stoutfellow

This is something I've wondered about for quite a while.

One very common figure in USAn popular culture is the One Who Is Right, when nearly everyone else is wrong. The Scientist Who Knows: Jor-El, warning Krypton of impending doom, to no avail. The Experienced One: Ellen Ripley, warning against returning to the Alien world. The Moral Strongman: Will Kane, ready to stand alone against the Miller gang. Often - at least in drama - the One Who Is Right remains alone, pulling out some semblance of victory single-handed. Sometimes - more often in comedy - the One manages to persuade the masses at the last instant, as in Miracle on 34th Street or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

Individualism has long been a key ideal, in the USA, and I think that, by and large, it's a good thing. But it also provides psychological support for those whose views are rejected because they are wrong, or foolish, or dangerous. ("They laugh at me, just as they laughed at Columbus!" "They also laughed at Mortimer Snerd, you know.")

I don't know enough about popular culture in other countries. Is this kind of figure as prevalent elsewhere?

Hard on the heels of Robin Williams' death, we've lost another one: Lauren Bacall has died.

I don't know that you'd call her a great actress, but she put in some great performances: "To Have and Have Not", "The Big Sleep", and "Key Largo" are among my not-so-guilty pleasures. I'd rate the first of them highest; she played a more, ah, active role in that story than in the other two, IMO.

Good night, Betty Joan. Say "Hi" to Bogie for us.

I'm an old-timer WRT comics; when I hear the phrase "Guardians of the Galaxy", I think of Vance Astro, Nikki, Charlie-27, Yondu, Starhawk, and... wossname, the crystal guy. On hearing the name applied to the newer team - several of whose members didn't exist when I quit reading comics, and the other two having died - I was pretty skeptical.

Still, I've seen both of the trailers that have been released, and the film looks like it might be fun. I'll have to think about this. (I mean, really. A talking raccoon? An ent? Drax, who was created to fight Thanos but missed out on the big showdown, then moped around uselessly until his own daughter killed him? (Granted, he was aiming to kill her, but she kinda deserved it....) Gamora, whose spirit should still be trapped in the Soul Gem with Adam and Pip? And... who the hell is this Starlord?)

Looking at my archives, I see that I haven't said much about my trip to California. So....

I'm not going to say much more about Dad. We arranged for him to have a military funeral - three-gun volley, bugler playing "Taps", flag ceremony, the whole schmear - and his ashes are interred, with a few other items, in a wall-niche at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. That was what he wanted.

:pause for brief tears:

I did pay a visit to Barnes & Noble, as usual. I didn't buy much; even without the $25 gift certificate I got for Christmas, I spent less than $100. I bought a few bits of fiction - Hiaasen, Bradbury, Steven Erikson, Naomi Novik - plus the cookbook I mentioned a while ago and Empires of the Silk Road, a book on Central Asian history someone recommended to me. Haven't gotten around to reading any of them yet.

D and I did get out to one movie, "Frozen". I was pretty pleased with it; I particularly liked the fact that, though there was a villain, he wasn't the central problem - that was Elsa's need to come to terms with her power. (If anything, he helped catalyze the resolution.) Like almost everyone who's seen it, I was most impressed by Elsa's big "Let It Go" number. Brought tears, it did.

I can't say it was a good vacation, but it had its moments.

The Veronica Mars movie has been made, and will be showing next year. tor.com has a trailer here.

Lookin' good.

In the past week or so, word has come down about film adaptations of topnotch F/SF work. SyFy is talking about doing TV-movies of Niven's Ringworld and Clarke's Childhood's End, and some filmmaker I've never heard of is proposing a series of films based on C. J. Cherryh's Morgaine books.

Ringworld I can see. The real star of the story is the Ringworld itself; the approach to the Ringworld, Fist-Of-God Mountain, and the eye storm make for magnificent spectacle, and if there's anything Hollywood does right, it's spectacle. Even SyFy ought to be able to do this right. Lots of CGI, of course, even at the beginning with Nessus and Speaker. It'll probably wind up as mind candy, but it should be good mind candy.

Childhood's End.... Unh-unh. The story is thoroughly disjointed, as far as characters are concerned; the only character who's present all through is Karellen, who is after all not even remotely human. Still, Karellen's first visible appearance, the visit to the Overlords' home world, and the final destruction of Earth could be done well. I don't really see this not being a fiasco, though.

The Morgaine books might be doable. I wonder whether they'll be able to capture the spectacle of it (any scene with Changeling, but most especially Morgaine's confrontation with the qhalur in Fires of Azeroth) and the subtleties of personality. Morgaine herself is such a complex character; showing why she is the way she is might be difficult. And how well will they catch the nuances of the scene in which she finally tells Vanye to braid his hair, and when he is unable to (because of his arm injury) offers to do it for him. That's a powerful scene, and hard to do. (I've envisioned a flashback to Vanye's childhood, when he learned the importance of the braid....)

I'm interested in all three of these endeavors. I'm not really that hopeful for any of them, though.

1. The pilaf (today was the second helping) is delicious. I love it when a recipe comes out right, even when I've had to tweak it. (Thyme instead of tarragon, and some adjustments of amounts.)

2. The ?skunk may actually have taken refuge in the garage. A bit ago, Buster and Gracie were barking in the back yard; I peeked out and saw them outside the outer doggie door, facing in and making a big stink fuss. I stuck my head into the garage, and the scent was definitely in the air....

3. I bought a new dryer today; it will be delivered and installed tomorrow. Cost a pretty penny, but needs must.

4. The restart on the library revamp may have been a blessing in disguise. The first draft showed me various problems, which will be taken care of from the start in the new version. This time, I'm planning and building all of the major forms before doing much in the way of data entry. So far, so good.

5. I suddenly have a hankering to rewatch Mulan. Disney put out a string of better-than-usual animated features there - Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin are also in that list - and Mulan is easily my favorite. Tonight, maybe.

I rarely watch movies in theaters anymore; about the only time I do see them is on my visits to California. This year, with one thing and another, I only got around to seeing one: "Les Miserables".

I saw the musical in London in 1989, and listen to the soundtrack from time to time. I've always loved it, and this screen rendition is quite satisfactory. My only significant complaint is that Hugh Jackman's voice isn't quite strong enough for the role of Valjean. In the great Valjean/Javert duet at Fantine's deathbed, the two voices need to be closely matched, and, sadly, Jackman just wasn't quite up to it. Other than that (and a couple of plotting quibbles), I was very much pleased. Samantha Banks does a fine job as Eponine (the singer on my soundtrack is a little too childlike), and Anne Hathaway milks Fantine's misery for all it's worth. The Thenardiers were well-cast (Sacha Cohen and Helena Carter), and I loved their first encounter with Valjean.

A good three-hankie movie, if you're at all susceptible to the storyline. One of my resolutions for this year is to finally read the book; I have a three-volume French edition that I bought long ago and have never gotten around to.

Tonight I watched my tape of "The Kennel Murder Case", a 1933 mystery starring William Powell as Philo Vance. It's a pretty good movie, but the audio on the tape was in bad shape; I had to crank up the volume twice, the second time to the max. If I want to keep the movie in my collection, I'll probably have to buy the DVD.

One thing struck me. Towards the end of the movie, several people used the word "suspect" - the noun, that is. All of them pronounced it with stress on the second syllable; in my experience, the noun is stressed on the first syllable, and the verb on the second. (This isn't an unusual pattern; cf. "project", "object", and - a variation - "defend/defense".) Was the word regularly pronounced that way in the '30s, or was it simply not yet familiar enough, so that the director (or whoever) thought it was pronounced that way? (Compare its memorable pronunciation in "Casablanca", less than a decade later.)

Is a puzzlement.

Well, my vacation is about half over, and I thought I'd check in.

We've had several family get-togethers already: the gift exchange at O's on the 17th, Christmas Eve dinner at E's, and a - rather time-displaced - birthday party at C's yesterday. The best-attended was the gift exchange, with all four generations of the clan present. (I got a copy of Pratchett's Snuff, about which more later, as my gift.) Christmas Eve was delicious, as usual; E's husband D is quite a good cook. (I found, to my surprise, that he's never tried to bake apple pie, and with the zeal of the recent convert I offered to send him a recipe.) I hadn't seen C's new place - she and her husband moved twice in the last twelve months - and the visit there was nice and relaxing. (She had picked up a couple of pairs of pants for me; finding pants in my size is a bit on the difficult side.)

I paid a quick visit to Barnes & Noble on the 18th. I didn't buy a whole lot, but did get half-price hardcover copies of Ghost Story and The Children of the Sky, as well as Charles Mann's 1493, David McCullough's book on the Johnstown flood, and some more F/SF by Charles Stross, Jack McDevitt, Peter Hamilton, Greg Bear, and Poul Anderson.

Snuff is, I think, mid-range Pratchett - not his best work, but good enough. Ghost Story was a good ripsnorter; it was nice to see the supporting cast, especially Molly, strut their stuff. (The main villain's last lethal error reminded me of a recent storyline in "Schlock Mercenary" involving Ensign Ventura....) I'm working my way through The Children of the Sky now, but haven't gotten far enough to have much of an opinion yet. Vinge's usual themes of treachery and child prodigies have already made their appearances.

My brother and I went to see the second Sherlock Holmes movie last week. I realized which story they were going for as soon as Mycroft mentioned the meeting in Switzerland, but it was fun seeing how it developed - and the final clash between Holmes and his opponent was worth the price of admission.

Research is proceeding well; I've gained several useful insights, but the overall picture remains elusive. I hope to give an overview of what I'm doing sometime in the new year.

No word from the dogsitter. I'll take no news as good news, but I am starting to look forward to seeing Buster and Gracie again. (Of course, that will also be the point at which I'll have to respond to queries and complaints about last semester's grades, which I've fobbed off so far on the grounds that I don't have access to the data from 2000 miles away.)

And I guess this year I'll be rooting for New Orleans again, after the Chargers' dismal performance against Detroit on Sunday. :le sigh: