Five more days til Matt Smith's final Doctor Who episode. Notice I didn't say "appearance." 'Cause, since Day of the Doctor, and even moreso Night of the Doctor, I'm not ruling out the possibility of any Doctor or Companion somehow reappearing down the road. Still, this will be the last substantive view of this particular Doctor and I am sad for it.
Part of the joy in a good continuing series is that you get to hold onto characters you've come to love. Then the evil day comes that either the actor leaves or the series ends.
If you're lucky, the writers are able to orchestrate a graceful exit. This is something that Doctor Who does especially well. I still miss any number of characters, but I can enjoy subsequent episodes without feeling (for example) a Donna-Noble-shaped hole in the proceedings. Perhaps Julian Fellowes should take a few pointers on transitioning characters; decisions around the actor attrition has Downton Abbey jumping more than a healthy number of sharks.
When it comes to closing an entire series, it's best when the creative team began the show with an exit strategy in mind and then were allowed to see it through. We're always going to miss living in these worlds with these characters, but at least we feel a sense of ... damn, I hate the word "closure" but there's no better way to say it. Even if the story arc didn't include a pre-determined conclusion, a team has a chance to make it work if they're given sufficient time to wrap things up. Last year, Eureka! managed well; Fringe a little less so. I continue to miss both shows (and think they both had a couple more solid seasons to give) but I feel more comfortable about where I left the people of Eureka!
The worst thing is when a series ends abruptly. I may never forgive HBO for the Carnivale debacle. When they decided to pull the plug prematurely, there simply wasn't enough time to bring this very complex, layered plot to a satisfying conclusion. The final episodes were a desperate mad dash to reroute character arcs into sone kind of resolution. What had been a rich, fascinating story was crippled by a feeble, sometimes ridiculous ending. Years later, I still feel robbed! And, btw, when people talk to me about renting/streaming Carnivale, I'm not shy about warning them of their eventual disappointment. If you're ever fortunate (?) enough to find yourself running a series, I suggest you take Carnivale as a cautionary tale: prepare each contracted block of episodes as if it might be the last.
Getting back to where I began this... Soon Whovians around the globe will be getting the gift of a Christmas episode that makes us say good-bye to a favourite hero. Like all good stories, the story of the Eleventh (ish?) Doctor is coming to an end. And a new story, which we will also learn to love, is about to begin. Transition is always bittersweet.
Showing posts with label 4F: Food Fashion Film Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4F: Food Fashion Film Fiction. Show all posts
Friday, December 20, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
A Writer is In The House
During a previous incarnation as an actor, I was privileged to study with the inspirational Nikos Psacharopoulos. Possibly the greatest compliment Nikos would pay to an actor was to say that he or she was "watchable." This didn't necessarily mean that you'd brought the character to life or had gotten to the root of the scene. It did mean that, whatever you were doing, you'd committed to it entirely and made it so interesting that the audience simply couldn't tear their attention away from you. Unlike the numerous, richly-varied techniques that artists can draw on to enrich and sustain their work, "watchable" can't be taught; it's innate.
For me, when something is "watchable," I suspend all other judgement of the piece, because I'm just so happy to be that interested. I find François Ozon an enormously "watchable" filmmaker. I remember walking out of 8 Women, completely bemused but delighted, thinking "I'm not sure why, but there's something about this film..." I still can't express "why," but Ozon continues to engage me in that way. So, during a flying visit through Paris in October, I was ecstatic to see the kiosk ads for his new film.
I finally got to see Dans La Maison in NY, just the other day. As anticipated, it's absolutely "watchable." As an extra bonus for a writer, it's Ozon mapping the cellular structure of the artistic mind.
Take a look at the trailer for the US release. You can view it at the website of the Washington Post (see YouTube for other release versions). It looks like a thriller, doesn't it? You wonder: is the boy a stalker? a serial killer? Whose lives will be destroyed?
This is the same kind of thing that Ozon did with Swimming Pool. Well, not remotely the same plotline; but exploring the idea that the process of creating a story is as treacherous as a planned crime and that the artist and those whose worlds touch on his/hers are vulnerable to the fallout of that process.
On the day that I went to see Dans La Maison, it was pouring in NY. Sheets of water in half-hour bursts, alternating with lesser torrents that soaked through rain gear and spilled off the edges of umbrellas, soaking whatever lay beneath. The streets were flooded ankle deep, so that litter was drawn along by currents. I walked 2 miles from my dentist appointment to the cinema, stripped off my raincoat and kicked off my sodden mocassins. From the knee down, my jeans were plastered to my legs. While immersed in Ozon's world, I forgot all about this.
No super-heroes, no chase scenes, and the only explosions being of the kind we all experience with the changes in our lives. 105 minutes later, it was a rude surprise to return and have to shrug back into my soggy gear and face my own world. All this from a story about writing. "Watchable" is only part of it.
[side note: 20th Century Fox made a big mistake by not thinking outside the box and handing over the remake of Fantastic Voyage to Ozon. The "patient" would probably have ended up being a writer, or maybe a filmmaker, and the story would be twice as fascinating as whatever love story James Cameron is imposing on Shawn Levy.]
I finally got to see Dans La Maison in NY, just the other day. As anticipated, it's absolutely "watchable." As an extra bonus for a writer, it's Ozon mapping the cellular structure of the artistic mind.
Take a look at the trailer for the US release. You can view it at the website of the Washington Post (see YouTube for other release versions). It looks like a thriller, doesn't it? You wonder: is the boy a stalker? a serial killer? Whose lives will be destroyed?
This is the same kind of thing that Ozon did with Swimming Pool. Well, not remotely the same plotline; but exploring the idea that the process of creating a story is as treacherous as a planned crime and that the artist and those whose worlds touch on his/hers are vulnerable to the fallout of that process.
On the day that I went to see Dans La Maison, it was pouring in NY. Sheets of water in half-hour bursts, alternating with lesser torrents that soaked through rain gear and spilled off the edges of umbrellas, soaking whatever lay beneath. The streets were flooded ankle deep, so that litter was drawn along by currents. I walked 2 miles from my dentist appointment to the cinema, stripped off my raincoat and kicked off my sodden mocassins. From the knee down, my jeans were plastered to my legs. While immersed in Ozon's world, I forgot all about this.
No super-heroes, no chase scenes, and the only explosions being of the kind we all experience with the changes in our lives. 105 minutes later, it was a rude surprise to return and have to shrug back into my soggy gear and face my own world. All this from a story about writing. "Watchable" is only part of it.
[side note: 20th Century Fox made a big mistake by not thinking outside the box and handing over the remake of Fantastic Voyage to Ozon. The "patient" would probably have ended up being a writer, or maybe a filmmaker, and the story would be twice as fascinating as whatever love story James Cameron is imposing on Shawn Levy.]
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Covetable Copy (3)
As a writer, I love this line. I also love it as an actor; spoken, it would be a gorgeous retort in a clever patch of repartee.
But however much I enjoy it, it nags at me because I've already published one book that isn't "about love" and have a couple more in the works. Well, there's a lot of love in my books, but they're not "love stories." Does that count, or does that mean that my stories shouldn't be classified as novels? This is the kind of thought-worm that wriggles into a writer's mind in moments of self-doubt.
The writer who said this does have love stories in his books. Novels. Other than that, his novels defy definition.
Once upon a time, I stumbled onto a copy of Little Big at Forbidden Planet. It was irresistible: a fat book with a lavender cover, at a science fiction bookstore. My "acquire" alarm started ringing wildly; I had to buy it. And once I read it, I was hooked on John Crowley.
I'm not going to pretend I always understand him. I've read all of the Ægypt cycle, slowly and with my full attention, but some bits were opaque to me. There were also some things that I lost track of, but this had probably do to with the long gaps between my reading the four volumes (and would probably be rectified by a re-reading splurge, someday, when I get through my own writerly undertaking and once again have time). Despite this, there is an atmosphere of Ægypt that clings to me.
Crowley excels in atmosphere. One is enveloped in his worlds. It doesn't matter if it's the world of John Dee or Giordano Bruno, or the more immediately familiar American homefront of World War 2 (in what is probably his book most likely to appeal to those of you who prefer their fiction "real," the The Four Freedoms). Reading Crowley is an immersive experience from which one surfaces in a kind of daze. To read in that way, you have to trust the writer. I do trust Crowley. And in trusting an artist who is unique, I give myself the confidence, for better or worse, to trust myself.
"He didn't have to be about love; he was a man, not a novel."
John Crowley, Solitudes (part 1 of the Ægypt cycle)
But however much I enjoy it, it nags at me because I've already published one book that isn't "about love" and have a couple more in the works. Well, there's a lot of love in my books, but they're not "love stories." Does that count, or does that mean that my stories shouldn't be classified as novels? This is the kind of thought-worm that wriggles into a writer's mind in moments of self-doubt.
The writer who said this does have love stories in his books. Novels. Other than that, his novels defy definition.
Once upon a time, I stumbled onto a copy of Little Big at Forbidden Planet. It was irresistible: a fat book with a lavender cover, at a science fiction bookstore. My "acquire" alarm started ringing wildly; I had to buy it. And once I read it, I was hooked on John Crowley.
I'm not going to pretend I always understand him. I've read all of the Ægypt cycle, slowly and with my full attention, but some bits were opaque to me. There were also some things that I lost track of, but this had probably do to with the long gaps between my reading the four volumes (and would probably be rectified by a re-reading splurge, someday, when I get through my own writerly undertaking and once again have time). Despite this, there is an atmosphere of Ægypt that clings to me.
Crowley excels in atmosphere. One is enveloped in his worlds. It doesn't matter if it's the world of John Dee or Giordano Bruno, or the more immediately familiar American homefront of World War 2 (in what is probably his book most likely to appeal to those of you who prefer their fiction "real," the The Four Freedoms). Reading Crowley is an immersive experience from which one surfaces in a kind of daze. To read in that way, you have to trust the writer. I do trust Crowley. And in trusting an artist who is unique, I give myself the confidence, for better or worse, to trust myself.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Covetable Copy (2)
I thought it was about time that I pay tribute to the writing of Anne Sexton.
My favorite Sexton collection is probably Transformations, her retelling of a cluster of classic fairy tales. Written years before Sondheim and Lapine began Into the Woods, Sexton's take on these stories is both darker and funnier than theirs and, oddly, more contemporary. With fairy tales trending so strongly right now, I'm hopeful that Sexton's work will be discovered by a new generation of readers.
"Depression is boring, I think, and I would do better to make some soup and light up the cave" Anne Sexton, The Fury of Rain StormsSeeing as I drew the name of my blog from this quote, I obviously consider it to be covetable copy. Like other Sexton phrases that stick in my brain, it declares darkness with a flippant shrug. It's an almost Chekhovian line. I have a particular love and envy of writing that has that Janus face of comic and tragic.
My favorite Sexton collection is probably Transformations, her retelling of a cluster of classic fairy tales. Written years before Sondheim and Lapine began Into the Woods, Sexton's take on these stories is both darker and funnier than theirs and, oddly, more contemporary. With fairy tales trending so strongly right now, I'm hopeful that Sexton's work will be discovered by a new generation of readers.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Covetable Copy
Sometimes I come across a piece of writing I wish were mine! A recent Facebook wall exchange with a friend reminded me of this brief meditation on branding from William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003):
Speculative fiction novelist William Gibson is best known for his often eerily prophetic cyberpunk works. Pattern Recognition (2003), together with Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010)
make up what is now considered to his Blue Ant Trilogy and, unlike much of his other fiction, looks no further than the day after tomorrow. In these three books, Gibson looks no further than the day after tomorrow, which he views through a prism of present hindsight that enables him to provide an almost retrospective examination of the first Public Generation.
"simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A dilute tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row ... There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul."
Speculative fiction novelist William Gibson is best known for his often eerily prophetic cyberpunk works. Pattern Recognition (2003), together with Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010)
make up what is now considered to his Blue Ant Trilogy and, unlike much of his other fiction, looks no further than the day after tomorrow. In these three books, Gibson looks no further than the day after tomorrow, which he views through a prism of present hindsight that enables him to provide an almost retrospective examination of the first Public Generation.
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