chesneycat

Del Toro's going to direct The Hobbit. I'm not too sure about the whole concept of the purported 'sequel', and I imagine that some of the hardcore fans will be spitting furiously... but perhaps if they concentrate on The White Council vs. The Necromancer it might not be totally irredeemable.

Ah well.

Del Toro!

Yay!

[Of course, this means I have to add tOR.n back to my daily reading list as well.]

Deduct ten points if you don't know what I'm talking about yet.

• Chesney's doing much better today!  He's still wobbly, but the anti-inflamatories and antibiotics have boosted his appetite enormously.  I think he got through four packs of meat and a bowl of biscuits yesterday... normally, he only manages a couple.  Given how skinny he is, this is a Good Thing.

• Today, astro-ph (the astrophysics pre-print server) has provided me with my first entry for "Incomprehensible sentence of the week".

"Using ab initio cosmological Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement radiation hydrodynamical calculations, we discuss how very massive stars start the process of cosmological reionization."

And no, it doesn't mean much more to me than it does to you.

• Ah, first year undergrads!  Without fail, there's always (at least) one every year who thinks that it's warmer in summer because the Earth is closer to the Sun.  For the umpteenth time, NO!

• In other news, I have a job interview! I'm off to Heidelberg in mid/late November.  Fingers crossed!

• Finally... we went to see Stardust last night. Wow.  Yet another reason to love Neil Gaiman.  Yeah, it was all rather predictable, but that's not the point.  It's a fairy tale, and I know the genre inside out.  Of course you're going to get all the usual traditional elements, but it's the execution of them that makes the story.  What does the tale tell you about human morals, and does it do so in a unique and interesting way? Aside from the quality of the film itself, Jez managed to identify half the cast of Green Wing... Mmm... must watch that again and drool over the delightful love triangles, and giggle at the sheer randomness of the Heron incident...
  

Well, Glasgow was actually pretty nice.  Everyone I met was most insistent that I didn't judge it on the basis of Tuesday's weather, which was pretty damn glorious.  But then, the second of October is my sister's birthday, and she always gets good weather.  The department was friendly, the talk/interview went well - I may have slipped slightly in one or two spots, but I didn't shoot myself in the foot like one of the other candidates, and managed to point out the massive chasm in another candidate's teaching philosophy with all the subtlety of a blunt object while still keeping my charmingly innocent demeanour.

Yeah, I totally pwned some of them!

But I don't know that I'll get the job.   Or even if I'd take it - Glasgow's a heck of a long way from here.  Two of the other candidates were also pretty strong, and have more direct experience.  They also seemed a little less concerned about the fact that the job itself is a bit of a dead end.  I do worry sometimes that honesty isn't the best policy in an interview, but at least if you're frank, everyone knows what they're getting.

Anyway, while I was stuck at Waverley waiting for the train I couldn't re-schedule, I got a bit more Dragon Days writing done, and Jez went to a free screening of Day Watch. [He was back in Sheffield - just realised this wasn't entirely clear, in case you were wondering why I didn't go as well.] This is a film we've been eagerly anticipating for a while, and he decided beforehand that he didn't mind watching it twice. 

And apparently, it's shockingly dire.  I think I'll end up waiting for the DVD now.

At least I have some other films to look forward to this month - there's quite a few of them, it seems.  Ratatouille, Stardust... and I really, really want to watch Black Sheep too.  It'll probably be complete shit, but looks funny enough to carry it off.


Baaaaa!
 

In the words of some random US soldier type, "man, this is fubar".

Not half!

I'm so glad they kept the music - it's a really wonderful score. Unfortuantely, I was spoiled by Baz Bamigboye's review in the Daily Shi^H^H^H Mail (my Mum claims her arms are too short to read a broadsheet, and she does enjoy her daily Fred Bassett), and Jez was spoiled by a wanker dropping plot-points in the row behind, which I fortunately tuned out.  That aside, it's a cracking good film.  I still prefer Days over Weeks - it's a little bit deeper, more psychological - but for sheer madness and lost humanity you can't go wrong with this pair of films.

Anyway, I won't spoil anything for you.  Do go and watch it though - it's definitely one of those films which is best experienced in the cinema.

It's a lovely, sun-shiny day, and I've just had lunch on the grass outside.  Delightful. A better excuse for a Bounty ice-cream bar simply doesn't exist.  Mmmmm...

We went to see 300 the other day, and Sunshine was one of the featured films in the trailers.  It does look pretty interesting - and you know what? They actually consulted an astromer about it.  Of course, they are kind of handwaving the whole issue of the spacecraft melting somewhere around the corona, but at least they've made an effort.  I like that, in a film.  As for 300 itself... well, it was fun, ridiculous and had more airbrushed pecs and cosmetically enhanced nipples than you can shake a graphic novel at.  But hey, we'd expect nothing else from a Frank Miller adaption.

I nearly forgot what it was I was going to mention about Sunshine.  They do see to be drawing on a few classic texts, and it'll be interesting to see how much is original, and how much can be traced back to things like Sundiver, The Cold Equations and others.