Well, there is no other news. Not really.
But I've been contemplating my surprising (to me) return to reading fanfiction again.
I've just finished the available chapters of a story called The Mirror of Maybe (by Midnight Blue) and I can't wait for new installments to show up.
The author has grafted some new magical constructs into the Harry Potter universe and it's almost seamless -- several of her inventions seem so logical that I wouldn't be surprised if they showed up in a future Rowlings book. (Assuming J.K. really is still writing and not, as I suspect, freaked out by her unexpected success and hopelessly blocked.)
The characters aren't all quite the ones we find in the book, but they wouldn't be since they're older. The ones who aren't substantially older are close enough to the original to be quite recognizable.
The slash pairing is Harry/Snape, but the author's in no hurry. Eleven chapters and 250 pages into the story and they haven't even smooched yet. But it's worth the wait and you'll enjoy the ride. So far this story contains no incest, no sex between adults and underage boys or really any sex with underage characters, and every character in the Potter universe has not conveniently turned out to be gay. All of that is very refreshing even aside from the interesting story line and the good writing. Try it.
This makes two or three Works In Progress (WIP) that I'm reading in the Potter universe. I usually avoid a WIP until, and if, the author actually finishes it. Fandom is littered with the messy remnants of stories that authors got tired of and abandoned and normally I refuse to get sucked into an epic that might never end. On the other hand, the Potter universe is another of those fandoms that spawns 500 truly horrible stories for every readable one, so I'm taking what I can get.
Of course, I do have FictionAlley.org bookmarked and as soon as I have time, I fully intend to search the archive and see what gems might be lurking there.
I understand there's a lot of HP on Fanfiction.net but I'm afraid of that place. It has a reputation for housing an amazing quantity of incoherently awful fiction.
What the big archives really need is a ratings system for stories like TVGuide uses for movies. From 0 - 4 stars. Then you'd know what you were getting into when you went looking for something new to read.
I don't suppose an idea like that would ever get off the ground in the oh-so-democratic world of fandom though.
It's a pity. Bad writers are going to stay bad if there's no incentive for them to improve. Marginal writers who just need to put a little more work into their stories aren't going to bother unless they can see a payoff.
And the poor mistreated readers are going to keep having to slog through a hundred pieces of crap to find that one story that's worth reading.
I get tired of people saying, "it's just a hobby" to excuse their sloppy, badly crafted stories. All over the world, million upon millions of people work at their hobbies every week or whenever they have time.
Amateur musicians want to improve. Sunday painters take classes and study the masters. Singers join groups and take voice lessons. People who embroider learn new stitches, people who work on cars buy new tools, and cooks try new recipes. Scrabble players study to learn new words.
Why is it that writing alone out of all these hobbies is considered too unimportant to work at?
I don't care if people, "just want to have fun." Improvement is fun. Excellence is even more fun. Being good at your hobby makes your hobby more fun.
If fanfiction doesn't get any respect (and anyone watching the mainstream press has certainly seen it made fun of over the years), it's because so many of the people writing it treat it disrespectfully.
I swear, I didn't start out with the intention of ranting on this fine, Sunday morning. It just makes me crazy. Of course, a lot of things make me crazy in fandom.
Anyhow, FictionAlley.org does have a sort of ratings system in place, which is pretty interesting. It's reader-based, so the rating a story gets is based on what the readers who cared enough about it to post an opinion thought, which isn't the best way to rate a story in fandom. I mean, as we all know, the odds of most people being willing to post a negative criticism publicly are slim to none, but it's a start, right?
Anyhow, it's a comments forum and while I might wish they'd add a "rate this story" polling system, I'm also aware that friends and family of everyone writing would jump in and give every effort an A+, so I'm willing to accept that the sheer volume of people who want to comment on some story or other might be a better indicator of quality than anything else available to fandom right now.
Switching topics to the site itself, I do have to say that the site can be hard to figure out. I mean, it's mostly excellent, but when clicking on a link to a story category leads you to a "reviews" page instead of to actual stories, it's a bit of a shock.
The first time I visited the site, it took me twenty minutes to figure out how to find an actual story. For instance, I did a Google search on the site for the story title and pulled up a page that contained no actual links to the story itself. Finally I figured out that if you can find a page that contains the "fanfics by author" category in the menu at the top, you can click on that to get to pages with links to actual stories. Making finding the reviews easy is cool, but making finding an actual story almost impossible is aggravating. (Unfortunately, I can't provide you with a link directly to the story I was talking about earlier because the site doesn't allow that. But if you go to Schnoogle, you'll get the page you need that has the links to "fanfics by author.")
On the other hand, if I wind up with a few hours to spare today, I might just enjoy searching through the entire FictionAlley.org archive and seeing if the quality of the fiction is as good as the overall quality of the site. I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far.
On a last note, I should point out that FictionAlley.org doesn't accept NC-17 fiction, so those of you who like your stories shippy or slashy and down-and-dirty might not care for the site.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)It's off to work I go.
Yep, after long months of unemployment I've finally suckered some hapless fool info offering me gainful employment for, as usual, more money than even my mother thinks I'm worth.
It's not that my mother isn't fond of me you understand. I guess it's just that after you've raised a child who spent the first twenty years or more of her life wandering around aimlessly, never quite connecting with what was happening around her, it comes as a shock to discover that employers are willing to offer fairly generous salaries for her to come and...do whatever it is that she does. My mother isn't quite certain what it is that I do. I think she was happier when I was a secretary. The money was lousy, but my mother understood what a secretary was.
In any case, this is not about my mother. It's all about me, me, me and the fact that I'm no longer swelling the ranks of the unemployed. (Any additional unemployment benefits originally earmarked for me can now be redirected to some hapless WorldCom victim. 17,000 employees, all headed for the unemployment line in a few days. It's sad.)
I don't usually have this much trouble staying on topic when the topic is me.
Anyhow, after four full days of gainful employment, I've already learned a few important facts.
#1 - Downtown Denver Is A Lot More Fun Than The Suburbs. In fifteen years of working in the suburbs, not one stoned-out homeless person ever hit me up for a quarter to take a bus ride. On my fourth day of downtown employment I finally had this first-in-a-lifetime experience. Bums, hobos, and potential criminals abound on our street corner. It's just so urban, you know? I was thrilled.
But I didn't give him a quarter. I'm not that dumb. (Not any more, anyhow. Remind me someday to tell you about the gypsy cab in Los Angeles.)
#2 - Downtown Denver Is A Lot More Fun Than The Suburbs. On my third day of employment I was treated (while at lunch) to the sight of not one, not two, but three charming young men attired in gray tee-shirts and tasteful red and gray plaid kilts. When I got my eyes up that far, the back of one shirt explained that I was seeing Karpenters In Kilts.
I've been racking my brain for two days and haven't come up with any karpentry projects that need done in my apartment but I'll keep thinking.
#3 - DD Is A LMF Than The Suburbs - There's a coffee shop across the street from my office. The charm lies in the fact that everyone in the office seems to take it for granted that I should want to wander out of the office once or twice a day in search of a fresh latte.
#4 - DDIALMFTTS - For years I've worked in outlying areas where the closest lunch spot was a choice of two or three overcrowded restaurants located three or four miles away down an overcrowded street. Now in a one-block radius, I have two fast-food Mexican restaurants, one fast-food Japanese, a Noodle Bowl, a Subway, A burger King, and no doubt several others I have yet to discover. There's a rumor of a bagel shop close by that I need to track down, too.
#5 - DDIALMFTTS - So far, I've found two decent ways to commute home. One forces me to drive past my favorite bookstore. The other forces me to drive past my favorite used-book store. Life is good.
#6 - DDIALMFTTS - Forget what you hear about the high cost of parking. My new position comes with free, covered parking. I'll be loving that next winter. My desk also sits next to a window that offers an amazing view of the Front Range.
What? The job? What job? With all of these benefits, what does the job actually matter?
Posted by AnneZook at 05:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)I can't allow that to happen. I love that show. I mean, I've only seen it once, but it was hysterical. Anthony Head's character had had an operation on his ahem equipment and the rest of the guys were bribing him to let them have a peek at it. What's not to like?
Meghan says the show offends her feminist sensibilites. I'm starting to wonder if I have any feminist sensibilities?
Posted by AnneZook at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)The X-Files.
For those of you living in caves, let me mention that the show ended a nine-year run last month. Amidst a certain amount of lackluster hoop-la from the media, fear and trepidation from the remaining fans, and complete indifference from the millions upon millions of viewers who quit watching the show around Season 6, the last episode was aired on May 19 as a two-hour "special" titled, amusingly enough, "The Truth."
Let no one tell you that the guys at 1013 don't have a sense of humor.
I've been resisting the temptation to talk about this episode for weeks. (Well, okay, I haven't been resisting. I've been talking about it constantly to anyone who will listen. But in my mind I'm mature, restrained, and above complaining about trivialities.) And that includes me being too kind to diss the people bitching about this episode. Me, I got everything I could have wanted or expected out of it.
I wanted:
Proof that 1013 is run by clueless morons,
Documentation of the fact that no one but the fans ever really knew what this show was about,
New support for my theory that The X-Files actually ended after Season 5 and that everything that's happened since was just Bobby in the shower. (Or, you know, that Field Trip never really ended, Mulder and Scully are still trapped in Magic Mushroomland, and everything that has happened since is their personal worst-case hallucinations of how the future might pan out.)
I expected:
The mytharc being reduced to even more mindless hash,
1013 continuing to try and play both ends against the middle on the whole romance question,
All of the appearances by my favorite characters being pointless and stupid.
I got it all and more besides! I got terminal boredom as a bonus! Two solid hours of my life I'll never see again.
Who where those people and why were they impersonating Mulder and Scully? Damn, I got sick of watching Scully bawling. When did she turn from a kick-ass, take-charge kind of person into a whiney dishmop? I'm giving thanks that I haven't been inflicting this show on myself regularly for the last two and a half years.
Random recollections of this disaster of a finale....
Was that not the easiest jailbreak you've ever seen? I may be mistaken, but hasn't the military been the Big Bad for the last nine years? Are we to understand that they were holding Mulder on a No Security Base and that they'd left the key to his cell in the lock or something?
And why did they leak the news to Skinner and Scully that Mulder was under detention anyhow? Presumably it would have been a lot easier for them to just slip some cyanide in Mulder's soup one day than to go through that farce of a hearing.
Monica had the most thankless job of all in the episode. As the newly designated Believer and Impossible Exposition Babe, it fell to her to deliver that improbably stupid speech at the trial where she tried to make a group of strangers coming by to watch the Miracle!Birth both significant and proof of a government conspiracy.
"We came to understand.... the importance of this quasi-virginal birth and of all the SuperSoldiers coming to witness it was Highly Significant! and Proof! of...of...of things. Mysterious and sinister things. So there!
The actress should have demanded extra pay for that. Okay, maybe Skinner had the most thankless job in the actual episode, that of trying to put together some kind of defense for the FBI's flakiest employee, but I give Monica full marks for having delivered the most embarassing speech in the show's nine-year history with a straight face. Even with passion and conviction.
Pretty much any court in the land would have found Mulder guilty as hell with the kind of witnesses and the complete lack of proof of anything that came out in that trial.
Of course a real court would have had massive confusion over the lack of a body and eventually the case would probably have been thrown out because who's going to put up with depositions from 30 witnesses, not one of whom cares enough to actually show up in court and by the way, the DNA proves that that body you entered as Exhibit 42 isn't actually the corpse in question, so cough it up guys or I'm shutting this fiasco down and going to watch repeats of Gilligan's Island, okay?
But. The case against Mulder wouldn't have failed for anything having anything to do with Mulder's witnesses or the case Darlin' Skinner presented. In fact, every witness that showed up just made not only Mulder but the entire FBI just look like a bigger bowl of Froot Loops.
The CrapArc That Was A Myth
I can't stand it...I have to say it....what about those hostages, hmmmm? Remember? Long time ago? The human conspirators gave up loved ones as hostages to fortune and said hostages were tortured endlessly for years? Someone explain to me again just why the human conspirators thought this was a good deal?
Except...no...we were told that the hostages were actually used by the Sekrit Government Conspiracy as subjects for experimentation to create a human/alien hybrid to help fight against...no, the hybrids were what the aliens wanted, The Sekrit Government Conspirators were experimenting on...other abductees or street people or something and it was the SuperSoldiers who appeared much later who were to help us fight against...no, wait, they were part of the alien plan as well.
You know what? The only people actually working against the aliens were the Russians. The only good guys in the whole show were the Cold War Era Commies. What does that say about...things?
I'll tell you what it says. Ratboy, in his role as the one who tried to spread the word that the Ruskies had developed a vaccine against the aliens, was the only really good guy in the entire show. He went and found the solution for the world's problem, and tried to get the word out to the world.
Yay, Ratboy!
Ahem. Sorry. Where was I?
Someone explain to me why CSM went to watch the entire Syndicate (besides himself, of course) getting torched by the aliens. Why did the aliens torch them? Why didn't they want to burn CSM? Why did he go watch it happen? Who forgot the marshmallows? Is that where he got the idea for how to marshmallow his son later? Was he trying to duplicate the Amazing Firetorch O'Death?
Or, maybe we have the answer to what happened to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice after that history-making wife-swapping scene in the movie.
If CrispySpender was actually Bill Mulder's son out of Mrs. Here-I-Go-Again, Frequently Abducted Spender then Spender Pater might have crisped Bill Mulder's offspring in retaliation for the shitty job Bill had done of raising Pater's son out of Mrs. I've Got A Secret Mulder?
I thought I was onto something until I remembered that Alice wound up posing as a spinster on the Brady Bunch.
But! What did we see as the pentultimate X-Files episode? The Brady Bunch house, obviously possessed of an alien spirit and having nurtured the first real human/alien hybrid, lurking around on a sidestreet in Middle America and brooding over the annoying red tape that meant a simple invasion had to take ten frigging millenium any more.
I have no idea where I was going with all of that, but I'm scared that it actually tied back into the show. (N.B. Return bong to Mr. CC with "thanks, but I don't think I'm up to it" note.)
How did Gibson Praise get out of that damned reactor and what happened to the alien trapped in there with him? What actual purpose did he wind up serving in the entire mytharc? Any at all?
Starlight? We waited years to find out what happened to Samantha, just to find out she was wandering around among the constellations, singing new age songs of joy? She was kidnapped, released, raised by Mulder's biggest enemy, periodically returned to the aliens for more demented torture, died at the age of 24 but was killed as a small child by a psychotic mass child-murderer, and was returned in spirit at the age of 13 as fricking starlight?
I hope everyone at 1013 gets boils. Big ones.
And what kind of race of incredibly advanced and powerful aliens comes up with such a stupid, slow-moving plan to conquer a bunch of semi-civilized monkeys? Who needs tens of thousands of years to squash a bunch of primitives? Were they just waiting until the highway infrastructure was suitable to their needs or what?
And what was with the crashed spaceships covered with writings in various languages proving that pretty much the entire religious and spiritual history of our species was some huge joke perpetrated by sadistic and really bored alien conquerors?
Could we learn to get along with a race that proves itself to have such a juvenile sense of humor? I think we could. We could easily have provided buckets for every gallon of oilen that wanted to come and visit our lovely planet. Or glass jars and then we could have taken them on road trips to see the interesting sights.
And, you know, the fines for accidentally leaving the jars in the back window of the car and boiling our alien guests in the summer heat could have been substantial. I think people would have cooperated.
Most folks were pretty tolerant of those stick-on Garfield dolls, after all.
The more I think about the mytharc, the more I'm pretty sure I understand what it feels like to go mad.
Anyhow, for a bunch of all-conquering aliens, they sure seemed to have a lot of trouble keeping their ships in the air, didn't they? What was with that? They couldn't maybe hand out maps that show where the various Evil Metal Magnetite deposits were located on the planet so that commuters didn't wind up crashing into the nearest hillside?
What do the Mayans have to do with anything? Wasn't it the Navajo who were set up to be the Mysterious And Primitive But Powerful ones? I object.
What about the alien rebels? What was their deal and where did they go? What's Krycek's connection to them?
What about the little, skittery aliens in the underground document facility where Mulder discovered that he and not Samantha was originally to be abducted?
Who is the Bounty Hunter and what is his connection to the black oil? And why does he look human when he wants to and if the aliens can shape-shift, why do they need a hybrid?
What the hell did bees ever to do Chris Carter, anyhow?
I'm losing hope here....
Scully. And, you know, that Mulder guy.
When I originally turned this show on, the first thing I fell in love with was Scully's character. And I weep, weep I tell you! for what they did to her over the years.
She gave up any hope of a normal life or career, or even something interesting to add to the family's holiday newsletter in order to help Mulder in his obsessive quest for some mysterious "truth." In return, she was kidnapped, experimented on, diseased, sterilized, and dissed.
Dissed mosly by Mulder I might add. As the years passed, he kept leaving her out of things, taking action without discussing it with her and denying that she, as his partner, had any right to either make her own decisions about how far she wanted to go or to be kept informed about how far he was going himself.
He never really accepted her fully, as an equal partner in his search. She was always an ally until things got, in his Wise Masculine Opinion, too dangerous for her. Or, you know. Until he forgot about her for a while or something. Then, there she was, running along after him, screaming, "Mulder! Tell me what's going on!"
Look at the ending. However Mulder discovered whatever he discovered that led him to what he considered the "key" to the whole mystery and his big TRUTH happened completely off-screen and when he was alone. Which, in the end, also emphasized Scully's irrelevance to his quest. The boy got a sniff of a hint of a piece of information and just sort of left her on her own for a couple of years.
It was All About Mulder for Mulder.
And some people have the nerve to pretend they think these two were in love?
What was that "he was hiding from people who want to kill him" thing all about anyhow? Since when was it news to him that someone wanted hm dead? Let's see. Mulder was worried for his safety, so he left his partner who could presumed to be in almost equal danger behind while he went and lived in a trailer with an underage boy for a year? I knew the guy was kind of offbeat, but that's just perverse.
And...what? It's okay for her to stay in plain sight and make like a target for another abduction or something, but his precious butt couldn't be risked? When did Mulder become such a coward? When did he decide that discovering and publicing everything he could about the government conspiracy was no longer a good idea?
One thing I hold firmly to is that Scully was the first regular character to be slowly dissolved in the bland acid of cliche on this show. It happened to all of them, but none of them started showing the effects of it as soon as Scully. I don't think 1013 ever forgave the actress for getting pregnant.
I mean, sure, the character was given a chance to make brave speeches about how she'd continue her work regardless of her personal problems (of which there was an extensive list over the years), but so what?
What was wrong with having a strong, capable female character who did not develop a tragic illness? Is this General Hospital or The X-Files? Is this a weepy move-of-the-week or is it a show about monsters and aliens and evil government conspiracies?
In some respects, Mulder's character was emasculated over the years, but I also think that at least going psycho and having holes drilled into his head was a personal. thing for the character. It's something Mulder would do, but not many other characters you see on television.
You're not going to see Josh Lyman getting holes drilled in his head, no matter how badly his life is falling apart. Punching his fist through a window, yeah. That's kind of a guy thing. But taking animal tranquilizers and letting psychos explore your forebrain with a Black and Decker? Pure Mulder.
On the other hand, almost any female character on television can sit around brooding over her reproductive organs. Scully's disintegration was sad. It was the opposite of creative and proceeded along predictable and boring lines until the devil (personified by CSM) arranged for her to get pregnant. (That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.)
The neXt-Files
It's a pity, a crying shame, that Doggett and Monica were saddled with the reeking remains of what had gone before, okay? Doggett and Monica could have saved this show, given the chance.
But 1013 chickened out on their plans to "reinvent" the show from the ground up and that destroyed any possibility that the new characters would be given a chance to build their own fanbases. Every time the new version of the show started building up steam, it was abruptly mired down in the soggy residue of the past.
Doggett was good. I'll go farther...Doggett brought a level of energy and enthusiasm to the show that it hadn't been displaying for several years. Monica, originally irritating and stagey when we met her, displayed an increasing ability to carry her half of the burden.
I offer my sincere sympathy to those two actors.
The Truth
Again...Krycek is the lucky stud given the rights to the One, the Only, Truth.
"Truth? There is no truth. These men make it up as they go along."
Oh, Ratboy, if only we'd listened to you!
Posted by AnneZook at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)After a 2+ year hiatus from fanfiction, I've been sucked, very tangentially, into Harry Potter slash. I'm so ashamed. After all the smart-ass remarks I've made about people reading and writing sex stories about underage kids, too.
First I read Heleninhell's charming and somehow very believable Draco/Ron story. I mourn that she never wrote the promised sequel to that one. Is it because it was the first story I read in the fandom, or is it Helen's amazing talent that makes me realize that if I were going to read a lot in this fandom, this would be the pairing of choice for me?
At the recommendation of someone whose taste I usually trust, I dipped a toe into Telanu's site to read her gulp Potter/Snape stories.
The very idea gave me hives when it was suggested to me, but there you are. I'm still unemployed and have far too much time on my hands.
The Your Horoscope For Today stories were charming, especially when framed, as they were, with quotes from The Onion's typically off-beat astrological predictions. Telanu caught Snape pretty firmly, the character's voice is very much like it might be if any of the books were told from his perspective. This version of Harry is...well, he's almost simple-minded. But the stories have a silly charm.
She has also written a longer, still unfinished Potter/Snape slash story. The good news is that she's not writing Snape having sex with an underage Harry Potter. Snape is, in fact, appalled by the realization of his attraction to the fifteen year-old. However, with each story, Harry ages a year, so we can assume that in another story or two, this unlikely duo will consummate this oddly convincing romance. If she'd only have resisted the "hey, let's make everyone gay!" temptation of making two of Ron's brothers (so far) Gay and Proud, I'd have very little to quibble about in these stories so far. Beyond the fact that she hasn't posted an update in six months or more, I mean.
Not that that means I'm going to go out and start surfing the net for any more slash in this fandom. Or in any other fandom. I'm still scared of what's out there.
Saturday morning, the farmer's market. It's early for Colorado produce but I got some fresh-baked bread and some delicious cheese. I also found some fabulous pesto, made with mascarpone cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, artichoke hearts, garlic, and of course olive oil. I've been diving into it every five minutes all weekend. (If this sounds like one of those dishes that clog your arteries and subtract an hour off your life expectancy with each bite, don't tell me about it.)
At lunch on Saturday, I also had a chicken-angel-hair pasta in lemon-dill sauce with capers sort of thing. Capers seem to be my theme for the weekend.
For those interested, by the way, we're to have rain this evening, they arrested the woman who set that 100,000 acre fire, and they think they might be able to keep the fire from reaching Denver after all.
What is it about Sunday afternoon that makes me so boring?
Posted by AnneZook at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)Okay, so last night, the AFI (American Film Institute) treated us to another of their Top 100 lists.*
This time it was the top 100 romance movies of all time. Check CNN's website for the list.
Or, maybe it was the top 100 Romantic Scenes in movies. I'm not sure.
Generally, I foundit weird that some of the movies on their list weren't actually romances in the sense that the romance was the focal point of the movie. I mean, I stand second to no one in my enjoyment of It's A Wonderful Life but the romance, while charming, is hardly the core of this movie. So, you know, maybe it was the top 100 romantic moments or something.
I could go check, but is it really that important? Not to me.
I can't complain about their top two picks, since both Casablanca and Gone With the Wind easily hit my top-ten, all-time favorite romance movies category.
But some of their other choices give me hives.
What's Up Doc? What in god's name were they thinking? If it had to win at all, how could they rate it higher than genuine classics like Harold and Maude, or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, or The Goodbye Girl, or Porgy and Bess? Or even their #100 choice? Their #100 choice was easily 100 times better than What's Up Doc.
Love Story is a top-ten winner I'd like to quibble about. I mean, yeah, it was big then, but does it really stand the test of time? Does the plot really offer anything new? Are the characters really so fresh and creative? Can it still be watched or is it painfully thin and shallow? Did they have to choose to show the single most-seen clip from the show, forcing my brain to continually repeat, "Love means never...." again and again for the last twelve hours? Can I sue?
These and other questions will not be answered as we continue.
The Way We Were. Ahhhh....sublime. Robert Redford was my first boyfriend, my first on-screen crush, and the man who can still make my shallow little heart go pitty-pat. A worthy top-ten entry.
An Affair To Remember. Hmmm. I know it was a blockbuster in its day but today it's so heavy-handed and full of blatant manipulation that I find it unwatchable. It certainly didn't deserve to show up on the list rated higher than, African Queen.
Rating the thin plot of Ghost (Whoopie Goldberg single-handedly saved that movie) higher than the beauty of On Golden Pond is practically criminal. I'm not one of the millions of women who go weak at the sight of Swayze although the luminescent beauty of Demi Moore stayed in my mind for a long time after I saw the movie. I want the guy who lit her to follow me around for the rest of my life, making sure I look just like Demi, okay?
On Golden Pond had its own luminescent beauty and was further characterized by performances of incredible depth and subtlety from Hepburn and Fonda. The story was original and the directing inspired.
I know...it didn't feature an oversized, phallic-shaped lump of clay, but still. I mean, it offered Jane Fonda in her most memorable on-screen moment since Barbarella. For those whose hormones incline them that way.
Perusing the list further, I see that gay and lesbian movies are overlooked, but bestiality (King Kong) seems to be acceptable. Whatever. C'mere, you big ape!i
In another, "can I sue?" moment, I see that Splendor In the Grass clocked in at 47. Beaten by such glowing examples of nuanced characterization as Beauty and the Beast (yes, the animated Disney film), Sleepless in Seattle (yes, a good movie, but not that good), Singing in the Rain (the bare minimum of "romance" immortalized by one man's passing fling with a lamppost), Pretty Woman (okay, I loved it too, but she's a whore, folks!), and Funny Girl (a classic, yes, but is the love story really the heart of the movie?).
I'm not saying those aren't great movies. I'm saying they're a far cry from being better than Splendor. In my never-humble opinion.
Sabrina (the original) only made #52? Who picked these movies?
The English Patient belonged much lower on the list. Okay, it had a great romance, but am I the only person in the world who thought that the movie would have been much improved by cutting even just thirty minutes of the endless panning over the scenery shots? By the time it ended, I was just sad that more people weren't dying. Or that there weren't, you know, dancing dinosaurs or something. Something to reward me for the numbness in my butt.
The Princess Bride was an amazing book and a highly entertaining movie, but one of the 100 greatest romances ever filmed? Even at #88, I have my doubts.
Browsing down through the rest of the list, my eyes spy Grease. You know the one. Olivia Newton-John, looking so good (and at her age!) that I want to slap her, dons tight leather pants and takes up smoking to win the man of her dreams. Yeah...that's a classic great romance alright.
Coming in dead last, we find Jerry Maguire. I'm not a big Tom Cruise fan. I went to the movie under protest and prepared to read comic books by the light of the flashlight on my keychain. I wound up watching every second of the movie. This was a charming, romantic outing that I still remember with a sort of astounded admiration.
That does it. I'm making my own list. Movies I think of as great love/romance stories will appear. These may not be movies that experts and those knowledgeable about the craft consider great. Nor, since I have no pretensions to being a member of the intelligentsia, will any silent movies be appearing. I will not be including rapturous eulogies about the make-up or costuming or the subtle irony of the lighting.
Because I love the classics, "Gone With The Wind" and "Casablanca" will be appearing. As will "African Queen."
"Adam's Rib" and "Pat and Mike" will both appear. "Woman Of the Year" will not since I never though it really pulled off its premise.
And Spencer & Tracey were an amazing combo, so I might also include one of my personal favorites, Desk Set. Computer geek humor in 1957! You gotta love it. (Yes, that's an order.)
Because I'm a sucker for some things and always have been, "The Way We Were" will be appearing. Very near the top of the list.
Movies more about obsession and less about love will not appear, so "Vertigo", although an incredible movie, will not be appearing.
Nor, much as I reverence Austen, will "Sense and Sensibility" be appearing because I have Casting Issues. Emma is an amazing talent but well-cast for that role she was not. Alan Rickman was his usual godlike self but I felt his character was wasted on the woman he loved. Somehow the book made his passion work, but the movie didn't. He was ten times more man than the on-screen version of the woman of his choice deserved.
Much Ado About Nothing will be appearing, not just because it features a scene with about twenty nekkid men bathing together (although that never hurts), but because it's my favorite of Shakespeare's romantic comedies.
I peruse the "winners" list again....
Movies that annoy me or didn't work for me will not be appearing.
Dirty Dancing left me high and dry - it's a no-show. The Bridges of Madison County was a marginally better movie than it was a book, but considering the extent to which I loathe the book, that's saying very little. Nope. The American President wasn't half as good as people seem to remember it was. No. The King and I never really did anything for me, which frees up a space for something better.
Enough of the negatives...I have to put together a top ten list of positives.
(* I should mention that some folks I know have seen and disagreed with most of my comments, as well as my opinions on such critically acclaimed movies as The English Patient so don't go thinking I'm some kind of movie-buff expert or something when I pan something you love.)
Posted by AnneZook at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)I get the feeling there's going to be a substantial amount of going back and deleting posts from previous days in this blog. If you ever think you saw something but it's not there later, you're probably not hallucinating. I'm already finding yesterday's entry more than a little stupid.
Imagine my surprise (yes, we've changed subjects, but it's still all about me) today when I opened my mail and found out that I'd received a feedback on something I'd written. That's a fairly rare occurence in my life. I'm always astounded to hear that other writers have hundreds or thousands of readers. I have four. (And I cherish them all, let me add.)
I think I wrote one story that got ten feedback notes and well over half those people seemed to misunderstand what was going on in that one, so I'm dubious about the value of their praise. Not that I'm dissing people finding whatever they want in a story. I'm just saying. It's not a rape story, okay? And it's not non-consensual. Everybody was having fun.
I have a page full of rants and rants thinly disguised as writing essays that's probably received more feedback than any all the stories I've written. (Today's feedback was on that page.) I also find that odd. One friend thinks I'm only really good entertainment when I'm all fired up about something. The feedback pattern indicates she might be right.
Okay, enough about me. Checking the short list of people I know who have blogs, I see The LilyLady dissing the Queen, Cap'n Nasty is still getting weird propositions from strangers, and that Wild Mole must be actually working because she hasn't updated yet. This blog thing could become quite addictive. I mean, if I had anything to say, you know?
I have some thoughts on the recent X-Files finale. Maybe I'll inflict those on you later today.
I can confidently predict that within a week, most of my friends (well, all four of them) will be praying that I get a job so that I'm not able to sit here all day every day babbling on about the butterflies drifting past the living room window and the way that the fan sounds almost but not quite entirely unlike the sea washing against the shore.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)First, let me tell anyone who is thinking of blogging that it's a dirty lie that you can change the template you choose. I was stuck with my original template for two days even though I tried desperately to change it from about ten seconds after I originally chose it. So, I deleted the entire blog and started over. Hah!
Second...The LilyLady blogs! Too cool. And she has a treehouse! That does it. I'm moving in with The LilyLady.
If you want to know about the Day of the Dead, I recommend reading Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree because not only is The Day of the Dead feature, but it's a darned fine book. Like all Bradbury books.
If anyone ever asked about about me me to, you know, try and figure out who I am and how I became who I am today, I'd recommend that they go read Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. Because, other than the facts that I'm not a boy and we weren't allowed to drink booze when I was a kid, not even booze made from weeds, that book is all about me. I mean, it's about the essence of my childhood.
No one ever asks, though.
I'm all about irises, babe. Nothing smells sweeter in the morning. Or, indeed, on a lush, summer evening. It's fun to have a gardenin' fool in our midst. I can see it now, The LilyLady lounging seductively in a redwood patio chair, sipping at a mimosa while she directs the Hunky Garden Boy to move his hose hee! to a different part of the lawn.
If your gardener is actually a seventy year-old man whose butt crack shows when he leans over to pull up a weed, I don't want to know about it, okay? I need my fantasies.
Speaking of fantasies, I've been browsing through my files of unfinished stories over the past few days, wondering why I never finished most of them. For the most part, it's pretty obvious. This stuff reeks.
I have one file that contains a single line. Mulder's tantalizing habit of holding himself out like a present to be unwrapped, a promise of erotic sensuality just beneath the surface. I never thought of anything to do with the line, unfortunately.
And then there was this:
Walter Skinner prided himself on his control. Walking a fine line between Bureau policy and what was necessary to get the job done, he watched his steps carefully, always covering his back. Until recently, when the eruption of Fox Mulder into his life had given him a reason to step across and commit himself against a shadowy committee that ruled the back rooms and dark alleys of Washington.
Mulder had an uncanny way of gathering allies in his search for the truth. In spite of himself, Skinner had been drawn in by the man's wild theories and outrageous accusations. Maybe he was right. Maybe the truth existed and he could find it.
Which brings me to my point and yes, I do have one. I can't believe that 75% of the discarded excerpts that I have are fragments of ideas for case-file stories, but they are. It's been a continuing source of sadness for me that I've never gotten the hang of writing complex storylines full of aliens and investigations and mysteries and stuff. A couple of times I actually tried to include something like that in stories and it was an abject failure both times.
I've bought books and talked to people and studied the structures of stories that do have the kind of case-file structure that I admire. I see how it's done. Sadly, my brain never comes up with any original ideas for doing it myself.
It's disappointing to realize that, in the end, I was merely a pornographer of the flimsiest kind. I wrote sex scenes with the minimum required amount of set-up beforehand.
Although I really haven't had the urge to write anything new for two or three years now, I have to admit that this one thing still haunts me. I never wrote a good story. A story of the kind that I like to read. I have nothing against the PWP but after so many years in fandom, I'm a little bored with the whole man-on-man sex thing in terms of the mechanics.
How they get there has always been more important to me than specifically what they do once they arrive.
I'm still hanging out waiting for a new fandom to hit me and before it arrives, can I put in a request that it be supplied with some real story ideas before it lands in my brain?
I love this blog thing. You can just ramble on about fifty different things and no one can tell you to shut up. It's so cool.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)Today I had Afternoon Tea. It's a thing I like to do occasionally. Makes me feel all girly and upper-class or something.
Sometimes I go out, but we do own an Authentic English Tea Service (well, okay, it's a breakfast service, but it's English) and some of those cool tiered trays that you stack the sandwiches and bread and cakes on. The tired trays were made in a country whose name I'm too lazy to try and spell but it starts with Ch so feel free to use your imagination.
Today I stayed in and had Afternoon Tea at home. Sandwich selection included cucumber (of course), chicken salad, and ham. With bite-sized quiches (crab), fresh crescent rolls with butter, and chocolate mousse cake for dessert.
I don't know why I'm telling you this, but there you go. It's my blog and I can blog about anything I want.
You might be wondering why I stayed at home and did all the work myself in a sunny, summer afternoon when Denver is littered with tea places that feature tables placed in shaded gardens, perky waitresses, and someone else hired to wash the dishes.
That's because it's not. A sunny, summer day, I mean. There's a big fire someplace outside of town and the city is covered with a heavy haze of smoke and ash today. The light is an odd yellow and the wind is blowing hot and dry. Those with asthma, heart conditions, and any respiratory-related illnesses are strongly encouraged to stay indoors.
Citizens are also requested to cease calling 9-1-1 to report that there's a fire.
This isn't the same fire that's in Glenwood Springs, of course. That's hundreds of miles away, across the Divide (Continental), on the west edge of the state. Too far away to be dumping haze and ash on Denver, in spite of the fact that it's already burned 7000 acres in the 36 hours or so it's been burning. That one burst forth from an underground coal fire that's reputed to have been burning for a hundred years.
I ask you. They're all over me about having an annual emissions test on my car when they know there's a fire that's been burning in the Western part of the state, spewing coal haze into the air for centuries?
I always say there's nothing like a nice sandwich.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)It should surprise no one to hear that I believe television next year is going to suck. When don't I hate the look of the new fall crop of shows?
Anyhow, most of you have already seen this, but I've done a bit of editing, added some more rude remarks, and decided to save it to check back at half-time and see how I'm scoring. Or, something. Sports metaphors really aren't my strong suit, okay?
ABC has these to offer:
That Was Then
This one revolves around a 30-year-old guy unsatisfied with his life who gets his wish to go back to one week of high school, when he believes his life took a wrong turn. I guess if they can get a season out of 24 hours, they can get a season out of a week. But what happens if it doesn't suck as badly as it looks like it will? Does he then have to go back and relive the prom where he didn't get laid? Will we see a third season about him frantically buying Clearsil and trying out different brands of pore-cleaning pads to cure that life-changing acne problem?
Midseason Replacement Threats
They're offering us Dragnet. Yep, they're remaking the classic, retooled for the "21st century." If Joe Friday isn't there, I'm not watching it. That's all.
Miracles
"Drama about a Vatigan [one presumes the futoncritic.com meant "Vatican"] investigator of the paranormal who after spending years debunking supposed miracles begins to losing his faith."
Some of you may remember that a couple of years ago, I made fun of a promo for a show called, Mysterious Ways - calling it, The X-Files meets Touched with an Angel. And it was, premise-wise.
But I was wrong because the show had heart, charm, interest, and a distinct feel all its own. (The network, surprised by the unexpected success of the show, is still trying to kill it by removing it from the schedule and then replacing it and then changing the airdate and time every week) But, past failures notwithstanding, I'm panning this one. I'm only including it on the list to pad out ABC's offerings.
Veritas
Action drama about a father-son archeology team a la the "Indiana Jones" film series. I've never heard of the actors, but the developers/producers list gave me a laugh. A guy with one season of one show under his belt (24), two guys with one movie to their credit (Tomb Raider), and Craig Zadan & Neil Meron -- best known for Brian's Song and Life With Judy Garland.
Yeah, that's the list of names I'd want associated with an action/adventure show about archeology. In any case, we're already getting, Relic Hunter on some channel and I'm thinking that one sucky Indiana Jones ripoff is enough, right?
It's going to be sucky but I'm a sucker, so I'll probably try it. Sean Connery, I already miss you!
Otherwise in Development
Fame
Didn't they already do a television series based on that move? Well, they're doing another one.
Flashpoint
Centers on investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I'm sorry, guys. CSI made microscopes sexy, but it was a lightning strike. Forget it.
Nancy Drew
She's now a college freshman, a journalism major, and she fights crime in her spare time!
CBS has its own list of contenders.
Still Standing
I refuse to promote a show about a guy who sells toilets. The jokes are already stinking.
CSI - Miami
Well, we all knew this. They debuted the concept in CSI's season-ender this year. I wasn't impressed with the cast and probably won't be watching this one, in spite of my devotion to the original CSI. Also, for those who care, David Caruso is looking seriously ragged. Like sixty, maybe seventy year-old ragged.
Without A Trace
will probably sink the same way. A drama that "centers on a division of the F.B.I. that focuses solely on missing persons" is going to go nowhere fast after fans finish tearing their televisions apart following The X-Files show-ending disaster.
Stars Anthony Lapaglia (Frasier, Murder One), a guy whose name always looks familiar to me, but I have no idea who he is.
Hack
This is, and I quote exactly, the description we were given of this one:
"drama about a former cop who works as a taxi driver after losing his job as a policeman for being on the take and helps people solve their problems and fight injustice while trying to win back his son and wife, who left him when he was fired"
I think they named it after the writer.
Life Of The Party
Comedy about a one-time tv star who lands on a much bigger stage in Washington when he wins a seat in Congress. Why might this be funny? Stars Nathan Lane.
I love the guy and I think he could be brilliant on episodic television. It's a shame he's having trouble finding a concept that works. Or, you know, costars who can act. Or writers who can write.
Jo
About a veterinarian who moves to North Carolina from Manhattan, where she joins her mom's practice. I mention this one only because it's been a long time since I had an opportunity to announce that I loathe Andie Macdowell, and I do.
Also --
So far, although I haven't been tagging them all, I've seen about five new series set in Miami, and either two or three new cop shows about the LAPD. And three, I think, set in Nevada. It's too bad this is such a small country and there are so few, original locations to set a new show.
Also I can't believe no one is doing a show about four teenagers in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir who solve mysteries with the kindly advice and help of their ancestors.
NBC is threatening to bring us:
Good Morning, Miami
which "centers on an ambitious, driven man focused on a tv career who takes over the lowest-rated morning show in the country as executive producer, a decision that turns out to be his salvation." (What ever happened to just finding Jesus?)
The the real kiss of death comes from the participation of Tessie Santiago, who was last seen sinking without a life raft in Queen of Swords. The two guys from Will and Grace who quit that show to develop this one shouldn't have.
American Dreams
Mind-boggling. A "period drama that traces the evolution of a family from Camelot to Watergate using vintage footage from American Bandstand."
I beg your pardon? A "period drama" from the sixties, in other words, since I'm assuming the Camelot reference refers to the Kennedy presidency and not the reign of the quasi-mythical Arthur.
If you needed any other reason to skip this one, previous working titles were Miss American Pie and Our Generation. Not surprisingly, Dick Clark is one of the guys producing.
Boomtown
A "drama which looks at a cross-section of a city's legal, criminal and journalistic communities."
Could they have made that sound any more boring? Everyone connected with this one seems to have come from a gritty cop drama or Band of Brothers. Except for one lost fool who came from the sitcom Spin City.
Run! Run!
Midseason Replacement Threats
Kingpin
This one's a drama that "follows a drug lord and his mexico-based trafficking operation." If you look down, you'll see the bottom of the barrel very close to you.
Otherwise Threatening
There's more, yes. They're redoing Fantasy Island except for this time they'll be doing it as a "reality" series and really making people's fantasies come true. With the same hook that the original show had, people aren't always going to like what they get.
Another show features a young couple moving in with her parents. Called, imaginatively enough, The In-Laws. Ha. Ha. Because the world really needs a situation comedy about people having sex while they worry about whether or not her father can hear them.
Another guy gets a series (and a job) where he's supposedly ghost-writing a column for a supermodel. "Stupid Talks". No, that's not the name of it, but it's not bad, is it?
Lost in Space is being recreated, featuring an entirely new family being lost. Without the robot, what's the point? Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!
My Three Sons is being recreated as, My Three Daughters with Chevy Chase. I love Chevy Chase but I'll be skipping this one.
Romeo Fire is going to offer us an ensemble comedy centering on a group of firefighters in a small town that has not had a fire for a long time. I guess we get to see them playing bridge and polishing their hoses. Heh.
The idea with the biggest loser stamp on it might be Rerun. "The basic premise of the show was presented on futoncritic.com as: "using the original script, actors re-create -- usually line for line -- a well-known episode of a half-hour comedy from the [C]olumbia [T]ristar library."
I'm still working on deciphering that sentence, never mind seeing the point.
I'll spare you the rest of the threatened schedule. Believe it or not, this is the cream of this particular network's crop.
Let's hope syndication offers more hope than the networks this year.
We'll start with The WB, okay?
Hmmm...we've got a made-from-a-comic-book series about three female crime fighters (with, I don't doubt, superpowers and supertits). Set in Nevada, of course.
A remake of Family Affair (I wonder if Mrs. Beasley will be resurrected?) starring Tim Curry in the Mr. French role. Hmmmm I like Tim Curry, but I don't think I'll be seeing him in this.
Do Over which is yet another show where a guy goes back to relive his high school years and am I the only one who finds something creepy in this whole "grown man pretending to be a teenager lusting after 16 year-old girls" concept?
Another show about a hip, cool columnist. Yawn.
The Lone Ranger is being remade. Why? (I never heard of the actors, but it's certainly a slash-intensive set-up.)
And apparently they're sending someone new to Oz. The Land Of, I mean. A "twentyish woman" winds up in OZ, can't escape, and leads a revolt against the Emerald City. Yeah, I remember that happening in the books.
And, to end it as badly as this list deserves to be ended, The WB is also developing a "variety show" set in the world of skateboarding.
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
How about UPN?
They have anything to offer?
Hmmm...a man "dies" for five minutes and when he's resurrected, he's haunted by ghosts who help him solve crimes.
Another man inherits a wristwatch that apparently confers superpowers on him.
In more promising news, Janet Evanovich's mystery series starring Stephanie Plum is being made into a series. I doubt it's any good (I'm discouraged), but it might be worth a try. Although that kind of Jersey, wisecracking attitude is probably more amusing on the page than onscreen. I mean, call me prejudiced, but I don't want to listen to a lot of Jersey accents for an hour every week, okay?
Moving along to FOX....
Fast Lane
is described as a contemporary spin on Starsky and Hutch and Miami Vice. It's a buddy show. What else could it be? Slash heaven! Featuring Bill Bellamy and Peter Facinelli, neither of whom I know but I'll probably be trying this one. Not with a lot of hope, but I'll be trying it. I loved those boys and their hot, red car!
Firefly
I missed the start of the Joss Whedan ride with the Buffy parade, but I think I'll be trying his new show. I mean, I like science fiction and the idea of a small, rag-tag crew of survivors of a galatic war doing anything they can to survive has familiar elements, but this show already has an impressive pedigree.
Eastwick
is "based on the John Updike novel and film of the same name". Don't we have enough witches on television right now? Can this concept survive without the amusing scenery-chewing of Jack Nicholson? I think not.
John Doe
is a "drama about an amnesiac who mysteriously washes ashore and realizes he knows everything knowable in the world except the truth about who he is".
I'll bet he knows which show is going to top the Jump the Shark contest next season.
The Time Tunnel
is a remake of the 1966 science fiction show about a couple of government scientists on a project that allows them to travel through time.
I know there are a ton of remakes every season, but doesn't it seem to you that this coming season is particularly barren of original ideas?
In desperation, I turn to PAX, America's Family Channel and I wonder how much it cost them to buy that slogan from Ted Turner? No, his was "America's Team" for the Atlanta Braves.
Still. Let's see what's up with this network.
Young Blades
A drama that, "introduces a new generation of musketeers." If these guys are over 18, I'm there for it when this show starts in November. I've always had my suspicions about those Musketeers! All that lace....
I'm glad only four people in the world have this URL because I don't have anything original or entertaining to say. It's going to be close to 100 degrees today, so I'm thinking that sticking close to home is a good plan for the day.
Tonight! Atomic Twister debuts on...some channel. Tornados and the threat of nuclear annhilation! Do movies get any better than that? Twister, Volcano, Godzilla, You-Name-It. I love me a disaster movie. Anyone else remember Mitch Pileggi in that killer ant movie? Anyone else in the world still have it on tape? Anyone else in the galaxy who has watched it more than once?
I'm jealous that Bitchcakes needs to know about Drag Queens. When I'm writing, my research tends to involve less esoteric material. Like right now, the exact dates of the Napoleonic Wars and what Florence and Venice were like, culturally and geographically, at the time. Hardly riveting stuff, you might say, but it amuses me. I am, for the record, researching a novel that I have no intention of writing. Let me stand up before the crowd and admit that My Name is Anne and I Am a Research Junkie.
There. Now we have that out of the way, right?
Because I'm likely to babble on and on about this novel idea and what I'm researching and I don't want any rude remarks about when the novel is going to appear or anything.
I don't need that kind of pressure in my life.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)If It's Real People, Then It's Not Fanfiction/Slash
I think that publicly posting erotic stories featuring real people whose only crime is that they've chosen to be actors or musicians or other public figures is a stupid, obnoxious pasttime.
I think that publicly sharing sex-based stories based on your fevered imaginings of the sex lives of real-life people is an appalling invasion of privacy.
And, in case you're in doubt, I find it personally distasteful.
I swear...Other People's Children drive me bonkers. Sometimes I wish they'd be raised with good sense.
Balance of rant removed because I felt like removing it.
You may think of yourself as "fans" but you're not any kind of fans I recognize.
Go. Away.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)