1. Tavis at the Powells blog notes that a film is being made of Aimee Bender's wonderful novel An Invisible Sign of My Own. Bender is an amazing writer, so this is very cool news.

2. Colleen at Chasing Ray has put out a call for bloggers to write about their favorite political books (fiction or non-) during the month of August. I know I'll be blogging about Orwell's 1984, which sits among the top of my list of influential novels, and will probably also talk about the groovy new cover by Shepard Fairey. Mention will also most likely be made of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which just hit bookstores this week.

3. As cmpriest mentioned, if you have signed up for the mailing list at Tor.com, the free e-book this week was her own Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Yay!

4. storySouth just revealed the Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2007; i.e. the best online short stories published during 2007. In addition to the attention paid to the short fiction of lots of great writers (matociquala, pgtremblay, ombriel, catrambo, kenscholes, jeffvandermeer, cybermonklives, Paul Jessup, snurri, yhlee, samhenderson, Gavin Grant, timpratt, Jason Stoddard, mevennen, scalzi, lucius_t, and Gene Wolfe, among others), Farrago's Wainscot won the Million Writers Award for best new online magazine or journal. W00t to Darin Bradley and the whole FW krewe!

From the 1976 film Network, which I still haven't gotten the chance to see.

This will be a bit long and rambly, so please bear with me.

Officially in the inter-term break now, and though I had a workshop and meeting on campus yesterday, the rest of my week is free. I plan to laze about some, write some, and prepare for Term 2 some, possibly in that order. Janet's off today, so we headed to IKEA with her mum and after a nice breakfast of Swedish pancakes, hard-boiled egg, and carrot cake, wandered about the store noting pieces of fürni or various decorative bits that we could use in our as-yet-nonexistent own flat.

The fiction-writing sabbatical last week went well: the first two days were instruction and activities, and the last three were critique workshops of student stories. Just thinking out loud here, but I may change this format when I do it again at the end of Term 3; for one thing, the stories that were submitted were extremely short (I think the longest was three pages), and were almost exclusively first drafts. This meant hurried work, and often ending the story far too soon; I have no problems with flash fiction, as long as they are complete and developed. For next time, I think I'll approach it more as a process, where we're focusing on different aspects throughout the week, with plenty of time in class to actually work on their stories, so that they end up with a good complete story by the end of the week.

I also noticed that when I asked direct questions, more often than not I got back complete silence. This occasionally happens in my regular classes as well (though I'm trying to get them out of that habit). Part of it, I'm guessing, is that I was a new teacher for most of them, and they didn't feel comfortable enough to engage in discussion. But I definitely think that another part is as a result of the corporate culture so prevalent here, not just in the school but in the whole country. The kids are so afraid of getting the wrong answer that they don't speak up at all; I can understand this to some extent (it's a natural feeling), but I really try to get them to understand that sometimes the best way to learn is through failure. If you're always right, or if you don't give yourself a chance to be wrong, you're never really learning anything.

Okay, what else? A trip to Kinokuniya yesterday yielded Daniel Alarcón's novel Lost City Radio (which they were holding behind the desk for me, and which I'd ordered almost immediately after finishing his collection War by Candlelight), plus an added unexpected bonus: Neil Gaiman's short novel for kids, Odd and the Frost Giants (which, not being in the UK, I was expecting not to be able to read, but there it was on a display with other kids' and YA fiction, for the equivalent cover price of £1.00, with no import fees added, a very nice additional surprise; I started the book last night (around 100 pp. in large type), and finished it this morning).

The plugged-in krewe over at io9 reveal the news that sequels to two of my beloved childhood skiffy films are in development: Tron and The Last Starfighter. All I can say to the filmmakers is this: please don't try to be all cute and self-referential and hip, don't play to the target demographic because most of them probably haven't seen the originals, and don't make your CGI too slick in comparison. Part of why I still love both Tron and The Last Starfighter is their very early adoption of computer graphics, and the unapologetic integration with live-action; they may look cheesy by today's standards, but the look is an important part of each story. Tron takes place within the realm of computers and The Last Starfighter is basically about a video game that turns out to be real. Chunky, true, but done that way for an aesthetic reason (and not just because of the limitations of CGI at that time, although this is indeed part of it). If you watch Revenge of the Sith and immediately follow it with A New Hope, your brain has to twist itself in knots to reconcile the fact that these are sequential movies, because they look so incredibly different, down even to the quality of the film stock.

All right, enough blather. Back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

Yesterday was the end of Term 1. And somehow I survived without spontaneously combusting. Yay me.

I finished marking any outstanding tests, input all the grades into the database system, and actually had time to meet with two students who are helping me out next week.

Next week? you say. But you just claimed that yesterday was the end of the term. Hast thou lost thy marbles?

At the end of each term at Hwa Chong, they have what's called Sabbatical Week. This is basically a week of electives, but it's only one class, which lasts the entire morning. The students bid for the sabbatical, and they can take things like Cooking or Film Appreciation or Fencing or Drums. You know, fun stuff. There's even a literature field-trip to England.

I'm teaching a fiction-writing workshop. As I have some experience with these, I think it'll go well. And on Thursday, my friend and fellow USian expatriate Alison Jean Lester (whose collection, Locked Out, was reviewed here) will come and talk to my students.

To celebrate the (nigh) end of the term, Janet and I went out last night for dinner and a movie (like an actual date, even!). Dinner was at an Indonesian sit-down in the basement of The Cathay; I had chicken rendang, and it was phenomenal, the first time I'd eaten it. So good that it may have supplanted laksa as my favorite local dish.

The film was Persepolis, and surpassed my already high expectations, bringing Satrapi's deceptively simple artwork to life in wonderful and horrible ways. I was also surprised at how funny it was; there was certainly humor in the graphic novels, but it didn't make me laugh out loud like the film did. And despite the fact that it was the dubbed (from French into English) version, the voice actors did a great job (even Iggy Pop) and matched the mouth movements well. If you haven't seen it yet, hie thee to the nearest cinematorium and do so, quicksharp.

I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but I just saw The Pianist, which the helpful librarians at my school let me check out on DVD. Jonathan Carroll once asked on his blog what truly breaks your heart, and it's a question I've thought a lot about since; the heartbreaking list is a short one, and is private, but I have to say that this film is now included. It didn't make me cry, but I was damn close.

From the ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Awards on 8th Feb. 2008: The voice cast of Spongebob Squarepants (Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, and Rodger Bumpass) dub their voices onto scenes from Casablanca, Singin' in the Rain and The Godfather. Made of pure uncut awesome.

Janet and I saw Stardust this weekend, and I'm still trying to decide if I like it. I've put off reading any reviews or comments on the film, because I wanted to form my own uninfluenced opinions.

Anybody who knows me knows that I'm a huge Gaimaniac (a word that I don't believe to have seen before) and read the illustrated novel years ago*. So I already had the story in my head, even though it had been a while since I'd read it, when we stepped into the theater (which was so cold that they were storing meat on ceiling hooks).

For the most part, it was very faithful to the spirit of the book, and I appreciated this. The main storyline is intact, albeit with some changes. Okay, they renamed the protagonist Tristan instead of Tristran, but this could be to save the actors' tongues from getting tripped over. Fine, the rotating guard shifts at the wall are replaced by ass-kicking octogenarian David Kelly. Some differences were necessary just because of the change in medium, from prose to film.

However, there were other changes that I think hurt the film, and in the end make it weaker than the source material.

***SOME SPOILERS AHEAD***

The magical land beyond the wall in the film is called Stormhold. And we learn that it's ruled by a dying king and a bunch of princes killing each other off to gain the throne. But in the book, Stormhold is just the name of the castle and surrounding lands in which these people live; the overarching setting beyond the wall is the realm of Faerie, of which Stormhold is just one part. Because of this, we know that Tristran's entrance into fairyland holds a certain familiarity; mythologists and folklorists and storytellers have been writing about Faerie for centuries (and, one could argue, millenia), and therefore, we know that there are certain expectations about the place. The place by its very nature is suffused with magic, and almost anything, including sitting on a cloud, is possible, albeit for a price. Instead, in the film, we're given the kingdom of Stormhold, where magical things do indeed happen, but we're uncertain just how magical the place is; can anything happen, or are there hidden rules we don't know about? It's a subtle difference, but it's enough to bring up questions that interfere with the viewing experience.

Though the cast is impressive, something about the acting overall felt flat. Possibly the direction. The story (in both the book and film) takes place in the late 1830s, and the dialogue in the book is consistent with this, but in the film it isn't always. Contemporary phrases pop into conversation willy nilly (this is glaring near the end when Tristan tells Victoria that "you need to grow up, and get over yourself"); these anachronistic intrusions hurt the versimilitude of the overall text, and for no discernible reason. (Possibly it was because the screenwriters wanted it to appeal to a broad audience, even as they were aiming for "fresh" and "hip.")

I was also bothered by the fate of Lamia the witch (played expertly by Michelle Pfeiffer). It's interesting that they named her Lamia in the film, as Gaiman has previously used the name for a warmth-vampire in Neverwhere; she is unnamed in the book, simply called the witch-queen (Gaiman has discussed the name change at his blog). Anyway, she's the Big Bad throughout the film (and the book), hunting down Yvaine the star so that she can cut out the star's heart and regain her youth. At the end of the book, the witch-queen has used up all of her magical youth in her pursuit, to the point where she has become a crone: "The old woman, shrunk by age and time to little bigger than a child, held onto a stick as tall and bent as herself with palsied and swollen-knuckled hands." And even though the witch-queen wanted Yvaine dead, the star pities the old woman and lets her go; this type of anti-climactic conclusion has happened numerous times in Gaiman's fiction (notably in Black Orchid), where violence is not met again with violence, where revenge is seen as something that prolongs the cycle of violence; forgiveness, rather than vengeance, is shown to be the higher path. But I suppose the screenwriters felt that moviegoers simply want black-and-white good-and-evil issues, and decided to write a showdown instead, where Lamia is blown to bits by Yvaine's incandescent starlight. The Big Bad gets what she deserves, and we can leave the theater once again comforted that we know right from wrong.

And, lastly, I must bring up Captain Shakespeare. Called Captain Johannes Alberic in the book, his part is very small, rescuing Tristan and Yvaine from being stranded in the clouds, feeding them, and then dropping them off later. Most of the time spent with Alberic is in summary. But the captain changes in the film to an important minor character, played by Robert Deniro. Instead of a skyship captain, he's a lightning pirate (which, I have to admit, was pretty cool, and allowed for some great visuals). But when he reveals himself to Tristan and Yvaine as a gay man, the character loses all credibility. Not because he's gay, but because Deniro chooses to play him as stereotypical camp. I have nothing against the idea of a gay pirate captain (it's actually not far-fetched at all), but Shakespeare is way over-the-top, in his mannerisms, in his penchant for hair styling and fashion and theatre, in his need to put on a dress and dance the can-can in his cabin. It's just too much.

Homosexuality does not necessarily mean transvestism, yet in the movie the two are conflated, and it's played for laughs. But then Shakespeare is caught in this compromising position by Prince Septimus, who quickly overpowers him; the pirate crew run in to find Septimus' sword at their captain's throat, and the image is telling, with Shakespeare on his back, and Septimus looming over him in the overtly dominant position. I didn't even believe that this would happen; regardless of Shakespeare's sexual orientation, the man is a fucking pirate captain. He's gotten to where he is not on reputation alone, but because of skill and cunning; he turns Tristan into a fencing master in less than a week, and is clearly no slouch with a sword; and there were no small number of potential weapons in the large closet in which he was caught out. Septimus is a bad-ass to be sure, but Shakespeare should have been able to hold his own, at the very least until his crew finished dispatching Septimus' men and could rush in to help. But instead, we're given the stereotypical Hollywood view of homosexuality; a gay man can't be strong, a gay man can't be commanding without compromising who he is (although his crew know about him and still accept him for it), a gay man must parade around in women's clothing when no one's looking. What's especially frustrating about this is that Neil Gaiman has written about sympathetic realistically-portrayed gay men and women in his fiction, with no hint of malice or mockery; the fact that the screenwriters portrayed the only gay character in the film in such a way feels like a slap in the face to both Gaiman's writing and to his fans. I might be overreacting and totally off-base, but it's such an obvious thing that it's hard not to notice or have a reaction to it.

So, like I said, I'm still deciding whether or not I really like the film. It has a lot going for it: gorgeously made, well-acted in some instances (the ghost-princes of Stormhold were great in their roles as comic relief; and Claire Danes, one of my long-term crushes, is wonderful in both her insults and luminosity), well-plotted (if a bit slow at times), good transitions. Ricky Gervais' shoehorned cameo was memorable. My above criticisms keep me from geeking out over it like I might have, but none of that changes the fact that the book by Gaiman and Vess isn't altered at all by my reaction to the film, and it remains as enjoyable as ever; however you felt about the film, I still highly recommend the illustrated novel.


*I actually bought the straight text version first, but after totally dissing Charles Vess at the very first Trinoc-con**, I picked up the trade paperback (originally issued as a four-part limited series for Vertigo) that he and Gaiman had collaborated on. And after doing so, I much preferred the illustrated version.

**A huge group of us were in someone's hotel room for a party, possibly Kelly and Gavin's, and Vess was in there as well. We struck up a conversation, and at some point I mentioned Neil Gaiman, and he asked if I'd read Stardust. I admitted that I had, and he asked if I'd read the version he'd worked on. I hadn't yet. Well, he said, I know there are copies in the dealer's room if you're interested. Hefting my nigh full book bag back on my shoulder (full of books, naturally, though now I can't remember which ones), and not wanting to spend any more money on books that weekend, I said something like: that's okay, I'll pass. Which was incredibly insulting, and a dumbass thing to do, and at which point Vess saw someone in the hall he recognized (or at least pretended to), and left. A couple weeks later, I ended up buying the graphic novel at the bookstore, and once again smacking myself for my dumbassery.

Trailer for Be Kind, Rewind, written and directed by Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep), and starring Jack Black and Mos Def. Coming in January 2008. Nice.

As stupid as I thought Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle was going to be, it was a really great movie, funny as hell. In between and amongst all the jokes, they managed to say a lot about race and class without making that the point of the movie. Harold and Kumar are just two normal guys (one uptight and the other outgoing, a classic odd couple pairing) who get baked and then have the misfortune to run up against idiotic racist stereotypes in their quest for the most disgusting burgers in the world.

And from this teaser, it looks like Harold & Kumar 2 will be full of all the same awesomeness. Plus Neil Patrick Harris, once again playing a hypersexualized version of himself.

(via Hyphen Blog)

Jeff VanderMeer's incredible novel Shriek: An Afterword (reviewed here), is now out in trade paperback (in the US version; the UK paperback was actually out before the US hardcover), and I saw some copies (faced out!) while at Kinokuniya the other day.

Some of you may remember that Jeff teamed up with Juha Lindroos to produce a unique short film as a companion to the book, and that Janet and I hosted a showing of the movie almost exactly a year ago at the Colony Theater in Raleigh, where Scott Eagle was a special guest. Sadly, we didn't get too many people attending the event, less than twenty I think, but it was an enthusiastic group, and they kept talking in the lobby long afterward about the film, the book, the author, and other geeky fiction-related things. So, not a big showing, but at least it was for the right people, and, I was told later, the fact that we hosted the Raleigh showing enabled Jeff to book some other venues around the country.

Well, those of you who didn't get the chance to see the film in the venues where it was hosted (or saw it at The Colony where the sound was a bit wonky) can now watch it online. Jeff's even released it under a CC BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) License, which means anyone can share and remix the work (although this doesn't apply to the soundtrack music by The Church, which will be released under a separate Creative Commons license that allows use but not alteration).

A kick-ass steampunk CG-animated short from Blur Studio. (via Brass Goggles)

(Link here if the embedding doesn't show up.)

I just watched Stranger Than Fiction for the first time since seeing it in the theatre, and it struck me once again what a damn good movie it is. Love love love it. As they say: made of awesome.

And I'd forgotten that Spoon frontman Britt Daniel had a big hand in the music for the film, using several instrumentalised Spoon songs as background, as well as one written especially for the film. An ingenius combination, pairing this film and this music.

I've been listening to a lot of Spoon lately (Kill the Moonlight is on heavy rotation right now). I'm warming up to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, still available in free streaming format until its official release on Tuesday (I don't know if they'll take it down at that point or leave it up).

No real point to this entry except to g33k out over music and a movie that I really dig. Which is what blogs are all about, right?

I checked out of the hotel about an hour ago, and am killing some time online before my bus arrives at 2:30.

Janet actually left yesterday, since she had to be back in Singapore today to take a test for her new tour job. After she left, I puttered around with a sad heart. I knew that I would be seeing her again a day later, but I just miss her so damn much when she's gone. Over three years we've been married, and I'm still reduced to a morose unmotivated lump when we're apart.

I did see Transformers last night, after benpeek's rave and lilredbite's excited descriptions, and enjoyed it for the most part. I tried to turn off my analytical brain and just enjoy the 'splosions and big! transforming! robots!, and was carried through for the most part on the escapism. Although I was bothered by the almost blatant stereotyping (detailed by nojojojo here), and Stoopid Character Syndrome played for comedic effect. Just like the original animated series, the movie is a vehicle to sell toys, and my expectations were appropriately low. The little ADD Decepticon was pretty funny.

All right, signing off now. Hopefully around 9 p.m., I'll be back in Singapore, legally able to stay in the country for another 90 days. Here's hoping I'm not forced into any other vacations anytime soon.

Most people know Jim Henson as associated with The Muppet Show or Sesame Street, but Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing recently posted about two early experimental surreal pieces by the master puppeteer:



"Limbo: The Organized Mind" (4:21): a mixture of puppetwork and stock footage, from an appearance on The Tonight Show in 1974.



The Cube (53:33): a minimalist black-and-white train ride through perception and the irreal that appeared on NBC Experiment in Television in 1969; the absurdity and existentialism examined here remind me of Zoran Zivkovic's fiction.

Both of these are certainly worth seeing, especially if you want a peek into another side of Jim Henson's fascinating creativity.

Among the trailers before Ta Ra Rum Pum (more about this movie later) was one for a new Bollywood film coming out in June, called Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, and it looks and sounds awesome. I know you can't judge a movie by its trailer, but damn was it well-cut and compelling (and booty-shake-inducing). I almost don't care what the plot is. How can you go wrong with a pimped-out Amitabh Bachchan?

The full trailer is available on the movie's website, although it takes a little while to load. Also, unlike the version that screened in the theater, the website trailer doesn't include any subtitles, which is kind of a problem if you (like me) don't speak Hindi. Still, it's worth a looky.

Every Friday, SomethingAwful.com hosts a photoshop mashup contest, and the results are almost always entertaining. This week, the contest was to remix movie posters as if they were originally released as grindhouse exploitation flicks from the 70s. The results are impressive, some of them damn genius, such as the above, which has turned one of my favorite feel-good films into something wonderfully sleazy.

(via Boing Boing)

Yesterday, I walked out of the condo complex where we live, crossed Upper Changi Road, waited at the bus stop for about two minutes, hopped on the number 10 bus and took it all the way to Tampines Mall in order to catch a matinee of Spider-Man 3 playing there. And I did it all by myself. May not seem like much, but it was an accomplishment. Living in a foreign city and having to navigate public transportation is a new concept for me, and it's nice to know that I can do it without Janet's help (although she did tell me which bus to take, and where to go once I reached my destination).

The movie (which opened here in Singapore on Tuesday, and which was preceded by fully fifteen minutes of commercials on top of the three or four movie trailers) was fun and exciting and a worthy successor to the franchise. Throughout it all, all the action and fight scenes and suspense, is Peter Parker's relationships with his loved ones. I was incredibly impressed by the writing and acting in this one in the ways that it explores the subtle and complicated histories that Peter has had with Mary Jane, Aunt May and Harry Osbourne, and there's a moment during the climactic fight scene that almost made my cry with its awesomeness.

At almost two and a half hours, it felt like they were trying to cram far too much into one movie, and I almost wish they had left the Eddie Brock / Venom story for the fourth installment (it would have been an awesome cliffhanger, Peter rejecting the symbiote and having it find Eddie; and I'm not spoiling anything, since this subplot is featured heavily in the trailers and commercials for the film) since it gets short shrift among everything else, but it was so much fun that I almost didn't notice.

I was also excited to see that Ta Ra Rum Pum is playing in the same theater right now. My sister Kristin has a small role in the big Bollywood film, as a bitchy corporate executive that reduces the star of the movie to tears. Her part has gotten some press in the Raleigh news sources [ ABC11 | Independent Weekly | News & Observer ]. Janet and I are hoping to see it in the next few days.

Currently reading 14theditch's collection The Fantasy Writer's Assistant, which has taken me far too long to get to.

Last night, The Colony showed an original 35mm print of the 1985 film The Goonies, as part of their new "retro classic" series that will take place on the third Wednesday of every month. The audience consisted of hipsters and geeks and dorks all around our age, fans of the movie when it originally came out over twenty years ago. Almost everyone had a glass of wine or cup of beer, and we were all ready to have a good time.

The film was an instant throwback to my childhood. I was ten years old when it first came out, though I don't remember seeing it in the theater; most of my viewings were from HBO. When I was a kid, I always thought the beginning was slow, with things not getting exciting until the gang goes down the hole in the fireplace in the Fratellis' basement and begins their exploration; but now, the beginning is probably my favorite part. True, the booby traps and challenges the Goonies face while underground are still exciting and fun (the water chute sequence still makes me squee), but it's when we see them just acting like kids at the beginning -- ragging on each other, riding their bikes, displaying a sense of adventure and optimism that just maybe they'll be the ones to find One-Eyed Willie's pirate treasure* -- that strikes me as the most interesting and compelling, even if it's just the set-up for the action to come later.

It was also interesting to see a group of pre-teens casually throwing around "shit" and "dammit" in a PG kids' movie, and made me like it even more. Kids do actually talk that way, and it was nice to be reminded that Donner and Spielberg were canny enough to recognize this.

Anyway, both Janet and I had a great time. It's been a while since I've seen The Goonies, and I'd forgotten what a funny damn movie it was. Jeff "Chunk" Cohen was comedically brilliant, and the "Truffle Shuffle" still makes me howl with laughter:



*I realize that "one-eyed willie" is a euphemism for a penis (though I'm guessing the filmmakers didn't realize this at the time), and okay, it made me giggle the first couple of times the name came up in the movie, but there were more than a few audience members who guffawed loudly every single time the pirate was mentioned. I mean, come on, how emotionally stunted can you get?

I'm eagerly anticipating this final installment in the Pirates of the Carribean trilogy, and Janet and I are very much hoping that they get the Southeast Asian details accurate. Chow Yun Fat's character is a Chinese pirate who appears to tool around Singapore (though it's unclear from the buzz I've read if he's actually Singaporean).

My clockpunk pirate story "Bogeymen" takes place in Singapore around the same historical period, and I'm jazzed that it'll be published near the same time that the movie comes out.

(via Bloggasm)

Thing #1: Behind the Wainscot #3 is now online, and it includes fiction by rudi and ecmyers. I was hoping to get another Mythologism done in time for this issue, but just ran out of time what with all the moving stuff going on. Anyway, go read the issue. Rudi's "Detail from a Painting by Hieronymus Bosch" is especially groovy (I've been fan of his fiction since we met at Clarion).

Thing #2: With "Bogeyman," I have inadvertently joined a newish sf subgenre (via Warren Ellis). Who knew? Clockpunk just seemed a cool term to appropriate (pinched from Jay), since there's a steampunk vibe to the story, but steam engines haven't been introduced yet to my setting. I also like "monkpunk," which I saw used to advertise a reading at WisCon last year; it has a satisfying duplication of the "unk" sound in one word. I may have to write a monkpunk story one day.

Thing #3: Janet and I watched Mike Judge's wicked satire Idiocrasy on DVD tonight, and it is easily one of my favorite films of 2006. Judge skewers consumerism, corporate pandering and sociopathy, anti-intellectualism, and the dumbing down of America. The visual gags are also incredibly pointed; Armin at Speak Up examines just a few examples of the typography used. Fox spiked this film, only showing it in a tiny number of theaters nationwide before shoving it into DVD release, so do yourself a favor and either rent or buy the DVD. It presents a scary and probable future dominated by corporate slogans and oversexed pro-wrestlers on the $10,000 bill, and Judge does it with the same biting wit that has made Office Space a cult classic.