W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

This week Thanksgiving is at my house, mostly cooked by me, with some dishes from other members of my family. So I got what will be a family favorite movie on DVD to watch: UP. When I saw the movie this summer, I told my brother and mom they would love the dogs. I myself love little Jordan Nagai doing the voice of Russell. Such funny dialog and he's so perfect at it!

I also got the BBC TV DVD special edition of THE MIGHTY BOOSH. I'd watched most of the episodes on YouTube until BBC TV figured out they wanted to get American money too, and made everyone take down their clips. I don't think my family will remotely get into that series. I find the hermaphrodite merman Old Greg hysterical, but I realize you have to evolve with the show to even "get it."

Then, because I'm a Jane Austen completist, I got the 2005 PRIDE & PREJUDICE. Man, it's awful. Not so awful I wouldn't buy it, and I'm almost always intrigued by how Joe Wright films things (will remain permanently amazed at ATONEMENT). Mostly I'm a fan of Keira Knightley too, with her gorgeous face and upper class drawl.

But the adaptation just removes whole characters the plot needs, and makes over relationships elsewhere. The casting -- like Brenda Blevyn and Donald Southerland for the parents, the bland Jenna Malone as bad sister Lydia -- is sometimes crappy. And having the intensely sharp-minded and socially aware Eliza Bennett drop her jaw, roll her eyes and snort, then go carvorting off around town and field with no bonnet or gloves, it's awful. Keira looks drab, dull, and distractingly flat-chested. Then they end with her fingering the naked calf of Mr. Dorsey who's standing barefooted on their balcony. Yuck.

But now I haz that one too. For me, the perfection of the 1995 BBC series with the hot Colin Firth can never be equaled. I love how Sue Birtwhistle does period stuff!

Since hooking up with goulo and a2na on Friday lunch at Magnolia Cafe -- where I saw Bryan, the screenwriter who was the only other person from Austin at the Hawaii Writers Conference that I identified -- they've been here for a few nights. Lots of activities with and without them this weekend, so it's being a crazily social few days. Whew!

• Had a fun dinner with about 16 folks at Madras Pavillion, which included cow-orkers from Russ's old employer, UD. Including Cow! Also J4, FredS and Clayton. And always good to see martang and Jeffles, plus others from the Russcon days. I ordered what turned out to be 10 little bowls of different vegetarian dishes with mysterious ingredients. Some very tasty! Some so orange that I feared they were made with (despicable!) yams. I got to share most of them when I got full early on, and I was wise to avoid yam-colored foods.
  
• Got my car back early Saturday morning! Finally! And the local insurance adjuster had called me at 4:05 p.m. Friday as I was about to go into a meeting and told me this was the last day for the rent car. I had to point out the North Austin body shop closed at 5:00 p.m. and I was downtown. He grudgingly extended the car for one more day. Then when I got my car, the body shop said they'd had to wait to call me because the adjuster was so late getting there with the check, and they won't release until all funds are paid--!! They'd also told him he was crazy to expect me to pick it up that day, and were concerned about the rental car. All this he knew when he called me trying to psyche me out of that last legal day. What a prince. Still, sure is nice to be driving the Prius again, after a month.
  
• Then took R&A to the Farmers Market at Burger Center Saturday morning, lots of booths with food and drink, and Anna bravely drinks and ingests anything that's remotely vegetarian. There was live music, lots of people with dogs on leashes. I got locally grown green beans and 4 satsumas, which I'd been curious about since they're promoted as citrus you can grow at home.
  
• R&A went off with a UD friend for the afternoon and I was free in time to connect with my progressive women's group for lunch. Many friends I see once a month there to catch up with; others I see more often and they're fun as well.
  
• Then last night, R&A treated me to a dinner and a movie to thank me for hosting them! Now that Russ is vegan, it's harder to find places, and Anna asked that we not do Thai for the 100th time. So I took them to the Asian Center on N.Lamar, and, after a false start at a Vietnamese restaurant that didn't smell or feel right, we went to another of the dozen Asian restaurants there, this one the Korean Grill. They loved the food! All the bowls of vegetables, almost all of them vegetarian, were popular. The owner was a trip, a Korean-American man with a poker face who kept doing crazy teasing. Then killed time at Barnes & Nobles, then on to see the late show of AN EDUCATION. Interesting, well-made movie. Would I give it an A? For me it was B or B+.
  
• This morning, R&A are off brunching with willyumtx and Clayton. I'm about to run errands. This afternoon we'll check out shaevel's house, which I haven't seen for a couple of years. Then they're off for the evening at a board-gaming party and I hope to write some on my novel.

It's fun having them! They move on to another domicile tomorrow, and then leave Austin on Wednesday, not to return for probably another two years...

Not surprisingly, I found years ago that a good place to keep the cats' bathroom necessities was in my guest bath. So the guest tub holds their litterbox, set upon a bed of newspapers, with a plug over the drain just in case grains of stuff filter down.

But goulo and a2na are coming this week! All the way from Poland! For three nights at my house! And they need their own bathroom. Luckily, the guest room is right next to the guest bath. Over the years, several friends have found that handy. Especially since my room and my bathroom are on the other side of the house.

But the cats, they've got to share now. They're very conscientious about their litterbox, and rarely make mistakes. But now that box location has to be moved. So here's what I do 3-4 days before company arrives...

First, the box can't be fresh litter. Of course I scoop it daily! But it has to have a little funk built up to remind the cats where it is...

Because second, the littlerbox comes out of the tub and lives for a day on the floor of the bathroom. Next day, it moves to the hallway. Next day it moves further down the hallway. Final day, it's placed in my home office, in the corner. And all of this is done with copious amounts of newspaper covering the surrounding area.

The process of going back into the tub only takes 1 day. They just need one interim step to transition back to that familar locale.

NOTICE: For LJ readers who don't already know, we're having a group dinner with Russ and Anna this Friday, 7:00 p.m. at the Madras Pavillion, 183 and Burnet. Followed by hanging out at my house if so inclined.

My friends at the Austin ghost-busting crew Aether Paranormal did an investigation of one of Austin's most intense haunted houses. The House of Torment keeps its building all year long to work on costumes, sets, etc. It used to be a smallish movie theater that I used to frequent in the parking lot of Highland Mall! But word was, it was haunted. Many creepy things happened!

So Aether investigated and found many unexplainable readings there. Spooky! So for Halloween this year, they set up a booth on Saturday nights and sold their DVDs and tshirts and promoted their Website. Now they are hot stuff with the goth-y high school kids in town! Shad showed me some photos.

Check them out: Aether Paranormal at House of Torment. Those are some amazing costumes and makeup jobs! That filthy, disgusting clown is an anglo guy under that makeup!

Ah, the youth of today... And our world is in their hands...

Wow, this not-quite-kids' movie and not-quite-adult movie WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE has made $65 million+ at the box office as of this week. And it's sure to be a monster hit on DVD too. So, good on Spike Jonz for taking a chance with such an odd property.

The lead, an 8-10 year old actor named Max Records (they started filming in 2005) is precocious and perfect. His face, his furious energy, all just wonderful. The grimy wolf costume, just perfect. You see him on talk shows (he's 12 now) showing eerie calmness and a very deliberate way of talking. He's already acting adult-y. But in ths movie, he's a wild boy with all his emotions showing in his face. It's stunning, and surely an award-winning performance. The stories about filming talk about how affectionate and supportive Jonz was to get Max to be in the moment. And it worked!

Catherine Keener was a great mom. Loved the voice talent. You don't often think of a voice actor being filmed huffing and snorting. But James Gandolfini as the biggest, roughest, most emotionally torn of the monsters, acts through his nose too! Lauren Ambrose, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Dano, Forrest Whittaker, Chris Cooper... They played their parts totally straight. Yes, the monsters are stand-ins for the emotions in Max's developing ego-self. But in this, they're given long-standing beefs and gripes and affinities that influence the plot. There's a bull monster who never seems to talk, or play, and he's played by some no-name actor. Was never quite sure what he was supposed to represent.

Because, yes, the script was full of Jungian analysis and metaphors, with plot developments that come right out of the pages of Bruno Bettelheim fairytale analysis. Jonz and Dave Eggerton were working from a kid's book with 8 lines, after all. They did fine at having a family life set-up that gave Max angst to trouble him, home behavior that made him wanting to stay as a wolf-boy king of monsters appealing, incidents and complications in the monster world that resonated with his psyche. The triggering event, that makes Max realize he needs to return home, was too freaking blatant, so lost the magical spell, but most of the rest of it was well done.

I'm not a fan of muppet movies. They don't give me the required suspension of disbelief because I'm always aware of the puppet assembly and the puppeteer working the gears. That happened here, so I'm not saying it's 100% great. But the voice talents were so strong, that I teared up many times over the monsters' heartbreaks. So there you go.

Austin Film Festival had the regional premier of the well-produced biopic THE YOUNG VICTORIA this Wednesday at the Paramount. I enjoy watching Emily Blunt, who has charisma to burn no matter what part she's in. She was the snotty, highly strung assistant in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. She played a self-destructive American in SUNSHINE CLEANING. But my favorite part for her was as Prudy in THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, where, in a large ensemble cast of excellent actors, she created the most memorable and quirky performance with a wonderful emotional arc.

So she's a good choice to play the young Queen Victoria, in her time from the to-be queen, and then her coronation. Followed by her choosing the best suitor for her husband, then figuring out how to make him feel worthwhile to the kingdom. She does a good "calm face" showing emotion underneath. And she passes for young Victoria pretty well from the paintings of the time. The other good choice is totally British actor Rupert Friend as a dead ringer for Albert. The foo-foo hair, the extremely sweet smile, the really good German accent. He was a babe, and Victoria liked him best from the first. Miranda Richardson was also good, and she's making a latter-day career of playing women of the British royal line, it seems. Paul Bettany could've been good, but the script gave him hardly anything to work with, see below.

The costumes and sets were so so gorgeous! And authentic -- they go into Buckingham Palace, the real joint, for a key scene. That's one of the benefits of getting Sarah Ferguson, her royal something, as a producer. But I fear that also made the story tamer than what was needed...

The problems? The script is lame indeed. A few high points, but no real dramatic arc to keep us invested. It's that thing about history: we know the result. She married Albert, had 300 kids and ruled for 900 years. I'm really surprised at how little was done to educate us about the political and historical facts about her taking the crown in a way that had emotional resonance. This was a script by Julian Fellowes (loved GOSFORD PARK) too! They resorted to white words on a black screen to set up how awful was the Order of Regency. Only we never did get a clear idea why the Parliament wanted and the royalty feared it. How would it have been so different from how it was already?

Much of the dialog was unremarkable. Yes, there was the famous rant by King William, her ailing uncle, where he fawned on Victoria but spat at her controlling mother. But other dialog, especially the love connection with her and Albert, not so great. And the direction was flat as could be. In something like this, you must focus on inanimate objects sometimes to support the story telling. You have to vary close-ups, medium shots, and some full shots. The director in this movie did almost everything medium shot. Very static, and with the lack of arc in the scripts, made the movie even more bogged down.

We had 13 women for the Austin Writergrrls lunch today, Halloween. Ooooh, spooky! At the Ironworks BBQ downtown, where they have huge beef ribs to gnaw on. Scary!

But they're all central Texas women who are creative, smart and funny. So, not so spooky unless you're a de-evolved man who's scared by smart females. If so, may you piss your pants and run the other way. Smart women rule!

Update: Dr. Marjorie (she's a psychologist who drives up all the way from San Antonio) made this animated photo album of it! http://gallery.me.com/marjoriebrody#100366.

It was very cool to have so many wonderful things to celebrate, too! One friend's mystery novel, her first book, has an editor asking to buy it. Another friend's fantasy novel, a past WLT novel contest winner, was just completed and she's sent it to a couple of writing contests. I had my good fortune at the Hawaii Writers Conference to talk about. One friend is in a well-deserved new relationship with a wonderful guy who doesn't have "danger" associated with his name in any way (that's the story of another friend).

But the biggest news is that one friend who released her "How To" family relationships book this year has been filmed by the Dr. Phil Show and is scheduled to appear there in the studios in an upcoming episode! WOOOOOOOOOT! More on that, with links and names, as it becomes a real, contract-signed event.

First, the peppy and inventive music film:


Isn't it cute? It's CGI by Animusic. You can find lots of their music machine animations on YouTube, all with robotic arms, tubes and gears playing various music pieces.

But somebody started a thread where this clip is emailed out and here's what the story (HOAX!) says:

AMAZING!
Turn your sound on for this. Read this first, then watch.

This is almost unbelievable. See how all of the balls wind up in catcher cones.

This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa.. Amazingly, 97% of the machines components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft, Iowa ...Yes, farm equipment!

It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see it was WELL worth the effort.

What kind of pissant takes what's a cool piece of art and technology and then blows all this smoke? John Deere parts, for pete's sake. And can people not see that the laws of physics don't let us use dropping, bouncing balls this way? Maybe for a few bars, which you'd set up a 100 times to get. Jeez!

First, saw a very weird (and the screenwriter had to identify what a character "was" to us afterwards) movie at the Alamo Lakecreek tonight, LITTLE FISH, STRANGE POND. One of the main characters was played, with an American accent, by Callum Blue. And Callum was there in person, and I talked to him! He did a really good, soulful job with an erratic story.

Callum Blue was the drug-addled dead Brit Mason in DEAD LIKE ME. Now he's joined SMALLVILLE as Commander Zod. Because of that, he's bulked up some in muscle -- not the scrawny punk he was. In odd timing, I was just talking to my brother who loves Callum Blue.... hehe

About his movie: it had Matthew Modine as an ambiguously supernatural person. I confess I was watching the whole time to figure out who was real and who people didn't see or hear. There were some quirky and fascinating parts, but mostly it seemed gratutiously weird. And it did that thing Hollywood guys do now that makes me urp -- use serial killing for pure shock value and never give us any depth from such a horrific topic with awful blood-filled scenes. Men! But it had shown once at AFF already, and this night, out in the boonies, the theater was oversold & they had to turn people away. So it's definitely got buzz. Glad I saw it; don't know if it'll get much distribution because it has that wacky plot thing going on.

Saturday I saw a good panel at AFF with Damon Lindelof, co-creator of LOST and producer of the recent STAR TREK movie. And he's just finishing up a movie COWBOYS AND ALIENS. Also on the panel was Roberto Orci, screenwriter for STAR TREK, FRINGE, COWBOYS AND ALIENS, ALIAS, ... And David Hayter, who wrote the X-MEN movies and is also an actor and martial arts person -- and could make a living as a stand-up comedian, he's so quick on his feet. Some of the things they said were useful for SF/F writers, and just cool stuff to know.

• All the mysteries in LOST have an answer (the polar bear, the recorded message in French, the smoke monster, the dead who appear, ...) because Lindelof says the weird stuff doesn't go into the scripts unless they know the answer. What's sometimes in flux is how the reveal happens, but they're all meant to be answered. One exception: Mr. Eko was part of an answer but the actor wanted to leave so they had to kill off his character & then scramble for a new answer.
  
• Hayter changed the end of THE WATCHMEN because he was writing the adaptation the year after 9/11 and couldn't face putting a big squid in downtown NYC as an alien-terrorist act. Plus Alan Moore had his characters say such a horrible act would make the world stop fighting and work on peace, but we were too cynical to believe that now. He says the story arc Alan Moore did for Dr. Manhattan already set up the promise and premise of what he did -- he figures Moore would've ended the graphic novel series similarly if he'd had time (he was famously rushed at the end).
  
• They all agreed that you do NOT start a SF/F script with machines in space, robots doing something, fantasy world weirdness. You must start with the human story first, have something people can relate to. Then you expand out. Like in the new STAR TREK movie, where there's a birth happening before the ship is attacked.
  
• The strongest thing you can do with world-building, they all agreed, was put the SF/F stuff around something with emotional impact. Have it be integral to the character arcs. Like they downplayed the beam-me-down technology development because they couldn't make it important to the relationships.

Crappy photo from the balcony of the filmmakers and NASA retired personnel from the actual Apollo13 mission and movie. Left to Right: Clint Howard, the moderator woman, Jerry Bostick (ground crew), Bill Broyles (screenwriter), Jon Aaron (ground crew), Ron Howard, Captain Jim Lovell (astronaut, Tom Hanks played him), Sy Liebergot (ground crew), Mike Corenbluth (production design), and Al Reinert (screenwriter).

This was the Saturday show at the Paramount downtown for AFF, where we saw APOLLO13, which holds up amazingly well and rightly won all those Oscars years ago. They lined up all these chairs on the stage afterward and these awesome people came together to discuss and answer questions. Really a wonderful moment!

From the AFF program book:
Austin Film Festival and Ron Howard, in association with NASA, present a special screening of Apollo 13! Special guests in attendance include Director Ron Howard, Screenwriters Bill Broyles, Jr. and Al Reinert, Actor Clint Howard, Commander of the Apollo 13 mission Captain Jim Lovell, and retired NASA Mission Control advisors Jon Aaron, Sy Liebergot and Jerry Bostick, who each played important roles in the 1970 Apollo 13 crisis, as well as Production Designer Michael Corenblith.