Movies in November

It's been more than a month since I saw these movies, and I've been too busy to even make any notes. So here's what I remember of what I saw in November (posted a day before December ends - ugh!).

Sweeney Todd. I think I liked the idea of this better than the actual movie. It was a little unrelentingly dark for me. I did like the songs, though.

The Incredible Hulk. Now, I liked the Ang Lee Hulk movie, but that was a little more Ang Lee, and this is a little more Hulk (if you see what I mean). I liked the little nods to the TV show sprinkled throughout (like Lou Farigno's cameo). The slums of Rio were an awesome location to open the story in, and I loved the ways he cobbled together scraps to make his own scientific equipment (I wanted Omesh in my WIP to be able to do that sort of thing, but in order to write it you rather have to be able to come up with the ideas, and I can't). The deleted scenes were also interesting for how many were longer cuts of scenes from the movie. They cut down dialogue between two characters by removing a line or even half a line at a time without disturbing the rhythm of the scene. I was impressed; having cut down dialogue on a page I know it's a challenge not to lose the rhythm and flow, doing it from actor's performances where you want the reactions to still be appropriate must have been a real challenge. On the other hand, these dialogue scenes were long; I suspect they knew they were going to have to cut them and had a working idea of where they would make the cuts.

Get Smart and the overlapping direct-to-DVD Get Smart: Bruce and Lloyd. I never watched the TV show, so I came into this with no preconceptions. I don't know who wouldn't like it, though. The writing is sharp and funny, and the casting is spot on. I particularly liked how he wasn't completely inept; the first thing he tried usually failed comically, but then he'd turn around and do something that did work. Because there is a reason he's a secret agent.

Kung Fu Panda was also sharply written and well cast. Plus the animation, particularly the background shots, was beautifully rich. The special features have a segment with the Food Network's Alton Brown showing how authentic Chinese noodles were made that's quite cool. But then I always like Alton Brown; he's the geek of the cooking world, showing not just how but why something is prepared in a certain way, with lots of science thrown in.

Journey to the Center of the Earth. Would have been cool to see at the IMAX in 3D. The BluRay came with the 3D version and glasses, but it's the color kind of 3D, not the polarized kind, and that never looks as good. Still, it was a fun adventure/quest type of movie if not a great one. I'll be checking out the sequel when they go to Atlantis (and maybe make a point of getting to the IMAX for that one).

A movie I had been breathlessly awaiting: Hellboy 2. I wasn't disappointed. I had had the boys watch the first one just before this one came out on DVD and they were both instantly huge Hellboy fans. The wind-up army at the end was a particular highlight for Aidan.

One last movie we watched with the boys: Shrek the Halls. Clearly made for TV, with the pauses where the commercials go. All the original voice talent was there, and it was watchable if not particularly good. We have tons of Christmas videos the boys absolutely adore that I have to play when I'm busy doing something else, preferably out of audio range. This one they can watch when I'm in the room.

Quin and I watched the sci-fi movie Primer. This involves two guys who accidently build a time machine in their garage and then figure out all the ways they can exploit it without ever travelling more than a few hours into the past. It's a total mind bend of a film, and I've been told all of the science in it is plausible. It's a thinking sort of movie, though, not an emotional one; at the end of it I couldn't tell you the name of any of the characters, although I did eventually work out which of the two was married to the woman that sort of wandered in and out of some of the scenes. If they could have used all the science elements but had another sort of writer give it more human meaning I would have been thoroughly enthralled. But then again it was an independent film made by actual science guys.

Another one we watched without the boys: Tropic Thunder. It's so cool that Robert Downey Jr. is working again; he's absolutely brilliant. I'm a bit of a geek for listening to actors talk about the craft of acting, and how they bring characters to life (I like to mine it for ideas on how to bring the characters on my page to life), so I really enjoyed all of the actor jokes in this one. Lots of great cameos and plenty of jokes that were just so wrong.

Only two Hindi movies this month, both starring Aamir Khan. The first was called Mann and took place on a cruise ship. It wasn't until they reached Mumbai and he and the girl he had fallen in love with agreed to meet on Valentine's Day at the Gateway to India that I realized I was watching a remake of An Affair to Remember. Which I haven't actually seen, but I have seen this:




So I spent the rest of the movie all giggly.

Ghulam I already knew was a remake of On the Waterfront, but I haven't seen that movie either, although I've seen parts of it in Marlon Brando retrospective shows. This was Rani Mukherjee's first Bollywood movie, and for whatever reason they dubbed over her voice. Which was distracting; she has a very distinctive smoky-sexy kind of voice. It would be like a movie that had a young Kathleen Turner in it, but had someone like Victoria Jackson from SNL dub over her. But Alka Yagnik did her singing. I don't think I've seen a Rani movie that wasn't Alka Yagnik singing. Which created the weird situation where she only sounded like "herself" when she was singing.

Oh yeah, and this movie had a motorcycle gang with leather jackets which declared them the "Jon Bon Jovis". I think that was meant to make them seem tough...

I'll finish up with the TV on DVD I watch in November: Seasons 3 and 4 of X-Files. I wished this show had more consistency in the storylines and character arcs. The episode where Mulder uncovers the possibility that his sister was abducted by a child molester and not by aliens would have been a wonderfully dramatic way to twist his head... if it hadn't come after so many episodes of seeing clones of his sister either all grown up or still a child. The child molester theory doesn't really explain the cloning that's beyond human science, now does it? Similarly, Scully becoming convinced that the government conspiracy and cover up is actually about unethical medical research and not aliens would have been a lot more believable if she hadn't seen so many things that didn't fit that theory. Scientists find theories that match all the evidence; they don't pick a theory and then shoehorn in the evidence, blithely disregarding the evidence that just can't fit. Or at least good scientists don't.

Still, there were highlights: "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" is my favorite episode and not likely to be topped. Peter Boyle guest starred as a man who could see exactly how you would die; he was a life insurance salesman. Of course Peter Boyle is always good. "War of the Copraphages" was interestingly structured, with Mulder off on his own investigating killer metallic bugs and calling Scully on the telephone to run theories past her for her to quickly debunk. There was good interplay between the two of them even though they were never in the same room. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" was another episode that had an unusual structure, really a Rashoman-type story about Air Force pilots pretending to be aliens in a small town.

Another one of which I am inordinately fond is "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man". The man can rule the word from behind the scenes, even to the point of rigging the Superbowl, but he can't get his novel published to save his life. A heartbreaking tale. "Kaddish" was cool for having a golem in it. "Small Potatoes" was another off-beat episode, with a man who can look like anyone else (but isn't very bright) taking Mulder's place, doing his job (although he can't spell Federal Bureau of Investigation) and trying to score with Scully. David Duchovny was particularly good in this one; he and the actor who played the face-changing guy clearly spent some time together working on the facial expressions that tipped off that Mulder wasn't Mulder. And lastly I'll mention "Demons", where Mulder wakes up in a hotel room covered with blood and can't remember anything that's happened for the last two days.

It seems like I remembered more than I thought. Of course Wikipedia plot summaries always help...

Some post-holiday musings

Christmas was pretty good around these parts. Not as much work as I expected, and I didn't get a terrible head cold until the day after Christmas, so that's good.

Aidan is very easy to shop for; he is always talking about what he wants to buy next and how much it costs as he pores over the Lego catalogs or browses Lego.com. Oliver, on the other hand, is tough because he never says anything. So we missed getting him his Red Ryder present-to-end-all-presents this year (some sort of Bionicle vehicle thingie. I can get into the Star Wars Legos, and the Indiana Jones Legos, and the "honestly, nothing to do with the Pirates of the Caribbean" pirate Legos, but Bionicles I just don't get). Luckily, when he pooled his gift money and the allowance he had saved up, he had enough to get it himself on the boys' annual day after Christmas trip to the Mall of America. (Not me, I stayed home with my head cold and work).

But when they got to the Lego store it initially appeared as if his dream set wasn't there. He looked and looked and just as he was about to give up (he tells me), these two people moved away and there it was, waiting for him. It was, he said, a Christmas miracle.

Quin was puzzled; this isn't a phrase that's heard around this house. Which of our many Christmas movies talk about Christmas miracles? Sadly, I knew at once what he was talking about. It may be the sheepish grin he gave me, but I knew just where he'd heard that phrase. I did the little dance to be sure and Oliver cracked up. Yes, this is where my littlest learned about the wonder of holiday miracles:




On an unrelated note, today we got a box of homegrown lemons in the mail. Aidan was looking on mostly to be sure there were no oranges in there; he hates oranges for some reason. I think it's the pulp. So Quin said, "You know what you do when life hands you lemons?" And having recently watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall I laughed. But Aidan said, "Make a lot of lemon juice, I guess."

Because you only get lemonade when life hands you lemons and sugar.

After numerous near misses, at last a sale

I've had a series of "we really like this, but it's not quite for us" rejections over the last few weeks, but at last I get a sale, and on a story that's been trying to find a home for quite some time. Aoife's Kiss has just bought "Full Circle" for their December 2009 issue. Backspacers will remember this as a former contest entry; it's the one with the dog in zero gravity. And the sudden appearance of a doll which made no sense. I have, of course, fixed that, or rather undid the edits that eliminated all reference to the doll before its plot turning use in the climax. I do that sort of thing a lot when I edit myself. You think you mention something too many times and surely once is enough, then you forget which once you were intending to leave in there and inadvertently take them all out. Which is why I rely on my critique group; they tell me when I'm making no sense. (I tend to garden that way as well. I'm an overly enthusiastic weeder).

This story also has squatters try to live in derelict spaceships and abandoned space stations, a setting I've since used again in my current WIP Mitwa. So it's particularly cool that this one sold; I hope it bodes well for Mitwa.

Books in November

I finished off my reading for Aidan's history program for this year with the last two books. The American Revolution by Bruce Blevin, Jr. is nonfiction rather than a novelization, basically a very thorough outline of events. I was particularly intrigued by one brief aside, that our first democractic processes got a bit bogged down in the beginning because while everyone understood about the voting process itself, it was the process after the voting, when you have to abide by the decision even if it isn't how you personally voted, that a lot of people hadn't really thought through. That is the tricky part, isn't it?

The second book was The Captain’s Dog by Roland Smith, a story of the Lewis and Clark expedition told from the point of view of Lewis' dog. I found it interesting but all too brief (I doubt very much Aidan will have the same impression). So I followed it up with a massive tome I've had for some time without cracking it open: Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo. It took most of November to read this book (and it's a bit awkward to hold while on the treadmill), but it was clearly thoroughly researched and I loved all of the little details of life in the various tribes Sacajawea met or lived among during her lifetime. I also ended up with a killer craving for beef jerky and corn.

(Fiction often makes me hungry. Partly I think that's walking on the treadmill while I read. Mostly I think I'm just very influenced by descriptions of food. The entire time I was reading the Heinlein catalog I was craving pancakes; I think everything he ever wrote has at least one scene of someone eating pancakes in it. Now I find when I eat pancakes I crave a Heinlein story...)

While I was working my way through Sacajawea, two more books arrived, both by John Scalzi: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded and Agent to the Stars. Hate Mail is a collection of posts from his blog, many of which I'd already read but some predated me. Laugh out loud funny in several places, even the ones I'd read before. Agent to the Stars was his first novel, something he wrote just to see if he could write an entire novel. It combines sci-fi with Hollywood, so you know I'm there. It's also funny and full of heart (the character of the blonde ex-cheerleader turned actress could have easily slid into a caricature, but she remains wonderfully and genuinely human, if not the brightest bulb on the tree). As a reader I loved it; as a writer it made me green with envy. Nobody's first novel should be this good. Of course I wrote my first novel when I was 16, so perhaps it's an unfair comparison...

The Boys' New Favorite Song

We got our copy of Beukemix 2008, and after just two days the boys have a clear favorite: MIA's "Paper Planes". Because who doesn't like a little Sri Lankan reggae/hip hop, er, thing? (There must be a special name for this. Everything has a special name these days). It's the chorus of sound effects that sells it for them:

And to think not so long ago they would beg me to stop singing her earlier song, "Bucky Done Gun". London, quieten down! I need to make a sound...

Speaking of gettin crackin', the holiday season is always a time of work, work, work and no time for writing or blogging, but I'm still hoping to get at least books and movies posted at some point. Due to circumstances far outside of my range of control, this is going to be a particularly brutal year, though. Still, beats being unemployed by a long shot.

Movies in October

I don't really write these monster posts all at a blow, you know. Not that much blogging time these days. I start them at the beginning of the month and add the titles as I watch/read the movie/book in question. I don't usually try to come up with a response right after I've seen something, though. I need time for things to soak in (which is why I'm glad my critique group is an online one. I'm not sure how I'd function in a group where I was expected to respond to something someone just read to me. I'm a slow ponderer. Which is partly why my critiques for the group are so pathologically late, and why these long posts come out weeks after the month ended. That and, you know, working too much).

Well, so anyway, here's trying to pull together a bunch of random notes to myself into some sort of coherent thoughts on what I watched in October. Which was quite a lot, actually; after the big push to finish off the first draft of MITWA I fried my brain and had to vegetate for a few weeks. TV on DVD is just what the doctor ordered. First up: How I Met Your Mother, Season 3. This show still hasn't let me down. I love the intricate way something barely seen in one episode becomes important later, the way a scene that played one way when you first saw it becomes a completely different experience when more context is added later. And the season ending was killer, and exactly where I was hoping they were going to go. The bummer is waiting a year for Season 4 to come out.

The other TV show I watched was X-Files, Season 2. I'm enjoying these, but I'm glad we're borrowing them because I don't think I would be rewatching these a lot. It's rather frustrating; it comes close to being something really good and then backs off. The character arcs aren't very well thought through; Scully believing or not believing in Mulder's theories is wildly inconsistent (people do vacillate, of course, but this isn't handled in a believable way). This comes up more as we progress; I think I'll save the real kvetching for next month.

Some favorite season 2 eps: "Irresistible", set in the backwater of Minneapolis where people never lock their doors at night and dead hookers in the backs of alleys are just unheard of. A mythical land, I think (and it looks a lot like Vancouver. That's our little running joke; the show is set all over the US but always filmed in Vancouver). "Fresh Bones" with Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) playing a Haitian refugee. I'd totally listen to him read the phone book; I love his voice. "Død Kalm" stood out as the second time Scully and Mulder were rescued by the Deus ex Machina rather than getting themselves out of their own bad situation (in season one they were totally coccooned by the spider things and should have died but apparently the haz-mat team got there just in time. Here they should have died of old age from whatever was in the water but they were rescued by I think the navy just in time). But my favorite ep was "Humbug", set in a town full of carnies. Vincent Schiavelli plays a man with the body of his partially absorbed twin protruding from his chest. There are midgets and lobster boys and Enigma, that guy covered with puzzle tattoos. I loved the moment at the end, when the guy who does the stunt magic is complaining to Scully that in the modern age of medicine there will be no more freaks. There won't even be slight deviations from the norm. No, in the future everyone is going to look like that guy, pointing across the trailer park to Mulder, who's too far away to hear them but for whatever reason he's striking a pose:

Made me giggle.

OK, I already exalted the virtues of Cinematic Titanic's The Doomsday Machine. We also watched their first offering: The Oozing Skull (the old "man at the end of his life has his brain put into a younger body but you know that never quite works out the way they thought it would" story) and their third: The Wasp Woman (a Roger Corman film. Need I say more?). I'm glad they're making these films; they fill the void I've had in my life since MST3K went off the air. And the direct to video is actually a plus for me: I don't think I could keep up with a once a week TV show these days, but sporadic releases suit me just fine.

OK, films in English: Ray, about the life of Ray Charles. I kind of wished I'd watched this before I saw Dewy Cox, as that led to a lot of unintentional giggling. A well done film, and Jamie Foxx is perfect as Ray. Don't watch the version with the added footage incorporated in, though. They didn't bring their extra scenes up to the level of polish of the finished film (they aren't color timed or anything) and it made for a very jarring viewing.

Iron Man rocks. 'Nuff said.

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. I went in with low expectations; I hadn't heard good things. I was still disappointed. At this point I think just about everybody does Indiana Jones better than Spielberg and Lucas. The Tomb Raider videogame? Totally more in the Indy spirit than this film (although not the Tomb Raider movies, of course). I even liked National Treasure more than this film. There is the problem that the entire plot offended me on a deep and profound level. Early man couldn't possibly have come up with irrigation and writing, aliens must have shown us how. (And did they come back later to explain quantum theory to us? Because we totally couldn't have come up with that on our own, could we?). Bah. And then we have the scene where they find artifacts from all the other cultures the aliens visited and were worshiped as gods. India, Egypt, Babylon. But there's nothing Judeochristian in that room, oh no; that god is the real deal. Oh, bite me.

I hated this movie. But don't take my word for it; Temple of Doom is my favorite Indy film. Clearly there is something deeply off about me.

M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening I enjoyed. It's twist free. I like the way his characters are always ordinary people. Mark Walhberg here isn't some genius scientist fighting this strange menace, he's just a science teacher who knows how to listen to what other people are telling him and synthesize it using what he knows about the scientific method. He and John Leguizamo are both very genuine, very believable as teachers. This wasn't a great film, but it had a lot of heart, something I don't find in a lot of suspense films but are always in M. Night films.

Two Spanish films this month: El Orfanato, a horror story set in an orphanage. This was produced by Guillermo del Toro, so it's probably not a coincidence that it reminded me of him. It doesn't have del Toro's mindblowing visuals, but it's genuinely creepy. It had a very novely feel, something I like in a movie but seldom find, even in movies based on books. Of course that might be because I got to watch this movie all at once in a quiet house with no interruptions because my mother had taken the boys out for the day. A rare experience, watching a movie all the way through without stopping. A kind of like it.

The other Spanish film is one I've been meaning to watch forever, Abre Los Ojos. This was remade in English as Vanilla Sky. It reminds me a bit of the Korean film Il Mare and its English counterpart The Lake House. Both have a younger, grittier feel in the original, where the American version is more polished with older actors. There are pluses and minuses to both; I kind of like having two versions of the same story that are not quite the same.

Bollywood: Rangeela, the first movie to feature music by A.R. Rahman. It's about more real-feeling people than most Bollywood films; by which I mean they aren't rich and living in spacious sound stage-sized homes. The ending didn't work for me, though. I spent the entire movie shouting at Aamir Khan's character to get a job. First get a paying job, that's how you impress the girl.

It's possible I'm missing something in the romantic department.

Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, an old black and white film. Gorgeously shot in that way that the best black and white is; the faces are just luminous. The story about a girl who marries into a rich family and then never sees her husband and wastes away from the neglect reminded me a lot Raise the Red Lantern.

When I was ordering films I was looking for what I thought were two different movies both called Mr. India, one by Salim-Javed and one starring Anil Kapoor. They turned out to be the same film, which left me with an extra Mr. India, an older back and white film. There is a running joke that Bollywood films have scripts written the night before the scenes are to be shot, but this is the first one I've seen that really felt that bad. Have you ever played the game where one person starts a story, then the next person tells the next bit, and you pass it around like that? Pretty much how they wrote this film. Still, there's a bit in the middle where Helen as a gangster's moll does a dance with daggers, and because she thinks her guys is messing around on her, she keeps throwing the daggers at him and his girlfriend. It was a great number, so I guess I got my $0.99 worth out of this one.

The Mr. India I was actually looking for, the one starring Anil Kapoor as a guy who has a wristband that makes him invisible and uses it to fight crime in Mumbai, was awesome. I love Amrish Puri. You may know him as Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (did I mention I have the doll?), but I've seen him in about a dozen Bollywood films now and he's always great. This role in Mr. India is probably his best, campiest super villian evah. After watching this film I kept saying his line "Mogambo khush hua" ("Mogambo is pleased"; being an evil overlord he talks about himself in the third person). Since then Quin has gotten one of those colds that give you the deep throaty voice for a few days and was saying at work that he sounded like Mola Ram, to which his Indian coworker replied, "Mogambo khush hua." It's like saying the name Arnold Schwarzenegger; someone has to say "I'll be back". It just goes.

So no musical numbers this month but a clip from Mr. India in all of its Austin Powers-y fabulousness. Watch for Captain Zorro with the eye patch and my favorite, the Indian in the wispy moustache playing the Chinese Professor Fu Manchu (although for total un-PC-ness, it pales in comparison to the guys in black face during the calypso number later in the film).

Books in October

The books I read in October fall into three categories: for pleasure, for school and for novel research. I think I'll start with the "for pleasure" category.

First up, Hotter Than Hell by Jackie Kessler. This is the third book in her Hell series. I've been enjoying her books so far, she takes such joy in the mythology of hell, her characters are fantastic, and each book comes generously sprinkled with laugh-out-loud lines. This series is fun and rich in fantasy. But this book? Totally blew the first two away. It had an ending I never saw coming and yet was absolutely perfect (my favorite kind of ending). All I can say is, wow. Well done, Jax!


The only other book I read for fun in October was someone I'm sure Jackie would approve of as a follow-up: Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. This book has already been roundly praised pretty much everywhere, so I'll just add a "they're right, you know". I like the Jungle Book format, not so much a novel as a series of connected stories covering the key moments as a boy grows up. I hope when they eventually make the movie version of this they go more for the Chuck Jones style of adaptation than the Disney. Disney's Jungle Book had great songs, but Jones' adaptation was in all other regards superior. It kept the episodic structure and dark overtones intact. And I'm not just saying that because I'd listen to Roddy McDowall narrate almost anything (although that's true too).

OK, I'm trying to polish off the novels that Aidan will be reading for history for the rest of the year, so I'm ahead of him and can help gauge how much time he's going to need to devote each. Our history curriculum is very reading intensive, perhaps a tad too much, but they pick such fine books. This month I read The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell, about a young Native American woman who gets left behind when her tribe leaves their isolated island home, Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes about Boston in the early days of the American Revolution, and Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare about a boy left alone, waiting for his family to return, in a log house at the edge of civilization in Maine. Aidan will be writing some compare/contrast type thing for the Dolphin and Beaver books. These are all good reads if you like YA historical fiction.

On to the realm of novel research, which this month is all about Islam. Actually this will be in the novel sort of like a bay leaf is used in cooking; it will flavor other things but won't actually be served in the final dish (well, not much). My previous source for all things Islam moved to the United Arab Emirates a few years ago (after 9/11, sadly), so it's just me and a stack of books now. My friend considered himself a cultural Muslim; he had grown up in that world but as an aethist professor of philosophy wasn't really a part of it anymore (which makes me wonder how things are going for him in UAE).

Yahiya Emerick, who wrote two of the books I read this month, is the opposite of that; he converted to Islam as an adult. So it's pretty much the opposite perspective than I'm used to looking at Islam from. In some ways this is better, he looks more sharply at things which someone who grew up in that environment might take for granted. On the other hand, particularly in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Islam he would get pretty heavy handed with the "all other religions are clearly inferior" type of vibe. I had to set this book down and walk away from it quite a bit. Despite that, it did have a lot of useful information in it for me. I fared better with his Complete Idiot’s Guide to Rumi’s Meditations, mostly because I've already read several books on sufism and generally find the sufis more approachable to a pantheist like me. I should probably at some point just get a book of Rumi's poetry and drink from the source. The problem there is the strong temptation to learn Persian so I can read it in the original. That's likely to take a few years...

The last book I read I liked much better: No God But God by Reza Aslan. This is written by a man who spent his early childhood in Iran but moved to the US with his family when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power (I knew kids in school in the same boat, at least during those times in my life when I was going to Minnesota schools. Tennessee doesn't attract many immigrants). This book covers all of the major historical periods of Islam, particularly dwelling on the culture from which it sprang. This I found very interesting; I like being able to put things into an historical and cultural context. Aslan also covers how the governments in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, and Iran formed, what they were intended to do, and how they've evolved since. I'd recommend this one for anyone interested in learning more about Islam (right up there with Karen Armstrong and John Esposito). It's informative, but it's also written with a strong sense of story (i.e. not dry reading). There are also extensive notes in the back with references to other books. Which just might be my downfall; I'm suddenly consumed with a hunger to learn more about the pagan Arabia that existed before Islam.

No, I'm never getting that To Be Read stack under 200, am I?

Oooh, it's snowing!

Time for the happy dance...




Or if you like it old school:



I think I like Linus' little dance the best.

A very big sale

Beneath Ceaseless Skies just bought my short story "Oil Fire". It's a new market so it doesn't qualify me for SFWA just yet, but they pay pro-rates and I'll have my story up there with the likes of Charles Coleman Finlay, Marie Brennan and K.D. Wentworth. How geeked am I? (Answer: very).

"Oil Fire" is one of my favorite things I've written and I'm very pleased it's found a home.

(Of course I'm also a bit geeked because some nice young men in a yellow truck delivered my groceries this morning. After three months of going out and getting them on my own it's so nice to have them brought to my door again, and just in time for winter. Which is apparently the response they've been getting from everyone, not just time-crunched writers).

Movies in September

October is nearly two-thirds over, so let's finish off September's posts. I spent most of September writing, so this is a short movie list this time.

I had high hopes for Crank, it looked like just my sort of Jason Statham fun ride. And I could see where this could be enjoyable; I wanted to enjoy it, but it just bugged me too much. It's the first movie I can recall seeing in a long time without at least one tough chick in it somewhere. Here all the women are strippers, hookers, or living works of naked art. Then there's the girlfriend, the very dumb girlfriend. She doesn't even have any "emotional intelligence", as her complete obliviousness to Statham's character's sense of urgency shows.

I suspect they are being ironic, but the movie comes with a "family friendly" cut, which removes all profanity (or so the box said, I didn't fire it up to see). In a movie filled with misogyny, violent mahem, and rampant drug use, profanity is the least of the things to shield young viewers from. I might even find that irony amusing if not for a similar misconnect with parenting values shown in the film, when the main character is raping his girlfriend in the middle of Chinatown, pinning her down and all that, but it's when he tears her shirt and her boob pops out that a nearby mother shields her son's eyes. Cause naked boobies, that's just wrong.

So this goes down as the first Statham movie to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I did like The Love Guru. The character doesn't work nearly as well as Austin Powers, but he's amusing enough. I particularly liked the titles of his self-help books ("Stop Hurting Yourself, Stop Hurting Yourself, Why Are You Still Hurting Yourself?") Verne Troyer (who played Mini Me) gets a speaking part here, playing a hockey coach. He certaintly got the look spot on; his haircut is perfect. But I really loved Justin Timberlake in this as Jacque "the Cock", a French-Canadian goalie with a porn star moustache. Some of the funniest bits are in the deleted scenes, though. I particularly liked the longer take of Stink Mop, when the young Deepak Chopra wants to play but is told to sit with the young virgins practicing their kama sutra positions instead (his pout is perfect). Of course the very idea of a game like Stink Mop freaked out the boys more than a little.

Some of Quin's coworkers were appalled that he had never seen The X-Files, so they've been loaning us DVDs to rectify the situation. I was working bizarre hours when this show started and wasn't watching much TV, so I've never seen it either. We watched season 1 in September, and Quin was ready at several points to give up on it, but I and his coworkers insisted he stick it out. As it turns out (to his annoyance), we were making the same point, that back when this show started networks didn't like running storylines, they preferred a series to be a series of oners so viewers don't have to worry about following the story if they turn on episode 6 or 12 or whatever. Which is a detriment to viewers like us who like continuous story lines. I suspect the success of the "mythology" episodes of this show and shows like Buffy broke the ground for shows like Lost or Battlestar Galactica, which are really one long story. By the season finale of the first season, though, Quin was just as into it as I was and anxious to start season 2 (to be covered in my October post).

Moving on to India, I watched a Merchant Ivory film from 1970 called Bombay Talkie. It was in English, but featured a few Bollywood actors I recognized. The film centers around a writer who's just written a "Hollywood Wives" type book about Hollywood and has gone to Bollywood to look for inspiration for her second. She's the most irritating kind of writer, always looking for inspiration and never just putting words down on paper. She's also a pathological narcissist who spreads ruin and destruction everywhere she goes. So not a fun film, but definitely an interesting one. To be honest, I enjoyed the special features more than the movie; they did a short film about Helen, one of the most famous dancers of Bollywood item numbers. She talked about her work day and they compiled some of her more famous dance numbers. She must have done a hundred or more films, starting in the days of black and white films and working into Technicolor (she still works as an actress playing grandmothers these days).

So I only watched two films actually in Hindi, and they were both called Shakti. The first was older, starring Amitabh Bacchan as the Angry Young Man. His father is a cop, who loves his job more than his family, or so Amit has been given very good reason to believe when he's a young boy. He grows up to work for gangsters, which would naturally create conflicts. This was a Salim-Javed film, so the dialogue is sharp and the character motivations and the way they interact with each other is spot-on. It's not my favorite of their films, but it's still worth a see.

The other Shakti is more recent and seemed reminiscent of Not Without My Daughter. Karisma Kapoor lives and marries in Vancouver, but when her husband hears of troubles at home he takes her and his young son back to the home he had very good reason to leave. Unlike NWMD, the husband isn't the problem, it's his father who wants to keep his young grandson under his influence. When her husband is killed, grandpa wants to keep his only grandchild and raise him himself, so the rest of the story is a mother trying to get back to Canada with her son. There were definitely cultural references I wasn't getting; the family were Hindu but ate meat, which I'm guessing makes them of a warrior caste, but I'm not sure. And they had a deep Hatfield and McCoy grudge against the other family in their village which led to all the death and destruction.

It was a heavy-handed film, but I found the grandfather, played by Nana Patekar, very compelling. Karisma Kapoor was very good in it as well. The dance number with Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai was cool and fun, but totally out of place. It's meant to be SRK's dream, but still. This sort of thing comes up in a few Bollywood films; a change of tone so abrupt it loses me. I can't see a woman burned alive and then laugh at slapstick comedy immediately after (as happened in Bhagam Bhag).

I didn't see any great item numbers this month, so my YouTube this month will be from my all-time fave: Jaan-e-Mann. This is totally what I'll be singing when I finally see New York. This is a Cyrano deBergerac story, with Salman Khan telling Akshay Kumar what to sing to Preity Zinta. Watch for the bit where Salman gets hung up in a pack of joggers and Akshay has to hum...

Books in September

I'm in no way finishing off this post as a way of procrastinating on cleaning my house. No way at all. Just so you know.

OK, I read six books that fall pretty nicely into three pairs.

The first pair is novel research, sort of. Having finished the first draft, I'm plowing through some books filled with information I'll never actually use. It's more about making sure I'm not getting anything subtle wrong rather than looking for more to include. At any rate, as a cluster of my characters are Hindus, and as most of what I've read on Hinduism I read nearly twenty years ago (I'm suddenly feeling very old...), I started with The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism. I like this series of books, they are good places to start to get a general knowledge of something, and the list of further reading in the back offers lots of next steps. I'm not such a fan of the layout, with the sidebars and cartoon characters talking in boxes in the margins, or of the title. I'm not a complete idiot, thank you very much, and I don't need something broken up into teeny tiny bits to grasp the concepts. But I've read a few of these on some pretty diverse topics and they've all been exactly what I needed to get a general picture of some vast area of knowledge, so I guess they do the job. I followed that up with Hindu Scriptures, translated and edited by R.C. Zaehner, which condenses down the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita into a reasonable size. Some of these I've read before, back in the day. I particularly liked this edition; Zaehner showed exactly where he made his edits and what was contained in the sections he removed. I liked that feature; most abridged texts don't bother to tell you what they took out. But when his notes would say "various mythological references removed" I was a bit bummed. I would have liked to have read those.

The second category of books: books by Robert Louis Stevenson. I had to read Kidnapped, as I've never read it before and Aidan is reading it for history. It's easier to correct his papers if I know the story. (This time instead of a book report summarizing the plot he wrote an essay exploring one of the book's themes, which he enjoyed. Not as much as playing Lego Game, of course; it's still school). After I read Kidnapped I decided to pick up Treasure Island. I remember starting this book many times as a kid but never getting through it. I'm not sure why, they read as fun adventure fiction to me now.

My last pair were new books read just for fun. Both are the latests installments in a series, but both work just fine as stand-alones. The first was Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi. Zoe's Tale is a retelling of The Last Colony from the point of view of Zoe, the teenaged daughter of the two main characters in The Last Colony. Sort of like Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead. It's a cool premise (I've always wanted to read the Neville Longbottom version of the same seven years at Hogwarts...), and Zoe is a terrific character, a smart and sarcastic teenager who felt absolutely real. This makes a nice companion piece to TLC and I enjoyed it.

The second was Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell. I loved the settings, the floating cities of a Venus-like planet, the claustrophobic feel of being trapped on a spaceship where things are quickly going to hell; it was very cool. Pepper is the main character in this one, and Pepper is always a great bad-ass character. I also liked the new character of Timas, a teenaged boy who has being doing some pretty extreme and heartbreaking things for the sake of his family. Now on the subject of zombies, I'm pretty neutral. I don't go out of my way to see zombie movies or whatever, but I don't avoid them either. I only mention because if you are into zombies, you're going to love this book. Buckell has an interesting twist on zombies here which I found intellectually engaging, but I don't have that visceral response that hard-core zombie fans have. To be fair to zombies, I don't really get the over-the-top way vampire lovers love their vampires either. I've read Ann Rice's early books a couple of times each, and I enjoy them (particularly the language), but I don't love them the way many of her fans do. I think I digressed somewhere in there... OK, to wrap up, Sly Mongoose, well-crafted story of people hanging on by their fingernails even before the zombies show up.

OK, I really must clean up around here before I drive into work for a meeting. I could make a fourth cat out of all the hair floating around here...

Still planning on finishing up those movie and book posts

I'll get to that before the end of October. Finished up some other projects, so that's good. In the mean time, the literal interpretation to a-ha's "Take on Me".


Pipe wrench fight!

Oh how I needed that...

We wrapped up school early today - sometimes that happens on Fridays - so the boys and I watched a movie together after lunch. We've been working our way through my vast (nearly complete) collection of MST3K episodes for a while now, but lately we've taken a side step to watch things I haven't seen before, namely Cinematic Titanic. It's from five of the MST3K writers (Joel, Mary Jo, Frank, Trace and Josh). The concept is the same; little silhouettes in the front rip bad movies. There are no robots this time and no outside of the theater bits, although they do pause the movie from time to time to digress.

Last week we watched The Oozing Skull, a mad scientist with a midget sidekick movie. But today we watched their second DVD, The Doomsay Machine. You know that thing where you laugh so hard you deprieve your brain of oxygen and start to get woozy? (Just me?) That's how funny the last ten minutes of this film are. Seriously. I finished watching the movie an hour ago and I'm still getting sporadic giggle fits.

Anyone else out there who needs a laugh as much as I did, go to CinematicTitanic.com and pick this thing up. You can even download it if you just can't wait.

Now if I can just stop tittering for five minutes, I can get some work down around here. You know, before I have to get to Work.

Not enough brain cells left for a pithy title

Working on the movie and book posts for last month. Working on something I hope will end with good news. Waiting on something else I also hope will end with good news. Mostly working on work though, which is not so much with the good news. You know what I need? I need to see that hypnotherapist from Office Space. Life would be so much easier if I just didn't care so much about my job...

A Tale of Two Musicals

So, I've seen two musicals recently. One blew me away, and one didn't. I'll start with the one that didn't (since I feel pretty confident you know already what blew me away).

Once upon a time in high school Spanish class our teacher showed us two slides. The first was a painting Picasso had done that was nearly identical with Velázquez's Las Meninas. I love the original painting, and it's technically impressive to see one master artist duplicating another. But then came the next slide: Picasso painting Las Meninas in the cubist style:

My point? As impressive as it is to paint like Velázquez, it's more impressive to go somewhere new with it, and Picasso was way new. Watching Across the Universe was a lot like that first Picasso painting: technically brilliant but not really new. It is a very well done film, gorgeous to look at and wonderfully performed by mostly unknowns. But I found it pretty pointless. Picasso painted like Velázquez to learn from his style, not with the idea of presenting his copy to the world as a work of great art (and I guess he did 58 different versions of Las Meninas, so those above are only two). I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from overly literal interpretation of the Beatles songs. "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" as a circus? Duh. Although Eddie Izzard is always cool. Bono and Joe Cocker are clearly having fun as well. But like I said, it was well done, just pointless.

Perhaps the real thing is that this very much a Beatles in the 60s film, and I was listening to the Beatles in the 80s. The Beatles to me aren't about Vietnam or psychedelic drugs or any of that. Also, as I referenced when talking about Walk Hard, this movie was far too reverent of the Beatles for my taste (and so are most Beatle covers, frankly. They sound like church music). The Beatles always had a great sense of humor, which this movie doesn't even touch on. But mostly, what with this and Mamma Mia (which I'll certainly see what it's out on DVD) - yes it's great music and all, but what I really want is something new.

Which brings me to what I did enjoy the hell out of: Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. This was done on the cheap by Joss Whedon, his two brothers, one of their girlfriends, and a bunch of friends (geeks like me who can recognize Buffy writers will particularly enjoy act 3). It's nowhere near as visually slick as Across the Universe, it's not quite 45 minutes long, and it's only ever appeared on the internet. Still, one of my main gripes of Across the Universe is that not only was it obvious where the story was going, you could even predict with stunning accuracy which song was coming next. Dr. Horrible, like all Whedon endeavors, is comedy and tragedy all at once and you never know which you're going to get next, or where it will all end up. I certainly wasn't expecting the way it all ended here. But then the other cool aspect: you look back and it all seems rather inevitable. It had to end this way, didn't it? It's led to some great dinner time conversations here, as the boys have watched it half a dozen times already (although they've been told that "we do the weird stuff" will have to remain in the realm of things they will understand when they're older). And we have a CD of the songs in the car and all know all the words.

I would love, love, love to see a real musical in the theaters, the kind where it's all surprising and new and takes me on a ride that I can't see the end of. I was hoping after Moulin Rouge (which didn't have new music, but did use old music in new and surprising ways, my fave being the tango "Roxanne") that we'd have a musical resurgence, but alas, that never came to be. My fondest wish would be for a feature-length Dr. Horrible sequel (come on, the story totally doesn't end there).

Of course Joss may be busy...

(And fellow MST3K fans, TV's Frank has a cool blog entry about it over here. I didn't really touch on the larger significance of Dr. Horrible as artist-controlled, although that was the whole reason they got together and made this thing during the SAG strike. Well, read Frank; he's got it covered).

OK, technically not done with those things that needed doing, so I'm back at it.

Gon Out Backson, Bisy Backson

Ow! Ow! Ow!

That's the sound of things falling out of the sky and pegging me on the head. My planned writing break is suddenly getting very writing-busy. Damn muse, can't keep a scheduled to save her life. Going to take a few days to do some stuff. Bisy Backson, indeed.

Movies in August

First off, I think I burned my brain. It's been a few days now since I typed "The End", but I seemed to have lost all ability to summon words. If you try to have a conversation with me, it will be a lot of "you need to do that thing with the thing. You know, the thing, the thing in the freezer? That goes in the back of the whats-it? The yard?" and fifteen minutes later, in the middle of doing something completely unrelated, will finally burst out with "you need to take the compost out!" Sheesh!

So, let's see if I can remember the movies I watched last month and find something intelligent to say about them...

Since I was spending every possible moment writing, most of my movie watching was with Quin, and hence in English. The first was a heist film called Flawless, set in the 60s with Michael Caine as a janitor nearing retirement age and Demi Moore as a woman butting her head against the glass ceiling of the diamond company she works for. After she gets passed up yet again in favor of a younger man with less experience than she, Caine convinces her to help him pull off the heist he's been planning forever. He's not forthcoming about his reason for wanting to do this, but he has a very, very good one. I don't remember hearing anything about this movie when it was in theaters, but I do recommend it. Good story, good acting, and wonderfully plotted.

I can't really say any of those things about In the Name of the King. It is, in fact, a film based on a video game. But it does star Jason Statham and is tons of unpretentious fun. The film makers take every opportunity to rip off stuff we've already seen in The Lord of the Rings, and Ray Liotta as the bad guy is just one goofy hat away from being Jack Palance; clearly this is not a film that was ever aspiring to greatness.

In the category of fantasy films that do aspire to greatness is Beowulf, which I liked better than I thought I would. This style of animation has progressed since the zombie kids of Polar Express (that movie still gives me the willies), and the low lighting through most of it help to sell it. The monsters are really well done. It was intended as 3D, which is a bit distracting when you watch it in 2D, but storywise I liked this retelling of the old tale. But then, I also liked The 13th Warrior's retelling, so...

Because Quin insisted I had to see it: Priscilla Queen of the Desert. I was actually supposed to see this movie lots of times back in the day, it played as a midnight show at the Uptown for years. But everytime my friend and I would go to see it, we'd always end up at Bryant Lake Bowl, hanging with his friends, a diverse group that even included a Korean Elvis impersonator. This movie made me nostalgic for those days; that particular friend of mine tended to fall for guys faste and drop everything to follow them to far-off cities. This was in the days before mobile phones, and I wouldn't hear from him for months. Then out of the blue he'd call, back in Minneapolis with a long tale to tell. I haven't heard from him since just before I got married; I like to think he found someone he could settle down with. But I'm still here, same house, same phone number. Perhaps someday I'll get another call out of the blue. (Also, Hugo Weaving is the bomb).

So after setting up my super-PC I got rid of my TV and DVD player in my office/work-out room. So of course the DVD player in the PC promptly kacked. Now I read on walking days, but on walk/run days I like to watch movies. Otherwise I get bored; running is very, very dull (my husband, who runs 5-6 miles at a time, says otherwise, but I think that's just because he has a cat-brain that lets him think about nothing for great tracks of time. If I'm running and thinking, I'm mostly thinking about all the things I have to get done when I get off the treadmill. Which is mostly conducive to getting off the treadmill). I have a program that lets me record from my satellite receiver onto my hard drive, so I tried that out. My test run was with a movie from the same director as Marigold, something called (very generically) Playing By Heart. I remember when this movie was still in the works it was meant to be titled Dancing about Architecture, and I think they should have stuck with it. It comes from a line Angelina Jolie says, "talking about love makes as much sense as dancing about architecture", which fits the movie better; it's a whole series of scenes of people talking about love. There's an old couple, a young couple, a married couple, a middle-aged couple just starting to date. It was a quiet sort of movie but had lots of great dialogue. I'm not sure exactly how old it is, but Angelina Jolie looked like she was barely more than 20. It also had Gillian Anderson, Jon Stewart, Dennis Quaid, Sean Connery, and Madeline Stowe (and a few more, this is off the top of my head a month later).

I was less impressed with Notting Hill. I confess that, for no discernible reason, I just don't like Julia Roberts. I don't hate her, I don't avoid movies just because she's in them, but I always find her very cold and never feel like she has any chemistry with the guy she's playing opposite to. I did like the secondary characters in this one, particularly the roommate, but unlike Four Weddings and a Funeral, this wasn't a film primarily about a group of friends.

Something borrowed: Walk Hard, the musical biopic parody film. Not only was it funny, the music was good enough to stand on its own; they sounded like real country songs, real Brian Wilson songs. My favorite scene was the one when Dewey Cox goes to India and hangs with the Maharishi and the Beatles. The Beatles are played by a bunch of familiar actors (you'll probably know two right off, and the other two will be naggingly familiar - thank you, Wikipedia, who that was playing George was going to drive me nuts) with great love but no reverence whatsoever. Which is in my book ideal. I love the Beatles, but I love them as human beings with lovable flaws, not as near-saints of musical perfection. (Keep this in the back of your mind, being overly reverent of the Beatles is going to come up again next month...)

OK, I did squeeze in three Hindi films. Silsila is a film Amitabh Bacchan did with his wife Jaya in I think the early 80s, about a man who marries his dead brother's fiance because she's pregnant with his nephew/niece and then regrets it after she loses the baby when he drives their car into a tree. As the movie progresses and he continues to pursue the woman he wanted before his brother died, even though she's also now married, you will want to smack Amit with a brick (I'm not saying I found him unsympathetic or anything).

Eklavya is a more recent film starring Amitabh Bacchan, and this one was nearly perfect. There are no musical numbers, so it clocks in pretty short for a Hindi film. I found it very Shakespearean in terms of plot, with the assassination attempts and concealed parentage of children. I thought at first it was a period piece, the clothing and palace are so ornate, but Saif Ali Khan as the young prince returns in a helicopter, clearly modern. Part of the story is past vs. present, tradition versus new ways. Most of the story, though, is about dharma. I've read a lot of books that have mentioned dharma, but there is nothing like a good story with a memorable character like Amit's palace guard to make you really feel it in your bones.

(I did think the ending needed one or two more scenes; some characters went through major changes that needed to be set up a bit more. They weren't unbelievable in themselves, they just happened a bit too fast. Minor gripe, though).

The last movie was so old it was colorized back and white: Mughal-e-Azam. I had to see it; both Saawariya and Om Shanti Om referenced it. It was way, way cool. The colorization was an enhancement; it gave the movie a sort of fairy tale feel. And it was old school, casts-of-thousands for the fight scenes. It's weird watching those in these days of everything-done-by-computer; you see elephants charging and you realize someone had to actually make that happen, and control it, and film it. This film is based on an old story about Akbar, the Mughal emperor, and his son the prince who falls in love with a dancing girl. The sets were amazing; it reminded me a lot of Aleksandr Ptushko, especially Ruslan and Ludmila (a very cool movie with mindblowing visuals, highly recommend).

So my clip this month comes from Mughal-e-Azam. The director originally intended to shoot in color but the budget wouldn't allow it, so only this scene was shot in color. Watching it on YouTube probably won't do it justice, but the part where her dancing is reflected off the facets of all the jewels set into the ceiling is to die for:

Act 3, here I come!

Because I've finished my fourth novel (rather, I've finished a draft of my fourth novel, there is still work left to do). How engrossed was I while finishing this up? So engrossed I didn't even notice I didn't have any phone service. Luckily I noticed that today, before I have to go back to work. Kinda need a phone to work, you know.

So the whole family is going out to dinner tonight (to the Olive Garden, which just goes to show my boys are two susceptible to the lure of commercials on television), and then we'll all gather on our new sofa to watch all three acts of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

I do feel like a ran a marathon, then got up the next day and ran another marathon, over and over for seven days. Except I was running with my brain and not my legs. I'm sort of twitchy and exhausted. But hey! First draft done. Yay me!

Oh So True

“I hate being in the final stages of a story. It's like trying to run programs on a computer with 100% CPU use. I'm left with just about enough native intelligence to walk, talk monosyllabically, and tie my shoelaces. I assume that I'm off figuring out the end of the story I'm writing, because the alternative, in terms of sudden-onset mental decay, is too dreadful to think about. Meanwhile I walk around aimlessly, cannot remember where I put things, or the names of the things that I can't remember where I put them. And I say "er..." a lot, and pick things up and look at them.” – Neil Gaiman 01/10/03

On the upside, it seems more likely that I will actually finish before Friday (for certain definitions of "finish").

Writing update

So here's where we're at:



Just a hair under 20,000 words to go. Which means if I want to be done by Friday, I have to crank out 4000 words a day all week. I did 4500 each on Saturday and Sunday, which is pretty damn productive for me, but of course I wasn't also doing school those days. Well, we'll see how it goes.

I pushed hard to pass the 40,000 word mark last night so I could hit my goal and finally watch Act 2 of Dr. Horrible with the boys. They are enjoying this almost as much as I am. Quin is going to wait to watch all three acts together, hopefully on Friday, because he doesn't dig the incremental thing. Of course we've thoroughly ruined the experience for him, as the other three of us can't stop singing the songs and quoting the jokes.

Books in August

Most of August was spent finishing off the John Carter of Mars books. Namely Thuvia, Maid of Mars, The Chessmen of Mars, The Master Mind of Mars, A Fighting Man of Mars, Swords of Mars, Synthetic Men of Mars, Llana of Gathol and John Carter of Mars. Phew! Pulp fiction makes perfect treadmill reading, though. These are fun books, and I'm very intrigued to see what Pixar is going to do in bringing these stories to film (I hope they do them all). Burroughs wrote the first book in 1917 and the last in 1964 and I did get a sense of how the world around him was changing as he wrote. I mean, Dejah Thoris may be Incomparable in terms of beauty, but she's a huge liability in a fight. She's constantly getting kidnapped, nearly killed in airship crashes, used as leverage to make John Carter do things... She always struggles against her captors, of course, but completely uselessly. But as the books progress we are introduced to other female characters who can fight. It's nice that John Carter saw the value in teaching his daughter and granddaughter how to defend themselves. And I particularly liked The Swords of Mars, where the fighter thinks he's in love with the beauty but slowly realizes he's actually in love with the girl he thought was a boy a first, the one he can talk to and who has his back in a fight. But The Chessmen of Mars is my favorite, because the Kaldanes are so cool. (Did I mention I'm hoping Pixar makes movies out of all of these?)

After reading all eleven of those books, though, I was in deep need of a little Opposite of That. I was just browsing my shelves before hopping on the treadmill when I saw Learning to Play Gin by Ally Carter, the sequel to Cheating at Solitaire. I bought this the week it came out but somewhere along the line it got shelved instead of staying in the To Be Read stack on my end table where it belonged. Which is just as well, a book about smart, emotionally complex women was just what I needed. I like Ally, she has wit and is often laugh-out-loud funny. I particularly identified with the pants-shopping scene: "I have a waist! And hips! And my waist is smaller than my hips!" I don't know why fashion designers assume that because size zeros tend to be built like boys that all of us are, we're just proportionately bigger. If I find pants that fit my hips I end up with way too much hanging around my waist. Not a good look. Thank the gods for Lands End custom-made jeans.

The last book was Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Aidan is reading an abridged version for history, so I finally plunged into the unabridged version I've had hanging around here forever. Not particularly good treadmill reading, I'll tell you. More cuddle up with a cat and an afghan reading, although what with the heat wave that wouldn't have been pleasant either. It's hard to knock a classic, but I will say this isn't as good as his later stuff. I'm guessing Dickens was a pantser, as this story started out doing one thing and then went all over the place. Still, I like his dry humor and observation of character. I just liked it better in, say, Great Expectations.

On the writing front, I did nothing all week. Seriously. We had painters working on our house, which involved lots of guys working around all my windows all day long. I felt like I was an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History: Life of a Homeschooler or something. They were completely professional, of course, they weren't actually looking in the windows, but still. I'm a recluse; it was traumatic for me.

So that leaves me with half a novel to write in a week. Which I'm going to try to do. Because I'm nuts. Well, wish me luck!

In brief...

I didn't get as much done last week as I wanted to. The combination of needing to work longer, later hours to help cover for illnesses, having to get up early pretty much every day last week for couch deliveries and a few different home repair things, and what my husband assures me has to be the last heat wave of the summer had me falling into comas every afternoon. (I know a nap when I take one, these were definitely comas).

I'm hoping to catch up a bit this week, but since two of those three things are still going on, plus school again... well, I'm not too hopeful. Which is a shame as I'm still a few chapters short of my Dr. Horrible Sing-along Blog Act 2 mark. And I let the boys watch Act 1. They're anxious to see Act 2. Very anxious. To the point of trying to roust Mom out of her coma. I'm afraid next week when I'm finally fully alert I'll find everything I've written since last Monday will read as if it were written by someone in a coma.

I did get some good news this week, though; another grocery company bought SimonDelivers and will be making deliveries starting in October. Going to the grocery store with the whole family has been surprisingly fun (particularly for my husband, who really really likes it. No, I don't get it either). Still, I only get two nights off in a week and I'd rather spend that time doing other things.

So, try to get more writing done this week, polish off my book and movie posts for August, and post some pics of the new couch and my freshly painted walls. I might be able to get a couple of those things done...

This week's goal

Update on last week: I ended up at 28,155 words, not quite halfway between my original goal of 27,500 and my Phelpsian goal of 30,000. That's actually pretty good since I completely rewrote chapter 1 (about 2500 words worth of work which didn't affect the total word count) and I also got the flu that's been running through our household and spent a day teaching school from the couch. It's a bit like being a Roman in a movie, reclining while people fetch you stuff, only I'm being fetched math homework and science reports and not peeled grapes and wine. It would have been more fun if my body hadn't hurt all over. I'm glad that bug is gone.

So for this week, the original plan calls for me to be at 37,500 words at the end of the week. Again I'm going to try to top my goal; that goal would only have me through chapter fifteen, and I have to finish chapter sixteen before I can watch Act 2 of Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Having watched Act 1 many, many times (man, Neil Patrick Harris is the coolest*), I'm very anxious to earn my right to watch Act 2. This might be a little tough; it's a vacation week from school, but I have a ton of prep work to do on top of working the paying job, particularly as I got no prep done on our last vacation week. So, we'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!

I think I'll wrap up my Mitwa musical sharing with this one, from my favorite Karan Johar movie. As much as I loved Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna still edges it out as my fave. KKHH succeeds admirably, but in KANK Johar was trying something tougher. This is a movie about two marriages where you can see both why these people got together in the first place and why things are not going well now. Which is tougher than it would seem, apparently; so many movies fall down on one or the other score (usually the first, but I've already griped about Serendipity, haven't I?). Johar has such a light touch in KANK, you can see how ShahRukh's character is a bitter jerk, but being around Rani calms him, and how Rani's character is a bit of a nervous wreck (and compulsive cleaner), but being around SRK calms her. And they aren't even trying to do this to each other, exactly the opposite, but they just fit. They start out as friends advising each other on how to get along with their spouses, and the song "Mitwa" comes at the point where they are both beginning to realize their feelings aren't just friendly anymore.

Johar is very much of the "I must make my characters suffer" school of writing (my favorite kind of writer; when you get a happy ending, it's a thoroughly earned one). These two have a very tough time and the ending is a low-key kind of happy. Plus there's another musical number where colors are used to absolutely amazing effect. Highly recommend.

* After the fifth or sixth time I got geeked out to NPH's Old Spice commercial, Quin asked if we couldn't go back to the place where Salman Khan was the coolest, as he thinks he prefers that to Neil Patrick Harris.

"Yes, but when Salman was the coolest, you wanted to go back to the place where Justin Timberlake was the coolest, remember?"

"Can we?"

"As soon as Justin does something new, he will totally go back to being the coolest. Promise."

On the one hand, this is the creepiest gift I've ever been given...

... on the other hand, I really like it. It's been a bit frustrating around here, not being able to find more than 5 minutes to write between 8 a.m. and 1 a.m. I've been... frustrated. Palpably frustrated. So on Friday Quin brought this home for me:


Yep, that's Mola Ram from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, bleeding heart in hand. Creepy and cute, not a common mix. I have a think for dolls from movies, in case you didn't know. I actually have too many to have out at one time, so they have rotating shifts guarding my books. Mola Ram has the current dream spot, next to Raven from Teen Titans in front of Gibson and Scalzi.

My original goal for Friday was 27,500, but I'm kicking it up a notch and setting it to 30,000. I'm not sure if I can do it, especially as part of this week's work will involve rewriting Chapter One before I submit it to my critique goup, which will be a quality and not quantity move, but I feel inclined to try for a more Phelpsian goal this week. Wish me luck!

Writing update

The writing progresses. My goal was 500 words a day, 2500 a week. I haven't been remotely capable of writing every day (how dearly I wish I could, this constantly losing momentum is beyond frustrating), but when I do find the time I'm making progress. I expect to be at 27500 by next Friday, and given my current status that seems pretty doable:



Takashi's chapters are still coming the hardest. Part of it is that his character still isn't really defined (I've encountered his type before, where I have to reach THE END before I even get a hold of him), but I think it's also because his story arc touches the most on my theme, and balancing what the novel is really about without making it any sort of allegory is tricky. Storytelling, character, those should come first. Theme should be a quiet background, safely ignored if you're the sort of reader who doesn't like deeper meanings. (Well, I don't think that's always true, or even mostly true, but it is what I'm trying to do with this particular piece).

You know, I could get more writing time in if I didn't spend an hour a day on the treadmill, but I don't think I'd be any more productive. I tend to slow down when I'm sedentary too long. This is something I've noticed in my paying job, where I also sit and type for hours on end. I am much more alert and productive if I make a point of getting up and moving around periodically. So I always write after I walk (and usually follow that up with Tai Chi, although if there's a time crunch that's the most skippable part of the day). I write to music, usually something I find atmospheric or evocative of mood, but I always throw one uptempo number in the Party Shuffle and when it comes up I get up and move around for five minutes. Keeps the mind sharp, plus it's fun.

Here's my current "get up and move" song, which even Oliver likes, because it goes dwoop-dwoop. (As I mentioned in my review of Tere Naam, I hate that haircut - ugh! - but it's a great song).

Movies in July

First off was The Spiderwick Chronicles, which I of course watched with the boys. This movie was neither exceptionally bad nor exceptionally good. Although Aidan loves the books I suspect he's not really going to watch this movie again. There was one aspect of it that I was outstanding, though: Freddie Highmore, the kid who played Charlie in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory plays two roles here, both of the twin brothers. Not only does he portray two very different characters, he does it all acting against empty space (since he can't be in two places at once), and with an American accent. This boy is a child actor with real chops, and I expect to see cool stuff from him in the future.

If you look up "cool" in my dictionary, you'll see a picture of Jason Statham. Because he's the coolest. And if he's in a heist movie, you know we'll have to get it. Hence The Bank Job. Pretty standard rob-a-bank fare, although this is apparently based on a true story.

Next up are two oldies I picked up on Blu-Ray, both of which I know I've seen but it was so long ago it was like seeing them for the first time. The first was Bullitt, of which I only recalled the car chase. Because who could forget that? I actually found this movie pretty surprising. These days every cop movie involves a break-all-the-rules maverick cop, it was palpably weird watching a movie about a cop who does his job without breaking any rules at all. It was nearly torture at the end: how many times is he going to let the bad guy shoot at him before he shoots back? As many as it takes until he can get a clear shot, or until people are in danger. Because spraying the scene with random fire is not good police work. I kind of admire this film.

The second oldie was Patton, which Quin had never seen. My memories of it were thoroughly mixed with the other WWII film of my early childhood: The Big Red One. So many great lines in Patton, I kept poking Quin - surely you've heard that before! All he would admit to was "Rommel, you magnificent bastard. I've read your book!"

In the Bollywood arena, I watched a lot of Aamir Khan movies. Mangal Pandey: The Rising is a film about the first Indian war of independence, when they got the East India Company out (and England took over, a bit of a lateral move independence-wise). This movie doesn't touch too much on the actual war, more on the circumstances that led to the Indians finally saying enough is enough. The script was based on source material, which was interesting. If they didn't know the motivation someone had for something, they left it open-ended (did the Company make ammunition casings out of cow and pig fat because it was cheaper, or just to irritate their Hindu and Muslim soldiers? The movie hints at both). Not as good as Lagaan, but beautifully shot with the usual top-notch music from A.R. Rahman.

Dil Chahta Hai was almost exactly the opposite: from lush period film to quiet indy-type film about three friends who have just graduated from college and what they do next. This is the sort of movie that I would catch on an afternoon playing on cable and leave it on because I've never heard of it but it has so-and-so in it. Then I'd get sucked in by the story and there's a whole afternoon gone. (You know, if this were in English and on cable. And this was before I had kids, when I used to have afternoons with nothing to do but surf channels). The music fit the story, sort of Indian college rock.

The last movie, Fanaa, started out as something I was really going to love. Kajol is a blind girl from high up in the mountains of Kashmir who goes to Delhi with her dance group for a performance. She falls in love with their tour guide (Aamir Khan). It was wonderful, her parents were loving and supportive, not smothering, her friends were distinct characters. She and Aamir traded extemporaneous poetry with each other. As Quin headed out for his run that night I assured him this was going to be one of my favorites.

Then terrorists hijacked my movie. Nothing on the box anywhere said this was going to turn into a Jennifer Lopez "I have to kill my husband" kind of thriller, but that's just what happened. Aamir Khan blows up part of Delhi (killing Jolly Good Singh among others, and I had liked Jolly Good) then leaves. Kajol gets her sight back (gah) and has a son which she raises up in the mountains with her dad. Then Aamir is doing more terrorist stuff and ends up half-dead on her doorstep. She of course doesn't recognize him (and to be fair, his voice in the two different halves of the movie is very different, and it's been about ten years, and she only knew him for a few days. So that was believable.) So the rest of the movie she figures who he is, then who he really is, while he keeps accidently or on purpose killing people because he really wants to go straight or whatever, but he just has to finish this one last job first.

Now Dil Se was also about love and terrorism, but I think that worked better. At the point Shah Rukh Khan encounters the woman who is intending to be a suicide bomber, she hasn't really killed anyone yet. So there is hope of redemption to drive the story. But in Fanaa we already know that Aamir Khan has killed lots of people. If they had tried to wrestle a happy ending out of that, I would have really hated it. But that left only one ending, and no real tension to drive the story. It was an interesting performance from Aamir, bouncing from scary terrorist to almost boyish fear of his own father and grandfather. I think if they would have dug deeper into his psyche I would have found this movie more interesting. As it was... well, there is a reason I don't watch these "I have to kill my husband/ex-husband/crazy stalker boyfriend" movies. Blah.

Kaante was actually Quin's pick. Shikha's husband had recommended it to him as a good heist film. The first half is The Usual Suspects and the second half is Reservoir Dogs. Some aspects of this were pretty cool. "The usual suspects" has a different meaning when it's the LA cops rounding up every Indian everytime something gets stolen. And once you figure out who's playing which TUS character, it was fun guessing which RD character they'd end up being. There were flaws, though. Their plan involved robbing the bank where all the cops do their banking, so that none of them would get paid. They walk right past the FDIC sign in the bank window a couple of times but apparently didn't realize what it meant. Quin thought that giving Malaika Arora Khan dialogues was a bad sign (she plays one of the thieves' girlfriend). I thought she handled acting fine, I just couldn't believe she was pole-dancing.

Salaam Namaste had no pole-dancing, but it did have a lot of kissing on the mouth, a Bollywood rarity. Quin said it was just like the Hugh Grant movie Nine Months. I don't remember that film at all, but I would guess he's right. Still, I found this funny with sharp dialogue.

To wrap up the Hindi films: Judwaa, whose box said it had subtitles but alas, there were none. I did watch the whole thing. On the one hand, I was only catching about one word in five. On the other hand, this was a broad comedy so one word in five was enough to follow the story. Salman Khan plays twins who can control each other. If one swings a punch, the other does too. Like Amitabh Bacchan's ghost movie, this irked my fantasist side. It was horribly inconsistent as to when it happened, clearly it wasn't all the time, or who was the controller and who the controllee. I don't need to know why something happens (and sometimes it's better not to explain the why, see Groundhog's Day, a film that works mainly because we never know why he's living the same day over and over), but the "how" should have rules. Of course this was all about comedy, so perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on it. One brother pounding a glass of milk causes the other to pound a bottle of brandy and they're both drunk (and dancing): OK, that was funny.

Alas, none of the musical numbers this month really blew me away, so for my YouTube fix I'm going with the best film I saw, a Japanese movie called Shinobi: Heart Under Blade. It's Romeo and Juliet, if the warring families were both ninja clans. And yes, it rocks. We got this on BluRay and it was particularly gorgeous. Not just the scenery, which was gorgeous enough for ten films (ooh, the falling leaves. The snow! Large chunks looked like scenes out of Hiroshige prints). The texture popped so much, I just wanted to reach into the TV screen and touch their clothes. It felt like I almost could.

Now, I have a certain person who critiques my writing who always complains about all the talking my characters do when they are meant to be fighting. This movie is so not for him. Two ninjas meet in the woods and gab at each other for a good ten minutes, and when they finally come to blows it's all over in a matter of seconds. Which is my kind of fighting, actually. I always liked the story of the two samurai who meet on a bridge and stare each other down until the lesser samurai turns and walks away. The actual trading of blows was superfluous; they both already knew who would be the victor.

(And as much as I liked this film, Quin was in raptures. This is his favorite since Marie Antionette. Although perhaps he would thank me for not mentioning that again...)

So here's the trailer (in English, this movie comes subtitled and dubbed both) for Shinobi. Highly, highly recommend.