Two Movie Reviews

I like movies. Who doesn’t? Well, I’ve realized that in my first post I said I might post movie reviews once in a while. Since it’s been a while I’ve seen a movie in the theatres (I believe the last time I went to the movies was in December – The Hobbit and Django Unchained – too long ago to give my thoughts, but I enjoyed both for different reasons), I thought I might share some thoughts on two that I recently saw at home.

 

Keira Knightley is an actress whose movies I always seem to want to watch. Maybe it’s because she’s in a lot of historicals, and being a history buff, I tend to gravitate towards those kinds of movies. But she’s also in a lot of movies that were adapted from literary classics (i.e. Pride and Prejudice). That being said, the last two movies I saw featured Keira.

 

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

 

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
2012

Starring Steve Carell as well as Keira Knightley, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is a dramatic comedy about, well, the end of the world. An asteroid impact is imminent. People are preparing themselves to die and it looks like they are generally having fun. Except for Dodge (Steve Carell) who finds himself suddenly alone after his wife leaves him. We never see this wife (apart from in pictures, I think) and only hear his friends speak about her and try to comfort Dodge by joking how it took the end of the world for her to finally get up the courage to leave him (or something along those lines). Without giving away too much of the plot, Dodge finally meets his neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley) when she cries outside his window on the fire escape. Funny enough, they have never spoken before then. Dodge was an insurance salesman and Penny was a free spirit type, so why should they have ever spoken before? But Penny had spoken to his wife, whom she thought was simply his roommate, innocently asking Dodge about his wife’s boyfriend. Well, that was a shock to Dodge. She also gives him mail that had come into her box accidently and which she never before bothered to return to him. In that pile of mail, Dodge finds a letter from his high school sweetheart, the only woman he’d ever truly loved, and thus begins a journey to find her before the asteroid hits, a journey that will involve a guilt ridden Penny.

 

I must admit, I shed some tears during this movie. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it can be a little depressing. I really felt for Dodge and his loneliness. And when Penny finally reached her family by phone, it wrenched my heart. To have those last words with her family brought tears to my eyes. All in all, I really enjoyed this movie. It wasn’t one that I had wanted to see but when it came up one night on the movie channel, I decided to try it out. I generally like end of the world type movies and this one was a refreshing change. Usually these movies are all about the astronauts or the scientists trying to save the world and succeeding. But this one was about failure and about normal people and how the end of days might look like. It kept my interest the whole way through and was good for a few laughs. It made me think of what I might do in the same situation and coupled with the meteor hit in Russia and the asteroid pass in real life, it gave me an awesome apocalyptic dream a couple nights later. That dream was like watching a movie in my sleep. No better CGI than your own imagination!

 

My rating: 4/5

 

 ~*~

 

Anna Karenina (2012)

 

Anna Karenina, 2012

Keira Knightley stars as the title role. The movie is based on Leo Tolstoy’s work of the same name. Anna Karenina seems to be a woman perfectly happy with her life. She is married with a young son. So when she goes to visit her brother in Moscow, there should be no reason for her to want to stray, should there? Wrong. She meets Count Vronsky on the train and, gosh, he’s too dashing for her to forget. She then sees him everywhere. At a ball, where she dances with him all night, much to the displeasure of Kitty (her niece? I was never sure of their connection) who had been expecting the Count to propose marriage to her. Poor Kitty had just turned down an offer from another young man, Levin, much to Levin’s agonizing sorrow. The rest of the movie shows us Anna and Count Vronsky’s affair, the implications of it, and on the side, tells the story of Kitty and Levin.

 

I have not read the book by Tolstoy, so I don’t know how close this is to reality. I remember, very vaguely, learning about the book in my Russian history class, but alas, not enough to relate it to the movie.

 

My feelings about this movie are mixed. On the one hand, I thought the storyline itself was interesting and really gives us a view into Russian high society. To me, it wasn’t fair that Anna was the whore and outcast for being with Count Vronsky and he seemed to get around the whole affair without any consequences. And I believe her own brother was allowed to have a mistress without any judgment. But that was life. I get that. I knew that. What really bothered me about this movie was the weird setting. I don’t know why they set it on a stage. Why couldn’t they have just used real settings? I would have loved to see a real Russian setting. Real snow for god’s sake. Just when I thought I’d gotten over the use of a stage, it would bother me all over again. The horse race could have been so much better if they had used a real race track. The whole movie could have been a lot better if it hadn’t been set on a stage.

 

If I wanted to see a stage, I’d have gone to a theater. Movies shouldn’t be set on a stage.

 

Ugh. Okay. Rant over.

 

My rating: 3/5

 

 

~*~

Links (IMDB):

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Anna Karenina

~*~

 

 

I'm supposed to go see Jack the Giant Slayer today, so maybe I'll post something on that later this week. I am also going to work on my From the Bottom of the Box Part II post. I had thrown that in my desk and forgotten about it! Until then, have a nice day!

New Goal

Okay, I'm a cheater; I've decided to extend my February goal into March. February was an epic failure. Well, maybe epic is too harsh. I did reach 57% of my goal. I suppose that is good? It's a pass in university standards, though it would have been a fail in high school. Anyway, I didn't have much time to write. Then again, maybe I didn't feel much like writing. But I don't think that the month was a total waste. I did get some writing done. And mostly, I planned out my ending way better than what I had already planned for it. So, now I am hoping to finish my story once and for all. I don't know if I can do it in March, but I will at least try to hit my word count goal.

 

In the meantime, I've got a lot of thinking to do about real life. I just can't seem to tell my mind to shut up so that I can have a clear mind to write. But anyway, I will have another post on my old diaries coming up real soon. Have a good day!

From the Bottom of the Box, Part I

Some of my old journals have come back into my hands recently. My parents cleaned out their basement a couple of months ago and dumped a box of my old things at my place. All of it still smells like my old home (musty basement smell, but so sweet for all the memories it brings up).

I used to keep journals/diaries sporadically, not ever really writing on a daily basis. Surprisingly, I remembered the combinations to open the locks on them, though I had to cut the oldest one open because it was locked with a key lock which I lost the key for. It was quite something, to step back in time, as much as 20 years in one! I’ve realized after reading through them that I have changed, but I’ve also, in many ways, stayed much the same (more on this in later posts).

In the oldest one I found, my mother wrote the first entries for me. Here’s an excerpt from the first entry on January 8, 1993 (don’t worry, nothing too personal!):

At school I worked and played outside. In the class I played with Barbie dolls and blocks. I shared my cookies with James. My mom bought this diary for me tonight.

Funny enough, I sort of remember dictating this to my mom. It’s interesting to see how I thought as a six year old. And I still keep in touch with James!

The first entry I wrote on my own, in sprawling, crooked block letters (how cute!) was on November 16, 1993 (I’m leaving in the spelling errors I made):

I love Jacob and Randy. My friend is Aubrey every day I paly with My friend Audrey and sometimes I paly with Ashley [last name withheld].

And how awesome, my dad wrote for me on the next page! That was the time my mom was away to get an operation. I remember my dad cooking us eggs for dinner, but I didn’t remember that he helped me write in my diary. I recognize his tiny handwriting. And then right at the end, I write: Mind Cat Bad

 

The entry my dad wrote for me.

 

The cat I am talking about can only be Rambo, the warrior cat of my youth. He was orange and white and all muscle. He had so many scars and his ears were halfway gone from all the fights he got in. But I never once saw another male cat in our yard when I was younger. How could I tell the ones I did see weren’t male? I don’t know and don’t ask!

I will have to show this to my parents.

To be continued…

Photo of the Week 10/02/2013

Good afternoon! On this day in which the sun shines brightly through the cold, I present to you the latest photo of the week. I took this photo earlier in the week, when the wind was blowing hard on the lake down the road from where I live. The fishing cabins huddle beneath the blue sky while the snow from the lake careens onto them; Winter's biting fury will not so easily let up, despite the bold predictions of several groundhogs. Out here, only a fool predicts the end of Winter.

Yes, that was an awful description I wrote above.

Have a nice day! Now, I go away to work on my writing... or perhaps slink outside to make the most of the sun... I love winter, by the way.

An "a-ha" moment!

Did you ever have a plot epiphany as you were writing? Something that would change the rest of your story so drastically from what you had planned, but for the better? I did.

While I was writing today, I was wondering how I would fit everything I had planned into the rest of the story without going overboard long on the word count. I had originally intended to introduce a very important character (let’s call him Bob for sanity’s sake) into the story but I kept delaying his appearance. I kept writing, and writing. And I would ask myself, when is Bob going to show up? It’s not going to make sense when he comes around for my heroine to follow him because there won’t be any time for them to get to know each other and their reasons.

So I opened a new text document in Scrivener and typed at the top: What would the rest of my story look like if Bob did not exist?  And then, as I was replying to that question, I had an "a-ha" moment.

Bob was already in my story.

That’s right. Bob was already there, right under my nose all along, only masquerading as something I hadn’t planned way back when (let’s call this character Rafael). Suddenly it all became clear what I needed to do.

Well, maybe not all clear straight away. I still have some things to work out. So it’s back to the outlining for me. There’s nothing I have to go back and drastically change; my subconscious wrote Rafael the way I need him to be to fit in as the important character Bob. Somewhere, deep down inside I had known Rafael was Bob.

Okay, so this is probably not making sense to you since you have no idea what my work in progress is about, but trust me, this was a big epiphany for me. And it will make finishing my story a lot easier, I hope anyway. There’s still the matter of the showdown with the villain. I have to make it satisfying; I have to make it make sense. This tale will be turning in my head until I figure it all out.

I have a feeling I won’t be getting a lot of sleep tonight.

A Goal for February

So, I've decided to give myself a goal for this month. I hope to write 25,000 words of my current work in progress. That would bring me to 100,000 words and probably to the end of the story.

 

I am a bit worried, however, that I won't actually get to the end of the story once my goal is reached. There's so much that needs to happen from now until then and I don't think I can fit it all in at 100,000 words. My story is a fantasy, and right now I'm writing it with an adult audience in mind, but I keep thinking it might be better as a young adult. That being said, I am a little confuddled as to how long it should be. General guidelines I've read over the Internet are all over the place, though from 90,000 to 120,000 max seems to be the generally accepted rule for fantasy.

 

*le sigh*

 

I think I'll just worry about all that once my story is actually finished. Then I can revise, edit, and cut any needless things. It might not ever get published anyway.

 

*face palm*

 

Think positive, missy!

 

Anyway, I've set up a word count meter to the right. As you can see, today I wrote 2,091 words. Pretty good. I haven't calculated how much I'll need to write every day to reach my goal before the stroke of midnight on March 1st, but I figure I can reach this goal. It will motivate me to sit down and write. And if I could do 50,000 in November, when I actually had a job and things to do, then I can definitely do this in February, even if it is only 28 days long and I didn't really write for the first two days. I hope I can do that anyway...

 

I'll update the meter every time I update the blog, which I don't know how often that will be; suffice it to say update times shall vary!

 

Have a good evening and a good week! Ciao!

 

P.S. How about those habs there, eh? 6-2!? Looking good, especially compared to last season (which I would like to forget ever happened).

Helpful Links Part Deux

Happy February 1st! Wow, this year is going so fast, isn't it? Maybe it's just me but 2013 is flying! I promised before that I would share helpful links about writing whenever I collected enough to make a significant post. Now I have and here they are!

 

The Writing Stage:

• Pacing Dialogue and Action Scenes - From fantasy writer Holly Lisle. She has a great mailing list that sends out writing tips every friday. I would recommend you sign up for that if you are a budding writer. It gives me another reason to look forward to fridays!
• A Simple Way to Create Suspense - Some helpful tips from author Lee Child on how to keep the reader turning those pages.
• Advice - A crime fiction writer's three pieces of simple advice.

 

Stuff to do with agents:

• Ten Surefire Ways to Turn Off a Prospective Agent - An agent's post on what not to do when querying an agent. Have you been guilty of any of the no nos on his top ten list?

 

Other things to consider:

• Apples or Oranges? - A blog post about book series and what to consider if you are planning to write more than one book with the same characters - fixed number or never ending? This is something you might want to consider before you start writing or before you finish your work in progress.
• Traditional Publishing vs Self-Publishing, Pros & Cons - An article which discusses, well what the title says. Good food for thought.
• How Long Should a Book Be? - Ever wondered how long your story should be? How long is too long? How short is too short? This is a great post which breaks down word counts for all kinds of books and genres.
• Literary vs Commercial - Have you also ever wondered what the difference is between literary and commercial fiction? Did you even know there were two such different things? I am a voracious reader, but I had never noted these things before, though it is something I should be aware of as a writer. Sarah LaPolla explains.

 

Motivation:

• Kurt Vonnegut Can Bite Me - A blog post about all the writing rules out there and how you should only really be following one - write! Makes all these links a little useless, but the other point is, take what you can and what you need from the sea of advice.

 

Further food for thought:

• Should books in a series have a "previously on..." summary page? Read author Zoë Marriott's interesting discussion on this hot topic. Having just started reading the third book of a trilogy, months, perhaps a year, after the second book, I tend to find this idea a good one. I had absolutley no clue what was going on anymore and found myself scratching my head through the first pages, furiously trying to remember.On the other hand, if I had just finished reading the second book, then such a page would be a waste of time (and paper). But, you can always skip over that page if that is the case.

 

I hope they were helpful! Good night!