A nice mix of mainstream, European and indy this year.

  Asterios Polyp – David Mazzuchelli
  Britten & Brulightly – Hannah Berry
  Chance in Hell – Gilbert Hernandez
  Doing Time – Hanawa Kazuichi
  Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
  Hellcity: The Whole Damned Thing – Macon Blair and Joe Flood
  The Lagoon – Lilli Carre
  Maybe Later – Dupuy & Berberian
  Powers: Z – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming
  Shaolin Burning – Ant Sang
  The Third Musketeer – Jason
  Walking Dead: No Way Out – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

Scripts

Hm. According to my reading diary, I read the average annual amount of these this year but very few have wowed me like I want to be wowed.

  Billy Elliott – Lee Hall
  The Good Wife: Pilot – Robert King and Michelle King
  Lone Star – John Sayles
  Manhunter – Michael Mann
  The Straight Story – John Roach and Mary Sweeney

Maybe it’s just me.

Books

Some ah, research led me to more non-fiction reading that I would previously readily admit.

  Armageddon – Max Hastings
  Nemesis – Max Hastings
  Striptease – Carl Hiaasen
  True Grit – Charles Portis

I’m tempted to try the Demi Moore vehicle that started out once upon a time as a film adaptation of Striptease but… ‘m afraid I mayn’t survive it.

Don’t the last six sentences of 50+ words make a lie of the second sentence?

Puh.

(All the items in ‘[' and ']‘ were initially for cheap laughs and some anonymity for the writer [and arse-covering on my part]. … No, ’tis neither funny nor anonymous.)

For me, making up stories is a little like building furniture, but with twelfth-century tools and only the vaguest idea what I’m trying to build. There’s a lot of grunting and banging, a lot of hammering on square pegs to get them to fit into round holes. It’s fun and I love it, but, usually, it’s a lot of hard work.

– from Mike Mignola‘s afterword to BPRD: The Black Flame.

The location for a story is fine. Now all I want is some bad guys and a plot. Ah yes, a plot. Well, I’ve found that by reversing some simple element in the opening of an old story you can create something entirely diffeent in its development. For example, I must have written quite a few stories that open with Modesty saving somebody’s life, so why not reverse that? How about opening with somebody saving Modesty’s life?

So who is it going to be, man or girl? Could be both, I suppose. Young married couple perhaps. That feels all right up to a point, but how does Willie fit in? Ah yes, let’s give it another twist – the girl saves Willie’s life, risking her own. Make that highly visitual. She’s the action seeker of the couple. Husband’s a gentle giant type, very dim but lovable.

All I need now are the villains. They could be after something the couple have or know about. Like what? I’ve no idea, but I’ve got enough to start scripting, and all the rest will emerge as I go along and as the characters come to life. It always does.

– from Peter O’Donnell‘s intro to his Modesty Blaise: Yellowstone Booty reprint – a lovely title (and likely reason I picked it up from the local).

I just finished reading your Zot – The Complete B&W Collection 1987-1991, and I wanted to say thank you.

Yes, I’ve read – why, I proudly own a copy of – your excellent Understanding Comics. And yes, I’m a proud product of the years I read and collected and treasured Moore, Gaiman and early Miller, while the last five years of Ellis, Vaughan, Bendis and Jason inspire me no end.

I thought your collection would be a “product of its time” but I couldn’t be more wrong. I completely fell into Zot and Jenny’s world for those 576 pages, and when I found myself back in the real world, I was humbled and invigorated. For me, Zot captured a youth that is long gone – but that it’s not something to yearn for, or to put behind, but to accept as part of my history, my life. My story.

Again, thank you for showing me what’s what.

Yours sincerely

d f mamea

The Arrival – Shaun Tan
Ball Peen Hammer – Adam Rapp and George O’Connor
Berlin Volume 2 – Jason Lutes
The Education of Hopey Glass – Jaime Hernandez
Ex Machina: Dirty Tricks; Ring Out the Old – Brian K Vaughan & Tony Harris
I Kill Giants – Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura
I Killed Adolf Hitler – Jason
Low Moon – Jason
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier - Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill
Omega the Unknown – Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple
Planetary: Spacetime Archaeology – Warren Ellis & John Cassaday
Powers: The Sellouts; Forever; 25 Greatest Dead Superheroes of All Time – Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming
Scalped: The Gravel in Your Gut – Jason Aaron & R M Guera
Stitches: A Memoir – David Small
Usagi Yojimbo: Tomoe’s Story – Stan Sakai
The Walking Dead – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard
The Complete Zot! – Scott McCloud

A bit sad to see the end of Planetary and Ex Machina but The Walking Dead and Scalped carry the torch onward.

Books

Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
The Constant Gardener – John Le Carre
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-city Neighbourhood – David Simon and Ed Burns
Crafty TV Writing – Alex Epstein
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets – David Simon
Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
The Road – Cormac McCarthy

I suspect Blood Meridian has ruined all other western fiction for me.

Scripts

30 Rock – various
The 40 Year Old Virgin – Judd Apatow and Steve Carell
The American – Rowan Joffe
The Blind Side – John Lee Hancock
The Book of Eli – Gary Whitta
Green Zone – Paul Greengrass
Michael Clayton – Tony Gilroy
Out of Sight – Scott Frank
Scrubs (pilot) – Bill Lawrence
Starting Out in the Evening – Fred Parnes and Andrew Wagner
The Shield: Circles – Shawn Ryan
Three Kings – David O Russell
Valkyrie – Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander

I’m pretty sure Out of Sight and Three Kings are re-reads, but I just can’t remember for sure. And if they were, they were just as enjoyable this time ’round.

Theatre

His Mother’s Son – Leilani Unasa
Le Tauvaga – Louise Tu’u
Raising the Titanics – Albert Belz
Two Old Women – Velma Wallis

I suspect I may be cheating here by having just one actual production – Belz’s Titanics – surrounded by three readings but… these were the ones I marked as having made an impact.

I can understand The Goddess getting halfway into a book before realising she’d read it before – she devours hundreds of books a year (and not one of them will have a speech- or thought-balloon). My reading diary has me averaging 115 comics, scripts and books a year for the period 2006-2009.

What’s my excuse?

There are doubtless innumerable posts in the ether about what makes a piece of art resonate.

For me, it’s a singular interpretation, execution and vision that transports the viewer.

I have no idea where David Simon and Eric Overmyer are going with Treme but I am so there, man, because I’m hooked. Same goes for the recently concluded 100 Bullets from Messieurs Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso – each trade paperback left me floundering as a reader but I’d still make enough connections between the many, many plotlines and goddamn if it wasn’t a hot little page-turner. And then there’s The West Wing and The Walking Dead. And The Good Wife and Ex Machina. And Mad Men. … I could go on.

With the exception of Treme, all of the above are easily categorized genre pieces.

Each title resonates not just because they’re so different from everything else out there that they’re essential reading/watching – they’re the creators talking directly to us the audience at an individual level. They’re connecting.

That’s resonating.

• The last swords-and-sandals epic I saw was Gladiator. Since then, Troy, Alexander, Rome and 300 have come and gone with nary a flicker of interest on my part. But The Incomparable‘s review of Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi‘s Spartacus has sparked a guilty, pulpy, what-the-heck kind of interest:
  …Spartacus won’t win any awards for the originality of its premise. Hunktacular warrior dude loves his superhot wife, but is reluctantly called away to battle for the good of his people. Hunktacular warrior dude is betrayed by sleaze-weasel Roman general and branded a deserter. Hunktacular warrior dude escapes and is reunited with his superhot wife just in time for them to be captured (notably, while in the altogether) by sleaze-weasel Roman general. Sleaze-weasel Roman general sells hunktacular warrior dude into the employ of agreeably amoral gladiator owner. Hunktacular warrior dude must wage a muscly, well-oiled, tiny-pantsed struggle up the ranks of the gladiator circuit to find his beloved wife and gain his whoa that guy just took a giant axe to the face!
• The always excellent xkcd webcomic has this heads-up for those writers out there putting the final touches on their denouement:

  

• And go here – now – for the rest of this brilliant bat-take on Memento:
  
  

It’s been so long since we’ve rolled into 2010 I won’t bore you with -0

This is my blog – and in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Hooah.

2009 was really a year for the goggle box –

– but cinema had some new – and old – pleasures –

– and when not glooed to a flickering screen, there was always –

I won’t be disclosing stats because they’re pitiful and I have no excuse. But if you break my run of comment spam (three figures and rising this past month) and ask nicely, I’ll consider it.

2009 was an okay year for watching and reading – a better year for writing – and 2010 awaits my conquest domination attention.

Overall rating: Satisfactory – but must try harder.

I’ve got fifteen minutes spare.

How quickly can I cut and paste and make sense?

• How about ten best film endings? (Fedora-tip: Infinite Monkeys by way of The Incomparable.)
• I’ve been a fan of Dylan Horrocks since Hicksville (a phase of forcing myself to try some homegrown comics fare). He’s got a blog. With serials and stories, too! Recommended for civilians and comic aficionados alike.
• PhD student Gareth James is very generously sharing some of the fruits of his research into the history of HBO original programming, 1997-2007 at Gareth On…. (Fedora-tip: Lynden Barber.)

Time’s up already. Must be a slow linker.

And this excerpt is for the benefit of The Goddess who wondered what the heck the story was with Bubastis the wondercat:

This link/post is dedicated to Mr Molloy.

• Billy Mernit makes a good case for bad screenwriting.
• There are such things as happy endings for screenwriters in Hollywood – just ask Robert Mark Kamen.
• Salman Rushdie writes about adaptation.
• Thanks, I suspect, to Nick Grant of Onfilm, I have discovered The A.V. Club‘s excellent The New Cult Canon series, in particular this article about the commentary between The Limey’s writer Lem Dobbs and director Steven Soderbergh.
• Oh, is nothing sacred, Mr Rogers?
• Another Kiwi screenwriting blog! Lyse Beck gives us Birds With Nuts. There’s a nice thread about Watchmen here.
• And speaking of the Minutemen, after all my build-up, The Goddess and I went to see Watchmen a week or so ago. She enjoyed it; I hankered for some interpretation rather than faithful replication. Thanks to Mr Slevin I’ve read people who can say what I’m thinking much better than I could here, here and here. (And no one’s mentioned it’s been two whole decades since Tim Burton gave us Michael Keaton as Batman – didn’t that kickstart the mainstreaming of comic-book adaptations?)