I enjoyed HBP as well. (Particularly Malfoy's goth-mod suit.) Emmett and I are just starting to listen to it on audiobook so I'm curious to see what they left out.

This is sort of related to our earlier conversation, but earlier today I told someone that I thought a certain detective show kind of had political messages and she sort of treated me like I was insane because a party wasn't named in it. But I think that if you make a statement about society in something, that's kind of political...it's not like I said there are subliminal messages encouraging people toward collective farming. But does there have to be before something has political undertones?

Everything has a subtext. Once you take a point of view about something then the presumptions behind that perspective inform the work.

Most detective shows are going to have a somewhat conservative bent. The Wire does not, as it fully lays out the social circumstances behind the criminals' decisions.

We were talking about "The Rockford Files", which is pretty anti-establishment for a detective series.ETA: Well, it's good to know that I'm not crazy for thinking "political" does not equal "voting record" because of course that's not in there, but plenty of other stuff about privacy and civil liberties definitely is...Chase, in particular, seemed to want to include it.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead

Have you heard anything about it besides that description?

Nope. That's pretty much the only blurb Rue Morgue Magazine has had about it.

We saw Avatar today. Wow, that was pretty. Very pretty. And a decently entertaining James Cameron movie. Sure, you can play "spot the stock characters" ( Hey look, it's Vasquez! Hi Vasquez! I bet you're going to die in the third act ... oh look, I'm right. ), but it was fun. And the plot and dialog didn't make me want to stick my fingers in my ears and hum, which is better than I expected.

I have to say, Michele Rodriguez surprised me in Avatar. She wasn't the angry, hotheaded, spicy Latina I've come to expect of all her roles.

She didn't scowl once!

H and I saw it today, too. And in spite of its inherent script flaws, it really was exquisite. 3D makes H nauseous (something to do with his particular astigmatism), so we saw it in regular digital. The sense of otherness was wonderful, once we had let go of the wincing. While I certainly see the parallels with Lothlorien, I really want a telepathically bonded dragon. Of course, that's nothing new for me.

think were finally ready for dragon riders of pern. fivking cat on lsptop

The only thing worse? George Lucas' take.

snerk

I haven't seen any Xmas movies yet. I'd like to see Sherlock Holmes if I can talk DH into playing hooky for a matinee.

Dude I can`t handle the mushroom clouds in Koyaanisqatsi. And those were real, just in New Mexico. I`m pretty sure I can`t handle James Cameron`s version of those visuals.
 
And we know how well he can be trusted with complex social and racial issues.
 
Actually the more I think about it, the sicker I feel. The stark atrocity of that event, and I use the term advisedly, is not something that should be used commercially by anyone, and certainly not by him.