Monday, April 12, 2004
No words came yesterday. I sat and stared at the iBook's screen for nigh on two hours, my hands hovering above the keyboard, at the ready, but no words came. If I am a conduit, the pipes weren't flowing. And here it is the day after Easter and I still have to finish this story, write another, and get a novel proposal into my agent before the end of April.
That vacation I took in January seems a million years away.
This weekend, Spooky and I rented the first two episodes of Steven Spielberg's Taken. I didn't watch the mini-series when it aired on Sci-Fi. I just couldn't imagine what Spielberg could do with the mythology of ufology that hadn't been done better by The X-Files. And, I'll admit, the cult of abductees has been getting on my nerves of late. Anyway, the first episode of Taken was so stupendously dull that Spooky actually dozed off on several occassions. I stayed awake, but kept asking myself why I was bothering. We almost didn't bother with the second episode, "Jake and Jesse." But we had rented it, and there was nothing else much to do last night. But the second episode is a definite improvement on the first. At least the characters begin to be a little more engaging. Still, I'm not sure we're going to rent the rest of this. I just can't get over the sheer dullness. And with this behemoth topping the scales at twenty hours, the word "overkill" keeps coming to mind. Close Encounters of the Third Kind has its flaws, but at least it never threatened to put me to sleep. Taken seems incapable of summoning any genuine menace, though menace would seem to be at the heart of the thing. The scariest boogeyman it seems to offer is Joel Gretsch's ruthless conspirator, Maj. Owen Crawford. But he's a bland shadow of The X-Files's William B. Davis. Indeed, bland seems to be at the core of Taken. The direction, cinematography, acting — everything — is so absolutely bland, in the way that television drama, more often than not, usually is bland.
For those of you who are into LiveJournal, Spooky (thrynglum) has begun a CRK LiveJournal community, Species of One. I won't be posting there, but I will be reading it. I think this will be intended as more of a book/story discussion group than is my phorum at scaredhedgehog.net. You are all invited.
Well, most of you.
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