In two weeks, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears opens! Well, at least with certain values of open: It’s released on February 27, 2020, in Australia. Here’s the trailer:
Looks very much like an upgraded version of the tv series, so it should be fun. (Apart from the bad trigger discipline, but I fully admit I’m very sensitive about that.)
I haven’t yet seen confirmed dates for Europe or North America; one site gave March for U.S. and a tv channel March 23 for their streaming date; no sources have confirmed theatrical release details, though. If anyone has seen firm dates, please let us know!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Each February, if conditions allow the seasonal Horsetail waterfall in Yosemite National Park in California to flow, the waterfall appears to be set ablaze by the setting sun. This event is known as the firefall (apparently as homage to Yosemite Firefall).
Just stunning! Why hasn’t anyone put this kind of an effect into a story yet—or have I just missed it? Anyone know???
The visuals continue to be as gorgeous as in the first trailer. (Suprise, surprise.) If I ever were to see this, it’d be mostly for the eye candy; the story hasn’t really drawn me in, at least in its earlier iterations, and as far as these two trailers go, they’ve not changed the situation. Well, there is Rosalind Chao, who is thoroughly awesome.
We’ll probably see it on disc eventually: giving our local library some circ stats isn’t a bad thing.
Mulan is expected to release March 27, 2020.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
This photo project is an older one, but due to the buzz generated by The Witcher screen adaptation it might be of interest.
(FYI: I can’t find a webpage dedicated solely to the project, so what I know mainly comes from an article at Design You Trust.)
Polish photographer and graphic designer Marcin Nagraba collaborated with designer Agnieszka Osipa to create a photoshoot entitled Pagan Poetry. Stylistically it can be described as Slavic fusion meets myth, fantasy, or Baroque. Osipa’s outfits certainly are out of this world—just check out the three examples below!
Nagraba’s personal Facebook page states he’s a “Former Photographer at Marcin Nagraba – Photography & Art”, so it sounds like he will not be continuing this project. Osipa is active, however, and she’s posting new work on Instagram and Facebook.
Britain’s Cheddar Man has gotten company: a DNA analysis of remnants left in a wad of chewed birch pitch from 5,700 years ago in Denmark showed that the chewer was a woman and likely had dark skin, dark brown hair, and blue eyes.
The pitch was found at Syltholm, a Late Mesolithic / Early Neolithic site, on the southern coast of Lolland island, Denmark. Apart from the human DNA, it contained also microbial DNA (from the chewer’s oral microbiome) as well as plant and animal DNA potentially from a recent meal.
Denmark’s coastline 6,000 years ago and the findsite of the chewed birch pitch at Syltholm on Lolland
Like the Cheddar Man, the Syltholm individual was genetically more closely related to western hunter-gatherers from mainland Europe than hunter-gatherers from central Scandinavia. It’s even possible that some hunter-gatherer groups genetically distinct from Neolithic farming communities survived for much longer than previously assumed, says the study.
It’s very exciting to be able to compare data from DNA analyses with archaeology; maybe one day we can also combine linguistic research to try to tease out even more details about our ancient ancestry.
My only complaint is that the process is so slow—think of how much more we could do in an entirely peaceful world, say, with no military budgets to hog the funding for humanities. (Oh, hey—there might be a bit more of a Star Trek fan in me than I previously thought.) It’s a good time to be an early history geek anyway. 🙂
Not bad, huh? When I heard the sequel was going to be set in the 1980s, I cringed (I’ve been there once; don’t want a repeat, thank you). But this is actually looking promising—many of the painful bits I remember are hidden away and the period even looks mildly innocuous.
But but but! Chris Pine returns as Steve Trevor?!? I get that this is a superhero movie, but to pretend they can supposedly return people from the dead with 1980s tech? C’mon. Srsly. I don’t think I can suspend my disbelief that much. (Because, if it was mythical Amazon or god tech bringing people back, surely they also would’ve mentioned it in the original and brought back Antiope? Unless they’re also doing that in this film?!? Otherwise it really stinks of a bad case of Deus ex Machina.)
Despite its problems, overall I did like the first WW. Apart from the era and the implausible return of the obligatory heartthrob, I have fairly high hopes of the sequel, too. And apart from Patty Jenkins directing, she also co-wrote the screenplay along with Geoff Johns and Cave Callaham; I’ve seen some of their work and thought it was at least decent. Also, director of photography Matthew Jensen makes a return; along with the first WW, I’ve seen his work in Game of Thrones, CSI, and the 2015 reboot of Fantastic Four, and liked it. Finally, to borrow a line from a friend: “Also they had me at Blue Monday so whatever.” 🙂
According to IMDB, WW84 is expected on June 05, 2020.
Oh, yeah; 2020 is gonna be a pretty good movie year for us!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
The cayuga duck is a breed known for its black to metallic green plumage, and—just like the black squirrels in NYC—to me they look absolutely marvellous!
There seems to be disagreement over the breed’s origin, but according to Wikipedia they were popularized around the Finger Lakes region (Cayuga being one) of the state of New York.
Looking cayugas up also taught me that drake is the English word for a male duck. Live and learn!
The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?
“Affair with a dancer? But of course, my dear—he had an affair with Katrina. Katrina Samoushenka. You must have seen her? Oh, my dear—too delicious. Lovely technique. The Swan of Tuolela [sic]—you must have seen that?”
– Ambrose Vandel in The Labors of Hercules by Agatha Christie (original emphasis)
The Swan of Tuonela is a tone poem about the realm of the dead by composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), and part of his Lemminkäinen Suite of Four Legends from the Kalevala. Considering his international fame at the beginning of the 20th century, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that he was mentioned in a book published in the 1930s, but I confess I was a bit startled.
Christie, Agatha. The Labors of Hercules. New York, NY: Berkley Books, 1986 [orig. published 1939], p. 62.
Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.
My 2020 started less than optimally with a cold / flu (jury’s still out). The good thing, though, about being awake at 5 a.m. and incapable of much else, is that flying around Azeroth at a time you don’t normally see shows a whole different side to things.
This view is westwards from the northwestern shore of Drustvar. Very Northern Lights-esque and pretty!
Image: screencap from World of Warcraft
This post has been updated.
Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.
During my years in the U.S., I’ve been asked more than one variation of the question “Is it always cold?” in Finland. (The short answer, of course, is No; the long answer is It depends on your definition, and when and where in Finland you are. It CAN be cold, but “always”, no.)
What southern people don’t usually realize is that it’s not the winter cold but the long dark that affects you most. (Of course, as a counterpoint, we do also have the magical light summer nights.)
Besides, the dark isn’t all bad. Away from light pollution there is the Milky Way on clear nights, and the further north you go, the higher are your chances of seeing northern lights. The latter can range from faint whisps to quite a light show.
For your potential worldbuilding inspiration, here is a small selection of Flickr photos roughly from around where I grew up, including travel destinations in the north.
For me, and indeed most other Finns, winter starts some time in November to December, depending on the temperatures each year. And even though technically I didn’t grow up with the polar night (when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon at all), it was quite dark especially before the snow fell—which is exactly why getting snow on the ground was such a relief.
The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?
