The Avengers - A Rebuttal

I am a firm believer that everyone is entitled to their opinion but, when I read Allen St. John's recent and rather scathing review of The Avengers at Forbes I just couldn't resist from offering the following rebuttal:

Sometimes it feels like reviewers, knowing that there are going to be fifteen gazillion glowing reviews of a particular film or book or album appearing online, come to the conclusion that the only way to ensure their particular review stands out is to swim steadfastly against the tide of opinion.

If one were feeling particularly pedantic then one could, perhaps, criticise The Avengers for a lack of character growth – although, to do so, would be to ignore the medium from which the film is drawn. After all, the episodic, long-term, nature of comics tends to require characters stay relatively static in this respect.

But to criticise The Avengers for not being fun? To accuse The Avengers of failing to excite? It gives the impression that Mr. St. John is being something of a curmudgeon. The Avengers I saw was crammed full of both excitement and fun and, from the reaction of the audience around me, I don’t think I was in the minority…

The Avengers scales heights that all previous superhero team movies (including those mentioned in his review such as X-Men and Fantastic Four) have not even aspired to. It is comic book mayhem and fun poured into the cinematic medium and given life. It is a movie that, like The Hulk himself, is a thundering juggernaut that resists any and all attempts to be slowed down. For newcomers, it is a film that makes comic book heroes cool again; for true comic book fans, it is veritable manna from heaven.

Whether it was merely an opinion put forth to gain attention, or whether Allen St. John genuinely found himself unmoved by the spectacle, I think it is an opinion that will very much be in the minority…

And, yes, I know I probably sound like a total fan boy :-) But I loved The Avengers... 

NBC - Please save Awake

This year on TV has been a little disappointing for me. I lost patience with The Mentalist due to the fact that the character rarely seems to genuinely grow and the Red John storyline has been eked out at a rate of one or two episodes a season. I tried watching Touch but found it too saccharine. Even Game of Thrones began in a somewhat fragmented fashion as it desperately tried to stitch together the many and varied threads it has spun out...

So, Awake came as something of a surprise. The premise was interesting - a cop (played by Jason Isaacs) is involved in a car accident but finds himself existing in two parallel realities that follow on from that accident. In one reality, his wife died in the crash and his son survived; in the other his wife survived but his son died. And against the backdrop of his confusion, he has to try and solve cases in both of these realities - with clues and coincidences criss-crossing and foreshadowing between both. Throw in a conspiracy that's being slowly revealed and you have a really intriguing show...

I admit, at times, it is not an easy watch - you need to concentrate to make sure that you keep track of which reality he's in at any particular moment - but it's a show that's worth concentrating on because, up until as far as I've watched (episode seven), it actually delivers.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I find it one of the most interesting shows currently on TV, it seems that its ratings are dropping week-by-week and it is looking more and more likely that NBC will pull the plug on it after season 1. Now, I really hope that is not the case and that the viewing figures pick up because when tripe such as Jersey Shore manages to pick up five or six million viewers a week it is a crying shame that intelligent drama such as Awake is on a downward ratings slide into oblivion.

All I can hope is that more people start tuning in and that the figures creep up a little, just enough that NBC can justify giving it a chance in a second season, hopefully in a better time slot (it doesn't help that it started mid-season and was pitched against The Mentalist). Because Awake is far too good a show to fall to wayside this early...

Writing Update...

Well, after a particularly trying three days - in which I've been laboriously engaged in some rather tedious work - I finally have had a little time to myself to think creatively and to evaluate things.

I really enjoyed the 30 Day Writing Challenge and found that it provided me with real motivation to put all my other responsibilities to one side, at least on occasion, and just write - and, therefore, I don't really want to stop having that motivation, don't want to fall back into the way I was previously where I allowed my work and my responsibilities to subsume my creativity.

Therefore, after mulling the idea for quite some time, I've decided that I am going to use this blog as a means of sharing the work I'm doing on my novel. I don't think I'll publish it all here - would probably be a dreadful format for people to read it in - but I'll try and put the first draft of the first four of five chapters up here as they roll in. And then I'll provide updates on where things are at...and, if enough people enjoy reading it, maybe I'll think about the possibility of publication in some format or other beyond that...

The idea behind the novel is big and sprawling and (hopefully) epic. Sometimes the sheer scale and scope of what I imagine leaves me wondering how I can hope to do it justice but that effort has to start somewhere. And so it starts, properly, here.

If you want to read early snippets of material I've been working on, then you can find them here and here in two of my recent writing challenges.

Ok, I have an appointment with MS Word...

Oliver's Eurovision 2012 Drinking Game

After having finished my 30 Day Writing Challenge I have decided it was about time I got around to this...

Following up on the, frankly scary, success of the 2009 and 2010 Eurovision song contest drinking games – and after having taken a year off to allow my liver to vaguely recover – I am back with Oliver’s Eurovision 2012 Drinking Game.

As with previous years, some of the rules are slightly UK-centric so, if you intend to play this in another country, just ignore rules 1 and 22 and knock back two shots before you get started.

Now, a word of warning; this game is based upon the consumption of strong alcohol. I cannot, therefore, be held responsible for your health (or lack of) if you stringently follow the rules of my game and drink yourself into oblivion. Play this game at your own risk…

Requirements

1. A shot glass for every person playing (probably best to have a couple of spares in case people get overexcited).

2. The national drink of Azerbaijan is, apparently, black tea – which is not generally a beverage associated with drinking games – so I would instead recommend that you switch to your favourite spirit of choice. I recommend you go with a decent vodka and am of the opinion that, if in any doubt, go with Stolichnaya...

Rules

The rules are very simple. You take a sip of your chosen spirit if:

1) Engelbert Humperdinck is mentioned. Drink an entire shot if he is referred to as The Hump.

2) Either of the hosts attempts to sing.

3) Either host pretends to be surprised at something said or done by the other host in what is clearly a well-rehearsed piece of improvisation.

4) Either of the hosts loses track of their autocue or messes up their timing.

5) The video shown before an act contains shots of people in traditional Azerbaijani costume. Drink a shot if anyone is seen doing one of the many traditional Azerbaijani dances. Frankly, there are far too many of them to list here so, if people are gyrating around in a semi-controlled fashion while music plays, take the shot.

6) You see Azerbaijan’s national animal, the Karabakh horse. Drink two shots if it’s a person dressed in a horse costume.

7) The song has the word ‘love’ in the title.

8) You are not entirely sure whether the singer is man who looks like a woman, or a woman who looks like a man.

9) A country is represented by a singer from somewhere else in the world. Drink an entire shot if a country is represented by what seems to be a random person (or persons) scooped up off the streets and then pushed out on stage.

10) The act involves people on stage banging large drums or industrial objects acting as large drums.

11) An item of clothing is removed on stage. Drink an entire shot if it is removed by someone else.

12) The act is bald. Drink an entire shot if they are also female.

13) The act possesses a large moustache.

14) The act is dressed in leather. Drink an entire shot if they are dressed in leather and have a large moustache.

15) If you hear a language used other than that of the nation who is singing (for example, French words in a song by Malta). One sip per language. If in doubt, take a sip.

16) You recognise the song immediately as being a blatant rip off of a previous winner of Eurovision.

17) The song is an ode to world peace. Drink three shots immediately if there are any children on stage at any time during the song.

18) There are dancers on stage who, by their movements, appear never to have heard the song before tonight.

19) People are pretending to play instruments on stage.

20) Every time there is an awkward silence and/or miscommunication between the hosts and the people reading out the votes. Drink an entire shot if the votes get mixed up.

21) Every time one of the people reading out the results of a country’s voting attempts to secure their 15 seconds of fame by babbling on incoherently and generally delaying things and winding a few hundred million people up.

22) Every time it’s "Royaume-Uni? Nil point!". Drink a shot each time, at the end of a voting round, the UK is in last place.

23) Every time a country gives top marks to someone for geographic, political or ethnic reasons.

24) If there is any alcohol left once the show is finished and you’re physically capable of coordinating the movement of alcohol from the bottle to your mouth.


And, if you'd like a printable version of these rules then you can find one HERE (don't say I never do anything nice for you!).

30 Day Writing Challenge - 30 Days of Writing. Done!

Thirty days of writing. Thirty challenges. 31,118 words. And now it's over and I get a chance to go back and reread some of what I wrote at last...

In doing so, I realised that it might be a tad tedious to have to cycle through the various days without knowing what they are all about and so decided to create this page, which provides a brief summary of each day (and a link) enabling anyone who reads this to have a little more information to hand in picking and choosing which of the writing challenges they want to look at.

Ernest Hemingway said the first draft of everything is shit, so the fact that the vast majority of the challenges in here represent the first draft of whatever I wrote means you may have to forgive a certain lack of refinement in what follows. My usual process throughout was to have a general idea for what I was going to write on a particular theme and then sit with my laptop, bashing aggressively against the keyboard, until I'd concluded and then fight to resist my natural urge to reread and edit and rewrite. I did this because I can sometimes find it difficult, when working on my novel, not to want to go back and revise the chapter I've finished the previous day - and I think it's likely far healthier to get into the mindset of ploughing on and writing the full story before you go back and revise it.

So, without further ado, here are all thirty of the challenges.

Day 1 - A Place that you love
For this challenge, I chose to write a short piece about a childhood haunt of mine 'The Hill'... [read more]

Day 2 - Facing The Fear
I decided, for Day 2, to head straight off into SF territory and write a short piece detailing a mysterious assignment for Alana Dshae, as she is whisked off to the furthest reaches of the galaxy to meet with an ancient alien race. [read more]

Day 3 - A genre you've never written in before
I've always held a fondness for Westerns but had never attempted to write anything even remotely close to one; so for this challenge I wrote the story of a group of killers, led by a man called Six Finger Bob, heading into the town of Desolation on the hunt for a man called Danny Ringo... [read more]

Day 4 - Dialogue only, please
I decided to use the challenge of today to flesh out some of the characters from Day 3's short story and provide a slightly ironic, and hopefully comedic, insight into the minds of the Little Jake and Slim Decker... [read more]

Day 5 - Inspired by your favourite song
After considering writing a piece of fantasy, I decided to make Day 5 an honest evaluation of how Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of Little Wing makes me feel. [read more]

Day 6 - Second person coffee
Writing in the second person is always fun and, once you're writing in this perspective, it's very hard to resist the lure of noir. Of course, there had to be some comedy in there as well as your morning coffee is somewhat spoiled by the arrival of The Mob... [read more]

Day 7 - A day in the life of your favourite comic book character
I decided to use this challenges as an opportunity to take a slightly alternative look at a much beloved comic book character... [read more]

Day 8 - A place that exists only in your mind
For today's challenge I visited a place that exists only in my mind; the hugely mechanised city of Trinity that crawls slowly city-wise on its path around the globe. This is a small excerpt from the first draft of my current novel. [read more]

Day 9 - El Diablo
This one kind of got away from me - or, rather, I ran out of time to finish it - and so there is only a tiny snippet of a very strange story that I intended to feature a Mexican drug lord and a Lovecraftian sub-text... [read more]

Day 10 - The Interview
After a few days of being (relatively) serious, I abandoned myself to the comic and wrote a short fantasy piece about the interview of a potential minion by a Dark Lord. [read more]

Day 11 - A Point in History
A short SF piece detailing the machinations of Alfred J Pollock, a scientist of dubious repute, who hoped to use his newly fashioned time machine to return to the past and enslave civilization... [read more]

Day 12 - Your passion
My passion is writing. So, I write about writing. Very meta. [read more]

Day 13 - The place I grew up
A slightly rose tinted view of the town of Halesowen, where I spent my formative years. [read more]

Day 14 - In the style of a favourite writer
A couple of possibilities suggested themselves but I decided to embark upon a short homage to the SF of Iain M Banks... [read more]

Day 15 - The road goes ever on
For some reason, I found this one of the hardest challenges to actually get an idea for but when I did I fashioned a short story that features a car trip, a powerful sense of deja vu and a realisation that all might not quite what it seems. [read more]

Day 16 - How an event from yesterday could have gone
This is, quite possibly, the silliest day out of all 30. I'll say nothing else. [read more]

Day 17 - The Ocean
A different tone entirely to the previous day, this challenge details the diary of a mariner stranded in the middle of the Atlantic... [read more]

Day 18 - The taste of your favourite meal
I don't want to give anything away about this; but it begins with a serial killer following a young woman as she exists a bar...[read more]

Day 19 - The day of randomness
Today's challenge involved heading to wikipedia and using their random page link to find the subject of your day's challenge. I got Pedro Aznar, a musician and so fashioned this short story about an encounter on a Rio beach. [read more]

Day 20 - A place you want to visit
An opportunity to reveal my desire to follow in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong! [read more]

Day 21 - Night
This offered me an opportunity to slip briefly into horror fiction as a man is assailed in his house by deadly visitors... [read more]

Day 22 - Standing at the precipice
A man stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon and has to decide whether he believes enough to jump. [read more]

Day 23 - First person blind date
This turned out to be almost as silly as Day 16 as it considers the perils of extra-terrestrial blind dating... [read more]

Day 24 - The City
A short piece that is derived from a fantasy world that I've had knocking around my imagination for many years. [read more]

Day 25 - A Poem
Today I created a SF sonnet... [read more]

Day 26 - Something you witnessed today
A short story that touches upon the more invasively dystopian possibilities afforded by the advances in augmented reality technology... [read more]

Day 27 - A snippet from a novel you want to write
This is a snippet from a novel I am writing - part of the same novel as seen in Day 8 - as we are introduced to Militza Tio; warrior,  member of the Shield Guard and soon-to-be renegade. [read more]

Day 28 - Second person bank robbery
From the perspective of you, an undercover FBI agent, waiting for a notorious gang to rob a bank... [read more]

Day 29 - Blue Powder
A chance encounter in a Parisian bistro allows the tale of the legendary Count of Saint Germain to be told. [read more]

Day 30 - The End
Best read after having read Day 29's story, this takes us to the very end of the Universe... [read more]