A fluttering flickering cloud of white flakes falling on the apparition

[sovay]

The ending of this week was slightly eaten by someone else's medical for a change, but everyone is alive and well and if not living in New York, at least some of us are going there next week to see The Gang's All Here (1943). Carmen Miranda. Busby Berkeley. Lots of fruit. If Wittgenstein didn't watch this film after one of his lectures at Cambridge, his biographers have been misleading me for years. I'm just not sure the Film Forum will allow us to bring in pork pies.

Today was mostly quiet, which was fine. I slept nearly ten hours and even had dreams I could recall: one was stupid and involved finding a bathing suit, but the other was about a three-person lesbian/genderqueer band I'm actually sorry doesn't exist. I think the drummer was hitting on me. In the afternoon, I went over to gaudior and rushthatspeaks' and did not watch the next episode of Due South (1994–1999), because the television remote refused to be found even in the box marked "OMG SO FRAGILE" and "NO SQUISHING," but they offered me pancakes and showed me the weird little fort on Prospect Hill which overlooks Union Square; the wind breaks over it as if off the sea, which is why my hair is still very snarled. There were trees growing all round the second terrace, just breaking into white, very sweet-smelling blossom. We have no idea what kind they were, but I climbed over the rail and broke a branch for Lila. It is not the fault of trees everywhere that I will always associate May blossom with the Mari Llwyd.

(Someone of M. John Harrison's acquaintance actually made a Mari. Unsurprisingly, it freaks me out exactly as much as I imagined from Silver on the Tree (1977). The fact that Harrison had it haunt one of the protagonists of Light (2002) kind of hacked my brain.)

Cowboys & Aliens (2011) is exactly what it says on the tin.

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for the ending of the week, but glad everyone is alive and well.

I'm glad you slept and had dreams you recalled.

It's interesting there's a weird little fort--is that a fort in the military sense, or a fort-like construction of indeterminate use?

Cowboys & Aliens (2011) is exactly what it says on the tin.

Indeed. What did you think of it? Or is it better not to ask?

[sovay]

It's interesting there's a weird little fort--is that a fort in the military sense, or a fort-like construction of indeterminate use?

The weird little fort itself dates back no farther than 1902, so it's a memorial rather than a military fortification; it commemorates the importance of Prospect Hill in the Revolutionary War (when it was known as "the Citadel") and it is apparently a big deal that Somerville can claim to have flown the very first American flag on the site. There were also some notes on the plaque about the Civil War, but I think that was just the merging of one military honor into the next.

What did you think of it? Or is it better not to ask?

I think it could have been an excellent blend of both genres if the script had been less conventional. It had the right amount of grit for a classic revisionist Western and even some interesting sketches of character. Unfortunately, just about everyone died whom you expected to.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

The weird little fort itself dates back no farther than 1902, so it's a memorial rather than a military fortification...

Coolness. I'm not sure I've ever seen a memorial quite like that. Will have to search for images.

I think it could have been an excellent blend of both genres if the script had been less conventional. It had the right amount of grit for a classic revisionist Western and even some interesting sketches of character. Unfortunately, just about everyone died whom you expected to.

Ayup. I thought there was a little too much Stuffed-in-Refrigerators, myself. Then again, I'm sentimental, so that always bothers me.

I did think it was interesting that the Harrison Ford character survived--I was expecting that the only redemption a Hollywood film would allow him would be a heroic sacrifice, perhaps in the place taken by the Olivia Wilde character.

Then again, the hero riding off alone is also a bit of a cliché--perhaps the Daniel Craig character riding off in the company of an extraterrestrial, with at least a few of the attendant ambiguities pointed out*, would have been a greater trope-aversion. I'm not a good judge of these things.

All in all, I thought it was better than most of the reviews I read made it out to be**, but not as good as it could/should have been.

*Is this a romance? Is it a friendship? What does Ella actually think about this? Does she even have those categories at all, much less in a manner that's compatible with a 19th century American man's way of thinking about such things? What is her true physical appearance? Her actual biology? Being a human woman must be, at least in part, a role she plays. Does it relate at all to her actual gender, if she even has one that translates into 19th century Western Homo Sapiens Sapiens concepts?

Of course, showing that in a movie might be fairly difficult, and being allowed to do so in a Hollywood movie fairly well unlikely. Oh well.

**Most of the mainstream media reviewers couldn't seem to grasp the concept that a science fiction movie could be legitimately set in the past on Earth rather than in the future on some other planet.