I would love to do it one year, but now I have two plots on the go and am not in a place where I can develop a new one from scratch. Which is a better excuse than I've had previous years and certainly one I feel happier about. I am, however, going to participate in a way by making a concerted effort to develop All England into, well, something less sketchy is all I can promise at the moment, but you get the idea. Obviously I hope to be able to write a lot of new bits, but I also need to do a fair bit of plot development, not to mention typing the bulk of the story so far since I wrote it in longhand to start with. I may try entering it in NaNo just to get comments - obviously I can't 'win' as it isn't a new project, but taking part might kick my arse a bit. I will try to blog at least twice a week - one 'development' post or profile and one extract. I also have a chain going here to keep me accountable, if I remember to update it...

Just watched the 'new' (well, new-er) Stepford Wives. I didn't exert any effort or money to do so, it just happened to be on TV and i had knitting to do that would benefit from some background.

Now, i must say, i love the original book. It is a work of genius, although it always surprises me to remember it was written by a man. No offence, i'm not saying men can't write or anything, just that in this particular instance i was surprised. Also, i've never seen the original film, but would certainly like to should it ever be on TV or available on video/dvd somewhere that doesn't involve delving into the recesses of a video shop and coming across films from That Series i have a phobia of. Anyway, love the original story, but this film pissed me off.

For a start, the Joanna in the book is a pretty cool person. She's a feminist, a good mother, a brilliant photographer, and also someone with insecurities most people can relate to. (I also like her wardrobe better in the promo shots from the first film, but maybe that's just me...) The Joanna in this film, not so much. In fact, she's someone i'd be having murderous thoughts about if i didn't suspect that she was going to get murdered as part of the plot. Also, this may seem minor, but 'Eberhardt' has been made into her own name in the film, where it was her married name in the book. These things matter to me, so it was just one more thing pissing me off. I guess i could be charitable and regard this woman as the granddaughter of the original, with all that follows in terms of parallels between the generations and so on, but must i stretch my imagination that much?!?

But i think my main issue was that the film was played for laughs. The original was a horror with some comic moments. This was a comedy taking the major piss out of something which still has a fuckload of horror potential.

( Cut because some people may regard this as containing spoilers, for this film, the related book, and for good measure Harry Potter. Your loss, cos it also contains samples of my devastating wit...Collapse )

Yeah, there were good bits. Bobbie (the cynical best friend) and Roger (camp 'feminine' half of Stepford's resident gay couple, replacing Charmaine from the book) were pretty cool - the sort of people you could see having the right sort of good influence on Joanna if they were all left to their own devices. (you know, away from being a cold-blooded corporate type, towards being the character she was in the book...) There were a couple of comedy moments, sure - i think i genuinely laughed about twice. Only one of those times involved something i can remember half an hour after the film finished.

( Cut for more spoilers, for the film and potentially the book. But not Harry Potter. I may be lying...Collapse )

So if you like gender comedy, you might like this. If you want a bit of political commentary chucked in, you might like to go elsewhere.

Kazuo Ishiguru's Never Let Me Go is quite disturbing reading. It is about a group of people who find out when they are very young that they are clones whose purpose in life is to be organ donors. (yes, for me this is light reading) It raises all sorts of debates - i guess cloning itself is an issue these days. Of course I think of it in terms of the animal testing debate too - you'd have to read it with that already in your mind to see the parallels, but they are there, mainly i guess in the question of what constitutes human life. Like so many other things (this is me straining to avoid a Godwin breach so early in the year!) the level of complicty with some might regard as an atrocity (although activism for clone's rights is not mentioned, despite the regime not being an explicily tyrannical one for 'normals') is shocking. It highlights the way that certain events can just be regarded as part of normal life. I could say something about how the clones' lives mirror our own, but to be honest i only just finished the book and haven't thought that bit through enough to want to write it out. Just a warning that i may do so in the future.

Been reading Simone de Beauvoir's She Came To Stay, found it in the new secondhand bookshop in Duck City Central. She's a way better fiction writer than Sartre, imo - by this stage in Nausea i was getting kind of bored. (and that from someone who likes - 'like', btw, does not imply 'agreed with' or the opposite - Sartre's political writings) I've often felt like Francoise, although i've a nasty feeling i might have been more like Xaviere if i'd been prettier. :-/ Certainly this is kind of an appropriate time for me to read it, given the amount of thought i've been giving to the merits of monogamy and its alternatives - it exposes all the insecurities of an open relationship which have nagged at me whenever the issue has arisen. (well, that's its purpose - to show the insecurities of SdeB's open relationship with JPS, also to gain some sort of revenge for a particular incident)

Joolz Denby is gorge!! Sorry, had to say that. Not just because of her tats and piercings either. Or her writing skills. (although i would recommend you find Stone Baby or Corazon if you want to know who i'm talking about, as they are well worth reading, and would be even if she was in fact a ditzy little blonde with plastic bits)