INDELIBLE FRECKLES

Been saving these up, oh yes I have.

• 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:
  
  

– my iTunes randomed to Beyonce’s Single Ladies and I went like –

– how could I forget Messrs Murphy, Falchuk and Brennan’s brilliant and irrepressible Glee?

That show is responsible for my Goddess’s growing unease at seeing/hearing how many showtunes I can belt out.

(Yeah, okay: eight days since my last post is more than a few days – more than several days – more, even, thana week. Sorry.)

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.

In the vacuum left by the season finale of Mad Men, the Fortress Mamea inhabitants have been at a bit of a loose end. We enjoyed a fling with Better Off Ted, had our injections with Nurse Jackie, but they too have gone the way of Mad Men.

I’m at a similar place with my slate. Having reached my writing objectives for the year, I’m now trying to raise my film and TV viewing stats (59 finishes and 33 walk-/turn-offs to date, compared to 2008’s 94 and 19, respectively), as well as my reading stats (there’s a gaping hole from July to September that I don’t think I can make up for). I’ve completed Delta Force: Black Hawk Down (snore) and Close Combat: First to Fight (grin)* but… surely I could be doing something more useful?

We’re chortling through Glee. The Banana Boat writing group is ending the year with a bit of a bash. Only 24 sleeps until Avatar.

And after a few weeks of staring at my development file for the next project and not being inspired… I’ve just had a brilliant idea for my next project, totally out of the blue**.

Suh-weet.

* Not that you asked, but I’m currently chugging through Aliens vs Predators 2 and finding it rather tedious – I think I might join Monty and the boys in their North African campaign sooner rather than later.

** “Out of the blue”. What a crock. It was a fortuitous intersection of: people I know and want to work with; an achievable production budget; and a perfick location.

Greetings earthlings.

• Phill Barron has an excellent parable about being a writer for hire. (And if you’re reading this in… wherever Mr Barron lives in the UK, he has a car for sale.)
• Why aren’t there more interviews like this, hm?
• I just have to share this:

  
  
  (Fedora tip: Jill Golick.)

• And having shed a tear or few over the season three finale of Mad Men, these articles from Vanity Fair and American Cinematographer make tremendously fascinating reading.

  (Fedora-tips: The Goddess and Gareth James, respectively.)

Lately I’ve been comparing – fairly or unfairly, it’s unavoidable – some shows screening on the Fortress Mamea goggle box.

EXHIBIT A

EXHIBIT B

What’s that? Why am I comparing oranges with bananas?

Because good writing is what makes the every-day interesting.

EXHIBIT A – REVISED

Some rather thin screenwriting-related links this month.

• Heee.

  
  
  (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

• I’m a Joss Whedon fan from his Buffy days (Dollhouse has yet to reach these shores) but this Cracked list of 5 Reasons It Sucks Being a Joss Whedon Fan is both funny and spot on, with my fave being:

  … There is only one real lesson in Whedonland, and it’s that loving cool people is dangerous because someone’s probably gonna shove a flaming rock into their skull.

  Yep: that’s how I got hooked in Season 2.

  (Fedora-tip: Lucy Vee.)

• And Roger Ebert’s post about performance artist Chris Burden has really gotten under my skin.

… Hey, this is my 250th post. Woo-hoo me.

Having ethnically disparaged The Cult, sight unseen, along strictly racial lines*, the inhabitants of Fortress Mamea have watched the first two eps.

For me, the greatest sin of any homegrown show is try-hard self-consciousness – and thankfully, there’s none here whatsoever**. It looks and sounds like a real TV show, rather than something we should watch out of patriotism. The direction and cinematography are uniformly flashy. The characters are clearly delineated. The plotting is pacey and the dialogue largely on point with only occasional excursions into exposition.

But I’m not feeling for any of the characters. Why am I not caring for:

• a father who wants his sons back at any cost (and, so far, without much thought)?
• a bitchy sister who keeps needling her brother’s wife-with-a-shameful-history?
• or the brothers inside the compound, in too deep and with seemingly nowhere to run?

And what’s the deal with the mercenary hired by the outside group? If he’s really an ex-SAS soldier, he’s being awfully reticent and docile. A character with a skill set like his is a game changer: the rules of engagement may differ (it’s not a warzone so killing people isn’t a good idea) but the game is the same – if your objective is to get certain people out of a compound, then you do everything and anything to achieve that objective. Instead, he’s rolled on and off screen like a prop, as and when the story dictates.

Ep three screens tomorrow, and The Goddess has given me the hard word: If this doesn’t get any better, you’re on your own.

Oh dear.

POSTSCRIPT: OMFG – The Cult’s section on the TVNZ website has a writers blog where creator Peter Cox shows some of the development process that went into the show.

* When I posted that, I couldn’t help flashing on this joker from the underrated Undercover Brother.

** No surprise, really: creator Peter Cox was behind both the near-perfect The Insiders Guide to Happiness and the excellent but abysmally scheduled The Pretender.