bradtastic

When in Cape Town, I went to the top of Table Mountain. It was amazingly hot with little breeze that day. But some plantlife was happily living up there.

http://www.mypapercrane.com/blog/?p=1578

We had a good time last night, despite the fact that all the snow we got kept some of our guests stuck at home. We decorated gingerbread (graham cracker) houses, exchanged cookies, listened to Christmas music, and had a fun evening. Thanks to everyone who came, and most especially wore a crazy Christmas sweater!

We made Christmas Mixed cds for everyone to take home as party favors. You can see the list of songs here–including some favorites like What Can You Get A Wookie For Christmas (when he already owns a comb)

So I built my first Elder Dragon Highlander deck last night. The general? Sapling of Colfenor. Why? Because I already had a B/G highlander deck (fairly successful in multiplayer) that I could adapt.

I'm not gonna write about it until I have a chance to play it, but I laid it out here because it's kind of like a puzzle - those who know Magic art well can see what cards I chose (barring basic land). Yes, it has a lot of powerful cards. But that's the way I like it!

...this year, we bought a water buffalo for Christmas.

Okay I don't know how the kid did it but a kid I was babysitting got ahold of my computer for all of 45 seconds yesterday and ever since it like...says out loud whatever I am doing. If I open up a new page in firefox it goes "firefox has a new page" etc with any and every program. If I scroll over the dock it says dock. It's driving me nuts and I went through system preferences but I can't figure out how to turn it off. :/ please help.

edit

Apparently it was voice over in universal access. :D

...will go up on Tuesday instead of Monday...

I've seen a few criticisms in the news recently, involving Obama having to make compromises to the Right to get things done (like the health care bill).  The criticism is that he should stand behind his principles, rather than negotiating to get a watered down bill through.  (And this also applies, apparently, to Copenhagen as well).

The thing is, he was being slammed by 'centrist' Democrats when he was trying to get things done.  They didn't like some of what was going into the bill, and to get them on-side, he had to make changes or they'd not have voted with him.  Then of course, there was needing to get enough Republicans on his side to actually get the thing through without being stonewalled, which meant more concessions.

So, I have to ask:  Would it be better to stick to your guns and lose and lose again and have nothing, or to concede some to get something through at all?  Is a minor victory better, or worse, than no victory at all?

different beauty textures

Roger Ebert said that when he watched Avatar, he had the same feeling that he did when he saw Star Wars - that from-the-future sensation of "Oh, this is going to change everything." And in that, he is correct.

Avatar is what movies will look like ten years from now, because it is the first movie in which they have gotten CGI and 3D right.

CGI's always been dicey because despite its tremendous usage, it still has yet to get heft and movement correct. There's something about non-human CGI that looks CGI - it's pretty, but the mind is subliminally aware that the way gravity interacts with things doesn't quite fit together. They've fixed most of that for humans, because you can (and should) motion-capture people - but for the other things like tumbling rocks or CGI animals, subliminally your mind still knows it's all just equations in a box somewhere. It's close, so you're willing to go with it, but somewhere in the back of your head you said, "It's a special effect."

Avatar has a whole CGI forest, and you buy every tree in it. There were points I kept having to remind myself that it was CGI, because that bioluminescent frond jiggled just perfectly when the fake character brushed against it. I don't know what they did to simulate mass correctly, but they did, and I bought the world wholesale.

That is an amazing feat. Let us congratulate James Cameron for that.

And the 3D? There were times I kept forgetting it was 3D, which sounds like a waste but it wasn't. This is the first movie where I've said, "Seeing this in 2D, the movie would lose something I don't want to live without." Sure, you can see shit like Journey to the Center of the Earth on your TV and miss out Brendan Frasier hocking a yo-yo in your eye, but who cares? But Avatar uses 3D to enhance the action scenes without making you aware that dude, you're in a 3D theater, isn't this awesome?

I'll state again: in ten years, this is what cinema will look like. Just like Terminator 2, he's taken umpty-million dollar and put every dollar of that money on-screen. It may, in fact, be one of the prettiest movies ever.

That is an amazing feat. Let us congratulate James Cameron for that.

Now. Let's discuss the plot.

I know I'll catch shit for this, but I'm not instinctively opposed to the "white guy meets noble savage" plot. It's hoary and can be completely insulting when done poorly (and yes, is mildly insulting when done well) - but the fact is that if you have some alien culture in a movie, the simplest and easiest way to introduce a reader to that culture is to have them experience it through the eyes of someone who is also new. It's lazy writing, but it's also effective, because at the moment your lead character is falling in love with this new set of people, so is your viewer.

(And sadly, at this moment in time "white guy" is going to be the stand-in for the viewer when Hollywood's involved - a regrettable choice I've come wearily to accept probably won't change in the next ten years. Although I'll disagree with some folks who've said that the underlying problems would evaporated if this had been Will Smith in the lead instead.)

The trick is, pulling off that plot is all about the subtlety. It can be done well, if white guy helps out the tribe but doesn't turn out to be the greatest warrior, the most intelligent planner, and the most swoony lover by mere nature of the fact that he exists and is white. So I said, "Self, I'm gonna hold off on this until I see how much finesse he applies. It's all about the subplots."

Avatar has no subplots.

Avatar has no finesse.

I'm going to reference Neil Gaiman's party theory here and say that most Hollywood films at least try to answer the question, "Why do I want to hang around this guy for the next two hours of my life? What makes him likeable?" Avatar is amazing because it sidesteps that question in its entirety.

The lead character is introduced as a man who lost the use of his legs and has a dead brother. How did he lose the use of his legs? In "a battle" in Venezuela. We don't know what the nature of the battle was, how he felt about the loss of his legs (aside from "he'd like them back"), what kind of soldier he was before. Nothing. And his relationship with his brother? Was it good? Bad? Is he driven by guilt, a need to supercede his brother, some need to make up for his brother's crimes? We have absolutely no clue why he's here or what he wants to accomplish aside from two facts - and those facts could mean any number of things.

Say what you will about Titanic, but at least at the beginning we knew that Rose wanted to be free of her too-strict societal conventions and Jack wanted freedom. The lead dude in Avatar is so blank that he's running on pure actorly charm - thank God the guy has a nice smile, because that smile is all the characterization you're gonna get.

So the emotional arc? Is completely stunted. Yes, of course lead dude falls in love with the civilization and defects to the other side, but do we know what it means to him personally aside from some sort of mishmash of The Earth is Good and Milspec Is Bad? Not really. We have no idea what he's personally rejecting in order to become a part of this world.

Any feelings you're gonna get from Avatar are coming straight from the SFX - it's like if Star Wars hadn't bothered to put in good dialogue (and yes, the original Star Wars has good dialogue, if not natural dialogue - check the number of quotable lines) and instead put all the weight on you feeling anything for Luke based on how awful that desert looked (so he'd want to leave) and how pretty the princess looked (so he'd want to follow her).

That's what Avatar is: a beautiful world where you're expected to fall in love with it just like the lead. Who doesn't really exist except as a hollow construct of actorly charm.

But the plot is thin, and often makes no fucking sense - rare for a James Cameron film. (I rather enjoyed how he went out of his way to show us why all that grand military equipment didn't work well against the Aliens.) ( In fact, let's ask the following questions... )

So what you get in the end is a very gorgeous movie where the natives, barring some very interesting biological quirks (I want an organic USB cable), don't have have the protective cladding of an interesting plot or fascinating characters to shield us from the knowledge that hey, these are Native Americans in blue garb! Which they are. They have the weapons of Native Americans, the vocal patterns of Native Americans, and the chanting and rituals of - well, Native Americans and some Africans. So suspension of disbelief, at least in that aspect, goes right out the window for anyone at all attuned to such things.

Let us bash James Cameron for that. His heart's probably somewhere in the vicinity of the right place, wanting us to love nature and people who love nature, but in the end what he creates is a fantasy where the native population is too butt-stupid to know how to fight the overwhelming power of the conquering civilization until the lead character comes along and shows them. In other words, the natives don't have the intelligence to build technology, and they don't have the wisdom to see the threat of the technology well enough to make plans to fight it effectively - but boy howdy, they have heart.

A heart that's only valuable because it can sucker a guy from that superior civilization into working for them. Otherwise? Toast. It's a value system that says, "You know, if only white guys had showed those Indians what to do, they'd have won!" Which, you know, is a little historically sketchy on so many levels that I don't even want to deconstruct that one.

It didn't ruin the movie for me, because it was extremely pretty. If I turned the brain off and watched the eye candy and said, "Holy crap, a mechasuit that looks mecha!" I was happy. Yet it was three hours long - and yes, viewers, I checked my watch twice. I'm not sure I'd go again by myself, but I'd happily take someone just to watch them gasp.

Avatar may be Hollywood's last gasp for the theater: You have to see this in the theater, in 3D. Have to. Because if you see it at home, on your crappy HDTV, the pretty's going to fade - and once the pretty fades, the plot is exposed for its underlying wreckage. And that plot? Hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny. It looks pretty, but most of your hungry bites are going to catch nothing but air.

( +++ )

Кольцо получилось очень удобным и простым, как я и хотела.
Можно носить стороной с деревом либо серебряной.
Размер этого кольца 18,5 остальные размеры под заказ.


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How would you find this beauty?


Only if you walk all way up to the top of Ollantaytambo ruins!

( Read more... )

I'm trying to upload pictures through iPhoto and I keep getting

( This message )

I have plenty of space on my harddrive so I don't understand what it's trying to tell me that there's no space.

Is there something I can use to upload pictures besides iPhoto?

My family and I took a small road trip out to San Antonio for the weekend, which is about a 4.75 hours drive from Dallas. I'm too tired to write too much about it tonight but just have to say that I really enjoyed it. It was my first time to the city, and I love the river walk! Just enjoyed spending time with my family, people watching, the Christmas lights at night, and strolling around the Alamo during the day. I would have loved to check out the bars and grab a couple of drinks, but that's not my parents cup of tea. It'd probably give them the impression that this is all I do in Denver too, which honestly would be amusing but not something I'd appreciate being nagged about. Nonetheless I loved spending time with my parents and siblings.

At one point when we were out strolling around last night, Dad tried to casually slip in the conversation of "Maybe you should move home because see what you're missing? When do you think you'll move here?" He's right. I do know what I'm missing, and I felt bad because I told him it wasn't the right time to talk about it. We quickly brush the topic aside. It's a hindering subject, and something I've been looming over for awhile. When is there ever a good time for me to talk about it? I love my Dad so much, and somehow telling him that being in Dallas is just not where I want to be at this point of my life is not enough for him. At the same time, he's growing so old now and as the eldest daughter I feel responsible moving home to be with him and my mom. I can accomplish the same things in Dallas as much as being in Denver. So what's keeping me? The mountains, yoga training, education in CO, my lifestyle, etc.--- All of it. It doesn't mean that I love my parents less, but I'm just not ready for the transition just yet. I feel selfish.

Ah...love. Regardless if it's family, friends, or lovers, sometimes it's just not easy, isn't it?

Anyway, turns out I did write a little more than I thought I would. I guess it's a good thing to get things off my mind. Spending time with my family does make me realize how much I miss them. Then again I think me being this sappy around this time of year is inevitable.

Well I'm grabbing a piece of pecan pie and calling it a night by reading. I've been reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang, and it's such a wonderful novel! It's amazing how the role of Chinese women can change drastically in three generations. Chang's family history makes me wonder about my ancestors during the 20th century. There's definitely a lack of knowledge in knowing my family history. My maternal great grandparents owned a silk factory in China, my paternal great grandfather had two wives in Vietnam...and that's my extent of knowledge. I should dig into it more. Also I've never even been to China, but I'm drawn to it's history so I'm actually learning quite a bit about China reading this book. I'll have to look into Chang's Mao: The Unknown Story after I finish this book.

*[wip]- colored pencil flowers-