The Dark Knight - This Changes Everything

Dark Knight might be the comic book film that changes everything and allows comic books and comic book ideas to be taken seriously. Since the dawn of superhero movies, we've been given a steady diet of the same thing, time after time. Some sort of origin story (either the hero, or the villain if it's sequels) coupled with some sort of plot to destroy/conquer the city/world. For the origin movie, it's almost always where the villain and hero are created from the same source, or are otherwise tied together somehow. Insert incredible action sequences and give the hero some sort of dramatic crisis for the climax. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That's not to say that past comic book movies have been bad. Spider-man 2 was my favorite film of 2004, while Iron Man was easily one of the best films this year so far, superhero or otherwise. Batman Begins, while really good, left me a bit flat because it still followed all the required superhero beats (ultimately). But at least it was trying to do something different. Iron Man also injected a bit more effort into the story to make it 'about' something.

But all that was setup for The Dark Knight. I think we needed all of those adaptations to where we got to the point where the superhero movie is ingrained in the national (or even worldwide) psyche in a way where it isn't just viewed as a geeky genre, but just as a type of film every bit as valid and encoded into our DNA as westerns or war films or detective thrillers. Watchmen director Zach Snyder has been talking about this very thing as now being the exact right time to finally release a Watchmen film. Watchmen deconstructed comics for those that were familiar with its rhythms. Now the public is at a point where they are so familiar with superhero tropes that a similar film deconstruction of comic book movies can be accomplished.

However, while Snyder was expecting that cultural shift to occur with the relase of his film, I reallly think it's happened this weekend, with The Dark Knight.

Dark Knight wasn't telling a superhero story. It was telling a complex crime story, but completely grounded within the Batman universe, pulling the best elements of both, and ramping up the drama, the stakes, the themes to levels you can only achieve with something like a comic book story. This was a crime drama overlaid with a brilliant examination of the extremes of good vs evil, black and white, with every shade in between.

Hopefully, this will signal a sea-change in the types of stories that movie studios feel can be told within the framework of a superhero story. I fear that because of the budgets and the need to make these types of films EVENT films that we'll not be able to get the nuance and subtlety that you can get from a great comic book story told over the course of a dozen or more issues. How many times can characters be put through the wringer at these escalating stakes and it not become even more repetitive and dull?

The Watchmen film is telling a specific story that has been proven to be effective and multi-layered. Dark Knight, while not based on any paticular piece of comic literature, definitely was born from an IDEA, not simply the desire to make a sequel and feature the next villain out of Batman's Rogue's Gallery. But I don't know if other comic properties will be able to be about something more than being a sequel.

Iron Man has a good head start in that there is an established comic story arc where Tony Stark battles alcoholism. That, when layered into the next Iron Man sequel, will make for a compelling, 'on purpose' sort of story.

Spider-Man 4, on the other hand, is going to be just the next sequel. Some themes and ideas might be able to be tacked onto it, but we're already beyond that with this franchise. Incredible Hulk tried to sort of be about something, but I felt it ended up a bit flat. I can't imagine how a sequel will be any more compelling. However, with all of these Marvel films, they're all leading up to an eventual Avengers film, which could be something really amazing if done right.

A future comic book film that could definitely be 'about' something is Captain America. I think there's never been a better time to do a film that allows this country to reflect on what it once stood for, and contrast that to what it does now. How America interfaced with the world 60 years ago, and how much it's changed today. If they just make Captain America a fun, superhero film, I think they'll have missed a chance to do something special. They can and should reach for a cross between Dark Knight and Saving Private Ryan.

In any event, superhero films now have a chance to reach for epic concepts and themes, not just epic special effects. Let's see who chooses to take up that challenge.

DVD Review - No Ending For Old Men

I more or less liked "No Country for Old Men" when I saw it late last year. I was confounded by the ending, but still thought it was okay.

Well, my wife and I watched the DVD last night, and on second viewing, it just makes me more angry that the film denies us a proper ending.

The acting was uniformly great, and Bardem's Oscar was well-deserved. But the presentation of the film ultimately failed for me.

I know how the film is SUPPOSED to be about the path everyone takes to get where they are, and how it's about the senselessness of violence and greed, but that's not what the movie gave us for the first 95% of its running time. We had a well-plotted, clear, concise film, with incredibly tense scenes. But then the Coen Bros abandon this over the last ten minutes or so, and decide that telling a cohesively-plotted story isn't what they were doing after all. The movie ends with (spoiler alert!) the main character getting killed offscreen by people who we didn't see until moments before the shootout took place (offscreen). And then we don't learn for sure if Chigur did indeed end up with the money, then we're only given the implication that he kills Josh Brolin's wife, and then we don't find out what ultimately happens to Chigur after he walks away from a car crash.

Some people loved that this film went against convention and turned the ending on its head, but it didn't work for me. And I also don't care if that's how the book ended.

But... it won Best Picture, so I guess someone really liked it.

I Am Legend (Well, not ME, but, umm...well, just read it)

Finally got around to watching "I Am Legend".

I was aware of all the grumbling about the film going into watching it. Complaints about the ending and about the horrible CGI. But I was still giving this one a chance. I'd heard enough fair to good reviews by friends of mine that I figured this just might be one of those 'taste' movies.

Alas...

For starters, let me say that Will Smith was fantastic in this. He's one of our true A+ movie stars. He was given an impossibly difficult role to play, being the only actor in the film for 90% of its running time. I normally cringe when movies have characters talk to themselves or to animals or inanimate objects, as it usually comes across as very obvious that it's just a device so that there's not just 90 minutes of a guy walking around quietly by himself. But Will Smith pulled it off.

But...

But then we get to the "Darkseekers". Here lies the treacherous path the movie decides to take. I just did a bit of research on the original novel this movie is based on, and discovered that vampires/zombies were not only very much a part of the novel, but even more overt than they are in the movie. But they also make a lot more sense than in the movie. The movie tries to make the epidemic a reaction to a cancer vaccine. While this in itself isn't a bad idea, it's where it leads that winds up making no sense.

Now, instead of the more "plausible" reason of vampirism as to why everyone else has superpowers and can climb walls like Spider-man and can leap twenty feet through the air, and on and on, now we have to somehow imagine that these powers are the result of a vaccine gone bad. It doesn't work for me, sorry. It should have either just be straight up vampires, or else dropped the super-abilities of those suffering from this problem.

The ending, while nice and bleak, is pointless because it's just so silly. Just another typical action film ending where everything comes together at the final moment, including Will Smith's character remembering one key thing his son said to him that winds up being the key to everything. How convenient that he remembers that quote and finally puts meaning to it right at the last possible moment.

I then went and watched the alternate ending, where Will Smith's character lives, by making some sort of silly connection with the lead Darkseeker. An infected Darkseeker that Will Smith had been experimenting on just so happens to be the wife or girlfriend of the lead Darkseeker, who ends up carrying her out with him. It has gotten tons of praise for being so clearly the better ending, but I think it's actually sillier than the theatrical version. I think the studios made a wise choice, at least as far as these two endings are concerned.

As far as the book ending (spoiler alert!), he ends up being the last remaining human on an earth that is now overrun by vampires, so now HE is the mythical creature causing problems for the rest of (vampire) society. HE is the Legend. It's kind of a Planet of the Apes sort of ending (haven't read the book, just a brief synopsis), and it makes much more sense than either of the silly movie endings.

While the film is ultimately silly, I can honestly say I was never bored, and never less than riveted to what was going on. But...I can only give this film six and a half teeth out of ten. Will Smith gets 9.5 teeth out of ten. The Darkseekers get one tooth out of ten.

Lawrence of Arabia - Review

Okay... I'm about 46 years late in getting this review out. Tough. I just finally watched it this past weekend. Blockbuster had a great sale on the special editions of a bunch of movies and I finally decided now was the time to tackle old Lawrence.

All I can say is that it totally lives up to all the accolades it has received over the years. Even though it was nearly four hours long, and featured lots of traveling across desolate stretches of desert, it never felt like it dragged. Even 46 years later, the cinematography is still stunning (watching the restored special edition doesn't hurt, I'm sure).

I didn't know a whole lot about T.E. Lawrence, so while everything that happened was a surprise to me, a deeper understanding of the history and the politics evaded me a little on this first viewing. I eagerly look forward to revisiting this film in the future.

This film garnered a lot of press for its cast, most notably introducing Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif to the world. I thought Omar Sharif in particular was outstanding and really projected star power whenever he was on the screen. I've always been familiar with him, but never really had that high of an opinion of him and always wondered how he became so highly regarded. But after seeing him here, I have no more questions.

Lawrence of Arabia is rightly considered a classic, and perhaps the greatest of the old school epics.

Nine and a half teeth out of ten.

The Mist

"The Mist" is the movie that "Cloverfield" desperately wanted to be. Scary. Thought-provoking. Well-acted. Evoking a sense of wonder. Cool giant monsters (and small ones).

I picked up the two-disk special edition specifically to get the director's preferred version of the movie, in black and white. And I have to say, it gives it a totally different feel than the color version. If you get the chance, definitely go for the B&W.

Can't say too much more about the movie without giving the good stuff away. The premise is that a mysterious mist rolls into a small town trapping a bunch of people inside a supermarket. The rest of the movie is them trying to figure out what's out there (no surprise that it's some nasty creatures), and what they are going to do to survive if help doesn't arrive soon. It should also be no surprise that the worse monsters are among the people trapped inside as civilized behavior eventually starts to fall apart.

Acting is uniformly good, and for the first time, I actually thought Thomas Jane commanded a screen, playing a great everyman in this.

The ending has received lots of controversy (it's much different than the novella the film is based on), but I'm ambivalent about it. It works well enough for the film even if it crosses the line a WEE bit into "and now here's the clever movie ending."

I give this nine teeth out of ten.

[Movie Review] Curse of the Golden Flower

Curse of the Golden Flower may be the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. It's certainly not the best movie I've seen, and there's a lot about it that left me scratching my head afterwards, but one thing that's not in doubt is that you've never seen anything like this.

Like most movies in this genre ("Hero", "House of Flying Daggers", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), the movie itself had lots of inscrutable parts. In fact, I had trouble scruting most of the second half of the film. You think you have an idea of what's going on, but then people start flying and balancing on top of a flower, and armies start popping up out of nowhere and you realize you probably missed a key bit of explanation twenty minutes earlier. The plot of this movie concerned secrets and revenge and the repression of women in 10th century China, but none of that mattered.

No, all that matters is that from the first frame to the last, this movie is a feast for the eyes. The image included at the top of this post is just one example of the orchestra of color you will experience. At no point do you ever really feel that you are seeing something real, or that this is in any way a true representation of the period, but I'm sure it's exactly what that period FELT like.

Here's a link to a gallery of still photos from the movie, which really don't do any justice to seeing this stuff in motion.

http://imdb.com/gallery/ss/0473444

I don't have an HDTV yet, but I may have to get one just to watch this film again, to see it in even richer detail.

"Curse of the Golden Flower" is Chinese director Yimou Zhang's third wire-fu, period film, coming on the heals of the almost-but-not-quite-as-beautiful films, "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers." After this unofficial trilogy, I'm not sure what ground is left for Zhang to cover in this genre. I'm sure there are hundreds of other Chinese legends yet to be filmed, but are any of them unique enough for him to spend his time on? Fortunately, he's just as well-known (in Asia) for his non-genre films, and I'm eager to check some of those out.

In addition to the stunning art design and cinematography, I have to also commend the acting in this (despite the sometimes bewildering directions the story would take). Gong Li and Chow Yun-Fat were both mesmerizing and prove once again that foreign actors and actresses should stick with films that allow them to speak their native language. Gong Li was forced to speak English in "Miami Vice", and as a result, her entire performance was awkward and stilted. In a similar vein, I've never liked Penelope Cruz, but I'm curious to check her out in "Volver" (for which she was nominated for Best Actress) since she speaks in Spanish in this movie, rather than English.

So, to sum up, Curse of the Golden Flower is a mesmerizing movie, beginning to end. If you're one of the lucky few that is able to follow the plots of these Chinese "Wuxia" legends, then you'll really like this movie. As it is, I'm looking forward to seeing this movie again, in the highest resolution possible.

Story: Five Teeth. Overall: Eight Teeth.

Iiiiiiit's Groundhog Day!

And by Groundhog Day, I of course mean the movie, not the day itself. I could care less about a rodent seeing its shadow. No, today is the day to celebrate the greatest American (or otherwise) comedy of the 20th century.

There are very few movies I can watch more than once (I've really only seen the Star Wars movies about ten times each, and only once each in the last decade), but Groundhog Day is the one movie I can watch again and again and never tire of. Which is ironic since the movie is essentially the same set of scenes played over and over again.

Groundhog Day remains my favorite comedy (it falls anywhere from number 3 to number 5 on my list of all-time favorite movies) fourteen years after having first seen it. It's exactly the kind of movie I like, and one I wish I could have made.

One one level, it's just a very funny movie. The jokes never drift into absurdity, always fitting the scene and moving the plot forward.

On the second level, it's the cleverest movie I've ever seen. More than any other movie with a gee-whiz idea, this movie takes it and explores it from every angle, really pushing the concept to its limit. What WOULD you do if you had to repeat the same day over and over again?

And if that's all the movie wanted to do, it would have been a comedy on a level with Ghostbusters. But Groundhog Day's launch into the comedy pantheon occurs because it seamlessly makes the movie ABOUT something deeper. It adds my personal favorite life-theme, redemption.

It's never too late to start appreciating the people around you and the things that happen to you and near you. Even if you've lived the same day over and over again for 10,000 years (as the filmmakers sometimes imply), you can still start fresh and make a change.

There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but that's what resonates so strongly within me. My life often feels like a Groundhog Day, with themes (rather than days) repeating over and over again. Every once in awhile I open my eyes and appreciate all the things around me, and/or learn from my mistakes, and then like Phil, I get to move on to the next great stage of my life.


There's a great article in New Republic (I don't read it, I found this online this morning) that discusses the enduring popularity of Groundhog Day (the movie) and its surprising cultural impact. Even though I've seen and read about the movie countless times, just like the movie, I was able to discover something new. Enjoy the article here.

So Happy Groundhog Day. And make sure you bundle up, cause it's cold out there.

Movie Review - Children of Men

Children of Men is one of those movies that could very easily have been a confusing mess, but fortunately, it successfully achieved my current movie criterion buzzword-- Clarity. A few times, the movie threatened to fall off the tracks of clarity, but each time, it managed to refresh me on the key points I needed to continue on.

The basic plot of Children of Men is that in the year 2027, the world is falling apart and women have been infertile for about 16 years. A young girl is discovered to be pregnant, and she needs to be delivered to a secret group of scientists dedicated to restoring worldwide fertility. However, there is a group that is pushing for an uprising and wants to use the existence of this baby as their rallying point. The movie is essentially a chase, with Clive Owen's character attempting to successfully deliver the pregnant girl to the scientists, avoiding the uprising people.

The movie does a great job of setting up the world through background images, such as TVs, newspapers and graffiti, rather than than an overabundance of expository babble.

The movie's been called a 21st century Blade Runner, and in a lot of ways it's pretty apt. The tone, the grittiness of the world, the bleakness of the story, the humanity of the main characters are all from the same DNA as Blade Runner.

But best of all, the movie achieves clarity at every point, allowing the full tension of each moment to effortlessly shine through without my having to wonder, "Now why is that guy shooting at them again??"

8.5 teeth out of ten.

Movie Review - Elektra

This was on the stack of "Movies that I want to watch that I know won't be any good, but I want to watch them so I can figure out why they didn't work."

I was only marginally impressed with Daredevil, and thought Jennifer Garner was miscast as Elektra. I wasn't looking forward to Elektra when it came out, and less so when almost all the reviews were harsh. But it popped up in the list of movies coming on HBO, so I went ahead and set it to record with my trusty Time Warner (soon to be Comcast) DVR. And there it was sitting in my recorded list as I sat down to eat some grub last night so I opted just to watch Elektra for as long as I could tolerate it.

Turns out I could tolerate the whole film. However, don't take that to mean I enjoyed it or give it a positive rating.

This falls in the category of movies that really didn't need to be made. It didn't bring anything to the action genre or the comic book genre. The story was basically a slight rehash of Terminator 2, where a villain must overcome their evil tendencies to help out a chosen one who has been marked for death. If you've seen a movie, you've seen Elektra. There weren't any surprises in this.

The best I can say about it was that I was never bored enough to stop watching. Some of the effects were neat. The characters were cardboard, but generally likeable. But surprisingly, there wasn't a whole lot of action, and only two scenes were Elektra worer her iconic red costume. There was a lot of talking and running.

Anyway, this movie would probably be better in a group setting with the intent being to ridicule the movie as it plays in the background.

5 teeth out of 10.

Movie Review - Series 7: The Contenders

Now this was a movie that I accidentally watched last night at about midnight. Granted, I had set it to record earlier in the evening, but it was as I was showing Tamara how to use some of the features of the new Time Warner DVR box that this movie started recording right in the middle of the lesson. We just started watching it and before long, we'd abandoned DVR lessons and settled in to finish watching.

The basic premise of this film is that we are watching the marathon of a reality TV show called "The Contenders, Series 7". This reality show randomly selects 6 people from a random town, gives them weapons, and forces them to hunt each other down until only one is left alive. This is apparently a government sanctioned and enforced TV show. So camera crews follow the various contenders around and presents their stories.

The film is shot and presented in video and looks like an authentic reality show. It's like a cross between Cops, Real World, and the Running Man.

What's most interesting about this is that this film was produced in 2001, predating (slightly) the success of Survivor. But it was prescient in its prediction of how reality shows would become more and more extreme. We haven't quite gotten to the point to where a deathmatch reality show is a, um, reality, but we're close.

The movie started off great and had our attention from the first moment. It didn't explain everything at first and just treated you basically as if you had just flipped the channel to a show that had already been on for years and you just hadn't ever seen it before. It seemed to have been done in a semi-improv style and this worked perfectly for most of the first part of the film.

It's only during the second half of the film when they had to steer the plot towards the more convoluted aspects of the story that it started to fall apart a bit. I find this is the case in most mockumentary-style shows is that the movement toward the pre-written story elements always come across as a bit clunky and forced. Such was the case with Series 7: The Contenders.

Overall, it was watchable, even during the contrived parts. An interesting experiment.

Final verdict: 6 and a half teeth

DVD Stack - Reds

Finally watched Warren Beatty's Reds. I have to admit that it wasn't at all what I was expecting. I knew it was about the Russian Revolution, but that's pretty much the extent. My assumption was that Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton played Russians caught up in the tides of the revolution. But I was completely wrong.

Instead, the movie is based on the lives of Jack Reed and Louise Bryant, two American socialist/communist activists/writers from the late 1910's who managed to be in Russia during the revolution and got caught up in it. It's really a love story between the two of them set against this backdrop.

I enjoyed it. It was suitably epic in its scope and intimate in its focus. What really added a lot to this film were contemporary (1981) interviews with people that actually knew Jack and Louise back in the day. It gave the film much more of a sense that this all really did happen, and made the dramatic parts seem more like these were the actual people.

Acting was superb throughout as was the cinematography. I'm sure as I watch (or re-watch) more period epics from the 70's and 80's I'll end up with similar opinions, but Reds felt like a movie that was produced within the last few years rather than 25 years ago.

I give it 9 teeth out of 10.

NaNoWriMo - Update

Okay. Here it is, mid-January. I got sidetracked in November by work and life in general, and am currently stalled out at 33,000 words. I hope to get it kick-started tonight or tomorrow and try to get to 50,000 by the end of the month. Not likely, but I'm going to go for it. In any event, I should be able to finish the rough draft of Word War III over the next month or so at the worst.

But before I do that, a couple of movie reviews.

NaNoWriMo - 7 - Day 5/6 - Back on the Horse

Now it's really starting to get fun. After three days of feeling practically helpless to get any traction on this story and to get myself out of the rut I was already in, I had a really good writing night tonight. Nearly 3000 words. I made up a whole day today, almost. Now I'm only 2200 words off pace, and with two good days, I can be right where I need to be.

The story is really starting to take some shape. I have a vague idea of where I want it to go a chapter or two ahead of time. Characters are starting to take shape and tell me things about themselves that I didn't know. More eloquent words and phrases are starting to flow from my fingertips rather than the typical "he glanced" or "he replied".

This is really fun.

I think I can actually do this. After Thursday and Friday I had serious doubts, but now... it's entirely possible.

Can't wait to see what happens next with this story.

And I never in a million years thought I'd be writing a political thriller...

NaNoWriMo - 6 - Day 3 - Chugging to a Halt

Okay... I am/was starting to get worried. I'm getting NO momentum going on this story. I spent all day working on emergency print ads and making some changes to the Global commercial. Then I had to go buy some wireless networking gear for my mom and then go to her house and set it up, and (this was the good part), eat some fantastic gumbo. After that I went to my sister's house and enjoyed their hot tub and spent a nice evening with my sister and her husband (Ryan and Tamara were both home sick tonight). And then I came home and watched a great episode of Battlestar Galactica.

So it was after midnight when I finally sat down to maybe think about writing. I almost just called it an evening, but managed to get in a fair amount of writing. Not a huge amount, but enough so that I feel like it wasn't a total waste of a day, NaNoWriMo-concerned. I'm now up to 1867 words, which is WAY behind where I need to be, but I was able to get back on the horse which is good. Saturday really SHOULD be a good day where I catch up. We'll see.

And I did pretty good today about not bogging myself down with editing and rewriting as I go. I came thisclose to grinding to a halt while looking up the actual geography of downtown Washington DC. That can all wait, and I successfully just plopped something down quickly. I think I'll get better at just going with the flow the longer I do this.

Okay... time for bed again, and a bit of "No Plot, No Problem" reading. Tamara is going garage saling in the early morning and I will try to wake up to join her. It's the mega-neighborhood sale, so there are usually good things to be found.

Out.

NaNoWriMo - 5 - Day Two

So it's 11:45 and I'm just finishing up work for the day (a major commercial for Global Industries). I haven't had a chance to write a single word today, and I'm totally wiped out. I think I'll try to go to bed early tonight (midnight) and wake up really early tomorrow and start writing to catch up.

One good thing I did last night before I went to sleep, was I read a good chunk of the "No Plot, No Problem" book written by the guy that started NaNoWriMo. There was a ton of good stuff I learned because I almost didn't read it, thinking I knew what he was going to say. The main thing that was re-iterated to me was that this month-long contest isn't about quality.. it's about quantity. If I'm going to edit and proofread and rewrite as I go, I'll never finish. Yesterday, I was so caught up in trying to make Craig's first chapter have a different voice that I got bogged down...in chapter one. I just need to WRITE it, as fast as I can, and really get it in my head that I'll be able to edit it later and rewrite it later.

So hopefully, tomorrow will be a more productive day, novelish-speaking. I might have a commercial to produce, but if I don't, then I'll be able to spend a good part of the day working on the novel. I should be able to catch up and maybe even get ahead. We'll see.

One really positive note, Tamara really likes the idea of the book and what I've written so far. It's the first time I've ever seen her interested in, much less excited about something I've written. So if SHE likes it, I might just have something.

Okay... on to sleep.. after a bit more reading of the "No Plot, No Problem" book.

NaNoWriMo - 4 - Day 1.5

Okay.. today wasn't a good day. I haven't felt good all day and I just want to go to bed. However, I did manage to get a few words done. I'm up to 1335 words. Tomorrow should be better.

In spite of my low word count today, I did manage to get some backend work done on the story. I have a much clearer idea of how the chapters will play out and how the duel will be constructed like a game of chess. Each writer will have to plan several moves ahead and anticipate what the other writer is doing, and try to determine what the other writer thinks he knows about

I also think I know who the main antagonists are-- I'll hold that back for now.

Okay... falling asleep at the keyboard. Be back tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo - 3 - First Report

Alrighty... it's 2am. I've got 930 words in my prologue. Not bad. I'll have to pick it up just a bit tomorrow night.

I've settled on a title for my story: Word War III. This is the third writing duel between these two writers. In the prologue, I opted to tell it first person from one of the writer's points of view. He's lost the previous two Word Wars, and vows to win this time.

My only quandary at this point is do I continue this first person view throughout the novel? Do I have this character comment on the other guys chapter, interspersing the commentary within the text of the chapter? Do I have him scour the text looking for clues as to what his opponent is intending and potential ways of countering him? Or do I just stay wholly within the narrative from this point on? Or do I have a mini-section at the beginning of each chapter as the POV character comments on what he's just read and ponders what he has to do when writing his next chapter? I kinda like that better. A bridge between each chapter. It might be fun to sprinkle in all sorts of external things happening to the POV character that are then reflected in the next chapter. There can be periods of panic as he struggles to write the next chapter. Periods where he feels he clearly has the upper hand. I like this. These bridges will have to be short so they don't break up the narrative flow of the story itself. With any luck or skill, I can turn this into a deep, multi-layered story with extra layers of meaning behind what happens on the page.

We'll see.

For now, it's sleep.

NaNoWriMo - 2 - My Plan

Okay... so here's how I'm going to go about this. I've got my basic idea for the skeleton of the story, such as it is. Then each day I'm going to write another chapter (or two, depending on how I ultimately decide to structure it). I have no intention of fully plotting out the story, or even partially. As I type this, I intend to use my Idiot Box game cards to dictate what the next chapters will be about. That way, I have no pressure to have everything line up logically all the way to the end.

This will also allow me to approach this more like the writing exercise it is, rather than WRITING A NOVEL. It will be a fun, creative challenge every single day, and that's got me excited, rather than dreading it. Because I KNOW that if I'm given a few random elements that I can come up with an interesting story in no time at all.

So here's the premise:

The overall story is going to be the duel between two writers who have been co-writing a book. They have had some sort of falling out and have decided to sabotage the story. What they will do is each day, they will alternately write the next chapter of the novel, putting the main character in such a horrible situation that there's no way the other writer can extricate the character from it. This will constitute "winning" in the eyes of the writers.

The rest of the story will be the chapters as "written" by the two writers, told through the eyes of the main character, and with each chapter ending in a cliffhanger.

The ending will be determined, I'm guessing, by whatever themes, plot, and concepts that develop throughout the month.

As I type this right now, all I know is that the main character is named Bernie (as named by Ryan), he works as a car salesman (Ryan) in Lake Charles, Louisiana (Me). He's living a boring life, and something happens at the dealership to propel the rest of this story. I'm guessing there is a hold-up, or someone steals a car with him in it. Hey.. it's a test drive. That works.

One thing I think is that the tone of the two writers should be very different. They should have distinct enough 'voices' that the reader should be able to know who's writing the chapter just by how it sounds. But even still, the character has to be consistent regardless of which writer is at the wheel. I can kind of see one of them being more jokey while the other is more grim. That should provide a wide enough contrast.

At first I was going to make this a battle between the two writers, where they each attempt to sabotage the other's story, but I think it works better as a contest between the two. The first chapter can be the two of them setting up the ground rules for the contest, and the conditions for winning.

At this point, I'm unsure if I'm going to attempt to come back to the two writers during the story. I may not even come back to them at the end of the story. It would be nice to be able to make it work within the context of Bernie's story.

A potential title (and definitely a working title) just came to mind. Word War I.

One other idea I'm toying around with (actually, it just came to mind not ten seconds ago) is making this something like Betrayals in that each chapter is also a completely different style of story, such as newspaper article, blog entry, etc. That might make it more fun for me, but also more difficult, as in addition to coming up with the story, I'd also have to determine a style as well. Probably not, as that would make it more difficult to leave each chapter with a cliffhanger. Okay.. executive decision... same 'novel' style throughout.

Okay... just a little bit longer. I think I'll start a bit early on it.

Updates later.

NaNoWriMo - I'm Gonna Do It

So in three hours, at midnight, National Novel Writing Month begins. I think I've decided to participate. The members of the Barnes & Noble writers group I attend have been talking about it since the first meeting I attended, and until just a few hours ago, I had no intention of taking part. It's going to be a bear to get through.

The way it works is you have until November 30th to write a 50,000 word novel. That averages out to 1667 words per day. On Microsoft Word, that translates to about three full pages per day. Every day. If I miss a day, that means I have to write six pages the next day. It's a tall task.

But... I know I can easily write that much every day. I wrote my Camp David treatment in six hours (from scratch) and that was 6500 words and 13 pages. So 1700 words a day shouldn't give me too much trouble.

The good thing about this is that ultimately, what I write doesn't matter. The whole point of this contest is not to write the next great American novel, or even a passable novel. It's just to get all of the hundreds of thousands of would-be novelists to get off their butts and WRITE something. At the end of the month, you won't have a masterpiece, but you WILL be able to say "I'm a novelist". "I have written something."

While I know that I have several dozen different projects going at the same time, and work, and on and on, I think more than anything, I NEED something like this to get me going.

A short while ago, Ryan and I talked briefly about what my novel will be about. I have a neat idea for a story that really works well with something like this contest. So we'll see....

I'll check back in later.

[ movie review ] Dark Water aka "The movie that soured me to Japanese horror"

That's right. I've had enough. No more horror movies based on Japanese horror movies.

I'm not sure what's going on over in Japan, but apparently there is an alarming rate of child murders taking place, because it seems nearly every horror movie coming from over there is about a dead kid seeking revenge. I think Japanese Dateline needs to do some sort of expose on that or something.

Anyway, Dark Water, starring Jennifer Connelly, was the most suspense-free horror movie I've ever seen. While some may find that refreshing, I was bored. The acting is good, just judging based on its own merit, but the characters didn't have anything interesting to do.

The ads made it look like it was going to be some sort of Amityville Horror sort of movie, but all the scary-ish stuff from the trailer came from one dream sequence in the movie.

(spoiler alert!)


The dark water in question, is really just the result of a dead kid stuck in a building's spiritual plumbing. Yawn.


It was a mess, and I'm not talking about the icky water.