A very pleasant surprise Juggernaut

Last week when I stayed home from the day-job with a migraine one of the things I did in the afternoon when I was feeling better was surf the Netflix instant view queue.

For those not in the know, if you have a Netflix account and a Netflix compatible device, such as an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, you can stream select movies from Netflix directly to your television. Sometimes even in high-def.

Juggernaut was a film I discovered by surfing what was available for streaming. I did not watch the movie that day, my headache was still too intense to allow full concentration. Last night after we finished watching our recordings of The Daily Show & The Colbert Report my sweetie-wife and went to the Netflix queue for something to watch. She spotted the Juggernaut in the ‘recently viewed’ queue — I had watched a few minutes to get a feeling for the quality of the production — and after a short bit of internet research she decided she wanted to watch the film as well.

Damn, this was one well made movie. The plot is simple. An extortionist has planted several large bombs on an ocean liner, he his demanding a large sum of money or he will not reveal how to deactivate the bombs. 1200 people are aboard the ocean and a mid-Atlantic gale prevents them from being evacuated. Time is running out until the bombs explode.

Now a plot like that can be done well and you will get a taunt suspenseful film, or it can be done badly and you get mindless action and explosions. This film was done well. For a bonus look at this cast. Richard Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Omar Sharif, Ian Holm, and a slate of character actors you’re sure to recognize when you see them. The tension in the film was quite strong, watching at home, with a headache, in a well lit room, I still felt it tightening my muscles. This is a movie I would never hesitate to show to someone. See it if you can.

Not much of a post tonight

I am suffering from a headache. Nasty enough to put me off my editing and posting tonight.

I was going to post a length essay on 2001: A Space Odyssey , but instead I will leave you with this challenge. IN that famous SF film, before thing start going wrong aboard Discovery, how many scenes can you find that have a dramatic nature and not a purely expository nature?

For a scene to have a dramatic nature it must posses a character, that character must have a goal, and there must be an obstruction to that goal. An Expository scene conveys information about the setting or character or plot that the viewer needs to understand the events of the film. (I would also posit that the expository scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey do a particularly poor job of exposition.)

Personally I cannot think of any scenes before we are on the Discovery that were not of a purely expository nature. Drama simple did not exist in that film until HAL went nuts.

**shudder**

Sunday Night Movie: Soylent Green

So this week over at Star Trek Re-watch we reviewed the third season episode, The Mark Of Gideon and that put me in the mood for an overpopulation story done correctly. The best overpopulation film is the 1973 classic Soylent Green. Even if you disagree withe presumptions and politics of this film it is still one of the best Sf films out of Hollywood.

As I stated when I made Rollerball my Sunday Night Movie a while back, the 1970’s were a time for thoughtful and intelligent SF movies. Soylent Green is special beyond that because it is part of the Charlton Heston trifecta of SF movies, Planet Of The Apes, Soylent Green, and The Omega Man. These were A-list films not cheap sci-fi tossed off for the teenager drive-in market.

Soylent Green is set in the year 2022 (hey, only 11 years away!) in a New York City with a population of 40 million and 50% unemployment. It is very loosely based upon the 1966 novel by noted SF author Harry Harrison ‘Make Room, Make Room.’

Heston plays Detective Thorn, an overworked and pettily corrupt police office. When a rich and power man is murdered during a thuggish robbery, Thorn draws the case to add to the other three murderers he is chasing down. The world in 2022 is vastly overpopulated with resources nearly exhausted. To discover any information Detective Thorn relies in his ‘book,’ Salomon Roth (Edward G. Robinson.) A live-in friend who has ‘a hand full of twenty year old reference materials.’ When the facts of the murder start to point to assassination and conspiracy Thorn knows he can’t sweep this case under the rug or it might mean his job. Without his job he’d be sleeping on the street, scrounging for survival. Amid political pressure and dwinliing time Thorn has to uncover a secret so terrible not only are some wiling to murder for it, but it makes the victim welcomes his assassin.

Continue reading →

Not my finest hour

So todayI relaxed with my friend ‘Bear’ playing a game of Federation Commander. Bear has a theory that two ships of the same point value are superior to a single ship of the same point value. For for example two ships with a combat value of 75 should best a single ship of 150. Today’s game was to test that theory.

Alas I screwed up my Erratic Maneuvering and allowed him some close in shots I really shouldn’t have, but that was my largest mistake. No, my big mistake was in ready the point values of the ships. Federation Commander has two scales, fleet and squadron. Fleet scale the points are cut in half and the ships are half as armed and powered. When I picked out his ships for the encounter I looked at the fleet scale, not the correct scale of squadron.

He out pointed me by 2 – 1. It’s no surprise then that he won easily.

We will try again.

What a way to own a handicap.

I love the promo for Fringe, even though I have never watched an episode.

Very cool

Here’s an alternate opening sequence to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I really dig it.

(But then again I own a copy of Keep Watching The Skies)

I don’t know to be happy or sad

So just over two years ago I did a line revision of Love and Loyalty because when I looked at it I saw where I could strengthen the flow of the sentences. As I delved into it I also saw a new plot element — that I would have seen the first time had I not been too slavish in following my outline — that I think greatly improved the novel.

So with fresh new edits and abetter writing I sent it off to a publisher. Well, if you follow this blog you now it got bounced recently.

This week I read it out loud for my writers group and boy did I hear trouble in the sentence structure. (Not grammar, but the sentences just did not flow.)

So that prompted my committing myself to a new round of sentence level revisions. (And the feedback I got at the reading was very helpful.)

I have such mixed feelings about this.

On one hand I was totally blind to the fault of the manuscript when I shipped it off in 2009.

On the other hand I can clearly see the fault so I must be improving, right?

Happy or sad, I just don’t know.

Cawdor is now officially on hold

Well After going through the first chapter of Love and Loyalty with the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Group I have decided to do yet another line edit of Love and Loyalty.

I want to work on both books, but a realistic appraisal of my writing time and our resources says that such plans are doomed to failure. Given that I had to select the novel I thought was closer to be a salable manuscript and that is Love and Loyalty. Hopefully it will not take me too long to edit the book. I can see that in the nearly three years since my last rounds of edits I have strengthened in my sentence crafting skills.

Let’s hope I have progressed far enough.

A bit of levity

Stayed home today with a migraine. Luckily it cleared out by about 11:30, but since my sweetie-wife had the car that meant I still was stuck at home.

Anyway I found this video over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog and it certainly cheered me up. (A little down due to the migraine and the knowledge I need to do a line edit on all 400 pages of Love and Loyalty.)

Sunday Night Movie: Macbeth(1948)

Before Citizen Kane, and before the Mercury Theater’s radio production of War Of The Worlds, Orson Welles was the wonderkid for his stage productions. He gained fame and notoriety for fresh and inventive productions of classic theater. Most notably among these was his production of Macbeth.

Using an all black cast he staged Macbeth on a Jamaican plantation with a cast that was inexperienced on the stage. The production was a smash hit, propelling the young Welles on his way to stardom.

After the trouble Welles found with the studio system and his bruising combat with William Randolph Hurst over Welles’ first film, Citizen Kane, perhaps it was natural that Welles returned to Shakespeare looking for his cinematic redemption. Welles convinces second tier studio Republic, best known for westerns, to support his Macbeth.

The version I watched last night is a version that Republic did not release. It was part of Welles’ that ‘the Scottish Play’ be done with Scott accents. The studio rebelled when it heard the final version and order all the dialog redubbed with the actors playing the parts in their native accents. This version is not currently available in the United States on DVD. The image above is from a Korean import which I purchased a few months ago.