You know how you are stuck on something, so you sit down to blog about it, and in the process of complaining that you can’t figure something out, it suddenly comes to you in a blinding revelation?
That’s me.
Breitbart soils himself by proxy once again
StandardSeveral folks have righteously mocked the post at serial liar Andrew Breitbart’s website “Big Hollywood”. It was written by one Leo Grin and here’s the link, with a “rel=nofollow” tag added: The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists.
Omnivoracious responds sensibly and links to several other comments, (also: Nick Mamatas) so there isn’t much for me to add. Still, I want to do a little examination of the original post:
Here’s a list of the authors Grin mentions in his post:
J.R.R. Tolkien
Robert E. Howard
Robert Jordan
Joe Abercrombie
Matthew Woodring Stover
Steven Erikson
Michael Swanwick
Robert Bloch
Hmm. I wonder if something is missing from that list. Hmm. Something about the fantasy that’s been written in the last century. Hmmmmm.
Nope! Not seeing anything!
In all seriousness, someone should aim Grin at Holly (“I riff on the idiocy of the global warming theory” “… I dare you to find a white male on Sesame Street now that anyone could point to as a role model for a son.“) Lisle’s work. Of course, he’d probably have to put on a dress before he read it.
New post at Antipope
StandardMy new post is up at Antipope: It’s about the (just passed) 80th anniversary of the premiere of Legosi’s Dracula. Did you know that Universal made a second Spanish language version of that movie at the same time as the Legosi version? English-speaking actors did their scenes during the day and Spanish-speaking actors used the same sets at night.
I compare them and discuss revision. Check it out, if you want.
Borders to close 1/3 of its superstores
StandardBorders has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I didn’t realize they’d been working with lawyers to restructure their debt since 2009, but that makes sense–they were already having troubles when we went into the economic downturn. I’m not sure if this story about the lawyer they hired to handle their bankruptcy should be alarming or not. Is it cronyism allowing the new CEO to enrich his friends or is Borders engaging someone well-versed in the tactics of the creditor’s side?
In any event, Borders is likely to survive and I’d be surprised if my favorite store in downtown Seattle will be closed. They’re pretty busy there and have a great location.
And it’s too bad. As I mentioned before, Borders used to be a great store. Their revolutionary inventory system kept books on the shelves in ways other stores couldn’t, and you had to take a lit test to work there. Of course, other companies have leapfrogged their inventory software and I’m not sure their recent CEOs could have passed their literature tests; they sure didn’t seem to know how to sell books.
I’m glad they won’t be going away completely, but I can’t imagine how they’ll catch up.
Update: via Matt Staggs on Twitter, a document purporting to list the stores that Borders will close.
Quiet? I haven’t been quiet
StandardCharles Stross asked me to guest blog on his site while he is traveling across the Atlantic to attend Boskone and accomplish various other things. (True fact: the first time I heard about it, as in: “How was your weekend? I heard Boskone was great!” I assumed it was some kind of pastry).
Anyway, my first post is live over there. It’s an expanded discussion of low and high thrillers. Check it out.
Randomness for 2/12
Standard1) What it costs for a best-selling ebook.
2) Screwed-up versions of the Star Spangled Banner down the years.
3) The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator. Just click “Generate New Bestseller.”
4) The Rocky Horror Batman Show. Heh.
5) You know what party cat likes? Parties.
The David Lynch movie of cheeses
StandardLast night (date night!) I ate the David Lynch movie of cheeses. It didn’t taste good, not at all, but there were so many flavors going on and they were so complex that I was fascinated. I mean, yeah, chief among those flavors was Old Feet and French Armpit, but there were others, too, and I kept picking up new one. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but it was compelling enough that I ate my full share.
Don’t ask what it was, though. There were no labels, and even if there were (and they came in the shape of the cheese’s country of origin, with little pictures of the dairy animal the milk came from and phonetic spellings of the name) I still wouldn’t remember the name.
The rest of date night was terrific–my wife and I wandered around our neighborhood shops–sampling wine at one place (and buying a nice bottle of port), sampling desserts at another, browsing the little local bookstore. Fun.
And even before that, I had a full day of work on the Project I Can Not Yet Discuss. (Everyone has a Sekrit Project–I want something of my own) Today will be more of the same. Lots of revisions to handle and I’m already getting a late start.
Mac Freedom… Engage!
Quote of the day
Standard“My fellow citizens. In this difficult time that the country is going through, President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has decided to relieve himself of his position as president and the Supreme military council has taken control of the state’s affairs. May God protect us.” — Omar Suleiman
The Egyptian people have managed a (mostly) peaceful revolution. The path ahead will be difficult for them, but this is a moment for celebration. Good luck.
I have been planning a serious post, but this ain’t it.
StandardThe OK Cupid blog (which I don’t follow as closely as I should) regularly anonymizes and crunches facts about love, sex, and the usual mating rituals. It’s science! Unlike some of the annoying assertions about genre I keep running across.
Anyway, want to know if a potential mate will be right for you without coming right out and asking? Check this factoid out:
Getting a “yes” answer from a man to: “In a certain light, wouldn’t nuclear war be exciting?” has an 83% correlation with the likelihood that he’ll have sex on the first date. Grim meathook future, your abs are irresistible.
The find out the same information about a woman, or to surreptitiously discover something else, check out the whole post.
Movie and book
StandardLast… spring, I guess? my wife, son, and I went to the movies and, before the film, saw a preview for Harry Potter 7, part one. My son turned to me and said “I want to see that.”
“You can’t. You haven’t read the book yet.”
He hadn’t been interested at all in Harry Potter until then, but that was all the urging he needed. Later that week we pulled book 1 down off the shelf and read them aloud in the evenings. Most evenings, anyway.
I’d forgotten how funny those early books were. Sometimes we were laughing so hard that the reader had to put the book down until we’d composed ourselves. And, somewhere in book 4, he became sick of it and we had to drag him back in.
We finished the last book today. My wife cried during several of the final chapters, especially “The Prince’s Tale,” “The Forest Again,” and “King’s Cross.” I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but whatever Rowling’s other faults, she wrote the hell out of “The Forest Again”. That chapter is one serious kick in the ass.
SPOILERS for the series.
I can’t help but wonder how much behind the scenes information the filmmakers had from Rowling. There’s a scene near the end of movie 3 in which Lupin transforms into a werewolf and Snape steps in front of the three kids. It’s clearly a brave, heroic move, and nothing at all what you’d expect from a true Death Eater.
The situation doesn’t even come up in the book; Snape is still unconscious when Lupin changes (the whole werewolf scene is quite different). They also telegraph the romantic relationship between Ron and Hermione much earlier.
Anyway, the books were terrific this second time around–very satisfying. I know a lot of people hated Harry around book 5, but I couldn’t help but see him as suffering the after-effects of Cedric Diggory’s murder. My wife, who never reads fiction (except mine), really loved the books, too.
As for the new movie, the animated story of the three brothers was the best part, but the movie wasn’t terribly by any means. The three leads have matured nicely as actors, and they managed to introduce several necessary but film-neglected characters smoothly. None of it had the thrills or the hopelessness of the books, but it worked on its own.
This whole series deserves a more in-depth post, but it’s late and I’m sleepy. Considering everything that’s been going on, I’m not seeing myself putting together an real analysis of the books, the films, or the changes that happened in adaptation.