Typically, I try to approach Fantasia showings with more curiosity than hype: you never know which film is going to affect you the most! This attitude was thoroughly rewarded during yesterday’s showing of Brigsby Bear [2017] – Dave McCary.
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Day 2 at the Fantasia International Film Festival had me attending a sold out showing of the Australian film Killing Ground [2017] –Damien Power, which as its title suggests, has a whole bunch of death. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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Yesterday was the very first day of the Fantasia International Film Festival, and I decided to pop in on opening film The Villainess [2017], being screened with director Jeong Byeong-Gil in attendance. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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What happens today? It is a mystery, to me. Seriously! 136 episodes, we record every two weeks, and suddenly I no show?
Here’s the scoop! I have 2 beehives in my backyard, that my brother and I try to keep alive and maybe get some honey out of. It’s been going pretty poorly because we’re terrible at this, and bees are strangely like cows or sheep or babies in that if left alone they’re more or less surely going to die. Bees are pretty tricky because in the process of dying they will send tens of thousands of bees out to find a new home (this is called swaming and is the natural reporducive path of the bee). But if the bees are flying off to found a new hive they steal half your honey (and half your bees) and this is especially bad in the middle of a big city because who the hell wants 20k bees to show up unannounced. Anyway, we had 2 swarms (maybe more) earlier in the year and we really don’t want to piss our neighbors off anymore, so we have a bee guru who showed up to help us out. And get paid.
Anyway, bee guru is doing his thing and my brother is like “oh snap, I gotta get to this thing” and so I hop in the suit and spend 3 hours rearranging the bees’ homes. It’s pretty interesting. The comb is used for several purposes. Storing honey you’re familiar with. They also make cells to incubate larva into drones, into workers, and into queens. The comb looks different depending on what’s going inside, so you can sort of tell what your queen is “thinking”. Also, if she’s laying too much or too little of one type of cell you can tell if she’s crazy or unhappy or whatever. Our comb was a total mess, and you can reorganize the combs to make sure the queen is on the right track.
Took us hours, and the whole time my phone is in the house while I’m outside. What happens when you’re away from your podcast alarms? Derp.
The bed music during our advertising is an old loop by Dan of Steel!
The bed music while we explain what the episode is about is Son of a Bit “Chased by a Running Chupacabra” used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Finally, the song we use in the intro is “Shiny Spaceship” by the 8-bit Ninjas. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
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If you look closely you can see that there’s an email subject line called “Battlesweaters”
So about a year ago, 9to5 (dot cc) darling Al Lafrance (he attained the rank of “darling” by being a repeated guest on Go Plug Yourself and also writing a column here for a little while) asked me if I would ever be down to do a story at one of Montreal’s great storytelling shows: Yarn.
I told him I was definitely interested and was honestly kind of flattered that he asked me. To me (and yes, I know this is just my impression and Yarn goes out of its way to have stories from all over the place) these things are usually reserved for fancy pants performers and comedians. I mean, it’s not too much of stretch, I’ve got over 120 episodes of two different podcasts under my belt so I’m no stranger to talking and I stand up in front a few hundred people to announce roller derby for Montreal Roller Derby so I’m not stage shy. Add to that that I used to do Improv competitively back in CEGEP and I think I got this.
I mean, I hope I got this. The show is tonight. Feel free to come find out if I crash and burn terribly at 8 pm at Cagibi for Yarn, birds edition.
However, I couldn’t say yes at the time because a year ago I was in the thick of planning my wedding, and right after that we swung into looking for a new home.
Then a couple of weeks ago, he asked me again. I said yes, without any real idea of what kind of story that I would actually tell.
So I had to write something. Or, at least, formulate something that would translate into a story that I could tell. I’m not sure what anyone else’s process is for writing a story but I decided to write the entire thing out and re-work it and re-read it a few times a day until I more or less had the gist of it. And tonight I’ll just go up and let my improvisational side take over and steer the story in more or less the way I wrote it. I don’t think I work very well if I’m trying to force myself to commit something to memory.
I doubt that it’s a perfect process. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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LOOKOUT THE TRAIN IS COMING RIGHT FOR YOU
Did I Write This Week?
YES I DID.
This was a weird week for me.
I’ve been sleeping pretty poorly and a few things that have popped up here and there have prevented me from really digging into the process of editing and fine tuning the zombie story (last part is this week!). I do intend in entering the finished product into a writing competition though and that needs to be submitted by May 19th so hey, a deadline that I have to achieve.
However, with that project coming to an end my brain has been doing a good job of starting to really flesh out some of the loose ideas that have been kicking around for next project (the full blown book thing).
I’ve got a loose narrative that I will need to expand on already in mind, and at least a handful of characters that I’ve come up with to play it out. I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about central themes and what a teenager might want to read about.
One of the hang ups that I keep getting caught up on is nailing down a tone, or a writing style that I will have to stick to for hundreds of pages. One of the fun things about blogging, or writing the zombie stuff, or writing the 9to5 comics is that I can flip back and forth between various voices and styles of writing. I know obviously that in more ‘advanced” level reading (Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting springs to mind in terms of wildly different voices depending on the narrator, and even A Song of Ice and Fire has different tones depending on which character is the viewpoint character) there can be a lot of variation. But when I think “book for teens” I don’t think the trend is quite as common.
As a bit of a test-run, yesterday I found myself starting to write what will ultimately probably be the prologue.
I really like the device when a prologue just sort of drops you into a scene and asks a lot questions, without really being tied directly to the main plot (even though it will tie-in eventually). It’s very cinematic. The opening scene of a movie crams a bunch of intrigue and suspense into the first five minutes, and then the opening credits roll and then we get to meet our main characters.
That’s kind of what I’m going for here.
The prologue could kind of stand alone as its own little short story, but it’s a fun way to try and find the tone for what I will ultimately be going for.
It wasn’t much, only a few hundred words committed to text so far, but it was kind of nice to have that ceremonial ground breaking of actually putting some of the ideas that I’ve had in mind for nearly a year now into a cohesive form.
Fun!
Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
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You know what was weird?
That time where I got a Loot Crate (February’s BUILD Crate) and totally forgot to take pictures of it and talk about it. I literally forgot I even received it until I got this month’s box and was like “oh yeaaahhh” about the BUILD crate. I mean, in a way that’s kind of a review of it in its own way, isn’t it?
Anyhow, onward to this months March PRIMAL Crate!
DO NOT READ THIS MOVE ALONG. If you think I’m any kind of entertaining you might want to check out our podcast 9ES, it’s got over 120 episodes and it’s also kind of entertaining. That’s my thing, I try to be kind of entertaining.
So this month’s Loot Crate theme was Primal. Having just played through Far Cry: Primal and seeing that there was nothing Far Cry related in the box, we begin with disappointment. Did that disappointment dissipate? ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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It’s a snowstorm!
So as you may (or may not, I don’t know who you are) have noticed, the progression over at Zombies and Loathing has been rolling on. It’s done. I have written all of it. It measures in at around 50 pages which I’m actually pretty happy with, I think much longer and it would overstay its welcome. I mean, it’s a zombie story that will be finishing about 4 years after the zombie crazy, so it has probably already overstayed its welcome.
But it was still nice to finish a thing.
I had the ending mapped out in my mind nearly 2 years ago, and I can tell you here and now (you’ll see in a few weeks) that it is not the best ending ever.
What happened?
I am not really sure.
I planted all the little seeds for the climax to come together in a way that felt out of nowhere but was actually tying in a bunch of little, seemingly insignificant little details that the narrator had dropped over the course of the story, but I’ve re-read what I wrote a bunch of times and it just doesn’t click the way I want it to.
Should I flesh it out more? Should I add more suspense? More observations from the St-Brigid?
I don’t even know. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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Hey I’m watching anime.
Did I Write This Week?
Oh hey, it’s Friday.
Don’t worry, there’s going to be a Zombies and Loathing going up this afternoon if you’re one of the two people who are paying attention to the progress over there.
That reminds me, I need to update the Table of Contents with the new parts. Grumble-grumble.
So what’s going on?
As you may have noticed, we’ve updated our menu bar! It makes more sense and is a little more logically laid out if you come to the site and don’t know who Jon, Scott, Keith and Sophie are. We still need to tighten up a few things up there, but I think it’s a lot cleaner.
Also, Sophie and then Scott have been sick over the last few weeks, which is why there hasn’t been a lot of movement over on 9to5 (illustrated). The snowstorm that triggered the storyline has passed and now the entire city is in the middle of one of those “February thaws” that happen all the time and are totally not unusual. I’m guessing the ending will pop up next week.
So I mean, stuff is happening. Slowly. Just not this week. Or at least, not up until today.
I have the ambitious plan of writing out the final chapter today, but we’ll see how that goes. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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So, a couple of months ago, Jon watched Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes back, and as we tend to do on 9ES, we ranked the movie. Jon laid it all on the line and vaulted the arguably best Star Wars movie straight to the top of “The List“.
Scott is currently texting me right now about how Fury Road is all style no-substance. What I don’t think he’s remembering correctly is that Empire Strikes back is very little style, very little substance. It’s not the best movie ever made. It’s not better than Brick and it’s not better than Fury Road. It might be as good as John Wick, but even then I’d be skeptical. The only reason Empire even deserves to be as high as that is pure nostalgia, which I’ll admit is definitely a weighted factor on The List (looking at you “Hackers”).
Full disclosure: Even though I’m about to tear into Empire Strikes Back, it remains one of my favorite movies and is still my favorite of the Star Wars franchise.
It hurts to have to do this. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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