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Film Review: Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen has had a long, very…um…interesting career. I’m normally a little bit wary of his films in general, though the last one I saw was for class, and that was involving Gene Wilder and his less-than-typical affection for a sheep. That was back in the 70s, though. He’s come a long way since then. Allen’s latest offering is Midnight in Paris, a tribute to the titular city during what some would consider its best age: the 1920s.

Owen Wilson stars as Gil, a successful screenwriter who desires more than the typical Malibu life that his fiance has in mind for them. He wants to live la vie de bohème, and write the great American novel, as so many of his heroes did before. One night, while visiting Paris with his fiance and her parents, Gil goes for a walk in the middle of the night. After finding himself invited into a passing car for champagne, Gil arrives at a party where a young woman introduces herself as Zelda. The two discuss Gil’s career as a writer, and Zelda says that he should meet her husband, who is a writer as well. Gil is introduced to Zelda’s husband, Scott, and realizes that somehow, he has found himself in a club with the Fitzgeralds, watching Cole Porter playing the piano in the 1920s.

Gil returns to the past several nights in a row, discussing his manuscript with Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, meeting the great surrealists, and musing over his own happiness with his upcoming wedding. Throughout the film, exceptional performances from a stellar ensemble ensue, and Allen’s love for Paris is evident. All in all, I’d have to give the film 5 out of 5 stars, and rank it very high on my list of personal favorites. It has a romantic charm that I’ve not seen since Moulin Rouge. It may very well have supplanted Moulin Rouge as my all-time favorite movie. There’s something irresistible about films about writers. I can’t wait to see how Midnight in Paris performs at the Academy Awards next month, when it goes up for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Art Direction.

Pick it up, if you have the chance. If you have any fondness for the Lost Generation, you owe it to them to see this movie.

Listening

My ears are sensitive. Not super-sensitive, like to the point where loud noises cause me pain or anything (thankfully, since I love metal/rock, and my poor girlfriend can’t take the volume at the concerts we’ve attended since we started dating), but just sensitive enough that I can usually hear people from a lot farther away than is expected. So sometimes, I just can’t help listening in on a friend when they’re talking on the phone. This is less common now than it used to be, since most of my friends are more fond of texting than talking, but it still happens from time to time. Every once in a while, when this situation comes up, there’s something said that’s absolutely brilliant. I had a couple of these gems pop up a couple of weeks ago:

“Oh, so it’s totally cool when a cat does that to a person, but when a person does it to a wall it’s creepy.”

“You have more of a passion for shih tzu’s than anyone I know.”

Now, I have no idea what was happening on the other end of the line, and I’m quite content with that. It’s more amusing that way. Sometimes, though, I think that when I’m writing, I’m listening to these one-sided conversations within my own head. It’s, as E.L. Doctorow put it, a “socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” I found this via stumbleupon a few weeks ago, and decided that I had to write something about the concept of the world around you being filled with voices that you can hear, if only you listen carefully enough. There’s something amazing about the writing process, because it lets you have those kind of talks with yourself (and/or your characters, if you so choose), and I love the idea that those voices actually have something behind them. I feel like those whispering voices are the kind of thing that you would hear when you’re wandering around inside this place. Named for a story by Jorge Luis Borges (which is sadly NOT in the copy of The Aleph and Other Stories that I’ve been borrowing from V), this library is reminiscent of things that I’ve been writing about in the past, and it makes me very happy that I’ve been crafting similar stories to those written by Borges, a man who died the year before I was born, and whose writing I’d regrettably never read until last year. I want to visit The Library of Babel, because it sounds like a place where I’d be able to get lots of writing done, as long as I was quiet and didn’t upset the librarian.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go listen to nothing for a while. Cheers!

There Has to Be a Better Way

Dear readers, as many of you are quite familiar with the internet (and for those of you who aren’t, there’s the wikipedia link for it, go get some education about this tool that you’re somehow, inexplicably using), I’m sure that you’ve heard of piracy. No, not that kind of piracy.  The kind that results in lawsuits because of something you downloaded from a totally legitimate and completely not illegal site. Online piracy is a huge issue, because the nature of the internet allows for people to transfer files via channels that aren’t accessible to your typical user. Most users aren’t even entirely certain of how things work, and don’t care, as long as the internet button brings them the research or the music or the porn. Seriously. They just don’t care. If someone threw an unopened carton of Oreos at your feet, would you question the legality of how those Oreos were obtained? Or would you just grab a glass of milk and chow down? With the internet, most people don’t question where content comes from. When you have what is essentially the combined knowledge of all of humanity at your fingertips, you use it.

That accessibility could change drastically. Some of our lawmakers have determined that the best way to fight piracy and protect the people who produce the content we find is to exert control over what can be viewed. SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that was introduced in October of last year, and is threatening to end the internet as we know it. Yes, that may sound dramatic, but this bill is overkill and then some. Let’s start with the full title of the bill: “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.” —H.R. 3261. You know what scares me about that title? Those last four words, “and for other purposes.” That’s way too vague, and way too Big Brother-y for my tastes. I’m not going to hand the government the ability to filter what I’m going to look for online.

There’s plenty of information on SOPA out there. Get out and access it while you can, and learn the truth.

Wikipedia will be going dark for 24 hours, in protest of SOPA. If you can’t access the majority of the links in my posts, now you know why. I support internet freedom. If you do too, and you live in an area represented by one of these individuals, please contact them and ask them to reconsider their position. If your representatives are against SOPA, call them up too, and thank them for protecting you.

Yes, internet piracy is bad, but the current wording of SOPA and the associated bill, PIPA, is not conducive to maintaining freedoms that we are promised as Americans. As it stands, SOPA will hurt everyday web users far more than it will hurt the pirates. It’s far more likely to incite a “worldwide arms race of unprecedented ‘censorship’ of the Web,” according to Vint Cerf. This isn’t the way to stop the piracy. This is the way to stop progress. Fuck censorship. Stop SOPA.

I Can Feel the Beat (Generation)

It’s all the fault of my literature professors. I fell in love with the beat generation several years ago. I was introduced to people like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and their numerous contemporaries. When I first read “Howl” in my American Literature class, it didn’t really click with me. Then we listened to Ginsberg reading it. It was a lightbulb moment. My entire concept of what poetry was and what it could be was completely inverted. I’d never heard anything with that kind of, well, beat, to it before, and I’d certainly never heard any poetry that was willing to take on the subject matter it did in such a bold fashion. I couldn’t believe it had been published in the 50s, and that was before I learned that Ginsberg stood trial for obscenity for the poem. Not that he was the only author who’d ever faced that kind of censorship. No. Like so many others, Ginsberg was merely ahead of his time. Want to see something amazing? Check out the movie “Howl,” which stars James Franco as Ginsberg, and discusses Ginsberg’s life at the time of his trial.

Some people would say that beat poetry died, or at least was phased out, in the 60s. I would disagree, thanks to the various poetry slams I’ve attended in the last few years, and also thanks to things like Tim Minchin‘s “Storm.” A good friend of mine showed me this the other day, and I can’t help being impressed by the brilliance of the writing and the tone of the poet as he reads it. Looks to me like the Beat Generation is still alive and well.

Non-Euclidean

Yes, I have Lovecraft on the brain. GET IT OFF!

Whew. So, Miss Sonia’s latest writing challenge is this: fifty words from one word. Mine was Euclidean. Enjoy.

Non-Euclidean geometry, they called it. It’s a mind screw. I think that’s kind of the idea. I’m not too sure how long I’ve been here now, and I have no way of knowing if there’s any way out of these damned Escher staircases. Too late. I can hear them coming.

Happy 2012!

Well, my New Year is off to a great start, with a day spent helping put away Christmas decorations and (finally) finishing Skyward Sword. That’s right, I’ve finished yet another Zelda game (you know, aside from the side quests, item hunting, and the new, more challenging “Hero Mode” that I unlocked).

It’s been nearly a year since I started this blog, thanks to V‘s influence. Through her, I’ve made contact with some pretty awesome people out there in the internet. I just want to take this time to say thank you to everyone who reads these, however infrequently. You make me feel like I might be able to make a difference.

 

A Shoggoth on the Roof

Somehow I missed out on the fact that they’d been developing a Lovecraft musical. To make up for this, I’ve been listening to the score. This is the first track on youtube, and it’s absolutely brilliant. I suppose it’s even better for people who are Lovecraft fans already, but it’s still pretty enjoyable for the general public, provided that you’ve seen A Fiddler on the Roof, the original play that this one parodies. I don’t care if they’ve only ever had a handful of successful productions of this show, I want to see it. Hell, if I had the money, I’d produce it. Much like Spamalot, this is one severely underrated musical that needs better exposure.

Lovecraft needs more exposure, frankly. I mean, kids today know Edgar Allan Poe from their high school English classes, if not from earlier. They see Stephen King (of whom I am a huge fan: 11/22/63 is on hold for me at the library, and I absolutely cannot wait for Dr. Sleep and The Wind Through the Keyhole) or Dean Koontz or the others on the shelves at bookstores, and many of them don’t realize that there was someone (or some thing…) filling in those years between Poe and today. Lovecraft’s fiction is deep, disturbing, and profound, and I can’t read enough of it. Just as entertaining are things like Neil Gaiman’s short, “I, Cthulhu.” Check it out on Tor’s website, here. I just wish that I’d had a formal introduction to Lovecraft the way I was introduced to classic literature. Some things just go unappreciated for far too long. Maybe, if ever I slip off of the pier and lose what’s left of my sanity (to the Dark Lord Cthulhu or otherwise) and become a teacher, I’ll try to sneak something like “The Color Out of Space” into my curriculum. Or maybe I’ll just avoid teaching. It could be dangerous and hazardous to young, impressionable minds. Damn kids might actually learn something, and we certainly can’t have any of that.

There’s all kinds of great things to read out there, and there are great people making things happen for people to help them get access to the things that they’re needing or wanting to read, whether it’s a copy of Lovecraft’s Necronomicon collection or the latest political biographies. The people of the Occupy Wall Street Library are those kind of people, and they need your help. Check out their wordpress page and see what you, as a writer or a reader or a lover of books or of democracy or of protests can do to help them out. Send them your donations, your books, your poetry, or even just a letter saying “Hey, OWS Library, we totally appreciate that you’re trying your best to help make this whole shitty situation a little less shitty by providing books and whatnot to all the people here.” Maybe you can send them a spare Lovecraft collection. In his house in Wall Street, dread Cthulhu waits dreaming of equality and fairness and an end to the bullshit that is politics. Right? We can only hope, and hang on, like a shoggoth on the roof.

A Smaller Place

Today, I started my first shift as a substitute at one of the smaller branches within the library system here in town. I don’t know if it was just the change in the size of the facility, the massive amount of snow on the ground, or some combination of the two, but it’s been a wonderful change of pace. The work is also a lot more along the lines of my old job at my university’s library. Unlike my current job, I’m not one of twenty or so staff members at work. Tonight, I’m one of three. Everyone does a wider variety of tasks. It reminds me very much of the library in my hometown, which was built in a converted house. There’s something very powerful about the atmosphere of an area of such concentrated imagination and knowledge and creativity.

All libraries and bookstores have this effect to some degree, but I’ve found that the smaller the location, the more powerful it becomes. This would account for my love of bookmobiles… I mean, honestly, a library that comes to you? Brilliant. Almost as good as fresh Guinness draught in a bottle. I suppose I could get the same impact with all the books I’ve got in a storage unit at the moment, but they’re all in boxes, so it’s not quite the same. Conversely, take the Library of Congress. I can’t imagine a more overwhelming building full of books in existence, but when I think about all of those books being condensed into a building that had enough room for just the books and none of the soaring ceilings and wide open areas, well…

I’ve planned a dream home around the presence of a personal library. While I am absolutely of the opinion that books should be shared and available to everyone who wants to read them, I’m a little bit protective when it comes to my own collection. I mean, after I discovered how mind-blowingly awesome Watchmen was (Alan Moore is a genius, if not the wizard that he claims), I went out and promptly bought a second copy so that I could lend that one out to my friends. My original copy stays on my shelf. I did the same thing with Salamandastron (still my favorite of the Redwall series) in the fifth grade after I met Brian Jacques. Despite being a mass-market paperback, it’s signed, and so it has a reserved place of honor, while my new-old hardcover (God bless used bookstores) is my reading copy. OCD? Maybe a little. I never claimed not to be. After all, I want to be able to pass many of them on to whatever children or nieces or nephews I may have. I’d like to take good care of them while they’re still in my possession. To me, a good book is worth its weight in gold.

I love me my physical books. I’m not afraid to retread old anti-eReader ground here. I can’t say it often enough. Yes, I support digitization of physical media for archival backup. If a physical copy cannot survive, then at least a digital copy will be available. Maybe then, in the future, someone could reprint a physical copy from the backup. This is just practical. Do I support a complete conversion to digital? No. Flat out. No. You cannot beat a physical book. I’ll happily listen to any defenses of digital readers. After all, I survived for ten months by convincing people of how great they are. If Barnes & Noble ever hires me, I’ll go right back to it. They’re nice, but they’re not right for me.

That much being said, I’ve got my notebook and pen handy. I’m going to write a little more before diving back into A Wizard of Earthsea.

Writing as Art

This one’s kind of a complicated subject, and was inspired by the latest Penny Arcade comic. How many of you feel that what you do as a writer actually counts as art?

I say yes. I know that some people would disagree with me.  However, I feel that a well written story or poem, regardless of the formal training  behind it, can be just as beautiful as some works of art, and far more impressive than others. I’ve read some pieces that, while incredibly well-written, strongly structured, and clearly organized, did absolutely nothing for me in terms of evoking an emotional response, and I’d consider them almost trash. Are those stories art? Much like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder (along with antimagic, disintegrate, etc., but I digress).

I know that my feelings on certain pieces change based on my age, my own life experiences, and my state of mind when I am reading it. Therefore, there are some books that I pick up on a regular basis. My love for Tolkien remains undiminished throughout the years, no matter how many times I’ve read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Other authors, I attempted to read in junior high or high school, and were totally dismissed at the time. Later on, particularly thanks to my degree, I would read them again, and I found that my tastes had changed. For example, let’s take Willa Cather. When I was a junior in high school, my English teacher taught Cather as a standard in his curriculum because she was his favorite author, and had lived where he had lived. That year, I attempted to read Death Comes for the Archbishop. I found it painful and dull, and questioned the relevance of Cather’s work.

Four years later, now a third-year English major (in part thanks to the influence of said English teacher), I read Willa Cather again, this time tackling The Professor’s House. With far more reading experience under my belt, I dove headlong into the book, and I finally found myself enjoying Cather’s prose. This time, I was fascinated by her characters, and eventually took it upon myself to revisit Death Comes for the Archbishop. Now that I was more accustomed to her writing, I realized that I really liked Cather, and was happy to add her to my list of favorite authors. I went through a nearly identical process when I first encountered Stephen King. Granted, I started with Desperation. Also granted, I was in fifth grade. Still, King’s writing style didn’t appeal to me. A couple of years later, however, I picked up The Green Mile, having seen the film version. It was, I guess, a more mild story, but it allowed me to adapt my mind to King’s writing form and characterization. Now I find myself hard-pressed to find King books that I’ve not read.

Based on my first impressions of both of these authors, I wouldn’t have called either of them artists. Skilled at their craft, yes, but neither Cather nor King would have kept my attention long enough for me to care. For whatever reason, I decided to give them another look, and that’s when I found the art. Now I feel that I’m able to see it far more often. In my own work, I’m trying to find the balance between craft and art. There’s only so far that formal training and technical approaches can take you. If you’re not putting feeling into what you’re writing, then you might as well quit now.

 

Character Backstory #3: Alexi

It’s D&D character backstory time again, folks, which means that I’m too busy/lazy to actually type up something completely new/original for your reading pleasure today (read: Skyward Sword is eating my life now that NaNo is over).

This one is for my soulknife, Alexi.

Forty years ago, there was a small group of adventurers who roamed the world of Taesos, combing dungeons and caverns and castles in far countries to gain the knowledge of ancient civilizations. A man named Dorn was one of their number, and upon his return to his home city of Arnes he married and founded a small private university in the large manor that he built with funds dicovered in his travels. It was here that he began to pore over the information that he and his friends had found. Dorn began to study alongside his students and found that with the right training, anyone could accomplish astounding deeds. His school quickly became known as a prestigious adventuring academy.

Not long after, Dorn and his wife welcomed the birth of twin sons, Jack and Alexi. In an unpleasant turn of events of which not even Dorn knows the truth, Dorn’s wife fled Arnes with Dorn’s best friend, Georg, and with Alexi, the elder twin. Dorn was left to raise Jack alone.

Alexi’s childhood was far from dull, however. Living with a wizard honed his mind. He had not the sheer varied talent of his twin, but his mind was unique in that it allowed him to shape weapons out of pure mental energy. This was the latent power that Georg, in reality a powerful illusionist, had sensed within Alexi, leading to the kidnapping.

When he reached the age of eighteen, he set forth with Georg to do battle with his long-lost brother, Jack. After searching for many months, Jack had finally stumbled upon his brother’s trail, deep in the mountains on Nyord’Wrend. Georg and Alexi slaughtered all of Jack’s companions and, in what may have been a brief moment of compassion for his brother, Alexi utilized one of Georg’s own inventions to teleport Jack out of Georg’s hands and back to Nirruna, wiping his memories of Alexi’s hiding place in the process.

Alexi remains a loyal servant to the illusions of Georg, fighting alongside others who have submitted to the will of the wizard. He now journeys across the world looking for potential new allies, making a bold statement of power with each manifestation of his mind blade. Perhaps someday he will encounter his brother, Jack, again, and be able to regain his lost years with his true family.