Some recommendations

Being in the Scribblerati carries with it certain responsibilities.

A lot of people often come up to us (and by "a lot", I mean: None. And by "often", I mean: Never) and they say: "You Scribblerati... you're pretty awesome. Pray tell, what kind of things do you like, because I would very much like to like them too. I would love to stroll about town and lord my new found tastes over the heads of others' much more inferior tastes while laughing, taunting them until my throat is sore, saying: 'ha ha, jerks, you're not cool like me and the Scribblerati!' Simply put, that would be... heaven."

Your cries have not gone unheard...

Some Recommendations

by Jon

Books
Reading... gross.

1. Cloud Atlas

By David Mitchell, in its own words:

"A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation — the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small."

Fantastic and soon to be a major motion picture. I intend to both read and watch the hell out of it. See the trailer here.

2. Red Country

By Joe Abercrombie. It's not out yet; that fact drives me nuts. However, it will be out around my birthday... ahem... Anyway, this will be his sixth book of an intended nine, all of them set in the same world, and the third and final one in the middle "loose" trilogy. In its own words:

"They burned her home. They stole her brother and sister. But vengeance is following. Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing.  She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company.  But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own.  And out in the lawless Far Country, the past never stays buried. Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts.  Even worse it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer, Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust…"

Can't wait.

Movies

Ah... le cinema...

1. Cabin in the Woods

It has come to my attention that not very many of you have seen this film. What is wrong with you? Seriously. For real. Seriously, what's wrong with you? The film is directed by Joss Whedon. It stars Thor. It's so meta, you'll shit. Seriously. One of the best films of the year. A geek must.

2. Detention

Okay, with this one I will just go ahead and assume that many of you haven't seen this film either. Don't feel bad, Joseph Kahn also directed Torque (barf). As a result, there are only 12 people on the planet, including the cast and crew, who have heard of this film, let alone actually taken the time to watch it. I am one of the lucky few. Part teen comedy, part slasher flick, part scathing indictment of society, part time traveling adventure, part sci-fi horror, part 90s nostalgia trip, part sarcastic laugh riot, part Space Bear snuff film, part domestic terrorism thriller, part meta-comedy (you will also shit), this film is absolutely worth your time, although you won't think so at first. At the very least, wait for the moment when the kid remembers different eras throughout 19 years of detention. And yes, I'm recommending it, even though Dane Cook is in it.

Comics

Sequential art, cavemen loved and respected it, why can't you?

1. Prophet

Rob Liefeld created this character. Are you familiar with his work? No, read this, we'll wait. Ah, you're back. Please join the others in looking at me and my recommendation somewhat dubiously... Go ahead, because I'm serious. This is a good comic. Really good. But, but... you say. How? How can a comic book featuring a character by one of the worst in the industry from a time when comic books seemed to be competing to be the worst of the indutsry (the 90s), actually be good? Well, for starters, Liefeld isn't involved. As a result we get an intergalactic, far-flung-future tale of clone soldiers on insane alien planets. They live for the mission. They die for the mission. It all reminds me of an arty Doctor Who or Star Trek, but crazier and a shit ton more violent. I don't do it justice. Trust me. Classic Sci-fi. Great art. Fantastic designs.

2. Locke and Key

Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King. He is a writer. Not since Dick Grayson has a man been more doomed to exist in his father's shadow than poor old Joe. The good news is: He's pretty all right. In fact, he's actually pretty good, as evidenced by this fantastic tale of the Locke family and their lives in the aftermath of trajedy while living in the family's ancestral home: The Key House. It is weird and rambling old structure set at the tip of a strange little island at the far flung edge of Maine, a place well known for odd. Oh, and also, the house is full of locked doors and keys, find the right key and the right door and odd things happen. Become a ghost. Beome an old man. Become a giant. Mend things. Alter time. Bring shadows to life. Switch genders. Steal memories. Go anywhere. But what does the Black Door Key do? And who is the ghost woman trapped at the bottom of the well...

TV

This and beer keeps us from going crazy.

1. Louie

There are few hard luck cases like Louie. He is the hang-dog man, sad-faced and trod upon. And hilarious. And brilliant. Riotously funny. Suddenly serious. Shockingly insightful. Often kind of gross and pathetic. But still great. It's a show that is constanly in flux and always innovative. The episode where he and Robin Williams go to a funeral? Genius. This is a man's life, so sad, so entertaining...

2. Archer

There are few things as awesome as Sterling Archer.



Told'ja.

Danger zone,

Jon

Name Game Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to the name game quiz from a couple of weeks ago.

If you want to take the quiz before you read the answers, check out the original post HERE.

Shirtless Nathan Fillion: Cynical ploy for more hits, or Mrrrrrrrowwww: You be the judge.

1. Popeye Doyle: movie The French Connection (Gene Hackman).

2. Travis Bickle: movie Taxi Driver (Robert DeNiro).

3. Sarafina Pekkala: book series His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman).

4. Elinor Dashwood: book and movie Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen).

5. Zaphod Beeblebrox: book, TV show and movie Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

6. Angus Thermopyle: book series The Gap Cycle (Stephen R. Donaldson).

7. George Bailey: movie It's a Wonderful Life (Jimmy Stewart).

8. Malcom Reynolds: television show Firefly (Nathan Fillion).

9. Mad Sweeny: book (and soon to be TV series) American Gods (Neil Gaiman).

10. Salacious B. Crumb: movie Return of the Jedi (Jabba's little ratty puppet friend).

11. Atticus Finch: book and movie To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee).

12. Corky St. Clair: movie Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest).

13. Raleigh St. Clair: movie The Royal Tenenbaums (Bill Murray).

14. Jerry Lundegaard: movie Fargo (William H. Macy).

15. Inigo Montoya : book and movie The Princess Bride (Mandy Patinkin).

16. Holly Golightly: book and movie Breakfast at Tiffany's (Audrey Hepburn).

17. Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps (pronounced "Fungy Fipps"): several Jeeves and Wooster books and television episodes (P.G. Wodehouse).

18. Brian Crookshanks: movie Charade (Cary Grant).

19. Archie Leach (this is a famous person's real name and a character name): Cary Grant's real name, and John Cleese's character's name in A Fish Called Wanda.

20. Charlotte Haze: book and movie(s) Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov).

Musical Musing

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ~Gustav Mahler

Ah Mahler, he of the 90 minute symphonies, you certainly had a lot to say.

Herr Mahler’s bon mot really got me thinking about writing, and whether the opposite of his statement is true. Okay, not the opposite, say, the oblique - whether the oblique of his statement is true. Let me ‘splain.

I’ve worked in theater; I’ve studied film; I watch a lot of narrative TV. All of these mediums utilize music to enhance the other aspects of their scenes: the visual, the emotional, the passing of time, the suspense.

When a song, or a soundtrack, is perfectly melded with a scene in a movie or TV show, it often induces chills. There’s a moment in Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring, where Gandalf is stuck at the top of Saruman’s tower, and he whispers to a moth and then lets it go. The music starts as soft singing - lovely, ethereal voices in synch with the fluttering of the moth’s wings, and then it morphs into guttural chanting and tense drum rhythms as the moth flies over Saruman’s factory of war.

Directors such as Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarentino use pop songs to great effect in their films: Think of Nico’s These Days playing as Margot Tenenbaum gets off the bus in The Royal Tenenbaums. Or the gang from Reservoir Dogs walking in slow motion to Little Green Bag. I love these moments in film, because film is about the blending of mediums, and when done well – well, chills.

Books don’t use music, can’t use music, at least not in the sense that the reader can literally hear it. Of course one could argue that books don’t use music in the same way that books don’t use elaborate sets or talented actors. Everything in a book is filtered through the reader’s imagination, and music is no different than any other element: sights, sounds, smells, tactile experiences.

Then why is it so difficult to convey?

Well, conventionally anyway, the music that appears in a book is going to be organic to the scene, and not permeating the action from the heavens, as happens in TV or film.

I say conventionally, because I can think of a couple of exceptions, and I’m sure there are more: Chynna Clugston, in her comic Blue Monday, does a fun thing, where at the beginning of a new chapter or scene, she tells us the name of a song that is meant to be playing in the background while the scene is taking place. The reader, if they wanted to, could actually listen to the soundtrack as they read.

Our very own Jon Hansen, in his terrific zombie novel, Gunslingers of the Apocalypse, does something much less literal, which is to put a quote from a song at the beginning of each section of his book. Not an uncommon practice, and a good one: it puts the reader in mind of a song with a particular tone (in Gunslinger’s case, hard rock or heavy metal) before they start reading. This works very well – if they know the song.

Which brings me back to the difficulty of conveying music in a book. There’s a lot of jazz music in my novel, Ursula Evermore. Since the book takes place in 1928 (well, most of it – it’s a time travel story after all), all of the music is from that year or earlier, and unless you’re a big early jazz fan, you most likely won’t know the songs that are mentioned. Huge obstacle. If I were to insert the Rolling Stone’s You Can’t Always Get What You Want, or Bing Crosby’s White Christmas into my story (although both would be anachronistic), most people would be able to hear the music in their heads, no problem. But, instead I have Louis Armstrong’s West End Blues playing a major role in a romantic scene, and how many of you can hum that?

Ultimately, I’m left describing it the way I’m left describing anything else in a book – from scratch. I describe Louis’s voice and the tone of his trumpet, two aural pleasures with which most people are familiar. I describe the tempo, the build of the song, the surprisingly soft way in which it ends. But mostly, I describe how the music makes my main character feel, and how it alters the mood of the people in the room, alters the emotional landscape of the scene.

At least I hope that’s what I achieve.

And now, for you trivia buffs out there… a quiz on music in TV and film.

Somewhat Difficult Music Quiz - Click Here!