Whatta Fiasco

Jane Austen meets Bollywood via Gurinder Chadha, who brought us Bend It Like Beckham. If you’re looking for Bollywood with training wheels, this is a nice fluffy place to start. Song and dance. Boys and girls falling in love and encountering difficulties along the path to happiness. Economic, cultural, and social class tensions. Multiple weddings. Multiple exotic locales. And no kissing. Some of the acting (the male lead particularly) and the English lyrics were a bit disappointing, but comedy was well done and the subtexts hit a good balance. It’s not as lavish a production as Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, but neither is it a four hour investment of time. It’s just another fluffy romantic comedy.

[For extra credit, try comparing Meghna Kothari (playing Maya Bakshi, the Snake Dance sister) with Shirley Henderson who you may remember as Myrtle from the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.]

Did you notice that the short list for the Hugo nominations was released this week? Quite to my shock, I’ve read three of the five nominees for best novel, and the only reason I haven’t read a fourth is because I haven’t gotten hands on a copy yet. (China Mieville, Susannah Clarke, Charlie Stross, and then Iain Banks is the one I’m still waiting for.) And given how much I’ve enjoyed those four authors, I think I’m going to have to try some Ian McDonald some time soon.

It is a strange experience to be reading along and suddenly realize that the preceding paragraph as a nice summation of Calculus 101. An entire semester in one paragraph. And a chapter later, there goes what appears to be a summary of differential equations. I can’t be sure because I never got past that first calculus class. It almost made sense, but don’t ask me to try to apply the stuff. Math is full of such pretty shiny things. Math for me is like walking into a well-equipped machine shop. I can mostly tell what the cool toys are used for, but don’t turn me loose unsupervised with any power tools more complicated than a drill. I’m perfectly capable of learning to use all of them well, or at least safely, but I haven’t been inclined to devote the time needed to get comfortable with them. Still, it’s fun to look, and I do try to learn new bits and pieces every now and then.

I went to work without my coat today. I think that makes it spring.

Yes, I’m woefully behind the times on this one, but I ran across the paperback edition for five bucks during the Christmas season and just this weekend ended up with some free frivolous fiction reading time. It was a pleasant enough book and a decent workout for my forearms (I’ll graduate to the weight of hardbacks one of these days), but good heavens does this woman ever need an editor. Sprawling and ungainly with too low a payback to page count ratio. Here’s hoping the next book has tighter story telling, but I’m not holding my breath.

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Not quite as good as the more recent Holy Fire, but still fun. Well, fun if you don’t live in Tornado Alley and aren’t preparing for the onset of tornado season. He does a reasonably good job of capturing the allure of wild weather and just how overwhelming an approaching thunderstorm on the plains can be. And then it goes way over the top, but it’s a fun ride.

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After working so hard to not get sick before the Denver fencing tournament, it didn’t really surprise me that I came down sick afterward. Would it have made more sense to focus on not getting sick at all? I was a rapidly deteriorating mess Tuesday afternoon, and managed to limp home, sneezing. Hubby was exceptionally nice and offered to cook dinner while I medicated myself and tried to get comfortable. (Hooray for spaghetti!) And then I called in sick Wednesday morning and crawled back into bed where I stayed for most of the day, except to renew the medication. It seems to have done the trick as I was back at work today and mostly functional.
And if you’re interested in learning more about how sleep works (i.e. chronobiology), check out Circadiana for all the good stuff.

But if you’re more interested in decadent breakfast food to indulge in after sleeping in late, don’t miss the Dutch Babies from the delightful Orangette. Because I consider breakfast food best late at night, I did a version of this one for my dinner. Sadly, my version had fat free milk instead of half and half, and no lemon juice. Both would improve it. And I cooked it in a single large skillet instead of two small ones (I only have one large skillet) but the part that puffs up along the edges of the skillet is the best. I may have to get some small skillets for the next time I cook Dutch Babies because I imagine I’ll be finding another chance to share them fairly soon. Yum.

An odd little rambling film. An unusual trio find themselves reuniting to buy a ship, but along the way we learn the price of falling in love with a crazy woman.

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Your basic Scottish crime novel, slang and all. It also works hard at painting truly gruesome crime scenes and an irresistible cad of an investigator. It reads well and quickly. The ending even ties things up nicely, although I found the final standoff either a little overblown or not quite set up properly. It was still satisfactory. I’ll be reading more of these.

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I wasn’t at all sure this one was going to be worthwhile, but getting to see it on a IMax screen made it seem a little more likely. It’s not great movie making nor great animation. The retro design theme wasn’t badly done. The list of names providing voice talent was impressive, but I am tired of Robin Williams and the sort of over the top zaniness that must be injected into all his comedic performances. And the music score was… odd. I think they blew ninety percent of the music budget just licensing a tiny bit of Britney Spears. It shows. (Lots of sound-alike pieces.) The plot is relatively simplistic and formulaic and there’s very little character development. But the worst offense of all was against any female bot who hadn’t been completely removed from the sexual sphere. Momma Copperbottom was a simpering ditz. Piper made the mistake of finding our hero attractive and was subsequently shoved to the background. Capi was such a thin brand of cardboard I don’t know how she didn’t get paper cuts from herself. Piper and Capi do eventually get minor dramatic roles at the final conflict, but it wasn’t enough.

And the IMax version was just a really big screen. Big deal.

And yet, I enjoyed the movie. I don’t want to see it again, although they added quite a few jokes that are difficult to catch the first time in order to boost repeat attendance/DVD sales. I don’t want to own the DVD either. In short, it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

This is the follow-up to his first book, Singularity Sky, and it’s even better than its predecessor. Nothing deep here, but if you’re looking for fast-paced entertainment, this is a good one.

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It’s opera time again! The king falls in love with his best friend’s wife. She admits that she loves him too but begs him to protect her from herself. He says the hell with it all, he loves her! The husband discovers that there’s something going on and declares that his wife must die for it. And, by the way, he’s also going to kill his best friend, the king. In the meantime the king repents of his rashness and signs papers to send his best friend and wife overseas out of temptation’s reach. At the masked ball the best friend stabs the king. The king forgives him, declares the wife to be innocent (which she is), and hands over the paper that will send them both away. King dies. Curtain falls.

Please note that no actual adultery takes place in this story. Not even off stage. And no one dies until just seconds before the final curtain. There are also no villains. Just foolish men trying to do what they think is the right thing at the time. But this is a Verdi opera, so the music is lush and interesting. The coloratura is restricted to the pants role, the king’s page, and the lead soprano only blew one note in a major way. (Ouch.) It doesn’t seem like a bad opera at all, but this performance was a bit spotty, uneven and lackluster. There were individual pieces of both acting and singing that were a joy, but taken as a whole, it just didn’t meet the level I was hoping for.

(Dear Lyric, Please please please fix the on stage microphone set up. The echo effect is embarrassing.)

My favorite overheard conversation from this past weekend was between two veteran fencers:
Vet Epee: Are you done competing?
Vet Sabre: I fenced Vet Saber and Div III.
Vet Epee: So how did you do?
Vet Sabre: The results weren’t so good in Div III but I got what I wanted out of it.
Vet Epee: Too many kids, eh?
Vet Sabre: Yeah.Next time I’m going to tie their feet together.

And my favorite names of restaurants in Denver where I didn’t eat were Swing Thai (800,000 Pud Thai Sold!) and Falafel King. But best of all was my new favorite name for a tattoo parlor: That Scary Place. Just perfect.