Forsan et haec olim scripsisse iuvabit.

Title: Cry Havoc
Fandom: How To Train Your Dragon (filmverse)
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Stoick, Gobber, and a dragon-keeper who should have known better ...
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1650
Warnings: None
A/N: Thank goodness I have godchildren to introduce me to fandoms I might otherwise have missed; How To Train Your Dragon is a wonderful piece of work and that wailing sound you hear is me lamenting the fact that I missed seeing it in a theater. So here's a deleted scene from late in the movie, because Hiccup doesn't give up that easily and Stoick doesn't have enough to do to keep himself from thinking. Concrit welcomed with Freyja's sniffles (because if you're expecting tears in this economy, you should think again, bud!).
Dedication: This is for Luci and Noël, whose taste is unerring, and for Katie the Elder, who correctly coined the term "nose-head" to describe Toothless's snout.

---

Beowulf maðelode, beotwordum spræc
niehtstan siðe: "Ic geneðde fela
guða on geogoðe; gyt ic wylle,
frod folces weard, fæðe secan,
mærðu frimman, gif mec se mansceaða
of eorðsele ut geseceð."

– Beowulf, lines 2510-2515
      Stoick was planning a war.

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All her life, it seems, Princess Merida's tomboyishness has been indulged by her father, King Fergus, while her mother, Queen Elinor, attempts to mold her into a lady. No points for guessing whom the princess gets on with better. But when the queen announces that it's time for Merida's hand to be awarded to one of her father's vassals' sons for the good of the kingdom, Merida has had enough. Running away into the forest, she finds a woodcarving witch who gives her a spell that will change her fate by changing her mother. The problem is, Merida didn't specify the change she wanted; the witch has a thing for bears; and King Fergus has been planning his revenge on the bear who bit off his leg for years ...

I enjoyed this movie, but I have two problems with it that I need to get out of the way.

( Problem One )

( Problem Two )

That said, I had a great deal of fun watching this film. Pixar's animation improves by leaps and bounds with each feature: the fishing trip to the river full of salmon had me gaping at how so many difficult elements (light, water, stones, fish, bear, human) came together in a single, gorgeous scene. The voice acting, as one might expect from such folks as Billy Connolly and Emma Thompson, was top-notch and Patrick Doyle's score was nicely hummable. I laughed at all the jokes and enjoyed the comedic action sequences (Merida's little brothers are a riot, when one shuts off the part of the brain engaged with problem one above) and was pleased to note that Merida's bow was not, in fact, portrayed as an effective close combat weapon. The climactic battle in the stone circle was also very nicely choreographed and its redemptive ending effective. (I love me a good redemption.) The post-credits scene is not only amusing, but ties up a dangling plot thread, which warms the cockles of my writerly soul.

Recommended with reservations. That it gives us a female empowerment tale that doesn't require a dead mother or evil stepmother to work is a plus; that it does so using gender stereotypes is a minus; that it's Pixar and therefore lovely to look at and reasonably clever with its storytelling is enough to satisfy me at the moment. Now that the ground has been broken, however, I expect better in future ...

Diane Duane likes The Avengers. Phew. I will not have shelled out for a ticket in vain.

Nearly a century ago, the thirteen districts of Panem rose in rebellion against their Capitol and lost. Ever since, each district has been required each year to send a tribute of one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to fight to the death in the Hunger Games. In all that time, District 12 has seen only one victor, so when Katniss Everdeen volunteers in order to save her sister Prim from being selected, she knows her chances are surviving are slim. Slim, but not non-existent: she has the help of her cynical mentor, Haymitch, her Capitol-assigned stylist, Cinna, and perhaps even that of her fellow tribute, Peeta … despite the fact that to win, she'll have to kill him …

( Read more... ) Worth seeing in the theater, but I'm looking forward to getting the right distance on those opening shaky-cam shots on a television screen once the DVD comes out.

I tried to watch the FMA movie trailer over here, but even on my super-spiffy university connection it loaded in fits and starts. I did notice that Maaya Sue Sakamoto's character appears to be a sharpshooter -- also that a chimera seems to play an adversarial role. Hard to determine much else, really (though that may be the virus talking ...)

When even Mr. Popcorn hates your movie, you're in trouble:

"The Last Airbender" is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.

Ouch. Paging Opus the Penguin. I wasn't planning to see this film in any case because of the racebending, but it looks as if that will spare me the pain of enduring a piss-poor adaptation of an elegant story. Time to rewatch the series ...

Sniffle. Goshwow! Sniffle! [rewinds to beginning and watches again ...]

Rumor has it that Peter Jackson is developing a film based on Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines!

I'd been holding out hope that someone would show the book to Miyazaki, but I'll take Jackson.

ETA: Further rumor-mongering here, likely the source of the previously noted rumors.

ETA 2: On a related note, Slate.com has a Best Movies of the Decade List Aggregator running on its site. I am immensely heartened by the numbers of SFnal films making it into critics' lists, everything from Spirited Away and The Incredibles to The Lord of the Rings and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to Pan's Labyrinth and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (currently in first place, ha!)

Ah, the Bard. We can all quote him, but how many of us really know his work? Who has the time to read all 37 plays and 154 sonnets? Fortunately, the Reduced Shakespeare Company has done it for us! The three-man troupe of Adam Long (former anti-nuclear accountant and bassist), Reed Martin (former clown and minor league umpire), and Austin Tichenor (former director of actual plays) distills the entire Shakespearean oeuvre to its essence and presents it as a single night's entertainment, complete with all the fire-eating, vomiting and groin-kicking that so pleased the groundlings at the Globe! (Now with added Canadians!)

I'd heard several The Reduced Shakespeare Company's BBC radio broadcasts and enjoyed them, but I chortled non-stop through this live show. Whether they're "modernizing" Titus Andronicus as a cooking show (with utterly [in]appropriate nods to Emeril), rapping Othello, summarizing the history plays via football commentary, or workshopping Ophelia's closet scene with the entire audience, the company combines clever riffs on the original material with dopey slapstick and never lets up -- not even when one of their number tries to escape the theater just before the act break or another collapses in tears when the audience refuses to stop laughing long enough for him to deliver Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" speech. Not to be watched while drinking splorkable liquids. Highly recommended to lapsed English majors everywhere.

Ran across the second trailer for Chris Columbus's upcoming adaptation of The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan:

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I'm not sure what to make of this one. The book strikes me as eminently filmable (very shounen, so to speak, with more action than introspection through-lining the plot); though popular, it shouldn't have the same YOU MUST INCLUDE EVERY INCIDENT OR RISK THE WRATH OF THE FEN! impetus that dragged down the first few Harry Potter films. Which gives me some hope for Columbus: his HP installments were pedestrian at best, but there were touches here and there that made me wonder if he felt stifled by the material. (It may also help that the young leads are played by somewhat older actors in The Lightning Thief; the adult cast -- Pierce Brosnan as Chiron, Sean Bean as Zeus, Uma Thurman as Medusa, etc. -- no doubt will help them along.) I expect I'll be seeing this in the theater with my godchildren when it comes out.