The Tour with a Camera (a Star Wars post)

If you've been following me for any length of time, you will know that the Lucasfilm offices and Skywalker Ranch are not places unfamiliar to me. There have been two problems with this:
1. Not owning a cellphone (and, thus, an always on hand camera), I have not ever had a camera with me when I've been. Usually, this isn't an issue as we're not going to be any place really cool, anyway; however, there have been a few events where a camera would have come in handy:

• the premier event for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- lots of cool props on hand at the gathering after the movie
• the premier event for the debut of Star Wars: The Clone Wars -- since it was animated, there were no props, but there was a lot of the pre-vis models and sketches and stuff
• that time George Lucas said "howdy" to me -- okay, so a camera would have gotten me in trouble that time, but since I didn't have one with me...

2. I've never actually been on a tour of either facility. Wait a minute... had never.

So, yeah, I finally got a tour of the Lucasfilm offices down at the Presidio in San Francisco and I took my camera with me. Although that was kind of scary. You have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before getting to go in (and get a security badge and all that) and that includes not taking any pictures. I  hadn't met up with my friend, yet, as I was getting my badge and stuff, but one of the main reasons for the tour is that I wanted to get some pictures, so not getting to take any would kind of defeat the point. Not that it would be a reason not to get the tour, but, you know, PICTURES! But I signed the agreement and went looking around for my friend. No, no, not in the building. Back outside, since I figured he was looking for me (and I couldn't actually go in without him, anyway). Once I found him, I was, like, "Dude! I just signed a thing saying no pictures. Does that mean no pictures?" And he was, like, "Well, I don't think so."

Yeah, that put my mind at ease.

But we stayed to, basically, public areas where there was no sensitive Episode VII stuff going on, so we're pretty sure the pictures are okay. And a couple of the security dudes seem to think it was okay, too, so, finally, I have some pictures. However, if you never hear from me again, you'll know what happened. I just hope they put me in a cell not connected to one of the garbage compactors.

Until then, here is your (partial) photographic tour of some of the cooler things I saw there:

Yeah, you have to pretty cool to get your own Lego head made for you by the Lego company.

The most famous blaster in the galaxy.

A statue to Ray Harryhausen, possibly the "Father of Stop-motion photography."

The Yoda fountain.

He's offering me cookies. (Recognize the shirt Briane?)

What? You thought it was all Star Wars?

Okay, it's a lot Star Wars.

But this is not Star Wars. (Knowing might win you points in my so far unimplemented point system.)

These should look familiar to at least some of you.

This guy kept trying to sell me stamps.

This is so sad.

Anyone recognize these guys? They don't come with batteries.
Well, that's about it for the pics (that I'm going to share), so everyone

"Beee goood."

NaNo: The Crazy Idea That Got Away

[Note: As I mentioned some time in the recent past (I don't feel like trying to figure out which post that was, right now), my wife is doing NaNo this year. It was kind of a spontaneous decision, but, then, that's how she often does things, and the best way to deal with that is to grab on and go along for the ride. To put it in writing terms, she would be the pantser of the family while I'm the plotter. Except that that's not quite true, but that's how it often feels and, probably, looks from the outside. At any rate, her decision to do NaNo was... well, I'll let her tell you about it in her own words.]

So I got a Kindle Fire for my birthday earlier this month. This was a present from my most excellent husband (the owner of this blog) and our kids. Some things to know about me and Andrew: We're not early adopters, ever; I'm actually kind of a Luddite (despite being a data analyst for a large corporation by trade); and we both grew up reading copious quantities of physical books. Thus this gifting of an electronic device on which books can be read is a big leap for us. But he made the leap, I think, because he's got a wife who does love to read and he just thought it would be nifty; also because after 15 years together he's still not really sure what kind of jewelry I like. [Actually, I wanted to get her something that she would use and enjoy on a continuous basis, and, as much as my wife likes the idea of jewelry, she rarely wears it. And she's always complaining about how the books I want to keep take up too much space, which is a valid argument for the size house we live in.]

I was both thrilled and intimidated by this gift. Thrilled because it's for books! and intimidated because, it seems, you can do a lot of other stuff with this device, like play games. Or surf the web. Or check email. Or...I'm not sure, it may even have a ray gun inside it somewhere. And I sort of hate to figure out new devices and how to use them (see Luddite, above) and determine how much money they will cost me in an ongoing sense. (Though I admit that having a portable ray gun would probably be really handy, but I bet the per-ray charges are insane.)

After my initial moment of "whoa, what," I did do some exploring and found out a fabulous fact: Our local library system does e-book lending, and it's nearly as easy to do as just surfing Amazon and one-clicking on whatever you like (after you physically visit the library, pay your late-book fines, renew your card, and spend a couple hours surfing the library website looking for ANY e-book that isn't already checked out).

So yeah, after one-clicking, I ended up with a book titled No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. There's very little explanation for why I checked this book out, other than the fact that out of 1000 or so e-book titles in the library this was almost the only thing that even remotely appealed to me and was immediately available. (Seriously, I would have even checked out 50 Shades of Gray, but it was checked out AND had a wait list of 40+.) I wanted some instant gratification on my new e-book mechanism, and this was it.

Let me be very clear at this point: I did not check this book out because I seriously thought I wanted to write a novel. Ever. Especially not during NaNoWriMo this year.

See, this is a substantial difference between Andrew and me. He has always wanted to write fiction, and I have always known that I do not and will not write fiction. That's not to say that I'm not a writer and not a good one, because I actually am. In college I could easily write a substantial paper overnight, without revisions, and get a B or higher. (The fact that I could usually get away with such terrible procrastination is why my overall GPA wasn't generally great.) But nearly all my writing has been done in the service of completing school and then being competent at my job. (You wouldn't think that the job of data analyst requires good writing skills but it actually does. No one's better at a bullet-pointed list than I am.) I've never taken a class in creative writing, and I didn't study more literature in school than I was strictly required to do.

I started to read the book and it turns out the story of NaNoWriMo--that is, the history--really drew me in. Basically it started out as a ridiculous thing for a group of friends to do. No one thought that works of great genius or amazing craft would be turned out; rather, it was a crazy creative thing to do for the hell of it, together. It sounded like a lot of fun. [It also wasn't originally in November, which I found interesting, and none of thought that it would become what it has. I mean, they weren't thinking about the future of it at all. It was a "let's do this right now kind of thing that became a tradition and then became a THING.]

After the history of NaNoWriMo, the rest of the book was mostly about the hows of accomplishing such a ludicrous, wild goal in the space of a month. Which, to boil it down, is "keep going and don't stop." (Now you don't have to read the book, but it's actually a pretty entertaining and quick read and possibly helpful to anyone who struggles with their Inner Editor or with writing paralysis.) Chris Baty managed to make the task sound like something which even I, the non-writer-of-fiction, am up to.

The upshot of it is that somewhere in the pages of the book I became convinced that I might as well try to write a novel. I do have a lot of story ideas in my head. I don't know whether they are good story ideas, but according to Baty that doesn't really matter; it's OK to write un-original crapola and it's OK to not care about "getting published." It's OK to write pulp fiction with no redeeming social value or great-novel aspirations. It's even OK to suck at spelling and grammar, at least for this first draft. (Spelling and grammar are a couple of things I un-suck at with writing; however, I'm also aware that they don't encompass fiction writing. And I managed to misspell grammar both times I typed it just now, of course.)

So yeah, I haven't ever written any fiction, but I have these things going for me:

-- I am a well-educated and thoughtful fan of sci-fi so I can probably not hack it up too badly. That is to say, I can do better than Galaxy Quest levels of science and there will be no chompy-crushy things in the middle of my space ship.

-- I write extremely quickly.

-- Spelling and grammar are not an issue for me.

Oh, I guess I should say I'll be writing a sci-fi novel. I was planning on writing something that could be described as "dystopian near-future sci-fi" (nothing like Hunger Games, okay), but yesterday I decided to switch to something different. A new idea, just because it feels more fun. And Baty's advice in No Plot was to write something I'd enjoy writing, so I'll be going for something more space-opera. I'm tentatively calling it All Suns Go Dark. (That probably should have been "tentatively titling." I told you I'm no author.)

Wish me luck. I'll update in the middle of the month if Andrew lets me and I haven't thrown in the writing towel by then. Anyone else doing NaNo or something equally ridiculous right now?

[I do want to say that I have been trying to get her to write something for years. She does have good stories, and I envy her ability to write quickly, a skill I do not have. Assuming she is still working on this, there will be an update in the middle of November sometime.]

John Carter plus Breaking Bad vs Justified

No time for a long post today, so these reviews will be a little shorter than I'd like. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is.

John Carter

I finally made it to see John Carter, and I have to say that I was disappointed. I haven't read any Edgar Rice Burroughs, but, from what I can tell by looking him up, this was a poor adaptation. That wouldn't matter except that it was also a poor movie. If it had been a faithful adaptation, I would have given it a pass on some of the last minute rescues and whatnot that filled the movie, but, no, it appears all of these were a part of the "adaptation" only since those sequences don't appear to be in the source material. Stopping the bomb at the 1 second mark may have, at one time, been the height of suspense, but, when a movie like Galaxy Quest (which is great, by the way) makes fun of such last moment saves so blatantly, you know it's time to move away from them. There is no longer any suspense in those moments.

All of which is to say that John Carter, above all else, is cliched. It's also hopelessly muddled and full of short cuts to get past issues that wouldn't have been there at all if they'd been more faithful to the source material (like the magic juice Carter drinks so that he can speak Martian).

So... while I was looking for a fun space romp (which should have been easy enough to do), what I got was something that failed to be exciting on any level despite the wonderful visuals. This is a movie that Disney really should have just aimed at kids, as it appears the older one gets the less likely they will really enjoy it. Here's my evidence to support that:

Daughter (age 8): It was good!
Son (age 11): Awesome!
Son (age 16): eh, it was okay...
Friend of son (age 16ish): >shrug< it wasn't the best...
Me: >sigh<


Breaking Bad (season 1)

After hearing many good things about Breaking Bad, my wife and I decided to try it out. That was unfortunate. The show uses every contrivance and cliche you can think of. It started with the one I hate the most: the flash forward (you can read more of what I think about this device here). It was so horrible. And this is going to be full of spoilers (but only about the first episode), so skip down if you don't want to know. We start out with the "hero" running from the law in his underwear. "What an interesting situation," you might think. "That's something you certainly don't see every day."

It goes on long enough that I turn to my wife and say, "This better not be one of those situations where they flash back to the real story." The "hero" gets out of the vehicle he's driving ready to... well, we don't know what he's ready to do. Go down in a blaze of glory? Commit suicide? Stand in the road in his underwear with a gun in his hand, that's for sure. And, then... "Three weeks earlier" WHAT THE HECK?!?!

So they go about getting us back to the point where he's in the road with the gun in his hand, and all I find out is that they lied to us to bring about the tension:
1. The sirens that we (the audience) are hearing are police sirens, but the vehicles, when they show up, are fire trucks. That's a cheap trick.
2. The way the character acts during the whole scene where he's running is completely not the character they build for him in the rest of the episode. You can buy it when you see it at the front of the episode, but, once we get to know the character, it doesn't work. He would not have acted like that.
3. The fire the trucks are responding to? There's no way. The fire was out in the middle of nowhere in the desert in New Mexico, yet we are expected to believe that the firemen respond immediately. And not just respond immediately, but that the "hero" knows they're coming and gets scared and runs. The fire was nothing. A little grass blaze, but fireman rush out into the desert within moments of it being started? I don't think so.

This is just the first episode. Don't get me started on the gas mask and all the completely ridiculous stuff with high school.

We did complete the first season. My wife wasn't as completely turned off by it as I was, but, by the end, neither of us cared enough to be interested in going on to season 2. Jesse Pinkman is the only character that's remotely interesting. And none of the side characters are at all likable or interesting. And Walter's life seems to be full of making bad decisions because he's full of pride, so I find very little in him to make me want him to succeed.

All of that leads me to this:

Justified

My wife and I started into season 2 of Justified last night. I love this show. So far, it has refused to use the horrible "flash forward" device, but that's not why I like it. It just makes me like it more.

Justified stars Timothy Olyphant, who is, in the end, the reason we watched Justified to begin with. See, my wife loved, I mean absolutely loved, Deadwood. I thought it was pretty good, too. However, Olyphant is so wooden and stiff in it that I often wondered if he was really a bad actor in a perfect role or a wonderful actor. As it turns out, he's a wonderful actor. But that was why I rented Justified; I had to know if he was always like that... like he had a pole inserted up his butt into his back. And, I have to say, that I am even more impressed with his role in Deadwood after seeing Justified, because, man, it must have been difficult to be the way he was in Deadwood all the time, but he did it.

Anyway...

As we watched the opening of the second season of Justified, the thought went through my head, "This is so much better than Breaking Bad. I had to wonder why that comparison came into my head when it's been weeks and weeks since we watched Breaking Bad (and I really never intended to talk about it here at all).

It's about the story telling. And the characters. Justified is full of interesting side characters. People you can relate to. Even the bad guys. You really just see them for who they are and end up liking them anyway. Like Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder. This is the bad guy, but, wow, he is just an interesting character. You end up rooting both for Raylan Givens (Olyphant's character) to catch him and for him to get away at the same time. This is after thinking that Boyd was just a throw away character at the beginning, too.

Justified has not (so far as we've seen) fallen victim to any of the normal conventions of TV or the associated cliches. My wife and I sit down each night to watch one episode of a show (that we rent, because we don't "have" TV), and, generally, we watch whatever episode that is, and I'm fine with it and ready to do whatever else I need to do before bed (like Farmville. Or the dishes (always the dishes...)). Not so with Justified. I'm never ready to turn it off. I want to just keep watching.

In my book, that's pretty compelling.

"It was justified."

Cowboys & Aliens and a Small Favor

Cowboys & Aliens

I finally saw Cowboys & Aliens. It was one of those things that, even though everyone says it's bad, I had to try anyway. Everyone was right. But I don't think it was bad for the reasons I heard. Actually, I didn't hear a lot of concrete reasons; people just didn't like it. I get that. But I think there are some very concrete reasons for how bad it is.

First, though, the good:
Harrison Ford. As I said way back in this post, any time he appears in a role that is not completely heroic, there are often bad things said. What I find most curious about that, especially from people that were old enough to have seen Star Wars: A New Hope when only Han shot (none of this "Han shot first crap), is that Harrison Ford made his name playing characters that, sort of, straddled the edge, and his character in Cowboys is exactly that kind of character. I thought he did a great job; although, it was criticisms of his role that I heard most often from people talking about the movie.

Also, Daniel Craig. However, the thing that made Craig good in the role is that he was playing the part of Harrison Ford. And he did a great Ford impersonation. It really felt to me that the producers (or whoever) wanted Ford for the lead role, but Ford is too old, so they put him in as the mentor-ish, quasi-bad guy and got Craig for the lead because Craig could do a good job of being what Ford was 20-30 years ago. They were fun to watch together; although, it was a bit like having chocolate mixed with chocolate instead of, say, chocolate and peanut butter.

The other good: Sam Rockwell, Clancy Brown, and Walton Goggins.
I love Sam Rockwell. He doesn't get enough credit. Go watch Moon if you really want to see what he's capable of. And, of course, there's always Galaxy Quest. He didn't do much in this one, but it was nice to see him in it.
The same with Clancy Brown. The same in that it was nice to see him in it. He's not around enough.
I hope Walton Goggins is someone that is up and coming. He's SO good in Justified, and he brought that same intensity to his part here, "I always did like you best."

The bad:
Olivia Wilde: Not that she was bad, but she was completely interchangeable. She could have been any of at least a dozen other actresses. And her character was... well, it was one of the things that made the movie bad. The "alien" that chose to look human to blend in in order to kill the other aliens. Oh, and she's the last of her race. Of course, she is. The character was only in the movie to give Craig a love interest, but it would have been better (more believable) if she'd just been human.

The aliens:
Everything to do with  the aliens is bad and wrong. When did the whole trend start with aliens just being ravening monsters? Was it Independence Day (I hate that movie)? Is it because of Alien? Whatever the reason, it doesn't make any sense. The idea that there are aliens that invented technology that give them interstellar flight but they are just beasts (with barely the intelligence to use their tech) is completely ludicrous. I'm more than a bit tired of it, at this point. I think Super 8 is the last movie that gets a pass on this from me (because in that, at least, it made sense).

Oh, and, yeah, they're just here because of... gold. Gold? Really? That's the best they could come up with? But these guys that landed, they're just scouts. If they're just scouts, why have they set up a whole mining operation? That doesn't sound like a scouting trip to me. And they're experimenting on humans to discover their weaknesses, but they view the humans as insects and, therefore, beneath notice. Those two views don't go together. Pick one and go with it, but don't try to sell me both of those.

The bracelet:
Craig's character has this nifty bracelet that he got from the aliens. It does things like shooting down the alien ships. Seemingly on its own. But... well, nothing with the bracelet makes any sense. It only responds to Craig's commands, but it acts all on its own. Okay, which is it? And Craig has this amazing hand-to-hand combat ability that you think comes from the bracelet, but, well, evidently not. So, then, the fighting style is completely out of line with the setting. It doesn't work.

But the worst part? The worst part is that, evidently, there's just one of these bracelets. Craig stole it from the aliens, but none of them have bracelets. Why in the world not? Craig blasts aliens left and right with the thing; you'd think the aliens would want to use them against the humans. Of course, then, the humans would have had no chance at all. So they don't have them or don't use them or... well, it's really just unclear. But it's dumb. DUMB!

The Indians:
I have nothing against Indians, but they were just tossed in so that they could lend a bit of mysticism to the movie, and that was... unnecessary. You have this movie with cowboys fighting aliens, such a cool idea, why do you need to add in mysticism? Just to complicate the plot a bit more? Or to fluff it up? Whatever the reason, it didn't need to be there.

The plot:
Cluttered and completely predictable. What should have been an interesting story was reduced to the mediocrity of being exactly what you expect. No, wait, it was worse than what you expect. But the story arc was completely what you'd expect. Including the fact that if they kill this scout ship then no more aliens will come. Why? If I was an alien and I sent a scout ship to a planet and it didn't come back, I'd send someone to investigate. But, no, according to the "human" alien, if the scouts are destroyed, they'll just leave the Earth alone.

Overall, it was just a huge disappointment. Mostly, because the idea had such potential. And the lead actors were, actually, really good, but the rest of the movie was a huge train wreck. Unfortunately, not in a spectacular way like the one in Super 8. Maybe, that would have been worth watching. This was the train wreck that's been out rusting for months that wasn't even worth cleaning up. The one that kids poke around in when there is absolutely nothing else to do. And, you know what, it wasn't even bad enough to get worked up over it. You can't hate it. It's sort of too bad for that. You just feel sorry for it. Like the kid that should have won the spelling bee but accidentally spelled "of" incorrectly (true story).


Small Favor

Small Favor is the 10th book in The Dresden Files series and another solid entry. In saying that it's solid, I'm saying that I liked it. All of these books are quite above average and surprisingly good considering the genre and that they are, basically, pulp fiction. As I've said before, the thing I appreciate most about the Dresden books is that they are not static. Most books of this sort resort to returning everything to the status quo at the end of the novel so that each successive novel really starts at the same point. Instead of a series of books, what you really have is what I'll call a wheel of books in which each book starts at the same point and proceeds out along a different spoke.

Not so the Dresden novels. Although you could probably just pick up any book and start reading, you really wouldn't want to. Stuff from previous books come back into play, and, honestly, I think it would just leave you feeling a little lost. Take my advice, start from the beginning.

All of that said, let me talk about where Small Favor fails:
Jim Butcher has always used Dresden as his own voice. Used him to pontificate about various topics that actually have nothing to do with the story (or only loosely) but that Butcher wanted said. Generally, this has happened in small doses and has been (mostly) easily overlooked. However, it seems with Small Favor, he got a little carried away with this or his editor/publisher didn't rein him in enough. For instance, he goes on for three pages in chapter 28 in what he sums up with, "We're ostriches and the whole world is sand." He really didn't need to say more than that, and he certainly didn't need to go on about it for three pages. Especially since he's talked about that same subject in other books. I guess he felt like he needed to remind us more strongly this time. He also goes on at one point about how dolphins are smarter than people. And it's not that I disagree, but I don't need him to quote research at me about it when the dolphins in question barely have anything to do with the story. There are more instances, but these were the worst. I found myself annoyed at these much more than usual with this book.

The other place of failure with this book was in the handling of one of the side characters. Remember how I said that Butcher has been really good at allowing growth and change with Dresden? Well, he's also been really good about it with the side characters. Bad things happen, and he allows them all to suffer the consequences. Or good things happen and they take a step forward. This time, though, he decided to lock one of the side characters into a static condition that seemed (completely) unrealistic. Given the choice to do her job better, she refused. And for the flimsiest of reasons. I see that Butcher wants to keep this character a "normal" so that we "normal" readers will have a character that we can relate to, but this time it felt really forced.

Still, I highly enjoyed the book. Just not as much as I have the ones that have gone before it. After 10 books, though, I guess it would be a little unrealistic to expect that there's not one that takes a slight dip.