The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Tuesday, April 07, 2009

A Perfect Day

I've had a few of them: the day Nicki was born. The day I realized I loved Tananarive. The day I broke through a major block at the Q3-4 workshop in Atlanta (talk to the trees, Steve!) and today might be another one. In the last two weeks major positive stuff seems to be happening. Some of it I'll talk about later, I don't want to jinx it. But if a certain telephone call I'm taking at 3:30 today goes well, I promise I'll spill all the beans.

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What I want to say anyway is that I am in love with life. Every evidence suggests that if you make clear plans, believe in yourself, and work your butt off...as long as you let nothing disappoint you, and keep modeling the success of others...miracles happen. Or at least, your dreams begin to come true, a little step at a time.

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Movies. Say "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" and thought it was great fun. The set-up is that two platonic roommakes, male and female, have been buddies since grade school, but never "done it." After ending up accidentally famous on U-Tube, they decide to make a porn film to cash in on the fame. Said film would climax, so to speak, with the two of them doing the dirty deed. And that's when the raunchy fun begins. Occasssionally bust-a-gut funny, it's mostly kinda chuckly and warm, strange for a Kevin Smith movie. A solid "B."

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"Knowing," the new sci-fi film about a guy (Nick Cage) who gets ahold of a list of disasters leading up to something really un-funny, is actually decent, but I have to give it a SAMBO ALERT.

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(SPOILER)

O.K., the list is a warning from aliens that our world is about to come to an end. The aliens manegest as white people. The only two people we see saved are white people. Sorry, but I've seen entirely too many movies ("When Worlds Collide" anyone?) where the only people in the world worth saving are white for me not to flinch at this. And it's a shame...there was a perfect scene there where they could have shown that the aliens brought people from around the world, from all groups. I thought they were going to do that. Ah, well...this is why I love the pressure various racial groups put on Hollywood to get their members into apprenticeship programs in management and tech. Without representation, this kind of (I'm sure) unconscious exclusion would happen even more often. Thank God Jason doesn't have to grow up surrounded by this crap.

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I'm going to Norwescon in a couple of days. Thinking of having a little room party Saturday night. If anyone reading this is going to attend, please let me know...love to see you!
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And please keep your fingers crossed for me. Like I said, something very very nice could happen at 3:30 pst today.

1 comment:

bud said...

Re: Knowing:
Even good ol' whitebread me noticed that. I think that the original script had an element of other survivors (although I have no idea what the racial mix would have been) but it was removed to emphasize the "Adam and Eve" element... but they spent too much money on the CGI showing other "ships" landing to throw out that footage with the concept.

Personally, I thought it was a crappy movie, right from concept - "Children of the Corn" meet "Childhoods End".