Hee! Just wanted to say that I LOVE Google's logo for today -- apparently it's Van Gogh's birthday :D

What do you MEAN I have an unhealthy obsession with movies?

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TheOneRing.net™ Insta-Poll

Which is the most moving part in LotR?

• Aragorn's 'You bow to no one' bit
• Eowyn's 'I am no man!' Witch-King slaughter
• Gandalf explaining death to Pippin
• Sam and Rosie's wedding
• Sam's 'I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you!' line
• Samwise's 'It Woulda been her' speech
• The Coronation
• The death of Boromir
• The history of Smeagol/Gollum
• Theoden's death speech
• When Frodo and Bilbo depart
• When Gandalf supposedly dies
• When Gollum dies
• When Pippin finds wounded Merry

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Darn it.  I may be speaking into deaf (or at least muffled) ears, but am I the only one here who finds this a difficult poll to answer based on the fact that all of those scenes were pretty damned moving?  And honestly, what does "moving" really mean?  Arrrgh.  Um, I guess I'll go with 'When Frodo and Bilbo depart' (they had to film that scene 3 times before it was right -- the hobbit actors say that, if ever there was a scene that they didn't want to go through more than once, it was that one for sure.  Heh.) but really, my vote could go for any of these.  Le sigh.  The poll today on IMDb was also not so fun, because it asks which April movie release you're most looking forward to.  I went with Sin City over Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but it's all good 'cause those were the top two responses anyway.  Man, I love the online fan community. :)

ETA: Question: If you visited IMDB today, I assume you saw the news about Orlando Bloom being in negotiations to play a young James Bond?
Yep, I did see that -- actually I heard about that particular 'news' a few days ago. I've got my sources. Heh. Thanks for the heads up anyway. Who knows if it's true or not? I won't believe that until it's confirmed by someone reliable. Heck, for almost 2 years, I didn't believe that all of those people were really going to be making some movie called Sin City until the movie actually started being promoted. It's a strange thing, seeing the progress of a movie from Crazy-Rumor to Actually-In-Production to Actually-Being-Promoted-With-Actual-Posters-and-Trailers to Actually-Being-Released. :)

Maaaarrco...

So, yesterday, half of our street was propelled back into the 1800s (or whenever) when we lost all electricity (and I got a taste of what aldehyde has had to deal with for, like, the past 2 weeks) and had to resort to candles for light. My first thought upon finding out about the power outage was that we'd miss the new episode of 24 (but thankfully that's what good old TWoP is for), followed closely by the fact that I had a group assignment due the following morning and the electricity company wouldn't have everything up and running again until around 1 AM (it was actually 2:30 by the time the power came back on; I know this because at 8:30 this morning, my clock said 6 AM). Thankfully, though, that project was more or less complete, and I phoned up my group members and told them they'd have to finish it without me -- all that was really left was the proofreading and grammar/spelling check for the last 2 sections, so....yeah. Hopefully those turned out okay. The thing's also 2 pages over the limit, but if luck is on our side (for once), we won't get any marks deducted for that. We also have appendices that go from A to L. Yes, I know.

At any rate, I couldn't do any work yesterday even if I wanted to, so Mom and I went to the library for a half-hour until it closed and then headed over to pick up a few groceries. Heh. Headed back home around 9 (Dad had stayed home and was asleep on the couch when we got back even though he'd stayed in order to, like, make sure nobody broke in or something), Mom went to bed at 9:45ish, I wrote a page in my journal about how cool blackouts are when they don't last too long (I mean, what better story setting can there be than a blackout? It'd be perfect for a lot of things, and at some point I'm gonna Google "blackout [fan]fiction" and see what pops up. Heh.), tried to read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe for a bit but could only get through about one chapter by candlelight before giving up, listened to some music over my Discman (I know, I know; how oldschool of me in this age of iPods. But then again, this is also apparently the age of Ugg boots, so...maybe this age isn't so hot after all.) until I was too tiredly delusional to pay any more attention to the conscious world. Had just enough energy (no pun intended) left to blow out the candles and then SMACK! I was down for the count (or, you know, the night) at 11 PM -- the earliest I've slept in about 2 centuries or so. Still tired today, though, and probably because you're supposed to keep a steady sleeping pattern every night. Whoops.

Your Irish Name Is...

Siobhan Barry

What's your Irish Name?

ETA: Ooooh, look at this new poster for the movie Everything is Illuminated! Melikes. :D

I never claimed I wasn't random

Well, cool. Go and take a look at Chloe's own take on [what looks like] my Current Conditions section. :D

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Speaking of musicals with cult followings, here's one that is likely to get a cult following of its own: The Lord of the Rings Musical is coming to Toronto. It'll be premiering on March 23, 2006 and hopefully run for a good while. Mark your calendars, T.O. folks. Wheee :) (Ha, with my luck, the entire thing will be sold out, forever, and I'll never see it, but anyhoo, let's be optimistic, eh?)

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Speaking of possible dyslexia, when I looked at my clock earlier, I could have sworn it was 8:32. However, I later looked at my watch, which read 8:30, so now I'm pretty sure the time on my clock actually read 8:23. Actually, I'm fairly positive that that's what I read at the time -- 8:23 -- but apparently my brain's memory cells (or whatever) are dyslexic. Huh.

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I was on the way to campus this morning on the subway. Between Runnymede Station and High Park Station, the subway train goes above ground. This morning, as my subway car passed by the street intersection visible from the train, the traffic light there happened to be a yellow (amber. whatev) light. After the traffic lights had disappeared from my view I had this lovely moment of realization -- or, rather, recognition, if you will. Of the three colors of traffic intersection lights -- red, green, and yellow -- yellow is by far the most tenous. I mean, it's only ever yellow for about 3 seconds, tops, at a time, while any driver would tell you that red lights can seem interminable and any other driver would tell you that the light sometimes stays green for long, long times. So. Yellow. In those 2 seconds in which my subway car passed by this intersection, the light was yellow. As the subway train was tenously between Runnymede and High Park, the light was tenuously and temporarily yellow. In my moment of recognition, I just had this feeling that, in those few seconds of the yellow light, anything could have happened anywhere. Of course, nothing of import in my immediate surroundings happened to suggest that my moment was anything other than temporary insanity, but still. I felt it. It just seemed like everything was a little bit more perfect than usual in those few seconds that my train passed by a yellow traffic light.

Of course, all of this sounded far more eloquent (to me) when it was still in my head. Now it's just kind of a long ramble about some yellow thing.

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That's all I'll subject you all to for now. I've got some work and other things that are, alas, again waving their proverbial arms at me trying to attract my attention. So far it's only slightly worked. Maybe they need more obvious arms.

Version 4.13

(a.k.a. She needs to sort out her priorities)

I have some work just begging to be done/looked at/vaguely cared about...but then I also have those new Harry Potter book covers. So, naturally, the thing to do with this stalwart combination was to make a new layout. Heh. :) Hope it looks all right.

A geek, a cover (or three) and a trailer

Okay, so I know it's one of the very geeky things you can check off on the Ringer Obsession Test, but...man, I just had to. I was walking across a field covered with snow today and...well...I did, in fact, attempt to walk on top of it. *cough* I'm deluding myself and saying that I did succeed somewhat, and that this is clearly due to the fact that the snow was pretty densely packed somewhere far back in my family tree, I have Elven ancestry. ;)

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Superficial news tidbit #1:
The new book covers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were released today - click here to see 'em. I think I like the American version of the cover the best, followed by the adult British/Canadian/international version. Normally I wouldn't choose the adult cover over the children's one, just 'cause I like my Harry Potter covers whimsical (well, technically, I only own one of the books so far), but dude, this may possibly be when I change my mind about that. :)

(p.s. Thanks to gr8gonzo for the heads up! :))

ETA: On second thought, go here to see the covers. They're bigger on this site.

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Superficial news tidbit #2:
For those of you who are interested (and hopefully some of you are), there's a new trailer for Sin City out now, posted here on the AOL site (I got this link from trailer_spot). Right-click and save to watch it. Looks good!

ETA: A scene-to-scene comparison of shots from the movie to images from the comic books can be seen as a slideshow on Yahoo. Very cool.

From TheOneRing.net:

LOTR IMAX Marathon in Toronto

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LORD OF THE RINGS MARATHON TO TAKE PLACE ON IMAX SCREEN

(Toronto, ON – March 1, 2005) – Isometric Projections will screen The Lord of the Rings trilogy at the Ontario Place Cinesphere IMAX Theatre in downtown Toronto next month. One Marathon showing of all three movies is planned, as well as, individual screenings of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

Saturday in Middle-Earth:

Fans and movie lovers can spend the day in Middle-Earth, Saturday, April 16th, when all three instalments of The Lord of the Rings saga come to life on the six-storey IMAX screen. The 10 hour and 18 minute Marathon begins at 11:00 am and will conclude just after 9:00 pm. There will be 30-minute intermissions between each movie and refreshments will be on sale.

Individual Screenings: Each movie will also be shown in separate screenings at the Cinesphere IMAX Theatre:

The Fellowship of the Ring – Friday, April 22, 2005 at 7:00 pm
The Two Towers – Friday, April 29, 2005 at 7:00 pm
The Return of the King – Friday, May 6, 2005 at 7:00 pm

Tickets go on sale today and are $30.00 each for the April 16th Marathon and $12.00 for each of the individual screenings on April 22nd, April 29th and May 6th. With only 750 seats available all screenings are expected to sell out quickly. Tickets will not be available at the Ontario Place Cinesphere box office and can only be purchased in advance at www.isometricprojections.com.

A portion of the proceeds from these screenings will be donated to The White Tree Fund, which has been formed by fans of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and Lord of the Rings communities around the globe to respond to the needs of the victims of the December 26th earthquake and tsunamis. It supports the work of Direct Relief International, Save the Children and Habitat for Humanity International in the affected regions. To make a direct donation please visit www.whitetreefund.org.

Isometric Projections is small Canadian company run by students dedicated to bringing quality entertainment to people of all ages, at affordable prices. Organizers are currently working on a LOTR gathering and contest in conjunction with the event so please stay tuned at our website AND we welcome your comments and ideas! [www.isometricprojections.com]

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No. No no no. Why then? No! Harumph.

One of my superficial goals in life is to watch all 3 LOTR movies back-to-back-to-back ... and doing this on a big screen (IMAX!) would've been even better, but of course the Powers That Be have decided to screen these 3-hour behemoths during final exam time. Bah. I'll be done by the 27th, but after that, all I'd be able to catch is The Two Towers by itself followed a week later by The Return of the King, and that really isn't the same at all as watching them all consecutively. Plus, I'd probably be better off just saving the $12 apiece and watching off of my pretty DVDs at home. Screw the IMAX. :) Anyway, yeah. That's all... I've said a whole lot of nothing with a whole lot of words, I know. Sorry. :)