Exploring Personality: Part Six -- "I'm special!" (an IWM post)

"You are all individuals!"

"I'm not."

--If you don't know, you don't deserve to know

The Individualist

Have you ever wondered how

Edgar Allan Poe
Virginia Woolf
Tennessee Williams
J. D. Salinger
Anne Rice
Hank Williams
Judy Garland
Bob Dylan
Paul Simon
Angelina Jolie
Johnny Depp

may all be related? Sure, I could list more people, but if those haven't hooked you, no one else will. If you want to find out what they all have in common, follow the link over to Indie Writers Monthly to find out. It's just a finger twitch away. And there are songs!

You Know You've Made It When...

You know you've made it as an actor when you get turned into a Lego minifigure. I think it used to be when you were turned into any kind of action figure, but, these days, especially after McFarlane Toys came onto the scene in the mid-90s, almost anyone can get turned into an action figure. It ceased to be something difficult to achieve. However, it's still noteworthy to get turned into a minifigure even if minifigures don't look like the actors.

Even more noteworthy? Getting turned into two completely different minifigures. And, yes, okay, this topic completely came out of a conversation with my sons. They have a completely disregard for action figures because, well, all sorts of movies get action figures (or, at least, used to; I suppose that trend has died down somewhat in the last few years), but only the really cool ones get made into Lego.

Of course, this whole conversation started with Harrison Ford.

Star Wars was the first Lego franchise, so you can almost say this all started with him.

That's one of the very first Han Solo minifigures, back when they were still yellow like regular Lego minifigures. Now, they look like this:

And, of course, the second incarnation of Harrison Ford as a minifigure:

There ensued a long "discussion" of what other actors had two different character minifigs. [Don't ask why discussion is in quotes; just accept it.] Here's what we came up with:

Chris Evans:

Johnny Depp:

Samuel Jackson:

Ian McKellen:

Christopher Lee:

Orlando Bloom:

Those are the ones we came up with. Ones that have actual, physical minifigures. There are a few more that have two different characters but one of the minifigures is only in one of the Lego video games.

If you can think of more, let me know!

Swimming On Stranger Tides

My kids started swimming lessons this week. It's been bad for blogging. More bad than I would have expected. I mean, generally speaking, I don't get a lot of anything productive accomplished in the mornings, anyway, because my daughter spends that time of the day doing her best to drive everyone in  the house crazy, because none of her friends are available to play. This, in itself, is a mystery to me. I was like my daughter at her age. As soon as the sun was up, I was out the door. Unless there were cartoons, but that was only on Saturday. My daughter is the same. Her friends, however, don't seem to share that same enthusiasm for playing and must only go outside once they are forced out by their guardians like baby birds being pushed out of the nest. At any rate, I was sort of assuming that going to swimming lessons with the kids would just be using that unproductive time in  the mornings in other ways, but, no, not really... It just hasn't seemed to work out that way.

However, surprisingly, swimming lessons have been good for Brother's Keeper. That, also, is interesting. I need a pretty quiet space for writing. The TV can't be on. Music can't be playing. The kids can't be making noise. That includes noise from video games. Basically, if I'm trying to write, they need to be somewhere else. Or reading. And even though I'd like to, I can't make them read 4-6 hours a day. Not to waste the time I'm sitting around while they have lessons, though, I take a notebook with me. And a book. Maybe it's because the chaos there isn't specifically directed at me. Maybe it's because the tables are at the back away from  the pool. Whatever it is, the chaos is sort of like TV fuzz, and I've been getting a fairly good amount of work done on the new manuscript while I sit around and they flop in the water. Or, maybe, it's just that I've had this stuff buzzing around in my head since February, and it's just ready to get out.

There was also a movie. I've been getting some one-on-one time in with the kids by taking each of them to a movie they pick out. Of course, it's not really that simple, because it all started over some drama with my daughter about her not getting to go see a movie she didn't want to go see. Yes, you read that right. She did not want to see a particular movie. She was given the option of seeing the movie, anyway, and declined. She became upset that  one of her brothers got to see it with me. Yes, I deal with that kind of thing every day. The oldest child chose to see X-Men: First Class (which I reviewed here). The daughter chose Judy Moody (You may, now, notice that I did not review this one. Yes, there is absolutely nothing to say about it. Neither good enough nor bad enough to really say anything.) The middle child chose Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Not because he really wanted to see that movie in particular but because none of the movies he wants to see are out yet, and it was the one he most wanted to see of what's available.

I feel a little bad for taking him to it, at this point, because he would have liked X-Men a lot more. But I had no way of knowing.

Pirates 4 is a lot like Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer; however, because it's such a big deal (as opposed to Judy, which you're not likely to even know about unless you have a, what do you call it now, a pre-tween girl in your house), I'll give you the scoop. Even though it is coming rather late.

There are two main issues with this newest installment of the Pirates franchise. The first one, I'm just going to gloss over, because I actually have an upcoming post dealing with this issue as it's not a problem specific to this movie but a growing trend, not just in movies but in, well, everything written coming out these days.

Pirates is a long movie. Too long. And, yet, not long enough. The writers wrote this long, rambling script with lots of extra stuff in it. Stuff that, really, has nothing to do with the actual plot. I'm assuming it has an actual plot, although I'm not convinced the writers had agreed on one specific one. At some point, they realized it was too long. Cuts needed to be made. Instead of carving out the non-essential elements, they just chopped off the first third of the movie, leaving something that was still too long but without any kind of foundation. At least, that's what it felt like.

For instance, the movie opens with Mr. Gibbs on trial. He's being tried as Jack Sparrow. How did he come to be on trial and why do they think he's Jack? We don't know. And we don't get to know. Of course, Jack is there to rescue him. Gibbs is surprised to see Jack, because Jack had nothing to do with why he's on trial, Jack just happened to hear about it and decided to rescue his old friend. Because, you know, Jack is prone to thinking about other people before himself. During all of the action revolving around the rescue, we find out we're already in the midst of the story, "I hear you've been looking for the Fountain of Youth." "Why, yes. Yes, I am." Something close to that, at any rate. And there we are in the middle of the story without any of the reasons for it. Of course, in the end, the "story" isn't even the story, because, well, as I said, the writers didn't know which story they were telling. The rescue of Gibbs and Jack's escape is the best part of the movie, though, and that, actually, has nothing to do with any story. It's just a bit of fun. Think car chase with no cars.

There's also a completely non-essential sub-plot, or, maybe, it is the plot, between a missionary and a mermaid. I think they were probably trying to recapture the romance between Swan and Turner from the previous movies, but, in truth, they are who the previous movies are about, so it worked. This movie, Jack is the main character, and we have no reason to care about the missionary and the mermaid, so we don't.

I could go on about the plot issues. For instance, there's the inclusion of the Spanish, who are there as no more than a deus ex machina device except not. There's Blackbeard. Why? I don't really know. Theoretically, he's important to the plot, but, unfortunately, he's also unnecessary. Anyway...

The other central issue to the movie is that the actors, over all, don't give the parts any life. It felt like watching a dress rehearsal. Hmm... no, not a dress rehearsal, a last run through of the dialogue while in costume. Oh, there are moments, but not enough of them. Johnny Depp even falls flat for much of the movie, but it may just be that the script kept trying to force him out of character. Like rescuing Gibbs when he was getting nothing out of it. Geoffrey Rush almost pulls off Barbossa, but he, also, is frequently out of character because of the script. It's like the writers had a basket of characters that they plugged in whether they should have been there or not. Well, actually, they had characters they needed to put into the movie and stuck them into the best places possible even if they didn't quite fit.

The biggest disappointment was Ian McShane. If I had never seen Deadwood, I probably wouldn't have given him a second thought; however, I have seen Deadwood, so I know what he's capable of. His rendition of Blackbeard was not it. Flat as a cardboard cut out. If they hadn't told us in the movie that Blackbeard was supposed to be scary and evil, I never would have known. And don't get me started on the cheesy scenes of him and his sword that they put in just for the 3d effects even though they didn't do anything for the actual story (no, I didn't see it in 3d, so they were doubly wasted on me).

The biggest surprise was Penelope Cruz. That may be because I was expecting absolutely nothing more than a piece of eye candy from her, but she was actually decent. As decent as the script allowed, at any rate.

Oh, and they stuck Keith Richards in just so he could be in the movie. Sort of like the random old guy that wanders through and says "Beware...!" the whatever and then is gone. Yeah, that was his bit.

What it comes down to is that I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone. At least, not for seeing it in the theater. It's probably worth a rental, but it has nothing to make it worth seeing at the theater. Not unless you just want to pay the 3d price in order to see a few swords and ropes flying out of the screen at you.

Sorry, Charlie!

I didn't read correctly as a child. Wait, wait! I knew perfectly well how to read. I just didn't follow conventional developmental patterns in my reading. I've probably mentioned this. The main reason for this was that I had no one to suggest books to me. Neither of my parents were readers. In fact, I don't think my father has ever read a book, and I know my brother has never completed a book, not even for school. My mom reads occasionally, but she's not a "reader" nor did she grow up spending a lot of time reading. I'm somewhat of an aberration, since how much a child reads is almost always determined by how much the parents read and how much encouragement they give the child in reading. But I started reading early. Before kindergarten. I just didn't know what I was supposed to be reading.

I started out reading science books. Non-fiction. Yes, I'm serious. I was into dinosaurs, so that's where I started. In fact, in 1st grade I got accused (by my teacher!) of making up the word paleontologist when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. She made me go to the board and spell it for her. Because, you know, if I could spell it, somehow, that meant I hadn't made it up. No, I don't really follow the logic, either, but there you have it. I spent the first few years of my schooling reading texts about dinosaurs and astronomy, mostly. I branched into history next. I was in 4th grade before I really discovered fiction. The Hardy Boys. By that time, some school counselor or something had told my mom that I had some kind developmental delay in reading, because I wasn't reading what other kids my age read.

And I still haven't read a lot of those books. I just didn't know about them. Make a list of books you read and loved as a child, and I would bet I haven't read most of them. Some of them, I may not have even heard of. My wife, after more than a dozen years of marriage, still reacts with shock and dismay when she mentions books she read and loved as a kid that I've never read. Like The Wizard of Oz. The Edward Eager books. The Phantom Tollbooth. Of course, I've been trying to correct some of these oversights, and I have to say, if you haven't read it, go, right now, and get Tollbooth. It's awesome!

To make this even more clear, I loved, loved, loved Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (this being the movie, not the book) when I was a kid. I still adore that movie. Gene Wilder is amazing. As much as I love Johnny Depp, he will never come close to Gene Wilder as Wonka for me. In fact, I really don't much like Burton's movie version of the book. Here's the thing, I grew up thinking that that was just a movie. I had no idea that there was a book, and I was, probably, in my 20s before I even heard of Roald Dahl. After all, he's not exactly high school reading.

Last year, my younger son had to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for school. That was 3rd grade. I just want to point out, that I didn't have to any read any books for school until I was in, oh, 5th or 6th grade, when we started having to do book reports, and we got to choose the books. My kids started getting books assigned in 2nd grade. I don't know if this a difference caused by evolution in the wider school system or if it's because I live in California, now, and not Louisiana (not exactly known for its stellar educational system). At any rate, I remembered, at that point, that I'd never read a Dahl book and decided that I should fix that. I ordered both of the Charlie books.

I finally got around to reading them, recently. I was disappointed. And I was disappointed that I was disappointed. I went into it fully expecting the like the heck out of the books. I mean, I loved the movie! I'm not sure there's been any other movie from a book where I've liked the movie and not the book. It's unprecedented. The cliche response is always, "The book was better." But not this time. I should have whizzed through the 150 pages of chocolate factory, but I disenjoyed it so much that it actually took me two weeks to read it. I felt bad about it, too. And my son... well, my son is still in disbelief that I didn't like the book. Maybe, I shouldn't have told him? However, I did know enough to know that my daughter, our not-reader, would like it and passed it on to her, and she did like it, so that was good.

I've tried to reconcile this whole issue of not liking the book. Maybe, it's just because I'm an adult, now, that it didn't click for me. That's totally possible, although I haven't had that issue with other books. I still love Narnia, after all. So, I thought, maybe the movie just got in the way for me. Because I love the movie. Have I mentioned that? I still do. But, really, the movie is not exactly the book, and, maybe, I just wasn't liking it because it didn't mesh for me. I thought, I'll read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and that will be better, because I won't have any false expectations for that one.

I didn't like it either. I felt really bad. Part of that one, though, is that it takes place, mostly, in space. What? That's not where Charlie belongs. I couldn't come to grips with that. We've gone from a book about a magical chocolate factory to an adventure in space? I'll say it again: What!?!? But it goes beyond that. I really just don't enjoy Dahl's style. It's too... sporadic, for lack of a better term, for me. He seems to have the attention span of a teenager in the way he writes. I couldn't deal. Glass Elevator also dragged for me and took much longer to read than it should have.

My wife, also, can't believe that I don't like the books. But I can't help it. I'm fairly certain I won't try any more Dahl.

Now, I'm not saying that there weren't clever bits of writing in there or even that I may not have chuckled once or twice, but the books just didn't take hold in me. I'm glad my kids like them, though. Maybe, if I'd followed a more conventional reading path as a child, things would be different, but I can't say I'm sorry for the path I took. Although, I do wish I'd had someone along with me that could have said to me, "Hey, why don't you try this? I think you'll like it." I could have augmented the path I took if I'd had someone there to do that. More than anything else, I try to be that person for my kids.