WTF did I just watch?
Been doing a lot of reading lately about writing, genres, literary styles, etc. I find myself agreeing with B.R. Myers in A Reader's Manifesto: screw pretentious "literariness" where authors write pretty prose just for the sake of pretty prose, and hang it loosely on a thin framework of plot and characterization, as if the story were just a mannequin that's there to display the words.
There is a cinematic counterpart to literary pretentiousness, and I think I just saw it with The Fountain. I can tell that the director was probably thinking "visually ambitious," "artsy," and "Oscar." I thought: "That was the most boring, ponderous piece of crap I've seen in a long time."
I enjoyed Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior ten times more, and it made no pretense of being anything other than a kick-ass martial arts movie.
I am also very pleased to be doing a lot more reading lately. (Actually, lately I've been buying new ebooks faster than I can read them. I really need to reduce that queue...)
Right now I am reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemison, and it's blowing me away. I'm only about a third of the way through it, and I know it's going to get a 5 star rating from me unless the author totally drops the ball somewhere before the end.
There is a cinematic counterpart to literary pretentiousness, and I think I just saw it with The Fountain. I can tell that the director was probably thinking "visually ambitious," "artsy," and "Oscar." I thought: "That was the most boring, ponderous piece of crap I've seen in a long time."
I enjoyed Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior ten times more, and it made no pretense of being anything other than a kick-ass martial arts movie.
I am also very pleased to be doing a lot more reading lately. (Actually, lately I've been buying new ebooks faster than I can read them. I really need to reduce that queue...)
Right now I am reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemison, and it's blowing me away. I'm only about a third of the way through it, and I know it's going to get a 5 star rating from me unless the author totally drops the ball somewhere before the end.