Teleidoscope

Wed, Aug 06, 2008

Tor Freebies

Posted at 2:46 pm MDT to Media

Tor Books has started a new website with a lot of cool bloggers on various topics (John Scalzi has the science desk) and occasional short fiction. So far that includes short stories by Scalzi and Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow and a web comic by Wesley Allsbrook.

Note that the tor.com online magazine is not the same as the Tor corporate site, which uses a clunky aspx interface. They really need a competent web admin on that one to work on getting the menus and directory defaults to work reliably.

In the run-up to the site going live, they posted (at weekly intervals) electronic versions of a dozen Tor novels. I downloaded the pdf versions.

Some of them were books I had already read, or that already existed in hardcopy in my to-be-read pile, but some were initial books of series that were new to me. In my case at least, the free books are going to result in additional sales for Tor. The books I have read so far are very good, with engaging characters and very well constructed worlds>.

In the past few days I have read two and a half of these. (I have also discovered that the KDE pdf reader remembers where you were in a file, so that when I re-open a book I left in the middle, it puts me on the correct page. This is very handy.)

The first one I finished was A Shadow in Summer, the first book of "The Long Price Quartet" by Daniel Abraham. (It looks like the next two volumes, Betrayal in Winter and An Autumn War are out or scheduled). The magic system in the story is unique and well thought out, the culture where most of the action in the first volume occurs is nicely and consistently alien, with an intricate formalised use of body language as well as speech, and the events of the plot grow organically out of the chanracters and the environment. And there is something to be said for a fantasy book where a major viewpoint character is a middle-aged female accountant.

The second was Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. He has another book out, Ragamuffin, set in the same universe, and another, Sly Mongoose that is due out in a couple of weeks, both of which I will be on the lookout for. I love the use of langauage in this book. The author is from the Caribbean and uses dialect beautifully in all of the dialogue. And his world-building is very solid. This feels like a Caribbean Poul Anderson to me: the combination of adventure and solid worldbuilding scratches that itch, and I think the non-whitebread speech rhythms are giving me echoes of Nicholas van Rijn, even though the actual accents involved are very different.

I need to find out what cultural ideas are attached to Ragamuffins and mongooses in the Caribbean. I have a definite impression that there are resonances that I am missing.

I am still in the middle of Kate Elliott's Spirit Gate. After WorldCon I will pick it up in hardcopy, along with the sequel Shadow Gate. I may also look into her series for another publisher. I like the characters and the world (refreshingly not-Central-Asia as well as not-Europe), but it is quite long, and my energy for dealing with things going wrong even in narrative is limited these days. Ironically, if I liked the characters less, my patience for dealing with the on-going tightening of the screws might be better. The cultural and religious details hold together nicely.

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Wed, Jul 23, 2008

Christian the Lion

Posted at 12:19 pm MDT to Media

This video was linked by Lori Coulson in the Making Light comments (#88). It is wonderful. The availability of thing is one of the wonders of the internet.

If I'm being a little quiet this week, it is because I am on vacation, and as the pressure of work came off, I found myself able to write fiction again. Which means I am not getting as much done around the house as I had planned, but I am not complaining.

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Sat, Jul 19, 2008

A Crossover of DOOM

Posted at 7:06 pm MDT to Media

On fmanalysts's live journal I found a link to The Royal Society (a crossover of DOOM).

This is a crssover fanfic for: "deep breath Torchwood/Discworld/Nero Wolfe/Lord Peter/Harry Potter/SGA/Jeeves&Wooster/Sherlock Holmes.".

While on the subject of fanfic crossovers, there are a couple of stories online that crossover Bertie Wooster and Lord Peter Wimsey. The suggestion is that Bertie Wooster's odd world, where World War I never happened, is the world-view of a former officer with massive PTSD. It works very well. The first story is Green Ice. There is the beginning of a sequel Armistice which is just heartbreaking. (Now I have them linked I will be able to find them again without googling.)

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Dr. Horrible

Posted at 6:26 pm MDT to Media

Joss Whedon spent the writers' strike writing a superhero musical: Dr.Horrible's Sing Along Blog. It stars Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Filion as Captain Hammer, his nemesis and Felicia Day as Penny, thir mutual love interest, and it has been posted this week for free, one chapter at a time. Starting tomorrow it will be available on iTunes, and eventually there will be a DVD with extras.

I finally watched it today: I needed to plug phones into my laptop to hear it. The speakers on this laptop suck royally. I hope the new laptop has a better sound system... my previous laptop had speakers that I could actually hear.

The music is great.

I want to see the adventures of Bad Horse, maybe as an online comic. The head of the super-villain group that Dr. Horrible wants to join (the Evil League of Evil) is a horse. An evil horse with henchmen in western clothes.

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Wed, Jun 11, 2008

Spike

Posted at 10:22 pm MDT to Media

I emailed in sick yesterday. This cold is a really nasty one -- we're sure it is a cold: Nanette developed the same symptoms at the same time I did, so we probably caught it at the same time from someone at market.

I think I'm getting a little better: my eyes are still watery enough to make reading a nuisance, but the pressure in my sinuses has eased enough that I hope to make it through the night without using any more Advil. Yesterday and earlier today the sinus pressure was so bad it was making my teeth hurt.

I'm coughing a lot, but I think that is because I have been breathing so much sludge. With the drainage slacking off, I hope the coghing will ease off too.

In the evenings I've been watching reruns of CSI (the Las Vegas one). They are new to me, since I have never watched the show in the past. Cartoon Network seems to be in one of its occasional cycles of very lame programming, and watching Food Network, my other usual selection, just makes me sad at the moment. On Monday Altom Brown made popovers: milk, eggs, sugar, and a small amount of flour.

The CSI reruns are on a cable channel called Spike, and I am outside their target demographic (males under 35? redneck males in general?) to a degree that makes the ads they run quite surreal.

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Sun, Jun 01, 2008

Shadow Unit Season 1 Finale -- Aftermath

Posted at 5:55 am MDT to Media

Man, do I need a vacation!

I awoke very early this morning out of an anxiety dream that I am sure was triggered by the Shadow Unit finale, which was amazing and shattering. But the context of the dream was someone doing something stupid and annoying in ClearCase, the software tool I work with in my day job.

Eight more weeks on this contract.

Sigh.

I don't think I've had a real vacation since the Geek Cruise I took in October 2004 -- benchtime between contracts doesn't really count. Neither does recuperation time after surgery, which covers a trip to Santa Fe with Nanette and her husband in June 2005, and Which is still 3 years ago.

No wonder I'm so burned out.

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Wed, May 28, 2008

Shadow Unit Season 1 Finale

Posted at 9:24 pm MDT to Media

The Shadow Unit creators are uploading their final "episode" for this season in "real time": the chapters that were uploaded yesterday describe events that took place May 25 through May 27, 2008. The chapters that were uploaded today describe events that happen today. This is going to continue for the next three days, with the finale of the finale scheduled for uploading on Saturday.

This makes quite a contrast of five-part Memorial Day stories. There have been seven previous episodes uploaded at two-week intervals. Five of the off weeks have had uploads of sections of a story about a potluck picnic held Memorial Day 2007 (the WTF BBQ).

The upload time is 7 pm Central time, 6 pm Mountain time. I was late reading today's chapters because I had a massage therapy appointment.

The Shadow Unit folks are also now selling mugs and teeshirts and such through Cafe Press, and one of the fans is setting up an order for FBI-style windbreakers with WTF on the back.

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Fri, May 02, 2008

SCFD

Posted at 4:49 pm MDT to Media

SCFD (Scientific and Cultural Facilities District) is a fund in the Denver area, supported by earmarked local sales taxes, that provides funding to museums and orchestras and such.

Last weekend at the concert, they announced that the Boulder Philharmonic was within $30,000 of donations of qualifying for tier II SCFD support ($100,000) instead of tier III ($20,000).

I usually make two donations a year: half when I buy my season tickets and half in December, and I bought my season tickets for next season several weeks ago. Because of the possibility of matching funds, it made sense to make the second donation now, when it would have leverage, instead of waiting until December.

I just received a phone call thanking me for the donation. They reached the goal and will get the additional funding. This is very good: funding for cultural organizations dropped dramatically after 9/11 and the Phil has been cutting back and cutting back to try to stay solvent. Maybe now they can start growing again. Or at least stop shrinking.

The orchestra has also been named Best Classical Music in Boulder by one of the local papers.

I may make another donation to the Philharmonic in December anyway. Last year my charitable donations were roughly 10% of my takehome pay. This year I would like to aim for midway between 10% of gross and 10% of net. I'm adding charities -- the Match-it for Pratchett movement got me to donate to the Alzheimer's Association -- but I may also increase donations to some of my usual targets.

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Fri, Apr 25, 2008

Noir LOTR

Posted at 6:32 pm MDT to Media

It is truly said that you can find anything on the internet.

Someone on the Shadow Unit forums made a sarcastic comment about a noir detective version of the lord of the Rings.

And someone else provided a link to the 1944 Warner Brothers version. Oh. My. God. Humphrey Bogart as Frodo. Peter Lorre as Gollum.

Nine minutes of wonderful editing.

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Fri, Apr 04, 2008

Da Vinci's Face

Posted at 9:33 pm MDT to Media

Neil Gaiman has posted a link on his blog to a wonderful discussion of what Leonardo Da Vinci looked like, by an artist who has drawn 1100 portraits and caricatures for newspapers.

I love the internet. It's full of such wonderful things.

I have only been outside of North America twice, both times on Geek Cruises (now InSight Cruises). The second cruise (October 2004) started and ended in Venice, and I spent a couple of days in the city before and after the actual cruise.

While walking around the city, I came across a church that was hosting a display of mechanisms that had been built based on designs from Da Vinci's notebooks, with pictures of the notebook pages they were based on. It was a working church (I was raised Catholic: I can recognize an active altar when I see one) but most of the floor space inside the church was taken up by the displays. Some of the more complicated mechanisms were marked "Please don't touch", but many of them were set up so you could move the various parts and really see how they worked.

The architecture of the church itself was lovely, too. And there were some nice pintings (probably frescoes) on the walls.

I will put a couple of pictures below the cut. I took more than 20 of the different gadgets. (I am such a geek.) I love digital cameras, too: if I had been carrying film I certainly would not have taken so many near the end of my trip. And I wouldn't have been able to take pictures indoors without a flash: the camera is smart enough to figure out the time it needs to make the image.

See more ...

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Thu, Apr 03, 2008

Stupid Banks

Posted at 10:38 pm MDT to Media

I can tell I'm a little better this week. Last week during working hours I couldn't stand to listen to the radio, only to one of the Dish Network Classical channels that has only pure wall to wall instrumental music with no DJs. This week I am listening to the radio.

But listening to the radio is a little annoying . There seem to be a lot of advertisements for bank loans against people's houses, which is surprising given the state of the local economy. Also for car deals with what sound to me like really iffy terms.

On the other hand, there seem to be a lot fewer ads for companies that claim they can fix your credit than I remember from a couple of months ago. Possibly they are being overwhelmed.

I happened to watch the late local news yesterday evening, and the opening segment was about foreclosures. On the average one family in 45 in Colorado has had their house foreclosed, and there are areas around Denver where it's running 1 in 30, including a couple of developments where almost every block has at least one foreclosed home (I suspect a collusion by scummy bankers and scammy developers).

One of the houses in my little neighborhood had a sign in front of it from the 'Get It Gone' real estate agency for a few weeks a while back. I suspect that means that we're running one in ten, here. (I can't tell if there is anyone currently living in the house: it is too far from the road and on the other side of the mesa from me.)

I had an ARM for the first couple of years after I bought this house. (It was a complicated deal -- I was making payments directly to the previous owners for a while to cover the down payment, on top of the main loan.) There was one year when interest rates went up from high to obscene (this was in the late 80s), and my payments went up and I spent a year paying basically nothing but interest. I got really good at budgeting, and ate really cheap for a while. And some major repairs (replacing the roof, which was leaking badly... jacking the foundation...) got put off until interest rates came down.

Since I paid off the previous owners (ahead of schedule) and got into a fixed mortgage, I have generally had 15 year fixed mortgages. I have refinanced a couple of times to do major home repairs and improvements and put money into the company, so the end date of my current mortgage is out a ways, but still before the end of my probable working span, and a reasonable chunk of my payment goes to principal, not interest.

I pay a little extra principal every month, too, rounding my payment up to the next hundred. Since June of last year more than half of my actual payment has gone for principal, a few dollars more every month thanks to the winders of compounding. Since January of this year, the interest in each payment has been less than half of my scheduled payment, so even if I cut back to my scheduled payment, more than half of it would be going to principal. It's nice to be on the down-hill slope, so to speak.

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Tue, Apr 01, 2008

Norse Three Bears

Posted at 10:52 pm MDT to Media

I have known of Jo Walton for years: she was a regular poster on rec.arts.sf.written before she became a published writer.

She has created a retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in the style of Norse poetry that is wonderful, and seems like a suitable topic for April 1. I found the link on Making Light, where abi (one of the local poets) has been giving tourist directions to Amsterdam in the Norse mode...

I love the internet. It's full of amazing stuff.

And at the moment I'm feeling very pleased because James Nicoll, one of my favorite writers from rec.arts.sf.written, and more recently on LiveJournal, has friended me on Live Journal. I'm not entirely sure how that works in this case, since I do my active blogging here rwith a link into LJ. I do hope the LJ feed of Teleidoscope is working.

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Sun, Mar 23, 2008

Dance Concert

Posted at 11:24 am MDT to Media

Last night was another Philharmonic Concert. This one explored classical music inspired by dance (Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances) and dance inspired by classical music.

The dancing -- by a modern/ballet duo called LemonSponge Cake -- was very good. Especially considering that they were dancing to some very abstract late-20th century stuff by Arvo Pärt. That part of the music would have been too depressing without the dancers. I don't think my brain chemistry is in a state where I should be inflicting abstract music on it.

That goes double for the first piece of music that was played yesterday: "Company" by Philip Glass. Too much math, not enough chemistry. I won't quite go as far as talking about the emperor's clothes when it comes to Philip Glass, but I very much prefer my music to have some melodic or rhythmic complexity, preferably both. I have a suspicion that Glass's reputation comes more from musicians than from pure listeners. I can see where the pieces might be much more tricky and interesting to play than they are to listen to.

Note to self: the guy who gives the pre-concert lectures is a pompous bozo. Stop getting to the concerthall so early.

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Sun, Mar 09, 2008

Promethean Age

Posted at 6:00 pm MDT to Media

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I seemed to be in a phase of aversion to long narrative. It seems that if the narrative is good enough I can still hack it...

Friday evening and yesterday I blew through the first two novels in Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age series, Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water. They are excellent stories and the prose is lovely.

These are stories containing modern wizards, old secret societies, swans, werewolves, one and every dragon, a variety of the Devil, and Faerie (and its inhabitants) out of the old tales and legends from before Tolkien gave elves souls and Disney, Inc. whitewashed and neutered most of what was left.

These stories, like some of their Fae, have sharp pointy teeth: I was reminded a little of Njal's Saga or Poul Anderson in some of his grimmer modes. We are shown mostly the nicer parts of the world but I have no doubt there are valkyries singing at looms strung with men's guts off in the distance over that way.

They are very 21st century narratives in their post-Copenhagen view of the complexity of truth, and also in the way that the characters are aware of the narrative structures in which they are immersed and try to work with or against the patterns. It is important that one of the most magically powerful of the human characters teaches Geology 102 at a University and travels to Faerie and back at will, and another teaches English Literature at a College, and uses stone lions at the NYPL as oracles. It is not a world of simplistic either/or reality.

What the stories are about is choices, free will and the lack of it, consequences, the meaning of sacrifice, fate, hope, duty, betrayal, payments, the nature of damnation, families, and the possibility of redemption. There is also a lot of talk about love and loyalty, but rather in the mode of "I do not think that word means what you think it means."

Also an evil sorceress named Jane. There was a book I read many years ago called Taash and the Jesters, by Ellen Kindt McKenzie. At one point the wise old woman character comments that the evil sorceress is correct the sacrificing someone's liver will bring power, but the evil ones never want to recognize that, for true power, the liver you sacrifice needs to be your own. Jane has her reasons for what she does, but she is very, very good at seeing to it that it is others who pay the price for her decisions and actions. And her 'reasons' are excuses for punishing what will not submit to her control.

By comparison, the other characters, even the soulless and the damned-by-definition, acknowledge the validity of prices and consequences in a way that Jane never does. There is a strong pattern of defining loved ones as the ones you accept the awful stuff instead of. (Sort of anti-1984, there.)

One notable anti-Jane in the story is Whiskey, the Kelpie, who properly is as amoral as the sea and as predatory as a wolf, but is stuck carrying someone's soul and effectively cripples himself because he will not allow the consequences of his actions to accrue to it. Even though the proper owner of the soul is the one who stuck him with it.

One nice thing about coming late to this series is that I have only a few months to wait for the next installment: Ink and Steel Part 1 of The Stratford Man, which should be available at the beginning of July (just in time for my birthday), to be followed by Part Two, Hell and Earth, a month later. Elizabethan poets and playwrights (especially Will Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe) and Faerie (and possibly an occasional devil). Something to look forward to.

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Fri, Mar 07, 2008

Elizabeth Bear Short Pieces

Posted at 8:06 pm MST to Media

Over the past couple of weeks I have gradually read Elizabeth Bear's Live Journal. All of it. By tags. In reverse alphabetical order. With all of the comments.

I really like her writing, but I have somehow gotten out of the habit and mood for reading long narratives. So yesterday evening I read most of the online short fiction pieces that are linked to from her website.

It was interesting to recognise different bits of research that were mentioned in the LJ entries, and I liked all of the stories. We seem to have a lot of historical and literary interests in common.

After reading the first novella in it, I'm looking forward to the reissue of New Amsterdam this year. Vampire detectives and dirigibles are hard to beat.

I think I'm looking forward to the publication of the 'Edda of Burdens' books, beginning with All the Windwracked Stars in the fall, even more. (I've been a fan of Norse myth since I was about 10.) "Norse periapocalyptic noir steampunk cyberfantasy WITH A GIANT TELEPATHIC METAL HORSE!" The horse was introduced/created in one of the short pieces. (It seems natural that E Bear books and stories should include the Fimbulwinter. It's a side effect of the overload of cool stuff. :-) )

And I think the next book of hers I read will be Blood and Iron rather than the sequel to her first novel (which I read one weekend while I was sick last month). The short pieces set in the Promethean Age world have put me in the mood for Faerie and literature. Besdies, what ex-librarian and cat-lover could resist a book where one of the New York Public Library lions comes to life? That's not a spoiler: it is ilustrated on the cover.

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Sat, Feb 23, 2008

Movies & Music

Posted at 9:29 pm MST to Media

originally posted Feb 19, 2008

This weekend was the Boulder International Film Festival, so the Philharmonic concert was exploring relationships between classical music and the cinema.

Before the intermission, they played a violin concerto by Korngold, who was an influential composer of film scores in the 30s and 40s. He established some of the traditional relationships between movies and music that were later used by composers like John Williams.

The concert notes suggested that it isn't so much that Korngold's concert pieces sound like movie music, as that movie music sounds like Korngold.

Personally, I find that a lot of 20th century classical music sounds like movie music. The previous conductor at the Phil included a lot of 20th century pieces and I could always tell symphonies that were written after movies were invented. I don't know what it is that I'm hearing as the difference between the 20th Century symphonies and the older works. It may be something about the transitions between different thematic material within the piece.

The second half of the Phil concert was Prokofiev's Cantata of music he had written for Eisenstein's film Alexander Nevsky. I like choir music and the music was well performed, but the overall event was a little disappointing. They had a narrator and showed (silent) excerpts of the film between the seven sections of the Cantata, but it would have been better if they showed more of the film, and showed it while the music was being performed.

I went to the Circle Bar during intermission and did some meat-space lurking. It turns out, the drinks and hors d'oeuvres are free for donors. Instead of buying a chunk of banana bread and a bottle of water from the regular caterers, I had a comfortably small cup of 7-Up, a small piece of brownie, and a few savory little puff-pastry things. They had other sweet things, too, and crudites, but I'm not sure I'm willing to risk trying to swallow raw veggies in public. And given a choice between macaroons and artichoke-stuffed puffs I'll take artichokes every time.

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Bone Key

Posted at 9:29 pm MST to Media

originally poseted Feb 19, 2008

Last week when I was running errands, I stopped at Border's and picked up a bunch of books by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. I have only read one of the books so far because I have been spending most of my spare time in Elizabeth Bear's extensive livejournal archives, and in the Shadow Unit LiveJournals and forums.

The first Shadow Unit novella, "Breathe" by Emma Bull, is now available on their website. It's excellent.

The book, The Bone Key, by Sarah Monette, is also excellent. It is a collection of connected short stories somewhat in the mode of Lovecraft. The viewpoint character is a museum curator in the early 20th century, and Ms. Monette does an excellent job of getting inside the head of a New England geek. (I have a lot of experience being inside the head of a New England geek.)

The various supernatural hazards Booth encounters are subtly interconnected and nicely original, and the museum makes a wonderful setting for several of the adventures. As a former librarian, the description of spooky, dangerous library stacks where there are strange noises after dark and the lights are unreliable pushed a lot of my buttons.

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Sat, Feb 02, 2008

Classical Mystery Tour

Posted at 11:01 pm MST to Media

Quotes from this evening: "If you can remember the 60s, you weren't there." and

"If you can remember the 60s, you're probably IN your sixties."

I'm not quite in my sixties yet. I was in fourth grade when President Kennedy was killed,
and I think I was in third grade when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. So I was actually a little too young to appreciate the early Beatles. This is relevant because I just attended the "Classical Mystery Tour" concert.

Classical Mystery Tour is four guys who used to play the Beatles in 'Beatlemania' on Broadway, playing the Beatles, backed by an orchestra, in this case the Boulder Philharmonic orchestra, so the combination can perform ALL of the notes in various Beatles performances as they are heard on the albums. They mostly included songs that had orchestral backups, so the playlist

Songs like "Day in the Life" and "I am the Walrus" are very impressive live. Actually, all of the performances were excellent. I have to say the performer playing Paul McCartney was born for the role: the resemblance was a bit eerie, even allowing for the assistance of the costumes and haircuts and wigs. ('John Lennon' had 4 costume changes, the others had 3. The Sgt. Pepper uniforms were... very colorful.) And "George Harrison" played the Eric Clapton solo from "As My Guitar Gently Weeps" -- they 'apologized' because Eric couldn't be here tonight. :-)

They also said 'Here's something the Beatles never said at a concert: check out our web page."

They did "Hey Jude", "Twist and Shout" and "Money Can't Buy Me Love" as encores. People were standing up and pogoing and swaying and singing along and waving lit cell phones. (I waved my cell phone too: I was never a smoker, so I could never wave a lighter, even when I finally started going to concerts. Cell phones are more democratic: pretty much everyone has one.)

I didn't cough very much during the concert, though I'm still getting over the crud. Thank goodness for Altoids. Of course, coughing during Beatles music is not as annoying to other people as it would be at a normal Phil concert -- I could hardly hear myself coughing.

I bought a CD and a T-shirt.

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Sun, Jan 27, 2008

Charlies

Posted at 7:44 pm MST to Media

Two stories about wild animals, living with people, both named Charlie.

First, the Daily Coyote blog has wonderful photographs of Charlie the coyote, who has lived with a human and a tomcat since he was 10 days old.

Second, a book I got from the Quality Paperback book club: A Buffalo in the House, by R. D.Rosen about a buffalo named Charlie who lives with a sculptor and her husband near Santa Fe and works as a model and buffalo ambassador..

One fascinating thing about both animals is how small they started out: Charlie the coyote was able to walk under the tomcat's belly (later, the tomcat was able to walk under Charlie's belly), and Charlie the buffalo is described as the size of a golden retriever and was brought home the first time in a dog crate.

Charlie the buffalo really did spend time in the house when he was a baby. And once when he was getting to be too big for the house, he snuck into the house and up the stairs and was found standing on the bed in the bedroom. There is a song (by Rolf Harris, my parents had one of his albums) about a herd of buffalos coming in the house and jumping on the bed... at least Charlie was just one buffalo.

I found the lyrics to the song "Two Buffalos" (they increase throught e verses by powers of two) here. For a long time growing up, we only had a few records in the house so I pretty well have the Rolf Harris albums lyrics memorized.

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Thu, Jan 10, 2008

Candy Pelennor Fields

Posted at 8:22 pm MST to Media

The people who did the candy Battle of Helm's Deep last year have done a candy Siege of Minas Tirith and Battle of the Pelennor Fields this year. (I got the link from Andrew Wheeler).

The detail is amazing. So (again) is their candy budget. The mumakil are especially impressive (and have 'circus peanut' bodies, which seem oddly appropriate for elephant-ish creatures).

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Tue, Jan 08, 2008

Shadow Unit

Posted at 10:42 pm MST to Media

Oooh. Shiny!

A group of SF writers (Elizabeth Bear, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, and Sarah Monette) have started an online fictional serialized creation about an FBI unit focussing on 'anomalous' crimes.

According to Elizabeth Bear's Live Journal "Shadow Unit is, more or less, the website for a serial drama in internet form. Or possibly it's a fan site for a TV show that doesn't exist."

The introductory bits that already exist look very good. The fiction kicks off in February. Something to look forward to.

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Sun, Jan 06, 2008

'Scottish Plays'

Posted at 7:15 pm MST to Media

On Neil Gaiman's site, I found links to some wonderfulessays by Teller (of Penn & Teller) about a truly kickass production of Macbeth that he is co-directing in New Jersey. The first relevant essay is dated 12/24/2006, and the performances will begin this month, so they cover a lot of the design and development of the production. And a lot of the joy of creativity.

They are doing all of the magic in the play as magic, all of the violence as violence. Like a horror movie on stage.

I wish I could see the production.

Earlier this week I spent a lot of time watching anime videos. I prefer to watch them subtitled, with the original Japanese dialog, which keeps me from working on the computer at the same time (which is how I watch most English language shows), so my arms had time to heal some of the accumulated RSI.

One of the series I watched was called "Ayakashi -- Samurai Horror Tales". It was an anthology of three arcs, each with different designers. The second arc, designed by Yoshitaka Amano (one of Japan's premiere horror illustrators), is Yotsuya Ghost Story.

In addition to portraying the story within the classic Kabuki play 'Yotsuya Kaidan', the anime tells the story about the Kabuki play (it purports to be narrated by the writer of the Kabuki play). 'Yotsuya Kaidan' is the Scottish Play of Japan: it is believed to be cursed (actors and production staff die, theaters burn down...), which is a little odd since the story is only very, very loosely based on a historical story about real people. (The anime mentions the few historical details that are known.)

Despite the risks the play has always been very popular, so it keeps being re-staged and adapted in various theatrical forms. Praying at a shrine once frequented by the heroine of the story is supposed to provide some protection...

After contemplating and portraying many layers of story and history: of the play itself and of the story in the play, the anime suggests that the curse exists because the audience wants it to exist, because the story is so very powerful. It's got everything: murders with swords and poisons, betrayals, mistaken identities, inadvertent incest, people being eaten by hordes of rats ... I wonder how they manage the rats on stage.

I assume the creators of the anime visited the Yotsuya family shrine.

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Sun, Dec 16, 2007

Revels 2007

Posted at 8:40 pm MST to Media

The concert/event was very nicely done. The local Revels company has made great strides over the years: we attended a performance the first or second year they had them here, and it was a bit rough around the edges. Last year's version (Scottish music) was fun, but this year's version (Irish music and 1890s texts, with step dancers) was well staged and performed and just clicked.

They brought a guest artist in from out of state this year -- a first for the local Revels group, I think. And the local soloists and dancers were impressive, too.

For next year they are trying to do an original Revels based on early settlers in Colorado 150 years ago, not one based on Revelses (I don't think there is a good plural for a Revels) that have been done elsewhere. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

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Wed, Dec 12, 2007

Pratchett is ill

Posted at 10:33 pm MST to Media

Damn.

Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimers.

I hope some of the recent advances in treatment turn out to be useful for him. It hurts to think of a mind like that disintegrating slowly.

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Tue, Dec 04, 2007

Tin Man

Posted at 10:31 pm MST to Media

The Tin Man mini-series on SciFi network is over. I'm sure Oz purists hated it, but I thought it was pretty good. The credits called it "Based on the Wizard of OZ" but I think "inspired by" would be more accurate: the adaptation is very loose, and different enough to not be predictable.

Actually, I think it was inspired by the Oz books in general. I don't think I have read all of them, and it has been years since I read any of them, but some of the environments and plot points seemed familiar, just not from the first book.

This was one of the Halmi and Halmi productions that worked. Beautiful and imaginative.

It was also well acted and directed, I think. At least, I found I liked the characters and I felt that they had some depth and complexity. The actresses who played the 'sorceress' who was the main villain were very impressive in a complex role, but I also liked 'DG' and her companions.

I find myself wanting to revisit the OZ books, if only to see what correspondences I can spot. According to Amazon there are a couple of different annotated Wizard of Oz books, which might be fun. And there is a 15-in-1 omnibus of all the Baum OZ books...

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