(no subject)
Feb. 23rd, 2005 08:43 pmBecause most of my vocabulary has been gleaned from books I often have an idea of their pronounciation that is waaaaaay off the mark (I once tried to use a soft c for the word "cunt". My mother laughed at me for hours. Thanks, Stephen King!). But, I'm also really anal. So I got a real tickle out of this NY Times article: Audiobooks have their own Henry Higgins. Good to know there are men crusaders like that out there! (login can be found at bugmenot).
Wonderful Valentine's Day cartoon featuring Spongebob Squarepants here. Heee!
Saw House of Flying Daggers last night for only $5! Hell yeah. Gorgeous, gorgeous film; perhaps not quite as gorgeous as Hero but definitely up there. Zhang Ziyi was fantastic, and everyone else was good too. The pacing was brilliant, just bam-bam-bam-pause-BAM!-interlude-BAM! although it was a little frustrating seeing the same scenes over and over. The fight scenes were, of course, incredible, as was the dancing. Really gotta see this one on the big screen, and with suround sound (although I kept expecting the importance of sound to be played up even more considering the blindness of the main character). Anyway, lots of fun, even if the horse continuity left a lot to be desired.
Interestingly, I was talking about it with one of my Chinese friends and he said he was really, really turned off it for the first half hour or so because it was in Mandarin (which is historically accurate) not Cantonese (I said, so you liked Crouching Tiger, then? And he's like, no, my entire family hates Chow Yun Fat. WTF? Hee) which he finds an uglier language. So it was an aesthetic thing, which I find interesting, especially in light of the course I will be beginning tomorrow, on the philosophy of beauty. I also wonder if that is generally accepted; would Yimou have filmed it in Cantonese (because not exactly *everything* about HoFD was historically accurate! For instance, I don't think people could fly back then) if he thought it was a more beautiful language?
Speaking of beginning uni, I've had the prelim lectures for my two politics courses now. The one for Politics, Ideology and Discourse was a bit, "so, BELIEFS influence PERCEPTIONS, and PERCEPTIONS influence ACTIONS!", duh, but it promises to be interesting. Today I had Anarchism and Libertarianism which was great fun. It'll be focussing way more on the former than the latter and the lecturer seems like this great old (and I keep trying to say "queer" here, but he's not at all like that :-D) anarchist who's just made this course to turn us all into converts. Well, that's a little extreme, but he's certainly not pretending to be neutral, and it's a lot of fun and looks very interesting. I'm especially interested in the intersections between anarchism and communism and socialism. My grandparents are going to be ecstatic. Despite being old-skool Labor members in the UK (my Grandad was Lord Mayor even, which goes on seniority) they're both absolute pinko commies and they're dying for me to follow in their footsteps. More fool them when I turn into an anarchist and go off to join a commune in Venezuela!
Wonderful Valentine's Day cartoon featuring Spongebob Squarepants here. Heee!
Saw House of Flying Daggers last night for only $5! Hell yeah. Gorgeous, gorgeous film; perhaps not quite as gorgeous as Hero but definitely up there. Zhang Ziyi was fantastic, and everyone else was good too. The pacing was brilliant, just bam-bam-bam-pause-BAM!-interlude-BAM! although it was a little frustrating seeing the same scenes over and over. The fight scenes were, of course, incredible, as was the dancing. Really gotta see this one on the big screen, and with suround sound (although I kept expecting the importance of sound to be played up even more considering the blindness of the main character). Anyway, lots of fun, even if the horse continuity left a lot to be desired.
Interestingly, I was talking about it with one of my Chinese friends and he said he was really, really turned off it for the first half hour or so because it was in Mandarin (which is historically accurate) not Cantonese (I said, so you liked Crouching Tiger, then? And he's like, no, my entire family hates Chow Yun Fat. WTF? Hee) which he finds an uglier language. So it was an aesthetic thing, which I find interesting, especially in light of the course I will be beginning tomorrow, on the philosophy of beauty. I also wonder if that is generally accepted; would Yimou have filmed it in Cantonese (because not exactly *everything* about HoFD was historically accurate! For instance, I don't think people could fly back then) if he thought it was a more beautiful language?
Speaking of beginning uni, I've had the prelim lectures for my two politics courses now. The one for Politics, Ideology and Discourse was a bit, "so, BELIEFS influence PERCEPTIONS, and PERCEPTIONS influence ACTIONS!", duh, but it promises to be interesting. Today I had Anarchism and Libertarianism which was great fun. It'll be focussing way more on the former than the latter and the lecturer seems like this great old (and I keep trying to say "queer" here, but he's not at all like that :-D) anarchist who's just made this course to turn us all into converts. Well, that's a little extreme, but he's certainly not pretending to be neutral, and it's a lot of fun and looks very interesting. I'm especially interested in the intersections between anarchism and communism and socialism. My grandparents are going to be ecstatic. Despite being old-skool Labor members in the UK (my Grandad was Lord Mayor even, which goes on seniority) they're both absolute pinko commies and they're dying for me to follow in their footsteps. More fool them when I turn into an anarchist and go off to join a commune in Venezuela!
