So yeah. It's been a while since I posted and the main - indeed, the only - reason for that is... *drumroll* I'm lazy. Not much of a reveal, but hey-ho. I've also had problems with writing in general - it's been at least 2 months since I've written anything, let alone a blog post.

So I may come back. I may not. We shall see.

I started that story the day after I posted that. As of yesterday, I'd managed one sentence. One lousy, stinking sentence. It wasn't even a good sentence.

Anyway. I've restarted it. I know have two sentences, and some idea for the rest. They're good sentences as well. I hope.

Watch this space.

So... I've had a new idea for a story - a short one this time (hopefully). It's gonna be based on the Norse Gods, a pantheon I feel particularly drawn to - in fact, it's the closest thing I have to religious belief. The plan is to write in first person, from the point of view of the Trickster, Loki. It's going to be set in modern-day and it's going to be something to do with the way the gods have adapted to life in the present - as some of you may note, it's inspired a little by Neil Gaiman. Anyway. Here goes.

Right, so it's been a while. The main problem was that I started a long, painful crit of Meyer's latest monstrosity book. Then, about half-way through I lost the will to write (not to mention the will to live) and gave up. I haven't really come back to this place since then, but I'm willing to give it another go. Watch this space.

Here I am, as promised. So, here goes

I, Robot - watched it last night. As I said, it's clearly a love story between one man and his Converse. Seriously, he loves those things.

Gigi, the wedding's next March

In the first five minutes of the film, you have him opening the packet and staring at his new babies lovingly. Then a close up of him putting them on, after which he walks to his grandma's, with plenty of full body shots from the side. Then, at his dear old gran's, he starts giving her a product pitch. Even his boss says "nice shoes". It's like they took the script of the film, then squeezed in as many references to footwear as possible. The only movie I've ever seen that has more blatant product placement is Transporter 2, where the first five minutes are basically a car ad for Audi.

Having said that though, I really do like I, Robot. It's a solid storyline that doesn't have tooo many clichés (which is really rare for Hollywood. Really, really rare). It's well-acted and has genuinely funny moments ("look, I understand you've experienced a loss, but this relationship just can't work. I mean, you're a cat. I'm black. I'm not going to be hurt again. " comes to mind, as does his response to being asked if he ever had a normal day: "Yeah. Once. It was a thursday"). Some of it does seem a little too... unlikely, mainly that Detective Del Spooner seems to be the only Robo-phobe in the world (you just know there'd be people preaching on street corners) and the mob being extremely un-armed against the robots (I wouldn't go up against something that was stronger, and smarter than me with a baseball bat. If you do that, you deserve the beating you get). Despite these though, it's a good film. I recommend.

So, Eclipse. Premièred on Thursday, general pre-release thingy yesterday. I'm hazy on the details, because I don't actually care that much (I like to be honest with things like this). After all my ardous research (five minutes on google) I was still unable to turn up figures for how well it did financially or stuff like that. What I did find however was an amusing little story about the preview. Apparently, for whatever reason (I like to think they were just screwing with the Twitards) the main names - RPatz, KrisStew and TayLau (possibly the daftest nicknames in movie history) - didn't come to the première of it. As you can imagine, the Twitards were incandescent (and not in the sparklepire sense that Meyer uses) and showed up wearing t-shirts saying that they'd been "Rob-bed" and suchlike. One of the things I found funniest about this was a comment on a video showing them that simply pointed out that despite knowing about this in enough time to get the shirts printed, they obviously weren't angry enough not to show up...

That's all for now. See you tomorrow. Or whenever.

MusicalCynic

Another day, another post. This is going to be a short one, and I'm just going to put things to cover more fully tomorrow.

I decided to go through some of my old DVD's and post reviews/comments and I've started with I, Robot, the story of one man's love affair with a pair of converse. And there's some stuff about robots as well, but that's just filler.

I spent yesterday in the Houses of Parliaments, our seat of government. Was pretty cool. Chilled on the roof with an MP for a bit. As you do, y'know.

Still reading Shame, so no news on that - other than it's a pretty weird book, which is pretty par for the course with Rushdie. More on that later.

Eclipse comes out tonight in England. Probably going to have the same result over here as in the US ($30 MILLION!!!!). So again, more will be mentioned tomorrow.

Anyway. I'm off. Enjoy yourselves and I'll see you here tomorrow (Well. Not actually see, but you know what I me - sod it, I'm off)

MusicalCynic

So. New day, new post. Having got all that annoying "introduction" stuff out of the way, I can now talk about stuff. So, here goes.

Eclipse came out today, 'bout midnight-ish and made something like $30 million in it's first screening. I'll repeat - $30 million, first screening. My brain basically just shut down from the sheer enormity of that number. Some #1 films don't make that much in their first WEEKEND and Eclipse did it in ONE SCREENING. I'll give you a minute to work out the sort of royalties Meyer is making from this thing. Seriously, go ahead. I'll wait.

Back again? If you're anything like me, you'll have come up with the figure of $ashitload. Much as I dislike Meyer's actual writing, she certainly knows how to sell her stuff. I think her plans for the future probably involve buying Hawaii and a whole load of Edward look-alikes and just going nuts.

Anyway, enough of me going mad with jealousy over Eclipse ticket sales ($30,000,000 zomg). Still on the subject of movies though, The Last Airbender was recently released and has had almost universally dismal reviews. And when I say dismal, I really, really mean it. By the sounds of it it's pretty much the final nail in M. Night Shamalyan's coffin. Selected comments from Rotten Tomatoes:

"The addition of the 3-D is obviously an afterthought, and in most scenes it's pretty bad. Almost as bad as the writing and the acting. Almost."

"A soul-crushing disaster made worse by unnecessary, counterproductive 3-D, The Last Airbender fails to immediately qualify as the worst film of the summer only by virtue of the year's abundance of other candidates."

In case you were wondering, Rotten Tomatoes currently has it at a score of 5%, although it has fluctuated between 0% and 5%. Not quite the tour de force some people (including presumably M. Night himself) were hoping for.

Another major criticism, along with the leaden dialogue, acting, visual effects, 3D and probably costume design (because why the hell not, really) is the seemingly casual racism in the casting, as seemingly all of the good guys are white. It's not even that this is how it was originally written, as in the original series they were Asian. But M. Night Shamalyan (I CANNOT GET OVER THE COOLNESS OF HIS NAME) has decided that the good guys should be white, dammit and has cast them as such. Of course, the bad guys all seem to be Asian (the main antagonist is Dev Patel, who starred in Slumdog Millionaire. Kind of a step down, huh?). So to recap, crap film, borderline racist casting and so many faults that it's almost hard to know where to begin. Unless you're this guy, that is who gave it a delightfully scathing review. BURRNNNNNNNNN.

I think that's pretty much me done for the day. I would post about a book, but I'm a bit behind on my reading and I've got nothing literary for ya. I am just about to start Shame, by Salman Rushdie (he of the Fatwa of Dooooooom), so I should have something to say about that in a day or two.

Until next time then.

MusicalCynic.

Hi.

So. Now I has a blog. Because, y'know, I didn't already have enough pointless shit to distract myself with.

My only real problem with having a blog though is that I don't really know what I'm going to do on it. I mean, I could write down my thoughts and feelings and share what's happened to me today... but if I wanted to do that I'd buy a diary, mainly because it's less embarrassing and it's (slightly) less likely that a random stranger is gonna read it - although the internet does grant the gift of anonymity (I know. Long words, right? It's just because I'M THAT COOL. Remember that in future.)

I could also be political on here, an idea that appeals to me, at least on the surface. On the other hand, it's harder to work in "teh lolz" (I'm big on lolz). Seriously, it's hard to insert comic relief into a discussion on the latest budget, mainly because at the minute one of the only funny political thing that most people are aware of is DAVID CAMERON'S FOREHEAD, which is apparently visible from space. The other downside of political commentary is that it actually involves work, something that I do my very best to avoid at all costs. I'm interested in politics, but I'd be spending all my time researching, something that holds zero appeal.

So I guess my only real option is just to post things that amuse me at random (like David Cameron's forehead). I may even post stuff about books or films, assuming I can find enough lolz in the subject matter (I seem to have developed an obsession for the word lolz. This is quite worrying). So onward we go, in a continuous search for shits and giggles.

toodle-pip for now,

MusicalCynic