A poem

Because I finished my writing early tonight, and am waiting for my totally for grown ups macaroni to cook in the microwave, here is a poem. Please, poet friends of mine, don't kill me? (Also, I like assonance and slant rhymes. Cause I don't want to try to find real rhymes. Also, fixed meter is lame. Er, I mean hard. Yeah. So I don't have it.)

"Inspirational Ode to a Ferrous Implement of Cooking"

Flavor percolating, aroma wafts

Any cook tells you heats best

The frying pan of iron, cast.

Such fancy, I think, and ask

“Why so?” The response, quick, nests,

“Flavor percolating, aroma wafts.”

At skeptic look, quick fast,

offending; an arrival from the west:

The frying pan of iron, cast

at head can hurt, as attest

my head will, concussion bust.

Flavor percolating, aroma wafts

into my nose, and like ships' mast

I bow before time's test,

The frying pan of iron, cast.

Like cat of Egypt, Bast

or marriage true, ipso est

Flavor percolating, aroma wafts,

The frying pan of iron, cast.

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Another one?

Madeleine L'Engle, four years ago.

Brian Jacques, this year.

And now Diana Wynne Jones, today.

Though each touches me differently as a formation of literary taste, it's disconcerting.

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Movies I am thinking about seeing:

Well, since I read advance reviews of Sucker Punch indicating it has an ending that invalidates any enjoyment I’d get from the cool action and Emily Browning’s and Abby Cornish’s acting, I’ve reevaluated my list of films I’m interested in seeing.  Interestingly, after Jane Eyre, there is nothing this year (except maybe Brad Bird directing Mission: Impossible – and only because it’s Brad Bird) that is on my “almost certainly will see” list (well, I will see Cars 2 because it's Pixar.  But I'm not terribly excited about it).  So this is just my “probably,” “possibly,” and “Absolutely not” list.

Probably:

Thor

Why: Kenneth Branagh

Why not: Marvel movies have not impressed me for over six years.  Plus, why do I care about Norse gods as superheros?

Captain America

Why: it looks fun, it sets up for The Avengers, which I’m actually excited about, I like Chris Evans a lot better after he was in Push and Street Kings.

Why not: it doesn’t look great, Joe Johnston likes to make stupid comments about all sorts of things and he directed Jurassic Park III.  Which is a bad thing.

X-Men First Class

Why: Matthew Vaughn did Stardust, it has Emma Frost

Why not: Matthew Vaughn did Kick-Ass, it has James Macavoy.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Why: I enjoyed the first movies’ acting and dialogue.  Also, it’s Sherlock Holmes.

Why not: I hated the first movies’ directing and plot.  Also, it’s Moriarty.

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol

Why: Brad Bird is directing.  And Brad Bird directed The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and The Iron Giant.  And I liked M:I 3 decently well.

Why not: I’ve really grown to dislike J. J. Abrams’ work.  And Tom Cruise is really hit or miss – mostly miss.

Source Code

Why: Plot looks semi-interesting, Michelle Monaghan

Why not: Jake Gyllenhall looks boring, the plot doesn’t look that interesting

Cars 2

Why: Pixar, I was surprisingly entertained and moved by Cars

Why not: the trailer looks like it’s all Mater, all the time.  And that’s a very bad thing.

Winnie-the-Pooh

Why: Animation!  And return to classic stories!

Why not: Well, I didn’t see Heffalump.  And I hated Springtime for Roo.  But I liked Tigger and Piglet’s movies.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Why: Because they’ll have to cut out most of the smoking that wasted half the screentime of the BBC series.  And Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, and other fantastic British actors are in it.

Why not: it might turn out to be dull even at such a length.

Breaking Dawn 1

Why: Because I’ve more enjoyed than not the other films.  Plus, Alice.

Why not: Because I have no clue about the director, and I’m very upset they brought the guy who composed the rather incoherent and electric guitar full (and ugly) score from the first film back.

Possibly:

Hugo Cabret

Why: because it has a nice cast, Martin Scorcese makes pretty, well-acted films

Why not: Martin Scorcese makes morally troubling films, I know nothing about the plot or characters

Red Dawn

Why: it might be more entertaining and better thought through than the rather boring 80s original.

Why not: it’s based on an 80s movie.  And the preliminary stills do not look interesting.  Plus, I’ve heard they’re changing the villains from China to Korea…er, what?

Priest

Why: It looks cool.  Paul Bettany is in it.  It might have some interesting theology.

Why not: It looks like it might end similarly to Sucker Punch.  Which would mean it would invalidate all the enjoyment from the cool action.

Spy Kids 4

Why: I really enjoyed the first Spy Kids.

Why not: I really didn’t enjoy the second.  Didn’t bother with the third.  And Rodriguez does not have a track record of films I think are worth seeing (yes, Sin City, I’m looking at you).

Butter

Why: Ashley Greene

Why not: Jennifer Garner.  And the movie itself sounds like it could be quite limp.

Coriolanus

Why: Shakespeare

Why not: Well, I know nothing about this Shakespeare.  And I’m not a fan of some of Shakespeare.

Absolutely not:

Pirates 4

Why: I barely tolerated the first film (I don’t like pirates as heros).  The second and third were simply bad.  And Johnny Depp is not a draw for me.

Transformers 3

Why: I didn’t tolerate the first film.  It was an unenjoyable, ugly, stupid, morally vile mess with no intellectual satisfaction from the action.  I angrily avoided the second, and will even more angrily avoid the third.  Why does garbage like this keep getting made when there are so many better stories to tell?  I mean, seriously, you could make an amazing Ender’s Game movie on a quarter of the money they burnt for this idiocy.

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Me reading things

So.  For school I just read five books in the past two days.  The best of them is Princess Academy by Shannon Hale.  The worst of them is The Magicians by Lev Grossman.  In between are Caroline Stevermer's A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics, and Robert Heinlein's Red Planet.  Here are my capsule reviews of them.

5) The Magicians.  Best described as "Harry Potter goes to college, then Narnia."  But only if you think Harry Potter is the utter jerk I see him as.  Lazy, selfish, arrogant, and full of "destiny" and the ability to ogle women, the hero drifts through this nearly plotless novel whining about how he wants to touch women's breasts, then whining about how when he does, it doesn't make him happy.  Oh, and he learns magic too.  And the author (a book critic for a major news organ...which is almost never a good sign, in my professional opinion as an English major) likes to babble about how God figures in fantasy (which apparently only means Lewis and Tolkien, who were also apparently pedophiles) can be killed by the kids who grew up without letting go of their fantasy...but hey, if you lose your girlfriend (and happen to kill bunches of other people too through laziness etc) you can live your fantasy instead of becoming a productive member of society (helping those nasty grey muggles...)

This book is horrible.  Morally, artistically, you name it.  The characters' concepts of sex and love are so immature I thought I'd accidentally picked up an Asimov novel.  The moral choices given are as sophisticated as a Harry Potter novel - and like a Harry Potter novel, the hero is completely rewarded for being a passive whiner.

When I think of the fantasy books which are being turned out today, like Robin McKinley's Pegasus, or Elizabeth Moon's Oath of Fealty, or the reprints of Gillian Bradshaw's Hawk of May trilogy, or Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey, or Orson Scott Card's The Lost Gate, and then look at the blurbs for this kind of pretention, I despair.  Until I remember that I can reread those other books.

Which I strongly advise anyone reading this blog to do.  Cause they're all what Grossman was trying to achieve - books about flawed but admirable heros and heroines facing both incredible evil and incredibly mundane things with equal parts maturity and grace, told through excellent prose, evoking not only tragedy but hope, not just pain but eucatastrophe, not just darkness but joy.

4 and 3) A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics.  Best described as "Robin McKinley lite."  Which is the exact same reaction I have to Diana Wynne Jones.  Which McKinley herself would no doubt deplore, but there tis.  I adore most of McKinley's works (I've avoided Deerskin and was bored through Rose Daughter and felt Dragonhaven was kind of, well, lazy) for the combination of incredibly beautiful prose, incredibly rich worldbuilding, incredibly consistent humor, and incredibly loveable characters (loveable not because they are "flawed" and therefore "believable" (I am so sick of people telling me Harry Potter is cool because he's an annoying whiner) but because they are mature, moral, and loving towards others, which naturally makes them loveable).  Stevermer (and Jones, in my opinion) plays with a magic-infused 1910s Europe in which the balance of the world was messed up a couple of generations ago, and the French and English schools of magic (women and men only, respectively) have to raise up their chosen ones to set things right.  Nice bits of romance (though the anti-marriage sentiment is rather annoying) and nice writing - but ultimately, the execution isn't up to McKinley's par.  Where McKinley is incredible, Stevermer is fun.

Which is a whole lot more than I can say about any of The Magicians.

2) Red Planet.  A Heinlein juvenile.  And nowhere near my favorites (Citizen of the Galaxy and Starship Troopers).  More along the lines of The Door Into Summer, and a bit better than the rather dull exposition fest Farmer in the Sky.  Honestly felt like a redo of Out Of The Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis, with more science and less religion.  And plucky boy heros.  And libertarian politics.

1) Princess Academy.  It's funny that my favorite book in this whirlwind research tour is a book about Princesses by a Mormon (recommended by a Mormon, Orson Scott Card, too).  I'd actually already read Hale's Austenland, and thought it was okay for Austen paralit (miles better than Lost In Austen, the fanfic-that-got-filmed for no good reason).  But Princess Academy, despite the title, is a treasure on the level of Susan Fletcher's Shadow Spinner.  A story aimed at children and young adults which nonetheless builds the world and characters so clearly and beautifully that it's worthy of time and tears from all ages.

So, that's it.  I'm tired.  Going to watch my five-dollar Swan Princess now.

Postscript: I hope to get my Ideal Husband, Kraken, and Jane Eyre blogs up sometime (and since I'm hoping to see The Lincoln Lawyer tomorrow, probably a brief post on that too).  We shall see.

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Well then, and shopping

So, here's what Robin McKinley, who I'd probably classify as a second wave feminist (very similar in many ways to Tamora Pierce, also one of her contemporaries in YA fantasy lit) has to say about dudes and chicks:

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2011/03/20/writing-like-a-feminist/

Which is similar, but not really what I say.  I think it's often very lonely being me: thinking that men and women are not born thinking and feeling different, but we are born to do different things...

Yeah, have a pity party somewhere else.  I just went shopping, bought ten boxes of grown up macaroni and cheese, three dvds (for 15 dollars, too - all together, not each, silly), ramen, and tasty tasty kettle cooked chips!  Shopping is win!

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Wow

Well, I just had an adventure.  I planned, bought tickets for, drove to a parking spot, took the metro, didn't get lost (despite walking quite a ways around DC in various spots), watched a very nice Oscar Wilde play (An Ideal Husband), and came all the way back.

I'm very proud of myself.

Now I must catch up on my work.  I have three posts, though - one reviewing Kraken by China Mieville (brief summary - seriously, religion is trying to erase science?  Who are you, Washington Irving?); Jane Eyre (new film, pretty, flawed, etc); and Ideal Husband itself (well, since it's an assignment, I ought to do it anyhow).

Now, dinner, sleep, work tomorrow, then much much writing (am so behind).

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Dear Hollywood Reviewers...

You are idiots.  Just because something is "dark," "gothic," openly "passionate," and "concerned with entertaining and not being faithful to the source material" does not make it a good film.

Now, I have no doubt that Jane Eyre is a good film.  I'm greatly looking forward to watching it.  But all your sneering asides about "those cozy Jane Austen films" are 1) unsubstantiated; 2) exactly what you were saying about Bronte films when Pride and Prejudice came out 6 years ago (and kinda sexist too); 3) demonstrations of just how thick you are that you can't get the seething hostility, suffering, and purity of emotion found in all of Austen's novels.

Crack a book.  By a woman.  Sometime this century.  Thanks.

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John Scalzi and packaging suffering

So, a bit ago I posted a rather intense blathering about how I thought a Spider-man comic was the epitome of packaging up suffering for consumption, and how this was a bad thing.  I tried very hard not to go over the top, treat it as funny, and the post took quite a bit of time, since I actually kept rewriting to get rid of any glibness.

This is not that.

See, that right there is glib.

Yup.

Anyway, since then, I've had two experiences which have provided me with alternate examples of what to do with suffering.  The Spider-man comic packaged it up as entertainment, gave a cynical manipulation into convincing readers it was "dark" and "worthwhile" storytelling, and then ritually murdered a young girl in a skintight uniform.  That's option one: cynical manipulation.  And that's the one I think is worst, because it's subtle and will worm its way into mainstream storytelling.

Option two is Mark Millar.  Who wrote something I actually swore about while talking to a stranger in the bookstore.  Still not sure about that action.  Anyway.  Millar wrote two things I've read which exemplify option two: shameless glorification.  His "graphic novels" "Kick-Ass" and "Nemesis" gleefully make the "heroes" kill in the most brutal, profane, and disgusting manner hundreds or thousands of innocents.  There is no manipulation, there is no justification.  There is just sheer, bloody gore.

Sickening, and dangerous (since these things keep getting made into movies, and people think it's cool and edgy when really, everything has been done in ancient Rome...oh, wait, we have TV shows glorifying that too...), but shameless and open about it.

The last option, and the only one I find acceptable, is what I found while rereading John Scalzi's Old Man's War series, an intellectual descendant of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (quite consciously so, as the characters in the books read those works and talk about it).  I've often described Scalzi's work as the equivalent of McDonalds (which I just ate for lunch, so don't think I'm dissing him or them) - quick, cheap, extremely competent, and disposable.  He knows exactly where to put his words, his plot events, his emotional beats, everything - and the fact that I keep buying him (at least this series, though I find his other work much less interesting) despite the fact that at every moment I can say "Oh, that's how this bit functions here" says a lot.  In other words, I see the skeleton of his books, but I think it's a mighty nice skeleton.

Scalzi's series is philosophical action military scifi.  Good stuff.  In the course of his books, soldiers (male and female) are violently killed, children are butchered and eaten, and all manner of aliens wreak havoc and have havoc wreaked upon them.  Stuff much worse than the above two examples happens.  And yet, I feel like it's justified because instead of cynically manipulating one into thinking it's dark storytelling or glorying in the gore, Scalzi lets us feel sickened, outraged, and horrified, without using extreme descriptions to package the suffering for consumption.  Evil happens - but it's seen as evil, not tiltillating or cool.

And that, I think, is how it should be done.

(Note: for some of my readers, er, that is, about three of the four of you - and I love you all dearly - the Old Man's War series has military-fiction style dialogue, so lots of swearing, and a rather free-wheeling approach to sex.  Just to get that out there, so I don't push readers towards it without proper warning.)

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Old Man's War: sold to be a movie!

Well, while checking my 15 things I try to check daily, I noticed this: http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2011/03/oscar-wrapup-plus-sales-and-disclosures/

This is exciting news for many reasons.

1) Old Man's War will make a fantastic movie.  Though it might have a bit of a lot of sex.

2) Old Man's War, directed by Wolfgang Peterson, would be particularly nice - though I thought Troy was a bit shy of the greatness it reached for, and thus worse than if it'd gone for dumb action thriller - I respected it for trying.  Air Force One was fantastically exciting and engaging, though I don't know if I can watch it again (the executions are really hard to take).  I have confidence in a sensible, exciting, stylish but not frilly and self-indulgent flick.

3) Old Man's War is very self-consciously in the line of Ender's Game and Starship Troopers.  If it gets made well and makes a lot of money, maybe they'll finally see that Ender's Game itself would make a killer film.  Funny thing is, at some point, Wolfgang Peterson was attached to direct Ender's Game, but that fell through when Card refused to let them make Ender a sixteen year old with a sex partner...er, I mean love interest, and Peterson had to move to other projects.

So - I recommend everyone read Old Man's War, and read the progressively better sequels, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe's Tale.  Though I describe them as my McDonald's reads, that's not really horrible.  Tasty, very well produced, hit the right notes emotionally, raise some moral points, and are ultimately rather disposable.  There's worse.  Not everything can be Ender's Shadow or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (both of which need movies...)

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Emma 1 of 5, a comic book review in list form

1) When I first read that Marvel was continuing its adaptations of Jane Austen's novels (former entries had been the rather generic and patchy Pride and Prejudice, with fantastic covers by Sonny Liew, and the great Sense and Sensibility, with Liew taking on interiors as well as covers), I was confirmed in my predictions (Emma is, after all, the most adapted Austen novel after Pride and Prejudice, and the one with the highest profile after those two, with a famous 96 film with Gwyneth Paltrow, a recent BBC miniseries with Romola Garai, and constant press comments on how "no one but Jane Austen could like this chick..."), excited (Emma is my favorite Jane Austen novel, and one of my favorite novels of all time), and worried (see previous paranthetical statement).

2) My worries were exacerbated by the announcement that Liew was completely off the series.  In my mind, he was the only real reason I paid attention to Pride and Prejudice, and his fantastic blending of chibi-style character design in strategic moments of the story with more normally proportioned figures perfectly captured the wit and intelligence of Austen's satire.  Additionally, his angular villains captured the darkness of that spiky and somewhat rough first published novel of Austen.

3) However, when I got a glimpse at preview art by Janet Lee, as well as reading about the decoupage method used to make her art, I quickly became very excited.

4) Now that it's out, I am thrilled.  Nancy Butler's scripts have only gotten better at capturing the elegance of Austen's storytelling (with a few blips I wouldn't have used, but quite excellent nonetheless).  Such a huge leap forward from Pride and Prejudice, which I felt really relied too much on captions and was hampered by pedestrian, Hollywoodized art.  Even more delicate than the very intelligent Sense and Sensibility, the exposition and character notes are balanced between interpolated dialogue and captions.

5) And the art by Janet Lee is wonderful.  Delicately colored, with muted yet vivid reds popping Emma herself out from the rest of the pastels and beautiful dress designs which make up Lee and Butler's adapted world, the adaptation is much less grim than the appropriately gritty slate-grey which dominated Sense and Sensibility.  The character designs are quirky in a totally different manner than Liew's, but completely in tune with the kind of brilliant, intelligent, loving, mocking, and above all loveable characterizations of Austen's masterpieces.

6) I have great hopes of this series, especially as they've breezed through to Emma and Mr. Knightley's major argument in the first volume of the novel in this first of five installments, leaving more room for the important bits of the extremely tightly plotted yet beautifully detailed final volume.

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