Charloween

I am totally in love with my Shakespeare class. Yes, it's only the second week in, but we spent three hours yesterday picking apart The Taming of the Shrew, looking at a few key speeches and scenes and going over all the different ways to perform the main characters. Is Kate jealous, headstrong, feisty? Physically or mentally damaged in some way? Is she a brooding teenager who likes to cut herself or a bitter older sister who, whenever she meets a guy, always loses the guy to her cute younger sister? What about Petruchio? Monster, bohemian, or scoundrel out for a wealthy spinster to marry? Who you make these people will mean you'll get different effects from the text. It's a fun little play with a clear central problem in its performance: how do you treat the whole idea of "taming"? That final speech of Kate's can pay off the play in many different ways, but there's a whole lot of character stuff that has to happen before you get there to make it credible. She goes on and on about how great it is to be a sweet, submissive wife, knowing that her big, strong husband is there to be her lord and master.

It's fun Shakespeare for directors, rather than boring Shakespeare for English lit students. I so picked the right class. After that Filming Literature class last year, I started to become suspicious of the whole English lit discipline. After this course (a theatre course) I am resolved to raise my hands and back away, slowly. Shakespeare is something to geek out about, not something that should bore you to tears. There's just so much possibility there. And the best part is that this course tickles my academic geek brain enough to motivate me to get on all the other stuff that needs gettin' on. (Mostly I just like the feeling of my brain being active.) Plus, the prof is damn cool: he rejects the idea that there's Meanings and Messages out there, only just what happens to you during a performance. :D

Next week we get to watch the version that Jonathan Miller directed for the BBC. That would be the version of The Taming of the Shrew starring John Cleese.

( More about a busy, productive, satisfying day. )

...well, I did. The octogenarian relatives, the utter boredom of being the only person under 50 at a gathering (all of you with cousins: I'm jealous), the constant food (it's like I sat around for an entire week and did nothing but eat.... ick + boring) and all the rest of it.

On the upside, when my brother did get back into town, I finally got him to watch Hard Core Logo. It's one of the greatest rock n'roll films of all time, sharper and darker than Spinal Tap and far less smug than the rosy-tinged love-fest of Almost Famous. Don't get me wrong: I love those two other movies, but Hard Core Logo is just better. As a Canadian film it's also about some losers in the prairies, in winter. It doesn't tell the story of a famous band or even a good band (or, a real band) but its faux-documentary style is deliciously raw and real. I heard that one girl (who hadn't been paying attention in class when it was screened) actually thought the entire thing was real. The acting is seamless, the editing is impressive and the story is quite plausible (that goes double for the ending).

So - I'm glad we found time to watch it.

The other thing I'm particularly proud of is getting a friend hooked on both Farscape and the new Doctor Who all in the space of the same evening. When I'm on, I'm on. Hee!

And now? I'm back home, enjoying time without people and doing my damnedest to sort my yarn stash (while watching Farscape). Maybe I'll have a nap, later.

Speaking of Doctor Who, though... ( oh, that Xmas special )

Has anyone seen Dead and Breakfast? Is it any good?

amyisyellow is currently my favourite roommate. Why?

Because today she bought a Wii. And she lets us play with it when she's out. The golfing game is hard. Actually, everything except bowling and boxing is iffy in a living room that's about 64 sq ft. But Wii Play? DUCK HUNT! And the cow racing game. And that creepy matching game where your other Miis pop up wandering in crowds. There's a few dozen computer-generated faces, and then suddenly there's your face staring back at you from the crowd. Creepy, but awesome.

I'm SO going to spend the next week making Mii-avatars of the characters from Arrested Development, Doctor Who, Heroes, Firefly, etc... 'cause in the games? You play as the characters you've designed. THAT means I can have Ten boxing, like, Peter Petrelli, or have a bowling team made up of Mal Reynolds, Buster Bluth, Niki Sanders and The Master. :D Can you imagine, though? Mal and The Master together in the same room? Mal wouldn't have voted for Saxon because he wouldn't trust any gorram politician. Or maybe he's got a dramatically convenient war wound that would block the signals. Or maybe Mr. Universe made special tinfoil hats for the crew so they wouldn't get caught up in Saxonmania. Hee.

...I think I may have missed the point of the Wii.

Still. *geek*

I LOVE YOU AMY FOR BUYING THE WII OMG!

EDIT: Thanks to an awkward lj hiccup, half the entry posted and then collapsed in on itself. clamore (in a comment to the vanished partial-entry) suggested a Tobias vs Sylar boxing match. Hee!

So Amy was only wearing a towel ('cause she'd just got out of the shower) and Dee and I were having lunch and then Amy started laughing because she realized that Dee and I were eating and watching her swear at Bono... whilst naked. I promised to blog about it. And it is done. (We were talking about celebrities we hated. Grr... Bono.)

So then later I was playing with that little 3" Dalek toy I got as a gift a few days back, and discovered that it has wheels and one of those motors where you pull the toy backward and then when you let it go, it trundles forwards on its own steam. I have a Batmobile toy that operates on the same principles. I interrupted Dee's homeworking-time to show her, and we ended up playing Dalek vs. Batmobile on the kitchen counter.

So it's been a fun afternoon. :)

I don't have any pictures from the con.

But I did meet Malcolm McDowell, which was super-fantastic. He's a very sweet man who didn't just sign his name and turn to the next person in line. After getting him to sign a picture and shaking his hand, I told him that I was excited to meet him because I'd written a paper on If...., his very first film. The sequel to that, he told me, was his favourite film (and he was quite excited to tell me the Criterion of that film is coming out in October). I didn't mention A Clockwork Orange (amusing, but fetishized by creepy, creepy fans) or anything he's done since then (which is mostly stunt casting) and I'd like to think he liked to be able to talk about work he was proud of. Plus, I actually do enjoy those early Lindsey Anderson films.

Because I'd said I'd watched If.... for class, he asked me if I wanted to be a director or actress. A fair question, 'cause most of the kids who study film have that goal. When I said I'd actually want to be a professor of film theory, he made an O_o face, asked me if I was ill and reached across the table to feel my forehead. *squee* I explained to him that watching movies and television for work and then talking/writing about them seemed like an awesome job. He agreed I had a point. *happydances*

firstgold and I could see the signing area from our table. We could see that for all three days McDowell was the last guy there, still meeting his fans and signing autographs after the convention had closed. He's the sweetest celebrity I've ever met.

Also, there was a guy with a FTW belt buckle and some really neat art. I snagged a gorgeous watercolour of Dream of the Endless and a cute-as-buttons "Batman and Catwoman in luff" stylized cartoon. I will have to obtain frames. I also grabbed a Batman t-shirt that says "Don't make me go KA-POW on you!". (This con I discovered I'm tired of pirates and that Doctor Who is severely underrepresented; I already knew that Batman was far superior to any other superhero.)

A while back, piratefanatic prodded me to start watching this Brotherhood 2.0 site. Two brothers are taking a year and communicating only through video posts. It's a cool idea, and considering that the brothers in question are intelligent, well-spoken dudes with healthy senses of humour, it's an experiment that's pretty darn successful.

The other fun think about John and Hank Green is that they're huge nerds. How huge? Well... huge enough to write an awesome song about Harry Potter:



EDIT: The Doctor Who s3 finale, ( Last of the Time Lords )

Dear Doctor Who,

Somewhere, somewhen, you stole my soul.

"Family of Blood" was just you delivering the bill of sale.

I am yours, totally and completely.

With unending love,


Me

cc: ♥♥David Tennant♥♥
cc: ♥Russel T. Davies♥
cc: BBC Wales/CBC
cc: anyone with prior claims... 'cause sorry, guys.

It's 2:15 in the morning.

A few hours ago, after realizing that even though it was bedtime and I have to work in the morning, I was STILL WIDE AWAKE.

So I watched "Smith and Jones". Martha > Rose. Ten with Martha > Ten with Rose (though not Nine with Rose). So, serrico, I agree completely that Martha > pretty much everything. And then I watched "The Shakespeare Code". Still not sleepy. Watched "Gridlock". Still not sleepy. Still ♥-ing Martha. (Srsly, up against Martha, Rose is a wibbly blancmange woman. If Ten tried to give Martha that "I can sense all of creation and it makes me emo" speech from "Rose", she'd tell him to stop being all full of himself. Speaking of "Rose", I wonder if they filmed both eps in the same location; on the commentary they said the basement of the department store was shot in a hospital, so maybe?) Funny thing is, my face hurts after watching an episode of Doctor Who because I stare at the screen with a huge goofy grin on my face. More than good television, it's good television that knows it's good and isn't the least bit puffed up about it. Which makes it good and happy-making television. (Though beating up the Doctor in every episode? Gets old. As does DT's periodic overacting. But then, I'm judging the character from a human perspective and maybe aliens are a bit more flamboyant and flippant.)

I was saving this season, trying to streeeeeeetch it out as long as possible so as not to run through my Who stash too quickly. BUT THEN! THEN!! I obtained s1 DVDs. DVDs with lovely bouncy crunchy commentaries with ol' Russel T. himself being all giddy and such. (Just even the first few lines on his into to the DVD booklet heaped fuel on my fannish soul, stoking the flames of Who love higher and higher.) And if that wasn't enough, I stumbled upon the motherlode: a healthy mega-uber torrent with every. single. Tom Baker episode. Old skool crack! Low-budget old-skool crack! FIFTY GIGABYTES of crack! CRACK! And three of the series/arcs/whatevers were written by Douglas Adams. *flails* I is a happy me!

So the point is that I watched three of the most recent Doctor Who episodes in a row, and while I am looking forward to watching more, I decided to stop there because the blonde woman in the teaser for the next episode had precious hair and a grating accent and I thought maybe it was time to switch to something else because HELLO I'M STILL AWAKE. Even the possibility that DT would wear glasses for a scene wasn't enough to woo me. (And well may I be woo'd!)

So then, firstgold will be happy to note, I grabbed the knitting and FINALLY watched "All Hell Breaks Loose". But only part one. 'Cause I think part two is on my other computer. But if I turn the other computer on it'll be admitting defeat and I will stay up all night watch television until it's time to go to work. But it was a really fun first half. Maybe "fun" isn't the right word. Better than average SPN, with interesting twists on Yellow-eyes' plan. And WTF Roadhouse? But at least I know that every makes it out, happy and healthy, right firstgold, xtinethepirate, underhand_glory? RIGHT?! And also, Dean loves pie. Pie pie pie. I hope there's an outtake where he leans out the window and yells, "When come back, bring pie!"

It's now 2:45 in the morning, and I'm STILL awake. And now I'm hungry, too.

thucyken told me about ihasatardis, full of tasty Doctor Who macros. Like the ones with the cats, except this time there are killer robots and Time Lords.

This post killed me. Killed me ded. Best part is it's non-spoilery and you don't have to know anything about the series to get the funny. Most of them are riffs on that Invisible Sandwich thing. "Invisible Care Factor" is my fave, but you know... it's all good.