Lilith Saintcrow

At least someone has told me what’s wrong with it, which is the first step toward fixing it. *evil glint in eye* I love tweaking conventions.

I am up early, mostly because the DHM likes to say “goodbye” before he goes for the day. Which is nice. But the Little Prince waits until the DHM is safely out the door…and then demands breakfast. With a sleepy smile and much blinking of his big brown eyes. He’s four years old and already a terror with the ladies. I console myself with thoughts of eventually embarrassing him once he starts bringing dates home.

The Princess is still sleeping soundly. It takes a land mine to get her out of bed once she’s down. Happily enough, the Surly Teenager is at a friend’s house, so I have some time and space today with just two rugrats to wrangle while I write. (I have this mad vision of crouching a-horseback while wrangling toddlers. Whistling “Whistle While You Work”, no less.)

Last night I went out for dinner with Sixton. Afterward we repaired to Casa Saintcrow and watched Dial M for Murder and High Noon. I love me some Hitchcock, and I love me some Gary Cooper even more. Funny thing–Grace Kelly was in both movies, looking pretty but wooden, and the same guy did the music for each one.

High Noon is particularly interesting, because it was intended as an allegory for the McCarthy era. But anyone who has ever been abandoned by their friends–or even been afraid such a thing will happen–can identify with Cooper’s character in the movie. In terms of cinemetography and editing it was superlative. I’m getting to the point where I start to recognize directors’ styles, noting the placement of the camera and the choices made about where actors/set pieces should be in space. Oddly enough, this is easier in older movies, where the choices are so deliberate; with the advent of CGI and stuff I’m noticing that less and less care is taken with subtle placement to make a point. Instead, the computer animation makes the point.

Then again, I’m not a critic, just a consumer of celluloid. (Do they even shoot film on celluloid anymore?) And I do tend to look at movies from a writer’s point of view, which means certain details escape me while others loom large.

I plan on trying Psycho and The Omen next. Mostly because I’ve never seen the former, and the latter has been mentioned to me four times by four separate people in the past week. I can take a hint.

No, really, I can. Which means I’m off to tweak that story, to make everything shiny and better. Thank goodness I have about 2K words to do it in.

Related posts:

1. Short Story Madness
2. Short Story Madness, and Updates!
3. No More Today, Thanks

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 10:49 am and is filed under Neato Keano, Real Life, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.