Tag: review

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See Hellboy Before Reading This

Not exactly spoilers ahead.  But kinda.

Just thinking about how much I was disappointed by Hellboy II makes me feel like a traitor.  The most brutal part of my unorganized negative commentary review would be this analysis: any randomly chosen four minute segment made sense and was good; any randomly chosen eight minute one was not.

Of particular offense was the Troll Market.  The tight streets and narrow winding alleys convinced me there was a ceiling on this sound stage.  It immediately brought to mind Diagon Alley and then dismissed it as quickly.

At one point I literally thought Perlman’s head was twice as big as his body.  Seriously I had problems with the make-up!

I have no idea why they were shooting at the tooth faeries with bullets in guns when in the just the previous scene we saw Liz expertly in control of her flames.  She was on fire near a kitten without toasting it.

The hand-drawn props and scenery that Mike puts in the books just did not translate to the movie format.

Oh well.

Sorry.

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The King’s Draggin’

I conciously skipped writing last night.  Let’s call it laziness.  I did replace it with reading a new book and going to bed early.  I did not, as previously threatened, watch copious amounts of bad TV.

The book I picked up in Houston last week reads well enough, but isn’t in my sweet spot.  I like my fantasy a bit more fantastical.  A couple chapters in I discovered the author is part of a group blog I read.  With a little more rooting about I found some my-thoughts-on-writing-and-genre type posts she’d done.  One of her things is historical accuracy.

Her emphasis on this accuracy shows in the text.  I’d not call it invasive, but I would call it evident.  People that shouldn’t have experience with horses don’t and only the clergy and some of the rich can read.  The effort definitely recommends the practice, but it does seem she’s gone out of her way not to be inaccruate–except for the magic of course.  Which strikes me as disengenious–or some other big word that means dumb.

When I’m done I suspect I’d recommend the book in general but I’m not sure I’ll be picking up the other six in the series unless she drops a plot bomb on me.  Fortunately, her more recent work is available via a free ebook from Tor.

Day 255

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Getting My Celtx On

A friend bought a Mac the other night. The all-in-one jobby that looks like a fat wide-screen monitor. I took over and downloaded Scrivener so I could see it in action. Once we figured out how to install applications on a Mac and figured out that the program actually was open after five minutes of trying to open it I was immediately reminded of Celtx.

Scrivener offered the same template projects. Much of the minimal tour I did reinforced the similarities more then eroded them. So today I thought I’d try writing some here, in Celtx.

You may recall 1000 Days began as a private doc in Google Docs. Following that it became a test of Movable Type until that install mysteriously collapsed and I reverted to my solid standby WordPress. Sometime in there I wrote in MS Live Writer, DarkRoom, and most recently and regularly in Q10. I suppose this illuminates my mercurial behavior more than anything, but when you work on the Internet, there really is something better around the corner.

What I do here doesn’t require all that much. I rarely post pictures and never any other sort of media. Why not just write in the editor provided by WordPress? that question makes me snicker because I really should be. The WP editor does everything I need it to do: align text, highlight colors, create links, insert photos when I need. The whole CMS aspect organizes and stores my daily posts. I don’t know. I just like trying things out.

Other than its similarities to Scrivener, Celtx interests me more now because with this week long theme thing I started–and promptly abandoned–I’m wondering if I have enough mass to start keeping track of similar posts in the same place. I’m wondering if I need to start populating character datasheets and prop information. Celtx lets me do that.

Now to find out if I can format this text or do a word count.

Word count: 339
Day 251