We went to see the new Sex and the City movie this past weekend. I was about to add "with high expectations" but that would be a lie. Too much I had read and heard about the second big-screen vehicle for Carrie Bradshaw and her friends had been negative for us to have any expectations at all.

Good thing: the movie was terrible. Offensive even. After seeing the film, I started reading some of the reviews from the pros around the world and, apart from agreeing the movie is really bad, they also managed to use up all the best headlines, including Sucks In the City And No Sex No City. It's not just that the movie isn't good: it's patently objectionable on so many levels.

The script is a disaster, with almost nothing happening. The dialogue is banal, filled with stupid puns and a great deal of whining. The direction is juvenile and uncreative and the acting... well, the four women who performed so beautifully in the TV series and even, to a lesser extent, in the first movie just seem tired and ready to move on. The feeling I got was that everyone involved figured they'd just go through the motions and milk the adoring audience one last time.

The movie lasts two and a half hours and provides, at most, 15 minutes of decent entertainment. There is one scene between Miranda and Charlotte, for example, in which they discuss in moving, funny detail the challenges of being mothers. Beyond that, S&C2 merely adds another note of Islamaphobia and America-centrism that is simply not needed in western popular culture.

Don't see it. Don't waste your time, your money, your intellect. Don't desecrate your memory of what made the TV series great.

Tags: Sex And The City, Carrie Bradshaw

A beautiful Victoria Day weekend here in Nota Bene has brought with it sunshine, warm temperatures, golf and black flies. If you're counting, that's three to the good but one very, very bad.

I had never really dealt with black flies until I arrived here in Freddie two years ago. When I was a kid, friends talked about them after trips to their cottages in the Muskokas and Kawarthas but I had lived a black-fly-free life. I didn't know how lucky I was but now I know the truth: black flies are right little bastards.

I played eighteen holes of golf Saturday morning and ran headlong into the black-fly menace. It was bad enough that I hung up my worst performance of the year with the clubs but coming home to find six serious bites on my arms made the whole experience a nightmare. Literally. For the last three nights, my sleep has been affected and, on this night, I'm awake at 3:30 in the morning, my arms on fire and itching, my head spinning. I also have an itchy eye and, fool that I am, I failed to heed the warning signs in time to get some antihistamines to help me.

Awful awful awful awful.

Holiday Monday turned into a bit of an early-summer scorcher meaning that, but for brief jaunts into the world to exercise the dog, we holed up in our oh-so-cool basement to do laundry and watch movies. The best of the three was Julie & Julia, the Meryl Streep/Amy Adams comedy from a year or so ago. I really enjoyed this movie and was once again blown away by Meryl Streep. This is, by all accounts, a minor little film in her repertoire and yet, there she is, delivering yet another stunning performance. She hits all the right notes as the famous chef, Julia Child, creating a wonderful chemistry with on-screen husband Stanley Tucci. Streep makes this movie worth seeing, her acting performance easily overcoming the weaknesses of the parallel plots.

We also watched a harmless British confection, Confetti, the story of a wedding magazine's search for the most original nuptials. Half mockumentary and half mad-cap comedy, Confetti bounces along fairly well and ends in a surprisingly satisfying way. We were pleasantly surprised to find Martin Freeman popping up again, having first encountered the every-man actor in Love, Actually, then later in the English version of The Office, which we have just gotten around to watching this summer. There were times during our viewing when I found myself wondering why Confetti hadn't done better at the box office (the website Rotten Tomatoes reports that the movie earned merely $145,000) only to be confronted again by a string of completely nude people in one of the three sub-plots. The nudity is so aggressive and in-your-face that it detracts from the entire film.

Back to work tomorrow and, if the black flies will allow it, back to sleep now.

Tags: Meryl Streep, Julie And Julia, Confetti, The Office, Martin Freeman

With snow coming down outside in one thick blanket (we're expecting up to 35 cm by the end of Saturday), today is a good day to curl up and do nothing. Not that we've been doing much for the past couple of days! Mostly reading and watching DVDs.

Patti borrowed a number of vids from the local library for the holidays and we've plowed through most of those. In honour of my commitment to reading all of Dickens, she picked up the BBC mini-series of David Copperfield (starring a very young, pre-Potter Daniel Radcliffe) as well as the recent theatrical film version of Nicholas Nickleby. We watched the first 90 minutes of the mini-series (the thing is more than 180 minutes in total) before giving it up as too depressing. Nickleby lasted only 20 minutes before we hit "Stop" and walked away. Maybe Dickens is better read than viewed.

As I was flipping among the various American college football bowl games yesterday, I noticed that Vision TV was showing all six hours of the BBC's version of Little Dorrit, the Dickens novel I am actually reading right now. Awful. Though it did seem to be a little more light-hearted than the others, it was still really bleak. I'm starting to reconsider my intention to read the whole Dickens oeuvre.

We have been watching the first season of Mad Men, the American TV show set in the 1960s, and are finding it a challenge. Yes, the racism, anti-semitism and misogyny so blatantly on display in the show are likely accurate representations of the time but they are very hard to watch. And I can't help but wonder if the decision to set the show during that time period and to focus on those kinds of behaviours (as well as smoking and drinking) isn't, itself, a form of backlash against the small progress we've made as a society towards inclusion and equity. Many have argued that the show represents a critique of such conservative, hate-filled attitudes (a la All In the Family) but I'm not so sure.

I'm happy to report, however, that the problematic aspects of the show seem to decline as the first season goes on while the plots develop in interesting ways and the characters and their relationships continue to be quite fascinating. The jury is still out but we still have six episodes of the first season to watch before drawing any conclusions.

I have enjoyed reading the two volumes of The Complete Peanuts I received for Christmas: 1971-72 and 1973-74. These two Peanuts volumes involve the introduction of both Marcie, the bespectacled little girl who calls Peppermint Patti "sir" all the time, and "Rerun", the baby brother of Lucy and Linus. As a result, I was concerned that, at this point in the comic strip's history, we might have reached the "jumping the shark" moment that plagues many a successful series (be it a TV program or a comic strip), when the writer runs out of ideas and the characters become mere caricatures of themselves.

I'm pleased to find that my fears were unfounded. In fact, I think I've laughed out loud more often with these two volumes than with any of the earlier books. And I'm finding it very interesting to see how Peanuts strips are reflective of their times. For example, in a February 1972 strip, Snoopy mentions Star Trek, the first time that iconic sci-fi show was ever mentioned in the Peanuts world. This is notable because the original series of Star Trek aired on television between 1966 and 1969 and passed unnoticed by Charles Schulz into oblivion. It was only when the show began to pick up speed in syndication that it became important enough a cultural force to make its way into Snoopy's world.

OK, so maybe I'm just pleased to see Star Trek make an appearance in Peanuts. Cool. I like to see my interests meld. Now all we need to have is Hermione refer to Spock and McCoy in the next Harry Potter film.

Tags: Dickens, Star Trek, Peanuts, Harry Potter, Schulz

December 28. Still off work, with Christmas itself now fading slowly into the past, become more happy memory than happy times.

It's odd not to have a writing project on the go. I am forcing myself not to pick up the printed copy of the draft of The Silent Goodbye but just to let it sit for a while. Reviewing it now would be largely a waste of time since I haven't gotten enough distance from it to be objective. Still, it's hard not to do so.

I have thought about starting the next novel, thought about working on an Abigail Massey short story, thought about getting around to the Star Trek presentation I have slated for February but I don't seem to have the energy to tackle any one of them.

So I read, watch movies (looking forward to seeing the first season of Madmen, one of my Christmas gifts) and putter around. Not a bad life, really, but not overly creative nor productive.

Meanwhile, I did the editing work on a new Marlee video, this one with her enjoying the snow and nice weather on Christmas day. I'll paste it onto the video page of this site for everyone to enjoy.

Hope you are all having a great holiday.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey, Madmen

My writing slump has gotten so bad people are now calling me on the telephone to see if I'm okay. "You haven't blogged in days," they say. "We thought something was wrong!"

Well, many things are wrong but none of them terminal. I haven't been able to sit myself down at the computer and write. That's the long and short of it. I actually built a fire the other night, got it going good and strong, then promptly fell asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace.

My mind is working on the next scene (a conversation between Gold and Stacey McLean) but I just haven't started writing it yet. It's getting quite frustrating. And the fact that my Rapidweaver program has now decided it doesn't want to insert Em Dashes any more I'm really upset.

So instead I've been spending my time reading The Complete Peanuts, watching movies (Lions for Lambs, starring Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Tom Cruise, for example) and taking advantage of the surprisingly warm New Brunswick November to go golfing rather than working on the novel. My end-of-December deadline for a finished draft is still in play but I think it's getting more challenging with each passing day.

Meanwhile, Star Trek (2009) has finally come out on DVD. Of course, they have to make it complicated by releasing both a single disc version (which I take it just has the movie and not many special features) at about $20 and the two-disc steel box set that costs around $10 more. I have to admit, I'm less excited about this DVD release than I was about the last Harry Potter but I think, if I'm going to break down and buy it, I'll have to get the two-disc set, at least to see what kind of extras they include.

Lions for Lambs, by the way, was surprisingly good for a film that Rotten Tomatoes rated at about 18%. Structured more like a stage play than a major movie, it was a lot of talk but interesting talk and we thought the scenes involving Streep, as a cynical reporter, dueling with Cruise, a powerful Senator, were exceptionally good. Redford does a better job of directing this one than he does acting in it: I find the older he gets, the flatter his performances. The film's worth seeing, however. At least we think so.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Star Trek, Peanuts, Streep, Redford, Cruise

One of the great things about writing is the rush of ideas that comes after you've written a substantial section. On Wednesday, I wrote a significant bit involving a confrontation between my hero, Phillip Gold, and the Alderman on the courthouse steps, then Gold's dinner with the attractive law student at one of Hamilton's best Italian restaurants. It's a good section and I like it.

But the two days since have been filled with ideas bursting into my mind about how to improve the scenes, how to heighten the tension, how to lay the ground work for what is to come. It's an amazing process. Literally, you write knowing that, once all the conscious and subconscious work has been done, you'll have to rewrite. Often significantly. You need to have written something in order to be able to do the imaginative work to write something.

So now I'm planning to go back and do a massive rewrite of the section I just wrote, deepening the conflict, involving other characters and setting up for the next step in the plot. Two steps forward, then back again to take the same two steps forward.

That's the writing process that I love.

In the meantime, Lynn and Gavin have headed back to Ontario, making the entire 14-hour drive in a single day. They left here at 7:30 a.m. and likely made most of the drive in daylight, an amazing feat at this time of the year. They're great guests to have, interesting and creative, self-sufficient and self-motivated, and not demanding at all. In fact, I think they did as much cooking over the seven days they were here as we did. And now I have a series of tasks set for myself with regard to this website that will make it really cool, I hope.

Of course, anyone who is willing to sit through an entire screening of the movie Trekkies without complaint is alright by me!

Also on the movie front, Patti and I wanted to watch something fun last night so we slipped 13 Going On 30 into the DVD player. We inherited this little Jennifer Garner/Mark Ruffalo vehicle from my Mom but had never watched it. For the first 30 minutes, we weren't sure we were going to be able to get through it all. A blatant rip-off of the Tom Hanks' classic Big, this movie seems silly and flimsy by comparison. Then, suddenly, it takes flight. Garner, who seemed awkward and gawky in the first half-hour, takes on new life and, amazing for a Hollywood leading female, shows a willingness to be wacky and weird. The Thriller dance sequence is especially funny and she sells it well. We were also pleased to find a film that finally gives the likable Ruffalo a believable role that suits him.

It's no classic but it was a good choice for a cold Friday night.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, 13 Going on Thirty, Trekkies

I'm in something of a writing short circuit right now, with no energy for the task. Phillip Gold hovers mid-trial and Abigail Massey is stuck in a rut.

So I'm watching TV shows and films instead. The other night, we watched a whole series of Mad About You episodes, and we've just enjoyed 11 episodes of Frasier in the last 24 hours. Tonight I watched the opening episode of CBC's wacky new reality show, Battle of the Blades, a live competition involving a retired male professional hockey players figure-skating with retired female figure skaters. The show's a bit stiff but the skating is fun to watch and these hockey players make their skating partners look absolutely tiny. I may just watch more.

What is it about the CBC anyway? Suddenly, they're offering a bunch of shows worth watching: Being Erica, Little Mosque, The Tudors, Heartland, Ron James and now this skating thing. If they're not careful, CBC may actually start selling some ads!

But I digress. I was planning to write about a couple of films we've seen recently: Merry Christmas and 27 Dresses.

Merry Christmas is a joint French, German and British production telling the fictionalised tale of soldiers from both sides of the battle in World War One putting down their weapons for Christmas in 1914 and meeting up in no-man's-land between the trenches for a brief break. It's a very effective, often frightening film that deals, among other things, with the idea that nations must train their citizens to see the enemy as something less than human in order to make them willing to kill in a war. The "fraternisation" that takes place among the foot soldiers undermines that effort and must, in the eyes of the commanders on both sides, be punished. It's an uplifting but chilling film, starring a series of European actors I don't recognise and directed by Christian Carion, that is very much worth your time to find and watch. And, if you get the two-disc version, be sure to watch the extra features. They're great too.

27 Dresses is not such a great film but it does showcase Katherine Heigl, of Grey's Anatomy and, I think, Knocked Up fame. Heigl is a revelation in this film and she truly lifts it out of the muck and mire of a bad script, poor direction and a mediocre supporting cast. Her performance in this uninspired version of the modern romantic comedy deserves better.

Tags: Heigl, 27 Dresses, CBC, Mad About You, Frasier, Battle of The Blades, Being Erica

After a break of about a week to work on other projects, survive a heat wave and deal with some weird family issues, I'm getting back to Phillip Gold and The Silent Goodbye. Finally.

Much of the credit for the return has to go to my sister, Janice, whose enthusiastic response to some questions I posed to her over e-mail has led to a rekindling of my own enthusiasm and a genuine belief that, with her help, I might just be able to write an entertaining, convincing trial. Janice, you see, was until recently a Crown Attorney extraordinaire and her insights into how a criminal trial would be run have been most helpful.

Janice has offered guidance on the mundane details of criminal procedure, such as who speaks first and what would the judge do in certain situations, but she has also been kind enough to share her insights into the more exciting stuff, like how the Crown would design her case, how the defence attorney could attack that case, legal and psychological gambits each might employ with the jury and such like.

The conversations themselves have been fascinating and she's been kind enough to agree to read the first draft once I've finished it and offer more guidance, more insights and more insider info. I'm quite excited at the thought.

The only problem is, I have to keep reminding her that my character, Phillip Gold, is not supposed to be a very good lawyer: I think Janice has a hard time playing down to his level, so to speak.

It is still challenging for me to sit down and work through the narrative on my own since every sentence seems to bring up another question but Janice's help does make me feel like, when all is said and done, the trial will be a realistic, exciting part of the book.

At the same time, I found out that a local library has a pretty sweet collection of films on DVD, including classic stuff and international films as well. One of the first DVDs that jumped out at me was the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard's excellent play. The movie version, also written and directed by Stoppard, stars Tim Roth and Gary Oldman as the title characters and is a fabulous piece of cinema.

I won't try to write a review here but will offer this: if you haven't read the play or seen the play or film, do so immediately. Well, do so after you've re-read Hamlet, Shakespeare's play from which Stoppard's work spins.

What I love about Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead, apart from the sheer cleverness and entertainment value of it, is the fact that Stoppard created two different versions of the same idea, each designed to take best advantage of the medium in which it will be delivered. Stated simply, he rewrote his own highly successful play to create a screenplay that is filmic, rather than just a filmed version of the stage play. He made some major changes in writing the movie to take advantage of film as a medium, while still remaining true to the soul of the original.

It's genius. And the DVD I borrowed from the library is a two-disc set, the second disc offering indepth interviews with Stoppard himself, as well as the two main actors in the film. I'm halfway through the interview with Stoppard and it's excellent. Great insights into the play, film and the creative process itself.

I have been a huge fan of Stoppard for some time and this DVD gives me all the more reason to admire him.

There's a personal connection for me too. While working at a hotel in Toronto in the early 1990s, I had occasion to meet and actually chat with Derek Goldby, the man who directed R&D Are D in its first professional production in London in the late 1960s. He was in town directing another Stoppard play, Rough Crossing, for one of Toronto's professional theatre companies. A very exciting opportunity for me and it was neat to hear Stoppard himself talk about Goldby in the interview on the DVD.

I'm looking forward to watching the film again and to seeing the rest of the interviews. It helps that Gary Oldman, who plays Rosencrantz, also plays Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Stoppard, Goldby

New Brunswick is sweating through its first real heat wave in two years with day-time temperatures climbing into the 30s and the humidity closing in on 100%. Fortunately, our basement stays pretty cool so we spend a lot of time down there and, today, we went for a drive through the Fundy National Park to Alma, New Brunswick, an interesting little tourist town with massive tidal variations to the water levels in its little part of the Bay of Fundy.

We got there just at the right time to enjoy low tide, meaning a great shelf of often-submerged ocean floor is walkable. How neat to pick your way through drying seaweed, pools of water, barnacle-encrusted rocks as well as sand, mud and sea shells. Unfortunately, we got fooled by the optics: we decided to walk to the water's edge, thinking it would take maybe ten to fifteen minutes; instead, we spent almost 90 minutes on the trek. We were exhausted and sun-stroked by the time we got back to the car. Poor Marlee was at her puppy-wits' end.

Of course, the temperature at the Bay of Fundy is about 10 degrees cooler than in Freddie, so that was something. We drove back via the Hopewell Rocks (we didn't pay to go in; we were just too tired) and then Moncton. A nice way to spend a hot day. Too bad we had to come back to the oven that is Fredericton.

With regard to writing, I've completed the draft of The Silent Goodbye up to the start of the trial. I'm actually quite stunned by my progress to date. I am currently on a little break from writing both to collect myself before diving into the trial itself and to spend some time doing video editing work in preparation for a training program I have to put on at my work in about 10 days.

My plan is to use scenes from popular movies and TV shows to show the participants examples of harassment, discrimination and other such issues. I have, therefore, been hard at work at this computer arranging the editing the scenes I want into usable shape. It's fun but frustrating since video files are so big. Even this very new iMac dual core I'm working on takes a long time to manipulate video files. I am, for example moving a one-hour TV show into iMovie and it is going to take more than an hour do so.

I'm training myself to set the computer to work, then go off and do other things. I should really be using that time to write but there's so much else to do. And some nasty heat to get through.

Tags: Phillip Gold

I just needed a little distance.

The first time I went to see the newish movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I was very disappointed. You can read my disappointment in my blog of 21/07/09. In anticipation of seeing the movie, I had re-read the book and, with Rowling's powerful prose fresh in my mind, I went to the cinema with high expectations.

It turns out, I approached the movie with the wrong mind-set. I went in looking for the ways in which the movie version stayed faithful to the book and the ways in which it diverged. Though Half-Blood Prince is likely my least favourite of Rowling's seven, I still respected it for its consistency of tone, its psychological and emotional depth and the new directions in which it took the characters. I also knew it would be tough to make this deeply introspective, tone-poem book into a successful movie.

This time, I went to the cinema on the spur of the moment Sunday afternoon, now three weeks separated from reading the book, intent on judging the film on its own merits. Well, my opinion of it has improved significantly. Yes, I still think it is a pale, shallow, hollow imitation of the book but, as a film, it works. (Now that's a back-handed compliment if I ever wrote one!).

I will never like what Steve Kloves did to the book in making it into a film script. I will never like the liberties he took not only with Rowling's scenes and story but also with her characters and their motiviations.

I do, however, have a strong appreciation for the look, tone and atmosphere of the film. David Yates and his crew have done exceptional work at creating an artistic film, filled with beautiful images and interesting visual constructions. Yates is especially creative in finding visual ways to show Draco Malfoy's despair as he languishes in his efforts to fulfill the Dark Lord's orders to him. Rowling used the literary device of having another character (Moaning Myrtle) tell the reader (and Harry et al) about Malfoy's torment; Yates isolates Malfoy in the corners of frames, pans from scenes of youthful frivolity to images of Malfoy alone and lonely, pens him physically in the architecture of the school.

Yates also does a very nice job with the "Wizards in the Muggle world" scenes, particularly when the sisters visit Severus Snape in Spinners End. The image of Peter Pettigrew seen through the fogged glass of the home's front door is stunning and Snape seems right at home in the dusty library.

I would (and no doubt will) watch this movie again, not simply because it is an adaptation of one of Rowling's books but also because it is so beautifully filmed and beautifully acted, at least by the veteran back-up cast. I can't say any of the three leads particularly impressed me with their acting skills but they do have a nice chemistry and the film's emphasis of the growing friendship between Harry and Hermione (a steadfast, unquestioning, rest-of-their-lives friendship) is a nice touch in preparation for the final films.

Tags: Harry Potter, Rowling, Half-Blood Prince