Mari Ness's Blog, page 33

Legos Gone Avant Garde

Instead of a blog post (although thoughts are sorta tumbling around for one) I bring you a link to some pretty extraordinary art made from Legos. No, really.

Danny the Champion of the World and other tidbits

Another one of those "various things" bullet posts as I try to regain the desire to blog:

1. Skipping publication order once again, I chat about Danny the Champion of the World over at Tor.com. Meanwhile, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator has arrived, along with a number of other books that I completely forgot I also requested over the holidays, so, reading ahead!

2. While we're chatting about Tor.com, my post about An Infamous Army went up on Tuesday. (I also took the moment to briefly discuss a few other books that she wrote after that.)

3. A number of science fiction writers have banded together to help pay for Jay Lake's whole genome sequencing to fight his cancer. A few things on this:

a) the situation totally sucks; I've met him only a couple of times, but Jay is a pretty awesome guy whose major bad habit is to make other writers (me) feel guilty about just sitting around and sipping tropical drinks by the pool while he continued to write away. (Although he did come out and join us by the pool from time to time.) BUT

b) the chance to do genome sequencing on a science fiction writer just seems too science fictiony not to do. Also, his fellow writers have donated some pretty whimsical things.

4) And among other things this week, I finally a) got to the Morse Museum after four years of wanting and trying to go (and I hope it won't be my last trip) and b) picked up and finished A Memory of Light, the final book of the Wheel of Time series, decades after starting the series. I am going to be honest, everyone: one of those two things was more worth the wait than the other. However, I do have quite a lot to say about both, so, we'll see if after I get a few other things done (like, rest), one or the other inspires me to blogging.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

While I was too dizzy to pay attention, my post on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory popped up on Tor.com.

The next post should be on the book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. However, this book proved unexpectedly popular in central Florida -- I ordered it several weeks back, but although my account claims it has arrived, it has not in fact done so, and I have some medical stuff upcoming this week (grr.) Which is to say that next week's post may be Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, may be Danny, the Champion of the World, or may be missing entirely. We shall see.

Meanwhile, I need to see if I can drag myself up to return some library books, just so the library doesn't cut me off from their services...

The annual wrap up post:

Very sick today, if slightly better than yesterday afternoon, but I see that ah, yes, it's time for the obligatory 2012 wrap up post listing eligible stories for awards and so on. I haven't a hope of getting a nomination for anything this year, but I have sometimes found these summaries a bit helpful for me. So.

And the Hollow Space Inside (Clarkesworld, February, short story, science fiction) generated the most passionate responses, for and against, of anything I published last year. As one reviewer insightfully noted, it was in part a response to C.L. Moore's "No Woman Born," (which I didn't realize until the reviewer pointed it out), in part a response to my ongoing anger with medical issues. I'm delighted to see it popping up on some of the longer "year's best" lists here and there.

My personal favorite, however, was unquestionably Copper, Iron, Blood and Love (Apex, March, short story, fantasy), a dark fairy tale that started off as part of my flash fiction fairy tale series, and turned into something far more.

I seem to be somewhat more alone in my liking for
More people seem to have liked A Cellar of Terrible Things (Shimmer, July, fantasy/horror), surprising because it's a ghost story about, well, terrible things. It too has appeared on a couple of the longer year's best lists here and there.

I haven't seen any responses to "Safe," my dolphin shapechanging story, from Oceans Unleashed yet, perhaps because the book hasn't been out in print that long.

Labyrinth (Apex, December, short story, fantasy/horror), about fighters in a labyrinth, also has not been out in the world for too long yet, but has already generated some nice feedback. To answer some of this feedback, yes, "Labyrinth," is very much part of a larger world, and more of it, including just how prisoners are selected for the labyrinth, will hopefully be revealed in later stories, short and long.

So that's six short stories – fewer than last year, but, on the other hand, four of them appeared in professional publications – that is, publications that pay at least five cents a word, which is an improvement over last year.

I also published four pieces of flash fiction. Of these, my favorites were "The Agreement," and Nettles; I suspect more people read A Different Rain and Shattered Amber, which both appeared in Daily Science Fiction. And last but not least, seven poems.

Please note that I am not eligible for Best Fan Writer, since I am paid for the Tor.com posts and I don't write enough about genre stuff on this blog. Can I instead recommend Abigail Nussbaum, Bogi Takacs and Fran Wilde? Or anyone else people feel inclined to nominate in the comments.

Les Miserables and the Hobbit

And now for the two movies I saw in the theatre over the holidays:

1. I liked Les Miserables, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted it to be, I dunno, more.

I suspect that this was thanks to several factors – one, I've heard seemingly umpteen versions of this, and know the score so well I had certain expectations, absolutely none of which were upheld by Russell Crowe; two, the director's decision to film about half the movie in EXTREME CLOSE UP, which after a time had me thinking less, "Wow, Anne Hathaway is making me sob," and more PULL THE CAMERA BACK PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU (someone on Twitter said the effect was claustrophobic, and I really have to agree); three, Russell Crowe, who was generally fine when singing more or less alone, but not at all fine when singing with everyone else, which just heightened the fact that he is just an adequate, not great singer; four, the switching around of a few songs, which meant a change to the careful balance of the musical, with longer periods of slow music and thumping music and less of an intermingling.

Also, an intermission after "One Day More," would have been greatly welcomed.

But the last scene was pretty thrilling, and I sniffled. So, yay.

2. The Hobbit. Already nearly discussed to death by nearly everyone else, but, some comments behind a spoiler tag just in case:


I had fun. But as I watched the film, I found myself strongly agreeing with whoever said, either about this film or about the earlier films, "Very pretty, Mr. Jackson, but you must not call it Tolkien." (And I say this as a person who loves Alexander Pope's translation of The Iliad however not at all close it is to the source material. Moving on.)

Part of the problem, as others have noted, is that the film can't decide if it's trying to be The Hobbit or a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, which results in some odd tonal shifts here and there. And in this case, these shifts aren't just a change to the source material, as in the earlier films; in many cases, they weaken the film as a film. A related problem is that I frequently got the sense that we were seeing a lot of things that Jackson in retrospect wished he had put into the earlier films (people singing and eating in Rivendell, the secret entrance to Rivendell, more stuff beneath the Misty Mountains, everything about Radagast). Alas, almost none of this, and in particular the stuff about Radagast, belongs in this film. (Our audience cracked up, and not as Jackson intended them to, during the Radagast bits.)

In a related problem, somebody – I'm assuming Jackson – decided that The Hobbit needed an Aragorn figure. And chose Thorin for that role. This is problematic for so many reasons I hardly know where to begin. For one, as Kate Nepveu noted, Thorin isn't Aragorn; he's Boromir. He isn't a king in hiding; he's a king heading back to reclaim his treasure, stolen by a dragon. And he's considerably more arrogant and proud than either Aragorn or, to be fair, even Boromir. For two, this means that much of the movie is focused on Thorin being very very good looking – and fighting with a sword.

That in turn leads to one severe misreading of The Hobbit. Tolkien, unlike Jackson, was actually in a major war, one he did not enjoy, and one that lost him many of his closest friends. His biographer and son both strongly imply that post traumatic stress from the war or the death of his friends later led to severe episodes of clinical depression (I find that some of the chapters of The Return of the King, and especially the chapters set in Mordor, work as metaphors for severe depression, whether consciously intended that way by Tolkien or not).

The result of this is that much of The Hobbit is dedicated to avoiding fights at all costs. Rather than physically fighting the trolls, Gandalf tricks them into getting caught by the sun. When Thorin and co later get trapped by goblins, their first impulse is to try to talk their way out of it -- a sensible decision, considering that Thorin and co are also deeply outnumbered. Bilbo tries to talk his way past Gollum (and succeeds.) The bit with the talking wolves includes a lot of dialogue, and also a lot of wondering on the part of the dwarves and Gandalf about what to do since fighting is out of the question. This is a trend continued in the book until Bilbo encounters the spiders, which are, well, freakish spiders, and the Battle of the Five Armies. You don't fight unless you have to or you have superior numbers.

Jackson, however, is creating an action movie, and for him, action movie means, "fight." I don't exactly mean to drag Tora! Tora! Tora! into every discussion here, but some of the more tense scenes of that movie were straight dialogue. Admittedly, Tora! Tora! Tora! could get away with that since the audience is aware of where that dialogue will lead – nothing good – but in the The Hobbit we know from the beginning that the group is approaching a dragon. It does not make sense for them to keep getting involved in various fights along the way. And it is completely against Tolkien's vision, which is not about fighting your way to Smaug, but trying to walk there.

And, er, giant orc with prosthetic hand chasing down Thorin? Would not have been needed had you kept this to a single film, Jackson.

Anyway. I found a few other minor bits off – given that Ian Holm's narration in the beginning appears to be a setup for telling the story to Frodo, then why on earth would he say, "In the hole in the ground there lived a hobbit...." Oh, yes, I was delighted to hear the narrative line, but it just felt wrong. Another moment later, when Gandalf (I think, or someone else), says "out of the frying pan and into the fire," also made me twitch a bit – it's a reference again to the narration of The Hobbit. Bilbo actually says something along the lines of "Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves," which, the linguist tells us, becomes a proverb much like "out of the frying pan, into the fire." But nobody other than the narrator actually says "out of the frying pan...." so it felt off to hear it in the film. And why all the deference to Galadriel? Since no one knows that Saruman has gone bad at this point, surely he's the ranking person of wisdom in the group? Also, er, in this version, are Gandalf and Galadriel having a Thing? Is that why her husband Celeborn discreetly stayed away? Also, um, why is Thranduil on a moose?

On the other hand, The Hobbit does give us two great moments, both worth the cost of admission: the dwarves singing in Bilbo's hobbit hole, and the confrontation between Gollum and Bilbo, which was brilliantly done and very tense. I'm not exactly inclined to pick this up on DVD, mind you. But I might grab it on sale at some point in the distant future, and just fast forward to those two bits.

The Expendables, and other things

So it's the last day of the year, the traditional day for rounding up all of the good and bad things that happened in 2012. At the moment I'm not even feeling up to rounding up all of the good and bad things that happened over the holidays, so instead I'll just be trying to chat a bit about some of the movies my brother and I have been watching on the new TV.

For the most part, as a compromise, this has meant action films: Thor, Captain America: the First Avenger, Avengers, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and the completely appalling The Expendables. All silly fun, except, to repeat, The ExpendablesTora! Tora! Tora! but although that has a lot of things blowing up that's not exactly in the same category as the rest of these films, so I won't discuss it much below.)


I initially meant to snark The Expendables. Really, I did. I could easily hear it in my head:

Hopeful screenwriters, one of whom is Sylvester Stallone: Have WE got a pitch for you! It's got Stallone AND Jet Li AND Bruce Willis and, to drag in a slightly younger audience, Jason Straham! And Mickey Rourke as some sort of vaguely Native American tattoo artist!

Hollywood money guys: Is Mickey Rourke actually Native American?

Hopeful screenwriters: We'll film him so darkly, it won't matter.

Hollywood money guys: Ok, we'll go for that. So, what's the plot?

Hopeful screenwriters: Things blow up.

Hollywood money guys: ....and the plot?

Hopeful screenwriters: More things blow up. And when we're stuck for dialogue, which will be often, more things will blow up.

Hollywood money guys: I dunno. I think we need more here.

Hopeful screenwriters: Ok. Here's what we got: aging action heroes and Jason Straham fly back and forth between a nameless Caribbean island that grows lots of drugs and is actually being run by some white guy from the CIA. They use a plane that says World Wildlife Organization as a Disguise Thing. Things blow up.

Hollywood money guys: I dunno. Can you give us, I dunno, some emotion here?

Hopeful screenwriters: Well, the aging action heroes can face off some dude they kicked off the team because of drug use! Also, Mickey Rourke can tell a Touching War Story.

Hollywood money guys: ...Mickey Rourke?

Hopeful screenwriters: If you have a choice between Stallone telling the Touching War Story and Rourke telling the Touching War Story, who are you going to go with?

Hollywood money guys: You have a point. Any other emotional things we can add?

Hopeful screenwriters: Well, relationships aren't really Our Thing, but if you insist, we can have a couple of women getting beaten up. And we'll ask some profound questions about why anyone would stay in a poverty stricken Caribbean country instead of just leaving since with American immigration policies that's always an option. Also, things will blow up.

Hollywood money guys: Hmm. Still not feeling it.

Hopeful screenwriters: What if we get Schwarzenegger to cameo with a joke about his potential political prospects?

Hollywood money guys: Can you get him to blow things up?

Hopeful screenwriters: No, but we can get him, Bruce Willis AND Stallone in the same room for a full two minutes which will be AWESOME for the trailers.

Hollywood money guys: Deal. Go blow things up.

So, yeah, the snark pretty much wrote itself (although I probably shouldn't make fun of the Mickey Rourke bit which was the film's only decent moment, if seeming as if it belonged in another film entirely), but as the film continued, I found myself more and more uncomfortable. Not because of the things blowing up. I'm as into big explosions as anyone. Or the crappy dialogue – it's an action film. With a script credited to Stallone. My expectations, they were not high. And not exactly because of the "Here come the Americans to save the day after they've screwed everything up," because that's a Stallone trademark (and, well, frankly a Hollywood trademark) that I was anticipating.

But because of the women.

Not, let me stress, because the film had only two women with speaking roles. After all, the rest of the films we watched were all equally male dominated, but those were fun. (Well, maybe "fun" isn't the word for Tora! Tora! Tora!.) But they also took a very different approach.

After all, with the exception of Tora! Tora! Tora! (which was striving for historical accuracy, and had almost no interest in gender issues at all), these films all featured a team of mostly men with only one woman (in Captain America, set in World War II, she doesn't join the team in the field, but helps put it together and holds a command role). Two of the films (The Avengers and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) had scenes where the women members of the team used their sexuality to extract information from the bad guys; two of the other films had women characters whose main point seemed to be sleeping with the lead (Star Trek, although that character also headed off for some sort of military job, and Captain America). Almost all of the bad guys in all of these films, even the background extras, were bad guys (Ghost Protocol also had a woman assassin, yay, who wanted to get paid in diamonds, somewhat less yay, but then again if you are collecting THAT much in cash for nuclear codes diamonds might be the easiest way to transport it, but I digress).

But, and this is key, the women in these films (mostly) did not spend the films getting beaten up or threatened and needing rescue by men. They mostly rescue themselves, when they need rescue at all (in Thor, for instance, the only people who need to be rescued are all men; Jane and Darcy need their computer equipment back, but they aren't physically threatened, and Uhura needs rescue only in the sense that the entire planet Earth needs rescue.) When the women are physically harmed, so are the men. (In fact Tom Cruise subjects his character to a surprising amount of physical pain.) In Ghost Protocol one of the women (MILD SPOILERS) even spends the film upset that she was not able to save a man although she was physically capable of doing so. This is not a judgement on her abilities in that film; the men also fail to save people. And the extras include plenty of women.

The two women in The Expendables just get beaten up.

The first is a decidedly secondary character, played by Charisma Carpenter, who gets herself beaten up by a boyfriend, and then stands by and watches helplessly as her ex boyfriend beats up the boyfriend. And that's it. The second gets kidnapped, beaten up, raped, and beaten up again. In the film's climatic scene, she is dragged around and around so Sylvester Stallone can blow things up and so that she can be saved by another man. She begs the American men – TWICE – to stay to help save her poor, Spanish speaking country which cannot possibly save itself. And which of course grows cocaine. Her father watches through a lot of this. Sylvester Stallone is so astonished to discover that she can make her own decisions that he decides to come back and blow up more of her country.

I forgot – the film has one more woman, who arrives on a motorcycle with Mickey Rourke. She has almost no dialogue; the camera focuses on her legs as she rides up a glass elevator. It's blatant, and I speak as someone who quite enjoyed the eye candy of Scarlett Johansson and more specifically her butt in The Avengers. (Given the camera's focus on it, it could almost have been given a nod in the final credits.)

The extras? Almost entirely men. The final scene? The men of the film – including the drug user who was earlier kicked out of the group (for drug use) and who had earlier tried very hard to KILL THE OTHER TEAM MEMBERS – gather together, without women, and throw knives.

Yeah.

And The Expendables expected me to enjoy this – a film that went far beyond marginalizing women, or including them as mere tokens. A film were women were excluded from all positions of power, all dialogues

Hell, Tora! Tora! Tora!, which was mostly ABOUT a bunch of men getting the U.S. and Japan into a war, in a historically sexist period, showed women with more agency and power – even though none of them were in uniform or military officers. It's a bad, bad moment when a woman secretary in a World War II film made in the 1970s has more power than the daughter of the leader of a country in a film made in the 21st century.

I don't need gender equity in my films – just as well, since I'm not going to get it. I will cheer on men heroes happily enough. But this – well, I said discomfort. Based on the length of this post, I think "discomfort" was not strong enough.

(Oh, and since I previously blogged about all of the other action flicks mentioned here, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, has a completely silly plot with huge plot holes, and a lot of things blowing up. Also, a lot of fun. Recommended mind candy of a film. Just don't think too hard about the plot.)

Random thoughts

1. I leave LJ and blogging for a few days, and return to see various people who haven't been on LJ for months or years returning to say that Facebook isn't the same and they miss LJ for various reasons but nobody seems to be around anymore...again, just as I was gone. Heh.

2. Part of the absence has been exhaustion, and part the new TV and Bluray player, which, yay! (I was getting ready to buy this -- well, the TV -- and then it was bought for me, which was awesomely convenient.) I was really not prepared for the difference between a 25 inch screen and a 46 inch screen -- oh, sure, I've seen it in stores and at other homes, but it's a bit different when it's at your own house.

I must say though that the difference between Bluray and DVD? Not as much as I'd thought it would be, though, to be fair, I'm so struck by the improvement in the screen size and picture quality (all of the DVDs look MUCH BETTER) that I may be missing more subtle differences, and I've only watched one Bluray (The Avengers) so far. Usually I'd add, "We shall see," with this, but since I pretty much get all of my DVDs from the library, which has not started purchasing Blurays yet, I may not see for a bit.

3. The weather has hit perfection -- nights just chilly enough to remind us what season it is and to give us an excellent excuse for hot chocolate and cider (not that I really need an excuse for either), days brightly sunny, interrupted by properly fierce storms yesterday.

4. And happy birthdays to both malterre and acwise !!!!

Post holiday cats

A bit blurry, but:




The cats were incredibly generous this year. They gave me a can of a tuna, a cat tree that they can climb on, a banana, two rubber duckies that look like them (a black and white kitty rubber duckie and a grey kitty rubber duckie) and some animal crackers. So I thought you should all enjoy a rather blurry picture of them, especially so I can prove that yes, the Grey One is alive and still with us.

And now I think I shall follow their example and zonk out for a bit.

A merry Tuesday to you all!

My holiday gift to you all -- apologies in advance:

'Twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the house,
all the people were shaking,
wishing it was only a mouse.
Alas, alas no, a dragon had arrived –
His glittering red and green wings bright in the skies.
And ooh! All the smoke! All the fire and brimstone!
What horribly large and strong scaly thighs!
And up on the roof there arose such a clatter,
that every last person squawked, oh what does it matter!
If we can't get the brand new TV to turn on,
Or get the ASUS tablet to change this &^%%# icon!
(Er, wait. The poet just recalled
this poem was supposed to be set in older times
when Christmas did not include getting Malled
or trying to figure out arcane stuff,
like, has this thing been charged enough?
So sorry. We will return to days of yore,
and see what this dragon story has in store.)
So up on the roof their arose such a clatter,
that knights ran out shrieking, "What is the matter?"
"I need gifts," said the dragon, licking his lips.
"Something from each of your townships."
"Virgins?" asked the knights. "We might be a bit short –"
The dragon stopped that with a snort.
"What would I do with a virgin? No, I want gold.
Lots of it. Don't care if it's warm or cold."
The people whispered, and then with a nod,
dragged out a great cauldron. "No fraud!"
steamed the dragon, and the knights all quivered,
But none of the others even shivered.
As they ran from house to house grabbing supplies.
The dragon watched, then said "Hey guys –"
To the knights, who were guarding the pot –
"Do my eyes deceive me? You're girls, are you not?"
"We prefer 'women,' " said the knights, with a nod.
"You must have met more in your flights abroad."
"Oh yes," said the dragon, with a grin.
"It's the women who beat me again and again.
So I warn you, I'm ready for all of you knights,
Even if you have some tricks with some kites."
(This puzzled the knights, and even the poet,
who just flung up her hands and said, oh, stow it –
It's not as if anyone will be reading this blog,
On Christmas, especially this slog.)
"Oh, it's not us who will be saving the town," said a knight.
"But our various cooks. Fire! Ignite!"
And the knights lit the fire. The cauldron bubbled.
The dragon looked quite befuddled.
And all through the town the cooks they did hurry
to throw things in the cauldron with quite a scurry.
Two hours later cooks and knights they did grin –
"Oh great dragon, we beg you, begin!"
The dragon approached, and sniffed and sniffed –
Beer and cheese and some kind of spice –
Even the well travelled dragon thought, well, that's very nice.
He tentatively stuck out his very long tongue,
And one of the knights – she was quite young –
Grabbed a spoon and brought the dragon a taste.
"Cheddar beer soup! Perhaps not great for my waist –
BUT GOLD INDEED! WOW! This is amazing stuff!
I just hope we have enough!"
And they heard him exclaim, as he flew out of sight,
"I'll be back with more dragons for this soup tonight!"

#

For those looking for something a bit more, er, Christmasy, a new post is up at Tor.com.

Heyer reread and other updates

(I see the auto cross posting from Dreamwidth is still, how shall I put this, twitchy. The Les Miz cat post went through without a problem, this one, not so much.)

Feeling somewhat better this morning, although the fever is still coming and going, which is as well since fbhjr and malterre are in theory on their way. That will probably mean even less time spent on this blog than usual (although, let's face it, that's not exactly going to be a huge change from the last few weeks.) Alas, they will be walking into a house that even the most kindly minded of you would not exactly call "clean" just now, but the friendly cat says he will be friendly enough (to who is highly allergic to him) that they won't notice. Also, Christmas train.

Meanwhile, if you are so inclined, book discussion of Georgette Heyer continues with one of my favorites, The Talisman Ring.

Since the next two Tuesdays are Christmas and New Year's, respectively, the Heyer reread is going to take a bit of a hiatus. (Also because the next book is An Infamous Army, not exactly Heyer's fastest read.) It may be back on January 8th, but since that is also known to many, many people as "YAY! WE WILL FINALLY KNOW HOW THE WHEEL OF TIME SERIES ENDS!" day it may be pushed back another week. We'll see. Meanwhile, keep an eye on Tor.com today since it's just possible that a Santa related post might be making an appearance. Just maybe. The Roald Dahl reread, though, should be continuing without interruption over the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, everyone keep your fingers crossed that the one last present I ordered will in fact arrive by Saturday (sniffle). It was supposed to arrive Monday and has been "delayed." Ah, holiday shipping.