Feast of Fools

1. I wish so many people didn't email me. >.< I thought I was doing so well keeping my two main inboxes clean while I was in Oxf, got back this morning and was treated to 212.

2. I wish Harry Potter opened tonight and not tomorrow.

3. I wish I'd got chibi Sephiroth's bangs a bit more accurate, they're annoying me now.

4. I wish I was a ninja and it was my birthday.

5. I wish you could have seen Katy's shared bathroom this morning, in which someone appeared to have exploded.

(Oh, and Katy, all is baked and your Strawbatty looks great. Want me to glue his wings on or shall I save it for you to do? :-D)

Posted by Jongleur at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

You're all too late! All the prophecies of doom could not save me, for she let the choir get her drunk last night and we all went to see it.

So. Hunt down Wolfgang Petersen and kill him with sticks.

That rumbling sound is Homer, wherever he be buried, doing 15,000 rpm.

^________________________^

I have to admit that considerable quantities of action-y violence and rampant gorgeous Hollywood flesh could not render this turkey anything other than the pile of poo it was. Which wasn't to say that I didn't have a damn good time watching a whole crowd of Classicists have little chickens all over the floor every time they crapped on the Iliad. ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

There were a few redeeming features: I also thought that Eric Bana and Sean Bean survived the worst script in history with grace and aplomb, though I didn't think Rose Dawson was all that hot an actress. And I didn't mind Brad Pitt, actually, thought he was pretty good in the part he'd been given (though I appreciate I seem to be in the minority on that one ^_^;;;)

[warning....warning....rant follows...unnecessary caps...warning...]

OH MY GOD what were they DOING with the CG???? It's been YEARS since there was any excuse for computer work that bad. You could BLOODY SEE where they'd cloned the thousand ships from a group of about six or eight, and there was one incredibly cringeworthy shot of them all beached where you could see that all the sails were the same mesh in the same position with different skins over the top... *cringes*

And as for the long shots of the ranks of soldiers standing before the gates of Troy while Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom rode through them, they might have been CG or they might have been dummies but they WEREN'T MOVING GUYS. And the long shots of the walking soldiers, AAARGH. They could do it almost eye-perfect with bloody orcs, WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE?

The accents were hilarious though. Instead of packing the elderly-men quotient with quality classical character actors (always a way of raising a bad film) they'd taken a bunch of Irish and Scottish (???) gritty drama types and told them to do pantomime villain. What? What? Brian Cox and Brendan Gleeson are damn good actors, but they're gonna be living with this for the rest of their lives.

So, in conclusion, Patroclus was his COUSIN. And don't you forget it. :-p

Posted by Jongleur at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Fimo takes a surprising amount of intense concentration >.<

I still wish to see Troy and now I can't find anyone to go with me. *cries*

I have X-Men 1 and 2 DVDs and Magneto rocks even more than I remember.

...and that's all I have to say right now. ^_^

Posted by Jongleur at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

............WANT TO SEE TROY WANT WANT WANT.

*throws rattle, splatters baby food, hurls rusk*

Posted by Jongleur at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

There are gentler ways of being woken up than a hefty plush Totoro toy to the head at TWENTY TIMES THE SPEED OF SOUND. -_-

It did, however, lead to an amusing plush toy fight and provided me impetus to get my ass out of my sleeping bag and go drive home in the blistering heat; tyres melting and leaving bubbling tracks on the tarmac, cars randomly exploding in showers of debris and molten metal, heat haze so thick it left marks on the paintwork, you get the idea.

And then I posted a million billion parcels all over the world and now I need to go and die in a cool and shady corner somewhere. Air-conditioning unit for the lounge arrives tomorrow. ^________________^

PS Things that are unfair #3108: the music from the Spiderman 2 trailer isn't in fact ES Posthumus, nor is it proper music. I've been told it's a professional sound cue from Immediate Music called Lacrimosa, and is probably about 45 seconds long. *sulks* I wanted that as a sooooong...

Posted by Jongleur at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In other words, did everybody watch Eurovision? I hope so! :-D

Stupid Eurovision party at Ivan's was of the fun, pizza chocolate and more pseudomusical cheese than any human being should be able to listen to. Highlights were the winners (Xena Warrior Princess with whips and nonsense words), the insanely camp dude from Bosnia, and the Croatian bloke who may or may not have looked like Methos from Highlander and kept singing lyrics that matched the standard Methosfic to a T. Was quite scared by the unbelievably orange makeup they'd all been slathered in though, even the Irish guy looked fluorescent.

Today has been rather less indigestion-inducing, but just as much fun. Met Ms. Peel in Oxf town for a good old gossip, and great fun was had by all. I love our coffee chats, they make me feel so much less disgustingly mature than I pretend to be the rest of the time ^_^ (Her li'l brother Chris passed his driving test! CHRIS! He's five! Suddenly I feel ooooold... O.o)

And it is sunny and lovely and I zonked with her in the Exeter Fellows' Garden for a couple of hours, and we nearly got our toes taken off by a roving band of homicidal croquet-players. But they missed.

Posted by Jongleur at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just have to copy this for everyone to appreciate (especially you). The ever-wonderful and many-times-supposedly-retired Nancy Banks-Smith's take on Charging for Alexander, from today's Guardian. ^____________^

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Robin Lane Fox is an Oxford don and the star of Charging With Alexander (BBC4). That last bit was an accident. He was originally hired as the classical adviser on Oliver Stone's epic, Alexander. They had long, transatlantic arguments on the subject. As we only heard Fox's answers, we can only guess Stone's questions. "Could she do it on the sofa with a snake?" "No, no, she wouldn't attack a goat. Not indoors."

Try to wrench your mind away from that.

Stone, who is nothing if not forthright, described Fox as "wonderfully eccentric, highfalutin, pretentious but terribly charming". He is also disconcertingly spindly; his endless, elongated bones being connected, apparently, as an afterthought. So it came as a bit of a shock when he insisted on taking part in the big cavalry charge, saying, according to Stone: "I ride to the hounds and the foxes. I'm a superb rider." He did not mention that he was also extremely shortsighted.

Fox said: "Dear boy!" Stone said: "Oh, boy!" and indulged him.

Bare-legged, breastplated and wearing, at his own insistence, a frilly silver helmet, he could have gone on as Don Quixote without rehearsal. Alexander's great cavalry charge, or various versions of it, were shot in Morocco in a storm of red-gold sand. Stone said: "Dust forces you to look through it, so what you find is more precious. It's like looking for gold." Fox charged gamely into the mists of myopia, crying shrilly: "Follow me! We'll have Darius for breakfast!"

It reminded me of the time Montgomery, newly arrived in the western desert, was rallying the troops from the back of a truck. He urged them, with word and gesture, to hit Rommel for six. Gazing raptly up at him was Harry Secombe. He piped up in that clear, sweet, carrying tenor: "We're with you, sir!" Shorts looked long on Secombe and his broken spectacles were insecurely mended with tape. Monty blinked.

Stone was touched by Fox's boyish enthusiasm, if non-committal about his contribution to the battle. "I may use it in the film. I may not."

Now to get back to that goat ...

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Also, new music! Helen's Tatsumi music, which I can't help thinking of as better suited to Yzak from Gundam Seed. And that just shows that a song with good lyrics can be co-opted for anyone. ^_^;;

Posted by Jongleur at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

We got our spangly new carpet in the lounge today. As mum said, it looks like an advert for the Ideal Homes exhibition. I give it a week. ^_______^

So me and Dad knackered ourselves thoroughly dragging all the furniture out and sticking it in the garden under stupid tarpaulin that kept blowing away; then the Carpet People swept in and did a sort of subliminal carpet installation - it was too fast to see, but you were left with a vague feeling something had happened and a sudden urge to assassinate a major public figure.

And then me and Mum knackered ourselves thoroughly dragging all the furniture back in. My legs no longer work properly. *wobbles* But oh, so much fun! Scraping manky old carpet underlay that's metamorphosed into a sort of gunky rubber/jam crossbreed off the floor now rates as my #2 Most Fun Thing You Can Claim To Be Housework, second only to Descaling A Glass Kettle With Blue Fizzy.

Quote of the day, courtesy of Mr Robin Lane Fox! You have to imagine the posh-as-jodhpurs accent and the tone of total contempt. 'History is more interesting than an American's imagination about a past of which he knows nothing.'

Extra random note! Good heavens, Patroclus is pretty. O.o *has been messing around on Troy movie website* *yes, is ashamed*

Posted by Jongleur at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So: catchup catchup catchup even more. What did the big tomato say to the little tomato who was lagging behind? 'Ketchup!'

Great weekend in Oxford. Plays, films, people, end of Kingdom Hearts, entirely unnecessary amounts of Rock Star by N.E.R.D. (Jason Nevins remix), damn good song, courtesy of SSX3. Drove back, middle of night, lovely drive, swear I would have beaten li'l bro's all-time record of 56 minutes but lost by three due to unexpected rainstorm on M25.

And I've been frantically working on commissions for the last couple of days, with the wondrous result that I cleared three today and am eight days ahead of my next deadline. So even *I* should be able to manage that then. ^_^;; I did, however, generate my very own anthrax scare last night, because I am a moron. No, really! I have this beautiful stained horn bead which needed reshaping to make the stone for Hitomi's pendant from Esca. And I had been grinding it with my little drill for some fifteen minutes before Mum pointed out that inhaling, swallowing and covering myself with a cloud of extremely fine skeletal product dust from a third-world country carries with it a certain health risk. >.< >.< >.<

So then I had a massive paranoia fit in the middle of the night and had to clean the living room to get rid of all the dust, because while poisoning oneself is embarrassing I feel getting one's whole family would be social *doom*. Work on the bead will continue anon, outside, with dust mask. And I don't appear to be dying, which is nice. ^_^

And finally, I have just watched 'Charging for Alexander', the documentary about her tutor cameo-ing in Oliver Stone's Alexander movie, and lo it was bloody hilarious. I shall bring the video to Oxf this weekend. All must see. ^_________^

In conclusion, I DEMAND THAT WE GO TO SEE TROY. The sooner the better. :-p

Posted by Jongleur at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Right, I have vast amounts to blog so I'm going to split it into separate entries. This one will be reviews of my weekend's media consumption; namely, Trojan Women, Touched by Fire, and Van Helsing. Two very good plays and one very, *very* bad film. ^_^

Trojan Women: A play by Euripides from 415 BC, given a modernistic feminist working over by an Oxf PhD student. Drum'n'bass music, chants, facepaint, hormones and *glorious* costumes should have made it something like the Commonwealth Institute exhibition from hell, but actually it was truly great. The actress who played Andromache has a great future ahead of her, and the kid actor who played dead onstage for a good ten minutes without moving a muscle will always be able to find work as a shop dummy.

Touched By Fire: Brand new four-man play by Ciaran McConville, a sort of surreal, dreamy piece that starts off as a straight story about a loony bin and slowly gets stranger and more mythical as it progresses, all the time backed by the progress of what is *nearly* the Moscow theatre siege. One of those wonderful structures where, by the end, every single tiny random thread and throwaway line ties in to one comprehensive whole. And it's not what you thought it was. I'm not going to describe it in any more depth in case you see it some day, but it was wonderful and you should see it. Also, the acting was uniformly great (rather important in a four-man job), and quality directing was provided by her mate Jo. ^_^

(random note: I was sitting directly opposite a bloke in the Burton Taylor while watching that who looked *exactly* how Jon is going to look when he's about 35. That was weird. :-D)

And finally: Van Helsing! I haven't laughed so much since Star Wars Episode II. I love, love, love sarky Oxford audiences on a Saturday night in termtime. Possibly the cheesiest film IN HISTORY, with a most shameful assortment of film references and good actors who should know better. It took about an hour before the whole cinema was laughing hysterically at every single line....

Highlight of the whole film; Kate Beckinsale bends tenderly over her expiring brother, who opens his mouth to gasp his final words - and someone near the front lets out a ginormous burp, which is a kind of mental onomatopoeia for *exactly* what everyone else is thinking, and he gets a rousing cheer and a round of applause. ^____________^ And Katy's face. Oh, Katy's face. That was worth the price of admission alone. And I WANT A RICHARD ROXBURGH DRACULA for my very very own! Go to see it. Laugh till you cry.

Posted by Jongleur at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May Day! That quaint and freakish Oxford custom where half the town drags itself out of bed at 5am and sleepwalks through the miserable dribble (it's not drizzle, it wishes it was but it's not) to stand under Magdalen Tower for fifteen years waiting for a bunch of snotty ten-year-olds to sing thirty seconds' worth of Spring-y songs, these relayed through a shocking set of speakers so it all sounds like 'Teletubbies say Eh-Oh' anyway. And then we go watch the Morris Dancers, skilfully dodging the Christian Union weirdos with their come-to-Jesus-and-we'll-give-you-this-doughnut! routine, and search for the breakfast with the largest possible proportion of saturated fats.

And yet it's fun. Go figure. ^_^

(You may have noticed I get *somewhat* less out of all this than imouto-chan, she's much nicer about it than me - I like my pagan-traditional glee minus the naff prayers for preference, and Oxford May Day has neither enough honest-to-Walpurga pagan cred, nor the second-degree atheist awe you get from a decent modern religious service, to attract me. If you're going to invoke underlying sociological drives via grand ritual, make it grand, dammit! Otherwise, where's the fun? ^_^)

There were, however, a small bunch of happy people with blue-and-yellow balloons and flags celebrating the EU expansion, which would have made me likewise very happy if the *smallness* of aforesaid bunch didn't remind me of how much I hate certain aspects of my country. >.<

Otherwise, lazed around happily in Katy's room all weekend, watched Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Starsky & Hutch (not necessarily in that order), read several books I've been meaning to read for ages, and had a break which I needed very, very much. The other denizens, on the other hand, generally had essay crisis or high-speed Finals work to do, but I made up for it by making tea and providing moral support along the lines of 'ha ha ha I don't have to do stupid essays or Finals anymore ha ha'.

Bookses were Jennifer Government (which I gather is spreading like a virus now ^_^), Alexander the Great (finished it at last! w00t!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1) and The Remains of the Day, which was enlivened by having a whole bunch of imouto-chan's A-level English annotations in the margins. ^_^ I was going to review them all properly, but I can't be arsed now, so here's the quick version.
Jennifer Government: amusing mildly anti-capitalist AU satire, modern scifi yet with characters you actually care about, author created that nationstates.com game that my brother plays incessantly. Good stuff.
Alexander the Great: suffers a little from thick, thick, heavy technical prose which drips off the page like tar, but most wonderful book and has left me (I suspect) as a minor Robin Lane Fox fangirl, which is fortunate cos he's her tutor. And now I can take the piss out of the film that's coming with pseudo-academic cred. ^_^
Remains of the Day: It's as good as it should be given its reputation. Bee-yootiful, a lot shorter than I expected, and now I *don't* want to see the film because the Stevens and Miss Kenton in my head don't resemble Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson at *all*. >.< (I also had great fun disagreeing with half your margin notes. Oh, the A-level nostalgia :-D)

And that's quite enough from me. Time to shut up.

PS. Does anyone know the number of the FMA episode which ends with Al jumping off a building and running away? I think it's in the early 20s. I've got a sudden urge to play anime catch-up and I don't know where to start downloading, but that was the last one I saw.

Posted by Jongleur at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)