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Good Things about the Two Towers Movie

Gollum was good. A lot of the Sam and Frodo bits were good. Theoden at Theodred’s grave, and the foretaste of Arwen at Aragorn’s grave in Rath Dinen? Oh, very nice. But as for a lot of the other stuff? Don’t get me started.

In an attempt to stay positive, here is my list of good things:

Very few spoilers for the book.

No pesky subtlety about the magic.

Exciting new character motivations. (Previous ones are 50 years old, after all.)

Frodo and Sam get to see more of Middle-Earth than in the original. A whole city more.

Acting like an impulsive idiot works again and again! So liberating.

Entish democracy exposed as much less effective than monarchy.

All other Rohan women retire their swords to give Eowyn more screentime. (Well, unless you count the little boy with a girl’s name.)

Elves bravely sacrifice the defense of their own homelands so as to save the day. (The other orcish armies which will show up after burning Lorien are beside the point.)

Great dream sequence after Frodo and Sam are overcome by the Nazgul’s Black Breath and taken to Mordor. (Either that, or the Nazgul was just being darned nice about holding his Black Breath….)

Eowyn made to look even more self-sacrificing by turning her future husband into a big fat jerk.

Helm’s Deep turned into Thermopylae. I guess in the book, they just weren’t outnumbered enough.

We learn that the horses of Rohan can defy the law of gravity and leap past pikes.

No need to write ‘missing scene’ fanfic; it’s in the movie. In fact, only half of the book was filmed to allow for more fanfic time!

Here’s hoping that The Return of the King will have a little more to do with Tolkien and less to do with somebody’s huge crush on Aragorn.

Anise Cookies Just Like Great-Great-Grandma Used to Make!

Springerle (German/Swiss anise cookies, so called because the molded designs on them ‘spring up’ when baked) are a wonderful holiday treat. There’s a good many springerle recipes up on the web, but none of them are this one. If you like your springerle hard on the outside but soft in the middle, follow this recipe. Please, don’t overcook your springerle; they’ll turn into charcoal briquettes!

What you’ll need:

4 eggs

Half an eggshell of water

1 pound granulated sugar (=2 cups)

5 or 6 drops of anise oil

(or equivalent in anise seeds, etc.)

1 pound flour (=4 cups)

3 teaspoons baking powder

A really heavy-duty mixer! This dough is _stiff_.

Someplace cool for the cookies to sit overnight, or for at least 12 hours, while they rise.

— Beat the eggs and water for 10 minutes.

(Those eggs are going to be _fluffy_.)

— Add the sugar and the anise oil.

–Mix at medium speed for 15 minutes.

— Slowly add in the flour and the baking powder
and beat until it’s all mixed in.

— Roll out the dough 1/4 inch thick. (Flour it a lot — this dough is sticky!)

— Flour up your molds or molded rolling pin.

— Press the molds into the dough gently. You want to leave a design, not cut through the dough.

— Cut out the cookies and put them on a cookie sheet.

— Let them sit overnight (or for at least 12 hours) in a cool place.

–Bake at 275 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 minutes. If your oven doesn’t have that, you can try 350 degrees for 10 minutes, but _be careful_! The cookies should be a very light golden brown when done.

Makes 90-100 cookies really, but there’s usually only 70 or so left by morning in my family. Keep the springerle in a tin with a slice of bread to keep them moist, and replace the slice of bread whenever it gets dried out.

Springerle.com is worth visiting for the historical information and pictures of molds, as well as their understanding of the hardening overnight.

But their pottery molds are very different from the wooden ones my great-great-grandmother brought over from Baden-Baden. We have two molds of four, and one with two. The mold of two has a daisy and a cornucopia. The molds of four have fish, birds, carrots and turnips, and all sorts of other designs on them. They’re nowhere near as elaborate as the wooden molds at springerlemodel.de, but I love them.

I should mention that some people use lemon rind or zest in their recipes. Whatever springs your le, I guess….

Other variations:

Separated yolks and whites!

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Christmas with Avon

I’m not a fan of Blake’s Seven, but this is still funny.

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Sad Girl in Snow

If you’ve never read the charming and touching webcomic Megatokyo, hurry up and check it out.

*A week passes while you catch up on a couple years’ worth of comics*

The interesting thing is that Megatokyo is so good, it attracts a very creative bunch of fans to the forums. Right now, there’s an excellent poem thread dedicated to one of Fred’s drawings, “Sad Girl in Snow”.

Garran started it:

I drew her on

A lonely day

Not dressed warmly enough because

I don’t think about that sometimes

I wasn’t dressed warmly enough either

And I’d shiver and the pen would tremble

I think that had some effect on her eyes

….

Jon Keim also has some nice lines:

I think her purpose is changing.

As she waits,

for me to fill in the lines,

and the shading,

the little details that will complete her world,

her purpose changes.

At first, a blank anticipation.

The curve of her face,

all the rough lines,

they were happy.

…

Regardless, the little fire

that burned anew in her oft-vacant eyes,

it drove her to this lonely park bench,

kept her warm,

though the trees were already bare this year.

(Flame was my intention from the beginning,

even before I started sketching).

There she sat,

clothed in construction lines

and doodled pose.

There was hope in that pose.

….

There’s a lot of good stuff in that thread, so I encourage you to go read it. Anyway, this was my contribution:

This is the sadness that goes unspoken:

the tears held back, for if they fall they’ll freeze –

the drift of snow, its lonely crust unbroken –

the stillness not touched even by a breeze.

Clear skies would make the night’s chill colder;

Clouds are a blanket in the sky.

She warms the heart; men long to hold her

Who only see her while they’re walking by.

Only she cannot see how lovely

She is, as crystals kiss her face —

Unique as those flakes from above, she

Is as ephemeral a grace.

It’s strange to think we’re the cyber-equivalent of some old Chinese poet or critic carefully inscribing a few lines onto the borders of a painting, itself probably inspired by a poem. But I don’t think either our works or Fred’s are any less worthy of such care.

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Tolkien by Muggle

It’s that time of year again. A Tolkien movie is out, and so are the critics. Not just critics of the movie, mind you — critics of Tolkien. Some of them are even competent writers. China Mieville apparently had a go at it on the BBC, while David Brin did a turn on Salon.com.

I’m tempted just to shrug and forget it. Some people just don’t get Tolkien, the same way I used to bounce off Dumas and Austen. My problem was just lack of experience (and in Dumas’ case, a good translation). Theirs may be something more neurological; there seems to be a clear distinction in brain types between the sort of people who really love Tolkien and the sort of people who can’t bear a word. But given how many people love the movies but still haven’t touched the books, I feel I ought to say something to defend the poor dead guy.

But first (and cattily), I would like to note that, although China Mieville and David Brin are both gifted and acclaimed writers, they aren’t up there with Tolkien. I’d really like to find out what someone like, say, Robertson Davies thought about the man. That would be something approaching parity. But Terry Pratchett has said various things about Tolkien. Probably the most profound was saying that writing fantasy is like looking at woodcut views of the road to Mt. Fuji; when you think you can’t see Tolkien anymore, that’s because you’re standing on Mt. Tolkien itself. I think that’s about right.

Something I’ve noticed: people like to criticize Tolkien either for including everything in the world (every word in the English language, according to one of my non-Tolkien loving friends!), or for not including everything in the world. That’s because Tolkien, like Shakespeare, writes something for everyone. Unlike Shakespeare, the poor guy can’t win. He knew it himself, noting how some parts that were specially praised by some were considered a blight on the book for others.

Some specific charges:

— Lord of the Rings is too long and difficult for anyone to read.

I read it in third grade myself. In the course of a weekend. I’ve been known to read it in a day, but that’s too intense an emotional experience to do often. Unlike many of his imitators, he never uses a long word when a short one will do. If you don’t like the odd flight of poetic prose, though, you’re screwed. Also, a lot of people seem to start the book thinking they are obliged to read the forewords first. If you don’t like scholarly humor, just skip the things! *roll eyes* I must admit, however, that even in second grade, when I was too scared of Dark Things to read past chapter one, I liked the forewords very much. (And idiots who think pipeweed is marijuana should definitely improve their minds by reading all about Old Toby and his mysterious acquisition of nicotine-bearing plants from across the
Sea.)

— Lord of the Rings is too black and white in its morality.

Hmm. Every ‘good guy’ has faults, failings and temptations, while the main onscreen bad guy — the recurring bad guy — is seen having serious second thoughts. Some of the good guys become dangers to their own side, while the recurring bad guy inadvertently wins it for our side. Yeah, that’s black and white morality. Uh huh. Suuuuuuure.

— But we don’t get to see Sauron’s side of the story!

Yes, you do. In large chunks of The Silmarillion. He’s the anti-Gandalf in “Akallabeth”, for instance.

— Then why’s the book called Lord of the Rings, if we don’t get a lot of Sauron?

Because Sauron’s not the lord of the Rings that really counts in this story, or because Sauron’s the big problem and the guy who kicks the bucket at the climax. (And if that’s a spoiler for you, Rosebud’s a sled.)

— Brin: But I wanted to read more about Sauron and his faithful followers! I’ve got some neat ideas right here….

There’s this place called fanfiction.net I recommend to you. Also, learn Russian and read Nienna’s stuff about the Witch King and the Riders and all. You can even buy her album; she’s got a good contralto. (Better yet, Brin, write the fanfic yourself.)

— Trent Lott: But Tolkien is all racist and stuff.

Tolkien doesn’t have African or Asian characters, no. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that he didn’t go into African or Asian studies, hadn’t set foot in Africa since he left it at the age of 3, and therefore didn’t really feel himself qualified to create figures of African or Asian saga and lore. You’ll notice that he stayed far away from the Irish and the Bretons, too.

There’s a lot of talk in the critics about “swarthy” or “dark” people being bad, or orcs being “swarthy”. This is a load of something less nourishing than manure. I’m rather upset that Peter Jackson perpetuated this by giving the orcs — the orcs who live under mountains and seldom see the Sun — the orcs who are descended from skinny pale elves — dark brown skin. Well, this isn’t the stupidest thing Peter Jackson did in his film adaptation, but it’s about number two. When Tolkien says someone’s got “fair” skin, he means that kind of fair where you get sunburned after three seconds of the sun deigning to peek through Northern
European cloudcover. When he says someone’s got “brown” skin, he means they’ve got a slight tan. “Dark” people have Welsh complexions. Now, granted, the Welsh gave us the Tudors and therefore there is a stereotype of them being evil to which Tolkien may have subscribed….

*Welsh people run up with sticks*

Just kidding! Seriously though, unless you’re talking about guys from Far Harad walking close by an oliphaunt, there’s nobody in Middle Earth to be racist to. If you want to read sword and sorcery stories featuring African heroes, kingdoms and legends, I recommend the works of William Sanders. There are many good Asian fantasies; perhaps the best in English are by Barry Hughart, Lawrence Yep, and Jessica Amanda Salmonson.

— Brin: But Tolkien is an enemy of science and technology!

This is probably the stupidest argument. You often hear people saying this approvingly, though. *roll eyes again* Tolkien would be the first to say that he didn’t like factories taking over his old stomping grounds. He didn’t like people who gave science as a reason for doing evil things. He thought sometimes we could do without the latest advances. Finally, he spent a great deal of his professional life fighting people who wanted to turn the cross-disciplinary study of philology into the social science of linguistics.

All these are eminently reasonable positions, IMHO. Tolkien wasn’t saying, “Down with modern technology and back to dying in childbirth back on the land!” No, he was just saying that there’s something to be said for trees, taking long walks, and eating and drinking at one’s own pace. He wasn’t saying, “There should be no scientific surveys of language,” for that matter. He just wanted language study to be done in context — and indeed, people are beginning to see things his way. He was not behind the times; he was ahead of them — a thoroughly modern conservative.

Brin’s complaints largely amount to “He wasn’t writing hard science fiction or techno-fantasy.” Well, duh. But even in Lord of the Rings itself, again and again Tolkien paid close scientific attention to the details of his world. Although he obviously is not acknowledging the attention Tolkien pays to the linguistic details of his worldbuilding, even Brin cannot deny that Tolkien gets the positions of the moon and stars right and is concerned with forensic evidence as well as a good recipe for cooking rabbit.

Another thing. I’m really impressed by how well Peter Jackson did Fellowship of the Ring. Unfortunately, I’m disgusted by how much better the film could have been if they’d stuck a little closer to the book. Aragorn is now the main character, for example. *rolls eyes again* Worse yet, they took the mature and confident guy who had a plan and turned him into a reluctant hero. (You know, I hate to point this out, but that’s what the old main character — you know, that Frodo guy? — was supposed to be.) I hear frightening things about more fanfic inserted into The Two Towers, including a scene where everybody thinks Aragorn is dead for stupid reasons, and removing the Rangers so he’s not hereditary chief of anybody and has no kindred at all. Basically, they’re trying to turn Tolkien into one of those bad Tolkien ripoffs, under the delusion that’d be more marketable.

Finally, frankly, I don’t care whether or not Tolkien had “enough” female characters, as long as he has Galadriel, Eowyn, Ioreth, Rosie, and Luthien. I’m not really interested in most people’s criticisms of his poetry; I think he wrote the best integration of story and song since Lady Murasaki wrote The Tale of Genji. Anybody who’s unfortunate enough not to appreciate the man’s work has already been penalized in a way more severe than any flaming I can give.

Tolkien did have weaknesses as a writer. This is his major one: he didn’t finish enough of the stories he started, and he didn’t live long enough. But his work will outlive all his critics, that I guarantee.

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The Translator Is a Traitor

Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about my translations. My grasp of Russian and Irish may be tragically inadequate, and my Japanese worse; but at least I’m honest. According to the Boston Globe, Stanislaw Lem has been slaughtered by inadequate and malicious translation of his works.

The moral of the story? Learn a few foreign languages. You’d hate to have a feud with someone over nothing. (It’s much more fun to feud with people who mean to insult you….)

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The Triumph of Technology over Distance

I’ve been listening to the BBC’s new audio drama/comedy/kids’ programming station, BBC7, over the Internet. It’s addictive. The Terry Pratchett audio plays are my current favorite, but I also like the readings of “Jennings Goes to School”, a fifties boarding school story. The Goon Show was as good as everyone always said it was, so was I’m Afraid I Haven’t a Clue; and I’m also getting addicted to a silly zoo sitcom, The Boosh. There’s a full diet of mystery stories, too; if you like V.I. Warshawski (I don’t), you’ll probably like Sharon Gless being her. Great stuff.

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Secret Library URL

In a triumph of journalism, lots of people reported the new Vatican Library website was opening, but nobody put the URL in the press release (apparently). But thanks to zenit.org, here’s the new and cool Vatican Library website. Have fun browsing the site and the catalog. Then feel sad that nobody’s invented teleportation.

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Baka, Baka, Baka!

Trent Lott is a big fat idiot. Read it and weep. The only silver lining is that, if he keeps screwing up like this, maybe we can get Lott out of the leadership quicker than I’ve hoped.

ObCatholicism

Just to prove that the Catholic bit of this blog is somewhat important, I’ll point out that today would have been the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, if it weren’t the Second Sunday of Advent instead.

Quick misconception check: It’s not about the virgin birth of Jesus. The “Immaculate” part in Immaculate Conception doesn’t mean Mary’s parents didn’t have sex, or had her without sex; it means God waved his hand and made Mary free of original sin _from the moment of her conception_. (You could compare this to being conceived already baptized, or you could compare Mary to the pre-fall Eve, the new Eve to bear the new Adam. I’ve never heard if there’s a theological preference, but the poetic tradition all goes for the Ave/Eva dichotomy.) So Jesus was immaculately conceived, too, but Mary is _the_ Immaculate Conception — the first member of the renewed human race.

I’m supposed to sing with my parish’s choir at UD tonight, as part of their “Christmas on Campus”. (Well, they can’t have a big Christmas thing on campus when everyone’s gone, so they pick a Sunday mass during Advent and just add a lot more songs.) I’m not sure this is going to work too well, as my throat is sore, my knee is killing me, and I missed Tuesday’s practice. (Oooops.) But the show must go on. I will simply avoid any soprano descants and hope for the best.

“My lady, my queen, my little girl”

Given that I have a prayer card of Our Lady of Guadelupe tacked up in my cube, I hope I’ll actually remember to post something about her feast next week. I will recommend in advance getting one of the wonderful albums of Mexican baroque music dedicated to La Guadalupana. My album’s “Guadelupe: Virgen de los Indios”, by the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble (SAVAE). It includes songs in Nahuatl and Spanish from cathedral archives throughout Latin America. Several were composed by Native American converts. There’s also spoken texts from the Nican Mopohua, the Nahuatl account of the Guadelupe apparitions. (And if you go to their page, you can hear some MP3 clips.)

Speaking of Nican Mopohua, you can read a translation of the full text online. It’s beautiful and not all that long.

And as he drew near the little hill called Tepeyac it was beginning to dawn. He heard singing on the little hill, like the song of many precious birds; when their voices would stop, it was as if the hill were answering them; extremely soft and delightful, their songs exceeded the songs of the coyoltotl and the tzinitzcan and other precious birds. Juan Diego stopped to look…

And then when the singing suddenly stopped, when it could no longer be heard, he heard someone calling him, from the top of the hill…And when he reached the top of the hill, a Maiden who was standing there said to him…

“Listen, my dearest and youngest son, Juan, where are you going?”

“My lady, my queen, my little girl, I am going as far as your little house in Mexico-Tlatilolco, to follow the things of God…that are given us, that are taught to us by the ones who are the images of Our Lord — your priests.”

….”Know — know for certain, my dearest and youngest son, that I am the perfect, ever-virgin, holy Mary, mother of the one great God of truth who brings us life, the inventor and creator of people…I very much want them to build my little house here, in which I will show him, I will exalt him in making him manifest.

“I will give him to the people in all my personal love…because I am truly your compassionate mother — of you and of all the people who live together in this land, and of all the other people of different ancestries — those who love me, those who cry to me, those who seek me, those who trust in me….”

…And immediately he prostrated himself in her presence; he said to her: “My lady, my little girl, now I am going to make your venerable breath, your venerable word, a reality….”

Now that Juan Diego’s been canonized, I suspect this feast will be particularly merry down in Mexico.

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Don’t Buy Anti-Semitic!

This story on the new European anti-semitism reveals that five European countries have banned all kosher food production. One, Switzerland, is considering banning kosher food imports. In related news, Sweden is considering banning ritual circumcision.

I am sickened. This is exactly the kind of stuff that makes me thank God my ancestors came to the US. Also, I knew animal rights activists were pretty unscrupulous, but I didn’t know they’d sink so low as to let themselves be a front for a bunch of little Hitlers.

Well, the heck with this. In the name of that Jewish guy I happen to worship, I’m boycotting all five countries involved. From now on, I will not be visiting or buying stuff from Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, or Denmark.

This is inconvenient for me, since I love tins of butter cookies from Scandinavian countries. But I’m willing to fast so my brothers and sisters can eat. Institute a little more freedom of religion, o Hanseatic Injustice League, and I’ll see about giving you a little more freedom of my wallet.

Never Again

Here’s one of my fellow fans who would no doubt have done a lot for the world. Instead, he died in Theresienstadt. But Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon flew his “Moon Landscape” into orbit. So rest well, Petr Ginz.

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Possibly Not Increasing My MovieCred

Ain’t It Cool News ran a contest last week: write a movie proposal guaranteed to be a bomb. The winners are impressively offensive efforts; proof that the depths of movie death were not plumbed by Battlefield Earth. But alas, one of them actually sounds good to me!

Yes, you guessed it. Abortion, the adventures of Leroy the Kung Fu Fetus as he struggles to escape his mother’s womb so he can survive his father’s attempts to kill him. I mean, yeah, it’s highly nasty to just about every side…but hey, it’s time for another righteously edgy movie. Maybe the guys from South Park and Kevin Smith should take this project on.

(And yes, I know I’m a sick woman. But wouldn’t it be cool to see a Christian movie featuring mad fetal kung fu skills vs. the Evil Dr. Killmeister? W00t!)

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Solaris Review

You’ve got a spare couple hours this weekend. You like a story that’s a little Twilight Zone-y. (Everybody likes Twilight Zone, right?) So why not go see Solaris? It’s a really good science fiction mystery, it’s beautifully shot, and the actors act their brains out. (Okay, and George Clooney’s naked. But it’s the most chivalrously shot sex scene in recent memory — none of this show-all-the-actress, show-nothing-of-the-actor stuff. Besides, it’s so dark you never see much more than Clooney’s backside, so don’t fuss.)

The story is not some gloomy art film thing. It’s about love and loss, reparation and redemption, and how much you really know the people you love. It does get pretty angsty. Bad things happen, people do bad things, and the portrayal of suicidal depression is scarily true-to-life if you’ve been there. But the overall message is that we need to respect life and each other, and not despair.

Why is this movie not being praised to the skies by religious writers? Is it the sex scene? (Oh, please; they praise lots of flicks including premarital sex.) Is it the fact that the right thing is defined by what happens if you don’t do it? Are some people not paying enough attention, so they want things spelled out in a voiceover at the end instead of just paying attention to all the clues? Or is it just that there’s a real lack of appreciation for Polish sf made into Soviet movies made into Soderbergh/Cameron collaborations?

*sigh* This isn’t action/adventure sf. This is the low budget Doctor Who or X-Files tradition (albeit done with a very nice budget), where the sets look vaguely like someone’s deserted workplace, you rarely see aliens or monsters close up, and talking about what the heck’s going on and why provides most of the interest. Personally, I like a good creeping sense of terror or wonder, while trying to figure out which one it will be.

So don’t be a Scrooge! It’s a great flick! Indulge your fannish soul and go see this sad, uplifting, funny, odd little movie. I loved it, and if you go in with the right attitude, you will, too.

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You Must Be Kidding Me

CBS Sunday Morning did a story on some Judith Leiber woman’s purses. They kept talking about how elegant they were. Um…no. They were kitsch. Something that’s covered in rhinestones or shaped like a tomato is kitsch. It can be cute, funny, cost more money than I make in a year, and be carried by every diva and Hollywood star — but that doesn’t make it high elegance. It makes it a slightly more expensive, more well-made version of the crap you find at garage sales.

I applaud this Leiber woman for making bucks by having fun, though. I just wish the rich and powerful women of this country had the guts to openly embrace their inner trailer trash, instead of pretending they are patronizing works of fine art.

(However, I very much appreciated the essay on how high heels hurt. Go, Nancy! Also, I’m glad to say that Baz Luhrmann’s Broadway production of La Boheme looks and sounds very nice. The amplification of voices is an unfortunate necessity given the theater; the presentation of the opera looks like 40’s dress, which looks very good; and using Moulin Rouge‘s popularity is the perfect way to get first-time-opera-going butts into seats. Go, Baz, and go, his wife the production designer!)