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Dec. 13th, 2006 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixie![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
suzvoy and cheapevilgirl, I got your cards. Thanks! They're both adorable. :)Speaking of Christmassy things,
softstepshoes gave me Cybermen socks! Cybermen socks that say, "You will be deleted!" Now my feet can delete people, mwahahahaha!*
So Tim Burton is a movie version of Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp in the title role and Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin. This is kind of awesome on a lot of levels. Helena Bonham-Carter is going to play Mrs. Lovett, which strikes me as a miscast, but maybe she can pull it off.
Yay, movie musicals about evil barbers and cannabalism!
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I will say this for the fourth season: Whatever its problems, however it may have started the downhill slide of the series, several of the last episodes are some of the best they did.
"The Feast" is one of my favorites. I like it when there's something going on in town that all the stories in an episode revolve around. Plus it has Adam and Eve, and that's always a plus. I love the storyline where Eve and Shelly work together to replace Maurice's expensive wine with some combination of vinegar and grass clippings. I wish the series had had more scenes with Shelly and Eve, because they work well together--they exist on two entirely different planes, and it's hilarious to watch them interact. I like Shelly and Ed together, too, for the same reason.
The Joel storyline in "Kaddish for Uncle Manny" is just...wow. Wow. The Cajun dancing storyline was pretty iffy, although I always like to see Marilyn, and the Stevens vs. Millers story was good for a few laughs as far as Bernard was concerned, but otherwise not terrifically memorable. But everything to do with the minyan...oh, man. I loved everyone pitching in to find nine Jews; Joel's "Minyan Rangers" dream was hilarious, and there was even a lovely little scene between him and Maggie when they're looking at old photos of his uncle. (They're not arguing! In season four! Amazing!) But yes, the capper is of course the ending, when Joel decides that kaddish is about community, and nine hired Jews aren't what he needs. I teared up a bit when he stood up at the lectern in the church, in front of his Cicelian friends, an obvious catch in his voice, and said that they were his community. Then he (sort of shakily) says the Hebrew prayer, and everyone else prays or remembers a loved one in their own ways. There's beautiful overhead shot from the back of the church, looking at Fleischman up at the front and everyone else in the foreground doing their own thing, and it closes with another gorgeous instrumental that's faintly reminiscent of the music that closed out "The Body in Question." Mmmm. These people knew how to write an ending.
As good as "Kaddish" is, "Mud and Blood" is even better. I taped that one a long time ago, and every time I see even a bit of it, it makes me desperately wish for spring (which I ordinarily could take or leave) and want to go out and play in mud. They manage to touch all the big spring themes without it feeling overdone--birth, rebirth, general annual renewal, and even mosquitos. *g* They didn't go for an I Love Lucy-esque comedic way of having Shelly tell Holling she was pregnant; instead, they used it to wrap up his whole, "It's spring, I must plant things" storyline. It's a natural conclusion, but is still surprising the first time through. Chris and Maurice and the truffle pig are great fun, and Chris reads long sections from Charlotte's Web, so there is no bad in that. Maggie's story is probably the best, though; "O'Connell as a positive force" was definitely a good place to take her character. Her deciding to no longer define herself by her dead boyfriends and her inability to really make relationships of all sorts work is excellent. Very appropriate for spring. Plus there's the mosquito festival, and of course the scene from whence my icon. Hee.
"Old Tree" isn't so high on my favorites list, but the scene in Ruth-Anne's store between her and Ed, where he admits to carving his initials in the sick tree and she claims that "trees are much bigger than we are, and much more forgiving," is lovely in the same way as them dancing on her grave in S3. I like their relationship; I like anything to do with Ed, but especially his friendship with Ruth-Anne. And right before that scene, there was Chris reading Thoreau, which was great. I used to not like Thoreau in high school; I think much of my animosity had to do with the school's habit of trucking the junior class out to Radnor Lake to do nature writing for a day. Only my day, it thunderstormed the entire time. I might remind you that we were tramping through forests, by a lake. Yeah, it's not a bad idea in theory, but it can kind of suck in practice. Anyway, I did an about face on Thoreau sometime in college, and now I quite like much of Walden, anyway.
Fifth season when I open my DVDs on Christmas! Wooo!
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Crackpot - INTJ 26% Extraversion, 73% Intuition, 73% Thinking, 73% Judging |
People hate you.
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My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Brutally Honest Personality Test written by UltimateMaster on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
Hmmm. It bothers me that this site claims I share a personality type with Jane Austen. Blech. Not to mention Donald Rumsfeld...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2006-12-13 06:42 am (UTC)BWAH! You and Chandra just made my day.
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Date: 2006-12-13 07:02 am (UTC)Hehehehe. *wiggles Cyberized toes*
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Date: 2006-12-13 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-14 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 04:44 pm (UTC)even in the face of some of my B'way-geek acquaintances having seven flavors of conniptions.no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-16 03:52 pm (UTC)And I wouldn't call Sweeney Todd *evil*, per se...tragic, twisted, rather insane, but.....
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Date: 2006-12-17 05:40 am (UTC)That would be amusing if they were electronic and actually said things, but I actually meant "have writing on them that says..." *g*
And I wouldn't call Sweeney Todd *evil*, per se...tragic, twisted, rather insane, but.....
He's for sure not all there. I can see insanity and evil co-existing in him, though.
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Date: 2006-12-22 06:16 am (UTC)Sweeney Todd: I just still find him wonderfully sympathetic (wonderful in the brilliantly written sense), for all his clear madness...
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Date: 2006-12-23 04:49 pm (UTC)And yet, sympathetic and mad as he is, IMO Sweeney's still enough in control of his facilities to know what he's doing is, well, not right.