Of crapometers and poems

Miss Snark is currently running her semi-regular 3rd annual Crapometer where she reads your query letter and the first page of your manuscripts and tells you what you did right (or wrong). I sent in my entry but never received a number and by the time I got around to even thinking about contacting Miss Snark about it, she’d already posted the winners. You snooze, you lose :p Ah well, her comments about other participants still makes for interesting reading though and the comments themselves should help anybody figure out how to craft a good query letter. So go take a look 🙂

I’ve not written much recently since I wanted to put writing on hold for a bit so that I could spend my writing time on reading Simon‘s "Hal Spacejock: Second Course" 🙂 I’m enjoying the book and will post a review once I get done but it’s slow going at the moment (not due to any fault of the book) but because I’ve not been feeling a 100% recently. But I’m halfway through the book and this is an even better read than the first one – some writers, like wine (not that I have any experience mind you :p), get better with time.

Though I’ve not been working on "Hunt for ‘Read October’", I’ve actually been writing a bit of poetry after ages. I thought I hadn’t written much in the way of poetry for close to 20 years, but going through my archives here, I notice that I had indeed written a few poems during the time this blog has been existence. These new poems however, are slightly different in that they have a central them and are part of a series 🙂 But more on that tomorrow (perhaps). For now, let me just post the first poem.

Light

Light and dark, day and night,
People walking in daylight bright.
Deeds foul or actions right,
Nothing ever is black or white.

Do you wonder ’bout the world of grey,
That often is just a thought away?
If you would bother to open your mind,
A different light you would find.

Where rights and wrongs are blown away,
And might does not ever hold sway.
A world of thought before deed,
With nary a hint of lust or greed.

A world where humanity really thrives
And towards excellence forever strives.
Like a sunflower opening its face
To the sun’s blessed life-giving rays.

Space jocks and good books

I finished reading Simon Haynes‘ "Hal Spacejock" today and I must say that it was a darn good read and something that I completely enjoyed reading, after a long time 🙂 What was interesting for me while reading the book was to note that I was hooked by the time I was barely a quarter of a way through the book and usually, it takes me much longer to be truly invested in a story. For instance, Terry Pratchett is my most favourite author and the last few books by PTerry took me at least till the middle of the book before I was really engaged in the story and could not put the book down.

Am I saying that Simon is better than PTerry? Not really. (Sorry Simon :p) But I’m saying that Simon’s style is very easy to read and to get into and that it is very different from that of Terry Pratchett – I enjoy books by both but I find that Simon’s is a much more easier page turner for me much more earlier on 🙂 But I’m not going to compare one author to another, that’s really not fair to either since each author has their own unique style and they bring completely different values and qualities to the table.

I know Simon. I have read his story of how he got published and I admire him for his determination, tenacity and courage 🙂 I wish I could call him friend but I don’t know him well enough and he doesn’t know me well enough. But he certainly is somebody that I wish was my friend. So, it’s a bit harder to review one of his books objectively. If it was somebody who didn’t know me and somebody who I didn’t know, I’d simply say what I thought. But when it is somebody I know, I always wonder whether I’m being too nice (or too harsh :p) simply because I know them.

So I shall not go into the nitty gritty stuff 🙂 There are things which annoy me about the story … OK, maybe "annoy" is too strong a word. It’s more like that there are some elements in the story which offends the nitpicky obsessive compulsive in me – the one who wants every t crossed (and for it to be exactly perpendicular) and every i dotted. For instance, I find the robots to be entirely too human and the humans a bit inconsistent at time. But what’s important is that while the inner-nitpicker complained bitter about these things I was still busily turning the pages. So I guess he was still doing something right 🙂

Basically, I enjoyed the story. It came together well and by the time I completed it, I wanted to get my hands on the sequel, "Hal Spacejock: Second Course" and continue reading. That’s all that an author can ask for, right? 🙂

Signs of the times

Does popular culture reflect the fears and phobias of the time? I remember a few decades back when stories (in books and movies) abounded about how the US president (or his wife or his vice-president) is replaced by a look-alike. I didn’t think that reflected the paranoias of the time at the time, but now I’m not so sure.

We’ve watched (or are in the process of watching) two US TV series from 2005-2006. They both show the leadership of the US as being morally ambiguous or corrupt. The shows? "24" and "Prison Break" 🙂 (Incidentally, "Prison Break" is my favourite new show :p) In "24", it’s the president of the US who has no care for his own countrymen (and women) in his quest to do "what needs to be done to secure the nation’s future". In "Prison Break" the vice-president will go as far as to frame an innocent man (and kill several others) so that she can win the presidential election. All for the "good of the nation".

Is this how entertainers (and a good portion of the population) view their leaders? Or are these stories just coincidental to the current political/social climate? Here in Sri Lanka, nobody would dream of using mass-media to criticize their leaders. Sure, there are shows which are critical but the criticism is more covert. For the longest time, if you dared criticize the government, you could expect a call from the goon squads and it wasn’t going to be a friendly visit either. However, the people do express their opinions of the government (and the opposition and of politicians in general) fairly openly. The problems crop up only when you start expressing your opinions to a lot of people via the media :p That’s kind of weird, I know.

On the other hand, I get the impression that in the US, the media will lambaste politicians while your average Joe, the man on the street, will not care enough to discuss these matters. Here, politics is more of a topic for common discussion than the weather. Over there, I get the impression that it’s the other way around. The only similarity that I see is that in the end, whether you speak out or not, whether your discuss corruption or not, the apathy remains. We keep electing the same bunch of crooks (or their counterparts) come election time. Sure, we might justify it by saying that one side is less crooked than the other but if we know that they are all crooked, should we be making a distinction as to how less crooked one side is than the other?

A Holiday of Chaos

We’ve been running into a spate of bad movies recently 🙂 I don’t know if it was just our mood – getting movies that just didn’t match our mood or if the movies themselves were bad. All I know of is that we have a growing pile of movies that have been watched halfway and then left aside. But a few days ago, we did hit a few movies which were quite good. Of course, it might be that the streak of bad movies just made these seem really good but then again, maybe not.

The first one in the lot is "Chaos". However, I can’t talk much about "Chaos" because it would ruin the "game" for other people :p What’s the game? Well, the game is something I play each time I start watching a movie or TV show – I start trying to figure out the ending as soon as the story starts unfolding and the score is decided by how soon I guess the ending 🙂 I love those movies where the game is at least half-way challenging and "Chaos" is perhaps in this kind of rare category. So I will not ruin it for any other players out there. I’ll just say that it has Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes and Ryan Phillippe and that it is a good story 🙂

The other movie, "Last Holiday" does not get in to the game at all 🙂 It is a rather predictable, straightforward story about a quiet and meek woman who suddenly finds her voice – both figuratively and literally 🙂 It is one of those wonderful feel-good movies about a person rising through adversity and the scorn of "society" to find their place in the world. I loved the movie though the storyline itself held no real surprises. It is one of those pick-me-up kind of movies which leaves you feeling really good about yourself and life at the end of the movie. Watch it 🙂

It’s the knowing that’s hard …

We watched “Home Delivery” yesterday. It is a Bollywood comedy but it really wasn’t that funny :p It took way too long to set up the characters and their back story and then where it could have been funny, it kind of skipped over the possibilities and simply opted for more boring stuff. It did have some great feel-good moments towards the end but most of the audience (except for us masochists of course :p) would have either turned off the movie or walked out long before that.

Sometimes though, even a bad movie can lead to an epiphany 🙂 As I watched the movie, I began to see similarities between how the movie’s plot evolved (or didn’t evolve) and my novel, “Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog“. The thing is, I’ve not been able to get much feedback on “Honest” or the writing style I use there. When I submit a chapter for critiquing, I get arguments about whether I should have used blaster or credits in there instead of inventing a term. Or I get told that it’s cute but that my humour gets annoying after a while :p Of course, on the other hand, there are others who’ve said that they like the writing.

To be honest, I don’t really let the criticisms or compliments bother me since I know that both are weighted by individual preferences. Sure, if everybody was unanimous in saying that I sucked, then I’d give up writing but so far that hasn’t happened (and that’s not to say it still might not :p). But basically what I’m getting at is that I haven’t used gotten any concrete critiques (except from a couple of people) that I can use to specifically “fix” my novel. But watching “Home Delivery”, I thought maybe my problem was the same as the movies – it sounds good as an overall idea but the execution meanders too much to make a good story :p

I don’t know if that is actually the case or not. Maybe I just haven’t found the right person to submit my work to but any avenue is worth investigating and I feel that my story perhaps has too many characters and too much meandering. So I’m going to use “Home Delivery” as a template of what not to do and then take apart one of my favourite novels to see how things work there. Then I’ll decide how I go on from there – whether “Honest” can stand as it is with a few tweaks or perhaps if I should simply rewrite it to be leaner and meaner 🙂

Masks and men

We watched "The Legend of Zorro" a couple of days ago. Now I was a big fan of "The Mask of Zorro" but the sequel? Well, it left me a little cold :p I think this might have something to do with the fact that the movie seemed to be (at least to me) a mishmash of what is "hot" at the moment. For instance, instead of the swashbuckling sword fighting that Zorro is so well known for, we saw Zorro jumping and swooping and rolling and gliding like a prize gymnast crossed with a show horse and an eagle :p Then the whole thing about Elena and Diego breaking up and all the ensuing hijinks seemed just a teensy weensy bit forced. But that might have just been me 🙂 The best part of the movie for me was Diego and Elena’s son, Joaquin and all the trouble he gets into. Overall, the movie just didn’t stand up to the legend of Zorro that I know of.

On the other hand, we watched "Neal ‘N’ Nikki" yesterday and it totally surpassed my expectations 🙂 I thought it might simply be an "experiment" by Yash Raj films. I had seen the beginning of the movie earlier and had not been very impressed. It had looked like something they’d come up to take Bollywood movies in a "new" direction. Dispense with the usual sugar sweet love stories and instead have something raunchier and much less inherently Indian. They did do all that, sure :p The movie is the most non-Bollywood type movie I’ve seen in a long time.

In Indian cinema, you hardly ever see any kissing let alone pre-marital sex or any kind of talk of sex. (Sure, rape scenes used to be big at one time but even then, that was for the sympathy factor rather than the sex factor and to build up the fact that the hero will eventually avenge the injustice :p) That particular trend has been changing. I can think of a few Indian movies of late which featured pre-marital sex or extra-marital sex. But nothing which just openly and joyously said, "this is all about sex!" I’m sure a lot of Indians (as well as Sri Lankans and others from the sub-continent) are going to be aghast at the movie and call it a perversion of culture. They are right on one level – it is. But at the same time, it is a fun romp. An unashamedly "guy" movie aimed directly at the younger generation.

Is it trashy? Yes it is. But it also has some fun moments and some really good scenes between the characters. The acting? The less said about it the better – if it could have been more wooden, the theaters would have been swarming with termites :p But I did enjoy the songs and half of them were in English and were sung very well …

Ultra-vacuous

We have been waiting to get a good copy of "Ultraviolet" for a while now. I don’t know why we got interested in the first place – it might have been the fact that Milla Jovovich is in the movie or it might have been the DVD cover which shows Violet (Milla’s character) extending a strange looking sword. Or it might have been a cover blurb about vampires. I forget which now. But it really doesn’t matter since my title says it all, this movie really bites :p

Sure, it looks great as far as the visuals go but the story (which is non-existent) and the world and even the fights just don’t hold together. I have read that they cut over 30 minutes from the movie and that the director’s cut version will be more coherent. Let’s certainly hope so since this movie had nothing much in the way of coherence. OK, sure, it made sense in a linear kind of way but the events of the movie seemed to be there just to keep the story moving and to make things exciting and not out of any kind of logic :p

There were way too many logic problems and the story was so bad that I’ve almost forgotten most of it by now 🙂 However, the logic wasn’t the only problem. This movie reminded me way too much of other movies for it to be just a coincidence. First and foremost, there is "Aeon Flux", which was released just before "Ultraviolet". There are a lot of parallels between the two movies and the two stories and while I didn’t think much of "Aeon Flux" either, that at least had a much tighter story than "Ultraviolent" … sorry, I mean "Ultraviolet". Actually, the movie doesn’t even deserve the "ultra-violent" moniker because while there were plenty of fights and beheadings and what not, leading one to think a lot of "Kill Bill", it just didn’t have the grittiness or the reality of violence that "Kill Bill" had. This was just imitation violence of the stylized sort which just leaves you yawning after you’ve seen the same thing three times over. (And yes, you do see the same fight at least three times in "Ultraviolet")

Of course, then there are the inevitable "Star Wars" comparisons. The single-combat, the way the swords suddenly shoot out into their hands from nowhere, all has a strong "Star Wars" feel to it. And to top it all off, you have the "Matrix" stuff added to the mix :p When Violet goes to the ministry (or whatever) and the security computer says "weapons detected – many" (which was a really stupid line for a computer), I expected her to do a Neo and Trinity right there. Of course, they didn’t show that fight but instead showed the results (maybe the fight was cut?). Others have also pointed out similarities to "Tron" in the motorcycle chase scene and while I could see it later, I didn’t actually notice it while watching the movie.

Basically, "Ultraviolet" seemed like a hodge podge of a lot of movies but it didn’t have enough story or character development for it to stand on its own. Of course, one reviewer on IMDB commented that "if story was the only thing that mattered, then you might as well stay at home and read a book instead and that this movie had sound and visuals and that mattered". Sure, if you want meaningless noise and rapid movement, you can stare at the highway all day and that should satisfy you :p But if you want an enjoyable science fiction movie, this might not be the one for you … unless of course, you want a movie to laugh at and pick to shreds 🙂

Up and at ’em …

Do you ever have days when you feel as if you need to be up and about, doing something, anything, as long as you’re doing something productive? I get days like that often and what do I do? I usually code a new application or go hunting for new software on the Internet :p Yesterday though, I didn’t do either. Instead, we watched "Full Frontal" and I tell you, it was a horrible waste of time 🙂

For some reason, "Full Frontal" reminds me of "Syriana". It probably has the same anaemic, lackadaisical attitude towards storytelling. That might have something to do with the fact that there isn’t much story to tell :p It’s a weird, rather sloppy and self-absorbed story about Hollywood people. It also is a movie within a movie within a movie kind of thing – you know one of those conceits which sound much better when you think of it than when other people see it … kind of like one of my novels :p

We didn’t watch the whole movie. Oh no, a full evening’s worth of "Full Frontal" would have been too much for our frontal lobes to take! Instead, we watched half the movie and then put the rest off till tomorrow when our brains would have recovered sufficiently to undergo that kind of punishment again :p

Basically, it’s got the kind of assemblage of stars that you’d usually only see on a clear night or at the planetarium 🙂 Plus, it was apparently done on a really low budget and the stars maintained their own costumes, hair and make-up and so on. I guess you get what you pay for though. Because this movie, it looks low-budget. But then again, it probably was a good thing because then they would have had less to lose than with a high budget movie since the only vision I can have of this movie is of it sinking like a block of concrete thrown in the lake :p

Race, what is it good for?

We’re watching "Anita and Me" at the moment. It’s one of those rare Indian movies made in English. There are a few of those around and we’ve gathered all of those together and watch them avidly since these movies have an experience beyond Bollywood and Hollywood. They are unique in their own terms because they provide an Eastern perspective of the West – or something like that 🙂

"Anita and Me" is the story of Meena, an Indian girl living in an English backwater village in 1972. She is fascinated by Anita Rutter (though the way they pronounce it, it sounds more like "rotter" :p) the local troublemaker and glamour girl. It’s an unlikely friendship and highlights a lot of things that we’d rather not think about. There is of course the racism, it is an underlying theme throughout the movie – both the racism of the British towards the Indians as well as the reverse racism of the Indians towards the British. But there are all the other subtle variations – wanting to be somebody you are not, wanting to belong, wanting to be your own person.

We haven’t seen the whole movie yet but so far it is interesting though sometimes a bit hard to understand because of the thick brogue of some of the characters. Even Meena, who is Indian, has a real thick accent which is unlike any Indian accent I’ve heard but then again, given she was probably brought up in England, it probably makes sense that she’d speak more like the natives of her village rather than her own parents 🙂

What interested me was the strong undercurrents of racism of all stripes and colours that the movie portrayed. We’re used to the usual stereotypes of racism and how the brown/black/coloure (make your choice) people are always looked down upon by the white folks. But what about the reverse? Sure, it’s true that most of the folks in post-colonial countries (at least) bow down to those with white skin as if they were aliens, or messengers from God :p But at the same time, they have this habit of disparaging the whiteys (or "goras" or whatever the common local term) and their morals and culture and so on. Is this not racism as well?

In truth, what should matter to us about another person is how they conduct themselves and how they treat you and others around them. Their skin colour or the country they were born in (or brought up in) should not matter at all. Unfortunately, it might be a long time before all of the human race comes to realize this ….

The good, bad and the plain stupid

We watched two movies yesterday (well, the second half of one and another one fully :p) and while both were basically on the same subject – family – they were miles apart in how the stories went. Of course, this is no surprise given that the stories were set worlds apart – one in Detroit, USA and the other in Chennai (or Madras), India. But let me get to the movies themselves.

I like Tamil movies. They try to explore "real" issues instead of getting all fluffy like Hindi movies (not that there is anything wrong with fluff mind you :p) and while they still do adhere to the story-song & dance-fight formula, they do tend to be entertaining. We watched the latter half of "Bose" yesterday and it certainly was entertaining … but perhaps not in the way the director intended.

The story is about Bose, your ordinary Indian commando, who is cashiered from the army for shooting a minister in the family jewels to save a girl who is about to be raped by the minister. This being a Tamil movie, it is all about the corruption in politics and the lone struggle that Bose leads against the forces of the minister who wants revenge. What was funny (or irritating) about the movie was the fact Bose’s whole family appears to be composed of stupid people. His whole family knows the story about him shooting the minister but his mother brings a thug searching for Bose home, his father reports Bose to the police, his brother takes his whole family and runs to the very minister who is trying to kill Bose for protection. The sheer stupidity of the plot made me pause the movie and shake my head quite a few times but the action sequences seemed to be derived from Hong Kong flicks rather than recent Tamil movies and so, if you are an action aficionado, you might still want to watch this one 🙂

The other one we watched yesterday was "Four Brothers" – about a four brothers (naturally :p) who team up to hunt down their mother’s killers. Now this one, I must say, was most excellent 🙂 I don’t believe that the movie was shot in Detroit but it does give you a feel for Detroit (I used to live there, so that might explain the "feel" in part :p) and I loved the characters in the movie. There was so much camaraderie, so much brotherhood between those four disparate individuals that they seemed to be "real brothers" (as they say in the movie). It’s a bit violent but a good movie nevertheless 🙂