Odds and ends

[catherineldf]

Pleasant weekend thus far, filled with succeed. Had friends over Friday night for homemade soup and goodies and the watching of Blood: The Last Vampire. This was, outside the scope of all expectation, a fairly decent movie. I picked it up at our local video place (Movies on 35th) because it had a wuxia-style Babe with a Blade cover and I'm totally the target audience for that. I'll pick up any film featuring women with swords, but I'm a major fangrrl of the Hong Kong/Taiwan/Korean films in particular, since they're usually the most interesting. Blood is a live action spinoff from an anime series, with a plot involving a half-human, half-vampire vampire hunter and her quest to kill the vampire queen (along with a lot of other vamps). There's a side plot in which she rescues an American teenager whose father's been killed by the good guys who turn out to be the bad guys. It's supposed to be 1970s-era Japan, complete with lots of references to the Viet Nam War, but with cheesy CGI effects (the vamps turn into something that looks like a dragon fetus with wings). But cheesy CGI aside, the acting's not bad, the American teenager turns from a shrieky victim to a pretty effective sidekick and the story line's got some interesting twists. I liked it much better than some of the recent films of its type that I've seen. Not Wing Chun or Dragon Inn or Peking Opera Blues by any means but a good time anyway. Saturday was a whirlwind trip to lovely Menominee, WI, for lunch at The Creamery in Downsville, followed by a holiday gathering at Kelly and Laura McCullough's place. We got to be there to see Kelly gifted with a copy of the cover painting from his first novel, rendered on black velvet, which was beyond awesome. Got in some pleasant social time, then drove off to St. Paul for another holiday gathering, this one of book artists so no black velvet paintings here. At one point, I ended sitting around with  gallery owner Susan Hensel comparing iPhone apps, to the mild annoyance and amusement of my beloved. She mumbled something about "geek crack." :-) Can't think where she got that idea, seeing as using the iPhone is now known as "Consulting the Oracle" in our household. Today, it's been errands and now hopefully writing and laundry and other useful things.