Week's End Round-Up

My life writing assignment drained my batteries pretty dry this week. This is what's left:

Saw:

Iron Man - Robert Downey Jr. was great as Tony Stark, the effects were cool, the script funny and Jon Favreau dialed Gwyneth Paltrow back from gratingly annoying to tolerably charming. On the other hand, the big bad was ludicrous and in our post-The Incredibles media reality, there's no excuse for a bad guy to be caught monologuing ever. Stay until after the credits.

Persepolis - awesome and intense and searing - at some point I will have more to say about this but it's too rich in my mind right now. I need to digest a little more.

Bones - Booth, Brennan and a baby made for fun TV. Bones is definitely my favourite forensic procedural - not only do the girls get to be smart but it manages to avoid much of the female death porn that is CSI's stock-in-trade.

Speaking of CSI - the most recent episode was boring even as background viewing while I caught up on a week's worth of newspapers in my room. And last week's Supernatural was even worse. Couldn't make it through either episode. Ick.

Read:

Half of Anna Karenina - stupid Russians! Write shorter books. Also the title is a lie: the book is really about this dude Levin who's Tolstoy's Gary Stu and thinks well-intentioned and terribly patronizing ideas for how to improve the lives of the Russian peasantry. I should look up how the Leninists felt about Tolstoy - I can see it going either way.

On Writing by Stephen King - the dude knows his stuff. A bit of a refresher, particularly after this past year, but all stuff that needs to be said.

Realized:

Lena Headey as Sarah Connor (TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) pretty much saved my sanity in February: grad school in a foreign country - lonely and depressed and February. It was ugly up inside my head and watching Sarah Connor kick ass helped, put me back in touch with the 18 year old inside of me, her enthusiasm and her passion. I should probably send a thank you card.

I write really well about my own life. I need to find that same voice and momentum in my writing about my fake lives and that probably comes from rewriting, rewriting and rewriting until I find the truth in it. Writing about myself is more about how much truth I leave out (I'm no James Frey - it's all true but it's not all of the truth - there are things, even when you're writing confessional memoirs, that no one else wants, needs or has a right to know about my life). It's finding that line that's the hard part.

If you're feeling oppressed by your grad school advisors, all of who think you're wasting your time writing a horror novel, there's no one better to read on writing than Stephen King.

This Is Not a Dress Rehersal

I would like to take this opportunity to go on record as saying that the argument "X movie or Y TV show was so good I missed it on first viewing" is bullshit.

It's a movie. It's a TV show. It's filmed performance. Its only job is to capture your attention as you watch. If you need to watch something three or four times to realize that you actually like it, it has failed in its primary job, which is to engage your attention and emotions and entertain you.

If you see a play or a movie or a TV show and you like it enough to see it again. It has worked.
If you see a play or a movie or a TV show and it intrigues you enough to see it again. It has worked.
If you see a play or a movie or a TV show and you hate it but keep watching it because everyone else thinks it's fucking awesome until you buckle to peer pressure and admit that, on the fourth viewing, you have seen the error of your ways, hallelujah and come to Jesus! It. Has. Failed.

This is not a book. We are not reading. Our brains are not actively engaged. We are watching. We are passive. You, the performer/writer/director are meant to be engaging us, not the other way around. AND YOU'VE GOT ONE SHOT.

If you fuck it up, you lose.

Protecting the Good In Toronto

This is one for the hometown brothers and sisters on the flist.

If you don't regularly read Royston James's column in the Toronto Star, you should. And yesterday's column especially.

Toronto has sometimes suffered under it's "weak mayor" system but better government does not come at the expense of democratic process or accountability. I urge everyone who's in town at the moment to read James's column and e-mail their local councillors about what's going on in Nathan Phillip's Square. The Mayor of Toronto represents a constituency near the size of Ireland and is responsible for a budget larger than that of many Canadian provinces. These are reasons why it's important for the mayor to have the powers necessary to do his job effectively. These are reasons why it's important for the mayor to be held accountable to council and to the people of our city.

The problem of democracy has always been thus - Quis custodiet custodiens? So pay attention.