To fall in love and fall in debt
Jun. 16th, 2006 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
My love of Green Day has reached obsessive levels now; I've had "Jesus of Suburbia" stuck in my head all day and I've been humming it all the time. Apologies especially to Lazarus and Tube, who will doubtless have to hear me mention it at least 80 bajillion times over the next week before I finally burn out of it. Sorry, guys.
Saw Mirrormask last night and it was a total blast! To be honest, I've never been a *huge* fan of Dave McKean's work, but now I know what Gaiman sees in him. His lovely sense of color and broken, fluid form matches Gaiman's sense of whimsy really well. There were tons of really neat sequences that more than made up for the almost inconsequential story.
One of my absolute favorite things about modern fantasty settings are the odd little quirks that will be tossed in for no reason other than "hey, this is a really neat idea." In Jonathan Lethem's Amnesia Moon, for example, one of the characters can only be interacted with after you've shot him into your veins through a syringe. Or, in Peter Beagle's Tamsin, the Pooka is always called THE Pooka, even though he's not the only one *and* no matter what form he takes, his eyes always stay the same...which tends to make even his more 'benign' countenances the slightest bit menacing. The movie is chock-full of those kinds of 'rules,' where this creature does this and not that, or the world behaves this way for whatever reason and anything else is an affront to its very nature. Devices like that in stories *always* make me want to ask questions about it, find out *why*, or at least how something/one developed the way it did. But then...the whole point of modern fantasy is its just better to wallow in twilight.
My favorite 'rule' in Mirrormask had to have been anthropomorphizing the books. In one of the earlier moments, Helena and her companion escape death by sphinx (who're actually really, really creepy) by insulting books and throwing them down on the floor. "As long as they believe you really don't like them," her companion/guide says, "they'll migrate back to the Public Library...and we'll get a free ride out of this place." What a brilliant piece of dream logic! :D
Speaking of dreams, I had a really odd one last night. I was working late at the Bookshop, which always seems to morph into something more...Victorian once the sun goes down. You know, gas lamps on the wall, strange dolls and knick-knacks...and sweltering heat. Anyway, I'm walking out of the back when I see this...rocket touch down in the middle of the intersection and morph into a short, dumpy robot. This robot then pulls out a flyswatter and threatens to turn everyone watching into flies by hitting them with it. For some reason, this absolutely terrifies people, and there's pandemonium in the streets. The rest of the dream was spent hiding from the carnage in the relative safety of the hot, dark Bookshop. :P
Tonight, Cy's Werewolf game. Last week was a really good game, though you'll have to stay tuned to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
smileydanq to find out why. Oh, yes, I am a shameless pimp.
Saw Mirrormask last night and it was a total blast! To be honest, I've never been a *huge* fan of Dave McKean's work, but now I know what Gaiman sees in him. His lovely sense of color and broken, fluid form matches Gaiman's sense of whimsy really well. There were tons of really neat sequences that more than made up for the almost inconsequential story.
One of my absolute favorite things about modern fantasty settings are the odd little quirks that will be tossed in for no reason other than "hey, this is a really neat idea." In Jonathan Lethem's Amnesia Moon, for example, one of the characters can only be interacted with after you've shot him into your veins through a syringe. Or, in Peter Beagle's Tamsin, the Pooka is always called THE Pooka, even though he's not the only one *and* no matter what form he takes, his eyes always stay the same...which tends to make even his more 'benign' countenances the slightest bit menacing. The movie is chock-full of those kinds of 'rules,' where this creature does this and not that, or the world behaves this way for whatever reason and anything else is an affront to its very nature. Devices like that in stories *always* make me want to ask questions about it, find out *why*, or at least how something/one developed the way it did. But then...the whole point of modern fantasy is its just better to wallow in twilight.
My favorite 'rule' in Mirrormask had to have been anthropomorphizing the books. In one of the earlier moments, Helena and her companion escape death by sphinx (who're actually really, really creepy) by insulting books and throwing them down on the floor. "As long as they believe you really don't like them," her companion/guide says, "they'll migrate back to the Public Library...and we'll get a free ride out of this place." What a brilliant piece of dream logic! :D
Speaking of dreams, I had a really odd one last night. I was working late at the Bookshop, which always seems to morph into something more...Victorian once the sun goes down. You know, gas lamps on the wall, strange dolls and knick-knacks...and sweltering heat. Anyway, I'm walking out of the back when I see this...rocket touch down in the middle of the intersection and morph into a short, dumpy robot. This robot then pulls out a flyswatter and threatens to turn everyone watching into flies by hitting them with it. For some reason, this absolutely terrifies people, and there's pandemonium in the streets. The rest of the dream was spent hiding from the carnage in the relative safety of the hot, dark Bookshop. :P
Tonight, Cy's Werewolf game. Last week was a really good game, though you'll have to stay tuned to
smileydanq to find out why. Oh, yes, I am a shameless pimp.
