Friday Fictioneers: Evidence

Reblogged from Joanna K Neilson:

Glad to have a chance to work on Fictioneering this week, with inspiration care of Lora Mitchell's intriguing photograph. This began as a straightforward take on the idea, then it mutated into a piece of a story which I now want to develop into something longer. Hmm, maybe if I write fast...

Thank you to Rochelle Wissoff-Fields for hosting the challenge, and don't forget to check out the rest of the stories, or as many as you can, via the little blue frog!

Read more… 111 more words

New Friday Fictioneer story with an urban fantasy twist, sort of. Not what I'd usually do, strangely. Not a tentacle in sight. I've also, updated my own header photo on this blog page. Now they're both unique, although it almost looks too much like any other one by Wordpress.

Friday Fictioneers: Dilapidated Shack

Reblogged from Joanna K Neilson:

Friday Fictioneers

Though it's been a while since my last Fictioneering, I've missed the discipline and mental exercise, and flat out fun of connecting to other writers with the same goal. It's also moved, since the last time I did this, to here , at a colourful blog owned by Rochelle Wissoff-Fields.

And I've wondered, what can't  you write about a dilapidated old shack?

Read more… 375 more words

Friday Fictioneers is back, for some it's never been away, but have been inspired here to do three new 100 word stories for the creepy and stimulating prompt this week. Although it's only creepy if your mind goes that way....

Flash Fiction Faction: The Shriek Hunters

Reblogged from Joanna K Neilson:

The prompt this week from Quill Shiv's blog is a simple picture.

I think a photograph like this is both useful and tougher, as I hate to do the most obvious choice, and did try out a couple of other ideas. However, this is the one that grabbed me.

So, I hope you enjoy reading The Shriek Hunters! Comments and observations are all gratefully received.

Read more… 974 more words

My entry for this week's Flash Fiction Faction, 'The Shriek Hunters'

Flash Fiction Friday: Bloody Jewels

Reblogged from Joanna K Neilson:

It's that time again. I don't know if almost three weeks almost in a row counts as a habit, but it can't hurt. I think this is going pretty well. I was overwhelmed by the positive responses to 'Reading the Bones' last week, I had an unprecedented number of hits which I'm very pleased by.

So first, thank you Madison Woods!

Read more… 238 more words

My 110 words for this week's Flash Fiction Friday.

Review: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I didn’t have any opinion on The Kite Runner when I started reading it, even though it’s been around the bestseller lists for a while, and had a blockbuster film made from it. I’m quite surprised I still had no idea what would happen when I started reading.

While it was well written and quite beautiful in places, I didn’t fall for this book at all. It’s a very simplistic story despite its exotic location (in the first half anyway) and everything that happens after the character’s life-changing event all feels a bit ‘easy’. The payback eventually fitted the crimes, but were a bit too convenient and  shallow. It’s not a terrible story, although we follow an unusually unsympathetic main character. Basically this feels like ‘Atonement’ set in Afghanistan, hamstrung by the sort of coincidences and coyly neat ending that mean you’re meant to leave the book with a warm glow, but which instead felt much too tidily rounded off for such a ragged situation.

I read Kite Runner mainly because I’d heard of it, and I’m gad I at least attempted to get something out of it. However, I didn’t engage with it and I didn’t feel it left me with any strong feeling about the main character, other than, ‘I’m glad that that all turned out OK, then, didn’t it…sort of…’

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW (also SPOILERS for Jeremy Dyson’s ‘What Happens Now’)

I also recently finished reading ‘What Happens Now’ by Jeremy Dyson, about three days after after I’d finished ‘The Kite Runner’.  It was taking me a while to write the review of Kite Runner and, weirdly, Dyson’s book has helped me to clarify just what felt wrong about how similar themes were used in ‘KR’. I want to note a few of them here.

In Kite Runner, I was sad but not especially surprised when the incredibly evil bully in Kite Runner took his brutal revenge on Amir’s childhood friend, Hassan. Angered by an earlier show of resistance, the bully rapes the loyal Hassan in an alley while Amir watches, too terrified to prevent it. Rape is used all too often in fiction to provide shocking drama, and Kite Runner employs it to propel the main character’s whole outlook during the rest of the book. ‘The Kite Runner’ makes it all about Amir, whose catharsis only comes after letting the same bully who attacked Hassan (now holding his friend’s son prisoner and raping that little boy, too) beat the tar out of him until the boy fights back with a slingshot.

There’s a leaden lump of coincidence happening at the end of ‘The Kite Runner’, too. It makes Amir’s struggle for redemption a very straightforward path, even though it’s painful, and I got an odd sense of inevitability and detachment from the ponderously slow self-analysis and gradual action. Amir’s very reluctant return to his home country seems mainly to let us point at Taliban-rules Afghanistan and say ‘isn’t it all dreadful now’ and of course it is, but it doesn’t provide much more insight than that. Also, everyone knows each other in this war torn country, to quite an insane extent.

Persuaded by an old friend Amir to return for his redemption, he rescues Hassan’s abused son from their childhood bully, who is now in the Taliban. While the rescue naturally provides much relief, a a reader I came out of it all feeling rather manipulated. This sense only increases when the boy tries to kill himself after being freed. Amir adopts him and everything is sewn up, as the boy slowly comes back to life and we end with the circular act of flying kites. This catharsis felt obvious and even shallow, beautiful yes, but so simplistic, and so inevitable it was barely earned.

‘What Happens Now’ dealt with rape very differently in its narrative. I shall be reviewing the whole book later, but its similaritie sto the Kite Runner were quite striking.

WHN also uses the awful act of rape to drive its entire narrative, and like ‘K.R.’ the rape is inflicted on someone the protagonist loves, when he was too young and afraid to prevent it happening, and witnessing it torments him for years afterwards. In WHN the reader knows nothing about the rape until very near to the end of the book. The descriptions of the characters’ inner lives, both before and after the moment, are very cleverly structured and it takes a while to fit all the shifting pieces together. I felt more in tune with the characters, their actions made more sense once the rape was revealed, the trauma’s effect on their lives suddenly clicking everything before into place. It’s very elegantly achieved.

The main character’s cathersis in ‘WHN’ is genuinely tragic and rather ambiguous. Its effectiveness is assisted by a touch of what is either magic or something deeply spiritual, which has been foreshadowed all the way through. Also the effect on the victim, outraged and damaged by what was done to them, eventually healing from these emotional scars, is brilliantly drawn.

It might be unfair to compare books, but I felt that ‘The Kite Runner’ was very simplistic although it has garnered rave reviews, whereas ‘What Happens Now’ contains very similar difficult themes but deals with them in a very different, and far more adult way.

View all my reviews

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) Dir. Rupert Wyatt (Blu-ray)

I’m not too familiar with the mythology of Planet of the Apes. dimly remember watching it a few years ago, or seeing some of it at least. I’m most familiar with it thanks to a combination of the end of Spaceballs and the Simpsons’ musical version. Oh, and the unmemorable remake made a long way back by Tim Burton. I think there might have been a TV series at one point, reshown while BBC were doing Thunderbirds repeats on Channel 4 back in the 1990s. But overall, I couldn’t really give a monkeys (sorry, sorry) about Planet of the Apes as a franchise.

So what’s so special about this incarnation? Which is, worst of all, a prequel! Well, riding the current slew of prequels really should count against it’. as the worst thing prequels seem to be doing is  ‘over-explaining-shit’ to needlessly fill in the gaps between original films and the imagination of the viewers, also ruining the surprises of the original movies. But that’s another subject (and rant!) for another time.

My feeling about this bold prequel to the Planet of the Apes series is that many modern viewers will have relatively little exposure to the 1960s original. It’s iconic, but many may have forgotten exactly why. So I’m able to let that aspect of the prequel go. providing it’s a strong movie on its own. In fact, the original series had alread disappeared up their own retellings and sequels, and ‘Rise…’ is partly based on an earlier Planet of the Apes movie, but with significant changes. It makes some sensible updates, keeping it real and not too cheesy. It’s also saved by a decent story and some well defined characters. They’ve also managed to create the most effective CGI character since Gollum.

This character is Caesar (Andy Serkis). He’s a chimp who gets adopted by James Franco’s scientist character. Starting off teeny and cute, he grows into a fully fledged CGI creation, human sized and fully capable of reason and emotional understanding. This is done so well I was soon rooting for Caeser and his survival. The effects feel flawless, this is a great leap in the technology, fine tuned even since Peter Jackson’s King Kong in 2004.

The Apes really are incredible to watch, pulling us into the story with a full gmaut of emotions. The human actors don’t do a bad job, either. James Franco is continuing to reveal his strengths as an actor who chooses roles in interesting movies. In this film there are echoes of Deep Blue Sea, as his scientist character attempts to cure Altzheimer’s Disease by making a serum that improves cognitive faculties. This cause is personal as his father, played by the always endearing John Lithgow, is suffering worsening stages of the disease. I have a hunch that John Lithgow was also cast due to starring in the Harry and the Hendersons movie, or it could just be a happy coincidence!

Franco’s scientist experiments on apes as he works on this cure, but when the first demonstration goes badly wrong he’s banned from trying further tests. All the affected apes til then are destroyed. It turns out that there was  baby ape, however, and so our hero ends up with infant Caeser. The little ape soon becomes part of the family, and it’s only as Caeser ages that he starts to realise the difference between himself and the humans who raised him. The big question is, which side will he pick?

Well, I ended up rooting for the apes as, through a sequence of fairly fluid storytelling, the inevitable rebellion begins to happen. It’s a shame that apart from the humans directly involved with James Franco, every other person we meet is a bit of an asshole or outright hate-worthy. This works as a spur to Caeser, but it’s a pity the ‘baddies’ couldn’t have been a little more shaded.

I also hope that the film isn’t really suggesting that humanity could do with wiping out, although I like the concept of accidentally arranging our own destruction. It would have also been nice if the female chimp-expert-cum-love-interest, played by Frieda Pinto, hadn’t been in the background quite so much. But at least she didn’t require rescuing at any point and served a good purpose in the story itself.

The story was strong, not too much leaped out as illogical, the action was seamless and a helicopter is attached by a silverback gorrilla. Yes, I think I got exactly what I wanted out of this movie, and if they want to do a sequel, done right, I’d probably be happy to see that, too. By then we might be watching a CGI James Franco, too! (Sorry, Franco)

Robin Hood & Russell Crowe (2010 version)

Robin Hood (2010) theatrical release poster

I feel I may have been a bit quick to judge this film. This is an open appeal to anyone who dismissed it to give it another chance, and get the decent version.

Sure, all the trailers made it look seriously derivative of the 1991 movie version starring Kevin Costner.

Sure, when I first saw it, the film didn’t quite click for me. It seemed to be lacking…explanations.

Then, on rewatching it on blu-ray, with the Director’s Cut instead of the Theatrical version, it suddenly and undeniably became a damn good historical action movie romp, directed by the Ridley Scott – the genius who gave us Alien, my favourite movie.

Ridley Scott has had a lot of hits, and some really have been stronger than others. For every Duellists, Alien, Thelma and Louise or Gladiator there have been a few that didn’t work out, like GI Jane, the original release of Blade Runner, and er, Conquest of Paradise. That said, even Matchstick Men was a very decent little film even though I strongly suspect – going by the documentary – that Mr R Scott was only there for the casting.

But back to Robin Hood. The original release version was duller, and as I said, quite a bit made no sense. From the very start, who were those masked boys running around in the woods? This is fleshed out greatly in the theatrical cut, giving them a purpose and an introduction to Robin and Marion, and when they turn up again during a moment of crisis, we’re not still going ‘why on earth are they there?’ So, that’s the most obvious improvement. I’ve only seen the original cut once, so the Director’s Cut is my default. I highly recommend seeing a copy of this and then deciding if you still think it’s a dry take on the Robin Hood story, or if Ridley Scott has actually managed to come up with a more deeply textured and interesting version of the myth.

Most importantly, in the DIrector’s Cut we get all the jokes put back in. Robin Hood’s men sure get merry, and with lots of booze and floozies, and there’s a better humour all round which lifts the film greatly, humanising the situation.

Wipes the floor with Kevin Costner’s version which is enjoyable for different reasons (cough-Alan Rickman-cough) I think it deserves a better chance. It has several villains, which become more apparent once you can tell the King of France and the bratty Prince John apart. I could, eventually. Lots of layers of evil here, too. Incidentally, is Mark Strong out to play the most villains of any actor, ever? The man is brilliant! I’m always happy to see he’s in a blockbuster, he’s cornered the market that I think Gary Oldman used to play for a bit. Psycho with a brain. And here he’s very, very bald, so you just know he’s evil, and he keeps getting wounded in the face, which just makes him even eviller and more badass. He can pull off a decent French accent as well. The man is versatile.

I also think that Russell Crowe’s accent is in no way the worst ever, he’s not Keanu Reeves for crying out loud. The character has also moved around a lot, so to me it makes sense it alters a bit. But seriously, get over it. It’s a decent enough British-type accent, we aren’t talking Daphne from Frasier here, either. To be fair, though, Cate Blanchett utterly nails a gruff Nottingham brogue. Cate Blanchett is also a great character, as a wise and no-nonsense Maid Marian who performs the classic will-they-won’t-they dance with Robin. I’m very happy that Ridley Scott can still give us excellent, and realistic strong women on the screen. For the makers of every other Hollywood blockbuster out there, ‘strong woman’ does not just mean shoving your leading lady in a pair of suspenders or a PVC catsuit and spiky heels, and handing her massive gun (and Zack Snyder, I’m looking very hard at you right now). A character with actual layers, Maid Marian is the best version of ‘strong woman’ that’s appeared in an action blockbuster since, er…er…

The film even gets away with its signal baiting ending card, when it says ‘And so the legend begins’ as Marian and Robin hide out in the forest, creating their Ewok community. This is followed by some top animation of sequences from the film. I’d really, really love to see a sequel. Anyone? We just want romps we can watch without gridning our popcorn into our gums. Is that too much to ask? I’ve also nearly had enough of origin stories, particularly as they’re about characters we know extremely well. Batman doesn’t need a reboot, it need to be about Batman. So, I sincerely hope we get that from the next Sherlock Holmes movie, over Christmas 2011.

Anyway, having seen how solidly Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood turned out, I am dying for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus to get released. The little peeks I’ve seen so far suggest that the smooth grunge of the original Alien returns. Massive sets ahoy!  The plot is intriguing, from the bits of it I’ve heard about, and they really aren’t billing it as a straight ‘prequel’. This is not the time to rant about prequels, but, they suck. Generally. Almost always. See The Thing remake/prequel and everything George Lucas has done since 1999. Same universe is fine, but a sequel that sucks the magic from the original story is just plain sad.

Changes

After several years it’s finally happened. I’m closing this blog and moving to wordpress, and then hopefully my own .com domain. I haven’t been giving this blog the attention it deserved, I kept waiting for my intentions to sort themselves out, and frankly I didn’t feel ready to write anything much while I was living in Cambridge. Things are better now we’ve moved back to Southampton.

I am now moving to these two new blog addresses, and will post updates here now and then:

http://joannakneilson.wordpress.com/
- A site dedicated to some serious writing and a place to link to all my published work

http://hauntedeyeball.wordpress.com/
- A place where I’ll still be reviewing books, TV, film and art, and anything else that comes my way.

If anyone’s out there, thank you for reading this blog, and please click away to find out more on.

‘The Little Friend’ by Donna Tartt

A quick review here, as I’ve just completed the book which is, certainly, the most useful book for passing time whilst sat on the loo. I swear that that is a compliment – some books just don’t cut it, but this weighty tome has been readable and entertaining. The atmosphere is pervasive, trickling with hot Southern State menace as 12 year old Harriet tries to uncover the truth behind the murder of her little brother several years ago. Her sister sleeps all day, her aunts barely listen to her, and her best and only real friend is a boy called Hely. She draws him into her plans and things soon turn lethal.

SPOILERS AHOY

Harriet is a self-involved, imaginative and believably stubborn twelve year old girl, teetering on the cusp of that world-altering change known as puberty. While she resists this and drifts ever deeper into her own fantasy life, she decides that a n’er do well, part of a clan of worse and even crazier ne’er do wells, was behind the murder of her little brother and sets out to get revenge. The book dips in and out of different characters heads – although thankfully not in the same section break. While this gave a brilliant overview of the small town mentality that Harriet is swamped by, and the unpleasant family life of the man she decided is guilty, it also distracts from being with Harriet all the way through. Her perspective is increasingly deluded and this is diluted by the bobbing between brains that happens here. Without the extra thoughts it’s likely that the book would be considerably shorter, with the bonus of an unreliable narrator in the style of Catcher in the Rye.

The inner worlds of the other characters are brilliantly drawn, however, and add a sympathy for everyone’s private hell and I still found it a deeply involving book. But it’s odd that it doesn’t actually go anywhere. I’d have appreciated a pulpier ending, just for a real sense that something is wrapped up. Maybe I just don’t get ‘literature’, because no sci-fi plot would be caught pulped hanging like this. Criminally (er…) we are left without any resolution for the tragic murder at the start, and that it was actually a maguffin all along, driving the plot but being completely pointless at the last hurdle. We never learn who did it – then again, this isn’t the Hardy Boys! There still some important murders along the way, and these are well drawn and lead to a hugely tense scene. Also, I have to wonder if the Ratcliffe family are indestructible, given what they go through, too. Perhaps all of this was just a dream belonging to her sister, the ever-sleepy Allison, or the dying thoughts of their adorably named cat, Weenie. It’s a shame because it’s a great ride getting there. Perhaps we’re supposed to learn that resolution isn’t part of real life. This is a good slice of Southern Gothic, with snakes, red-necks and the white-heat of a long dreary summer. If you expect anything to be properly tied up, please keep clear.

Despite lacking a full conclusion, there’s still a lot to like. The Little Friend was an enthralling and atmospheric read and I will soon be checking out Donna Tartt’s first book, as it tends to garner stronger reviews than this has.

Doing without live telly – and loving it – Introduction

Having successfully moved to a new location, from Winchester to Cambridge, UK, our household (me, boyfriend, cat) made the decision to scrap any of the live TV channels and use Virgin Media Broadband only. This fixed our Sky+ addiction at once, and the theory was that the media we consumed would consist of things we CHOSE to view, rather than letting the burping digital tide wash over us, smothering our willpower with endless flashy adverts, music videos of girls dancing in their knickers, and lots of comedy we’d seen before ten years ago, or didn’t really care about. Of course we could have switched Sky off at any time. Yep, works in theory. But there’s no end to it, even though, after about two years, we’d caught up on all the repeats of things we’d missed (I was delighted to rediscover Knightmare, the childrens’ sword & sorcery gameshow from the 1980s and early ‘90s, being broadcast on Challenge!) and a lot more guilty pleasures of this ilk soon followed. (Yes, I used the word ‘ilk’, it’s fab). It was fun while it lasted, and very, very bad for the brain.

This isn’t going to be a smug rant about how we gave up watching telly altogether, because frankly we haven’t! But, as even Channel 4 discovered, there’s only so long you can repeat something (i.e. Friends) without it becoming a standing joke. There were only so many times even I could watch Sex and the City episodes on Comedy Central without becoming seriously blasé – and yet unable to look away! On Sky, having access to newish movies was a great thing to have, but were they worth the money? They would appear only long after the hype and even the DVD had been released, although this helped to take the film on its merits.

So I’m going to take a look at the alternative entertainment options on offer instead, as without the steady feed of live TV, it soon became clear that the more discerning we were, the more we got out of taking personal responsibility and wilfully choosing what appeared in front of us, rather than becoming hypnotised by flicking channels on the Sky screen. There’s something very fulfilling about the media we consume becoming finite, and everything we do watch holds greater value this way. (It might even improve my attention-whatsit.)

On another note, even before we did this, we knew we barely watched the BBC and paid separately for Sky+, and yet the TV Licence continues to maintain its grip on the United Kingdom to a ridiculous extent. Another juicy blog argument, yet again, which is getting more ridiculous as the months and years roll by. It’s easy to deflect into a rant about this, and I’d like to debate that another time as well.
For now, I want to examine the alternatives to live tv (and the BBC) already out there – and yes, one or two of these come from the BBC, but this, I hasten to add, is mainly because they already have a grip on the market and they are certainly not the first choice when we look for something to watch.