So, I'm back. I thought that I'd try to fight past the crippling laziness I mentioned last time - all those months ago - and actually come back here and write something. Not to be defeatist, but I don't rate my chances high... But anyway. So currently things in life are a little bit hectic. I have revision I should be doing (The key phrase there is "should be"), I have campaigning to do for the local elections that I just happen to be running in and I've got an American kid coming over in three days and staying with me for a while. So yes. Busy busy busy.

I don't really have any entertainment news, other than to say I'm reading the Sharpe books and they are awesome. If any of you have even a passing interest in Napoleonic history, I fully recommend buying a couple and trying them. No big film stuff, mainly because it's all passed my by.

ETA: There is of course the whole Wicked Pretty Things anthology... issue... but that's been covered in great detail and far better than I could hope to manage by the wonderful Cleolinda Jones. Just scroll down to the post marked "Sit down and get comfortable" and read up from there. http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/tag/publishing

That's all folks,

MuscialCynic

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