The Dark Knight + Music From Vertigo = Woah!

I came across this video on Set Phasers to LOL last night. Plan 9 Pictures put music from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo with the opening scene from The Dark Knight. The way the dramatic beats in the scene match up with the music is a little freaky. The longer I watched, the more drawn in I was. I'm wondering how much Hitchcock's work influenced Christopher Nolan, even subconsciously, for the timing to be so close. 

Another thought: This music also amps up the tension of the scene, I think, though I'm not sure if it's because it's this music or simply because it's different than the music I'm familiar with in the scene. I think the removal of all the dialogue adds to the tension, as well. 

Today's Google "doodle" honors drive-ins

Today's Google doodle is a short video honoring the 79th anniversary of the first drive-in theater. Like any good film, it has rewards for those who pay attention.

A few fun things I spotted:

• A Google doodle within the Google doodle
• The ubiquitous Wilhelm scream
• A little Android guy in a grass skirt on a dashboard

Were there any other interesting things you noticed? Share in the comments!

Missed the transit of Venus? You can still check it out on Flickr

I missed out on the transit of Venus yesterday, but with any astronomical event, Flickr's users are there to keep me covered. NASA always provides especially good views:

via NASA Goddard Photo and Video's Flickr stream

Click here to see this photo LARGE and you can see more photos and videos here and here.

Dreams don't work unless you do [Quote]

Source: allthatinspires.me via Jon on Pinterest

Here's a little fun for your Monday!

see more Set Phasers To Lol

A humorous piece about that one clock tower in London

by Me

"It sounds like Big Ben is to be renamed the Elizabeth Tower in honour of the Queen, after a majority of MPs backed the proposal. We’ve no beef with this — the tower has long had a history of confusing names and nicknames and this latest appelation just adds to the glorious complexity..."

Click through for the rest (it's short and funny): 

Big Ben: The Tower With Five Names | Londonist

You've been watching too much Avengers when...

...you don't notice what's wrong with this picture. (It took far too long for me to notice because, obviously, Thor is everywhere, right?)


see more Set Phasers To Lol

Look what popped up on my Kindle this morning!

Winning the Widow's Heart is my friend Sherri Shackelford's first book. The Kindle edition just released today (since I'd pre-ordered, this greeted me when I got up this morning. I just love that about my Kindle.).

I'm so proud of you, Sherri! You inspire me.

Finally: How The Avengers Should Have Ended

One of my favorite sites on the web is How It Should Have Ended. They create alternate endings for popular movies (and occasionally video games) and often their ending makes more sense than the original movie's did. At the very least HISHE's is funnier than the original. I've been waiting (not so) patiently for them to do The Avengers, and they finally released it yesterday.

Here ya go:



If you're confused by the appearance of Superman & Batman, watching a few of the HISHE videos (you want to anyway, don't you?) will show you that they tend to pop up in these videos, usually to hilarious effect. This is one of my favorites:

Google has a gorgeous doodle today

via Google

This doodle is in honor of Peter Carl Fabergé's 166th birthday. I've always found Fabergé eggs fascinating.

This video made me cry such happy tears

Yes, I'm a big ol' sap, but it's so sweet I dare you to not be moved by this:

Towels, Star Wars...oh, and Avengers

Today is Towel Day (we miss you, Douglas Adams!) and the 35th anniversary of the release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, so I marked the day by seeing The Avengers for the third time with my daughter. (I mean, of course. What else would one do?). I think that's the last time or there might be an intervention.

Conveniently, here's a comparison of Star Wars and Avengers characters I recently found:


see more Set Phasers To Lol

I love that last one. :)

Now I just need to figure out where my towel is...

Sadly, I fall into this all too often

via GoComics

Do you know what today is?

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!


Sorry. I couldn't resist. You can go back to your day now.

Loki'd!

The Avengers-itis continues: 

 Tom Hiddleston possibly takes his role as Loki a little too seriously...

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

via MTV

And after watching that, I just love this:

via julinspiredgirl

Some random thoughts on The Avengers

I'm going to do one long post of some of my random thoughts about The Avengers, and then I'll try not to let this slide into becoming an Avengers blog the way my Tumblr did (but I feel like my Tumblr is just for me, so I don't really care over there.)

This isn't a review - I don't have much to say in that vein that hasn't already been said by a million others. This is more of a gathering of my random thoughts:

• I want to watch this movie over and over and tear it apart layer by layer, doing GMC, looking at the Hero's Journey or the 8-sequence structure, studying the dialogue, etc. I feel like there's a lot to mine here. Can't wait for the DVD so I can. (Who am I kidding? I'm getting the DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital Copy package)
• I've got a mega-crush forming for Tom Hiddleston - I love him as bad-boy Loki (that grin! that hair! the hug-needing!) but then I find he's doing not one, not two, but THREE Shakespeare plays this year (which will show on BBC and I’m hoping will come to PBS), he studied classics at Cambridge and he knows it's pique, not peek or peak - be still my Shakespeare-fangirl, grammar-nerd heart!
• OMG the Joss Whedon dialogue! Anyone else would let the villain finish his speeches before the good guys retaliate, but every time Loki is just hitting his crescendo he's cut off mid-sentence in some demoralizing way. Love it.
• I think I enjoyed the Hulk in this movie more than I did in any other story. I didn't care for either of the recent Hulk movies, but not because they weren't decent movies. I just find the Hulk too much of a tragic figure to enjoy a story hung entirely on his character. He seems completely bereft of joy and hope. I come away from Hulk movies feeling weighed down, not lifted up, and that's not what I want from entertainment. In The Avengers, he seems somewhat less tragic, and I think that has a lot to do with Mark Ruffalo's acting (and Joss Whedon's directing, I'm sure) - the way he carries himself, the way he almost-grins through half of the movie. He's not as worn down as the other Bruce Banners, I think (or maybe he's hit bottom and is on the way back up?).
• If I bought the soundtrack on cassette (remember those?), it would be worn out already. Thank goodness for digital music. Good thing I have headphones or everyone around me would have hurt me by now.
• At our second viewing, my daughter pointed out that most of the people on the bridge of the Helicarrier are women. It's awesome that they're there, and awesome to me that she noticed.
• More on this later, but I found myself rooting for Loki - not to get what he wants but to get what he needs.
• Speaking of Loki, I do have a question for anyone who didn't see Thor before they saw The Avengers: What did you understand Loki's motivation to be? I'm curious whether seeing Thor gives you a different impression of Loki's character. I want to explore this later, so let me know.

How Avengers characters see common items

This cracks me up:

via Twitter / @Esperacchius

I've conquered the basement, now back to the blog!

I haven't posted here in over a month. What have I been doing instead? Reclaiming my basement!

For years, the basement has been the catch-all for anything not wanted in other parts of the house. I've occasionally tried to clean it up from time to time, with varying degrees of success, but I finally reached the end of my patience with the mess about a month-and-a-half ago and started in earnest to clean it out. After many trips to Goodwill and filling the trash & recycling bins to the brim every week, I've finally got the room to where it's use-able and presentable. It's not done, but what's left is more fine-tooth comb type stuff as opposed to the bulldozing I've been doing (for instance, the boxes to the right of the desk in the pictures now are all items to be sorted and ultimately discarded, probably, with just a few things needing to be scanned, filed away or shredded).

Last year, I apparently already had it in my head that I was going to do this major work, even though at that point I wasn't ready to discard with the vehemence that I mustered up recently, but I was thinking ahead enough to take "before" pictures. I finally got to the point that I could do "after" pictures yesterday. Looking at them on my computer last night, I realized I took the "before" pictures exactly a year before the "after" pictures. The before pictures really are the basement at its worst. It got better, but then bad again, before I finally reached the end of my rope and started in on it last month. These pictures should give you an idea of the extent of the transformation:

The basement is now going to function as my office and craft room, freeing up the spare bedroom to actually be a spare bedroom (imagine!). I've got so much more room to work down here than I had upstairs, with my two folding tables in the middle functioning as one big table. I'm excited to be creative in my "new" space!

Now that this is (mostly) done, I feel like I can bring my brain back around to writing, and that includes this blog. I have to warn you, though: In the time since I last posted, I've seen The Avengers twice (and LilGirl and I have plans to see it a third time this weekend). I'm a leeeetle obsessed. I promise not to be nearly as fangirly here as I have been on my Tumblr. There's just so much I want to explore and dissect about the movie and this is probably the best place to get it out. I hope you'll bear with me and that I'll get over Avengers-itis soon. :)

Drop Everything and Read!

Via D.E.A.R

It's D.E.A.R. day in honor of Beverly Cleary's birthday! I remember the Ramona books fondly, and I'm a little sad that I never could get LilGirl interested in them, but she was much more into the Magic Tree House books and books about dragons.  Maybe I should have convinced her Picky-picky was really a tiny dragon?

What were your favorite books as a kid?

Happy Library Week!

Source: atyourlibrary.org via Mary on Pinterest

Check out more quotes about libraries at atyourlibrary.org's board on Pinterest.