Busy busy busy...

[hells_half_acre]

I have to work full time during the month of January. Usually I work 4 days a week (which is technically still full time), but this month I have to work five. So, I find myself with considerably less time for fandom related stuff. Especially since this past week I lost nearly all of my evenings, granted, one of them was for SPN, but STILL... Show is getting in the way of writing things about Show. :P

This weekend, I'm cat/house-sitting for a friend of a friend...who happens to be a film critic. So, I'm sitting around with a stack of screener DVDs, so of course I'm not working on my hobbies...I'm watching movies!

But I digress, for the record, this is the stuff on my blog that is coming up in the NEAR future: 
1. Supernatural/Merlin fic
2. Sherlock "Scandal" rewatch (I wanted to do this before the end of January, but I've only done a rough write-up of the first 8 minutes so far...so we'll see. A typical Sherlock rewatch takes me about 10 hours, and I usually can't handle more than 1 hour in a sitting.)

In the distant future, there will be another resource project, maybe more fic? and more Sherlock...and beyond that, I can't make any promises.

Beasts of the Southern Wild - Man, what a crazy film. It was good. It was really interesting to have a child POV through and through (unlike Harry Potter which I'd argue is child POV through an adult lens). Very interesting. I liked the use of metaphor and whatnot (it's late, all my fancy words have escaped me). 

Now that being said, I also recently saw Life of Pi. I read the book 10 years ago (almost exactly, actually, I read it over New Years 2002/2003). The film was a marvelous adaptation of the book (even solving some of the books problems, like the way Yann Martel goes into far too much detail about unimportant aspects of the story IMHO). What REALLY blew me away about the movie though was the fact that the tiger wasn't real - the whole movie is an astounding performance by a young actor in his first job and he SELLS that tiger. He sells everything in that movie. He's really really marvelous (he also didn't even know how to swim before he got the job...yikes!).

What I'm saying is that although Beasts of the Southern Wild was very interesting and a good film, and the little girl in it did a good job of being a little girl...I really didn't see anything in her performance that made me think "man, she should be nominated for an Oscar"... whereas when I saw Life of Pi, I was like "I think perhaps we should give that kid ALL OF THE AWARDS."

I'm going to see if I have time tomorrow to watch that Silver Playbook movie thing...I don't actually know the title. There's also some movie about a Marigold Hotel? (This is what happens when you don't have a TV. If it's not adapted from a book I read or it doesn't make it onto social media, then I don't know what it is). I probably only have time for one film though, so I'll have to choose.

Comments

[nic]

The Marigold Hotel movie was wonderful! It struck a chord with the older generation, hence the lack of social media.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... well, I only have time to watch one of them. I guess I'll read the synopses and see which one sounds more like a "sunday afternoon" type of movie.

[missyjack.livejournal.com]

I can't believe Suraj Sharma didn't get an Oscar nom. He was the emotional heart of the movie and made us believe it was all real!

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Exactly! He's a talented kid. He didn't even have any co-stars to act off of for most of the film... really phenomenal work.

[franztastisch]

Suraj Sharma is THE BOMB. And you're right, he sells the tiger. He really, really, really should have got an Oscar nomination.

I have to disagree with you about Quvenzhane Wallis/Hushpuppy though. I think she was hands down phemomenal in Beasts. She sold the film, because without her and the guy who played her dad, that film would have fallen flat. AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

(PS Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Silver Linings Playbook)

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, fair enough. It's true her and the guy who played her father had to carry that movie...but, I don't know, I think we'll just have to disagree on this one. I'm not saying she was bad, I'm just not entirely sure it was oscar-worthy, you know? But then, I'm not an industry professional and a lot of people win Oscars/get nominated for reasons unknown to me. :P

Maybe I'm just a little bitter that Suraj Sharma wasn't recognized, because he just blew me away. Quvenzhane Wallis impressed me, but didn't blow me away.

[franztastisch]

The fact that Suraj Sharma didn't get an Oscar nomination is ridiculous. For his first film he spent 90% of the time in a swimming pool acting with nothing. And it was amazing. He really should have got a nomination.

[seesmooshrun.livejournal.com]

I recently saw Life of Pi. Awesome, now I definitely want to read the book. It hadn't occurred to me as I was watching, however, how well Suraj SOLD that tiger being there. I was so busy drooling over the visuals and marveling at the story itself and really marveling over the fact that the tiger was CGI (brain: "CGI? Really? How is that possible?!?") that I forgot to notice how seamlessly Suraj was interacting with... nothing. Thanks for opening my eyes. Dang it, now I have to see the movie again.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

It's a movie that definitely stands up to rewatching! And I highly recommend the book too - though keep in mind that the beginning of the book goes into a lot of (IMHO unnecessary) detail about the zoo, before it gets to the action.