What’s next?

I had been looking forward to watching "Next" – it was touted as another "Philip K. Dick story" and since science fiction movies again seem to be becoming a bit scarce, I wanted to see this. Of course, the trailers seemed to indicate that it might be another one of those recent crop of "our freedoms are being trampled by the government which is evil and corrupt" and that was putting me off from getting to it immediately. Enough already with the whole terrorists and civil liberties crap – don’t these American’s have anything else to moan about in the land of the brave and the home of the free? :p (And that rant is something I should have one of these days – US entertainment has become so sickening in the way the same theme crops up over and over and over and over in all the recent movies, TV shows and even comics)

Anyway, watch "Next" we did. And all I can say is, if that’s next on your list, just say "Next!" and move on :p Let me tell you, this is no Philip K. Dick story – so don’t be fooled by that one. They took one tiny premise from a Philip K. Dick story, "The Golden Man", and then created a hodgepodge of a movie that defies all logic, reason and the laws of attraction. Seriously now, Jessica Biel falling for a Nicolas Cage with a head of hair that looks as if it was stolen off a doll and stuck on his head with crazy glue? Who is gonna believe that? :p

The most surreal thing I found about the whole experience was reading the reader comments for the movie on IMDB. A lot of people seem to think that this was a great movie with a philosophy, humour, action and excellent special effects! I can’t help but wonder if I saw a different movie because I can tell you, we watched it on DVD and I could still see the cheesy special effects. So how could those who watched the movie on the big screen have missed that? There are a lot of stunts with big logs rolling down mountains and boulders missing Cage by inches or vehicles tumbling down around him a la "Die Hard 4.0" – but you can plainly see that these are just CGI creations because they look utterly fake. But maybe that’s just me …

But I digress. The core of the story is that Cage’s character, Cris Johnson, can see two minutes into the future. This is all that they took from the original Phil K. Dick story. That, and the name of the protagonist, which was Cris in the original as well – I shudder to think where the Johnson came from :p To this, they add some nameless (and apparently organization-less) terrorists who have stolen a nuclear weapon and want to detonate it on American soil – again for no specific reason. The terrorists make no threats, don’t seem to have any specific goals except to blow things up.

The next twist is that Cris can suddenly see much further into the future about a girl. No explanation as to why he can do this or why the girl is important. In fact, none of this is resolved when the movie ends. It just is. Sounds like a good way to set things up but if you’ve got at least half the brain of a red-ant, you’d probably want to know they why of things – not just that they are.

Then things get really sloppy as Cris’s abilities are used to move the story forward and he does a lot of things which make no sense at all. Yes, some people on IMDB claim that those who didn’t enjoy the movie didn’t understand the complexities of the movie because it didn’t stop to spell things out 🙂 But that’s not my issue. I’m a science fiction buff – I understand how time travel and precognition is supposed to work. What I don’t get is how this darn story is supposed to hang together if you look at it logically. But then again, in this day and age, logic is highly overrated, right? :p

Boosting Joost

Over at LinkedIn, where I’m a member, I heard about this new service called Joost. It was still in beta but the aim of the service was to provide television on demand, for free, to all users via the Internet. Sounded like a good idea to me and so I wanted to join in and see what the service was like.

Only thing is, Joost is in beta at the moment, as I mentioned, and you needed an invite from an existing member to get in. Fortunately, LinkedIn members were there to help 🙂 Mat Morrison from digital marketing strategists, RMM London had some invites available and was kind enough to send one my way when I asked over at his blog. (Incidentally, I’ve got invites now and if you want one, ask away – you might have to link back to me but I’ll give you an invite :))

The Joost download was not very big and the install went through fine. The video streaming is pretty good, even with the crappy broadband connection you get here in Sri Lanka. The playback is a bit choppy but since Joost appears to cache the program as it is being downloaded, you can simply let it play in the background at the standard choppy rate (if your Net connection is as bad as mine that is) and then play it back when it has a good chunk downloaded.

Actually, the caching goes beyond that. Let’s say you shut Joost down while you were in the middle of playing a show or a song. The next time you connect to Joost, it will continue on from where you left off and it appears to have the cache for the segment you already downloaded intact. I liked that because I can watch a long show without having to go through the download again 🙂

There’s some Indian content on Joost as well and so I’m getting my Hindi music fix :p They even have a couple of shows from the Sci-Fi channel (not available in the US or Canada via Joost though) but that’s where I ran into my first snag. I’m not sure if it’s a Joost issue, a Vista issue at my end or something else (like not enough disk space) but everytime I tried to cache one of the Sci-Fi channel shows, Joost would crash out half-way through. Hopefully, they get that kind of thing sorted out (if it’s a Joost issue) and I can enjoy my television to the max 🙂

Note: If you want a Joost invite, you will need to let me know both your first name and last name as well a valid e-mail address since Joost requires these things to send out an invite. (You don’t have to put the e-mail address in the comment – if you give your valid e-mail address when posting the comment, I’ll be able to get that even though it’s not displayed along with your comment.) If you don’t want to leave those details in a comment, please e-mail me directly 🙂

Due to the number of people asking for invites without providing the details requested above, please note that I’ll be ignoring any requests without all the necessary details.

Eragon or Hero Gone?

I have not read Christopher Paolini’s "Eragon". However, we did watch the movie yesterday. I don’t know how similar the book is to the movie (the synopsis on Wikipedia seems to suggest that there might be major alterations to the story) but as soon as the movie started, I had but one thought – "This sounds a lot like an adaptation of ‘Star Wars‘" 🙂

That was my impression on seeing the first five minutes of the movie and the rest of the movie did nothing to dispel this impression. A world ruled by benevolent dragon riders and all of the dragon riders being killed by one of their own who then became the despotic dictator of the world? Years later, a young princess stealing a valuable object belonging to the dictator/king and running off to hide? When she’s caught, she sends off the valuable item elsewhere? The item ends up in the hands of a young farm boy who lives in the boondocks with his uncle? Any of this starting to sound familiar? :p

Having not managed to get my book sold at all, you might ask "Who are you to talk?" I might even be accused of jealousy. I’m not jealous of Christopher Paolini. He made it and the more power to him. Given that he was fifteen when he wrote this, you can actually understand the inspirations and the sources behind the story. Of course, according to another Wikipedia entry which lists no source, Paolini has said that his inspiration wasn’t "Star Wars" but Joseph Campbell’s "Hero’s Journey", which has been credited by George Lucas as his own inspiration for "Star Wars". Looking at the number of similarities between the "Star Wars" storyline and "Eragon", I find that a little tough to swallow, but whatever, dude 🙂 We are not talking about Paolini and his source of inspiration.

What I do find fascinating is the complete lack of originality on the part of Hollywood. Why would they take a story which so obviously is "Star Wars" on dragons and create a movie out of it? Did they think the success of the book would guarantee the success of the movie? Are we so bankrupt of ideas today that we think just taking any successful book series and creating movies out of them is the way to go? Or is it just that every Hollywood studio wants a series of their own that they could milk for several years? It all seems so silly if you look at it logically but then again, logic seems to be in even shorter supply than ideas in the world of today ….

Worlds galore

Notwithstanding their popularity, I haven’t been much of a one for MMORPGing. About the only Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game that I’ve played consistently in the past has been Puzzle Pirates 🙂 While I loved the puzzles in Puzzle Pirates, the monotonous nature of having to play the same puzzles over and over again finally got to me and I gave up.

Since then, since most MMORPGs are fee-based (and because I just didn’t have the time to devote to them) I’ve stayed away from them. Stayed away that is, till a couple of days ago when I read about Second Life. I downloaded the client and tried it out but found it to be utterly boring – not to mention very, very slow :p If you want to have a virtual life pretty much the same as your normal life, Second Life is ideal – all you do is find a job, build a house, talk to people … that kind of thing – boring :p I uninstalled Second Life after the second time of trying it.

But, my appetite whetted for online games, I went in search of other games to try. That was when I came across Pirate King Online. I loved the colourful, cartoony graphics and since the game said that it was going to be free for ever, I decided to give it a try. Of course, the client turned out to be 300MB and it took me about a day (with the slow broadband we have over here :p) to download it. Once I downloaded the client and installed it, it found more updates on the server and started downloading those. Once that was done, I was finally able to get in and I must say, I really enjoyed what I found in there 🙂

It’s an interesting fantasy world full of creatures to fight, skills to unlock and lots and lots of quests. This is the kind of game that I actually like. One where there are set missions and you have things to do and ways to level up. Of course, if you want the usual virtual life stuff, I believe you can set up a stall and become a merchant or offer other services. But for the moment, I’m content to simply play the various missions and to level up 🙂

Decadence of dreams

I’ve said this before – maybe my tastes in movies are changing or Hollywood is totally bankrupt in the ideas department. Or maybe it’s both :p I still have to see a totally satisfying and thoroughly enjoyable Hollywood movie in months. About the only US/Western entertainment that I’ve found to be enjoyable lately has come from TV. Maybe it’s the longer length, or the shorter episodes but there is some good stuff on TV that really works.

Take for instance, "Prison Break". While I have yet to see season 2 and am curious as to how they can maintain the same level of novelty and interest as the first season, I nevertheless found it to be a gripping and entertaining drama. Then there is "Lost". Sure the second season sagged a bit down the middle and I do hope that they tie everything up neatly in the third season (which I hear is the final season) but it’s still damn interesting. I also hear good things about "Heroes" though I’ve yet to see it.

On the other side of the coin, the Hollywood side, you have trash like "Miami Vice" :p We watched it yesterday and it is the worst excuse for a movie that I have seen in a long time. It appeared to be more of a soft-porn movie which had somehow stumbled into the area reserved for the more upstanding citizens of the movie world. I kid you not, the first part of the movie was mostly shower scenes and bedroom scenes and what not. Considering that you had at least five sex scenes in a two and a half hour movie, there wasn’t much room for story :p

Not that there really was a story, mind you. It appears as if Michael Mann decided to go experimental on this one (or maybe you should drop "experi" and you’d be closer to home :p) You get dropped into the story in-progress and at the end you are yanked out without any satisfying conclusions. The story was supposed to be about finding a mole in the FBI but at the end of the movie, we still have no idea who the mole is. The woman that Sonny Crockett risks everything for, goes away into the sunset on a boat. Life just drags on. No satisfaction, no emotion, no connections – basically, a big old zero. The only good thing I have to say about this movie is that we only paid $2 for a local DVD copy – my sympathies to anybody who paid full price for this garbage 🙂

The second movie that we watched yesterday, "Children of Men", was much more satisfying and engaging. The movie started off slow and I was beginning to think it was a dud too. I love science fiction movies but this was way too close to home to be entertaining – it was just depressing. However, as the story progressed, I became more and more involved with the character of Theo Faron, who goes from your average guy who just wants to make his own corner of the basket safe and nice while the world goes to hell in a handbasket, to a knight in rusted armour :p Of course, the high point in the movie, for me personally, has to be when I suddenly heard cries in perfect Sinhalese from a wailing woman standing by a slain boy, towards the end of the movie 🙂 Overall, it was a good piece of cinema though not something I’d want to watch if I wanted pure entertainment – it’s just too gruesome and hits too close to home for comfort of mind.

Entertainment in the hole

I have not been able to find a good movie lately even to save my own life :p Everything seems to be either bad remakes or sequels which never go anywhere. I thought "Mission: Impossible 3" would prove to be good but it was nothing special. The story was average and there certainly weren’t any memorable stunts as in the previous movies. I hear that "Miami Vice" is a bust as well, though I haven’t seen it myself yet.

About the only two English movies that were even passable recently were "Nanny McPhee" and "Wedding Daze". However, the former didn’t really grab your sympathy. It was a nice morality tale which was supposed to warm your hearts but the children (who were the key) came out as brats who needed a good spanking rather than adorable miscreants who needed a firm hand :p Of the children, the only one I really liked was Baby Agatha. On the other hand, "Wedding Daze" was better but a bit predictable and the comparison to "Father of the Bride" didn’t help much. The other interesting fact is that neither of those movies was released in 2006 – I was watching old fare, there :p

It’s been a rather dry season on the Bollywood side of the fence too. I hadn’t seen one movie that really tugged at your heartstrings or made you want to jump up and dance like in the days of yore. The much awaited "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" was a damp squib as far as I’m concerned. Sure, it had enough star power for a galaxy or two but the story really went nowhere. The closest thing (ironically) that KANK came to was "Closer", which I didn’t particularly like either :p Incidentally, Shah Rukh appeared to be borrowing from his older roles in this movie and was actually making me feel a bit nauseous – it wasn’t a good performance and it wasn’t a good movie.

The bright spot of the year? It has to be "Lage Raho Munna Bhai" 🙂 I had liked the original, "Munna Bhai M.B.B.S." but not overly so. It was fun but not brilliant. The sequel was different. It was a touching story which kept your emotions going almost throughout the entire movie. I was either laughing or sniffing (not glue :p) through every scene. Sure, at least some of the characters were already established, but the director managed to give them new dimension and new meaning. I was a bit confused by the fact that the sequel appeared to not acknowledge the original – it was almost as if the original story took place in an alternate universe and the new story is a complete retake of Munna Bhai’s life. Other than that, this was a beautiful movie and a pleasure to watch. In fact, I just might watch it again 🙂

The forces that move us

I don’t seem to find myself compelled to write about the movies that we watch anymore – I’m not sure if that is because I’m too busy or because we haven’t seen a movie that actually moved me in a while. Yesterday, we did see something which, even if it did not move me to reflection as much as usual, did make me pause a bit. The movie? "Edison Force", which apparently was released as "Edison" originally but was renamed for the DVD.

On paper, the movie looks absolutely brilliant – Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey, with a supporting cast which is a veritable who’s who of Hollywood? It seemed like a movie buff’s dream! I enjoyed the story most of the time though there was nothing really new in there. I loved how the movie showed the motivations for the different characters and the changes in their outlooks and actions as the story progresses. I also enjoyed the fact that at heart, the movie was a cautionary tale/morality story.

However, with such a large cast of well-known characters, the story needs to be especially strong to let each of the characters to shine through. This just didn’t seem to happen. I enjoyed the story while it played out but afterwards, I can’t point to one person (or one character) and say this is what defined him. If anything, all I remember vividly from the movie is Moses Ashford’s (Morgan Freeman’s character) potty-mouth :p (It just seems so wrong to have Morgan Freeman say the things that Moses says – almost as bad as hearing your own grandfather using the obscenities that a teenager would use ..)

The biggest flaw was probably in letting the entire movie hang on Justin Timberlake‘s scrawny shoulders :p Don’t get me wrong, I was surprised at how well he acted given his normal persona that you see in the DVD extras. But boy, even given that improved acting, he really didn’t convey much emotion or character throughout the movie. And given that the story is mostly about Pollack (Justin’s character), it is no wonder that the movie ended up feeling so anaemic – because that’s how Pollack comes across.

So in the end, I don’t know whether movies are becoming worse by the day or if my tastes are growing more rarified, but I just can’t find any movies recently about which I can really say "Wow, that moved me!". "Edison Force" is no exception.

Codes, Concepts and Breakouts

We watched "The Da Vinci Code" a couple of days ago. I am not going to go much into the movie itself since everybody and their unborn child has probably seen it by now. Or heard about it. Or been urged by their neighbour’s grandmother to go see it. Or read about it in the newspaper. Or something. You get the picture 🙂

Now Laurie had already read the book. I hadn’t. So the movie was all new to me – especially since I hadn’t been interested enough in the book to learn what the story was about :p What did strike me while watching the movie was that the story was almost a poster-child for Donald Maass’ "Writing the Breakout Novel" 🙂 Maybe I’m reading more into it (pun intended) than I should. But I’m reading "Writing the Breakout Novel" at the moment and Dan Brown appeared to follow Donald Maass’ advice very carefully. Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps not. So the first thing I did was to check for any connections between Dan Brown and Donald Maass. Don’t think I found any direct connections or references to Brown being influenced by Maass’ book. So then, I looked up the publication dates for the two books and Maass’ book had been out for 2-3 years before Brown’s book was published. So I guess it certainly is possible.

Or maybe it’s just coincidence. Maybe bestsellers do follow a formula. I have no idea 🙂 But what I did notice was that Brown raised the stakes continually as Maass advices in his books. You start with a simple murder, then Langdon gets called into take a look, then we learn that he’s a suspect in the murder, then he learns that there is a conspiracy behind it and he has to go on the run and so on. The stakes just keep rising and you are swept away in the tide of rising excitement.

Then there are the characters themselves. There’s Langdon’s claustrophobia, which is introduced almost as soon as the story starts. So you start sympathizing with him. Then you are introduced to Sophie and you learn that she does not believe in God. You start wondering about her. Then you learn that her whole family died when she was a child and you begin to realize perhaps she blames God for it. So you again sympathize with the character and are invested in their quest and what becomes of them.

There are many other points to ponder about how the story (in the movie) follows Maass’ advice closely. It probably is coincidence but then again, it’s a nice mini-not-quite-conspiracy theory of my own to say that Dan Brown wrote his bestseller by following Maass’ advice to the letter :p Or maybe, it just points to the fact that you can write by numbers as long as you know which numbers to follow 🙂

Books and serendipity

Simon and I were discussing Sir Arthur C. Clarke yesterday and in the process he happened to mention that he thought ACC had shared lodgings with William F. Temple a long, long time ago. Who is William F. Temple you ask? Well, I only learnt of Temple through Simon’s page about his search for Temple’s Martin Magnus books. (It’s an interesting story, you should take a look :))

But the mention of Simon’s hunt for Martin Magnus books made me consider what my most serendipitous book discovery had been. I believe it’s the Apprentice Adept series by Piers Anthony 🙂 (Yes, I know that some people turn their noses up at Piers and say that he writes as if books were going out of style tomorrow :p But I liked his early work and still consider myself a fan though I haven’t read any of his recent stuff.)

I think I first discovered Piers Anthony quite unexpectedly. I saw this book with an interesting cover in the local library called "Castle Roogna". I took it home and read it and was enchanted by the puns and the world he created where plants had pies growing from them and everybody had a magical talent. In case, you’re not really familiar with "Castle Roogna", it’s part of Anthony’s famous (or is it infamous?) Xanth series. I hear that the later novels (the series runs to 30 books or more and is still going I believe) weren’t as good but the early novels were quite interesting.

So, hooked by "Castle Roogna", I went back to the library and searched high and low for any other books by Piers. The only other book I found was "A Spell for Chameleon", which if I recall correctly, was the first book in the Xanth series. I devoured that book as fast as I could but I wanted more. But unfortunately, this being Sri Lanka and it being the early 80’s, it wasn’t easy to come by books. Especially books by a specific author. I scoured the second-hand bookshops (the best source for good science fiction and fantasy those days) but for the longest time, I could not find anything by Piers Anthony.

Of course, being consumed by the need to read more of Xanth, I kept scouring the bookstores each time I went there and finally, I discovered a copy of "Source of Magic" (another book in the Xanth series) and "Split Infinity" – a new series. Now "Split Infinity" was interesting in that it was a book which combined fantasy and science fiction – it was a story about two worlds. In one world, science reigned and in the other, magic. I liked the concept and the whole thing about the main character, Stile, being able to move between the two worlds. Of course, it wasn’t a stand-alone book. Stile’s story wasn’t completely resolved by the end of "Split Infinity" and I wanted to read more! And of course, there were no more Piers books to be found 🙁

I searched for years but didn’t find any of the other books in the Apprentice Adept series. Then, sometime in 1993, I went to India on a short trip with a cousin. I was walking along the street in Bombay when I saw a second-hand bookstore and never being one to pass a second-hand bookstore, I went in. You could have knocked me down with the owner’s feather duster when I discovered not one but both the other two books in the Apprentice Adept series! I grabbed them immediately and held on tightly all the way back to the hotel 🙂

So now I had the complete Apprentice Adept series (or so I thought) and I was happy as a clam. I knew what happened to Stile at the end of the series and I went my merry way confident in the knowledge that I had completed another fantasy series. Then sometime in 1997 or so, I was browsing through the shelves in a secondhand bookstore in Georgia (where I was working at the time) and what do I see but more books by Piers Anthony in the Apprentice Adept series! I was stunned. The dastard! He had gone and written more books and I hadn’t known all this time :p But the good news was that the store had all four books that continued the series and so, I was once again up to speed on the Apprentice Adept series and I was happy. Of course, given Mr. Anthony’s habit of extending a series, there is always the possibility that the Apprentice Adept series will get more books added on later. But for the moment, I’m happy in the knowledge that I have read the full series 🙂

A Second Course of Spacejock

I finished Simon Hayne’s "Hal Spacejock: Second Course" yesterday and I must say that I enjoyed this book several magnitudes more than the first one. (And that is not to say I didn’t enjoy the first one – as you’d see if you read my review of the first book :p)

This book certainly shows that at least some authors mature over the course of years 🙂 The first book was enjoyable and a smooth read but the humour wasn’t a primary factor – especially in the conversations between the characters. From the opening pages of "HS: Second Course", the humour in the conversations is much more evident. I can’t say much more without spoiling the story for people and so I won’t. Just take my word for it 🙂

And another thing which really drew me to this book was the complexity of the plot and the hairpin twists and turns that Simon introduces into the plot. There is a bit towards the second half (which again I can’t comment about for fear of spoiling) which has so many plot elements packed together in a few chapters that Simon must have used a compression program :p It has lost alien civilizations, deserted planets full of alien technology, lonely towers standing guard far out to sea and a lot of other things that I really enjoy reading in a science fiction novel. In fact, I wish I’d written thins one 🙂

In fact, about the worst thing I can say about "Hal Spacejock: Second Course" is that I don’t like the cover as much as the cover of book one. Now don’t get me wrong, Dion Hamill is a good artist and there are elements in the cover of the second book that I do like but Hal looks a bit grim and old and Clunk looks a bit shifty eyed in the second book. Now the first cover (by Les Peterson) has what I’d think of as the "classic" Hal pose and while Clunk looks a bit big and purple in that one, he still looks really cheerful. And that’s how I personally see the books – one big, cheerful read 🙂