The Hall of Fire

Thank you for posting this. I've been wanting to read it and just now got the chance. The two things that particularly caught my eye were the letters: Guns firing at night are beautiful - if they were not so terrible. They have the grandeur of thunderstorms. But how one clutches at the glimpses of p...

We watched part I yesterday and will watch part II today. It was sly, funny, satirical, and had Nathan Fillion in it. Four out of four. And Neil Patrick Harris! Five out of five. Just finished watching Act III and loved it. It's not what I would have expected, but it worked out so rightly. "Fr...

I saw this on opening day and was almost perfectly pleased with it. I wasn't sure how I felt about the whole crystal skull thing because even for an Indiana Jones movie that seemed a bit much. (Incidentally, I looked up crystal skulls and they're pretty interesting historically.) I got over that pre...

I prefer villains with ideals, who think they are serving them. That is exactly it! That is (I think) what I was trying to talk around. It's that belief that whatever they are doing is, if not right, then necessary . To take Wampus's example of Benry from Lost (who, incidentally I really love) he's...

That is a good point, and so I think I would emend 'perfect' to essentially good or essentially bad -- essentially any one particular thing without leaving that bit of ambiguity. Is that still the same thing? I suppose it is. There seems to be a trend to giving bad characters tragic backstories to m...

I feel that way about a lot well written villains, especially in Shakespeare. For example, Iago is absolutely fascinating and I enjoy him very much as a character, but I cannot like him. Othello is the same way -- I cannot bring myself to like him because he is so easily consumed by jealousy and yet...

I saw Sunshine this summer and was completely entranced by it until they tried to turn it into a thriller. I think it would have been much better had they stuck with the psychological aspects. They had some really good actors that were underutilized. MORE SPOILERS!!! All the way to the end of the po...

How exciting! Congratulations!!!

I didn't realize how special it was until I read The Professor and the Madman, about its making. Ditto. That was the book that really started the fascination for me, and then I went on to spend far too much time lost in the OED itself. I'm going to be one sad camper when I leave school and no longe...

Hmm. LOTR by Tolkien (No surprises there.) Arcadia by Tom Stoppard Good Omens by Messieurs Gaiman and Pratchett (If I'm on a desert island, I need something funny.) The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by (guess who!) William Shakespeare. I think I'd want either the Arden or the Riverside, too,...

To the Professor, with many thanks.


I'm so glad you bumped this -- I had completely forgotten.

Driveby post because I should be studying for my bio exam, but I'm really looking forward to a good read of the new posts. [Compare Túrin and Frodo at their respective nadirs: Túrin dies and Frodo doesn't. Why? Well, Sam of course, but there is no "of course" about it. Túrin dies alone bot...

I think Sam had to survive.... and therefore so did Frodo have to. There is no way only one of them could have come out of Mount Doom alive... I'm sure someone's going to come along and prove me wrong, but in a way I don't think Sam did have to survive. Having neither of them survive would have hit...

But no, he had to live on. He had to live and remember the failure and humiliation of claiming the ring. Is that right, humiliation? Just a little bit. To get all that way, work so hard, and then screw up at the very end? He fell short of his own inner goals. But that's often life. There's a lot of...

Hmmm, although there is wonderful poetry in the play and it glorifies a certain form of martial valour to the standard we would expect of Shakespeare, nevertheless the jingoism in it grates. Henry V in actuality was not an admirable king and the Agincourt victory was more a cool headed deliverance ...

Alatar wrote:I hate you.

I second that.


(Although I did see Ian McKellen as Lear on Saturday so I can't complain too much yet. )

Nothing to add but my love for Henry V.

Thank you, but if Tolkien intended it otherwise, it isn't really correct.

Here's something I can't quite square (aside from my general and universal dislike for fate and divine planning). It says right there, black and white, in the Silmarillion, that Men are not bound by fate, that Men are born in the world, live in it, and then leave the place entirely upon dying. Yet ...

I was very amused to find out the other day that 'avuncular' means 'Of, belonging to, or resembling an uncle." I knew the word but never would have guessed it's actual meaning.

(narya, our sigs should be friends.)