Meanwhile, in Rivendell . . .

Hello again! Haha, I'm sorry for blogging again so soon.  Truly, I am, but I feel like I haven't posted regularly in a long time, and so the past few days I wanted to seize my opportunity, hehe.   Thusly I shall proceed to ask you all some questions that have been mulling around in my brain.   Item #1:   I've a hankering to write a movie review (shocking occurrence), but there are so many possibilities, dontcha know.  So, I leave it up to you:  would you rather read a review of Zootopia , Miracles from Heaven , or a different movie?  "I put it to ya, and I leave it to ya." "…You disrespect my mother, whom I buried in that skunk-butt rug, by the way." Item #2:   Will someone please, for the love of all that is holy, explain to me how it is possible for me, a typically semi-morally-perceptive individual, to mildly hate Jake yet LOVE Hank?!?!   Help me.  (For those of you who don't know, I'm talking about the tel...

Does anyone remember that far-forgotten time when I mentioned that I was considering making a "personality board" of sorts?  With pictures and quotes and other paraphernalia about introversion and such-like? Yeah, I don't either.  That is, I remember I did it, but I don't remember when or where…but anyways, I'm here to tell you that I actually made that board and it's been on my wall for quite a while now.  So I'll show you all some pictures, just in case any of you remembered and were waiting for them (at which I would be very impressed, I gotta say).    Today will be a day of short posts :)  And the quality of my iPod camera (the only camera to which I really have usable access) translates terribly into the computer, but it's better if the pictures are small, so…they'll be smaller than normal.  'Pologies.   #shamlessplugformynewlyrearrangedbookcase Here it is :)  I'm pretty happy with how it t...

…People tag you, you procrastinate for about a month, and then decide to whip up the answers despite the fact that you haven't even formally wrapped up your latest Western-themed week.  Yeah.  That.  (I SHALL wrap up Western Week and draw/notify the giveaway winners before too much longer.  I SHALL.)  Anyway,  Ivy  and  Anna  have both tagged me (hence the spiel about tagging and procrastination)!  Thanks, ladies!  I do so love a good tag :)  Let's dive in. (Also, there'll be a lot of random movie collages that have nothing to do with the answers.  I found a bunch of really pretty collages over the past few months and wanted to share several of them with y'all, being the kind soul that I am :)) ~ Ivy's First Tag (Simple Questions) ~ Rules Pass along the questions Questions 1. What nationality are you? For privacy's sake, I'll just say Caucasian. 2. What's your favourite animal? Hmm…to be around, p...

EDIT 08/2020:  I have excised parts of this review that reference/celebrate Howard Keel's performance as an Indigenous American.  I realize that it is inappropriate for white actors to play BIPOC characters, and I apologize for handling the issue inappropriately in my original viewing & review of the film. "Mine hit the ground first." "Mine was taller." -- Lomax and Taw -- Once upon a time, a lovely blogger called DKoren  reviewed a movie .  (Well.  That is to say.  She's done that lots, but this was a special instance I'm talking about here.)  She sparked my interest right off the bat by observing that it starred John Wayne (in case you didn't know, I have A Rather High Regard for the Duke). Time passed, and lo, the film showed up in my library's DVD collection.  You will be happy to know that I secured said DVD, carried it home, and watched it before any great amount of time had elapsed ;)  And I liked it just as much a...

There are many standby sights you'll usually, if not always, find in a Western of any sort:  Dust.  Rifles.  Stetsons.  Horses.  Boots.  Sweeping plains.  Manipulative villains.  A small number of women.  A (slightly bigger) number of men.  And, ofttimes, a marked emphasis on friendship. Think about it--have you ever seen a Western that didn't feature a strong bromance?  ( Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , for once in the history of the universe, doesn't count.)  In these stories about hardened heroes grappling with adverse elements, sinister bad guys, and unruly quadrupeds, companionship is important, and filmmakers seem to recognize that.   Cowboys have it rough, man.  They spend long days in the saddle, short nights on the ground, and a heck of a lot of mental and emotional energy just trying to be decent human beings in a country that's still in the process of becoming civilized.  Justice, in a...

*takes deep breath*  Oh, boy.  This.  Well, folks, I finally watched the classic Western  High Noon  about a month or two ago.  And…I don't know what I think of it, precisely. Being well aware that this news may not exactly enhance my popularity in the blogosphere, I give you full permission to not read this review :P  But it's not going to be a negative review, understand--it'll just be a mixed and undecided review, that's all.  I just don't want to be that person who "bashes" someone's favorite movie (even though I have no intention of bashing it).  So…yeah.  Read at your own risk and please don't hate me, what ;) I enjoyed High Noon --really, I did.  It's just that it had certain, shall we say, quirks.  The cinematography itself was nearly flawless--the camera angles and use of chiaroscuro combined to create a dramatic, edge-of-your-seat sort of effect--and the acting was wonderful, as you'd expect from such a cas...

"It never occurred to them that their search was stretching out into a great extraordinary feat of endurance; an epic of hope without faith, of fortitude without reward, of stubbornness past all limits of reason.  They simply kept on, doing the next thing, because they always had one more place to go, following out one more forlorn-hope try." You'll be so proud of me, guys.  I finally finished an actual Western book .  I've seen several, but I don't think I'd ever read a Western novel all the way through.  I just haven't picked up that many, and the content I've run into has sort of put a damper on our relationship, as a very wise man in black once put it.  (Well, maybe that Dear America book about the wagon train counts…and then there's A Lantern in Her Hand and Love Comes Softly  and the like...)  Anyway, a week or two ago, I did it--I read a no-doubt-about-it, true Western:   The Searchers  by Alan Le May. I'm accordingly her...