Category Archives: Journal

This is me rambling about me, mostly. Current stuff: home, family, my head’s on fire… that kind of thing. This also includes everything imported from LiveJournal.

Journal, Reviews

Hitman: Agent 47

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HitManAgent47Hitman: Agent 47 does nothing to set itself apart from other action movies, and is kind of predictable from start to finish. Still, it didn’t actually disappoint me, so it enters my list at #17, safely above the Threshold of Disappointment.

Rupert Friend’s performance as the titular 47 is pretty good, but he wasn’t given much to work with. Zachary Quinto was great, but under-utilized. Hannah Ware was awesome, and kept the movie fun and interesting. I enjoyed the way the story was told through her eyes, and I suspect that this same story with a less skillful actor in her place would have been unwatchably dull.

There are far too many things wrong with this film for me to catalog them. I had fun in spite of them. Your mileage will almost certainly vary.

UPDATED TO ADD: Armed with a pair of coupons, I saw this movie Monday morning, soda in one hand, and popcorn in the other, for $2.50. At that price it would have been difficult to disappoint me. Had I burnt $20 and a Friday night on it, this review might have had a completely different tone.

Essays, Journal

Sasquan Report

I haven’t attended a WorldCon without exhibiting since 2009 in Montreal. Sasquan, held in Spokane, Washington, would have been a fine show at which to exhibit, but I didn’t really want to spend the whole weekend working. That’s really haaaard.

So I only spent part of the weekend working. I wrote about 3600 Planet Mercenary words, and inked a week of comics. I recorded three episodes of Writing Excuses with Brandon and Dan, and I “networked” with dozens of peers in the genre fiction community.

That last bit doesn’t really feel like work. All I was really doing was talking to people about stuff I would have talked about anyway, and introducing friends, new and old, to each other.

The greatest unpleasantness was the smoke from the disastrous forest fires in western and central Washington. I inhaled enough smoke on Friday that I got sick and had to lie down, and the newfound shallow-ness of my lungs stayed with me even after the air cleared a bit on Saturday and Sunday. Walking and talking at the same time usually left me short of breath, sometimes to the point that my head would hurt and my vision would begin to narrow.

And then there was the Hugo Award thing.

The Hugo Awards, whose concomitant controversy was something I was pleased to not be sitting on stage for, have been better discussed by other writers. I watched the awards from the lobby of the Davenport Grand with friends new and old, former Hugo winners among us. I was pleased with the results, but like every year it was bittersweet.

My heart goes out to those who did not win awards this year, especially those whose work missed being on the ballot because of the hijacked slate. Their work will stand independently of this, however, and needs neither my pity nor the validation of the short-list. As a former Hugo loser, I know that it stings, but I also know that you’ve got to keep making stuff regardless of what happens with awards. I kept making Schlock Mercenary for five years after it started not winning Hugo awards. It still hasn’t won, and I’m still making it today.

Just as awards shouldn’t validate your decision to create art, they shouldn’t have any bearing on how you feel about the art you consume. Reading in particular is a deeply personal, intimate act. An award on a book is like a sticker on a banana: it might help you pick the banana, but if you eat the sticker you’re doing it wrong.

Journal, Reviews

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation

MissionImpossible5I was at Gen Con Indy last weekend, so I didn’t make it to Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation until the Tuesday after it opened. I really liked it. The action was taken to super-spy levels of unbelievable from the opening scene, and the intrigue and heist elements were both spot on and satisfying.

Which is to say that the movie is full of all the ridiculous things you expect from the Mission: Impossible franchise, including punchy uses of the theme in all the right places. Joe Kraemer’s soundtrack is lots of fun, and will make good music for me to write and draw to.MissionImpossible5OST

I was pleased to find that the trailers did not spoil the film’s key scenes—a kindness on the part of the marketing department, I suppose, though it’s possible that they had explicit instructions from filmmakers who wanted to preserve some of the intrigue.

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation clears my Threshold of Awesome and enters my 2015 list at #10.

 

 

Journal

I’ll Be Talking About Kickstarter Stuff

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This Saturday I’ll be at the Salt Lake Public Library at the invitation of Utah Sequential Artists and Illustrators.

IMG_0009

Alan Gardner, newshound-in-chief at The Daily Cartoonist, and a founding member of USAI*, did the poster above, and I love the caricature.

Here are the details again, because copying and pasting text from an image is tedious:

July 11, 2015
10:00 AM @ Salt Lake City Public Library
Conference Room A

I’ll have slides, I’ll answer questions, and the whole thing will run for about 60 minutes. Seating is limited, and the event is open to the public. A few seats will be reserved for USAI members.