Day: May 11, 2010

Two More Out

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

Took a “mental health” day off school today (hence my Iron Man viewing).   I also managed to get a couple more stories submitted.  I got my rainbow-themed story (title fluctuates) into the queue at Clarkesworld.  That rejection will be back by Friday.  I also got L.R. out to a Pill Hill Press anthology called Zero Gravity: Adventures in Deep Space.  They say they are looking for “intergalactic warfare, space pirates, alien races, space opera, space colonization, super humans, space horror, parallel worlds, etc.”  I added the underlines for the stuff L.R. has in spades.  This may be the one.  Small pay to be sure, but Pill Hill Press had an endorsement from another Codexian.  I am hopeful.

So, six stories out.  Not bad.  It makes up for the slight stall I’ve hit with the novel.  Honestly, I know where I’m going, I just don’t want to nickel and dime my way into the next chapter.  I need to record a big chunk of words at once, preferably the whole chapter.  It’s a transition and will intro several characters.  I need two solid hours to work.  That’s hard to come by around here,

I still have a dormant story or two, but everything reasonably close to being submission ready is out there (or sold).  I still have a religion piece that really needs to be harvested for parts and made into part of a bigger story.  Oh, and a story about exploding soldiers that needs a similar treatment.  Both ideas I plucked too green.  Dangerous habit. I also have some really old pieces I retired: a genetic engineering piece, a dialog-only story…I don’t remember what else.

It’s an odd sensation, knowing everything that has a reasonable chance of selling is on the market.  I don’t think I have ever experienced that.  Some of my earliest short stories are still out there in new forms, one even on hold at ASIM.  I try never to give up on a piece, but a few are just beyond hope…for now.  But now my future as a writer is all inside my head or will be one day.  There is no back burner story to be edited and released into the wild.  They’re all out there.  My breath is held for the little ducklings, but I need to lay more eggs.  This makes the novel seem like an extra-huge gamble, one big story to get out there in the time I could be writing several.  But it’s time to be a big boy.  Odds are, if the novel is good, it’ll sell before the last duckling does.  For now, I wait.

Not the Marvel the first was

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 5 Comments

Saw Iron Man 2 today.  Not bad.  Not great, but not bad.

Robert Downey, Jr. and Mickey Rourke both put in excellent performances.  Don Cheadle was fine, but he wasn’t given a whole lot to work with.  It felt like his best lines were cut either out of the script or the film.  Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Pots was whiney and annoying.  Scarlett Johansson’s character was unnecessary and gratuitous, and I say this from the perspective of someone who had a fair amount of gratitude.  Sexy as hell, but a bit pointless.  And her booty was enhanced…again, not that I’m complaining.

Other actors’ performances registered even lower on the Richter scale.  Samuel L. Jackson felt like a cameo the whole way despite having at least twenty lines.  Sam Rockwell (played Tony Stark’s competitor) was annoying and poorly written, being either competent or incompetent as the script required.  Even minor roles (Happy Hogan and Agent Coulson) were cardboard and silly.

The acting simply lacked depth, no thanks to writing that offered depth only to a character or two.  I wonder if there’s a director’s cut with a more complete story.  Effects, at least, were as good as expected; not Avatar but good.

When the first Iron Man came out, I expected an explosion-packed roller coaster ride with some snarky comments and lots of cheese.  What the film delivered was a complex if narcissistic hero in a well-developed story with poor acting y the villain (sorry, Jeff Bridges).  So for the sequel, I expected a more complex story with more personalized character depth and some new toys that go boom.

More toys, check, though not much was made out of them.  Complex story?   Hah!  Not even.  On top of that, every opportunity to explore a character other than Tony Stark was promptly brushed aside in favor of more drunken antics from the protagonist.  Somehow Rourke transcended this and delivered his darkly sinister Russian physicist with some complexity, mostly achieved through facial expression and silence.

So, was it worth it?  I went to a matinee, so sure.  It was better than Transformers 2, nowhere near Avatar or either recent Batman film, beat the pants off both Hulk films, dropped square in the middle of the Spiderman franchise (with better effects than the webslinger), and fell short of my appreciation for the GI Joe film (which I actually liked).  Most importantly, it fell short of the first Iron Man.  It was a typical summer-blockbuster-sequel-type film with a couple standout performances and a little eye candy (don’t forget the sexy US Marshal…who is Kate Mara?).  Little more than that.  But don’t expect too much and you’ll have a fun night at the movies.