Writing Prompt: Happy New Year Message

For the first writing prompt of the year, what's more appropriate than a New Years' themed writing prompt? This weeks exercise comes from writersdigest.com, and it goes like this:

• At exactly midnight on New Year's Eve, you receive an e-mail labeled "Open Immediately." The really strange thing is that the e-mail is apparently from your future self.  What does it say?

This prompt originally called for a mere 500 words.  I just wrote stuff until it felt complete.  A bunch of interesting possibilities came to mind, and some of them could potentially be whole new novels.

My response for this prompt is as follows:
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     Just as the fireworks exploded in the sky and splashed vibrant colors over the city block, my phone vibrated.  I couldn't even hear its ringtone over the booming fireworks and the noise from the cheering crowd.  Brandishing the phone, I opened a new e-mail message; I assumed it was a friend or family member giving me a New Year's greeting.
     The message I saw simply read:

Get to 175th Street, now.
RPG

      RPG:  Robert Paul Grazer, was my name and initials.  I signed every e-mail with those three letters, and chances were small that anybody else had those same initials in all e-mails.  One more detail in the header perplexed me:  the message was sent on January 1st, 2025.  That was twelve years into the future.
     It had to be a joke, or a hoax.  I was compelled to ignore it, but something in my conscience convinced me otherwise.  There was an irrational sense of dread and anxiety creeping over me, and with each passing second, it grew worse.  To quell the growing unease, I started moving.  Pushing past the others in the street, I left the main road and started toward 175th Street.
     Traversing away from the crowd, I trotted further away from the city center and further away from the fireworks.  I brushed past some happy, drunken revelers, but otherwise, the streets were mostly empty.  Everybody was in the city center in celebration, and I felt strangely displaced by breaking away from the crowd.
     Suddenly, an earth-shattering roar cut across the sky, drowning out the booming fireworks.  Looking back, I saw a giant metal disc plummeting from the sky.  Its sides were aglow in red-hot flames.
     The saucer-shaped object sliced through a skyscraper, cutting through the top floors cleanly.  The cleaved piece of the building slid and fell into the streets with the sound of crashing glass and metal echoing in the air.
     Continuing into the city center, the disc cut through the fireworks display, with colors lights bouncing off the glowing hull.  Screams erupted all across the square, before the disc slammed into the concrete road.  Many of the cries were silenced.  Seconds later, the sounds of scraping metal, electricity, and otherworldly mechanisms filled the block.
     With gut-wrenching realization, I suddenly knew the truth.  I did indeed send a message to myself from the future.  It was a warning to get out of ground zero and find safety.  Because a war was about to break out between the human race, and something else not of this world.

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Film Review: The Godfather

"He is a good godson." - Marlon Brando

This film has spawned so many gangster cliches and parodies that it's not even funny. Every time you've heard of people "sleeping with da fishies" or "making an offer you can't refuse," it'll all boil back to this classic, highly-tutted film.

On first glance, I dismissed the film as being rather dull, despite a few standout moments. On repeat viewings, I have found it more compelling. The film is most memorable for the scenes everybody knows and loves: the scene with the horse's head, the street fighting scene, Marlon Brando's mumbling, the restaurant shooting, sporadic bursts of gunfights and violence...it's all there. Dialogue dominates most of the film, but when given due attention, the story can be rather gripping and mesmerizing. At this point, the only drag I've felt is in the last thirty minutes or so; the film just kinda winds down after nearly 150 minutes of epic-scale gangster mayhem.

The story is long, dense, and chock full of quality characterizations. The film does a fine job of keeping its events in order so that the politics of each situation makes some kind of sense. What matters the most will be the characters, who are endearing, and the underlying themes of family, honor, and loyalty. Family and generations are probably the most blatant themes, especially since most scenes show some strong contrast (or perhaps comparisons) between adults and children.

As a film, it looks really classy. Photography never was a huge standout for these films, but the sepia tones and framing lends the movie a type of classic family-portrait appeal. Editing is decent. Acting is probably the biggest virtue here. Marlon Brando chews the scenery, despite his mumbling and constant fiddling with things, he does show endless nuance and expressions that brings Vito Corleone to life really well. Al Pacino must be at his most nuanced as Michael, and the rest of the magnificent cast fulfills their parts well. Writing is decent. This production has good-looking sets, props, and costumes, and is especially noteworthy for its period reproduction. Music is nice too.

Everybody should see this at least once in their lifetime.

4/5 (Entertainment: Pretty Good | Story: Good | Film: Perfect)

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Film Review: Slaughterhouse-Five

"I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival." - Kurt Vonnegut

Chances are you may have heard of Slaughterhouse-Five; it's one of the highly-tutted classics of science fiction, penned by the ever-eccentric Kurt Vonnegut.  As of this writing, I've never actually read the book, but this movie seems to capture the gist of things.  It's a very strange, surrealist story that chronicles a man's life and death through a series of random time-jumps.  The man was a prisoner in WWII (and the actual slaughterhouse was his residence), before raising a dysfunctional family afterwards, and then being abducted by aliens.  Yep, strange stuff indeed.

The film will be most memorable for the rough and dirty war scenes, the sporadic family outbursts, and the scenes on Tralfamadore.  Part of it drag a little, but there's enough interesting scenes to pull the film together and maintain interest, especially for fans of sci-fi, war movies, or bizarre cinema in general.

I have no idea how close of an adaptation this movie is to the book, but on its own merits, the film does an interesting job of using its random narrative structure to show the character at the different phases of his life; really, it shows somewhere between three to five different narrative strings at once.  Some scenes run into each other, with characters in one timeline finishing off dialogue from another, or scenes mirroring each other so that they're intercut together.  It makes the film run as one long and smooth stream of consciousness, while exploring the character's life, memories, and psyche in full.  In a way, you probably could interpret this whole film as the memories, memoirs, and dreams of a man who's either mentally insane or dead.  As such, the film may subtly hint as some underlying themes of life, death, and the human condition.

If there's anything to complain about, it's just the sheer randomness of the story, for even with its constant focus on the main character, it never settles on any specific plot structure or tangible form.

The film has quality photography and really excellent editing.  Acting is a bit over-the-top, but it gets the job done really well, and the writing is not bad.  This production has fine-looking sets, props, and costumes.  Music is not bad either.

For bringing a literary classic to life, the film is worthwhile seeing.  As random and strange as it is, I'd recommended some caution:  rent it and see what you think for yourself.

4/5 (Entertainment:  Pretty Good | Story:  Good | Film:  Good)

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Happy New Year 2013!

As the world completes its eternal elliptical path around the sun, it carves a path in the cosmos for the human race; so it comes to pass that one era end and another begins.

...or, rather, one year ends and another begins.  Maybe not an entire era per se.  Whatever.  The point is, 2012 has ended and 2013 begins.  Chances are that I'll remember 2012 as (maybe the final) year I got to visit Scotland and Germany, the year I visited my grandmother and some of my uncles in the States, the year I lost close to 30 pounds, the year the Mayan doomsday scare came and went so very uneventfully, the year of the Hobbit and The Avengers and Skyfall and The Dark Knight Rises, the year of the 57th Presidential Elections in the US, the year London hosted the Olympics and the Queen of England celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, and the year we were all blessed with that "whoop it gangnam style!" song. 

And yeah, it's also the year I completed a new novel:  Perfectly Inhuman, the epic rampage resulting from a cloned pop star going wild.  It's actually a pretty big deal, considering I came up with the story ten years ago.  It experienced quite a weird evolution in all that time, but it finally came together within the past year.  It's pretty amazing how so many ideas I had over the years wound up being pieced together with a bunch of new ones to make something really cool and exciting.  One of my prerogatives this year will be in editing, rewriting, and maybe even shopping it around for publication.  One can always dream, anyway.

More importantly, 2012 will be my final year living in England.  In a pretty short time, I'll have to move.  As nice as it's been to live in the rolling green hills of Yorkshire (rain and all), the conditions of my day job have ended, and I feel like it's time I transplanted myself to a new place.  I'm pretty used to moving every few years; spending more than four or five years in one place tends to get old, stagnant, perhaps even monotonous.  I feel it's time change things up again, to go to someplace new, take on new challenges, and see new sights.  The prospect of finding a new home in another part of the world is definitely thrilling.  At the same time, it's a little wearisome to think about the work involved:  having to pack up all my belongings, my car, settle my affairs, etc.  From experience, I know that the next few months will be fast and relentless, given all the work.

So yeah, I have a lot to look forward to in 2013, from that alone.  Who knows what other surprises 2013 will have for me, and all of us?

Moving and writing will not be the only things on my mind.  It's only customary to mull over some New Year's resolutions:  stuff that's really nice to contemplate, but rarely ever gets done.  In fact, the one resolution I always bring up - losing weight - wound up being most of the way fulfilled last year, the year I didn't bother making that resolution.  Isn't it funny how that works?

With at least some conviction, I do intend on sticking with these.  My top five resolutions this year are:

1. Finish all the writing projects I've started.  My to-do pile currently has around seven short stories and seven novels that remain unfinished.  To say nothing of the stories I've finished and never bothered to proofread.  Despite all I have to do, I have a bad habit of dreaming up new stories to make and starting off new drafts.  For now on, I need to focus on finishing stuff up before starting anything new!
2. Publish something! For the love of God, I gotta do something with all the stuff I finished! Even if it's self-published, I need to get something out there!
3. More blogging.  I've had plenty of ideas for good or fun blog posts, I just get lazy sometimes and don't bother putting them up.  Well, that's gotta change.  I hope to get somewhere between 10 - 20 posts a month, as life allows.
4. I got plenty of other things that need to be finished.  I got over two thousand photos from the past year or so that needs to be sorted through.  I got video clips since 2010 that I need to edit and compile into viewable segments (I might even post them on youtube, see what happens).  I resolve to finish all these things off before 2014.  
5. Get below 200 lbs and stay that way. 

You'd think these resolutions would be easy, but finishing a dozen stories, sifting through thousands of files, and dieting will be work, I'm sure.  However, I do hope that these things will make 2013 a productive and satisfying year.

And for everybody else out there, I wish you all a Happy New Year!

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Video Game Review: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

"Fus Ro Dah!" - best spell ever

One of the best virtues of video games is that they transport the player into a whole new world, plants that player into a character's shoes, and let them live as that character.  Of all the role-playing games I've played, none has been more captivating, more beautiful, and more open-ended than Skyrim.  The game's first chapter lets you build your character, offering a fair amount of options to shape the look and race of the character, before throwing you into the heat of battle.  Then, you're pretty much free to run off into the wild blue yonder and do whatever your heart desires.  Follow the main story path, and you'll become a wicked dragon slayer and hero.  Or, explore the hundreds of locations on the map, pursuing potential careers as a thief, a wizard, an assassin, a bard, treasure hunter, demon hunter, or you could just wander around aimlessly.  You can get married, or not.  You can be an upstanding citizen, or not.  You could become a vampire or a werewolf if you wanted.  The possibilities of this game are amazingly endless, and playing it feels like living a second life in the shoes of an adventurer.  With the game's gorgeous locales and intricate level designs, I've blown well over a hundred hours in exploring, fighting, customizing, and experiencing the stories this game embodies.

Gameplay is quite intuitive with practice.  It ingenuously gives the player the power to go anywhere and do most anything with the mere push of a few buttons.  It may require a little patience to wait through some of the loading screens and to wade through the menus, but for the most part, the game runs smoothly and sublimely.

The story is pretty fun to play through.  It builds your character up as a mythic hero of sorts and has you doing a fair amount of exploring and fighting.  There are quite a few cool bits of folklore, myth, and ideas that pop up to make the story stand out.  As noted above, one of the key benefits of this game is that the story is not a requisite for playing; you could ditch it altogether and do your own thing.  What matters here is that the world is built up with incredible precision and detail.  It goes to prove that it's not the destination that matters, but the journey.

The one real negative about this game is that it is prone to frequent freezing on the PS3, and glitches are common.  The game will strain resources, largely because the autosave feature makes the save file bigger and bigger until the console gets stuck.  Patches, and maybe turning the autosave off, will help the issue a bit, but it hasn't stopped many gamers from bashing on this game, calling it an inferior product that should have never seen the light of day.  Frankly, even though the problem has been frequent for me, it's never been enough to dissuade me from playing.  Nor has it stopped me from admiring the awe-inspiring graphics.  AI can be pretty nutty, but it's still pretty amazing how the programmers set up the NPCs to live and work like real people.  This game spared no expense in designing and incorporating thousands of usable props, weapons, armor, artifacts, reagents, characters, and everything else.  Voice-acting can be cheesy.  The music score for this game is one of the best.

Despite some technical issues, I've found the game addicting, gripping, and alluring in every good way.  It's become my top favorite game of this generation (outclassing my last favorite game, Fallout 3).  Every serious gamer should give Skyrim a playthrough.

5/5 (Entertainment:  Perfect | Story:  Perfect | Game:  Very Good)

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Film Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

"The world is not in your book and maps. It's out there!" - Ian McKellen

Ten years ago, I laid eyes on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and instantly fell in love. I realized pretty quickly that it was the perfect combination of style and substance: a film so loaded with story and detail, but also had enough style and action to make the experience truly epic. This experience would only be supplanted by The Two Towers and The Return of the King, the latter of which has taken its place as my personal number-one favorite movie.

After so many years of legal battles and creative turmoil, The Hobbit is finally adapted for the big screen. If anything could displace the Lord of the Rings as my favorite film trilogy, I was certain that it would be The Hobbit; if for no other reason than I found Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a far easier and funner read than LOTR, and I always knew that there would be moments that would make for excellent cinema.

Despite the underwhelming reviews and reception, I found The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey satisfying; it met my expectations perfectly. I won’t deny, however, that the film overall feels like a long-labored attempt to force lightning to strike twice. Not only because of all the story padding, connections to LOTR, returning stars, and the splitting of the story into three films, but also insomuch as trying to craft new iconic characters out of Bilbo and Thorin to mirror Frodo and Aragorn respectively. I think the thing that really gets on people’s nerves is the sheer audacity in taking a single book (one that was previously adapted into a humble, bite-sized 79-minute cartoon) and exploding it into a 500-minute franchise. Thus follows the common complaints that the films are too long, too padded, too big for their own good.

Personally, none of these factors really affected my enjoyment of the film.  The only real drag I felt was in the opening act; the Shire scenes seemed to take a good while to wrap up. Once the party hit the road, the film explored the big plot points I remembered well from the novel’s first third, complete with awesome rip-roaring action. The film’s final act is pretty jam-packed with loads of orc-slaying mayhem. Above all, however, the film has a nice sprinkling of humor and character throughout, keeping things lightweight and even. I think the most memorable and satisfying of scenes, however, will be the major encounters that I remember fondly from the novel: outwitting the three trolls, for example, or the riddle scenes with Gollum, are all brought to life perfectly on the big screen.

The story for The Hobbit is as quintessential of a fantasy adventure as, well, Lord of the Rings. The film not only does a fine job of packing in loads of events, characters, and fine details from The Hobbit’s original narrative and story, but it also ties in some content from The Silmarillion and the appendices of Tolkien’s books. A lot of this is incorporated to make tangible ties with LOTR, allowing the film to serve as a proper prequel, while digging up additional subplots, conflicts, and details to layer onto all of Peter Jackson’s Middle-Earth films. Yes, the film could have all these extra scenes cut out, making the film trimmer. Frankly, I liked it the way it is. Some of the scenes helped me understand certain nuances of The Hobbit’s politics and backstories. Some helped in the nuances of established characters and events (especially in regards to chronicling Gandalf’s whereabouts, who would otherwise just pop in and out randomly, like in the book, but it would have probably alienated audiences further). Some is purely invented for the film series to streamline the continuity (purists might be outraged when they see Radagast on screen). It’s a bit early to tell where The Hobbit is going with all the threads it has grabbed, but it does serve a purpose in the long run. If nothing else, it’ll help average audiences connect and understand the Middle Earth on a deeper level, and set things up for later events in the next two films.

As expected, the film looks splendid, with quality photography and editing. I’m especially pleased to see that the filmmakers dropped the shakey-cam effects that were dispensed in the fight scenes of LOTR; just about every shot in The Hobbit is solid and steady. Acting is pretty decent from the whole cast; aside from all the familiar faces, Martin Freeman plays Bilbo with the right amount of nuanced uptightness, while Richard Armitage plays it tough as Thorin, and every other dwarf actor does their best to make their characters stand out in their own neat ways. Writing is great; the script adapts as much as it can from the novel, while allowing the film to breathe on its own. This production is loaded with excellent sets, props, costumes, and special effects. Music is nice too.

Perhaps I’m biased, because this is another film where I see nothing really wrong with it. If anything, it feels like more of the same as LOTR, with the same construction as Fellowship of the Ring.  Even if it is a blatant cash-grab, drawing out the material across three movies to maximize the franchise, it is still a fair crowd-pleaser. Given that we still have the desolation of Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies to witness on the big screen, I’m certain that An Unexpected Journey is but a small taste of greater things to come; things that may prove to be as epic, if not moreso, than LOTR! At the very least, the film does perfect justice to the original novel, while delivering a fine spectacle. I couldn’t ask for a finer film.

5/5 (Entertainment: Very Good | Story: Perfect | Film: Perfect)

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Film Review: Koyaanisqatsi

From the Hopi language, Koyaanisqatsi is a word that roughly translates as “crazy life,” or “a life out of balance,” or perhaps more appropriately, “a way of life that calls for another way of living.” Incidentally, that’s exactly what this film shows:  no plot or story, just a document of the modern age of man, far out of balance from nature, which calls for human beings to adapt to their own constructs.

This film doesn’t offer any conventional story with any characters; it’s purely an experience built from images and sound, to illicit thought and feeling in the viewers.  Both the images and music are beautiful in their own ways:  with Phillip Glass’ epic, well-structured music score, the film takes on a palpable rhythm and mood that perfectly accentuates the gorgeous scenery.  The film plays around a lot with time-lapse footage and slow-motion, which serve to show common cityscapes in an invoking new way.  Altogether, the film is as hypnotic and mesmerizing as it is thought-provoking.

This film was cobbled together from all kinds of footage filmed across the United States from 1975 to 1983, with a tight budget.  Regardless, the filmmakers show superb prowess with their photography and editing skills.  At least on a technical level, they’ve maximized their potential and tools to craft an audio/visual masterpiece, weaving the images and music to the themes implied with the term Koyaanisqatsi.

As far as the content goes, like any piece of art, it’s left to the viewer’s interpretation.  The most opaque of themes will revolve around civilization’s progress, the depletion of nature, and the effects of technology and industrialization on the human race.  There are times in the film where humanity seems triumphant, and other times where it feels like it’s spinning out of control in a downward spiral of chaos and destruction (especially in one of the film’s final shots, depicting an Atlas-Centaur rocket exploding; it’s a sequence that’s always hit me the hardest, given the combination of imagery, music, and the overall theme that human civilization rises so high, but will eventually crash and burn).

Watching this film is not only a treat for the eyes and ears, but also a sobering, moving experience unlike any other.  I believe it truly represents the best and worst of the human race in the modern age, and everybody should see it at least once in a lifetime.

5/5 (Entertainment:  Perfect | Content:  Perfect | Film:  Perfect)

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