Back at it.

Ok, so I'm working to kick off the blues that have been troubling my writing and just getting in there and doing it.

Tonight went fairly well, I've given my Alpha Readers two new(ish) chapters to dig into, completed a quick pass on another chapter, and written a third of another chapter, all in about an hour and a half.  See, even if I have limited time, I can get something done.

I had to tweak a bit of my outline as well since the piece I'm writing through now is a little different from when I first outlined it (hey, I can get away with that!), I'm considering it part of the iterative process, which will hopefully settle a bit as I get this thing closer to submission shape.  I don't want to be performing full re-writes on every pass :)

Something that helped me kick the blues was the company of good friends and my Wonderful Wife over this past weekend.  They did a great job distracting me and hanging out with me at the movies yesterday for Total Recall and The Bourne Legacy.

You see, movies and books are kinda my thing, they're my favourite way to spend money and time besides my kids and my writing.  I'd easily pass up a party or a night playing video games to go to a movie or read a good book.  It's all about gathering stories, I love them in any form (even in my video games, my favourite games of all time are all very heavy on story, even if they're not great ones).

That said, when it comes to movies, I can be pretty forgiving of  many things that would bother me to no end in a book, so I can completely love a movie that others would find appalling.

I've seen reviews for Total Recall on the web, and a lot of people just don't seem to like it, which I just don't get.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, start to finish it was a fun ride.  I have to ask myself, what were people expecting when they went to see it?  Good science?!?!  A deep and engaging plot?!?!  Have they seen the original?

I thought it was brilliantly done, with just the right amount of subtle (and not so subtle) call outs to fans of the original.  It was a theme by theme reboot, while still keeping me engaged and thoroughly happy. They even managed to surprise me in a few places, which was a nice touch.

As for Bourne Legacy, it was perfect for the first two acts, lots of pseudo-science with just enough believability to suck me in, and some great character moments and fun fight scenes.  Renner and Weisz played their roles perfectly, Ed Norton was actually a bit of a disappointment at times, but nothing too distracting.

My issues with the third act, without giving any spoilers, was the flatness of the big bad.  I mean, most stories (in movies and in books) can easily suffer from the villain being a stronger character than the hero, well, I think they solved that problem in this movie.  They could have just as easily (though possibly not as plausibly) pulled in one of the police bots from Total Recall to fill the role of the big bad and kept the same level of character.

Previous movies had Clive Owen and Karl Urban to play the big bads, and they were rich and deep, even within their limited roles.  You believed they were people outside of the scenes you saw them in.  It's something I believe to be important in all stories, that the characters feel like they have something outside of their small piece to play.

It was a bit of a let down, but I didn't feel like I'd been robbed of my money, it was still worth the price of admission.

I'm going to find a way to get a "Top 10" list of movies for the year posted on this blog, and I'll update it as I see movies, more for the self satisfaction of having a list with rankings than because I think anyone will care.

Yeah, I'll do that.  At some point.

- Grimm