Archive for 'writing'

Jul201028

Brennig

0

Video (from the Latin: ‘I see’)

I’m desperately trying to keep this away from a Bristol-related rant. And also I’m going to work hard to keep this away from an ‘Underage and Having Sex’ (which we’re currently watching) rant…

I’m thinking of making a video.

No, really. A proper one, not one of those videos!

My sitcom sits on the hard-disk; finished and ready to get pimped around London. I think it’s not a bad piece of writing, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be setting myself up for the pain and rejection that the odds indicate are going to come my way.

I also think it’s not a bad piece of comedic writing (which isn’t much of an indication of quality, because writing comedy has always been my weak suit).

But, and here’s my problem, I’m having trouble seeing it as a piece of visual… stuff.

And that’s why I’m thinking of making a video.

Because making a video would help me with the visualisation, no? And it would give me an opportunity to fine-tune the screenplay and really help to develop the shooting-script. No?

It wouldn’t be a posh job.

We’re talking a wobbly hand-held or tripod-mounted camera and the whole product subjected to some seriously bad editing.

But the soundtrack would be a killer. And the soundtrack is a significant component of the sitcom.

My dilemma is, unfortunately, twofold.

Dilemma #1. Setting. Apart from the opening scene, all of episode one is set indoors – but in three different sets. But I think that could be OK. This isn’t supposed to be the finished article, and with a little creativity from the props department (me!) and a bucketload of imagination from the viewers (probably no-one), I think we can work around this.

Dilemma #2. The cast. Episode 1 scripts 6 speaking parts and a bunch of non-speaking extras. Even from the position that no-one will be expecting Oscar-winning performances, how does one begin getting the potential company together, where from and – when they’ve been found – what’s the best way of casting?

Hmmm… I think I need to consult an AmDram specialist. Fortunately, I have one at the stables.

In other news…

The girl on the television in the show ‘Underage and Having Sex’ was just talking about how, as a 13-year-old, she had sex for the first time.

She said ‘It happened, I don’t know how’.

Well dear, I could be a million miles off target with this, but I’d hazard a guess that you let him put his cock in your cunt. Is there anything else you need to know?

Tsk, kids.

As you can see, I successfully avoided a Bristol rant, but the ‘Underage and Having Sex’ rant just kind of slipped out. Sorry.

Jul201025

Brennig

0

Ha-ha, fooled you!

Yesterday Soph and I drove in to London, parked the car at Queensway and caught the tube to Mile End where we met Ash for lunch.

Ash is a unique guy. Genuinely talented and blessed with an abundance of creativity Ash chooses to spend most of his time working in the public sector; providing valuable services to some of our fellow humans most in need of assistance.

With his free time, Ash indulges his creative talents as a composer/musician of serious ability – we have shared just a fraction of his musical talent with our podcast listeners, under the names of artists ‘Warning! Heat Ray!’ and ‘Unsound’.

And he writes; as a music analyst/reviewer, Ash is one of the few muso-writers whose opinions – and writing – I hold in genuinely high regard.

Lunch, with Ash, was brilliant; that’s a measure of what a genuinely nice guy he is.

Later in the afternoon we went back to the West End, had lunch in an Italian restaurant in Berner Street then walked to the place where we were to meet up with author Alex Marsh and renowned blogger Jonny B.

Alex Marsh and Jonny B are the same person, obv.

The occasion was an informal launch of Alex’s new book ‘Sex and Bowls and Rock & Roll’, or as Alex put it ‘Not a book launch, just a drink in a pub with a few friends’.

Sitting next to Alex was the deliciously gorgeous Catherine Sanderson (aka internationally renowned author and erstwhile blogger, Petite Anglaise).

So that wasn’t very intimidating at all, was it? Jonny B and Petite Anglaise sitting next to me.

Erm, yes. I may have slipped in to idiot mode.

More people arrived.

Mike Atkinson (aka influential blogger/journalist Troubled Diva) was followed by a pair of very influential internet characters, bloggers, writers and podcasters, Cliff Jones and Mr Angry.

The very lovely (he did me a favour by personalising a copy of his book for Soph) Andrew Viner.

And there were others!

People whose names I can’t remember; intelligent, articulate people who said bright, witty (if not outrageously funny) things.

It was a fun, funny evening.

We bailed out, leaving the survivors to carry on, around 8pm.

By the time we got home, watched Big Brother drank tea and fell in to bed it was midnight.

This morning Soph and I are teetering around the house like a pair of newly-dead zombies.

Because we are not the grown-up people we pretended to be on two occasions, in front of all those folk, yesterday.

We are a pair of kids  who went out and successfully fooled them all.

Ha-ha, fooled you!

But not only was it really nice to meet everyone – from lunch with Ash to Jonny B and all of his friends – it was very pleasant to meet such a thoroughly nice group of people.

Jul201025

Brennig

0

Ha-ha, fooled you!

Yesterday Soph and I drove in to London, parked the car at Queensway and caught the tube to Mile End where we met Ash for lunch.

Ash is a unique guy. Genuinely talented and blessed with an abundance of creativity, Ash chooses to spend most of his time working in the public sector; providing valuable services to some of our fellow humans most in need of assistance.

With his free time, Ash indulges his creative talents as a composer/musician of serious worth – we have shared just a fraction of his musical talent with our podcast listeners, under the names of artists ‘Warning! Heat Ray!’ and ‘Unsound’.

And he writes; as a music analyst/reviewer, Ash is one of the few muso-writers whose opinions – and writing – I hold in genuinely high regard.

Lunch, with Ash, was brilliant; that’s a measure of what a genuinely nice guy he is.

Later in the afternoon we went back to the West End, had a meal in an Italian restaurant in Berner Street, then walked to the place where we were to meet up with author Alex Marsh and renowned blogger Jonny B.

Alex Marsh and Jonny B are the same person, obv.

The occasion was an informal launch of Alex’s new book ‘Sex and Bowls and Rock & Roll’, or as Alex put it ‘Not a book launch, just a drink in a pub with a few friends’.

Sitting next to Alex was the deliciously gorgeous Catherine Sanderson (aka internationally renowned author and erstwhile blogger, Petite Anglaise).

So that wasn’t very intimidating at all, was it? Jonny B and Petite Anglaise sitting next to me.

Erm, yes. I may have slipped in to idiot mode.

More people arrived.

Mike Atkinson (aka influential blogger/journalist Troubled Diva) was followed by a pair of very high-profile internet characters: bloggers, writers and podcasters, Cliff Jones and Mr Angry.

Then the gorgeous Girl With A One-Track Mind rocked up.

The very lovely (he once did me a favour by personalising a copy of his book for Soph) Andrew Viner followed on behind.

And there were others!

People whose names I can’t remember; intelligent, articulate people who said bright, witty (if not outrageously funny) things.

It was a fun, funny evening.

We bailed out, leaving the survivors to carry on, around 8pm.

By the time we got home, watched Big Brother drank tea and fell in to bed it was midnight.

This morning Soph and I are teetering around the house like a pair of newly-dead zombies.

Why teetering around the house? Because we are not the grown-up people we pretended to be on two occasions, in front of all those folk, yesterday.

We are a pair of kids  who went out and successfully hoodwinked them all into believing that we were grown-up.

Ha-ha, fooled you!

But not only was it really nice to meet everyone – from lunch with Ash to to the afternoon/evening’s meeting with Jonny B and all of his friends – it was very pleasant to meet such a thoroughly nice group of people.

Jul201018

P.Viktor

0

Inception Review

Inception If you like your films smart, action-packed and completely original, look no further than Inception, Christopher Nolan’s latest epic since his career defining Batman sequel The Dark Knight (2008). It has been getting rave reviews from prominent film critics and extremely vocal online fans and for good reason – it is perhaps one of the most riveting and visually original films I have seen in a long, long time. In a single stroke it has reassured the film-going public that ‘blockbusters’ don’t have to be dumb, mindless star vehicles full of action and no heart. As a result, Nolan is quickly making a name for himself as one of the most exciting writer-directors of a new generation of filmmakers creating psychological thrillers on smart drugs. His first major film, Memento (2000), was the most original film I had seen for some time and has fast become a template for later films such as The Prestige (2006). Playing around with ideas of memory, dreams, perceived reality, and grief, Memento laid the foundations on a far less grand scale for Nolan’s latest release.


The story follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an ‘Extractor’ who can enter people’s dreams and steal information or plant ideas in their subconscious. He does this with the help of a team of dream architects, builders of entire worlds in the subconscious in which Cobb can then lure his target and take the information he needs. He hooks both himself and the target up to a strange device in a briefcase, both intravenously taking a ‘compound’ that allows Cobb to access the other person’s dreams. Cobb is offered one ‘last job’ that could allow him to return to America and be reunited with his children. He puts together a team – an architect (Ellen Page), a researcher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an identity forger (Tom Hardy), and a chemist (Dillep Rao), to infiltrate the dreams of Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) who is to inherit a large company from his dying father. From this point on, the plot becomes as complex as Matryoshka doll as a sequence of dreams within dreams lead the audience deeper into a strange world.



In addition to this, Cobb is dealing with his own demons which become manifest in these false dream worlds. His dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) keeps appearing unannounced and attempts to sabotage his plans. It is this narrative of Cobb dealing with repressed guilt and grief which provides the emotional drive of the film. As much as Inception is a heist scenario, it is also a film about how grief affects us and how much we will do in order to keep the memory of a loved one alive. The scenes between Cobb and Mal are genuinely believable and emotionally wrought, and it was wise of Nolan to conceive of this story to give it more pathos. Visually Inception is beyond anything I have seen before. Despite obvious references to films like The Matrix (1999), The Cell (2000), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), there are many moments of great originality – hotel corridors turning vertically in which Gordon-Hewitt conducts a stunning fight sequence, Escher-like staircases, visions of a completely imagined world Cobb and Mal have created, the streets of Paris folding like a pop-up book.



Inception is one of the must-see films of the year, if for no other reason than to see a brilliant filmmaker working at the height of his creative powers. That a film as complex and original as this can find funding in cash-strapped Hollywood is reassuring, so is the idea that not every studio executive believes audiences are stupid and need to be spoon-fed their entertainment. This is a brave, mad, epic film, which is begging not only to be viewed over and over but it also leaves scope for a sequel. Let’s hope the latter is a dream fully realised.


Official Website of Inception

Jul201015

P.Viktor

0

Stephen King – Bag of Bones | From a Buick 8, Review

Bag of Bones
From a Buick 8 During the hot summer months I like to put down the serious, dense literature and snuggle into some genre-fiction that doesn’t require quite as much battery power from the brain cells. Stephen King is one of my favourite genre writers and his books are a guilty pleasure – great page-turners by a formidable storyteller and in King’s case, one who is himself devoted to ‘literature’. It seems unfair how his books tend to be marginalised from ‘the canon’, but I guess this is largely due to the fact his books sell in their millions and also because he writes within the ‘horror genre’ – something serious writers would find limiting. Despite this, I do enjoy reading his books and I tend to devour them quickly, though in the case of Bag of Bones (1998) and From a Buick 8 (2002) one of my motivations for reading them was also research for a book. I wanted to learn more about writing in the horror genre and how to write a page turner and there is no one better in both respects.


Both books are mature works from a prolific writer. Most would agree King’s best books are far behind him – Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Pet Sematary, It, and Misery are all brilliant, original books from a writer at the height of his literary powers. That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed some of his other books – I especially liked Dolores Claiborne and Four Past Midnight – but for sheer creepiness and horror, the aforementioned books are unrivalled. King’s later books tend to suffer from a certain narrative sloppiness and bloated length, something which could be said of Bag of Bones and From a Buick 8. In my mind both books are far too long – at almost seven hundred pages Bag of Bones could have been vastly condensed, same with From a Buick 8 which might have benefited from being far shorter. I guess the longer a writer has been writing and the more successful he gets, the harder it becomes for people to tell him to edit out the peripherals.



Bag of Bones is an effective ‘haunted house’ story and for the most part it is well written.  It tells the story of Mike Noonan, a writer who is recently widowed, as he starts to unravel various mysteries regarding his dead wife, leading him to return to their lakeside retreat, Sara Laughs. He meets Mattie Devore there and becomes involved in a custody battle while trying to cope with the haunted residue of his old home. There are some genuinely creepy moments, especially when Mike Noonan is at home on his own, but all too often King asks us to swallow the supernatural activity in the house as if we naturally believe in all things supernatural as readers. I have always maintained the best horror is written with ambiguity and left wide open – is it Mike or is the house? King doesn’t allow us to make this choice as a reader, and I felt irritated by that.



When Mike starts to have premonitions and can seemingly see things, for instance what someone is wearing when he is on the phone with them, we are asked to just believe that it is so. When he explains this to another character, she reacts as though telepathy were an everyday occurrence. I found that completely implausible and showed a real lack of judgement in reader gullibility. I know it is fiction, but at least have the characters behave like they are in something representing the reality the reader lives in. I also felt the custody storyline was soap-operatic at times and rather distracting. If I want to watch bad tv, I would simply watch bad tv. These criticisms put aside, Bag of Bones is at times a chilling book, with a gripping thunderstorm denouement and an unravelling of mystery only a master like King could pull off.



From a Buick 8 is probably the better book of the two and is by far the most original. The premise is very simple – a man drives a Buick into a garage one day, goes to the toilet and disappears. The Pennsylvanian Police Department impound the car, only to find out that it is some kind of gateway into an unimaginable world. They become custodians of a dangerous and mysterious porthole which has devastating consequences for them all. The unique aspect of this book is in its telling – a group of state troopers impart the story of the car’s history to a young boy whose father has been killed in the line of duty, and the narration is picked up by different members of the group. It illustrates King’s desire to experiment in form even though he has nothing to prove this late in his career. It is a great read and there are some gruesome scenes which left a shiver down my back. However, at almost five hundred pages I think the story would have been better suited to a short novel, intensifying the power of the story but also ridding the repetition which bogs the narrative down.



Both books are an enjoyable read and King can be safe in the knowledge that the ‘king of horror’ accolade remains his. Reading his books always reminds me how important it is to tell the story rather than focus on stylistic concerns and lofty themes imposed by the writer which hinder the telling of the story. Those things should always come second, and this is a lesson many of us would be apt to learn.


Official Website of Stephen King

Jul201012

kate

0

Because you’re worth it

We want to consume content without paying for it. So why do we still equate professionalism with getting paid?

read more

Jul201004

P.Viktor

0

The Ghost

The Ghost

For five laborious years it has been thus,
caught in the cool steel of his office lights,
fluorescent tubes in a pretence of daytime
that never quite seems to arrive, the date
ticking over as a manic clock speeded up.

Before him the terminal, the unreal glare
makes his pale face paler, that bluish-grey
of dust settled over centuries. He operates
the machine with fingers, limbs, and eyes,
producing nought but electronic actions.

The rattle of its keys under his fingertips
amounts to his voice, deftly spelling out
strings of sentences never spoken aloud.
Only the phone punctuates this silence –
giving out its hollow scream infrequently.

About him the tongues of his colleagues –
that braying and cawing, the whinnying
and squawking, the hissing, the shrieking.
Theirs is a dialogue that goes unanswered,
a pettiness of committees and meetings.

Here is a task, here is another, how their
momentum could cause an avalanche of
paper to bury him. He has a photograph
of his heart on the glass of a photocopier,
pressing infinity he Xeroxes it to nothing.

Thus he becomes as faint as the magnolia
paint on the walls of his quotidian prison,
wiling away the long hours on trivia, seen
and unseen, heard and unheard, the slow
drip of boredom marking off his one life.

He is but a title bearing no resemblance
to his person, a description of objectives,
a set of rules which constrict him, a box on
a flowchart, less than the sum of his parts.
He is strange, quiet, thin as a document.

He gets thinner, and thinner, and thinner,
his pallid face will disappear in the bright
hot bars of sun at a window, as he watches
the planes and sycamores waving gently in
verdant celebration, waving only to him.

Jun201027

Brennig

0

Stream of unconsciousness…

This is a test piece of writing…

It’s been said many times before, that the most intimidating thing, for a writer, is a blank page.

That’s cobblers.

The most intimidating thing in the world, for a writer, is the audience as it leaves the theatre, having just watched a comedy show that includes pieces you’ve written.

‘Keep your friends close, but keep your underwear closer’.

The audience laughed at that, it’s one of mine. The laughter made me feel good.

‘You want me to give financial support to a campaign to promote teenaged abstinence? Can I say that as someone who experienced being a teenager ten years ago, I’ve already given teenaged abstinence seven years of practical support? They don’t need my fucking money as well.’

That’s another of mine. The amusement rippled around the room. I felt intimidated by the amused rippling, but I loved the clever double entendre. Even if I wrote it.

‘Am I the only person here who feels that ‘Judge Judy’ feels like a command that should be followed with the shout: ‘Guilty!’?’

You could have heard a pin drop after that one. Too sophisticated for Leeds, I thought.

The difficult thing with being a comedy writer is rotating the comedy from inside my imagination, out on to a piece of paper. Several dozen pieces of paper.

My life is a riot of funnies. I am actually the funniest guy I know – and I know some really funny guys.

But getting my native funniness from inside me head to out there, and doing it in a form that’s still funny, is the most intimidating, the most difficult thing I’ve ever experienced.

Just this morning my wife, in fits of giggles, pleaded with me, ‘Don’t make me laugh!’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t push if I’m laughing’.

She was on the toilet. Having a poo.

You have to agree it takes a special kind of person to make a woman have fits of giggles. Whilst she’s on the toilet.

Having a poo.

Jun201027

P.Viktor

0

Cloth

Shroud

What do we pull between us –

a thread, an artefact, a belief?



Does one unravel the truth of

another by an absence of proof?



Here is a man, he is unknown,

his Jewish face is the negative



Of a negative. Here is a cloth,

perhaps once a shroud, a twill



Of flax fibrils, sepia photograph

of a mortal, long dead and buried.



The name of the man is hidden,

but he maybe fits a description.



But it probably is him, they said,

as if probability was itself certain.



Probably is not good enough –

probably causes war and death,



Probably relies heavily on faith,

on not permitting the evidence.



What do we pull between us?

A thread, an artefact, a belief.

Jun201022

Ben Werdmuller

0

An introduction to Activity Streams

I’ve written an introduction to the Activity Streams standard for IBM DeveloperWorks:

Enter Activity Streams, an evolving standard that extends Atom for expressing social objects. Although it is a young standard, Activity Streams is fast becoming the de facto method for syndicating activity between web applications. For example, MySpace, Facebook, and TypePad all now produce Activity Streams XML feeds. But this technology isn’t just for the consumer web environment. As corporate intranets and internal software become more social, solid business reasons support implementing Activity Streams as a feature. This article describes Activity Streams in detail, considers its potential uses in enterprise environments, and provides some examples for interpreting Activity Streams feeds using PHP.

The full article is over here.

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