Madness and Movies

Yesterday was the day of getting my to-do list dealt with -- ordering promo material, paying bills, making appointments. I don't know why all that is so draining, but it is. And that means today is a day for writing. I was so tired last night that I went to bed super early, which meant I was up early today and got my errands taken care of. So I can spend the rest of the day hiding in my air conditioned cave, sitting under the ceiling fan, drinking cool beverages, and writing like a madwoman.

I mean in quantity, not in quality. Then again …

In other topics of interest …

I have not seen the new Ghostbusters, mostly because that would involve leaving the house, and see above about writing. However, I did watch the original two on cable over the weekend, and you know, that first one is really not a good movie. The premise is fun and the cast is great, but the script is awful. I like the first half, when they're actually, you know, ghost busting, but then it jumps the rails entirely when it goes off on the tangent of Sumerian deities. There's no real worldbuilding, no character development, and yet there's potential there. The treatment of women is pretty awful. The stuff around Sigourney Weaver's character was really uncomfortable, both with the creeper neighbor and the way Bill Murray's character treated her. I don't think I'd seen the second one since I saw it at the theater, but I was surprised that I mostly liked it better. That may have been because it was relatively fresh and I didn't remember any of it, but I liked the plot better. There weren't as many funny lines or comic set pieces, but the story was more coherent. Really, though, the entire thing in both movies was the charm of the cast and the novelty of it. There's a lot of room for improvement in those films.

And then there's this news: The Jim Henson Company is developing a movie of Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men, with script by Pratchett's daughter (who is actually a professional screenwriter, so it's not just a nepotism thing). Her involvement suggests that they won't screw up the spirit of it, and the Henson people do good stuff. It seems like they would "get" it. The project is "in development," so there's no guarantee it will actually make it to the screen, but Brian Henson himself is involved, which probably helps.

I'm going to have to see the new Star Trek movie this weekend (my friends are going) because I'm on the Star Trek panel at WorldCon, with people who've actually written for the series, including David Gerrold. I haven't been keen on the reboot movies and might have skipped it otherwise, but now it counts as work.

Speaking of work ...