This is about the movie 300, which I saw at a local cinema today. I have to say, my review would be somewhat different if this had been an all-out fantasy, and not a disturbing depiction of a telling of a tale about a battle between Xerxes’ Persian army and a small group of Spartans. Here’s why. These days, I often find myself wondering, “Why are you telling me this story at this moment?” I think it of the topics students choose to talk about in class — some of them brought up simply because they’re big in the news, …
Category: REVIEWS
Corea and Burton, Live in Seoul
Well, last weekend Lime and I went to the concert to which she got me tickets for my birthday. That show was the Chick Corea and Gary Burton live show in Seoul, March 10th. The show was pretty good, really, but there was something about it that was a little underwhelming. I mean, let’s face it, Chick Corea knows what he’s doing at the piano. Yet some of it felt a little, I don’t know, phoned in, or maybe emailed in. No, wait, that’s not quite fair either. It’s also just partly something about Chick Corea. He’s one of those …
February Readings, Part 2, and March Readings Part 1
Sadly, yes, I am still catching up on my one and only current monthly magazine subscription. (I’m actually technically subscribed to a few more monthlies, but they haven’t yet started to arrive.) various magazine subscriptions. The theory is that I need to at least catch up, since I’ve subbed to a few more things and want to be in the groove once all the new subscriptions start arriving. But I find I can get through an issue of F&SF in a couple of days if I focus on it. So Maybe 5 or 6 days a month, my reading time …
Listen to My Compositions (If You Dare)
I’ve added some more recordings to the archive of all music I’ve participated in. The recordings that just became available to me are all from the period of 1995-96, which was my most prolific year of composing music during undergraduate music studies. There are five pieces: a bass clarinet duet, a piece for solo piano, a piece for electric guitar and harpsichord (with a title referring to the work of H.P. Lovecraft), and a couple of pieces for large ensemble. I’ll be working on getting more recordings of my work in the next year, but it’s come to my attention …
Give Up Cars, Save the World
Here’s another reason to like Iain M. Banks. (via a posting on Culture List.)
Anyone Order Me a Book Lately?
I received a few things in the mail today. A disappointingly limited selection of my own compositions — lots of things from my third year compositions, but absolutely nothing from my second year, which means that when my box of audio tapes were turfed last year, the recordings of my earliest compositions were utterly lost — as well as the last issue of InterZone (but not the new one) and finally, a very dated issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet along with Ray Vukcevich’s Meet Me in the Moon Room from Small Beer Press. It’s not as weird as it …
Sugungga, Translation and Translatability, and Something Weirdly Beautiful
Sugungga (Soo-goong-ga, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the standard form of Korean romanzation, which is as opaque as pinyin to those who cannot read Hangeul) is a pansori, of which I recently bought (a 3-CD set) and to which I have been listening. Yep, that’s the cover to the right. Don’t click that link yet. Read it later. For now, bear with me. People say that this form is “Korean traditional opera” (always “Korean traditional”, not the other way around as we’d say in native-speakers’ English). I understand why they compare it to opera, of course — …
Watched and Read
Finally been able to use the holiday as I’d hoped — lots of writing, lots of reading, some movies. What have I read? Well, I finally finished Nalo Hopkinson‘s Midnight Robber. The book was a bit of an excursion for me, rather different from the bulk of SF I read. Not the futuristic, melded Caribbean patois — that didn’t faze me at all, and in fact I very much enjoyed that element, even when there were words I couldn’t pronounce mentally — but what was a departure for me was the fact that (a) this is a kind of domestic …
“Daughters…” !!!
UPDATE (9 April 2013): A quick update, since I stumbled upon this post while trying to clean up the site database. This book never got published, unfortunately… apparently there was no market for a children’s book preaching that girl children are not a disappointment. Which is probably a good thing, but it makes me sad because the book was really a good, sweet, gentle one, and I was proud to have helped translate it. ORIGINAL POST: Well, today, while I was headed to the post office to mail back some some student assignments, I stopped by the main office to …
Cthulhu Tracts
A fellow known to some of us as Danevolent posted this on a mailing list: Cthulhu Tracts. Yeah, it’s only funny if you know about Chick Tracts and the work of H.P. Lovecraft, but, well, see, this is what we SF nerds find funny.