And so it begins. . .

I've finally done it. I've gotten a LiveJournal so that a) my comments on other people's LJs will no longer be "anonymous" but b) (more importantly), I can share my vast wealth of opinions with everyone else! Or at least the five or six people who will bother to read this blog occasionally!

I've been thinking about getting a blog for months now. I figured that since I read more on LJ than any of the others, I should be on LJ. Of course, that decision seems to have precipitated a server outage; I wasn't able to get to LJ for a couple of hours, although all the other websites I use seemed to be fine. Perhaps that should be a warning (to me, or to my readers; I'm not sure).

I intend to write about books I'm reading or have read, movies I've watched, shows I watch, and maybe a little about fanfic (although I hope my own fics are self-explanatory).

My fics, for those who want to read them, are at Aelfgyfu's Mead Hall.

And so it begins. . .

I've finally done it. I've gotten a LiveJournal so that a) my comments on other people's LJs will no longer be "anonymous" but b) (more importantly), I can share my vast wealth of opinions with everyone else! Or at least the five or six people who will bother to read this blog occasionally!

I've been thinking about getting a blog for months now. I figured that since I read more on LJ than any of the others, I should be on LJ. Of course, that decision seems to have precipitated a server outage; I wasn't able to get to LJ for a couple of hours, although all the other websites I use seemed to be fine. Perhaps that should be a warning (to me, or to my readers; I'm not sure).

I intend to write about books I'm reading or have read, movies I've watched, shows I watch, and maybe a little about fanfic (although I hope my own fics are self-explanatory).

My fics, for those who want to read them, are at Aelfgyfu's Mead Hall.

Primer

If you love science fiction, go see this movie. Honestly, one of the reasons I started an LJ was so that I could tell people what to do--I mean, make recommendations.

Primer is a little SF indie movie I never even heard about until this year when we activated our three-month Netflix gift. If you want, you can look it up here: IMDb entry. Shane Carruth, the writer/star/director/cinematographer/producer/editor/composer/sound department/production designer/casting director (whew!) said he wanted to make a movie exploring friendship and trust, and at that level it's pretty successful. It's even more successful as a hard SF movie--made on a $7000 budget. My gosh. I hope this man makes more movies!

Brief synopsis: four friends are working on projects in one's garage. Two of them discover that they've accidentally made a time machine. "You got it--you gotta use it." To tell much more would be to give too much away.

The movie makes no concessions to audience inattention or ignorance. It won't talk down to you. In fact, my husband and I got to the end of the movie and went to Wikipedia to read the entry there to be sure we'd understood everything correctly! One Wikipedia entry, one viewing of the movie with commentary, and one more viewing of key scenes without commentary later, we realized we'd been mostly correct all along, but a little extra help . . . helped.

I wish more people made movies that challenged me and made me think for days. We watched The Prestige a few days later, and my husband said, "That's the difference between a big movie and Primer--at the end of this movie, they had to tell you what happened!" (Of course, it might have helped us if Primer told us just a little more about what happened!)

I don't generally like time-travel stories because I feel that most are badly done. Primer considers many facets, plausibly. I love this movie. See it--it's amazing.

Primer

If you love science fiction, go see this movie. Honestly, one of the reasons I started an LJ was so that I could tell people what to do--I mean, make recommendations.

Primer is a little SF indie movie I never even heard about until this year when we activated our three-month Netflix gift. If you want, you can look it up here: IMDb entry. Shane Carruth, the writer/star/director/cinematographer/producer/editor/composer/sound department/production designer/casting director (whew!) said he wanted to make a movie exploring friendship and trust, and at that level it's pretty successful. It's even more successful as a hard SF movie--made on a $7000 budget. My gosh. I hope this man makes more movies!

Brief synopsis: four friends are working on projects in one's garage. Two of them discover that they've accidentally made a time machine. "You got it--you gotta use it." To tell much more would be to give too much away.

The movie makes no concessions to audience inattention or ignorance. It won't talk down to you. In fact, my husband and I got to the end of the movie and went to Wikipedia to read the entry there to be sure we'd understood everything correctly! One Wikipedia entry, one viewing of the movie with commentary, and one more viewing of key scenes without commentary later, we realized we'd been mostly correct all along, but a little extra help . . . helped.

I wish more people made movies that challenged me and made me think for days. We watched The Prestige a few days later, and my husband said, "That's the difference between a big movie and Primer--at the end of this movie, they had to tell you what happened!" (Of course, it might have helped us if Primer told us just a little more about what happened!)

I don't generally like time-travel stories because I feel that most are badly done. Primer considers many facets, plausibly. I love this movie. See it--it's amazing.