More random thoughts
Aug. 6th, 2006 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cleolindaHmm. I'm at the point in a new story where I've gotten in just deep enough to feel stupid about it. As in, "Why am I writing this? Why am I bothering? It's so dumb. Seriously, I can't believe I even tried this." It's something you've just got to push through--sort of an artistic queasiness. I highly recommend not talking about your project to anyone at this point, because it's at a very fragile point of development, by which I mean that it will sound like the dumbest thing ever if you try to describe it to someone. I like to think of it as still being in its gestation period--not ready to come out of the womb yet. Doesn't make me feel any less lame, though. But the mad writing binge I've been on for the last three or four days has made me feel better at a time when I was feeling really, really bad (which I think has been related to adjusting my medication), so I keep telling myself that it can't be all that worthless. If nothing else, I can keep writing it just for me and never show it to anyone else. So, you know, if you ever feel that way, you're not alone.
Heh, Sleepy Hollow's on TNT tonight. I watched the DVD a couple of days ago, and it is a strange feeling to look up in the middle of a scene and realize you've got Dumbledore (#2), Uncle Vernon, Rita Skeeter, Emperor Palpatine, Principal Rooney, and Alfred the butler (#1) all in one room, with an assist from Darth Saruman and... well, Christopher Walken. "Christopher Walken" pretty much is his greatest character. (Emperor Palpatine! I didn't even know they let the man do any other movies!) The extras are shit, though. They're not "Interactive menus! Chapter stops!" shit, but there's only one commentary--and that's Tim Burton saying over and over, " I just had such an incredible cast. Also, how much fake fog did we pipe in? So very much"--and a bombastic behind-the-scenes thing that I guarantee you originally aired on HBO. You know--it's got That Announcer Guy who narrates in capslock. The problem is that the DVD must have come out in--what, 2000?--and I actually remember 2001 as the year DVDs started to get really, really good. And this was before LOTR. I guess my problem is that I'm spoiled by even the non-LOTR stuff like the X-Men 1.5 and Matrix Revisisted DVDs, where they have these great, in-depth, unintrusive features. Nowadays, even a mild hit like this would come fully loaded. I've come to expect DVD extras to go through all the major elements--casting, rehearsals, action and stunts, costumes, effects (the one thing Sleepy Hollow actually bothers with), and outtakes if you got 'em--in a far more in-depth fashion. That, and one-person commentaries almost always suck, I'm finding. You really need at least two people to play off each other, unless the speaker is just really, really engaging. Martin Scorsese, for example, can get away with it. Still, the Sleepy Hollow DVD's worth at least a Netflix for the part where Burton gets to the scene where Miranda Richardson and Johnny Depp are essentially wrestling for the Horseman's skull, and deadpans, "Ah, the climactic girlfight."
(Someone has an "Ichabod Crane: Girl Detective" icon that makes me laugh about as hard.)
Talladega Nights and Barnyard perform better than expected. Despite the fact that Barnyard involves cows voiced by men. I'm just saying, that's a logical dealbreaker for me.
The Descent: A far better movie than the poster would indicate. Seriously, I saw the trailer at Apple and just about wet myself.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden tries to interpret the video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
Viggo Mortensen, Pornstache Conquistador. (Between this and The Fountain, it looks like conquistadors are the new big thing.)
Satchel writes a blog. Poor Satchel.
Off to write some more. I feel a little better now. 
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 09:18 pm (UTC)Anyhoo, you've already spoilered us that someone dies, so, might as well put us all out of our misery and get it done already!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 09:25 pm (UTC)And I try to give updates because I think it helps for people to see that someone who is fairly confident about her process will still go through things like being blocked, feeling stupid, not knowing what to do, etc.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 09:26 pm (UTC)But then, I think he's pretty much teh smex in just about everything he does.
no, I'm not a rabid fan at all. No, really...no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-08-06 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-08-06 09:49 pm (UTC)The first DVD I ever bought was the original release of Apollo 13, which came out in '98. You'd NEVER know it from the packaging, because it says nothing about bonus features, but it's loaded. Two commentary tracks (one with Ron Howard, one with the Lovells), an in-depth and very well-done documentary called Lost Moon: The Triumph of Apollo 13, the trailer, the isolated soundtrack (the whole thing will play over the menu if you just sit there and let it play -- you can even skip forward and backward through the tracks), production notes, etc. I was duly impressed. And yes, as it's since been proved when I got a widescreen TV, it's anamorphic. When the DVD got re-released last year, I felt absolutely no need to double-dip. ;)
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Date: 2006-08-06 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-08-06 10:06 pm (UTC)Oh, god, do I know that one. It's enough to make myself question my very existnce.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 10:09 pm (UTC)That gives me hope that there's a movie about the Conquests of Mexico or Peru in the works. The drama involved in those two periods is ripe for a movie.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 10:11 pm (UTC)Well, I got a leaserdisc player in 1995 and started up a nice library.
I have the Star Wars "Black Box" with all 3 original movies in the original theatrical version, the loaded T2 with the James Cameron film school, the TRON and Fantasia box-sets, The Compleat Tex Avery box-set, the Criterion Dr. Strangelove and Robocop, and other assorted niftiness.
Anyway, even basic LDs came with extras.
So I was pretty much disappointed with DVDs from the get go.
I mean: compressed video, awful artifacing whenever there was an explosion on-screen or an abrupt change of lighting, the picture didn't seem any sharper, LDs already had CD-quality audio with surround so whoop-dee-doo.
These problems resolved themselves over time, with newer improved DVD players and likewise for DVD manufacturing techniques.
Now, I find myself not being concerned with extras so much.
I bought the cheaper, less-extra-ed versions of "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" and "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", and I'm fine with that.
That said, I do want "Hellboy: Director's Cut", and not so much for the extras as for the actual Director's Cut itself.
In other news, what is up with that poster of "The Descent"?
It's like a bad attempt at recreating the skull detail from the moth on the "Silence Of The Lamb" poster, which is itself lifted pretty much wholesale from a Salvador Dali photo.
Sheesh...
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 10:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-08-06 10:16 pm (UTC)Ian "Palpatine" McDiarmid is one of the Holy Trinity of old UK actors named "Ian," as defined by my friend and I in our evil Legion of Fangirls. And as for the rest ... I have never seen Sleepy Hollow, but it sounds like it has the World's Greatest Casting. Which Alfred? Michael Caine or Michael Gough?
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Date: 2006-08-06 10:20 pm (UTC)You should totally see SH, by the way. It's probably a bit uneven, and it's only vaguely related to the Irving story, but I love love loved it on a big screen, and the atmosphere, cinematography and costumes are fabulous. As is the cast--I didn't even mention that Miranda Richardson's in it, for example. It's also really, really funny, in a deadpan kind of way.
(If your third Ian is Holm, I may be a candidate for your legion.)
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 10:34 pm (UTC)(Between this and The Fountain, it looks like conquistadors are the new big thing.)
Heck, if you want to extend it to all of Europe's colonial period, you could include The New World. (Do you think any conquistadors show up in Apocolypto?)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 11:09 pm (UTC)I love the old Hammer movies--anything with Peter Cushing and I'm there--but it totally didn't occur to me that they were a big inspiration for Burton until I listened to the commentary. I mean, the fakey-fake tomato-red blood, the melodramatic acting, even the windmill at the end (which is from I think *two* different Hammer movies--Frankenstein and possibly one of the Draculas, maybe the sequel that *didn't* have Lee)--it all makes sense now.
But yeah, his commentary is ungood. This is why I think he really needed someone else there--anyone, really--to sort of prompt him to tell some actual stories or move on from the Such a Great Cast fixation. Like, yes, it is--now TELL ME about it.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 10:47 pm (UTC)I downloaded it a year ago (it was a cam of a screener or something), because I absolutely fucking LOVE the book that it's loosely based on (in the same sense Apocalypse Now is based on Heart of Darkness). I... did not like it. At all.
Once I got over that it was nothing like the book (which took me about five seconds, 'cause I knew it going in), I should've loved it. I mean, they're UNDERGROUND and TRAPPED and there are THINGS EATING THEM!!! What's not to love???
A lot, apparently. It seemed to drag ooooooooon and oooooooooon and oooooooon. Which is kind of hard to do with what amounts to a creature feature, so I have to give them props for that. But damn. Did not like it.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 12:34 am (UTC)Hey,
I downloaded it a year ago (it was a cam of a screener or something), because I absolutely fucking LOVE the book that it's loosely based on (in the same sense Apocalypse Now is based on Heart of Darkness). I... did not like it. At all.
-I love THE DESCENT by Jeff Long as well. But I also love the film, which basically just used the book's opening chapter, with none of the "Biological/Anthropological explanation for the myth of Hell" stuff...
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 11:32 pm (UTC)That would be the ever-lovely and talented
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Date: 2006-08-07 04:10 am (UTC)i'm pretty sure it's actually inspired by johnny depp's description of ichabod, too, which for me just makes it that much funnier.
::re-lurks::
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Date: 2006-08-06 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 11:59 pm (UTC)Yarha, Defiant Against All Odds
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Date: 2006-08-07 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 12:11 am (UTC)http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0762421371/702-8511063-4941612?v=glance&n=916520
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 12:09 am (UTC)Actually, I find this is the case even for work that isn't mine. Like, have you ever tried to describe the plot of the book you're reading to a random person you're sitting next to on an airplane (or bus/train/what have you)? There seems to be a rule that it will sound incredibly dumb.
"See, there's this really emo guy? And his dad's ghost wants him to get revenge for his murder. The dad's murder, I mean. The dad was killed by his own brother, who's gone and married emo guy's mother. But it's even weirder than that because emo guy totally has a thing for his mother. Meanwhile, there's this whole political thing because emo guy's dad? Was the king. And now emo guy's uncle is calling the shots. And they're all under threat of invasion. And that's, like, just the setup. It gets more complicated."
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-08-07 12:16 am (UTC)I'm off to raid your m15m icon stash now. Hee!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 12:26 am (UTC)I feel your DVD Special Features pain. Over her in Oz? Most local (R4) dvds consider the ability to put the dvd in your player and press play a "Special Feature". They redefine 'sparse', yo. I usually just nab US R1 dvd from Amazon now- the deal killer for me was FREDDY VS JASON's American release getting alternate beginnings/endings, three making ofs, deleted scenes, commentary by Freddy, Jason and the Director and a gallery. The Oz release's special features? the trailer- *including scenes only found on the US DVD*. Auuugh!
THE DESCENT is an awesome film, despite the crappy reshot US ending for the "Duh, me no understand- me need everything spelled out" brigade.
btw- you forgot to mention the heady delights of Casper Van Dien in SLEEPY HOLLOW *g*
bright eyes
Date: 2006-08-07 12:28 am (UTC)I am so intensely amused that I have TEARS in my eyes. What were they thinking? I actually liked that song (don't know where I heard it first, probably in a dentist office that played "light rock favorites from the 70s, 80s, and 90s," since radio was limited almost as much as television). But now? Now I swear I will snicker every time I hear it. I won't be able to help it because all I can see now are high school age boys (who look like they could belong to the Dead Poets' Society) wearing choir robes with glowing jack-o'latern eyes.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 12:41 am (UTC)Wait, wait, wait... this is only supposed to be a point? Not a years-long, on-again, off-again round of feelings of ineptitude? Man, I've been going about this all wrong! Curse my delusions of adequacy!
Seriously though, I do feel better after reading your posts on writing. Good to know I'm not the only one who mucks through this stuff.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 01:29 am (UTC)