Brief notes
I'm about three-quarters asleep, and should've been in bed an hour or two ago, but it occurs to me that writing a quick entry will reduce the number of things running through my brain and thereby make it easier for me to sleep, so here goes:
Mary Anne arrived Friday evening; great to see her, of course. We spent most of the day Saturday working; I got through one of my three major tasks planned for Saturday, which I suppose is all I really could've expected. Saturday evening, Indian food followed by renting Disney's Atlantis.
Everyone I've talked to who's seen the movie has told me that it had some decent visuals but was otherwise mediocre at best. It may've been the resulting low expectations that caused me to enjoy it a fair bit. I laughed out loud numerous times (at intentionally funny bits); I thought the visuals were mostly quite nice; I really liked the design of the submarine, the lobster-monster, the Journey to the Center of the Earth-style drilling machine, the flying fish-vehicles (especially the ones with the long sinuous tails), and the early-20th-century technology that shows up late in the film (it would be too much of a spoiler to say what it is). The cast largely does a fine job: Michael J. Fox perfectly good (if unexceptional) in the lead as Milo Thatch, Phil Morris (who's been in various things in the past, including half a dozen Star Trek episodes and movies and even a B5 episode) (and in fact his first role was as one of the kids in the ST:TOS episode "Miri" in 1966!) as my second-favorite character in the movie, an excellent big-black-guy half-American-Indian doctor (he'll be reprising this role in the upcoming Team Atlantis TV series, which I imagine will be dreadful but oh well), James Garner doing a very nice turn as the military leader of the expedition, Don "Father Guido Sarducci" Novello as an Italian demolitions nut, Leonard Nimoy of all people as the Atlantean King, and, best of all, Claudia Christian as Helga, the sexy blonde femme fatale, lifted straight out of Terry and the Pirates (I think) and any number of 1940s comic books and perhaps movies as well. I didn't recognize her voice until her last line in the movie, alas, but even without that, I'd have to rank her as the sexiest female character to appear in an animated Disney feature. Zowie. (The Atlantean princess is pretty cute, too, but looks much more like a generic Disney heroine.) . . . Oh, and Audrey, the 14-year-old Latina chief mechanic, was a fine character, but seemed to me to be a refugee from another movie entirely. Oh, well; at least there were no Cute Animal Sidekicks in this movie.
So even though there are holes in the plot big enough to drive an undersea city through, and even though the movie bears a strong and suspicious resemblance to Titan: A.E. in far too many respects, I would say it's worth watching, especially now that it's available on video.
Lessee. So today we headed up to Berkeley a bit after noon, attending Nick Mamatas's and Joi Brozek's readings at Dark Carnival. Good readings (bought Nick's book), good bookstore (had never been there before).
Continued on to Au Coquelet, legendary Berkeley café, where a bunch of us hung out and chatted for a couple hours, then onward to Thai food for dinner and more chatting. Good stuff. Too sleepy to say anything more than that.
Definitely time for bed.