Skyfall -- Just a Name

On the surface, Skyfall is a really excellent movie.That's because it's a really excellent movie. If you take it as an individual movie and forget that James Bond already exists. That includes forgetting the previous two Daniel Craig Bond films. As an individual movie, it really only has one flaw: its title. The title is a lie and has nothing to do with the movie at all.

Yeah, yeah, I hear those of you out there that have already seen it saying, "But..." (and I'm not finishing that sentence, because I'm avoiding the spoiler). It seems pretty obvious to me that the title was arrived at completely separately from the movie. Something like:
"Wouldn't Skyfall be a cool title?"
"Sure, but it has nothing to do with the movie."
"Well, can't we work it in somehow?"
So, yeah, the "word" was just thrown into the movie so that it could be used as a title and has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. I felt a little bit cheated by that. But not really enough for it to take away from the movie experience overall. It's sort of like the pricker you get in your finger while picking blackberries; it's annoying, but it's not gonna keep you from enjoying the cobbler.

So for the movie itself:
The action was great. There was only one bit that I thought really strained plausibility (it had to do with a subway train), so that was pretty good. But, then, these new Bond films have been better at "keeping it real" than some of the older ones.

The acting was great. Daniel Craig is a great Bond, and, of course, Judi Dench is just great. Ralph Fiennes is also in this one, and he was surprisingly good. I say "surprisingly" because, while he can be great, he is not always great, and this seemed like the kind of role where he was more expected to look good rather than be good, but he was quite good, and I'm glad that his character is one that will (should) be returning.

The tech... well... there's a lot of computer stuff in this, hacking and all sorts of things like that, and, mostly, that was okay, but...
Well, I went to see this with my friend that works for... um, Lucasfilm? Well, right now, he works for Lucasfilm; I suppose they will keep that name even once Disney takes over in January, because that's how they do it, so, yeah, I went to the Lucasfilm premiere of the movie with my buddy that works there. Well, two buddies, now, because one of our mutual friends now works there with him. I think he's trying to recruit everyone he knows into working there, and I want to know when it gets to be my turn, but I suppose they don't really need any writers. That's not his department anyway.
But I digress...
So I was there with my friend, and there's this scene where Q is explaining some computer something-or-other with a lot of technobabble, and my friend just starts laughing. Not LOLing or anything, just a sustained chuckle. So I know whatever he was going on about was gibberish, because my friend does the whole computer thing. I'm fairly technologically challenged (just ask my wife (also notice that I still have that same, stupid generic blogger wallpaper for my blog)), so I probably wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been laughing; I mean, I don't know what they're going on about either way. Well, except for the part where I just sort of assume that it's all meaningless technobabble anyway.

However, as much as I enjoyed it as an individual movie, I was more than a little let down with the movie in terms of its relationship to the other Bond films. There are two main reasons for this:

1. With Casino Royale and the re-boot of the Bond franchise, they created an ongoing story line. Quantum of Solace, while not the greatest Bond film as an individual movie, was an excellent continuation of that story. It felt like they were putting things in place for something really cool, and I was intrigued by where they were going. With Skyfall, though, they just drop that whole story line and, at the moment, have no plans to go back to it. This is incredibly disappointing, and, for that reason, despite how good Skyfall is on its own, it is, itself, also disappointing.

2. Skyfall feels like even more of a re-boot than Casino. There is a grasp in this one to make this Bond the definitive Bond. The Bond. An attempt to sweep away all earlier versions, while still giving a nod to them, and actually make this 007 James Bond. I can't be more explicit than that without giving spoilers, but I just want to say that I wasn't entirely happy with this aspect of the movie in relation to the other Bond movies. Casino did a fine job of updating the franchise and setting up a new sequence of movies. There was no need to go even further back and attempt to shove all the other movies aside.

But, still, all by itself, Skyfall is well worth seeing.
Just ignore that the time frame of the opening events doesn't quite match up, and all should be well. Maybe, I shouldn't have pointed that out, though.

NOTE:
Remember that Friday, this Friday, Nov. 16, is the Oh, How I Miss You blogfest hosted by myself, Alex Cavanaugh, and Matthew McNish. If you haven't already signed up, follow one of the links and get over there and do it! Let's let some people  know that we've noticed their absence. It's always good to know you're missed!

Revisiting Blackberries

My daughter and I have been out picking blackberries again. Over the last few weeks, we've had three cobblers, and, OH MY were they awesome. Two of them were straight up blackberry cobblers, and the other was a blackberry-peach cobbler. Oh, the goodness. We even had homemade vanilla ice cream with the first one. We need to get out there at least once more before there quit being any blackberries to pick, but this past week has been too busy, and it doesn't look like that's going to change in the next few days. We want to make homemade blackberry ice cream, though, so I better figure out how to make it happen.

All of that aside, my wife told me I should write another post about blackberries like this one from last year. However, I don't think I really have anything new to say about blackberries. That's a pretty good post I wrote way back then about blackberries and writing, writing is still like picking blackberries for me, and I suspect it will always be that way. Which makes me think of something that Neil Gaiman said once, well, actually, no, it reminds me of something that Neil had said to him once after saying something like, "I thought after I finished my first book that I'd figured out how to write books, but this one is as hard as the first." And the author he was speaking with responded with something like, "You never figure out how to write books; you only figure out how to write the book you're writing." And that, to me, is like picking blackberries.

Anyway... All of this discussion about revisiting old topics got me to thinking about how the blog has changed since I started writing it a year and a half ago. I mean, back then, I would never have believed that I would spend any amount of time talking about grammar and punctuation. How boring is that? Didn't we want to escape school because of that stuff to begin with? But it's important, and there is an obvious lack of discussion about it if you spend any amount of time looking at independently published manuscripts.

I also had no idea how important reviews and honest reviews would become to me. There needs to be a lot more talk about that stuff, but, at least, that discussion is happening, especially with the (somewhat) recent news of authors buying hundreds of fake reviews to boost their exposure.

Still... it makes me kind of nostalgic for some of my older posts. My blog is not the same blog as it was back then, and it's hard to write those same kinds of posts these days. My mind just isn't in the same place, now, as it was then. Kind of like not going back to crawling after you've learned to walk. Except, in writing, it's like learning to walk over and over again. And over and over again. And again. So I've decided to start linking back to some of my more favorite posts from time to time, especially on Shadow Spinner release days. That seems like a good time for that to me. So, today, I encourage you to hop back in time and read the Blackberry Writing post if you weren't around to see it the first time. [And feel free to comment there, too, if you'd like. Just because it's an old post doesn't mean you can't comment!]

Speaking of Shadow Spinner!

Today is the big FREE! release of "Part Five: The Police Car." Did I say FREE!? Because it's FREE! So, yeah, you really have no excuse not to go over and pick it up. Of course, you might say, "But I don't have the others." Okay, well, to help you out, "Part Four: The Cop" will also be FREE! today. Sorry, but you're kind of on your own with parts 1 - 3. Amazon only gives me so many free days per quarter, and, as much as I'd like to make these FREE! all the time, I just can't do it. Believe me, I tried. So, to recap:
"Part Five: The Police Car" is FREE! Friday, September 21 and Saturday, September 22.
"Part Four: The Cop" is FREE! Friday, September 21 only.
This installment marks a turning point in the story. The new cover is a clue.
You should also pop over to Briane Pagel's blog to see what he has to say about Part 5, specifically,  and Shadow Spinner in general. I can't help including a couple of quotes here, though:
"...the first five chapters so far have less in common with Potter or the Pevensies than it does good Stephen King."
"I'd say Leon is reinventing the book, but really what he's doing is reintroducing the book to us..."

I didn't put him up to that. I promise. Makes it hard for me not to glow from the praise, though, which would be awkward for going out in public.

Also, because I've been meaning to for a while and still haven't put up a link on the side, you can find  me over on Goodreads here. Really, I'll get to the side link... sometime.

One last thing:
This is not precisely a follow up to stuff from my A to Z posts, but it kind of is. NASA is working on faster than light travel. I don't mean this in a purely theoretical sense either. There are actual laboratory experiments happening. Read the article here. Between this and the whole quantum communication thing, interstellar travel could be here within a generation or so. Boggles my mind!

Blackberry Writing

My daughter and I picked blackberries yesterday. The blackberries were for a peach and blackberry cobbler, which was truly excellent, but that's beside the point. Oh, with french vanilla ice cream. Oh, my! the cobblery goodness! Nope... nope... not what we're here to talk about. No matter how good it was. I saved a tiny bit, though, so, if you can get here within  the next few hours, I'll let you have a tiny bit. A bite. Maybe two. But that's all. Anyway...

My daughter and I picked blackberries yesterday. Blackberries are a curious thing. Although they deliver us wonderful fruit, the vines are considered a weed. They're invasive, covered with thorns (even the leaves), and COVERED with thorns. Oh, wait, excuse me, not thorns. Prickles. Covered in prickles. They get in amongst other plants and, if left unchecked, will choke them out. Kill them. And they can thrive in poor soil making them great for ditches, vacant lots, wastelands. Of course, in many places, especially Oregon (Oregon produces the greatest volume of blackberries in the world), they're a cultivated weed.

I always want a ladder when we pick blackberries, because they climb all through the shrubs and up the fences and stick up way over the tops of them. There are always big clumps of ripe berries just out of reach. That's true for the kids, also. The kids that live in the complex here spend lots of time out at the blackberry vines. I can reach higher than them, so there's usually a good selection of berries at around the level of my head that the kids can't quite reach. The problem with these is that many of them have become overripe. These, of course, are the sweetest berries, and, really, only good for eating right off the vine. Which, of course, we do. And happily. The ones that are just barely within reach like that are not good at all, though. They're too high for the gentleness required to pick them, so they squish in your fingers when you try to pull them off and only yield juicy fingers rather than anything you can actually devour. But, if I had a ladder...

Also, I always want gloves. I'm not sure why I haven't invested in good blackberry picking gloves other than that I don't ever remember to do it. When I was a kid, a younger kid than my daughter is now, my cousins and I used to go picking blackberries with my grandmother. Or, rather, dewberries. Of course, dewberries are just a cultivar of blackberries, so, really, it was blackberry picking. My grandmother had these great leather gloves she wore when we picked berries. She also wore rubber boots and a thick, long-sleeved work shirt. She'd just shove the vines aside and get in there amongst the berries and pick away. My cousins and I are were always left on the outskirts gobbling up all the berries we could get our hands on, which was never as many as we would have liked. Enough, though, for us to go back home looking like we'd been fighting with a pack of wild cats. My daughter almost looks like that, but, being a city girl, she's not as willing to get scratched up as we were when we were kids on the farm in Texas. She counted seven scratches on her arms, yesterday. I'm much more cautious when I pick than I was when I was a kid, and I'm better at not getting clawed up. That comes with a price, though. Often, the plump interior berries get left behind, because I'm just not willing to stick my arm down in amongst the brambles to pull those berries out. Ah, for the heedlessness of youth.

As I mentioned, there are the overripe berries that are only good for eating right there at the vines. There are also the perfectly ripe berries. They're firm so that they don't squish in your fingers, but they also pull easily from their stem. These are also great at the vine, but, really, these are the ones you should be putting into your vessel to bring home, but they're so so tempting. Sweet with just a hint of tartness. Then, there are the nearly ripe berries. They can be difficult to pull from the stem, because they're just not quite ready to let go, but still good. A bit more tart, possibly too tart to eat at the vine depending upon how into that you are. These are also good to bring back if you're making something like a cobbler, because the tart can be a great addition for something like that. Of course, there are also plenty, right now, more than plenty, of red berries that haven't turned, yet, and have to be left for later.

Coming home with a container of berries is something to be proud of. It's not like picking blueberries or strawberries. Those are safe. Easy to get to. The biggest issue to deal with there is not eating them all while you're picking them. Not only do you have that to do deal with when gathering blackberries, you also have the thorns. Um, prickles. Coming home with a few cups worth of berries becomes a huge achievement. An oh so delicious achievement at that. Especially when they get turned into cobbler.

Writing is somewhat like picking blackberries. Wild and unkempt. It can grow anywhere. It's prickly. Choosing the ripe words can be difficult. Some of them are too soft, some of them too tart. Some not ripe at all. They're too high to reach or buried too deep inside the vines. They scratch and tear at you as you try to get at them. And you have to know what you want them for. Are you just eating them right there at the vine? The words you choose for that are going to be quite different from the types of words you're going to bring back to make into pie or jam.

Of course, the more we work at it, the more cultivated we can make our vines. Trimming them back so they don't get too tall. Or too deep. Keeping other plants out of them. Knowing which cultivar we want at any given time. Marionberry seems to be the preferred cultivar, at the moment, somewhat the way YA fiction is the preferred genre. At the moment. These things always change. Having the right tools to get the most out of our words.

Maybe, for some, writing is more like blueberries, but, for me, it's blackberries. It's painful, and it takes a lot of work. Selecting just the right berries for what I'm doing at that moment. Of course, when you get them home, you have to wash them off and pick back through them. Eat some more. Make sure they're good. Of course, if you're making jam, you don't have to be as careful. Just dump them all in. If you haven't been careful when you were picking, you may have too many that aren't ripe enough and have to be discarded for other purposes. Edit the berries more if you're doing something like putting them on ice cream. Those berries have to be perfect.

I tend to expend more work in the picking stage. I only want berries I'm going to use. Some people pick everything, which is faster and easier, but have to go back through their berries with much more care than I do. Some of those not quite ripe berries can still ripen if set aside, after all. Yes, I edit at the vine. So to speak. Editing in the kitchen is not something I enjoy as much, although that seems to me the way most people do it.

Hopefully, when you're all finished with your picking and sorting and sifting and cooking, you have a yummy cobbler like we did last night. Of course, it still may not be to every one's taste, and that's okay. My younger son chose not partake of the cobbler that everyone else was so ravenous over. Yes, we all think he's crazy, but it did have peaches in it, and he doesn't like peaches. Still, it's okay for him not to like it. However, blackberry jam (seedless) is his favorite kind of jam. The important thing is that you like it. I mean, you are the first person that will experience whatever it is you're picking those words for, right, so it's most important that you like it. And, if you don't, if you've cooked something up that not even you like the taste of, don't try to force it on someone else. Just get back to picking and try again.

Oh, and just by  the way, British folklore says you shouldn't eat blackberries picked after October 11. Apparently, the devil claims any blackberries that are still around at that point of the year and urinates all over them to stake his claim. I'm not sure what that says about writing, but I'm sure it's something significant.