(no subject)

[solitary_summer]

Hm. I think for once I actually do have a goal for next year... For this to be, if at all possible, the last Christmas season in retail. Seriously. I know no job is perfect, but I think I need a change in annoyances. I want to be able to have leisure before Christmas again, go to advent markets, take my time in choosing presents for people, want to be enthusiastic about baking Weihnachtskekse again... instead of telling god knows how many people that, no, we don't have this book any longer, and no, I don't know if, or when, I'm going to have it in stock again, until I want to scream and bang my head against the next wall. If I never hear the word Sudoku again... ::sigh:: Not going to happen.

I really hope that 1) I'll be able to maintain the determination, and, more importantly, 2) will actually find something at least reasonably interesting and aggravating in all new and exciting ways . Anyway, the search starts after I'll have revived from Christmas.


My history with the Potter movies is a rather bumpy one... liked PS, if only because of the wow, that's how it looks like, and wow, you can actually film a quidditch match effect; disliked CoS, my sister and I left half-heartedly vowing not to see another one, but then a year passed, and of course we were there for PoA, which, rather to my surprise then, I actually liked a lot. With GoF I'm back to somewhere between square one and two, that is, feeling less than enthusiastic.

Yes, long book, complex plot, yes, difficult to put into a movie, but still... I know PoA cut big chunks out of the book's plot, but the thing is, watching the film I never missed them. With GoF I had the book constantly in the back of my mind, supplying plot details, character details, and, what perhaps was even more of a problem, emotional depth... it never really developed a life or vision of its own. It supplied a visual to the book, which is still something that will keep me fascinated for a while, because I don't have much of a visual imagination - I can analyse a character to death, but ask me what s/he looks like and the answer will be a very vague one at best -, but in the end it's just not enough to satisfy. The acting wasn't particularly impressive either - with PoA I had the impression that the director was actually pushing his actors, whereas here it rather felt like everyone was going through their part pretty much as they liked, without much direction, or enthusiasm, for the matter. And some of the changes... am I the only one who found the entrance of the Beauxbaton girls vaguely offensive? (Not that the Durmstrang entrance was any less strange, but all the ah-ing and oh-ing and butterflies... ::gag::) And Hermione... it's one thing to be hurt and angry with Ron, but to have her in weepy hysterics? And at the same time to cut S.P.E.W., or the way she found out and tricked Rita Skeeter... these things establish her as a character with strong opinions, determination, intelligence and resourcefulness, whereas movie!Cinderella!Hermione is reduced to just that. And, a propos victor Krum... does everyone has to be prettified in the movies? This is a serious question, actually: Why is it possible to be normal looking, or even ugly, in books, whereas in a movie at least no one who is a main character, or romantically involved with a main character, is allowed to be anything less than perfect?

And because I cannot say anything without immediately contradicting myself at least partly, the kid who plays Ron is going to be very cute in a few years. Which I mean in the least perverted way possible.


[BTW, there's a rather funny parody of the movie here, if you haven't seen it already.]


The not-really-a-rant about Buffy will have to wait, it got too long and rambly already to finish tonight... Which really begs the question why it always has to take me forever to sort out my thoughts and put them into words...


Random, unrelated thought of the day... It's curious. Between zoos and television you think you're a little jaded, you've seen it... well, not all, but a lot of things. Even strange things, or in this case, strange animals, are not all that strange.

But sometimes you still get something of that profound sense of alienation that early explorers must have felt when they first set foot on a strange land and saw things that not only they hadn't seen before, but never even heard of before. And you understand how the legends came about, the to our eyes odd-looking drawings, the descriptions that struggle to find an object of comparison to describe something they had no real frame of reference for. I channel surfed into a program about fruit bats this evening and to see a whole (flock? swarm? what's the correct term?), thousands of the of them, flying in the bright day, the light shimmering through their semi-transparent wings... it was a weird sight, because my brain wanted to see birds in this sky dark with flying... animals, then kept bringing up images of those flying dinosaurs, and refused to connect this with our nocturnal bats...

Or maybe I'm really, really weird.