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We All Shine On
Feb. 10th, 2011 11:53 amI'm picking over "Lagan", which is looking at least a tiny bit better--Steve and I were able to discuss our way through the first section. But yeah, this lack of a clear narrative voice is really difficult, in terms of driving the story where it needs to go. I almost want to do what I occasionally revert to under stress and just put it all in the second person present ("you do this, you do that"), which occasionally helps to break me free simply because it acts as a filter between me and the idea--renders it distant enough to not feel "real" so anything could happen.
Otherwise, I've been working my way through some books and movies. On Tuesday night we watched Monsters, which I'd been looking forward to for some time, and it's very impressive indeed, particularly because of the way it was shot: The writer/director, who comes from an F/X background, went down to Mexico with two pre-cast actors and no real script, just an idea. They then moved around, tracing the path the characters would have taken and roping locals into performing as character extras--at every stop along the way they'd explain the premise, then ask people to say what they'd say under those circumstances (and it works frighteningly well). And then he spent some time afterwards sticking all the F/X in, using some sort of animation extension for the X-Box.
Basically, the idea is that six years ago a returning probe infected with alien matter broke apart on re-entry and crashed in Mexico, causing mammoth extraterrestrials to grow, roam, and perpetuate themselves. These things, which we usually see only at a distance, in grainy TV footage or represented by a series of signs, murals and (most amusingly) animated kids' TV PSAs about what to do if the Pelligro! Extraterrestres! siren goes off, look sort of like a cross between insects and octopi, with gigantic glowing brains and bioluminescence flashing up and down their skins. Since our main characters--a lost rich girl tourist and the photographer her Dad hires to get her home--are not exactly soldiers or scientists, all they know is what they learn along the way, which isn't much: These things mainly come out at night, they don't like to be screwed with, they migrate around this time of year to lay eggs in the trees, they're attracted to light-sources.
As they pass through the highly-dangerous "Infected Zone" on their way towards the mammoth wall America's spent six years building across the border, however--which, it turns out, is pretty much useless at keeping out monsters that grow skyscraper-high--the real narrative thrust becomes our growing hope that we'll eventually be able to see one of these things straight-on, life-size, as opposed to in snatch-and-grabs, off-camera. And (SPOILERS!) eventually, that happens--not just one, but two, interacting with each other next to a gas station while our hero/heroine crouch nearby, transfixed. It's genuinely awesome, so much so he even forgets to take pictures.
From my POV, the film is about how you can suddenly realize that the world has changed irreparably while you weren't looking, without you even noticing. And the other implication seems to be that perhaps what draws these massive yet oddly delicate things light-wards is that they think TVs and spotlights are trying to communicate with them...that part of their rage once they realize they've just been fished into another potential fire-fight by those tiny annoyances on the ground comes from disappointment. These lumbering multi-limbed giants, lost and lonely on a planet they weren't made for, which may be changing itself to fit them but will never really be their home.
Now I'm about halfway through Wes Craven's My Soul to Take (in haphazard 3D), which is...very odd. The characters are strangely complicated, considering the trashy Peyton Place highschool afterschool drama meets MPD/slasher/voodoo mish-mash world they live in. I particularly miss the beautiful Jesus-freak who kept getting warnings from God, though I had her pegged early on for one of the won't-get-out-alives. Then again, this is Craven--maybe he'll kill 'em all.
Okay: Get dressed, go do my Mom's mail, and pick up the guy. Try not to cough out my entire lung-lining, while I do.
Otherwise, I've been working my way through some books and movies. On Tuesday night we watched Monsters, which I'd been looking forward to for some time, and it's very impressive indeed, particularly because of the way it was shot: The writer/director, who comes from an F/X background, went down to Mexico with two pre-cast actors and no real script, just an idea. They then moved around, tracing the path the characters would have taken and roping locals into performing as character extras--at every stop along the way they'd explain the premise, then ask people to say what they'd say under those circumstances (and it works frighteningly well). And then he spent some time afterwards sticking all the F/X in, using some sort of animation extension for the X-Box.
Basically, the idea is that six years ago a returning probe infected with alien matter broke apart on re-entry and crashed in Mexico, causing mammoth extraterrestrials to grow, roam, and perpetuate themselves. These things, which we usually see only at a distance, in grainy TV footage or represented by a series of signs, murals and (most amusingly) animated kids' TV PSAs about what to do if the Pelligro! Extraterrestres! siren goes off, look sort of like a cross between insects and octopi, with gigantic glowing brains and bioluminescence flashing up and down their skins. Since our main characters--a lost rich girl tourist and the photographer her Dad hires to get her home--are not exactly soldiers or scientists, all they know is what they learn along the way, which isn't much: These things mainly come out at night, they don't like to be screwed with, they migrate around this time of year to lay eggs in the trees, they're attracted to light-sources.
As they pass through the highly-dangerous "Infected Zone" on their way towards the mammoth wall America's spent six years building across the border, however--which, it turns out, is pretty much useless at keeping out monsters that grow skyscraper-high--the real narrative thrust becomes our growing hope that we'll eventually be able to see one of these things straight-on, life-size, as opposed to in snatch-and-grabs, off-camera. And (SPOILERS!) eventually, that happens--not just one, but two, interacting with each other next to a gas station while our hero/heroine crouch nearby, transfixed. It's genuinely awesome, so much so he even forgets to take pictures.
From my POV, the film is about how you can suddenly realize that the world has changed irreparably while you weren't looking, without you even noticing. And the other implication seems to be that perhaps what draws these massive yet oddly delicate things light-wards is that they think TVs and spotlights are trying to communicate with them...that part of their rage once they realize they've just been fished into another potential fire-fight by those tiny annoyances on the ground comes from disappointment. These lumbering multi-limbed giants, lost and lonely on a planet they weren't made for, which may be changing itself to fit them but will never really be their home.
Now I'm about halfway through Wes Craven's My Soul to Take (in haphazard 3D), which is...very odd. The characters are strangely complicated, considering the trashy Peyton Place highschool afterschool drama meets MPD/slasher/voodoo mish-mash world they live in. I particularly miss the beautiful Jesus-freak who kept getting warnings from God, though I had her pegged early on for one of the won't-get-out-alives. Then again, this is Craven--maybe he'll kill 'em all.
Okay: Get dressed, go do my Mom's mail, and pick up the guy. Try not to cough out my entire lung-lining, while I do.
