Spectral review

I watched Spectral on Netflix, and was surprised to have actually enjoyed it. I went in thinking that it was going to be a real bad movie, based off an article that dissed the science in the movie.

To understand how much I liked the movie, you need to understand how I often watch movies: I often don’t really watch them. I often just listen to them in the background, as kind of a soundtrack to my life, doing other things like reading or playing games. If I really enjoy a movie, I will dedicate my full attention to it.

So I set out to treat this movie like all of the other “okay” or decent movie, and found myself engrossed to the point that I stopped the movie because I couldn’t stop the other thing I was doing to pay full attention to it. Couldn’t really find time over the past couple months, but finally I sat down and dedicated myself to it. I didn’t read or play video, I just watched the movie. Jackie can tell you how different that is for me.

So why did I enjoy the movie? I think in some ways it’s very simple: it had an intriguing idea, and articulated it extremely well. They developed rules for the bad guys, stuck with them, and hinted at other rules from the very beginning. This last point is important, because to me there is nothing worse than changing behaviors mid-movie, out of nowhere. In Spectral, the behaviors were always there, and it wasn’t until the super-nerd realized it that I realized they had that lovely little fact at the very beginning. It was a nice touch.

Sure there were a couple scenes that made me go “Yeah, there is no way they could do that, with what they have, in the time they had,” but at that point I was invested, and was forgiving. The movie stretched my suspension of disbelief without breaking it. And even that stretch set up a beautifully done payout that made me go, “OK, that was worth it.”

Something that didn’t hurt is that there were some solid performances all around. They got some decent actors for this movie, and they all made me care about their characters. Sometimes it was hard to see who was getting killed off underneath the grim and body armor, but I cared every time one of them died. Well most of the time. This movie is filled with red shirts, but even their deaths made their marks as they lined up against a seemingly invincible enemy.

Lastly, I want to give props to the art design. They really nailed the stereotypical urban hell-filled warzone. I don’t know if that’s what a city that is in the throes of civil war is really like, but they sold it well. They also did a good job on making the bad guys truly creepy, and the end was just the capper on a creepy premise.

If you are still reading at this point, I don’t expect anyone else to enjoy the movie like I did, but it isn’t a bad movie, and if you have a netflix streaming account, you’re pretty much getting it for free. Worst case, you watch this movie and say “Christ, Jeremy is full of shit.”

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Haunted Hauler

This is the down and dirty rough draft of the haunted U-haul movie idea. I mean, I am typing this exactly how I wrote it in my notebook.

Man & ex-wife argue because she got a court order to stop him from taking their kids to California. He kills her, possibly by accident, then takes her to woodshed and dismembers her.  Instead of just burying her, he stores the parts of that could identify her in coolers, and puts them in the moving van. He intends to bury the body parts in different parts of the country to make it more difficult to determine what happened. The ghost attacks people based off the body part that is buried near them.

An FBI agent starts investigating when the body was discovered in a state park near the murderer’s house (couldn’t just leave the leftovers at the house they moved out of.) The murderer doesn’t stray far from the motels and hotels, which gave the FBI a break when a stray dog found a body part (possibly a foot.)

Note: the ghost actually haunts the u-haul, but can’t leave unless the door is open, and can’t kill her killer. In fact, she doesn’t actually kill anyone. She just forcefully suggests people harm themselves, like cutting off their own hand.

Huh, it’s been a while

So, I decided to revive this slumbering beast, mainly because I had thoughts about “An Ordinary Vampire” that I didn’t feel would fit into my Evil Blog. I started to write again after three months of being stressed out, and therefor unable to write. I’m back on nights, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for two other drama’s, and I’m tired of playing video games and watching stuff. Throw in re-reading my Schlock Mercenary books (waiting until I get the new one before I finish the archives – again {Schlock Mercenary inspires me greatly}) and picking up the Troy Rising series by John Ringo (if only he would finish the Looking Glass series *pouts*) and I feel like I’ve had an enema for my mind (that was probably a image better fit for the Evil Blog, but ah well.)

Oh, and her. That’s a conversation for another place and time.

But any ways, some quick notes: Jeanine’s branch of the Family is related to Aunt Beatrice, right? So what were her parents like, considering that branch is even more messed up that Kyle’s?

The Family and the Inquisition: discuss.

The Mistress’s hatred for all things Catholic: see above. (Related, the Netherlands shard’s reverence of all things Mistress. Reminder: Causality is quite often ignored by the Traum, with ideas from the future affecting shards in the past. While the Mistress is a result of a hundred years of recent re-imagining vampires, the idea has resonated so well that it affected the past. To the point that she was there for the Eighty Years War, and helped save the Netherlands from the Catholic invaders. Or was she? Or does it really matter?)

Any ways, I’ve lost track of my train of thought and have grown exhausted. (Got stuck reading about the Netherlands, the Inquisition, among other things…)

Random web-surfing, err… research!

An interesting post about how magic works in the Marvel universe.

Act 1 done for now

WC 33,736

Rough draft, yada, yada, yada… Bleh, I’m tired.

waking up

WC: 31,474

The end is nigh! Probably tomorrow night/morning to be exact (4-6-09 to be even more precise.) Or maybe not. I’m not quite sure.

“Just a little closer, my dear!” *cackle*

WC: 30,345

Good writing night. Once I got going, the words flowed, and I really didn’t want to stop, but I want to get up earlier than normal tomorrow.

Over 8,000 words in the past month, and almost 16,000 since I got going again… Wow, I have been consistent since the beginning of February. Which is a good thing, of course. Heh, half of the act has been written in the past two months.

Soooo close

WC: 29,397
Tonight or tomorrow night I will be finished! With this act, at least. Then I get to figure out what in the hell to do with the next act.

conjecture

wc: 28,726

Another Laundromat night. Ran into a gay black man reading the book “Nigger.” At least I conjecture he was gay. I know he was black, and the book was his, so it’s pretty certain he was reading it. Unless he was just looking at the pictures… Which it might.

My guess is two thousand words more, although the way I’m writing, I’m not going to stick with that. Probably more. It wouldn’t surprise me if I’m able to pump out 4k-6k more.

I just realized that I need a title for the book. Oh well. I can get that later.

Lost work…

Bugger, bugger, bugger! I normally redundant out the arse, with at least 4 copies of my story on at any given moment (Treo, Mini, Laptop, Google Docs) but somehow, despite copying the story between my Treo and Mini… I lost the last edit of my story. It wasn’t that much, maybe 200 words max, but I completely lost my train of thought. I can’t remember what I was thinking. So, I try this again.