Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 20
September 27, 2018
Long overdue Liebster Award
Thank you Kat for nominating me for this months and months ago! Finally – I yield up my answers and trivia!
The Rules
Acknowledge the person who nominated you!
Answer the 11 questions Kat at The Lily Cafe asked me about blogging.
11 random facts about yourself.
Nominate 5-11 bloggers.
Ask nominated bloggers 11 questions.
11 Questions from Kat, and my 11 dubious answers.
What book has had the biggest impact on you?
Probably The Hobbit, it’s the reason I write fantasy. If not it then Nine Princes in Amber, as it made the idea of writing fantasy sexy. Or Heir of Sea and Fire, it made me think dreams could be spun into words. They’re my fantasy trifecta. A Scanner Darkly blew my mind. Moby Dick recently transformed from an oddity I was reading to get through into a thing of wonderment, something that has never happened to me before. Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare – failure has never been so beautiful. The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Chaucer, a character so vivid, so real, so far from us and yet so immediate. Many others that have inspired dreams, instructed, puzzled, challenged. So not one book.
What animal would you want to be for a day and why?
Dolphin. So I can know those guys speak a complex language and are smart. And then feel ashamed at how we are trashing their world.
What is your favorite kind of music?
Heavy Metal. I love many others but 70s rock to 80s metal was what I was a pre-angsty teen to, and then an actual angsty teen to, so despite many other love affairs, (I loved me the gothic music as an agnsty teen also) it has to be metal.
Have you ever had a kitchen disaster? If so, what was it?
Yes. One day the kitchen ceiling fell in. That sucked.
If you could go anywhere in the universe, on Earth or otherwise, where would you go?
Just off the shoulder of Orion, because it isn’t exactly there. Though I’m sure someone somewhere has calculated a position for it. (Which one do I want to visit though? Obviously the one with the attack ships on fire…) You can appreciate the vastness of the universe from your back yard, but sometimes I’d like to be floating in it in a way far more immediate and personal than as a passenger on our iron-cored rock-vessel.
What is your favorite holiday?
My wife. Italy. Art, food, history, sunlight.
Dog or cat? Fish?
Fish, when I was a kid. Rent a dog too as a kid, and I loved them. (Holidays with my Aunt.) Now – cat.
Would you rather live on a mountain or in the desert?
I kind of do live in a desert, given Colorado’s official semi-arid designation, and near to the mountains. The poetical in me would love to be a mountain dwelling hermit. The practical says it would be an annoying drive in winter to Walmart for supplies. How romance crushing is that?
What is your favorite kind of dessert?
All of them. I have a significant sweet tooth. Not unusual for Scots – we make a virtue out of creating pure sugar confections.
What is your favorite kind of post to write?
The ones where I share an insight, even if fleeting, into what I do or why in writing. Being moderately amusing is also a plus.
What advice would you give to other bloggers?
Keep going and expect nothing. Do it for yourself, you’ll enjoy it more.
11 Random facts.
1) I, like Kat from the lily café, love lighthouses. I had a romantic dream of living in one in Galway in Ireland for many years. There was going to be a rowboat, and cable-knit sweaters. Pity I’m no sailor.
2) I’m no sailor. But I don’t get seasick.
3) Though a cruise ship did make me a tad queasy.
4) I was once known as the buffet slayer.
5) I have learned how to waltz three times.
6) I like walking in the rain.
7) I used to collect Tolkien calendars. Like all my collections, it is incomplete.
8) I am ranked a 7/9 in APA pool. I’m okay. It took a lot of work to get to those rankings, and there are many many players far more skilled than I out there.
9) I genuinely enjoy playing people at pool who are better than me.
10) At first.
11) I never liked how it was so much harder to gain craft than strength when playing Talisman. We changed the rules so you gained both the same way. (I think later editions went down that road too.) Loved that game, but it did get to be a boring grind after a while.
My Nominees
And really anyone else who would like to join in – feel free to do so!
My Eleven questions
1) What was your favourite playground game?
2) When you think of the sea, where are you?
3) What is your favourite genre of writing?
4) Why?
5) When is your favourite period of writing?
6) Why?
7) Tidy writing space messy writing space, where do you fall on that continuum?
8) Have you ever sung in public?
9) Do you think a door can truly ever be a jar? (I know, I just went there. Invent a question and answer it here: do as you will.)
10) Most disappointing sequel you’ve ever experienced – book, movie, TV show seasons, take your pick. Mine is of course Highlander 2. Gah.
11) If you could wake up in one random other country on earth, a real one, tomorrow, which country would you like to wake up in (and why!)?
September 20, 2018
One Phase done. Ebooks on sale.
Once again, the title says it all. My developmental edit has been submitted. Much gladness and rejoicing has ensued, tempered by the knowledge that more is to come. A writer’s life for me!
Also – the kindle version of The Thief and The Demon is on sale! Catch it at the absurdly cheap price of 99c/99p until Sunday! I can’t do the sale in other markets: I shall have to make an effort to manually change the price in other markets and declare a sale on those pages in future!
Thank you to everyone who has bought my book – soon there will be another joining it on the virtual shelf, I can’t wait to share it with you!
September 17, 2018
The Writing Life: Facing Uncertainty in Editing
This is definitely a doubt based post. Unofficial doubts part 6, but for the fact that I’ve accepted what I’m worrying about, and am going to bulldoze on anyway.
This is, admittedly, a newer one for me, but a variant I think on what I have been through in the past and led me to taking far longer than I should to either move on from one project, or finishing another.
I’m almost finished with my developmental edit. I’ve been doing a lot of work on beefing up the frame story in The Killer and The Dead, making it less of an occasional interloper in the main story, and more of an integral part of the whole book, the frame reflecting on and helping to illuminate the character of the protagonist, some of his actions, and of course the character and motivations of his unseen and mostly unheard audience.
So there’s that point, with fifty pages left in the manuscript to revise, where I decide to think, “Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have done any of this…” despite the fact that I’ve got right into some of the additions and in general they have allowed me to enrich the novel and its characters, plot, and themes massively. There’s always the fear that you’ve gone too far, added too much so that the original ‘elegance’ (ho ho!), such as it was, will now be marred by all this extra artifice.
These thoughts are so inevitable I think I’d be more concerned if I didn’t have them. Of course the clutch of doubt feels real. It takes a while to shake off its cold fingers. But I do, with more irritation now than dread.
What do I accept? That I will make mistakes. Doubt tries to pin you in a catch-22 – changing your orignal manuscript will be a mistake, but aha! leaving it alone is also a mistake – gotcha! “What will you do now?”, says doubt, triumphant, “You’re doomed to make mistakes no matter what you do!”
Yeah, but I’ve already accepted that, says I. And I think I’d rather make a more adventurous mistake than a conservative one, and I already know that some of my alterations have made a material improvement in the original, so the original is not a place I can go back to, or even want to.
So sod off doubt – I’m making changes. And let’s stop calling them changes shall we? Let’s start calling them improvements. Because that is what they are.
And I have more passes of edits to go after this one, more reviews and re-evaluations to parse. Anything added here that does begin to feel clunky, misplaced, out of synch can be altered, polished, or cut. Doubt can be useful in identifying these things sometimes, the misfit toys that don’t quite work, but faith in your writing, trust in your gut and your instincts also helps you know when you’ve got something right. And those moments are downright giddy. Just remember not to go all General Zod, got to keep some perspective!
I’m always going to be uncertain. I’m probably always going to think that with more time I could make it better, but I’ve wasted so much time already on that idea. Years of it. I’m going with this process now. Deadlines and instinct to trump doubt and perfectionism. Let’s go.
September 10, 2018
Why I Write Fantasy: Cosmology and History and Geology and Meterology and… as Inspirations. Knowledge is inspiring. Keep learning.
Time for another attempt by me to ramble on randomly about fantasy and see what falls out. No planning for this blog. I should be in bed already!
If you don’t have time, the title sums it up and you can stop here! (Added this line in last, haha!)
When I consider characters, dilemmas, conflicts, and challenges, they always come dressed in handwoven cloth and chainmail, against a backdrop of grass and stone. I have written contemporary fiction, but I inserted Lucifer, so how contemporary was it?
When I have philosophical musings, or consider current cosmological theories, fantasy universes are born. I have a few different universes based on alternate versions of astrophysics, because it is fun, and while I definitely do not understand the physics properly it isn’t the detailed understanding that matters to me there (though I do earnestly like to learn more of our universe’s origins and operation), it is the inspiration it engenders. It is a very rich breeding ground of ideas for me. Ideas beget ideas, no matter where they’re from, in my experience. The important thing is that the ideas are growing, living things, that could themselves inspire others to have their own vivid imaginings. When I read articles about the first ever sales complaint on a piece of akkadian cuneiform, an absolutely fantastic historical fantasy story was instantly born out of my consideration of the posssible consequences of that writing. I really should write that down. Probably make a solid short story as it stands now, easily open up into something more with a bit of work. I went straight to court intrigue, wealth and power, and a desolate man on the run from a vengeful newly crowned king. As you do.
I also think I am a storyteller at heart, a creator of tales, and the fabric of fantasy is the most primal material from which to craft a story. Once upon a time is not fantasy, but so often it is a prelude to the imagined land of yore, before the rigid rules of our world became so structured, a peek back into times where the universe that people interacted with was more fluid, more unexpected, where humanity was not necessarily at the apex of the evolutionary tree, and stood to be taught harsh lessons by other entities. The capricious gods a stand in for the unyielding dominance of tectonics and weather over our ancestors’ lives, where years of hard work, even generations, could be wiped out by flood, or famine: El Nino turning the rules of agriculture upside down and destroying civilizations, tsunami or vulcanism ignoring centuries of building to flatten or bury it in an afternoon of chaos.
Our ancestors recognised how helpless they were, and had a healthy respect for the dangers that lurked around the corners of their world, just off the map, but always ready to invade. Fantasy can also embody that danger, have characters live in a world that knows it exists in a fragile balance, often ideological in fantasy, rather than environmental, but the lesson remains the same – value what you have, do your best to safeguard it, defend it if necessary.
Of course you can choose to write fantasies that reflect today, where the world is dangerously complacent about its stability, and believes there is no reason what is known now will not continue forever. I hope that is true, but history shows us many examples of civilizations who expected to march on indefinitely, only to fall apart. Often in a shockingly short period of time. Of course, resilient humanity carried on, and built anew, a process itself filled with story possibilities.
So maybe that’s another reason I write fantasy, to explore those ideas, among many others. That’s the thing – this blog barely scratches the surface of where ideas can wander, what story seeds they can drop. These were the grander schemes, but just as important can be the microcosm of family life, of personal beliefs and actions, and how they can interact, what they can reveal, when wearing homespun cloth and chainmail.
My advice, if I have any, is to stay curious, and keep learning: the more you stimulate your mind, the more material it has to work with to create something strange and beautiful. I like that. I like that a lot.
September 4, 2018
Taking Stock
Sorry for the lack of blogs, I’ve been deep in the editorial jungle, hacking away with the machete of no remorse. Oh wait, this is the developmental edit – I’ve been adding more than subtracting, as is usual for me! Part of that is recognizing where I the writer take my own knowledge of the setting and pieces of plot info for granted, and forget to share the needful bits with the reader! It is amazing how easy this is to do, until you get a few comments asking you the same thing a few times over!
Now I like to minimally signpost some things in my writing – hints and links to future events or other books, and I keep being asked to be less subtle. So fish in the face it is! (Not really, I don’t think!)
Anyway, it is going well, but will continue to fill my time for the next two weeks.
I do plan on having an ebook sale of The Thief and The Demon soon, to celebrate my gratifyingly positive Kirkus review, appropriately quoted snippets of which shall be added to my book description, when I can get around to it, haha!
So it has been just over a year since I re-launched my blogging efforts in anticipation of my first book coming out. And quite a year it has been. I have learned a great deal. I have not implemented all the lessons I learned. Exhibit one – I didn’t get my next book cover made in advance. That was foolish. Next time, honest. I’m in this lark for the long haul though, so I feel okay with being very incremental in my progress.
One of the great ironies that has been driven home to me in the last few months is my amusing choice to set myself the task of producing a high quality book once a year… after I re-enter the workforce. I had four years off and produced one book. Talk about missed opportunities in that stretch of time! It is what it is. I learned a great deal as I frittered away that time, and hindsight is teaching more with each month that passes. I do laugh at it, to be honest. I’m being more productive now in many ways than I was when I wasn’t working. Deadlines, while taxing and stressful, do get me to actually do the work. And this new process is a deliberate and conscious experiment – I’ve got to see it through, and then assess the final product. Before charging into the next round of writing, drafting and redrafting, ho ho! I think I’ll take some time off after I’m done with this one before starting the next draft. Spoil myself before fixing the next lot of deadlines into the calendar. If it wasn’t fun and so gratifying it really would be the most ludicrous pastime to dedicate yourself to. My pool game is suffering, let me tell you!
I’m also reading Moby-Dick. I started off reading it as an odd Victorian curio, wondering why it is regarded as a classic of American literature, but damn if it doesn’t just keep layering and building, to sections that are really quite sublime, because of what you have got through to get there, and how it all contributes to what comes after. The Try-works (chapter 96) is just astonishing, in my view. I’ll put the link to the chapter here, but I don’t think reading it in isolation does it justice, it’s the work taken by the reader and writer to get there that makes this chapter just a fantastic piece of art to me. And it keeps getting better as it builds towards its climax. I’m now 91% of the way through the book. Don’t tell me what happens at the end! The sense I get is this is a book where the author was just letting it all hang out, his ideas, his style, his structuring, his passions all pushing his envelope and unafraid to do so. Of course I say that with nothing but the impression of this book, I’d need to read his other works to gain a true comparison. But I’ve decided to read Crime and Punishment next! Books that I am glad I did not read before writing The Killer and The Dead, haha!
Lastly, it is amazing to me that given my love of all things gothic musically, that I never discovered Type O Negative until this week. I’d heard of them, but I’d never listened to them. Why, I cannot now imagine, because they hit a bunch of sweet musical spots for me. I started listening to Black No 1 (the full lenth version) on YouTube and just let the channel chose the songs after that – absolutely brilliant stuff, I’ve liked most songs more than the one that came before so far! I’d read about Peter Steele, may he rest in peace, in the past, but never, for some reason listened to his music. I have a sense I have a lot of exploring to do now.
Ok folks, that will do for now. I shall try to get back on schedule soon!
August 27, 2018
Editing as a cuesport
This is going to be brief, because I should be editing, not blogging.
I refer you to this blog. It is far more true now for me than it was a couple of weeks ago!
But, here’s my quick thought.
Anyone who is any good at cuesports, be it pool, snooker, or billiards; often has a lot of options when they come to the table. Let’s stick with pool for now, because it’s the one most folk will be more or less familiar with, and the glorious variant known as 8 ball.
The pack has been broken up on the break, the balls scattered aross the felt. You come to the table, and have your choice of shots. Which side to choose, how best to run your seven balls out and then make the 8 to win the game?
There are thousands of choices, but most are constrained by your skill, your imagination, and your execution. Even skilled players can err in execution, so it isn’t precisely the same thing, in my mind. And your mood, whether you feel confident and aggressive, or nervous and in need of some confidence to get started, can make all the difference to the pattern you try to run to get out.
There are thousands of ways to get through just eight shots. Ways in which a player can demonstrate their style, their flair, their technique, their nerve, their concentration, and their skill.
And you can run a table ugly, where every shot doesn’t quite work, but you scramble, and somehow still get all the balls down. Your opponent is shaking his head as he watches, wondering how you managed to make an easy opportunity look so hard. But still you finish.
Or you can make an impossible table look easy, breaking open clusters, putting the white in the only place on the table where you have a shot, making insanely difficult shots look effortless. Your opponent is shaking his head wondering why he bothers playing against someone who can dominate the table so. You still had to finish. Miss the final shot and all the earlier effort can be wasted.
But it is all in the choices the player makes, the techniques employed, what spin here, what speed of stroke there, one cushion or two for the next positional play, which order to take the balls, to make it easier, or harder at the end.
Editing is like running a table of pool, except with tens of thousands of balls, now become words, to be juggled and arranged in order. In a sense there is no one perfect order, just the one that feels most right to you, the writer, the way that reflects your mood at that time, and your skill, imagination, and execution. In your command of plot and character and grammar (among many other things) you display your style, your flair, your technique, your nerve, your concentration, and your skill.
So yeah, editing a book is totally like running a rack of pool. LOL.
Next chapter.
(And when you rush a blog out you know what happens? You keep re-reading it and seeing typos and errors, and have to keep updating it. Editing before I get back to editing. Hey ho.)
August 20, 2018
Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #4: Clearly I Have a Type
So while writing about Highlander, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and The Crow, I couldn’t help but notice the common elements that the movies shared.
In no particular order.
1) A narrated opening. All three start with someone speaking, telling you a story. Yes, apparently I’m five, and still like to be tucked up in bed and told a story. Who knew that a writer likes being told stories?
2) Doomed love Story. Connor and Heather, Vlad and Elisabetre(my spelling, it’s how he says it, to me)/Mina, Eric and Shelly. I’m an old school Romantic at heart.
3) Fantastic sound track. Each one works to enhance the plot, visuals and characterization. Each movie would be far weaker without those musical choices.
4) Arresting visual style. I would argue all three of these movies have this. Two, Highlander and Dracula also have the scene transitions as a motif too, most prominent in Highlander, but the eye of the peacock feather transforming into the railway tunnel immediately brought Highlander to mind on a recent viewing of BS’sD.
5) Strong and interesting villains. The villain is the star of one, steals the show in another, and there is a whole ecosystem of them in the third. A far better treatment of villains than in your run of the mill movie, in my opinion, is evident in these three films.
6) Self-contained story. None of these films require a sequel. Unfortunately two got them anyway.
7) Gothic or ornate settings. Highlander is a little of the odd one out here, but still has a very rich sense of setting, both in the past and the present. The 80s New York is at times very well evoked, but can seem a little weak too – the Silver Cup scene and the underground garage are a bit lifeless in comparison to the lushness of other parts of the film.
That’ll do for now – crazy eh? I’d like to add another couple of my favorite films also share many if not most of these characteristics: Blade Runner, and Hero. Narration or text crawls, doomed love, glorious soundtrack, visually arresting, all present in abundance. Fantastic villain – here Hero is the odd man out because the whole film *spoiler* is the story of the presumed villain being discovered not to be worth killing, and could indeed lay claim to being the Hero of the title – though of course I’d say it was Broken Sword, myself. A majestic film. Self-contained stories, yes – though 2049 is a great sequel, though mildly soporific for me despite my appreciation of it. Gothic/ornate setting – oh yes, both have that in spades. More ornate (and epic) for Hero than Gothic. But Chinese gothic exists in my mind at least!
So there you have it – I have a type for movies I’ll go and see four times, and for other movies I’ve watched far too many times at home! When you think about it, do your favourite films share a lot more in common that you’d think at first glance?
August 18, 2018
We’ll talk about this later…
But for now I’d like to say I’m “Today’s Featured Indie Book Review” on Kirkus.
Find it here.
I’m pleased with what they have to say. Bottom left of the page.
Check it out.
And if you have read and liked my book, feel free to endorse the review on their site.
And anywhere else, of course.
Just sayin’.
August 16, 2018
The Writing Life: Choices in Art
In my recent blog on Bram Stoker’s Dracula I threw in a line that while viewing that film multiple times I chose not to see its flaws. I could, if I wanted, pick away at what some might perceive as problems in the movie, but I chose not to, because I’d much rather enjoy those aspects that enthralled and entranced me. I wanted to embrace the spell the creators had tried to cast over me, not break it.
It strikes me that a lot of the time, when reading, watching, regarding, touching, or tasting things we really want to engage in, we choose our experience in many ways. How many times have we decided not to like something based on a first fleeting bad impression, and found it hard to overcome that randomly inculcated opposition to the item/object of experience? Just me? Oh well, moving on…
But just as prejudices can be hard to overcome when interacting with art, be it written, produced, or performed, so can adoration be hard to puncture. I find that fascinating – this is why superfans can find it difficult, I think, to recognize when output by their idols falls below previously held high standards. It takes a lot to break the willing engagement in a spell. I am a Dio superfan – so it is with regret I am forced to admit that Angry Machines is a terrible album, with maybe one and a half songs that are redeemable. I can see where they were trying to go, but I don’t think the band successfully got there. It wasn’t that last word though, and the band and singer came back stronger for a late career renaissance. But of course I would say that, wouldn’t I?
None of the three movies I recently talked about are perfect. I choose to look past their weaknesses and focus on their strengths, the things that make them resonate in me, draw out emotions and imagination, make me intellectually engage, all at the same time. If a piece of art or entertainment can do all those things I am generally won over, because I can enjoy it in the moment, or be inspired or intrigued later as I choose to chew the fat and play at finding patterns of significance where there may be none, for no other reason than the delight of it.
And what then of the artist’s choices? Knowing that your audience can and will make decisions about your work, that some will see more flaws than flair while others will see more beauty than catastrophe, what effect can that have on the artist as they create, or on me as a writer?
Right now I’m editing a book I know has moments when people reading it might well reach a fork in the road and go no further. I know that choice exists for them, and I am making the choice to leave those forks in the road there. I could still remove them. But I’m not going to. I’m making that choice because I believe it creates the story I most want to tell: anything else would be dilution. I’m hoping enough readers are engaged enough to keep following the road wherever it goes, and to reward them at its end. Setting yourself targets like that is highly intimidating, because as a writer you have to work hard for that engagement in a reader, and to risk throwing that away goes against every instinct. But I am exhilarated by the choices I have made, because I believe in them. I’m still working on executing as well as I can though!
And what is editing but an endless sequence of choices seeking to drown you in indecision? I’m finding that the only way to proceed is with a mental machete, and plenty of pristine back up files!
As writers we make a multitude of choices, as readers I think we make just as many, if not more, when deciding whether or not to like, love, or keep reading a book. Those choices are fascinating to me, and the tension between what a writer chooses to include and what a reader decides to focus on is something that I believe is not easily manipulated – better to create what you can and not try too hard to control outcomes in the minds of unknown others. Where those two sets of choices interact – the writer’s and the reader’s – is a place that through the magic of words on the page two minds can interact, if not ever quite meet, though the illusion at times can be very powerful. That space is one of marvels, and I try not to treat it with a heavy hand. I leave it to others to judge my success in that regard.
To finish: a beautiful song about choices that resonates with me, draws out my emotion and imagination, and makes me think all at once. The video is also full of intriguing choices, reflecting the song in intriguing ways. See what you think.
August 13, 2018
Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #3: The Crow
More spoilers for a film that this time is a mere 24 years old.
The last film that has, so far, made me run back to the cinema three more times after the first viewing was this one. A modern gothic fairytale with yet another fantastic soundtrack, an alternate contemporary world that was close enough to ours to imagine real, but with its own mythology and magical elements blended seamlessly in, a dark hero, and a range of charismatic side characters (Jon Polito, among many others, is awesome in this film) and villains who all richly deserve their fate, with of course a love story beyond death, and you have an intoxicating mix for my early 20’s self.
There’s no getting around Brandon Lee’s death, and the effect it had on viewing the movie at the time. I don’t think I viewed it as death porn, more it heightened the sense of loss already present in the film, of lost possibilities present in the dead lovers echoed poignantly in the loss of the film’s talented and charismatic star. And at the time we knew he was killed by an accident on set with a gun, and his character gets shot a LOT in the film, so even though we knew the actual shot which killed him was not shown, there was still a sense that any of those scenes could have been the one in which the fatal accident occurred. It made for mixed viewing, to be honest. (I learned which scene in filming he died in years later, and it does make it harder for me to watch that sequence now.) The movie’s story of the Crow having to go away at the end was also Brandon’s farewell to his audience, and that added layers of emotion to an already excellent film.
Like the other two films in this little series of mine, this movie had a definite visual style, and an aural soundscape that marked it apart, that merged with and mirrored the storyline so well. It was capital R romantic, capital T tragic. Plus another capital R for revenge. The grungy city was a modern otherwhere, a model imagining of Detroit in flames, filled with settings and scenes you could almost smell. Because onions make you fart, big time. In such a dark landscape the arrival of the Crow does not seem a surprise. The film is eminently quotable, but what drew me back again and again was the opening, and the cathartic moments of love and loss throughout the film. The scene with the rings gets me every time. Especially after the comedy of “Mr Gideon? You’re not paying attention.” Well it was always comedy to me, what can I say? Plus the badass action sequences, the visuals, the seamless escalation of conflict, the superb cast and characters, the relationships between both villains and heroes: this film took the time to set up relationships on both sides, which made the conflicts between those sides far more involving.
This was a film about the bad guys, what they did, who they were, and why they had to die. It did all those things brilliantly, and with great economy while also building the relationship between the Crow and Ernie Hudson’s fantastic cop Albrecht, between Sara and Darla, between Top Dollar, his sister and their minions. All while letting the love story between Eric and Shelly shine through the gaps. I view it as a great example of defining multiple characters well at speed in a film, giving you enough to know who they are, what motivates them, their strengths and weaknesses, their reasons for living and dying. In that respect it is an absolute triumph of storytelling, in my humble opinion. Plus it quotes Milton, in a way that perfectly illustrates and reinforces the core theme of the movie. And you know, I’m a sucker for themes.
This film had everything, and the soundtrack, for a goth metal boy like myself who had ventured into industrial music when not checking out dance clubs, well it was perfect. The funny thing is, though I knew of many of the bands, I wasn’t a particular fan of any of them, and for me some of the songs on the soundtrack turned out to be my favourite track from that band when I later investigated their music.
Like Highlander, this movie is constantly under threat of being remade. Like Highlander I went to the cinema to see the sequel, saw it once, and didn’t bother again, such a pale echo it was of the original. If a reboot is made I’ll check it out, but not with high expectations – the original set a very high and emotional bar that I would not want to have matched, so sadly entwined as it is with the tragic loss of a great talent far too young.
