Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

...and then, an unexpected return to my youth. *grin*

triadruid, matchgirl42, popefelix, ruisseau and I went out last night to see Fishnets and Floorshows do the Rocky Horror Picture Show at Screenland. We get in the door, having navigated the question "Are you here for RHPS, or the Bible study?", and are standing around idly (okay, I was gawking at a hot androgynous redhead... all RHPS troupes are apparently by law required to have a hot androgynous redhead, and thank all the gods for that really!).

Then, said H.A.R. is pointing at me. And saying "She's cute, let's ask her." Then, zie's walking over saying, "How many times have you seen this movie?". I fumble around in my brain for a number. "Well, I used to be in a cast in Florida, so, a lot, but it's been a really long time since I've seen the film." Zie says, "Good enough. Our Columbia can't make it tonight, could you be Columbia?" I say... er. And then, I say "Sure, but I can't tap-dance. Do you have a hat?"

And lo, it came to pass that I did not get to sit safely in the audience and yell out rude things at the screen, but instead, got to run around for two hours variously screaming, dancing, and flailing. Apparently, I did all right, (or they're really short of players) because they asked me to come back next week and finish the October run. I'm divided. On the one hand, it's a lot of fun, and I probably wasn't doing anything at midnight next Friday and Saturday. On the other, I have *no* costuming, I still can't tap-dance, and I woke up this morning with glitter in my eye. Hrm.

Anyway, they put on a very funny show. Since I haven't been to a production in manymany years, there's a whole load of new lines that I haven't heard -- you'd be amazed how many Sarah Palin jokes you can fit into the script. If you are in the area and have any interest at all in the Cult of Rocky, I suggest you buy tickets now. The show runs next Friday and Saturday and midnight. Saturday's performance is alleged to be costume night, with some sort of contest.

EDIT: In other news, triadruid wore PVC pants to the show. I believe the phrase "Hot Damn!" is appropriate.

Other than Beltane and Beltane and Beltane and Beltane, this weekend featured Iron Man. If you have any interest at all in superhero films, films that go boom, or Robert Downey Jr., I exhort you to see this film. I mean, really. You so rarely get a chance to walk out of a film saying, "Wow, that was the role that man was *born* to play." (Actually, that might happen to other people more often, but I mostly only watch the sort of films with a lot of monsters and explosions. But I digress.) Robert Downey Jr. is a better Tony Stark than a lot of the Tony Starks in the comics. Seriously.

Further notes from the film:
- When it comes to playboy billionaires, Bruce Wayne is Doing It Wrong.
- Gwyneth Paltrow makes an adorable redhead.
- Apparently I have some sort of paraphilia for machinery. You get some lovely sequences of Stark 'suiting up' that were far more interesting to me than they should have been. I mean, yes, it's Beltane and all that, but still. (This is actually not that surprising. I mean really, it was like machine porn. Gratuitous engineering. Or something.)
- It is possible to shoot a scene involving industrial robotic arms as characters, and give said robotic arms an astonishing range of expression.
- I've said it before, but I'll say it again: They'll let *anybody* be an Avenger.

All in all, a fully worthwhile way to spend an evening. Also, for what it's worth, I predict that agrnmn's robotics class will experience a dramatic upswing in interest when school starts again. :)

This weekend kicked a lot of ass. Some of it was mine. *grin*
( How I spent my Summer Vacation... er... Weekend. )

Also, somewhere in there, I had the first root beer float I've had in over a year. Somewhere in there, I spent a lot of time in bed, mostly with company. Somewhere in there, I cooked a meal and made oatmeal cookies. I'm liking this weekend-with-few-commitments thing. I'm going to try to do some more of it. Like next weekend, maybe.

Bit of an entertainment, from jackbabalon23. This is a movie game.
Here's how it works:

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb (or Wikiquote) and find a quote from each movie. (or in some cases, just remember them.)
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out Italicize it when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it correctly and the name of the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb/Wikiquote search functions.
6. I'm stealing jackbabalon23's rule, too - no more than two correct per person, please. I know some of you are encyclopedic in your knowledge of dumb movie lines. :)

( Ready? Go. )

I just saw the director's cut re-release of Blade Runner. I had not seen the film before (although I did read the story last year...) and every time I say that to somebody, they go, "WTF? You haven't seen Blade Runner? How could that be true? It's so very you!"

And, now that I've seen it, I had to ask myself "Holy shit! How could I have not seen this movie?". I mean, really, I've spent 25 years of my life having not seen Blade Runner, and it is so very very fucking me. It expresses practically the whole of my aesthetic preferences. It asks Probing Questions About What It Means To Be Human. It is chock full of moral ambiguity. You don't really know what happens to the hero and the heroine at the end. And, a guy fucks a robot(!!).

Anyway, I feel enriched by the experience.

Dragged out to see Sweeney Todd last night with adammaker, and had an effing blast. jackbabalon23 called the film 120 minutes of Sondheim and Gomorrah, which is accurate, and I can't come up with a better descriptor than that, so I'm stealing his. I promised orcjohn I'd tell him how the film was, so here I am, telling him how the film was: It was mostly brilliant, and extremely funny. We laughed at all the wrong parts, which are, of course, all the right parts. There's a bit in the beginning where they do a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride style shot, moving through London, narrowly avoiding any number of disastrous collisions, and it's just about worth the price of admission by itself.

I was a little worried about whether or not Johnny Depp could, you know, sing at all, but I hear he had lessons, and he acquitted himself reasonably well. Well enough for Sondheim, anyway, and where he falters, it's just as much a product of Todd's accent as anything else. Sacha Baron Cohen is a wildly funny Pirelli (again, quality of singing not so important for the role -- it's comedy, for the gods' sake). Toby is, for some reason, about 8 years old, which is a better fit in some ways than the sort of 14-16 that I think you usually get, although it did make the end much creepier than it might have been. The boy playing Toby is perhaps the best vocalist of the film, although the boy playing Anthony is a close second. Also, the boy playing Anthony is extremely pretty, and I enjoy seeing extremely pretty boys getting roughed up a bit. I consider this to be a failing in my character, and I'm sure you will too, unless you're a pretty boy who likes to be roughed up a bit, in which case you should talk to me after the show. ANYWAY.... Helena Bonham Carter is superb, but I wasn't expecting any less. The clash between her single-minded motivation and Depp's single-minded motivation is brilliantly played in facial expression and inflection, so that was a lot of fun to watch. It doesn't hurt that she has a lovely voice, and two of my favorite songs in the show. Rickman, we don't get enough of, which was the one noticeable failure of this production. Turpin's creepy behavior towards Joanna is limited to spying and the harassment necessary to move the story along; you don't get to see much of his internal struggle or his wretched proposal to her, which are some of his best bits, in my opinion. Alan Rickman, not creepy enough. Oh, well. Joanna, meh. She has almost no character to begin with, and a lot of the little she had got cut from the film. This is just as well, as I had no desire to hear her sing any more often than was strictly necessary, and she looks just enough like a grey alien to be unnerving. ANYWAY AGAIN... Overall, two thumbs up (one severed and in a pie).

Following the show, we went to Hooters (no respecter of holy days, Hooters) and had some solid food that almost certainly wasn't people. adammaker regaled us with alchemical research and meat pie recipes. At one point, kittenpants left the restaurant to take a phone call, and got locked out. Comical hijinks ensued. Also, we discovered that we'd apparently all slept with adammaker, at least according to popular theory. It's nice of people to tell me these things, because I'm almost never aware of them. I'd hope that if I slept with adammaker, I'd at least remember it, because it seems like it would be fun. FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ANYWAY...

So that was my Christmas day, how was yours?

Having failed to go to the meeting I thought we were going to last night (which is to say we got up to the church and nobody was there), we went out and saw I Am Legend. I had some doubts about the film, but it pretty much kicked ass and took names. It was a much better film than The Golden Compass, even if not a better story. Anyway, that's not the point.

The point of the post is that the trailer for The Dark Knight ran before the film. I'd seen it in tiny tiny on the PC screen, but somehow hoped it would be better if it were bigger and louder. Alas, no. I'm not really feeling it, and that makes me sad. Mostly this feeling of meh stems from watching Heath Ledger do goddamned Jack Nicholson impersonations all over the freaking trailer. He looks good in the stills - he looks like he's going to be the massively unhinged, out of control character I know and love. But then, he talks. And it all goes to hell, because I've seen Nicholson do it, and that was pretty good, but you can't just rehash that concept and call it good. I demand a new interpretation, something that feels as gritty and desperate and batshit insane as it looks. I hope we'll get that in the film. So help me, Heath Ledger, if you ruin the Joker for me, I am not sure what I will do.

On the other hand, I am massively intrigued by some of the other stuff in the trailer -- the smashing of the Bat-Signal, the National Guard lining up in Gotham, and so on. It's not like I won't go see the film, and I'll probably even like it, because, you know, Batman. I'm just setting the expectation bar a little lower.

Incidentally, as I was typing this post, I got faxed a job application from a woman with the last name Quinzel...

ARMORED BEAR PLUSHIE!!!

I want one.
(We saw The Golden Compass last night. It was er... choppy and weird, but amazingly beautiful. And the Panzerbjorn were every bit as awesome as I had hoped they would be. I ask again, who doesn't like an armored bear?)

My green hair is gone, alas. This was accomplished through no fault of my hair stylist's. Big drama at the hair salon about multi-stage processing and hours of work and how dare I put temporary color on and whether they would take liability for the condition of my hair and so on. Feh. I can do color at home in half the time and for 1/20th of the cost, and I already have liability for my hair. So I did. I'm back to something approximating my usual red now. I did manage to actually have my hair cut at the salon, which was nice. Apparently, I simply do not get along well with long hair.

Last night, we went to the movies and saw American Gangster. I wish more mob films were multi-cultural. It's way easier to tell the characters apart that way.

I'm 700-some words into the NaNoWriMo story. At this rate, I am informed that I will reach my 50000 word goal by the end of next November. I'll try to hack some more on it later (and hack is the word for it, oh yes).

LJ-Balderdash will get posted some time later today. Iffn ya wanna enter, you still have time.

EDIT: In other news, lolhistory is really, really funny today.

It's Tuesday. I feel like arse and a half - fever, sore throat, sneezies, aches, and so on. And I'm at the office anyway, because I'm supposed to hire three people this afternoon. Ha. So that sucks, except that I can now ascribe yesterday's craptastic mood to oncoming illness, which is all right. I had no other good explanation, anyway.

In other news, for triadruid, the movie I was trying to tell you about last night was U-Turn, with Sean Penn, directed by Oliver Stone (1997), not Lost Highway, with Bill Pullman, directed by David Lynch (1997). I can't tell Sean Penn from Bill Pullman, apparently, but I can tell Oliver Stone from anybody.

Also, note: Kurt Russell was not in either of these films; Kurt Russell was in Breakdown (you know, that other movie that came out in 1997 about a guy trying to sort himself out of mad bad shit after he breaks down on the side of the road somewhere weird). The point is, Billy Bob Thornton was the mechanic in U-Turn, and he was hugely fat, but you can still tell he's Billy Bob Thornton, because he sounds the same.

(For those playing along at home, we watched Bandits last night. This prompted a discussion with triadruid about Other Movies Billy Bob Thornton Is In. This sort of discussion is always exciting for us, because I'm face-blind, and he is not really good at differentiating people by voice (i.e. he can't tell the difference between Styx and Rush. I'm just sayin').)