Year: 2010 (page 26 of 73)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The Emperor’s New Groove

August 28, 2010 / / 3 Comments

Logo courtesy Netflix. No logos were harmed in the creation of this banner.

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/emperorsnewgroove.mp3]

Originality, even when it’s forced, is a rare and wonderful thing these days. Sometimes it comes about due to the constraints of budget or equipment. Sometimes the expectations or demands of a client or superior change. However it happens, if a production can manage to recover, even if it goes in an entirely new direction, the result is usually at least interesting, if not decent. The Emperor’s New Groove is more than decent, being an atypical Disney movie and, in my humble opinion, one of their most fun.

Courtesy Disney

The story is set in an ambiguously ancient Mezzo-American empire, whose current head honcho, Kuzco, is something of a spoiled selfish jerk. The teenaged tyrant is looking to build his new summer home (complete with water slide) on the hilltop currently occupied by a small peasant village. His plans distract him from the machinations of his ancient witch of an advisor, Yzma, who conspires with her large and somewhat ADHD-afflicted handyman Kronk to poison Kuzco and usurp his empire. Unfortunately for Yzma, Kronk grabs the wrong vial and instead of dying, Kuzco is turned into a llama. The polymorphed potentate is dumped on a cart belonging to Pacha, leader of the village scheduled for destruction. In order to get back to his palace and regain his throne, Kuzco needs to work with Pacha, who will only help the emperor if he agrees to build ‘Kuzcotopia’ somewhere else. Hilarity ensues.

Originally, this was going to be a far more typical Disney musical, called Kingdom of the Sun. They had a Prince & the Pauper storyline, Sting was lined up to do the songs, everything was going swimmingly. The production began to suffer, however, when the team tried to find ways to make the story more original. Test screenings didn’t go well, and the two directors assigned to the project by Michael Eisner ended up working on two different films, with one leaning towards drama while the other aimed for comedy. When the more drama-minded director left the production, Eisner threatened to shut down the production entirely. While the animators were assigned to a Fantasia sequence, the writers and remaining director gave the film a serious overhaul. The result was The Emperor’s New Groove.

Courtesy Disney
Think of the jaguars as very angry investors. But what the hell do they know?

Opting for an entirely comedic experience, the movie plays a lot more like something out of Warner Brothers than Disney. There’s no romance save the relationship between Pacha and his very pregnant wife, all but one of the in-movie songs were cut (which made Sting very upset), and the typical Disney cute animal very spitefully tries to get Kuzco eaten by a pack of hungry jaguars. A particularly Looney Tunes moment is in the third act when Yzma and Kronk are in a dark room, and all we can see are their eyes in an entirely black space. You’ll know what I mean when you see it.

One of the most brilliant decisions made was to cast David Spade as Kuzco. His performances in the various comedies he’s been a part of over the last decade or so have been somewhat hit and miss. Emperor’s New Groove is the former. Spade is very good at being a shallow jerkass, and channeling that into the shallow-as-a-thimble Kuzco is a stroke of genius. The small ensemble cast is, in fact, effective on all sides. John Goodman’s Pacha is very charming and endearing, Patrick Warburton launched a great voice acting career due to his turn as Kronk, and Yzma wouldn’t be anywhere near as enjoyable or the jokes to which she’s subjected as funny if her voice wasn’t coming out of former Catwoman Eartha Kitt.

Courtesy Disney
One might even say she was “purrfect” for the role.

Combining this great voice work with some of Disney’s finer hand-drawn animations and quite a few lampshades being hung on the typical fare from the studio creates a very funny movie that still manages to be endearing in places. We see an actual friendship develop, the characters are memorable, the story moves a great clip and none of the jokes overstay their welcomes. In terms of both comedy and animation, this movie does everything it needs to do right not just right but very well.

Even if you don’t have kids, I’m willing to bet you’ll find The Emperor’s New Groove an amusing and refreshingly quirky romp from Disney’s animation studio. It fits well in just about any Netflix queue, whether you’re a fan of comedies in general or need a change of pace. It’s always interesting to see, over the course of a narrative, a complete jerkass grow and change into… well, a slightly more tolerable jerk. Which is part of the reason Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, in my opinion, works as well as it does.

…What? You haven’t seen that yet, either? Why are you still sitting there?

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

The Truth About Tropes

August 27, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Courtesy MEAP Careers

If you’re at all associated with the Internet, beyond referring to it as “a series of tubes,” you’re probably away of a little site called TV Tropes. Caveat Browser: This site will eat your free-time like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Anyway, a lot of the things listed on the site also list examples of places where things go totally wrong or depict a work in a satirical or sarcastic manner. You might come to think that the things on the site are things to be avoided, for fear of derision, ridicule or the simple notion that your work might suffer because of their presence.

They have a whole page on this subject, under Tropes Are Tools: Tropes Are Not Bad.

First of all, you can’t avoid them. Even if you say to yourself as you write, “This is X or Y trope,” chances are you’ve already written at least two other tropes into your work. Something that you considered entirely original will probably be pointed out as a trope and listed as such on the aforementioned site. Even if it’s pointed out as a ‘bad’ thing or ‘overused’, at least somebody’s reading your work, right?

Moreover, it’s entirely possible to use tropes well, or turn them on their heads. Look at Watchmen or Kick-Ass. Something that has its cool factor emphasized or the humor level turned up to eleven isn’t necessarily a bad work. In fact, such things can be rather successful if done right.

Finally, the existence of this trope listing serves a repository for quite a few cautionary tales on how not to do it. Consciously or unconsciously, if you see something listed on a trope page that reminds you of your work, and not in a good way, on that same page you can find examples of how the trope is done well, so you can see how to change your work to make it go down a different path than where it goes currently. Specifically, the path that rocks.

Take a look at TV Tropes. Browse around. Look up stories you like and stories you hate. Just let someone know you’re going in. Use the buddy system. And for God’s sake, don’t forget to eat something.

Search Term Grab-Bag

August 26, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Every so often, Chuck engages in a little “search term bingo.” I don’t have as many to deal with, but let’s see some of the more interesting ones from the past week.

ariadne inception

Courtesy Warner Bros

This one comes up a lot, since I do have a deep affection for the film. But it gets me thinking: who would want to “infect” Ariadne with an idea? And what would that idea be? If I had more time and less self-esteem, I might write a fanfic about it. But World of Warcraft satisfies any unnatural cravings I might have in the fanfic department. Speaking of which…

wow troll, troll warcraft, troll female

I think they’re awesome. Warcraft, and the trolls therein. I’m just wondering why the biggest search term draw is related to…

Troll Female, by Samwise

…oh. Right. Troll tits.

jason statham with hair

Courtesy Filmofilia.com

Statham’s lack of hair is like Chuck Norris’ beard. It’s the source of his power. I mean, he can still rock a flick he’s in (like Revolver) when he’s coiffed, but it’s better when he rocks his bald of awesome.

velvet and gay vampires

Enough interesting questions have been asked about me. This doesn’t help.

additional pylons

They must be constructed.

Care For, Then Conceal, Your Strings

August 25, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Courtesy Vulcan Stev

You’ve heard it before. “Start your story as late as possible.” It’s good advice. Get your reader right into the action. Paragraph one on page one, WHAM. They’re neck deep in narrative. In medias res, even. Get them asking questions, and promise answers right around the corner to keep things moving. All good stuff.

Unfortunately, you can’t drop into the story yourself, as a writer, out of nowhere. It’s extremely rare for an idea to spring fully formed from your cranium and immediately make itself coherent on the page. Characters need motivation. Settings need history. Present events should be informed by previous ones. You need to do some planning. Puppets, after all, don’t just drop onto the stage and start cavorting about. They need strings, and you need to make sure those strings are taut and untangled.

The audience, on the other hand, never needs to see the strings.

Take a character from a work. That character came from somewhere. They had parents, or creators, or something along those lines. Maybe they’re an experiment that started before the story begins. Maybe they’ve been kicked out of an organization or Heaven or the local book club. They might have loved and lost, or maybe a candle still burns for someone. This is all stuff to figure out beforehand.

Once you do, though, it’s not necessary to show it to the audience. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit would not exist without the history and stories set down by Tolkien in The Silmarillion, but those notes might not necessarily make for good reading. Die hard fans will definitely get a kick out of that sort of thing, but at first blush, it’s cluttering up the narrative and over-complicating the characters. Hook the reader with clear, concise action and dialog first before you delve into the background stories, if you do at all.

Character bibles are good tools to use here. Get the stuff out of your head and into a format you can reference, but that doesn’t seep into the finished work. When it comes to trimming fat, trim things discussed in your notes that don’t necessarily need to be brought up in the story. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

I think I’m starting to ramble rather than dispense good advice at this point, so let me hear from you. How do you keep your strings cared for but concealed from the audience? What works for you? What doesn’t? What are some other examples of this sort of thing?

Azeroth is my Gym

August 24, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Courtesy Blizzard
Why don’t you come with me, little girl, on a magic carpet dragon ride?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

With a few exceptions, I’m not entirely focused on World of Warcraft when I’m playing it.

The aforementioned exception is the dungeons & raids. I stay focused in there. Mostly because I don’t want to suck at playing whichever role I happen to be playing at the time. If I’m DPS, I want to top the damage charts. If I’m tanking, I don’t want anybody else getting smacked in the face. And nobody dies on my watch when I’m healing, otherwise you have every right to call me a tosser.

There are exceptions to the exceptions, too, since some of the dungeons I’ve seen and finished on my main character about a hundred times. If the run’s routine, and populated with random folk I’ve never met who are all sporting gear as good as or better than mine, I can slip into the place where I spend the bulk of my Warcraft time. Half in the actual game, half in other places.

You see, being in the fantasy world of Azeroth is to my brain what being in the gym is to other people’s bodies.

I don’t go to a gym. I can’t afford it, and while I might benefit from extended physical activity on a regular basis, I see walking to and from the train stations in Lansdale & Doylestown as an adequate amount of physical exercise, more than most in my sedentary line of work get as they sit in traffic cursing at some jerk in a BMW who cut them off while yammering on their Bluetooth and sipping their latte. Suckers.

Back on topic. Wandering around the huge game world of Blizzard’s MMO, I find inspiration almost everywhere I turn. The towering spires of Dalaran, that whole floating city in fact, reminds me a great deal of the similar cities I’ve conceptualized in Citizen in the Wilds. The lush, overgrown landscape of Sholazar Basin invokes those selfsame Wilds. Northrend, in general, is a big reason why I got off my ass and was able to finish the first draft of Citizen, and is a constant reminder that I have more editing to do before it’s ready to present to agents and professional editors.

I’m also using the background and ongoing stories for Warcraft characters as exercises in writing. I’m looking out for passive voice. I’m keeping things simple and brief. I’m killing darlings. Even if only a half-dozen people read the stuff that emerges from those exercises, I’m keeping my writing knives and scalpels sharp. But those exercises wouldn’t come to be at all if I weren’t playing the game.

I know that playing the game as much as I do doesn’t make me as productive as I could be. However, if I try to get something creative out of the experience, be it inspiration for an original work or motivation to write even a small snippet from a character’s point of view, then some minor productivity manages to emerge overall.

I’m approaching Warcraft the way I do movies these days. I keep my brain on.

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