Krell Labs

Looking at The Awakening (2012) on my movie blog today. With Rebecca Hall, not Charlton Heston, which is all to the good. Plus poetry quotations!

I also like this film’s heroine. Florence Cathcart is what would have been called a “new woman” in 1921, one who wears pants and smokes cigarettes and doesn’t care if it’s “proper” for a lady. She’s educated, too, and the best in her chosen field. The film has a sub-theme dedicated to what happens when such a woman bumps up against institutional patriarchy, though it ultimately doesn’t figure in the denouement. And I like the actors. I can watch Rebecca Hall in anything. It’s fun watching Dominic West play against type as a haunted school teacher.

ruckawriter:

The text of our first official Kickstarter Campaign Update!

Wow, you guys weren’t fooling around!

We’ve been told we broke some records Monday, and frankly, Eric, Rick, and I are stunned at the support and response the campaign has received. It’s humbling, and it’s far more than we expected. We cannot thank each of you enough. We will do everything in our power to reward your faith with our best efforts in the days, weeks, and months to come.Our initial goal of 27.5K wasn’t just met, it was decimated. To such an extent, in fact, that you actually blew past our first Stretch Goal, which we’d planned for 35K. You can see a description of it on the Kickstarter Page, below the Stretch Goal heading. Long story short, every order of the book will now come with a two-sheet Lady Sabre paper doll set, created by papercrafter Linda Candello, using Rick’s designs. These will be printed up in full-color, on 100lb matte or its nearest equivalent, and depict Her Ladyship and some of the choices from her fabulous wardrobe. Additionally, the PDF files for the paper dolls will be included in the digital package. This means that if you backed us at the $20 level or higher, you’re getting the paper dolls in one form or another or, more likely, both.

Stretch Goal two is a bit further afield, as it’s more ambitious - the Pocket Guide to the Sphere by Edwin Windsheer. This is a crafted piece of ephemera, something we hope will look and feel and read as if it fell through time and space into your hands from the Sphere. Roughly designed to be the size and feel of a small casebound Moleskine, printed in black-and-white, and containing various sketches and writings by the foremost chronicler of the Sphere’s Fourth Age (IV.E). This will run 32-pages, and contain all original content, never before published on either the website or in print. Depending on the response, we may expand the book to 64-pages, which would make more sense, but, also, cost more. We shall see!

Stretch Goal three… yeah, well, we’re already getting ahead of ourselves.Finally, we’ve added a new backer tier, what we’re calling “Rare & Royal.” This is a limited (100 of 100) run of the book, bound in imitation leather with foil-stamped case and spine, ribbon bookmark, and matching foil-stamped slipcase. This is kinda our dream edition, to be honest, and we weren’t sure we could even afford to offer it. You’ve proven us wrong, so after some discussion, we’ve committed to its run. This, as we explain in the reward description, is the book as we envision it on Her Ladyship’s shelf. Each copy is numbered and signed by Rick and myself, and comes with the Lady Sabre dog tag designed by Optimystical Studios.

Once more, our sincerest gratitude for all your support, from your pledges in backing us to your retweets, tumbles, and facebookings. Please continue to spread the word!

Hold fast!

Looking at Room 237 on my movie blog today.

There’s a word for the psychological effect that causes people to see Jesus in a piece of toast. It’s called “pareidolia”, and it’s the reason that you can look at the grille of a car and see a human face staring back at you. The human brain likes to see patterns, particularly patterns that it recognizes. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Seeing a purposive universe is a key to the development of science, even if that purposive nature to the universe is an illusion created by the way our brains are wired. Unfortunately, that same pattern recognition feature can become a bug when you can’t turn it off. I was thinking about this while I was watching Room 237 (2012, directed by Rodney Ascher), in which five people descant on the “meaning” of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining while trawling through the minutia of the film. Now, I shouldn’t throw rocks. I occasionally see things in films that other people don’t. Hell, that’s what the movie-o-sphere on the internet is for. But I generally don’t take the kinds of cognitive leaps that leads the commenters in Room 237 to their conclusions.