(no subject)

[ealgylden]

You know it's a good birthday when you get a passel of the new Playmobil Vikings and the Holy Grail.

My Grail, of course, is disguised as the soundtrack for The Dark Crystal, one of my all-time favorite, best-beloved, essential-to-a-happy-life film scores. A beautiful piece of work (I'm a big Trevor Jones fan), but one that hasn't been available since the original LP release, back in the early 80's, and I couldn't justify spending a huge amount of money for an album that I couldn't even play. But Numenorean Music (great name, considering) just came out with a limited edition 2-disc set, with the original release score on Disc One and the complete score on Disc Two, and copy #14 of 5000 is now my new favorite thing. It's so wonderful. I've decided that all I'm going to do today is lie around listening to it, yelling out things like "The Great Conjunction is at haaaand!" and scaring the cats. Eeeee! I'm giddy!

There's a whole group of early to mid-eighties fantasy films- Dark Crystal, Ladyhawke, Neverending Story, Labyrinth, Last Unicorn, Princess Bride (even though that has a different, lighter feel to it), maybe a few others- that I love beyond all reason and am completely unable to watch critically. I know that Dark Crystal has been criticised for having a generic plot, that Ladyhawke's Alan Parsons Project score is considered a horror show (hey, I like it, synthesizers and all), that supposedly Neverending Story is dull and too far removed from the book... but these movies are my It's a Wonderful Life or Gone With the Wind. Even their flaws are wonderful to me. I mean, I once torpedoed an hour's busy flirting with a pretentious but gorgeous film geek by naming not Das Boot as my favorite Wolfgang Peterson film, but The Neverending Story (oh well, he wasn't that cute). Other young fantasy geeks had their synapses molded by the good Professor and his elves and orcs and Maiar; I've always been happy with Gelflings and the Southern Oracle and the Goblin King. Especially the Goblin King. Rrowr.

Eeeeee! I love my CD!

Oh, and since this post isn't spammy enough yet:


You are Mulier badasstica pseudofeminista,
the Grrl Sue. Your aggressively bitchy
"feminist" stance only causes men /
boys / male elves to posture the more, and you
fall for it. And them. Surprise, surprise.


What Species of Mary Sue Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Of course I am. Funny thing is, I even have the Chicks in Chainmail book that the picture is from.

Comments

Re: Labyrinth

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

What's kept me addicted for these years is the detail and completeness of the movie's world, but I blame my getting addicted in the first place entirely on Kira.

I'm with you. I'm soo with you. Same boat. Same cabin row. I got hooked on The Dark Crystal on TV and in French, but it means the same to me.

And I really like all those mid-80s movies you listed too. The Neverending Story especially (those crumbling fairy-dust-sprinkled stone sphinxes! the book-throwing! the horse-riding boy hero who looked just like me as a girl!). The Goblin King's mad crystal-ball-twirling skillz. The biting fairies. The ROUS. The wolf and hawk at twilight. The Mandragore in its cage.

I am broke. When I find the money, I'm so buying the Dark Crystal soundtrack. I'd only seen bootleg CDs of it before. I Googled Numenorean Music and bookmarked their site, so a million thanks for the heads-up. :-)

Re: Labyrinth

[ealgylden.livejournal.com]

Right, exactly! Those are exactly the things I love about these films! The ideas and images like the Goblin King's crystal ball (that was so cool) and the Helping Hands, the crumbling sphinxes and Artax in the Swamps of Sadness (wah!), Aughra's eye and the Landstriders, and the Bishop of Aquila, who was my favorite villain for years and years... oh man, I'm going to have to have a film-fest this weekend.

And now I feel silly that I didn't think to put Numenorean's link in my post. Sorry about that, though yay for Google.