On being a twat

And that's pronounced the English way, with a short "a", as in tw-at, rather than my kiwified "twot".

So, yeah, here's me announcing to damned_colonial a couple of weekends back in a rather sentitious way that I didn't really consider myself fannish. Yeah, I read SF/fantasy, but I subscribe to precisely one author-related mailing list, belong to precisely one L/J author community (lmbujold), and have a newsfeed from precisely one author's blog. The last TV I saw (or downloaded) was the last Doctor Who, and the one before that was Firefly. I have not read any Whovian fanfic. I read a bit of Firefly fic, and those written by people in my friends list. I hate Star Trek (well, maybe "hate" is too strong a word; I'm vastly indifferent to any of its permutations, and I hate Trekkies who engage in mob behaviour). I have been to one science-fiction (or any other non-work-related) convention, purely because LMB was the GoH.

Blah de blah, wankitude.

But. Oh my god, BUT. Joan D. Vinge is coming to town. JOAN VINGE is coming to CANBERRA. She is going to be GoH at Conflux, the Canberran sci-fi convention.

And all I can say is *SQUEE!*, with a big *SQUEEE!!!11!!* on top. Yes, I submit and reclaim my inner fan.

Looks like I'll be doubling my convention attendance, then.

At the movies

I had a bit of a movie weekend this weekend.

Firstly, I watched Desert Hearts again, for the first time in about 10 years. You know, I'm so glad I had that for my "coming out" movie. It played at the Auckland Film Festival in 1986, in my last year of school, and just after I decided that this sex with girls thing was really me. How nice to have a positive cultural icon to relate to.

I'm glad I saw it before reading the book. Some of the decisions made for the movie - such as changing Ann's name to "Cay" and making her a sculptor rather than a cartoonist - seem rather egrerious in hindsight. My favourite scene in the book - where Vivian and Silver help pick out Ann's pewter dress - is necessarily missing. "Pewter... the colour of your eyes" doesn't really work when the actress has almost black eyes. It's a shame, because it was where Silver essentially scoped out Vivian, and handed over the torch. So to speak. I'm also slightly annoyed how the movie skips across Silver and Ann/Cay's relationship, although it's kind of implied in the bath scene.

Still, it's a fabulous romantic movie. I can't decide whether it beats out When Night Is Falling for total escapist romance... Hell, why decide? It's also interesting how one's tastes change as one gets older. In 1986, I thought that Helen Slater was yummo as Vivian, but Patricia Charbonneau was teh hawt. Now, I totally worship Helen Slater, whose acting is fab and utterly shows the conflict that goes on in those circs, and sit there wishing they'd gotten a better dialogue coach for Patricia Charbonneau, who makes an "interesting" meld of an attempted US-western accent, and her own native Canadian. Well, it's kind of cute, and so is she.

I'm trying to figure out whether the movie had an effect on what appears to be a real fetish I have for women smoking. Well, "real" in terms of the fact that I find it a big turn-on, not that I have to have it to get me off. It's bloody bizarre, because I find smoking as a habit pretty gross (in terms of smell and detrius), and it's certainly an addiction I don't grok. I get the fact it is addictive, but I don't understand how anyone smokes enough cigarettes to get hooked in the first place. Mind you, I smoked pot a couple of years before I even tried a cigarette, and it seemed fairly... pointless, after that. There you go, how to stop the kids from getting hooked on tobacco - make sure they smoke marijuana at a formative age. :-)

Anyway, Helen Shaver smoking cigarettes. Dear lord. I'm tempted to run out and visit my g/f with some cigarettes in my hot little hand and make her have at least one in front of me. (She doesn't really smoke now, but she used to.) Disgusting, I am.
( Narnia )

If they make the others, I'll undoubtedly see them, because they're better stories. I'm just hoping that if they use the same actors, that they improve as much as the Harry Potter ones have (although I really don't think they were that bad in the first HP movie. Must see it again and check).