Work Ethic Quick Notes

I don't know how long I spent writing Ladyhorse.

My re-write of The Sacrifice was done in a sitting, a rather arduous one. The original 1999 (98?) version was written in a single session as well, and I remember it coming to me very easily.

The story I'm writing now, which is not part of NaNoWriMo since it's only a short, began around November 1st, maybe earlier, with a deadline of Thanksgiving (so it's earlier than NaNoWriMo), and that's turning out to be one of the most difficult things I've ever written. I'm quite literally not happy with any of it. I think the problem is that while I stand behind the idea itself, the story requires too much simile and metaphor to work at conveying its imagery, and that can get a little too flowery for me.

The closest thing to a novel I've written was a five-act play written around 1998. It took me 2 years to write, longer if you count the 50-plus scraps that were eventually consolidated into the work, making for its 75-plus main characters. I'm never posting it or showing it to anybody. I'd rather tell the story of how I got the idea to consolidate the stories, because it is kind of hilarious (and I can say that because it wasn't my idea):

These stories were all set in relatively the same universe, and I had envisioned a kind of crossover culminating in a singular ending (I'll just say one word about it: Dallas), but only thought of that ending, nothing about the interaction of the separate characters. One day, I was in the school library, writing a story of a soldier becoming a doctor. A friend (of sorts) walked by and asked what I was doing. I told him I was writing. He asked, "Fiction?"
"Yeah," I replied, "And it's going about as well as the other stuff I've written." He looked interested, and said as much, with the prospect of being able to offer me advice since he'd written much himself. I told him that the problem with how I write is that I always have an idea of a beginning, and I more or less know how I want the story to end, but it's making the connection between the start and stop that gets to me. Believing he knew where I was going, he nodded and finished my sentence:
"Because you always want to introduce new characters, new situations."
I shook my head, "No, it's not so much that...." I stopped that sentence dead in its tracks after realizing that his complaint made for really good advice. I asked, "What did you just say?" like one of those Mel Brooks moments where you first dismiss or even laugh at an idea, but the moment you speak your dissent is the same moment you realize it's complete genius:
"Maybe we should send the dummies into battle."
"Ha!" One one-thousand, "Hmm...."

The best advice I ever got about writing came from my Western Civilization professor during my freshman year at UNM. He said that the first sentence of your essay (or anything you're writing, for that matter) should sound like it has absolutely nothing to do with what the paper is about. It's kind of hard to elaborate on what exactly that means or entails, but here's the best example I can think of, the opening sentence to John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids:

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

The novel, for those of you who don't know, is about ambulatory, carnivorous plants with venomous tongues that have a ten-foot reach and target the eyes, yet those are not the worst thing going on in the world when the story starts.

Civilization by Committee (Metropolis Tezuka/Rintaro)

I never thought the time would come when I'd actually get to use the following analogy to describe a film.

Take the DeLorean, the DMC-12, arguably the most famous (if not most recognizable) car in film history. Despite its place in pop culture and history, in terms of automotive design, it's something of a spectacular failure. The fact is, no single element of this car's design is uncool or ill-conceived, but putting them all together on the same car simply doesn't work. The Double-Y chassis designed by Lotus gave the car's mid-engine layout fantastic handling, but the stylish gull-wing doors gave it too high a center of gravity to take advantage of it. The stainless steel body looked striking enough, but was almost impossible to maintain. The engine was a collaboration of three great automakers, yet their combined efforts were staggered by changes made to comply with United States emissions standards.



Rintaro's Metropolis is a DeLorean.

Perhaps it's a matter of expectations being too high, but I was really disappointed by this film. Of course, when your story is patterned after one of the most influential and iconic films of all time, it can be a heavy and cumbersome premise to run with. Imagine if Disney decided to start making films based on the works of William Shakespeare rather than classic fairy tales. There would be no denying the visual craftsmanship, but Disney's usual vibrantly charming animation style and art direction would undoubtedly clash with the dark and subversive tone of something like Titus Andronicus. Dark twists on Disney characters have worked in past instances such as the Gargoyles television series, the Kingdom Hearts games, or some of the lesser-known Mickey Mouse comics like The Throg Ray Wars, but a tragedy about a roman general whose daughter is physically mutilated and takes his revenge by making a meal of her attackers served to their own mother would simply be going too far. Metropolis has this same issue of tonal conflict in that the themes it deals with are done a massive disservice by its presentation. Maybe if the character designs were a little less cartoonish and cuddly, or if the backgrounds were less busy and realistic. Maybe if the score were either a more traditional orchestra or a full-on jazz ensemble throughout instead of jarringly flip-flopping between them at rather inappropriate times. Maybe if there had been a little more clarity of vision to the art direction and design, perhaps there would be fewer distractions that break the immersion into an otherwise beautifully-crafted world. Sadly, however, they distract only from deeper flaws. Beneath the visuals and sounds lay the plots and characters. This is where substance has a chance to step forward and let style save face. Sadly, it doesn't fare much better.

The plot of Metropolis is rather cluttered and scatterbrained, littered with false starts and half-baked ideas, but it's ultimately linear enough that a decent summation can be given before addressing its flaws. The film begins with the celebration of the finished construction of a building called The Ziggurat, a massive tower in the center of the city. There is some unrest surrounding the building's construction because of suspicions that its purpose is completely military and not at all civil. These suspicions are correct as the ziggurat's crowning feature is a device capable of generating sunspots, which causes chaotic interference with all electromechanical devices, namely robots. The weapon is controlled from a single room adorned with an ominous-looking throne. As for who sits in the literal seat of power, Duke Red, the lead military authority in Metropolis, hires the mad scientist Dr. Laughton to construct a new kind of android not only indistinguishable from a normal human, but also modeled after his deceased daughter. The duke's intention is for Tima to take the throne and be the main controlling component of the weapon. Rock, Duke Red's adopted son, feels this plan is all wrong and that it should be the Duke himself who takes the seat. The conflict stems from Rock's resolve to seek out Dr. Laughton's secret lab and stop him from completing construction of Tima. Coincidentally, Laughton is being pursued by Detective Shunsaku and his nephew Kenichi, who rescues Tima from the wreckage of the lab following its destruction by Rock.

The first and most obvious problem that arises from this premise is a question of motivation on Duke Red's part. Why would he want a robot in control? Is it some kind of stalemate tactic, with a robot not recklessly using a weapon that affects other robots? If that's the case, why would the robot be made in the image and given the impression of being the duke's own daughter? If she thinks she's human, wouldn't she then make human decisions? On the other hand, if we look at it from the superhuman angle (as Duke Red and Dr. Laughton insist Tima is), why would a superior being be concerned with or have a better viewpoint of the petty affairs of lesser beings, let alone be in charge of the arsenal? There are just too many factors to see the logic in this plan.

Speaking of multiple factors, the second glaring flaw this film has is that it has no singularly apparent protagonist. At first, we might think Kenichi is the hero and, for all intents and purposes, he is despite being notably absent if not literally unconscious for nearly one-third of his total screen time. More often than not, he serves as a kind of bargaining chip to lure Tima out of hiding; Rock uses a forged letter from him to lure her out of Duke Red's home, and Duke Red himself keeps Kenichi captive in the ziggurat, knowing that his detective uncle will have Tima use her superhuman powers to search for him, thus bringing her to her potential seat of power at the ziggurat. It's an ironic (even cute) twist on the damsel-in-distress trappings of an adventure story, but Tima is too underdeveloped as a character to make it a full role-reversal.
Later on, we're introduced to Rock, whom we almost are led to believe is the real lead (especially if you knew going in that he's an original character created for the film, which I didn't). His should be the most interesting character arc, desperately trying to gain his adopted father's approval yet not being able to keep silent about his father's irrational and immoral decisions. That he doesn't understand his father's plan should make him the audience-identification character given that we don't understand the plan, either. However, he's just too unlikeable to relate to; normally, we can forgive an arrogant anti-hero's antics because of the faults of his personal life or because he eventually commits some redeeming act of selflessness or kindness (Save the Cat, as screenwriters say), but this latter action never comes to pass. He enters as a dastardly antagonist, and exits as one as well, leaving only a body count in his wake.
Detective Shunsaku could have also made a good lead, but he only comes center stage and into his element after Kenichi is taken by Duke Red. When introduced, he comes across as comedy relief, second fiddle to his nephew (again, the one we first believe to be the hero). Even during his separation from Kenichi following the destruction of Laughton's lab, he only offers occasional points of insight before resorting to his usual pratfalls and farcical misadventures. All this just makes his taking the wheel toward the finale that much more unprecedented and difficult to take seriously. Playing the fool in act one only to come out on top before the final curtain is a difficult trait to have in a hero because it throws the audience for a loop and breaks their relationship to the character, which is why more often than not it's reserved for villains or other traitorous denizens of fiction. The only other surefire way it works on heroic terms is when the narrative turns its focus to how the supporting cast reacts to these seemingly out-of-character moments by the lead(*), but this doesn't happen as no one is surprised by or ever doubts his actual competence.
As for the supporting cast, two of the characters who could have made decent contributions to the plot are rendered virtually ineffectual by the same revolving-door narrative structure that marginalizes the main cast. Pero, Detective Shunsaku's city-appointed android assistant, for example, serves the Red Dwarf's Kryten-esque role of "Exposition on Legs" minus any actual personality or relevance, making his death as pointless as that of the man who caused it. That man is Atlas, whose name is an unsubtle reference to objectivism(**), our second-most useless character. Between his late entry and hasty exit, coupled with the fact that the most interesting part of his character arc is his staring match with Pero at the onset of his workers' revolution, he's only one rung on the ladder above Pero in terms of importance to the story. Furthermore, the very revolution he's essentially the face of is by far the least important subplot of the film, which is a shame given how central the workers' revolt was in the original Metropolis. They speak out against the upper class, but their violence is directed at the machines they insist took their jobs, one of which is described as being too dangerous for humans to do in the first place. Overall, the revolt just comes across as incompetent and misguided; One scene a pair of Zone 1 citizens can be seen curb-stomping a robot, and the next scene an entire crowd of them are standing in awe of a firefighting robot putting out a burning building in their zone. For them to then take to the streets and massacre every robot they come across only emphasizes how misdirected the revolt is. Of course, it is entirely possible that the robot massacre is merely a prelude to what should be their real and proper objective of storming the ziggurat, which ends in a slaughter before they get to the front gate, but that just raises more questions about their motives. If the ziggurat was their real target, and the robots were not hindering them (except for Pero to stand in the middle of a very wide street and calmly advise that their demonstration disperse), why the massacre? Sure, the workers' revolt in Lang's Metropolis was equally misguided and needlessly violent, but that's because it was deliberately misguided by a plant in their own ranks. Atlas is no plant, so our only conclusion about him is that he's just an idiot leading a herd of sheep through a minefield. That's not sympathetic, that's suicide.
It's entirely possible that these casualties of characterization and plot development are redeemed by having more fleshed-out backstories and exposition in the original manga. This, however, I cannot accept as a saving grace to the film, or any film adaptation for that matter. An adaptation should do justice to its source material but ultimately stand alone. If the film can't be bothered to tell us enough about Atlas to make him an important character, then the film shouldn't have him in it. If a point made in the source can't be expanded upon or at least done justice in the film, it needs to be omitted and worked around. It's the same problem I have with The Last Airbender and every Harry Potter film since the third one, with them feeling less like adaptations and more like ancillaries. Lastly, even if one were to try and take the source material into consideration as a way of making up for all the film's shortcomings, it would do no good because not only is Rock an original character created for the film (and thus has no excuse), but much of the remaining cast members are actually borrowed from Tezuka's other works, so it's practically impossible to judge them in terms of the source material because they were quite literally never there to begin with.
As it stands, Rintaro's direction of Tezuka's Metropolis fails as a film, on both the style and substance fronts. It's a spectacular failure, true, but a failure nonetheless.

(*)The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is a textbook example of this formula and how it can work effectively as a narrative structure.

(**)Which has absolutely nothing to do with any of the themes explored in any version of Metropolis. In fact, if any character in Metropolis (2001/1927) exemplifies objectivism, it's Laughton/Rotwang (respectively), and they rank among the villains, so it's either a misnomer or a condemnation. Take your pick.

F--- Hughesnet

Hopefully, I can get through writing this. When I got my new job back in July, the new income permitted me to move to a place where I could get high speed internet through a cable provider. The old place was too rural and couldn't have cable, leaving dial-up and satellite the only options. Enter Hughesnet, with their limited data connnection of 200MB/day, mediocre customer service, 80USD/month bills for so-called service, and 400USD early termination fees (despite only being an internet provider. Until the day of cancellation, I actually thought the ETF was 200, like a cell provider or most cable services; they offer more than web services, yet the web-only provider charges more. Still, I cancelled, resolving to pay the final 400 over time.
Today, I just get home from work and find a letter from Hughesnet showing a final balance 300USD over the previous one of 400. The extra was a returned equipment fee, because in the move I'd managed to leave the modem in the trunk of my car well past the 45 day return window. I called in to see about waiving the fee if I sent it in this week, only to find out from them that I don't even have all the equipment. It turns out, in addition to the modem and power supply, which I confirmed with them by phone the day I cancelled the service, I have to include something called the Radio Assembly, part of the receiving dish outside in the front yard of a house I moved out of 3 months ago. I have no idea if it's still there. Customer service insisted they not only told me about the Radio Assembly, but also e-mailed me instructions on how to disassemble the dish. I didn't read this e-mail because, as I told them today, I was only told of the modem's return. Why would I need/read directions in identifying a modem and its power supply? Their notes on that call I made back on the 14th are vague, saying only that the "equipment" must be returned, with no details beyond that. So, nearly 1000 is owed to an internet provider because of a 100USD modem (that can be returned right away) and a 200USD dish component that may or mat not be there after all this time.
I'm literally having trouble breathing, and I feel like I'm about to pass out as I can't seem to take a deep enough breath. I'm taking breaks as I write this to catch my breath to quell the dizzy sensation, and I don't even have asthma.
I found out just after the call to Hughesnet that I became an uncle for the third time this morning, and now I can barely stand up because of a stress attack over some stupid bill.

EDIT: It's been about four hours, and I'm a little better (and adding tags). I drove by my old house on my way to get food, and luckily the dish is still there, so I'll come by tomorrow, meet the new owner, and get to work disassembling the dish. I wonder, though, if someone moves into a house and gets the same satellite service, would Hughesnet get them a new Radio Assembly? If so, what happens to the old one, given that while it doesn't technically get sent back by the previous owner, it does get handled by a professional installer with connections to the company?

vii Favorite Movies With Numbers in the Titles That Are Not Sequels

2001: A Space Odyssey
32 Short Films About Glenn Gould
THX-1138
7 Samurai
District 9
The 10 Commandments
Plan 9 from Outer Space

Honorable Mention:
Godzilla 2000 , technically speaking, none of the Godzilla films are exactly sequels, more like episodes, akin to James Bond films or the works of Kevin Smith. There may be ties (especially if it involves Mechagodzilla), but each film, by its very nature, stands alone. If nothing else, Godzilla 2000 has the weakest ties to the other films in the series.

10 of My Favorite Movies With One-Word Titles:

Labyrinth
Hero
Rashomon
Powaqqatsi
Unbreakable
Casshern
Strike
L'atalante
Solaris
Metropolis

You know what I hate about Stephen King?

The damned colloquialisms.

Whether it's:

"F--- me, Freddy" in Dreamcatcher,

"Shoot a Pickle" in The Tommyknockers,

"Doodly-Damn" in Cycle of the Werewolf (thankfully excised from Silver Bullet),

or any other that I can't remember, they're omnipresent and annoying. They grind the story to a screeching halt and never sound natural coming out of anybody. Maybe the problem is simply that I've never in my entire life actually heard anyone say any of these things. Whenever I hear someone in the story say them, they never seem to be in the right context, and even READ like they were afterthoughts. As dialogue in film or television adaptations, they sound even more clunky and forced. It completely kills the immersion and utterly deflates the terror.
Of all the criticisms I can level at King's work, this is the only one I can never forgive and move on from (except maybe the name-branding and pop-culture references).

Okay, this could pose a problem...

I just found out that when I post a weblog entry, the date it sets is not actually the date it gets published, but the day the draft was created (or last saved, I can't quite tell). This made my horror movies for non-horror movie fans list show up as being posted on the 15th of October rather than the 18th, making the whole "13 days until..." motif rather embarrassingly erroneous, if only in appearance.

This strikes me as very odd. I mean, why would I want the "post" date to be based on when I wrote the draft as opposed to when I actually publish the post? After all, when a film is copyrighted, it's copyrighted the year of its theatrical release, not the moment post-production concludes or principal photography wraps or the script is approved. Many films have been sidelined by distributors (would-be or otherwise) for years following post-production. Video games have a similar problem, especially considering the games that are imported from Japan. I recently heard about a game called Hydlide, an RPG released back in 1985 in Japan but not released in the US until some four or five years later. In terms of technology, even back then, that was practically a generation gap, akin to comparing Phantasy Star II (1989) to Final Fantasy VIII (1999) or even The Tower of Druaga (1984) to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000).

Of course, that's overstating the situation as we're only talking about a few days or maybe weeks, but it's not as if I wrote the entry out in full and then let it sit in the posts list for weeks before publishing it. Even if that were the case, I'd still give it a once-over, and I know there would be changes to make, whether they were needed or not.
It's a problem I've had since maybe even high school; no matter how much preliminary writing I'd do, I'd end up doing a first-page rewrite the night before. I wouldn't even look at that first draft for guidance. Of course, that had as much to do with me having already internalized my notes on the given subject as any sort of dissatisfaction or disassociation with that early draft. This habit reached its apex in college and at one point I was very overwhelmed with something like four papers in three consecutive days.
The truly ironic part, though, was that I'd always get better grades on those rushed essays than the few essays that I'd write early on and finish weeks before the due date, as though they were the control factor in an experiment. At worst, I'd get a B on a hasty and agonizing re-write.
People tell me this is a great ability, and sometimes that they even envy me for it. The fact is, I hate it. I hated that my last-minute forehead-bleeding sessions got better results than works I'd planned out in advance and got done early. It cheapened the accomplishment and left me feeling like I'd put a gun to my head as some sick means of self-motivation. It's like when you start nodding off on a long drive and, instead of doing the sensible thing and pulling over, slap yourself as hard as you can. Sure, you've made great time, but the stinging sensation on your palm and cheek doesn't go away as quickly as it should and you feel like a tool for hitting yourself. It's like how I imagine Bruce Banner feels when he makes himself get angry and reluctantly unleash The Hulk.
It never helps that I already sweat over every word I write, regardless of time, even if it's a reply to a comment on something I've written or a thank-you note for a birthday card. I worry over everything and find myself playing out every possible outcome of the scenario, from jovial conversation to excruciating fall out. Maybe it's some subconscious fear of dying and the inevitable reality that ultimately my words survive me, as they ultimately do for everyone.

So, yeah, Blogger turned out to have a weird set-up with drafts and publishing dates. Good thing I caught it now before I finished a few other time-sensitive journal entries.

Lastly, random fact about me: I hate saying goodbye. Hearing it is somewhat tolerable, but overall it just depresses me. I think I can cite the moment when it began getting to me, but it would only be a supposition and giving that event far too much credit. So, if you're the first to say goodbye, and there's a pause before I reply (with anything BUT goodbye), that's the reason.

Good night, and good luck. (Haven't closed a journal with that phrase in years. I like it, even if my theater background makes me averse to wishing good luck. Come to think of it, I should really see that movie again; the last time I saw it was in the theater.)

Horror For All!

As Stephen King pointed out in his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, horror comes in three flavors: Terrify, Horrify, and Gross-out. Gross-out is self-explanatory, best represented by films like the Saw series (which will plague us for, hopefully, the last time with this year's installment), Turistas, and anything made by Herschell Gordon Lewis, the Godfather of Gore. Horrify is less obvious, but just as straightforward in concept; it refers to what's commonly called the jump scare, anything that's only really scary because it startles us with its abruptness and unexpectedness, playing on our flight-or-fight response hardwired into our very being by evolution itself. Terrify, lastly, is the hardest to describe as it relies neither on visual stimuli or instinctive reactions to make itself known. Rather, it works by what it doesn't do but makes you think it will.
One might think, then, that this makes for three different types of horror movies, one for each form of fright. However, in terms of horror movies, there's more like two, with Terrify serving as a kind of guiding principle for the other two to follow. In fact, Terrify is so vague as a principle that some of its best cinematic examples are not even horror movies. Films of the Gross-Out variety, on the other hand, tend to "preach to the choir" so to speak, while those of the Horrify ilk rise above the one-trick pony quality of their gory kin and tend to draw the bigger crowds.
What follows, in honor of having only 13 days until Halloween, is a list of films that favor the Terrify variety of horror, and only occasionally employ the Horrify strategy, but all generally steer clear of the Gross-Out ideology. In other words, these are horror movies that really anyone can enjoy; not many people like to get grossed out, but deep down, almost everyone likes to get scared on some level, even if only at one particular time, like a certain holiday.

KAIDAN:
This Oscar-nominated anthology based on Japanese legends collected and published by Lafcadio Hearn is as eerie as it is beautiful. Japan as a nation was something of a Johnny-come-lately when it came to color in its cinema, having been completely left out of the Technicolor era. That said, when they came on the scene, they hit the ground running, hitting their full stride by the time Kaidan (sometimes spelled "Kwaidan" due to the translational sensibilities of the time) reached screens. The sets look like sets, it's true, but what sets they are. Admittedly, I've only seen two of the four segments that comprise the film, but even just one of them is worth the price of admission and I'll probably be celebrating Halloween by checking out the other two. The two parts I saw were "The Woman of the Snow," where a happily-married woodsman admits a terrible secret to his wife, only for her to have one for him as well, and "Hoichi the Earless," where a blind musician is asked by a mysterious visitor to play for a most uncanny audience.

SOLARIS:
Not many would consider Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey to be a horror film, nevermind that most of the story involves a group of astronauts trapped on a claustrophobic ship run by a sentient computer with full control of the airlocks, life support, and (most importantly) any and all communications with anyone who might be able to do anything to help in case, say, said computer were driven homicidal by a small oversight in teaching it the difference between being asleep and being dead. In Andrei Tarkovsky's "Anti-2001" film Solaris, it's not the computer onboard that one should be weary of, nor even the enigmatic and alien ocean below, but of one's own demons within, or rather, what the aforementioned ocean makes of those inner demons. For reasons never fully explained, the ocean of the eponymous planet is able to make physical representations of people from the crew members' respective pasts. The trouble is, the ocean doesn't quite get many of the details right. It's not its fault, though; it's working from their memories... and consciences.

THE FORGOTTEN:
There's quite a bit of hate out there for this film, and, for the life of me, I don't understand exactly why. In a way, it's the perfect kind of horror movie; it takes a simple premise (in horror terms, a common fear) and runs with it. In the case of The Forgotten, the base fear that makes up the premise has to do with paranoia, the feeling that some unseen force has an agenda against you and you are completely powerless against it, coupled with the possibility that the whole thing may be merely self-delusion. In the film, Julianne Moore plays Telly, a mother grieving the loss of her son, the exact circumstances of which are not only mysterious, but ever-changing, from a plane crash at the age of nine to a miscarriage that many years earlier. Admittedly, the execution of the film's "What's real and what isn't?" motif is fundamentally flawed, but the performances keep you invested in spite of that.
My only beef with the film is that I've somewhat already seen it before, albeit in a rather unlikely place, the 5th episode of the 4th season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Entitled "Remember Me," the story centers on Dr. Beverly Crusher unknowingly trapped in a failed warp bubble experiment wherein members of the ship's crew sporadically disappear without anyone giving any notice or having any memory of them ever existing. It aired on the 22nd of October in 1990, fourteen years before the release of The Forgotten. The two share a similar premise, and both feature a strong female lead (both redheads, oddly enough). They even share a subtext in the form of romantic tensions between the leads and their male counterparts, Crusher and Picard in the case of Star Trek, and Telly and Ash in The Forgotten. I wonder if screenwriter Gerald Di Pego is a Trekkie?

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY:
I feel like I've talked endlessly about these "faux first-person footage" films and, for those of you that have endured reading those reviews of mine, it may seem a bit strange that I'd recommend one in any favorable light. Put simply, of all the Blair films out there, this is one of the best. Most of the scenes in the film are locked-off shots. That is, the camera is mounted on a tripod and left "unmanned" by any sort of camera operator. The angles favor function over flattery and certainly aren't intended to hide or obscure anything. Though seen as a weakness in comparison to other Blair films, this lack of ambiguity works in the film's favor and while we may never see the entity in question, there's certainly no question about what it is, what it wants, and how far it's willing to go to get it.

FLATLINERS:
The fear of dying is arguably the most common and universal fear that plagues humanity. Almost all of our actions are dictated, driven, and motivated by the singular principle that we are mortal, and that mortality is fickle and unpredictable. Flatliners centers around a group of medical students obsessed with death, namely patients who have actually experienced it or situations not far removed from it, with one patient having once been declared legally dead for four-and-a-half minutes. The students, using their medical knowledge, endeavor to "explore" the great unknown by way of inducing near-death states of being. They each are revived, luckily and in the nick of time, each having a different and unique experience of "the other side." The trouble is, they don't leave those experiences behind when they come back. What's great about this film is that, because the fear it centers upon is essentially that of the unknown, it really doesn't matter what your personal beliefs are going in. I don't personally believe in the afterlife, but that didn't make the film any less terrifying. For me, the real moments of fear and tension are in the CPR sessions where the students bring each other back their states of near-death.

THE SHINING:
Part of the reason why this film seems to have such a wide appeal beyond the normal crop of horror fans is that it's really so unlike any other horror film to come before or since. Stanley Kubrick has never been one to work within the confines of genres, ignoring their far-too familiar tropes and cliches yet still staying respectful to them and not straying too far from the path. The Shining stands as a kind of horror psychology test, with different people seeing the film in different lights. For some, it's a ghostly, haunted house story of the most supernatural variety. For others, it's a psychological thriller about the effects of isolation, where . For others still, it may be both of these things, or neither. Whatever the overall interpretation, it's a textbook example of the best kind of horror movie, taking a simple premise and running with it.

THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES:
I actually debated whether or not to include this one, and I'm not going to have that much to say about it, and what I do say will be the result of a mental strain to find the right words. Don't get me wrong, The Mothman Prophecies is an effective horror movie, but the way its horror works is so different from the other entries on this list that it stands as having an unfair advantage over them. Whereas the other films are ultimately works of fiction, though some more thoroughly researched than others, this film is only a slight dramatization of a book that chronicles and collects the accounts of residents of the otherwise-sleepy little town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, of a series of seemingly unconnected events culminating in an unquestionably tragic event not forgotten today. The film is well-made enough on its own merits, but having the backlog of lore, skepticism, and facts sets it above any other attempt in cinema to capture the essence of human fear. The fears are real because the people are real. Say what you will about what they believe they saw, but that makes it no less real to them, their fear of it no less real.

QuikTek

I mentioned Twitter last time, and writing about how I appreciated its versatility made me remember something. The first weblog I ever had was on Yahoo!360. I knew well of (and hated) MySpace, but hadn't heard of Facebook. I always preferred 360 to MySpace because it seemed that 360, by virtue of being a Yahoo! service, attracted a wider and more eclectic audience, whereas MySpace was almost exclusively a teen phenomenon. Call it ageism or technophobia, but it's probably safe to assume that more people have an e-mail address than a MySpace account, therefore that older and/or less tech-savvy generation still "ooh"-ing and "ah"-ing over Electronic Mail will be more likely to start up a weblog if that service is offered as part of the "packaged deal" that came with their e-mail account as opposed to seeking out an external, self-contained site that requires separate registration. In other words, on Y!360, you got more people who would probably not have otherwise started a weblog because they wouldn't want to leave their comfort zone.

Yahoo!360 is gone now, crushed underfoot by practically every other social networking site in existence, the key problem being a few unresolved technical issues (which led to my friend Vanessa tragically losing her entire account), the others being a deliberate dismantling by Yahoo! in light of a proposed buy-out of Facebook and an attempt by Yahoo! to make the networking tools of 360 a more integrated part of one's Yahoo! profile. I've archived those entries to a site called Multiply, a rather shameless MySpace knock-off. I won't link them here; they're not much to look at. Most of them recount my obsessions over my own personal pet peeve about 360 in light of other weblog sites like Multiply or Blogger, which was mobile-friendliness. I prided myself on "breaking the system" by using my PSP's built-in web-browser and wi-fi to write entries in clear defiance of desktops. It probably went a little too far; every time I got a new device, my readers would know it, evidenced by my "Hey, guess what I'm writing this on!" style of entry.

There was something I don't think I ever said on 360 and I think I never said it because I wasn't actually sure how well it would translate to text, so here goes:

The very best thing about 360 is that WE'RE ALL DIFFERENT, COMING FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE, ALL OVER THE WORLD, and yet, at the end of the day, we're all just sitting at home in front of our computers, talking to one another.

the very worst thing about 360 is that we're all different, coming from all walks of life, all over the world, and yet, at the end of the day, WE'RE ALL JUST SITTING AT HOME IN FRONT OF OUR COMPUTERS TALKING TO ONE ANOTHER.

The point is, while I may have been seemingly singing the praises of Twitter last entry, my adoration is almost entirely conceptual; the first social networking site made with mobile networks distinctly in mind. By its very nature, it encourages people to go out into the world and not feel tethered to their undoubtedly uncomfortable desk chairs in front of their undoubtedly cluttered and cumbersome desks upon which rest their undoubtedly ghastly laptops and monolithic desktops.

To crib a saying by filmmaker Jean Cocteau: Weblogs will never truly achieve anything until they can be taken to all the same places ordinary notebooks and pens can go.

Twitter was a good start.

Tumblr appears to be the next step.

Evernote is the long stride between them.

Do It To It, Dammit!

I should have known this would happen; I make a To-Do list and all it makes me want "to do" is anything but what's on the damned To-Do list. In my defense, some of the journal entries proposed are technically "here" on Blogger, just in draft form. So, they aren't NOT being worked on. The only one that may be abandoned is a review of Jim Starlin's Cosmic Odyssey, a mini-series featuring Jack Kirby's New Gods with art by the indomitable Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy. I may still make the accompanying primer video giving an historical overview of Jack Kirby's The New Gods. In keeping with my desire to write reviews of items that don't fit proper categories or are otherwise heavily-marginalized, the video would discuss how originally Kirby's Fourth World series of monthly comics were never meant to be part of the DC Universe proper. That is, we'd never see crossovers with or guest appearances by DC denizens such as Superman or Batman. Tragically, though, the books would be abruptly canceled (the notably ironic exception being Mister Miracle, Super Escape Artist) and many of the characters would be scattered to the winds, settling upon the larger DC Universe in an oddly intriguing kind of "separate, yet joined" status. There's a long-running tradition of superheroes (or other comic book characters) that lack the following to sustain their own title, but are popular enough that guest appearances in other books meet with little to no dissent or disinterest.
As for Cosmic Odyssey, I don't think I'll be reviewing it simply because it's a tad on the unremarkable side. It was far from disappointing; with Starlin's fearless approach to storytelling and Mignola's dramatic lighting and shading, it truly is a match made in heaven, one that I wish would have been repeated prior to Starlin's solo project The Death of the New Gods. Suffice it to say, if Starlin and Mignola do work together again, it won't be on The Fourth World.

Changing gears to old business, there's no update on Jolicloud's "Windows Refund" program as they've yet to answer my inquiry and I've found no other information on it specifically. There was, however, something tangentially related: an article sourcing the Novell Boycott's information about Dell's "Windows Tax Credit." I won't go into too much detail because it's actually going to help me round out the story regarding Jolicloud's refund program, but the long and short of the matter is that Microsoft has essentially pressured Dell into selling PCs with Windows pre-installed exclusively, with prices actually favoring Windows-equipped PCs versus ones with a Linux OS on it.

In the broader scheme of things, there have been a few minor changes to the format of Decay-Proof Record Scroll. I've overcome my fear of tinkering with CSS or, for that matter, any HTML document I didn't write from the ground up myself, and proceeded to tweak the template I selected when I first opened this Blogger account. While I do like the format overall, a few minor problems came up that were fast becoming persistent nuisances, chief among them the width of the main text column. For text, it wasn't an issue, and admittedly seemed to help the words flow, being neither an intimidating, monolithic wall of text nor a thin, whispy news ticker. For videos, however, it turned problematic. Even with videos in the 1.33:1 ratio, the results of refitting them to fit inside the column were less than satisfactory, with videos in 16:9 even more so. Granted, I remember the days when 160 x 120 was the norm and formats like 320 x 240 were "cinematic," but after more than ten years following those days, even I don't feel regret thumbing my nose at videos smaller than 320 x 240. Put simply, it's been long enough, we can expect more. The highest quality Youtube HD video may still only just hold a candle to a DVD, but they're still leaps and bounds above the Cinepak cut-scenes of the early CD-ROM era.

I've also added a Twitter module, which probably gets more updates than any other site I frequent. Then again, that's supposed to be the appeal of Twitter, that you can update it from practically anywhere with any reasonably-equipped electronic device, mobile or otherwise. In a sense, it's what I've always wanted from a weblog tool, a journal anyone can see that's as accessible to me as pen and paper.

Speaking of which, I've also removed Atop the 4th Wall from the Better Reads module. Don't get me wrong, I still watch each new update and hold no ill will against it, it's just that Better Reads seems better suited for weblogs that update irregularly as opposed to AT4W's "Every Monday" model. It also lets me give top billing to my friend Karla Thomas' new Tumblr page Bloggity Blog, which sadly doesn't seem to get half as many followers as her original DeviantART page. It's understandable as, typically, people who "live" on a particular site don't like to be told to go "somewhere else," even if it's only for a brief visit. This is probably the worst part of the whole "Web 2.0" side of the internet; no longer one vast, open country, but a scattering of walled city-states that insist on their own self-sufficiency.
It reminds me of something my brother told me when he went to Canada. On the plane, the in-flight magazine was full of ads promoting tourism in countries all over the world, including Poland and Japan. At first, he didn't think much of it until, when he landed and got settled in, he still kept seeing the same foreign travel ads all over, with the same ubiquity there that "What happens in Vegas..." has in the States. He said it really put the concept of "international" in perspective, noting how the US seems to have this "we have everything right here" mentality when it comes to tourism. It's genuinely sad that we went from services like Geocities to ones like MySpace; sure, it makes networking far easier, but it would seem to do so at the cost of diversity. Perhaps it's just an inevitable social phenomenon.

Last update: I'm also working on a short story, and hopefully I haven't jeopardized its completion by mentioning it here. Like the act of making the To-Do list, I find the less I spend talking about something is more time I can spend doing something, hence not displaying the list here. As such, I'm not going to delve into the plot apart from little hints I've divulged on my Twitter feed, such as doing research on Orbital Resonance despite not technically being a sci-fi story.

Now, we move onward to more regular updates, and less updates about updates.