Spring, spring, spring

Watched Sherlock Holmes. I didn't expect any similarities to the original Sherlock, so I wasn't disappointed. It's a neat film. I enjoyed it.
A lot was changed in comparision with the original books. I'm not a die-hard detective novel fan, so I don't mind. It makes me wonder why, though. There isn't much left of what Sherlock was in the 19th century. You still have the deductive intellect and the affinity to the night. But, also, now you have sex and action.
My theories are that either people don't like a perfect hero anymore, because they cannot relate to them. Sherlock is pretty much perfect, when it comes to the standards of the time in which he was written. Dr. Watson's role was also spiced up. There's no top-down hierarchy anymore. Instead, you have a flat hierarchy. What does that tell us? The western world still has mostly top-down hierarchies, and I don't think most people want to change it (do I hear yells of "anarchy!"?).
Maybe a pure detective movie wouldn't work anymore. Not enough action. Nothing to get women into the theatres.
Who knows?

***

Now there's a video game on guerilla gardening. You can see pretty neat stuff on this video. Screaming flowers. And there will be puppies.

I swear, Subterranean Press publishes the prettiest books (probably also the most expensive ones). Now there's a limited edition of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Awesome book. Pretty, pretty edition.
(But why does the market practically force consumers to have a credit card to acquire all the neat things?)

***

Some tiny illustrations I did for work:





There's a colored version of the latter somewhere...

The Visual and the Lexical

Some interesting points concerning my diploma thesis topic from the PhD thesis of A. Hall (The Meaning of Elf and Elves in Medieval England):

- Looking at the linguistic treatment of the word "aelf", they are not small and invisible
- Elves have sometimes been related to (fallen) angels. If you leave aside the "fallen" part, elves are related to holiness. This explains why Thomas Hardy, in Jude the Obsucre, compares the female main character twice with an elf or calls her elfin - thus stressing her purity.
- In the 8th century, aelf still connotated males only. It wasn't until the 11th century that the term could also denote females.

***

The cinemas in Linz seem to be overrun because a. it's vacation time and b. Avatar is on. It's seriously impossible to reserve a seat at the evening screenings, unless you want to sit in the first four rows. Despite this, I managed to see it (in the afternoon).
Avatar is awesome. I love it. Finally, after probably a year of bad films, one worth watching (except for Up and District 9, maybe). The creature design is so-so (in general, it's pretty obvious where the film drew its inspirations from, starting with the overall story down to most creature designs). The birds are neat. So are the winged frogs and the avatars/Na'vi. Most impressive of all is the landscape design. The beauty, colourfulness and richness of the plant life is sheer overwhelming (which is probably good and necessary, if you think about the gist of the story). The cinematography was good, too. I likefd how depth and perspective were used and played with, especially in the intitial sequence. That made the 3D effect even more impressive. Later it was used in a more subdued way, which I think I prefer when it comes to 3D. It just makes you feel at home with the technology, because it seems natural. When the technology is shoved into your face, it rather screams "Look at me. See how cool I am. The special effects are all you need to pay attention to. Ignore everything else."
The acting was very convincing. Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver did an outstanding job both as humans and in their avatars. Cameron has created a bunch of very likable characters (I'm thinking particularly of Trudy here).
-Minor spoiler warning. Don't read on if you haven't seen the film yet-
The story - yes, it was predictable and has been there before (multiple times). Does it matter? I think not. Most stories have parallels to stories that have been here before, because, well, we're all human and pretty much the same stuff makes us all tick. We write stories that we'd want to read ourselves, so it's clear that they have certain common denominators. The message of Avatar is an important one, and it hurts not to have it repeated.
For me, the film reminded me that I have wanted to read into various indigenous cultures for some time (too much stuff I want to read). Their culture, their belief system, their rites, and, most importantly, their place in today's globalised world. And not just the major, known ones, like the Native Americans or Aboriginees. Like with languages, there's a multitude of cultures out there which are dying every moment. I can only imagine the knowledge and individuality that has been lost in this process. To learn about and listen to them is, I believe, an enriching journey.

***

An awesome video of Eiga doing oji waza. My eyes are getting watery when I watch this.


Mit dem neuen Jahr kommt auch eine neue Ausgabe des vierteljährlich erscheinenden Fanzines für Spekulative Fiktion (Fantasy/SciFi/Horror/Mystery) Specflash. 90 Seiten an Kurzgeschichten, Interviews, Artikeln und Rezensionen laden zum Lesen ein. Das Hauptthema der Ausgabe sind Vampire. Empfehlenswert ist vor allem Udo Eickenbergs Kurzgeschichte "Die letzte Prüfung", die auf die Entwicklung der Menschheit in den nächsten 150 Jahren blickt.


Ich koche ja gerne und oft, und probiere fast täglich neue Rezepte aus. Bei der Rezeptsuche und beim Foren-Lesen kommt man dabei stets über das beliebte Wort "lecker". Mittlerweile kann ich's nicht mehr sehen. So geht es wohl nicht nur mir, denn beim Stöbern in einem ausgezeichneten Koch-Blog, kam ich über diesen Eintrag. Viel Spaß beim Lexikon-Erweitern!

Movies

Election day is pretty much over. I guess it could have been worse, but I'm not exactly thrilled about the results.

Watched two movies recently, both very recommendable. The first was Pixar's Up in 3D. I'm not really one for special effects, but the 3D in both Up and Ice Age 3 amazed me. Moreso in the former, because Ice Age pushed the effects right into your face, while Up was more subtle. It felt like being in a wonderful, colourful 3D universe, with the 3D being natural rather than special. Nice.
The film itself (apart from the 3D) was quite good, too. I don't remember that any film I've watched so far has managed to make me cry in the initial 10 minutes. Pixar are masters of their craft. Particularly the non-verbal scenes right at the beginning are phenomenal. It takes an artist to create an attachment to a character with only images in such a short time.

The second movie was District 9. The trailer made me wonder if the movie had a plot. It had. The film shows some gritty, believable Science Fiction with a couple of plot holes and many open questions, which offers much material for discussion. It is also highly critical of society and has all of the good stuff - funny dialogue, intriguing background and for the mainstream folks blood and action. Good soundtrack, too. And the documentary style which the movie uses appeals to me greatly.

***

Vor zwei Wochenenden war ich auf der Wearfair, der Messe für ökologische und nachhaltige Mode, die zum zweiten Mal in Linz stattfand. Auch wenn die Kritiken die Messe als eher klein und noch aufstrebend betiteln, fand ich sie recht beeindruckend - schon umfangreich und mit vielen Ausstellern. In Linz gibt es ja nur eine handvoll Lokalitäten, wo man derlei Kleidung kaufen kann. Großteils ist man leider auf den Online-Versand angewiesen. Aber die Messe hat mir auch gezeigt, dass das Segment auch in Linz im Wachsen begriffen ist, und zumindest die Wearfair ist ein guter jährlicher Anlaufpunkt, um sich bei Bedarf mit Kleidung einzudecken.

Auf dem Weg zurück zur Straßenbahn kam ich dann noch über eines der Projekte des Kranken Hasen, den ich seit meiner Visite beim Haus der Geschichten kenne. Ich mag die Aktionen, die der kranke Hase bringt - Tanzen zu unhörbarer Musik, auf Leute in der Einkaufsstraße wirr einreden und, wie in diesem Fall, eine Baumdisco. Die Dinge sind so schön skurril, kurios und abseits der Norm, dass man sie doch nur mögen kann. Denn was ist schon normal.

Quickie

Quick sketch before going to bed.




(The Lord of War audio commentary is kickass. With a quality like that, you watch the film once, and every subsequent time you watch the commentary because it has more interesting information to offer.)

Once

Some quotes I stumbled over in the last weeks:

From Babylon 5 (I re-watched all seasons recently - fun :D)

"I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by a liberal media elite."

(not quite as good as Ivanova's:
"Who is this? Identify yourself?"
"Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova, Commander, daughter of Andre and Sophie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengence and the boot that is gonna kick your sorry ass back to earth. I am death incarnate. And the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me."
...but also quite amusing when hearing it in the series.)


And from a book I've just finished reading:

"Linda Stone [...] labeled the disease of the Internet age 'continuous partial attention'-two people doing six things, devoting only partial attention to each one-she remarked to me, 'We're so accessible, we're inaccessible. We can't find the off switch on our devices or on ourselves. We want to wear an iPod as much to listen to our own playlists as to block out the rest of the world and protect ourselves from all that noise. We are everywhere-except where we actually are physically."

and

"Does your society have more memories than dreams or more dreams than memories?
By dreams I mean the positive, life-affirming variety. [...] 'One thing that tells me a company is in trouble is when they tell me how good they were in the past. Same with countries. You don't want to forget your identity. I am glad you were great in the fourteenth century, but that was then and this is now. When memories exceed dreams, the end is near. [...]' In societies that have more memories than dreams, too many people are spending too many days looking backward. They see dignity, affirmation, and self-worth not by mining the present but by chewing on the past. And even that is usually not a real past but an imagined and adorned past. Indeed, such societies focus all their imagination on making that imagined past even more beautiful than it ever was, and then they cling to it like a rosary or a strand of worry beads, rather than imagining a better future and acting on that."

***

Last week I noticed one of the small, private bookshops in downtown had closed down. It had been a family business for 200 years. The small note on the door sounded as if the owner had had a very hard time actually deciding he had to close the shop for good. Seeing it hit me by surprise, too, even though it shouldn't. You grow so familiar with the small businesses that you walk past regularly that you take them for granted.
But, shamefully I have to admit it has been years since the last time I bought a book there. My tries to buy local products haven't really gone much further than the food-sector.

I was similarly surprised when I walked into the Moviemento on Thursday and saw masses of people queuing up for the film I wanted to see. It seems arthouse films aren't so much arthouse anymore when it comes to the audience. That's probably good. Hollywood shouldn't be the only one to make money.
The film I saw was Once. I was a bit unhappy at first, because the film had German subtitles, but ended up being happy about that because the story is set in Dublin and one of the protagonists is Irish - so I got to listen to that lovely Irish accent after not having heard it in a long time. Overall, the language was a big treat in the film. Like many other aspects, it felt very natural and realistic. It isn't the polished, movie-English that you get in most films nowadays. It's colloquial, down-to-earth and how I remember people speak (sometimes painfully so, bringing up old memories).
The music is another treat. It has a big part in the film, and admittedly, I only wento to watch the film because I had listened to the soundtrack over and over again in the last weeks and it stayed with me all the time (you can listen to all of it here).
All in all, it's a very rare and special film. I don't remember the last time I sat in a cinema and forgot where I was, completely emerged in the story that evolved between the screen and my mind. Walking out of the cinema, I was speechless, slightly confused and in a way out of touch with my surroundings, as a part of me was still within the story.
It was quite an experience.

***

Small memory from last month:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I'm probably referring to my Popular Culture lecture from Oxford way too often. But sometimes life gives you stuff that sticks with you mentally and every now and then your mind opens up the drawer in which it was hidden.

A film that we watched in that lecture was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It was an interesting film, but I didn't fully understand its point and in general it wasn't the type of film that I normally like.
Still, something in the title intrigues me. Wikipedia says:

According to Kundera, "being" is full of "unbearable lightness" because each of us has only one life to live: "Einmal ist keinmal" ("once is nonce", i.e., "what happened once might as well have never happened at all"). Therefore, each life is ultimately insignificant; every decision ultimately does not matter. Since decisions do not matter, they are "light": they do not tie us down. But at the same time, the insignificance of our decisions—our lives, or being—is unbearable. Hence, "the unbearable lightness of being".

Which is something I need to internalise. I simply can't make decisions and usually let life and fate make them for me (which works surprisingly well).

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I remained pretty unaffected by today for most of the day. But ... at some point, the urge to do something grew too strong and I couldn't resist any longer.

Spread the love.



And this isn't a subtle hint that my cannibalistic tendencies and my appetite for sweets are interrelated. Tehehehe :->