Monday, June 11, 2007

Yay!

Yesterday, I went to Tracy and Marv's house in Dade City to hang out with all the Lord of the Rings OneRing.net Line Party people... Yes, five years after its formation just prior to the release of the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, we're still getting together every few months to eat, talk and nerd-out. Say what you might, but it's a lot of fun and they are all really cool people! We rarely watch LOTR anymore. We've seen it so many times together (with and without the cast commentary on) that we all know what everyone always wants to say about every scene in the movie... Today, we watched a really weird Japanese fantasy movie with subtitles that Alina recommended called "Death Trance." I have to remember to mention it to Maria... Very weird, but strangely kinda interesting... We also watched "Beowulf & Grendel" (Gerard Butler is yummy...) and "Galaxy Quest" (told you we nerd-out)... People started wandering about the house during "Galaxy Quest" though. We usually eat lunch soon after we get there around noon and then pick, pick, pick at the huge pot-luck spread that we had put together for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. I made a noodle kugal. It was a hit, though I've still got half of it left. Today, we got to talking so much that it was 9:30pm before anyone realized what time it was. It was 9:55 by the time I got in my car. It takes 40 minutes to drive home... I was still buzzed from all the excitement until about 15 minutes ago... I really should go to bed...

Oh! I found out that Tracy will be publishing her second book in her fantasy series sometime right around Christmas this year! Yay! I know what David, Rachel and Heather will be getting from me: signed copies (again)! Her first book can be gotten here. Or just type in "Tracy Akers" at Amazon.com. Mainstream publishing houses basically said to her, "But there aren't any dragons in it..." and handed it back. But what do they know? So Tracy published it herself. So far, it has won six independent book awards! I'm so happy for her! I suppose I should finish the first one before the second one is released, if only I can put my knitting down long enough to read something other than pattern instructions or school books! But it has gotten glowing reviews from everyone I know who has read it, even people who don't know Tracy, so don't think that they are biased reviews. If you like fantasy, or you know someone who does, or you have a middle-school-aged relative or friend, consider The Fire and the Light by Tracy Akers.

Since getting home from the Ringer Party (that's what we call these get-togethers), I've been working on my Cafepress merch for one of my stores, Non Timebo Mala. It's got Supernatural type swag... We had gotten to talking about Supernatural since Alina, Sharyl and I all love it. Poor Tracy had a bad experience because she's quite frightened of ghosts and the one episode that she attempted to watch was when the death-omen ghost comes after a woman who is all by herself in house and that poor woman ends up dead in that episode and Tracy was home by herself that night. So Tracy's not very happy with Supernatural right now. Alina and I have high hopes of eventually turning that around, I think, but we'll have to wait and see... Anyway, I made a license plate frame that I kinda want for myself... And I added a whole bunch of t-shirts, including the new "plus" size shirts, colored t-shirts, and maternity tees as well...

Very tempted to get Lara a maternity tee... Still might, after all, she has almost a month and a half to go...

Anyway, if you're interested, you can check out the new merch by clicking above. And if you open your own shop, I'd be awfully grateful if you credited me with the reference.

Okay, now I'm going to bed...
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

*Squeal!* I have a copy of "Death Trance". You almost have to watch it a couple of times for it to make sense; observe closely the fight between Grave and the Goddess of Destruction at the end of the movie.. and pay special attention to the sword hilts. O.O It's an amazingly fun movie. The monk is utterly and completely drool-worthy, in my opinion.

What was your take on "Beowulf&Grendel"? I haven't seen it, but I'm sort of afraid to.. :P I thought I saw somewhere that they're making yet another version of it, but I could well have imagined it.

2:02 PM, June 11, 2007
RaeS said...

LOL! Yay, if there weren't two other people there who had seen "Death Trance" several times before, we all would have been very confused. I noticed the sword hilts... Actually, I think my jaw hit the floor when the "chosen one"'s sword started pulsing. I didn't say anything though because we had a 9 year old in the room who was oblivious as can be... The monk is totally drool worthy, I completely agree and so would my friend Alina, but Tracy, Sheryl and I all thought that the bad boy rogue samurai... or whatever it is he is, is totally drool worthy too.

I love "Beowulf & Grendel." It has it's faults and there are some things they could have done better, but you've got to remember this is a relatively low budget film for this sort of thing. They had no real CG budget, so almost everything is makeup effects and camera angles. The cinematography is incredible! They filmed the whole thing in Iceland and it's amazing for the scenery alone if nothing else. There are some parts that are difficult to understand because the Scottish and other accents are difficult to make out, so if you have captions, I would use them. There are some weird and awkward scenes, mostly due to the several characters that they added for either plot devise or kinda dead end reasons that I can't quite figure out, but the costumes and sets are incredible and I adore Hrothgar's wife, Queen Wealtheow. Her hair and dresses and jewelry are amazing! Accurate, but the likes of which I don't think we've ever seen in a "Viking" movie before. The designers for this film actually looked that the archaeological record before proceeding. Amazing! And her whole character is amazing... Very like I would have imagined her. And Gerard Butler is always lovely... The guy who played Cleitus in "Alexander" is also in the movie, one of Beowulf's retinue, with very long, dark hair... And Stellan Skarsgard in it too, as Hrothgar! That's the guy who plays Bootstrap Bill in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3...

Someone is making another version, which is why this one couldn't get an American distributor. The distributors were like: But these guys are doing an animated version with famous people's voices and we don't know of any of the people in your movie and we can't have two of these movies that close together! The American public would never go see both! ... Like it's ever stopped them before... Angelina Jolie is said to be voicing Hrothgar's wife, I think, and I think they are also gearing it more toward kids, but I could be wrong... I haven't heard all that much about it yet...

3:04 PM, June 11, 2007

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