With apologies to Dave the Thune
(as well as Mike Baron & Steve Rude).
WRITING:
Every day. 1000 words.
That’s the goal.
Christmas week. That meant the writing got a backburner again
– though I only missed one day of writing this week, but the amounts were all
below 1000 – as I worked on wrapping gifts and writing out my boy’s letters
from Santa. Yes. From Santa.
I stole this idea from Tolkien, who would craft these wonderful,
illustrated letters to his own children from St. Nick. This year they learned of Santa’s discovery
of a group of ice dwarves who had been living in the North Pole for far longer
than Santa has been there. When the North Polar Bear stumbled into their secret
homes, they came out, finally, and offered their assistance to Santa. It was a fun little story to conceive, and
though the dip pen can be frustrating, I am always happy with the results. And, overall, this was a great
Christmas. Our youngest is seven, at
just the right age to enjoy Christmas and the magic of Santa, and he played
Santa on Christmas morning, making sure others had gifts before he opened one
of his. That was pretty special.
READING:
Bakuman by Tsugumi Ohba &
Takeshi Obata, published by Viz comics.
I finished reading this
series. 20 volumes about two young
creators – one a writer, one an artist – who come together in middle school and
decide they want to pursue the dream of becoming famous manga artists in Weekly
Shonen Jump magazine. This was such a
blast. The art is wonderful, and the way
these creators manage to continually infuse the narrative with tension and
drama is a testament to their creativity.
Highly recommended.
Brain Movies III by Harlan Ellison
This collects a number of Ellison’s
teleplays, in their original script form.
Ellison has never been one to leave things up to the directors and
actors who envisioned his scripts for television. These scripts are fully realized, with visual
details that allow one to picture these stories quite easily, in one’s
mind. Plus, we get a few anecdotes from
Ellison, at the beginning of each script, which are always entertaining. This third volume is centered around Ellison’
full-length story “Cutter’s World.” We
get two iterations of this script – first, the TV-movie version, followed by
the revised film version. It was
interesting to see how some things changed.
The first 100 pages were roughly the same, but then Ellison enhanced the
story immensely, with stronger connections between the aliens and Cutter, the
protagonist, that not only upped the emotional engagement for the audience, but
also tied the entire narrative together far better, without it feeling
forced. Great stuff, and interesting
from a process standpoint.
DD by Brubaker/Lark
Started reading this run, and it’s
good (duh). Not as engaging as the
Bendis/Maleev run, but still some fantastic Daredevil stories. I think one of the things that places this
run beneath the Bendis run is the fact that Brubaker seems to stretch his
narratives out more. Where the Bendis
stories seemed to run 5 issues, on average, Brubaker’s storylines all run to
about 10 issues. Not that it feels
padded, but the emotional charge isn’t as immediate with the longer arcs, and
it doesn’t impact me in as visceral a manner as those quicker, sharper Bendis
narratives. Which isn’t to say these
aren’t some pretty great stories. Just
different. And I can appreciate that.
WATCHING:
Miracle on 34th Street
My favorite Christmas movie, hands
down. It evokes everything I love about
this holiday, the lush decorations, the ideal of it being a season of giving,
and the magic that surrounds it all, for me, embodied by the main character of
Kris Kringle, the man hired to be a Santa at Macy’s department store who claims
to be the one, actual Santa Claus (AGE: ‘As old as my tongue and slightly older
than my teeth.’). I haven’t watched this
in a few years, and I decided to subject my seven-year-old to it, even though
it was the black and white version (his lament, not mine). Overly idealized with just the right amount
of cynicism from Maureen O’Hara’s and HER NAME’s characters to make it too
saccharine, in my opinion, I had forgotten how smartly written the script
was. The way it goes about “proving”
Kris Kringle is the one and true Santa Claus in the court proceedings is worth
the price of admission alone – especially the scene with the prosecutor’s son
coming to the stand as a witness, which leads to the state of New York
conceding that Santa Claus is a real person.
I loved rewatching this, and my son also enjoyed it, sitting for the
entire movie without any complaints.
Win, win.
Bladerunner – The Final Cut
Ridley Scott’s science fiction
masterpiece (I view Alien as a horror masterpiece) has long been a favorite
movie of mine, and when the “Final Cut” was released a few years back, I picked
it up. But I discovered, while watching
it this past week, that I had never watched it; I’d only watched the “making
of” documentary, apparently. Man, is
this final cut great! It elevates the
film so much, and it was great before.
Without the dopey voice-over, you really get to appreciate the musical
score composed by Vangelis and better understand how much it adds to the
overall film, evoking emotion without being soon the nose as some composers,
aided quite a bit with the “electronica” approach he took. Just brilliant. The other major fix is that Scott excised the
more upbeat ending by cutting the film at a point prior to that – a point that
is more ambiguous while also being more bleak, matching more closely the
overall thematic approach to the film. I
was surprised how much more I enjoyed this cut, and I look forward to watching
it again.
MISCELLANY:
New Year’s Eve will see the release
of the Winter issue of Needle: a magazine of noir. And my story, “Silence,” will be included in
there, along with some great crime fiction – having enjoyed previous issues, I
believe I can say that without reservation.
I will have a link here when it goes live and also plan on writing a bit
on how I managed to achieve this goal.
But that’s another post.
SIGN OFF:
And, as always, check out my
friends – Brad & Matt and Don McMillan
-chris
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