life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

I went to see KOTCS with C. and elerrina_amanya the week after it can out, but I haven't got around to talking about it yet.

( Has anyone not yet seen this film?? )

In other news, Dubya is in NI today and managed to bring pretty much the entire afternoon commute out of Belfast to a standstill, bother the wretched man. And then he did soundbites for the radio about how committed he is to the peace praw-cess. Like he's done so brilliantly with peace.

Perhaps we can send him back to America via Heathrow Terminal 5? There's a good chance he'll get lost for ever in some Italian warehouse.

elerrina_amanya and I went to see Stardust tonight. It was very good fun.

Lavender Brown has been cast! I like her. :)

The cutest baby owl pic in the world, ever

Last week I went to see OotP before it went out of the cinema. It was obviously very compressed from the book-I always finds it helps to think of the films as a very complex animated .gif illustrating the books, that way I can think of the Quidditch and Ron and Hermione being prefects and chocolate in the library all happening off the edge of the page.

My brothers aid that Umbridge wasn't ugly enough, but I didn't mind that. I thought that the contrast between her being all pink and fluffy and so evil was  very effective. I especially liked the 6 spoons of sugar in her tea. And I love cats, but those kittens on the plates were the creepiest-looking felines.

I missed the Quidditch-well, I missed seeing Ron play Quidditch. I hope that  they include it in HBP, which they might, as there's less plot in that book, and I'm sure they'd want to use the trio kids as much as they can seeing that there are so many flashbacks to young Tom.

I don't like the twins much, although they aren't as bad in the films. It's rather sad to see them doing everything together, knowing that in a couple of years Fred will be dead.

I was watching PS on video a few days ago, and I noticed the contrast between the films. Not just Tiny Squeaky Trio, but the early films are brighter. I thought it was just the change in the uniforms, but it's the whole colour palate, I think. At this rate DH will be all in assorted shades of black.

I always like the little bits around the edges that show there's a school, and a world, happening beyond the Trio, like the kids having music going in the Gryffindor common room, and the Fudge banner in the Ministry, and the boy and girl kissing that Umbridge blasts apart. Also, nice forshadowing for the snogfest in HBP.

Who is this Nigel bloke? I seem to remember him vaguely from GoF; is he a replacement for Dennis Creevey? BTW, I wonder was JKR thinking of Dennis instead of Colin when she killed him off in DH. Colin was sixth year and had to be either 17 or within two months of it, and was hardly likely to be still a midget.

I saw Casino Royale last weekend, with Phil and Gillian.

( Spoilers )

I've just got back from seeing GoF. The stupid eejit on the ticket desk told us at first that it was sold out, and by the time we'd gone back to the car to have a council of war, the only tickets we could get were down in the front corner. Emma Watson looks rather lopsided or something when you aren't looking at her straight on.

Anyway, I took a notebook (much to my brothers' derision), so this is more or less point-by-point as it struck me. ( Spoilers, of course )

Now I really, really want Book #7!

Went to see PoA last night. Gillian and I both *squeeed* at the Ron/Hermione hand-grab and *oohed* at the Dememtors. With no prompting from me she started to make fun of Stylish!Hermione, SuperDuper!Hermione, WerewolfHowling!Hermione and PinkHoodie!Hermione. She also concluded that Film!Hermione was 'a big flooze' though she thought that she fancied Ron and was just messing with Harry :-D We think that the pink hoodie is like Superman's cape: when she puts it on she becomes SuperHermione.
I saw the two sets of footprints in the Dung Bomb store and the two people very close together in a cupboard during the credits. *hee*
Werewolf!Remus looks exceedly dumb. The more I see of him the dumber he looks. Hermione: Arrrough!! = v.v. bad idea.

Gillian made me a cake! (very chocolatey) Also she bought me a little toy that you can play Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? with. It asks you twenty questions and there are buttons for Yes, No, Unknown and Sometimes. It's really quite cool. We reckon it has about an 80% success rate, but we were cheating by thinknig of words like hippogryff, magic wand and Hermione's Super!Pink!Hoddie. It doesn't know about cup of tea either, it kept insisting on coffee. Obviously programmed by an American!

I had my hair cut this morning and went up to the eleventh floor of te library and took some photos of the view. I've been meaning to do that for ages. It is quite impressive. I could see Stormont and Slieve Croob and right out to the Lough.

The Passion of Christ seems to be turning into the latest tempest shaking the old flist, following hard on the heels of homosexual marriage and...what was before before that?

I haven't seen this film, and I don't know whether I will see it or not, but I just want to comment on a few of the opinions I've seen floating around.

I'm not sure, first of, that any human actor can portray Jesus, who while being human, was god, and perfectly good. Isn't it like making an image? And I know it's not in the context of worship, but...when I think 'Frodo', my visual nowadays is of Elijah Wood. Bother me and my wretched visual memory!

The violence would not be my issue with it. Roman crucifixion was the most barabarous and horrible method of execution the human mind had devised at that time. Added to that, the being utterly rejected by God, having been holy and in perfect communion with Him up till then--while being God, and don't ask me to explain that one. (Heck, I believe counter-intuitive things every day of the week for my bread and butter (try quantum physics for size, ugh). I would expect God to be counter-intuitive too.)

That was hell. Literally.

Speaking of which, why oh why is Satan female? If Gibson is supposedly creating a true-to-the-source account, then why has he introduced this unwarrented interpretation? I don't know if that's the Anti-Woman Version, he's got, but Satan is male in my Bible.

I don't know whether Gibson agress with his father's opinion on the Holocust, but I wish he would state that he doesn't. It turned me literally sick when I read that quotation from his father (the one about all the Polish Jews going to the Bronx, rather than Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz).

I hope this film isn't going to stir up anti-Semitism, which unfortunately there is still far too much of around; I feel like apologising for the persecution of Jews done in the name of my God and my religion. Those who shouted the name of Christ and did the deeds of Satan, I want no part of you.

Yes, the Jews killed Jesus, but so did the Chinese and the British and the native Australians and the Southern Baptists and the Free Church. So did I. That visual I've heard tell of, where the hand driving in the nail is Gibson's hand, is chilling to me.

My hands, bitten nails, carbon black and solder burns on the fingertips, knotwork ring on my third finger, 'NUCLUER ASSIGN.' scrawled across the back of the left one (I never said I could spell)--my hands did that as surely as they connected up the wires to the mass spectrometer this afternoon.

Well, if the point of that film was to make me think, and/or send me to my knees, it has worked.

Just been to see it on my afternoon off--it's been out for a week or so, but I hadn't had time. That's one ROXIN film.
( Spoilers, if anyone ELSE has not seen this film yet. )

I got to see this film on Saturday night, being forced into it by a couple of my guy friends who wanted to see the fight scenes. The plot was laughable of course, the good guys were so stupid that you were cringing, it had every American cliché about England/Britian known to man in it, but OH MY WORD Aidan Gillan!!!! In formal dress doing SWORD FIGHTING!!
Of course, my pernickety self would like to point out that if he were 10th in line to the throne, he would be a Duke, and addressed as 'Your Grace' not as 'Lord'--even if he were a lesser member of the aristocracy it would be 'My Lord'--they aren't praying to him, you know! But I suppose it's too much to expect correct protocol in a film which has motor-cars and Jack the Ripper in the same time-frame!
"So you're still 20th in line to the throne?"
"Tenth!"
What a line!