Back in Black

Ok, so I know I need to get my shit back together after it's been apart for so long. I got another post up over on the other blog, and it's a new beginning. I've been trying to write a lot lately, and what's actually been happening is more plotting and thinking, and actually typing up loose ends story-wise that had been bugging me and getting me down about the story. Fixing all this stuff up makes me want to get back and write again, because I kind of have a goal again. I ran into a bunch of problems that I didn't know how to solve and it felt like I wasn't going anywhere.

Anyway

I'm back, I'm writing again, I should have another one up tomorrow. And they should be a lot more frequent now. Sorry for the wait and all.

Hollywoodland
5/10

I like a lot of the 1950's noir-crime stories, but this one left a lot to be desired. I was waiting to see how they'd do it, seeing as the real-life story it was based on, the death of Superman actor George Reeves(Ben Affleck), was never solved. Alas, this movie doesn't really go anywhere either. It's the story of Louis Simo(Adrien Brody), a private detective hired by Reeves' mother to investigate the circumstances surrounding her son's death. The LAPD case had been closed suspiciously fast, and there were more details that had been apparently overlooked before the police ruled it as a suicide.

It's one of those movies where the detective, through investigating a case, learns a lot about his own life and the relationships he's messed, in this case those with his ex-wife and son. The mystery element is just ok. It's predictable that at some point guys are gonna come and beat him up and tell him to mind his own business. Of course, he doesn't.

Bob Hoskins is mis-cast as an asshole Hollywood exec, and Diane Lane as her husband, and love interest for Affleck, is made to look surprisingly unattractive throughout the movie, especially as it moves on through time. I was surprised to look her up and find out she's only 42. They manage to make her look like an older woman who's trying to look younger, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, it's kind of a big mess that goes nowhere, in that when the "Directed by..." title at the end, my dad and I looked at each other with the "did I miss something" look. Skip this one.


Feast
7/10

Not smart, by any definition of the word, but a pretty good gory time. A bunch of generic, cookie-cutter characters (The big-shot twenty-something, the cowboy bartender, the middle-aged biker chick, distraught mother, bimbo, etc.) get stuck in a bar somewhere in the south, and there's monsters outside. They have to survive the night. That's it. That's the whole story.

This was the end-product of season 3 of Project Greenlight, produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Wes Craven. It's basically a first-time director who's done minor work on a couple other movies, with a bunch of no-name actors, and then Jason Mewes as himself, and HENRY FUCKING ROLLINS and a shirt-and-tie motivational speaker. People die, people backstab each other to survive. There's blood, explosions, etc. Pretty much all you could expect or want from a simple horror movie like this. Nothing ingenious or new, no character development, in fact the characters didn't even have names, but were called things like Honey-Pie, Bozo, and Beer Man. But that's not why you watch movies like this to begin with. If you rent this expecting all that, all I can say is "dude, don't suck."

Best quote, after somehow trapping the monster's junk in-between a door and the doorframe and cutting it off, Henry Rollins:

Coach: Whoa. Monster cock.

Crap

Man, after four months, going back and reading some of this, I seriously need to re-write some of this. There's a some crap crap crap in there. I guess that's what happens when you do all your writing so early in the morning. Good god man.

Real life

You always hear people saying they saw something that "they'll never be able to forget" or "the image stays in their mind forever."

I saw one of those things today on the way to work. My dad saw something similar a couple years ago, and he still remembers it and thinks about it. I didn't ask him to tell me what it was, he just said it was something almost identical.

I ended up in tears on the drive to work, and twice later, in the back room, and in the bathroom at my job.

I don't want to write about it, because it's really sad and depressing, and fucked up pretty much my whole day at work. I couldn't really talk to anyone about it, but it stuck with me the whole day, until finally I called my mum from the bathroom at work and just cried over the phone to get it off my chest, so it wouldn't be bottled up inside any more.

Certain things put the world into perspective pretty fucking quick.

I guess it's those things that teach us how to live, and teach us to think and look around us. I'm going to write something similar into my book, because it was like a kick in the face lesson on how hard and cruel the world can be. I'd been stuck looking for an event like this, that could change someone's outlook on life, and I realized that even in a world of aliens and spaceships, something from our world could carry over and be more poignant that anything I could make up.

Current listening and some changes

It might come as a surprise to most people I know, but pretty much ever since the old days of playing with Transformers and He-Man, I've been in love with Annie Lennox. I'm sitting here working on 3.1, amongst other online distractions, including reading a list of Console RPG Cliches, and I've been listening to the Eurythmics for probably the last four hours. It's good music to keep me rocking at almost 3 am.

There have been a couple minor changes to the storyline. For one, the addition of Saeera setting an alarm on her PDC at the end of 1.5. I guess I forgot to add that in there, but I guess such is a by-product of doing most of my writing between midnight and 5 am.

Also, the timeframe has been changed. When the story starts, she has around 36 hours to complete her mission, but I felt like there was getting to be too much exposition, and therefore cut out some scenes(that have not been posted on Oceanus Procellarum yet). Where the timeframe stands right now, she wakes up with 16 hours left, instead of around thirty. It sucks that I have to cut scenes out, but I guess it's like when the film studios cut a two and half hour film down to two hours. Some of it wasn't necessary to the story, and some of it is getting moved to later sections. It feels like the story wasn't taking shape quick enough.

Denver reading list

As you probably know, I'm going to be in Denver for two weeks. I don't know anyone in Denver. So I'm going to be doing a lot of reading and writing in my off-time. Here's some books I ordered from Amazon in anticipation. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

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I couldn't help but order this, for the obvious reasons. It's the first in a series of 8, all published in 1974 and 1975.

The Baroness packs in her sleek, voluptuous body the lethal power of a tigress. To the world, she's known as Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini, model, millionairess, and international playgirl. But to a crack team of superspies, she's "the chief" - the deadliest of them all. She knows how to make it hot for a man - in bed or in action!

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I love Brian Keene

Tommy O’Brien once hoped to leave his run-down industrial hometown. But marriage and fatherhood have kept him running in place, working a job that doesn’t even pay the bills. And now he seems fated to stay for the rest of his life. Tommy’s just learned he’s going to die young–and soon. But he refuses to leave his family with less than nothing–especially now that he has nothing to lose.

Over a couple of beers with his best friends, John and Sherm, Tommy launches a bold scheme to provide for his family’s future. And though his plan will spin shockingly out of control, it will throw him together with a child whose touch can heal–and whose ultimate lesson is that there are far worse things than dying.

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Isn't it obvious?

Brian Keene, best-selling author of THE RISING, CITY OF THE DEAD, and TERMINAL, unleashes his most powerful short story collection yet.

Something bad is about to happen...

An ancient evil awakes in the bloody sands of Iraq. A young woman struggles with loss in the aftermath of September 11th. For contestants on a new reality show, the only way off the island is death. After a chic new play, it's time to unmask. And all across the world, it's starting to rain.

In life, there are no happy endings...and no matter how high you fly, there's always gravity.

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I've wanted to read this one for a few years now. I heard back in 2000 I think that David Fincher was going to be directing the movie. I remember seeing some of the concept art and it looked mindblowing. Anyway, it's back in production. I think it's gonna be his next movie after Zodiac, which comes out later this year.

A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears. The astronauts given the task of exploring the hollow cylindrical ship are able to decipher some, but definitely not all, of the extraterrestrial vehicle's puzzles. From the ubiquitous trilateral symmetry of its structures to its cylindrical sea and machine-island, Rama's secrets are strange evidence of an advanced civilization. But who, and where, are the Ramans, and what do they want with humans? Perhaps the answer lies with the busily working biots, or the sealed-off buildings, or the inaccessible "southern" half of the enormous cylinder. Rama's unsolved mysteries are tantalizing indeed.

Currently Reading

My co-worker Laurie let me borrow this because I mentioned Elmore Leonard, and she said Hiaasen is Leonard-ish. I'll let you guys know how it is.

from Amazon.com:
"Charles "Chaz" Perrone fancies himself a take-charge kind of guy. So when this "biologist by default" suspects that his curvaceous wife, Joey, has stumbled onto a profitable pollution scam he's running on behalf of Florida agribusiness mogul Red Hammernut, he sets out right away to solve the problem--by heaving Joey off the deck of a luxury cruise liner and into the Atlantic Ocean, far from Key West. But--whoops!--Joey, a former swimming champ, doesn't drown. Instead, as Carl Hiaasen tells in his 10th adult novel, Skinny Dip, she makes her way back to shore, thanks both to a wayward bale of Jamaican marijuana and lonerish ex-cop Mick Stranahan (Skin Tight, 1989), and then launches a bogus blackmail campaign that's guaranteed to drive her lazy, libidinous hubby into a self-protective frenzy."

Currently Reading

Despite bearing perhaps the most obvious and awful photoshop I've ever seen on its' jacket, The Conqueror Worms is pretty damn fantastic. I just picked it up today, having thoroughly enjoyed Brian Keene's The Rising and its' sequel City of the Dead. It's rare that I find a book that I simply cannot put down, but that was the case with both of those. The last paragraph of City was so brilliant and fitting for such an epic story, it damn near killed me. I must've read that paragraph ten times.

Anyway

The Conquerer Worms. It's been raining for over a month. A massive storm has caused tidal waves and flooding all over the world. Islands and pretty much every coastline around the world have become submerged, with death tolls in the millions. Teddy Garnett, an eighty-something year old man in Rhode Island is the last man alive in his town, holed up in his house for most of the duration of the storm. Then one day the worms appear. Giant vicious worms have come up from the ground to do something. I haven't gotten to the part that explains the worms' motivation. I'm sure it's pretty much just to eat people and destroy everything. Teddy meets some other survivors and some other stuff happens. I haven't gotten to that part either.

I know it sounds like a 50's B-movie, but Brian Keene has such a talent at convncingly conveying chaos(say that a hundred times fast), and writes plot and characters so damn well, it's tough to put down. From what I've read, Brian Keene doesn't get all that deep or philosophical, but his books aren't just fluff. They're well plotted, well told stories, and it's as simple as that. I know some might think that horror novels are crap and a dime-a-dozen, but Brian Keene stands far far above most of the other contemporary horror fiction authors I've read. He just needs to beg Dorchester Publishing for a new art director.

on Heroines

I have to say, I'm so freaking sick of the idea of the heroine as a sex object. Yes, I am a guy. Hard to believe? I guess I would just like to think of us as a species that has progressed past such base ideas. I guess the problem is that guys write most of this stuff- movies, comics, video games, etc. and they know that it appeals to the primal urges of the male audience.

Take a look at the male heroes in popular culture. There's some damn ugly guys been saving the world since the beginning of 'pop culture.' John Wayne could've been your dad who came home drunk and smacked you around when you pissed him off, Sylvester Stallone generally plays a monosyllabic cro-magnon meathead, and Wolverine looks like a damn lumberjack. But the girls are always bombshells. It pains me, the realization that we will probably never progress past this.