Tag: movies

What’s Your Favorite Type of Story?

Laura Highcove

Another prompt from the DIYMFA.com. To find out more, you can check out the DIYMFA.com’s instigator, Gabriela Pereira’s new book DIY MFA.

QOTW 15: What’s Your Favorite Type of Story?

My favorite type of story is one that has a theme of camaraderie, either a pairing or a team of some kind. This does not (necessarily) mean an ensemble cast. I am a fan of characters interacting with each other in a place of teamwork and/or trust. It can be romantic or not. (I am always a fan of a good bromance.) I also like it when it starts out as hate or reluctance.


The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Examples across media include:

Castle: The four main characters are willing to do anything for each other, even if it’s sometimes outside the law.

Psych: Shawn and Gus seem to know what each other is thinking and are always together, have each other’s backs, and the jokes they pull off together are amazing.

Suits: In the cutthroat lawyer world, the two main characters are seriously loyal to each other.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV Show and Movie): In the TV show, the two main characters are partners and work very well together. In the movie they start out hating each other and come to a sort of grudging respect.

BBC’s Merlin: The two main characters start out hating each other and eventually develop into friends AND in later seasons get a whole team that works together on trust.

Speed Racer This movie has a theme of family, and plenty of times when everyone has to work together to get stuff done.

The Avengers: More an ensemble cast, but they all have to learn to work together

Blue Exorcist: Team of students that bond through their adventures enough to keep them together when they find out the main character is the son of the devil. (This one’s an anime.)

The Legend of Eli Monpress: The main character and his team are already established at the beginning of the books, but it’s their bonds to each other that keep them from failing.

Brandon Sanderson novels: He likes to have a tight knit team that works well together and gets along (fairly well) in most of his books.

As you can see, it’s a wide variety of different types of relationships and teams that gets me interested, but it’s no surprise that I have a similar theme in all of my own stories.

Why does this archetype appeal to me so much?

Because I inherently want to trust people.

Because these are the kinds of relationships I want to have.

…it’s something like that I’m sure.

I don’t like books where everyone betrays everyone else all the time and are just out for themselves. I like to see people willing to go to the mat to defend a friend. I like to see people throw it all on the line for something they might not even understand because it’s important to the person they trust. I never get more teary eyed than when two people (especially who hated each other previously) go back to back. It’s about that connection. It also tends to result in some pretty awesome dialogue as friends snark at each other.

Out of this I am planning on doing a series of blog posts going into more depth with what I like about my favorite media, and what I didn’t like about media I consumed and didn’t like. I expect I’ll find that a lot of the things I like about the media I consume end up in my own stories, like this one, but there may be some that I’m not even aware of right now, and if I become aware of them, then I can manipulate them to better effect in my own storytelling.

Warcraft Movie

Laura Highcove

So a few weeks ago I went to see the Warcraft movie. I knew it wasn’t going to be good and I knew it wasn’t going to have a happy ending (cause the whole Alliance vs Horde thing), but I was hoping that I could get some entertainment value out of it.

Now at one point I was a pretty big Warcraft lore buff, but it’s been three or four years since I played World of Warcraft, and so most of it has faded. The only name I remembered was Medivh, and that he wasn’t a good guy.

As for the movie itself. The script was pretty terrible, however the characters did a good job of showing what good friends they were with each other. I don’t know if that was the script, or just good acting, but it made the movie bearable.

The graphics were, of course, amazing. Especially the orcs and how they moved and looked. I was also pretty impressed with the magic effects. I could see people saying that the magic was a bit overblown, but after playing World of Warcraft, it’s exactly what you see swirling around a mage or a warlock when they cast.

Seeing the cities of Ironforge and especially Stormwind was just amazing. I enjoyed seeing Karazhan and Dalaran as well, though they looked a little less like their in-game counterparts. Also, kudoes to the Alliance’s armor, showing off the shiny and the bling. Not realistic in the least, but who the heck cares?

And the movie did bring up nostalgic feelings of playing World of Warcraft, which I did from 2006 through 2012 in a hardcore raiding guild. I admit, I got goosebumps at the end when the crowd was chanting “For Azeroth!” and then shifted to the one “For the Alliance.”

Overall, movie was not great. I’d probably watch it again, but I have a feeling this is one of those movies where I’ll skip a lot of it. If you loved World of Warcraft, go check it out for old times sake. If not, you won’t miss a thing.

James Bond’s Spectre

Laura Highcove

So last night my husband and I went to see Spectre. He has wanted to see all the Daniel Craig James Bond movies when they came out, but we never managed to. When I saw Spectre was coming out, I made a point of having a marathon of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall so that we could see Spectre.

Warning: Spoilers

The opening sequence at the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico City was visually stunning. With the added effect of it being one long shot, it was rather impressive. I also liked the worlds slowest parkour as James walked down and across the rooftops for his assassination.

That is about where my enjoyment of the movie stopped. The chase through the crowd and the helicopter fight were too close and jumbled to be very exciting, and I wasn’t even able to suspend my disbelief that helicopters CAN’T turn over, (much less then come back under control) in order to enjoy the fight.

Then is James Bond getting in trouble for being off doing his own thing. (Shock.) He gets repercussions, and then they mean diddly squat. Not only that, but he steals a car he’s not supposed to have, somehow gets it to Rome (18 hour drive btw, in a rather unique looking car) so he can listen to people talk, have some shadowy guy realize James is there, and have an entirely lackluster car chase through the streets that I’m told was supposed to build tension but during which I simply got sick of him glancing in his rear-view mirror to see his pursuer in exactly the same spot as before. And then he dumped that beautiful car in the river.

Off he goes to get info out of a dying guy he somehow magically knows the location of so he can go find his Bond Girl. Ms. Assassin from Mission Impossible 4. Her dead-fish eyes really worked well for that role, but in this role I felt her just dis-likable.

Then sitting around and waiting in the hotel room before heading off to the middle of nowhere, punctuated by a fight with the ‘heavy’ on the train which wasn’t completely horrible, (He even hit the girl and she got back up and shot him.) before sitting around and waiting until a car came to pick them up. I guess we get a little tension because this guy knows all about them. He shows off his power a bit. Tortures James with a brain drill that is supposed to disable him and does absolutely nothing, nor does the explosion he uses to escape, since he then comes out of that building and drops the bad guys with a shot each.

All while Moriarty …pardon me, ‘C’ is running around being obviously evil while our secondary characters scramble to do something about it.

The walk through the old MI6 building was not bad.

I was impressed that James didn’t shoot the bad guy, and that they had foreshadowed that a bit. (Though this comes right after I saw Jim Gordan decide not to kill a bad guy in Gotham, who then kills a police officer on the way to lockup.) However, I was a little surprised that apparently James actually loved this Bond Girl (like run off together, love) because the actors had no chemistry.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent an entire movie thinking: “So it has to pick up soon since people have said it’s so good.”

So in conclusion, the best part about Spectre is that I saw Skyfall and Q was cute.

Researching Arthurian Legend

Laura Highcove

So today I’ve done a bit of research on Arthurian Legend. The first part of the second half of The Storyteller, I’m sending Tabitha into The King Arthur tale.

Before this I knew the basics of this myth like most people:

There was a king named Arthur. He had a special sword called Excalibur that he got out of a stone or a lake, depending on who you ask. He had a wizard mentor named Merlin. He has a group of knights and a round table. He has a wife Guenevere who is also in love with one of his knights, Lancelot and that got everyone into a lot of trouble.

Places I have seen the Arthur Legend:

The Sword in the Stone by Disney, with adorable little Wart and old man Merlin who taught him everything important.

I saw a live action movie one time that may have been based on the book The Mists of Avalon (which I haven’t read) that focused more on Morgan le Fay. I don’t remember much of it except that she was tricked into sleeping with her half-brother, Arthur.

The BBC series Merlin, which toward the end used the less than happy ending to the Arthur story, ie Arthur getting mortally wounded by Mordred and then “disappearing”, but oh hey it might come back some day. (Argh, I don’t care how ‘faithful’ that ending was, I was so unhappy.)

New things I discovered:

Excalibur actually came out of the lake. There was a lady there who took care of it, and she and Merlin had a thing.

The sword that Arthur pulled out of the stone was not Excalibur.

There is apparently a lot of illicit sex going on among the peoples of this mythology. Arthur’s father slept with a married woman to get Arthur. Arthur slept with his half-sister Morgan and/or Morgause and sired the person who would kill him, Mordred. And some of his knights got naughty as well (Besides Lancelot).

Chivalry was a super big thing, but most things involving Courtly Love eventually just turned into illicit sex.

and …

I’m not sure how I’ll use this information for my story yet, but it was only an hour or so of research. Just enough to get me the basics. I think my main issue is that there are a lot of people in the Arthurian Legend, and if I’m keeping with calling people by their roles instead of their names, it gets a lot more complicated when there are all those knights. We’ll have to see what I come up with.

Frozen

Laura Highcove

So on Tuesday I walked into the back room of Fun N Games, now newly moved to University Mall, where we hold our weekly D&D session. Gloves immediately stood up, pointed at me, and said ‘You have to go see Frozen.’ Now if you know Gloves, you will know that this is very odd behavior for him, as he is the type of guy who is perfectly happy in his own opinions, but for the most part does not try to impart them on other people. Therefore, my husband and I knew that this sort of declaration warranted attention.

We proceeded to talk about how the commercials and advertising for the movie were horrible, or at least did not make me excited about going to see the movie, which is the point of advertising. At that moment of the conversation with Gloves, I knew two things: One: Frozen was based on ‘The Snow Queen’ fairy tale, and they had both an annoying snowman mascot AND another hoofed animal acting like a dog (A la Tangled) which is a pet peeve of mine, as I actually work with horses.

Then Blake brought up the fact that he had read a review that said the reviewer basically could not say anything about the movie, because it was all a spoiler. I thought about that for a moment. It’s a rather tall order. It also would explain why there was nothing other than joke scenes in the commercials, in addition to a line from the main!? character saying ‘That’s not a blizzard, that’s my sister’, which did not actually occur in the movie. Spoiler!?

After seeing the movie, I can understand why they decided that pretty much, the movie is a spoiler for the movie. I will now proceed to explain why I think the marketing was done the way it was, which is in fact spoiler. If you haven’t seen the movie, go patronize it with money. If you have, you have no worry of spoilers.

Reasons the commercials were horrible:

1) They did not want to show Anna in princess garb, that cut out a large portion of scenes at the beginning.
2) They wanted you to think Elsa was the villain and there are no real villainy scenes with Elsa, because she’s not a villain.
3) They couldn’t show the actual villain, because unlike most Disney movies, who the villain was is actually a surprise. And most of the rest of the time he’s on camera, he’s singing or with Anna in princess garb.

However, I was really happy with the way I feel they played with tropes in this movie. Elsa became a queen and then went rogue (not villain, but still rogue). The trope being Disney Queens are evil.

Also, I have a thing for fairy tail characters who know (to some extent) that they exist in a fairy tale world. (My top two favorite books ever are examples of this, ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ by Diana Wynne Jones and The Fairy Godmother by Mercades Lackey) When they say ‘a supreme act of love’ and everyone goes right to ‘true love’s kiss’. (It’s a theme in ABC (owned by Disney)’s Once Upon A Time, which is also wonderful, go see it.)

Then there is Anna, who is an action girl, ready to go out there and deal with life on her terms, then becomes a damsel in distress. Sadface. They rush her back to the castle only to find out her ‘true love’ Hans is the villain at which point we assume she needs Khristoff to save her … only then she sacrifices herself for Elsa, which causes her to save herself! A wonderful break from normal fairy taleing, even if it makes Khristoff a rather handsome ancillary character.

So both girls had wonderful character development, the snowman ended up being rather perfect, and now the Internets have someone to pair Jack Frost with. Plus, the ice palace was rather spectacular.

Thor: The Dark World

Laura Highcove

Last week when Thor: The Dark World came out, my husband and I took our date night out to see it. He, because it was a super hero movie, me because of Loki. Don’t judge me. The movie’s premise worked really good. There always needs to be some sort of explanation of why, when a world rending evil is lurking in a world where the Avengers exist, that the Avengers all (or part of at least) don’t just swoop in to save the day. This movie handled that by having the only proof of it happening unknown until things were really rocking, oh and having most of it take place in other worlds where mere humans can’t go.

Did I mention spoilers? I’m mentioning spoilers now. Open movie, cleaning up stuff from the last movie until new threat from unknown and ‘thought long gone’ source. Way to get Thor off his lazy, saving the nine worlds butt, and back to his ‘girlfriend. I guess the movie is technically named after him, so I accept that he must be part of the movie. But Loki! In Jail! With Books! >.> I am also super happy that they finally really showed what Frigg(a) could do.

Truthfully at the end of the movie I simply sat back and thought to myself ‘This movie gave me everything it was that I wanted, without even really knowing that I wanted it.’

Loki

Laura Highcove

I actually don’t know what first sparked my interest in Norse mythology. I remember already knowing a bit when I first played Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (for the PSP, not the PS1) But I didn’t really start researching it until after I saw a mostly obscure anime called Ragnarok many many years ago. I only watched a few episodes of it, but while the characters interested me, the story did not and I walked away from it going: “I can do that better.”

Loki interested me from the beginning, as he is, I feel, the character around which the entire mythology rotates. I have read a lot of different opinions on him, from him just being a harmless jokester to evil incarnate.

When the Thor movie was coming out I knew nothing about it. I really didn’t want to see it because I figured it would effect my own vision of Norse mythology too much, and Thor was not a comic book hero in which I was ever interested. I’m not sure why I changed my mind, (Maybe cause Thor’s actor was cute, no lie) but when I started it up and saw “Thor’s brother” I wasn’t sure at first who it was. Odin has lots of sons after all. (In mythology anyway.) It wasn’t until I heard the character called “Silvertongue” that it actually clicked.

And I remember feeling a sense of dread. It is so easy to make Loki the villain, and I figured that was what was going to happen in this movie as well. I was so happy at the thought and care that went into Loki’s progression from good to evil. The depth and humanity of it, well I can understand why he has such a following (handsome, talented actors aside). I don’t watch that movie for Thor. Thor can shove it. I don’t believe his change in attitude for a moment when compared to the anguish that Loki had to endure and the decisions he had to make.

Though part of me is still upset, because now I feel like I have to share Loki with the rest of the world. Some of them who don’t know anything about the mythology or the character beyond what was in that movie. It worries me mostly because of the story I am trying to write that uses Loki as one of the main characters. It will probably be tainted by those movies, but I guess I won’t let that keep me from nurturing my own version of Loki. And maybe one day, someone else will like my version of Loki as well.