Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
madman - There is a scene with his mother, where he really really
performs, and that's all I will say in an effort to avoid spoilers :)

DanW - "The thing is... in 1977, people who were 31 became 9 again."

I think this is a hard thing for Lucas to repeat, though. In 1977, he
didn't have a limitless budget, he had to really work and slave to make
something that would get him where he wanted to go. Yes, he broke
ground, yes he created one of the finest movies ever made. But now, he
not only has a nearly limitless budget, but he has all kinds of
herculean expectations set on him to produce another mind-blowing
masterpiece, and I honestly don't think he has it in him. His
motivations seem to have changed, his writing and directing mostly
suck, and his ego seems to have gotten a lot bigger. He can't recreate
that moment we experienced, of seeing the first Star Wars for the first
time, of being blown away by this shiny, new cool movie, and that
seems to be what people want from him - a neverending stream of
innovation and awe. I don't think even many great artiste's are up to
that task. 

Mary - Actually, the costuming was one of my favorite parts of the
movie, and if I could own that black outfit Amadala had on, I would be
a happy woman! It was sooo delicious!

DanG - Re: Amidala's tight white outfit... did anyone else notice the
handy pointers on the shirt, to her nipples? They might as well have
but pink, neon flashing arrows with a sign that says "Tittilation
Here!!"
Still, Natalie has killer abs, and looked fantastic in just about
everything she put on.
  

    
Oh. Now I MUST see the movie to check out the outfits. I'd avoided it
up until now.
  

    
So. I have this thing for penguins. And then I see this:
http://www.journeymilwaukee.com/demosites/penguinwarehouse/default.htm

heeheehee . . . do you think my Cats would like a new playmate?
  

    
Odd to see _The Water Babies_ mentioned here; I just finished rereading it,
along with reading _Madame How and Lady Why_ for the first time. Had
forgotten there were so many digressions in TWB. Am now trying to remember
if it had a plot at all, under all those digressions.

Looking forward to Coraline. Soon, yay!

Elise,
reminding herself to go see if mousecircus.com is unfolding more yet.
  

    
There's this guy I read on Xanga who does a special feature every
week: Sushi Day. This is the entry for today's Sushi Day. It made me
laugh:
http://www.xanga.com/item.asp?user=oomp&tab=weblogs&uid=2024443
  

    
Mike- Don't forget Lawrence Kasdan.  In terms of writing *Empire*, I
mean.  He shares the screenwriting credit with Ms. Brackett, and he
wrote *The Big Chill*, among other big movies I can't conjure off the
top of my head (he wrote *Mumford*, too, which wasn't terrific but was
a generally good movie [his son Jake, though, wrote and directed both
*Zero Effect*, which is an interesting movie about a Zen detective
<"People think the way to follow someone is to tail them, but then
people being followed can turn around and spot the person following
them.  The best way to follow someone, then, is to get whereever it is
they're going *first*.> and the truly grand *Orange County* which is
just very, very good]).  And you rock for using a footnote, too.  I
love that.

And, of course, it all just goes to prove a point.  Let Lucas think up
his ideas, fine, but somebody take the pen and camera away (we need a
film Nazi ["You no good!  No more shoot for you!"]).
I remember one of the better film reviews I read in, well, I think
2000 (was that when *EpI* came out?) was comparing Lucas and Kubrick,
which said that they were both genii, but perhaps weren't any longer. 
Both *EpI* and *Eyes Wide Shut* were examples of formerly great
movie-makers who came back and made movies which were badly received
(well.  Not *my* opinion, mind you [first of all, I'd *never* call
Kubrick great, or a genius.  Burton, yes, even though I'm not a fan,
and Maynard, yeah, and Alan Moore, but I've just never seen Kubrick
either way]).

On being nine again; there've been two movies in the past two years
who've done it.  *The Matrix* and *Moulin Rouge*.  *The Matrix*
surprised me because I'd seen no promotional footage whatever and was
entirely unprepared to be blown not only out of my seat but through the
back wall of the theater, and *Moulin Rouge* because musicals never
work for me (I just never buy that people come out a library and burst
into spontaneous, ad-libbed, on-key song, though that may simply be
because I'm not taking out the right books) and that one had me
grinning from *Lady Marmalade* and then laughing through *Your Song*
straightaway till the end (I don't like how that sentence was
constructed, but you get the idea).
I've a feeling *Amelie* might well do it for me, but then again, it
might not also, simply because I've got the feeling it will.  I hope it
does anyway, but I'm not going to hold it to.
  

    
Dan - isn't that just always the way? The girls all say they want the
nice sensitive, stable man but then they go trotting off with the first
schizophrenic mass-murderer that happens along.

I'm glad that little bit of movie logic bothered someone else as much
as me.

Erynn - re:tampering with the original movies. I wouldn't believe any
of the rumours about putting Natalie or JarJar in the first movies. The
only thing that has been confirmed is the John Williams admitted he is
rescoring a few scenes to bring them more in line with the prequels.
Everything else so far is just rampant internet gossip. So far I've
heard everything from Weezer replacing the alien cantina band to the
addition of a small Bea Aurthur musical tribute to Howard the Duck.

Have to drive to Chicago next weekend and not really looking forward
to it. I'm wondering if I can find the audio CD of Coraline to listen
to but it doesn't look to be out in time. Oh well, maybe American Gods
instead.

Shawn - reading about another Ramones death and strangely thinking of
an article by Larry Miller on the recent burning down of the Parisian
Israeli embassy 
  

    
Shawn - but, speaking from experience - though not that melodramatic a
one - all those insane, scary, violent types all seem to be such nice,
sensitive, understanding guys (SO understanding because they've got
all the same problems as you - never mind the bit where they forget to
tell you that they've got all those problems in
psychological-trauma-in-need-of-medication-pronto! proportions)

Maure - So the soap wasn't enough for you? Now you need a live one?
Maybe we should send you to work at the local aquarium.

squeaks, who rather needed that nap earlier. :)
  

    
Not much to say at the moment, but I just had to grab that sig...

A friend of mine picked up a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special a
few years back. Neither one of us had anything more than fond, but very
dim, memories of it from out childhoods. 

The Bea Arthur musical number in Mos Eisley cantina... the cardboard
interior of the Millenium Falcon, the shamelessly recycled film clips,
the wookie porn, Carrie Fisher on thorazine and Mark Hamill wearing
more makeup than Eddie Izzard on New Year's Eve...

Just more proof that Lucas had his missteps from the beginning.
  

    
Squeaks,  I love the soap! I can't bear to use them, they're so
adorable. But you can never have enough when it comes to penguins. ;)
I'd be terrible at working in an aquarium, though -- I'd spend all my
time playing with the animals.

As for women saying they want the sensitive type and then running
after "schizophrenic mass-murderer"s . . . I agree with Squeaks. The
really twisted ones are the ones who can make you buy into their facade
of sweetness and understanding, but who are sociopaths just below the
sensitive surface. Of course, I wouldn't be speaking from experience
here. <cough cough>
  

    
"Beijing's most popular newspaper has unwittingly republished a bogus
story about U.S. Congress threats to skip town for Memphis or Charlotte
unless Washington builds them a new Capitol building with a
retractable dome. 

  
The source? America's celebrated spoof tabloid, the Onion. "


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=1&u=/nm/2002060
7/od_nm/fake_dc_1
  

    
Dan - To be fair, from what I understand, the gloriously horrific
Holiday Special was not directed, written, or produced by Lucas.  They
just used all of his stuff.  

Maure--PENGUINS!  Oh my god, I love it.  We went to Sea World over
Memorial Day and those penguins were so amazing we just kept going
through the exhibit over and over again.  NOW I can have my very own!

And, the Onion thing:  GOD DAMN that rules.  
  

    
Squeaks - I suppose the quiet, gentle ones are always the ones you
have to watch out for. But I'm fascinated by the girls my younger
stepbrother dates. He has some really deepseated mysogynistic
tendencies and yet he never fails to attract a certain type of girl who
just thrives on being treated terribly. It's really scary to me that
these otherwise intelligent young women would put themselves in that
sort of relationship.

Maure - oh that wacky, wonderful Onion. Time-gobbler of bored office
workers nation wide.:)
  

    
Adriana,  I think they're the funniest creatures, next to the
platypus, which I would also very much like to have as a pet. Maybe
Tree will smuggle one in for me next time she comes to the states?

Shawn,  Bored office workers and Chinese news reporters, apparently. I
can just imagine what the editors of the Beijing paper must have
thought about that story. No wonder Americans have such a bad
reputation around the world, if they think the Onion's stories are
real. I remember one of my favorite stories being one where we were
sending in drop shipments of vowels for Eastern Europe, who were badly
in need of a's and e's.
  

    

> a small Bea Aurthur musical tribute to Howard the Duck

...I'm having an acid flashback here, right?
  

    
Maure - Be careful what you wish for. Tree and Reg have been known to
smuggle such creatures across vast expanses of water for thingies...

The Onion - Rules. :) Especially the collections. I bought one of them
(I think 'our great century' or something like that) for the boy, but
I tend to get my hands on it pretty frequently. Too funny!

Linda - You *wish* it was a flashback!

squeaks, who really should be tending to squeaky critters and working
on cleaning up the apartment for visitors
  

    
Hey! 
http://www.mousecircus.com  is up now!
fun fun fun
  

    
Adriana - oh fine... be rational and fair. It's so much fun to lay
that bit of drek at Lucas' feet, though. 

Mousecircus is up? Groovy! I shall have to wait until I get to work on
Monday to look at it, though. It sounds bandwidth intensive..
  

    
The Mousecircus.com Coraline site -- It's not bandwidth heavy -- takes
a couple of minutes to load at the beginning, and after that it's
plain sailing.

Linda --Where should we ask on the Well, if we wanted to know
something about mysterious children's author Victoria Walker, who wrote
The Winter of Enchantment and The House called Hadlows?

in haste

me
  

    
The Mousecircus site is quite fine indeed!  

As a fleacircus man I was naturally quite interested...
  

    

Neil -

I always ask such questions in g news, in the Experts on the WELL topic.  
It's astonishing what people know and are happy to expound on at great 
lengths there.  Sometimes even short and helpful lengths.

Linda
  

    
Mousecircus - Ooooooo... am I happy it is up now while I'm at home on
my happy (though fussy) cable modem, as opposed to extremely flimsy
dialup at work where downloading a flash site is akin to sucking an
apple through a straw. It's so much fun, and surprising how deeply
creepy the text is while only offered in small bits.

Neil - why oh why moust the CD version be released exactly 2 days
AFTER my excrutiatingly dull roadtrip?

Shawn - who thinks clicking on cockroaches has never been more fun...
  

    
Re: the Onion thing picked up by the Beijing paper as legit -- Dan DeQuille
would be proud.

Mousecircus is live? Ooh! Want! Must go see.

(making note to self to go buy second copy of that Walking Tour through the
Shambles thing to send to an expat Chicagoland friend)
  

    
Neil--COGRATULATIONS!  Lovely news about the Stoker.

Ooooo, off to Mousecircus......
  

    

That Website is so much fun!