Come out and take your medicine!

Re-read The Shining before Doctor Sleep comes out, I said.
You'll want the refresher, I said.
Don't pay any attention to the terrifyingly accurate depictions of addiction, I said.
You won't be emotionally traumatised by the concept that Danny Torrance succumbs to alcoholism as an adult despite his absolute horror of it as a child, I said.
The relationship between Jack, Wendy, and Danny will not emotionally destroy you as it has the previous three times you've read this book, I said.

I'm an effing moron.

The Dark Tower 'Fairy Tale' Casting

Trolling around the 'new' IMDB (but not being a troll), I decided to see what message board activity existed for the Dark Tower Multimedia Project of Epicness. After stumbling on a casting choice for Eddie I hadn't thought of -- that almost caused me to wet myself and scream with glee, and then curl into a fetal position because it's likely they'll pick, say, Ryan Reynolds *gag* -- I decided I should put some thought into my ideal casting. Just because, you know, I like having my hopes dashed by Hollywood politics. This post will be expanded upon as I think of other ideal (for me) candidates.

Roland (Contemporary) - Viggo Mortensen
Hugh Jackman LOOKS the part, and lord knows plenty of people don't mind looking at that man for hours and hours on end, but the ability to carry the entire series on his shoulders with the grizzled depth required... I don't think he can pull that off. Viggo's a no-brainer -- he's got the look, the talent, the depth, the proven ability to carry an epic undertaking like this. Hell, I think the question isn't whether they'd want him to do it, but whether HE'D want to do it.
Otherwise they should just wait another 5-10 years and have Karl Urban and Christian Bale duke it out.

Eddie - Ben Foster
Thank you IMDB board for that one. Now all I will ever want is him in that role and there's a snowball's chance it will happen. (Of course now someone's also said Joseph Gordon-Levitt... oh, wait...)

Roland (Young) - Joseph Gordon-Levitt
He may be pushing the age, but he still looks like such a baby it would work. Plus he's got the intensity and depth necessary for making that section of the story powerful and believable -- something I'm not certain an actual 18 year-old could pull off. And if they could throw in a zero-gravity, balletic fight scene in old-west-style clothes, so much the better.

Susan Delgado - Karen Gillan*
*Not 100% sold
She'd have to be blondied-up, but given the choice between her and any number of blonde (or pretend-blonde) Hollywood tartlets... yeah, Karen's got it. Hands down. Not that I want to see Amy Pond put through that kind of hell, but Karen's gorgeous, spunky, smart, and has the 'it' factor of making you want to watch her.
If only one could reverse time and steal Rosamund Pike when she was 16-18, that would be perfect. Or Jewel Staite.

Cort - Mickey Rourke
I've seen some ideas floating that he should be Randall Flagg, but that makes Flagg too creepy without any appeal. There has to be something about Flagg that draws you in, even though you know nothing about him is good. Cort on the other hand is just a grizzled, old bad-ass, which Rourke could do in his sleep.

Walter/Flagg - Colm Feore
Again, thank you IMDB board. Not only has he god the unsettling-yet-appealing freaktastic thing down to a science, crossover be damned he KNOWS how to do this brand of King evil. Ever see Storm of the Century? Scarred for life, in the best way.
"I'm a little teapot, short and stout..."

Susannah - ???
Of all characters, this one gets the 'fucked if I know' award. The complexity involved in being an African-American schizophrenic, wheelchair-bound heroine with deathly accurate aim and a soft spot for redeemed screw-ups... to put any established actress in this will lose some pivotal aspect of her due to pre-existing habits and ticks. Whoever plays Susannah needs to disappear into her entirely, and that's going to take a face we haven't seen much/any of before.

Stephen King - DUH
Incidentally, his appearance on Sons of Anarchy is probably his best acting work to date.
And if he's not Rick Baker-ed to the extreme for the young appearance, use Joe. He looks plenty like his poppa.

In other random movie news, apparently Cameron wants to prove he can single-handedly destroy own the movie industry by making a Cleopatra movie with Angelina Jolie.
Quick, let's get Brad in on this. It did such wonders for Liz and Dick...

Snobby Pontificators and the Societal Zombie Plague

This article both inspires and infuriates me: Are Our Writers As Lousy As Our Bankers?

Within my fury comes the desire to counter and respond, because while I agree with the assessment of the current psuedo-intellectual trend in literature and art that ultimately is devolving 'high art,' it assumes the only art IS high art. Yet in order to define that which is 'high' from that which is (to use the phraseology of dear Uncle Stevie's mother) 'trash,' you place on a pedestal your own assumptions of what constitutes genius, and willfully dismiss anything that does not fit into your narrow-minded ideal of artistic mecca.
I do love the title 'Urban Intellectual Fodder' and agree with the style it describes, and the type of people who devour it. I also agree that art as a whole is on a downslide, a fact that can be attributed to a world with a disparate polarity between those who don't want to think and those who only think they want to think -- and trapped in a suffocating underworld, those who want to think AND feel and are being pressed down into near oblivion.
However, where I take issue is the assumption that one person's thought and emotion mean less, or have less long-reaching social impact, than someone else's. The Beatles were once little more than the 'NSync of their day. Bergman, while brilliant, is not perfection. Faulkner... well, let's just say I understand the appeal, but for me he's a pompous, over-wordy snob (this from someone whose favorite writing era is Victorianism). Yet he did write with passion, which counts for a lot.
This is where the analysis of 'real art' in this article's argument falls apart for me, because what strikes someone in the emotional chest, makes them gasp or scream, and/or makes them rethink the world, is different for everyone. Creating your own arbitrary standard of 'real art' only applies to you, and perhaps a group of others who have a similar aesthetic. Not that groups of people embracing their ideas about art, literature and culture should not be formed and encouraged, but doing so to the exclusion of all other forms of creative material adds to the detriment of art as much as Urban Intellectual Fodder.
Granted, I give the writer credit for admitting scruples and snobbery, but the intensity of feeling which accompanies such snobby opinions ultimately lends itself to turning away people who the 'true intellectuals' and 'appreciators of real art' deem as having lower cultural standards than themselves. While 'high' art and literature certainly has its place in society, and a much needed one, it is not necessarily the most valuable form of art. Some of what is now considered in some circles to be the best, most brilliant and affecting works of all time were either completely ignored in their time OR considered to the the 'pop' art of their period.
Now, if you want to make an argument that popular arts have taken a dive, I'm pretty much on that bandwagon. I also agree (to an extent) that high-brow forms of art have disintegrated, for the most part, into Urban Intellectual Fodder. I also agree there are many projects floating around out there which could, potentially, be incredible works but cannot get the funding or attention needed to come to fruition -- this can be blamed on the overarching attitude of 'whateverness' of our culture, and the concept that people want to be seen as supportive of the arts and art funding until it's a project which requires them to think or feel or express beyond their comfort zone -- or that of the drooling, teeming masses who only want more escapist 'reality' TV or to be instructed what to read by Oprah or plunk down $20 on popcorn and a remake that's a shadow of its source material, because none of those options require effort from us.
We're zombiefying ourselves with 'art' and the cultural height of said art is less relevant than the fact that we're training ourselves to not think or feel.

A Beautiful Dark Mind Tower?

They're really doing it. They're really making a film/tv adaptation of The Dark Tower series.



I'm not even sure I can form coherent thoughts regarding this development, but I shall try.
I want to jump for joy and flail about in fangirlish glee over the fact that after years of quasi-development someone finally got their mitts on the rights to the Dark Tower series and is tackling it in a logical way: films AND television.
My opinion has always been that the series would be an awesome spectacle on the big screen, but would have to be a larger undertaking than even The Lord of the Rings... which might be impossible. I've since held that the way to 'do it right' would be to divide the series into a few short-run series 'seasons' on HBO, Showtime, Starz... one of the pay cable channels where they can be as violent and sexy and profane as King wrote and also have the budget to pull off all the fantastic elements. It looks like we're trying to strike a balance between the two, and I wish Universal success and hope it does not bankrupt them.

Here's what I AM excited about:
Including Roland's backstory via what's touched on in The Wizard and The Glass and expanded on in the comic series.
Covering, hopefully, the entirety of the series in a format that allows the inclusion of all the good stuff (of which there is much).
Something on such an epic scale that provides me with years of something to obsess over an geek out about (much like The Lord of the Rings trilogy).
Roland Deschain 'in person' as an actual physical being. 'Nuff said.

Here's what's potentially terrifying:
Poor casting choices. Howard's very hit and miss with this. Something it's great, sometimes there's someone awesome on tap and they get turned down in favor of someone not nearly as right for the role. In this situation, for this series, I will go all kinds of fangirl apeshit if the right people are not found for Roland (young and old), Eddie, Susannah, Jake, Flagg, or Callahan. And Uncle Stevie better be Uncle Stevie.
Forcing CGI where other alternatives would be better placed. This is a general fear I have of late, but especially when it comes to epic fantasy/horror/adventure... of which this is all three.
Ron Howard. I'm sorry, but the man is an emotional dead weight when it comes to filmmaking. He's got good ideas and executes technically cool films... sometimes... but they can be be the dullest, most unemotional movies ever. If that happens to this series, there are going to be a ton of pissed off King fans gunning for him and Universal. I mean, we're not talking about The Dark Half or Desperation here... or even 'Salem's Lot. This is the magnum-frigging-opus of King's career -- his LotR, his Narnia, his Golden Compass series as only King could envision.

I truly am excited at the prospect of this project; I'm just worried about the execution. So if anyone out there has the power and needs any kind of consultant on how to make this series emotionally engaging, well cast, and not made of suck, I'm here.

(Sidenote: I saw the trailer for Priest -- comments to come -- can we please work Paul Bettany and Karl Urban into this Dark Tower mix?)

I Write Like... Me

This week there's been a bit of a to do over the "I Write Like" site, which analyzes a block of text to 'inform' us what famous author we write like (or authors if you're like me an go totally geek over these kinds of things and submit various writing samples to see your varied results).
Flattering, yet not surprising, my results came up with only two authors: Bram Stoker and Stephen King. Stoker jumped out as the first candidate, but every subsequent sample produced a King-ly result. Even smut (and yes, that side of my writing exists).
Granted, I know better than to take this as a serious analysis of my writing style -- just like I treat every online analyzer or quiz result as a way of amusing some part of me that needs a bit of reassuring, or just a good laugh. Yes, there is the Insecure Writer voice that flings out its arms and spins around like Fraulein Maria when my writing gets compared to the great Uncle Stevie, but when I'm honest with myself (brutally so, as I tend to be), I know two facts: his writing is far superior to mine AND we do share a similar style. Without ever intending it there has been a stylistic similarity in my writing and his since I was a teenager and only just starting to read him. To that point I had been raised, and raised myself, on the likes of Roald Dahl, Lois Lowry, Shakespeare, Calvin & Hobbes (one day I will talk about how I see Watterson's comic as so much more than 'just a comic strip'), and Scholastic books about creepy coincidences, famous hauntings and ancient curses. You know, books such as this one:

Still, flattering as it is that an online generator using ones and zeros to compare my writing samples to whatever stockpiled text by various authors exist in a database states that what I provided it relates to my favorite author's writing style more than anyone else it has data for, that's a 'fact' I'm already aware of. Reassurance by the interwebs is nice, though.

In order to get a more articulate perspective on one's writing style, there is also this site: http://typealyzer.com/ which rather than analyze a sample of writing your provide it, analyzes a link and the text on that webpage (i.e. it will analyze an entire page of your blog rather than a selection of text you choose to copy and paste). Unfortunately, this method only works for public sites, so my personal blog and the location where the bulk of my fiction is stored is inaccessible by this site. However, for a Myers-Briggs breakdown of this blog, it gave me an intriguing result.
I've taken the full Myers-Briggs test a couple of times (and little variations thereupon several times as well), always with the same result: I/ENFP. I waver a bit between the introvert and extrovert depending on where I am in life when I answer the question, but the others never change. Until I input this blog link into the Typealyzer and get this:

INTP - The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Again, this is all just for the sake of argument as I know my personality IRL and my writing for this blog are somewhat different, as are my fiction writing style and 'personal' writing style. Still, I found it interesting that this blog (in its infancy) weighs heavily on the intellectual and not on the feeling. I suppose I could take that to mean my rants thus far come across as subdued OR that they are articulate enough to not qualify as a rant in the raving, emotional sense (I mean, if you could SEE me when I rant about these things there'd be no question of the emotional response they invoke).
Now, that first section does describe a cross-section of myself with eerie accuracy. It's only the bit that says I can come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive that makes the 'real' me, the 'F' me, want to cry out, "NOOOOOO! I sympathize with everyone! Even stupid people who don't understand me!"
You see the contradiction there.
I also feel compelled to add that the drawing which accompanies the description amuses me greatly. That does pretty much sum me up when it comes to what I look like when writing at my computer... just replace the calculations with images of British things, attractive men and/or supernatural 'stuff' and you've got my inner monologue.

As online quizzes and analyzers go, I don't typically engage in ones that engage me in deeper thought. Yes, I too have fallen prey to wasting an hour taking such quizzes as "Which Twilight guy is You're Soulmate?" (typo intentional -- and Jasper, for the record. Duh.) and "What color best represents your personality?" and even "How much do you know about Harry Potter?" (answer: a helluva lot, especially in regards to the movies, but not nearly as much as Super!Fans) Still, since these particular sites related to writing and style and a dash of psychology, they did give me time for some brief reflection on why I write like I do, and how my writing may be perceived by some people-not-me -- so these silly things are productive, right?