vulgarweed (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vulgarweed) wrote2005-10-02 11:23 pm
vulgarweed) wrote2005-10-02 11:23 pm
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Been a great couple of weeks to be a Neil Gaiman fan, that's for sure.
So, MirrorMask!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
quantum_witch and I went out to see this yesterday with our menfolks.
It's about as beautiful as films get, for one thing. I can't remember the last time I've walked away from a film so dazzled by such an intense universe that is so utterly itself, like no other place I have any frame of reference for, and so completely real in its surreality. Maybe City of Lost Children. (which it reminded me of in some ways)
For the collaboration between Dave McKean and Jim Henson Studios--anybody with any interest in digital animation and conventional animation and how to integrate it with live actors and natural locations and bring whole realities to life that couldn't be done any other way NEEDS to see this film.
The story is a pure fairy tale, in that Gaimanesque sort of way where the sly asides give my li'l cynic a touchstone to hang on to while all the stakes of the quest are utterly, utterly real (as are the rewards). Now, a reviewer of my acquaintance took it to task for being eye candy with thin characters, but I found the story's dream logic was utterly, unfailingly true. The Light Queen and the Dark Queen (both of them also Helena's mother, whose life is in danger), Helena and the Anti-Helena, and none of them in their proper places...well, I don't wanna go all Jungian and I'm not gonna spoil it. Just know that there are some people on my flist I really REALLY think would appreciate this film on a spiritual level, and I'm not pulling any punches on that.
I'm also almost finished with Anansi Boys and I am thoroughly loving it. It's certainly funnier than American Gods and a whole lot lighter...but I'm not convinced at all that it's less deep. A lot of the intensity of it is in what one might call the "throwaways"...and yet, they are so not. It's a much "smaller" story of course. With different priorities...actually the more I think about it, the less sense it seems to make to compare them at all!
1. At least once or twice, Gaiman breaks the "fourth wall" of writing, with a sort of "I regret to say" type aside, a la Tolkien in The Hobbit. Which always jolts me out of the story every time it happens, unless it's part of the story a la Italo Calvino or Lemony Snicket. Yet I do this often too, in humorous stories. Is there an etiquette for this? I feel Gaiman didn't do it enough to set up an expectation that it would be there.
2. This may be an issue mostly for those who studied literature in lefty colleges, but I've always been perpetually insecure about culture and race and appropriation in my own writing. On principle I certainly don't automatically disapprove of this scenario (white writer; African/Caribbean cosmology; Black characters); I think any writer is free to try to tell any story that calls upon him or her. (There is Mystery involved, after all; our stories choose us.) But it's still a thing that I take notice of. Any thoughts? pleasepleaseplease LJ gods don't let this turn wanky.
Aaaaand....it won't be long before the only two-week-old Good Omens Library gets its 100th story uploaded. It's currently at 93* Over at the forums I proposed doing something fun for that momentous occasion.
ETR: (edited to rec) Speaking of American Gods, a fantastic gen fic that isn't getting nearly the feedback it deserves: Confidence Men, byxylodemon. Wednesday and Loki, "Life, liberty, and the art of the two-man con."
*(li'l shoutout to David Tibet and a certain kind of music-geeks and the Thelemites in da houze)
So, MirrorMask!
quantum_witch and I went out to see this yesterday with our menfolks.It's about as beautiful as films get, for one thing. I can't remember the last time I've walked away from a film so dazzled by such an intense universe that is so utterly itself, like no other place I have any frame of reference for, and so completely real in its surreality. Maybe City of Lost Children. (which it reminded me of in some ways)
For the collaboration between Dave McKean and Jim Henson Studios--anybody with any interest in digital animation and conventional animation and how to integrate it with live actors and natural locations and bring whole realities to life that couldn't be done any other way NEEDS to see this film.
The story is a pure fairy tale, in that Gaimanesque sort of way where the sly asides give my li'l cynic a touchstone to hang on to while all the stakes of the quest are utterly, utterly real (as are the rewards). Now, a reviewer of my acquaintance took it to task for being eye candy with thin characters, but I found the story's dream logic was utterly, unfailingly true. The Light Queen and the Dark Queen (both of them also Helena's mother, whose life is in danger), Helena and the Anti-Helena, and none of them in their proper places...well, I don't wanna go all Jungian and I'm not gonna spoil it. Just know that there are some people on my flist I really REALLY think would appreciate this film on a spiritual level, and I'm not pulling any punches on that.
I'm also almost finished with Anansi Boys and I am thoroughly loving it. It's certainly funnier than American Gods and a whole lot lighter...but I'm not convinced at all that it's less deep. A lot of the intensity of it is in what one might call the "throwaways"...and yet, they are so not. It's a much "smaller" story of course. With different priorities...actually the more I think about it, the less sense it seems to make to compare them at all!
1. At least once or twice, Gaiman breaks the "fourth wall" of writing, with a sort of "I regret to say" type aside, a la Tolkien in The Hobbit. Which always jolts me out of the story every time it happens, unless it's part of the story a la Italo Calvino or Lemony Snicket. Yet I do this often too, in humorous stories. Is there an etiquette for this? I feel Gaiman didn't do it enough to set up an expectation that it would be there.
2. This may be an issue mostly for those who studied literature in lefty colleges, but I've always been perpetually insecure about culture and race and appropriation in my own writing. On principle I certainly don't automatically disapprove of this scenario (white writer; African/Caribbean cosmology; Black characters); I think any writer is free to try to tell any story that calls upon him or her. (There is Mystery involved, after all; our stories choose us.) But it's still a thing that I take notice of. Any thoughts? pleasepleaseplease LJ gods don't let this turn wanky.
Aaaaand....it won't be long before the only two-week-old Good Omens Library gets its 100th story uploaded. It's currently at 93* Over at the forums I proposed doing something fun for that momentous occasion.
ETR: (edited to rec) Speaking of American Gods, a fantastic gen fic that isn't getting nearly the feedback it deserves: Confidence Men, by
xylodemon. Wednesday and Loki, "Life, liberty, and the art of the two-man con."*(li'l shoutout to David Tibet and a certain kind of music-geeks and the Thelemites in da houze)