[SF] VALIS

by Philip K. Dick
****

I’m now seeing a pattern with most PKD novels. I find his initial approach too philosophical or focused on the characters. Then, at some point, the story turns into a gripping thriller. That’s certainly the case with VALIS which, because PKD claimed many times it was based on true events that happened to him, is basically about a crazy person who has verifiable evidence he’s talked to God. As a consequence, it turns out we’re all trapped in a Roman Empire version of The Matrix where the part of Neo and the hackers is being played by early 1st-century Christians armed with secret knowledge from Hyperuniverse I.

Worth checking out, especially his use of a dual-narrator to indicate mental illness.

[Western] My Darling Clementine

dir. John Ford, scr. Samuel Engel & Winston Miller.
****

20% documentary and 80% classic Western. As John Ford said, “I knew Wyatt Earp … and he told me about the fight at the OK Corral. So we did it exactly the way it had been.” Here’s a movie that’s tense, funny and classy

See Henry Fonda either imitating John Wayne or portraying an authentic frontier accent. Watch Victor Mature embody both an effete, tubercular surgeon and a lethal hard-drinking gun-fighter. Witness Indians, Mexicans and cattlemen getting a hard time (and read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States to get an idea of how unfair that is). Enjoy 90 minutes in Tombstone, a town I’d be scared to visit.

[SF] Undead

by the Spierig Brothers
* ½

Great special effects, cool ideas and at least 10 hysterically funny zombie movie moments.

Incoherent action, ending and logic. Multiple 5 minute stretches that lack tension. Two dickheads sticking guns to the head of the Man Who Knows What He’s Doing and making him do the stupid thing.*

Upshot: A neat, inventive big-looking little film shot on low budget with a script that made me go (20 minutes in) from, “Why isn’t this movie famous?” to “I understand why this movie isn’t famous.”

* Also some patchy performances.

[TV] Gilmore Girls 5.2

The Season 5 plots emerge: the consequences of Rory becoming sexually active, Luke and Lorelai finally get together, and Lane may be in love with her band’s singer.

The episode also detonated a nuke that the casual viewer wouldn’t see: Lorelai and her daughter Rory have been arguing for 3 months. Lorelai has also become neurotic about cleanliness and everything being in its right place at work.

When her best friend points out that this is exactly how Lorelai’s mother behaves, we realise Lorelai’s teenage rebellion contributed to her mother becoming an icy-bitch.

It’s a powerful realisation that simultaneously illustrates the motivations behind three generations of Gilmore women and makes us keen to see them all reconcile. Another demonstration of how the show is about subtle conflicts.

[RPG] The Celebrity Machine

I’m working on a new Sorcerer setting: the cost of being a celebrity in Hollywood.

(Edited to add: it's getting some really good responses from readers.)

[RPG] Toon Town Confidential

Just finished running a game of Sorceror set in the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? universe.

Got the initial idea July last year. Pitched it to my group in October. It went completely off the rails over Christmas and I needed a lot of advice from the Forge to figure out what to do. Last week, I had an intense discussion with Ron Edwards (Sorcerer's designer) while prepping the game. In the end, everything turned out great. We had a blast.

[TV] What does ‘a 3-dimensional character’ mean?

To me, 3D means a character feels ‘real’. Achieving that means writing someone whose actions are ‘plausible’ and who audiences find ‘fascinating’. I can think of at least 7 qualities that you need to consider.

Uniqueness. Back story. Subtext. Attitude. Motivation. Sex Appeal. Humour.

1) Uniqueness. Is this someone we’ve never seen before?

2) Back story. Lots of juicy secrets, hidden agendas and a colourful past, all just waiting to be revealed in the current plot. My (borrowed) rule of thumb: ‘Never devise a new character or piece of the setting without coming up with a secret about them.’

3) Subtext. In this case, subtext means having them involved in two storylines; the pressure of one storyline informing the other. But it could also mean that the character has a secret we know about but the other members of the cast don’t.

4) Attitude. Make sure they differentiated from the other members of the cast in the way they approach conflict and think about life. See any Joss Whedon series for examples of this, but especially Buffy from Season 1 to 5, watching how each new recurring character is introduced.

5) Sex Appeal – what type of sexy are they?

6) Humour - what type of funny are they?

Last and most important:

7) Motivation. It needs to be consistent from week to week as well as within episodes. Everwood provides a good example. However, motivation is a defining characteristic of 3D characters. The things they want are what we find gripping to watch. So motivations need to be plausible (consistent with what we know about the characters and what the writers know about their backstories), fascinating and unique.

[TV] F&G – Stalker Humour

It’s the funniest of all humours.

Here’s another episode that deepens 2 secondary characters – Nick and Cindy – to such an extent I suspect they're about to be revealed as the real leads of the whole show. And, dear lord, the funny. Not a dead scene in this whole installment.

[The Limit] Act 1 done

My half of Act 1 is done and sent off to Andrew. Overall I'm happy. It's got a far more casual tone that the 'dark intense thriller' I was imagining ... but there's a long way to go yet and a lot more pressure to be put on characters.

That tricky scene from a couple of days ago: first I improved it 150% by starting it halfway through and removing a lot of "I'm sad," "I'm angry," dialogue. Then today I whipped up a version of it that was about half a page long and almost entirely non-verbal which I like and which I went with.

[The Limit] Banality vs. Multiple Drafts

Yesterday I wrote a terrible version of a crucial scene and I don't care. Writing a feature film on spec means having the time to make sure a scene works. In this case, making it easy for the audience to empathise with the grief and anger the main characters feel.

Yesterday's scene was too on-the-nose. So I've brainstormed up a lot of ways to make it work. After I finish this nasty little action sequence at the end of Act 1, I'll head back, try out a couple of the most promising approaches.

[Script] Mamet's advice

In a Sight & Sound review, David Mamet is quoted about what he's learned from writing for Hollywood. His advice: "Tell the story as straightforward as possible and play fair with the audience."

[Poll] “Dark Forever”

That name popped into my head early this morning. I’m pretty sure it’s the title of something but I’m not sure what. So my question to you:

“What is Dark Forever about?”

[The Limit] Current mood: contemplative

Trying to get to sleep last night, I came up with a neat scene for later on in the movie. A sure sign this project’s starting to occupy a larger part of my brain.

I’d forgotten how good it feels to just write – solving problems at a dialogue level, trying to figure out character and get the scenes to do their jobs. Also, I’m loving the pace. I have a deadline, but I also have enough time to reflect on how to fine-tune scenes. It all feels very contemplative.

Read more.

I’m happier with the ‘discovering the body’ scene I was working on yesterday.

The scene where ‘the parents try to figure out what to do’ may need to push the story along more. At the moment, it’s just mirroring the cops’ line. The page feels like it needs more oomph. Basically, I look at each page and ask whether it’s worth 14 cents –the price of a movie ticket divided by the number of pages.

My normal approach to writing has been to fly through it and fix the stuff later. Now I realise that I’m always going to fixing stuff later, so why not try and get things as right as possible at first draft. Having a higher quality of stuff to fix will hopefully mean less work later.

[VW] Indie computer game designers

Another article about people developing computer games without being co-opted into the traditional funding and distribution models.

Take special note of Alien Hominid, which started as a Flash game and has now been developed for PS2 and Gamecube.

[The Limit] First scene

Finished outlining the end of Act One with a tidy little action scene.

Did not finish writing my first scene, police discovering a body. Unlike upcoming moments in the script, the conflict isn't as clear here. That means some of my dialogue feels like padding.

[The Limit] Work has begun

Finally. I was a little freaked out about starting to tackle it - but decided to break it down into a manageable bit.

Now I'm working on the end of Act 1, a new action scene involving an escape from a police station.

[VW] Design that game! 6 obsolete excuses

This article at Terra Nova explains why you should go out and write the game you've always wanted to. The bullet-point summary:

1. You can download the tools for free.
2. Do a mod for Quake, Doom, Half-Life, or Unreal.
3. Flash.
4. There are zillions of phones out there and plenty of web sites looking for games.
5. Downloadable, tradable PDF-based games!
6. Second Life.

[SF] The Embedding

by Ian Watson
**** (out of 5)

It’s a thriller about aliens who want to harvest human brains for new forms of language and it’s about an Amazonian tribe trying to stop their jungle being flooded.

The Embedding is kind of whacked out and unpleasant and I didn’t like any member of the human race by the end of it – but still a pretty compelling read.

[RPG] Forum is up and running

The forum for our Tuesday night RPG group is now live at central.rpg.net.nz

[SF] The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of

By Thomas M. Disch
** (out of 5)

The subtitle is 'How science-fiction conquered the world' but this isn't the history I was expecting. Rather it's a survey of trends in science-fiction over the last 120 years coupled with some first-hand gossip about the quirks of famous SF writers.

After a weird opening chapter about America as a culture that celebrates lying and then an unconvincingly argued chapter on Edgar Allan Poe as the progenitor of science-fiction, Dreams then settles into its stride of identifying a subset of science-fiction and looking at the prominent books inside it.

Those trends include: Space Flight, The Bomb, Feminism, Religion, Militarism and Alien Contact. Dreams also identifies the future of SF as lying with fan-fiction, a sentiment that the creator of the revamped Battlestar Galactica agrees with.