Author: latepaul

Another Watchmen Blog Post – Why?

Post author By latepaul
Post date 13 March 2009
No Comments on Another Watchmen Blog Post – Why?

M. and I went to see Watchmen on Tuesday night and one of the things we did afterwards was to browse some of the online comment about the movie together. She read out one blog entry that basically just kept repeating the question “Why?”

Which is kind of how I feel – about this post, not the movie.

I’m not sure I have anything original or insightful to say. Still most of my reviews are well after the fact so I’m going take the opportunity to gain a bit of passing trade by comment on something current when I’ve actually seen it.

So… I think I agree with most of the reviews that one problem with Watchmen is that it’s too reverentially close to the source material. Perhaps that’s unfair because as I said in my review of the comic book

That and extraordinary visuals. Take for example the iconic cover-art image (above) and see how that’s used and developed on the very first page. This kind of thing — starting on a small detail and pulling back and back until a fuller picture (literally and thematically) is revealed — is done throughout the book. It’s no wonder people want to make this into a movie. It’s like a pre-drawn storyboard for itself.

Though actually it’s not the direct copying of the book’s visual ideas that’s the problem. It’s the adherence to the plot – which makes the film episodic – which is obviously fine for a comic book but not for a movie where we need a single consistent story.

Where I also agree with a lot of the reviews is that the ‘Hallelujah’ sex scene was cringe-makingly awkward and awful. It reminded me of the kind of soft porn I used to furtively seek out as a teenager. Superficially enticing, once you get over the “ooh naked bodies” of it, it’s extremely un-erotic due to how obviously fake it is. Two naked people rubbing themselves against each other but blatantly and deliberately not having sex is weird and embarrassing.

I did enjoy the movie – Rorshach was great, as was Dreiberg/Nite Owl – but it felt slow and ponderous in places and gratuitously violent in others. The change to the ending was not as radical as it might have been (should have been perhaps) and in my opinion slightly improved it. But then I never really liked the comic book ending.

But having agreed with a lot of people who basically said it was a disappointment let me say this: it’s not so very long ago that a big budget CGI-fest like this came with a free lobotomy. Aside from a few notable exceptions such as Dark Knight many still do. One of the trailers was for Transformers 2 and that doesn’t look like it’s got anything interesting to say about the moral ambiguity involved in wielding power. It’s nice to see a blockbuster that’s actually got some ideas in it.

6/10 – enjoyable but not as good as the book because it needed to be not the book a bit more.

Tags comic book, movie, nite owl, rorshach, watchmen

reviews

Lesamy Week 25 – Big Breakfast

Post author By latepaul
Post date 9 March 2009
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When we moved offices at work back at the end of January it had an effect on my eating habits. It became easier to make and take my own sandwiches. Which meant that I was eating slightly more calories for lunch than I had been. Which in turn meant that I compensated by having a smaller breakfast. Probably over-compensated because I found I regularly had 400+ calories spare at the end of the day so my usual one treat had become three.

Which would be fine – as long as it’s in the budget – except I was feeling quite hungry toward the end of the day. Plus I was also struggling a bit with my morning sit-ups. If you recall the reason I started having breakfast at all was so as to have something inside me before I attempted these. I guess I forgot that, or thought that a 100 calorie yoghurt was somehow helping with that.

So now I’m back on my 361 breakfast of cereal. It’s made a huge difference to my feeling less hungry in the afternoons and has, I think, helped my mood. I wish I could say it has made the sit-ups easy, but I definitely think it has made them easier.

So anyway here’s some figures:

Weekly loss: 1.4kg (3.1lb)
Total loss: 33.1kg (73lb or 5st 3lb)
To target: 34.8kg (77lb or 5st 7lb)
Current weight: 111kg (244lb or 17st 6lb)

So I’m now over 5 stone down!

Tags breakfast, diet, dieting, exercise, lesamy, weight-loss

movie reviews

Ghost Town

They seem to love Ricky Gervais in the US. Something I can’t quite understand – for the simple, arrogant reason that I personally think he’s just ok. I can’t see why many other fine British actors or comedians never get the reception he gets.

Anyway they obviously like him enough that someone thought he could star in a romantic comedy. And you know what maybe they’re right because it oh-so-nearly works. And as you may know if you’ve read this blog for a while that’s quite an acheivement for a rom-com in my opinion. The nearly-great ones are rare enough never mind the tuly great.

Gervais plays a mildy misanthropic dentist, Bertram Pincus, who dies briefly on the operating table and acquires the ability to see ghosts. This is not much fun as they all want something from him – all that unfinished business with the living – “tell my daughter I love her”, “the will’s hidden behind the…” and so on.

Chief amongst these is Greg Kinnear who is the dead husband of Téa Leoni and it’s his attempts to frustrate Leoni’s new relationship via Gervais that occupy most of the film. Naturally Gervais falls for her and thus we have a story, albeit a fairly predictable one.

Which is not to say this movie is without its charms – it looks great, it manages to find some shots of New York we’ve not seen a million times before – but let’s get to the key question: does Gervais pull it off as a romantic lead?

Well yes and no.

First the no. At the end of the day he doesn’t look like a leading man. It’s not actual looks per se it’s the way he holds himself I think. He’s too used to being the figure of fun. Also whilst I think he’s likeable and has some chemistry with Leoni, when Greg Kinnear comes on screen you realise what a great comic actor he is and what’s lacking a little with Gervais.

Also, and this is not Gervais’ fault really, there’s this thing that happens in some comedies with a forceful comic personality at the centre where the comedian steps outside of the plot and basically does his schtick – his well-known sitcom character, or even his stand-up routine – and the characters around him/her carry on as if this is nothing unusual. You see it in everything from Woody Allen to Groucho Marx and it makes for a certain kind of comedy, but I don’t think it works in a rom-com because it distances you slightly from the emotional reality of the characters.

What works is that Gervais does sadness well. Cleverly David Koepp co-writer and director, has fashioned a story in which Ricky’s character is more sad than bad. He doesn’t really hate the world he’s hiding from it because he’s been hurt. This is where Gervais’ training as a comic loser comes in, because such characters as David Brent are really tragic figures. So Gervais knows how to make us feel sorry for his dentist Pincus. It’s a short step from there to empathy and to imagine why Leoni feels something for him.

Overall it’s a brave attempt and I did enjoy it. As a movie per se it’s no better than quite good, but if you have to choose a rom-com from the last 5 years you could do an awful lot worse.

7/10 – Mildly enjoyable

Tags ghost town, ghosts, movie, review, ricky gervais, rom-com, romantic comedy

25 books reading reviews

25 Books, book 2: I am Legend

Post author By latepaul
Post date 8 March 2009
1 Comment on 25 Books, book 2: I am Legend

I had a dilemma as whether to include this book or not in my 25 Books list. You see I didn’t actually read this, I listened to an audio book version of it. An abridged version as broadcast on Radio 7. However since I’m lagging seriously on my books (I should be onto book 5 or 6 by now) I’m allowing it. After all it is a book and I spent the time to “read” (i.e. listen to it). But I’m adding a rule that I can have a couple of audio books.

By the way on that whole “I’m way behind” thing look for an upcoming blog post, hopefully later today.

Anyway to this book.

I first became aware of “I am Legend” in the credits to the 1971 movie “The Omega Man”. The movie, based fairly loosely on the book, is about a man living alone in a world devastated by a world-wide plague that killed 95% of the population and left the remaining few as pale-skinned… well what they are is an interesting point but let’s just say they can only come out at night and they’re no longer quite human, and definitely not friendly.

Anyhow I enjoyed the film – though it was a bit dated – and always intended one day to go back to the book. I intended this even more after the recent Will Smith remake of the film – which I’ve not yet seen. And now I finally have read/listened to the book.

I enjoyed it but it wasn’t the big step up from the movie that I thought it might be. It was better in some ways but less satisfying in others.

This kind of story – last man left alive – has always appealed to me, both as a reader and a writer. In fact I did, during Eurofiction, write a story that was compared by the judges to I am Legend. It was one of my two highest scoring stories but not one I was particularly proud of. I think the appeal – which is obviously not unique to me – is that one can easily imagine oneself as alone in the world. Being alone aside from hostile not-quite-human creatures can easily become a metaphor for “No-one really gets me, I feel as if I’m all alone”.

The book was written in 1954 and it betrays its era in a couple of ways, notably its handling of sex. It’s actually quite coy on details to a modern eye/ear whilst maintaining a tone that suggests it knows it’s being shocking – which I guess it would have been. At times it felt like what I imagine an old-fashioned bodice-ripper would be like – lots of “heat rising in his loins” and so on. There’s a discussion of Neville’s frustrated desires, but absolutely no mention, nor even implication, of masturbation as a release.

One thing it does, which I imagine was fairly new in 1954 but has become almost a cliche since, is to give us a “scientific” explanation of a classic mythical monster. And this is where it diverges from the movie (ok, more properly the movie diverges from the book) because it explicitly calls the plague victims “vampires” whereas in the movie they’re not – at least I don’t recall any fangs or bloodsucking. I actually quite enjoy this trope and Matheson does it well, though it has been done better since.

The story is fairly slow-moving. There are some fast paced moments of fleeing from or fighting his vampire foes, but there are also long passages, discussions of how he survives, of his scientific theorising, in which not a lot happens. I actually didn’t mind but I can imagine some readers being impatient.

The ending is another area where the book differs from the 1971 movie (and the 2007 one is different again I believe). I actually think the movie ending is the better one – but I won’t spoil either.

6/10 – enjoyable but a bit dated and not quite a classic.

Tags books, i am legend, last man, movie, novel, reading, reviews, sci-fi, will smith

writing

Once Again, Only GOOD this Time

Post author By latepaul
Post date 7 March 2009
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One Competition Finishes…

So SlingInk’s Eurofiction is over. Actually for me it’s been over for more than a week but I finally got the final scores. For those that don’t know Eurofiction is SlingInk’s annual short story competition. 10 rounds over 20 weeks with the scoring following a ‘Eurovision’ model (top story gets 12, next two get 10, next two 9 and so on).

My goals for Eurofiction were simple:

Finish it i.e. hand in a story for each round (I only managed two rounds of the Whitaker 2008)
Write a new story each round

Well I finished and did complete each round. I wrote 9 new stories and only re-worked an old for one round because of a last minute work thing that meant I didn’t have as much time as I’d hoped. Once I realised what the scoring system was and that there were 32 entrants I added an extra goal:

score in each round

I did score in each round though by round 6 all that required was that I kept entering due to the number of people no longer submitting. I didn’t win a round but I scored 10 twice. My lowest score was 2 (in round 2).

Lessons Learnt

What did I learn from SlingInk?

That I am capable of not only finishing stories but doing so regularly
That deadlines are great – they motivate you to finish stuff
that deadlines are evil – they stress you out and cause you to hand in any old crap
that what I like and what scores highly aren’t necessarily the same thing. My favourite stories of mine scored 2 and 6. My least favourite scored 10.

So Let’s Do It Again

In about 30 minutes[1] Whittaker 2009 starts and I’m entered. This is the short story competition of The Write Idea forum. I entered last year but dropped out due to lack of persistence. However buoyed by my success – in terms of finishing – in Eurofiction I’m going into this quietly excited. Plus I like the fact that I’ll be back on the deadline treadmill again. Like as in also hate it that is.

Whittaker’s similar to Eurofiction but there are a few differences:

Only 9 rounds
There’s a 2500 word limit – Eurofiction has no limit and in 2 of my entries I went over 2500.
The scoring is based on a 100-point system with so many for character, plot etc. I prefer this as I can see where I’m doing well. (though Eurofiction did have very helpful constructive feedback)
The scoring is based on the story itself not relative to the others. In theory all entrants could score exactly the same.
The prompts in Whittaker tend to be a bit more cryptic – but they are there more for inspiration than anything.

New Competition, New Goals

My goals for Whittaker 2009 look a lot like my ones for Eurofiction:

Finish – enter each round
Write new stories for each round
Make the quality higher – write stuff you’re actually proud of.
Win a round

Those last two are obviously linked. The incentive to win is that the winners get published in an anthology and whilst its the kind of thing largely bought by the writers and their friends and family, last year’s was really well put together.

But aside from winning I really want to make this about writing better. The great thing about the deadlines was it made me finish stuff on a schedule. The bad thing was that by the end of the competition I’d get to a deadline and all I cared about was having something to hand in. If this is to be about learning to write then I want these stories to be better.

How To Write Good

How am I going to achieve that? Simple really. My new rule is that I won’t allow myself to hand in a first draft. I sort of had this last time but in the end I was polishing the first draft, mainly for typos and spelling and calling it a second draft and entering that. This time I really won’t hand in draft one because the rule is I have to write draft two from scratch.

I did this with a couple of my first stories. I wrote an entire first draft then started again with a blank document. It works because you already know something about how the story should go. Any good bits, any really nice bits of writing, snappy dialogue or effective description you’ll remember anyway. Plus it allows you to just write without worrying about where it’s going because you already sort of know. Not that I’ll not re-configure the plot if that seems like a good idea.

I’m going to try to make “first week = first draft” my motto too – but I know the power/curse of deadlines – everything gets done, but it gets done last minute. We’ll see.

[1]or probably already has by the time I finished writing and formatting this post.[2]

[2]yep it has!

Tags eurofiction, slingink, the write idea, whittaker, writing

lesamy

Lesamy Week 24 – No Tipping Point

Post author By latepaul
Post date 2 March 2009
No Comments on Lesamy Week 24 – No Tipping Point

You know I’ve been doing this for quite a long time now – more than 20 weeks in fact – so you think I’d be used to it by now. The ups and downs, the uneven nature of the loss, how hard it can be, not physically but psychologically.

But I guess I’m not.

It’s been another tough week. I’ve struggled with motivation and wanted to give up. I keep coming back to that Fat Aceeptance thing and wondering why I’m doing this. If it was for general fitness then I’ve achieved that. All that’s really left is that I must simply want to look better. That I believe being 12 stone will make me better in some ways that being 18.

So why do I keep going? Well for one I realised that if I was to do the HAES thing properly then it’d look a lot like what I’m doing already. In terms of the things that are most effort – having to think about what I’m eating, and making time to take exercise – they’d still apply even if I’d be letting myself eat more and being all self-accepting. So what “giving up” would really be like, real giving up, would not be HAES, it would be back to slob-dom and ever-increasing weight and unfitness. As long as I’m not damaging my health – and I really believe I’m not – then why not try to keep going?

That was one thing. The other was the idea, oft-repeated but never really tried by me, that things that are worthwhile take effort. Well guess what this is the effort. What did you think “not being easy” would feel like?

And then there’s always plain old stubbornness.

So, I grit my teeth and I make myself doing situps when all I want to do is stay in bed. I push myself to go for a walk when I know it doesn’t really add much to the weight-loss. I stick to my calorie limit when I really really fancy a whole bar of chocolate. Or some wine. And I make it through another week knowing that it’s just one week amongst many many to come – cos we’re motorway driving, but I’m really tired and want to just get there…

Anyway.

I guess I always thought there’d be a ‘tipping poing’. A point where it really was ‘all downhill from here’. Where the fact that I weighed less would mean that I was pushing, pulling, lifting, dragging less weight around and so the exercise thing would be easier which would mean I could do more, which would accelerate the weight-loss…

But there’s no tipping point. I may have lost nearly 5 stone but I still have this huge belly that makes my morning pushups a struggle. I still have far too much wobbly bits to think about running rather than walking just yet. And I still look like a fat bloke.

And that’s really the issue. It’s not even that I care how I look, not really. It’s that I’ve done this huge thing. I’ve worked hard at something, consistently over months, exhibited a level of discipline and self-control I didn’t know I was capable of and if I stopped now no-one – no-one I hadn’t actually told – would know. I’d get no credit for it. That’s what I want. It’s not how I’d look, it’s that it’d be obvious I’d done something impressive.

Yes I am that shallow.

Weekly loss: 1.4kg (3.1lb)
Total loss: 31.7kg (69.9lb or 4st 13lb)
Current weight: 112.4kg (247lb or 17st 9lb)

Tags diet, dieting, exercise, fitness, lesamy, weight-loss

lesamy

Lesamy Week 23 – The Cost of Freebies

Post author By latepaul
Post date 23 February 2009
No Comments on Lesamy Week 23 – The Cost of Freebies

So after last week’s ‘tough week’ this was supposed to be the week where I knuckled down again and started making more serious progress to the next milestone.

Yeah right, erm, ok.

When I first started Lesamy you’ll recall that one of the ‘rules’ was that I am allowed a ‘cheat day’ once a week of upto 2300 calories instead of my normal 1800. I’ve never really done this. What I did instead was invent the ‘freebie’. A freebie is a day, an evening or occasionally a weekend when I stop counting calories. During a ‘freebie’ I can eat and drink what I like and it doesn’t count.

I started this because early on I went to spend a weekend with M. and I wanted to relax and I also didn’t want her to feel like she suddenly had to change her eating habits because I was with her. I told myself I’d still eat sensibly – not have snacks, watch portion size that kind of thing – but I was consciously not going to count calories.

It’s a strategy that’s worked well. Partly because it gives me the regular ‘treating myself’ times that a cheat day was supposed to achieve. However mostly I think because in the early days I could have a freebie and still lose weight. That’s getting tougher.

It’s getting tougher because I’m losing less on average generally so there’s less slack in there, but also because the freebies are getting bigger. That ‘…but still eat sensibly’ bit has gotten a bit squeezed out.

This week for instance I’ve had two freebies and they’ve both been quite big. I hope I’ve learnt from them and will try not to repeat the mistakes.

Freebie 1 was on Wednesday when I finished my final story for Eurofiction. As a celebration I took a freebie. I deliberately went and bought some of the kinds of thing I used to eat a while back – real junk food – microwaveable burgers, pork pie, sausage roll. You know what? I didn’t enjoy them. Too greasy and too much.

Freebie 2 was on Friday when I went to the pub at lunchtime. Normally I try to only have 1 freebie a week but when I get invited to the pub I like to go because it’s social. Unfortunately alcohol is a danger because not only is it calorfiic but it lowers your defences. It had been someone’s birthday and they’d bought donuts – too many donuts as it turned out. So when I got back to the office, a little merry, and saw they were there I had about four. Apart from anything else it made me ill to have so much sickly sugary stuff.

Actually I used to do ok with the pub visits and I can’t help wondering if it’s because of my lunches. It used to be the case that I bought my lunch in town. A fairly low-cal sandwich and baked crisps. However on days where I got an invite to the pub it was invariably too late to buy something so I’d go, eat a pub lunch -usually something with chips – and have a couple of beers. I’d feel guilty but write it off as a freebie.

Since we moved to the new office it’s too far to go into town and I’ve been bringing packed lunches. Which is better but if we go to the pub then I’m drinking on a much less full stomach which means I’m liable to go for snacks on the way back – such as the donuts in this case. So ironically – I might be better off having a plate of chips at the pub.

I make it sound like I go to the pub a lot – actually it’s once or twice a month at most – but I do need to be careful.

Anyway I think I need to reign in the freebies – stick to one a week and remember they’re not supposed to be free-for-alls.

Here’s my stats for this week:

Weekly loss: 0.2kg (0.4lb)
Total loss: 30.3kg (66.8lb or 4st 10lb)
Current weight: 113.8kg (250lb or 17st 12lb)

Tags chips, diet, dieting, freebie, lesamy, pub lunch, weight-loss

reviews TV

Dollhouse 1.01 – ‘Ghost’

Dollhouse is the new TV show from Joss Whedon, starring Eliza Dushku. You may not have heard much about it, you certainly haven’t from this blog because I’ve been keeping a low profile. I’ve been deliberately ignoring hype and information for two reasons:

I think I’ll enjoy it more with less pre-conceptions
I think I’ll be less invested in it if it gets cancelled.

However it’s Joss Whedon and it’s the first new TV from him in a long time, virtually the first new anything. So I’d lying if I said I hadn’t been looking forward to it.

Unfortunately it’s not great. I mean it’s not great, not insanely fun and re-defining what you can do with the genre, it’s merely OK. At least that’s true of episode 1 – Ghost. I hope and pray (almost truthfully) that it will get better. All three of Joss’ previous TV series had merely ok eps, Angel and Buffy at least had some not good at all ones. So I’ve been trying to convince myself that it’s ok, that it can have a mediocre start and get better. I’m having a little trouble though because all his previous shows were better than this from ep 1. Even Firefly‘s “The Train Job” which was a re-tooled, and significantly less-good, pilot from the original two-hour Serenity – even that was better.

By now you’re probably thinking I hated it. I didn’t but let me put it this way. If you’d shown me this and I didn’t know it was from Joss I would never have thought he’d been involved. It had none of his humour or flair for dialogue. It pretty much just played it straight all the way through.

Unlike some other fans/reviewers I don’t see the concept – agents or ‘actives’ are programmed with personalities/skills, hired out and then have their minds wiped on return – as inherently a problem. I can see that it could mean there’s no chance for character development, that we’re watching Eliza play a different role each week and so it’s hard to care – but someone as smart as Joss will have thought of that.

I’m more worried that take away the Joss humour and edge and what you’re left with, on the evidence of Ghost, could be a ep of pretty much any lawyer/cop procedural – albeit with a scifi twist.

I’m writing this now, over a week after I watched it because I’m about to watch ep 2, “The Target“. I’ll report back soon as to whether it got any better.

Eliza wakes up

Almost forgot the most important part – 5/10

Tags dollhouse, eliza dushku, episode 1, ghost, Joss Whedon, review, TV

lesamy

Lesamy Week 22 – Tough Week

Post author By latepaul
Post date 17 February 2009
No Comments on Lesamy Week 22 – Tough Week

It’s been a tough week. First of all I guess I relaxed a bit after last week’s big loss. Also I had one pub lunch day (allowed) but I also had a day where we had cakes for someone’s birthday, and another when we had “treats” for a company meeting. Normally I’d try to only have one of those type of things a week. I also had a couple of days when I missed my exercise.

By the weekend I was back on track as far as my normal regime goes but I was struggling a bit. I’d gotten a taste for eating again. I wanted to eat nice stuff, just because I fancied it. I managed to keep to my calorie limit but it was more of an effort of the will than it’s been lately. A similar thing happened with the exercise. I could easily have gone for a walk both Saturday and Sunday but I didn’t and ended up doing an hour on the stepper – most grudgingly.

Still it can’t all be easy huh? and I did do it in the end. I guess it just worries me when I have these kinds of struggles because I think it’s easier to will myself to do stuff now when I’m heading for a target than it will be when I’m just trying to maintain the weight.

But hey ho, here I am again looking on the glass-is-half-empty side.

Weekly loss: 0.6kg (1.3lb)
Total loss: 30.1kg (66.4lb or 4st 10lb)
Current weight: 114kg (251lb or 17st 13lb)