So this studio works for years to produce ROSA, a beautiful little short about an apocalyptic android goddess with kung fu powers on loan from Neo, who’s busy not using them in the Matrix — oh, wait?
One lone man did this?
NO WAY.
But it’s true. Take a look.
Hollywood took notice, and now ROSA is becoming a full-on movie, with popcorn and everything. This makes me happy.
Peoples of the Series of Tubes, and the Twitter, what’s your favorite short film that deserves to be made into two hours of movie goodness?
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
So I see this on the interwebs, and my brain says, “Ah, here we have James Cameron, busy at work on AVATAR 2: BLUE MONKEYS VERSUS HUMANS AGAIN, BECAUSE I WANT ANOTHER BILLION DOLLARS.”
But no, this is a real animal here on Earth instead of whatever that Avatar planet is named, though I believe this blue dragon would be something the blue monkeys ride if they’re traveling by sea. Also, it probably eats unobtanium for breakfast, because blue dragon mollusks munch up deadly poisons from prey and recycle that stuff with a shrug. Can you do that, Mr. Top of the Food Chain? I DON’T THINK SO.
Here’s a photo:
Have you ever seen this animal before? Me, neither, because it just arrived in a space ship from the water planet Xenu.
And before we get to video proof that this isn’t some PhotoShop job, or some kind of sasquatch prank by college kids who got all Dr. Frankenstein with two oysters and a bunch of model paint, here’s the Wikipedia page on blue dragons, which boffins (scientists) call “glaucus atlanticus” for some boring reason involving science and such.
HOWEVER: Some people call these “blue dragon sea slugs.” Even if they are related to sea slugs — say, sea slugs are their ugly uncle — it’s wrong to call these beautiful little guys “slugs.” No. They’re 5.92 bazillion times cooler than boring gray slugs, which don’t ingest deadly toxins for breakfast and can instead be killed by plain old table salt. No self-respecting thing can stroll into a super-hero bar and say, “Hey, my super power is, like, crawling all over plants to get my slime on them, but my super-weakness, uh, is, you know, table salt.”
The blue dragon mollusk, now, can float into that same bar looking awesome and not have to say a word, because if you disrespect it, say hello to a little free dose of deadly toxic whatever.
You have questions, random peoples of the Series of Tubes, and do I have random answers? Maaaybe.
Question: Where can I buy a blue dragon mollusk?
Answer: At the blue dragon mollusk store. No, I am kidding. These are not pets. These are aliens from the planet Xenu, and if you try to keep them as pets, their buddies show up in a wicked spaceship and zoom off to find more venomous things to eat for breakfast.
Question: Does the blue dragon mollusk really eat deadly venomous animals?
Answer: Yes. They eat stuff like the man-of-war, which is only found in the ocean, and not pet stores, making it even harder for people to feed their kidnapped blue dragon mollusk they’re trying to keep as a pet. Though I think the plural should be “men-of-war” or “men without hats,” who are only found in Australia. I also believe they eat peppers, like the ghost pepper, in their salsa. Sour cream and guacamole is too nancypants for them.
Question: What other insane animals don’t I know about?
Answer: These things.
This is a real animal, an aye-aye, not an extra from a bad horror movie.
The dumbo octopus, also a real animal that I did not make up. He’s buddies with the blue dragon mollusk, but not the honey badger, who he believes is a bit too aggro.
On to the footage: blue dragons in the wild.
More blue dragon footage, because I’m still not convinced.
OK, I’m convinced, and want some for pets, as long as they don’t evolve into those giant VW-sized facehugger things from PROMETHEUS.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
THE HOBBIT movie poster is seven separate kinds of awful.
This isn’t bad in the usual way. The production values are high. The photograph looks nice. There’s nothing low-budget about this.
HOWEVER: From looking at this poster, and reading the tagline “An unexpected journey,” what do you think this movie is about?
Here are my theories:
Theory Number 1: Gandalf makes an unexpected journey back to the store after he forgets to buy sour cream AGAIN.
Theory Number 2: “Oh, it’s only partly cloudy today, when my weather prediction potion said it would definitely rain. How unexpected! I’ll go for a stroll.”
Theory Number 3: Gandalf, being older than the oldest hobbit’s great-grandfather’s grandfather, is getting rather senile. Every journey he takes is unexpected.
See, here’s the thing: a movie poster needs to express one thing, and one thing alone: conflict.
No conflict, no story.
No story, no movie.
No movie, no audience.
This is why the JAWS movie poster is so powerful and iconic.
The JAWS movie poster is classic, and will always be classic, because it’s simple and visceral and seven separate types of awesome.
Do you have any doubts, whatsoever, about what this movie is about? (Hint: It’s about a killer shark.)
THE HOBBIT poster gives us nothing to work with, no reason to plop down $12 for tickets with funky 3D glasses and $9 for popcorn that costs 26 cents to make and $6 for Diet Coke.
Memo to Hollywood executives: Put the conflict — the villain — on the poster. If you make the poster calm, beautiful and boring, there’s no reason to see a film that cost $230 million to make.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
Classical music can be a wonderful sleep aid. HOWEVER: These people show that you don’t need a guitar loud enough to shatter boulders.
No. All you need is a violin (or a cello, whatever that is) and a whole bunch of talent.
First up is an Alaskan wunderkind, Bryson Andres, who has some kind of magical electric violin and such.
Second: Lindsey Stirling in a flipping ice castle. She may remind you of Peter Pan or an extra from LORD OF THE RINGS, but it isn’t bad enough to put you in therapy.
And finally, our clean-up hitter: Four British women with three electric violins and one super-powered cello, covering Led Zepellin.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
Take a look at this man, who was apparently a famous poet.
Charles Baudelaire, the most famous poet you don't know. Hell, I could be making him up, and you'd nod your head and say, "Sure, I read some of his stuff in grad school."
I know the name Gertrude Stein, and understand that she is some kind of Giant of Literature.
(It’s pronounced “lit-rah-SURE, by the way, if you want to be all snobby and lame.)
HOWEVER: For the first time, I’ve read actual words she wrote and published.
Not even gigantic hits of marijuana chased with tequila shots would make her stuff (a) understandable or (b) enjoyable.
She isn’t somebody I’d tell a new writer to read and emulate. If I actually cared about the new writer’s sanity and career, I would tell them this: read her words, then DO THE OPPOSITE.
Gertrude Stein is a literary train wreck.
Check out one of her famous poems, Sacred Emily, which starts like this:
Compose compose beds. Wives of great men rest tranquil. Come go stay philip philip. Egg be takers. Parts of place nuts. Suppose twenty for cent. It is rose in hen. Come one day. A firm terrible a firm terrible hindering, a firm hindering have a ray nor pin nor. Egg in places. Egg in few insists.
And those words help sell 5.842 gazillion miles of barbed wire back in the late 1800s, when the West was still wild and there weren’t handy trees or stones to make fences.
Light as air, strong as whiskey, cheap as dirt – I’ll remember that for days. Forever, maybe.
It’s honed down to perfection. Nine words, and not a one is wasted.
A little strand of steel with a twist and BOOM, you are golden.
In the five seconds it takes to hear those words, or read them, you’re sold.
Writers struggle with those first five seconds.
What’s the best way for a reporter to convince the city editor put a story on A1 instead of buried next to the obituaries on B15?
How can you sum up a 100,000 novel in a single page – or a single sentence?
When a magazine editor is buried with pitches, how does yours stand out from the slush pile?
What should a screenwriter say about his script while riding in an elevator for 30 seconds with Steven Spielberg?
"In my insomniacal Twitter meanderings I find the miracle of @speechwriterguy. Follow him. He makes energetic sense about words. And life."
@CharlesCrawford / Oxford area, England / Former British Ambassador turned speechwriter, writer, mediator, trainer, blogger. Founder member of ADRg Ambassadors LLP
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@DavidWeedmark / Ottawa, Canada / Acclaimed poet & novelist with a penchant for dark roast coffee; passionately curious.
