Night Watch

All That Stands Between Light And Darkness Is The Night Watch.

I was so excited! We got to see the first screening here in the West (unless you have been a bad person and downloaded it from the Net) of Night Watch. There was a surprise bit at the start where the Russian Director did a small into of the movie to us, the Horror Audience at Frightfest last night = we applauded madly.

I can easily see why it grossed more than Lord of the Rings and such, over in Russia. It is beautifully shot, the shapechangers when changing actually look like the animals they are supposed to change into...the changes back into human form suitably gory complete with cracking bones and gore...it was brilliant. The story is easy enough to follow - (and I copy this from the US official site as I am too lazy to type it up myself) -

For as long as humanity has existed, there have been "Others" among us; Witches, Vampires and Shape-Shifters who are soldiers in the eternal war between Light and Dark.
Light Others protect mankind from Dark Others, who plague and torture humans.
Over 1000-years ago a truce was struck between Gesser, Lord of the Light, and Zavulon, General of Darkness.

They agreed that no one could be forced to good or evil, people must choose freely for themselves. To uphold this truce, each side established underground forces; the soldiers of the Light would be called Night Watch, making sure Dark Others obeyed the truce. And the soldiers of Darkness would be called Day Watch, to do the same.

Ancient prophecy foretells that one day the Great One will arrive who can end the threat of an apocalyptic battle between Light and Dark Others. That day has come, and the Great One, once he or she is identified, must choose whether to destroy the light within or battle the surrounding darkness. This choice will reveal mankind's destiny.

1992:Anton Gordesky, a broken-hearted man, desperate to win back his fiancée, seeks out the black magic services of a witch. This Dark Other, about to use her magic for evil, is arrested by the Night Watch moments before for completing her spell. The cataclysmic event awakens Anton to discover that he is an Other. Now he must choose whether to become a protector of light or warrior of darkness.

Today:Somewhere on the streets of Moscow the "Great One" wanders, oblivious to his or her powers. Anton, along with his Night Watch team, race to find and protect the Great One from Zavulon and his Day Watch vampires who seek to plunge the world into darkness. Whoever reaches the Great One first will hold the balance of power in their hands and control the fate of humanity.

Nuff said. Can't wait for it to come out onto circuit as I will go and see it again.

Off to Ikea now to go and buy a frame for the huge kick-ass poster for Land of the Dead. Oh, plus, we got freebies yesterday - t-shirts and really cool tiny badges for the Night Watch promos. How kewl!

Drunk people?

Holy hell - what is it with people? We have just come back from having a lovely dinner at Strada in town, dessert at Haagen-Dazs, with some friends of ours. We stood waiting on the concourse at Charing Cross for the sumat past whatever train down to Hayes and watched, in amazement as a busload of drunk people, beautifully attired in lovely office clothes staggered about. Hopelessly shitfaced. Especially the women.

The one woman, was so drunk that she probably walked fifteen rows of footprints, staggering and tilting from port to starboard. I just prayed feverently that we didn't have one of the upchuck types in our carriage.

Now, I can appreciate getting drunk. Been there, done that, fell asleep on the pool table, and am still a legend in some places...or is that a warning? I forget which...but jaysus, can you blame someone for robbing you/raping you if you are completely and utterly senseless? If you have no clue where you are or what you are doing? And then, in the morning telling your mates "Gods, I can't remember how I got home last night!" and having a laugh about it, if a bit nervously. In this day and age it really shocks me to the core how people - women especially - can allow that to happen themselves! Firstly, have they got no shame; secondly, aren't they worried about being taken advantage of (murdered, raped, robbed, all of the above) - and it isn't like I am making this up - everyone has seen the headlines lately. And these things happening to men, not just women, which is scarier still.

Why not travel home with a mate who is a bit less drunk than you? Why not shell out £30 and crash at the Travelodge? Why not club together and get a room - an orgy (always use protection) I am sure is preferable to trying to get home whilst so badly drunk that you started dry-humping the ticket machine on the concourse. Yes, it was that bad...and that funny.

In no way, shape or form, am I a Puritan, far from it...I suppose I was just lucky enough to have someone to take care of me; sling me onto the back of the bike and tie my hands around their waist so that I didn't fall off around some of those corners.

Poor them...I hope they get home and that that late night McDonalds stays down.

Holiday...its holiday...!

Whoo hoo!!

Migraine hasn't come back to wipe me out in over a week, the bbq I held for my work colleagues this Saturday past was a success, and guess what? All of this week, blissful holiday. Nothing fancy, not even going anywhere, but staying at home, where it is safe and quiet and peaceful. Have been, thus far, reading, sleeping, musing about storylines...taking Sparrow for runs in the park. It is bliss.

I got a beautiful arrangement of excuisite flowers from the girls at work yesterday, to say thanks for the lovely day on Saturday (thank the gods it decided not to rain, although it could have been a teeeeeeny tiny bit warmer). They are downstairs in the diningroom and I am staying far away from them...they are making me sneeze nonstop! Can't win, ever.

Am very much looking forward to this coming weekend - it is the Frightfest here in London and we are lined up to go and watch bunches of movies not yet released anywhere in the world. Well, Friday will be taken up with watching the Romero trilogy of the Dead. Saturday we are watching some werewolf movies and other chop-saki messed up Oriental movies and then on Sunday, the one I am aching to see is Night Watch by the Russian chap...man, oh, man - fun, fun, fun.

Beaming happily.

Oh, look at that - time for a nap.

Migraines

Who needs them!?

Trolls

I love urban fantasy novels by people such as Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman and such. It never occurred to me that we would so intinsically be linked to the Otherworld ourselves.

But, I get ahead of myself. Each morning we travel on the same train (one which has not yet blown up) from our local overland station. Said transport stops at the same stations...we see the same people. And amongst the mundanes of every day life we have come to clutch at our respective seats and pray violently, sweat dripping from our brows, that the Three Trolls of Lower Sydenham do not come and sit near us.

Now, in no way shape or form am I astoundingly beautiful. But jaysus, I look at these three women (I use the term loosely here) and I shudder into my very core and think to myself that if I were God, I would defintely have added chlorine to their family genepool. Or something to stop their parents from pro-creating. The Osborne's are photogenic by comparison.

They are hideously ugly. And I won't even liken them to witches cos witches are cool.

They are trolls and should have names like Grimjaw and Grayskin and Childbiter and they should lurk under bridges where they would frighten children and steal their lunch money and hide themselves from the view of normal mundane folk.

I have NEVER in my life seen people more grey skinned (I think the term is "sallow?"), worn out, overweight with these strange asymetrical faces - as Fat Gecko says "They are one dna strand away from dragging their knuckles on the ground". You get the idea. And guess what? The one, a behemoth of a creature is pregnant and so smug with itself. All I want to do when I see it is run away screaming, clutching at my hair, plucking it out. It sits there in all its huge glory, encouraging these other two trolls to touch its swollen stomach. I have visions of things crawling out of its belly button - something like out of Alien, only that thing was cute.

Thank heavens we have had a respite this past week - I think the ToLS (Trolls of Lower Sydenham) have gone their separate ways and are on holiday. Hopefully Spain or wherever they elected to go will decide to keep them there to entertain other holiday makers where children can throw rotten fruit at them and such....

Ahem.

So, please feel pity for us and send ideas as to how to overcome the ToLS.

Yours aye,

L

The Ancient World of Heroes

I love history. I love reading histories and historical novels, in all shapes and sizes. From my great book of fantasy writing I discovered a lovely list made up by one of the authors about some of the best ancient books/known stories of times gone by. I was shocked to see that I have read most of them!

Beowulf

Grendel (John Gardner)

Grettirsaga

Kalevala

Histories - Herodotus

Germanica - Tacitus

Illiad - Homer

Odyssey - Homer

The Aeneid - Virgil

Code of Hammurabi

Bullfinch's Mythology

Some miscellaneous resources

The Hero with a thousand faces - Joseph Campbell

Man, Myth and Magic - Richard Cavendish

The Art of War

And that is all I can squeeze in from work.

Some useful writing links

I feel guilty.

I haven't blogged in AGES. And Ages.

Things at work have been slow, and that inlcudes the internet so no blogging cos of that and in the evenings at home, it is just tooooo comfortable to curl up on the couch to read or watch telly.

So, I have decided to update my blog with my favourite passtime - links on writing resources as I know loads out there are always searching for them.

The first batch of links are from my most recent book on fantasy writing, but these are quite good pointers, character generation, plot, etc.

www.writerswrite.com

www.absolutewrite.com/novels

www.fictionfactor.com/articles.html

www.babynamer.com (character names are always a Duzi!)

www.sfwa.org

www.hobgoblin.net/resources/createlinkl.asp

I have tried some and they work.

Gotta dash to go and have some food!