Category: Uncategorized Page 16 of 122

One Of Us Has Matured Into A Deft And Skilled Writer

On 07/12/2009

In Link, Personal, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

Back in my teen years (yes, that’s right, it was a very long time ago), I had a bit of a crush on a music journalist who used to appear on TV occasionally – impressively, she seemed to be about my age, but somehow was a lot more eloquent than my spotty teenage self.

Lo and behold, in the intervening decades, it turns out that Caitlin Moran – for it is she of whom I speak – has become even better at writing, while I… well, my skin’s cleared up, if nothing else.

Anyway, here’s an example of her current work in reviewing TV shows (cut and pasted from the Times website, as Mr Murdoch likes us all to do):

…the voiceover began with the insistence that the Queen’s story “is all our stories” — surely to the annoyance of everyone’s internal fomenting peasant. You can claim a lot of things on behalf of the Queen — admirably consistent hair, biggest jewel collection in Europe, magically tolerant of Prince Edward — but “being like everyone else” is a difficult ball to lob across the courts of reason. Indeed, when it comes down to it, The Queen is pretty much the apogee of singular stories, given that she is the only person in the world who owns 16 countries.

I like that a lot, and there’s more of the same quality of material to be found here. I think her stuff reads like a less venomous, but equally well-honed, version of Charlie Brooker’s work.

Go now. Read columns. Make fire. Ug.

Oh dear, I seem to have regressed to my teenage self. Is this a blackhead I see before me?

I Could Hardly Believe My Rodent Pies

By John

On 06/12/2009

In Fish In A Barrel, London, Pictures, Uncategorized

Spotted in a shop in Holborn, London.

The London version of ratatouille, I suppose.

Are The Boyband Auditions Being Held In The Woods Or Something?

By John

On 05/12/2009

In Books, Film, Fish In A Barrel, Personal, Pictures, Uncategorized

Maybe it’s just me, but the werewolves in New Moon really don’t look as if they’re intended to appeal to teenage girls at all.

Add a couple of years to that audience, and multiply the testosterone level by about 50, and I think we might be getting closer to the actual target demographic.

I am, of course, just jealous; the nearest I get to having a six-pack is devouring a multipack of KitKat Chunky Caramel bars. And I have the circumference to show for it.

In America, Archie Comics Are Seen as Child-Friendly. Tch.

By John

On 04/12/2009

In Comics, Fish In A Barrel, Pictures, Uncategorized

Forget the language used, what’s actually most offensive about this cover is Archie’s ability to walk on water.

You wouldn’t get that kind of talk from that nice Carpenter chap with the Mexican name. Shocking.

At Least It Was Tastefully Lit

By John

On 03/12/2009

In Fish In A Barrel, Link, Music, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized

Michael’s bid to become a professional photographer floundered; not only did he insist on framing the shot like a scene from the 1960s Batman TV show, but he pointed the camera towards himself instead of the subject.

Fascinating fact: Despite media reports, Michael Buble is not a blood relation of Bubble from Big Brother 2001. They are in fact related by marriage.

Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You

By John

On 02/12/2009

In Film, Fish In A Barrel, Link, Uncategorized

My eyes! My beautiful eyes!

Actually, number 10 is a film I have fond-ish memories of. Mr Cusack’s teen films were always a notch or two above the standard fare, mainly because of the surreal elements. But that poster looks like a Vitalite advert.

Suspended: Disbelief And Animation

By John

On 01/12/2009

In Books, Link, Pictures, Uncategorized, Writing

So, National Novel Writing Month ended at midnight last night, and if you’ve been taking part, I hope you made it to 50,000 words without going completely bonkers.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to write a novel to a deadline but have two months in which to complete it, there’s a very interesting post which I’d point you towards. It’s called How to write a novel in two months, and is by a chap called Jeff Vandermeer (who, I see, has written Booklife, which I’ve seen positively reviewed elsewhere).

I think it’s a solid article, with some good advice, and the one thing which I thought was particularly of note was point (7), wherein he says:

“Don’t animate what doesn’t need to be animated. This might just apply to any novel, but it’s especially true when you’re under the gun deadline-wise. There’s a lodge in my novel and separate rooms for all of the guests, along with one common room. There’re maybe two scenes in the separate rooms and lots in the common room. So I spent my time detailing the common room and really didn’t describe the other parts of the lodge at all. There was really no point.”

I think this is very astute – I’ve certainly known novels I’ve been generally enjoying but have struggled to complete because every time a character walks into a room we get a half-page description of the furniture or whatever; in fact, now I think about it, I gave up on a thriller I was reading some years ago because a row of cars parked outside a building was described in terms of the makes – three Renaults, a Ford, etc – and it not only slowed things down but, as I’m a non-petrolhead, it didn’t give me enough information to be able to populate the scene in my mind, and in fact there was probably no need to do so in that level of detail.

What I like about Jeff V’s use of the word ‘animate’, though, is that it suggests a writer can choose just to leave some things as background, like the flats in a stage play, whilst others should be active in some way. In the book I’m currently working on, I have a military base, and there are certain places within it which are plot-related – the medical rooms, the sleeping quarters, and the like – but others are only really relevant insofar as they’re potential places for the killer to hide, but they’re not of great interest (and thus probably not worthy of going into detail about) in their own right. So I’ll try to avoid ‘animating’ these locations more than is at all necessary.

Anyway, that’s what I took away from reading the article – hope you find something similarly useful in it.

See The TV Show, Read The Script (This Offer Valid Today Only)

By John

On 30/11/2009

In BBC, Freebies, Link, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

I’ve only just spotted it, so there’s not much time for you to take this up, but better late than never and all that, eh ?

My point is: you can download the Doctor Who episode ‘Partners In Crime’ from iTunes for nought pence by clicking here, though that offer expires at midnight tonight, so be swift.

And then, by way of wandering backstage after the show has finished and everyone has gone home, you can download a copy of the script from here and see how it was all done.

I think it’s a pretty decent episode, even if the scene where the Doctor and Donna are miming to each other always reminds me of the pictured ‘reunion’ from Halloween H20…

Contains Strong Language: Oh, Won’t Somebody Think Of The Children?

By John

On 29/11/2009

In Oddities, Pictures, Uncategorized

So, this is something which my non-UK readers might be aware of, but Blighty folk will probably have been less likely to have seen. Hence my sharing it.

Pictured below, then, is the 1989 Fleer Baseball Cards picture of Billy Ripken, an infielder from the 1980s to the late 1990s:

This card, however, was withdrawn pretty sharpish because of its dirty vile nature. Don’t see it? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you, and look at it again.

Still not got it? Look at the pommel, as it were, of the bat.

I know: Shocking.

Even if it does makes me giggle.

You’ll Notice I Don’t Mention ‘Press Packs’ Or Other Such Possibilities.

By John

On 28/11/2009

In Books, Fish In A Barrel, Link, List, Pictures, Uncategorized

When the Thomas Harris book Hannibal came out in 1999, I was very keen to read it.

I’d enjoyed Red Dragon and The Silence Of The Lambs – even if they were essentially the same story twice (representative of the FBI reluctantly goes to imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter for insight into a current case), they were solid crime thrillers with a good sense of being a race against time, to stop a killer.

In Hannibal, on the other hand, Lecter has escaped, which removes the ticking clock element, and instead of the reality-based investigation, the tone of the book is more one of gothic melodrama, with an ending that left me speechless in the worst possible way (working from memory: Lecter digs up Clarice Starling’s dead dad, drugs her and confronts her with the corpse, and after a bit of her boss’s brains being eaten, she and Lecter become lovers). It was like I’d recorded LA Confidential and found that someone had taped Friday the 13th over the last third of it. Very disappointing. But I guess these things happen.

More strangely, though, there seemed to be a lot of very positive reviews of the book when it come out (as evinced here), often using words such as grand guignol, but hardly ever referring to the ending and making me suspect that they hadn’t actually read it all the way through before getting their reviews in. Anyway, it certainly made me less trustful of reviews, and blurbs and publicity material (I know, it’s appalling that I was 28 before that truth hit home; I like to think of it as a charming kind of naivete, but history will be the judge).

A very similar thing happened to me yesterday in relation to the new John Grisham paperback, The Associate; I used to like Grisham’s stuff a lot, though the further I went through the world of legal academia the less I enjoyed them, until I just stopped reading them.

But The Associate sounded more like The Firm, with its storyline about a newly-qualified lawyer in trouble, and I wondered if this might be a fun read. The print reviews certainly seem to suggest so – look at this gallery of praise taken from the Amazon page for the book:

It’s a damned good read. This is Grisham returning to what he knows best.
Scotland on Sunday

Grisham paints a fascinating picture. Vintage Grisham, with a really believable ending
The Guardian

Tense and exciting
Evening Standard

The suspense is there in what is easily his most recognisably ‘back to form’ novel since The Firm. Grisham has returned with a vengeance to his trademark territory: the grim world of corporate law and the sinister machinations of the men on its fringes.
The Times

In typical Grisham fashion it does hurtle along at a decent clip
London Lite

Don’t wait for the film read the book first this time. The maestro of the legal thriller’s new one centres on a brilliant student with an unfortunate secret.
Daily Sport

A classic Grisham plot, similar to his first major success, The Firm, and told with the same elegance and elan.
The Daily Mail

Grisham never disappoints and this is another fantastic read
The Sun

In The Associate, John Grisham returns to the legal milieu he explored so vividly in The Firm. Grisham is such a storyteller that you want to turn the page
The Guardian

Grisham’s new book harks back to the one that made him famous, and effectively defined the legal thriller genre: The Firm. Grisham does a fine job of evoking the insanely competitive culture of a major New York law firm.
The Mail on Sunday

… so, lots of praise there, and many of them referring to the book of his which I’d enjoyed so much, which made me feel it could be one for me… until I went onto the Amazon page and saw that the vast majority of the reviews were negative, and repeatedly spoke about one particular failing: the story just ends without resolving anything.

Seriously, check out the customer reviews; over and over again, people say how much they were enjoying the book, wondering where the story was going and how he was going to tie up the loose ends, and over and over they say that he doesn’t, that the book just ends.

And so I don’t think this is a book I’ll be buying (probably for the best, I have a sizey book-queue already), but I find myself remembering the Hannibal experience and starting to wonder how it is that professional reviewers can overlook something so fundamental as a letdown, or an absent, ending.

I’m very keen on stories that reward you for time expended on reading them by showing that, yes, we were going somewhere all along (and even better if the seeds of the end were planted near the start – as in The Shining), and whilst that’d kind of a personal preference, the concept that ‘stories should have a beginning, middle and end’ is a fairly well-known one, and you’d expect that most reviews would refer to a weak or rubbish ending (as Marie did in this review on Wednesday).

Deadline problems aside, is there a good reason why this sort of thing happens? Is it seem as in some way gauche to address such fundamental elements of a novel?

And of course, the alleged absence of a climax certainly makes the Guardian quote (second in the list above) look pretty strange – unless they’re making the point that sometimes life just carries on without tricky situations being resolved, but that seems an odd thing to do in a thriller.