It's Christmas time again, and, once again, despite the craziness of the season, the mental and physical exhaustion of trying to squeeze so much into a mere 24 hours a day, the sheer number of tasks still to be accomplished, the one looming absence from our usual family gatherings, and the threat of another sort of white Christmas out here in la la land, it's turning out to be a wonderful Christmas after all.

As usual, I ended up having to choose between baking and sending out Christmas cards. Baking won out, and I've so far made three batches of coconut macaroons. I'm usually lucky if I can get one made (and eaten--given that most of the members of my family don't have much fondness for coconut, and the few who did had to give it up because of cholesterol issues), but this year, I found a recipe that actually worked and immediately began modifying it by making up batches of almond, lemon, and raspberry (different batches for each flavor). I brought some into work along with some of my mother's absolutely fantastic cookies and was gratified that mine were the first ones gone from the plate. I'll probably make at least one more batch before Epiphany.

Now it's late and my family has enjoyed the tradition we've developed in recent years of turning on all of the Christmas lights (and turning off all of the regular lights) and listening to Christmas carols while we sip brandy and look at the beautiful sight of the brightly lit and decorated tree with all of the presents underneath. Time to get some sleep to shore up for the busy events of the day.

May the joy of Christmas be with you today and throughout the year. And even if you don't celebrate Christmas, Peace on earth and good will to all!

In my previous post, I was muttering about how the trailers for Stardust didn't do it justice. I happened across a trailer on YouTube that comes the closest I've seen so far. It's the UK version of the trailer.



(I'll save the muttering about YouTube's poor video quality for a later date.)

So, after much waffling about it (and falling asleep on Friday night and missing the showing I'd originally intended to go to), I finally got around to watching Stardust today. I'd decided to watch it mostly because a) it looked mildly interesting to a lover of fantasy action adventure stories and b) because it features one of the few brunette characters in movies this summer whose costume I might possibly be able to make by Halloween this year (uh huh, right, like I made my Lois Lane costume last year--she says as she surreptitiously shoves the unhemmed skirt of said costume farther into the closet and sneezes on the dust it has collected in the past year). In any case, reasoning that if I'm even going to make the attempt, I should at least see the movie, I headed off to the theater.

Based on the trailers I'd seen, I was expecting cringe-worthy dialogue, anachronisms galore, and a jarring distraction brought on by the artificial blondness of Yvaine's hair. The trailers do not do the movie justice.

Mind you, the dialogue can be cringe-worthy in places, and Yvaine's hair does look quite unrealistic at times. But the most awful bits of dialogue from the trailer sound much better in actual context, and frankly, you're just having too much fun watching the movie to care about its imperfections anyway.

I'd definitely recommend it (although I will note that there are parts of it which sensitive people might have a problem with, so it's not a movie for everyone). It isn't about to take Superman Returns' place as my current favorite movie, but I'd see it again in theaters, and I'll be buying it when it comes out on DVD.

Now to hunt down blue cotton gauze for my Halloween costume...

Pottermania continues on the Today show where Rowling reveals--well, not all, but at least a little. She tells who was supposed to die, but didn't, and gives a few other minor hints about other characters.

( Cut for spoilers )

I picked the book up at midnight and spent all of last night and a huge chunk of today (minus various cat-naps) and finished it.

And my non-spoilery opinion: Definitely worth it.

:)

So here we are, the last few hours until we know who lives, who dies, and whose lives will be changed forever. Oh, and we find out what happens to Harry and his friends, too.

( Reminiscing on Harry... )

One year ago today, I went to watch Superman Returns. I wasn't expecting to get sucked into a new fandom, but two and a half hours later, my fate had been sealed.

When the teaser trailer for SR came out, I wasn't expecting much. "A knock-off of Batman Begins," I said, comparing the two "falling" scenes. At the same time, however, I was getting back into the 90s TV series, Lois & Clark, thanks to the release of the DVDs, and starting to get into comic books, so I suppose I was already getting primed for a return to Superman fandom. Then the actual trailer for SR came out and I was intrigued.

As the weeks went by, I was honestly expecting myself to get into Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest in a big way, with Superman Returns as a secondary interest. The sheer number of trailers I collected for Superman Returns, vastly outnumbering the ones I collected for Pirates (though, admittedly there were fewer released of these), as well as the number of times I watched each of them, should have tipped me off.

But even as I was walking into the theater one year ago tonight, I was thinking I'd watch Superman Returns and Pirates each five times in theaters that summer, to help them do better than the Da Vinci Code movie, and leaving my record for the first two Star Wars prequels (eleven times each) untouched. (I only saw the third SW movie five times in theaters, but that was only because I spent that summer recovering from my car accident.)

And then the opening music played. And the credits rolled. And I found myself caught up in the drama playing out on the screen. By the time I left the theater, I had decided that I wanted to go back the very next night, to the 10:30 PM showing, so that when the clock ticked over to my birthday at midnight, I'd be spending the very first moments of my birthday watching Superman fall back to earth.

And so my year of Superman Returns began. I matched my record of watching a movie eleven times in theaters. I burned CDs of Superman-related music to listen to in my car. I even started following "Kryptonite Creek" (aka Smallville) on the strength of my fangirl devotion. It's definitely a different fandom than the ones I've been involved with--for one thing, it's much more scattered over various sites and lists than FK or Gargoyles, but I'm thinking that when 2009 comes around, I'll definitely be at the theater at 10 PM (or whenever that first showing starts), waiting for that music and for the big blue Boy Scout to fly by.

I just got back from the midnight showing and it was *so* totally worth it. The ante was definitely upped and the movie exceeded it. The final action sequences were just amazing and yet they managed to bring a level of drama to the movie that I wasn't quite expecting.

A masterpiece. It's a far cry in tone from the original film, which was more fun and frolic, but with this one I felt like there was more at stake, and the characters felt more well-rounded. The "fantasy action" genre has a worthy entry in this film.

Will and Elizabeth's story now feels done, but I can definitely see a lot of new directions for our Captain Jack.

It's amazing how much sense memory there can be in music. Tonight I was listening to my randomizer in iTunes and the last track from the Star Wars Episode II Soundtrack came up.

The swell of the Imperial March, appearing for the first time in the prequels in all its full glory, the tender sweetness of the love theme, and the haunting melody of Anakin's theme, clung to me. When the piece launched into the main theme, I was suddenly transported back to the movie theaters and late nights I spent watching Episode II in 2002. I could almost feel the breeze on my face as I stepped out of the theater into the parking lot to go home (after yet another viewing).

One of the things I love about the CD soundtrack version of the Episode II finale, as opposed to the version that played over the closing credits in theaters, is the way that the three themes, Anakin's theme, the love theme, and the Imperial March combine in the last two minutes or so. Anakin's theme has a series of notes which almost swell into the Imperial March in places--and at the very end of the finale in Episode I, the melody actually resolves into it. Here, Anakin's theme, reintroduced after a long segment of the love theme, intertwines with it, and then, as the piece is ending, the Imperial March enters, low rumbling under the high-arching emotion of the other two themes.

It's why John Williams is the master.

Ah, my first LiveJournal post. Sadly, I expect my LJ to get updated about as often as my ink and paper one (which is to say, rarely), but in the enthusiasm of my first online journal and its very first post, I mean to try.

On a more reflective note, today marks two years since the death of Pope John Paul II. Since his papacy shaped so much of my youth, and continues to shape the faith I'm proud to call myself a member of, I want to take a moment to remember him. And since this was also the pope who had Bob Dylan and breakdancers perform for him and whose papacy saw the growth of the internet (and the creation of the Vatican's website), I can't help but think that he won't mind being memorialized in a LiveJournal entry.

And now, on with the LJ fun!