Monday, August 25, 2008

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."

Monday, August 18, 2008

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!



Wednesday, August 13, 2008

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).

Thursday, August 07, 2008

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.



Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Books in July

Still crunching away at the WIP, so this will be pretty brief.

First up: Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan. I liked her previous novels, Doppleganger and Warrior and Witch. This novel is very different, more alternate history less sword and sorcery. The writing is gorgeous, and the story is steeped in Elizabethan history. One gets the sense that when a chase is on through London, one could go to London and recreate it exactly, that every street and turning is exactly right. The idea that there were two queens, and that Queen Elizabeth's fate was tied to this other, darker queen is a cool one, and is handled well. If you like faerie stories, definitely check this out.

Catching up on some more of the Christmas books, I plunged into Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. I've read some of her short fiction before, and last year I checked Zahrah the Windseeker out of the library, read the first third and added it to my must buy list (you know, the list I keep going through the year so I know what to get with my gift cards in December). Cool concept, with the plant-based technology, although the writing was a touch too exclamation pointy for me. The Shadow Speaker goes deeper, darker, and is written with a defter hand. Zahrah was a fun read, but The Shadow Speaker was much cooler.

Having whetted my appetite for YA, I dove into Diana Wynne Jones next. I started with Eight Days of Luke, about a boy who accidently frees Loki from his prison. It was about the Norse gods, which are my favorite pantheon, so of course I loved it. (It also features a boy whose parents have died and he lives with his relatives who don't treat him particularly well, always trying to get him to stay at school over the holidays, and dressing him in much-too-big cast-offs. Sound familiar? Only this book was written in 1975...)

The other Jones I had on hand were all the books in the Chrestomanci series (individually: Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Conrad’s Fate, Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona, Mixed Magic and The Pinhoe Egg). All very cool. Jones writes magic really well: it has a framework and rules, but there are different styles and a lot of individuality between magic-users. And it's a series that gets more interesting as it goes, which is always a good thing.

At that point I needed something less engrossing, something I could read on the treadmill but wouldn't feel compelled to give up writing time to finish. So I finally caved to my husband's pestering and plunged into Edgar Rice Burroughs. I read the first three: A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars. Very cool settings and creatures, I can' believe no one has made a film of this yet (although nearly everyone cool in Hollywood has been just about to try it. I believe Pixar has the hot potato at the moment). It did make me appreciate that my first experience with pulps was Star Wars, though. I mean, John Carter is very much like Farnham with his lifeboat rules; Dejah Thoris may be a princess but she is going to do exactly what he tells her to do without asking any questions. And she meekly agrees. Can you imagine someone trying to pull that act on Princess Leia?

OK, off to eat my very cold lunch now...

Monday, August 04, 2008

A very disjointed post, written in 30 second snatches while the boy does math...

I saw The Mummy 3 last night. What a fun movie! This one has a new director: Rob Cohen, who always makes good popcorn. The use of ancient China was much more reverent than the use of Egypt was in the first two movies. Serious Egyptology would have been misplaced in a popcorn movie, I know, but an Egyptian magician whose magic is the plagues of a Hebrew god? It still makes me grit my teeth, and I liked that movie. There isn't more than a touch of Taoist alchemy in this movie, but at least what's there jives with what I've read. But I think it'd have to, or you wouldn't have Jet Li in your movie.

Plus there are yeti, and Shangra-La. And a three-headed dragon, and Michelle Yeoh, and Russell Wong. (Man, Russell Wong just isn't in enough stuff. I know I'm not the only one who remembers Vanishing Son.)

Originally The Mummy was supposed to be my trade-off with my husband, where we each take a night out alone to watch a movie, but I invited the whole family along for my night out, because popcorn is best when it's shared. Quin went out Friday to see the new Batman movie. I'll happily wait for the DVD on that one, partly because I think I'll find it too upsetting to watch right now, but mostly because I think it will be the sort of mind-twist movie where I spend days stewing about it after, which wouldn't be good when I'm supposed to be stewing on my own story just now.

And stewing I am; I woke up in the middle of the night early, early Sunday morning, suddenly realizing why chapter four didn't work. Then I couldn't get back to sleep until I fixed it, and then I was too keyed up to get back to sleep (so I blogged in the middle of the night; haven't done that before).

School and work week, so the goal is lower. 500 words a day should be doable, I hope. And that should have me at the end of chapter 8 by Friday, which of course means Dr. Horrible.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

It was about this time last summer...

...when I first saw the trailer for Marigold. My response was pretty much mah. I finally got the DVD and watched it this weekend.

First off, this is a movie made with much love, which I greatly appreciated. Apparently the director, Willard Carroll, caught the movie Chori Chori Chupke Chupke while vacationing in India and was sucked in by the first song, "Number 1 Punjabi". He subsequently ordered Bollywood DVDs by the boxload until he'd seen over 150 movies, including everything Salman Khan had ever done. He relates all this in the bonus features, and my husband found it quite amusing, as it's pretty much what happened to me. Substitute Andaz Apna Apna for CCCC, and I've not quite hit the century mark yet and have only seen about 2/3 of Salman's movies. But yeah, Willard and I share a love.

It's also not the fish-out-of-water story I feared. No "whacky" encounters with strange customs or weird food. Again, much appreciated.

It's also not really what the marketing claims it is, which is an east meets west, Hollywood girl meets Bollywood guy. Sure, that's what's going on superficially, but there is even a scene in the movie that pretty clearly spells out that she's just Marigold, not Every American Girl, and he's just Prem, not Every Indian Boy. It's a smaller but more interesting story than the marketers would have you believe.

I don't think it was a rousing success; I'd have to put in the category of films that try for something interesting but don't quite follow through (for comparison, I also put Stranger Than Fiction and Feeling Minnesota in this category). It's really the story of how an overgrown adolescent learns to set aside childish things and be a grown-up. And despite the marketing spin, it's not all of Bollywood that does this for her, it's just one guy who makes her feel safe enough to let up on her defense mechanisms. These two characters and how they draw each other out was really very well written.

It was an interesting story, particularly when her semi-fiance enters the picture and is neither a villainous jerk nor some dope you know she'd never end up with (like the flute player in Serendipity - was it ever remotely believable that Kate Beckinsale would marry that guy?).

Still, flawed. Too many characters appear all at the end of the film, and it all feels rushed (which is one way in which it was not a real Bollywood movie, not even two hours long???). Plus Prem's parents go through a drastic change in motivation that really needed a lot more set-up to feel real. And I would have made Marigold's arc a bit less neat. She pretty effectively stops being a bitch; if I had been writing it, it would have been a much tougher transition for her, and at the point when the Big Secret is revealed, I would have had her really fight not to lose all the grace and self-control she's just learned to have.

Still, it was far better than I had expected.

Friday, August 01, 2008

This Week's Progress

Just a hair under this week's goal:



This is coming out a tad longer than expected. I'm a third of the way through 60,000 words, but not quite a third of the way through my outline. This is not a bad thing, the 60,000 is just a guess after all, and once I go through it all and tighten up the prose it will shorten up by about 10%. Still, it does mean that I should probably gauge my progress by chapters written rather than by word count for the purpose of doling out my rewards. My outline is for 24 chapters, so when I've finished chapter 8, I'll get my first Dr. Horrible installment. I've just finished chapter 7, but the pace slows down from here as I head into three weeks of both work and school. It could be a week or more before I earn my first reward.

As far as the writing itself goes, well, Neil Gaiman said it best when he was working on American Gods:

Feb 13th -- wrote some stuff. It was crap...
Feb 14th -- wrote some brilliant stuff. This is going to be such a good novel. Honest it is...
Feb 15th -- No, it's crap...
And to think I do this for fun.