I loved this movie. A wonderful story, beautifully told. The writer in me was happy, the story lover in me was happy, even the movie lover in me was happy.
I don’t know why it is, but the occasional Pixar movie these days seems to do a better job of portraying the human condition than any number of flicks with real actors. Perhaps it’s because they’re unafraid of sentiment. They feel no need for irony or wallowing in misery and despair, while at the same time they manage to find depths of raw sorrow in their narratives that frequently come off as plain painful in other movies. Perhaps it’s because these movies are cartoons, and we know they’re going to have happy endings, but I do know that the five minute sequence early on that summarized Carl’s and Ellie’s sweet, sad marriage affected me about as much as anything I’ve seen in a long time.
And there were talking dogs, too.
Squirrels!
First she took my shoe downstairs, and then she took another shoe. Normally this is a sign of great excitement, though I did have my suspicions. It was only when she stood up on her hind legs to grab her coat out of my hands and take it downstairs as well that I finally understood.
Nellie is having a snow day.
Really. I shall be introducing the incredible, spectacular, momentous, staggering, and just plain jaw-breakingly awesome film, It Came From Outer Space, on Friday, March 5th, at the Rubin Museum of Art in NYC. Come one, come all, for 50s American SF at its most 50s and American. (My first choice was that classic of British cinema, The Quatermass Experiment, where my 8th grade English teacher plays the scientist/sidekick, but the musem couldn’t get a copy, so that was that.)
This actually fell right in the middle between Likes-Some-Things and Likes-Nothing. Being such a positive guy, I decided to give Stew the benefit of the doubt. After all, I love his discs.
The last four songs of the show were what I really liked. Stew is a great singer, larger than life personality, and very funny. All this came through in the last four songs. The first two-thirds of the show, however, were a bit too overwrought for my taste. Stew drinking, Stew crawling across the floor into a mini-fridge. And the video show playing on three screens was ho-hum at best. There is a reason I’ve never been part of the art crowd, where the banal can be worshiped every bit as much as Beethoven’s 5th. And the songs seemed overproduced, which is the musical sin I’m least likely to forgive.
Maybe it was because this was the last night of the show and Stew and the band were either trying too hard or not trying hard enough.
But the last four songs were wonderful. Am listening to some of them right now.
An op-ed piece in the NYTimes today about why record companies are a necessary evil. As are publishing companies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/opinion/20kulash.html?ref=opinion
Because she’s lazy and fast, just like me. Or at least like I used to be.
Mostly I just ate myself to death. Chinese for lunch Saturday, Afghani food for dinner that night, came back to Brooklyn with good friends Melinda Snodgrass and Ian Tregillis (make sure to buy their books when they come out in April from Tor!) for Italian dinner, then dim sum and Chinese New Year on Monday.
Burp.
I think there was a con in there somewhere.
There’s been a lot of ranting back and forth lately about the Amazon/Macmillan fiasco of a couple of weeks back, and I thought I’d take a moment to make clear what I thought (and what I believe a lot of other authors thought) about the whole thing.
First of all, it wasn’t about the pricing. Personally, I don’t think either pricing model being proposed is the right one. I think ebooks should be priced like mass market paperbacks, mostly because I think mass market paperbacks are what ebooks are going to ultimately replace. So I don’t really care one way or the other about Amazon’s or Macmillan’s pricing models. (Not that Amazon or Macmillan care what I think about book pricing. I have even less input on that than I do on the cover art.)
What it was about for me was bullying. I don’t like bullies. I have no idea what was happening at the negotiating table – maybe Macmillan said something to Amazon that left Amazon no recourse but to pull the buy buttons from Macmillan’s books. But I doubt it. Mostly Amazon’s tactics struck me as those of the kid in the pickup basketball game who, not liking the fact that the gang doesn’t want to play by his rules, takes his ball and goes home. It’s his ball, so he can do what he wants. But that doesn’t mean I can’t think he’s a jerk for doing it.
And, because there was a personal element involved, ie my books being affected (I probably lost only two or three sales, but still), my reaction was a bit more virulent than it might otherwise have been. But, even if I hadn’t been involved, I think the substance of my reaction would have remained the same.
I don’t like bullies.
Chicks in chainmail and soubrettes with swords just don’t do it for me any more. I’ll take a 19th c. spinster who can do sums any time. She takes on her tradesman father, marries one of his workingmen, and gets her sisters settled into the bargain. If you can get past Charles Laughton hamming it up as a drunk, this is a very funny flick.
Boskone this weekend. In Boston, of course. I’m still trying to think of any bad books I love, since mostly I don’t ike good books either.
Friday 9pm More on the Business of Writing
S. C. Butler (M)
Elaine Isaak
Melinda Snodgrass
Ian Tregillis
Last year we did this program item, and people enjoyed it so much
that we’re doing it again! Find out what the writer needs to know
and do to become (financially) successful (or, at least
responsible). It’s not all creativity or perspiration, no matter
what you’ve heard before!
Friday 10pm Bad Books I Love
S. C. Butler
Kathryn Cramer
Theodora Goss
Paul Levinson (M)
Feorag NicBhride
Choose your favorite piece of mindless mush, and persuade us to look
at it a second time. Admit those guilty pleasures! (C’mon, you know
you want to!)
Saturday2pm The City and Science Fiction
S. C. Butler
Alexander Jablokov (M)
James Patrick Kelly
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Steven H. Silver
From the planet-spanning urbs of Trantor or Coruscant to the
steamfunkier precincts of New Crobuzon to the vastly vertical
Spearpoint of Alastair Reynolds forthcoming Terminal World what s
your favorite skiffy megalopolis? Would you move there tomorrow?
Would it actually work as a technological/societal/economic
artifact? In an advanced, post-scarcity society, would people even
want to pig-pile together? What will cities be like in the future?
(And what would you prefer them to be?)
Saturday5pm Autographing
Sunday 11am Reading (0.5 hrs)
