film

Nothing bad can come of this

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Fran Kuzui Rebel did such a fantastic job with her original Kristy Swanson version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer that she and her husband are working on a Joss Whedon-less reboot.

Which is probably a bad idea, okay? Seriously. The original movie stunk in an amazing variety of ways, not least because the superpowered heroine of the story had to be saved by her lunky unpowered boyfriend. Because a girl with superpowers becomes the equivalent of a boy.

Don’t miss the comment section at that new item, though. My current favorite:

I’m convinced half the posts below were written by Whedon himself. No viewer is that much a fan of any TV producer. Knock it off Joss.

I haven’t even seen the movie

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But this Star Trek parody is freakin’ hilarious.

A link for you:

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Scratch.

What is it, you ask? It’s a free, simple, entry-level animation program that allows anyone (although it was designed for kids) create short videos, games, or whatever else you want.

The program was designed at M.I.T. to give young people the ability to create their own media. I myself am not “young” by any stretch of the imagination but I downloaded it (for my, um, son. Yeah, that’s right. My son.) and found it surprisingly easy to use.

If you’ve ever wanted to make your own goofy videos or games, check it out.

Yesterday

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Here’s a quick tally of yesterday’s strangeness (not all of it bad):

Woke early. Worked on …Blue Dog for a while, then rushed home.

Went out just after lunch to see BATTLE FOR TERRA. My son nearly fell asleep on the bus.

We all stopped in at a comics shop for Free Comics Day. The first comics we saw were very, very adult. We had to make our way to the back to pick up books the boy wanted.

At the movie theater, I had to take the elevator. This particular shopping center (Pacific Place) is four stories with a wide open mezzanine structure. The escalators trigger my fear of heights, and for some reason I was extremely vulnerable yesterday.

Loved the movie. See previous post.

At the boy’s insistence, we sat down to eat at Johnnie Rockets, which was even worse than I remembered. The meal was interrupted partway through by an PA announcement that they were evacuating the building.. I stayed behind to settle the bill, then met my wife and son outside. So much for visiting the bookstore in the basement.

On the bus ride home, I noticed something strange just before we came to our stop. A woman was standing by the door to her townhouse, pushing a man away. She would then turn to unlock her door, and he came up close to her again. She appeared to be fending him off.

My wife said “That didn’t look good.” We all got off the bus and I immediately went over there, but they had both gone inside. When I turned around, I saw that my wife had flagged down a police car. We explained what we saw, and he promised to look into it.

Was she about to be raped? Why was the building evacuated? I don’t think we’re ever going to find out.

BATTLE FOR TERRA (no spoilers)

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We just returned from BATTLE FOR TERRA, and it was fantastic! Great characters, thrilling action scenes and a powerful ending. My wife cried (which is not a spoiler–she cries at happy endings and sad ones, as long as it’s emotionally powerful). She also walked out of the theater with the urge to travel.

The boy loved it, too. We saw it 3-D for him (‘natch) and he kept saying “Whoa!” and “Awesome!” all through it. There were a couple scenes that I thought might be too intense for him, but no. He was all over that stuff.

And it’s gorgeous. This is the most beautiful science fiction movie I’ve seen in a long time.

For me, one of the most interesting things about the story was how the violence came from fear. This is something I’ve been working through in my own work, and it was wonderful to see his take on it.

Go see it. It’s wonderful.

Also, thanks to everyone who’s voted in my poll. I’m grateful for all your ideas and the poll is still open.

Quick links and notes

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First: I’ve mentioned before that I cut my writing teeth on Wordplay, a screenwriter’s site, and I maintain a friendship with many of the people I met there. Well, another Wordplay alumnus, Keith Calder, has a movie coming out this weekend: Battle For Terra. His previous film was The Whackness, and if that doesn’t say “this producer has a wide range of skills and interests” what would? It opens this Friday, and I’m planning to take the whole family.

Next: this is what the term “office hijinks” was created for.

Next: I passed the halfway point of the revision of Everyone Loves Blue Dog, and I’m about to start a scene that will need heavy changes (for the better, I suspect). As soon as I finish this post and a little more kitchen work, I’ll be back at it.

Next: Tonight we have a taste test of the three pizza crust recipes posted in my LJ last week. The family decides tonight!

Next: Andrew Wheeler posts the genre bestsellers of 2008. Hmm. If each hardback sale earns about two bucks for the author…

Next: The deadline to opt out of the Google/Author’s Guild settlement is May 5th. Find out more about it.

Next: I’m on Dreamwidth as burger_eater. Currently, I have no idea what I’m going to use the account for, but once a WordPress cross-poster comes into the world, I may start copying everything over there, too.

Finally, on Saturday we took a couple buses across town to check out the final weekend of Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. It was beautiful, and I loved the idea of paintings where the same characters appear several times in different places, each different image coming together to tell a story. Amazing stuff.

Exciting!

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Some friends of mine are planning to make a low-budget sf film. I have the script at home waiting to be read, and I know–know–it’s going to rock. No cheapo aliens, Ed Wood monsters, or SiFi Originals-level acting for these guys. They’re smart and clever.

The title is NEWTON’S CRADLE, and I can’t wait to read it.

So! For my own contribution to the glittering screen, I offer a failure-proof of my idea for use in any Hollywood mega-production. For free!

Because you know it’s good if it doesn’t cost you anything.

The movie will be called JIG, and it’ll be about a woman who collects rare jigsaw puzzles–you know, for the art–who discovers a WWII era German jigsaw artist who hid clues in his many puzzles that will lead a clever puzzler to the location of Secret Nazi Gold. It’ll be just like a Dan Brown novel, but with pretty pictures of leaping dolphins and homey villages populated with anthropomoriphized kittens.

Our Heroine teams up with the smoking hot great grandson of the jigsaw artist–a detective with a love of Nazi puzzles–in a race against [mumble mumble] to find the secret treasure. But was the jigsaw puzzle artist really a secret Nazi and a killer? And is his great grandson one too????

See? It writes itself. And after people left the theater, they could tell all their friends they “Saw Jig.” Heh heh. Get it?

Call me, Hollywood!

6 things make a post

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* Check out this short “video” which I guess is supposed to advertise a new TV. Actually, I probably shouldn’t have quote marks around that word, because this is a digital video at 30 frames a second, but it’s really more of a technical acheivement than a short film. Basically, it’s “bullet-time” on red kryptonite.

* Health care reform without a public insurance option=the German model. Money quote: “Finally, premiums for children are covered by government out of general revenues, on the theory that children are not the human analogue of pets whose health care should be their owners’ (parents’) fiscal responsibility. Instead, children are viewed as national treasures whose health care should be the entire nation’s fiscal responsibility.”

* Seven year old boys prefer store-bought lemon-lime soda to the homemade variety.

* On NPR this morning, the father of Roxana Saberi, the journalist sentenced to 8 years in prison in what appears to be an Iranian kangaroo court, has been trying to make waves by telling people that his daughter was tricked into confessing to spying. According to him, they promised to let her go if she admitted to the crimes, which he thought was illegitimate. I hope someone explains to him that this happens in the U.S.A. all the time–the teenagers wrongfully convicted in the Central Park “wilding” case were nailed because of exactly this tactic, and that the FBI wanted Richard Jewel to confess to the Olympic bombing as part of a “training video.” While the Iranian government is deeply fucked up and in desperate need of reform, there’s no point in criticizing them for doing the same thing we do.

* I don’t have whatever cable channel showed THE WIRE, but I know it has a lot of fans. If you’re interested, here’s the original pitch and series bible. (Warning, that’s a .pdf file) I haven’t looked at it myself, because I plan to watch the series someday.

* Finally, putting my wife on a bus for her second day at her conference pretty much wasted my writing time today. My son is up, too, and once that happens I’ll have no time to focus on the book at all. Which sucks, but hey, that’s what family is about. Now we’re off for our Saturday library run.

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Today, I pored over Everyone Loves Blue Dog, and accomplished nothing. Also, the book my wife gave me to read couldn’t be renewed. I had to strip out all her bookmarks and slip it into the conveyor belt at the library.

As for the LiveJournal feed for Nathan Bransford’s blog, it turns out that Mr. Bransford himself ask that it be suspended. I have no idea why; LJ syndication is just another kind of RSS, but whatever. No more “This Week in Publishing” I guess.

At work, I discovered that the intranet policy book pages I’d spent a good part of last week working on were completely useless now. The manager copy and pasted them into .mht files elsewhere on the network, breaking all the links. There were good reasons to move them to another part of the network–our system is criminally slow–but damn.

Finally, do you know what my company and I both pay, per month, for the basic health insurance my wife, son and I have? Not just what I contribute, but everything?

Over $1,600. Per month.

We need reform in this country, and we need it now.

Links! The Top 16 Worst Movie Quotes to Utter During Sex. Is it wrong of me to laugh so hard at this?

Next, another amazing animation, this one done with stop-motion. Sorta. Check it out.

Finally, tweenbots, a video art project via Jay Lake. His link described it as teh cute, but I think that misses the point. The really, really cool thing about this is that the robot is a cute, nearly helpless little thing that relies on complete strangers to help it get where it needs to go. Even if you can’t watch the video at that page, the write up is fascinating.

It seems that a lot of my posts lately have been straight link farms. I feel boring. Is there something I should post about? Something I said I would talk about but haven’t? Let me know.

It’s that time of year again (5 links)

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The stellar bluejays and hummingbirds are back. To celebrate, here are some links.

A pretty cool book trailer for A Madness of Angels. Check it out.

Writers get so much respect: here’s a job opening for a screenwriter/office assistant. Because what you really want for your films is a writer who can answer phones in a professional manner.

How professional athletes lose all their money. I’m so going to use this in my current book.

Amazon rank. Hey, folks. If you’re looking for a good alternative to Amazon.com, consider Indiebound.org. They’re an online ordering system for a network of independent bookstores. When you order a book from them, the sale goes to an independent near you. And it’s not just books, either.

Finally, the Kinda Sutra. A short, partially-animated film about the screwed-up ways people are taught about sex. I think it’s SFW, but you might have different situation.