a funny thing happened on the way to decorum

Snarky McSnarkerson goes to university.

Sat, 05 May 2012 14:16:41 +0100

Snarky McSnarkerson goes to university.

I’m not the hugest fan of Harry Potter - but as a break...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:26:27 +0000

I’m not the hugest fan of Harry Potter - but as a break from Poem A Day April, here’s a photo from ‘Stickers on the Central Line’ which, after a bit of a hiatus, is back managing regular mischief.

stickersonthecentralline:

Sorting seat

there’s nothing hidden in your head

the sorting seat can’t see,

so sit on me and I will tell you

where you ought to be.

PADA #20 - Amos Wilder

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:14:01 +0000

This nugget of gold is an epigraph in W D Davies’ ‘The Gospel and the Land’ which I am reading at this very moment in the British Library. It is taken from Amos N. Wilder’s Grace Confounding.

…He came where he wasn’t expected

as He always does,

though a few mages were tipped off.

He came where even the Apostles couldn’t go along,

in Nazareth of all places, on the edge of nowhere;

they had to place it in David’s home town.

He is always one step ahead of us;

the space-age calls for new maps

and its altars and holy places are not yet marked.

Really, though: how often do you get theology, biblical criticism, science fiction, and topography presented in no more than 9 lines of poem?

PADA # 17,18, and 19

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:12:11 +0000

Happy you! Today you get three poems about rain - because it’s been suitably April-showersy here in London town.

Don Paterson’s Rain, from his collection by the same name.

John Keats’ Fancy, full of personified nouns and seasons.

Sylvia Plath’s Black Book in Rainy Weather.

(I love this bit: With luck, / Trekking stubborn through this season / Of fatigue, I shall /Patch together a content /Of sorts.)

And finally, the full text of Rabindranath Tagore’s Rainy Day, in translation:

Sullen clouds are gathering fast over the black fringe of the
forest.
O child, do not go out!
The palm trees in a row by the lake are smiting their heads
against the dismal sky; the crows with their dragged wings are
silent on the tamarind branches, and the eastern bank of the river
is haunted by a deepening gloom.
Our cow is lowing loud, ties at the fence.
O child, wait here till I bring her into the stall.
Men have crowded into the flooded field to catch the fishes
as they escape from the overflowing ponds; the rain-water is
running in rills through the narrow lanes like a laughing boy who
has run away from his mother to tease her.
Listen, someone is shouting for the boatman at the ford.
O child, the daylight is dim, and the crossing at the ferry
is closed.
The sky seems to ride fast upon the madly rushing rain; the
water in the river is loud and impatient; women have hastened home
early from the Ganges with their filled pitchers.
The evening lamps must be made ready.
O child, do not go out!
The road to the market is desolate, the lane to the river is
slippery. The wind is roaring and struggling among the bamboo
branches like a wild beast tangled in a net.

PADA #16 Fitzgerald & Book Spine Poetry

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:58:54 +0000

Brainpickings.org celebrates National Poetry Month here.

And F Scott Fitzgerald’s ”On A Play Twice Seen”

Here in the figured dark I watch once more;

There with the curtain rolls a year away,

A year of years — There was an idle day

Of ours, when happy endings didn’t bore

Our unfermented souls, and rocks held ore:

Your little face beside me, wide-eyed, gay,

Smiled its own repertoire, while the poor play

Reached me as a faint ripple reaches shore.

Yawning and wondering an evening through

I watch alone — and chatterings of course

Spoil the one scene which somehow did have charms;

You wept a bit, and I grew sad for you

Right there, where Mr. X defends divorce

And What’s-Her-Name falls fainting in his arms.

PADA #15 - Howe Bird Boland O'Siadhail Nye

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:58:22 +0000

And another big fail in the PADA effort. I am resolving to be much more organised this week. In the meantime, here are oodles of goodies to make up for the past few days’ lamentable lacks of lyrics.

An interview with Marie Howe on NPR.

Andrew Bird in concert at SxSW 2012 (again, from NPR).

Eavan Boland’s An Elegy For My Mother In Which She Scarcely Appears.

Micheal O’Siadhail reading ‘Between’ and ‘Home’.

Naomi Shihab Nye and ‘Streets.’ Incidentally, her YA novel Habibi was a fave of mine in early middle school.

PADA #9, 10, 11 - Samuel Menashe

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:40:22 +0000

Where does the time get to? As an apology for missing the last two days of poem-a-day April, here’s a poem that is three poems and also one poem. (here as a jpg to deal with formatting woes)

Triptych

PADA #8 - One from the peanut gallery

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:17:56 +0000

Dear old Wendell knew a thing or two about Sundays being good for poem-ing. I offer a bit of ramble & scramble from my notepad. Regular programming of published poets will resume tomorrow.

‘Hiatuses in the habit of writing are difficult to break’

Now, suddenly, this need to make.
Have I been so long absent from
the wheel of a narrow sea vessel
accustomed to leaving things in its wake?
A verse, a ramble, a scribbled room
of a drafty castle:

the graphite-encumbered visions
I never can quite capture accurately,
though God knows I try. All trail behind
my making-ship as it sails incisions
in the gauzy surface of the sea,
miles from land,

on which somehow I have been marooned.
Here where I need no special set of legs
and where my made things follow logic,
argument and policy attuned
to the frequency of order. My hands beg,
though, for magic:

the chemistry of a whole, new thing
with a spine and story heretofore untold
and a tongue willing to use such phrases
without concern for their archaic twang.
But I have been landlocked here, ensnared
by the phases

of an unkind moon who has seen best
only to tide my ship beyond my reach.
Obscured by thick and busy fog, she might
still trail inspiration like precious ballast
but I cannot know from this distant beach,
out of sight.

(photo © betty wills)

PADA #7 Robert Grenier

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:52:58 +0000

Grenier’s “Sentences” is literally a box of notecards with sentences on them, read in a different order at every reading.

Take a glance at some here: http://www.whalecloth.org/grenier/sentences_.htm.

Poems or not?

PADA #6 - Dunstan Thompson (with a prologue)

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:55:41 +0000

Thompson is another poet about whom I heard through the Image Journal. You can read an editorial about him here. Before I get to his poem, though, a thought for the day.

Today during the ‘Last hour by the cross’ at Christ Church, I kept returning to the question “how can we live our faith bodily?” How can we live the cross bodily? Any of you reading from a Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or even just a high Anglican background will be shaking your heads at how long it took me to figure out the most obvious, basic way: to make the sign of the cross. In this action, we physically do what wordsmiths call ‘verbing a noun.’ We cross (noun > verb) ourselves. It’s utterly of-the-body, and in one sense is the precursor to all cross-shaped living which can flow out of it.

Recently, in a discussion about faith and science, a uni mate and I shared an eye-roll at those who will point out “evidence of Christianity” every time a cross-like shape is found in science, be it at the molecular level it in the shape of a protein, or in the division of cells, or the symmetry of galactic bodies. Let’s be frank: that sort of shape-happy ‘proofing’ is superstition. It does not prove beyond a doubt that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

Neither does making the sign of the cross prove someone to be Christian. But is it one way to start doing this bodily faith thing? I certainly find it less than comfortable! What if people see me and think I’m trying to be holier-than-thou? What if I’m doing it wrong? Will I be judged for saying In the name of our loving Parent, or Creator, or Mother, instead of Father from time to time? What if this is just another way of putting up an in-group/out-group boundary instead of creating unity among people of faith?

All those uncomfortable anxieties aside: something about this is also deeply comfortable in the sense that I feel I am giving a natural, physical assent to something: not a certain doctrine of the atonement, not the patriarchy of the church, not the superiority of uber-liturgical traditions…none of that. I am giving a natural, physical assent to Yeshua, a carpenter from Nazareth, God in the fullness of history bringing wholeness back to humanity. I am subverting the symbol a Roman instrument of torture and claiming it for the other side. I am observing Good Friday as Dunstan Thompson observes it in his poem ‘On a Crucifix:’

      See

Here at last

       is

     Love

PADA #5 - Amy Newman

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:07:36 +0000

Pantoums are one of those poetic forms that, when done well, look deceptively easy to write. They are NOT easy to write.

This poem’s knocking around at Christ Church this evening for Maundy Thursday. I discovered it in a recent issue of Image.

Pantoum for Seven Words | Amy Newman

Forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.
Blood, veins, infinity, the garden, your words
in metaphor: the whole story rises dark blue
in the trees’ green burdens, drenched with voice.

Blood, veins, infinity, the garden, your words
all dissolve, like the story itself, to myth
in the trees. Green burdens drenched with voice
blur the stories, insist and transform, bright leaves.

All dissolve, like the story itself, to myth.
A million habits arrange and rearrange
blur. The stories insist and transform bright leaves
beneath which, birds preening: forlorn, lost shapes.

A million habits arrange and rearrange,
provide: to shift, adjust, put right, perfect.
Beneath which birds, preening forlorn lost shapes,
is the first tree, the dark encroachment and the rest?

Provide: to shift, adjust, put right, perfect.
In metaphor the whole story rises dark blue.
Is the first tree the dark encroachment? And the rest?
Forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.

PADA #4 Liz Almond

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:53:48 +0000

What a wonderful little gem of a poem.

The Man Who’s Easy On The Eye Is On The Beach, from ‘YELP’

His wife has little plaits, crow’s feet. She teaches
him to unlearn Albanian, adopt demotic Greek
in which he learns to curse and swear,

to flit, sweet-talk, cook the boss’s books,
how to flatter, sell and never tear
well-sealed envelopes containing words

like ‘circumspect’, ‘discretion’.
Don’t talk to her, she’s on her own
You don’t know what she’s looking for,

if anything. She might be on the rebound
or fond of solitude, or full of grief,
she could be on the look-out

for someone with whom to correspond.
The man who’s easy on the eye
has surface shimmer like gold leaf

and if it’s stripped away you find
a swamp of dead brothers
the sister who jumped,

his mother’s burnt bread, smouldering,
his father’s broken shoulder
in its dirty sling.

This is the sealed envelope
even his mother-wife
can’t prise open.

PADA #3 - Wendell Berry

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:42:04 +0000

From Sabbath Poems

1983, II

The year relents, and free
Of work, I climb again
To where the old trees wait,
Time out of mind. I hear
Traffic down on the road,
Engines high overhead.
And then a quiet comes,
A cleft in time, silence
Of metal moved by fire;
The air holds little voices,
Titmice and chickadees,
Feeding through the treetops
Among the new small leaves,
Calling again to mind
The grace of circumstance,
Sabbath economy
In which all thought is song,
All labor is a dance.
The world is made at rest,
In ease of gravity.
I hear the ancient theme
In low world-shaping song
Sung by the falling stream.
Here where a rotting log
Has slowed the flow: a shelf
Of dark soil, level laid
Above the tumbled stone.
Roots fasten it in place.
It will be here a while;
What holds it here decays.
A richness from above,
Brought down, is held, and holds
A little while in flow.
Stem and leaf grow from it.
At cost of death, it has
A life. Thus falling founds,
Unmaking makes the world.

PADA #2 - What the thunder said

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:35:50 +0000

Welcome back to Poem-a-day April.

Maybe T. S. Eliot is a bit of an easy choice? Oh well. Enjoy. And read out loud if at all possible.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID (from ‘The Waste Land’) by T. S. Eliot

After the torch-light red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
                                If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

                      I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

National Poetry Month 2012

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 08:58:44 +0000

Get ready for a poem-a-day in April. Though the crafting of daily poems is more of an Advent aspiration for me, sharing other people’s work is good for any time of the year. Watch this space for poems / links to poems each day throughout April, and feel free to link through to your beloved poems or poets in the comments.

Today, in honor of her life and recent passing, is Adrienne Rich and ‘Planetarium.’

Sunday poem

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 10:39:25 +0000

(Despite all the aspects of her poetry about which critics might readily complain, C-Rose seriously shuts them all down when she churns out a contemplative jewel like this.)

Good Friday

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop

Thy blood’s slow loss,

And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon –

I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.

Denison Witmer, “Life Before Aesthetics.” I do like...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:58:35 +0000

Denison Witmer, “Life Before Aesthetics.”

I do like this song but sometime it feels weird listening to a song about living simply that has been produced using so many instruments. (The result of listening mostly just Denison + his guitar for quite a long time, I reckon.)

Women's History Month - film & book recs

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 19:04:00 +0000

Another post featuring films (and books too, this time). I had intended to be writing regular posts about both Lent and Women’s History Month, both of which are in danger of getting completely away from me if I don’t just jump in. Without further ado, then, I present to you an idiosyncratic list of films and books particularly suited to March, a.k.a. Women’s History Month. Many of them exist in both film and book versions.

Films

Frida- Basically this is Salma Hayek being awesome. A biopic of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo whose long-term injuries, the result of a bus accident when she was very young, shaped her vision of the world. Best scene: Frida sarcastically commenting on her then-husband Diego Rivera’s less-than-true-to-life mural: “the breasts…they lack gravity.”

Out of Africa – Based on the memoir of the same name by Isak Dinesen, the pen name Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The film draws its strength in equal parts from the stunning cinematography, talent of Meryl Streep, and complexity of issues tackled – colonialism’s end, love, grief, and rootedness.

The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri’s prose adapted for the silver screen. Although there are several main characters, I find that this story ultimately revolves around Ashima, the mother of the Indian family struggling with life in Boston, Massachusetts and the demands of being a first-generation immigrant.

Amelie – I used to be very weirded out by Audrey Tautou, my only interaction with her being the slightly creepy, clownish face associated with this film. At the persuasion of a good friend I finally watched it and can now completely see what the fuss was all about. This film is light, certainly, but soaked in colour, quirkiness and good will. Amelie conquers her debilitating shyness for herself, but does so by investing in the lives of others.

Whale Rider – I was so sad not to have time to re-watch this when it was on BBC iPlayer a month or so ago. A writer whom I greatly respect listed this film as one of “the best films about finding your voice (without finding a dude).” A young Maori woman & her family wrestle with her clan’s traditional primogeniture.

Wit– originally a play by Margaret Edson, this film features an unmissable Emma Thompson as Dr. Vivian Bearing, an academic who has spent her life becoming an expert in the work of John Donne at the expense of close personal relationships or much practical emotional intelligence, so it would seem. When she is diagnosed with Stage Four breast cancer, she must grapple with metaphysics in a way that is suddenly and painfully personal.

Novels / Poetry / Plays

The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks. Jane is 27, unmarried, and recently pregnant. Having been kicked out of her father’s home, she relocates to a boarding house in a seedy part of London, meets people whose lives mirror her own turmoil about the future.

The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy. The women living in the shadow’s of great mythic, historical and literary figures. Duffy makes plenty of statements with her witty poetry, this particular collection critiquing the male-dominated fields of western thought in favour of women’s stories.

Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds. This graphic novel is a modernization of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, which in my head is the English Gone with the Wind (or perhaps GWTW is the American FFTMC). Very flawed heroine who has a nose job and finds out that being beautiful really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley. This book, if I have not already said so on this blog, is everything that is right with the genre of books that happens to feature vampires. The protagonist, Sunshine, not only faces down some pretty badass vampires but also deals with ridiculously well-written and complex psychological themes around fugue / post-traumatic stress disorder and choosing / finding one’s vocation.

A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer. This is a YA book but completely worth a read. Nhamo’s mother has died and father is absent, and she is fleeing an arranged marriage in her village in Mozambique and traveling upriver to Zimbabwe. The dangers of the jungle, the lingering ghost of her mother, and her own path towards adulthood comprise a fascinating journey.

The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The only of Ingalls Wilder’s books published without any editing on the part of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, this tells the story of her first four years of marriage to Almanzo Wilder, in a much more adult tone than the eight ‘Little House’ books preceding it. Eking out a life on a farm in South Dakota (or not eking, as the case may be), facing the death of a child, and reacting to a quickly changing social and political environment, the story of Laura and Manly’s first years of marriage gives a depth to their characters that makes you want to go back and read all the little house books over again.

The Lark (L’Alouette) by Jean Anouilh, adapted into English by Lillian Hellman. A play about the last days of Joan of Arc’s life in which she remembers her campaign and leadership. Without giving too much away, the play has a rather interesting and unexpected twist and is worth a read and certainly a view if it’s on near you. (You can find another English adaptation here).

Watch this space - Rhian P's photography

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:28:02 +0000

Watch this space - Rhian P's photography:

The lovely and talented Rhian Pearse, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy her photoblog as it takes off.

Filmstravaganza '12

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:50:51 +0000

As the Oscars approach and I realize I have seen a grand and pathetic total of 5 films of all those nominated, I once again compile a list of those upcoming ones which sound worth trekking to the cinema to see. Most of these are horrendously mainstream, I should add, but I’ll leave it to good recommendations, RichMix, Ryan and happenstance to clue me in to more limited-release films.

World War Z (December 20120, starring Brad Pitt) – I must say I am chompin’ at the bit for this one. Ever since the wonderful Hannah Spiring posted me a copy of Max Brooks’ “Zombie Survival Guide” for my 23^rd birthday (the only one of the past four I have spent without the pleasure of her company), I have been looking forward to this adaptation of his novel. Not sure how I feel about Brad Pitt in it – outside of ‘Benjamin Button’ and more importantly ‘Burn After Reading’ I find his characters rather dull and indistinguishable – but maybe he does have skillz to bring to the zombie genre. Hopefully the lack of any ‘Godspeed You! Black Emperor’ montages featuring an half-trepanned Cillian Murphy won’t hinder this film.

The Woman in Black (February 2012, starring Daniel Radcliffe) – Okay, okay, so he played Harry Potter in 8 films. I feel for the guy. Having to play an increasingly whiny stock hero character with a lamentable inability to change the style of his spectacles could either be disastrous for his acting career, or provide it the perfect springboard off which to launch (think, his recent run in ‘Equus’, a veritable AntiPotter). The first time I saw this play in the West End was one of the most terrifying experiences of theatre (stage or film) I have had to date, resulting in a sprint home from the bus stop (in heels) and a night spent sleeping on the floor of the friend with whom I’d seen the play, because neither of us wanted to sleep alone. Here’s hoping that the film retains the play’s excellent pacing, clever script and subtle horror.

Moonrise Kingdom(May 2012, by Wes Anderson) As usual, Anderson takes a tried-and-true topic (here, the Great American Summer Camp Experience with a little Coming Of Age Romance thrown in) and does his quirky, postmodern, hipster thing. I’m still pretty faithful to the Darjeeling Limited as my favorite of his, but am willing to be persuaded otherwise.

Wettest County (August 2012, starring Tom Hardy, Shia LeBouf, Mia Wasikowska, Guy Pearce) That list of stars basically explains why I’d like to see this film, although the premise – two bootlegging brothers brushing up against the law in Appalachia – doesn’t sound too shabby, either.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (June 2012, starring Steve Carell and Kiera Knightley) I’m intrigued by this. Part sci-fi/apocalyptic storyline (an asteroid is nearing Earth which it may impact in a rather unhelpful way) and part romantic drama (a man whose wife has left him goes looking for his high school sweetheart). If Steve Carell can keep up the self-effacingly funny guy he was in ‘Dan in Real Life’ whilst dealing with the end of life as we know it, I’ll be impressed. A little weirded out, but impressed.

Lincoln (December 2012 starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sally Field) Considerably more historically accurate than the other Lincoln-centric film slated to come out this year, I am a little sceptical of Spielberg’s ability to avoid sentimentalizing this president, simultaneously one of America’s most lauded and criticized (during his time and afterwards). But DDL & JGL together are pretty incapable of disappointing, and really, can you think of anyone better to play the absolute nutter who was Mary Todd Lincoln?

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (June 2012, starring Benjamin Walker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus Sewell) Speaking of that other Lincoln film: this is it. The stretch of supernaturally skewed literary/historical rewrites (Pride and Predjudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters) was basically begging to jump onto screen, and I hear tell that this is going to be produced by Tim Burton, which flings it at least midway up my must-see list. But the real reason I want to see this is that Alan Tudyk is playing Stephen A. Douglas, the Great Emancipator.

Skyfall (November 2012 starring Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem, Ben Whishaw) Dear James Bond, have you taken a dose of emo-be-gone? Not that I have any problems with you grappling with your emotional issues, I just wish your chroniclers would let you do it verbally, instead of repressing it all and Blowing Up Lots of Shit. Because that’s what Quantum of Solace was. Anyhow, I can’t wait for you to share the screen with Lord Vol…er… Ralph Fiennes, the how-did-the-world-ever-cope-without-her Dame Judi, and fantastic Ben Whishaw as the new and improved ‘Q.’ But please, for heaven’s sake, say what you need to say. I’m afraid if you keep it all inside the pressure will distort your ridiculously chiselled jaw. Yours sincerely, &c &c.

The Hobbit, part 1(December 2012, starring Martin Freeman + LOTS) I can just feel the nerd in me flipping out for it already, although I remain a bit worried that this is just going to be Another Excuse to Be Epic, in the vein of the LOTR trilogy, when the Hobbit really isn’t supposed to be the same type of literature. LOTR is an alternate history, if you will, to fit the western mind. A saga to encompass the mythologies left on the edges of other great sagas. The hobbit, written before this, touches on some of the themes and threads to be revived in LOTR, but it is at its heart an adventure tale very aptly summed up by “there and back again.” I can’t help but expect the grandiosity to take over the humanity (hobbitity?), but then again, I do want to see Peter Jackson’s conception of Smaug. And Dale. And Beorn. And the eagles’ eyrie. And the forest.

The Great Gatsby (December 2012, starring Leo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan) “Our boats beat against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.” Ah, F. Scott Fitzgerald and all his fantastic period glamour and melancholy. I can’t help but think this is going to be great, although the ennui of the privileged seems an ever-increasingly ironic subject matter given the current economic climate. Oh, did I mention Baz Luhrman’s directing it? Perhaps it won’t be filled with ennui after all.

The Raven (March 2012, starring John Cusack and Luke Evans) A fictionalized account of the last days of Edgar Allen Poe’s life, involving him solving crimes based on his stories? Be still, my inner literary geek heart. I am not sure what the quality of this film is going to be, but I most certainly would like to see it. Quite curious as to whether it will be revisionist enough as to come up with an alternate cause for Poe’s death (besides him being found very ill, under the influence and incoherent in a gutter, to die shortly after).

Mysterious Untitled Terrence Malick film (2012? Starring?) All I know about this I learned from IMDB. When does it get a title? When does it come out? Why is Terrence Malick so prolific all of a sudden?

Les Miserables (December 2012, starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathway, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter) This cast feels a bit unbalanced, but then again, the French Revolution was a topsy-turvy time. Cohen & Bonham Carter as the Thenardiers are what’s drawing me to this one.

…and that’s all for now, folks. Which films are you excited about seeing this year?