My own self

Not remembering one fig of this movie anymore, I'm just going to copy-paste a couple of comments I made when I'd actually just seen it:



It was a good movie, beyond any doubt, but brilliant? Hardly.

The way he worked the grief of his father into his music would have been interesting if the father got about five times as much screentime as he did. As it was, the potentially most interesting character-relationship of the movie got three short scenes and some vague hints to a less-than-perfect childhood. The Don Giovanni-effect of the father’s death got about as much screentime as, if not more than, the relationship with his father did in total. That’s not good moviemaking. If the buildup takes five minutes the payoff can’t take ten. If you want a ten-minute payoff, put the work into a thirty minute buildup. Otherwise you’re stuck with an audience that’s not justifiably interested in the event to care about the payoff in the first place.

His dragged-out death-scene was good, but, they foreshadowed it so heavily that at the time it finally came around the “yay, this scene is good”-feeling was just barely stronger than the “yeah, I get it, in fact I got it thirty minutes of movie ago; he’s going to die from writing the requiem, get on with it will you?”-feeling. Which is less than ideal. But it worked, sure. One of the movie’s better parts.

The only parts of this movie that were truly awesome was those of Salieri’s frame-story. I also liked how the movie made the story into a chessgame between Salieri and God, and how sneakily God won it. Sadly, all that was told almost to my satisfaction in the frame-story - I didn’t really need most of the actual movie.

I’m coming off as very critical, I’m sorry, the movie was clearly good. But I felt it was a solid cry from great, so I’m confused as to what makes people love it so.

Then again I didn’t get Blade Runner either. I guess I’m just stupid.

The most interesting parts of the movie were in its middle, which doesn’t make for anything resembling perfection in the experience of watching it. Additionally, they foreshadow Mozart’s death so heavily that when it finally occurs, I’m left with the “what? That was it?”-feeling more than anything else. Sallieri was the one thing about this movie I felt could be described as more than a step above mere “good”, and when I say I’d give it a weakish 8/10 he’s probably responsible for 2 of those points alone. Well, the script was also well above “good”, I’ll admit, and my that I mean that the entire way the plot of the movie was built was a very clever way of making the story seem interesting. It fell a little short of really blowing me away, though - probably through the limitations of actual events having to be portrayed, I think.

So, inspired by this and this, I've made my own list of Twelve Objects of Recommendation from my entertainment-year 2007. Why Twelve? 'Cause I like the number. Plus, that makes one for each month, which is nice and symmetrical.

From least to most recommended, here. We. Go.


12. Night of Knives
I know that technically, this isn't better than a lot of stuff that didn't make the list. Still, this is one of only two novels I've read this year that sucked me in without taking more than 200 pages in doing it, and that earns it a certain amount of extra points for sheer excitingness.
Plus, Kellanved!

11. Buffy the Vampire Slayer 8x5-9: No Future For You
Brian K. Vaughan managed what even Joss could not - he made me feel like Buffy the Vampire Slayer was back. Alright, Joss did a splendid job making me feel like the character of Buffy was back in The Long Way Home, but it never quite felt like an episode of the show. This did. Plus, Faith and yellow submarine-sweaters and everything.

10. Studio 60 at the Sunset Strip
The little show that couldn't, Studio 60 has slipped into the enormous and growing masses of brilliant tv-shows cancelled before they could shine properly. Still, this show got a lot of shining done in the little time it had. That the story about the tv-show that struggled against the network was cancelled itself probably came as no surprise to anyone, but you have to admit, it's a delicious piece of irony.

9. The Prestige
A chilling, intriguing, intelligent and captivating movie about stage-magicians getting out of hand, and a really, really good way of opening my movie-year when I saw it in theatres in January.

8. Garden State
This movie is simply lovely in just about every way. (And Natalie Portman has never looked prettier than she does in this one.)

7. Bone
I finally read Bone! Obviously, such an epic masterpiece is a shoe-in on this list, and one of the motivations for making it in the first place. Everybody who read Donald Duck-comics growing up and remember some of the best ones with fondness should give this a read, and probably at least half of the rest of you should, too!

6. Battlestar Galactica, season 3
Not quite the level of brilliance it had during seasons one and two, but pretty damn close in my opinion. I've said it before and I'll say it again; Best show currently on television.

5. West Wing
What is there to say? The presidental periods of Jed Bartlett cannot be ignored when it comes to good American television. I mean, they even referred to the BSG-episode about the possible assasination-attempts on Laura Roslin as "their West Wing-episode" - that's how iconic this show is. Despite a less-than-brilliant middle-bit, it starts out gloriously and ends brilliantly, and asking for more than that is just plain greedy.

4. Rome (season 2)
They actually managed to make it better than the first season, which impressed me a lot. There's more politics here, and more intrigue, and the young Octavian does as splendid a job as the ice-cold manipulator as Mark Anthony does as the self-confident warlord.

3. Lies of Locke Lamora
This year's big surprise - not that it was good, I was expecting that, but that I actually got around to reading it. I read it right before New Year's and it thus barely managed to be the second book to truly captivate me all the way through this year. Thanks to Mr. Lynch for that.

2. Sin City, all volumes
Absolutely wonderful stuff. Truly. If you liked the movie, you should be obligated to reading this.

1. Deadwood seasons 1-3
The fact that this is at the top of my list says more than enough about it, in my opinion. If you have to know more, you can read my reviews, linked above.



Honourable mentions: Pan's Labyrinth, The Fountain, Midnight Tides, Veronica Mars' final season, Heroes' second season, I, Claudius, Scrubs' sixth season, Rose, The Long Way Home, The Pride of Baghdad and Neil Gaiman's short story Monarch of the Glen. Some stuff was excluded from consideration, like Angel: After the Fall due to not being out in any completed form yet.

Or something. (My puns pain even me. I'm sadomachopunny.)


Anyway, I recently saw Elizabeth: The Golden Age in the theatre, and then the day after (!) the first movie, Elizabeth, from the late 1990's aired on Norwegian television. So I saw that too. Ironically, I just the day before protested to the idea of a genre of "queen-movies", and, well... maybe there's something to it. Blanchett really pulls off this personal journey of the strong but untested woman in a man's world in the first one as well as the life of a woman cut off from a woman's life such as her time would have it be in the second.

As you've probably gathered by now, I thought they were good! Better than I thought they'd be. I actually preferred the sequel to the first one due to a series of reasons, foremost of which is probably simply the fact of having seen it in the cinema. Then again, the first one also had Elizabeth walk around be all unsure of herself the entire time, and she only got properly cool by the last scene, so I think that might have been a big influence on preferring the sequel - especially after seeing it first and thus expecting her to be cool in the first one only to find that she's not. (With the exception of the very clever treatment of the duke of Anjou, anyway) Because, by comparison, the sequel had Elizabeth go about her ruling very, very convicingly capable manner, and thus she came off as quite cool, though no less conflicted when in private than she was in the first one.

I should add, I love Cate Blanchett when she's in regal-mode, in the end-scene of the first one as well as in key scenes in the sequel she speaks in a certain commanding manner which quite frankly rocks like crazy. I dare even the most inane republican not to get a tiny little closet-feeling of royalism if he'd been in the room with a queen speaking to him like that.

Geoffrey Rush's Walsingham was awesome, but he had, like, no screen-time at all in the first one - and I already thought he had little to do in the sequel and was expecting there to be more of him in the first, not less. This was a huge disappointment. Also, I preferred Clive Owen's Sir Raleigh greatly to Joseph Fiennes' Eal of Leicester as far as romantic interests go, and the plot surrounding it, too, was more interesting in the sequel. However, Owen's Raleigh might have been painted a tiny tad too much the unflawed hero for my tastes, so I'm not exclusively positive.

All in all, two very strong movies. I'd give Elizabeth a weak 8 out of 10 (if I ever do a rewatch, I might retcon this post into showing 7,5) and The Golden Age a fair 8,5/10.

Together with this, Terje is now quoting this comic-strip of mine in his MSN subnick.

"Eg kunne hatt djupn! DJUPN!"
(approx. "I could have had depth! DEPTH!", a pun on how if he wasn't drawn on MS Paint, he might be three-dimensional in aesthetics and maybe also as a character.)


Thanks. ^^

Making my own take on it, I figured I'd list some Moments Of Tears of my own. Halfway randomly chosen categories. And nothing I've seen for the first time after last October counts. I'm waaaay too easily put in both positive and negative emotional imbalance these days. XD


Right, so, on with the categories.


First scene in a TV-show that made me cry
I can't know for certain, of course, but I'm pretty sure this was "M*A*S*H", and I'm pretty sure it was in the episode where Colonel Blake leaves (and dies). The emotion in the ending of that episode is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

But M*A*S*H in general, actually, quality-sadness wise? Good show indeed.

Longest continous crying from any piece of story-based entertainment ever
Buffy's "The Body", of course. If you don't get distraught by this one, you're either a psychopath or you're a, no, wait, actually, you pretty much would just be a psychopath if you don't. Such a beautiful, horrible, gruesomely convincing portrayal of death and dealing with it, it's scary.

Biggest comic-book-crying-memory
I'm not sure if I've cried from several comic-books, or just this one. I probably have, though, I just can't remember them now. I'm a sap, it's true.

But I do remember this one. I was taking the boat back home from Bergen, which is an approximately three hour thirty minutes trip, and before leaving I picked up a graphic novel of the JLA (with whom I'd never read anything before) from Outland on the sole reason Joss Whedon's name was on the cover as having written the introduction to it.

I honestly did not, and will never need, more of a quality-stamp than that.

I read it hoping to get lots of Batman. 'Cause, you know, when reading any DC comic at all, that's basically what you do. You hope for the Bat. You hope for the Clown, and you hope for the Bat, and if you're going for the full hat trick, you're also hoping for Lex, but mostly, you're hoping for the Clown and the Bat. And while Batman's in it, and being his pretty cool self too, it started out with a chapter with second-stringers. Or even third-stringers. Characters I'd pretty much never seen before, some of them never even heard of. The first chapter was of these people. New characters, to me, completely.

The first chapter, by the time it had ended, had made me, sitting on the boat home, in public, reading a fracking comic book I'd bought on a whim, cry.

I'll never forget that.

(You know, unless I get hit in the head with something heavy or I grow senile, which could happen.)

Most powerful sad-moment on a comedy show
I'm actually not giving this award to a M*A*S*H-scene, though I do admit, I could be overlooking it 'cause it's simply such a long time since I watched M*A*S*H. Still, I'm giving this to "My Screw Up", the most heart-breakingly beautifully sad Scrubs-episode ever. The ending scene was even used on its recent CLIP SHOW-ep in season 6, and even there, completely devoid of context, it made me fracking sob. Huuuuge props to John C. McGinley and Brendan Frasier for their performances in this episode. It's fracking incredible.

The time Friends made me weep
Could probably call this most powerful happy-moment on a comedy-show, but it honestly deserves its own category just as a Friends-moment. 'Cause I totally cried when Chandler and Monica tries proposing to each other and they both start sobbing. I totally did. And if I rewatched it this very moment, I probably still would.

First movie to ever make me cry
"Homeward Bound". When Shadow appears in the ending. Gets me every single time. And I used to be so very embarrased and scared my younger siblings or parents would see me cry whenever the scene rolled up.

Fred
I mean, come on, people.

Most Evil Thing To Make Me Cry
The wheelchair-reveal in "Walkabout", which is evil 'cause it convinced me to keep watching Lost, and three seasons later I'm still not sure if that was the right call. The show's not exactly made me cry again after that, I guess is one way to put it.

Top Five Crying-episodes of the Slayerverse that aren't "A Hole in the World" or "The Body"
'Cause I'm just THAT much of a whedonite.
In no particular order:
- The Gift
- Lineage
- Not Fade Away
- Fool for Love
- Grave

Wow, Tara didn't even make it on my list. Nor did "Innocence", or "Lullaby", the ending of "Billy" or a certain Pryce being a "dead man". Or a ton of others. I should totally make a top fifteen instead some day.


In closure, let me add that I very rarely cry from books, for some reason*, and I can't with certainity remember one that has made me cry right now. However, I think I might have cried during several Malazan-scenes. The big character-death in the end of "Memories of Ice", and Coltaine getting to the verge of ascendancy simply by being awesome in "Deadhouse Gates", maybe. But I honestly don't remember if I did or not.

*I think this might have the same reason as why books very rarely manage scaring me properly. I think mind maybe censors the experience when I need to conjure up my own images of it.

And for those of you missing the VM, BSG, Firefly and no-doubt-tons-of-other-stuff-mentions in this list, well, if I were to list EVERYTHING that's made me cry, the post could go on almost for ever. But maybe some other day, in another post, on another occasion.

So, that was that. And yes, I'm a total crybaby. A weak, weak, weak man.

Terje quotes me in his MSN subnick:

"Ein kan fint vere inkompetent sjølv om ein har artium. "
("You can easily be incompetent even having finished high school." Or somesuch.)

It's from my comments on this strip of me and Obdormio's webcomic.

Or, hopefully, anyway. I'm not handing out guarantees.

Is this post late, you say? Is this not in keeping with the fine standard I set last year? And what about the Prime Minister Speech Review? Didn't do that one this year, either. Nor did I do the review of the King's Speech which I wanted to do to make up for last year.

Fear not, gentle reader.


Oh, and fear not, violent readers, I hadn't forgotten you, either, I'm just favorizing my gentle one.


Anyway, fear not.


'Cause I've got me some explanations.

I was at my grandfather's this New Year's Eve and Day. So, no internet. Zap. Zilch. Nil. Nada. Splonge. Bupkiss. Bippers. I might have made up some of those words. No net, though. Net-depravement is big around those parts.

He lives in a valley so secluded you had to transport your cars there by boat 'til 1989 'cause there were no roads.

Anywho.

No net, no immediate ability to Report On My Thoughts and such. Also, I've been busy. Busybusybusy. As in the kind of state where you're, you guessed it, busy. (Good guess, by the way, were you peeking ahead?) I've had other stuff on my mind. Plus, this whole (non-)blog-thing isn't as new and fancy and interesting now as it was a year ago. Then again that's life. ("That's liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife! That's what all the people saaaaay." That commercial has killed my taste in music)

The Prime Minister's Speech, that one I would have done a post on. Had I fracking watched it. I just caught the last five minutes. Probably a blessing in disguise, it's not like they ever say anything new. I caught the King's Speech, though, naturally, I'd be a poor sod of a monarchist if I didn't catch the one time throughout a year the King actually speaks directly to the people. But it's been so long since, now, I can't remember enough of it to comment properly. It was the same old same old with the thematic twist of the year, as usual, but I liked it. It dealt a lot with xenophobia and common decency and that kind of thing. Very humane. Sappy, but that's the point, I guess. Kudos to Harald and his speechwriter(s?).

Just for the record, though, I caught the national anthem after both speeches, and the King's song before his speech, and I rose and stood through all three. I might be a closet nationalist. I might just like the song. Or I might just think it's plain cool to revere something which is purely symbolic.

So, the year. Interesting thing, the year. It's a natural cycle. It's not man-made, like the second or the hour or the century or the millenia. There actually would be such a thing as a year even if we hadn't made up a name for it.

Sorry, I digress. I meant "the PAST year", not years in general, and by believing that was obvious, I seem to have misled myself, 'cause apparently, it wasn't. I need to stop taking everything I write literally.

So, the past year. Well, it's past. And it was a very good one. For me, anyway. They hung Saddam, though. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can do. I mean, he's even in the South Park-movie. He's like Cæsar; you just can't picture the guy die. Sure, he's a swine, but even so. He's like an icon. Doesn't ring right, his being dead. Like you kind of can't really believe it. It's scary, that, realizing how frail human life is even when you're the world's possibly best known genocidal maniac. If HE can die, everybody can die. He didn't lose his cool, though. Kudos to him. I'm generally opposed to execution as a form of penalty - I figure that nobody can really know what it entails without having died themselves first - and I kind of think imprisonment for life is the worse sentence anyway. Apparently, though, the Iraqi government was clear on this being to spare the people of him, not to punish him, so, that's a moot point. I just can't quite wrap my mind around his being gone. Even though the world is probably a slightly better place for it.

Other people I have never known, met or really wanted to meet have died this past year, too. The only ones of them to make an impression on me, though, were a couple of actors and the like. Right now I can only remember Sverre Holm and Peter Boyle. Thanks, guys. You've made me laugh.

So, that's the morbid section of this post. Me, I'm good. Good year. Better than good. No major bad occurancies in my immediate family, me included. Good health. Good life, rather good economy. Good getting-my-civic-service-postponed-indefinetely. Good studying. I'm regretting I didn't take an additional course in spring, 'cause one of the two I did take turned out to be far less work than I could have ever dreamed, but still. I re-took an exam in March, and improved my only post-high school grade below B, a D, to a B. One of my prouder moments, that. I had two more exams in June, one in an interesting subject where I got really lucky with the questions on the exam, and one in a dreadfully boring subject where I wrote my bachelor's assignment and somehow did extremely well without having read more than 10% of the curriculum. Summer was nice, but uneventful, maybe. Other than making my webcomic. Of which I'm rather proud, to tell the truth. Otherwise, this summer, I took a short trip with my family like we usually do in summers, and beyond that, I mainly just worked. I'm starting to tire of working where I work in vacations and weekends where I'm home. I'm starting to grow more comfortable there, yes, with the people there and the assigments there and so on, but I'm tiring of it. It's so dreadfully boring. Anyway, on to the autumn, where I took three *very* interesting courses, making for my academically most interesting term since spring 2005, and the two I've learned the results of yet turned out really well, too. January 17th will prove whether or not the third one followed suit. I have hopes. ("He's got HIIIIGH hopes. He's got. HIIIIGH hopes. He's got high apple pie in the sky hopes!" I love Goofy) If it does, it'll be pure awesomity. Personally, too, it's been a great year. I'm very lucky, I have a very easy life and no major worries, never really did have. I hope it'll last a long while yet. I've grown more social, too. This spring, I kind of regressed, I didn't share courses with anyone I know and I didn't really make much contact with the ones I knew outside my courses from before. Right before summer, though, it changed, and I made an effort to keep it up the first few weeks this fall, and voilà, it held. Suddenly, I find myself socializing almost one day or so every week. It's crazy. Nice people, too. Not a lot of people, but very nice people. Obviously. I'm way too picky to keep up seeing people I don't think are very nice. And I incresingly realize, I know a lot of very nice people online, too. You know who you are, but thank you for making my year that much better for having chatted with you and listened to me. So, great year. And in the humble beginnings of October, it got even better. Sure made me glad I don't keep this weblog in Norwegian.

I hope next year will be as good. Or possibly even better. I've signed up for some courses in Latin on top of my full-time studying history, so academically, it's suicide, but I'm hoping it will be a good year even so. This far, it's looking pretty promising.

To all of you out there reading this, happy new year. I wish you all the best. And thank you for all you've done for me in the old one. ^^ Keep flyin', people. I implore you. As does Mal.

Oh, and if any one of you tries making jokes on how late this post is, there will be fatal beatings administered.

Terje is quoting me in his subnick saying "Eg liker å snakke om meg sjølv, eg". Totally out of context of course, but hey. ("Me, I like to talk about myself")

He's wrong for once! Yay! He doesn't have quite as good taste as I do! Wohooo, I still rule the top alone!


Oh, and I'm hereby officially editing the grade I gave Superman Returns down to 7,5/10. While he is wrong, he's not THAT wrong, and I think the pure joy of the movie having proven enjoyable against all hope made me a little biased when I wrote it.

HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!

And he writes really nicely (in more than one way) about an episode of Buffy!

HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!

I'm happy.



I think I need a glass of coke to celebrate.

Book Two Of The Malazan Book Of The Fallen


Marvellous read. Simply marvellous. Out of the five main plot-lines (Fiddler & Co, Kalam, Duiker, Felisin/Heboric and Mappo/Icarium) I loved one (Duiker), liked another two very much (Kalam & Fiddler) and neither of the two remaining ones were anywhere near boring. All plot-lines were marvelously entwined, too.

Much, much, much better than book 1. Insanely so. I'll not go into details, for fear of spoiling, but... the Chain of Dogs was incredible. Incredible.

I have questions, though, so if anyone of you have read the book, please answer me these questions:

Whatever happened to the note the nameless marine gave Duiker?
Whatever happened with those two familiars in the ending? I'm suspecting it is related to the bottle-thing given Coltaine by the Guild, later given by him to Duiker. So... am I interperting this right when I think Duiker may re-awaken in Coltaine's old body? This entire thing confused me, anyway.
Just how does Ascendancy take place? Am I to undetstand that Kallanved and Dancer ascended by walking into the Azath? Because while that seemed to be it in "Gardens", that doesn't seem to be the case after this book. And Gesler, Truth, Stormy and Coltaine, they were all on the border of Ascendancy, right? Why, how, and when, is my question. I realize this is left vague on purpose, but I suggest there may be information on it in the book which has slipped past me anyway.
Why was Shadowthrone so pleased in the ending? Laseen didn't die, the Azath didn't take Icarium, and I fail to see what other scheme of his actually worked out. He even, if I understood that somewhat confusing scene properly, lost his entire pack of Hounds. Why is he so big with the happy?
Fener's plan with Heboric, and his "being trapped on the mortal plane" - I didn't get any of that. What was/is Fenere's agenda?
And last, which child was she-who-was-Felisin talking about with Heboric at the end of the book? Was this some strange way of saying she was pregnant? If so, with who? The Talon?


There. I'd say, after nine hundred plus pages of complex plotting, I consider that an impressingly low amount of questions.

Well... sort of.

And not just me-quoted! I'm character-quoted! One of my characters in this story I'm working on (and, at some point in time, considered doing a map-development on on this weblog, which appears to have been forgotten) has been quoted by Terje, one of the people I'm using as test-readers, in his subnicktext on MSN. Yay for Terje, and for ol' William Panther, loyal officer and senile gentleman!


"Damned be my subconcious hints of exhibitionism!"




Now, if you weren't all that impressed, don't worry, it is, in all modesty, far better in context.

(You're supposed to pronounce the title with the intonation that Colbert pronounces "Called it!" with)


Terje quoted me in his MSN-subnicktext yet again! This time, it is from a debate I had/have with someone one a Wheel of Time-board who seems to have a lot of prejudice towards the fantasy genre. The quote is from a sentence where I dryly try to crystallize my point with quite a bit of exaggeration and bad attempts at humour:
"Fantasy kan skildre nøyaktig det det vil, det vere seg psykologi, religion, hesteavl eller bærplukking."
Which translates to "[the] fantasy [genre] is able to depict exactly what it wants to, be that psychology, religion, horse-breeding or the gathering of berries."


As for the debate it comes from, it started here, but as it grew to be off topic, it changed threads. There's a link to the new thread in the last relevant post on the thread I just linked, though, so you people (allright, Obdormio, as if anyone else'll body reading this) should be fine.