One of this summer’s big releases is going to be the 3D animated science fiction film BATTLE FOR TERRA. Check out the trailer here.
I know one of the producers from our days on Wordplay, and I can’t express how happy I am to see him doing so well. Plus, the movie looks awesome.
Check it out.
We had a slushing of snow last night (which is like a dusting, but sloppier) which we weren’t expecting and only discovered when we received an automated call telling us school would be starting 2 hours late.
Now I’m behind on everything I need to do today. For instance:
I have to finish up the chili I put in the crockpot last night and jam it into our refridgerator somehow.
I have to vacuum. A good half hour was spent fixing the damn thing yesterday, and that’s after more than a week of struggling with it. Our carpet is really, really in need of a vacuuming right now, and that’s what I’m going to do next.
Recycling needs to be done.
And so on.
But before I get to the vacuuming and writing my words for today, I have to post this for geniusofevil:
When I came back to writing as an adult, and decided to pursue it seriously, I was trying to write for the movies. I wrote thrillers and zombie space comedies and alien invader scripts and so on. Twice I tried to make the move to L.A. but punked out both times. Once back in Seattle, I got together with a friend to make our own low budget horror films, but that didn’t work out well for me.
And I realized I had changed in the last few years. I now preferred books to movies and so I went back to writing fiction.
So! When I received a note from my editor that I should hold off on writing book three because she had a concern about the proposal, I felt a little sick. I couldn’t help thinking of that scene in SUNSET BOULEVARD where the producer wants to change the writer’s submarine thriller in a comedy about women’s baseball. And I was remembering going through the script I wrote for our horror film with my director, and all the changes he wanted me to make.
But I was startled by the notes I actually received. It wasn’t “Make sure [supporting character x] appears by page fifty and stays through to the end. We like that character.” Nor was it “This setting won’t work for us. What else do you have?”
It was all suggestions about making the book work. Very polite suggestions, too, (which makes me want to take them all the more). “This sounds interesting and should make a good contrast with the previous books.’ “Will this character be appearing?” “Be sure to tell us if [minor character y] survived book two.” “I’d like to see more exploration of the group they belong to.”
And so on. All good ideas, even if I’m not sure I have room in the book to implement them, and all designed to make it a deeper book than I would have written otherwise. Not once did she suggest that I add a sexy, sexy love interest or a zany chimp, and Pikachu help me, I don’t know why I expected it.
Okay. I’m off to work.
1) My back is still painful, but I expect to be able to go back to the day job tomorrow. Heating pads, ice, and body work have me doing pretty well. Although I still wouldn’t try to climb a ladder.
2) On the web, James Enge takes the latest episode of Criminal Minds out to the woodshed. Don’t miss that one.
3) Elseweb, Agent Barbara Poelle posts five story ideas she wish someone would submit. Obviously, I’m not going to be working on any of these–I have an agent already and a contract, too–but it’s interesting to see what people want. Her list is nothing like mine would be–in fact, number 2 sounds like it would be appalling. Still, it’s pretty interesting to see how people think about they books they’re looking for and how they frame their interest.
4) and 5) While I was trapped at home on the couch, I had a chance to watch two of the movies I borrowed recently from the library: WANTED and HANCOCK. Weirdly, one was adapted from a comic book and one was about a superhero, and they weren’t the same movie.
Now here’s a chance to see if my WordPress plugin can put in the LJ cut. Spoilers!
WANTED was actually the stronger of the two movies, as sad as that seems. It was based on a comic book of the same name, which I’ve read in trade paperback. From what I’ve heard, producers bought the rights to the story after the very first issue, which ended with the scene where the shlub shoots the wings off a fly. In the comic, the next story beat was that the protagonist learned he was the son of a supervillain in a world where the villains has defeated the superheroes years before, and now ran everything in secret. He came into his powers, embraced evil and consolidated his power through a whole lot of killing.
In the film, his father was a superhuman assassin from one of those millennia-old assassins guild that movies seem so full of. Our Hero learns to use his powers and hunts the dude who killed his father.
It was mostly an excuse for ridiculously over the top action scenes, which are decidedly out of style now. And it was kinda fun. I just wish they’d left out the fat snark.
HANCOCK is the superhero movie that came from a spec script titled TONIGHT, HE COMES, which I haven’t read but have heard is amazing and wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that it had to be made, and had all the misery and desperation drained out of it.
Really, as soon as Charlize Theron turned out to have superpowers, too, the whole thing comes apart. It’s like the scene in DEJA VU where the protagonist climbs into the time machine–the reality of the story came apart and stopped making sense.
Disappointing, both of them.
I must be losing my mind.
First, in the “I do not think it means what you think it means” category:
“OMG! Was that live? Terri! Terri, come here, please. About that word you used when you were describing the President’s love life…
And here’s another video courtesy of Amy Sheldon’s sff.net newsgroup: A Cause Worth Fighting For. A very fun animation that’s also beautifully done. It’s about 8 minutes long, but it’s probably the best show you’ll see today.
Charles H. Schneer passed away yesterday He was 88.
I saw this one in the theater with my father, and I was just the right age for it.