tasted flat.
He was Camarilla – so vanilla!
I think I’ll try Sabbat.

Diablerie, diableraa,
Diablerie, diable-bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Diablerie, diableraa,
The blood hunt’s on my back!

It's a filk for Vampire: The Masquerade (perhaps a little out-of-date, now).

Shoulda, Coulda

Well, I was planning on doing some more sewing this afternoon after class, but I fell asleep at three and did not awaken until half six. I figure I must have needed the sleep more. Had disturbing dreams, too :-(

On the other hand, it was a good morning. I got an assignment back with very good marks, and that makes me happy.

That's all.

Ugly Hat Day Revisited

This isn't quite the ensemble described in my previous post: instead of the violet and turquoise flannel shirt that's better for temperate climes I was prepped for rain and chill winds with a ghastly cardy. Also, you'll note the burgundy-coloured long-johns un-hidden by the britches and socks. Finally, you can't see it under the jacket and ghastly cardy, but under the short-sleeved t-shirt is a long-sleeved ratty spencer, for layered sartorial horror.

And thanks go to Michael W, who risked his camera, eyes, and considerable artistic skill in bringing this visual blight to the outside world.

Why I Don't Like Synthetic Organza

It melts.

This means that you don't dare get the iron too hot. Of course, it doesn't take a crease worth a d__m either.

It's also transparent (well, my organza is, anyway). This means that I have to have good-looking, neat seams. If the fabric (and thus, the seams) is not visible, why the h__l do we bother buying transparent fabric, eh?

Well, there's a really nifty kind of seaming could flat-felling. It gives a strong seam, beautiful from both sides. The trouble is, you need to be able to iron a crease - twice. It's also quite fiddly. I actually got quite good results for the first seam, matching two selvedges together (and I think the extra toughness of the edge helped), but trying it on a cut diagonal nearly drove me insane. Even basting the ruddy stuff left me with a kluged together ugly piece of sh_t. I suspect I shall be covering it with ribbon.

So I threw it all in and, for the other seams, did French-seaming instead.

We Have Hail!

After a spate of really nice early spring weather, Palmerston's natural, coldly brooding environment has reasserted itself. For the last week we have had rain showers coming and going, and today they came with a vengeance, in an orgy of ice falling from the sky.

I am holed up in the computer lab because it is mildly more pleasant than sitting at the bus stop waiting.

I envisage floods this week.

Ugly Hat Day

I had an ugly hat day today. That is to say, I wore the lime-green souvenier hat that my flatmate brought back from his holiday. It actually has beautiful workmanship and is comfortable, with a useful brim, but I'm not a lime-green kind of person. So I matched it with a tartan shirt (violet and turquoise) and my blue swandri, plus the almost standard black knee-britches and knee-high socks. It was refreshing.

Also, I had an interesting time looking at people's feet under the table and observing who wore tiny, pointy shoes, elegant black leather somethings, clunky black boots (me), oxfords, canvas sneakers, or trainers. Actually, two folk had these soft shoes that reminded me a little of bowling shoes - they looked wonderfully comfortable.

To top off my ugly hat day, I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and gorged on sugar, red food colouring, chocolate, and fizzy drink. It seemed appropriate.

That's all.

Sweet, sweet roses...

So, I'm supposed to write two love poems for class. Psche to Eros is already up in its basic form. This is the other one I'm handing in:

O Rose

You don't know me but I know you.
Through your window I watch your grave
silent sway. You are fairer than any nodding lily:
your blushes warm me. No savage thorns
lie hidden in your bed, though the rosy hues of your inner chamber
are petals to ornament your perfection.
How I long to peel
them away and touch
your crimson core.

I'm watching in my secret place,
Where the pine-tree's drip
slithers under my collar,
snakes coldly down my spine...
You'd better appreciate this!

You don't know me, as I said, but you will.
You'll meet me soon,
O my Rose.

This is more of an anti-love poem: I was trying to subvert the genre, using the traditional language (including flower imagery) to induce a sensation of creeping dread on the part of the reader. It's met four beta readers so far, and the results have been very mixed: two of them going Eeeeeeeuuuuuwwwwww, how could you write that? and two looking bewildered and asking me what the point was. I am interested in your personal reactions.

Yes, it's based on Blake's poem The Sick Rose, which goes, for those who can't quite remember it:

O Rose thou art sick
The invisible worm
That flies through the night
And in the howling storm

Has sought out thy bed
Of crimson joy
And his dark, secret love
Doth thy life destroy