A mixed bag
Feb. 10th, 2014 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThe Hard Way by Lee Child:
Alternating between young adult dystopian fiction with teenage girl protagonists and Jack Reacher books seems to be working out quite well! What can I say about The Hard Way? It's a Jack Reacher book! Back to third person narrative, which I think I prefer, the usual gaggle of devastatingly attractive women (though Reacher says he prefers the one in her 50s over the one in her 30s because he predicts she'd be better in bed). I worked out the entire plot way before him, as usual, but that's actually become part of the fun - and it was a very entertaining plot. What makes this one stand out from the others, though, is that Reacher takes a trip to England, which was highly amusing, not least because of the range of truly awful British accents the audiobook narrator used. Great stuff for the commute!
Twelve Angry Men:
We went to see this at The Garrick last week, and it was awesome! Martin Shaw (Doyle from the Professionals) and Robert Vaughn (The Man From UNCLE) took on Jeff Fahey (Frank Lapitus from Lost) and Nick Moran (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) in one long continuous scene (only broken by the interval) where the whole cast remained on stage the whole time. The staging was brilliant - the big conference table very slowly rotated throughout the whole play, so you kept getting a different angle on things without really realising it was moving. And the actors also moved around very effectively so that the static nature of the scene wasn't an issue at all. The acting was excellent - and it was actually funny in places (though the audience also laughed in others where I didn't think they should have). It was also a different experience for us, because we somehow ended up in a box. At first we weren't sure this would be a good idea, because of the restricted view, but we ended up really enjoying the space and the privacy - and the view was fine! Fantastic all round.
The Woman in the Story by Helen Jacey:
I've been watching feministfrequency.com videos (excellent, by the way) and wanted a view on how best to improve the female characters in my novel, so I bought this book. It did have some kernels of advice that may prove useful - but it was largely disappointing, because it was about how to write memorable female protagonists in screenplays, and it mostly went through all the possible variations of movie cliches - concluding that the best way to be successful in screenwriting is to pander to what Hollywood thinks is popular. So, it seems I can get an awful lot of information on how *not* to write decent female characters, but it's proving a lot more difficult to find advice or examples of how to do it *right*.
I Love You Because:
One of my work colleagues runs a theatre production company and this was her first show - a very well produced muscial about dating in New York. The only flaws were in the writing (which had some rather dodgy representations of different gender attitudes to relationships) - the set was very effective with only a few pieces, the acting and singing were enthusiastic and of a good quality, and the music was great. My colleague was also the Musical Director and played the keyboard throughout (rather impressively conducting the rest of the band with her head movements). I did get rather distracted from the main action by watching her play, but overall I enjoyed the show.
Racing Demons:
This is a card game I was introduced to on Saturday night. It's basically competitive Patience. You play your own deck, but put Aces in the middle of the table, after which anyone can play the next card on top of that pile. The aim is to be the first to get your primary stack of cards 'out'. You get a positive score for the number of cards you play into the middle, a bonus for any stacks you complete with a King, and negative points for the number of cards left in your primary stack at the end. It can get a bit frenetic, and I wasn't very good at spotting opportunities for getting my cards out, but it was a lot of fun, and a good game of flexible length, as each round only takes a few minutes, but you can play lots in a row. You do need multiple cards with different backs, though, and it doesn't scale that well above four or five players.
Alternating between young adult dystopian fiction with teenage girl protagonists and Jack Reacher books seems to be working out quite well! What can I say about The Hard Way? It's a Jack Reacher book! Back to third person narrative, which I think I prefer, the usual gaggle of devastatingly attractive women (though Reacher says he prefers the one in her 50s over the one in her 30s because he predicts she'd be better in bed). I worked out the entire plot way before him, as usual, but that's actually become part of the fun - and it was a very entertaining plot. What makes this one stand out from the others, though, is that Reacher takes a trip to England, which was highly amusing, not least because of the range of truly awful British accents the audiobook narrator used. Great stuff for the commute!
Twelve Angry Men:
We went to see this at The Garrick last week, and it was awesome! Martin Shaw (Doyle from the Professionals) and Robert Vaughn (The Man From UNCLE) took on Jeff Fahey (Frank Lapitus from Lost) and Nick Moran (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) in one long continuous scene (only broken by the interval) where the whole cast remained on stage the whole time. The staging was brilliant - the big conference table very slowly rotated throughout the whole play, so you kept getting a different angle on things without really realising it was moving. And the actors also moved around very effectively so that the static nature of the scene wasn't an issue at all. The acting was excellent - and it was actually funny in places (though the audience also laughed in others where I didn't think they should have). It was also a different experience for us, because we somehow ended up in a box. At first we weren't sure this would be a good idea, because of the restricted view, but we ended up really enjoying the space and the privacy - and the view was fine! Fantastic all round.
The Woman in the Story by Helen Jacey:
I've been watching feministfrequency.com videos (excellent, by the way) and wanted a view on how best to improve the female characters in my novel, so I bought this book. It did have some kernels of advice that may prove useful - but it was largely disappointing, because it was about how to write memorable female protagonists in screenplays, and it mostly went through all the possible variations of movie cliches - concluding that the best way to be successful in screenwriting is to pander to what Hollywood thinks is popular. So, it seems I can get an awful lot of information on how *not* to write decent female characters, but it's proving a lot more difficult to find advice or examples of how to do it *right*.
I Love You Because:
One of my work colleagues runs a theatre production company and this was her first show - a very well produced muscial about dating in New York. The only flaws were in the writing (which had some rather dodgy representations of different gender attitudes to relationships) - the set was very effective with only a few pieces, the acting and singing were enthusiastic and of a good quality, and the music was great. My colleague was also the Musical Director and played the keyboard throughout (rather impressively conducting the rest of the band with her head movements). I did get rather distracted from the main action by watching her play, but overall I enjoyed the show.
Racing Demons:
This is a card game I was introduced to on Saturday night. It's basically competitive Patience. You play your own deck, but put Aces in the middle of the table, after which anyone can play the next card on top of that pile. The aim is to be the first to get your primary stack of cards 'out'. You get a positive score for the number of cards you play into the middle, a bonus for any stacks you complete with a King, and negative points for the number of cards left in your primary stack at the end. It can get a bit frenetic, and I wasn't very good at spotting opportunities for getting my cards out, but it was a lot of fun, and a good game of flexible length, as each round only takes a few minutes, but you can play lots in a row. You do need multiple cards with different backs, though, and it doesn't scale that well above four or five players.
