Category Archives: Art, Theatre, & Film

Booky Rant

I have to rant.

If you work in a bookstore, and a book has in its title, oh, I don’t know, “Wicca”, and you have a section called “Wicca”, don’t you think the book should go in that section instead of a completely unrelated section? (Substitute “Christianity”, or “Buddhism”, or whatever floats your boat. It goes in that section, not a section marked “Islam” or “VoDoun”.)

And if you’re shelving a book, shouldn’t it go next to the other copies of that book already on the shelf, rather than two shelves below it next to a completely different book? (If you try to use the shelving by title excuse, you automatically die.)

If someone wants to pay me for reshelving books that are already put out, I’ll do it. But otherwise, there’s no excuse. If you’re a bookstore employee and have been for any period of time over one month, you should understand the sections of that bookstore (clearly marked) and the methods of operation utilised within that bookstore (clearly outlined in the handbook and reiterated several times at staff meetings).

On the other hand, and completely unrelated, the graffitti in high school washrooms amuses me. They call each other “hoes”. I wonder if they understand that by misspelling the insult, they’re comparing themselves to gardening implements.

Slowly But Surely

Ah, the first cold I’ve had in months. I so have not missed being sick. The general ache, the out-of-it feeling due to the sinus pressure, the boxes and boxes of tissue….

Thursday night I had a dynamic pair of students in a workshop, which was an enjoyable switch from the usual silent note-taking type. Friday night I got to make a flying visit to the first Montreal NaNo coffee gathering and met some terrific new people while re-acquainting myself with terrific people I’d met last year. And, as a result of a highly amusing misunderstanding, I have resolved that my story will have a psychic ferret involved in it somewhere (you just had to be there). (And I called Tal insane. Ah, well. There’s a reason we’re related by choice.)

It was a lovely Thanksgiving weekend (apart from the cold, of course, which ensured that I couldn’t taste my in-laws’ wonderful harvest feast to the degree it deserved), with a nice gift at the end: Salem, my favourite local cat-who-is-not-mine, ate about 30 ccs of food after refusing to eat for a period of days. Sure, it took three of us to hold her (including one and a half animal techs), but she ate; she even ate willingly after being force-fed a bit of it. Then I got to cuddle a corn snake while I watched the new trailers for Matrix Revolutions and The Return of the King.

This afternoon is a legal presence at the Palais de Justice (no worries, it’s all good), and then an intimate get-together at Hurley’s to celebrate a few different milestones achieved over the past three months.

(Palais de Justice, for our non-Quebec-resident readership, is the fancy French term for the city courthouse. It does not, in fact, have anything to do with a superhero team. More’s the pity.)

Slowly but surely, I’m getting my mind back into the writing mode. I managed to get my printer working again (using the popular kick-it-hard method combined with replacing an ink cartridge) and printed out the existing copy of two half-finished stories, then took them to the Second Cup with me Friday afternoon to edit and add to them. Re-reading work that I haven’t touched in months is a remarkably good carrot to use when I’m stuck; it’s often better than I remember it being. Must stop drinking lattes and mochas while doing it, though. Herbal tea all the way!

I Lied

Okay, so I was wrong about the vanishing thing. I worked late on the publishing stuff last night, and I needed to be online for it, so I posted a few times.

The cool part is that I finished around eleven, when my husband arrived home to switch on the TV and discovered, completely by accident, the very first episode of Angel, season five. Swoon! I have a new TV date!

Coming Soon To A Mailbox Near You

My contract with the hitherto unnamed American Publisher is in the mail.

What? Oh, that sound? It’s my Ego tap-dancing joyously to the tune of “I told you it was real”, as performed by my SuperEgo.

When I have it in my hands, signed and returned, All Will Be Revealed. Just like the penultimate song in a Savoy operetta. (The ultimate song is, of course, the finale, which is just a rehash of the major themes previously heard during the show.)

Hail, Saint Jerome!

Since no one else is going to say it:

Today is the feast-day of Saint Jerome, patron saint of librarians.

Here’s to those brave souls who deal with people who don’t know their alphabets or can’t read signs that plainly indicate that books are not to be reshelved, and who are the keepers of worlds of wonder.

Here’s to those men and women who seek to add to their collections in order to offer the greatest range of knowledge to seekers.

And here’s to those moms and dads who read to their kids, encouraging a life-long love for literature and a thirst for story.

Hip hip hurrah!

A Review Of The Film Underworld, By Me

Out of the goodness of my heart I now provide you with a review of Underworld, the new Gothic action film about to open in theatres everywhere.

My take on it:

Some guys got together and said, “Hey, let’s make a vampire action movie!” And then, someone said, “Hey, let’s add werewolves!” Cool action scenes were carefully storyboarded, an art director was hired and reduced the team to gooey messes of tears and envy, a costumer clothed the characters in utter coolness.

Then they said, “Oh, yeah. We should probably have a story to link the action scenes together.”

So they dragged out the old patriarch-perpetuates-lie-to-maintain-control thing, plus the heroine-must-discover-truth-of-her-past trope, and even threw in the sons-plotting-against-the-father bit. Too bad none of the characters had chemistry, there was no true emotion found anywhere except in a flashback sequence, and the story didn’t show up until the last twenty minutes in an expository info-dump. (And no, I don’t mean the explanation of an aggregate of clues; I mean the entire story.)

In general, we agreed that the art direction was terrific, the effects were well-done, and that the music was great. As the credits rolled, t! was heard to ask plaintively (but very audibly), “Where were the vampires?” This is a gaping absence in the film. There are werewolves a-plenty, but their antagonists appear to be people in long coats with guns (and poor night vision, but that’s another issue entirely). If a vampire character was threatened, their first line of defence was to open their mouths and hiss for a long time. If I were the werewolf attacking, I’d just rip their throat out and terminate the posturing, end of encounter.

Actually, as an editor-type, those over-used long pauses pained me. I’d have cut most of the long lingering shots where nothing happened and no emotion was expressed, and used the time instead to focus on character development or establishment of plot in an interactive fashion. But that’s just me. Hollywood’s average offerings and I aren’t best buddies.

The upshot of it all? Do not under any circumstances pay full price. See it on a pass or on a cheap night, and only if you are completely obsessed with dystopic Gothic dark-and-pained situations. We got exactly what we expected: a B-movie with beaucoup de fromage, and cool clothes.

The best part of the night, however, was that my husband and I Went Out. We dressed up, had dinner, went to the theatre for the premiere, where friends and co-workers were happy to see us. It was good. When we returned home we did, however, have to watch an episode of Angel from the season two box set to take the dry taste of badly-portrayed vampires out of our mouths.