Surreal photography

Bsimple.com is the conceptual photography of Misha Gordin. The human drama is staged in several thematically linked series of stark tableaux in black and white. Anonymous figures stand in crowds, grapple with giant masses, stand bound or blindfolded, gather scattered objects, dig in holes, burst into flames, or scream in mute anguish, locked into symmetrical boxes or placed against vast backdrops of infinite deserts and endless oceans. Very powerful.




Insomnium is the surreal and dream-inspired photography of Kevin Wilson. His work consists mostly of digitally-manipulated photographs, sometimes paired with text; there are hands with eyes, long halls, swimming faces, curious bodies, bits of cats, clocks, broken dolls, strange bedfellows, objects melting and blending and transforming. Many of his photographs, in true surrealist fashion, are renderings of visions and dreams half-remembered. Most are in black and white, with occasional color images -- isn't that how they say people dream?




The work of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison is surprising and touching. Like Misha Gordin, they attempt to represent human endeavours in surreal, black and white imagery, but unlike Gordin's vast, impersonal geometry of figures, their images, rough and grainy like old sepia photographs, are quirky and intimate. Dressed in rumpled suits, the figures in the scenes seem to be custodians of nature, using string and twigs and ladders and fantastic but old-fashioned machines to rake leaves, shake out carpets of grass, harness lightning, make rain, sow seeds, and dust the sky.




I'm actually a bit surprised that I don't have more sites to share. I have loads of links to wonderful photographers, but none in quite this category. Anyone have anything to add?

The Underside Gallery

Have you been all the way down?

More content will likely be added in the near future...

Banned book meme

How it works: these are the 110 top banned books. Bold what you've read, italicize what you've read part of. Read more.

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabinthia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Swiped from Daily Delights, and you may do the same.

Newish

Some things of note... I've added several new animation links, particularly some new series and entries in the Flash/Web Art category, that are well worth checking out. There are a couple of new blogs, also. I would especially like to draw your attention to BibliOdyssey, a delightful blog I've just discovered that explores old books, etchings, lithographs, and that sort of thing. Lots of great images.

Finally, I've added a new "Reading" category to the sidebar, which I figured was more sophisticated than the summary of media I'd consumed that used to follow my chattier blog entries.

Browse, and enjoy.

Six good old-fashioned adventure games

Pinhead Games is a developer with three solid releases so far, and more on the way: the film-noir styled Nick Bounty series, A Case of the Crabs and its sequel, The Goat in the Grey Fedora; and Tales of the Odd: Brain Hotel, an adventure set in a comic-book world (at a supervillain convention, to be precise). All three feature an interesting plot with strong elements of humor; good gameplay with well-implemented puzzles; and a smooth, well-designed interface. There are a lot of colorful characters, and all the dialog is voiced. In short, these are everything a good classic adventure game should be -- a point underscored by the numerous awards they've won.
Help and walkthroughs for all the games can be found on the site's own forums.




PASH is a game I have a lot of fondness for. It's a Flash adventure in which you must scour a dilapidated city to collect your scattered belongings and fight off the grrroms, wicked bug-monsters that terrorize everyone. You choose your own avatar, a combination of hip, photorealistic clothing and a cartoon body. This visual mix lends PASH its unusual flavor -- all the backgrounds are photos of abandoned, run-down urban locations, while all the characters and many of the objects are Flash cartoons. Add to that the funky electronic beats of the soundtrack and the odd, lilting quality of the characters' voices, and you get that unique PASH atmosphere that I can't quite define. Browsing the site's links, it seems that PASH is actually a Munich clothing manufacturer, which would explain the avatars' trendy threads -- though not much else about the game. Anyway, it's a quite fun, and nice to look at.
A couple of hints and help at the Nordinho forums, but it shouldn't really be necessary, as the game is pretty linear.




Peasant's Quest is a Homestar Runner parody of classic Sierra adventure game King's Quest. The graphics and game mechanics are just like the first several KQ games -- arrow keys to move, and type all commands, like "TALK KNIGHT." Features Homestar Runner's usual brand of humor -- a great take-off on the adventure games of old.
Walkthrough on Homestar Runner Wiki.




Inspektor Wombat is a very nice adventure game. You play a charming old German detective who collects numerous unusual objects, talks to people, and solves mysteries. The cartoonish animation is very cute and well-done. The game is German, but there is an English version. The commands, objects, descriptive text, and dialog are translated, but unfortunately, in-game texts -- such as the "blackmail letter" you begin the game with -- are left in German. I haven't played the whole game yet, so I don't know how much of an obstacle this is.
Help and a walkthrough are provided in the English forum, however.




As you may have noticed, these are all third-person adventure games. Up next: first-person (or "Myst-style") adventures, of which I have very many.

A treat

I got a package in the mail today -- the cd Sakura by Susumu Yokota, a gift from the amazingly generous mr.h of Giornale Nuovo, who was recently giving cds away for the asking as he occasionally does.

I was lucky to have snagged this one. It's just the kind of funky, minimalist, jazzy, exotic, experimental, ambient instrumental thing I often like to listen to, and I am enjoying it quite a bit. Plus there's the excitement of having interesting things mailed to you by strangers from Sweden, in envelopes bearing Swedish and French writing, stamps, and insignia. (It didn't even occur to me that mr.h hailed -- and mailed -- from anywhere other than America, although the footer of his blog even carries the bold warning Not to be introduced into the British Empire or the U.S.A., which we've violated pretty well now.)

So anyway, it was a delightful treat, for which I thank mr.h heartily. I also recommend readers to visit his always fascinating and very informative blog, which uncovers some of the most unusual treasures of art history, old prints, books, and manuscripts, and all kinds of goodies for the common enjoyment. His latest post, for example, presents the strange and surreal work of nineteenth-century French artist Odilon Redon, and another that I liked a lot recently discusses the seventeenth-century treatise The Discovery of a World in the Moone by John Wilkins.

So go and visit him. He has some great things to share.

Silhouettes at play

Two cute Flash toys:

Arms, oddly entrancing, and




Elastic Enthusiastic, quite fun. It's like some kind of old-time shadow puppet garden party.




Both via Le Web...et le reste.

Sorting

If everything in my sidebar suddenly looks strange and confusing and you can't find anything any more, it's because I have begun to introduce a new sorting system -- blogs and most other links will now be arranged alphabetically, rather than by chronologically by day added as before. Some blogs which were buried in the mess may rise to prominence -- especially those beginning with numbers and A's -- while others, once leaping out at you, may have settled down quietly among their alphabetical fellows. Take advantage of the shakeup to peruse the links and discover something new.

And as always, there have been a lot of new blogs added in the past couple of days, particularly those in the now-bursting, newly-renamed "Collage, Mail Art" category, thanks to a load of great blogs brought to my attention by Out of Lascaux. Some new blogs in Folklore and Personal, too, and others.

The story of Blue Tea

When I was a child coloring with my mother, her daring and unorthodox use of color would often shock me. Much to my astonishment, she insisted on green suns, pink grass, and purple trees, while I meanwhile dutifully adhered to the hues prescribed by schoolroom tradition and rudimentary observation.

One day much later, we had purchased a new box of Crayolas and sat down together for some nostalgic doodling. True to form, she began picking out bright crayons and drawing things that weren't usually associated with those colors. She drew, among other objects, a sturdy, squarish mug of swirling, steaming coffee, and it was blue.

"Blue Coffee," I remarked. "That would be a good name for a website."

But it wasn't. I didn't really like coffee all that much, and I felt that whatever I had to offer should be more soothing and introspective, and less jittery. Tea addict that I am, just like my mother, I adjusted the title to Blue Tea.

I used the name for a short-lived website in which a version of this story originally appeared. In the days before blogs, or at least before blogs were mainstream enough for me to know about them, Blue Tea I was a sort of proto-blog, a collection of random, brief writings and rambles updated semi-regularly by hand (no fancy publishing software, no!). It never really got off the ground, and after a few spotty entries, I discontinued it, and I recently removed it from the web, to save on both embarrassment and confusion with my current endeavor.

Because I had the cute little graphic drawn up already (drawn and colored by hand, then scanned and tweaked a bit), and I had the lovely name, I decided to reuse the brand for my new blog when I migrated from Blurty to Blogger. I was still fond of the theme, and decided that my earlier project hadn't done it justice. So here we are.

Since the original project's inception, I have discovered that blue tea, along with black, green, white, red, and potentially others, belongs to the spectrum of real tea varities. I know nothing about it, really, but the odd visitor has showed up to my pages in search of the genuine article. Mine, alas, is but a metaphorical blend, but I hope a tasty one nonetheless.

Linlithgo -->

This is the mysterious, strangely alluring sign I routinely pass while driving north on Route 9. I have never heard this place spoken of, nor spotted it on any map -- my only knowledge of it comes from this single green and white sign which is posted at the terminal end of a lonely-looking road winding away from the crest of a particularly steep hill along Route 9, midway between Tivoli and the Rip Van Winkle Bridge.

I have wondered, idly, about Linlithgo. To me, the name evokes some imaginary place out of an extravagant sixteenth-century flight-of-fantasy -- a utopian city-state, a fabled land of youth or gold, a quaint, savage island somewhere beyond the setting sun, a paradisical, prelapsarian garden of singing birds, ripe fruit, and careless nudity, a whimsical, upside-down country populated by midgets or giants or dog-headed men.




What reminded me of this was an excellent article in the latest issue of Strange Horizons, "The Ten Stupidest Utopias!" More in-depth and profound than the title suggests, the article discusses and critiques a number of important classic utopias, from More's foundational text to Plato's Republic, the cyberspace of William Gibson's Neuromancer, and Charlotte Perkins Gillman's peculiarly Amazonian Herland.
Via Bookslut.

And as I recently mentioned, there is some great stuff, particularly the loads of beautiful images (such as the above), in the Utopia expo (French version) at the BnF.

Linlithgo...

In memoriam

Archive photo -- 2001




A photograph I took on September 11th, 2001. Now seemed like a good time to show it.

Dark animation

There is a fantastic collection of Russian Flash animation at KOMS.ru (English site), most of which tends to the morbid and the surreal. It is the work of a collective of artists, many of whom have their own websites full of great work.

Scary Dolls is one of those sites. For a quick intro to his style, try Smiley Fairy (created for the Ten Sec Film Fest). Lots to watch under "Cartoons", plus other features, like a gallery of, well, some rather scary ragdolls. The site is in both Russian and English. (The movies are mostly Russian only, but often subtitled where dialog is essential.)

FarUnder is another nice one. I would recommend Candy Venery and The Boatman's Call Remix.

Kollaps.ru is the site of artist Kol Belov. He's created an impressive number of Flash movies with a distinctive vision -- highly stylized, surreal, and quite grim.

That's it for the KOMS.ru crowd. Now some other stuff:

Childrin R Skary explores the premise that children are scary. Their main feature is the very Burton-esque The Little Girl Who Was Forgotten By Absolutely Everyone (Even The Postman).

Bitey Castle has some good animation, including Bingbong of Brackenwood, about a boy who doesn't heed the warnings about the Faery Folk, and Taken, about an alien invasion. The site has a nice flash interface, too.

Now some series:

Strindberg and Helium is a classic. The adventures of a melancholic writer and his hallucinatory demon friend.

Making Fiends is beautiful and brilliant. Vendetta, a dark, sadistic little girl who brews monsters at home and terrorizes her school, meets her match in the unrelenting friendliness and cheer of new girl Charlotte, who is determined to be her pal. Whimsical animation and great humor.

Finally, some single films:

The Cat With Hands is an incredibly creepy short film. A mix of live action and very well-done claymation.

The Periwig-Maker, on AtomFilms, has long been one of my favorite animated shorts. A wig-maker makes do during a London plague. (For the record, whoever described it as "medieval plague-infested London" is disgustingly ill-informed -- this is surely closer to the 17th or 18th century. Some people apparently use "medieval" as a synonym for "before electricity.") The claymation is simply gorgeous, and the story is sweet and, like everything else in today's post, quite eerie.

A post that is actually about tea

Bibi's box has a lovely post all about tea, with some great links:

George Orwell's essay A Nice Cup of Tea about his rules for brewing perfect tea;

the BBC article "How to make a perfect cuppa", which critiques his rules with input from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and offers a challenging tea-themed quiz;

the h2g2 entry on Tea, which discusses brewing methods, including a convincing argument (with cute flash animation!) for pouring the milk first;

and Wikipedia's as-always very comprehensive article on all things Tea.

So of course I have to throw in some links of my own.

In my sidebar, in the new "Tea" category (formerly under "Specialty"), I have two very nice tea-themed blogs:

ANiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown is a charming blog that discusses tea varieties, biscuit brands, favorite spoons, electric kettles, tea tours, and other aspects of the tea-lover's daily life with cheery enthusiasm. Fun features like "Biscuit of the Week" and their own themed merchandise.

Cup of Tea and a Blog is the personal blog of a tea afficianado, and features brewing tips, photos, notes on tea shops, reviews of teas, and links. Lots of very nice stuff.

Another worthwhile blog, not in my sidebar but bookmarked, is Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea, which celebrates hot caffeinated beverages of all (or at least two) kinds with recipes, news items, links, art, reviews, and more. In fact, scratch that...I don't know why this blog isn't in my sidebar, I'm going to add it now.

So after reading all the above hints and tips on how to brew tea, I decided to try it their way. I generally brew my tea straight in the mug, using a tea bag -- I would love to switch to loose leaf tea, finances permitting. I pour the milk in afterwards. Before these articles, I'd never heard of another way. But I decided to change a few things, and see if I could notice a difference.

So I dusted off my white teapot and tried a few new tricks. I filled the pot a quarter of the way with water and microwaved it, to preheat the pot. I was uncertain if the pot was microwave safe. I'm still a little unsure, since the water tends to heat slowly but one little spot at the bottom of the spot gets alarmingly hot very fast. I really hope the thing doesn't break. I made sure to keep the water for the tea boiling as hot and long as possible, and not cool down when I took it off the heat -- I knew the water had to be hot, but I didn't realize that it should be boiling when poured. I tried to respect the 3-5 minute brewing time, since I'm apt to just leave the bag in for twenty minutes. I don't mind strong, but I decided to give the short brewing time a try for taste. I realize that strength depends on the amount of tea, not the brewing time. And finally, I poured the milk in the cup first, and added the tea. As I feared, I used too much milk, and furthermore the tea was rather weak from brewing for such a short time. The tea was nice, but too weak and milky for my tastes. A second attempt with a little less milk and a little more brewing time produced a similar result. I think next time I'll use even less milk, and try two bags. I do use a large mug. I'll get it right. I think it will make a difference.

Silent films

I've just discovered NEOMUET, a collection of seven silent films celebrating and revitalizing that classic art. Ranging from serious to whimsical to gently parodic, the films are all wonderful, but if you just want a taste I would particularly recommend Richard III, La Boxe, and especially Horror. The site and all of the films are available in both French and English.
Via Bibi's box.




Neomuet reminded me that I should also point you to Nicholas Gurewich's (of The Perry Bible Fellowship, and SEW, which I mentioned earlier) excellent silent film The Liars, a surreal, stop-motion silent film about a quarrelling couple and their trip to the moon. It's simply stunning -- visually, conceptually, everything. Go see!

Fairy tales and other expos at the BnF

The Bibliothèque nationale de France has a lovely online exposition on fairy tales, Les contes de fées. The text is in French only, malheureusement, but anyone should be able to enjoy the rich collection of images.
(There are a lot of other great exhibitions worth checking out, too -- Medieval Gastronomy, Graphic Design, The Art of the Arabic Book, Utopia, Heaven and Earth, Persian Splendors, and many more are all available on the English site.)
Via Giornale Nuovo.

More on fairy tales here.

Articles, etc.

Guédelon is an intriguing and ambitious project: as they describe it, "For the next 20 years, thirty five craftsmen and women will be building before your very eyes a medieval castle. They will do so following XIIIth century techniques. The natural site in the middle of the forest will provide them with all the building material necessary : wood, water, stone, earth, sand and iron." It's been underway for a some years already, and is quite an impressive undertaking.

If a castle seems extravagant, how about a house made of cardboard? This prototype could be the first of a series of commercially available, portable, some-assembly-required homes constructed entirely of cardboard and other recyclable materials.
Via Boing Boing.




Try this quick test -- can you tell the computer programmers apart from the serial killers? I got all but one right -- but I missed one of the killers, so I suppose I'm dead.

Worthwhile Onion article: "Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory."

A cute cartoon at Don't Drink the Koolaid, "God: A Career Retrospective", might explain a few things.

An interesting New York Times article about the badly-thought-out cover to Rick Moody's new book: "Book Misjudged by Its Cover Gets (What Else?) New Cover."
Via Bookslut.

An article at Editor and Publisher looks at what editors do when faced with an official movie title containing errors: Press Wrestles with Grammatically Incorrect 'Virgin'."
Also via Bookslut.

The portfolio of this professional retouch artist has a twofold effect: it could be a reassuring reminder that models aren't that different from anyone else, or it could be a sickening testament to our warped airbrush-culture and our outrageous ideals of beauty. I'm torn.

Slate has an interesting take on the always-delightful blog Overheard in New York.

Visual poetry

Brazilian Visual Poetry is a wild, wonderful connection of visual poems that combine words, fonts, arrangement, image, and color in a great blend of poetry and art.
Via scribblingwoman.




Altered Books is a neat project to create art and poetry by selectively vandalizing the pages of books.
Also via scribblingwoman.




A couple of lovely animated poems:

About the Other Animals is an elegant, powerful poem about the creatures denied passage on the Ark. It is featured in Born Magazine, an "Art and Literature Collaboration" showcasing a collection of interactive media projects.
Via grow-a-brain, via scribblingwoman.




Ode to Summer is probably not strictly speaking an animated poem, although it is about a poem. It is a gorgeously animated gem of a film by Ron Hui which brings Chinese calligraphy and painting to life.




UPDATE: LadySusan has pointed me to the excellent altered-book art of Tom Phillips. You can also see his "treated book," Humument, at its own site, www.humument.com. Cool stuff.

Regrettable

Word verification has been activated.

You know the drill.

Five haunted houses

As promised, the next installment of online gaming links: horror games.

The Last Half of Darkness is a well-done, basic haunted house game. The online version is really a demo for the larger game, but it's quite playable and enjoyable on its own.




Exmortis is a very scary game. They suggest playing with lights down and sound up, which I would recommend for a great experience, as long as you have a stern constitution. It's another of those stories where you wake up in the woods and take shelter in a nearby house, where scary stuff starts happening. You see ghosts, discover mutilated bodies, and stumble on arcane secrets. There's a great plot twist at the end, and the game has multiple endings.
Walkthrough at Nordinho forums.




La piedra de Anamara (The Stone of Anamara) is yet another haunted house game. Nice graphics, very slick, with an interesting plot. The atmosphere is suitably bleak and eerie with some really startling moments. The game has several different fullscreen sizes, and is available in English, Spanish, and Italian.
Walkthrough at the Gamershood forum.




Found Lost is decent haunted house game, though less scary than the others. The less realistic graphics detract a bit from the atmosphere. The game is quite short, with only one real puzzle, and a somewhat perplexing ending. The painting at the end is a real painting with an interesting story, though. Find out more about it here.
Get help with the puzzle at the Nordinho thread.




I generally avoid movie tie-ins, but Do You Have a Grudge?, a plug for The Grudge, is notable as mostly just a well-crafted freakout, with some little puzzles along the way. Play this just to be spooked. It's like a thrill ride.




I don't know what's next. Next feature to be decided.

More on Grimm:

A Blog of Glup gives us a sneak preview of all the action and excitement of the Grimms' lives as it will be portrayed in the movie in an INSIDE SCOOP ON HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER THE BROTHERS GRIMM!!!!!!

Jake's (Heath Ledger) appointment as secretary of Jerome Bonaparte's library in WESTPHALIA! Will's (Matt Damon's) contributions to the Deutsches Wörterbuch, foundation of modern German etymology! Jake's literary endeavors! The publishing of the three-volume DEUTSCHE GRAMMATIK!

Oh...swoon!

Meanwhile, folks at Language Log ponder other scenarios comparable to the mangling of fact in the Grimms' story in Disowning the Brothers Grimm:

Imagine a Life of Noam in which, through the miracle of miniaturization, the heroic Chomsky (played by Brad Pitt in a revealing latex bodysuit) takes a band of brawling adventurers into the deepest recesses of the human brain, to recover bits of the language organ for sale through his start-up company -- a sort of cerebral 21st-century Fantastic Voyage. Appalling.

Or alternatively:

... 200 years from now a movie (or whatever form of mass entertainment they may use) on Spielberg's harrowing attempt to fight off dinosaurs from the Temple of Doom with the help of his loving extra-terrestrial friend.

My original reactions to the movie's trailer here. I should really just see this movie and get it over with already.