The Borgias is dead, long live the Borgias

Jun16

Well, there goes my ‘Borgias‘. My father likes to tell people he had to badger me for YEARS to get me to watch it… in reality we had to wait years for me to have a time in which I can watch wildly questionable TV (containing swearing, sex and violence) without some overly impressionable young eyes and ears in the room.

Yes dad, I loved it. Jeremy Irons has been the man since before I was born, and age has done nothing to lessen his talent. The other two in the power trinity for the show, who plays Cesare Borgia, and who plays his sister, the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, are equally as brilliant. Holliday presents a beautiful and innocent girl who wants nothing more than to live and love her family, transforming into a strong, worldly and capable (if somewhat damaged) woman through her various trials. Indeed I’d say Halliday stole the show, and controlled every scene she was in, with Jeremy and Francois reaction to her steel-sheathed-in-satin performance.

The Borgia’s doesn’t pull any punches, and as such wont be for everyone. It’ll appeal to people who were into things like Rome, and Game of Thrones. For the mad history buff, there is an amount of artistic license, but as a bit of a truth Nazi myself I found the overall feel to be more than enough to compensate for those niggly little things they decided to change (though I still can’t work out why they turned a relatively well born Bravo into a low-born homosexual? Although, God help me, gave a seriously good run for Micheletto and was the absolute best of the secondary cast members in my opinion).

Word is that there will be a 2 hour TV movie to wrap up the story. I hope so, I can handle the end as it sits, but it would be a lot better if the story could go up to the death of Alexander Sextus (Jeremy Irons). We will sit with fingers crossed.

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Scene by song

Jun12

I’ve spent the afternoon pairing up scene’s from one of my novel concepts to songs… I know this may seem like a waste of time (because it is, didn’t write a damn word all freakin’ day), but I still kinda like it.

I’ve included a couple of songs, in the order their scene’s appear – anyone who can spin a coherent story out of these gets… gets… I’ll think of something.

1 The Only Exception by Paramore

2 Block of Wood by Carbon leaf.

3 Jar of Hears by Christina Perri

4 This is War by Thirty Seconds to Mars

5 Bring me to Life by Evanescence

 

Hints – Songs 1,2, and 4 are about the same two person relationship but they’re NOT in love -  3 and 5 include one person from the previously mentioned relationship, and one of those songs is a character lying… In there we have one character death, one love affair, one relationship that no one else understands and one character who does something evil, because it’s as close to love as he can get.

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Roswell

Jun8

I’ve just finished bashing my way through all three seasons of Roswell, which I somehow managed to miss when it first came out. Probably too deep into Buffy to have much room for anything else.

Long story short, I loved it! Even now when I’m almost 30 I can still find that escapism of teen-drama the show has with it’s mental relationships, the lovey dovey couple, the guy who just does NOT understand his girlfriend (who is probably being just a bit high maintenance all things considered), the love unrequited until it’s too late. It’s all there, punctuated with FBI investigations, alien powers and the all important secret no one can even whisper…

I’ve got a bit of a yen for this sort of thing. If you loved Buffy and Angel (from Joss Whedon) then I’d say Roswell will hit your buttons just right. It required popcorn, chocolate and maybe some girlfriends to watch it with. Best of all, it finished! It actually has a closing that wont leave you wanting to storm the HQ and tear chunks out of the executives. Something rare and wonderful in the world of TV.

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My ‘not brothers’

Jun6

In my 29 years of stumbling blindly around the place, I’ve picked up a small contingent of ‘brothers’… this is entertaining to many as I’m actually an only child. Well… kind of. There was someone before me, someone who was coming but never arrived… the calm, scientific part of my mind recognizes that it is just as likely that this other person was a girl… but somehow I know it wasn’t. There’s a hole in my life where my big brother was supposed to be, so I filled it…

Big Brother is a martial artist and an acrobat, he juggles fire and sing wicked dirty folk songs. We fought and wrestled and he forced me to be better. He plays with my daughters like a mad uncle, and will sit by the hour holding the baby and singing softly to her. He held me up when I was little, when I wasn’t strong enough.

Little Brother is an artist. He sat with me through many a long, freezing Tasmanian night as we polished of more booze than was really good for us and wallowed in our individual miseries. We hit bottom together, but unlike most alcoholics, somehow, we just pulled ourselves out again. He sat with me when I was alone, when I was broken.

Baby Brother came late to the party, and it’s not fair I should call him that because he’s as much a man as anyone I’ve ever known. He shared all the stupid things with me, the giggly fun times and the stupid childish jokes that almost made us wet ourselves. He had his own trials, and I was able to be there and I’m more proud of that than I can say.

I love my brothers, and it’s never really made much difference to me that the blood tests wouldn’t match… my darling boys, in all their serious childishness, in all their confused focus and their constricting, irritating love and support (whether I wanted it or not).

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Weird writing process

May29

Does anyone else have a weird writing process?

I took a little trip to NSW recently to a blogging event (only to hide in the corner and not really talk to anyone much because a whussballs). Anyway, the trip involved a fair old number of hours in transit, which saw me with my head in my headphones studiously not making eye-contact with anyone.

I’ve composed a load of scenes for some of my fiction pieces in my head around music, sort of like music video’s. Imagine if you will that the stuff I write was a TV show or movie instead of a novel… well what I did in my head was compose what’s commonly referred to as a fanvid, in my head. Don’t know what a fanvid is? Here,

UPDATE: I’ve accidentally given the impression to a number of people that I made the below! I did not in fact, I just searched youtube for a suitable vid to use to demonstrate my point. I picked this one because as has been pointed out, it’s wicked cool, I love Buffy, and the song is awesome. I did used to make my own in this way as well, but as with many things, I’m wussballs and would never put one of mine up for fear you’d all laugh at me.

Quality isn’t 100% but I really love the song, and I still have a little cry when I see Anya get Joss’ed in there. Buffy was my crack when I was a teenager.

So, something like 8 hours of travel left me with a half dozen of these things in my head, completely reordered a couple of characters and facilitated a break up and a hook up… anyone else do weird things when they’re writing?

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A softer Game of Thrones? {SPOILERS}

May23

By ‘softer’ I in no way mean ‘bad’!

I love Tyrion Lanister, played by the disgustingly talented and somewhat indecently attractive Peter Dinklage. I have an inappropriate crush here, and I don’t care who knows it, I think he’s brilliant!

Anyway, I was watching the latest ep of GoT and I couldn’t help noticing a couple of subtle differences in the way they played out the wedding of Sansa Stark to Tyrion Lanister from the book to the screen. I like both characters quite a bit, what with the seemingly unrelenting pile of shit which heaps itself upon them constantly and the way they attempt to survive it. In the book, there was never and real chance of an alliance between the two, too much hurt, to much mistrust, but the TV show has given the relationship a softer feel. Oh they’re not in love (though I can’t help feeling poor Tyrion deserves a loving wife, and Sansa should have someone in her life who would actually care about her), but there was less softness in their interactions in the book.

At the wedding in the book, Sansa refused to kneel so Tyrion could put his cloak over her shoulders. I’m not surprised. The Lanister’s destroyed her family, Joffery had been physically and psychologically mistreating her and now they were forcing her to marry ‘the monkey demon’… I wasn’t looking forward to it. The move terribly embarrassed Tryion in the books, and stung him badly considering how hard he’d been trying to protect her and I KNOW Peter Dinklage is more than capable of showing me all of that with his eyes… Instead, she knelt. While Joffery was attempting to humiliate and denigrate them both, there was at least this small victory that they could take for themselves. Some tiny sign that Sansa at least see’s he’s not evil, that he is being punished as much as she is.

It’s not true to the books, but in a way my desperate longing for something good for these two characters makes me glad that the scene was played out just that tiny bit differently. If there is one thing you can say about GoT (the books and the show) it’s that the characters don’t always get what they deserve. Good and noble characters die, terribly and pointlessly sometimes, while stupid, vile and evil characters seem to go on forever without the slightest hint of karma. It’s one of the books greatest strengths… but my soft little heart still begs for at least someone to get a happy ending. To have their actions and trials rewarded.

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Voices 2013

May22

So I was invited to the Voices of 2013 kidspot event in Sydney on the weekend. This of course involved flying up to NSW from Hobart, which I did without any kids… I think this FB post best sums up the day I left.

Flight Voices of 2013 Trip It was fine, infantile, but fine. I made a right tit of myself but hey, it’s me, and I’m used to it. That kind of childish behavior continued into Paddy’s Markets in Sydney where I spent about 2 hours shopping and bought… not a damn thing!

Unfortunately, because I’m a special ferret, those auspicious beginnings degenerated… Having given myself many hours to get to the event, I went to the perfectly wrong place…

terrible dayI made it, about an hour late, exhausted and completely reliant on the kindness of Sydney bus drivers (which was overwhelming and lovely!) Still, I made it in time for some great panels on working with brands and PR companies, not to mention the stories of some  great blogs including wee birdy, who is awesome (even if she hasn’t blogged since January).

It’d be nice, I think, if this post was more about the greatness of the blogging medium, the amazing women I met and how we’re all going to change the world, and less about how I’m a small town hick with permanent baby brain who can’t navigate in a city that too large to walk across easily… but thems the breaks unfortunately.

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Group works and learning curves

May14

Thing’s I’ve learned working in a group;

  1. Nothing, and I mean nothing is ever as simple, or straight forward, as you think it’s going to be when you start. This is true of everything from getting the appropriate stationary to making sure everyone understands what’s going on. No matter how clear you think you’ve been, you have confused someone. No one want’s to confuse you either, they think they’re being perfectly clear.
  2. Just because you like and/or respect someone, doesn’t mean they feel the same way about you… and visa verse. The person who seems like sweetness and sunshine can in fact be thinking you’re a complete moron, while the person who is driving you nuts can be the one with the most faith in your abilities.
  3. There is a space between your projects and the rest of your life for a reason. Keep it there. You can not, should not, must not live the project and be available to it 24/7 – you will lose your $#!^ and become worthless to everyone.

All you can ask for in the end, is to have something that you’re proud of whatever your level of involvement. I wasn’t as involved in some things as I wanted to be, I got pregnant and my daughter decided it’d be fun to turn mummy inside out, there have been some family issues and organizational problems. These things all conspired to make me significantly less helpful and involved than I wanted to be, and I think I’ll regret that for a long time… but I learned a lot, and I console myself with the knowledge that I was helpful and there were one or two little things that I made possible that might not otherwise have happened.

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Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

May13

I’m down with the hokey, fun, adventure movies, so this was right up my alley. Fair warning, it’s not taking itself seriously and if you try to you’ll be properly disappointed. Still, Jeremy Renner is a long time favorite of mine and his straight faced delivery of some of the cheesier dialogue gave me a big enough happy to make up for the fact that this is still Hansel and Gretel, and they did still get lured into a house made of candy.

You’ll probably go for it if you liked : Brothers Grimm, National Treasure, and every mid 80s family movie. (Keep in mind though, this one is for adults, it’s got swearing and a moderate amount of gore)

 

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A quick escalataion

May12

Well, I started The Black Stamp last week and this week it’s moved to a URL of it’s own! www.blackstamp.com is up and running and I’d ask anyone who was interested to pop over and have a look, or update their links.

I’d like to thank everyone for their support (which was huge, and quite nuts) and I hope to see everyone make the move with me to the new URL.

love CJ

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