On Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" (spoiler-free)

I officially like Syfy's Alice over Burton's, much as I love Tim Burton as a general rule. While it was an enjoyable film, it still...dragged? I think the group consensus was that the story moved quickly, and yet it was a kinda boring story. Visually interesting, but oddly slow. I kept waiting for Something Big and Interesting to happen, and it sorta never really did. Perhaps the film is suffering from its own hype? Overall it is not, by any stretch, a bad film. Was it worth paying full price for (always my barometer of movie-worthiness)...? Eh, I'm not so sure.

If you have the option of seeing it in IMAX 3D, don't bother. (Of course my first ever 3D film was Avatar so I may be a lot biased. IDK.)

Anyone else seen it yet and have thoughts?

Op-Ed: Protect voter gains of 'Bloody Sunday'

On Sunday we commemorate the courage and sacrifice of 600 men and women who dared 45 years ago to take the first steps in a 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital, Montgomery, for the right to vote. That day, Sunday, March 7, 1965, would come to be known as "Bloody Sunday."

As these unarmed civil rights patriots attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where fewer than one percent of eligible black voters were allowed to register, they were gassed and beaten with billy clubs by state and local police, some on horseback, ordered to break up the demonstration.

Captured by television cameras and broadcast nationwide, the suffering of these nonviolent activists, 50 of whom required hospitalization, awoke the nation's consciousness to the importance of voting rights and the entire civil rights movement.

Within 10 days, President Johnson would send a bill to Congress, the National Voting Rights Act of 1965, that would outlaw the discriminatory Jim Crow-era practices that had long worked to disenfranchise African-Americans and other minorities across the United States.

Forty-five years later, the right for which marchers in Alabama bled remains out of reach for many Americans. In many states, minority voters encounter obstacles at every step of the voting process, from registration to casting a ballot.

(Read the rest of this op-ed on CNN.com)

via erinm_4600

~ Anyone who looks at this entry wants to do this has to post this meme and their current wallpaper.
~ Explain in no more than five sentences why you're using that wallpaper.
~ Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!



I change my wallpaper seasonally; this is Winter.
It took me a little while (and a few interim wallpapers), but I finally settled on this scene in particular because of the element of light.
Other snow-scenes or winter-bare trees were too dark or depressing.
My other Winter wallpapers tend to be variations on fire (fire dancing, flames, phoenix shapes in fire), dark colors, space, or Moya.