• Thank you, jennygriffee, for the lovely card!
• Props to technoshaman for getting me a signed copy of this, and a card as well!
• Big smiles over to janne who actually hand-made me a book cover, with a suspiciously familiar face cross-stitched onto the front. How sweet was this? Handmade gift, people! <3
• mamishka knows me very, very, VERY well and sent me this awesome Han Solo shirt.
• Extra big smiles to my beloved solarbird for the new instrument rack where the General, Rags, and my bouzouki Spring are all now residing! There’s room on it for my octave mandolin Autumn as well, although Autumn’s getting more play time at Dara’s hands these days.

This Guy Looks Familiar

My birthday technically isn’t even over yet, as spazzkat‘s present is still pending! It’s been late showing up on the mail, although he informs me that he has been charged for it, so hopefully Whatever It Is will show up soon. I have my suspicions, and am dying to see if I am correct.

Thanks much to you all! I feel loved. <3

My reaction to passing The Crowe on the streets of Portland in 2001 is fabled in song, story, and LJ post! (flashfire, ssha, mamishka, and kathrynt all still do give me periodic shit about it, too! ;) ) Given that, and given how I could barely manage to talk to The Doyle the couple of times I’ve encountered him, I’m figuring the chances of my brain exploding before the concert even starts are very, very high. Hell, the sheer thought of Alan and Russell on the same stage where I can actually see them perform may make my brain explode RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT.

Because if this happens, my children, I am going to this. Oh yes, I am going. And there will be massive, massive squee. Better brace yourselves now.

Rational: Oh god not another remake!
Fangirly: But, but, but, RUSSELL! Shooting things!
Rational: But it’s ANOTHER REMAKE!
Fangirly: What part of RUSSELL SHOOTING THINGS are you not getting here?
Rational: This is yet another movie that’s standing between him and making a Master and Commander sequel.
Fangirly: …… well, you do have a point there.

I remember when The Equalizer was out, mind you, though I never watched it; I was too young to be its target audience at the time. Intellectually I can appreciate though that it seems like Russell would be a good match for the character. Wikipedia says the show was well-received and ran for four seasons, which matches my own vague recollection of it.

Anybody out there actually watch the show? If you did, what are your recollections of it?

I think I’ve mentioned before on LJ posts that their story should totally be a movie. It’s got everything that would make a movie great: an epic forbidden cross-species romance, a quest at the behest of an angry king, a great and loyal hound, monsters, magic, and most importantly, the heroine standing up to not only Middle-Earth’s biggest badass ever but even death itself for the sake of her man. I mean, seriously. You don’t get much more classic than this.

Since this is the Ideal World According to Me, I would of course cast Russell Crowe as Beren. (Actually, I’d have cast him as Boromir in Lord of the Rings, but this’ll work too!) Beren is not a young pup in the story; he’s already got several decades of experience under his belt by the time he sees and is absolutely smitten by Luthien. So Russell’s current general age and slightly grizzled look would be perfect. Not to mention that man, just the thought of seeing him do Beren’s being literally struck dumb by the first sight of Luthien gives me delicious shivers. I can see it now: the camera lingering on his awestruck face, so intense that he looks like he’s about to weep on the spot. Yum.

Likewise, it should surprise none of you that I’d totally be casting Alan Doyle as Daeron, who also loves Luthien and winds up betraying her a couple of times to her father, out of jealousy for her love of Beren. He later repents and writes laments for her loss. Wikipedia describes Daeron as “the greatest minstrel of the Children of Iluvatar”; frankly, if there’s any other role that would have “Alan Doyle” written all over it, even more than “Allan a’Dayle” did, I can’t think of it! (And I’m not fangirling for the opportunity to see Alan with pointed ears! Well okay, not much. Though I’ve always found Alan rather more puckish than your typical Tolkien elf would be, I’ve always suspected a touch of the fey about him. :D )

In my Ideal Movie World, they would of course do this movie with all the same loving attention to detail that Jackson’s done with LotR and which hopefully will also be done with The Hobbit. No garishly obvious CGI. Make it look real. Make it look right. The great hound Huan must not under any circumstances look fakey. Nor should Carcharoth, the monster wolf who bites off Beren’s hand that holds the Silmaril. Though I have a hard time visualizing how to do Morgoth–who, as an even bigger badass than Sauron, as in fact the original Big Bad of Middle-Earth, should be even scarier and more intimidating than Sauron was!

And you would of course need a proper Luthien. If she hadn’t already played Galadriel I’d be totally eying Cate Blanchett. But failing that, you’d need somebody who could pull off not only unearthly but even angelic radiance even when rescuing her man from the grimmest, most hellish places on earth. (Since Luthien is not only just an elf, she’s also part Maia.) You would need someone who could sing, or else someone with a heavenly voice dubbed in for when the character must sing–because this is after all a big driving force of the story.

(Side thought: if they dubbed in a classically trained singer for Luthien’s singing voice, one presumes she would be a soprano. Since that would seem fitting for “Tinuviel” meaning “Nightingale”.)

Okay, and in the Ideal Fangirl World According to Me, Luthien would of course be played by me. But I’m thinking of this in terms of the Ideal Movie World, not the Ideal Fangirl World. Mostly. ;)

So many vivid characters to be cast here, overall. I passionately hope somebody writes this into a script at some point and that it gets filmed. And that for the love of all that is holy, that nobody tries to do it in 3-D.

*pauses to wave tiny!fists of glee, particularly over Robin and Marion, and ALSO over Alan! Doyle! Movie! Star! and his Action Lute!*

Ahem. Now let’s try this again, only a bit more coherently, shall we? (Please, dear husband, won’t you share my spoilers?)

If you’re not me, which is to say, not a raving fangirl of Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett and especially Alan Doyle, you probably won’t squee over this nearly as hard as I did. mamishka pretty much nailed it for me when she said that this movie is no Gladiator, and it isn’t great–but on the other hand, it is solidly enjoyable.

If you’re a Robin Hood fan in particular, there’s very little here that’s actually Robin-Hood-ish; all the big familiar names are in play here, but as this is an origin story, you’re not going to get much that’s traditionally part of Robin Hood tales. Russell will probably strike hardcore Robin Hood buffs as inadequately English, but this version of Robin is not a nobleman; it’s his old familiar “Royal Shakespeare Academy, two pints after lunch” accent from Gladiator, only with a touch of a brogue, and it worked for me. But I acknowledge, I’m addressing this with my Russell fangirl hat on, and yeah, fine, I can listen to that man read the back of a cereal box, so there you go. ;)

If you’re a history geek, you will probably know more than I did about whether the events portrayed on screen have any semblance to actual history–although, casting a glance over King John’s page on Wikipedia suggests the movie isn’t entirely bullshit in this regard, which is nice. But hey, Wikipedia; take that with the obligatory grain of salt. History geeks out there who’ve seen this, I’d be interested in knowing if the movie did right by what it portrays!

There are some groanworthy moments: lines like “we are Men of the Hood, now merry at your expense”, and “the more the merrier” were over the top. WE GET IT, Ridley, these are the future Merry Men of Sherwood Forest! It’s okay, use a few different adjectives plzkthx. We won’t mind! Also, a couple of the bowshots had Sam Raimi written all over them, especially the final one that takes out the bad guy. Which is fine if you’re a Raimi fan, but I’m just sayin’, kinda cheesy. Go in expecting that.

Now let’s get back to the fangirling. ;)

ALAN DOYLE. Great Big Sea fans, take heart: our Alan acquitted himself splendidly in this movie. He had significant screen time, both as one of the three main Merry-Men-to-be and as his own delightful singer self. At least three times we get to see him whip out his lute and start singing, and a couple of times when he’s doing that in the background, he is totally cutting loose like he does on stage at a GBS show and it’s beautiful.

He gets in some lovely shooting, too. It’s still deeply, deeply weird to me to see Alan with his hair pulled back and wearing a beard–and his accent stood out way more strongly for me here than it normally does, possibly because I’m of course used to hearing him interact with Sean and Bob of GBS, and of course they also have Newfoundland accents. But ACTION LUTE! I will be deeply, deeply disappointed if he’s not on the soundtrack, but I’m pretty sure he’s not. Sniff. Oh well, darn, guess that means I’ll just have to watch the eventual DVD more. (Like I wasn’t going to do that anyway?) Also? Blue homespun is a really tasty look on him.

CATE BLANCHETT. <3 She kicks ass right out of the gate, and I gotta say, ho-ly CRAP her chemistry with Russell just crackles. She and he have regrettably little screen time together, but what scenes they do have… whuff. WHY HAVE THEY NOT MADE A MOVIE TOGETHER BEFORE? And when will they do it again, that’s what I wanna know. Because wow.

My only beef with any of her portrayal at all is that, once she pulls an Eowyn and shows up in the final big battle with her ragtag band of fighters, she doesn’t actually get to kill Godfrey herself or even really seriously damage him. Yeah yeah yeah Robin needs to kill him ’cause Robin’s the hero and all but it would have been nicer if she’d really gotten in some serious blows first and, y’know, helped him kill the guy who killed her father.

Also, take note of “pulling an Eowyn”, because several of us in my group tonight kept totally flashing back to Lord of the Rings. I swear to gods I kept expecting the warg riders to come pouring over the green, green hilltops of Nottingham. This is not necessarily a bad thing, mostly because to this day I still maintain that Russell would have been an awesome Boromir, but it was nonetheless kind of distracting to keep flashing over to better movies–

Except for the scene where Shirtless Russell was involved. I didn’t have ANY distraction problems then at all. ;) For a dude in his mid-forties, yeah, Russell’s still looking suitably buff. Yum.

Which of course brings me around to Russell himself. This is not going to go down in my fangirly history as Best Russell Movie Ever–Master and Commander still has it beat by a nautical mile, and Jack Aubrey is IMO far more suited to Russell’s considerable talents than Robin Longstride is. But that said, Russell’s been in movies that were considerably worse (Breaking Up and Rough Magic, I am LOOKING AT YOU). And as mamishka said, this was still solidly enjoyable. I absolutely foresee myself rewatching this repeatedly, and Russell goes a long way to making it so. He doesn’t honestly stretch himself much here, but see previous commentary re: crackling chemistry with Cate; there are also quieter, touching scenes with Max von Sydow and more than one moment where he’s trying very hard to look as casual as possible while his character is very clearly very, very nervous. He’s also got multiple great moments with Will Scarlet and Allan a’Dayle and Little John, and his line “these are my men-at-arms. This is about as courtly as they get” is so far hands down my favorite.

In conclusion, it should surprise absolutely none of you that I will be seeing this again!

jennygriffee

spazzkat

solarbird

Anybody who wants in, please either drop a comment or just email me so I know who all to fling plan mail with more specific details to!

And now I will spend the rest of the week trying very hard not to imagine Russell Crowe bellowing “YOIKS AND AWAY”. Hee hee hee…

spazzkat

I am, of course, going next weekend. Folks local to Seattle or points immediately nearby are hereby invited to accompany me! Preliminary checking of showtimes thus far reported tells me that it unfortunately won’t be playing at the two best places downtown, Pacific Place and the Cinerama (the latter of which will of course be running Iron Man 2). Nor will the Neptune or the Metro in the U-district be running it, at least on Thursday, but it’s possible they may have shows show up in another couple of days.

Right now I’m eying the Woodinville theater as the place I’m most likely to go. Unless I hear a lot of enthusiasm for a midnight show I’m aiming for either a Friday or a Saturday show. And since Woodinville seems to be the best locale so far, chances are high of sushi in downtown Bothell pairing up with said film.

Who wants in? Any counteroffers on locations and/or dinner preferences? Sing out, y’all! Robin, Marian, and Allan a’Dayle ain’t gonna ogle themselves! ;)

Is it May yet? Is it May yet? Is it May yet? Also, elf needs icons, BADLY. And desktop backgrounds! And, Big Trailer is Big, so behind the cut it goes!

To which I must say YES PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE. Because I definitely need me some more Jack Aubrey in my life.

solarbird

Friday night we had all the Bothell crowd as well as jennygriffee come over for more tabletop gaming, and while that was quite hectic, it was also fun. I continue to be full of Win for little Moira and Lillian, and this time around I also got little William’s attention; the boy thought it was great fun to try to help me play my guitar. He’s shyer than the girls and doesn’t talk nearly as much, so it was pretty neat to see him perk up.

Lily and Moira love going up our stairs and peeking in my bedroom because I have a big bed they can bounce on, and also, we have a cache of stuffed animals in there. But they also love making me (as well as any other convenient grownups) chase them in circles around the main floor of the house. Lily in particular commanded me to “be a dinosaur!”, so I apparently need to get right to work on my T-rex impersonation. ;) Meanwhile, Moira wanted to further investigate our DVD collection, and when she spotted the pink boxes that contain our Cardcaptor Sakura anime episodes, I went ahead and let her watch that figuring that it wouldn’t be too scary for her or Lily. kathrynt tells me that Lily in fact is experimenting with being scared, and likes to identify things as “scary”.

This led to one of the cutest things I’ve heard coming out of a two-year-old mouth lately: “scary toilet paper lady” to describe the antagonist character in the movie I showed them. Hee.

And, Moira insisted that I “protect” her while she was watching the movie, and sat in my lap. Aw. <3

It should also be noted that Lily furthermore kept asking me for "Donkey Riding", and when she spotted the background pic of Great Big Sea on my computer, pointed at it and said "that's a picture of Donkey Riding!" She's still a little shaky on which name goes with the band and which name goes with the song, but she clearly now knows the faces of Great Big Sea when she sees them. Mostly. She also thought Eddie Izzard on my T-shirt was Sean, I think. I put her straight!

Yesterday morning Q then IMed me to tell me that Lily told her "we put on shoes and go over to my Anna's house!" I am apparently now Lillian's Anna! Who knew?

Unrelatedly, last night while working on checkbook balancing, I re-watched TOS's "Doomsday Machine" episode (some awesome mileage of The Kirk), Master and Commander (which I think is now well and solidly my favorite Russell Crowe movie Ever), and another 4th season episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (which is still bringing the wacky).

* Why the hell can’t I buy just a replacement lens for that taillight, anyway? The light itself is intact, it’s just the outer lower bit of the lens that’s broken. But according to the guys at Schuck’s the assembly is all they have, and they wanted $130 for it. I bought a $5 roll of reflective red headlight repair tape instead and used that. Which should do me for now and hopefully satisfy the next cop that tries to pull me over for having a broken taillight.