Well photographed, intense road trip drama through post Katrina Louisiana, in which three strangers of two generations bound by loneliness reach out to one another, leading to the possibility of second chances. Brett (William Hurt) dealing with a painful past, crosses paths with a lonely and troubled teenager Martine (Kristen Stewart) and her new 'ride' Gordy (Eddie Redmayne). The trio head out together, each motivated by reasons of their own. Martine yearns to escape her family, Gordy hopes to get closer to Martine and Brett must decide whether he wants to return to the uncertainty of the life and the woman he left behind, his ex-wife (Maria Bello).
You can choose between the US and the European trailer version.
It's Complicated HD480p 43MB HD720p 128MB UK 27MB
A second US and a UK trailer version for this romantic comedy about a successful woman (Meryl Streep) and mother of three grown kids who has an amicable relationship with her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) who's now married to a much younger woman (Lake Bell). But one day the ex-couple is starting to have an affair. Things get complicated when the man (Steve Martin) hired to re-model her kitchen also starts to fall in love with her. John Krasinski and Rita Wilson are also part of the cast. Written and directed by Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday, What Women Want).
If you only want to watch one, then I recommend the UK version, it's in my view the most compact and the timing seems better.
I'm glad that the movie already gets released in most countries before the Oscar ceremony, otherwise it would've smelled even more of a promo stunt. But in general I like the idea of Baldwin and Martin hosting together.
That Evening Sun HD480p 40MB HD720p 96MB
Intense drama about an aging Tennessee farmer (Hal Holbrook) who instead of living in a nursing facility flees and returns to his country farm to live out his days in peace. There he discovers that his son has leased the farm to his old enemy and his white trash family. Not one to suffer fools or go down easy, he moves into the old tenant shack on the property and declares that he won't leave until the farm is returned to his possession. But the new tenant, has no intention to move out or give in to the old man's demands. Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton's upcoming Alice, plays one of the daughters.
Holbrook, who got an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in Into the Wild, again gets rave reviews, so another nomination isn't entirely out of the question. Movie is now in limited release in the US.
Shutter Island HD480p 45MB HD720p 104MB
A second, slightly less hectic trailer version that came out a while ago for the delayed until February mystery-thriller directed by Martin Scorsese (The Departed, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver), based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River). Set in 1954 that tells the story of two U.S. marshals (Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo), who are summoned to a remote and barren island off the cost of Massachusetts to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a murderess from the island's fortress-like hospital for the criminally insane. Also part of the cast are Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley and John Carroll Lynch.
I wonder if actors with names consisting of three words indicate they're one of the bad guys.
The Men Who Stare at Goats TV Spot Clooney McGregor Bridges Spacey
Funny 30-second TV spot that's a parody of the marketing campaign for Paranormal Activity, as well as four, one minute character trailers for the lead actors George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges of this absurd comedy.
Sideways - Saidoweizu Japanese 11 MB
More of a curiosity value, after years of Hollywood remaking Asian (mostly horror) movies, Asia has begun to strike back. This is a Japanese trailer for a pretty faithful looking remake of Alexander Payne's movie of the same name. The best known actor of the four leads is Rinko Kikuchi.
Allegedly, Zhang Yimou is also working on a Chinese remake of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple. But it's really hard to tell from that trailer.
When your chat client's status "now playing" function announces to the world you're watching porn.
Jay's status was changed to "Backyard Sluts 9 - Japanese School Girls Get Taught A Lesson - iTunes"
Maya Patel: O______O
Jas Wong: WTF!!
Tiffany : I don't think we should be friends anymore.
Charles Cow: Dude, status malfunction...
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 07, 2009 is:
bastion • \BAS-chun\ • noun
1 : a projecting part of a fortification 2 : a fortified area or position 3 a : a place of security or survival* b : a place dominated by a particular group or marked by a particular characteristic
Example sentence:
The university's economics department was considered the last bastion of political conservatism within an otherwise liberal campus.
Did you know?
"Bastion" is constructed of etymological building blocks that are very similar to those of "bastille" (a word now used as a general term for a prison, but probably best known as the name of the Parisian fortress-turned-prison stormed by an angry mob at the start of the French Revolution). The history of "bastion" can be traced through Middle French to the Old Italian verb "bastire," which means "to build." "Bastille" descends from the Old Occitan verb "bastir," which also means "to build." "Bastir" and "bastire" are themselves of Germanic origin and akin to the Old High German word "besten," meaning "to patch."
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
Okay, so I enjoy RPGs from time to time, but “sandbox” style play has limited appeal for me: I hated Oblivion, for example, because I kept getting lost and could never figure out where the story goals were. (Fallout 3 was much better in this regard.) For the same reason, I didn’t really enjoy Mass Effect that much; it was a lot more widespread than most of BioWare’s RPG games (which I usually like) and my gaming time is limited so I don’t want to spend it running my character all over the damn place.
I’m asking because I want to know how big the sandbox factor is for Dragon Age. Will I grow old and die before I advance my character halfway through the frigging game? These are important questions if I am gonna play the game. Otherwise I’ll just go buy Left 4 Dead 2 and shoot zombies. Actually, why don’t I just go buy Left 4 Dead 2 and shoot zombies?
Still got other sizes left for those months, though. But wow: we sold out of two months of MOAMs in twenty-two hours.
Edited to add:
We are now also sold out of October MOAMs.
- Mood:gobsmacked, for sure
In short: There's not much left to do.
You Know Me - Robbie Williams (Official full-length video)
Robbie Williams | MySpace Video
Robbie Williams goes to Wonderland. Bonus points for the women riding carrots, the inexplicable and clearly not Robbie ballet parts. And the singing cabbage. I'm going to be iconing the singing cabbage. All accompanied by the awful sensation that this is gonna be some furries wet dream for decades.
Double bonus points: How long until some enterprising RPS writer produces some Rabbit Robbie/Mr. Tumunus of Naria? Hint.
http://files.harpercollins.com/Mktg/Harp
Hi Mr. Gaiman,
I was disappointed today to read you won't be part of the judging for The Graveyard Book contests. My not-wealthy, middle-of-nowhere bookstore just sent in its entry, and something we're concerned about is the fairness of judging.
For example, independent bookstores like Powell's (I'm sure you know) easily have enough money and are in a convenient enough location to ask you to come at one time or another. Against stores like that, who were able to put more money into their parties, we stand little chance.
I don't think that it's a lost cause for us; we were very creative. I'm just nervous to know you won't be judging. Can you tell me whether you think the judges will take things like size and location of bookstores into account? It would make me sleep a little easier until the results are announced.
Tusen takk,
Allison
Well, per the rules, the judging is based on:
(i) Overall creativity of the Party, as demonstrated by the invitations, signage, decorations, activities, entertainment, and refreshments.
(ii) Customer attendance and response (i.e., enthusiasm, costumes, participation).
(iii) Ability to capture and represent the spirit of The Graveyard Book.
...specifically to reward creativity, and not the ability to outspend other shops. (That was also why the party had to actually be at the bookshop, and not at another location.)
I asked my editor, Elise Howard, and she said,
Gosh, yes. Here's what we think is happening. We are looking at all the entries. On Monday, we'll send you the best 11, from which you will choose the Grand Prize Winner. The rest will get the first-prize package. So the short answer is that you ARE helping to choose.
The longer answer is that we will be very fair and will consider creativity, which includes work done with available resources, along with pure execution. (Don't you think? We haven't done anything yet; still waiting for more entries to come in.)
...which means that
a) I was wrong and will be the ultimate judge, from the shortlist. (Damn.)
and
b) everyone's on a level playing field.
Does that help reassure you?
PS -- Widgett's Graveyard Book Dessert competition winners have been announced over at http://www.needcoffee.com/2009/11/06/gra
This one had NOTHING to do with me at all. But lor' the winning desserts look tasty...
I'm home again from an absolutely fascinating tour of post-communist Eastern Europe and can start writing about it as soon as I get my interviews transcribed.
After leaving Romania, I was supposed to visit Chernobyl and the apocalyptic ghost city of Pripyat outside Kiev, Ukraine, but the trip was cancelled at the last minute. The Chernobyl Administration wasn't letting anyone into the area for reasons that aren't clear to me and may never be – perhaps because of a radiation leak, or maybe for more mundane reasons.
So I went to Crimea instead, the part of Ukraine that may be lopped off and reattached to Russia if Vladimir Putin decides to go on another Georgian-style adventure.
Traveling from the eastern edge of the European Union into Ukraine is educational, to say the least. Romania, Hungary, Poland, and other formerly Eastern bloc countries have largely recovered from communism, but much of Ukraine outside Kiev is still ruined. It still hasn't fully recovered from Soviet collectivization, the genocidal terror-famine, the Stalinist purges, and dekulakization. Kiev is a magnificent city and Crimea is a jewel, but large parts of the countryside feel haunted and doomed.
Stand by for photos and stories.
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I bided my time. I knew that either I'd be notified that my story was released or else the reversion clause would kick in. It was only a matter of which came first. I'd already been paid, which was a plus, but really what I had wanted was that publication! Ah, well, that's life.
Then, much to my delighted surprise, Realms was resurrected! So my time-biding became much more satisfying.
And now the end of my wait is in sight!
My story "The Unknown God" will be in the February issue of Realms of Fantasy, available in fine bookstores starting, Mr. Cohen says, sometime in December.
- Mood:
pleased
I have a love-hate relationship with this product. It seems to target my computers for problems, while leaving everybody else in the house just fine. After the disaster of AVG, the worst program I have ever used, Norton 360 began to look better…
BUT it turned out not to have spam filters. I had to get that elsewhere. AND now it’s endangering my computer, overheating the CPU and generally annoying the daylights out of me. I tracked the problem to a file named ccsvchst, which enables Norton to talk to Norton…so you can’t be rid of it. It’s an old problem, a known problem, and it doesn’t play nice with Microsoft Outlook or Office. Isn’t that nice? They swear up and down they fixed it in the last issue of Norton, but nay! not so. It keeps your cpu churning and churning and the fan going and going, and the only way to stop it is to reboot—I know that now. Not only that, the program won’t shut down at the request of the Taskmaster, so you have to abort it, and occasionally to shut your computer down cold.
There is a possible interface with this and some registry relic (did I mention this has a registry cleaner? doesn’t work on itself—go figure) of a prior Norton installation, so I have spent what would have been a productive writing morning wrestling with this beast, and now will have to completely uninstall Norton clean, then reinstall, reconfigure…
Quel pain! You’d think a company whose whole business is reaching into computer processes could get it right the first time!
(At around page 100, where the main character is giving "tourists" a tour of their history-museum-bits of the convent and doing one of the best infodumps ever.)
(I have been jealous of a creation myth before, though; Tolkien's universe has the best creation myth, hands-down, accept no substitutes.)
I need to read several books on chemistry and electrochemistry; I need to read several papers; I need to go do some analysis on this, and some more analysis on that, and some more analysis on that other thing.
I feel strangely happy about this situation. Hope it stays that way.
In other news, doing research for ILE2, starting a roleplaying game, cooking a lot of gnocchi.
Page Summary
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
trailer_spot : Yellow Handkerchief, It's Complicated, Evening Sun, Shutter Island, Men Who Stare at Goats, Sideways [+0] ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
dictionary_wotd : abeyance: Dictionary.com Word of the Day [+0] - urbanwordofday : Status Malfunction [+0]
- webster_wotd : bastion [+0]
- cdsfeed : Saturday, November 07, 2009 [+0]
- apod : Ring Nebula Deep Field [+3]
- mighty_god_king : HEY NERDS [+0]
- elisem : ArtLog: Beads of the Month gobsmackery [+2]
- michaeltotten : Post-Communist Postcards [+1]
- norabombay : Robbie Williams: You Know Me [+0]
- oed_wotd : poop, n.1: OED Word of the Day [+0]
- officialgaiman : Final Reminder for Bookshops [+0]
- mighty_god_king : Friday Louis CK [+0]
- michaeltotten : Home from the East [+0]
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
dreamwidth :: solitaryjane : Here Ya Go [+0] - ann_leckie : Oh, Long Awaited [+9]
- cjcherryh_feed : Norton screws up again… [+0]
- classical_music :: piony : Program Notes [+2]
- silmaril : All right, that's a first for me. [+5]
- papersky : My recent Tor.com posts [+11]