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Sunday, November 26, 2006

Casino Royale

As part of my family's Thanksgiving celebration, we went out to see Casino Royale.

I'll admit, I wasn't sure what to expect. I know that the casting of Daniel Craig caused quite a hullaballoo (a blond-haired, blue-eyed Bond? Sacrilege, apparently) and I had heard some good buzz about it before we went.

I have to say, this may be my favorite Bond movie. Now granted, I've only seen the Pierce Brosnan movies, so my experience with Bond is a bit limited, but even still, I found this movie superior to any of the recent ones.

Why? I thought that Craig's portrayal of Bond was a bit more realistic. He was merciless when he had to be and completely shut down emotionally, yet was still able to act human and display a sharp wit when the situation demanded it. This James Bond is more human than the last versions.

Not only that, but I appreciated the retooling of the Bond genre. By "retooling", I mean blasting down to bedrock and starting from the ground up. Gone are the over-the-top gadgets. Gone (thankfully) are the stupid, punny names for the Bond girls (that convention outlasted its welcome with Dr. Christmas Jones and the awful way Bond used her name in a pun. I can't remember how it went exactly, and I'm thankful for that little bit of amnesia). Gone are the insane supervillains trying to take over, if not the whole world, then a significant chunk of it.

Instead, we have a Bond grounded in reality. Like I said, the plot didn't involve stopping some convoluted plan to seize control of the world (which would then be evicerated in certain parodies). Instead, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable problem and, while playing Texas Hold 'Em seems like an odd way to solve it, it made sense.

I suppose when you come right down to it, there are times when franchises need to be restarted, so to speak. They need to be stripped of their out-dated conventions and revamped for the modern age. I know that Marvel and DC comics do that all the time with their heroes; it makes sense to do so with other cultural icons as well.

The trick, I think, is to make sure people understand it's a break from the old and an establishment of the new. If this had been a new entry into the existing Bond canon, it wouldn't have made sense. But if this is a complete rebooting of Bond, then it worked perfectly well. You just have to make sure you're doing a rebooting and not a prequel, or else any changes you make to the canon will be very, very bad.

Case in point.

Fragile Things



Early, early this morning I finished reading Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. It's another collection of Gaiman's short stories and poetry and, as always, it left me feeling a little jealous. This man has undeniable talent when it comes to writing. It's little wonder that he continues to hop onto the bestseller lists; if anyone deserves to be there, it's Gaiman.

That isn't to say that everything Gaiman did was perfect. His take on the Chronicles of Narnia, The Problem of Susan, ticked me off to no end. I saw the ending coming in How to Talk to Girls at Parties. There were a few stories and poems that left me scratching my head.

But by and large, Gaiman is a mster of his craft. I loved A Study in Emerald. Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire, while a finger-twisting title, really made me laugh out loud. Seeing as I majored in theatre in college and for a senior year project directed a play based in commedia dell'arte, I felt right at home reading Harlequin Valentine. And The Monarch of the Glen was a worth addition to the American Gods canon.

But the biggest surprise was, by far, Goliath.

If you've read Gaiman's collections of short stories, you know that he always has notes about the stories in his introduction. He explains his inspiration, that sort of thing. After reading Smoke and Mirrors, I decided that in the future, I would avoid reading those notes until after I've read the story. There were a few cases where the notes ruined the ending for me and I wanted to avoid that this time around.

Anyway, I read Goliath with a certain amount of frustration. It was clear that Gaiman was ripping off a very popular movie (or so I thought) and I wondered how he could have done such a thing. Then I went back and read the notes and realized that he didn't actually rip off said movie; instead, he was asked to write a short story for said movie's website.

That's all I'm going to say. Read the short story yourself to see which one it is. You'll figure it out within the first page or so.

Anyway, good read, as always when it comes to Gaiman. I may not always appreciate his philosophy (and definitely not his theology), but he always gives me something to think about and shows me how woefully inadequate my own writing is.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Musings on NaNoWriMo

So earlier this morning, I crossed the 40,000 word mark on my NaNoWriMo novel. That felt pretty good, so I thought I'd stop and share some thoughts about this whole experience.

I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to sell this book or not. It's a convoluted mess right now. I've already mentally highlighted half a dozen places I'll need to go back and shore up. Or I may just have to put the perfect finishing touch to this story when I'm done. Namely a match.

At the same time, though, I've learned some things about myself and my writing:

1) I needed the structure and the deadline. I've been very lacksadaisical about my writing for the past year. I'd type in a few words every now and then if I felt like it and usually, I found myself playing World of Warcraft or some other computer game rather than writing. But now, thanks to NaNoWriMo, I've been forcing myself to get up earlier and start the day by writing at least 1,500 words. It's a good discipline that I'm hoping to carry past just this one month.

2) I really, really, really need help on crafting good characters. One of the critiques that I got regarding The Leader's Song was that I needed stronger characters. Writing this novel has made me realize how true that is. I bought a book recently that hopefully will help, but if anyone has any ideas on how a plot-oriented writer like me can learn how to make fresh and vivid characters, please let me know!

You know, I know I learned more than that. Huh. Oh well. At any rate, even with taking two (maybe three) days off for Thanksgiving, I should be able to hit the finish line by the end of the month. I don't think the book will be done yet, but at least I've benefited from this experience.

Happy Feet

Last night Jill and I went to see the CGI movie "Happy Feet" and, I have to say, I was impressed ... sort of.

To be honest, the only reason I wanted to go was to see the rapping baby penguin from the commercials. I knew that bit would take all of half a second (and I was right), but I was pleasantly surprised.

For starters, we have the music. I can't imagine how much the producers must have spent to get the various licenses for all of that music. It was woven through the plot pretty well and often had Jill and I doubled over with laughter, simply because we couldn't believe what they came up with next. Just to give you an idea: in the first minute or so of the film, you'll hear a penguin imitating Marilyn Monroe singing Prince's "Kiss". Not what I expected in a kid's movie at all, but it made me sit up and take notice.

The vocal talent was top notch. Very well done. If I didn't know that it was Hugh Jackman playing Memphis, I would have never guessed. And Robin Williams did a pretty good job as Ramon (although I question the intelligence of the writers making the shorter penguins all Latino stereotypes).

The only problem I had with the movie was the rather bizarre plot. If you've read anything about the movie, you know that the plot basically boils down to this: most penguins sing to find their mates, but one penguin named Mumbles is unable to sing. Instead, Mumbles can dance, but that's discouraged as being "unpenguin". So on the surface, the plot is typical children's movie: be yourself in spite of what others say, yada yada yada.

But then there's a rather odd subplot (or main plot, I really couldn't tell) tacked on about aliens. Yes, you read that right. Aliens. It was pretty funny when it was introduced but as this plot becomes more and more important, things just become stranger and stranger. The last twenty minutes of the movie just didn't feel right to me. It had a deus ex machina feel to it.

I think the problem is that the writers wanted the audiences to think about a serious issue at a children's movie and so they tacked on the serious message at the end of the plot and then bludgeoned us over the head with it repeatedly. It kind of detracted a little.

But overall, not a bad movie and if you're planning on going, I wouldn't stop. Just be ready to stare disbelieving at the screen because of the music.

Monday, November 13, 2006

CSFF Blog Tour: R. K. Mortenson's Landon Snow and the Island of Arcanum

CSSF Blog Tour



Good grief, is it blog tour time again already? The days just sneak past you, y'know?

This month's tour is centered around R. K. Mortenson's Landon Snow and the Island of Arcanum. Sadly, I have not read this book and I doubt I could locate a copy of it before the end of the tour on Wednesday. So I'll offer this as a cop-out. Ain't this a nice cover?



Okay, so that's a lousy cop-out. Be sure to visit the other participants. I'm sure they'll have done their homework.

Jim Black
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Frank Creed
Gene Curtis
Chris Deanne
April Erwin
Kameron M. Franklin
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Leathel Grody
Karen Hancock
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
Sharon Hinck
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Karen and at Karen¹s myspace
Oliver King
Tina Kulesa
Lost Genre Guild
Kevin Lucia
Rachel Marks
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Caleb Newell
John Otte
Cheryl Russel
Hannah Sandvig
Mirtika Schultz
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Chris Walley
Daniel I. Weaver

Friday, November 10, 2006

Fallen from Babel



This is sort of momentous for me. This review marks the last book that I brought back from Dallas and the ACFW Conference. 'Course, that doesn't mean that I won't be reviewing books anymore. I have since spent a bit of money to create a whole new stack of books to read. And my lovely wife brought home Neil Gaiman's latest collection of short stories because she heard me mention once that I like his writing. I have a good wife.

Anyway, all that aside, earlier this afternoon I finished reading T. L. Higley's Fallen from Babel. In this gripping story of time travel, Professor Peter Thornton finds himself transported from 21st Century Boston to ancient Babylon during the time of the Jewish exile. He finds himself inhabiting the body of a priest named Rim-Sin and finds himself interacting with Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Higley does a marvelous job bringing ancient Babylon to life. There were many times where I was tempted to stop reading and do some digging into Babylonian culture myself, not because I wanted to check facts, but because it piqued my interest.

Higley also constructed her story that it kept me reading and kept me surprised. I was never sure exactly what was going to happen and there was one point where I definitely did not see a twist coming. It felt really, really good to be utterly surprised.

My one minor complaint is something that sometimes pops up in Christian fiction, and that's what I would call the "leap of spiritual maturity" problem. To put it as vaguely as I can without giving anything away, sometimes in Christian fiction, new converts are somehow given an extraordinary amount of spiritual maturity right out of the box, which often strikes me as a little untrue. This happens at the end of this book; I'll let you see if you can figure out what I'm talking about.

But this is still a fantastic book and I'm looking forward to reading more.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

CSFF October Blog Tour -- Day Three of DKA

CSSF Blog Tour


And so we come the end of the October Blog tour.

Once again, I went to Dragons, Knights, and Angels Magazine and read one of their current short stories. This time I chose Dragon...Knight...Angel by Genevieve Cunningham. It's listed as a student entry, which is something that I think is fantasitc. I've noticed when heading over to DKA in the past that they have student entries. It's wonderful that younger writers are being given the chance to shine.

On to the story itself. It was a great concept of a broken down knight going out to battle a dragon. But why is the dragon even there? I think Genevieve put together a great story and should be proud of herself.

Two bits of criticism, though. In some cases, I thought things got a little wordy. Those of you who have seen my unpolished writing will know that this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. If it can be said in five words, I tend to say it in twenty (or more). Maybe that's why I noticed it.

The other critique I have is that the story wrapped up a little too quickly. There was a bit of a deus ex machina at the end where everything was explained to a bewildered Reycott. If Reycott had made part of the cognitive journey himself (specifically, if he had tried to fight the dragon but found that he couldn't beat it), the sewing up of loose ends would have sat better with me.

But hey, it's easy to arm-chair quarterback, and I know that. Again, Genevieve Cunningham is another name I'm going to be watching out for.

Make sure you visit the rest of the blog tour participants:

Jim Black
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Frank Creed
Christina Deanne
Beth Goddard
Rebecca Grabill
Todd Michael Greene
Leathel Grody
Karen Hancock
Elliot Hanowski
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
Sharon Hinck
Joleen Howell
John Otte
Jason Joyner
Oliver King
Tina Kulesa
Kevin Lucia
Rachel Marks
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Cheryl Russell
Mirtika Schultz
James Somers
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Chris Walley
Lost Genre Guild
Speculative Faith