Last of the year, and mostly doom and gloom, I'm afraid.
A tax graph. Yup, not really sustainable.
Merry Christmas! Birth o' the savior! Colbert is awesome!
Climate change explained through comic strips.
Bradley Manning, who is allegedly responsible for the WikiLeaks document dump, is being treated very poorly in captivity. I'm not saying he's innocent; hell, I don't know. But I do know that if we're as great a nation as we say, we shouldn't be so inhumane.
Sports: weirdly awesome pictures from the early part of Disco Demolition Night. Reminds me of "Heavy Metal Parking Lot," somehow.
With cover art and everything. Title: "When Iguanas Attack."
1. Who Knew “Made Belief”
2. Band of hosss “Laredo”
3. Iron & Wine “Peng! 33”
4. Silohs, “Silos”
5. Phoenix, “Lasso”
6. Broken Social Scene, “Forced to Love”
7. Pearl Jam, “The Fixer”
8. They Might Be Giants, “Why Does the Sun Shine?”
9. The Black Keys, “Sinister Kid”
10. Fitz & the Tantrums, “Winds of Change”
11. The Roots, “How I Got Over”
12. Janelle Monáe, “Tightrope”
13. You Say Party! We Say Die!, “Laura Palmer’s Prom”
14. Belle & Sebastian, “I Didn’t See It Coming”
15. The New Pornographers, “Crash Years”
16. The National, “Bloodbuzz Ohio”
17. Spoon, “Out Go the Lights”
18. Arcade Fire, “We Used to Wait”
Drop a comment if you want to know how to get it.
I realize there is something obnoxious in complaining about a movie I haven't seen yet, but bear with me. Elizabeth and I are reading the Narnia series--we're on The Horse and His Boy right now. Dawn Treader is my favorite, as it was when I was a kid. And from what I've seen and heard, I am straight-up pissed about what they've done in the movie.
First off, just having Caspian sail to the Lone Islands to find his father's lost lords wasn't good enough for them. Oh, no: "Caspian and company must locate and unite seven swords, lest a strange, green, gaseous evil be loosed throughout Narnia," according to this review on Slate. I guess the original story wasn't compelling enough for them? That's unfortunate, because I find the quest in Dawn Treader to actually be more noble than that in the other books, precisely because it is optional. Caspian doesn't have to go searching for his father's henchmen; indeed, it would be easy to say "Guess we'll never see those guys again. Bum luck, eh?" But he goes off in search of them because they were stand-up guys who supported him and his dad, and it's the right thing to do. Bully for Caspian, and boo to the film director and screenplay writers/adapters who thought that wasn't good enough.
Secondly (warning, here be spoilers if you're not familiar), from watching the trailer, it sure looks like Caspian accompanies the Earth children and Reepicheep to the end of the world. He does not do so in the book, and in so doing the filmmakers have spoiled one of the key points that makes the final chapter of the book so compelling and other-worldly (in my opinion). They are going to a place that is so mystical and inconceivable that most Narnians (who mind you are from a place where animals talk and the Son of God occasionally appears in the form of a huge-ass lion and helps smite their enemies) are not really sure it exists. A place so outlandish that Caspian himself isn't allowed to go there. Aslan told him so himself. Furthermore, it's a key moment in Caspian's personal development. Even when you're the king, and you have the world at your beck and call, there are things you must or must not do for the greater good (in this case, he would be betraying the Narnian people if he left for the edge of the world and never came home).
I am not sure if I will see this movie. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but these changes infuriate me. If anyone can provide good reasons, please explain.