Movies

Why I Belong in Literary Hell

General Geekiness

Heh, I’m so rotting in literary hell for this. Which level, I’m not quite sure.

Movies I Prefer to the Books They’re Based On:

Atonement. Loved the movie. I thought it was beautifully shot, lovely costumes, great soundtrack, good acting. In the book? Well, I was bored stiff. I didn’t care for McEwan’s writing style; it was too flowery and overly descriptive for my liking.

The Princess Bride. The movie is so classic, it just wins. And in the book, the author’s butting in is annoying.

The Princess Diaries. The book doesn’t have Julie Andrews.

Bridget Jones’s Diary. Colin Firth + Hugh Grant + wimp fight> book entertainment value. I enjoyed the book. Wimp fight on screen is just awesome.

And the ultimate reason why I belong in literary hell…

Pride and Prejudice. Either the BBC one or the 2005 one. Try as I may, I just can’t stomach Jane Austen. I like her story lines. I like her characters. I dislike her writing style. I realize that she lived/wrote during the Regency so her style isn’t exactly modern. But there are PLENTY of books I enjoy from before or just after that time period.

If you’re going to write an action/adventure story…

Nerds Have More Fun, The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

you had better name your main character “Jack.”

Seriously.

A few months ago, my friends and I noticed that a large quantity of action heroes had the name Jack. I thought I’d share an abridged list with you.

Jack Bauer, 24

Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy

Jack Shepard, Lost

Jack Aubrey, Master and Commander and Aubrey-Maturin Series

Jack Ryan, The Hunt for Red October and others

Jack Harkness, Doctor Who and Torchwood

Jack O’Neill, Stargate SG-1

This is merely a brief selection of Heroes Named Jack. Save yourself the trouble of coming up with new names for your action hero. “Jack” is perfect.

Visual aesthetics of a story

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

I’ve been thinking about the aesthetics of The Continent. I see it as a movie; I need to do the preproduction work. Location scouting and set dressing are high on the list.

The Continent has a muted, understated feel, like a war movie (Master and Commander, perhaps, or Band of Brothers). Lots of browns, visually, the colors not vibrant in the least. It has an odd feel in my mind. Historical sci fi, kind of steampunkish (I use this term loosely), but The Continent is set in the near future (of an alternate reality). There are computers, indoor plumbing, etc, but it has the stately ceremony of the 19th century. Warships are more stately and curved, less angular, and certainly smaller.

CC//stevecadman

CC//stevecadman

 

 

There’s a sort of grandeur and intrigue missing from our world that is present in history. Romantic I may be, but we can’t compete with ships of the line and crazy archdukes. There was speculation, guesswork, a delay of information where battles could be fought after peace had been declared; today everything can be found immediately online. We’ve lost that mystery and sense of wonder. I hope that The Continent evokes it.

Destroying characters in one smack

General Geekiness

Ah, the pages of pulp fiction. A place to lose yourself in the fast paced world of fancy…or laugh hysterically at an author’s expense.

I’m currently reading Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons. It’s light and a quick read; thus far I have only one major beef.

How idiotic can the physicist Vittoria Vetra be?

Case in point:

“Is the Pantheon even a church?”

It is. Vittoria, you’re Italian. You’re apparently intelligent (you helped create an antimatter-creating particle accelerator for Chrissake) and your adopted father was a ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST. I imagine he must have taught you something about it amongst all the math and science.

I realize that not everyone knows the Pantheon is a church or that it is in Rome (no, it isn’t the Parthenon, that’s in Athens). But seriously.

Casting your Characters

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

Do various actors ever pop into your mind when working on a story? Do you ever think, “Oh man! Hugh Jackman would be perfect as my character”?

I took a class on modern theatre a year ago. For our final project, we had to read a play and then cast it, design costumes, etc.

I read Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman. We cast David Tennant as Katurian, Sean Bean as Ariel, Michael Fairman as Tupolski, and Edward Norton as Michel (solely because we couldn’t think of anyone else).

Ever since that course, I’ve been thinking about who looks like my characters, or at least could pull them off. I haven’t been able to pinpoint anyone as Will, yet. But I’ve noticed that I rarely watch movies/TV shows with characters in their late teens-early twenties, so that may be part of the problem. Having just rewatched Dead Poets Society, I’m thinking a young Robert Sean Leonard or a young Ethan Hawke. They look completely different, but Will’s coloring is closer to Ethan’s.

For other characters, it’s a little easier. In my mind, Geoffrey looks like Peter Wingfield (a semi-underground actor who’s in mostly sci-fi stuff, but was in this season of 24).

But what about you all? Does anyone else do this?