We saw HERO

[ellenkushner]

a few days ago. If it's still playing at an Art House near you, rush to see it if you like:

• Swordfights
It averages more great duels per minute of total screen time - emphasis on *great* - my fave was the one in the grey stone rainy courtyard with the old blind musician playing in the background, closely followed by the one with the two women in floaty red flying all over a field of equally active bright yellow leaves . . . kapisch?

• E. R. Eddison
The grandeur! the heroism! of even the bad guys! who are not really bad - just grand, and, well, kinda nuts. So are the good guys.

• Slash
- the kind where you take the same characters and put them in the same situation over and over again only you make them do slightly different things each time (that's slash, right?), but they die beautifully every time.

• Romance
Oh my god. (See "E.R. Eddison," above)

• Eye Candy
Boys with long, long hair. A thousand votive candle that move as one. Flights of arrows that blacken the sky.

There you have it. Need I say more?

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Hi, Ellen.

Hope you don't mind my muscling into your blog space. (We met briefly at the Bantam dinner at Worldcon, and I very much enjoyed your Ballad presentation).

Anyway, I'm glad to see you on livejournal, and have added you to me reading list.

I very much agree with you about the swordfights in HERO--I think the bit in the rainy courtyard is one of teh finest moments of cinema I've seen.

Sooo shiny.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

You are most welcome to my blog space! (Isn't that the point - and the charm - of LJ, that people are free to come in and chat?)

It's good to "see" you again - and I do like your accompanying image! Also the titles of the stories on your website - always good to meet another Richard Thompson fan.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

And my previous comment is obvious proof of why I need a copy editor. Yipe!

And huzzah for Richard Thompson! I was just listening to part of "Mock Tudor" last night.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Ah, screw copyediting on LJ! If my fingers can't slip among friends, and theirs too (on the keyboard, this is) I'm not playing. Life is too short to sit there counting coup on others' typos.

I think I love this picture/text I.D. of yours even more . . . What *do* they teach them in these schools? and where can I learn it?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

- that last was rhetorical, btw. I know there's some program or other, but it ain't gonna happen, not in this calendar year.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I'm heavy into the '60's spies, as well. *g*

I just use photoshop for the stationary icons, and photoshop and an animator for the not-so-stationary ones. I actually paid for the extra icons, because I'm somewhat addicted to my own cleverness, I fear.

If there's anything you'd like made up, I'd be happy to bang somethng together for you.

My various icons are over here--

http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=matociquala

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

That is such an incredibly generous offer that I have been sitting on it, scunnered, for a week! What can I say but thanks, and thanks, and thanks again?

I'll try not to abuse the privilege. Where can I write you off-journal to connect on this, if I get the itch?

My LJ edress is EKjournal[NO SPAM]@comcast.net

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

My best email addresses are (bear at tuginternet dot com) and (matociquala at gmail dot com.)

And really, it will be a pleasure. I *like* playing with Photoshop: it's modelling clay for grownups. *g*

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Gosh. I've seen it three times, and I'd not made the Eddison connection at all, and had been in general liking it for an overlapping set of virtues - based mostly on visual composition, use of colour, and also layering of levels of story, plus finding the whole thing more politically positive thatn almost any cinema I've seen in ages.

[ You've met me with papersky at a Tor party, fwiw. ]

[thette.livejournal.com]

I've only seen slash mean (homosexual) non-canon romantic/erotic fanfiction.

[kate_nepveu]

Yes, and purists like me think it's only non-canon same-sex interactions, though a lot of people think it's just any non-canon romantic/erotic fic, or even just romantic/erotic fic.

_Swordspoint_ tends to be very highly thought of by slashers, for all that it's not, technically, slash. =>

[thette.livejournal.com]

Then there are the purists who separates slash (male) from femslash... (As in "Liberty/Justice is my femslash" on all those icons...)

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

All true, in terms of the definition. Still, though, slash, as a subset of fan fiction, does represent hordes of people taking the same characters and having them do things in different and mutually contradictory ways. (One of the coolest things about fan fiction, to me -- that every branch is equally valid, and no matter what irrevocable thing it may do to the characters, canon just rolls on. Most genres grow pine trees, and slash grows banyans.)

[blackholly.livejournal.com]

GUH.

You've convinced me. Sounds delectable.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I loved those duels--though my first fave was the two women--but the third one I liked was the aerial one over the water, when either feet or swords would just brush the water, sending out rills, in the same manner as a swan or egret taking off low over a lake.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

But... but you left out the color schemes! The art direction was totally Eddison. The movie overflowed with the local equivalent of jacinth-studded pillars.

Note: A new movie by that set of people, "The House of Flying Daggers", opens next week in NY/LA.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

You are so right!

And I am so there . . . .

[naominovik.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am so happy I browsed over and saw this; I hadn't heard about House of Flying Daggers before. Hero was a truly sumptuous movie, the trailer for this one looks even more lush, if that's possible. But no showtimes listed yet, hmph.

[musictwig.livejournal.com]

I loved this movie so very much. I'm definitely going to check out "The House of Flying Daggers".

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

China has the world's only remaining three-strip Technicolor film lab in working order, and the team behind Hero had the happy idea of combining it with slight digital editing (to make the wires invisible). And the story... Oh, it was lovely.

Thank you for the Eddison comparison, which I had not thought of, but which became immediately obvious once you said it. Now I want to see a photograph of Carce...

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Ooo. Technicolor.

*sigh* I remember the first time I saw a fully restored Technicolor print of Gone With The Wind.

Wow, that's something special.

[stardustgirl.livejournal.com]

 Eye Candy
Boys with long, long hair. A thousand votive candle that move as one. Flights of arrows that blacken the sky.


Mmmm.... yes, please.