31 January 2007

A Snake Meandering Towards Its Hole

I revised the short story I was writing and totally screwed up the feel I was going for. Read what I had to Mr. Yumicho. He said it needs work, and he thought I should work on character develppment. He thinks I should do another revision and have him look it over this weekend.

Winter Passing

It's not often that I have to stop a film to take a breather because I am convinced if I continue to watch it to the end, I will end up with my head in the oven. Winter Passing is just that sort of film.

I normally enjoy films with this type of feel. Flawed people quietly going about their lives usually as a really cool soundtrack plays. I can overlook a lot of flaws with these films like factual errors and unrealistic plots (My Life Without Me) or somewhat clumsy application (Down to the Bone), and honestly, I didn't hate Winter Passing. The protagonist is obnoxious and kills little kittens. The rest of the cast of characters are nuts or unlikable. Will Ferrell breaks from his usual type cast and plays a slightly dim, over-sized oaf. Yet, after a few hours break, I went back and finished the film.

Was this because I am a masochist or was I secretly hoping to see another disturbing sex scene between the protagonist and her metro-sexual boyfriend? Maybe both? Sometimes the best films aren't "feelgood" movies. Explorations into negative emotions is sometimes what makes a film worth while.

But this film grates against some major sensitive spots for me. Regret about family involvement (or lack of it). The declining lucidity of a parent. Grief. Self-loathing. Did it help shed new light on these things for me? Not really, but I did spend a lot of time thinking "Oh, God! Ed Harris is so old now".

I ended up giving it 3 out of 5 stars on Netflix because despite what was wrong with it, it was a beautifully shot and acted film and the soundtrack was wonderful.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0380817/

30 January 2007

Another go

I had a blog here years ago, but I don't remember the password. It did have this very pretty header made with html. I am not sure how to modify the new styles in a way that I could put that old code on this one.

I've been trying to be more disciplined in writing. I've started several excercises in the past few days, but it wasn't until I found this one earlier that I really got into anything. It's a short story based on a "theme". I may post it here when I am done.

I think one of the major problems I have with writing is that I get too distracted by stuff. All day today I've meant to work on one excercise or another but a ton of things got in the way. I had to set this up. Then Lastfm went down. The horrors! I spent time trying to figure out if it was their servers or my puter. Then when it came back up, I spent time picking out a recently played chart. I did this all for your viewing pleasure, because it was for this blog and not because I love to procrastinate about everything.

So I only got a few paragraphs of the short story done. They are very dense paragraphs, though. They remind me of pemmican.