( Did his hood just withdraw into the shadows again? )

Damn, I read this book when I was about thirteen. At the time, I thought it was a fairly standard but inoffensive fantasy. I've been assured it gets much better, so I've come back for another stab at Dragonlance. Well, folks, I damn well hope it gets better, because four chapters in, this is some of the silliest stuff I've ever seen.

Don't worry, I don't remember much of it - I remember really liking Sturm, thinking Raistlin would be really cool if he weren't so whiny, some gorgeous, bland Staff Chick, and something about discs. That's about it - I'm essentially coming to this fresh.

This series of posts will stop at the point where the series actually gets good. But I'm not your typical jaded sporkmeister, and as I've read Weis and Hickman's Forging of the Darksword and really, really liked it, I'm actually pretty sure that point will arrive.

( Without further ado... )

Fantastic freaking news, this - there's no way they could do the entire book justice in a two-and-a-half-hour time span. I say the split should come just after Malfoy Manor and the burial, and ending where they discuss the significance of the interrogation so the audience has a clear idea where the second movie is going to start. Shell Cottage also strikes me as a nice, easy way to open a movie. Now, obviously, that's twenty-three chapters for the first movie and thirteen for the second, but a) those twenty-three chapters involve the stake-out in the forest, a lot of which can be covered, as it could not in the book, by brief Montages of Futility; and b) a whole hell of a lot is happening in those thirteen chapters, and they could leaven it with time to take in what's just happened, take a panoramic view of things - maybe even give Those Two Characters a proper send-off.

Of course, all this will come to naught if they can't ditch Steve Kloves.

[The following is copied in full from here.]


Help the People of Burma — Post this on Your Blog!

Note: This is a new kind of online protest that uses blogs to spread a petition globally. To participate, just add your blog by following the instructions in this blog post.

This not an issue of partisan politics, this is an issue of basic human rights and democracy. Please help to prevent a human tragedy in Burma by adding your blog and asking others to do the same.

By passing this meme on through the blogosphere hopefully we can generate more awareness and avert a serious tragedy. As concerned world-citizens this something we bloggers can do to help.

How to participate:

1. Copy this entire post to your blog, including this special number: 1081081081234

2. After a few days, you can search Google for the number 1081081081234 to find all blogs that are participating in this protest and petition. Note: Google indexes blogs at different rates, so it could take longer for your blog to show up in the results.

THE SITUATION IN BURMA AND WHY IT MATTERS TO ALL OF US

There is no press freedom in Burma and the government has started turning off the Internet and other means of communication, so it is difficult to get news out. Individuals on the ground have been sending their day-by-day reports to the BBC, and they are heartbreaking. I encourage you to read these accounts to see for yourself what is really going on in Burma. Please include this link in your own blog post.

The situation in Burma is increasingly dangerous. Hundreds of thousands of unarmed peaceful protesters, including monks and nuns, are risking their lives to march for democracy against an unpopular but well-armed military dictatorship that will stop at nothing to continue its repressive rule. While the generals in power and their families are literally dripping in gold and diamonds, the people of Burma are impoverished, deprived of basic human rights, cut off from the rest of the world, and increasingly under threat of violence.

This week the people of Burma have risen up collectively in the largest public demonstrations against the ruling Junta in decades. It’s an amazing show of bravery, decency, and democracy in action. But although these protests are peaceful, the military rulers are starting to crack down with violence. Already there have been at least several reported deaths, and hundreds of critical injuries from soldiers beating unarmed civilians to the point of death.

The actual fatalities and injuries are probably far worse, but the only news we have is coming from individuals who are sneaking reports past the authorities. Unfortunately it looks like a large-scale blood-bath may ensue — and the victims will be mostly women, children, the elderly and unarmed monks and nuns.

Contrary to what the Burmese, Chinese and Russian governments have stated, this is not merely a local internal political issue, it is an issue of global importance and it affects the global community. As concerned citizens, we cannot allow any government anywhere in the world to use its military to attack and kill peacefully demonstrating, unarmed citizens.

In this modern day and age violence against unarmed civilians is unacceptable and if it is allowed to happen, without serious consequences for the perpetrators, it creates a precedent for it to happen again somewhere else. If we want a more peaceful world, it is up to each of us to make a personal stand on these fundamental issues whenever they arise.

Please join me in calling on the Burmese government to negotiate peacefully with its citizens, and on China to intervene to prevent further violence. And please help to raise awareness of the developing situation in Burma so that hopefully we can avert a large-scale human disaster there.

Twirling your hair and stacking stuff is the Falcon of nervous tics.

Brought to you by the Department of Cryptic Bi-Fandom References. Also might be completely wrong, as I have nine episodes to go, but at least I'm past the "what are we going to do for the next eleven episodes?!?!" stage.

I could really use a doughnut binge, though.

Deathly Hallows: A Running Journal

Date:	2007-07-07 09:51
Subject:	Shiny sevens! Must be prediction time!
Security:	Public
Mood:	Ever nearer to July 21...

First off, yes, this date was a missed opportunity of massive numerology and nose-thumbing for all. That nose-thumbing bit is an upside, may I add, not a downside. If the Brits are going to start postponing things on account of propriety, they'd have to start with Christmas. (Luckily, I'm fairly sure they're cooler than that and it really was publishing time constraints. Those two weeks look a lot longer from this vantage point.)

With that out of the way...

( Cut for massive Trelawney spam. And I mean MASSIVE. )
Gah, I think I'm forgetting something, but this'll have to do.

Okay, why the hell is pottersues suspended?

Well! It's been a while. Dude, I'm looking through my archives, and even I am going through mental acrobatics to figure out what the heck I'm saying. I will be more candid from now on. Egads. 

The slight continuity error with the prefect badges... isn't so slight. I'll give you half a long summer of mercy, but I am not so spared. I know what's coming. Way to spare Harry's feelings, Dumbledore...

That stuff about Buckbeak BETTER be what it looks like.

Boy, did Bush paint himself into a corner here. Kept using the phrase "full sovereignty" for the June 30 takeover... I'm actually hoping he's caught in a lie here, because there's no way Iraqi "full sovereignty" is a good idea, especially since we still don't know who we're transferring power TO... but either way, he's doomed politically. And I notice he's still pretending we're not an occupying army... get OVER it, we are. Oh well, at least the troops are sticking around. I can just hear the Demos scream. And yeah, Bush is lying. Thank God.

Date:	2004-03-17 19:02
Subject:	And, on the Azkaban movie front...
Security:	Public
Mood:	pessimistic

No scrap can go! The plot's so tight
The prospect's dim they'll get it right
Then last June's resulting rubble
Doubled all the toil and trouble.

Someting wicked this way comes!

If you haven't seen the prescreening reports (at either LeakyCauldron or MuggleNet) you may want to avoid them. They bode naught but ill, other than that Lupin's supposed to be brilliant. Of course, if you don't want to be unpleasantly surprised on June 4th, read them. Being unpleasantly surprised might just add more fuel to the legions that would go against Alfonso Cuaron (Sirius, for instance, is reported as "slightly more insane than I imagined him".)

Let's add to the gruesome stuff over there that it's supposed to be the shortest film yet. That and the "Housekeeping" scene probably gratuitously sucks up time. I don't want to think what they cut. If they cut Buckbeak, for instance, my hopes of poetic justice are pretty much dead. Oh heck, 92% of PoA would be deemed uncuttable by any fan. Not so for a producer. JKR should never have given in to these goons; I mean, she was making plenty already!

Date:	2004-03-16 19:13
Subject:	On Stargazing
Security:	Public
Mood:	morose

I thought that by moving to the mountains I would be able to get a good star view. Hah! The star-view is good enough, but all I see is the three-constellation cluster. Orion, Canis Major, Lupus.

Having had the wrong orientation on Orion, I hurled curses at Betelgeuse for months, including five times on full moons. Speaking of which, Betelgeuse and Rigel have got alleged aliens. The belt stars have a place in all sorts of lyricry. But the rest pretty much fade into oblivion, unless you research this stuff the way I do in bursts of masochism. You might make it against brilliant, pivotal saboteurs and impostors when the climate of foreshadowing favors you so strongly, you might be accredited the use of the singular for four people, you might speak for the other nine on the grounds of... evil equal opportunity, I guess, but it's no good in your own constellation!

Right now I mutter "overcast" darkly, or run out of earshot of my house and bellow, "CIRROSTRATI!!" (finally, something Legolas fans have a better grasp on) and on clear nights I just stare, full of passions, at a member of the cluster. And the sun sets at about 7:00. The cluster sets at about 9:30. By about June, it will be gone entirely from the sky. I would be able to view the sky normally after that, but the absence is just too conspicuous... it's really depressing.

Then I'll be stuck with Andromeda, Draco with its head called Rastaban (so I guess Rabastan is as much of a ninny as hinted) and Leo with a hind foot known as Regulus. I might be able to get some actual stargazing in, the objective kind. But for now, I must go back to my wistful staring.