Mel at the Movies: Australia

The posters are up and the trailers are playing for the upcoming "event" of 2008: Jackman and Kidman, together again for the first time, in...



To be honest, I don't go to the cinema much; the last movies I saw on the big screen were IRON MAN and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull ... both of which I enjoyed vastly. (I know some people are rubbishing Jones now, but I personally enjoyed the movie, so, what they hey? It had a great sense of both humor and the ridiculous; it knew when to laugh at itself; Harrison Ford has turned into a likable old codger who, in this incarnation, could go on for a long time. Okay, he's not young anymore. Where is it written that a person has to be young to be likable? Spielberg and Lucas cast an attractive young dude as Jones Jr., and Cate Blanchett gets to strut her stuff outrageously, so who's got a complaint? The movie was FUN, people.)

Having said that I don't go to the theater much, I shall certainly be sitting in the middle of one of the big ones at the Marion megaplex later this month ... Australia is a movie I gotta see.

In the last couple of days I've been watching numerous trailers. In case you've missed them, and are interested (!), here you go:


THE FULL TRAILER

and


A second, different trailer.

...There are about a half dozen trailers and sneak previews circulating right now, each giving a different perspective on the movie. One of them at least is "getting rotten reviews" as a trailer! Peanut gallery critics are not even waiting for the movie to come out -- they've got Australia labeled as a lousy movie because they found the trailer "baffling and incomprehensible."

It's true that if you don't know much about Australian history, you could be confused. It's equally true that Aussies and Kiwis might find the trailer for a movie about the American Civil War to be confusing ... doesn't mean it's going to be a lousy movie: just means that the parochial education -- necessary to understand the visual references used in the shorthand with which movie trailers are crafted -- is missing in folks from way downunder. High duh factor on that one. Same difference with the trailer for Australia. I watched the exact same 90 seconds that had rubbed this person the wrong way, and the footage made perfect sense to me.

What's going to take me to the movies to see this one on the big screen is sheer curiosity: my gods, it's a movie about Australia, with real Australians in it!!! Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, Bruce Spence, David Wenham, Bill Hunter, John Jarratt, David Gulpilil, Ray Barrett, Arthur Dignam ... they're all Aussies!!

It's seldom that a movie about Australia is actually 1) about Australia, 2) done properly and not turned into a pastiche from foreign perspectives, 3) FILMED in Australia, 3) cast with real Aussie actors.

For example ... The Thorn Birds, filmed in Hawaii in 1983, starring Richard Chamberlaine, Barbara Stanwick, Rachel Ward, Christopher Plummer, Jean Simmonds, Piper Laurie, Earn Holliman ... the dramatisation of the crash-hot Australian monster novel of the early 1980s. Not one single Aussie actor in it. Not even filmed here.

The year before ,The Man From Snowy River premiered locally with the kind of pomp and fireworks that are usually reserved for things like Return of the King and Revenge of the Sith...


In its favor were the cast (all Aussies with the exception of Kirk Douglas who played two parts and was actually very good in both ... don't count Gus Mercurio as a Yank: he'd been here for so long, he was as Aussie as any of us by '82), and the cinematography, which was so vast, so sweeping, so color-saturated and amazing ... it looked like a Marlbro country commercial half the time. Sorry, guys, but it did. In the end, the massive cinematography (reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain) looked like the cigarette commercial, and ended up as a detraction.

The big problem with The Man From Snowy River was that, for most of the audience, the whole movie ... all 102 minutes of it ... hangs on about four and a half minutes of action which, admittedly, knocks your eyeballs right out of their sockets. The thing is, you have to wade through 95 minutes of Nineteenth Century Soap Opera to get to this. Now, if you fell instantly in lust with Tom Burlinson or Sigrid Thornton, you sat there drooling for an hour and a half. If you didn't, you kinda toughed it out and waited for this:



There you go: there's The Man From Snowy River in a thimble -- at least, the bit that counts, the bit the greater percentage of the audience remembers. The rest is soap and teen romance, and glorious backdrops. This highspot is well worth the rental price of the DVD, if you have a big-screen TV. Trust me on this: you will get goosebumps.

Not quite what some of us had in mind when we imagined a movie about Australia. Sure, Snowy was as Aussie as the dog on the tucker box -- which, in a big way, was a relief. But ... a movie about Australia?

A couple of years earlier, we came close

"From a place you've never heard of comes a story you'll never forget." Whoever wrote that slogan got it right. Gallipoli is less a movie than an experience ... and it's an experience it'll take you a week to get over. Not that it's graphically violent by today's standards: if you're thinking along the lines of Private Ryan and We Were Soldiers -- wrong. To many people (myself included) too much too-graphic violence causes compassion fatigue well inside the 120 minute running length of a movie. What shocked me in Reel One doesn't rouse much of an emotional reaction in Reel Six. Gallipoli is the exact opposite. It's like an exercise in virtual reality. You are there ... you live and work with these guys (Mel Gibson in the days when he was an Aussie, and drop-dead gorgeous, and Mark Lee, who has always been an Aussie, and equally drop-dead gorgeous). And you die with them. The movie stands out in my memory as the most amazing Australian movie done to date ... but I can't watch it more often than about once in three years, because it's almost unbearable, especially in the last ten minutes or so.

Here's the sneak-preview:



YouTube has a couple of uploads of the end, but the good one of them is dubbed from a copy with what looks like it might be Dutch or Danish subtitles. I find this distracting, but give it a shot:



(Yes, of course I have a copy, and I know it line for line. I wasn't at the premier, but I saw it the first week it played here (parts of it were shot in South Australia, so it was a big event here; believe it or not, Mel Gibson used to live in this city a loooooong time ago, before he went well and truly bonkers. I can tell you, the audience was full of very elderly veterans of the actual campaign ... and you had to swim out of the theater. It was that good. That real.)

Australia opens here on November 26th, and I just have to be there. A real Aussie movie, with real Aussie actors and ... everything. From the trailers, it looks like it's going to be tremendous, and certainly Hugh Jackman will be a sight for sore eyes:


I'll talk more about the movie when I've seen it. For now, my recommendations regarding Aussie movies? Gallipoli (keep the kleenex handy), Quigley Downunder (there, now I've astonished you, right?), Man From Snowy River (learn where the fast forward button on your remote is), The Chain Reaction (if you're lucky enough to find a copy) ... and here's hoping that I'll be able to add Australia to this list very soon.

Movie trilogies: part three mayhem

If you look at anything long enough, patterns emerge from the background tapestry of Life. There was a day when Cro Magnons looked into the sky and saw constellations ... when people looked into their spent teacups and discovered they could read the leaves ... and out of this simple and logical progression came the pseudo-science of market analysis. Eight minutes later, your ancestors could have been forgiven for running back and forth "doing a Doctor Smith," bleating, "We're doomed, doomed," until someone whacked them upside the head with a handy two-by-four. (Incidentally, Garry Oldman was great in the part. Seriously, what an actor.)

So, if you look at the whole, wide, thrashing ocean of movies -- as a realm, you understand; not any specific movie -- for long enough, you start to see patterns.

Like... Hollywood loves trilogies. And ... Part One is almost always The Best. And ... all the Part Threes seem to go ballistic.

Don't get me wrong: I love an action movie. The big action sequences are fantastic, especially in this age of CGI, where anything is likely to happen, and probably will if nobody exercises a little artistic or editorial restraint. The days when plot elements had to make sense -- or at least obey the more mundane rules of physics, such as gravity and inertia -- are gone, and unmourned.

However, the average age of the normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill moviegoer is 14. Therefore, when movies are designed and executed to make a profit over their nine-figure budgets, they're targeted to ... tweaked for ... the fourteen year old, whose adolescent bum is the most usual form of bum found on any seat more or less in front of a big screen.

I've been asking myself if the average age of the audience might be the cause of Hollywood's current trend. I call it the "Top That! Syndrome." Basically, the symptoms are simple. No matter what you did in the previous movie, the next one has to out-do it.

So, Part One could afford to set up the characters, backstory some of them, expand on the screen presence of others -- with comprehensible dialog, and other qualities which are expendable in the future segments. This installment will still need massive effects and whacked-out action, because without these elements the film is going to bomb so badly, there won't even BE a second or third movie.

But Part Two is born under a cloud: it's a TTS baby, contracting Top That! Syndrome in utero. It has to be bigger, faster, wilder, funnier, bloodier ... and the audience will love it.

However, TTS has a phase where the patient will have a close encounter with disaster, a near-death encounter ... a phase that could easily be terminal, unless teams of specialists can drag it back from the brink, and resurrect it. And virtually all Part Threes come into the world teetering on the brink, because of Top That! Syndrome.

Some survive: Return of the King could only follow the book. Everything that could be done to top The Two Towers was done, but the framework for the material had been laid down decades before, so there were several pacing points, parts in the denouement where one could draw breath -- absolutely enforced scenes where the action had to stop!!

Most Part Threes are not allowed the benefit of these pivot points, where the characters stop running, shouting, shooting, fighting, crashing, whatever. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor ... Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ... and even Revenge of the Sith is dangerously close to falling into the same category.

The entire movie has been converted to action sequence. All of it.

Surprise: I actually enjoyed these movies. You just have to get into the spirit of the mayhem, and there are times when I can. I also know that movies like Tomb of the Dragon Emperor were aimed, fair and square, at Mr. Average Moviegoer, age 14, complete with the popcorn, candy and acne, in the front row. These movies hit the bull's eye, and make a ton of money.

But (and some of you are going to be looking for a blunt instrument to throw at me for this) for myself, I far prefer The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Mummy, and old Fellowship of the Ring, the very first X-Men episode, and ... so on. Those where the action STOPPED occasionally; when people talked to each other, rather than yelling at one another over the roar of the oceans and engines and hurricanes.

By now, the news that Johnny Depp has signed for a Pirates of the Caribbean Part Four is old news. But I'll add my two cents' worth right here. Since they finished the original storyline, maybe they can go back to Square One, start over, and come up with a movie that has something more like the pace of Curse of the Black Pearl. Because ... I hate to think what will happen if the TTS is not arrested, retarded -- perhaps even cured. (Is it curable? One hopes so!)

The other bit of news that's old, now, is that Johnny has also signed to play Tonto in The Lone Ranger, against George Clooney. This will make interesting viewing! I wonder if they're going to do it 1950s twee (like the TV show), or if they'll have the nerve to tell the Old West like it was, historically ... dirt and fleas and racial discrimination and all. The movie could have a sting in its tail, if they do it right ... have George rescue Johnny from a lynch mob intent on murdering him for being born an Injun, for example... Hmmm.

Like the rest of the audience, I love action scenes; I'm just not wildly enthusiastic about having the whole movie converted to action. A nice blend would be preferable. Like ... Vertical Limit, and maybe even The Peacemaker, and Max Max, and Troy.

Lately, when I hear that there's going to be a trilogy spinning off a movie I really liked, I tend to groan quietly, because the probability is, the whole thing is eventually going to go haywire. It doesn't always happen. The Zorro movies haven't gone (yet) to a Part Three -- but Nostrakeeganus, he predicting they will. It'll be (!) Son of Zorro, in another five or ten years, when Antonio's and Catherine's celluloid kid is old enough to put on the mask. X-Men: The Last Stand was frenetic, but only borderline whacked out (it's main problem was, it was under-cooked: it should have been a half hour longer, with a great deal more in it ... but the developmental material was obviously ditched to push the action sequences closer together to get Mr. Average Moviegoer revved up in the front row. Damn).

Two of the current Hollywood franchises worry me -- because I liked them both. Iron Man is one of my favorite films, and to my mind, the best comic book movie yet done. The words "sequel" add "trilogy" have been uttered, and part of me is groaning.

The other franchise that worries me is already 66% of the way trough to the terminal phase of Top That! Syndrome ... Batman. The Dark Knight was furious, frenetic, full of comic violence and cartoon horror. Contrast it with the previous movie, Christian Bale's first outing as the Bat. The fact is, few people liked the first movie, Batman Begins (I was one of the few; I loved it ... it was realistic. Woah. So, naturally, audiences stayed away in droves and movie critics pounded it. Makes sense, right? The action sequences were in proportion, and stopped for long enough for characters to be constructed.)

Now, apply the symptoms of TTS to The Dark Knight ...! To Top That, what comes next? Oh ... dear.

Sundry Sunday miscellany

Sunday finds me working on LORDS OF HARBENDANE, and taking half hour out right here to answer some readers' questions.

This first, from a lady in Toronto, Canada: when the [expletive deleted] will the rest of HELLGATE be putting in an appearance?! Good question, with a simple answer: soon, because I'm doing the prep work for the entire rest of the series at this time. Right now, I do believe I'm cutting seven books to six, and just as I wrote CRY LIBERTY and PROBE back to back, I'll be doing the last two the same way. They'll be released singly, a few months apart, and I'm hoping to get them out in 2009. Afterwards, we have a pet project: the six HELLGATE books will be partnered by twos, and you'll be able to buy the whole lot in three big hardcovers which will look amazing on your bookshelf. (Few science fiction novels/series look like that ... and it's an absolute first in gay publishing. Three monstrous hardcovers, being a 2,200 page epic tale of love, war, espionage, death, high technology, survival, freedom and friendship? I'm actually racking my brains to think of any other such project. There's a number of big, huuuuuge fantasy novels ... the Wheel of Time, for one. But nothing similar, in hard SF. And absolutely nothing in gay SF or fantasy. Let me get this done, guys, and we'll make some history here.)

Next, from a gent in the UK: does the NARC riot armor look like the suit in IRON MAN? Actually ... no. Which is not the same as saying I don't really like Tony Stark's design -- I do. However, the NARC armor is very different. To begin with, it doesn't have a "face" on the helmet; the visor is featureless. Floodlights and sensor packs are concealed in a smooth fairing around the helmet. The NARC armor is mirror-black; there's a powerpack mounted between the shoulders, containing a superconductor unit. Those shoulders are big -- think ice hockey pads in mirror black. The joints are "smart seals" so you don't have massive, "swollen" elbow and knee assemblies ... when you put it on, piece by piece, the armor's joints nano-seal themselves, as securely as welds. I would love to be able to tell you I know exactly what the NARC armor looks like, but all I can tell you, really, is ... what it doesn't look like. I had an absolute blast at IRON MAN, and I like the armor a lot. But the NARC armor is very different. We're still working to get a design I, uh, like.

Next, this from a very nice reader who wants to know, would I take on an editing job? In fact (sorry) I have to say no. Editing is an incredibly time-consuming job, and at even minimum-wage rates, it gets very expensive. No writer trying to crack the market can afford to pay so much, and also, if you do shell out and pay a pro to do the work, you don't learn nearly as much as if you did the job yourself. I realize it could take months to learn this job, but at the end of that time you still have your money, and you've assembled a suite of skills which will benefit you the rest of your writing life.

The other downside to editing is that writers (especially new ones) can get very upset during the process, when it often seems there's something wrong with every second word. Someone once said, it takes a million words of creative fiction under the belt before one's work will be "good enough." This is not true; but the gist of it is ... it takes a hell of a lot of very hard work and practise to reach the point where the writing is (and I hate the term) "good enough" to pass muster in the pro arena.

Is there a study course I would recommend? Again, not really. There are hundreds out there; pick the one that suits you best, at a price you can afford. One word of caution: beware of the "we want to read your novel," and "get published fast and easy" type ads. You can be in print by next week, and you don't need to drop five hundred bucks to one of these companies to achieve this result! What none of these schemes guarantee is that anyone will buy your book; or, if you do get buyers, that your work has been polished to the point where it's ready to "fly solo." If it's not ready, this kind of "automatic self-publishing scheme" is a recipe for disaster. Sorry to be a killjoy.

It's much better to work with a smaller group -- a writers' workshop or a circle of friends -- until you're sure of your skills, *then* give the pro market a shot. There's almost certainly a writers' workshop in your area. Your local library would know -- and might even be the meeting place for one. It often happens. Writing for a group gives you the chance to bounce your work of other people before you have to start putting down a lot of money. When you're in Aus or NZ, a submission to a publisher in London or New York will cost upwards of $100. You have to print out, airmail, and pay return shipping on the whole 300-400pp manuscript. This is something that can wait till you're pretty sure of your skills. When you KNOW how good you are -- time enough, then, to start putting money into the project. Even if you're lucky enough to be close to the world's publishing capitals, it can still get expensive, especially if you blunder into an "editing agent" who wants $75 per hour, and more, to edit for you. The bottom line is this: the better you are before you run the gauntlet of these people, the easier it'll be and the less it will cost. By all means take a course. Also, find a writers' workshop or similar, and have some fun along the way.

And now, back to THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE. It's a cold but sunny Sunday, and everything in the world is in bloom, leaving you with fuzzy eyes and sneezes. I'll leave you with these images, which illustrate what I mean:

All part of whose Master Plan?!

Yesterday I mentioned getting The Idea which will not only rescue my haunted house book, but make something special of it. It needs more work, as I said -- which leads me into a little judicious research into the world of parapsychology.

So I got online and started looking at spooky stuff...

There's a lot of weirdness out there, guys.

Not the ghosts. They're perfectly normal. I mean, they're dead, but otherwise they're as normal as you and me. We have it on the best authority of mediums who work hand-in-glove with the FBI and the CIA: they basically hang out in places they either liked or hated while they were alive, and try to make contact with the dense humans, which is virtually impossible to do when you're transdimensional. (It even gave phase-shifted Star Trek characters a challenge, and god knows, if they can't do it, what hope is there for the rest of us, dead or alive? Anyway, the bottom line is that dead people are as normal as the rest of us.)

No, the weird ones are the military scientists. OUR military scientists. As in, the USA and the West, the free world, you and me. We. Us. A shiver runs up my spine as I type this, because I've written a lot of this stuff. I really can say, as can many an SF writer, "Been there, done that. Didn't like it, had my heroes punch out the Bad Guys at The End." But this time around, WE are the bad guys. (Who's going to punch us out? Now, there's a nasty thought.)

A couple of days ago a report was issued, with the offbeat, euphemised title, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies." What the hell do they mean by that?

Dig a little deeper (which is to say, bother to read the damned thing) and you discover that these bast-charming folks are experimenting in mind reading; mind control; mind-machine interfaces (I coined the term "biocyber," and gave this field of research to Dr. Yvetter McKinnen in the NARC books ... she who was the burr under Jarrat's saddle and the thorn in Stone's foot, until time and necessity made them work together and, hey, they discovered they're on the same team).

Now, you know me. I'd be the last voice on the planet raised against the kind of high-tech you see in IRON MAN ... I love the AI interface depicted there -- Tony's computer. And I have something of a vested interest in empathy (again, NARC), and by extension, telepathy. I have to tell you, I've had a few strange experiences myself, which keep my mind w-i-d-e open on the subject.

But, mind control? That's the 'noir' aspect of SF ... it's never been something the good guys (you know: us) did. Mind control was something foisted on us by THEM, those out there, the Bay Guys, the nasty ones the heroes and sheroes get to flatten in the last reel.

Here's a little outtake from the Wired Science blog I catch up with once a week: "Mind control. Largely pharmaceutical, for the moment, and a natural outgrowth of cognitive enhancement approaches and mind-reading insight: If we can alter the brain, why not control it? One potential use involves making soldiers want to fight. Conversely, "How can we disrupt the enemy’s motivation to fight? [...] How can we make people trust us more? What if we could help the brain to remove fear or pain? Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?"

Sure there is. I'm 99.999% positive we can make our enemies bark like chikens and cluck like dogs. The problem is, this sort of iffy, dodgy technology never stays under wraps for long. Espionage. Bribery. Theft. Super-spies ... 007. Suddenly the technnology is in the hands of THEM, the Bad Guys, and --

It's us who're doing the clucking and barking. Hmmm not so good. It gets worse, too.

Drugs and "cognitive enhancers" that make soldiers want to fight. Ooooh, boy. There's an old SF chestnut, but here's the thing: the people who were responsible for creating "heroes" like the poor guys you saw in Kurt Russell's SOLDIER, were the Bad Guys. Mind control, drug-induced jingoism, is what we resent them for ... it's the reason they get their nasty butts kicked.

Robots under thought control. Another SF classic. Automata the size of towns, controled by the minds of the aforementioned drug-modified soldiers. Yep, I've seen this one before; but we were always fighting against the robots, because where's the honor in mashing teeny little civilians under your monstrous treads?

And mind reading -- ditto. Here's a direct quote: "In situations where it is important to win the hearts and minds of the local populace, it would be useful to know if they understand the information being given them."

It certainly would. But what about if they understand oerfectly well, and just don't agree? Let's say they don't want to be commies ... or do want to be gay, or don't want to be Republicans, and do want to be peacefully pagan and go out on a tree-hugging expedition?

If the thoughts in your head aren't secure, you're potentially in deep doodoo. And if "they" decide they don't like what you're thinking, they can use the aforementioned mind control to change you into whatever they want you to be.

I'd love to tell you that this page is a hoax, but it ain't. Get the potted version of the report here: Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain, and chase down the report itself.

While you're on that science blog, take a look at something else: Military AI Could Rule the Internet. The military morons are actually trying to develop the SkyNet computer which SF predicted decades ago --

Thing is, SF predicted it as being an enemy so mean and rotten, Big Arnie couldn't knock it down, and it's gone to a fourth movie rematch! It's going to take Christian Bale to sort it out.

My point is, SF has predicted every last thing the military is currently proposing ... but our side, the Good Guys, were not supposed to be doing this stuff. We were fighting against it, in the novels and movies.

You have to ask, what goes on here? One bunch of our military genii is hard at work, using rat brain cells to drive little robots (same blog -- Wired Science) while the masterminds behind this stuff try to figure out ways to make SF's most bleak and horrifying scenarios into reality.

Like I said, it ain't the ghosts who are weird. The CIA's and FBI's own psychics report our deceased comrades to be entirely normal, albeit dead, life forms, (dead life forms? That's a good one), nothing to get one's underwear into a knot about. But the military scientists??? Chills down the spine.

One can only hope that something can be done about these idiots before we are ALL perfectly normal ghosts, phase-shifted into another dimension by being killed stone dead by a rat-brain-driven robotized jet-fighter controled by a drugged-out soldier using telephathy to target us for our non-conformative thoughts!

Digital daydream

Today, I can't help seeing visions of a movie that was never made -- or hasn't been made yet. I saw BEOWULF last night (for the first time; I'd missed it at the theatres), and was very impressed by the gulf of difference, and development, over the FINAL FANTASY movie which was done about ten years ago. The evolution of digitals is phenomenal. FINAL FANASY: The Spirit Within was amazing back in 2000. I was as impressed, then, as I am with BEOWULF now.

Nostrakeeganus, he going back into the prediction business ... I'll give you five more years, and you won't be able to tell who's real and who's a digitoid, in the movies. They tell me, computer power is doubling or quadrupling every year. We're on the brink, right now, of a line beyond which we'll be in a digital reality from which there is no turning back. ('Digitoid' is a phrase a coined for one of the HELLGATE books. I like it ... it actually respects the digital entity ... and they're getting extremely, uh, respectable. Scroll down.)



Picture Credits: pics on this post are publicity stills, with all interests reverting to the company, no rights contested, no wrongs to be revenged! (Click pick for the larger version.



The character of Beowulf seems to be a composite of several actors. Ray Winstone voiced him, but that ain't Ray Winstone's face, much less his bod. They had a professional athlete model for the body, for sure, and the face is a cross between the young Sean Bean (see him in the SHARPE movie series), and elements of Ray Winstone himself, and a touch of someone else whom I just can't place.

(This is how digital face design goes: DreamCraft's cover artist, Jade, will slog through this every time we create a new face, or faces, for the book covers. I'll say something ridiculous like, mix up Brad Pitt, Charles Bronson, Percy Montgomery (the kicker for the South African Springboks national rugby team) and Gary Bailey (used to keep goal for Manchester United in 1980). Out of this ridiculous mish-mash will appear a face which is something new, yet has elements of all the contributors.)

And now the daydream, the visions I can't help seeing...

Imagine this: THE NARC MOVIE. Seriously. The whole thing is 100% digital, so you can be as outrageous as you like. One bunch of mime artists comes into the studio and does the motion capture ("mocap") work to set the body language for the characters. They go home. Another bunch of people comes in ... voice artists this time. They voice the characters and go home. They're unknowns, and brilliant (most voice artists are; ADR specialists only get into the news when they're celebs ... say, Ian McKellen is dubbing Iorik the polar bear, so it's big news in the media (and incidentally, he did a fantastic job of it). So now you have the athletic body shapes and fine-tuned body language mapped into the computer for Jarrat and Stone, Gable and Cronin and Ramos. Then they're voiced -- probably by artists who look nothing like these guys. Short, rotund, bald, 62, all of the above ... but he's got the Stoney timbre and cadence. Woah. Meanwhile, a team of digital designers has been designing the faces, which are then slapped over the erased-faces of the mocap artists.

Oh, boy. It'd cost upwards of a hundred million bucks ... if you're going to daydream, do it big. The cities would look like Syd Mead designed them. The spacecraft look like something out of one of the ALIEN movies. The riot armor has something in common with the suit Tony builds in IRON MAN. And so on.

Sigh. Hey, you can dream, right? And five years from now, the digital realism is going to be such that you won't tell any difference between the digitoid and the human. Speaking of which: if you missed BEOWULF at the movies, rent it on DVD. It's probably still way over-priced (upwards of thirty bucks in this country), but renting it is always an option. We use Quick Flix, which I believe is the same as Net Flix (spelling??) in the US.

The plot of BEOWULF will remind you of many facets of THIRTREENTH WARRIOR, which shouldn't surprise you, since they're both reworkings of the same legend. (I spotted that instantly, as soon as the Antonio Banderas movie got underway ... I was in Fairbanks, Alaska, at the time.) The opening scenes are rambunctious indeed: digital drama is getting ribald and sexy. The movie violence (and design hideousness) is gruesome to the max that I personally care for. Anything else is wasted on me ... they could save themselves several million bucks on their budget, because I'm not even looking when people's heads get chewed in two and their brains leak out. The musical score is very fine, and the animation is astounding.

Behind the animation are the performances of Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Brendan Gleeson and Angelina Jolie. Of them all, it's Hopkins (as usual) who is the stand-out actor. He has a presence, a voice, a manner about him, which consistently set him apart. He was equally as good, in BEOWULF, as in the first Zorro movie, and THE EDGE, and (my personal favotite) THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN. Brendan Gleeson is one of the most recognizable faces in movies like this: you saw him in TROY, playing Helen's hopeless, hapless husband (forgive the alliteration: it wasn't intentional!) ... in BEOWULF he's a far nicer character than in TROY. In fact, he's more likeable than the central hero, Beowulf himself, whose arrogance is essential to the character, but hardly endearing.

Hats off to all concerned on BEOWULF: I'm impressed. Very.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to drift off into some more NARC movie fantasies!

Kingdom, phylum, species ... and so forth

Being a disseration upon the Classification of Literary Species.

Part of the process of marketing books on the Internet is to get yourself into the directories, lists, hubs, communities and general meeting places for online readers and bookbuyers. This has been the challenge for both Keegan and DreamCraft during the last few months, and almost at once you hit a hurdle. Not a wall; or, if it's a wall, you can certainly scramble over it without much more than a bloodied knee or two. However ... a hurdle is a hurdle, and in this day and age, as we plow through the twenty first century at a speed I'm beginning to find disturbing, I have to wonder how far we've really come, and how far we have still to go.

The hurdle is, of course, the mainstream's attitude toward gay literature, or movies, or themes, or any kind of gay content at all. As a community, much as we might be reluctant to face the fact, we either define ourswelves, or are defined externally by others, by our sexual preference. Now, sex is a "mature" or "adult" theme / concept / topic in our modern world, and we're in a slightly sticky position right here, right now. Until recently, I had not actually realized how sticky.

I'm at a site called Author's Den, listing (or thinking about listing) books there. Top of the data list for any title is the field: Authors, Rate your work, G, PG, PG-13, R; no Adult Material.

Uh...huh. Well, Author's Den does have a gay list, so they obviously don't categorize anything gay as "adult" (some literature sites do). But at once, on line one, the writer is in the business of self-classification. And it ain't easy.

Let's ignore the G and PG classifications, for a start. I don't write for kids; I never have, and after being interested enough to look into the lower-end of the classification guidelines for purely academic reasons, I don't think I ever will. The way it's organized today, The Chronicles of Narnia isn't fit to be shown to kids, and as for The Golden Compass? Forget it.

(Interested? Get onto a site called Youngmedia and check out some recent movies; anything will do, since the "Under 8" and "8 to 13" recommendations are the same on every page. Based on these criteria, there isn't a lot that should be allowed in classrooms. My generation grew up with Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Jack London, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, and so forth. Kids the same age, today, are supposed to be growing up on a steady diet of Alice in Wonderland, and the most mild of the Disney movies. (101 Dalmatians? Dog-skin coats??? No way! Peter Pan? You mean, with Captain Hook --? Good gods, kids will be scarred for life. The operative particle of sense within the ratings system is, of course, the letters PG. Parental Guidance. It's up to parents what they let their nestlings watch. Jurassic Park? Sure. People get eaten alive by monsters, screaming all the while; that's cool. Iron Man? Let's see. Whiskey, wine, gambling, sex outside of marriage. Hmmm. Too much reality for kids to handle. Right?)

I did this research to give myself a little perspective before I even looked at seriously classifying my work as per the Authors' Den requirements. Given that the bar is set so low at one end (to protect kids, obviously, and rightly ... though I do recall enjoying a ton of stuff, when I was 6, that today's kid ain't allowed to see ... which makes me sad), where is the bar set as one proceeds higher up the rankings?

Let's have a look at what Author's Den calls the R-rating: "In the opinion of the Author, this title definitely contains some adult material. Parents are strongly urged to find out more about this title before they allow their children to read them. An R-rated title may include hard language, or tough violence, or nudity within sensual scenes, or drug abuse or other elements, or a combination of some of the above, so that parents are counseled, in advance, to take this advisory rating very seriously. Parents must find out more about an R-rated title before they allow their teenagers to view it." [Author's Den pop-up guidelines; current as of the date of this post]

There's an ocean of elbow-space in there. Some nudity within sensual scenes? What does "sensual" mean? How explicit is "sensual" allowed to be, before you're over the line? What line, drawn where, by whom, upon what relative values, and for which reading group? Drug abuse? What if the story is about a parent trying to save the life of a kid, who's abusing drugs? Or a cop fighting a crusade against drugs? What about nudity outside of sensual scenes? In literature, how in the world does what a person is wearing, or not, affect the narrative? We can't SEE the character(s), the scene is set up with a line something like, "He turned off the shower and swiped up the phone, hoping to hear his partner's voice -- annoyed to hear his boss instead." Or, is literary nudity classified on the "hard language" used to describe body parts? Does "hard" language mean four-letter-words, or the correct anatomical terminology for physical characteristics?

In Aus, we have not one but TWO classifications for movies in between PG-13 and R, while at sites requiring literature classification, there seems to be an enormous, yawning void here. We do G - PG - M - MA15+ - then R. "M" stands for mature, obviously; there's no age ban on this bracket, but a parent ought to be along.

At Author's Den, the PG-13 bracket is very difficult. They begin with a fair statement: "Some Material May Be Inappropriate For Children Under 13." Okay. But this bracket bridges all the way to R (18s, adults, only). The whole classification bracket is so "iffy," I'm going to paste the actual wording over, to remove any danger of me misquoting some element.

Here goes, with all due citations to the source:

"A PG-13 title is one which, in the view of the Author, leaps beyond the boundaries of the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, or other contents, but does not quite fit within the restricted R category. Any drug use content will initially require at least a PG-13 rating. In effect, the PG-13 cautions parents with more stringency than usual to give special attention to this title before they allow their 12-year olds and younger to read.

If nudity is sexually oriented, the title will generally not be found in the PG-13 category. If violence or language is too rough or persistent, the title goes into the R (restricted) rating. A title's single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, shall initially require the Author to issue that title at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive must lead the Author to issue a title an R rating, as must even one of these words used in a sexual context. These titles can be rated less severely, however, if the Author feels that a lesser rating would more responsibly reflect the opinion of parents. PG-13 is designed to make these parental decisions easier for titles between PG and R.

Unquote.

For myself, I've slapped an R-rating on my stuff, across the board, and I don't think some of my books fit into the Author's Den list at all. HELLGATE can go there, but not NARC ... TIGER, TIGER, yes, but not WINDRAGE. THE DECEIVERS, sure ... but not FORTUNES OF WAR, or WHITE ROSE OF NIGHT.

How the hell do I classify NOCTURNE? It's more than tickling the category of serious "proper" literature ... but at the same time it has blood, gay sex, violence, sexual violence, sexual references and inferences, the occult, the Tarot,the vampyre, murder, ritual killing, the works. It's firmly in the "too hard" basket, along with TWILIGHT and several other of my titles, which is interesting...

Because no one in "our community" would have reckoned my vampyre books as being beyond the pale. But when you step out of our community into the online literary communities, as I began, there's this hurdle right in front of you. Literature Classification.

Turns out, we're a difficult subspecies to classify ... and therefore, a much more difficult niche to market than you would at first assume.

Well ... shoot. Thinking cap goes back on.

Unsung Heroes of the Event-Free Zone

Thank gods the Tour de France only has a week to go. I don't think I could stand much more of this ... it's unmittigated sadism. They used to call this torture -- forcing a person so stay awake, force-feeding them chemicals, such as caffeine, in a desperate attempt to keep the eyes open, because they keep the best part till last ... and it's invariably about two o'clock in the morning when the leaders zip across the line. By that time, these guys have been in the bike saddle for maybe six hours, and have slogged up mountainsides in the heat, the cold or the rain; they've fallen off and picked themselves up, ridden through hundred-degree afternoons, left their skin on the bitumen --

And they look a hell of a lot better than the poor buggers at home, we unsung heroes who make up the Viewing Public without whom the whole bloody event would be cancelled, because there'd be no one to watch the damned commercials!!!

(I debated about putting half of the above paragraph in captitals and then decided against it. Caps would make it look like I'm yelling. I'm not. I'm whimpering pitifully while trying to find the scotch tape. I'm going to need it if I intend to get any work done this afternoon, because my eyes are not going to stay open by themselves. Whimper.)

Today is a rest day for the likes of Cadel and Robbie and Simon and George and Fabian and about another 160 just like them.

Tomorrow is a rest day for Keegan: first day off I've scored in two weeks. I'm going to a movie. Last time I blogged about going to a movie, I didn't actually get the chance -- stuff happened, as it usually does, and my moviegoing activities were postponed. (I'd seen IRON MAN and the new Indiana Jones in the previous month, so I can't complain too much. I defiitely want to see the third MUMMY picture. And tomorrow, THE DARK KNIGHT.)

Incidentally, the new Indiana Jones is very good. If you read critiques to the contrary, don't believe a word of it. Some idiot said he wished the movie had not been made ... presumably because he can't stand to watch Harrison Ford getting older. That's fair enough. Ford is about 66 now, I think, and sure, he looks like Han Solo's father. Thirty years have gone by! What, a person should look the same after three decades of rough living? Ford hasn't exactly coddled himself through those years, and the truth is, he was showing the mileage a loooooong time ago.

(Interestingly, though, Brad Pitt doesn't seem to be showing the mileage at all. How the hell does he do it? He has to be mid-40s now, and there are photos where he looks younger than the missus, who's only 33. Damn.)

Anyway, it's THE DARK KNIGHT for me tomorrow, and I'll let you know what I think. I expect to like it a lot. (Then again, I also liked IRON MAN a lot, and subsequently read some genuinely stinking reviews of the movie, which sorta-kinda surprised me. Some critics can't seem to get one salient point through through skulls: it's a FANTASY! It was never going to be structured like MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, scripted like OUTBREAK, with acting performances like Russell Crowe in GLADIATOR. Movies like IRON MAN are strictly for fun. It'd be like tuning in to THE SIMPSONS and breaking your heart over the deeply-moving human drama that unfolded in the next 25 minutes, between the Coke, Pizza Hutt and Bigpond commercials. I would often love to tell some of these critics to 'get real,' but ... what do I know? I'm just a viewer, the poor nong who puts the money down to actually BUY the ticket.)

As you can probably surmise from the diatribe on movie critics, Indiana Jones and ... so on, this neck of the woods continues to be an Event-Free Zone. So I'll fall back on Plan A and put up some pictures. Australian pictures this time, since I did the Alaskan shots yesterday.

Same story: they're parked on Jade's Flickr account for sheer convenience (meaning, Keegan hasn't bothered to get an account yet, and might not be bothering, since it's so much easier to shoot the pictures to the existing account, and Jade doesn't seem to mind, so ... what the hey?) If you'd like to use a photo, just drop me (or Jade) a line either here, or at Flickr, or on the website.

Pictures, now...


Laden vines stretch away to the Barossa hills. Some of the best wines in the world are made in this part of the world ... not all of them. I'm admittedly biased because I'm from the southern wine-growing zone, but I actually prefer the McLaren Vale wines over the Barossa vintages...


Morialta is a deep river gorge a few minutes' drive from the city of Adelaide. It's a sort hike through to the waterfall (which actually flows in winter), and you think you've stepped back in time a million years. You wouldn't be surprised to be stalked by raptors. This shot was taken from the Giant's Cave, high in the cliff...


There you are, you see: we DO have fall colors in Australia ... just not many! Seriously, the native trees don't shed their leaves, so the foliage never 'turns,' but early settlers planted European trees wherever they went, and obviously these do change. (The only northern trees that don't do well down here are birches. They call them 'weeping birches' downunder, because they droop like weeping willows -- and you can't get anyone to listen when you say they're not supposed to.


Speaking of early settlers, this is the kind of structure they built. Of course, they originally built them with roofs and windows and everything. (!) This colonial ruin is probably Heritage listed. I think it's somewhere in the Scott Creek area, but the truth is, that's only a guess.


Yeah, yeah, okay, you were waiting for pictures of the beach. This is Australia, after all, and we're one BIG beach, we admit it. This one is south of Adelaide, at Silver Sands.


Also the sea shore, but not quite what you were expecting: the horse tram at Victor Harbor, which carries passengers over the causeway to Granite Island. This shot was taken (plus about 1000 others) on a winter's day. It's very cold ... which would suit the Little Penguins which are native to the area. Doesn't seem to bother the clydesdales, either.

Now, I gotta find that scotch tape ... or maybe duct tape...

Breaker, breaker

As you read this, Keegan is gearing down for a couple of days' break: 48 hours of trying not to think about work, and getting out of here and maybe looking at some hills and trees rather than screens and cables. It's time for a break, because when I get back there's about a year's worth of work stacked up in front of me, and maybe four months to do it in! So ... lunch somewhere; and a movie; and a couple of Subway constructions and a hike through the national park, weather permitting.

I saw weather permitting, because it's winter, and even though most northerners would vigorously contest the fact that it gets cold down here, it's also true that you aclimate pretty fast, and 50 degrees F. feels just as cold as 30 F. feels. I'm one of the few folks who can really attest to this, because I spent 15 months in the Frozen North, and although I never 'wintered over' in Fairbanks, I was there until the Christmas trees went up in the stores, and I returned the next year before breakup. I was there for the world ice carving championships, and the dog races. (I'd show you the pictures, but in those days you shot your best stuff on (yep) slide film, and I'd have to scan them. Now, that's not a problem in and of itself ... but the slides are packed along with the rest of my library.) The coldest temperature I ever experienced was around -30 F., but to fully appreciate what this felt like to ME, personally, you have to factor in the information that it was 98 F. here in South Aus, on the day before I flew out.

I judge it from the day before because, as anyone who's ever made an international trip knows only too well, overseas journeys begin in the middle of the night. My alarm would be set for 3:45am, I'd have a taxi booked for 4:30, and the airline demands that you get there 60-90mins early for the checkin ... even though the metal detector people don't get to work till about two hours AFTER you arrive at the airport!

Mind you, it was a good thing I arrived early one time, because the delightful young life form behind the checkin counter had me booked on Japan Air Lines out of Sydney at 9:30am, with no booking whatsoever on the connecting flight from Adelaide, which should be due to tuck up its wheels at 6:00am. Sorting out that problem took a while -- so I guess it's not a completely ridiculous notion to turn up early.

I just wish the people who staff the metal detectors and the coffee kiosk had to turn up at the same time as the passengers. Put another way, wouldn't it be nice to have someplace to get a cup of coffee and sit down, since you're already suffering from a major case of sleep deprivation??

Fortunately, these are not problems I have to wrestle with in the next couple of days. A short break in this neck of the woods probably means sleeping late, walking about 150 yards down the street to the local restaurant for lunch, dawdling down to the megapelx to watch Indiana Jones, or Brendan Fraser, or someblody. Not even sure what's playing right now.

The last movie I saw was the Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, which I quite enjoyed (though Dave didn't seem to like it so much, becaise it defied the laws of reality fairly routinely). As I recall, the Jones movies never did score highly on the 'common sense' quotient, and the'reasonable adherence to the laws of physics' register. Then again, neither does IRON MAN, and I have but two words to add to this: who cares?

These movies are FANTASIES. The whole point of them is to leave your common sense in the foyer, turn off the part of your brain that figures out whether physics will allow for this or that, along with your cell phone, and ... enjoy. Let's be honest: Spiderman, Batman, Daredevil, Iron Man, the X-Men, the whole lot of them, would be relegated to the too-hard basket, if they were required to adhere to the laws set down by Newton, let alone Einstein, and (perish the thought) Planke and Bell.

But who cares? Movies are about forgetting who you are for a while, and what your problems might be. Indiana Jones is almost as improbable as Rick what's-his-face in the Mummy movies; and I really can't say it bothers me. (Rick O'Connell, is it? Brandan, at any rate. You know the hunk in question. He has a couple of movies in the works right now; one of them is in 3D, and although it otherwise seems to be populated by juveniles, the 3D aspect of it might seduce me into a seat at the cinema. It also doesn't hurt that Brendan Fraser looks very good in this one, if the poseter's anything to go by. There's also another Mummy movie in the offing, with Jet Lee topping the bill with Mr. Fraser ... and since Rick's kid should have grown up by this movie, we shouldn't have to contend with juvie content.)

We spent a fascinating day installing software, getting the computer up and running ... freaking when various disks couldn't be found, then finding them three hour later behind something else in the software box. We have too many disks, I'm sure, though not all of them are software. I spent the last 12 months dowbloading quite a lot of music --

I have a URL for you: emusic.com. I got some excellent music, and would highly recommend them, especially if your taste is somewhat eclectic and inclined toward the international. Mine is. It was a lot of fun.

The downside to which is, you're probably going to end up with a lot of disks. Plus movies, plus software, plus backup files. And when you have upwards of a couple of thousand disks, it's easy to lose one. And we did. For about two wonderful, fun-filled hours, before the house gremlin decided to play nice and give it back.

So we're all installed, up and running, ready to go ... and I'm utterly exhausted. 48hours off sounds about right to me. The major newsletter announcing the new site goes out in the morning, our time, and then, for me, it's on to the next project.

I need the break. I'm starting to 'zone,' with that 'rabbit in the headlights' look, glassy-eyed and semi-comatose, while my deeper brain functions sing a siren-song of a lullaby, "Sleeeeeeep, why don't you sleeeeeeep, why don't you cloooooose your eyes and let the world slide byyyyyy, while you sleeeeeep..."

Your eyelids are getting heavy (mine sure are).

On the count of three you will fall into a deep, deep sleep.

One...

Two.............

.............................................

[sounds of snorring issue from terminal in corner of room]

Spacetime, delivery dudes, and gay cables

Since 8:30 in the am I've hd one ear turned toward the frondoor, doggedly listening for the bell. Against all odds, by 11:41 it still hasn't rung, and I'm conscious of experiencing genuine Einsteinian time dilation. Time is definitely slowing down -- but Einstein got it wrong: you don't have to travel at high velocity in a direction at right angles to the 'arrow' of time (this is what you get for reading Brian Green late at night). All you have to do is sit tight, try to get some work done and listen for the bloody-damned doorbell --

Needless to say, I'm expecting a truck, delivering a 7kg box, containing my new monitor screen. I just ordered up a 22" LCD flat panel, to go with the Dell desktop which will be giving this overworked old laptopa break, as soon as the monitor arrives. (I have weird eyes, and can't look at a 'normal' monitor screen. They cycle at 25 frames per second, and I can actually see the flutter with one eye, but not the other one ... which means my vision wil split while you cound three, two one, and the next thing I know, I'm taking migraine pills. Big fun.)

(Off topic: I think they found the cure for migraine. At least down here, *some* doctors are prescribing beta blockers to inhibit them, and they work. Low doses of beta blockers don't seem to have any dire side effects, and I haven't had a full-blown migraine in about 18 months, since taking the first pill. Now, there's a thought to conjure with, if you're a sufferer.)

Time definitely slows down when you're waiting, which I don't think Einstein ever noticed; or if he did, it was not germaine to his theorem way back when. Of course, Einstein lived in an earlier age, and most of his groundbreaking work was done in a decade which still moved largely at the speed of the horse.Their horses were therefore overworked, slowed down, and the pace of time slowed down with them -- with intricate relativity to the animals' workload. If Einstein had lived in our modern age, he would have had the same insatiable thirst for instant gratification we all suffer: I wannit, and I wannit NOW! (Well, you can't have it now, Keegan, because it's still on a truck, probably still halfway down the Princess Highway, so just shut up and get some work done.)

And that's another point Einstein would have gotten to grips with, had he lived in our era: the inverse angular square law of the propogation of worklesness during time dilation caused by waiting.

I realize that's an inexcusably technical term for a blog intended for the consumption of normal people, so let me put it into layman's terms: The longer you have to wait for something, the slower time runs, and (which is the counter-intuitive part) the less you get done. For example, I've waited at least three weeks for this monitor, since 8:30 this morning. In the real world, only about three hours have passed by. In my world, it's been fifteen working days (we won't count weekends; delivery dudes take weekends off). But have I ripped through three weeks' worth of work? Have I slogged through three HOURS' worth of work?!

I think I've done about an hour's worth, and --

Got to go listen for the doorbell, hold on.

Back. Damn. All my imagination.

Soon as the thing gets here, we can have a look at the connections and figure out what kind of cable it needs. And this is where the process gets fascinating, because cables (in case you're unaware of this) are gendered. There are male plugs and female plugs. Monitors also are gendered, mostly with female sockets requireing male plugs. The other end of the cable fits the back of the PC's brainbox, which is also a female socket.

I guess I need a male/male cable. And I fully intend to walk right into IT Warehouse or OfficeWorks (same as OfficeMax in the States), accost the first unsuspecting little assistant and ask where they keep the gay cables. Lesbian cables won't do for this job; and bi cables are out of the question. It's a gay cable, or forget it, I have to find another store. I'm dying to see the look on the assistant's face.

Seriously, I do need a new computer, and this laptop needs a break. It'll probably be reformatted, after I've transferred everything off it and got the new system up on its feet. This laptop is a Compaq Presario, but it's getting along in years; the incoming desktop is a Dell build-up, much faster in every way, though still far from the top of the line systems.

Speaking of cutting-edge computers and interfaces, one of the elements in IRON MAN that I enjoyed the most was Tony Stark's computer system, with the holo display. About six months ago I saw part of a show (on SBS, I think ... but I could de dead wrong) hosted by Michio Kako, in which they depicted these interfaces and set the date of 2040 - 2050. What you're seeing in IRON MAN is a special effects preview of what we can fully expect to be using in bout 30 years' time.

Thinking of IRON MAN also drags my protesting brain back onto the subject of the NARC riot armor, and reminds me ... I have an appointment with destiny. A half dozen new helmet designs are waiting for me to look at, and I acknowledge the fact that, yes, sooner or later I'll have to make a decision and say, "THIS is what the NARC armor looks like." Trying to get this thing right is a fracas almost like the scenes you see in those 'Making of STAR WARS'-type documentaries, where someone like George Lucas is stuffing his designers around for the tenth time, saying words along the lines of 'I'll know what I want when I see it.'

Hold on --

Is that the doorbell??

Getting artistic on you

We're working hard to put the last finishing touches to the new website before it goes 'live' in a couple of weeks. This afternoon's endeavor was the 'send an e-card' segment, which works beautifully, is extremely friendly, and colorful. Check this out:



We did over thirty 'cards,' which use the artwork from bookcovers and the calendar. They're quite eye-catching. I'm impressed ...




...and this is also a chance to show around some of the very new artwork, such as the cover for the 2008 edition of AQUAMARINE. Oh, yes, I'm proofing it. Even after all these years I can't believe what happened with the Millivres edition. Put yourself in the writer's shoes for a moment (or his hat, if you prefer), and imagine that the manuscript you turned in was published just as-is, without even a fresh pair of eyeballs to proofread it and pick up whatever typos! I'd been waiting to get the galley back, so I could go over it myself, and what did I receive? A box of presentation copies! Jaw hit ground, heart stood still for a moment, and then I do believe I screamed. Hmmm. [sound of sighing]

The chance to go back into AQUAMARINE and take another crack at it is very welcome. This will be the next Keegan book online, and it'll be up in July. (I have a mammoth amount of work to do on other projects, but this one is easy, and I'm actually looking forward to it. The last time I read this novel was about seven years ago, and I always liked these characters a lot.)

One of the jobs I have waiting for me is to sit down and talk lucidly (ha!) for an hour or two with the designers from DreamCraft. Subject: the NARC armor. The bloody NARC riot armor. Which has become another cause for screaming. No matter how the helmet is drawn, it's not right ... it's weird; I can 'see' it in my mind's eye, but the instant it drops to two dimensions on paper, it's wrong. Or at least, not right. What I see is something oddly graceful and yet deadly with menace.

A few folks have wondered if the armor from IRON MAN is close to what I see as the NARC armor ... and it is, and it isn't. (Incidentally, I liked the movie a lot. If anyone was asking moi, I'd have to say it's the best Marvel movie since the first X-MEN, and Robert Downey Jr. is so perfectly cast as that dissipated heap of debauchery, Tony Stark, the casting could have been done in heaven. If you haven't seen the movie yet: see it on the big screen if you can. It'll look great on DVD, but this is one film which really uses the massive screen, and is advantaged by it. And yes, it's a power trip. I get a very similar kick out of it as I do from the NARC stories ... and that's saying a lot. Kudos to Marvel on this one; cheers also to Robert D., who pulled a neat trick of acting with the character change in the middle of the picture. You really dislike him in the first reel, and the fact is, you don't have a lot of sympathy for him when he gets caught by his own weapon and taken prisoner. Rather than have him change utterly and become a moralizing goodie-two-shoes, the writers had him LEARN, and WAKE UP. In the last couple of reels, the character of Tony is still an SOB, still dissipated, but he's also a nice guy. I found the character very believable. As for the suit -- it's fun. It's only meant to be fun. Leave your grasp of physics in the bottom of your coat pocket, along with the turned-off cell phone and the cough candy (yes, it's mid-winter here. Cough drops. Donte leave home without them).

I'll paste in one more picture here, and leave you for today ... got to get some work done...