Reflecting on Lord Dunsany's Book of Wonder

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957) Yes. I own a book stolen from a library.

“The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Their evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of famine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would soon be full again.”

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Bob Anderson Will Be Missed

Bob Anderson in the Vader costume, but without the dark helmet. He almost didn't get credit for his work as saber-Vader, as George Lucas didn't want to take credit from David Prowse. But you can't keep a great artist behind the plastic mask forever.While trawling the Charlotte Observer this morning, I read that Hollywood swordmaster Bob Anderson has died on New Year's Day.

He was an Olympic fencer for Great Britain in the 1950's who went on to work in movies as a swordmaster: you can see him fencing as Darth Vader in the first Star Wars movies.

He made onscreen sword-fighting a ballet, an art, something worth watching that contributed to both characterization and the story.  He was inventive at finding ways to make sword fights comedic, spirited, or adventuresome, and used style to say something about the characters: consider Darth Vaders' heavy hammering of Luke Skywalker on the bridge of Cloud City, or old Obi-Wan Kenobi's elegant, elusive spin away from Vader's jabs.  Or Aragorn's instinctive awareness of enemies behind him.  These small moves in fight sequences say things about each character.  Anderson really understood that you can't divorce a fighting style from the personality, at least not in art.

He staged sword (and light-saber) fights and trained the actors for the in the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Highlander, James Bond, and Zorro franchises, as well as choreographing and training the actors for the brilliantly comedic fencing scene in The Princess Bride, which I think may be his best work.

Notice in the video below the sword-play's casual, effortless elegance forming an ironic dramatic bedrock for the funny dialogue and a shift in the relationship between two major characters.   Momentum shifts between them several times as they advance and retreat from one another, fighting through one another's secrets and building towards mutual recognition.  They begin as unknown quantities to one another, but learn to know one another through the fencing, and gradually develop a mutual respect that carries the story forward:

If you didn't notice the first time through, watch again how The Man In Black wrongfoots Inigo by maintaining his fencing discipline and calm as well as his secret identity.  When Inigo, the drunken and emotionally turbulent Spaniard, does lose, it's because of a series of wild, emotional cuts with his blade that show his recognition that he is outclassed by a man he cannot truly understand.  And yet they share in common deep love of different kinds, and they are (as The Man In Black recognizes) peers of a kind.

Bob Anderson's art will be missed. 

Some of his last work will be seen in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit.

A Hobbit In Full

File this under value-for-money.

I want to work up the Dwarves' song as a klezmer hit.

And Speaking of Culture...

You know, really.  Neil Gaiman, Adam Savage and Gollum all in one video.

My daughter sends me stuff like this.

And It Just Keeps Coming

Mom's bad day is a blood clot on her lung.  Not unexpected, but, well, hell.

I walked with her bed down to the CT.

She was a little groggy. 

But she had enough wit to see the guy transporting her bed, a long-haired slender young guy named Scott.

She pointed at him and whispered something.

I bent down and heard her croak through her throat tube as she pointed over her shoulder at Scott: "Legolas."

Now she's back in bed, holding to her pain-button. 

I can hear her breathing.

Ringing The Bell

Updated on Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 11:37PM by Otter

I'm with mom tonight. Tired, emotionally and physically, beyond any saying.  This will be a short, and probably weird post.

My mom's father was a county ordinary (judge). He had this brass bell that belonged to a father or uncle or something: a schoolmaster in the same county.  I should pin down these details.

It's sitting beside mom's bed. Now and again a little "clang" comes from her room. I go and see what's up: a need for a pillow to be moved, an IV that feels off, a need to know that dad got home alright.

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Myth: What Is It?

On a homeschooling forum some of us were discussing C.S. Lewis and myth, and the notion that Genesis 1-11 is a "myth."

From The Mailbag:

I think I need to understand Myth better.

 I think I might be able to help you with that.

A "myth" is a story.

It aims to structure some aspect of experience by giving you a way of imagining  things you otherwise couldn't imagine.

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