RRR 41 Mindscape, Red Lights

StarAdventurer.com

I tried, but I'm simply spread too thin. With the podcast, writing, a teeny bit of blogging and looking for full-time work, I have, on average, a 7-day 70 hour week! That's way more than anyone should have! Anyway, something eventually had to give.

Honestly, all I can really manage right now is to finish the fiction projects and continue with the podcast. Everything else is secondary. Am I sad? Only that I'm not using such an evocatively named domain. So SciFi Golden Age isn't it? But apart from that, NO, because I need to be writing, writing, writing.

Writing

Oh boy, have I been writing, so much so that I barely have time to do anything else. Two thousand words, EVERY DAY. Yeah, it doesn't sound like much, it's about 4 articles worth of words for me, equating to one 1 hour per 500 words, but it's a real bugger if you miss even one day. Why 2000? Well, It fits in neatly with my plans of churning out book after, book and never, EVER procrastinating again. It's about what I can manage and, coincidentally, also the amount of writing St. Stephen (King) churns out every day.

Anyway, I missed about half a day, because I went to MK Collectormania on Friday (I posted some pics on my blog), and I've been catching up ever since.

I also have a screen-play do finish, hopefully in tandem with the book and interspersed with all this is a lot of real-life stuff that I don't bore you with, but is also a drain on my time.

Needless to say, I am now running around like a combination of the White Rabbit whinging about time and the Mad Hatter because he is MAD.

Game of Thrones Season 4 Catch-Up

Okay, finally caught up myself and it's still going on at quite a clip, or gallop. So we know that Joffrey's dead. Very, very dead after being poisoned at his own wedding. And deservedly so. Nasty little bugger. Now, we see what happened next. Well, Tyrion is arrested and chucked in a dungeon awaiting 'trial'. Well quite a lot happens between this and episode 6, but the main thing is obviously the Tyrion trial and outcome.

I suppose I could mention a few other things, like Daenerys getting all regal and a bit ruthless too and starting to see the cost of ruling. Arya and her death list (which now includes her escort/kidnapper the Hound (who Tywin has put up a huge bounty for his capture or death, unsympathetic (to Stannis) Bank of Bravos and the continuing plotting for the throne by Petyr 'Little Finger' Baelish and Varys 'the Spider', but I won't!

Anyway, by the time you get to the most current episode (6), i.e. the trial of Tyrion, (and why, BTW, are trials such a part of genre), Jaime eventually confronts daddy and promises to leave the King's Guard and resume his royal duties. Abruptly Tywin accepts and the arrest and trial seems to have all been a rouse by Tywin to pressure Jaime into this very decision. Jaime tells Tyrion, that as long as he keeps schtum and cooperates, he will be found guilty, though spared and sent to the Wall as a Ranger. But, Tyrion, despite his pragmatism and logic loses it and demands trial-by-combat. Now given that Jaime has been learning to use his left hand by Bronn, Tyrion's sellsword henchman, I can see where this is going and I don't like it! (But knowing GRRM, I might also be completely wrong).

BTW, a little on the 'controversial' scene between Jaime and Cersei. Really? After multiple murders, multiple infanticides, torture and literally dozens of rapes, you are now going to single this one scene out? Really? I heard on another podcast that this was more about people feeling let down by Jaime, but, please, Jaime is a nasty piece of work; even Hitler was nice to this kids. Get what I'm saying? Anyway, enjoy episode 7 later today.

Mindscape

(AKA Anna) (2013/14).

Marc Strong is the good guy for a change, this time a psychic by-product of the government's sinister 70's MK-Ultra-like projects, now working freelance as a "Mind Investigator", a legally unrecognised, though influential, technique for telepathically entering other persons memories. Recently widowed, he is asked to investigate the sanity of a rich couple's daughter.

Not so much femme fatale as lolita fatale bit of noir hotch-potched into a predictable, though not entirely terrible movie. Rush has a lot to answer for, though, with some unbearably contrived voice-over narration by an unusually informative newscaster near the beginning of the film. We'll also be touching on this again lazy voice-over rubbish when we talk about Red Lights in a moment.

Inside Llewyn Davis

(2013).

A little Coen Brother's comedy about a talented Dylan-a-like beat-era folk musician trying to make it big.

I almost completely sympathise with the guy trying to make it big in showbiz, but not with the way he treats people and women in particular. He seems just a little bit too horrible.

Anyway, as far as I can tell the movie seems to be about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and being eclipsed by other, more successful folk singers of the time.

An ok film, I just wished I could relate to the protagonist a little more. There is a really funny scene in the movie where Justin Timberlake sings this really excruciatingly bad song. Also, I kept mistaking the actor for the guy from numbers!

Red Lights

(2012).

Cillian Murphy is the skeptic and Robert Deniro the psychic in this fairly ridiculous horror movie. However, the twist is pretty good, when it is eventually revealed, but, unfortunately, it is treated in such a ham-fisted way that it's completely wasted!

And now, back to the voice-over stuff I said I'd bring up earlier. Again, like in Anna, (thanks again Ron Howard allowing others to abuse the use of this by saying that it is an okay thing to do with Rush), we have some intensely annoying and utterly unnecessary 'news' voice-overs over-explaining things. Listen, how stupid do you think I am as an audience member? I don't need this stuff!

Ok, now I did mention that the twist was good, although treated badly and I also found the Lost Dharma flickering film quite interesting, if a little over-used since Lost.

My overall impression of Red Lights and, for that matter, Anna is that they should really have been put together with more care. I could see what the productions were going for. They had all the material, all the actors with chops, they just seemed to have ended up like a right hacked-up patchy mess. And it's a real pity when you see decent enough actors trying their level best to make the whole thing zing, when it just doesn't.

Doctor Who Marathon Continues Next Week