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So the Jem and the Holograms movie is apparently not good.

...Somehow, I can't say I'm surprised. Nothing I'd seen in pre-production, trailers, posters, nothing, gave me a frisson of hope that it would capture what I and so many others loved about the cartoon.

Alas.

ETA: Here's an article that examines things in a little more detail. Including why Hollywood's misogyny cost Jem fans the movie we wanted and deserved.

The movie was actually quite good, worth its 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not something I would typically expect from something in this kind of franchise. It's been, what, 30 years since the last Mad Max movie? Definitely the way to go in breathing fresh life into a franchise.

And, under "how do I love thee" or "among the many many reasons I adore Wonderful Husband," he was the one who suggested seeing it. His curiosity prompted, I have zero doubt, by the many gifsets and anti-anti-feminist rantings coming across Tumblr recently. And when we walked out, he remarked that he couldn't see where the anti-feminists were finding their problems with the movie. To him, as to me, it was just a good film.

(No, seriously, where do the anti-feminists find flaw? Neither of us gets it.)

Over the weekend, for our December date, Wonderful Husband and I went to see Frozen. Which, for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, stay to the end of the credits. There's a bonus mini-scene. And both of us want to see it again.

( Spoilery talk. )

I have a fanfic for the movie brewing in my head, but it's going to wait until I have time to write it out. And, no, it's not a cross with RotG, because even though Elsa and Jack both have winter powers, I don't have a nibble from that bunny yet.

Am now at the stage of pregnancy where turning over in bed at night is uncomfortable and difficult. Fortunately, that is about the extent of my difficulties.

I've started a new embroidery project. At some point, I found at Savers a couple stacks of pre-printed quilt-blocks-to-embroider, and as they were $cheap!, I bought the lot. One of the sets is sixteen squares, 18" each, of butterflies and flowers. I'm on block two at the moment, and am planning on doing them all in different colors since cookie-cutter embroidery just seems boring for this project. Plus I'm delighting in using up some of my floss. I have three boxes of embroidery floss. Some of it needs to go. Now, granted, I don't expect to have this done much before Squiddle goes off to college (I know myself and my average attention span), but for now it's keeping my hands busy.

I find myself slightly disappointed in the Pacific Rim fandom on AO3. There's a goodly number of stories... but they all seem to be either pairing-based (which, I suppose the basic setup of the universe makes that all too easy...), or exact retellings of the movie substituting in characters from a different fandom/series. Which, c'mon, people, you're writers. Can't I get a little creativity here?

Went to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader. ( Somewhat spoilery review. )

The neverending battle of never being able to catch up with things. There's just not enough hours in the day, even on the weekends.

At least a bit of the garden got sorted out this weekend. And I'm keeping up with my early-Saturday-morning bellydance class, and Wonderful Husband and I went ice skating this afternoon, so that kind of tempers out the fit of body loathing earlier today. A little. I'm suspecting the limits the sodium thing puts on what I can eat will help me with losing weight, but I need to find a way to shoehorn more exercise in. Three hours a week isn't enough.

We went this evening to see RED. It has a stellar cast and was very fun if over the top in a few sections. But then what should you expect of an action flick starring Bruce Willis?

So for now I should go feed the kitties, clean their box, put dishes away, wash the new ones, finish up the ironing, and put laundry away before grabbing a quick shower and going to bed.

Wonderful Husband and I spent $6 between us this evening to see The Sorceror's Apprentice at a cheapie theater. It has something like a 6/10 at Rotten Tomatoes, which we agree with, but it's a pretty solid six. The SFX were good, there were some delightfully tongue-in-cheek moments, and Horvarth's pupil (whose name I cannot remember but we ended up dubbing him Jareth because he was a cross between Labyrinth-era David Bowie, and David Copperfield) was a delight. Jay Baruchel was... well, I hope he has something more of a range because he was playing a very Hiccup-esque character and I'd hate for him to get stuck in that role forever.

The world built was interesting, and put me sometimes in mind of A Flight of Dragons (science vs. magic) but even more often in mind of So You Want To Be A Wizard (wherein magic is essentially long physics equations). I did have problems with a bit of the costuming--Veronica and Morgana's dresses were NOT c.740. More like c.1240.... But that's me and my own geekdom. A lot could have been done with what the film presented if it didn't have to fit into a Disney Romance formula. Still, well worth the viewing especially at $3.

I was also quietly, quixotically amused to see that the film was dedicated to the memory of Dr. August Coppola (Nicolas Cage's father). The gentleman in question passed away in the past year, and the company I work for handled his services.

So, went and saw The Last Airbender (part 1) last night. It had some pretty visuals, which is about all that can be said for it. Because, sadly, the movie sucks. It hews too blow-by-blow closely to the (awesome) Nickelodeon cartoon it's based on, which means it takes the ~440-minute season one and squishes it into a ~103-minute movie. In doing so, it loses all sense of character (Iroh and Sokka were the only ones who seemed remotely like actual people), character development, world background, and personal arcs. It's filled with unnecessary close-ups that are actually painful to watch, and as a sin of sins, it tells not shows the storyline. How many years of English classes did we all have where our teachers pounded it into our heads not to do that? Flat dialogue and info dumps abound, starting with Katara voice-overing the scrolling text at the beginning. Because audiences, you know, can't read or anything. Things happen solely because the plot demands it, not arising from any natural sequential action or character motivation. Appa looks like a refugee from Where The Wild Things Are, and Momo isn't even given a name. If season 2 gets made into a film, I shudder to think what Toph will end up like.

So, if you liked the cartoon? Go watch it again and don't even bother seeing this movie unless you're bored and it's hit a $3 theater near you.

Have just finished reading Alan Dean Foster's novelization of Revenge of the Fallen. (Shaddup, it's a slow day at work and I'm caught up.) Given how bad the first three TFs novels by him have been, I wasn't expecting very much.

I have seldom been so pleased to have my expectations disappointed. Obviously coming from an earlier draft of the script, it keeps in almost everything I liked about the movie (except Simmons' dialogue about "Gunfight at the OK Corral", and a couple smackdowns 'Bee does to most deserving characters), and fixes all the shit that sucked. It even answers some niggling little fangirl questions like "Why did they do a casting call for a certain character who doesn't even show up in the film? What did they cut?"

While I'm pleased that ADF has finally gotten things "right," though, I find myself wondering why the heck he couldn't pull things together for the earlier novels. And also wondering why he felt the need to change Simmons' first name from "Reginald" to "Seymour" as well as Epps' name from "Robert" or "Bobby" to "Raymond"....

I'm hoping this is more to do with the three hours' sleep last night than anything else, but my throat hurts, so I've dragged in a tea ball and a nice selection of loose-leaf teas today. Mmm, bloodberry...

TFs is still fresh and new in my mind and I'm really looking forward to getting to discuss it tonight with some online fangirl friends. I was surprised (pleasantly!) by the trailers that came with the movie. The G.I.Joe trailer was a given, of course (and I still say the accelerator suits vs. missiles scene is "borrowed" from the first TFs movie), but also we got the first teaser trailer for Avatar (much better on the big screen than on YouTube); G-Force (which will probably be stupid, but I like the trailer); 2012 (which will probably disturb me but looks to have really good SFX); District 9 (Alien Nation meets Japanese internment camps); Harry Potter 6 (if it lives up to its trailers, it's going to be the best one yet); Funny People (an Adam Sandler movie which actually looks good); and Public Enemies (which looks to be a classy film but I'm obviously not nearly as much of a Johnny Depp fan as my sister and Liz are...).

Current Mood: awake

( Mixed Feelings. Very Mixed. )

Current Mood: argh!
Current Location: home, heading toward bed

Yesterday I translated two episodes of Ultraman Moebius for our subtitling group, watered my plethora of sprouting seeds with cooled chamomile tea (has certain antibacterial properties), went with Wonderful Husband to see Speed Racer (which started awkward but improved... the races are *definitely* worth watching) at the $3 theater, watered my garden (harvesting two tomatoes and three squash), and overall failed to die of the heat.

Let's see if I can top that today. ^_^

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: home, sewing room

Well, it's 2008 here now. The rain is really coming down, but people were setting off fireworks regardless. At the moment my sister-in-law and I are watching Paul McCartney perform "Get You Into My Life." One of the amusing things about watching British television is that there are very, very, VERY few people, ads, or anything I recognize. It's fun.

Still fighting jetlag, am minorly sick (threw up earlier, but fortunately there was very little in my stomach to come up)... am hoping that it's just a small annoyance I caught on the plane that will be over soon. Like in the morning. Sticking to small amounts of simple foods at the moment. No animal protein or fats. So far it's working. ^_^ Otherwise, I feel fine.

Wrote a little on Twin Terrors 5 today, and have been been doing embroidery. The former (not the latter) was helped by Transformers being my first movie of choice on the flight over. The second was Waitress, and I got halfway through Hairspray before we went into a landing pattern, so I'm hoping to finish it on the way back.

Back to nibbling my grapes and roll....

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Southampton, England

We did it, we did it! *does the happy subber dance*

Our fansubbing group, Fushigichan Fansubs, can finally call ourselves a real group! We have a website and have started releases!

*falls over dead of the happy*

In any case, please feel free to download and watch our first production, the Ultraman Moebius movie. Because I think the series is really really cool and have been pimping it to anyone reading this journal for months anyway, and the movie more or less acts as a standalone piece and you don't need to have watched the TV series to follow it. (We plan to tackle the TV series after most of our group goes to and returns from Japan.) And if you do download it and watch, we hope you enjoy!

Current Mood: hyper
Current Location: home, Earth

Went and did some grocery shopping today, including the ingredients for my part of Thanksgiving (this year: cranberries, no not the canned variety you louts except for th jellied, because the canned variety for those is so far better than I can do; pumpkin scones; pureed acorn squash; and salsa for appetizers, both the "pure" version and the Velveeta version). Made the salsa tonight and sampled it, in fact. I think it kicked my stomach out through my spine. It should be just right by Thursday, though--it'll have had a chance to settle by then.

Went also with Wonderful Husband to the new movie theatre in the area. I think we shan't be going there again. Granted, it was the opening weekend, but they told us the movie was just starting with ten minutes of previews to come and it turned out to have started ten minutes ago, the kettle corn I got tasted burnt, the guy behind the snack counter gave us the wrong drink sizes, an employee came in the theater to give the no cellphones warning, we got one trailer (Nanny McFee), they stopped, brought the lights up, then lowered them again and started the movie. No pre-movie show, not even any music playing... oh, and no matinee prices either. *rolls eyes*

That said, Pride and Prejudice wasn't a *bad* movie... it covered the salient points and had some nice eye candy. I want to buy it when it comes out on DVD. But both Wonderful Husband and I ended up with issues with the some of the cinematography, not to mention random meetings with Mr. Darcy just getting more painful as the movie went on. The last one was so incredibly contrived that I was literally praying during the middle of it for it to end. Something along the lines of "This is Regency England, dear Lord, please, please, PLEASE don't have them kiss!" Oh, and the lucky rest of the world gets to not see the (invented) very end scene, for which I consider them all fortunate. They are missing NOTHING. I want to get the English DVD for this, in fact, in the hope that it will not contain that scene. However, I very much liked Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, felt a great deal more sympathy for Mary than I ever have before (in the BBC version I disliked her; in this one it's quite the opposite!), and felt that both Charlotte and Mr. Collins were well represented by their actors. The costuming, while not as "pretty" as the BBC mini-series, felt very authentic (I was rejoicing that I could see the hand-sewing on some of the costumes--I so wish there was a book about the making of this movie), and the dancing was to my uneducated eye a sheer delight.

After that we popped over into the Barnes and Noble nearby (didn't have Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh, hasn't for several months even though before I really wanted it there were THREE copies just sitting on the shelf; also didn't have a clean copy of the Official Illustrated Movie Guide to Narnia, so I came away bookless) and spent a bit paging through manga and TPBs. NOT. BUYING. TPBS. Down that road lies madness, and spending money on comic books again and losing even more room and getting more stuff when I need to get rid of stuff!

And then we came home and made stir-fry and my writing goal is just to finish the chapter tonight and start worrying about word counts again tomorrow.