album cover time

Courtesy of baldanders, I give you the CD Cover Meme, a method for generating faux indie rock album covers. Even with having to one-click-at-a-time slap this together in Paint (no Photoshop or such on this computer, alas), this proved to be addictive. (There's also an archive of covers; this one is my favorite so far.)

( My own effort. )

(no subject)

Anthony Minghella, Oscar-winning director of The English Patient, has died at the age of 54.



(As an aside to the author of this article: Lord David Puttnam is a film producer- Chariots of Fire; The Killing Fields; The Mission. He has never directed a feature.)

two things that make me happy today

1) I've successfully applied for a passport; this December, on my 40th birthday, I'll be in New Zealand. If the gods are at all kind, I'll meet up with a friend and fellow film geek there, and we'll prance around to the Lord of the Rings filming locations, and geek out tremendously :)

2) I've just obtained my Time Bandits map, and have made space for it in a place of honor above my desk.


What's making you happy today?

(no subject)

Adorable, and not a macro. Thank heavens.

in which I make the o_O face

Jarring, yet true: Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production company is negotations to remake Rosemary's Baby. I'm fairly sure Bay won't be directing- that it'll be an executive producership a la his Texas Chainsaw remake... but man, is that a peanut butter and borscht sandwich. (I see he's also remaking The Birds: one imagines him directing Bruce Willis taking out hordes of turkey vultures with his trusty flamethrower, even as one of them siezes a turtle in its claws, and we follow the turtle as it plummets towards Bruce's bald head...)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, CBE, rest in peace (December 16, 1917 – March 19, 2008)

Science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died aged 90 in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, it was confirmed tonight.

Damn it. Clarke was one of the three SF writers whose work was most influental for me as a youth (along with Ellison- only nominally SF, granted- and Heinlein; Sturgeon and Heinlein came later.) I still reread and enjoy his novels; I’ve seen 2001 more often than any other film, with the possible exception of Citizen Kane; when I was a child, dreaming about nuclear war, I copied out his story "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth" by hand- I found it somehow comforting to imagine people survivng WW3, on the moon, looking at the aftermath of nuclear war from a safe distance. When he was born, the first World War was still being fought; he lived to see men walk on the moon, and 2001 itself. He was the last of the “Big Three,” along with Heinlein and Asimov; it is impossible to overstate his influence on science fiction. His book 2010 contained the first depiction of bisexuality treated as an everyday occurrence that I ever read; he originated the notion of geostationary satellites as telecommunications relays... I’m too upset to go on. Rest in peace, Sir Arthur.

( A video of Sir Arthur’s reflections upon approaching his 90th birthday. )