Lowell trips and tussling with icons

Finally fixed the timing problem on the anti-Damned Book icon and I also discovered I needed to compress the animation to make it fit on the site. LiveJournal can be pretty picky about file sizes which gives me a heads up on the next project I decided to break up the last frame into three, which makes it somehow more dramatic. Here's one for the biggest literary con artist of all time.

In and out of Lowell the past couple days: yesterday, I was bringing back some overdue CDs (ouch) and today I had an appointment with my therapist. Also (yesterday) I nipped into Larry's Comics for my once-a-month-therabouts visit and picked up the May issue of "Hellblazer" and an odd volume I hadn't noticed before, "Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days", featuring several stray DC/Vertigo items that Neil scripted, including an odd issue of "Hellblazer" (which was reprinted with the comic version of
"Constantine", but the little introduction that they added for this collection was clever, so I don't mind having the same story in two different books), a few stories from the "Swamp Thing" series (which I'm not familiar with, aside from the Swamp Thing's cameo in "Black Orchid" and aside from the knowledge that John Constantine first appeared in the "American Gothic" story arc of ST), and a mini-series from the "Sandman Mystery Theatre", in which Wesley "the Sandman" Dodds of the Golden Age of DC Comics briefly crosses paths with the King of the Dreaming, from a certain series that helped launch the Vertigo line...

(Which reminds me, I took it into my head to animate my Vertigo logo icon so that it spins. Don't ask me what posessed me to do that -- maybe the mischievous part of me wants to make you, my readers, dizzy. I may or may not upload it. We'll see...)

Movie Review: "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"

****** out of ***** (Yes, I know that's 6 out of 5 stars: It's that good!)

Whoa.

WHOA!

This does for C. S. Lewis what Peter Jackson did for Tolkien: I'd seen the old "WonderWorks" made-for-Canadian-TV version, which was broadcast on PBS years ago, and while that was okay for its time, this made-for-the-big-screen blows it out of the water! Utterly pitch-perfect. Visually stunning. I can't get over how they made it all look so *REAL*!

The four young actors and actresses who play the Pevensie children are splendid, but I think the most exquisite is the little girl who played Lucy. She's such a dear, you honestly want to hug her! (I'm told that when they filmed the scene where Lucy first steps out of the wardrobe and into the snowy woods, that the young lady playing the part hadn't seen the set for it until that very moment, so her wonder and surprise were more than mere acting.)

Tilda Swinton's White Witch... whoa... scary and poised and oddly attractive. I thought Ms. Swinton was an odd choice for the part, since she's built rather slender and androgynous-looking, but she turned out a splendid performance that sends shivers down your spine even as you have a hard time taking your eyes off her...

And Liam Neeson as the voice of Aslan. Wow! Does it get any better? I know some critics have said that a growlier voice would have been more fitting, but I can't imagine anyone else. You get the feeling that he's "not a tame lion", but there's a warmth in that voice that doesn't swamp the character's commanding presence.

And the fellow who played Mr. Tumnus the faun... Awwww! He's so schweet! Another character you just want to cuddle. Or dance with! (Yeah, I'm crushing on him, can'tcha tell?)

I laughed at the funny parts, my pulse pounded through the battle scenes (very, very reminiscent of similar battle scenes from LOTR, and I think they were filmed in New Zealand, too... Hey, Narnia could be the eastern shore of Middle Earth, for all we know...). I cried with joy at the scene where Father Christmas arrives in Narnia for the first time in 100 years. And I was weeping real tears first of sorrow, then of joy at Aslan's death and resurrection.

I've dreamed of there being a *GOOD* movie version of this classic that I grew up with, and now that dream has come true.

Now if they'd do a movie version of C.S. Lewis's "Space Trilogy"....