Xkcd has what I can only say is a brilliant rendition of  Read the rest of this entry »

Merideth, John, and I went to see Speed Racer last night. Here’s a my mini-review:

If you overlook the simplistic plot, trite clichés, and the not infrequent wooden acting, it was a visually spectacular. Eyeball laceratingly spectacular. Don’t go see Speed Racer if you can be induced to vomit just by watching bright colors in motion. Do go see Speed Racer if you want to see the closest thing to a live-action cartoon (yet).

Below the cut is the YouTube version of the Machine-Girl trailer (assuming the embedded code works in WordPress) I blogged about yesterday (again, be warned, it is bloody):

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Below the cut you will find a link to the most over the top trailer Read the rest of this entry »

Came across an interesting post on MetaFilter on Dashiell Hammett and Red Harvest that led me into this thicket hard boiled links: Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday evening I had the second reading of “The Alchemist of Liberty” at the writers’ group that I frequent. It went over a bit better than the first part (see my rant from last week), which is not too surprising given its more intense action sequences and introduction of a plethora of new terms (which I have been working on cleaning up). The main critique was to more on the characters and not be so relentless in my introduction of new things, which is, of course, a good suggestion as compelling characterization will usually pull you through the rough spots.

One interesting suggestion to come out of yesterday’s reading was that I should try writing it up as a movie script and sell it to Hollywood as the SFX wizards could do better justice to its visuals. This is not the first time that I have been told, in not so many words, that my writing has a cinematic quality to it. On the other hand, I can’t help but think this is polite way of saying that I should give up on trying to describe complex and/or exotic situations and events. I will politely ignore that, if it is the actual intent of the comment, and continue on trying to describe said exotic complexities.

This does bring to mind one fond wish of mine, which is to have Matt Howarth illustrate a graphic novel based one of my stories. How is that for pie in the sky?

Recently, I watched what has to be the best Zatoichi that I have seen to date. One of the reasons that I particularly liked Zatotichi and the Fugitives (1967) was that it was roughly the same plot as Yojimbo / A Fistful of Dollars. I didn’t notice that this was the plot until about two thirds of the way through the movie. Which to me means that the script was well crafted.

I’ll have to write a version of the Yojimbo story sometime.