Sidney Blaylock Jr.'s Blog, page 51
November 7, 2017
Potpourri–A Bunch of Little (& Stranger) Things
Bowl of Potpourri Flowers, Image Source: WikiHow
This blog post is just a random collection of little things that I’ve been working on over the past week that really don’t deserve a full blog post.
Stranger Things
So I started watching Stranger Things Season 2 over the past weekend. Right now, I’m really enjoying it. The first episode is reestablishing the characters and introducing new characters. I like the vibe of the show, so far, even after only one episode. It is like getting reacquainted with old familiar friends after a long hiatus. There’s a lot of 80s nostalgia that is really forefront in this episode and also several new characters seem like a good mix for the show. I can’t wait to see how it progresses.
iPhone 7
So my iPhone appears to be utterly and truly dead. After talking with Apple, I’m going to have to take it to a local authorized Apple Dealer and see if they have a phone in stock that I can exchange with it, or if I’m going to have to wait for Apple to send me a replacement. Ugh, very frustrating. I’m just grateful that it was in the 1 year warranty period for the phone. I’ll keep you up-to-date on the phone situation. I did, by the way, have a great Technical Support experience and the Apple Advisor was very patient with me as we went through the process. I greatly appreciated that!
Star Trek Next Generation – First Season
I’ve started STNG and the first season is much “rougher” than I remember. I knew Worf’s prosthetics & makeup underwent a redesign, but it looks worse during the first season than I remember. Also, many of the trademark elements that made STNG what it was were either still being formed or hadn’t yet been implemented, so the show feels like an “empty shell” rather than the rich, inventive show that I remember.
Well, that’s all for now–this post will have to be short and sweet. Till next time!
November 6, 2017
Die Another Day (The Farce is Strong With this One)
Die Another Day UK Cinema Poster, Image Source: Wikipedia
Having watched half of Die Another Day, I now know why 1) I’ve been so resistant to seeing it and 2) why it is considered such weak entry into the Bond franchise. I will be honest and say that I haven’t completed it as of yet (I’m about half way through), but even halfway is enough to start to figure out where it went wrong.
Story
To say that the story doesn’t make any sense would be disingenuous because there is sense to be had if you really take the time to follow the convoluted logic of the story, but none of the story scenes really resonate. There is a tenuous tie through out the first half of the movie of uncovering the identity of spy/source who gave up Bond’s identity and helped to “burn” him (in spy parlance). Yet, Bond goes from scene to scene without the audience clearly knowing what is driving him. For instance, a short time after escaping from what we assume is a MI-6 recovery room after being tortured for 14 months in captivity, James is back to his normal “antics” with Jinx. He is supposed to be consumed with a desire for revenge on the unknown “person” who set him up and a desire to clear his name, but he is back to his old “self” and is as right as rain, even back to the clever quips and ridiculous sword fight that would have (at the very least) sent members of the supposed fencing club running for their phones to call the police or running for their lives..
Too Much Farce
Which brings me to another point. In DaD, there’s just simply too much farce to take seriously. In one scene, Bond strolls into a ritzy and glamorous hotel (5 star) in his pajamas completely unshaven. Now, let’s be real, even the local McDonalds has a no shirt, no shoes, no service policy. If you or I tried to do what Bond did in real life, we would be turned away. If we insisted, the police would be called. Yet none of this happens in this movie. Bond turns heads, but it is meant to be humorous/funny, but the writers forgot that humor doesn’t come from ignoring the way things work in reality, but highlighting them and pointing out the absurdity. Guardians of the Galaxy‘s humor works because Rocket the Raccoon knows he is a Raccoon and comments on the fact (& takes umbrage when others belittle him for his origins). Groot’s humor works because the audience only hears “I am Groot,” but we know based on the others’ responses that he is expressing himself in some manner that we are not privy to and that’s funny. And so on with each of the characters. DaD, on the other hand, expects us to laugh when they break the rules of how the world really works, when in fact, they are calling attention to the fact that this is unreal, that this is a “movie.”
Changing Tastes in Realism
M: The world changed while you were away.
B: I didn’t.
This is exchange was meant to emphasize Bond’s dedication to the mission, but what it really did was emphasize how Bond refused to change to be relevant to the change in audience tastes and expectations. While Goldeneye still maintained much of the Bond tropes, it was actually a “forward-looking” Bond movie that was more realistic in a fun way than the dour realism of the Bond movies under Timothy Dalton’s reign. Obviously, Ge’s realism was nothing compared to the gritty realism Casino Royal and Skyfall under Daniel Craig’s stewardship, but at the time, and for its time, Ge was fairly well received as a return to form for the Bond franchise. DaD, so far at least, undermines this. Yes, I know I like Roger Moore’s Bond and those Bond movies are often as silly as this one, but in the mid to late 70s and very early 80s, you could still get away with that. Movies like Smokey and the Bandit, Cannonball Run, Silver Streak and even as late as Superman III with Richard Pryor were a lot of what the Roger Moore Bond movies were taping into with their campiness. However, with the introduction of the Bourne movies with Matt Damon, the world’s taste in spy movies changed, and DaD didn’t change with them. Audiences craved a more realistic depiction of the clandestine spy hero, but DaD regressed at the very time it should have been more like its more realistic sibling, Ge.
So, I’m going to wrap this up for this week. If all goes well, I will either finish this up piecemeal over the coming week while I wait for my phone to be repaired or I will finish it next weekend, but unless something major changes, this one is very much neck and neck with the George Lazenby Bond movie for the one I currently dislike the most. I will, however, reserve judgment until I finish it completely.
November 3, 2017
Building the “Bible”
Cover for Star Trek Voyager Series Bible, Image Source: Calormen.com
So this is the post that I’d intended to write yesterday about the progress on my novel based on my time in the Writing Center. This will be a shorter post, but hopefully informative. Basically, we dived a little more into the character of Skye and I discovered that I don’t really write “deep” character sketches. I write them on a surface level, so over the weekend, I plan to revise the character sketch and add in more details if possible about Skye and her personality. I also hadn’t settled on physical characteristics for Skye yet, but I think that I have now, so I’ll add those in as well.
My consultant wanted to know more about the world and how the “rules” of the world operated. I told her about some things, but she suggested that I, like Tolkien, commit them to paper instead of trying to hold them all in my mind’s eye. I told her that I’d tried to do that earlier in my career. There’s a term that series TV uses for it: “The Bible” for that series. Most Television shows (& some movies and graphic novels–probably even some novels) have “Bible.” I know that Babylon 5 had one as I heard about it through a history site of the show. Apparently, the B5 used to sell copies of the show’s “Bible” during its run, but now that the show (& I’d assume the fan site) is no longer active, it is unavailable. I even went to eBay to see if someone might be selling a copy that I could purchase just to see how it was put together (no luck though–at least as of a year or two ago when I last looked).
My consultant decided that I should go ahead and try to create at least a nascent “Bible” of the world, the politics, the history, etc., just to get all of my ideas out of my head and on to paper. Even if I never use them in the story, at least I would have them down and “codified” on paper in a tangible way so that I could refer back to them as necessary and so the consultant might be able to read them and understand both the backstory and the motivations behind the various people, institutions, and world that I had created. So that’s my homework for this week: to create a nascent “Bible” that begins to explain/explore some of the concepts that I’ve created for my world.
Finally, we talked a little bit about how the story (plot) is developing. It is Science Fiction, but as the protagonist is young, we talked about how it could be a Young Adult story (or perhaps marketed as Young Adult). We talked about some of the possible advantages and pitfalls of the YA market at the moment, and discussed some of its conventions. We decided to wait and see how the story evolved organically before deciding where and how the story could be marketed, but even at this early stage we are looking at the audience for this story and trying to decide which audience is most appropriate for it.
Anyway, that’s it for this week. So sorry for yesterday’s diversion, but when life throws a curveball, I fell compelled to play the umpire and call it as I see it. Not sorry for the baseball reference, however, as the World Series has just wrapped up–wish I could have seen more it, but maybe next year.
November 2, 2017
Iphone 7 Bricked
An example of a completely black iPhone 7 screen (mine looks exactly the same as in this image, by the way), Image Source: YouTube
Well, this sucks. I was going to write about my experience at the writing center working on my novel, but I’ll have to save it for another time (preview: it went well & was productive, but more in a later blog post). No, unfortunately, I find that today’s topic is that I woke up this morning to find that my 3 month old iPhone 7 is bricked. It will not turn on, it will not charge, it will not do anything. It is essentially a paperweight.
Color me unhappy. I no longer upgrade the iOS immediately anymore to keep from things like this from happening. I knew iOS 11 was out, but now I wait until the little update badge appears on the Settings icon of the phone nowadays as that usually happens when there have been one or two bug fix updates applied to the iOS. In this case it was three: iOS 11.0.3, before it popped up to upgrade last week.
I upgraded and IMMEDIATELY noticed a drop in battery life. I used to be able to watch YouTube and Netflix periodically throughout the day and the battery would last a day and a half. I could get through a full day and most of the night before it needed recharging. After the update, it needed to be charged every 6-8 hours with the same usage model, sometimes dying in the middle of the night even though it started the night on an 75%-80% charge. I figured that this would be fixed in a future update.
Yesterday, however, battery performance was particularly bad. I had to charge multiple times during the day, so last night, before going to bed, I plugged in the USB adapter into the wall charger and plugged in the phone hoping for a full charge in the morning (the battery indicator was on 43% and was yellow when I went to bed). When I awoke this morning, I didn’t remember hearing the alarm, so when I rolled out of bed, I checked the phone. Dead as a doornail.
I thought, maybe the phone overheated. Nope. Maybe it needed to be turned on after shutting itself off. Nope. Maybe I just need to reset it. Nope. On and on, solution after solution via Google and online forums. Nope. Nope. And Nope. So now as I type these words I have a black paperweight of glass and plastic staring at me, refusing to even acknowledge its own existence.
And now, I’m probably going to have to miss class to try to take it into a local AT&T store to discover what the problem is and that is not something that I really want (or should have) to do as a Graduate student. At this level, school should come first. I buy Apple products because of the “Just works” mantra. If that’s no longer the case, then I need to start looking around for other products that will suit my needs more capably.
Not happy, Apple. Not happy, AT&T. Not happy at all. 
November 1, 2017
The Bonds are Back (in Town)
James Bond 007 Actors, Image Source: Movietube.online
So, this won’t be a long blog post today as I have a lot of work to do over the next few days–reading (Sister Carrie), grading (Rhetorical Analysis papers), classes (working on an informal paper proposal for 19th Century Lit. class) and writing (Character Sketch & Plot Outline for Project Skye–yes, I’ve dusted off that old chestnut of a project and am going to try to revive it just in time for NaNoWriMo).
However, I felt compelled to note that Amazon (I believe) is getting all the Bonds back together. They are streaming quite a few James Bond movies in the month of November. After writing the post where I listed my favorite James Bond actors, I actually had a fairly large regret of not being able to say that I’ve seen all the James Bond movies and that I had to qualify them by saying all EXCEPT for Die Another Day. Well, this movie is one of the ones that is coming back so I am going to make a special effort to see this movie. They have quite a few of the Bond movies from all 4 of the recent Bonds if I remember correctly looking at the list, but it isn’t a complete back catalog.
Still, for someone who is a completionist such as myself, I need to make myself watch Die Another Day–even if it is only for half an hour a day so that I can have a complete grasp of the character through all his incarnations and hey, who knows, I might be able to use Bond in some way in an academic setting or paper in some way And I just know that “Shaken, not stirred,” would make a GREAT paper title! 
October 31, 2017
Finished Goosebumps
Goosebumps Movie Poster, Image Source: Wikipedia.com
So, for Halloween, I thought I’d mention that I finished Goosebumps over the weekend (well, not really–it turns out that GB is on the list to go away from Netflix’s library in Nov). As I had seen about ⅓ of the movie, I wanted to finish it before it left, so I watched it over the weekend. I have to say that I liked it. It was more fun than I thought it would be.
It is the quintessential Young Adult movie with a few scary elements. It actually reminds me a lot of the Spiderwick Chronicles and Inkheart. It has a lot of heart and isn’t a cynical cash grab like some other “YA franchise films.” Some of the students at my old Middle School really loved this film, but it has enough for adults too.
Without spoilers, basically, the movie is a “What if?” scenario: What if R. L. Stine was real (well, he is real, but real in the movie’s world) and the monsters in his books were also real and can literally leap off the page? It takes some of the most famous characters and books from Stine’s work and creates CGI monsters to bedevil our protagonists. There’s not a lot of teen angst and the love story is “sweet” (not saccharine, but really nice one that actually has a basis in the plot of the movie). That being said, there are a couple of cringe-worthy moments that kids won’t mind, but adults will roll their eyes at, but on the whole it is a fun movie. And, to be honest, the movie earned major cool points with me for having Jack Black’s R. L. Stine character take on Stephen King on who’s a scarier writer and a better bestseller. The scene is small, less than two minutes of screen time, but it was a nice Easter Egg for a former Bookseller/Librarian Assistant like myself who sold/checked out countless Goosebumps books.
Overall Grade: B (Above Average)
Here’s hoping everyone has a fun (& safe) Halloween!
October 30, 2017
Finished Star Trek Deep Space Nine
Cast of Deep Space Nine and image of the Deep Space Nine space station, Image Source: Den of Geek
So, last week I wrapped up the seven seasons of Star Trek Deep Space Nine in my continuing goal to watch all of the Star Trek series. I suspect that much like Disney movies, Paramount (the owners of the Star Trek brand) will probably want to move their shows over to their fledgling streaming service CBS AllAccess when their deal with Netflix is up (no concrete info on that, but it does seem reasonable given their desire to withhold their newest show Star Trek Discovery “hostage” in order to get CBS AllAccess into more homes–and to dig deeper into their audience’s wallets.)
Sorry, I digress. Corporate shenanigans really make me a little irritable. Back to the issue at hand: Deep Space Nine. As a Star Trek show goes, I really liked it. I thought that it was pretty intriguing. One might think that being stuck on a space station would limit the writers’ toolkit for creating meaningful stories, but that wasn’t the case. Mainly, the writers are able to create tension by using a “war” motif for most of the run of the series. Either we are recovering from a disastrous occupation by the Cardassians in the early seasons or we are engaged in a war with the Dominion in the later seasons. Either way, war and its after affects plays prominently as a key component of the show.
The characters are engaging. I actually enjoyed, on the whole, most of the cast. I thought they were an interesting and varied bunch. I wasn’t a fan of the Doctor’s portrayal in the last season–as I feel his relationship was rushed and forced in order to give his character a happy outcome at the end of the series, but before that, his character worked just fine for me. I also felt that Cisco’s character was pretty intriguing. Now Cisco gets a lot of heat because Avery Brooks changed Cisco’s demeanor mid-way through the series to better reflect another character Avery Brooks played, Hawk from Spencer for Hire. I actually didn’t mind as I had watched and enjoyed this series with my uncle (and the spinoff series, A Man Called Hawk), but as it is a strong portrayal of an African American man who moves from more of a mild and understated command to a more forceful and brash command style, I know that Avery’s change in performance likely rubbed some fans the wrong way–especially after the “diplomatic” portrayal of Jean Luc Picard by Patrick Stewart. I found it refreshing, actually (and familiar–remember I watched Avery Brooks in the Hawk role growing up). There are also some pretty insightful nods to race, race relations, and racism in the stories told here, both interspecies racism and racism based on skin color (via Time Travel and Time Travel-like stories) in this series.
The plots were mostly good. Like other Star Trek series there are some really good episodes along with some really bad ones. On the whole, the stories were mostly good and I found I fast-forwarded through about the same amount as had for Star Trek Voyager. I did notice that this show seemed a lot more grim than other Star Trek shows. Death is very common among many of the minor characters and not just “red shirts” even. These are characters who might have a few episodes or even a full season’s worth of character development, but they still are killed in fairly grim ways. If you’re expecting Gene Roddenberry’s original, more hopeful view of the Star Trek universe, you might not want to stop here first. However, even with the grimness, Deep Space Nine is a destination one should visit at least once–and who knows, you might even find a nice home somewhere on the Station’s promenade.
Series Grade: B (Above Average)
October 27, 2017
Great Actors in Small Roles: Haley Bennett in The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Haley Bennett as Ellen Cullen in The Magnificent Seven (2016), Image Source: Pinterest
I wanted to take a moment to call out performance in the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven. I don’t do these type of blog posts often, but when I see an actor in a “smaller” role and that actor leaves just as much of an impression as the named actors, I do want to take a moment to highlight his/her performance.
Pathos
I think that the role that Haley Bennett played was a crucial one to my enjoying the movie as much as I did. She brings a level of pathos (emotion) to the story that was sorely needed. The other male actors emoted, true enough, but they were all playing hardened men, seasoned killers, and (generally speaking), you don’t get to be a “tough guy” while still being able to emote. Their performances, like their characters, had to come across as reserved. About the only passionate emotion the male actors could display was anger–such as when Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke’s character) swears mightily when trying to train the townspeople to shoot. Yet, it is Bennett’s performance through her character Emily Cullen to express the rage and anguish (sometimes quiet, sometimes tear-filled) of a woman who has nothing else to lose after the villain’s actions.
Reaction Shots
While I could have wished that her character had a bigger role (speaking), her character does at least get quite a bit of screen time in relation to the other actors. Many of her scenes are “reaction shots” (her character’s reaction to some action and/or dialogue by other characters). This, to me, is where where she really makes me believe in Ellen Cullen. Based on her emotions, I actually believe that Ellen would emote in much the same way that Bennett portrays on the screen. While I wish Hollywood would involve women into the plot in a more integral way (a la Wonder Woman and Black Widow), Bennett’s portrayal of Ellen made an impression on me as I watched the movie and really stood out as a truly standout performance in a small role.
Hopefully, this blog entry will serve as a handclap of praise for a well deserved actor with a well delivered performance. Great work!
October 26, 2017
Baby Steps To a Novel
Chapter One of a novel on a Typewriter, Image Source: edx.org
So, yesterday I took my first steps to trying to complete a novel. Regular readers of the blog will note that I’ve tried before (without much success) to try to write a novel, but this time I’m using my university’s Writing Center to help. I’ve worked in the Writing Center myself all last year and I have a friend and colleague who is working there now who has agreed to a “Writing Partnership” with me–a fancy term for a standing appointment to talk about writing over the course of the semester. Generally, they are used for long term projects (thesis, dissertations, etc.), but they can also be used for just improving one’s writing in general. We talked about what I wanted to do ultimately (short-stories or novels) and we decided that writing a novel would be a good way to “grow” as a writer. Then we discussed the idea I had for a novel and what the next steps should be going forward.
Character Sketch
So, my homework is to complete at least one character sketch–the main character/protagonist–and have it ready by the next meeting. We talked about who the main character is (Skye–which longtime readers will remember from earlier blog posts) and what is her personality like. If possible, I’d like to write a character sketch for her father as that is her major familial relationship in the book, but based on school work and obligations, there may not be enough time for that. We spent quite a bit of time talking about the importance of characters and how they should act appropriately–something that I don’t think that I always do well because of my interest in the plot. Hopefully, I can really nail Skye’s personality and be able to create a convincing character arc for her.
Plot Outline
I also need to produce a plot outline for the next meeting. Again, one mandatory, but two if possible. I have “story map” that I use that is a 1 page “synopsis” of the characters, setting, plot, climax, and resolution. However, I’d like to also provide a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the story as that is where I always seem to break down when writing the novel, but I may find that that might be better suited to do after we talk about the character sketch/synopsis of the novel. In any case, I do intend to do what Brandon Sanderson noted about how he writes novels on his podcast, Writing Excuses, where he notes that he writes down big tentpole scenes as he’s generating ideas for his novel. I think that the tentpole scenes, in addition to the synopsis, would be helpful to do before trying to tackle the larger, chapter-by-chapter breakdown.
NaNoWriMo
November is National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo). I’ve never really tried to do anything for the month because I always had school (or a ton of things to do in the month of November), but as I’m in the midst of trying to write a novel and as the Writing Center will be holding a “Write In” on November 17, I guess I’ll give it a try. I don’t know what the outcome of all this will be, but I’ll blog about the process here to hopefully inspire other writers (aspiring or practicing) and maybe provide, tangible techniques and tricks to my fellow writers out there as well.
Wish me luck! 
October 25, 2017
Moribund Genres: The Western
Cowboys on horses, Image Source: WiseGeek.org
Watching the Magnificent Seven over the weekend and reading some of the critical reviews of the movie (I often skip reading movie reviews until AFTER I see a movie as I want to go in fresh/not have any preconceived notions and/or opinions), I see that the Western genre, after having its hey day in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s is still in a moribund phase. While the dictionary that I’m using lists several possible definitions, I’m going to use two as a way to guide my discussion.
1. Near death, dying
While I don’t think the Western genre will die, it might as well be dead to both movie-going audiences and the majority of non-genre (i.e., Western genre) critics. Every year or so, we see one or two major movies released, but rarely do they seem to draw any real attraction to themselves or garner any steam (pardon the pun). I can remember all the way back to the mid 1980s with the movie Silverado watching and enjoying a western movie that seemed to get no love critically or commercially (even though it helped to introduce Kevin Costner as a rising star who would go on to become a major movie star in another western Dances With Wolves). For some unknown reason, audiences reached a saturation point with Westerns as a movie genre in the late 1970s and the lack of interest around the remake of the Magnificent Seven shows that the audience interest for western movies still remains tepid.
Now there have been bright spots here and there: the above mentioned Dances With Wolves (which I haven’t seen all the way through–managed to catch parts of hit) and Clint Eastwood’s early 1990’s movie Unforgiven were standouts both critically and commercially (and I’m sure that one can argue for others exceptions to the rule), but for the most part, the western is no longer a part of the American movie-going experience.
2. Not progressing, stagnant.
This probably the most important reason as to why western movies are having such a tough go of it right now. In many of the reviews that I read, reviewers touched on the “cliches” of the Western genre and how many of them are in play in the movie. The audiences (perhaps rightly so) don’t think they can expect any new surprises from this genre. If you were to name ten “conventions” (or cliches) that one often sees in western movies, you could probably find at least half of those on your list in the Magnificent Seven. Now all genres (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adventure, Horror, etc.) have certain tropes, but it is Horror’s turning the tropes on their head through race relations (GetOut), atmosphere (Stranger Things, Stephen King’s It) and flat-out scares (ANY of James Wan’s recent successful movies) that have turned Horror from the also ran of the 1980s and 1990s into the rising juggernaut that it is quickly becoming.
And there is an audience for Westerns as a genre. One of the hottest video games during the last gaming console generation was Red Dead Redemption, an open world western adventure game and its sequel, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most anticipated games for this current console generation. So the audience for the genre is there, but filmmakers are going to have to look for new stories to tell and new ways to tell those stories.
