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I saw a mad gaiety in his shadowed eyes
My poem "Tapping the Vine" is now online at Goblin Fruit. It was written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
time_shark and tithenai. The turndun is an Australian Aboriginal form of the ritual instrument known in English as a bull-roarer and in classical Greek, as a component of the Dionysian Mysteries, as a rhombos (ῥόμβος). The OED tells me the name is "Native Australian of the Kurnai tribe in Gippsland." I do not know if the language it came from is still extant; I hope so.
On an utterly un-classical topic, How to Train Your Dragon (2010) was quite a bit more awesome than I had been expecting. I had assumed the dragons would be good: they were. (The protagonist dragon is of the feline rather than the purely saurian model, which accords with my tastes; it is also not a wish-fulfillment animal companion.) I had not assumed they would be in the same film as aeronautical engineering, subtle non-stupid gender stuff, and cursing by Odin and Thor. Yes, all right, Northumbrian smallpipes are not particularly Norse, and neither is the tradition of apotropaic names. But the credits song was by Sigur Rós!
And my fever broke sometime this afternoon, so I am going to celebrate by going to bed at a reasonable hour, or at least staying up with The Annotated Hobbit (2002) rather than a thermometer.
time_shark and tithenai. The turndun is an Australian Aboriginal form of the ritual instrument known in English as a bull-roarer and in classical Greek, as a component of the Dionysian Mysteries, as a rhombos (ῥόμβος). The OED tells me the name is "Native Australian of the Kurnai tribe in Gippsland." I do not know if the language it came from is still extant; I hope so.On an utterly un-classical topic, How to Train Your Dragon (2010) was quite a bit more awesome than I had been expecting. I had assumed the dragons would be good: they were. (The protagonist dragon is of the feline rather than the purely saurian model, which accords with my tastes; it is also not a wish-fulfillment animal companion.) I had not assumed they would be in the same film as aeronautical engineering, subtle non-stupid gender stuff, and cursing by Odin and Thor. Yes, all right, Northumbrian smallpipes are not particularly Norse, and neither is the tradition of apotropaic names. But the credits song was by Sigur Rós!
And my fever broke sometime this afternoon, so I am going to celebrate by going to bed at a reasonable hour, or at least staying up with The Annotated Hobbit (2002) rather than a thermometer.
no subject
You're welcome!
I am in the rare position of never having read the original books; I understand they're quite different. But what they were adapted into did not register to me as the usual Hollywood bastardization, if that helps.
That does help, actually. I've only read the first one, which seemed a charming bit of silly fluff--my aunt, a teacher, discovered it and lent a copy to my mother, who used to be a children's librarian. What I can't understand is why they'd take a book about Vikings who tame dragons and the kid who makes the best of getting stuck with a whimpy one into a movie about Vikings who slay dragons and the kid who somehow manages to befriend/tame a whimpy one.
Oh well. It sounds as if it's worth seeing, all the same, and if they've added girls (I don't remember any as major characters) they've not done ill in all their changing of the story.
no subject
I think the book's premise is the movie's end situation.
no subject
It does sound that way. Now, if they'd decided to make the movie a prequel to the book, it would all make sense.
Any road, I suppose I'll be able to to tell my mother that the movie sounds worth seeing.