Captain America 2, The Winter Soldier: Short, Controlled Bursts

It's a fucking snakeskin turban, people. And no, Mom,
 she doesn't "just look that way" and those aren't her real
cheekbones. Gah, we argued so much about this dumb movie.

It's always a kick in the pants when the Oscars come around. My degree is in cinema studies and working at a grocery store comics. This left me rather depressed, having read my living-the-dream, scriptwriting amigo's annual top ten list to discover I'd only heard of any of the films via a fashion blog I read and not seen a single one. I haven't seen any of the nominees this year, except (cough) Maleficent which is up for costume design. Arg.
through high school and college, I was ever so tapped in to Hollywood (and beyond). The steep drop in my consumption of film--at least current film--coincides quite noticeably with the absence of any disposable income to speak of. Ah, how culture eludes the impoverished! I graduated six years ago in the spring and I've reduced myself to what I can steal from the internet, my streaming-only Netflix subscription, and movies related to my chosen field,

Giving Me a Number, Taking Away My Name

More than the snobbish angst of having not enjoyed any high art at the multiplex this year--and that's being generous in assuming some was made, I'm a cynical snob--is that I have no brevity in my nature. My articles on Watchmen and The Hunger Games are more akin to essays, and between tracking down images, writing and editing, they took days of time to produce. This is a hurdle, more than a flaw, I'd say: It's the way I tend to rant articulately about my opinions to a few people, promise myself and others that I'll write down my thinking and then never do that is the real, real problem. But, since I'm a deli-slicer extraordinaire these days (we don't give out numbers, actually), I might as well do as Devo commands and get up off my ass.

I've Got One Hell of a Job

This is a challenge all writers face: Not writing and feeling bad about it. Let's remember to work with what we've got, draw inspiration from whatever truly does inspire us, and just keep trying to write it down. I did see some movies that were in release this year. I do have opinions about them, discerning critiques as a writer, a filmgoer and a scholar of the silver screen. Let's get nitty and gritty, let's think critically about mass-audience entertainment, let's commit to following through on our promise to ourselves and each other and elevate even the lowest common experiences to the level of intelligence befitting discourse! Or, at least let's delve into a very long exploration of Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier, like I fucking said I would when I saw it in April. Yeehaw!

After this point, there are mega-spoilers, not that I probably need to warn anyone about a movie this old and some triggering things like descriptions of violence. Oh, and hereafter, there will be no more references to "Secret Agent Man" by Devo, in part because Steve Rogers makes the worst secret agent ever.

Cat Box

This morning, while making a dent in the post-holiday detritus, my husband discovered our cat, Lilu, hiding in a box. But, not just any box. It was a shoe box with an attached, hinged lid, lined with foam padding. The box says "ta-da!" on it, and was a snug fit for Lilu (a truly big-boned gal). This box was special. It's her box. She loved it to pieces when it was in the living room, got it so filthy with her fur-leavings that we tossed it in our recycling pile months ago. Now that we've collected enough other boxes to reach critical mass, it was one of many, at the bottom of a vast heap. She could have had any box she wanted. And, well, I guess this was the one.

This is a cat we're talking about, and this is more than the concept of territory or ownership. This is attachment, a deep and primal feeling. We long for what's absent, we hold on to what is dear, what we like, what makes us comfortable. There's nothing terribly extreme in it, no agressive defense. She just likes it best of all. Taking it away left her looking for it, and in the cat-to-human translation we didn't notice the signs. Talk about a priceless insight into character-building. So often, we focus on the key needs and objects that pertain to a character, Lasche's blades, for example. But it's equally important to comment on the fact that he's really attached to his boots, and for no better reason than that attachment is essential to the soul.

(We're letting Lilu keep her box, of course...)

It's Always the Quiet Ones

I didn't become a writer. Silly as it sounds, I was born with the bug, and have always been writing in one form or another, the subconsciousness of the action as validating as the act itself. Now I talk about it, proclaim it as part of my life-boildown.

How long might it have taken me to embrace it, without the encouragement of those around me? Not forever, but a long time at least. And now I have that same power, the gift of "You should write more."

Here is where I got my breath stolen away in surprise. I didn't know he wrote wrote, you know? I don't think he really knows it either. Not yet, he doesn't. But someone should tell him.

Several New Ones

There's really no sense in spending this post tearing Ridley Scott's "effort" Prometheus the...criticisms it deserves. I can only count my stars lucky that this was not the film that emerged in the stead of Alien, given that the strong, independent, yet achingly feminine Ellen Ripley might have been replaced by a shrieking female lead defined by little more than an obsession with pregnancy and a fuzzy understanding of the important difference between belief and proof.

What to learn, what could it be? I like characters that attempt--even in vain--to lift themselves above their emotions when the situation requires. I like love stories: It's love that moves the mountain, or at least, what makes you want to move it. But there are more interpretations of the love-drive than the howling abandonment of reason in the face of loss. It's a good first step to realize this as an author. The next step is allowing your characters to learn the same lesson. Sometimes there is work to be done; suck it up, leave your boyfriend in quarantine and go do it.

The Clever Club

It's all over modern narrative: The practice of writing a long-form piece and making every single loose end tie in by the end, causing seemingly throwaway characters/plot lines to balloon into what-a-tweest surprises and/or forcing casual readers to flip back hundreds of pages to remind themselves of insignificant details which are now inflated with meaning. It's so endemic in a certain author's work, I call it Gaiman-ing. This is bad writing, for a number of reasons, but it's alluring as hell. In the process of creating my world for Soil, Ocean, Air, I found myself skirting this approach. Time to "Stop, breeeathe, think," as my mother (and Blue's Clues, I believe) would encourage.

I started grouping together the reasons why I crave such neat wrap-ups, but it turned out that they were all facets of one thing: Pay-off.

I get a little endorphin rush when I solve a puzzle. Doing so in a story with the fewest pieces possible feels economical and smart. Then I feel smart and I want to show it off.  "Wow," the throngs will cheer, "I totally see what you did there. That is so smart. I am in the Clever Club with you, Wirtz! What a great book!" Then they will do the thing I want most--more than reading my work once, they will read it again, now a little smugger because they are in the know. And then they will tell the people they know to read my book because they, like their dear author, will want their friends to join in the satisfaction with them. Gold!

Or is it?