Social Stuff and much mini-Reviewing
Jan. 9th, 2006 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseWe now have a social hall!
For those of you not from around here, a social is a pre-wedding event, a paid dance party with raffle, which is supposed to act as a fundraiser for the wedding etc. I've been told occasional couples will do this elsewhere, but it's mostly in Manitoba where it's a standard tradition with that particular name. (I get the impression it may have crept into North Dakota and Minnesota a bit, too. if so, sorry.)
So I spent most of the last week finding and booking a place that seemed like they'd be reasonable in what they supply and what we do. It's their own booze, so we don't make so much money off that, but there's the tickets and the raffle stuff still to come. We've begun digging into our resources for the prizes for the latter.
It'll be Friday March 10, 8:00PM, in Regent Park Banquet Hall (yes, in Transcona). Virtually no place worth asking seemed to have any Saturdays open. Once we have tickets, I'll start pushing people to push them.
In spite of having my mind very much on Halls and wedding prep, I did get some writing done this week, especially this weekend. I finished and sent off the review I started a couple of days before Christmas. Still haven't rewritten the one for the Duhks (of which the original second half is on my dead laptop's hard-drive). One down, six overdue to go. I also straggled, struggled, and dragged on rewrites and raw text in Raising the Storm, trying to get the Goddess, in one of her more direct actions, to sound like she's really trying to do the right thing, even if the protagonist disagrees, rather than just like she's being a dominant demanding bitch. She's not -- I know what she's seeing. But it's damn hard to write from his point of view at this moment without Her coming across wrong, or, worse, him coming across as sulky and whining, when, from my view, he's got every right to be furious. So far this weekend, I haven't done anything for Labyrinth.
________________
Colin and I got to King Kong on saturday after the last bout of Social Hall Hunting, and after we'd dropped off my "Sis" and her boyfriend, who I'm liking more as I get to know him, though I'm not sure the converse is as true.
The movie was... good without being great. It's a tragedy in the most classical sense, full of fatal flaws in the characters. it was also too long, which about 50% of the people who've seen it seem to think, whether they liked or disliked it. I disagree strongly with the one person who specified which parts were too long. He said the opening stuff, before they reached the island. For me, those were good, and moved fast, and were relevant to story and theme.
The great big action giant-monster fight scenes, especially but not exclusively with the bugs, just went ON and ON. Yes, the much touted return of the lost spider pit scene made me mostly wish it had stayed cut. Not just because of the bugs and the leech-lamprey things - I dislike giant bugs, but the camera and the insects tended to be moving too fast to really let me be bothered by them for my usual phobia and "gross!" reactions (except with the leech-lampreys. The phobia fear-trigger didn't hit, but they got enough lingering sight for a definite "Eeewwww."). Who was it lately who was discussing how all too many action scenes are entirely gratuitous, rarely containing any real plot or character development -- or, in fact, any development at all? (Much in the way of all too many sex scenes.)
Also, the music in it was too much the standard sweeping action-movie fatnasy stuff that I describe as "full of musical swellings". I'm sometimes hard put to describe why, say, the first Harry Potter soundtracks are musical swellings when the Lord of the Rings tracks are splendid and inspired (Harry Potter got better as it went, as they replaced John Williams with someone who, though he borrowed some of the themes to maintain continuity, did better things with them). Why I can listen to the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe many times over, while wrinkling my nose at what I heard in King Kong. I can only say, some people are obeying the movie music tropes in paint-by-numbers fashion, and others are using those tropes as inspiration for their individual creative fire. (I'm using relatively recent movie soundtracks in part because I'm less likely to remember the standard boring ones from past years, and most of the old soundtracks I own aren't the orchestral ones. Labyrinth, for instance. And the Muppet Movie, though I have that one only on vinyl, which means I still can't listen to it. And Amadeus, go figure.)
________
I think I may have actually hit the glut point for new stuff this Christmas (and just after). At one point, I had eight discs on my computer desk, and the only one that wasn't new was the one for the review. And yesterday I just threw up my hands, and put one of my old faves that's particularly good for writing Raising the Storm on Repeat. I never repeat albums more than twice a day, rarely in immediate successtion. That one went five before I switched it to another hoary fond oldie.
I'm in about the same state with the new DVDs, and the new fiction books (At least until I put a bigger dent in the stack behind me), and with unread non-fiction, which meant I used my gift certificate at the beloved McNally Robinson to pick up two more picture books (which probably fills up my tolerance for art books, too). Same artist as the one I grumbled about some months ago, but his own stories, and much more whimsical, well written where there's writing at all -- one story is told exclusively in pictures -- and charming. And, oh, yes, of course, they're *pretty*.
And a strange antidote to their whimsical beauty, my brother loaned me WE3, which, if you love your pets at all, is a deeply disturbing and gory violent tale about the use of animal cyborgs as weapons. I'd recommend it if you have any tolerance for non-gratuitous heavy gore, but do be ready to be weirdly depressed.
For those of you not from around here, a social is a pre-wedding event, a paid dance party with raffle, which is supposed to act as a fundraiser for the wedding etc. I've been told occasional couples will do this elsewhere, but it's mostly in Manitoba where it's a standard tradition with that particular name. (I get the impression it may have crept into North Dakota and Minnesota a bit, too. if so, sorry.)
So I spent most of the last week finding and booking a place that seemed like they'd be reasonable in what they supply and what we do. It's their own booze, so we don't make so much money off that, but there's the tickets and the raffle stuff still to come. We've begun digging into our resources for the prizes for the latter.
It'll be Friday March 10, 8:00PM, in Regent Park Banquet Hall (yes, in Transcona). Virtually no place worth asking seemed to have any Saturdays open. Once we have tickets, I'll start pushing people to push them.
In spite of having my mind very much on Halls and wedding prep, I did get some writing done this week, especially this weekend. I finished and sent off the review I started a couple of days before Christmas. Still haven't rewritten the one for the Duhks (of which the original second half is on my dead laptop's hard-drive). One down, six overdue to go. I also straggled, struggled, and dragged on rewrites and raw text in Raising the Storm, trying to get the Goddess, in one of her more direct actions, to sound like she's really trying to do the right thing, even if the protagonist disagrees, rather than just like she's being a dominant demanding bitch. She's not -- I know what she's seeing. But it's damn hard to write from his point of view at this moment without Her coming across wrong, or, worse, him coming across as sulky and whining, when, from my view, he's got every right to be furious. So far this weekend, I haven't done anything for Labyrinth.
________________
Colin and I got to King Kong on saturday after the last bout of Social Hall Hunting, and after we'd dropped off my "Sis" and her boyfriend, who I'm liking more as I get to know him, though I'm not sure the converse is as true.
The movie was... good without being great. It's a tragedy in the most classical sense, full of fatal flaws in the characters. it was also too long, which about 50% of the people who've seen it seem to think, whether they liked or disliked it. I disagree strongly with the one person who specified which parts were too long. He said the opening stuff, before they reached the island. For me, those were good, and moved fast, and were relevant to story and theme.
The great big action giant-monster fight scenes, especially but not exclusively with the bugs, just went ON and ON. Yes, the much touted return of the lost spider pit scene made me mostly wish it had stayed cut. Not just because of the bugs and the leech-lamprey things - I dislike giant bugs, but the camera and the insects tended to be moving too fast to really let me be bothered by them for my usual phobia and "gross!" reactions (except with the leech-lampreys. The phobia fear-trigger didn't hit, but they got enough lingering sight for a definite "Eeewwww."). Who was it lately who was discussing how all too many action scenes are entirely gratuitous, rarely containing any real plot or character development -- or, in fact, any development at all? (Much in the way of all too many sex scenes.)
Also, the music in it was too much the standard sweeping action-movie fatnasy stuff that I describe as "full of musical swellings". I'm sometimes hard put to describe why, say, the first Harry Potter soundtracks are musical swellings when the Lord of the Rings tracks are splendid and inspired (Harry Potter got better as it went, as they replaced John Williams with someone who, though he borrowed some of the themes to maintain continuity, did better things with them). Why I can listen to the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe many times over, while wrinkling my nose at what I heard in King Kong. I can only say, some people are obeying the movie music tropes in paint-by-numbers fashion, and others are using those tropes as inspiration for their individual creative fire. (I'm using relatively recent movie soundtracks in part because I'm less likely to remember the standard boring ones from past years, and most of the old soundtracks I own aren't the orchestral ones. Labyrinth, for instance. And the Muppet Movie, though I have that one only on vinyl, which means I still can't listen to it. And Amadeus, go figure.)
________
I think I may have actually hit the glut point for new stuff this Christmas (and just after). At one point, I had eight discs on my computer desk, and the only one that wasn't new was the one for the review. And yesterday I just threw up my hands, and put one of my old faves that's particularly good for writing Raising the Storm on Repeat. I never repeat albums more than twice a day, rarely in immediate successtion. That one went five before I switched it to another hoary fond oldie.
I'm in about the same state with the new DVDs, and the new fiction books (At least until I put a bigger dent in the stack behind me), and with unread non-fiction, which meant I used my gift certificate at the beloved McNally Robinson to pick up two more picture books (which probably fills up my tolerance for art books, too). Same artist as the one I grumbled about some months ago, but his own stories, and much more whimsical, well written where there's writing at all -- one story is told exclusively in pictures -- and charming. And, oh, yes, of course, they're *pretty*.
And a strange antidote to their whimsical beauty, my brother loaned me WE3, which, if you love your pets at all, is a deeply disturbing and gory violent tale about the use of animal cyborgs as weapons. I'd recommend it if you have any tolerance for non-gratuitous heavy gore, but do be ready to be weirdly depressed.
