Meanwhile…

I attempted to watch Wings of Desire and failed utterly. I get it, it’s pretty and artful and life sucks. After an hour of nothing happening I gave up. Please don’t mistake me for someone with the attention span of a Michael Bay Transformers fan, or who doesn’t like “reading” at the movies. I’m a huge fan of Kurosawa, for example, and he doesn’t exactly have the most fast-paced movies. But you don’t need an hour to develop a character whose defining characteristic is that he’s bored.

On the plus side, now I get all those Sprockets jokes.

I watched The Friends of Eddie Coyle last night, and it was fantastic. Great story of a small-time hood in over his head in a town full of scumbags. Robert Mitchum and Peter both turn in excellent performances. Check it out. The film got a really nice Criterion edition just this past year.

And just to end on a down note, I checked out the first episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand on Starz. Wow was it bad. Probably one of the worst things I’ve seen on television. They essentially took everything that was good about HBO’s Rome, threw it out, then added in effects from 300 that they clearly didn’t have the budget to recreate. When the appearance of Lucy Lawless doesn’t persuade me to keep watching, you know you’ve got a problem.

My day job has gone into crazy overtime busy season, so I’m getting pretty much nothing done (other than my twitter stories, of course). I am, however, finding time to read and what not. A little, anyway.

Reading

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. This is the recent comic book adaptation of the classic Baum book, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never read the originals, but I understand this is pretty faithful to the novels. It’s a lot of fun, and I recommend nabbing the hardcover so you have a version to read to your kids. Work is already under way on Marvelous Land of Oz, the next book in the series.

Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. I mentioned some time back that I read Iron Council, which is actually the third book in the series that begins with Perdido Street Station. As much as I loved Iron Council, I think this may have been a tiny bit better. So good. I can’t recommend Mieville’s books enough. If you enjoy fantasy or steampunk, you will certainly enjoy these books.

I just started in on the behemoth Illuminatus! Trilogy, by the Roberts Shea and Anton Wilson. At the rate I read, I will report back sometime in 2013.

Watching

I finished up the last season of Veronica Mars this past weekend, sort of on accident. I didn’t realize I’d reached the end until popping the last disc to discover it contained only speacial features. There are only twenty episodes in the third season, so I must surmise the network didn’t let them finish properly. Two episodes would have easily been enough to let them wrap up a few hanging plot threads. While it’s a shame it ended on such a whimper, I enjoyed the show immensely. The first season is easily one of the best seasons of television ever made, and the second is nearly as strong. The last season was decent, certainly better than most of what gets put on the air. Any fan of mystery and noir will find a lot to like.

Paris, Texas, which is quite good. Moving character drama with powerful performances all around, and some great visuals. At first when I saw the bleak, desert landscape, I immediately thought, “Paris is in northeast Texas, and this is clearly west Texas!” But the film didn’t fall into that usual Hollywood fumble. You can kind of tell that the script wasn’t actually finished when they started filming, but the way the main character develops smooths out the rougher edges of the story and the viewer can fill in the gaps pretty easily. The asshole in me wonders why you would ever turn a camera on anyone other than Nastassja Kinski.

I’ve always wanted to watch director Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire as well, so maybe that’ll go on the queue sometime soon.

From Hell. I probably should have seen this years ago, being both a comic book geek and Alan Moore fan. I’d never really heard much good about it, though, so it just kind of slipped my mind. I’ve also never read the book, so I have no attachment to the source material. It was better than I expected, even if it didn’t blow me away. It looked great, and the story is a fun and interesting alternate history murder mystery procedural conspiracy tale. It fell short in the actually making me scared or suspenseful department, though, which is unfortunate.

That’s about it for now. Anyone reading or watching anything interesting?

Last night HBO premiered its new series, “Bored to Death.” Starring Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson, and Zach Galifianakis, this show is pretty much what you would produce if you were looking to create porn for Alexander Burns.

I’m a big fan of Schwartzman’s, ever since Rushmore, one of my favorite movies. There’s something about the way he can deliver the simplest of lines that is just sublime. He can take a little throwaway sentence like “I understand.” and imbue it with real significance. Rushmore had a great, tight script that really took advantage of that.

So take Schwartzman and:

1. Make him a writer,
2. living in New York,
3. pretending to be a private detective,
4. inspired by Raymond Chandler,
5. whose best friend is a comic book artist,
6. (and I believe at one point they made reference to his fascination with British slang and terminology)

and you’ve pretty much pulled something straight out of my brain and put it on television. Galifianakis is a funny guy, too. On top of all that, I loved how they filmed the pilot. There are a lot of very Sam Raimi-esque shots that tickled me. Honestly, the only thing that would make this more crack-like for me is if Ted Danson turned out to be a robot.

The pilot was a bit slow, introducing everything and what not, and I feel like they probably could have developed the characters a little more. The standard troubles pilots usually have. The big problem I see is that I think it may end up suffering from being only a half hour long.

Still, I’m looking forward to the rest of the season. HBO will repeat it like a billion times this week, and you can watch it for free via iTunes, so you should have plenty of chances.

Yeah, started in on Veronica Mars this weekend. Whoever was in charge of informing me of this show’s awesomeness will be fed to the alligators for dereliction of duty.

Fresh new rejection waiting for me this morning. They said they loved everything but the part that I thought was the most fun and clever. So I don’t know what to think about that. No matter, there are other homes at which it will fit, I hope. I just have to sit on it for a month awaiting submission periods. Sigh.

Other than that, I’m juggling about half a dozen writing projects at once. It’s a little tiring.

On kind of a Chandler adaptation kick lately, I watched The Big Sleep last night (just a week or two ago it was The Long Goodbye – if you want a really good time, watch both of these followed by The Big Lebowski). Despite the extraordinarily convoluted plot, it’s a good time. You could tell the writers knew how hard the plot was to follow - there are several points in the film where everything just sort of stops so the characters can sum up what the hell has been going on. You almost don’t even notice the “who killed the chauffeur” plot hole. Mostly you just watch to see Bogey flirt with beautiful women.

Which is what brings me to the inspiration for this post. One of my problems (as I hinted in my last post) with Dollhouse is how the dolls are treated. They’re sex slaves, and it doesn’t seem to bother any of the employees. The show itself doesn’t seem to give the issue a second thought. There are certainly ways that it could be used to discuss a deep moral quandary, but it mostly seems like the show just uses it as an excuse to have Eliza walk around without pants.

The Big Sleep definitely features women as sex objects. Every female in the movie throws herself at Marlowe. (In fact, I thought the scene with him and the girl in the bookstore – played by stunning Dorothy Malone – was  way sexier than any of the euphemism-laden flirting he engaged in with Bacall.) And Bogey has a blast with it; he’s far from being the best looking guy in Hollywood, but he plays the role with a slick flair that makes the viewer totally buy it.

So we’ve got two different scenarios here. A ’40s detective film in which the women are props designed to make the protagonist look good; and a contemporary action thriller in which women (and men, just to be fair) are programmable dream dates.

But The Big Sleep doesn’t bother me. Marlowe seems to actually respect the women. He treats them as equals even as he admires their physical traits. At a couple points in the film he relies on Vivian to help him out in physical confrontations with the bad guys. He values an intelligent woman as much as a lovely one. It’s pretty remarkable for a film of its time. They’re using sex to sell, sure, but they’re doing it in a classy way.

In Dollhouse, on the other hand, the dolls are mostly treated as pets, and there’s been little evidence that anyone in the Dollhouse ‘verse even cares. Ballard, the FBI agent trying to bust the Dollhouse, has become so obsessed that we’re not sure whether he’s doing it because of human rights issues or just to prove himself more stubborn than the next guy. And he’ll probably punch out the next guy anyway. Langton, Echo’s handler, was set up in the first episode as someone who could perhaps be the ethical voice, but he seems to have bought into the Dollhouse line pretty quickly.

I could be totally wrong. It’s a series, so the next couple of episodes may see a complete reversal of this. Someone will be revealed as the traitor and they’ll have some impassioned plea about equality and what not. But 10+ hours in is a little late for for me.

Edit: having read some of the other reactions and critiques of the show that are floating around, and the loads of discussion concerning Dollhouse, I will concede that the show is smarter than I was originally gleaning. I get it. But I’m still not entertained by it or care about anyone in the show. So it’s a wash for me.

Group reaction to Telepath’s Lament was positive. There are a few things I need to fix, but overall I think it’s a pretty solid, fun story. I should have it ready to market by the end of the month. First destination: Writer’s of the Future (I need to check the deadlines, but I believe I have plenty of time to make the current quarter). After it fails there I have some ideas for regular markets where I think it would fit well.

In the meantime, I have a flash piece to write for a new market. I’ve started but I’m not sure I like the beginning.

On the television front, I’m greatly saddened by all the rumors of cancellation swirling around Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It’s not a perfect show, but when it’s good it’s really good, and the season finale left us on a hell of a cliffhanger.

I think I’m done with Dollhouse. I suppose it has clawed its way from mediocre to, what would be above that, tolerable? But tolerable doesn’t make it worth my time. I find the premise boring and the characters to be uninteresting or poorly drawn. There have been some fun plot twists and a few cool scenes, but overall it has failed to engage me. And, seriously Joss, finding new excuses every week to have hot girls dressed in nothing doesn’t help the feminist cred.

Maybe if this week they kill off three quarters of the cast and shift the focus of the series I might stick around. But I imagine that won’t happen.

It’s odd. For the first time in a long time there won’t be any geeky television for me to watch. Battlestar is done. Terminator may not be back. Everything else is either terrible, didn’t catch my interest, or I missed out on the beginning. All I have is a sitcom or two and a cop show, and I’d probably be okay with losing those (except 30 Rock, that show is too good to end). Very odd situation to find myself in. There’s pretty much always been something on or something to look forward to.

Well, there is this. But I don’t want to get my hopes up too early.

This is a rant I’m hesitant to start, because I’ll just go on all day about it you let me. But the premier of “Southland” last night brings it to the forefront of my mind.

“Southland” is a cop show. It’s dark and gritty, set in Los Angeles, which as we know is a pretty brutal hotbed of violence. It was a solid premier. Nothing that really blew me away, but pretty good. I guess it’s from the producers of ER, but I didn’t get any of that same intesity that I remember from the first season or two of that show (say what you will about ER, and I only watched it during the first couple of seasons, but that was some gripping camerawork there). But the thing that really ripped me out of the illusion of the show was that they bleeped the swears.

Are they kidding me with this? Really NBC? Either grow a pair and give us perfectly justifiable swears or just tell your writers to write around it. All that beep does is annoy me.

Our culture’s obsession with this “bad word” nonsense is something that’s bothered me for years. Words only have power that you imbue them with. If you choose to be offended by them, that’s fine, but don’t limit someone else’s freedom of expression because of your arbitrary designation. Sure, they should be used sparingly and only to provide maximum impact, but I would give the same advice on any word. I get more offended when people repeatedly say “literally” than if they’re dropping a “fuck” every other sentence. If it’s character-appropriate, there’s no reason not to have them talk that way, and no reason to insult the audience’s intelligence with ridiculous censoring techniques that break the artistic integrity of the production.

And of course there’s the old violence vs sex vs profanity arguement. Showing a teenage kid gunned down in the street is okay but a boob or a stressed out cop saying “shit” is verboten. Guh. Get over it. There’s no such thing as a bad word.

Except “literally.”

[I should note the exception to this rant - the Season 3 X-Files episode, "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" - Detective Manners and his self-bleeping was genius. One of the greatest single episodes of television ever produced. But I digress.]

Last night the pilot for the new HBO series, “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” premiered. It looked like a fun, charming show, so we checked it out.

The series (based on a series of books) is about Precious Ramotswe, the first (and only) female private detective in Botswana. She’s a smart, charming woman with a great eye for detail and a consuming desire to help her fellow Batswana. She’s been through some pretty devastating personal tragedies, but pulled through them all with her pride and dignity intact.

In some ways, it’s pretty standard private detective stories – in the pilot, her cases include searching for a missing child, spying on a husband, and a fraud plot.

But there are a couple of differences that make the show a lot of fun to watch. First is Precious herself. She’s the polar opposite of the standard-issue hardboiled dick you usually see in mystery stories. She’s not going to be beating information out of informants. She’s polite and compassionate. Warm and empathetic. On top of that, she’s new to the detective game. She’s learned most of what she knows from a book. There are consequences of this – she makes a critical mistake on one of the cases and it blows up in her face.

The other big difference is the setting. Botswana isn’t some steel canyon of grungy high rises punctuated with elevated trains and smog. It’s a rural society. Technology is limited. But at the same time, Botswana is a prosperous place, and there’s definitely a feel that the standard of life isn’t bad. When someone says they’re happy, you can believe it. You don’t automatically assume the authorities are corrupt or potential war criminals.

The show has a lot of humor, but they don’t shy away from the harsh realities of Africa. There are several references to the AIDS epidemic scattered throughout the show, and you know the bad guys are really bad guys. Their mobsters don’t bust your kneecaps, they kidnap your kid and use his fingers for spell components.

So I definitely recommend the show. If you’ve got HBO, I’m sure they’ll give you plenty of chances to catch up before the second episode airs on Sunday.

If I ever get out of work today, I look forward to watching the second episode of Castle tonight. If you haven’t seen Castle, it’s a cop procedural starring Nathan Fillion. Fillion plays a mystery writer who tags along with a tough-as-nails police detective as she works her cases. The show really rides on Fillion’s charm and personality, and it seems as though the part was tailor made for him. It’s not going to change the face of television or anything, but it’s cute and there’s nothing else on Mondays anyway.

At any rate, it makes me think about how many times I’ve written stories just to play around with a character, fashioning stories around the protagonist. I would say that’s usually how I write. I’ll some up with what seems like a fun idea for a personality, then build a world necessary for that person to exist, and the story (I hope) falls into place after that. The character isn’t necessarily well developed at first, but there’s usually enough to get started. Once you’ve tossed them into a difficult situation, I have to hope that I’ve figured out how they’ll cope under pressure, and that along the way I can develop them into someone who is interesting not just to me, but the reader. The process probably isn’t unlike that of writing a part for a particular actor.

Unfortunately, it means I tend to have trouble coming up with good plots. Take “Apotheosis Cake,” (if you haven’t read it, cruise on over to the Publications page for a link) for example. I came up with what I thought was a pretty wonderful character in Jennifer, the narrator. She had a fun voice and an outlook on life that was both unique and instantly identifiable. The whole story hinges on her wit, and I think it mostly works. But since there’s not really much plot there, the story probably falls a little flat at the end. I’m still working on striking that balance.

It makes me wonder what it’s like for those writers lucky enough adapt a pre-established story for television or movie – they essentially get to write a story for their character for an actor.

This is just a long-winded way of saying to stay tuned for the 2018 release of Shades of Red, starring Summer Glau as the Scarlet Ranger.

Wow. So lately the wife and I have been watching random episodes of “Law & Order.” It’s always interesting to study something that is so immensely successful. It’s somewhat painful, given that the shows we typically fall in love with so often get cancelled long before their time. But nonetheless, I think it’s valuable to study the types of storytelling that seem to garner such enormous audiences.

L&O seems to have a number of strengths:

• Simple  characters – They follow a pretty basic white-hat/black-hat pattern. The cops are righteous and honest. The prosecutors are determined and competent. (I won’t go into some rant about how completely unrealistic that is.) They do have to sometime make tough decisions, but the motives are always pure. It’s fascinating how long actors will stay on that show, some of them for over a decade, but at the same time they people they portray are pretty interchangeable. Also, if you are a female lawyer, you are hot.

• No story arcs – as far as I can tell, every episode is done-in-one, that is, the mystery is completed in one episode. L&O vets could probably point out exceptions, as I’m sure they’ve probably done two-parters before. You can pick any episode out of any season and watch it without worrying about some crucial plot point or character development. Because there isn’t any. (Come to think of it, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was much the same way, only occasionally referring to previous stories or featuring recurring characters, and often what seems like a dramatic character epiphany or growth was forgotten a week later.)

To me this is almost blasphemous. It’s a waste of the real strength of TV, the serial story. Shows like The Shield, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and Deep Space 9 took full advantage of the serial aspect of television. The actors grew into their characters. The characters could be given long-lasting changes to their motives and personality. The producers can introduce plot elements in a subtle fashion, planting seeds for future stories sometimes several seasons in advance. It requires committment, sure, but the payoff can be extraordinarily satisfying. Do you want to start watching mid-season? Of course not, but in this age of easily-accessable TV on DVD, there’s really no excuse not to be caught up.

Clearly, however, it has worked for L&O, so I’m probably just talking out of my ass.

• By extension of the previous two points, there’s this powerful revelation: you can start watching any given episode at any point and be caught up in five minutes or less. Missed the first half hour of the show? Who cares? You’ll be fine. Just wait a tic, and the DAs will summarize everything up to that point. It’s the ultimate in impulse television. By contrast, if you missed the first five minutes of an episode of Babylon 5, you could write off the rest of the season. And back then there was no DVD to run to.

None of this is meant as a slight – L&O and its various and sundry spin-offs is perfectly entertaining television. In fact, the little I’ve watched of SVU indicates that it actually does use the serial nature of television more to its advantage, with overarcing character development. And I have a great deal of respect for the writing pit crew, who must have a hell of a time coming up with a fresh mystery every week. I just thought it was interesting to note some of the facets of the show that I think contribute to their success.

I’m not sure what the lesson should be for prose writers, but there’s got to be one in there somewhere. And it’s probably depressing.