S For Saturday
Mar. 19th, 2006 05:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustHello, all. Long time no speak to.
St. Patrick’s Day concluded Week Ten, which was its usual admixture of desperation and annoyance: Few of the people who genuinely needed to show up did, very few of the people who needed to get stuff in did so in time, etc. Next week is Break, however, and then it’s Week Twelve, more Break, new semester. My schedule shifts so that I’m only working Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the new batch coming up from behind contains not seven more sections but only two each, thank GOD. Things are finally going back to normal.
Meanwhile, the big news is that I saw V For Vendetta, and loved it. Not perfect, no—I completely agree that reducing V and Evey’s relationship to "only" a lopsided girl-meets-monster love affair is probably the result of the Wachowskis genuinely thinking most people wouldn’t "get" it otherwise. In my opinion, you can "get" that V loves Evey (in his own fucked-up way) just by watching what they both do to/with/for each other, with no grand declarative statements necessary on either side of the equation; at its worst, it retroactively devalues the wonderful impact of Valerie’s letter—that ultimate platonic connection between two human beings—on both Evey and V himself, which is the entire reason he does everything he does, not to mention the single best gift he can ever give anyone. Still, it worked for me, and Alan Moore’s refusal to participate in it is a pity…given the inherent problems of translation between media, this is exactly as logical, consistent and respectful of the original’s intent as one might hope for. To be perfectly heretical, in fact, there are some ways—most of them to do with Evey’s character and choices—in which I actually like it better than its source material. And it’s left me with this continuous, all-but-unshakable mental image of Hugo Weaving in mask, cape and boots, solemnly boogying down to the strains of the Stones’ "Street-Fighting Man" as a mental hangover; doesn’t exist in RL, but somebody with the appropriate skillz really needs to create it, shrink it, and make it into an icon fast. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Today, meanwhile, I saw Tony Scott’s Domino, which was probably fairly reprehensible, yet great fun nevertheless. The sort of film that epileptics and impressionable teenagers (particularly of the sort I once was) should probably avoid; thankfully, I’m over most of that shit by now, but it certainly did give me a little tweak-hit of nostalgia for the days when I still thought being aimless, energetic and doomed was sort of cool. A bit surprising to look back and recall the sheer amount of bile it drew while in theatres, though—but given its hyper color/editing scheme, it probably plays a whole lot better on TV, anyway.
So here I am, chores and shopping done, having worked out and had my weekly personal training session, trying to restart my interest in "Spectral Evidence". It’s so short, I truly do feel like I could probably get it done by Monday if I put a push on, and the lure of getting as much completed over this upcoming week as humanly possible is a big one—of course, I also need to get my TP-119 exams printed up, and write a new bible for TP-133 (since nobody ever seems able to figure out what the fuck I’m doing/want them to do just from reading the one I hand out in class now. Though God knows, a good part of that may be simply attributable to stupidity…).
All right. Now back to actual work, while Steve watches Flightplan, which already sound emotionally excruciating. Maybe I can get some real wordage under my belt yet, before I finally have to roll into bed.
P.S.: By the way, after tearing everything apart several different times, we finally found the clicker for the DVD player; it was (I shit you not) wedged between one of the bookcases and the wall, maybe four feet up off the ground. How did this happen? Impossible to say. Steve thinks he might have put it on top of the bookcase to get it away from Cal, then just forgotten it was there. Fun and games, folks!
P.P.S.: Not to boast, but my big fat jeans are now literally hanging off my ass, only held on by that stubborn post-pregnancy potbelly...but even that's a hell of a lot smaller than it used to be. My bathroom scales say I'm 170, crazy as that is to believe. It feels like it might even be true.
St. Patrick’s Day concluded Week Ten, which was its usual admixture of desperation and annoyance: Few of the people who genuinely needed to show up did, very few of the people who needed to get stuff in did so in time, etc. Next week is Break, however, and then it’s Week Twelve, more Break, new semester. My schedule shifts so that I’m only working Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the new batch coming up from behind contains not seven more sections but only two each, thank GOD. Things are finally going back to normal.
Meanwhile, the big news is that I saw V For Vendetta, and loved it. Not perfect, no—I completely agree that reducing V and Evey’s relationship to "only" a lopsided girl-meets-monster love affair is probably the result of the Wachowskis genuinely thinking most people wouldn’t "get" it otherwise. In my opinion, you can "get" that V loves Evey (in his own fucked-up way) just by watching what they both do to/with/for each other, with no grand declarative statements necessary on either side of the equation; at its worst, it retroactively devalues the wonderful impact of Valerie’s letter—that ultimate platonic connection between two human beings—on both Evey and V himself, which is the entire reason he does everything he does, not to mention the single best gift he can ever give anyone. Still, it worked for me, and Alan Moore’s refusal to participate in it is a pity…given the inherent problems of translation between media, this is exactly as logical, consistent and respectful of the original’s intent as one might hope for. To be perfectly heretical, in fact, there are some ways—most of them to do with Evey’s character and choices—in which I actually like it better than its source material. And it’s left me with this continuous, all-but-unshakable mental image of Hugo Weaving in mask, cape and boots, solemnly boogying down to the strains of the Stones’ "Street-Fighting Man" as a mental hangover; doesn’t exist in RL, but somebody with the appropriate skillz really needs to create it, shrink it, and make it into an icon fast. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Today, meanwhile, I saw Tony Scott’s Domino, which was probably fairly reprehensible, yet great fun nevertheless. The sort of film that epileptics and impressionable teenagers (particularly of the sort I once was) should probably avoid; thankfully, I’m over most of that shit by now, but it certainly did give me a little tweak-hit of nostalgia for the days when I still thought being aimless, energetic and doomed was sort of cool. A bit surprising to look back and recall the sheer amount of bile it drew while in theatres, though—but given its hyper color/editing scheme, it probably plays a whole lot better on TV, anyway.
So here I am, chores and shopping done, having worked out and had my weekly personal training session, trying to restart my interest in "Spectral Evidence". It’s so short, I truly do feel like I could probably get it done by Monday if I put a push on, and the lure of getting as much completed over this upcoming week as humanly possible is a big one—of course, I also need to get my TP-119 exams printed up, and write a new bible for TP-133 (since nobody ever seems able to figure out what the fuck I’m doing/want them to do just from reading the one I hand out in class now. Though God knows, a good part of that may be simply attributable to stupidity…).
All right. Now back to actual work, while Steve watches Flightplan, which already sound emotionally excruciating. Maybe I can get some real wordage under my belt yet, before I finally have to roll into bed.
P.S.: By the way, after tearing everything apart several different times, we finally found the clicker for the DVD player; it was (I shit you not) wedged between one of the bookcases and the wall, maybe four feet up off the ground. How did this happen? Impossible to say. Steve thinks he might have put it on top of the bookcase to get it away from Cal, then just forgotten it was there. Fun and games, folks!
P.P.S.: Not to boast, but my big fat jeans are now literally hanging off my ass, only held on by that stubborn post-pregnancy potbelly...but even that's a hell of a lot smaller than it used to be. My bathroom scales say I'm 170, crazy as that is to believe. It feels like it might even be true.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 03:56 pm (UTC)What I liked best (apart from things blowing up to the finale of the 1812 Overture) was that they really got that Allan Moore everything-is-an-echo-of-everything-else, which is the underlying theme of From Hell, for instance, and which failed to come across in that movie adaptation. I liked that there were parallels even where they didn't turn out to be plot points, for instance the mirroring of Deitrich and V.
I also liked scanning everything in V's place and trying to figure out what had earned it a spot in the Censor's vaults: "ok, pagan, pagan, homoerotic, heretical, just plain too weird - hm, I wonder what their problem was with the Turner - not representational enough?"
no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 02:07 am (UTC)