discoveredinalj | Member Posts

I'm excited about the new art technique I've come up with. I used it today to make the MFU fan art below.

For this technique, I made a rough photo manipulation, then traced it using a digital pen and tablet. Next, I deleted the manip, leaving only the tracings. Finally, I applied some virtual ink washes, also with the digital pen. (I added a couple of fictions not in the manip, too, notably Illya's right sleeve.)

This technique has two main advantages. First, it allows me to create finished images from photo manipulations without the endless color adjustment and attempts to match the noise and blur of different components. Besides being time consuming, those things tend to be hit-and-miss in their success. Second, it allows me to create something with a human touch despite my limited drawing skills. (I can draw a bit, but not well enough to create likenesses of the characters.)

It's also an interesting process. There is some artistry in choosing which lines to trace and how, what ink washes to use, etc. Not to mention the already creative process of making the kind of many-layer manips I have often produced.

I'm looking forward to exploring the applications of this technique.

gilda_elise

Spent two weeks in Phoenix, where are main activity seemed to have been watching movies. But lucky September was such a great movie watching month, because October was something of a bust.

MOVIES WATCHED IN SEPTEMBER

Sept 3 - M*A*S*H: The Comedy that Changed Television (2024)
Join the men and women who made M*A*S*H as they celebrate one of the most beloved, enduringly popular, often quoted and influential comedies ever created.
Director: John Scheinfeld
Stars: Alan Alda, Gary Burgoff, Jamie Farr, Mike Farrell, Loretta Swit

Interesting and informative take on one of my favorite shows. Good time to watch it as we’re once again “bingeing” on the show. But since there are over 200 episodes, it takes awhile.

Sept 7 - Atomic People (2024)
A record, drawn of the testimonies of Hibakusha - survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan - of humanity's potential to destroy itself.
Directors: Megumi Inman, Benedict Sanderson
Stars: Iwanaga Chiyoko, Kiyomi Iguro

An in-depth look at the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, past, present and future. Sobering, but well worth watching.

Sept 10 - Fiddler On the Roof (1971)
In 1905 Russia, a traditionalist Jewish peasant contends with marrying off three of his daughters with modern romantic ideals, all while anti-Semitic sentiment threatens his village.
Director: Norman Jewison
Stars: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Paul Michael Glaser

An old favorite. The music and acting is first-rate.

Sept 11 - The Four Seasons (1981)
Witty character study of three couples who vacation together each season. After one divorces, feelings of betrayal and more spawn criticisms of one another, but things that unite them are stronger than those which might pull them apart.
Director: Alan Alda
Stars: Alan Alda, Carol Burnett, Len Cariou, Sandy Dennis, Rita Moreno

Funny, but thoughtful too. And the casting is spot on, especially Alda and Burnett.

Sept 12 - Highest 2 Lowest (2025)
When a titan music mogul is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.
Director: Spike Lee
Stars: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera

Not my normal fare, but my sister has a thing for Washington. Not a bad movie. Not great, but not bad.

Sept 13 - Your Cheatin’ Heart (1964)
The story of the country and western singer Hank Williams.
Director: Gene Nelson
Stars: George Hamilton, Susan Oliver, Red Buttons, Arthur O’Connell

I remember seeing this at the drive-in when it first came out. The movie is good, but the music is fantastic. Made us Williams fans.

Sept 18 - The Accountant (2016)
As a math savant uncooks the books for a new client, the Treasury Department closes in on his activities, and the body count starts to rise.
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Stars: Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, John Lithgow, Jean Smart

This was another movie re-watched before watching the sequel. Enjoyed it just as much as the first time. But I’m something of an Affleck fan, so there’s that.

Sept 19 - The Accountant 2 (2025)
Christian Wolff applies his brilliant mind and illegal methods to reconstruct the unsolved puzzle of a Treasury chief's murder.
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Stars: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, J.K. Simmons

Almost as good as the first movie. I liked the focus on the two brothers.

Sept 20 - Lost In Yonkers (1993)
In the summer of 1942, two young boys are sent to stay with their stern grandmother and their childlike aunt in Yonkers, New York.
Director: Martha Coolidge
Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Mercedes Ruehl, Irene Worth

A truly funny at times, sad at times, movie. Both Dreyfuss and Ruehl are great, as always.

Sept 21 - Same Time Next Year (1978)
Beginning in 1951, neurotic married accountant George and naive married homemaker Doris have a one-night stand and then meet at the same place once each year. As years go by, they observe changes in each other and their relationship.
Director: Robert Mulligan
Stars: Alan Alda, Ellen Burstyn, Ivan Bonar

Given the storyline, a surprisingly romantic film. I love it.

Sept 21 - Sneakers (1992)
A security pro finds his past returning to haunt him when he and his unique team are tasked with retrieving a particularly important item.
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Stars: Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Sidney Poitier, River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell

Losing Redford, it was lovely, though sad, watching some of his movies. This was an intense, yet funny, movie. Some great actors, too. Highly recommended.

Sept 21 - Frida (2002)
A biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.
Director: Julie Taymor
Stars: Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Diego Luna, Antonio Banderas

Stays fairly true to life. Interesting, compelling, and rather tragic.

Sept 23 - The Natural (1984)
A middle-aged unknown comes seemingly out of nowhere to become a legendary baseball player with almost supernatural talent.
Director: Barry Levinson
Stars: Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley

Redford is great as a man who is trying to make up for past mistakes.

Sept 23 - Lions for Lambs (2007)
Injuries sustained by two Army rangers behind enemy lines in Afghanistan set off a sequence of events involving a senator, a journalist and a professor.
Director: Robert Redford
Stars: Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Michael Pena

Somewhat disjointed as the story jumps between those who influenced the ultimate outcome, whether they knew it or not.

Sept 30 - Superman (2025)
Superman must reconcile his alien Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as reporter Clark Kent. As the embodiment of truth, justice and the human way he soon finds himself in a world that views these as old-fashioned.
Director: James Gunn
Stars: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Bradley Cooper

Rather sweet. I liked how much they kept to the original characters as much as possible. The action scenes carried on a bit too long, which seems to be the downside of most graphic novel based movies today. Maybe why they’ll never surpass the Reeve movies.

MOVIES WATCHED IN OCTOBER

Oct 10 - John Candy: I Like Me (2025)
Explores the life and legacy of the iconic funnyman John Candy, who died of a heart attack in 1994, at the age of 43.
Director: Colin Hanks
Stars: John Candy, Bill Murray, Chris Candy, Martin Short, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Conan O’Brien

I was never a huge fan, but what I saw I liked. This documentary really brings him to life (no pun intended.)

Oct 15 - Eddington (2025)
In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.
Director: Ari Aster
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Deirdre O'Connell, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal

A truly strange movie. Not at all how I thought it would be, but entertaining in an odd sort of way.

Oct 20 - The Uninvited (2024)
A stranger crashes a party, sparking a comedy of errors, and a reordering of life.
Director: Nadia Conners
Stars: Elizabeth Reaser, Walton Goggins, Lois Smith, Pedro Pascal

Another movie that was nothing like what I was expecting. Sort of intriguing, though. And I like seeing Goggins and Pascal.

Oct 30 - A House of Dynamite (2025)
When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Stars: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos

Very much worth watching. Gives us a bleak but probably true view of what might happen under this situation.

tinturtle

Poking around today, I found that quite a few more VCR-era Professionals vids are hosted on the Internet Archive now than last time I looked. One of them is Deteriorata by DJ Driscoll. This vid is set to a musical parody of the poem Desiderata. That's the one Doyle displays in his flat in the episode Discovered in a Graveyard. This vid is funny and has a great interplay between the music and the clips.

gilda_elise

They followed the path of ancient scrolls into the Judean desert. They unearthed one of the greatest discoveries of all time. The perfectly preserved body of the Virgin Mary. Soon the world would know the wonder of her healing. The sick are made well. The weak are made strong. But with the miracle of her return comes an omen of evil.

I’ve read several of Wilson’s books and enjoyed most of them. But every once in a while he writes one that has some major flaws; this is one of them. It had a promising start, but went downhill from there.

To start, I wasn’t crazy about the female protagonist. She’s supposed to be almost saint-like, but is anything but when it comes to having her way. I suppose that’s the main driving force of the story, but it made it hard to care as to what happened.

Which is another problem. Was this supposed to be horror? Because a lot of went on could only be explained by a supernatural force. If it’s supposed to be god, he’s got some major problems. It felt too much like “I’m going to mess with you just because I can” sort of story.

And the ending was sort of weird. And one of those endings that’s not really an ending. I’m so glad that the book isn’t part of his “Secret History of the World” series; I don’t think I could have stood that.

( Mount TBR 2025 Book Links 1-45 )

46. A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and Its Implications by Carl Sagan
47. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
48. Curfew by Phil Rickman
49. The King's Justice by Stephen R. Donaldson
50. Virgin by F. Paul Wilson

Virgin

gilda_elise

Two new, original novellas—Donaldson's first publication since finishing the Thomas Covenant series—are a sure cause for celebration among his many fans.

In The King's Justice, a stranger dressed in black arrives in the village of Settle's Crossways, following the scent of a terrible crime. He even calls himself "Black," though almost certainly that is not his name. The people of the village discover that they have a surprising urge to cooperate with this stranger, though the desire of inhabitants of quiet villages to cooperate with strangers is not common in their land, or most lands. But this gift will not save him as he discovers the nature of the evil concealed in Settle's Crossways.

The "Augur's Gambit" is a daring plan created by Mayhew Gordian, Hieronomer to the Queen of Indemnie, a plan to save his Queen and his country. Gordian is a reader of entrails. In the bodies of chickens, lambs, piglets, and one stillborn infant he sees the same the island nation of Indemnie is doomed. But even in the face of certain destruction a man may fight, and the Hieronomer is utterly loyal to his beautiful Queen--and to her only daughter. The "Augur's Gambit" is his mad attempt to save a kingdom.

Donaldson seems to be trying to write in the style of a previous time. Way previous. But, at least for me, it doesn’t really work. Especially in The King’s Justice. It makes the characters rather stilted, which is a major problem because the story is told imostly from Black’s point of view. It’s only near the end that I started to feel a connection to him. Even then his personality is rather stark. He does what he does because…well, pretty much just because.

Fortunately, it works better with Augur’s Gambit, maybe because the story is longer. What also helps is that there are more characters, each with their own distinct personalities. The story is told from the point of view of Mathew Gordian, the augur, who risks all to save all. It still took a while for me to get into the story. So much of it is the setting up of the kingdom’s history and that of its main citizens.

So, not a bad book, but not a great one. A disappointment, though, considering how much I’ve loved Donaldson’s other works.

tinturtle

I had a really good time writing my longish Professionals fic The Wind and the Rain. Pretty much the only parts of the process I didn't like were the parts where I wasn't feeling well enough to work on it. Now I want to write more fanfic. In particular, I'd like to write another Man from U.N.C.L.E. fic. (I posted a short one in 2021.) To do that, though, I need to refamiliarize myself with the show; it's been a long time since I watched it regularly.

That need gave me the idea to do a rewatch of the entire Man from U.N.C.L.E.. All 105 episodes feels like a lot to work through, though, if my main goal is to get to a point where I can write some fic. Also, I don't think it's controversial to say that some MFU episodes just aren't very good. Thus, I'm thinking of restricting myself to the list that I generated some time ago by asking other fans to name their favorite few episodes. (The list was part of my eventually abandoned project to run a regular social MFU watch.) I ended up with 51 episodes, which appear below in filming order.

( Read more... )

At this point, I started feeling sad that I would be watching so much MFU and no Professionals. The number of Pros episodes is also in the 50s, so I could have chosen a few more MFU episodes and maybe weeded out a few from Pros—*cough* Blackout *cough*—then alternated them. MFU is still the show I'm trying to bone up on, though, so I decided maybe I'd do a similar highlights tour of Pros. I was able to find a list I'd made a long time ago after asking LJ Pros fans for their favorite episodes. It contained 22 entries, and appears below, again in filming order.

( Read more... )

Then it occurred to me that if I chose one more MFU episode and three more Pros ones, I could watch two MFU followed by one Pros twenty-five times, then two more MFU at the end. Accordingly, I picked the following supplements:

( Read more... )

And there you are: a detailed plan for what, if I proceed with it, I'm going to call The Little Rewatch (in contrast to a Great Rewatch). I'm not going to set any kind of timetable for this, since consistency is very much not my strong suit. (That's what happened to the social MFU watch, sadly.) As I go along, though, I will probably post some informal thoughts on what I watch. I'm not sure yet whether they should be in my journal or in the appropriate fandom comms.

Let me know what you think. I know I've got a bit of a tendency to try to organize everything, but it's been making me happy in the case of my fanfic reading games, so this seems worth a try. This post itself has cheered me up on a bad night.

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Discovered in a Livejournal

September 2022

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Page Summary

tinturtle - A New Art Technique
gilda_elise - So Many Movies, Old and New
tinturtle - Things I Like: Deteriorata
gilda_elise - Virgin by F. Paul Wilson
gilda_elise - The King's Justice by Stephen R. Donaldson
tinturtle - A New Idea: The Little Rewatch

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