Mere, who recently saw YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES and really dug it, has really wanted to see the new SHERLOCK HOLMES movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.  Everyone else in the house wants to see it, but we’re not sure as to whether it’s really appropriate for the little mystery junkie.

Same situation with AVATAR in regard to not-sure-if-appropriate-but-everyone-wants-to-see-it.

Post your thoughts, ESPECIALLY if you saw either of the movies, as to whether you thing either one would be something she could deal with.

This year we decided to buy a big household present for everyone rather than a lot of stuff (of course, Mere still makes out, but…) so the big add was a combination of an HD TV for the living room, and a  HD TiVo and a Blu-Ray player to go with it.

This is changing the ‘viewing experience’ quite a bit here.

First, there’s remembering where the heck the HD channels are….I just finished a listing of the channels that we watch and how to find them, with a note on there as to which is HD and which isn’t – and if there’s a HD channel, that’s the one in the listing.

Without the listing, it’s VERY confusing.

The HD TiVo really has much more limited space than the old living room one, and while TiVo touts a ‘DVR Extender’ eSATA hard drive that you can attach to the thing with a Terabyte of space, the things are out of stock and unavailable – apparently Western Digital ran into serious quality problems with the thing and has ‘temporarily’ stopped production.  For now, anyway.

That means no pile of stuff on the TiVo that we haven’t gotten around to, and that we’re forced to watch and delete on a real thorough basis.

The HD TiVo does have one very nice feature – it records in HD, of course, but it also can pull down streaming stuff for us from my Netflix account.  Some of their movies are set up that way, and we’ve discontinued our movie channels as of yesterday – the Netflix stuff (either rental or streaming) is much more useful and bang-for-the-buck.

It also is able to access YouTube, for what that’s worth.

The quality of the HD images and of the Blu-Ray player is rather good, and we like that part a lot.  Both the TiVo and the Blu-Ray are hooked up to the house Ethernet system, and can pull things off it from the Internet or be updated on firmware that way.   We only have two Blu-Ray discs at present – my gifts via Sinterklaas – UP and NATIONAL TREASURE, but we haven’t gotten through either yet.  In the future, I’ll probably buy either combo packages (DVD, Blu-Ray and ‘downloadable to MP3 Video player’) or Blu-Ray for the future.

Actually, our purchases of DVDs was dropping considerably.  Ditto books.  Susan and her Mom are on a Sara Paretsky binge at the library, going through the entire oeuvre, and I’m too busy to do much reading for pleasure (and have a huge backlog in any event) right now.

Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland on his old 31-year old criminal warrant from America.  I didn’t think they’d ever manage that one.

Online search references for the Quran and the Bible;  the Quran part has both the Arabic and three English translations, and the Bible one has a BUNCH of different translations, most NOT English (which has around 20 different versions).

Note that the authoritative version of the Quran is the Arabic one, of course.  And this is the relevant text from the Book of Armaments.  (See also the Rabbit of Caerbannog.)

Saw the trailer for 2012 at Harry Potter 6; I was going oh geeze and razzing the ridiculous POS. Maybe my present health situation has made everything-go-boom Novels and Stories a whole lot less interesting, but this one is just trading on the latest millennial fear nonsense. I say it’s spinach cilantro and I say to hell with it.

Saw it with the family today; Mere and Kay have been whomped with allergies, and I think they’re turning into sinus infections.  The kids hate taking stuff for the allergies and hate the nasal sprays, but they hate worse being sick.

In any event, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the film, mostly because so much got screwed around with or cut.  Visually, it was a treat.   My feeling is that if you dig the story at all, read the books, they’re far better.  The end.

ORPHAN: My readers quietly passed along some information on this still-yet-to-open movie that I trashed earlier…and a little more information on a personal note.

Susan talked to Mere, and she got the impression from Meredith that the sheer scariness of the poster got to Mere more than anything else.

Arthur passed along this article from the Daily Beast about one adoptive mother’s upset over the film, and why it’s wildly *wrong* about the adoption experience, et cetera, and perpetuates a lot of damn fool notions about it. it’s worth a read.

Another reader who has been  connected into the film world wrote in and said:

Anyway, I checked my mailbox yesterday, and what did I find? Not just a preview pass, but a postcard exhorting me to “register for free preview screenings of and great prizes from” Orphan. If they’re being that lazy, then we’re talking a dog that’s probably going to bomb on DVD. I thought you’d want to know, because a little schadenfreude goes a long way.

I hope the producers lose their shirts on it.

No, this isn’t an advertisement as such.  Both the US and UK versions of Amazon are running DVD sales, and I’m listing out my ooh-that-would-be-interesting list for my purposes (and your edification, in case you have similar interests).

Note that I have multi-region / NTSC and PAL reading DVD players in the house, and that the UK PAL stuff won’t be readable on normal US systems, and vice versa.  Personally, I hate the regions system.

UK:

• Complete Jeeves and Wooster (Fry and Laurie; I have only seen bits of this)
• The Palace (ITV drama series about an alternate royal family; we loved it and I wouldn’t mind having a cheap copy of this)
• The Chinese Detective (sounds interesting, but I really don’t know beans about it)
• Complete Gilbert and Sullivan (1982 series, I think this was done over here for PBS, and this puts back in stuff that was edited from the VHS version, which I had at one time; it was ruined in a flood – need to see if there’s a US version of this)
• Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (not for me, guys, but for future material for Mere, considering how much she loves British/Australian kids stuff)
• The Devil’s Whore (pay no attention to the title; historical fiction drama set during the English Civil War of the 1650s)
• Einstein and Eddington (historical drama around the time of WW1, and yes, that’s Albert Einstein and yes, this has Physics in it, and it looks cool.)

This weekend, Meredith, her cousin Kay and I got out on a rare outing to a movie, and saw STAR TREK on the big screen; the kids were ‘I-dunno-about-this’ until they got sucked into the story, and they want MORE.    I thought for a re-boot of the original series, it was actually darn decent.

The problem was that Meredith was flipping out over a poster on the wall as we went into the theater at the multiplex; I’d heard of this movie vaguely, from online groups I’m connected with, but I didn’t expect her to spot it and be totally flipped out about it.  (possibly triggering movie poster for Adoptive kids after the cut and some spoilers about the movie ORPHAN.)

Unlike many folks out there who read this, I’m not a gung-ho Anime fan; part of it is that extreme cuteness isn’t a big draw for me, and the other is that the more wild, cartoony stuff isn’t much in my taste, either.

However, I have exposed Mere to the Miyazaki movies, and she’s seen a few; KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, THE CAT RETURNS, NAUSICAA, CASTLE IN THE SKY and HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE are favorites, and she just saw WHISPER OF THE HEART with her cousin.  It was a little slow for me, but it was right up the tweener girl alley.

I’ve held off on SPIRITED AWAY;  partially from the parents-taken-away stuff that can be triggering for adoptees, and partially from the scary-weird parts (she’s sensitive to that, and her sister far more so).  She saw MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, but that was a while back, and she found it weird and very very slow.

I should look into PORCO ROSSO and POM POKO, I assume.

Any other suggestions?

The only series anime she’s seen was HAIBANE RENMEI, which we all loved.   (One of the discs is missing, I gotta replace it.)   Her con ‘persona’ name, when she uses it, is ‘Little Reki’, from that series.   If you’re suggesting a series, keep in mind that she’s still only 9 1/2, and that if it’s too weird or slow, she’ll lose interest.

But she and her cousin Kay are digging into the house Anime stuff with great gusto, and i’d like to keep them supplied in Anime crack.

I finished going through the VHS tapes that I can do anything with;  I’ll  hooking up the phonograph next to get working on digitizing the records to MP3s.

There’s around three boxes of pre-recorded tapes left to be disposed of (either at Goodwill or a local used-media store) and a small handful of tapes left over for actual sale (Amazon rated them above $15, so they’re worth fooling with) and two to offer off to a local friend first.

The stuff left:

• Nick Danger In the Case of the Missing Yolk (Firesign Theater) – $100 on Amazon
• Firesign Theater: Martian Space Party  – $20 on secondary site
• Emigrants  / The New Land (both around $40-45 on Amazon)
• CBC: Life and Times – Robert Munsch (totally unavailable in any format anywhere; gotta be worth something)
• Le Grand Chemin $20 at amazon
• Cast A Deadly Spell $15 at amazon
• Little Dorrit – Part One: Nobody’s Fault $24 at amazon

The two I’m handing off:

• Groucho: A life in revue
• One Warm Line (Stan Rogers documentary)

If someone’s interested in the sale stuff, let me know, and we’ll arrange something.  I’m giving my friend a few days to see if she’s interested in the other two, and then they’re free for the asking.

Time Magazine:  mashup of Iranian Politics and Lord of the Rings.

Channel Two is putting on a Lord of the Rings marathon as part of the government’s efforts to restore peace.

Lots of people, adults and kids, are watching in the room with me. On the screen, Gandalf the Grey returns to the Fellowship as Gandalf the White. He casts a blinding white light, his face is hidden behind a halo. Someone blurts out, “Imam zaman e?!” Is it the Imam? It is a reference, of course, to the white-bearded Ayatullah Khomeini, who is respectfully called Imam Khomeini. But “Imam” is at the same time a title of the Mahdi, a messianic figure that Muslims believe will come to save true believers from powerful evildoers at the time of the apocalypse. Isn’t that our predicament?

And listen: there is the sly reference to Ahmadinejad. Iranian films are dubbed very expertly. So listen to the Farsi word they use for hobbit and dwarf: kootoole, little person. Kootoole, of course, was and is, the term used in many of the chants out on the street against the diminutive President.

In the eye of the beholder in Tehran, the movie is transformed into an Iranian epic. When Gandalf’s white steed strides into the frame, local viewers see Rakhsh, the mythical horse of the Rostam, the great champion of the Shahnameh, the thousand-year old national epic. “Bah, bah…Rakhsh! Rakhsham amad!” someone says, in awe.

At the moment the ancient Treebeard bears Pippin through the forest and the hobbit asks, “And whose side are you on?” those of us watching already know the answer: Mousavi! Treebeard is decked in green, after all.

Yes, I know I’m considered to be a real bug about such things, especially in alternate history fiction….

For my Swedish and Swedish-American readers in particular: Does THE EMIGRANTS / THE NEW LAND (Utvandrarna / Nybyggarna) strike you as real, as something that sounds/feels/is right in regards to the Swedish emigration to North America? (Others are welcome to throw in their comments as well.)

For anyone else: What movies have struck you as particularly good or bad (especially the good ones) in regard to the research / historicity of the period, people and so forth?

“I am sorry and did not want to hurt her. I still love Haylie and would have stopped doing porn if she had asked me to.”

Woman finds out when arranging for her batchelorette / hen party that her fiance is a porn actor.   Not was, but IS.

Marvellous stuff.  See it.  Meredith, Kailyn and I went right after work, and we saw it in 3D (which we very much recommend) and were just blown away.  *splutter*

The kids were just babbling as we came out, and I was not far behind.   And the commercials on TV with the cranky old man tell you virtually **nothing** of the story.  Ignore them.

While retrieving THE FIXER from one of my off-air VHS tapes, I ran across the real-life story that the movie/novel was based on - see the story of the Beilis Trial in late Tsarist Russia in Wikipedia.  Wow.

Movie in Frames: the site that dares you to present the essence of a movie in four frames.

CORALINE (7 out of 10) - Recommended, with care
MONSTERS VS ALIENS (6 out of 10) - Recommended

Meredith is a big fantasy fan, and was interested in both of these due to the heavy TV advertising.  We saw both of these in Tru3D, which I recommend as adding to the story (as it did in Bolt) because there’s a LOT of action.

CORALINE can be VERY scary to little kids.  I would not take anyone less mature than Mere to it.   I got grabbed HARD a lot of times in that movie.

MONSTERS VS ALIENS is fluffy story-wise, but the nonstop action might be too much for younger kids, especially if they’re watching it in 3D.

Adults will have a good time with either, but CORALINE’s got more substance to it by a mile.  MONSTERS VS ALIENS is fun fluff.

Boy meets girl, swamp creature eats boy, girl runs off with swamp creature.  It’s an old story.

LJ: cedarseed is in Ethiopia; I’ve always been intrigued by the classical end of Ethiopian civilization (I need to pick up a Budge book on Ethiopian magic one of these days) and love looking at classic Ethiopian art.    Some good photos; check it out and her LJ in general.

Jay Lake and his family (especially his daughter, who, like mine, originated in China) are toodling around in China, with lots of pictures there and at his Flickr site.

Highly recommended by me and Meredith: The Tivoli Theater in downtown Downers Grove, about 30 miles west of the Chicago Loop.  And if you’re in the city, try the Gene Siskel Theater.

Fanzine: Henry Welch’s The Knarley Knews.

We aren’t going anywhere for the Easter holiday, alas.  Meredith is part of a twin study with Sissy, and is supposed to be given her IQ tests and whatnot this weekend here at the house by a professional tester; one of my many tasks is to finish up an evaluation of her to hand in for the study.  Sunday, we’re invited up to Susan’s aunt’s house for a while to eat an Easter dinner of sorts off of their new grill.   And as usual, I have a blue million things to do.