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Telling Stories
Sep. 16th, 2008 10:38 amHey, all…
Sunday night was a washout in terms of sleep, though I managed to finally watch Tarsem’s The Fall, which does indeed have much to recommend it. Gorgeous vistas, Ishioka costumes, the wonderful back-and-forth of Roy the omniscient narrator vs. Roy the falliable, pissed-off, depressed guy spinning a seat-of-the-pants yarn to get somebody else to do something for him (“I thought he was Spanish.” “…no. He was from…France.”). Alexandria was also remarkably human as well as cute and empathetic, always pleasant to find in a child character/plot device. My main problems with the film overall come in the last act, which is certainly where Roy starts having big problems with his story as well; I’d sort of liked to have had Governor Odious turn out to be Roy, for example, instead of making him the movie-within-a-movie’s “real” star, a far easier target. And then there’s the odd mish-mash of the actual RL denouement, in which Tarsem seems to want to make us question everything that’s gone before, which undercut’s Roy’s genuine mounting desperation throughout. Man, though, Lee Pace is great—and sexy, spinal injury or no. I just kept thinking: Wow, shame about the legs [and penis, and catheter bag], but as long as he’s got that tongue—literally and figuratively—I think he’ll do okay.
So yeah. Woke up, got Cal to school, dealt with a problem straight out the Monday morning gate—Catholic school board people are coming to assess him for an Educational Plan on Wednesday, and scheduled it for what’s actually the Tom’s Place nap-time—then fell back into bed. Luckily, this doesn’t seem to have reoriented my schedule all that much, since I slept very deeply last night…so deeply that I didn’t even realize Steve was slamming the “snooze” button down so often that by the time we had to get Cal off and away, it was already 8:15 AM. I’m pretty tired now, too, but determined to do at least some genuine work; I got a great idea for a new story yesterday (to go with all those other great new ideas I haven’t actually been working on), so I want to get those notes inputted and maybe do some wordage on other stuff, too. ‘Cause you gotta have goals.;)
And what else. Oh...I've spent the last three days or so working on a new playlist which is (if I dare say so myself) probably my oddest yet. Thematically, it's evolved around a core grouping of songs I think would make either great credit sequences or pilot episode montages for TV shows that don't exist--the primetime line-up of GemmaTV, in other words. This made me think about the various types of shows I'd program, given my druthers, and which ideas I've come up with would make good versions thereof: Things Steve and I have occasionally discussed, like "wouldn't it be great if there was an all-psychiatric assessment version of Law & Order? Like, Law & Order: Expert Witness?" Or the debate about female character-driven shows vs. shows with overt ho-yay which actually goes somewhere...I was saying to Michael McMaster the other day that I've gotten to the point where UST pretty much leaves me cold; I want to skip past it to the part where all the characters have already had sex, and now have to deal with the consequences. Like a cross between Coupling and Torchwood, I guess. Anyhow.
The good part about doing this is, as ever, that I get stuff out of it. Indeed, the "new" story has resulted pretty much directly from my plans for a Supernatural-type show crossbreeding with my plans for a Prison Break-type show...hopefully I can fuck with it 'til its precedents aren't quite as obvious, but it's going extremely well, thus far. Not to mention that I think I have a far better idea where my characters are going to end up than Scheuring ever seems to've.;))
Anyhow. I'll be sure to post the result(s), when I'm done: Playlist with one-line pitches attached, maybe. In the meantime, coffee!
Sunday night was a washout in terms of sleep, though I managed to finally watch Tarsem’s The Fall, which does indeed have much to recommend it. Gorgeous vistas, Ishioka costumes, the wonderful back-and-forth of Roy the omniscient narrator vs. Roy the falliable, pissed-off, depressed guy spinning a seat-of-the-pants yarn to get somebody else to do something for him (“I thought he was Spanish.” “…no. He was from…France.”). Alexandria was also remarkably human as well as cute and empathetic, always pleasant to find in a child character/plot device. My main problems with the film overall come in the last act, which is certainly where Roy starts having big problems with his story as well; I’d sort of liked to have had Governor Odious turn out to be Roy, for example, instead of making him the movie-within-a-movie’s “real” star, a far easier target. And then there’s the odd mish-mash of the actual RL denouement, in which Tarsem seems to want to make us question everything that’s gone before, which undercut’s Roy’s genuine mounting desperation throughout. Man, though, Lee Pace is great—and sexy, spinal injury or no. I just kept thinking: Wow, shame about the legs [and penis, and catheter bag], but as long as he’s got that tongue—literally and figuratively—I think he’ll do okay.
So yeah. Woke up, got Cal to school, dealt with a problem straight out the Monday morning gate—Catholic school board people are coming to assess him for an Educational Plan on Wednesday, and scheduled it for what’s actually the Tom’s Place nap-time—then fell back into bed. Luckily, this doesn’t seem to have reoriented my schedule all that much, since I slept very deeply last night…so deeply that I didn’t even realize Steve was slamming the “snooze” button down so often that by the time we had to get Cal off and away, it was already 8:15 AM. I’m pretty tired now, too, but determined to do at least some genuine work; I got a great idea for a new story yesterday (to go with all those other great new ideas I haven’t actually been working on), so I want to get those notes inputted and maybe do some wordage on other stuff, too. ‘Cause you gotta have goals.;)
And what else. Oh...I've spent the last three days or so working on a new playlist which is (if I dare say so myself) probably my oddest yet. Thematically, it's evolved around a core grouping of songs I think would make either great credit sequences or pilot episode montages for TV shows that don't exist--the primetime line-up of GemmaTV, in other words. This made me think about the various types of shows I'd program, given my druthers, and which ideas I've come up with would make good versions thereof: Things Steve and I have occasionally discussed, like "wouldn't it be great if there was an all-psychiatric assessment version of Law & Order? Like, Law & Order: Expert Witness?" Or the debate about female character-driven shows vs. shows with overt ho-yay which actually goes somewhere...I was saying to Michael McMaster the other day that I've gotten to the point where UST pretty much leaves me cold; I want to skip past it to the part where all the characters have already had sex, and now have to deal with the consequences. Like a cross between Coupling and Torchwood, I guess. Anyhow.
The good part about doing this is, as ever, that I get stuff out of it. Indeed, the "new" story has resulted pretty much directly from my plans for a Supernatural-type show crossbreeding with my plans for a Prison Break-type show...hopefully I can fuck with it 'til its precedents aren't quite as obvious, but it's going extremely well, thus far. Not to mention that I think I have a far better idea where my characters are going to end up than Scheuring ever seems to've.;))
Anyhow. I'll be sure to post the result(s), when I'm done: Playlist with one-line pitches attached, maybe. In the meantime, coffee!
