The Simpsons - Hilarious Game of Thrones introduction. Plus the hilarity of Sanjay Patel! :)

I was browsing gehayi's wonderful lj blog when I came across her post on The Simpson's hilarious Game of Thrones introduction http://io9.com/5890410/watch-the-simpsons-game-of-thrones-intro

LOL at Burns' Landing. And poor Moleman gets run over. As usual. Plus - the three eyed crows pop out of the nuclear power plant! I've watched this 3 times in a row. It is *that* good. Now I'm worried that I'll burst out laughing every time I see the actual Game of Thrones intro...

Also!  Artist Sanjay Patel's adorable and hyperactive article about his past art exhibition is here. The exhibition was about Indian Avatars: http://www.asianart.org/maharaja/avatars.htm

Here's a sample of his zaniness: I recently received such an email; it went something like this. 'Hey it's the SF Asian Art Museum. We're hosting an exhibition called Maharaja: Splendor of India in the fall. Would you be interested in activating the exterior of the building based on this exhibition?' Did I mention that I'm an Aries, first sign of the zodiac, with the special ability to charge ahead and fall flat on my face? My colleagues responded to my news with a very sensible question: WTF does activate the exterior of the building mean? Did you hear that sound? Yeah, that thud was me falling on my face...

Whew! I was exhausted just by reading that. But in a good way. :) I get the impression that he's very charming to listen to, but devilishly hard to interrupt!

Movie reviews - *drumroll* Les Miserables! SPOILERS galore.

First off: I love Les Miserables. I love the book most of all. I adore the musical. I adore the first half of the book and musical far more than the second half. The first half contained my most favourite characters: Jean Valjean, Inspector Javert, and Fantine. The second half contained Marius. Marius is a good character, but Valjean, Javert and Fantine are way more interesting.

The movie was a mixed bag for me. It's divided everyone's opinions. There are newspapers and cinemas online giving the movie anything from two and a half stars to five stars out of five. And that's OK! We all have different tastes. :) The movie is a musical. Most of the lines are sung, but there's quite a few spoken lines too.

SPOILERS!

I loved the bit where the Bishop Myriel tells the police officers that he gave Jean Valjean the silver, and advises Valjean to become an honest man. That part will always be one of my most favourite parts. :) The man who plays the Bishop in the movie (Colm Wilkinson) also acted/sung as Jean Valjean in the musical!

I enjoyed the movie's second half far more than the first half, as the first half had some mediocre to bad singing and acting from Russell Crowe. Normally, I like Russell Crowe. I don't expect Russell Crowe to sing well - he's an actor, after all. But I do expect him to act brilliantly. His facial expression was mostly flat, which was a disappointment.

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I was watching youtube videos on the making of Les Miserables (the movie). They mentioned that the actors had to *sing* for every take. They sang so much that Sacha Baron Cohen (who plays Monsieur Thenardier and is famous for his alter ego Borat) lost his voice and couldn't speak for at least a week! The poor guy had to write whatever he wanted to tell people. Sacha Cohen also made up a line "crawling on all fours" for his song. He wasn't intimidated by acting with other stars or in a much loved movie, which I found impressive.

Movie Review: The Hobbit. Spoilers!

SPOILERS GALORE. You have been warned. ;)

I love reading Les Miserables way more than The Hobbit (novel version). Les Miserables has a way better story. There is no point in comparing the two. But I enjoyed watching the movie version of The Hobbit better than the Les Miserables movie (which was brought down by mediocre singing and acting from Russell Crowe. I like Russell Crowe and I don't expect him to sing well. But come on. There is no excuse for his lacklustre acting in Les Mis. He's usually a brilliant actor! Why his acting was so flat in the Les Miserables movie I will never know).

Soooo...The Hobbit. It starts off slowly, and they only skim the world building (if they included all of it, the movie would have been longer than three hours. No thank you!).

I didn't like how elves were portrayed as the best race (it's a Tolkien thing). But I liked how the dwarves were portrayed with more dignity and intelligence. And Bilbo's fondness for good food and his pipe is adorable.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

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Verdict: Very good. Nowhere near as good as Lord of the Rings, but still worth watching (and re-watching). :)