“NOPE” Review and What Would I Would Have Done

22 07 2022

SPOILERS!

Peele’s movie has two stories brought together to make a theme. He swung for the fences with both stories, but having them together messed up the momentum of both. Their tension did explain the motives of characters in both (OJ explains Jean Jacket’s asserting its dominance, matching the chimp’s attack; while Jupe’s awe at bumping fists with the gore-covered chimp explaining Jupe’s later fascination with Jean Jacket). Peele used Tarrantino cinema style to create this Hollywood story, using graphic placards, time jumps, sudden slams to black, but the spine of this movie was weak. There was no impending doom like in “Inglorious Basterds” or “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”. The doom created impetus to keep watching while any digression was welcome relief to the presumed fates, those fates of course being twisted into the unexpected.

The cinematographer Antlers puzzled me. He was a foil for the protagonists, but his spiritual rumination seemed an attempt to add both humor and gravitas. Perhaps he was meant to harken to an earlier age, in that the video tech maybe represented the entertainment of today, and Antlers the passions of yesterday.

Maybe get rid of the video tech and have Antlers be more contemporary. One less character to juggle. Still have the surveillance gear and Antlers reverting to his antique film camera in the third act.

Let’s consider that Jupe’s encounter with the murderous chimp led to his wrong-headed trust of Jean Jacket. Let’s consider that Jupe had already brought horses for Jean Jacket to eat over several nights. Let’s consider that the second scene Jean Jacket has fed on screaming humans and their detritus plummeted onto the ranch to kill O Sr.

Maybe Jupe could have enticed some unhoused people to where Jean Jacket could eat? Jupe could have watched the chimp being trained and believed the monster could be tamed. So, finally, in the third act, Jupe could lose control and Jean Jacket could still eat everyone, and that event could have more impact.

Because this movie is filled with a lot of action, but aside from Brother and Sisters’ story arc of fidelity, there isn’t much here to care about. Forty people are eaten, as are a family of five, two additional supporting characters, several horses, and unseen other people, and frankly not much is made of it.





Summary of Ray Bradbury’s Tips For Writers

21 07 2022

Some years ago, I posted a sour assessment of “Zen and The Art of Writing”, a memoir by Ray Bradbury of his life and writing. He seemed to rest his success on his supportive upbringing and sunny disposition, neither of which I had a lot of while growing up. I have not revisited my post, but this summary makes a good case for ZatAoW as a good writing guide.

Have a look and I do recommend buying the book from your local bookseller.





Ian Fleming On Writing Thrillers, Writing For Fun, Writing For Money

14 07 2022

A pretty neat article! Wanna write streamlined action prose? Here it all is in one list.





Writers Groups Like My New Novel Darft (Draft)

12 07 2022

Yes it does say “darft”, I’m trying to generate some whimsy here.

Because things are going quite well. Everyone is following the sequence of events and understanding the cause/effect of the “magic system”. The darft tenses shift around and I have to fix that. The big reveal is shocking! The climactic resolution? It resolves five characters — five! — in one scene! And everyone is good with it! The characters are all likable and relatable!

The main characters are women. The women who are critiquing like the woman characters! I kept their motives as sex-free and guy-free as possible, and the critics really liked that.

What they seem to like: there is no villain, just people bumbling around making mistakes; the use of unusual settings like Ren Faires; taking risks with descriptions of emotions, getting as precise in their physical affects as possible; personal quirks that aren’t eccentric (showing reliable bias towards particular flavors, styles, tastes); keeping real-life branding and signifiers out of the story (I am reminded of a National Lampoon parody of Stephen King: “Pepsi!” he screamed in terror.)

This book is such a change from the previous book. “The Flesh Sutra” is a fix-up novel episodic, gothic, nudging on erotic (meter and rhyme accidental here, that was cheesy). “Saints of Flesh” is streamlined more like a novel with lots of ghastly stuff but literally no sex.

I’m still compiling reviews, but I dunno, maybe it’ll be off to agents/editors by the end of the summer?

I want to work on flash fiction for a while.





George Saunders “Thoughts On Endings”

7 07 2022

Ten thoughts on endings from George Saunders’s Substack. The last one is the best.





Sigilengine.com Lets Me Experiment With Magick/Hacking My Subconscious

1 07 2022

I’ve written about art and reality are a dialogue allowing the artist to change. I’ve written about how my writers group pushed me to change my protagonist from a tragic romanticist to a protagonist who is more proactive and hopeful. In time, hopefully, I will tell you how that helped me grow past obsessing about supposed deficiencies and actually working toward growing.

Chaos Magick had always appealed to me. It supported the conclusions of my pragmatic upbringing while emphasizing the importance of creativity. I have neither the faith nor the energy for complex ritual and Chaos lets you invent your own process.

I liken it to playing slight of hand with my neurosis. By doing something unusual, by taking a small risk relating tangentially to specific goals, any progress toward that goal helps me to think I have control. Which yes, I do have control over my life, but my neurosis does not believe that. This slight-of-hand makes me more confident to see opportunities more clearly.

My goals are relationship and writing-based. I went to sigilengine.com and followed the instructions. The resulting designs were drawn in sketch pads and adapted into cartoons. Then in accordance with the sigil process, I forget the original requests and pay attention to the cartoons.

Coloring the cartoons needed a liminal state, so I listened to the same song on repeat while drawing and coloring.

Have a look. I have only slight idea what these represent.








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