The Three Musketeers (2011)

The Three Musketeers 2011The makers of The Three Musketeer (2011) may have done well to take a cue from the film’s title. I.e., remembered that the story was more than The Adventures of D’Artagnan and His Three Sidekicks.

The movie’s poster accurately sums up the movie. D’Artagnan front and center, with the shrunken versions of the heroes three, trying to fight the battle while D’Artagnan vogues. Milady DeWinter (Mila Jovovich) is overacting* in background, with Buckingham and Richilieu demonstrating their one facial expression. (*Jovovich somehow manages to overact while employing only three facial expressions: a leer, a sneer, and an eyebrow twitch. It’s rather amazing.)

The basic premise of the movie is this: Arthos (Luke Evans), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Mathew MacFayden) are down-on-their luck Musketeers. D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) is the arrogant country boy who Continue reading

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The Thing (2011)

the thing 2011You know a movie has acquired a level of suckitude approaching black hole proportions when … I don’t even care about the dog.

I make no secret of the fact that I like animals more than people.  Sometimes, an animal is the only character worth watching. For instance, I spent the entire, agonizing, “good lord smite me before I have to watch more of this crapfest,” three-hours of Alexander the movie, worrying about Bucephalus the horse.

The Thing couldn’t even get me to give a fuzzy crap about the dog.

The Thing begins with three guys in an ice jeep thingy (look, if the director and scriptwriters were too lazy to build character backstories, I’m too lazy to Google the correct name of the vehicle). They are following a mysterious signal across the Antarctic ice. And they are Norwegian, which is Continue reading

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)I’ve never read the novel, but have seen the original Swedish movie adaptation, so this was an interesting journey into essentially watching the same film twice. Literally. The first two-thirds of the movie seems to be a scene-by-scene re-shoot of the original, in English. This version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo–now with Daniel Craig!–both is and isn’t an improvement over the original.

The story begins with Mikael Blomqvist (Daniel Craig) being convicted of journalistic fraud after his expose of a corrupted industrialist is revealed to be underlain by shoddy journalism. In truth, Mikael has been set-up, but the ruling has repercussions, not only for his career and Continue reading

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Dear Author, Don’t Make Me Smack You.

No, you charge

No. You charge.

Several months ago I read a much-lauded book, the first in another long epic series where the author is taking a god’s age to finish the sequels. (Like I can talk. I’m still not done with the 80K sequel to The Music of Chaos.) Despite all its press, I found the novel overrated, but that’s not the point of this post.

In one small scene in the novel, the protagonist, while on horseback, shakes the horse’s reins to encourage it to move forward.

And then my head exploded, raining confetti all around the room.

This isn’t the first book I’ve read where the author mistakenly thought that riders shake the reins to signal “Go.” It may have been one Continue reading

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They Hang Horse Thieves, Don’t They?

donkeys

We Isn't for "Borrowing."

An interesting side effect of being a heathen employed by a church, is that I probably read more scripture than many so-called Christians. Certain scriptures, those associated with Lent/Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, for instance, get replayed yearly.

Every single time I read this scripture (below), I think, “Dude, Jesus totally stole that donkey.”

Mark 11:1-6 (ESV)

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’” 4 And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. 5 And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go.

Yeah, I know. If you do more than skim it, you’ll note that in verse 3, it’s implied that Jesus will return said long-eared critter, but I still argue that Jesus had a rather loose definition of property rights. I mean, the attitude reads as pretty much, “I’m borrowing this here donkey; deal with it.”

Religious folk, of course, might argue that since Jesus is also god, creator of the heavens, firmaments, and beasties great and small, the donkey is his by default.  Well, no. Not unless Dodge can roll up onto my doorstep and appropriate my Ram truck for a few hours, whenever Dodge chooses.

Today’s heresy is brought to you by the upcoming Palm Sunday and my muse who says I don’t have time to write a review of the action flick we watched two nights ago (Ronin). (Pictured: Two of five, of my neighbors’ donkeys, Sora and Clyde. Aren’t they cute?)

But It’s a Dry Heat

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In Time

In Time, movieRemember Logan’s Run?

Me neither; just a few scattered impressions from when I was a kid and it was on TV.  I recall it being about a futuristic society where people were killed off at 30, their expiration date announced by some kind of colored device on their hand.

In Time trades in a variant of that premise: in the future, science has somehow made it so that people stop aging at twenty-five. Humans, however, still make babies and in a world where no one dies except through fatal accidents, people would eventually be packed on this little blue sphere like sardines. Society’s solution is stamp a digital clock on everyone’s arm that starts ticking at 25, counting down a year. Since it’s possible to put more time on the clock, a person could theoretically live forever. Run out of time, however, and it’s Deadsville for you. Time, not money, is now the most important commodity.

It’s the future and Continue reading

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Regarding Greyhounds, and WIP Excerpts

Greyhound and the case of zoomiesIt’s an absolutely lovely day here in sunny New Mexico. Blue sky, a light breeze, and 74 degrees.

My muse, however, has been very persistent and I spent most of the morning writing. By about noon, the greyhound decided I totally sucked because I hadn’t taken him for a walk. Never mind that the backdoor had been open and he’d been free to sun on the lawn all morning. (This, because, the flies haven’t come out of hibernation or back from Florida or whatever it is that flies do when they aren’t tormenting horses or loitering on dog shit.)

At one o’clock, I’d run out of words and it was time to get up and move and stop growing my ass. I put on the hound’s harness and out we went into the warm sunlight.

Halfway down the block, the greyhound’s tongue is a pink, wet ribbon, flopped out of his long snout, his head is down and he’s drooping like an orchid in the desert. My delicate little flower. “You’re trying to kill me,” he seems to say.

“Puh-lease. There’s no point in killing you. It’s not like you’d make good eating.”

Tomorrow? We’ll go through the exact same routine.

Here’s my response to a Lucky Seven tag on Facebook, via Maureen O. Betita. Supposed to post 7 lines, from 7th paragraph, on 7th page from current WIP. As usual, I cheated. This comes from chapter one, even though there is a prologue, but I’m so appalled that I’ve written a prologue, I can’t bear to make it more real by posting excerpts. And it’s more than seven sentences, because…I can’t follow instructions. Neener-neener-neener.

***working title, Lost in Paradise***

“Some help here, huh?” said Eowyn, Kelly’s seventeen-year-old niece.

Kelly grabbed the garbage bags, noting the contents–more coffee filters and cups–and hefted them into the dumpster.

“You’re late,” noted Eowyn.

“Nonsense. A bookseller is never late. She arrives precisely when she means to.”

“Ugh.” Eowyn marched ahead of her and opened the door. “You know the Lord of the Rings movies are the bane of my existence. Before them, only real nerds teased me about my name.”

Kelly strolled through the doorway, ahead of her niece. “I can’t help it. I was compelled by–”

“Wisconsin called. They want their genre cheese back.” Before Kelly could reply, Eowyn asked, “So how was the booksellers’ conference?”

****

Mischief managed. Have a great Friday.

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Hugo

Hugo“…it was a very long, very french tongue bath for some creator of silent films..” ~a comment on a review at Rotten Tomatoes.

To some extent, that assessment isn’t off-base, although a big part of the slobber on Hugo comes courtesy of critics who would cheer for a film about paint drying, if it were directed by Martin Scorsese.

Which isn’t to say that Hugo is a bad movie. I liked Hugo. I didn’t love it, but it was a pleasant way to spend an evening. It’s pleasant like a perfectly toasted slice of bread with a bit of butter and fresh strawberry jam is pleasant. It makes for a nice breakfast, but deep down, you’d really prefer a breakfast burrito, loaded with cheese, chile, potatoes and eggs.

I had no particular expectations for the film, but those who Continue reading

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The Iron Duke

the iron duke by meljean brookIn which China conquers the known world not with cheaply priced chachkes to be sold in Wal-Mart, but with nanotechnology and mind rays….

Kidding. Sort of.

In the alternate history of The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook, an Asian culture known has the Horde, conquered vast swaths of Europe by infecting their opponents with nanoagents, teeny little machines, aka, “bugs,” that swim about in the infected’s blood.

The infection had two variants. The first variant turned people into zombies, because you simply can’t have a good story without zombies. The second was a mixed blessing since it provided enhanced strength and healing ability while also including a susceptibility to mind-controlling rays. Via a specific radio frequency, the Horde was Continue reading

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Clumsy and Insane; What’s Not to Love?

The wonder horse

Cute but clumsy

Ask any horse owner for the defining characteristics of equines and they’ll likely say “accident prone” and “frequently paranoid.”

The second is a function of the horse’s position on the food chain, herbivore, aka, a carnivore’s happy meal. While the average horse is as likely to be eaten by a lion as I am to win the lottery, most equines retain an instinctive wariness of anything that smacks of predator. In the modern setting this might mean a black trashbag or a small child dressed in a Halloween costume (horse eating gnome).

Non-horsey folks, having seen movie horses who gallop without hesitation toward gunfire, think horses arrive, out-of-the-box, brave and cooperative.  Horses are smart and can be trained (desensitized) to tolerate all manner of scary things. Hollywood horses, because they have to carry expensive commodities–actors–are particularly bomb proof. But even a horse who’s utterly unfazed by gunfire, might come unglued at the sight of your grandma and her purple hat with the peacock feathers.

Writers really should take note of this. If your fictional equines are calm, tractable beasts of burden, you’re missing out on a prime opportunity to torture your characters.

Horses are also Continue reading

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