DISappointedNEY Again...

Apparently Disney is concocting a live-action movie called Tink.

It will be a romantic comedy and reportedly strays from the traditional story/setting of Peter Pan.

I've not much to say about it. I'm not much of a Tinker Bell fan, but then I am not really a fan of the Disney version of Pan either.

Elizabeth Banks will play the infamous fairy.

Either way, there is lot riding on this, since many people are Tink fans who could conceivably be disappointed. I pretty much already am...

This is an update from Hollywood, it seems... other post.

It'll Show Up Where Now?

Here's what's going on in my world of Peter Pan...

Still working on the revisions. I've been dilligently honing the other "speech" part of Peter Pan: Betwixt-and-Between to better fit into Barrie's style. Every time I think I'm done with it, I find a new word or whole sentence, perhaps even a new idea to tweak into it. Usually just a word or phrase here and there. But it's going nicely. If I don't have it quite yet, I have it just so. Anon's critiques have been most useful, as I've said. This particular reworked section is a both pivotal and delicate, and Anon is familiar not only with Barrie's style, but how this book works in cohesion with it. Which is a roundabout way of saying I've decided to have Anon have a look at this scene's rewrite. Afterward, I'll continue on to the rest of the novel. It should be a welcome change to tinker around with actual story bits again. (Rather than "explanatory bits" for lack of a better term.)

Also, I just had a talk last night with someone delightful... and cutting to the chase, Peter Pan's NeverWorld will be showing up in an unlikely place in the near future. You might even say it's a little bananas to be there, but the owner is fond of me as I am of him, and he wants to foster my plight of Pan. I'll keep you posted as things develop, but I will say clues are in this paragraph.

Reaching for the Asteroids

If you're my age or up, you'll remember a little vector graphics video game taking the world by storm. Yes, even before the famous Pac-Man. Asteroids.

You're the triangular ship surrounded by asteroids. Fly and shoot your way through endless space (and levels) and see an occasional U.F.O. that shoots back. That's the whole deal.

Any guesses why I'm bringing it up? That's right! A live-action movie's in the works. Do I even need to rant on this one? All I can say, in earnest, is that if they can pull it off (and be a successful film to boot) then we have found the next Hollywizards.

And it sounds like their dreaming is already explosive:
I had an immediate reaction 'Yes.' The reason was not because playing the game, we thought somehow that game could be translated into a movie, it can't. The word 'Asteroids' connotates a large-scale experience, so the challenge, which was great, was 'Okay, so how do you get a mythology that will support that? We really went after a mythology on the level of Star Wars and we'll see if we succeeded or not but it's not a simple thing of the asteroids are going to hit the earth. We never come to earth. The entire movie takes place in the asteroid field. We do some homages to the game for sure, but I like the sense of scale.*

So says producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. Writer Matthew Lopez, a sincere best of luck. You did a great job with Race to Witch Mountain.

Here's an excellent game "re-invention" of Asteroids. Enjoy: Vectoroids

I rather like this video. It's a trailer for Tetris: The Movie. I don't know if it would sustain itself for a whole film, but Bravo to BLACK20 STUDIOS for this wonderfully awful take on Tetris as a narrative. I had stumbled across it and will admit I'd been fooled at first, dreading its coming... all the while hoping it to be a joke. Thank goodness.


* Quoted from this page.

Who is MEATLOAF?

The title is the question, and there on the left is the answer.

Jeopardy! really seems to like Peter Pan.

I knew this tidbit, but I don't know terribly much about it. I recall hunting for more once upon a time... but since the project had been abandoned/altered, as I remember it, information is limited.

What's my opinion of such a project, i.e. a rock opera/musical of Peter Pan?

I don't doubt that it could be done. But as I've stated in one way or another before, I tend to think adding narrative music to Barrie's tale just becomes cumbersome and silly. As in no, I don't particularly like musicals of Peter Pan.

On the Page...

Last night I went to see Josiecat. She’s in the throes of finishing her thesis and wanted me to take a gander at what she’d written, as well as sought advice on what direction to channel the rest of her efforts. Not that she doesn’t have a handle on her material. She’s so in the thick of it that her mind wound up in a jumble, trying to approach it from many directions at once and she needed a fresh eye to help smooth it out. So I rewrote the whole thing for her. I’m kidding, of course. I’d read practically the rest of her work, so it’s not as if I went into it cold. Together we hammered out some of it… and Josiecat seems to have a sense of how to proceed. Best of luck, Josiecat!

While we wound down on working on it and discussing, Buttercup came home. She joined us in the small room (more of a nook) in the back and sat down. She hadn’t been there very long when suddenly she perked up, eyes shining, and she looked right at me with a finger point and said, “JEREMY!” [She meant my character, as she’s been reading What If It’s a Trick Question?] She followed up this one word with, “You… Okay…” then gave a half laugh and half sigh, rose and with a clear troubled-but-happy exasperation, slapped my arm. YES! In response to how what I wrote made her feel, she SLAPPED me! She then said, “I’ll be back.” I commented before she’d been out of earshot about being physically abused and suffering for my art, jokingly, of course.

When she returned, she explained that she hit me for the emotional roller coaster I put her on. She’d obviously just read an intense part of the story. She told me where… and also that she had to stop reading because it had been too much to bear - in the good sense. In other words, she felt so bad for Jeremy, and having discovered the answer to a long gestating question in the book, got too choked up to continue. And the thing is she’s only just about a third of the way through the story.

I thanked her for the compliments. We then wound up discussing it, with me not divulging any spoiler information. It’s very fun to see what parts impress or touch people. Since I can’t read the novel “fresh” myself, I enjoy “reading vicariously” with them. I like hearing assements of what readers think is going on... which characters they like and who they're suspicious of and such... So thanks, Buttercup, not only for going into my world on the page and your kind words, but for sharing your reading experience with me.

She wound up saying that she can’t remember when she’d last enjoyed a book to this magnitude. Apparently she finds herself thinking about it when away from it, and is quite emotionally invested in Jeremy’s plight. I must say it felt really good to hear. No matter how many times I’m told by someone that they enjoy my work, it always makes me just as internally giddy.

Thanks again, Buttercup! And you don’t know the half of it!

Josiecat - May the Force be with you!*

* I only ever use Lucas's saying with utmost sincerity.

Pixar Doesn't Toy Around...

A couple of posts ago, I said that Buttercup and I went to the movies. I promised to say which one. Toy Story 3, of course...

I adored it. I'd been quite glad to see it in a theater as the other two I saw at home. I had been skeptical of another one when Toy Story 2 arrived. But I heard nothing but good reports on it. And you know what... Toy Story 2 turned out better than the first. Well, nearly the same thing happened with the third. Except by this time I didn't doubt Pixar's ability to come up with a worthy sequel.

For my general views on sequels, it's in this post. The thing about Pixar is that they really care about story. They have stated outright that no sequel will come for one of their tales unless there is a narrative that must be told. They have proved themselves once again with Toy Story 3. All I heard had been praise... no, really, only praise. And I have nothing but praise to give as well.

This new film completes the story of Andy (in relation to his toys.) It's genuinely heartwarming, a little terrifying - yes, I found myself a little misty - and damn hilarious. I'd laughed all the way through (except for the scary parts, of course) and cheered a few times. And you know what? It felt satisfying. The story really did feel like a closed book. Good thing, too, as Pixar says it's the last of the Toy Story movies.

After seeing their masterpiece, I'm extra glad to have three Pizza Planet 3-eyed aliens adorning my house.

Bravo, Pixar!

Doing it Write!

The rewrites are going well.
So far I’ve only done the one section. I’ve gone over it and over it again, sometimes as many as five tweaking/redoings a day. If it doesn’t sound like much to be just done with the one part, then consider this: It’s pretty much the crux of making the concept of the book work as a whole. I didn’t have to rework the ideas, but rather had to get it to sound more like the ambiguous specificity of the original stories. In other words, it needed to be more Barriesque than it had been. It's a challenge to write 'as'/'like' Barrie in the first place, so to get wild ideas such as these to come out sounding like him is even harder.

Fortunately, I seem to have done a good job. I gave it to Anon to have another gander. The verdict?

Wow. MUCH better! :D After only the first paragraph I was already impressed! It felt like I was reading something new from Barrie! I think he would be proud!

Ah, good. Now I can proceed with the rest of the revisions, knowing that I’m back on track. Next up… the fairies’ description of the Neverland…