also, two-headed dog

[freckles_and_doubt]

Department of Academic Gloating: the approved cover design for my book arrived today. It's stunning - as per my suggestion they've used Ursula Vernon's art deco nouveau "Beauty and the Beast", and done the whole thing with a corresponding art deco nouveau feel and exceptionally beautiful fontage. I am a very, very happy proto-author. I'm also a chapter away from finishing the edit review, which is a good feeling. Current peeve: the copy-editor has taken out all my uses of inverted commas as distance quotes and added "so-called" instead. This annoys me, and there has been much throwing about of stettage. I am also somewhat miffed by her refusal to accept "formulae" as a plural. "Formulas" just looks all wrong to me. Still, she has managed to remove a positively ridiculous, if not indecent, incidence of the completely spurious word "itself", so it possibly all comes out in the wash.

Fired with near-completion, not to mention hopeless fangirliness, I took myself off to see X-Files: I Want To Believe last night. I have heard, from various sources, differing things about this film:

1. It's just like an X-Files episode, and therefore dull and disappointing. (Half of Teh Internets).
   
2. It's just like an X-Files episode, and therefore wow, squeee! (The other half of Teh Internets).
   
3. OMG Mulder and Scully are old and ugly! (Different half of Teh Internets).
   
4. OMG Mulder and Scully are still hot! (Other different half of Teh Internets).
   
5. It's really dark and depressing. (jo&stv).

The upshot of all of this was that I didn't have very high expectations, as a possibly direct result of which I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I think Chris Carter actually went seriously out of his way to provide an antidote to the (equally enjoyable) giant!underground!arctic!alien!spaceship!-vibe of the first movie - this was low budget, gritty and real, with the focus away from special effects and towards the psychological and philosophical interactions which were always the strength of the series, anyway. The games the writers play with self-conscious use of the series clichés are particularly entertaining; I loved the classic X-Filesy driving-a-country-road-at-night opening.

Overall I found it a surprisingly adult and thoughtful film, although really I shouldn't be surprised, the series always had the capacity to deliver that, however interspersed with goofy humour, weird science and grandiose paranoid conspiracy. I'm also revolving some kind of theory as to the symbolic function of snow for Chris Carter; apart from its obvious provision of freeze/thaw motifs for both meaning and emotion, it's visually very effective, and the film was beautifully shot. (The end credits were particularly lovely).

Overall, I think I fall into category 2, with a side helping of category 4, except that, while it's well presented, goofily endearing and eccentrically realistic, Mulder/Scully is just weird.