Summer 2013

Warning: this one’s a slightly dry post… mechanics of my mission, ect. Blah blah blah. Skip down to the cool round photos if you want the highlights.

I have big plans for this summer. I’ll be starting my final year of college in the fall, and I have a squarely three-month time span between now and then. In that time, I hope to accomplish two things. I want to get this blog onto a firm every-other-day posting schedule, while hopefully stocking up enough spare posts to keep it going strong during the school year, a task that I’ve found is pretty darn difficult. Second, I want to explore ebook self-publishing. I’ve already done some research into this, and I have a few options to follow up on. I have two or three novels that are okay enough to publish. Sadly, I probably don’t have the time needed to write more this summer, but you never know.

My blog plan means I’ll have to write seven posts every two weeks. To get that done, I hope to publish posts elsewhere on the internet, and then reposting them on my blog. By setting up this site as a hub, I can keep my audience up-to-date, while still pulling in interested people from other sites. I’ve already started posting, as you might have noticed. Here are the categories that I’ll be using to keep me churning out the insightful commentary that all you fans love so much.

Sci-Fi Essays

I’ve got a kinja blog over here, where I post science-fiction related information for the Io9 crowd, like this recent post about Steven Moffat’s plotting misadventures.

Book Reviews

I’ve got this account at GoodReads, where I post book reviews. I’m hoping to expound on my favorite genre, the wacky shenanigans genre, which I coincidentally also came up with. In future posts here, expect a deep study of the genre. For now, you’ll have to settle for this recent review of the Henry Reed books.

College Advice

I’m a freelancer at HackCollege.com, and I’ve blogged lists of the posts I’ve written for them in the past. I’ll be continuing that practice in the future.

Film Reviews

Sadly, I’m no longer in my cinema class, which is what forced me to post a 300-500 word review here every week. Now I just need to rely on my own initiative, and I always tend to watch more TV than film when I’m given the chance. I certainly wouldn’t check out such admitted classics as Citizen Kane or On the Waterfront.

Trailer Reviews

This one won’t be regular, either. The trailer reviews were commissioned by my college newspaper’s website. They’ve only posted one so far, and they’re on hiatus for the summer, but they want around five reviews for the next year. I might easily do more on here.

Miscellaneous

I’ll post links to my guest posts, and I might even post the guest posts that have failed to find hosts. Heh, post hosts. Anyway. I’ll also add old articles I’ve written for my college newspaper’s print version, and past blog posts I’ve squirreled away. Also, I might expound on some notes that I’ve written for myself: I have a ton of old thoughts that can easily make fun blog posts. For example, nicotine patch gym shorts. “Get addicted to exercise!” Genius.

Projects

Last and greatest: my various projects. I’ll try to keep you updated on:

Emmett

My planned podcast is The Academic Emmett, a dramatized series of short fiction stories airing around December 2013. It stars Emmett, who’s basically Sherlock Holmes if he were a college student and a mad scientist instead of a detective. I’ll have my own website for it, and I’m in charge of writing, recording, some voice acting, rounding up all the other voice actors, editing, adding music and sound effects, designing the site, and advertising for the whole thing once it’s done.

I still need to finish 13 stories this summer, but I just wrote one this weekend, so it shouldn’t be too tough to complete those on time. I’ll have a total of 4 seasons, each about 11 episodes long and covering a year of Emmett’s academic career. This is my favorite one… I’m excited.

Flux | Flow

This is the TV show I’ll be acting in. Most of the work will be done over the fall semester, but I may be writing a future episode ahead of time, which will be a great way to flex my screenwriting muscle. I’ve been studying the art via reading Story, by Robert McKee, which I’ve been enjoying.

More about the show here.

NoiARRRRR

I’m writing, producing, and co-starring in a genre mash-up that I’m calling NoiARRRRR. That’s right, five Rs. It’ll be a buddy cop film starring a film noir detective (that’s me!) and a pirate. They’ll have to learn to work together in order to stop a group of smugglers. Expect plenty of terrible puns and great genre references.

Stalker

I’m planning to get started on a film spec script. The plot? The stalker of a B-level actress is the only one with enough information to save her when she’s kidnapped. We’ll see how this one progresses…

Untitled Young Adult novel

That’s right, I’ve got one more writing project planned. More information to come on it. Can I possibly finish these all? No. But you won’t be able to find out which I complete and which I don’t until August. Follow along. It’ll be fun, I promise.

Book Review: Henry Reed, Inc.

The entire Henry Reed series has long been a favorite of mine. The author, Keith Robertson, was never very visible, and I’m not nearly as fond of any of his other books, as he tended to have pretty bland prose. In the Henry Reed books, however, he has figured out a narrative voice that successfully masks his limitations: Henry is a forthright young boy with the defining character trait of lacking a sense of humor. As a result, his journals contain more plot than descriptive prose, and none of the description is inspired. But rather than drag the book down, this voice rings true to the character and more importantly, highlights the plot.

Henry is an enterprising lad who – through no fault of his own – is constantly accosted by all types of zany hijinks, and, dare I say, wacky shenanigans. The adventures are episodic, though certain facts are often introduced in order to return at a later date, and are spurred by an idea such as using a dog rather than a pig to hunt for truffles, or trying out dousing rods. Inevitably, a plot twist keeps the adventure fresh and fun. The cast contains plenty of one-note characters: Henry’s tomboy friend Midge is spunky, Aunt Mabel is loving, and Uncle Al is both wry and (accurately) pessimistic.

Henry’s age reversion back to 13 in the final book, despite the fact that it’s set after the others, gives the character’s world a James Bond-like sense of timelessness. The Henry Reed series isn’t about great literature; it’s about the sense of wonder and curiosity any exploring kid knows, mashed with the entertaining educational tidbits that same kid wants to know.

That’s going to end well.

Originally posted as a review on Goodreads.

Film Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

 

JJ Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness has exactly the same successes and mistakes as the first film in Abrams’ reboot franchise, which, for me, means that I loved it. I think Abrams’ crew has consistently walked the line between creating a riproaring action-adventure and paying homage to their source material. A reboot shouldn’t be the same, but it should have the same tone, and this sequel culls plenty of call-backs yet turns the whole mish-mash into a coherent film, just as the ’09 reboot film did. The plot, however, does have holes, and only depth to the entire thing comes from the fact that it’s a clever homage. Spoilers to follow.

Steven Moffat’s Plot Twist Problem

Poor plot twists are everywhere, and they come in two types: either the plot twist was so cliché and obvious that everyone knew it was happening miles before the book, show, or film decided it was time to reveal it, or else the twist caught everyone so far off guard that it didn’t even seem to be real after it had happened. Authors and screenwriters are always walking a tightrope balance: they must both create a twist that is foreshadowed and explainable, and they must make sure that no one sees it coming. That’s a tough task, and that’s why plot twists are so hard to write.

Let’s take the last few series of Doctor Who as an example. Stephan Moffat is a reigning king of twisty plots. The episodes that he’s personally penned for the earlier series of Nu Who – The “Empty Child” two-parter, “The Girl in the Fireplace,” “Blink,” and “Silence in the Library” – are all stand-out plotty-wotty stories, and his “Scandal in Belgravia episode” of Sherlock is my favorite of that series. Moffat became the Doctor Who show runner in 2009, and, although the show definitely retained its awesomeness under his hand, he finally showed which side of the plot twist problem he stumbles over. His recent Who episodes have all held underdeveloped plot twists.

Spoilers to follow. … Sweetie. Sorry; it’s a dumb joke, but then again, so am I.

Coming up roses

One dark and stormy night, it was raining cats and dogs. Timmy tried to sleep like a log, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks: he was a scardy-cat. Trembling like a leaf, the youngster wrapped his mind around a solution. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box or the sharpest knife in the drawer. He wasn’t even a rocket scientist. But the wool couldn’t be pulled over his eyes. Any monsters would be waiting under his bed til the cows came home, for Timmy’s bed was as secure as Fort Knox. It was all coming up roses.

(14 cliches! Try and beat that.)

Film Review: The Shore

The Shore’s 30-minute span is enough to detail a story, though barely: the back-story has to be detailed in a five-minute monologue from Joe to his daughter. To be fair, though, the actor who portrays Joe is the best one there, so it’s a smart choice to give him the heavy lifting. The only noticeably poor actor is the daughter Patricia, in fact, probably because most of the others are older, with more acting experience. Patricia’s slightly forced and ham-handed emotions were a little distracting. The film’s slow-paced atmosphere and beautiful location definitely helped to communicate the universal emotions of love and loss covered by the short film. I spent my last spring abroad in Ireland, and the sense of the people in the film was the same as the sense I got while visiting the actual country.

While the film is only 30 minutes long, its penchant for lingering shots of cold Irish hills and numerous subtle reaction shots made it feel cinematically lengthy. This fact might stand against the assumption that short films are the future of cinema due to the shortening attention spans of the internet generation – if the film has less information in it than a typical, frantically cut Youtube video, it will still feel tedious. For now, though, the style is what qualified the film for its 2012 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, so no one’s too upset about it, I suppose.

I appreciated the film for the fleshed-out, realistic reminder it gave me of Ireland, and Irish life, and for the fact that it didn’t have an entirely sappy ending – the fact that Joe doesn’t tell Paddy the truth and allows Paddy to be the guilty one is, in my book, not an entirely perfect ending. And since I don’t enjoy entirely saccharine storytelling, I appreciate the touch.

Film Review: Iron Man 3

It’s tough to be the director of a Marvel film. You have to construct a good film — intelligent plot, engaging characters — but you also have to help the entire franchise along as well, which means countless constraints. You can’t kill the main characters. You need to fit the narrow evil-villain-tries-to-take-over-the-world superhero model. You need to include tons of side characters, and even introduce new ones. It’s a Herculean task, really. Which is why I’m happy with Joss Whedon and Shane Black, who are able to juggle it all and still turn out decent films.

Overall, Iron Man 3 was okay, with occasional flashes of awesome. The spoilers were negligible, I’m happy to say, so the film was not ruined as I thought it might be. I’ll put an entire spoilery review below.