I will ride, I will fly, chase the wind and touch the sky

I don't really remember how much time has passed since my last blog. It says the last post was 25th June but that doesn't mean an awful lot in real money to me. I have a few milestones but they all seem to happen in one lump at the start of August and really nothing happened in July.

• My books acquired mould again, very much against what I had hoped but that is the way life is. I still don't have my primary bookshelves anymore, which makes my room look bigger but sader because books are lovely! It chose to occur when no-one was at home except for me (of course) and so that was hella stressface all over!
• Printing orchestral scores is a pain in the arse and highly stressful too. I don't recommend it to anyone (unless you are a professional printer or you enjoy inducing stress in your life, in which case by all means and do you fancy doing mine in the future?). However the scores looked pretty good even with the few hiccups that occurred, but we'll know better for next time :D
• Putting one half of my first pet to sleep. This was very much the most traumatic and it was worse because parents weren't home to deal with such issues (so I made Jonaface deal with the vets for me) and Tarq was in all day rehearsals which he couldn't miss. Her sister is still with me but I worry that she's going to get les mis (because rattybums do so). I still love her to pieces though.
• Iolanthe. After all that stress and sad the show was pretty good. I'm still apprehensive about it but mostly because I just wish I could do better. However I have been told that it sounded and looked fabulous so that's all that really matters :D that and everyone seemed to have a fantastic time! In fact I'm going to elaborate a little on Iolanthe thoughts right here and now but in a haphazard sort of way :P

Score carrying, constant rechecking, front seat, Panda driving, Les Miserables belting and half casting, over the mountain, through little villages, remeeting and new meeting, little cottage, spiral staircases, lots of talking, fun times and laughing, expensive taxi, cosy bedding, early morning, detour breakfast (not open, back to tescos), flute and piccolo playing, photo taking, wrists breaking, parent meeting, performance time, new dress (very exciting), avoiding anyone in white, pretty sure lunch was somewhere, showtime starting, not bad overture, photos midperformance, MD missing, 2nd act, applause, packing up, get out quick, dump stuff, Panda, pubtime talking, soup snack eating, chinese foodles, tastynom, travel back home with acquired Annak, sleep times again, lazy start, dreams are shattered and ice cream is dust, dreams reborn, TINY TRAIN, sweetie shop, breakfast time, 14 rolls and 16 rolls, old books and dice, new books and maps, Penistone and being sworn at by locals, tiredout, home time.

• Started second job, it was pretty good and easy enough (we were on a quiet bar that served the boxes so there was minimal customer contact). Hoping to get many more shifts but certainly don't have enough hours to move out yet >:( it is all of the rubbish.

Those are all the things that I think I have done of note recently. I haven't really been up to much, taking a break from G&S because MY GOD too much in one week much! Although I do miss G&S uni group and it's weekly rehearsals and seeing those people and I miss G&S second group (I don't remember if I gave names anywhere but I try not to use any names ever in anything because I enjoy it :P) and the people there, I will be very much glad when it all starts up again even though that means stresstastic times for me as I have two scores currently in progress and another two that may or may not make an appearance (one my brother is dealing with... aaaat some point and the other isn't confirmed yet). This whole G&S malarky seems to take over lives and I swore I wouldn't let it happen but it has and I'm not 100% complaining :P not yet anyway!

Last night I was lying in bed and my brain was composing. I was writing music and I thought to myself, should I get up (even though I've already gone to bed and am starting to go to sleep) and write and write and write (or possibly sit in front of a computer screen and curse my inability to create the things that are in my head even though they are there and waiting) or sleep at a decent time (like I have been for quite a few nights now) and hope that inspiration does not desert me. I chose the latter and inspiration did indeed desert me like a stealthy thing in the night. WHICH IS A MAJOR BOTHER! *mental salute to Maj. B* I am forever losing these moments and yes I should have just got out of bed and hoped that I wasn't still working on things until 4am but I didn't and blah!

It was after watching Brave (which, by the way, made me cry more than once because I am a sap and Pixar are just too good at everything) and the whole folky music style thing which I've been wanting to do for ages because I've been contemplating writing music with a purpose but haven't quite got round to doing anything about it. Maybe I should do some concept arts on the matter and make an immersive world and scenes and stuff and compose to that but anyway, it got me totally wired and thinking about stuff that I wanted and I was getting little riffs and instrumentation and linking phrases from one to the other and it was awesome and now it's all gone (verysadface).

Brave reminded me that I wanted to learn Gaelic (technically I wanted to learn Irish Gaelic because I love Clannad's music but Scottish Gaelic would be just as fun). Actually one thing I didn't quite get was the ages of people when they were young. Those three tiny boys, I have no idea how old they are meant to be but they seem older than their stature would make you presume. They are brilliant though. The whole thing is wonderful and I'm so glad that they made it.

I'm also hella glad that I've ordered the ost already so that when it arrives I can listen to it and hopefully be inspired. I'll have to work fast on concept arts and things for what I want to do although whether I can get everything done in time is another matter.

I also want to try and plan another NaNoWriMo but I don't know if I can, at least not in time for this November, but it's always worth trying, if I don't start now then November will be here and then it will be too late to plan for this one but too early to pressure me into planning for the next one. I'm just not sure where or when I want to set. I mean I never specify in any of my stories on that matter but is it a dystopian future, a rural past, a parallel to our own time? This planetesque? Outer spaceesque? I have a few, really I should work on L'u and Dust but I worry it's too similar to other stories I know but since I'm never going to publish it does it really matter? I worry I don't have enough to get me going but then even though I planned Snow for about 3 years I didn't know a lot about the story until I started NaNo. Will I jsut end up recycling characters too much? Will I always have an emphasis on music even accidentally that it bores people?

I should really finish Snow. I mean it has beginning, middle and end but somewhere in the middle it got to the bit that I couldn't be bothered to write out fully and so I did it in note form. I mean I still hit 50k in the month but it's not a complete novel currently and it's been a couple of years since I tackled it so I might be ok delving back into it. I should also look at what material I can salvage from previous writings, I have so many snippets, mostly from the same type of universe, that I should try and bring, at least the ideas from, together. I don't want to be a writer, many of my friends either do or have gone through that as an idea, but I don't want to be a writer at all. I don't really want to have a job that relies too much on a constant stream of creativity. I just want to get ideas flowing, concepts brewing, world creating!

I'm just finishing the fourth (and final?) book in an excellent "twilight" series:

I was rather surprised 1. with the fact that for once Blogger has let me place the covers in the correct order with minimal fuss (comparatively) and 2. that this Russian series has a lot more to offer than the first film shows. If I remember correctly the first film is actually the first third of The Night Watch (the book) (although I was aware of something that happened in The Day Watch (book) that I think happens in TNW (film) which kinda confused me). It is certainly an interesting series and ok, yes, yet again we have magicians, witches, vampires and werewolves (and others) but it seems to be covered in a thick dusty layer of realistic grey and brown (like so many computer games these days that are known as "gritty realism"). However this does not detract from it (actually it is very much more grey than brown based on the twilight levels but that is something that should be read about and not spoilerised) and certainly takes away all this Disneyfication that fantasy has taken to doing currently (I'm thinking Harry Potter, Twilight and all that spawned after it). Although yes those books are for children/YA but this (whilst only found in the sci-fi/fantasy section in book shops, well away from YA/kids etc.) isn't exactly difficult to read and could have gone down the whole vampires are misunderstood/evil route but kind of sits in the middle of vampires are just vampires like people are just people. Not everyone is "evil" even if they are Dark and not everyone is "good" even if they are Light. It doesn't do a whole lot of moral stories though, just that people (or in this case Others) are just as unfortunate and messed up as everyone else. They are branded as one type or another but means about as much as the branding of a football team in the reality of everything. It's very good and the covers are excellent, imo.

I only had the first and the last to begin with. I had picked up the first I think new from Waterstones or somewhere, probably in a sale or in a special offer, because it was pristine and it is unlikely that you get those from secondhands. The last was a charity shop buy (Oxfam if I remember correctly but that might be a fabrication). When I started on the first and discovered that I was enjoying it I jumped straight onto amazon.co.uk and bought the next one (and then the third even though it would have made more sense to buy both at the same time but I'm trying really, really, really hard not to buy new books currently so though it best to wait and see on the matter and it came almost just in time for me to start reading after finishing the second book). One of the most interesting things about it though is less on the stories (which are good) and the writing (which is also very nice) but that when it mentions a thing that occurred in another book there is an asterisk and a note telling you where this information comes from. It happens not too often that you want to hit either the author, or the translator, or the publisher for allowing it to be on the page, but just often enough that it jogs memories when things are mentioned. My favourite one (and so far has only happened once and I'm half way through the second story of book 4) is on page 78 of The Last Watch:

"This story is told in the movies Night Watch and Day Watch."

I was amused :3

I've probably wittered enough for now (and maybe the next couple of months or so :P) and I want to try and finish this book tonight because things are getting intense and it's exciting! Maybe next time a little less rambly and a few more pictures? Although my blogs are nearly always more a higher ramble to picture ratio, I think it's just the way I am (and I use this as a omg-all-of-my-brain-be-out-on-this-digitalised-form-of-paper).

Love and fluffythings,

Buttercup xxxxxxxxx

My first girlfriend turned into the moon

You know what it's something different today. A review/or justification to myself of a FILM! Hold onto your hats folks! I know it's crazy =p

So I'm not running into a new film, one that has only just come out at the cinema. I'm not going for an old classic either (a you-should-watch-this-because review). This film has had time to settle into the DVD market and has plenty of reviews. Plenty of baaaad ones, but I'm just talking myself out here, go with it.

The film?

THE LAST AIRBENDER
(aka, wor Avatar film or Aang-chan or just plain Avatar (ignore blue people please for now, haven't seen it, will at some point but to me that is not the true avatar =p). If you don't like spoilers TURN BACK NOW! Go get the cartoon, watch that, get the live action film, watch that, then come back. If you have already covered one of those bases you should be fine =D

For those who don't know L-R:
Katara (14), Aang (12) (main guy in all this), Sokka (15)(Katara's brother)
The little guy with the green eyes and is all ears is Momo a flying Lemur-bat

Still with us? Good. To start with I am a fan of the cartoon. It is good, bonkers plotwise and there is rarely a linear feel but that's fine. The most linearity in the first season is going from the Southern Watertribe to the Northern one. But you know what? it works.

Now here are the film characters - just while you still have the cartoon picture in your head =D
LR-TB:
Aang, Prince Zuko (we'll come to him in a bit), Katara and Sokka.

Ok there is no bright blue cloth but that makes sense! They're pretty close don't you think? Right now here is the first issue. If you like Sokka from the cartoon you have a 99% chance of hating him in the film. I personally didn't like him in the first series but I know that he's wrong. He's a bit of an idiot in... one maybe two scenes instead of the entire film. That's a big change. He's rather serious in this film. Rathbone maybe wasn't their best choice, he seems very serious. He needed to be a joker character, a bit stupid and telling stupid jokes all the time. Sigh.
Prince Zuko... one minute let's go back to the cartoon for a minute:

Prince Zuko (16) has daddy issues.

Now his character looked very wrong to me but we let it slide, in fact all of the main Fire Nation had the wrong hair (aside from the glimpse of Azula, his sister, that we had) which did bother me. Iroh sounded the same which made me happy (his uncle, but seriously watch the cartoon because it's too hard to explain here everything that happens!) but he was not right but meh, character designs change!

They pronounce Aang and Avatar wrong a lot. Little gripe but important! There is 3 serieses! You can listen to it! GO! It isn't Ar-ng but A-ng and not Ar-var-tar but a-vah-tar. I quickly forgot that they were doing it wrong but if you get annoyed by that don't watch. It'll kill you!
So I would change some of the characters, or at least make them look more accurate. That's generally a problem with an adaptation, you already have at least an idea of how you want them to look or even better, someone has already set the bar and shown you what they look like! For Instance Fire Lord Ozai. It's hard to find some photos but they basically cut off all his hair (inluding the awesome pointy beard) and didn't give him his crown-deely (pretty important).

Ok now the plot of the film! They cover the first book(season) Water. This was a good move. If they attempted to cover everything all in one film they would have done a much worse job of it. Seriously. They had a hard enough time to fit enough in as it was. Histories of characters were shortened to a brief conversation and a lot of the side plots (and I mean A LOT and since the cartoon is MADE of side plots and filler episodes that's a lot missing) but they kept the shape the same and generally only missed out things instead of changing them to make them wrong. I think that is a relatively good way of adaption and this really is an adaption here, oh aside from two sections that we noticed nothing was "wrong" per se, just had chunks missing.

There was no Bumi, no Suki, no Jeff (I mean Jet =p). Aang didn't learn ANY firebending (you'll know what I mean if you know the 'toon), no huge canyon, no fortune teller, no Teo. So unless they are presented in the later films (the characters not the canyon =p) the ending plot is going to be MESSED UP! There is a lot that is going to have to be explained.
The film is 103 minutes long. That's barely 2 hours! They could have extended out to 2.5hours and filled in one detail. One character. Introduced the Kyoshi warriors maybe, nothing major, just a hello and a bit of dissing from Sokka.
I know that films start to get a little bit bogged down when they have to introduce a lot of characters and that is generally the problem with adaptations. Lord of the Rings did pretty well (with nine pretty main characters in the first film alone!) but did skip out on some characters in places to make things easier, Final Fantasy: Advent Children hoped that you would know who everyone was from the game and even gave you a summary of the game on the DVD. Harry Potter has a lot of the characters in but I don't know that much on it so meh, I'm sure it was done very well.

Ok so we've worked through the characters (that actually by the end of the film I was ok with most of them), the plot (which I thought was relatively accurate although missed out pretty big chunks!) now onto the stuff I was less critical about.

The martial arts aspect of it was actually rather impressive. I thought it looked pretty and, as in the cartoon, they all had different styles. Even the little kid playing Aang was really good. He knew his stuff! It looked fancy and the digital effects didn't hurt. Actually the digital effects in general we pretty good. Apparently the 3D aspect was rubbish but we weren't dealing with that so I don't know on that matter but watching walls of water, people being frozen, fireballs, icespikes, rock walls, it was all pretty impressive.
The music was pretty good too, James Newton Howard was the composer. Other Works are I Am Legend, Hidalgo and the Sixth Sense to name a few. He has also worked on The Dark Knight/Batman Begins with Hans Zimmer.

I wonder if maybe I, along with Blue and her sister who watched it with us, set our bar too low. It was an ok film. Nothing really special but something I wouldn't mind watching again really. Maybe we were expecting it to be so painful we couldn't finish it and would pretend it didn't exist and watch the cartoon again in a marathon as penitence or something but no. It was ok, possibly even good. In fact I'm ok calling it good and like I said, I liked/loved (more accurate) the cartoon.

Maybe it's because most adaptions from cartoon/anime suck that our bar was so low, we didn't expect much. Death Note was ok (but not much happened in that), Blood The Last Vampire was bonkers (like the anime) but had a whole second half that wasn't in the first anime because it was a short and bonkers plot. Not much is thought of of The Dragonball-Z film (haven't seen can't comment), Bleach live action? Probably going to be terrible and I love Bleach. Even the Marvel/DC films aren't that great although they are starting to come out of their shell now. But those guys have had practise! I mean look at how many terrible Batman films there are. Or on second thought don't and just watch the better stuff from more recent years! Thing is adaptations don't have a good life expectancy anymore. But really let's change that.

FILMS don't have a very good life expectancy.

We still get the big blockbusters and the ones that blow us away but against how much dross and how many terrible films? But it's nearly always been like that, sadly.

The moral of the story? Set your hope low on the film and then you won't be disappointed.
Or pray they start making more really epic films!

Anyway I actually enjoyed the film, ignoring all it's faults and flaws, or I just don't mind if the film is B-rate... so nyeh to all the bad reviews =p

Love Buttercup xxx