... is the theme of the sci-fi movie marathon I'm in right now. And we just watched Alien Raiders, a really excellent low-budget sci fi suspense/thriller. Perhaps because they shot it during the writer's strike, they got some really excellent cast involved, including Carlos Bernard, Mathew St. Patrick, Rockmond Dunbar, and an actress who I haven't noticed before but who I liked a lot--she reminded me pleasntly of Maggie Gyllenhaal--named Courtney Ford.

I've got a Donnie Darko vibe about this movie, in that I saw it in a theater before anybody knew about it and it enormously exceeded my expectations. It's just really well done suspense, that knows when to show gore and when merely to suggest it, and that is written, paced, edited really well. We had the director, Ben Rock, for Q&A afterwards, which was enjoyable, though he didn't reveal any deep dark secrets. He comes out of The Blair Witch Project and related projects, but I promise, the shaky-cam is minimal, used in a couple expository bits, that's it. It was shot entirely in a supermarket and surrounds, and it uses its resources really really well. Big thumbs up for the foley and editing. Big thumbs up in general, and rmd concurs.

It's direct to DVD, coming out this Tuesday, and I highly recommend.

[Thanks for birthday wishes, folks. The winter blues get me enough that maybe I should have a birthday-observed at a sunnier time of year!]

[[I have a movies tag and a films tag? Must fix.]]

Oh yes, another one of these....

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
( cut for those who've had enough of this stuff... )

Added more lines for the songs that are still mysteries.

Thank you sparkymonster for telling me this first when the news was hot off the presses. Now, of course, it's 12 hours later almost exactly. I bibbled in IM rather than here, initially.

What? Oh, have you not heard? ( Hagrid never married. Whoops, I mean: Dumbledore is gay. )

Also: She was surprised that no one had ever asked her what Dumbledore’s wand was made of. If ever asked this question she would have simply said "It’s made of Elder" and left it at that. Well, yes. That's why I wouldn't have asked.... Oh, wait, she means before book 7 came out. When eight-year-old Mia asked an Aberforth question, Jo asked her age and said that just for her the answer would be "that the goats were easy to keep clean and that they had curly horns," as the audience roared with laughter. Really, the second (HPANA) link has all the stuff of greatest fannish interest, as you'd expect.
( Yet more quotes. )

I'm amused. As saylee said in IM, "It does confirm my theory that JKR does better gay subtext than straight romance." Ayep. The vibe from just that one description of the picture of the young Dumbledore and Grindelwald was quite clear, and, I must agree, more convincing than any of the overt, straight romantic relationships we were shown.

Yes, not the gay subtext many would have liked to have seen. It does cause a bit of a problem of double vision--confirming one gay identity puts the nail in the coffin of others that were not confirmed. But I have great faith that fanfic-writing fandom can not only only accept JKR's interviews when it wants to, but also accept them with one hand and ignore them with the other. Carry on!

I'm still in veiledintention, a post-book-6 game where we can always use Death Eaters or characters of Marauder age or older or just more players in general.

But now I'm in a post-book-7 game too, aww_rpg. Is there anyone on my friends list who cares about Harry Potter spoilers but hasn't read Deathly Hallows yet? Heck, I'll cut the post ( anyway. )

Time for the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker yet again. Proving I'm me:

and when she does, it's just a meme. I know, I suck.





Still, how cool is that?

Though really, the test ought to take the gender information it collects and differentiate between nerd kings and nerd queens.

... I have just illustrated my own nerdiness, not that it was in doubt.

There is one question I only knew the answer to because I looked it up after watching a friend take her test yesterday. But given that I did that out of geeky curiosity, I don't think it counts as cheating.

ravenna_c_tan and I sat down and wrote our last-minute guesses (in the hour before Deathly Hallows went on sale) on some plot points we expected would be addressed in the book. She posted hers here (and yes, the comments are spoilery). Here are mine. We sort of shorthanded the questions to each other so may not have answered exactly the same questions. ;-)

( questions )

( cut for the vast majority of my friends who don't care about Harry Potter fanfic )
Edited to add "Just Another Soldier in the War", which my imperfect filing system led me to lose.

Backdated, testing icons, nothing to see here.

please see wrog's ideas about book 7, so far superior to my own.

I'm sure some people's friends lists are afire with the news, but amazingly few people have said anything on my f-list and besides, I wanna talk about it!

So. Harry Potter book 7's publication date has been announced: July 21, 2007. A mere fortnight after the rumored 7/7/7, but this way it comes out more than a week after movie 5 rather than several days before. I assume the movie side of things is just being inflexible. Oh well.

(But ya see, 21/7/7 = 3x7/7/7, which is equally nifty in its own way. See the 3, and the three sevens? Okay, I'll put the prime factoring subprocess back in de box for now. Don't be scared.)

I don't want to quote J.K. Rowling about what will or won't happen in the book. Go ahead and do that in comments if you like--I just don't follow her interviews closely, nor do I care to. I just read the books. And the fic. And play the RPGs*. ;-)

And I just want to talk about what I want to see, and what I think I'll see.

( Want: )

( Predict: )

* Oh yeah, my RPG is still looking for a Bellatrix and other characters, though I know there are applications pending for some characters. Come play! Personally, I want to see more Death Eaters and more older characters, but the more the merrier! *bats eyes*

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".

That's nicely evocative.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6200745.stm

I saw another article that said it was Deathly Hollows, but I know which one is likeliest to be a misreading of the other. Anyway, you can go to J.K. Rowling's site and see for yourself.

EDIT: Deathly, not Deadly. Purely a typo on my part. *facepalm*

Everything below the cut is a query about how offensive some song lyrics are. Click or no, it's up to you.

( showtunes are evil )
EDIT: Want context? Check my initial comment.

A friend found this modern re-enactment of the third song on youtube. It's notable for being an actual family of men, and for a slavish devotion to the original blocking and camera angles. Also, Cheryl explained the story context for it better than I did.

... this leads me to hunt youtube versions of the other songs: It Depends on What You Pay, A Difficult Transition

... that is, if a Harry Potter LiveJournal roleplaying game sounds at all appealing. I'm Severus Snape. :)

I haven't really gotten rolling in an online RPG before. It's somewhere between collaborative fanfic and improvisational acting, and I'm enjoying it even more than I thought I might.

The setting is, about 2.5 years after the end of book 6. The golden trio defeated Voldemort; everyone but him and Narcissa Malfoy who was alive at the end of book 6 is still alive and available as a player character (yeah, I know, unrealistic, isn't it? but it's to allow as much participation as people want, so I excuse it); Lucius Malfoy is setting himself up as the new Dark Lord; Snape was exonerated. It's 1999 and Harry and his cohort are 19-ish.

The game started just over a month ago, and we've just hit a point where the plot is about to seriously start.

We very much need Death Eaters. Come be villainous! Our Bellatrix has been kidnapped by so-called Real Life, so we very much want a new Bella. But any new player is a good thing.

( blah blah blah )

Trading standards officers have ordered the Black Mountains Smokery in Powys, Wales to change the name of its Welsh Dragon sausages on the grounds that they are made with pork, not dragon meat.

Courtesy of the Language Log, one of my favorite LJ feeds. languagelog

... and other fanfic writers. And other pornographers. You know who you are, and you're probably not reading this. (Nobody take this personally. Every one of these I found in more than one place by more than one writer.)

I have conducted an... ahem... careful study of a broad swath of fanfic over the last several weeks, and here are some pairs of words I would like you to be sure you know the difference between.


discreet, discrete: You almost always mean "discreet". Secret? Discreet.
palate, palette: The first is the one in someone's mouth. Google doesn't actually back me up on this one, but I know it to be so. Is this a British/American English distinction I was previously unaware of? Please advise.
prone, supine: Just look it up. No more bizarre sexual positions because you flipped one of the characters over, thank you.
compliment, complement: I think this is perhaps the trickiest one on my list. Flattery? A compliment. But a shirt that flatters you may complement your eyes, meaning perfecting your look. Careful!
principle, principal: Morals are principles. The main something is the principal something.
illicit, elicit: Is it sekrit and naughty? Use the first one. Is it a verb? Use the second one.

Oh, just look it up:

• taut, taunt
• breath, breathe
• loath, loathe
• baring, barring
• bound, bond

The phrase is just deserts, unless you're actively punning at the time. It does sound like "desserts", but that's because it's not the sandy "deserts", it's "deserts" derived from "deserve".
dominate, dominant: I don't even understand where this comes from, but it's really common. Dominate is a verb. Dominant is an adjective or noun. There is no such thing as "the dominate" in a scene or relationship. No really.

And please, for the love of all that is holy or unholy, learn the difference between
prostate, prostrate: The fun thing for men having anal sex? Only one "r".

Thank yew.

EDIT: tongue tongue tongue Accept no substitutes. (courtesy of kjc007)
baited/bated: Breath is bated. Traps are baited.
rein/reign: Oh, where to begin. Horses are controlled with reins. Kings reign. The idiom is rein in your emotions. No really. (these two pairs courtesy of calanthe_fics)

I was, well, out of the country when PotC 2 came out... but I still want to see it. miss_chance, rmd and I are going to see it tomorrow, 3:15 at the Boston Common theater. Want to come? Lemme know, or just see you there. :)

Yarrrr!

(To those on my friends list of a certain disposition, I apologize that my icon isn't inclusive of all Captains Jack. ;-)

Oh, all right already. This is, as rmd says, strangely compelling.

( Live Trumps card within )

So, as if I didn't spend enough time on LJ (no really! I spend infinitely more time reading than posting), I've gotten involved in a Battlestar Galactica roleplaying group here: actionstations. I'm Six! Well, the Six in Baltar's head. ;-) But there's no Baltar yet, which means me and others NPC-ing Baltar until there is one.

So if you want to play Baltar, or Galactica's Boomer, or Tigh, or Kat, or Tyrol, or any of the other uncast characters, come on over. The more the merrier!

Note that things not yet out on DVD are considered spoilers in this little community. But hey, they're back near episode 1-2 (Water), so that shouldn't be too restricting just yet.

I can't believe there's only one Cylon so far!