The PAC Dance Team from Walden Grove High School in Sahuarita, Arizona, went above and beyond in their Marvel Homecoming Assembly Dance performance:
“Marvel” Homecoming Assembly Dance by ThePac Walden Grove on YouTube
Based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the performance recaps the story of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
You go, kids! đ
Found via File 770.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Emmy Award winning screenwriter Andrew Davies has adapted Jane Austenâs last, unfinished work Sanditon into an 8-episode series. To my knowledge it hasn’t been adapted for the big screen before, so this is rather a big thing!
Here’s the trailer:
Sanditon Preview by Masterpiece PBS on YouTube
Among the big names in the production are Rose Williams as Charlotte Heywood (e.g. in Medici) and Theo James as Sidney Parker (the Divergent movies, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, among others). Anne Reid as Lady Denham is also a well-known career actor (I mostly remember her from Doctor Who âSmith and Jonesââthe Judoon on the moon episode).
I heard through the grapevine that Davies will move entirely away from Austen’s material after the first half of the first episode. Wow, that’s soon! I did already notice a number of character names not found in the book in the IMDB listing. I hope Davies will not go overboard, though; I’ve seen a number of his adaptations, and he can be a bit of a hit or miss for me.
The U.S. release set to 2020. Canât wait!
Found via Frock Flicks.
This post has been edited to update a removed link to video.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Redemption in Indigo was Karen Lord’s first published novel. It won a number of awards and nominations, including the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.
The description from Lord’s website reads:
âPaamaâs husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parentsâ home in the village of Makendha, now heâs disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying onesâthe djombiâwho present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.â
Redemption in Indigo has been called a contemporary fairy tale, a mix of Caribbean and Senegalese influences (chapters 1-3 are based on the latter), and a story of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit, complete with trickster spiders.
I found Redemption in Indigo intriguing and refreshing. Since it pulls from such different traditions than my native northern Finnish ones, I did occasionally have to consciously stop and adjust my expectations (like I did when I was reading Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death).
Anyway. Paama’s humor was a delight, slightly sarcastic at times, and I’m definitely a fan of well-crafted sarcasm (like Jane Austen’s). Her bit-of-a-dumbo husband Ansige cannot control his appetite, with consequences bordering the ridiculous. Lord also made some interesting structural choices which nod towards oral storytelling traditions.
The most enjoyable feature of the novel, however, was how seemingly small scale beginnings (a wife walking out on her husband) actually turned into life and death siatuations, and, yet, that wasn’t turned into a DRAMATIC OMG IT’S THE END OF THE KINGDOM / EMPIRE / WORLD (again)TM story like so many western fantasy novels tend to be. Lord’s subtle telling just rolls smoothly on, forcing the reader to pay attention. I had more than one âWait, what?â moment… Which, to be explicit, is a good thing!
Dr. Lord is a Barbadian ownvoices author, editor, and research consultant. Visit Lord’s website for more.
Image by Eppu Jensen
ICBIHRTBâpronounced ICK-bert-beeâis short for ‘I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read This Before’. It’s an occasional feature for book classics that have for some reason escaped our notice thus far.
Another adaptation of the hugely successful tv series Game of Thrones is out. Embroiderers at the Ulster Museum and the Ulster Folk Museum produced a 77-meter long textile in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Originally the embroidery depicted events, locations, and story from seasons 1 through 7, but in June 2019 further panels depicting season 8 were due to be added.
The R-rated tapestry was on display at the Ulster Museum earlier this year, but the exhibition page and a few small photos are still up on their website.
While we loved the production values for the show and the intricacy of the writing, we stopped watching after season 3 due to the upsetting amount of violence. I do confess, however, that this project really tickles the textile history geek part of my brain!
Found via Helsingin Sanomat (NB. Finnish only).
Images: Embroiderers at work by Paul Faith / AFP via Helsingin Sanomat. The others: Tourism NI via National Museums Northern Ireland.
The first trailer for the Star Trek spinoff Picard was released at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, and it’s looking mighty fine:
Star Trek: Picard | SDCC Trailer – Sir Patrick Stewart Returns by CBS All Access on YouTube
Like Discovery, it’s absolutely breathtaking visually! I do wish technology had been more advanced when TNG and DS9 were filmed.
Storywise, I’m not quite as excited, though, for the borg stories never interested me. I will probably want to see this, however, since Sir Patrick Stewart is incomparable. Also, it would be a joy to see some old faces like Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine).
Any thoughts you had?
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Disney is making a live action version of their animated story Mulan, and the first trailer is out:
Disney’s Mulan – Official Teaser by Walt Disney Studios on YouTube
As far as the look goes, I’m all in favor of the live action oneâhow absolutely gorgeous! So far we can’t say how much the story may have been tweaked or which supporting characters might have been omitted, but I can’t say I’d lose much sleep over the loss of talking animals doing goofy gags in the sidelines.
According to IMDB, Mulan‘s U.S. release date is set on March 27, 2020.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
One reason I love my fellow geeks and nerds so much is the dedication we put into things we care about. Exhibit number 18,452: a Minas Tirith wedding cake.
Photographer Jenny Wenny gives only this detail about it: âMinas Tirith wedding cake at the Enchanted Forestâ; sadly no other information is available at all.
Isn’t it astounding, though? So incredibly detailed I wouldn’t want to touch it! And even though it’s a few levels short of its literary model, the adaptation works for its intended purpose perfectly. Kudos to the creator(s)!
Image by Jenny Wenny on Flickr.
Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!
Melissa Ng and her husband hacked their IKEA bookcases with a space peel-and-stick wall mural. The results certainly have more than a bit wow factor:
So cool, isn’t it?
I wonder whether there is any fantasy-themed peel-and-stick wallpaperâI noticed myself daydreaming of scifi book shelves backed with space murals, fantasy shelves with amazing forests or creatures, history with vintage wood or brick or castles, etc.
Found via IKEAhackers.
In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
Under the moniker FXitinPost, visual effects artist Christopher Clements made an unofficial, improved scene for Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope and seamlessly inserted it into the movie. The resulting six-minute clip is all about the final confrontation between Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader, and definitely worth a watch:
Star Wars SC 38 Reimagined by FXitinPost on YouTube
I don’t know whether they had any skill or not, but if Alec Guinness and David Prowse were not competent sword fighers, it’s understandable the scene looks like it does. I have to confess, though, that the clunkiness of the fight has been long bugging me; it also stands out since Lucas retroactively changed so many other scenes. Clements’ version is much more in line with Jedi abilities and includes many intriguing creative choices on how to use the space on the Death Star. Kudos!
In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
OohâI knew cosplayers were an ingenious group, but this is awesome: cosplayers portray Disney princesses in Boba Fett -like armor:
Oh my goodness, the leaf detailing on the Pocahontas / Fett helmet! And the detailing in generalâlove it!
The photography is credited to Jonathan York who posts his photos as York In A Box. I haven’t been to confirm it, since Facebook has been glitching for me for some reason. It would’ve been great to read more about the setup and the individual cosplayers’ thoughts.
(I did some searching elsewhere, too, but my google fu fails me for the moment. If you can find a different link, please share!)
Found via Queens-of-Cosplay on Tumblr.
Images by Jonathan York / York In A Box via Tumblr.
Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.
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