Friday, November 9, 2012
DEN OF GEEK geeks out over MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO
Great animation is like a lens, providing a fresh perspective on the world around us. This is perhaps why, of all Studio Ghibli's animated features, My Neighbor Totoro stands as its most beautiful achievement - even compared to undoubted classics such as Castle In The Sky, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, or any of its other major works you care to name. Devoid of a strict three-act plot, villains, violence or peril, My Neighbor Totoro is, even by artist and animator Hayao Miyazaki's standards, a gentle tale. Although some critics were nonplussed by Totoro's slight narrative when it appeared in US cinemas in the 1990s, it's the pace and rhythm of Miyazaki's story that makes it so timeless and captivating...
click here to read the rest
Thursday, November 8, 2012
IN THE MOUTH OF DORKNESS has a big bucket of reviews and thoughts and things and stuff...
Not much in the way of Dork life for most of the week. But on Friday night, there was another meeting of the Justice League of Extraordinary Book Club. This month, for Halloween, we read the Hellboy anthology The Chained Coffin. I was surprised (and very happy) that folks seemed to really like it. Much more than I was expecting. And several people expressed interest in reading more (Jill’s already started). Hellboy is so rooted in the things I love. The weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson, and others; the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and others; Judeo-Christian mythology; medieval history and legend; the pulps like The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Spider; and so many more...
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
In honor of the election- Suddenly conservatives freaking out... CONSERVATIVES FREAKING OUT EVERYWHERE!!!!
Sympathtic GIFs included at no extra charge...
So, in conclusion...
Let's everyone wish my wife a happy birthday today!!!
The ancient Egyptians had d20's? MAKE A SAVING THROW VERSUS AWESOME!!!!
Romans may have used 20-Sided die almost two millennia before D&D, but people in ancient Egypt were casting icosahedra even earlier. Pictured above is a twenty-faced die dating from somewhere between 304 and 30 B.C., a timespan also known as Egypt's Ptolemaic Period...
