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Vertigo Comics - tentaţia independenţei

lanternativa — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:55:44 +0000

Vertigo este una dintre editurile specializate pe comics & graphic novels care îmbină într-un mod excepţional caliatea scenariului, grafica şi subiectele alese. Chiar dacă face parte din gigantul american DC Comics, ea reuşeşte să-şi păstreze o anumită independenţă dat fiind (şi) faptul că se adresează unei categorii de cititori caracterizate ca şi "adult audience". Tocmai din acest motiv subiectele acoperă câmpuri de interes controversate (niciodată nu am reuşit să înţeleg de ce controversate): de la sexualitate (de multe ori alternativă) şi până la religie (prezentată într-un mod care nu prea face plăcere societăţilor puritane), de la horror până la fantasy (cu un puternic mesaj politic contemporan). Din acest motiv, pe multe din coperţile diverselor colecţii suntem întâmpinaţi de politic-osul mesaj: "Suggested for mature readers".

Fondată în anul 1993, Vertigo şi-a câştigat extrem de repede popularitate între iubitorii genurilor propuse de aceasta, devenind în scurt timp cea mai cunoscută şi apreciată din categoria editurilor aflate la marginea mainstream-ului. Multe dintre numele (istorice) care semnează în interiorul diverselor serii găzduite de Vertigo (Hellblazer, Sandman sau Death: The High Cost of Living) provin din Europa, mai exact din Anglia, printre acestea numărându-se Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore sau Grant Morrison.

Printre seriile de succes se pot aminti titluri ca:

The Sandman - 75 de numere

Transmetropolitan - 60 de numere

Lucifer - 75 de numere

pe lângă acestea existând o sumedenie de alte colecţii, subcolecţii, ediţii limitate, anuale sau experimentale, putându-se întâlni cazuri în care acelaşi număr este publicat de două ori - diverse fiind ilustraţia copertei sau formatul revistei.

Nu este un secret că multe dintre ultimele producţii de film (nu doar Hollywood) din categoria super-heroes sau fantasy s-au inspirat din comics-urile publicate aici. Printre acestea se pot cita:

Constantine (2005)

V for Vendetta (2006)

The Fountain (2006)

Stardust (2007)

De asemenea, mai jos puteţi admira câteva dintre cele mai reuşite cover-uri ale diverselor colecţii:

Vertigo este una dintre puţinele edituri care, în ciuda popularităţii destul de mari, nu este tradusă în foarte multe limbi de circulaţie (cum este, spre exemplu, Marvel) - poate şi datorită subiectelor nu tocmai cuminţi - multe din filmele citate mai sus fiind o variantă "periată" a subiectului original. Unele dintre ele merită însă a fi vizionate: Stardust-ul lui Aronofsky, de exemplu.

Nu ştiu să existe vreun proiect de traducere în româneşte a (măcar) câteva din colecţiile oferite de această editură. Dar dacă există, procuraţi-vi-le, chiar dacă vor fi vândute în pungi negre!

Închei această preascurtă prezentare lăsându-vă în compania Vertogo Team:

Transform the Flood into Stardust

preskinn — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:10:01 +0000

Jag och Magnus såg precis klart filmen Flood, den var inte bra. Se inte den. Jag blev nästan arg av att se den, så dålig var den faktiskt. Engelsk TV-produktion skriker det, och, ja det är svårt att beskriva i korthet, men bra var det inte.

Igår kollade vi iaf på betydligt mycket bättre filmer. Vi var hos Anna, som i sin tur var hos sin syster som barnvakt . Då såg jag om Transformers och Stardust, den sistnämnda är verkligen mysig som sjutton. Titta på den om du inte har det. Den är så mysig och trevlig, brukar ha lite svårt för magi och grejer vanligtvis, men den är väldigt fin och trevligt! Transformers är ju bara sjukt coolt; töntiga robotar från 80-talet som spöar onda robotar, och åker rollerblades.

Jag funderar lite på om jag ska gå på fotopromenad med Magnus snart eller ej. Nu kollar han om det går att tvätta efter kl 22:00, det vorde väldigt positivt om det gick för sig, för jag har nog haft den här tröjan tre gånger nu.

There is too much changing.

Yokaze — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:05:30 +0000

There is too much changing. ending.

I am home again for yet another weekend and I'm starting to freak out. Since I only have access to a computer once a week - on weekends - and I only watch anime that time (not to get behind my schedule too much) I don't know anything about anything that's going on anymore. And as if that's not enough, several of the animes that I currently watch and love are ending this (or the previous week) such as To LOVE-Ru, World Destruction, Code Geass R2 (ah, the sorrow) and D.Gray-man and if that doesn't make you shed a tear than there's something wrong with you. That's all on that matter.

Under the week we have watched a few movies again, starting with the great but not scary horror flick The Eye (yes, they finally let us rent it after four weeks); we also saw Stardust and I later on came to the point where I finally watched the whole The Bourne Identity (I would like to add another , but that's a secret between you and me.), now I just have to see The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. Or maybe "have" it a wrong choice of word? Anyway, you know what I mean so keep yourself from exploding (or imploding) and hopefully we'll see eachother again next week. ^^

Gallery Opening: BOLD HYPE

jackiecous — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:21:23 +0000

NOTE: This post was written Saturday, 09/27/08

So I've been working a lot of long nights and weekends at my jobby (I am a very busy graphic/motion graphics designer, I'll have you know), so when I got home tonight I decided that, since it's Saturday, I would put entertainment before eating in the name of the weekend. But after watching and LOLing at Baby Mama, it was time to get some food. I decided to rush over to Stardust before the kitchen closed, and as luck would have it I accidentally made it to the opening of the new art gallery, Bold Hype, that I had meant to attend intentionally.

If you're familiar with Stardust Coffee and Video (Orlando peeps), then you'll know how to find this place. Just walk next door. The Gallery is currently showing works by such young and sassy art-tists as Jessy Chapo, Phil Noto, Sean Morris and Dennis Hansbury. They also sell limited edition print t-shirts and kitschy novelty items (handgun shaped vases, tea kettles wearing ski-masks). It's exactly the kind of place you really didn't expect to see in Orlando.

Anyway, tonight there's some live t-shirt screening by Enemy Ink, a DJ set by Sleepy Hippie and also some delicous hot dogs being cooked outside by one of the Stardust employees. That took care of my food thing. You know, that thing you do so you don't die.

-Jackie Cous

Thor finally gets a director, maybe

Mr Hollywood — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:46:28 +0000

After director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust) bailed out to helm Kick-Ass and D.J. Caruso (Eagle Eye) threw his name in the mix, another filmmaker is now attached to Marvel Studios' forthcoming adaptation of the comic book Thor, one that is the most unusual and the most interesting.

Indeed it's none other than Northern Irish actor/director Kenneth Branagh (Much Ado About Nothing), who is probably being sought for his strong affinity with shakespearean themes, which are apparently prominent in the comic. If this pans out, I'm convinced Branagh could churn out an amazing film.

Thor will be firmly set in the same continuity as Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and other forthcoming Marvel films, and like those movies will lead into the planned 2011 The Avengers movie. Thor will be released in 2010. The screenplay was written by Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend).

Source

Russell Crowe will have double the fun in Nottingham

Mr Hollywood — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:56:50 +0000

We already knew that Rusell Crowe (American Gangster) will play the Sheriff of Nottingham aka Sir Robert Tornham in Nottingham, the new take on the Robin Hood tale courtesy of acclaimed director Ridley Scott (American Gangster), but it turns out he'll play the prince of thieves as well! Why? Simply because in the script, the Sheriff and Robin Hood are actually one and the same.

Duo Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris (Kung Fu Panda) and Brian Helgeland (Man On Fire) wrote the screenplay of the film, which will also star the currently despised Sienna Miller (Stardust) as Maid Marian. No word on when the highly anticipated film will start filming, but it is set for release in November 2009.

Source

quotes that make me smile.

apatrick930 — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:35:46 +0000

this one is from the movie stardust and if you've never seen it, do.

"but to see the way mankind loves. you could search the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. so, yes, i know that love is unconditional. but i also know it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable, and strangely easy to mistake for loathing. i think i love you. my heart, it feels like my chest could barely contain it. like it doesn't belong to me anymore, it belongs to you. and if you wanted it, i'd wish for nothing in exchange. no gifts, no goods, no demonstrations of devotion, nothing but knowing you love me too. just your heart, in exchange for mine."

the following are from my favorite tv show one tree hill.

"at this moment there are 6,470,818,671 people in the world. some are running scared. some are coming home. some tell lies to make it through the day. others are just now facing the truth. some are evil men, at war with good. and some are good, struggling with evil. six billion people in the world. six billion souls. and sometimes... all you need is one."

"there comes a time when every life goes off course. in this desperate moment, you must choose your direction. will you fight to stay on path? will others tell you who you are? or will you label yourself? will you be haunted by your choice? Or will you embrace your new path? Each morning you choose to move forward or simply give up..."

"there are moments in our lives when we find ourselves at a crossroads. the choices we make in those moments can define the rest of our days. and, of course when faced with the unknown, most of us prefer to turn around and go back. there are moments in our lives when we find ourselves at a crossroads. but, once in a while, people push onto something better. Something found just beyond the pain of going it alone. And just beyond the bravery and courage it takes to let someone in. or to give someone a second chance. something beyond the quiet persistence of a dream. because, it's only when you’re tested that you truly discover who you are. and, it's only when you're tested that you discover who you can be. the person you want to be does exist; somewhere on the other side of hard work and faith and belief. and, beyond the heartache and fear of what lies ahead."

maybe they touched you in some way too...

HarperCollins' [Fre]E-Book: Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere

SchoeyChaelly — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:24:18 +0000

I should have posted this sooner - like, when it was first announced a couple of months ago (and not just two weeks before it's over ...) - but Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere can be read for free as a downloadable PDF document (or via Harper's "Browse Inside" feature). I read Neverwhere many many moons ago and, while it's not my favorite Neil G. book (like American Gods or STARDUST [available now, thanks to yours truly, in its original graphic novel form in the YA Section]), it's still pretty rad and delightfully weird. And hey - it's free.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="133" caption="Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman"][/caption]

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but shrewish fiancee. Then one night he stumbles upon a girl lying on the sidewalk, bleeding. He stops to help her, and his life is changed forever.

Soon he finds himself living in a London most people would never have dreamed of — a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels.

All Books Have Genders - by Neil Gaiman

thatactionguy — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:32:03 +0000

Stumble It!

Article from the legend that is Neil Gaiman.

Enjoy!

ThatActionGuy.com

***

Books have sexes; or to be more precise, books have genders. They do in my head, anyway. Or at least, the ones that I write do. And these are genders that have something, but not everything, to do with the gender of the main character of the story. When I wrote the ten volumes of Sandman, I tended to alternate between what I thought of as male storylines, such as the first story, collected under the title Preludes and Nocturnes, or the fourth book, Season of Mists; and more female stories, like Game of You, or Brief Lives. The novels are a slightly different matter. Neverwhere is a Boy's Own Adventure (Narnia on the Northern Line, as someone once described it), with an everyman hero, and the women in it tended to occupy equally stock roles, such as the Dreadful Fiancee, the Princess in Peril, the Kick-Ass Female Warrior, the Seductive Vamp. Each role is, I hope, taken and twisted 45% from skew, but they are stock characters nonetheless.

Stardust, on the other hand, is a girl's book, even though it also has an everyman hero, young Tristran Thorne, not to mention seven Lords bent on assassinating each other. That may partly be because once Yvaine came on stage, she rapidly became the most interesting thing there, and it may also be because the relationships between the women - the Witch Queen, Yvaine, Victoria Forester, the Lady Una and even Ditchwater Sal, were so much more complex and shaded than the relationships (what there was of them) between the boys.

The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish is a boy's book. Coraline (which will be released in May 2002) is a girl's book.

The first thing I knew when I started American Gods - even before I started it - was that I was finished with C.S. Lewis's dictum that to write about how odd things affect odd people was an oddity too much, and that Gulliver's Travels worked because Gulliver was normal, just as Alice in Wonderland would not have worked if Alice had been an extraordinary girl (which, now I come to think of it, is an odd thing to say, because if there's one strange character in literature, it's Alice). In Sandman I'd enjoyed writing about people who belonged in places on the other side of the looking glass, from the Dreamlord himself to such skewed luminaries as the Emperor of the United States.

Not, I should say, that I had much say in what American Gods was going to be. It had its own opinions.

Novels accrete.

American Gods began long before I knew I was going to be writing a novel called American Gods. It began in May 1997, with an idea that I couldn't get out of my head. I'd find myself thinking about it at night in bed before I'd go to sleep, as if I were watching a movie clip in my head. Each night I'd see another couple of minutes of the story.

In June 1997, I wrote the following on my battered Atari palmtop:

A guy winds up as a bodyguard for a magician. The magician is an over-the-top type. He offers the guy the job meeting him on a plane - sitting next to him.

Chain of events to get there involving missed flights, cancellations, unexpected bounce up to first class, and the guy sitting next to him introduces himself and offers him a job.Which is pretty much the beginning of the book. And all I knew at the time was it was the beginning of something. I hadn't a clue what kind of something. Movie? TV series? Short story?

His life has just fallen apart anyway. He says yes.

I don't know any creators of fictions who start writing with nothing but a blank page. (They may exist. I just haven't met any.) Mostly you have something. An image, or a character. And mostly you also have either a beginning, a middle or an end. Middles are good to have, because by the time you reach the middle you have a pretty good head of steam up; and ends are great. If you know how it ends, you can just start somewhere, aim, and begin to write (and, if you're lucky, it may even end where you were hoping to go).

There may be writers who have beginnings, middles and ends before they sit down to write. I am rarely of their number.

So there I was, four years ago, with only a beginning. And you need more than a beginning if you're going to start a book. If all you have is a beginning, then once you've written that beginning, you have nowhere to go.

A year later, I had a story in my head about these people. I tried writing it: the character I'd thought of as a magician (although, I had already decided, he wasn't a magician at all) now seemed to be called Wednesday. I wasn't sure what the other guy's name was, the bodyguard, so I called him Ryder, but that wasn't quite right. I had a short story in mind about those two and some murders that occur in a small Midwestern town called Silverside. I wrote a page and gave up, mainly because they really didn't seem to come the town together.

There was a dream I woke up from, somewhere back then, sweating and confused, about a dead wife. It seemed to belong to the story, and I filed it away.

Some months later, in September 1998, I tried writing that story again, as a first person narrative, sending the guy I'd called Ryder (who I tried calling Ben Kobold this time, but that sent out quite the wrong set of signals) to the town (which I'd called Shelby, because Silverside seemed too exotic) on his own. I covered about ten pages, and then stopped. I still wasn't comfortable with it.

By that point, I was coming to the conclusion that the story I wanted to tell in that particular little lakeside town ... hmm, I thought somewhere in there, Lakeside, that's what it's called, a solid, generic name for a town ... was too much a part of the novel to be written in isolation from it. And I had a novel by then. I'd had it for several months.

Back in July 1998 I had gone to Iceland, on the way to Norway and Finland. It may have been the distance from America, or it may have been the lack of sleep involved in a trip to the land of the midnight sun, but suddenly, somewhere in Reykjavik the novel came into focus. Not the story of it - I still had nothing more than the meeting on the plane and a fragment of plot in a town by a lake - but for the first time I knew what it was about. I had a direction. I wrote a letter to my publisher telling them that my next book wouldn't be a historical fantasy set in restoration London after all, but a contemporary American phantasmagoria. Tentatively, I suggested American Gods as a working title for it.

I kept naming my protagonist: There's a magic to names, after all. I knew his name was descriptive. I tried calling him Lazy, but he didn't seem to like that, and I called him Jack and he didn't like that any better. I took to trying every name I ran into on him for size, and he looked back at me from somewhere in my head unimpressed every time. It was like trying to name Rumpelstiltskin.

He finally got his name from an Elvis Costello song (it's on Bespoke Songs, Lost Dogs, Detours and Rendezvous). It's performed by Was (Not Was) and is the story of two men named Shadow and Jimmy. I thought about it, tried it on for size...

...and Shadow stretched uncomfortably on his prison cot, and glanced across at the Wild Birds of North America wall calendar, with the days he'd been inside crossed off and he counted the days until he got out.

And once I had a name, I was ready to begin.

I wrote Chapter One around December 1998. I was still trying to write it in the first person, and it wasn't comfortable with that. Shadow was too damn private a person, and he didn't let much out, which is hard enough in a third-person narrative and really hard in a first person-narrative. I began chapter two in June 1999, on the train home from the San Diego comics convention (it's a three day train journey. You can get a lot of writing done there.)

The book had begun. I wasn't sure what I was going to call it, but then the publishers started sending me mock-ups of the book's cover, and it said American Gods in big letters in the top, and I realised that my working title had become the title.

I kept writing, fascinated. I felt, on the good days, more like the first reader than the writer, something I'd rarely felt since Sandman days. Neither Shadow nor Wednesday were, in any way, everyman figures. They were uniquely themselves, sometimes infuriatingly so. Odd people, perfectly suited for the odd events they would be encountering.

The book had a gender now, and it was most definitely male.

I wonder now, looking back, if the short stories in American Gods were a reaction to that. There are maybe half a dozen of them scattered through the book, and all (but one) of them are most definitely female in my head (even the one about the Omani trinket salesman and the taxi driver). That may have been it. I don't know. I do know that there were things about America and about its history that it seemed easier to say by showing rather than telling; so we follow several people to America, from a Siberian Shaman 16,000 years ago, to a Georgian pickpocket two hundred years ago, and, from each of them, we learn things.

And after the short stories were done, I was still writing. And writing. And continuing to write. The book turned out to be twice as long as I had expected. The plot I thought I was writing twisted and snaked and I slowly realised it wasn't the plot at all. I wrote the book and wrote the book, putting one word after another, until there were close to 200,000 of them.

And one day I looked up, and it was January 2001, and I was sitting in an ancient and empty house in Ireland with a peat fire making no impression at all on the stark cold of the room. I saved the document on the computer, and I realised I'd finished writing a book.

I wondered what I'd learned, and found myself remembering something Gene Wolfe had told me, six months earlier. "You never learn how to write a novel," he said. "You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing."

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Cheers!
Brian M Logan
ThatActionGuy.com
EMAIL ME HERE

Søndag = Filmdag

missninita — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:26:32 +0000

Sånn bortsett fra min grytidlige gåtur i dag har jeg daffa og hatt en sikkelig søndag. Bortsett fra en eneste fornuftig ting er dette en dag som utelukket tilbringes på sofan! Og den fornuftige tingen er forrsten å vaske ei maskin med klær ! :)

Ellers betyr søndag film ! Sett Stardust i dag.. Kjøpte den før helgen for 59 på Norli, og det må jeg si den er verdt! En ting som er typisk meg er å kjøpe filmen. Uten å lese bak altså. Brent meg på det mang en gang, men nå hadde jeg flaks. Bak på coveret står det:

"Utspekulerte prinser, helsprø hekser, flyvende sjørøvere, himmelsk kjærlighet og en renhjertet helt, alt sammen i et magisk land. Hva mer kan du ønske deg? sier Todays film-anmelder Gene Shalit om Stardust, et episk eventyr med Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer og Robert De Niro i rollene. I håp om å vinne hjertet til en vakker pike (Sienna Miller) lover Tristan (Charlie Cox) å hente et stjerneskudd til henne. Men livet tar en overraskende vending når han oppdager at stjernen i virkeligheten er en himmelsk skjønnhet ved navn Yvaine (Danes). Når den gamle heksen Lamia (Pfeiffer) forsøker å stjele Yvains ungdom, må Tristn beskytte henne, koste hva det koste vil. Dette magiske eventyret, som ikke ligner noe annet eventyr, vil få deg til å hyle av latter og tro på kjærligheten."

Må si dette gjorde meg en smule skeptisk ! MEN filmen var bra :) Hadde en rekke uventede vendiger så dette var faktisk en film jeg ikke karte å gjette handlingen helt på. Slik som så altfor mange Hollywood filmer nå til dags. Men sant skal sies, filmen var en smule merkelig. Men om du liker magi og finurlige morsomheter løp og kjøp :)

Booklist!

gwenniiee — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:01:53 +0000

My version of the book review, one on a book that i'm currently reading, and two on my all-time favorite books.

Current read

Right now i'm halfway through A Year in High Heels by Camilla Morton. It's really a book on everything—a collection of interesting vignettes on fashion, music, literature, and pop culture. There's a chapter for each month of the year, and each month features a book review, a muse of the month (a short bio on a woman who rocked the world), and a shoe of the month (to boost your fashion IQ!). Camilla also offers advice on everything from how to write a proper thank you note to how to buy a house to how to be A-list for the Oscars.

Vogue calls this book "The must-have guide to year-round fabulousness," so read it if you want to be fabulous, or already are.

Favorite reads

Anything i've read more than once earns a spot in this category, and in recent years, there have only been two. Lots of books have served as good entertainment, but these are my comfort reads, the ones i pick up when i need to feel good, or be inspired:

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

I love this book because it's like a fairytale, but for grownups, or for those who should but aren't quite ready to grow up yet. Stardust is set in the 1800s in the tiny village of Wall, so named because of the wall at the edge of the town which separates it from a whole other world, a world of magic and strangeness. No one is allowed to pass through the wall, except once in nine years, when people from the other side come to sell strange and exotic goods at the village fair.

Stardust tells the story of Tristran Thorn, son of a farmer and a mother whom he never met, who left him on his father's doorstep shortly after he was born. Tristran is in love with Victoria, who of course happens to the prettiest girl in the village. To win her heart, he promises to bring her back the falling star they both saw fall on the other side of the wall.

So Tristran goes on this reckless journey on the other side of the wall, and in the process, he finds out that what he thinks he wants isn't what he really wants.

Stardust is a coming of age story, a story of a boy who discovers that he's more than a farmer's son and that he's destined for more than just the prettiest girl in town. Read it if you're a hopeless romantic, shamelessly, like i am :D Or if you want to try out one of Gaiman's lighter novels.

The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis

This is the third of seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia series, the author's only works written for children. Coincidentally (or not), this is another coming of age story. It's about Shasta, a fisherman's son, and Bree, his talking horse, who both run away to escape a life of slavery. On the way, they meet Aravis, a rich girl, also running away to escape an arranged marriage. In the end, a scared boy discovers that he's meant for greatness, but not before he learns courage and how to take responsibility for himself and for those around him. A spoiled brat learns to think of people other than herself.

Read it if...you're just about anyone. I'd actually recommend the whole Chronicles of Narnia series to anyone. It's classic, imaginative storytelling.

Heroes' Quests

bregister — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:46:35 +0000

I started teaching a couple of Intro classes at George Mason University about a month ago, so I've been fresh out of time for blogging.

Spoiler alert for Lars and the Real Girl, and just a little bit of spoiling for Stardust, The Graduate, and Donnie Darko.

Had I had some time, I might have written an entry on Lars and the Real Girl, a charming quasi-comedy about Lars, a deeply alienated young man, who buys a custom plastic blow-up girlfriend, named Bianca, and believes that she is quite real. He introduces her to the family. He takes her to parties. He's off his rocker.

In one of the most benevolent portrayals of Christian ethics that I have ever seen, the townspeople resolve to humor Lars. They pretend that Bianca is real. They put her on committees. They have her help at the hospital. She gets elected to the school board. She's really very popular. They do all of this in the name of Biblical principles of loving kindness.

Aside from being a story about Christian virtue, it's also a Hero's Quest. Lars is troubled. His mother died giving birth to him. His father was wrecked by the loss of his wife, and withdrew. His brother left home as soon as he graduated, and returned home only after marrying. Lars has never had any stable, deep connection to another person. He is so incapable of affection that he suffers nearly unberable physical pain when he is touched by the flesh of another.

So Lars sets off on a quest. He leaves the realm of reality, in which he is an asocial loser, and enters a fantasy realm. He seeks the magical amulet: the ability to have a relationship with some depth. The relationship with Bianca is a shadow version of the real thing; a sort of training. He finds a guide through this mystical underworld in the person of the sympathetic doctor.

Since Bianca is incapable of motion, she is "ill." She grows increasingly so as Lars becomes ready to leave the fantasy and return to reality with the new magical power necessary to solve the trouble in the real world. Bianca sleeps in Lars's mother's room, a very enclosing pink space. Lars spends a fair amount of time in this notional uterus on his way to rebirth.

Finally, Bianca dies. The town mourns with Lars, but he has a newfound capacity to have a go at a relationship with a genuine girl. As with all Hero's Quests, the hero, on his return from the underworld, gets the girl; that sounds more stylish or profound if we characterize it as "mates with the earth mother," but it means the same.

We also watched Stardust, based (I'm told loosely) on the graphic novel of the same title by Neil Gaiman. It is so very much the Hero's Quest that it doesn't warrant much discussion. Entertaining. An ordinary young man, troubled by his failure to get the girl, journeys into a fantasy realm to get her the gift of a fallen star. The fallen star turns out to be a much more appealing girl. After various adventures, he becomes king of the kingdom, marries the star, and then they live happily ever after. EVER after. Stars are permanent.

And The Graduate, in which an alienated young man is troubled by the lack of direction in his life, and goes on a quest to inject some meaning or interest into his bleakly meaningless — one might say "Plastics!" — existence. The quest is an affair with an older woman. He returns from the quest able to pursue his true love.

Finally, Donnie Darko, a dark and stylish movie about a disturbed young man whose world is ripped asunder and who journeys out from time itself in a confused effort to save everything from meaningless annihilation. Like Stardust, it is a very self-conscious story, which announces itself as a pastiche of the superhero and time travel genres. Since it's very suspenseful, and I don't really have any thoughts about it other than that it was rockin', bitchin', and awesome, I'll leave off by saying that there is a crisis and the hero goes on a quest outside of the normal world and returns with what's necessary to resolve the crisis, but is permanently changed in the process.

You are perhaps noticing a theme, which is that I really liked The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The basic template might be the sort of thing that tricks one into "finding" patterns that aren't there, but then it might be the sort of thing that helps one find patterns that one would otherwise miss. And the basic template might be so abstract or vague as to be meaningless: it might just be the structure of a plot: situation, conflict, resolution, denouement. There is a crisis in the mundane world, the hero leaves the mundane world to seek resolution, he returns with whatever is necessary for the resolution, and then the mundane world returns to normal. I don't know whether knowing about the Hero's Quest is actually making me more insightful, but I do know that it's a fun toy.

(I also watched High Sierra, a classically, timelessly, wretchedly bad movie starring Humphrey Bogart as an idiot who does stupid things for stupid reasons.)

While I'm on about the Hero's Quest, I've found that I'm teaching one, in the form of Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy. In the mundane world, there is a crisis of knowledge. Religion and science suffer the upheavals of war and Inquisition. Descartes suffers the crisis. So he decides to leave the mundane world and seek the fundaments of knowledge. He first enters the world of dreams. He then leaves the world of dreams for an even stranger and darker realm in which God himself torments him. He fears that he might have left time itself. But then he finds a guide that he can trust absolutely, even if God is his enemy: Descartes finds himself. And, having found himself, he then knows that, if he can replicate his self-discovery, then he can find more. Then he grounds himself in time and God, and finally returns from the realm of dreams with the foundations of all knowledge of souls and objects.

It's a really extraordinary story, told that way.

One of the lessons of the Meditations is that understanding can undermine doubt. You might come across a claim and believe that you have reason to doubt it. But, if you had only waited and worked for understanding, then you would have seen that your "reason" to doubt it was a confusion. It evaporates in the light of attention.

Our culture has the extremely unfortunate tendency to mistake open-mindedness with intense and instantaneous criticism of any claim that one comes across. That sort of dogmatic scepticism is not open-minded; open-mindedness is willing to doubt claims, but doesn't do so for no reason. Responsible action is done for reasons; doubt is an action; responsible doubt is done for reasons. And you don't have a reason to doubt a claim that you don't yet understand.

But, as a way of satisfying our students' cultural tendencies, we are overcritical. And, as an expression of those tendencies, we are, when students, overcritical. So Descartes' unclear passages have come to be mistreated as fundamental, even childishly stupid, mistakes. It's a lot easier to teach him as a clown than it is to teach him as very much cleverer than we are. That happened in my education, too, so for the longest time I have been laboring under bizarre delusions about the Meditations. I'm appalled at how cheaply I have treated Descartes.

Last summer, I was working on Humeanism, and I read quite a lot by Bernard Williams. Williams's first book was on Descartes. I thought that I would get insight into Williams, and I did, but I got more insight into Descartes by way of contrast. I think now that the Meditations, while of course erroneous in a number of ways (the proofs of God, the proof of dualism), is a spectacularly rich, deep, and subtle work, perhaps the exemplary work of the modern Western tradition, and certainly the perfect introduction to philosophy.

Recomandare: Coraline

Shauki — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:35:49 +0000

UPDATE: Pentru site-ul american al cartii, apasa aici.

Acum câteva zile a apărut prima carte pentru copii – CORALINE - la imprintul Tritonic Junior, parte componentă a grupului Tritonic.

Povestea este scrisă de către Neil Gaiman, autorul cărţii Pulbere de Stele (roman ecranizat în 2007 Paramount Pictures), publicată şi în România, la editura Tritonic.
Un film-animaţie 3D inspirat după roman va fi lansat în anul 2009 în America.
Însă până la film, puţin despre carte:

Ca multe alte celebre cărţi pentru copii, şi aici este vorba despre o fetiţă, pe numele ei Coraline, isteaţă, perspicace, dornică să exploreze apartamentul în care tocmai s-a mutat împreună cu părinţii ei şi împrejurimile acestuia. În cursul explorărilor ei, găseşte o uşă misterioasă, încuiată, aflată în camera de desenat. Mama ei are cheia, şi îi arată Coralinei ce se află în spatele uşii: nimic altceva în afară de cărămizi.
În mod inevitabil, Coraline se va întoarce şi va deschide uşa. De data aceasta cărămizile au dispărut, iar în locul lor se află un coridor întunecat. Coraline păşeşte în coridor – ce explorator n-ar fi făcut la fel? – şi ajunge într-un apartament care este aproape la fel cu cel pe care îl ştia.
Poate că descrierea şi coperta sunt puţin prea pentru copii, însă povestea merită citită de orice persoană, indiferent de vârstă.
Eu aştept să ajungă cât mai repede în librăriile din Iaşi.

Cast member added to Kick-Ass

Mr Hollywood — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:25:37 +0000

Clark Duke (ABC Family's Greek) has joined the cast of Matthew Vaughn's (Stardust) forthcoming independently-funded adaptation of Mark Millar's (Wanted) comic book Kick-Ass. He will play Marty, the hero's best friend.

About 17, a chubby Caucasian high school student who loves comic books. He is Dave’s funny best friend. Together with Dave and Todd, he loves to go to comic book stores, and checks out the latest issues, while talking about school, girls, the futility of teenaged life, and the exciting adventures of Myspace insta-celebrity Kickass. He never suspects that Kickass is in fact Dave Lizewski — and neither would you if you knew Dave.

Duke thus joins Aaron Johnson (Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging), Lyndsy Fonseca (ABC's Desperate Housewives), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad), Nicolas Cage (Bangkok Dangerous) and Chloe Moretz (ABC's Dirty Sexy Money) in the movie, set for 2009. See a side-by-side comparision of characters and actors here. Meanwhile, you can catch Duke in the funny-looking Sex Drive, premiering October 16th in the Netherlands (?) and a day later in the US.

Source

Neil Gaiman

paulmatsumoto — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 03:54:02 +0000

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
-Neil Gaiman, "The Sandman"

English born author, Neil Gaiman, has delighted millions with fantasy tales of imaginative genius. Through short stories, poems, novels, graphic novels,
comics, and film he breathes life into fantastic universes that reveal welcomed insights about ourselves and the nature of humankind.

A friendship with Tori Amos led to a character in "Stardust" (and her referencing him in songs "Tear in Your Hand", "Spacedog", "Horses" and "Carbon"). Tori muses here...

The Hugo and Nebula award winning novella
"Coraline" comes out in 2009 in film...

From the book "Fragile Things" the poem, "Instructions"....

"The little folk dare anything", said his friend. "And they talk a lot of nonsense. But they talks an awful lot of sense, as well. You listen to 'em at your peril, and you ignore 'em at your peril, too."
-"Stardust"

full moon tonight

heatherdyan — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:41:59 +0000

september's full moon is the harvest moon and it is the full moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox. it is so named because at the peak of harvest, farmers can work late into the night by the light of this moon. corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice, the chief indian staples, are ready for gathering.

autumn is unquestionably my favourite time of year, and i welcome the harvest moon and the autumn equinox with open arms. i can't wait to feel a hint of cool in the breeze and see the leaves painted in a myriad of warm colours.

i find endless beauty in the transitions.

It seems that my viewer statistics are steadily growing.

supposedly — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:08:39 +0000

3, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10.

Those are the current stats from the last six days. As much as it does not matter how many people are watching, I must admit that it did cheer me up greatly to see this. For a while, the numbers were relentlessly zig-zagging, and they have currently stopped doing so. Maybe the increase in views is due to the fact that I have been blogging more recently, or maybe now that school has started my life has become more interesting and readable. Either way, I am glad for it.

This weekend I mostly did a lot of reading and watching movies. Actually, I basically just read. I did the required reading of To Kill a Mockingbird for English, read some mildly interesting book that did not make a whole lot of sense, and re-read The Gospel According to Larry, Vote for Larry, and 13 Little Blue Envelopes. I re-watched Stardust (compliments of Netflix) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which we recently added to our movie collection but I had yet to re-watch. I guess that a lot of things were repeated this weekend.

One thing, however, that was NOT repeated, was my making dinner rolls. Actually, I have not made them yet- they are currently in the bread machine and will be for about twenty-six more minutes, I believe. *runs to kitchen* Scratch that, only twenty-one more minutes. Then the oven and baking part, I guess. I am terribly excited. I really like all types of bread, especially homemade bread. It is so much better than store-bought, it really is. Every once in a while (but all to seldom) my mother makes a loaf of bread, corn muffins, or some other type of bread-related thing, and they are always so scrumptious. Who knows, maybe this dough business will turn into a hobby for me.

I am invited to a sleepover birthday party next weekend and have an amazing present coming in the mail for the recipient. Once it has been given, I will post a picture/ description. It really is amazing and I am sure she will love it (she being my friend Eleanor).

I am shaking a bit with anticipation for the dinner rolls to come out of the bread machine, so I really must be on my way.

Good luck in whatever it may be.

EDIT SOME TIME LATER: The dinner rolls have baked and somewhat cooled and guess what? They are delicious!

EDIT FOURTEEN SECONDS AFTER: The stats have increased from 10 to 16!

Renaming the author

chennairamblings — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:26:55 +0000

I have been wondering as to what I want to write now, the knowledge that this blog has acquired a "few" readers who know me personally has made me pause and try and take a decision as to whether the anonymity with respect to the author's name is required any more.

Let's face it, I published my real name some time back after a few track-backs and still kept my pseudonym in the hope that people would still refer to this as CR, it seems pointless now to pretend to the world and myself (not in that particular order) that this is a necessity anymore.

So the author's name has been updated in this blog.

In the meantime, there are other things that I have been discovering of late.

Like the fact that my idea of a perfect beach date includes shooting balloons down with a 10% accuracy rate and discovering the different hues of blue and yellow while watching a bhutta being fried.

Like the fact that I have revised my opinion of men and do think they might be worth having around.

Like the fact that I don't feel the need to write as much since I have begun to speak what I think without having to censure any of my words.

Like the fact that while discovering that I have not been able to escape the chains of commitment despite my best efforts, I am rejoicing now in my new found freedom to be just me.

By the way, have you people been good?

I'm being Goggled

Tentative Equinox North — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:25:41 +0000

Earlier this week, a friend emailed me to say "I'm having trouble Goggling you" which I thought was an hilarious typo. Turns out it was just a precursor of things to come.

Back in June I wrote a post about muppets representing your personality (June 29, 2008, go look for yourself, I don't want a pingback in the comments). I chose Beaker. I posted a picture of Beaker. The post got about 25 hits total (and 3 great comments).

Until Friday.

Apparently, judging from my statistics, Friday was when the picture that I posted of Beaker made it to the #1 spot when searching for an image of Beaker on Google Images.

So, since Friday, I've had about 75 hits on that post. And it's still going up.

It took me a few scenarios to figure this out. I thought for a while there was just one crazy Beaker-obsessed person roaming around the internet, who had decided to stalk my image of Beaker by repeatedly clicking on my site to check on him. Then, I wondered if some teacher had set up a class project about copyright infringement using Muppet images as an example. Then, once I realized I was at the #1 spot it finally occurred to me that given there are millions of people on the internet, and Beaker is pretty famous as muppets go, it's really not outside the realms of possibility that 30 or more people a day would search for an image of him.

Now, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's a nice little boost to my statistics (Hey, don't judge me, I'm still building an audience, and I don't belong to any traffic-driving networks). On the other hand, I feel like it's not really a count of people reading what I'm writing. They're merely looking for an image. They're in, they're out. Still, (on my third hand) I guess there's a chance that 1 or 2 people out of a hundred would then become a loyal reader, I mean maybe if we both identify with Beaker, we already have a connection. Right?

It's a weird feeling though. It makes me a feel a little Beaker-ish. The Dr. Bunsen Honeydew that is Google has this crazy experiment going and now I'm standing on the sidelines with my hair on fire wondering what the hell happened. I mean, I like writing, and I like people to enjoy what I write. But I don't like the feeling of being so exposed. I know, I know, I'm a creature of contradictions. C'mere, c'mere, c'mere. Go away. Go away. Go away.

I guess I just feel a little goggled.

Update Sept 15: Up to 231 views on the Muppet post. Who knew that people identified so strongly with Beaker?

Update: Up to 276 views on the Muppet post. Google has now cast me aside and has gone on to fresher Beaker meat. I have to say I'm a little relieved.

Bo Amy Winehouse v "klubu 27"?

kmery — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 08:03:17 +0000

Vsakič, ko slišim to enkratno pevko, me stisne pri srcu, saj imam občutek, da ne bo več prav dolgo med nami. Dečva, ki bo 14. septembra letos dopolnila 25 let ima vse karakteristike da se pridruži Brianu Jonesu, Jimi Hendrixu, Janis Joplin, Jimu Morrisonu in Kurt Cobainu , ki jih je prezgodnja smrt iz slavnih spremenila v kultne. Vsi so umrli stari 27 let.

Brian Jones (eden izmed ustanovnih članov Rolling Stonesov) je leta 1969 utonil v bazenu, naslednje leto je virtuozni kitarist Jimi Hendrix umrl zaradi prevelike količine uspavalnih tablet ,čez nekaj mesecev pa mu je zaradi usodnega odmerka heroina sledila še Janis Joplin. Naslednji je bil pevec skupine The Doors, ki je umrl v še zdaj ne dokončno pojasnjenih okoliščinah, zadnji iz "velike peterice" pa je leta 1994 s strelom v glavo postal prvi mož Nirvane Kurt Cobain.

Bo Amy naslednja?

Psihologi razloge za prezgodnjo smrt razlagajo s krizo identitete. Dvajseta so ponavadi leta, ko ima človek občutek, da ga definirajo predvsem njegovi dosežki in razmerja v katera se spušča. Zavemo se, da nas stvari, za katere smo si prizadevali, sploh ne osrečujejo. Če temu dodamo še stalni pritisk medijev in javnosti, je beg v alkohol in droge, kar prakticira Amy, že skoraj nujen.

Amy je s svojim načinom življenja prava poslastica za medije. Pred njeno hišo redno dežura kakšnih trideset paparacev, ki podrobno spremljajo življenje mlade glasbenice, poimenovane črna kraljica škandalov. Vsak teden namreč poskrbi za svežo šokantno novico in njeno življenje spominja na črno kroniko.

Vsi so bili prepričani, da se bo po zlomu sredi junija končno pobrala. Takrat se je onesvestila, ko je doma pila čaj. Odpeljali so jo v bolnišnico, kjer so ugotovili znake pljučnega emfizma in trajno poškodbo dihalnih poti zaradi kajenja in uživanja kokaina. Zdravniki so ji svetovali, naj se preneha drogirati, sicer si lahko trajno uniči še glas.

Še nedavno so mediji poročali, da se je končno pobrala, saj je uteho našla v budizmu, par dni kasneje pa naj bi si za zabavo po podelitvi britanskih glasbenih nagrad naročila kar 48 steklenic viskija.

Upam, da bo nekako našla moč in se izvlekla iz tega pekla, ki ga preživlja. Pa ne samo zato, ker je res dobra pevka, z meni enim najboljših vokalov. Punca se mi kar malo smili. Nekako prikupna je. Tudi kadar komaj stoji. Pa vedno je zelo tragično, ko umre kak zvezdnik, njenega formata. Kar spomnite se Cobaina.

Tapping into Pleasure

Tentative Equinox North — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:52:26 +0000

Look what I bought yesterday...

[caption id="attachment_567" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Tap Shoes!"][/caption]

Yep, I bought some sneaker-type Capezio tap shoes. Got them on a clearance special from Dancecraft.

Aren't they cool? Plus, the added bonus of being easy on my wide, high-arched feet. I might even be able to put my orthotics into them. Frankly, I'm not sure if that last sentence makes me happy or sad.

Anyway, I enjoyed the 5 beginner tap classes I did in the summer so much I've signed up for a long haul adult beginner class with Classic Steps Stage Productions. (I would provide the link but it seems to be down. If you're interested in signing up for some adult tap classes in Delta, leave me a comment.)

My first class was last night. It's a lot of fun, but about 45 minutes in, my brain is full. It's going to take some time and practice to build that tap dance neural net I guess. My affirmations during the next little while will be: My brain is plastic. My brain is plastic. My brain is plastic.

The teacher is great because (I'm finding her approach similar to JUMP Math actually) when a student (read: me) is confused, she breaks the steps down into the absolutely smallest increments. She believes you can always make it simpler. We beginners have trouble chunking 5 steps together, while the students that have been doing it for even just a little bit longer than us, move more quickly along that path.

It's the first dancing I've ever done, where you learn a dance step more by how it sounds, than by how it looks -- it's very auditory instead of spatial.

I've become interested in the idea that I will practice the things that are fun rather than the things that I believe are good for me. So, I'm trying to find the ways in which I WANT to move rather than just guilting myself into lifting weights at the gym.

So, tell me, how do you combine enjoyment with that yucky word 'fitness'?

Vogue Stardust

sensuously — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:02:31 +0000

Jag älskar när modetidningarna tar nutidens modeller och gör ett retro-reportage av det. Så otroligt vackert!