We Love Shakespeare Week - Tag

So, the We Love Shakespeare week is kicking off with a tag.  Here are my answers.

1. When and how did you first encounter Shakespeare's plays?
In 7th grade, when my school showed Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet over two days on a huge screen in the school auditorium.  I was completely engrossed, and I balled my eyes out for about a solid hour after the play ended.  That particular version of Romeo & Juliet remains my favorite Shakespeare play to this day.

2.  What are your favorite Shakespeare plays?  (Go ahead and list as many as you like!)
Romeo & Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet, Troilus & Cressida, Macbeth

3.  Who are some of your favorite characters in his plays?  (Again, list however many suits you.)
Henry V, Iago, Mercutio, Hector, Banquo.

4.  Have you seen any of his plays performed, whether live or on film?
Boatloads.  I believe I may have actually seen more performed live than on film.  I have definitely seen more variety of plays live.  I had the privilege of attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland Oregon when I was in high school.  My best friend's family took me along, and it was wonderful and amazing.  We saw several plays there and that's where I first saw Troilus & Cressida and loved it.

I also got to see two Shakespeare in the Park productions in NYC.  Richard III with Denzel Washington was the highlight and one of my favorite live plays, though Taming the Shrew with Morgan Freeman and Tracey Ullman was right up there as well.

And then, of course, there are the myriad movie versions of various plays I've seen.

And opera versions, though these don't use the text, but Otello is one of my favorite operas, I prefer it to the play.  And it was watching Simon Keenlyside in the opera version of Macbeth that slowly made me appreciate that play.

5.  Have you read any of his plays?
Many, though mostly because of high school and college courses.  The first play I ever read was The Taming the Shrew, in a high school Shakespeare club run by one of the instructors, where we would meet at her house once a week and read a scene or two aloud, and she worked with us to both understand the words and how to speak them, and the history and social conventions of the time period.  I read Bianca's role.  The only play I've read multiple times just for myself was Henry V.  I fell in love with Ken Branagh's movie (saw it about 15 times when it came out in the theater), and I read it at least that many times after.  I had most of the play memorized, the only Shakespeare play I can say that for (though I had Ken's abridged version memorized, not the full text).  The Upon the King speech remains my favorite soliloquy of all the plays I'm familiar with.

6.  Share a dream cast for one of your favorite Shakespeare plays.
I'd like to see Othello with Idris Elba and Chadwick Boseman alternating in the title role, and Daniel Craig and Michael Fassbender alternating as Iago, so I can go enjoy both casts.

I also wouldn't mind seeing an updated version of Hamlet set in some unnamed fictional Latin country, with Antonio Banderas as Claudius, Sofia Vergara as Gertrude, Oscar Isaac as Hamlet, Diego Luna as Horatio, Andy Garcia as the ghost of Hamlet's father, America Ferrara as Ophelia, Rodrigo Santoro as Laertes.

7.  What draws you to Shakespeare's plays?  (Language, themes, characters, the fact that they're famous, whatever!)
Same thing that draws me to any story.  I have to like the plot and characters.  I have to want to be the characters, or at the very least relate strongly to them.  I find it interesting that I don't like modern comedies, nor do Shakespeare comedies speak much to me either.  I much prefer the tragedies and historical plays.

8.  Do you have any cool Shakespeare-themed merchandise, like t-shirts or mugs or bookmarks, etc?  Share pictures if you can!
Nary an item.

9.  How do you go about understanding his language?  (Do you prefer copies with translation notes, look things up online, or just read so much stuff written in Elizabethan English that you totally know what everyone's saying?)
I didn't realize it was supposed to be hard.  Maybe because I've been reading/listening to Elizabethan English for nearly 40 years?  Sure, if there were words I didn't understand, I'd look them up in the dictionary, but I have little problem understanding what is being said.  Context and action tend to make it quite clear.  You don't have to know the meaning of every single word to understand what characters are saying.  I think it's a mistake to get hung up on language and it might even take away from the experience.  (Here speaks the person who grew up watching operas in Italian or French, often with no subtitles, and could follow story and what they were saying based on limited knowledge of the language and context and action.  So yeah, understanding every single word is not remotely a necessity to appreciating Shakespeare.)  There's a beauty to listening to Shakespeare -- done well -- that goes far beyond the individual words.



(love this version of Upon the King)

10.  What are some of your favorite lines from Shakespeare?  (Maybe limit yourself to like ten, okay?)

I'm only picking lines I can quote from memory and that I actually say to myself on a regular basis, so these are not going to be displayed in proper play format. They're also going to be mostly from Henry V as that is the play I know far and away the best.

She is the fairies' midwife , and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate-stone on the fore-finger of an alderman...  (okay, this is kind of cheating, because the reason I can quote this line is not because of watching/reading Romeo & Juliet, but because Simon le Bon quotes it in Duran Duran's video for Night Boat, and I have seen that far more times than any Shakespeare play...  But still, I quote it to myself a lot, and it is Shakespeare.)

I tell you truly, herald, I know not if the day be ours or no. (Henry V)

Let's shog.  (Henry V)

And then to Calais, and to England then, where ne'er from France arrived more happy men. (Henry V)

So, if a son, that by his father is sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness by your rule should fall upon the father that sent him.  But this is not so.  (Henry V)

If the enemy be an ass, and a fool, and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass, and a fool, and a prating coxcomb? (Henry V)

De nails, madam! (Henry V)

Lay on, Macduff. (Macbeth)

To be, or not to be, that is the question. (Hamlet)

Silent Running (1972)

The last time I saw this movie was somewhere in the early 80s.  It was the first and only time I saw the movie, though I had grown up with a couple cues off the soundtrack.  Some movies I see once and I've forgotten them a couple weeks later.  Some movies I see once and they stick with me for thirty plus years.  Silent Running is one of the latter.

While Silent Running isn't one of my favorite movies, it's a movie I appreciate and I'm glad I rewatched it for the Robots in Film blogathon.

Rather like Wall-E, it's set in a future where nothing green grows on earth anymore.  To preserve the last natural vegetation, several giant space freighters were sent into space, each carrying several greenhouse domes, each preserving a different type of natural environment.  For eight years, the ships have been in orbit out near Saturn.  Then the order comes from earth -- detach and nuke each dome and return home.  They need the big spaceships for other purposes, and no one needs the forgotten forests anymore.

Our protagonist in this story is Lowell, played by Bruce Dern.  He finally gets to play a good guy, though some could argue that Lowell comes a bit unhinged.  And maybe he does.  Your opinion may vary depending upon how much you love the natural world and how far you'd go to protect it.  But I personally love Bruce Dern in this movie, and I love his character.  I have to admit I relate pretty strongly to his passionate caretaker character, who ends up disobeying the nuke orders quite violently to save his favorite dome from destruction.  Where the other crew members rotate on each year and take care of the running of the ship, Lowell has been with the ship caring for the domes the full eight years.  Bruce Dern is perfect for this role.  Watching his horror at the irreplaceable loss as the other ships gleefully jettison and blow up their own domes one by one is heartbreaking. By the time they come for his dome, you know he has to act.

And that brings us to the robots in this movie:  Drone 1, Drone 2, and Drone 3.  Or as Lowell renames them:  Dewey, Huey, and Louie, in that order.   They are basically maintenance robots, designed to keep the giant spaceship running.  But, they're also reprogrammable, and once he's alone on the giant ship, Lowell reprograms them to do all kinds of new stuff to help him survive.  He programs them to perform surgery, to play poker, and, most importantly, to care for the garden.  The robots are boxy, a bit awkward, have no mouths or eyes or any human features, but they quickly take on personalities after he reprograms them, and they appear to convey what they're feeling to some extent.  They feel the loss of Louie, they consult each other during a poker match.  It helps that Lowell talks to them as if they're human.  Huey, Dewey, and Louie are crucial to the plot of this movie, and I love the ending of this film.  The three robots are acted by real people, which accounts for their unique movements and the more human emotions they engender. 

The title of the movie does indeed come from submarine talk, as Lowell attempts to fake his ship's destruction to throw off the other ships and goes silent so he can escape with the last precious dome.  When that ultimately fails, he's forced to take even more drastic measures to preserve the dome.

This movie plays a bit dated now, the montages with the sung songs really jar by today's standards, but the effects, the cool design of the ships, the diverting go-kart-like vehicles, and robots are quite great.  I watched the making of extra on the DVD, which I really enjoyed.  This movie was made on a tight million dollar budget, as an experiment, in a quick 32 days.  They filmed it on a decommissioned aircraft carrier, Valley Forge, redressing the carrier to look like a space ship instead of a naval vessel.  It looks pretty fantastic, particularly the use of the giant aircraft hangar, which in the movie is a storage area and a homemade racetrack for their all terrain vehicles.  (One of the memorable scenes I have never forgotten.) The spaceship in the movie is also called Valley Forge.  The aircraft carrier gives the spaceship halls and rooms and control room a real feeling that I doubt constructed sets would have achieved.

I have had a life-long attraction to botanical gardens.  My favorite part of any county/state fair was always the garden area.  Something about waterfalls and ponds and trees in an enclosed building always fascinated me.  There was a Bank of America building in North Hollywood that we used to go to back in the 70's that had a mini botanical garden behind glass, with a waterfall and trees, and I was utterly entranced by it as a child.  Best part of going banking with my mom was just getting to visit that little garden.  I remember it to this day.  So, I love the geodesic domes in this movie, each with its own set of trees, plants, water, animals...  Right up my alley.

My thanks to Quiggy and Hamlette for hosting this Robots in Film blogathon!  Check out the other entries to read more about other robots in movies!

Wall-E (2008)

**Minor spoilers follow**

Wall-E is one of my favorite Pixar movies.  It ties with Up for the number one spot, and I can’t choose between the two.  What puts Wall-E up at the top of the list is not just the beautiful animation and the fantastic storytelling (done with almost no dialogue), but Wall-E himself.

I am very fond of my action heroes, and a lot of grey area characters, and, admittedly, a lot of villains.  Wall-E is none of those.  Wall-E is the sweetest, gentlest, most romantic, naïve, generous, genuine, and most helpful character ever.  He is probably the nicest fictional character I’ve ever loved.

This is the magic of Wall-E.

Wall-E is one of the most amazingly wonderful characters ever created.  The fact that he doesn’t really speak, that his character is conveyed strictly through his physical appearance and actions, just makes the beauty of his character even greater.

The quick synopsis:

It is the future.  Earth has been evacuated and abandoned to mountains of trash and dust storms, but one lone little robot carries on with the job he was programmed to do:  clean up the trash.  Wall-E stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth Class.  He’s a little trash compactor.  He trundles around, compacting trash into neat little cubes and stacking those into towers.  One day, a spaceship arrives and drops off a probe, Eve (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), designed to look for vegetation, and Wall-E’s life is changed forever.  He falls in love with Eve (whose name he can’t pronounce, and he calls her Eva), and he follows her into space, to the giant starliner Axiom, one of the spaceships that humans have been living on for the last 700 years.

The first half hour of the movie is my favorite.  We follow Wall-E around as he does his job.  He may be alone (except for his pet cockroach), but he finds beauty in everything.  He marvels at a glimpse of the night sky, and films it on his internal recorder.  When he stows away on the departing spaceship, the first thing he does in space is ooh and ahh over the view.  When he locates where Eve is stored, the first thing he does is point out at the sky to share that beauty with her.  He takes in all the sights in space with genuine awe at their beauty.

Wall-E is also a collector.  As he compacts trash on his daily rounds, he collects all manner of things that appeal to him.  His home is full of his found treasures.  His biggest treasure is a video tape of Hello Dolly, that he watches and re-watches in the evenings.  He has an internal recorder, and he records the things he loves the most, like the clear night sky, and bits of Hello Dolly, particularly the part where two characters hold hands to express their love.

Then Eve arrives.  Where he is terrestrial and boxy and low tech, she is sleek and shiny and high tech, and she flies and soars with elegant grace.  She is beautiful, and Wall-E falls in love just about instantly.

He follows her around, makes her a statue (and is crushed when she rejects it), joyfully shows her all the treasures is his home, shows her his precious Hello Dolly video.  He takes care of her when she shuts down, and, unwilling to lose her, he desperately follows her into space.  All this is conveyed with almost no dialogue.  Wall-E says Eve’s name, but other than a couple words, he conveys everything he’s feeling with physicality.  And his heart is worn right on his sleeve.  Wall-E is one of the most expressive and heart felt characters I’ve ever seen. 

But as much as I love that first half hour, a lot of the Wall-E’s true strengths come out in the rest of the movie.  Because Wall-E changes every single character he meets for the better, with the exception of the two bad guys, and for those, he serves as a catalyst to action.  From Eve to M-O to the door-opener robot who learns to wave a greeting, to the two big Wall-A load lifters, to the host of damaged robots, to the captain, to John and Mary.  Wall-E greets everyone he meets with warmth and compassion and wide-eyed-optimism and joy.  Wall-E cannot even conceive of bad people.  And each one who meets Wall-E discovers they can break out of their programmed lives and start really living again.

And that is ultimately what this movie is about.  It’s about living.  Living your own life.  Taking control of your own life.  Following your dreams with joy and open hearts.  Everything on the Axiom is run by robots.  Even the literal paths the robots are allowed to traverse are designated lines on the floors.  Until Wall-E shows them they don’t have to keep following a line in the ground.  Wall-E doesn’t try to change anyone.  He simply greets everyone with joy, offers open friendship to all, and points out the beauty and love in the world.  That example is all that’s needed to open the eyes of those he meets.

Even when Wall-E is grievously damaged, his first reaction when M-O approaches is to hold out his hand and introduce himself.  He doesn’t ask for help, he simply says the equivalent of hello, happy to meet you.

In the commentary on this film, the director, Andrew Stanton, says that the theme of the film was that irrational love can conquer life’s programming.  The rest of the story was conceived in service of that theme, and was not meant to be messag-ey in any other way.  As a writer, I understand that.

I talked with a lot of people when Wall-E first came out who found negative takeaways in this movie.  Some got stuck on objecting to reading in an environmental message, etc., or they got hung up or offended by depiction of these futuristic people, but that misses out on the wonder and joy and happiness of watching a truly nice character change the world in his quest to find love, happiness, and meaning in life.

This has been an entry for the Robots in Film blogathon. Follow the link to read the other entries in this blogathon.  I will also be reviewing the 1971 film Silent Running.

2018 Favorite movies - revisited

Naturally, since I made my list of favorite 2018 movies before the year was over, before the Christmas movies came out, my list changed before 2018 ended.

Conclusion:  it is really a three-way tie between Ready Player One, Avengers: Infinity War, and Bohemian Rhapsody.  I honestly cannot pick one over the other.  All three were seen multiple times in the theater, all of them leave me revved up and bouncy-happy coming out of the theater.  I wouldn't change anything about any of them.  All three were shared with family who loved them just as much as I did, so there are many memories, and hours of conversation about each of them.  Music is infinitely important to what makes a movie a favorite movie, and the scores to all three have been listened to repeatedly.  Obviously, the movies earlier in the year have been listened to more, but Bohemian Rhapsody, being Queen, kind of gets a pass there, as that is music I've listened to for even longer, though I've discovered some new songs.

Which makes 2018 one fabulous year for movies for me.  It is rare to have not one, not two, but three movies of that calibre, that captured my heart so completely.

I was reviewing the movies I streamed on Amazon Prime and Netflix last year (which was a LOT), and oddly, I did not discover anything there that grabbed me.  There was only one movie viewed from a streaming source that I wanted to own on DVD, and that was Macbeth (2015).

2018 was definitely a year for theatrical movies for me, not small screen.

Movies seen over Christmas vacation

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Hope it was a great one.

I got to go see two movies at the theater this past weekend.

Aquaman (2018) - This was a very enjoyable movie.  Pure popcorn fun.  Definitely my favorite so far of the DC movies.  I'm not much of a DC fan in general, but this one just really works well.  I think a lot of that is because it doesn't have a message or agenda, and it doesn't try to be anything more than what it is:  a superhero movie.  And it does that really well.  There is no great depth to this one, the plot doesn't try to be clever or manipulate its viewers, it's just straightforward and straight shooting.  I liked the actors and the visuals were cool.  There was a lot of humor, and some serious moments, and some striking imagery.  There was a lot of beauty in the underwater landscapes that I appreciated.  And a submarine.  I'm always going to appreciate submarines.  Alas, a completely unmemorable film score for this one, but otherwise, a very fun romp.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) - I loved this movie so much.  I can't wait to go back to see it in the theater again.  I'm not even that much of a Queen fan, though I have always admired their talent, and I love many of their songs ("Crazy Little Thing Called Love" has been in the top 5 of my favorite non-Duran Duran rock songs for ages), but this movie is so classy and respectful and full of the band's love of creating music/performing.  It's beautiful, it's sad, it sticks with you afterwards.  This is movie celebrates their lives and their talent, it isn't a sordid expose.  I like that.  The casting is completely uncanny.  The casting director should get an oscar for finding this ensemble cast who is freaking perfect.  I was watching Queen videos the day after, and I literally cannot tell the real Brian May from the actor who played him in the movie.  (My brother-in-law, who grew up watching and listening to Queen, commented that it was actually creepy how much of a resemblance there was... we're all fully onboard with the hilarious internet theory that Brian May (since he is an astrophysicist) figured out how to time travel and came to the future to make this movie. ROFL!)  The others are truly amazing as well.  Rami Malek is excellent as Freddie Mercury, and he really looks like him, particularly with short hair and a mustache.  Of course, I've been listening to Queen songs and watching their videos ever since seeing the movie.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to go see Mary Poppins Returns.  I've been hearing good things about it... but I just don't know if it's for me. 

Publishing news!

It's been awhile, but I have a new story just published.  It's a flash fiction story called "A Clean Home is a Happy Home," in an anthology called It Happened in a Flash.  This story is published under my pen name Dana Fischer.

And right now, this anthology is free on Amazon and Barnes & Noble!  You can't beat that price, that's for sure, so what are you waiting for?  Check it out!

Not only do I have a story in this anthology, but Hamlette does as well.  Her story is called "Knighthood."  We've wanted to share a table of contents for a long time, so this is very exciting for us!

Two stories for the price of... nothing!  Not to mention, there are 62 other flash fiction stories of various genres in the anthology. 

Happy birthday, Kirk Douglas!

Kirk Douglas turned 102 today! My family watched 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea tonight to celebrate.  Hope he had a great day.

 

 

The eagles are coming

The salmon are running, which brings the bald eagles to the lake to feast.  I don't have a good camera, so getting the really good pictures I leave to the rest of my family, but I was able to snap this one on my phone.  The days are very overcast right now, so the lighting is not exactly conducive, but it's not terrible.  A third eagle joined these two right after I started walking away. 

I spent a long time just watching the eagles fish on the lake.  It's quite cool to watch them dive down and snag a swimming salmon in their talons then take off.  If you look at the trees around the lake, the eagles are really easy to spot with their white heads.  Some trees have a dozen or more eagles perched in them.

2018 Movie Wrap-up

So, this was an interesting year for movies.  I saw eleven new movies in the theater in 2018.  Only a couple of those merited repeat viewings in the theater.  The only other movie I will probably be seeing this year is Aquaman.  We will have to see where that one falls in the scheme of things! 

Favorite movie of the year:  Ready Player One
Hands down my favorite movie of the year and the one I've seen the most. I love all of the characters, love the setting, love the plot.  I had read the book beforehand, but I had no problem with any of the changes they made to translate to screen.  Absolutely adore Ben Mendelsohn as Nolan Sorrento in this movie.  My sister and I laugh and laugh over his lines, and my nephew even has one of his lines as his text tone on his phone cuz it cracks us all up so much.  ("You need three of them...")  We laugh all through this movie, in the best way possible.  And Mark Rylance is brilliant.  Of course, the 80s were our formative high school years, so there are tons of funny references and easter eggs and things that just tickle us to death.  Plus, simply re-watching and catching new references or shots of things from other movies is a joy.  The martian ship from George Pal's War of the World film is a highlight every single time it comes on.  This movie is a happy place movie I can watch anytime, anywhere.

Best movie of the year: Avengers: Infinity War
I loved everything about this movie, thought it handled everything so perfectly, I'm still in awe of how it managed that.  I come out of this movie so revved and pumped up.  The combos of characters thrown together was absolutely delightful, the dialogue some of the funniest. Doctor Strange remains my favorite character, and I could watch him and Tony (and Peter) argue over things all day.  This is one of those movies that ended up making me love the Guardians of the Galaxy.  They worked so well here that now I actually love their two movies, where I wasn't particularly a fan of them previously.  Thanos was marvelous as a bad guy whose goal is actually to help save the universe, for once. That was so refreshing.  There was nothing about this movie I didn't love.

Most disappointing movie of the year:  Ralph Wrecks the Internet
I didn't see the first one in the theater.  The family ended up catching it on cable, DVR'd it... and we then proceeded to wear it out.  We loved the plot, the characters, the resolution... it was just so much fun.  It was one that the adults couldn't walk out of when my nephew wanted to watch it. The sequel... is none of those things, though depending on what sweet spots people have, the plot may be more appealing than the first one.  It undeniably has an utterly fantastic depiction of the internet.  That alone is worth the price of admission. I absolutely positively loved the internet.  And there's nothing wrong with this movie.  It's very well done.  Just disappointing, and that feeling may vanish on repeat viewings.  But the things that drew me to the first movie weren't in this one. I loved the characters of the first one.  But in this one, everything that I had loved about them in the first one was gone here.  Vanellope had lost her sass, Ralph had become clingy and whiny and no fun to watch in the movie (I realize this actually isn't unrealistic... again, nothing wrong with this, just explaining why it was disappointing to me on first viewing), and Felix and Calhoun, who were my favorite part of the first movie, were sidelined into nothingness.  The secondary characters in this movie ended up being more interesting than the leads.

Movie I expected to hate and quite enjoyed:  Incredibles 2 
I'm not a fan of the first Incredibles.  Like at all.  So it surprised me greatly when I actually rather enjoyed the sequel.  This is probably the opposite of Ralph Wrecks the Internet...  I had zero expectations, and so the movie ended up being a lot of fun.  Jack-Jack was great, all the characters were much more likeable than in the first movie, and I generally had a good time.  Not a movie I need to own, but I won't walk out on it if the family is watching it, where I do leave if the first one is on.

The rest:

Black Panther -- liked it a lot, love the characters, except the bad guy, who just doesn't work.  Better on repeat viewings, though.

Tomb Raider -- Okay, fun but hard to think of as Tomb Raider.  I enjoyed it more just as an action adventure movie starring an actress I really like.  I like Dominic West too, and Alexandre Willaume (a Danish actor I really enjoy watching).

Solo -- most of it was good, but that nerve-grating droid of Lando's nearly ruins the whole movie.  But loved young Han and Chewie.

Ant-man & the Wasp -- liked it a lot, will probably be better on repeat viewings, but I only saw it once and haven't felt much desire to see it again.  I didn't love it the way I loved the first Ant-Man movie.

Hunter Killer -- hahaha!  I quite loved this.  A lot of ridiculous, delightful fun.  Just like a first season Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode, but with a big budget. Don't go to this one for believability.  Go because submarines and crazy cartoon action.  (Also, the guy playing the Russian president was cute.)  Toby Stephens played my favorite character, as the head of the SEAL team.

Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald -- a bit of a wreck, though some of it is still good.  But it sidelined main characters, and, really, the whole thing felt like filler and padding just to set up the next movie, which means the next one should be much better.

Robin Hood - The first half of this was really entertaining.  Then it went all message-y and lost the fun.  Nothing annoys me more than having a message shoved down my throat.  Doesn't matter if it's a message I agree with or one I'm against.  Do Not Preach At Me.  And it's really too bad, because I found a lot to like about this movie until politics and things mucked it up.  I liked Taron Egerton, I liked the completely whacked out setting/costumes.  Almost goes without saying that I loved Ben Mendelsohn. He was fantastic.

The only ones of these movies I've bought on blu-ray were Ready Player One and Solo, and the latter remains unopened.  Ready Player One has, of course, been watched repeatedly.  You may ask, what about Infinity War, and I will be picking it up... I just saw that one a lot of times in the theater and am not prepared to watch it on a small screen yet.  I prefer my big screen memories right now.

As for film scores this year...  It's a toss up between Alan Silvestri and James Newton Howard for favorite composer.  Silvestri scored both Ready Player One and Infinity War, both of which have gotten hours and hours of playtime.  Howard scored Red Sparrow and Fantastic Beasts 2.  FB2 was just released, so I haven't had a chance to listen to it much, but I've really enjoyed it so far (more than the movie itself).  And Red Sparrow has some fantastic cues.  (I also picked up Howard's score for the Nutcracker movie, but it's a very specific sound because of the Tchaikovsky, so I probably won't play it much.)

Favorite cue of the year from the new movie scores is a toss up between "Didn't I do Well?" from Red Sparrow and "Looking for a truck" from Ready Player One.





As for what I'm looking forward to next year... Avengers: Endgame, of course.  Captain Marvel, How to Train Your Dragon 3, Chaos Walking.

Snow and Nano Update

I have a folder on my ipod with a lot of my favorite soundtrack cues.  It's what I listen to at work a lot, or while I'm doing chores, as I usually don't want a single mood or sound.  I set it on random, and just enjoy what comes up.  I put it on early this morning while I fed the cats and dog and did morning chores, and it must have known I had a rough night, as it's given me lots of most excellent revving up cues.

It started with a cue from High Velocity by Jerry Goldsmith, always a great way to start the morning, went to "Bishop's Countdown" from Aliens by James Horner, went to "Traveling," from Island at the Top of the World by Maurice Jarre, To "Claudie Says Yes" from The Last Run, to "Rock Shop" from Robocop by Basil Poledouris, to Shogun, to In Harm's Way, to For Greater Glory... and on.  Of course, there's a reason these cues are in this folder, but some days the shuffle feature is just dead on.

We've had our first snow of the season here, last Friday.  It was lovely, and it was so much fun watching family members experience snow for the first time.  I didn't t really take any pictures, so I'll wait for the next snow.

(Mmmmm, "Hunting the Wolves" from Wolf Totem just came on by James Horner.  This is a very good music morning here)

Nano was churning along steadily, but I had a major revelation last night, and so I'm not continuing with Nano this year. This isn't a bad thing. Quite the contrary.  I was participating really only to 1) get back in a regular writing habit, and 2) clear the air, free the genie, release the kraken.. whatever you want to call it.  And this revelation did that.  That makes this Nano a resounding success for me!  I could not be happier.  Certainly worth the tears and frustration.  And even better -- I figured out what I needed to figure out 20K words and 12 days in, so I don't have to waste another 30K of words that I could better spend on other projects.  Win win win.  And a new plan and attitude going forward.  I am very pleased with this Nano.

("Main Title" from Lonely are the Brave)

As far as movies, my dad has been my movie partner lately for the TCM movie releases on the big screen.  We saw Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and this past weekend, we went and caught Die Hard.  It is great fun getting to see and share these with him.  A local theater is having a Veterans Film Festival today, and we may get to go see Sergeant York this evening.  That's one I've never seen before so hoping we can make the timing work out.  We'll be catching White Christmas next month.

Happy Halloween and Nano begins

It is November 1st!  Hope everyone had a lovely Halloween. It was pretty fantastic here.  My sister's new home is right by a popular park, and it's where many come to go trick or treating.  There was a fabulous turnout.  Hundreds of kids... we ran out of candy to pass out, had to make a fast grocery store run to pick up more.  Saw tons of adorable costumes.  One of my favorites was the mom and dad dressed as Ron and Hermione from Harry Potter, and their three young boys were all Harry Potter himself.  Three matching little Harry Potters.  It was fantastic.  There were superheroes, pirates, Disney princesses, Incredibles characters, a whole flock of kids in those blow-up T-Rex suits running around (which was hilarious).

My own family went the Star Wars route, specifically Return of the Jedi, with Vader, Luke, and yours truly as a stormtrooper.  Walking around in full-on Star Wars costumes is The Best.  Kids, and more often than not, the adults, would come running up, saying, "It's Darth Vader!"  So fun!  We all had a blast.  And now we know what to expect for next year, so we can have more candy stockpiled to start with.

Today, it is raining, and it is the perfect weather to start a novel.  I've got my hot tea, a Danny Elfman score on (Oz, the Great and Powerful), and am 800 words in.

And now for probably the last of the fall color pictures.  It's still going strong here.  I had to check the date of my first post, and that was Sept 10th.  I suspect the last trees will still be turning on Nov 10th, so that's been two wonderful months of amazing color.  These were just taken, you can see the weather's turning towards rain and cold.  No more sun to shine off the leaves.  But the color is still impressive.

And now, off to write some more.  Still have another 800 words to complete today's word count.