Enough with 2005 already

So we got a call from Ruth's aunt this evening, and Ruth's Mom had brain surgery again today. Unexpectedly. Because the first incision infected and they had to reopen it. She is in the hospital and in good shape; we will not be going to Wisconsin again because we are going to Ohio to be as helpful as we can with my mother's breast cancer.

This year can stop jumping up and down on our mothers anytime now.

By way of distraction: ( Memesheep-- 15 Things About Books. )

Enough with 2005 already

So we got a call from Ruth's aunt this evening, and Ruth's Mom had brain surgery again today. Unexpectedly. Because the first incision infected and they had to reopen it. She is in the hospital and in good shape; we will not be going to Wisconsin again because we are going to Ohio to be as helpful as we can with my mother's breast cancer.

This year can stop jumping up and down on our mothers anytime now.

By way of distraction: ( Memesheep-- 15 Things About Books. )

Aeon Flux review + a Thing About Books

Just got back from Aeon Flux with the boy.

*blink* *blink*

Good movie.

No, actually good movie, not just good in a trashy sort of way, which is frankly what I was expecting. I knew that the kind of rampant and perverse non-linearity that the animated series reveled in wasn't going to turn up in a live-action Hollywood film, so I was figuring they'd turn it into a by-the-numbers sci-fi-lite action flick. Well, they didn't. It's not the animated series, although it preserves a few of the more entertaining and memorable bits of that, but it's not dreck either. It's good solid science fiction, with the science, made with a very large budget and a lot of techie-toys, and it's fun.

I'm not saying it's a great movie, and those of us who follow science fiction as a literary genre may well find it easy to underestimate, because it does things that we have seen many times in genre novels and short stories. However, and I feel that this is an important point, it uses genre ideas that are not usually used in cinema with any degree of intelligence. There is nothing in this film that made me want to jump up and down screaming about the scientific errors, and there is an actual thought experiment involved here, with some consideration of multiple sides of the issue (although of course not as much consideration as one could wish).

Mind you, the intelligence doesn't kick in until about the second hour, but I also recommend the film sheerly on the grounds of visuals. It's pretty, and the architectural design is amazing, a lovely cross between Japanese minimalism, Western ornamental gardening, New Urbanism, and the fascist-totalitarian formulae of Albert Speer. It is beautiful and even warm with just the slightest touch of institutional chill in all the creepiest details, and it's a place, a set of well-defined places, which I would love to be able to wander around in. This is some of the best visual design work of the year, easily better than that in Serenity and more original than the most recent WETA blockbusters. It is so lovely to look at that I wouldn't have cared if it hadn't a thought in its head.

The exposition is horribly clunky, and some of the dialogue is pretty bad, and you're probably not going to care about these characters if you don't already, but this is a good solid hard-sf film well worth seeing big-screen for the pretty, and I'm very glad that there are getting to be more of those lately.

In other news, this week's Onion editorial column was brought to you by Gorzo the Mighty.

And a question, which occurred to me while reading p_zeitgeist's Fifteen Things About Books meme: she mentions difficulty in parsing, as a small child, some of the books that are commonly shoved at children as classics, due to the fact that cultural differences etc. made various actions and social conventions totally incomprehensible. When I think back on my early reading, I know that at some point I must have learned to interpret some of these books as containing things which made sense, even though they decidedly failed to apply to me, and I must have learned to make some distinction as to which of them did or could apply to me. And I have no idea how or when I did this. I suspect that I didn't do it completely, as I did internalize the concept that a woman should never appear in public with her hair down or it is immodest, and a whole lot of things along those lines. (I don't follow that rule or expect other people to do so, but I still *believe* it on some level.) But I don't remember learning what, for instance, 'a penny for the Guy' meant in several of my favorite British books (Diana Wynne Jones, P. L. Travers), or what a finishing school is, or why rules about chaperonage with young men were no longer current.

So. Do any of you remember when and how you learned the cultural context of the 'children's classics' you read, if you read them? How did you do it? Did you internalize any of that cultural context despite its irrelevancy to you? Was it in fact irrelevant?

Any and all answers appreciated, as I am fascinated by the whole issue.

Aeon Flux review + a Thing About Books

Just got back from Aeon Flux with the boy.

*blink* *blink*

Good movie.

No, actually good movie, not just good in a trashy sort of way, which is frankly what I was expecting. I knew that the kind of rampant and perverse non-linearity that the animated series reveled in wasn't going to turn up in a live-action Hollywood film, so I was figuring they'd turn it into a by-the-numbers sci-fi-lite action flick. Well, they didn't. It's not the animated series, although it preserves a few of the more entertaining and memorable bits of that, but it's not dreck either. It's good solid science fiction, with the science, made with a very large budget and a lot of techie-toys, and it's fun.

I'm not saying it's a great movie, and those of us who follow science fiction as a literary genre may well find it easy to underestimate, because it does things that we have seen many times in genre novels and short stories. However, and I feel that this is an important point, it uses genre ideas that are not usually used in cinema with any degree of intelligence. There is nothing in this film that made me want to jump up and down screaming about the scientific errors, and there is an actual thought experiment involved here, with some consideration of multiple sides of the issue (although of course not as much consideration as one could wish).

Mind you, the intelligence doesn't kick in until about the second hour, but I also recommend the film sheerly on the grounds of visuals. It's pretty, and the architectural design is amazing, a lovely cross between Japanese minimalism, Western ornamental gardening, New Urbanism, and the fascist-totalitarian formulae of Albert Speer. It is beautiful and even warm with just the slightest touch of institutional chill in all the creepiest details, and it's a place, a set of well-defined places, which I would love to be able to wander around in. This is some of the best visual design work of the year, easily better than that in Serenity and more original than the most recent WETA blockbusters. It is so lovely to look at that I wouldn't have cared if it hadn't a thought in its head.

The exposition is horribly clunky, and some of the dialogue is pretty bad, and you're probably not going to care about these characters if you don't already, but this is a good solid hard-sf film well worth seeing big-screen for the pretty, and I'm very glad that there are getting to be more of those lately.

In other news, this week's Onion editorial column was brought to you by Gorzo the Mighty.

And a question, which occurred to me while reading p_zeitgeist's Fifteen Things About Books meme: she mentions difficulty in parsing, as a small child, some of the books that are commonly shoved at children as classics, due to the fact that cultural differences etc. made various actions and social conventions totally incomprehensible. When I think back on my early reading, I know that at some point I must have learned to interpret some of these books as containing things which made sense, even though they decidedly failed to apply to me, and I must have learned to make some distinction as to which of them did or could apply to me. And I have no idea how or when I did this. I suspect that I didn't do it completely, as I did internalize the concept that a woman should never appear in public with her hair down or it is immodest, and a whole lot of things along those lines. (I don't follow that rule or expect other people to do so, but I still *believe* it on some level.) But I don't remember learning what, for instance, 'a penny for the Guy' meant in several of my favorite British books (Diana Wynne Jones, P. L. Travers), or what a finishing school is, or why rules about chaperonage with young men were no longer current.

So. Do any of you remember when and how you learned the cultural context of the 'children's classics' you read, if you read them? How did you do it? Did you internalize any of that cultural context despite its irrelevancy to you? Was it in fact irrelevant?

Any and all answers appreciated, as I am fascinated by the whole issue.