(1) MOVIE MEME. Mari Ness’ contribution brought the #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly meme to my attention…
Construction workers find themselves caught in the middle of an explosive war they never asked for. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly
— Mari Ness, still masked (@mari_ness) December 13, 2015
Some others –
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/676098003741052928
https://twitter.com/TheFienPrint/status/676155312173408258
https://twitter.com/markmcdsnp/status/676127648976920576
https://twitter.com/kraker2k/status/676121261366489088
Woman is removed from a corner by hotel staff #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly pic.twitter.com/uvownHOWZt
— Sean Cisterna (@seancisterna) December 13, 2015
(2) THINGS TO DO. Mary Robinette Kowal, who uses Habitica as a productivity tool, invites others get the benefit by participating in her guild, “Ink Slingers” –
For science-fiction and fantasy writers and editors who are actively working in the field and trying to improve craft. But who also need peer pressure to be productive.
We have some challenges with habits and dailies that you might find helpful.
The way Habitica works is that you break the things you ought to be doing into three types of things.
- Habits: which are things you ought to do, but not necessarily on a regular basis. Like “3 minute stretch break.”
- Dailies: which you do regularly. Like “Write three sentences.”
- To-Dos: which are one time things. Like “Complete revisions for episode 2.”
To use it, you need to create a Habitica account first, then join Ink Slingers.
(3) WENDIG. Locus Online has an excerpt of its interview with Chuck Wendig.
“We’re either moving toward evolution or the ruination of humanity. There’s an angel and a devil. Both of those are manifest in every single technical jump we make. Which one of these do we bet on? Are we going to destroy ourselves with technology, with a nuclear bomb? Or are we going to get nuclear energy? Even a knife can be used to feed my family, or to kill you and take your food. Even the simplest, tiniest technology has a massive polarizing effect on humanity.”
(4) MAXAM PASSES AWAY. SF Site News reports Bay Area fan Felice Maxam died December 1. Maxam, then Felice Rolfe, participated in the Society for Creative Anachronism from the beginning. She was present at its first Tournament in 1966. She also belonged to the Peninsula SF Association in those days. Co-editor of Niekas with Ed Meskys, she was nominated for two Hugo Awards, and won the Best Fanzine Hugo in 1967.
(5) FUTURE OF EASTERCON. Caroline Mullan is publicizing the Future of Eastercon questionnaire one more time. By Novacon, 207 responses had come in. Another 40 have been submitted since. “We’re mailing round to see if there is anyone else out there who would still like to fill it in before we have another go over the responses,” she says.
The Eastercon Options website has been busy over the last month — here are some of the most interesting posts.
A questionnaire was open on the website during October 2015. We had 207 responses, about half from people who do not usually attend Eastercon bidding sessions…. https://eastercon.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/novacon-presentation.pdf
At the Novacon presentation, someone in the audience asked for a general restatement of what problems we’re trying to solve here. We have a number of problems, some more significant than others, some are not problems at the moment but may well become so. It’s fairly obvious from the results of the questionnaire, that we also have a whole bunch of problems that we didn’t really consider to be problems at all, until we started asking questions….
Fans are often bad about communication. We tend to be rubbish about talking to other people, and even worse about understanding them when they talk back. That’s a bit strange for a subculture that is largely based around forms of communication, from letters to fanzines to films to blogs to conversations and panels at conventions. Historically though, the record of fans communicating, misunderstanding each other, followed by “all Fandom plunged into war” is pretty consistent. So it’s no surprise that here we are in 2015 and the results from our questionnaire show that we’re still doing a lousy job. I’d like to understand why, though the folly of doing this through the act of communicating via yet another written medium has not escaped me….
(6) Today’s Birthday Boy
- Born December 13, 1925 – Dick Van Dyke
Fans help Dick Van Dyke kick-off his birthday weekend celebration with a flash mob at The Grove in Los Angeles on December 12, 2015.
(7) SITH STATUARY. The BBC profile “The Man Who Turned Lenin Into Darth Vader” tells about Ukranian sculptor Alexander Milov, who got the Odessa city council to allow him to turn a Lenin statue they were threatening to melt down into a Darth Vader statue. It even has free Wi-Fi!
To create his new sculpture, Milov strengthened the original structure and added a helmet and cape made out of titanium alloy – he also inserted a Wi-Fi router in Vader’s head. Despite the statue’s apparent glibness, it serves as a reminder that we can’t control which memories last and which don’t. “I wanted to make a symbol of American pop culture which appears to be more durable than the Soviet ideal.”
(8) COOKING FOR WHO. Chris-Rachael Oseland, author of Dining with the Doctor (recipes inspired by Doctor Who), is interviewed by Salon in “Geek food for the geek soul: ‘As society gets increasingly secular, we need to fill the social void’”.
Oseland will bring out a second edition of her Dr. Who book next year, as well as “Geek Breads,” which includes the “Dune” recipe. If you’ve seen the image of a “Dune” sandworm made of bread that went viral last week, that’s her work….
So it came out of your interest in history, more than fiction or something?
Yes – and I think that’s reflected in most of my cookbooks. “An Unexpected Cookbook,” my hobbit one, is a straight-up history cookbook: It’s all recipes from Tolkien’s childhood in the 1890s.
I’m doing the same thing with my Dr. Who cookbook – anytime where they go back in history, it’s an excuse for me to tuck in a few historical facts… I feel this obligation to make sure I’m historically accurate with these things.
(9) SENSE OF HISTORY. Adam-Troy Castro read Castalia House’s first two blog posts about pedophilia in sf and he challenges the relevance of its entry about David Asimov.
(10) SOUND FOOTING. Star Wars socks from Stance.
(11) OUT OF THE BOX. This Saturday Night Live faux commercial spoofs toy collecting nerds.
(12) RUCKER RECOMMENDS. Rudy Rucker’s book picks for 2015 ends with four books from this year (the others date earlier). His enthusiasm is contagious, so brace your TBR pile for incoming….!
(10) Paul Di Filippo, A Palazzo in Space. 2015. Paul Di Filippo writes SF stories, a lot of them, and he’s had a zillion collections come out. I collaborate with him on stories sometimes, so I’m very sensitive to the pleasures of his style. He has this jovial voice and an extreme love of words, with a real knack for SF neologisms. Like one of his stories communication devices is said to be “uebertoothed.” And there’s a gang of reality hackers called Los Braceros Ultimos. In one of his stories, “Pocketful of Faces,” he gets into an insane riff about people switching their faces, storylet after storylet, topping himself over and over—its’ like watching some mad juggler. And in the denouement, someone is wearing a fake face on top of a fake face on top of their real face, and who even knows why, but it just has to happen. And the doubly buried faces is like a pale grubworm inside a rotten log. Great stuff. Write on, celestial scribe!
(11) ONE LORD A-LEAPING. Legend of Tarzan official teaser trailer.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and Steven H Silver for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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First !
Loved the Star Wars – collect them all spoof.
Tarzan looks surprisingly good. And the movie memes are great!.
I second your first!
I’ll just tee this up for the next person…
F*th?
(Which depends on whether Mike’s counts.)
With all these remakes and grimdark re-imaginings, can I please have a remake of “Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze”? I’d give a helluva lot to see a moderately serious (not camp, but fun) Doc Savage movie, ideally set in the 1920s.
The story would be interesting; I’ve been rereading some of them and they don’t hold up well. Well, the stories are fun (evil scientists, violent villains, strange substances and bizarre discoveries), but the social mores and racial stereotypes are a bit, err, interesting.
@the other Nigel
You might try the Curtis Magazine reprints … I have heard good things about them. All the pulpy goodness with a more modern social outlook.
http://project-nerd.com/2015/01/20/doc-savage-archives-vol-1-comic-review/
@Shambles
That looks good. I’ll check ’em out. Thanks a lot.
(1) MOVIE MEME – ::embarassed:: I dunno what the first one is, help?
(9) SENSE OF HISTORY – Day, grasping at straws? No, that *simply* cannot be.
I do like ATC’s theory that the whole thing was based on the author googling an incredibly general query like “science fiction pederasty” and running with it.
I’m guessing it’s a reference to construction workers on the Death Star, therefore Star Wars, however I make no guarantees….
(2) Habitica really is a wonderful productivity tool- there’s nothing for encouraging daily habits and goal setting like getting experience, gold and pets for your 8-bit character. Honestly, it’s one if the things that kept me on-task for writing.
And what about Kurt’s? Sorry, I don’t get it.
@snowcrash,
They work a lot better on Twitter where many of the tweets have images from the movie concerned.
These are good too.
Mexican Shah ?@MikeElChingon:
A lot of people take the Ice Bucket Challenge. It doesn’t end well.
“Gvgnavp”
Maggie Serota ?@maggieserota:
Paranoid billionaire afraid of immigrant
“Ongzna i Fhcrezna: Qnja bs Whfgvpr”
Mentioned by John Groves ?@jfgroves:
Rick Polito’s: Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she mets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.
“Gur Jvmneq bs Bm”
Ian Hughes ?@ilhughes:
Tom Cruise lives.
Tom Cruise dies.
Tom Cruise lives.
Tom Cruise dies.
Tom Cruise lives.
Tom Cruise dies.
“Rqtr bs Gbzbeebj”
justelias ?@Just_Elias: A woman will overcome any obstacle to be alone with her cat.
“Nyvra”
The other Nigel ,
Have you read the linked short stories by William Preston that are (though never referenced explicitly) a nod to Doc Savage? They were first published in Asimov’s but are now available from Amazon. “Helping Them Take the Old Man Down” was the first one published. They are terrific.
@JJ
“Ybeq bs gur Evatf”
Ahhhhh. Thanks @Mike, @Soon Lee. Though I think the first one should be “Fgne Jnef: Erghea bs gur Wrqv”, as that one had more construction workers.
I am now mildly embarrassed that I thought the construction workers one was talking about The Lego Movie.
(11) If it’s not based on something by Philip Jose Farmer, I’m not interested. It’s time. And the source material has been rehashed, straight-faced, too many times already.
@Ian,
The point is that they are movie plots explained *badly* (and I didn’t get some of the ones on twitter moreso when they didn’t include picture clues).
Shouldn’t our esteemed host’s comments carry additional weight, making yours sixth?
Ok,consolidated list of movies for the Science Fiction Movie Bracket can be found here.
These Explain a film badly entries are pretty funny, but none, I think, quite match the ur-example of the printed one for the Wizard of Oz that set off this entire idea. (wasn’t that shared here at some point?)
That said, I’d mildly engaged in this myself on twitter, but not to memorable result.
Saladin Ahmed’s example for The Matrix made me laugh and laugh.
Pacific Standard Simon: (11) If it’s not based on something by Philip Jose Farmer, I’m not interested. It’s time. And the source material has been rehashed, straight-faced, too many times already.
You want toy action figures for Farmer’s books??? 😕
Soon Lee: “Ybeq bs gur Evatf”
Thanks. I’m not really a huge fan of either the books or movies, so I wouldn’t have gotten that.
(I know, you are all shocked to hear this, SHOCKED I tell you!)
A large Pest Control Operator comes under criticism for its deceptive exploitation of child labor #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly
(6) Today’s Birthday Boy
A pair of anarchists persuade two disaffected youth to engineer a run on a bank, then assassinate its owner when the plot backfires. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly
Are these supposed to be inaccurate, as well as badly explained? In no way was Frodo a young boy when he set out. The book had him as turning 33 when Fellowship opened, and 50 when he set out from the Shire. The movie compressed things, but still Frodo was an adult.
@Brian Z: I am sure these are good, but without a picture or link I am clueless.
Henley: The first recent, starring Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley, the second 50 years ago starring Dick Van Dyke.
I’d be up for a Wold Newton movie franchise. Do it Marvel style – start with new versions of Doc Savage and the Shadow and then start having them interact and cross over. Then you could start bringing in the more obscure characters. I’d pay to see a ‘G8 and His Battle Aces’ movie.
Tarzan has me guardedly optimistic, as I was expecting a CW teen romance. Let’s hope it doesn’t suffer the same fate as “John Carter.”
Regarding the Wold Newton Universe, I’ve only just realised that the Trinity Universe RPG setting, especially the Adventure! rulebook, is a fairly blatant copy of it with the names filed off….
Also, I note there are two 11’s…
If you describe the basic ideas behind Doc Savage, it should make for interesting books/movies/TV shows. The actual Doc Savage pulps/novels leave a lot to be desired. Even if you ignore the dated social elements, they’re often inconsistent (series canon and tone) and most of the Fabulous Five behave like bratty children instead of the geniuses that they’re supposed to be.
I’m torn whether a good writer could improve the series or would just be better off starting their own pulp team from scratch.
Movie Plot Explained Poorly: Hero cat survives despite idiot crew.
I may need some of those Boba Feet to go with my Boba Bag.
Wold Newton-esque fiction: currently reading Carrie Vaughn’s Dreams Of The Golden Age, in which an Event caused superpowers to manifest, and the third generation is in high school.
(Actually it’s more Astro City than Farmer, but owes a tip of the hat to PJF)
Movie Plot described poorly: human interest story ruins hummingbird migration documentary.
(A favourite film that is sadly under-appreciated.)
I wonder, given how badly League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was done and did, if there is a wider appetite for a Wold Newton movie verse. Or is the idea of the Marvel movie verse really something that can be successfully copied at all?
Weren’t they written by different authors using the same pen name? I could be wrong, of course, but I thought that was a common practice.
Ugh, yeah. Most authors write genius pretty badly. (I once saw recommended the technique of setting up a problem, then thinking about how to solve it for a very long time, then writing it as if the genius thought of it very quickly. This may be difficult when one is writing pulps on a very tight schedule, though.)
Well, DC’s certainly trying to replicate the Marvel movie thing, but the trailers for Batman vs. Superman do not fill me with confidence.
Haven’t watched ’em, although the youngsters at the family gathering have been enjoying mocking them.
Wonder Woman seems to be remaining as the afterthought who stands between the two guys and looks dumb, as I believe one actress described it back in the 1940s.
Although written under the house pen name of Kenneth Robeson, I think there were six authors of the Doc Savage stories. (More if you include the recent revivals.) Lester Dent did the majority of the stories. Though he had a pretty specific formula he used to write the stories, occasionally he’d go off on a weird streak, especially in the later stories. Even the stories written by Dent aren’t always consistent. Philip José Farmer catalogs some of the inconsistencies in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.
I think the modern equivalent of the Fabulous Five is something like Scorpion where the characters spout buzz words which might sound impressive if you know nothing about the problem they’re trying to solve or the technology they’re describing. It usually becomes something laughable if you know anything about the area at all. Often the pulps wouldn’t even try to fudge it and the characters would just do things without any plausible explanation.
I am having trouble not imagining the Faaa-abulous Five, in full Priscilla Queen of the Desert get up.
Clicky.
I know I’d be up for that. Put Pat Savage, Doc’s cousin, in charge of their look. Not sure there’s much you could do with Long Tom.
I didn’t seek out the latest Batman vs. Superman trailer, but it came up before something I’d gotten from Netflix (Man from UNCLE, maybe?). I came away from the trailer convinced that they really, really don’t understand any of the characters — possibly even moreso than in the last Superman movie.
@Simon Bisson – Ooh! Ooh! Is that The Big Year? I love that movie.
Although, speaking as a birder, they made High Island way nicer than it is and Snowy Owls do not live in the woods and the Pink-Footed Goose bit was wildly inaccurate. But they were very sympathetic to birders in general.
@RedWombat. It is!
Looks like there was a leak of the Star Trek Beyond German trailer, and this caused Paramount to release the actual trailer earlier (I think this was the one that was supposed to come out with Force Awakens)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRVD32rnzOw
Will wait for the Blu-Ray.
The only thing that makes me even remotely interested in checking out Batman Vs. Superman is Jason Momoa as Aquaman, but that’s nowhere new enough to make me pay money to see it.
Recent reading:
Uprooted by Naomi Novik. I was a bit wary about this before reading it, as it has been getting a barrel-load of hype and it didn’t sound entirely like my cup of tea, but I actually enjoyed it rather a lot. It’s well-crafted, and has a lot more page-turnability than I would expect from folkloric fantasy.
Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell. Picked up after a Filer recommendation earlier this week. I enjoyed it as a pleasurable light read – think Hornblower-in-space but with trading instead of fighting. I was able to read it for ‘free’ using my Amazon Prime membership – in the UK it’s a bit pricey to buy at £4 for a short, 250 page, novel.