Coraline Review

Saw Coraline in 3D last night.

For the unfamiliar (how can you be, at this point?) Coraline is a story of a young girl dissatisfied with her parents, alone in a new town. And through a secret door, she finds the Other world, a perfect world of best meals, beautiful gardens, and constant games, strung together by her Other Mother. Except that this fantastic other world is a trap set to lure children away, for the Other Mother, the Beldam, to devour their lives and snatch their eyes.

If you like Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach) you’ll like this. It’s very similar-but-not-same, visually, because he’s got a distinct style, though I see him pulling from the modern school of animation (which pulls from an almost-twenty-year-old pushing-boundaries school of animation) and integrating it with his style flawlessly.

Script is good. Voice acting is good. The story is well done and I feel stays very true to the book. My friends claimed it was scary, but I wasn’t that creeped out by it. They also claimed they wouldn’t take their children to it, but I would. It really wasn’t that frightening. Maybe at moments, but it’s okay for children to get scared once in awhile. Helps spinal development.

Now, I’m not entirely sold on the 3D concept. My friends were pretty stoked on it, but I’m not sure it impacted the movie-watching experience to the point that I’d insist people try to see it 3D. Still, the 3D tricks (things coming out at you) weren’t overused, and they weren’t used at poor moments, so the 3D definitely doesn’t detract at all. Simply a flavor choice, here.

In the end? Highly recommended. See and enjoy. Bring the kids.

Graveyard Book to be Film

Trufax.

Novelist Neil Gaiman, fresh off his Newbery medal win for The Graveyard Book, announced that director Neil Jordan will adapt and direct the film version of that award-winning novel.

Books Read in 2008

1. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
2. Lottery by Patricia Wood
3. The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan
4. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
5. Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss
6. Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
7. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
8. Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones
9. The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
10. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
11. Sun of Suns by Karl Shroeder
12. The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
13. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
14. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
15. The Watchmen by Alan Moore
16. Summer Knight by Jim Butcher
17. Death Masks by Jim Butcher
18. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
19. The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury, illustrated by Dave McKean
20. Switch On the Night by Ray Bradbury
21. M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman
22. Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves
23. Air by Geoff Ryman
24. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
25. Dracula by Bram Stoker
26. Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer
27. A Walking Tour of The Shambles by Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe
28. The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket
29. Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury
30. The Facts of Life by Graham Joyce

Not quite 50, but I still feel it’s a respectable amount.

SF in SF (11/16)

I consider myself a newbie writer. While I may have been writing for some time, I’ve only recently decided to take it seriously. No, that’s not right. I’ve always been trying to be good at what I do. I guess I’ve only recently decided to try to get published which is a different breed of serious and one with far more weight behind it.

I’ll get to why that’s relevant in a moment.

I have never been to SF in SF, and I’m glad Emily Jiang dragged me along. Of the writers there, I had only heard of Ellen Klages and not read, and had only recently been introduced to Geoff Ryman. Emily thrust the book AIR into my hands, I read five sentences, and it was all over. It’s currently in my bag, waiting to be read some more. (Along with two other books. And seven others floating around the house with scraps for bookmarks.)

A tip of my hat to Geoff on that front: Due to my ferret-like nature, I am oft distracted by shiny things and wind up “in the middle of” ten books at a time. I’d declared a moratorium on buying books. Geoff ruined that.

The authors read some fabulous excerpts (I made a comment to the effect of “I feel like I’m listening to a Terry Gilliam flick” about a bit of Geoff’s writing) and then their writing was discussed. Sort of.

We started down a path, in mentioning setting as a character, as a central piece of the storytelling. I agree to a point–setting obviously is a character and should be treated with weight. But what stayed with me from their excerpts wasn’t setting, not entirely. It was the visuals. Ellen’s description of the white sands in New Mexico, Nalo’s road of black pitch devouring an army, Geoff’s grape thing.

Especially the grape thing. Yikes. Part of me wonders if he saw the pile of champagne grapes and chuckled maniacally.

What was fantastic in this reading for me, the budding writer, was having such strong visuals thrust into my headspace. I realized exactly how crucial that is to a reader, something I never think about while I’m reading (as it’s my tendency to skim large blocks of text and make a world spun of loosely connected adjectives and the occasional improper noun). It is my natural inclination to under-describe when I write. Perhaps I give the reader too much credit, but I feel that in the moments I reveal scenery or character, I’m being obvious and intrusive. Yet time and again readers yell at me about lack of description. So, I’m still working on it. Still. Always.

The discussion disintegrated into Writing 101, which pleased me in a way. It made me feel good to know that–despite the fact that this information was pretty generic, beginner, obvious–I already knew all of it. Everything they discussed was already something I was either working on actively or still fine-tuning (because let’s be honest, I’m not done on the beginner stuff, and likely never will be).

And the post-reading discussions were fabulous. I talked with people about programming, Prague, and prose. I wish I’d found out about this whole shindig a hell of a lot sooner.

… Fatalists?

The title is a Men in Tights reference.

In AW I made a very solid post I wanted to save here. You know. For posterity.

We were discussing propensities for discovering slash in any subtext findable, and Lord of the Rings came up in this context (and yes I mentioned pointy hat trick). I mentioned recalling Sam actually outright declaring love for Frodo. (Yes, yes, love between men doesn’t have to be gay, I understand.)

The Post:

HAH found it.

Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo’s face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiselling of the shaping yeas was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: ‘I love him. He’s like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.’

Here’s how I imagine a conversation about that going…

Tolkein: So..?

Lewis: So.

Tolkein: What did you think?

Lewis: Um. Friend. I’m… not sure if you’re aware… but are… are they..? You know…

Tolkein: Not sure I follow.

Lewis: [waves a hand] You know.

Tolkein: Oh. Oh! No. No no no.

Lewis: It, er, it comes out that way. A bit. In the text.

Tolkein: I see. [scans text] Now… which part exactly?

Lewis: I’d have to say it’s somewhere between Sam watching Frodo as he sleeps and saying that he loves him aloud. I don’t know. Somewhere in there.

Tolkein: Huh. You think if I make an offhand mention of Rosie in the final part, it’ll balance that out?

Lewis: … It… it might?

Steampunk Convention Redux

Photos here.

Day One – October 31

Spent the bulk of the evening around drinks with Shweta, Emily*, Jeff, and Ann*. Conversation was mainly of the speculative variety, from loved fiction to their Clarion experiences to politics, though we mostly grazed that latter topic with frustrated fists and let it be. I have not had a “Clarion Experience” myself, but I enjoyed being a fly on the wall for this one. And as long as I didn’t mention my lack of Clarion, I remained unnoticed by Emily and Shweta and their odd desire to see me go to Clarion.

It’s likely to not happen, though I appreciate the sentiment.

I tried to subtly snipe a photo of Nathaniel from Abney Park. Ninja I am not. He cornered me over whiskey and tea and we discussed everything and nothing.

Met a lovely group of people and drank Black Bush. The topic of the day for this and many conversations was how wonderful the steampunk community is. Which, truly, it is. But more on this later.

Met more lovely people who apparently were Platform One. Had a lovely discussion about music and general creativity, and did my best to explain steampunk to someone who demanded more punk and less steam. But our punk comes not from our willingness to destroy but our willingness to create and reclaim that which has been lost. We say no-thank-you to the society that demands we drink and party every night, that rampant and tawdry consumerism is a sign of being confident in one’s self, and that maybe, just maybe, sitting in your room with a soldering iron and a cup of tea is an okay way to spend your Saturday night.

Moreover, unlike regular punk, steampunk owns the fact that the visual aesthetic is a big part of the identity. But this is perhaps an essay topic for later.

Day Two – November 1

It took me a day, but I discovered the game Damnation, demo of which resided in the lobby just by the vittles stand. I spent far too much time here, waxing about this game. I, by history, am a gamer, and this is a good game. I’ll likely make a post exclusively about the game once it’s released. It’s got a steampunk look to it, though I can’t speak to the steampunk feel from the demo. It was standard shooter goodness, with a bit of magic powers, and some acrobatic platform-jumping. If you’re a fan of things like Resident Evil 4, Bioshock, or HalfLife, as far as gameplay goes, you might enjoy this one.

The VanderMeers held a panel, solo (duo?), though I believe they were supposed to have others with them. Which led to them interviewing one another, not having rehearsed the questions beforehand. The highlight of the whole thing was when Ann embarrassed the living hell out of Jeff. She opened the interview session with, and I’m paraphrasing: “Now, Jeff doesn’t know I’m about to say this, but we’ve done this before, asking one another interview questions. But we’ve always done it naked. So this will be the first time we interview one another with clothes on.” I’m not exactly certain, but I think Jeff turned purple at one point.

What I took away from that panel was the five awesome things of steampunk, which Ann claimed to have bogarted from someone else: one, it’s something the genders can share; two, fantastic visual aesthetic; three, it’s goth’s nicer cousin; four, it bridges the subgenre gaps; and five, it goes back to the “promise” of science, of a glorious future-that-could-be. The last could be another essay topic all on its own.

The VonSlatt keynote was wonderful, and I won’t do you the disservice of summarizing it. Instead, I’ll link it. I particularly enjoyed his discussing tinkering with respect to open source projects; I feel too many stare at a computer as a terrifying black box with a shaman inside, and I work to demystify the thing to my friends.

Then came the Party at the Center of the Earth. Mme Cavalaxis had the wonderful and decidedly drunken idea to dance. I followed, as did a few others. I decided our party was too small, and there were questing eyes in the audience, the longing look of, “I want to dance but none of the boys want to dance with me.” I pulled hands and we danced around the room until the floors were flooded.

Abney Park and Platform One put on good sets.

Day Three – November 2

My first event, after getting a Jamba and hiding the fact that my hair was in need of a deep cleansing, I went to a panel on Researching and Writing Steampunk, with Ryan Galiotto*, Gail Carriger, Mike Perschon, and Jeff VanderMeer, moderated by Ann VanderMeer. What I liked about the panel was the opening question, about entry points into steampunk. The answers varied from the clothing (Gail) to having a story idea and being told it’s steampunk (Mike) to comics (Ryan). It really does emphasize the all-inclusive nature of steampunk.

Gail did a very good, detailed writeup for this panel, over here.

So, that’s my redux of the con. Hope you enjoyed reading.

* If you have a link and spot this, let me know, so I can link you properly in the text.

Lad, I don’t know where you’ve been, but I see you’ve won first prize.

The Graveyard Book, Tomorrow

Just a reminder to all: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman comes out tomorrow. My spoiler-free review is chilling here.

Get on it!

Bigger is Not Always Better

I’ve discovered that my library (my specific branch) is the largest library west of the Mississippi.

And yet, the only book they have on Slavic mythology is some book on modern Slavic shamanism.

Guys. Seriously. I can’t be the only Slav in the South Bay. This is statistically improbable.

Mr. Shivers

I guess I can talk about this now.

Friend of mine (Robert Bennett) is getting published.

When the time comes I’ll be going into greater detail on this. Story-sans-spoilers. Sordid details of his life. Photos of his narwhal-hunting days. As of now it’s too far out to whet appetites. You’ll become bored of hearing it and by the time the thing hits shelves you’ll all be dead inside.

But so’s you know, this is a book I beta’d twice. It’s that goddamn good.

Graveyard Book Tour, San Francisco

It’s getting to the point that I should just make a category for ‘Neil Gaiman’–but I wouldn’t want to seem obsessive. (Let’s nevermind that I am. I just wouldn’t want to make it more obvious than it already is.)

So, I’m not certain who all reads this blog that is in the Bay Area, but is anybody else planning on being at both events?

I am.

There’s a narrow list of authors to whom I would do this, and sadly I doubt Bradbury will be up for whirlwind tours of the nation anytime soon. Still, my ear is kept to the ground on that front.