So basically my life consists of long periods of staggering boredom, punctuated by steadily increasing suck to a pinnacle of several seconds of sharp, violent excitement suffixed by another long sucky descent into boredom. Do not underestimate the boredom. It’s incredible. It gives me plenty of time to contemplate the amazing lack of realism in Hollywood, in some cases exacerbated by the very desire for realism they espouse. Movie explosions are terrible, as I’ve mentioned before, but that’s not the issue. It’s the subtle nuances of events that stop the tension, and force out of immersion, even while one is immersed. It’s hearing detonations while you’re in the shower and having to make a split second choice whether you’re going to haul ass to the bunker with aforementioned ass exposed, or risk several seconds to throw on pants. It’s knowing whichever way you chose, you’ll second guess yourself for it later.
I just saw “In Bruges” which was amazing. It has a plot, plot necessitated action, surprisingly good acting, and midgets. Plot necessary midgets, at that. I may have to forgive Collin Ferrell for Alexander, or at least retract the hit. Very good dialogue that I’d put on par with Pulp Fiction. There’s a similar recursive mockery of the events that in no way undermines the seriousness of those events. The movie takes itself as seriously as death, but includes the way people make fun of that. Very good movie. I give it one Quentin Tarantino, or perhaps an low-fat Equilibrium
Other things I’ve seen recently are the Fast and Furious series, which were terrible. They’re exactly as bad as one expects. To be honest, if you like such things, they’re exactly as good as one would expect too. No surprises. I’ve also been watching Warren Miller flicks. Those get better as they go on, as production values are very important to ski porn. The first few clearly don’t have much of a budget, and show people doing little things that are impressive, but not for the sake of spectacle. The later episodes can capture the incredible runs better.
Another thing that I’ve been noticing in movies is conflict. Take a movie like Pirates of the Carribean, the first one. Every scene has clearly evident conflict between characters. The conflict is inherent to their characterizations, and doesn’t come across as forced. Compare that to Fast and Furious, which clearly has no reason for half the people to do what they’re doing, but someone added conflict with the same slap-dash approach as a Steven Segal flick adds fighting. I suppose the difference is called “good writing” or “a script” but sometimes even that isn’t necessary. Casablanca was written piecemeal, writers brainstorming the night before about what scenes they were going to shoot the next day. That being said, F&F is about cars driving fast, so perhaps it shouldn’t even be in this discussion. There is something inherently interesting about cars crashing and things exploding, even if the explosions are black powder pushing charges behind bags, or occasionally drums, of diesel. But they lack the honesty of a Warren Miller production, which has no story, no real characters or dialogue, and gives you exactly what you want: movies about skiing so you can live vicariously while you’re stuck in a furnace behind the back door of nowhere. Iron Man, and I admit I lowered myself to watching it, I’m not proud, I’m bored, tried to stick to the right side of the chasm, but overloaded me with transparent politics rammed down my throat. Maybe Hollywood really does think that the zeitgeist is 1960s era Berkley the world over. Maybe they just want to sell that so peer pressure makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe I’m too sensitive to such things. But come one, must the one sided politics be that blatant? Can you at least be discrete about it?
I’m reading this book on goals, motivation, and conflict which entitled that, only with more capitalization. I’m beginning to see the more technical side of writing, and why the Middle Earth game worked so much better than Carcosa. It wasn’t just time and energy, though we all had more of those in the first one, but the NPCs were easier for the PCs to riff off, and vice versa. The conflict wasn’t so one dimensional. And as ridiculous as it may sound, Balrogs aren’t as overpowered as the Princes of Wilno. They weren’t. You could do things with them. Things that the PCs could manage easily, as opposed to necessitating incredibly complex schemes that no one could hold in their head when we met to run the game for a week every few months. It’s hard to tell if maybe Carcosa would have worked out if we’d had more time, but that may be an exercise in hypotheticals that is about as productive as me building a character I want to play in any game ever.
And while I’m on my soap box about that, my PbP game died. I knew it. I got to play a lunatic, and was actually trying to explore some psychology. I’d even managed to get the balance of the game down to the point me waxing philosophical about the Id moved the plot along. The damn character’s name was Sigmund and I got to spout about psychology! Symbelin, I now know your pain about dragons.
I want very badly to write a small-scope character driven story. I don’t want to write about the fate of the world. That’s a crutch to add urgency. I want something small, but necessary between the people. Maybe I should have taken an English class in college that wasn’t “General Education: Literature for Science Majors.” Screw it, I’m getting a masters in creative writing, going to move to Oregon and wear Berkenstocks 365d/y, and start listening to the ‘Dead. But only if I can keep reading xkcd.
