(no subject)

!!!!!

My sister just told me that House of Flying Daggers is coming out in Taiwan on Friday! I forgot I'd heard about this while Cannes was going on.

It's a wuxia movie! It's directed by Zhang Yimou!! Who did the very awesome Hero! And it stars Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhang Ziyi!! Oh the eye candy.

And did I mention Zhang Yimou?

OMG SO COOL!

Except I'm here in California and who only knows when it'll be coming out in theatres here =(. Even Hero hasn't come out yet, grrr. I bet the DVD will be out in Taiwan before it's out here. Argh.

But if it's been released at Cannes, it means it must have had English subtitles, right? Or French, hrm. But if they have English subtitles, then I can make the boy watch it too!!

*wibbles*

Grown-up books

mrissa was recently asking questions on adult books (as opposed to YA or children's, not necessarily erotica or porn) and when various people started reading them, if they were ever restricted from doing so, etc.

I think one of the interesting byproducts of growing up basically speaking a different language than my parents meant that they had no idea what I was reading. Still probably don't. I figure that by now my mom has probably found my hidden romance novel stash back at home and sort of knows what they are, but by now I don't care as much as I did back in high school. I should also give my parents points for knowing more than they let on, but seeing as how I have yet to experience parenthood for myself, I have no idea what they know and what they pretend to not-know, and I find it rather comforting to pretend all around that there are general subjects everyone just not-does and not-knows about.

Anyhow. I think the very first adult book I read was Lord of the Rings back in sixth grade (11 yrs. old?). Previously I had pretty much always stayed in the kids' section of the library and dug out books like Gordon Korman (I should reread those and see if they're still funny), various classics, etc. Lord of the Rings was a giant, giant eye-opener. First, I used to constantly sift through all the books in the kids' section looking for fairy tales and myths and various retellings, and in LotR, I discovered that there was an entire new world, a fat world that filled three volumes and didn't explicitly retell any fairy tales or myths. After Lord of the Rings, I headed up to the adult section to look for more books like it (it's really hard to do when there are no genre categories and one is making judgments based on spines) and found Terry Brooks, and, subsequently, the genre known as fantasy.

I've never been told that I was too young for a book (although some time down the line I realized for myself that that was the case). I've never been personally stopped from reading something I wanted to read. I've only actually talked about books and reading to very few people in my life prior to LJ because, well, most people don't quite understand the excitement or most people haven't read the books I wanted to talk about. LJ's been a giant blessing because it's finally allowed me to burble on about reading and books and bibliophilia in general to people who don't think I'm nuts for reading all the time. I sort of felt invisible in a good way when I was reading -- outside of a select group of people, no one really ever knew what I was reading or what I thought about it.

( Post is getting long... )

(no subject)

ARGH!!

The drycleaner shrunk my pants. I would swear to never, ever, ever buy dry clean again, but it seems as though all business wear is dry clean. ARGH.

My nice, lovely, nappy Express pants are now no longer softly nappy, fit too tightly in the waist and the legs, and make my butt look big (the ultimate offense, really). And they were fifty dollars!! Why why why?!

Which means I'm probably going to have to buy new khaki colored nice dressy casual pants, which means hours in a dressing room glaring at my hips and even more hours cursing the stupid fashion industry and that stupid, stupid low waist look. And the assumption that women do not have curves for some reason, so all pants will fit either the hips or the waist, but never at the same time.

Luckily I went to the Milk Pail and got some fruit, so I feel a little better. Someday I will actually wake up early on a Sunday and go to one of the various farmer's markets around here.

I can hear the boy falling out of his chair with laughter at the thought of my getting up early.

(no subject)

Thoughts sparked by the discussion on kijjohnson's LJ on that old sci-fi versus fantasy thing, as well as I, Robot the movie versus Asimov books.

I was reading an NYTimes article on the I, Robot movie, which mainly discusses how the movie goes through the old action movie evil artificial intelligence out to conquer the world schtick, rather than staying with Asimov's usually peaceful and rather logical robots. (one reason why I'm not going to see the movie -- sure, make an evil robot movie, but why refer to Asimov if one is not going to stick with Asimov?)

I wonder why sci-fi is generally thought of as forward looking. Granted, there's that whole future thing, but haven't lots of papers been written about how sci-fi generally reflects the fears and concerns of the time the book or story was written? I always think of sci-fi as more now-oriented than future oriented, because so much of it is extrapolation of present day problems. In part, people laud sci-fi for being good social commentary, and isn't that by definition very firmly in the present day? Also, I don't think social commentary is limited to the futuristic setting, although in general, sci-fi seems to have been more engaged with the socio-political than fantasy. But I'd say Harry Potter does do a good deal of social commentary as well, despite the pseudo-medieval wizarding world setting. And from the commentary I've seen on Laurie J. Marks' Fire Logic, it deals very much with issues like war and its broad impact on society and on individuals.

Also, I wonder why this argument always pops up, or seems to? I mean, who cares if something is backwards looking? I don't understand -- do the sci-fi supporters disregard historical fiction as well? Obviously I am biased, since I am mainly a fantasy fan and have read little golden age sci-fi. I usually only read sci-fi if it comes highly recommended because I'm mostly interested in interiority and in character. I don't know. I just think it's a rather silly argument, given that a lot of the speculative elements in sci-fi can be given a fantasy spin (immortality, alien life forms/races, religious governments, etc.) by just switching the "scientific" rationale to a magical one (i.e. Asimov's psychohistory or whatever it's called vs. Card's idea of torches and reading heartfires).

The clinging to the social commentary thing is what gets me the most. I feel that if a book has something to say on the human condition, it doesn't really matter how forward or backward looking it is.