Meanwhile, in Rivendell . . .

His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him. A Christmas Carol , by Charles Dickens ⸻ You know them, you love them — expressive little stuffed animals so authentically wrinkled that they appear to be made out of nothing but yards of felt and puddles of toddlers' saliva.  But what commerce, you may ask, have these children's toys, these Muppets, with pillars of Victorian literature? According to Brian Henson, quite a bit. Setting his sights on none other than Charles Dickens, Himself™, Henson released A Muppet Christmas Carol just in time for Christmas 1992, dedicating the film to his recently deceased father, Jim, Muppet mastermind.  In so doing, he initiated decades of Yuletide traditions for families innumerable — presumably, at least.  He certainly did for my family.  My siblings and I grew up watching the oddly corporeal Muppet ghosts cavorting around Michael Caine's relentlessly stoic Scrooge on at least a semi-annual basis. And yet, if I'm to be ru...

It seemed wrong to group the dead.  It was not seven; it was one and one and one and one and one and one and one.  Each an entire life, each with a name. Chanel Miller, Know My Name Let's talk ✨violence✨, kiddos. Growing up, I developed a reputation as someone who was "easily freaked out" by violence, peril, etc. within the realm of fiction.  Part of this — when I was younger, especially — was due to real sensitivity.  Anything "dark" was difficult for child me to handle without paying for it when trying to fall asleep at night.  As I've grown older, however, things have shifted.  Exhibit A:  my inability to make it more than twenty minutes into  Snow White and the Huntsman  as a tween, contrasted with my adoration for the whole movie as a twenty-something.  Now, I'll take a film with R-rated violence over a cutesy murder mystery episode of Monk any day of the week — and, what's more, I'll (probably) be far less disturbed by the R-rated ...

Howdy, partners!  For today's LoWCW post, I'm sharing an essay that I wrote last year for a Western film class in college.  This essay is about one of my tip-top favorite Westerns (and probably movies in general??) :  The Big Country (1958).   Now, a couple of notes before we begin: 1)   I wrote this essay during a compressed sub-semester.  As I recently mentioned , I'm also working full time and managing health stuff.  So, take the writing with a merciful grain of salt — it's not quite as strong or polished as it could/should be, and I know that.  For example, syntax is a growth area for me, so when you encounter all those overly long, twisty sentences . . . just know that I already know. 😂 2)   I am, of course, dealing in generalities when I speak of traditional Western gender constructs, stereotypes, problems, etc.  Don't get your panties in a wad.  I like Westerns, remember? 3)   I've cut and pasted the text verbatim,...

Hello, my loves. ♥  I started this year with the tentative goal of posting at least twice a month, and obviously that hasn't worked out too well for me.  But, I have been managing to meet the once-a-month mark (even if I get the post in just under the wire, as is the case today 😅) , so we'll take what progress we can get. In lieu of the heavier duty posts I have in draft, I thought it would be nice to have a cozy little 'miscellaneous' post.  It's been quite a while since I've given any kind of in-depth life update or talked about what I'm into right now in terms of books, movies, music, etc.  So, why not do that today? Lately, I've been . . .  ☙ Watching - much more TV than I used to. ||  I've always been more of a film girly, and I think I still prefer film as a narrative medium, but I do find it much easier to keep up with a TV episode here and there now that I'm working and studying full time.  My evenings are pretty tight at the moment, so ...

I've been rereading the one true love of my life The Princess Bride this January, so I thought that now would be the perfect time to share an article I wrote about the novel for the online magazine Femnista back in autumn 2020.  As with the  Broken Trail piece I posted for last year's Legends of Western Cinema Week, what you'll read below is my initial submission to Femnista , not the version that appeared on the website after a few moderator edits.  I've also added a couple of my own tweaks to the original (i.e., adding an additional quotation, etc.).  But the gist is very much the same; never fear. So, if you want to learn more about just one of the manifold reasons this book is so dear to me — and if you don't mind spoilers  — then I echo to you Mr. Bennet's immortal advice:  Read on, Lizzy! ⸻ What if I told you that the real story of The Princess Bride was not that of Buttercup and Westley? Or of Inigo and his revenge? What if I told you that, ins...

If you've been around for a while, you may have heard me say before that I dislike time travel in fiction.  I just do.  There are (a very few) exceptions, of course, but, for the most part, if I know that a story involves time travel, I can give it a friendly "Not for me" and move along my merry way with no hard feelings on either side.   I've more or less always known that this technique is one of my fictional no-go's, but I haven't always known why — or, at least, I haven't always known fully why.  That changed when I watched Christopher Nolan's Interstellar for the first time a few months ago.  (Yep, this post has been in draft that long. *coughs*) If you don't know, Interstellar tells a fairly familiar story:  a retired military-pilot-turned-farmer living on a futuristic Earth teetering at the cusp of ecological Armageddon is recruited by a super-secret branch of NASA.  His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to undertake a Perilo...

I'm kiiiinda bending the party's rules with this one, because this post was originally published over on Charity Bishop's Femnista .  So it's not brand-new.  However, it hasn't made an appearance on here  until now, so I'm saying it counts. 😉  And, since Femnista is closing down on August 1 and Charity has given contributors permission to repost their articles on their own platforms, Legends of Western Cinema Week seemed like the perfect time for this post's  Rivendell debut.   (Note:  What follows is my original draft of this piece, along with a couple of final 2022 tweaks — not the slightly edited version which appeared on Femnista back in 2020.)   ⸻ The 2006 miniseries Broken Trail brings several unique perspectives to the traditional Western paradigm, not the least of which is its exploration of what it’s like on the other end of the brothel business.  Before we get into all of that, though, let's begin with a brief synopsis f...