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Mrt'sblog: A progress report
It's about a year since I fully embraced blog writing. I was waiting to start a Gap Year and intended to travel. My friends were about to leave for university. I needed a distraction and I wanted to concentrate on doing something I loved. Hence the growth of this blog.
I didn't manage to travel. I still intend to and desperately want to. Perhaps I'll take another Gap Year a few years down the line or have a truly adventurous and globetrotting summer. There are so many places I'm yet to see, from European capitals to America and Tokyo. I'll get there one day. That's what everyone says I know but hopefully I mean what I say. If I won the EuroMillions I'd go tomorrow. But I might need to start entering first.
Travel writing would certainly be a new challenge and the idea excites me. Capturing the personalities of people in the crowds, as well as the places themselves, is an appealing task. It requires great skills which I would have to develop. Even if my academic brain has been neglected, I do feel as though I have learnt some things, acquired some skills, over the past twelve months.
I'm not sure how I stumbled into reviewing so regularly. I suppose I followed the old saying about taking opportunities that present themselves to you. Reviewing films, sometimes TV or books, is certainly not all I want to do. I want to create my own stories and sketches, perhaps scripts or plays. I haven't focused enough on that desire.
If I take a glass half full view though, I have immersed myself in storytelling. Hopefully this has taught me more about it, as I absorb the bad, the mediocre and exemplary films that I review. Some of this may well rub off beneficially when I do come back to seriously contemplating my own writing. And of course I have written a sketch that will be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in a few weeks. I could never have imagined such a satisfying and exciting end to my year of writing development.
The Fringe sketch is a good example of how much I have achieved.
But it's probably just human nature that I dwell more often on the negatives. I
have not read enough, of either new fiction or classics I should've read, in
philosophy, history or literature. I feel that I have not improved enough as a
writer. I have learned that there are deadlines to meet, even with the room of
freelance work, but too often I make do with something I know isn't my best
work. I still finish pieces knowing I could have done so much better. I do not
have enough of a personal stamp or brand either.
This probably accounts for the poor viewing figures of Mrt'sblog. Despite the increasing success of sites like Flickering Myth, which I write for, my personal blog continues to remain unseen by most. There was a period when figures rocketed but then they sunk rapidly back to depressing levels. I have over a hundred Twitter followers these days and Twitter certainly has its networking benefits. But it has not had an impact on my blog stats. I can't help being frustrated by this.
I remain torn between serious articles and funny articles, pieces about film and pieces about literature, opinions on football and opinions on politics. I have struggled to link my interests and to continue all of them separately, resulting probably in average output in terms of quality and frequency in every department. I have, as I've mentioned, enjoyed some success writing elsewhere though.
On political issues I have written some of my highest quality pieces, in my view, for Demo Critic. On film I have settled into contributing regularly for Flickering Myth, helping the site's strong grow in a small way. Football pieces I have written have done tremendously well for Caught Offside and brought in the most traffic to this site. And this week I have started writing for Blog Critics (all of these sites are linked in my Blog Roll).
I couldn't have imagined doing that well a year ago. But now I want to do better, just as time is running out. I will not be able to write as regularly as I finally head off myself to university. I know I have to get some serious reading done, simply to get back in the groove of devouring books and to exercise intelligent muscles, before the end of September. I will not stop blogging but it may at times have to take a backseat. I certainly won't stop writing for Flickering Myth but again, it might be less frequent.
Despite my niggling regrets this saddens me. Writing can be incredibly lonely and daunting and disheartening. It often goes without praise or reward, unlike when you do well at school or on a pitch. But I enjoy it more than anything. Watching films and sharing my thoughts on them would be an amazing way to make a living, or even just a fantastic sideline. I've experienced the reality of writing and I still love it. I might have failed to achieve certain things on this year out but I have a vague plan for the future. Write, write, write. Move to London, eventually get a satisfying and interesting job. But keep writing. Write articles and all sorts of other stuff. Combine the lot.
This post is not a goodbye but simply a heads up. It will also serve as a reminder to myself. If you do read regularly I thank you wholeheartedly, it means a great deal. Things will wind down here as I head off to read, study and be a student menace to society ( yup don't worry I will have fun too). But Mrt'sblog isn't going anywhere and it will still archive everything I write elsewhere.
Posted in Personal, Uncategorized
Tagged blogging, Flickering Myth, Gap Year, Liam Trim, Mrt'sblog, read, reflection, Twitter, writer, writing
What's the secret to writing good sex?
Article first published as What's the Secret to Writing Good Sex? on Blogcritics.
You can admire an awful lot in My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead, a collection of short stories about love of all kinds compiled and edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. There is lush and evocative prose in Nabokov's "Spring in Fialta". There is meaningful and moving role play in "The Hitchhiker's Game" by Milan Kundera. There's perfectly distilled decay and restlessness in William Trevor's "Lovers of their Time".
You can also learn a great deal, both as a reader and a writer. In Chekhov's "The Lady with the Little Dog" we realize that subtleties are vital to deft and developed characterisation. Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is the perfect showcase of profound and realistic dialogue. Various stories somehow convey the emotional frustration and torment of love that is never reciprocated.
It's a thoughtfully composed book, bringing some of the best fiction about love, a word that can mean so many things, together in one place to try and paint one enlightening and complete picture. It takes you on a journey. It's a journey that never tries to ram truths down your throat but nevertheless you discover them.
Along the way I thought I worked out the secret to writing good sex. Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by "good". I don't mean arousing or satisfying for the participating characters. I mean sex that is not simply erotic, sex that doesn't detract from the purpose of a story but enhances it, sex that is believable. I mean sex that is well written but not overwritten. Sex should not stand out like a sore thumb in a narrative or be self conscious or awkward.
It's a very difficult thing to get right. It's all too easy to verge into soft porn or erotica. Perhaps even worse is resorting to cliché, being at once graphic and far too high minded about the physical act. There's a fine line between a tasteful romantic coupling underneath the stars and the trashier sort of Mills and Boon escapism. That's why there are awards for bad sex writing. At the time the writer may have felt as if they'd hit the nail on the head, as though they were composing a masterpiece; which makes the eventual failure even more humorous.
This leads me to one of the factors I thought I'd discovered. Writers that succeed in writing good stories about or featuring sex, anticipate the humour and embarrassment by including their own. In Stuart Dybek's "We Didn't", the central couple never actually manage to consummate their young love. Dybek tells the story from the young man's point of view, at times almost poetically. We feel his disappointment and stifled desire, even his hinted at longing for concrete emotional connection.
But the lists of places and situations in which they failed to do the deed are also inescapably funny from an outside perspective. They come closest during a well written fumble on a beach. This passage is tense, varied and vivid, as well as tragic and funny. The condom springs from his grasp into the sand. He has to dust the sand off of it, struggling not to kill the mood as lightning erupts in the sky overhead. For a second he thinks they are already doing it, prompting more meaningful language about "a gateway into the rest of my life" and "groping for an Eternity" which is immediately cut short. Police cars arrive, lights blaring. A body is washed up on the beach and she is haunted by it every time they try again.
Something else I thought I'd learned about well written sex is that being shameless and colloquial helps. In director and writer Miranda July's short story, "Something That Needs Nothing", the protagonist uses sex to empower herself. This is a tale with some serious things to say, many of them linked to sex. The narrator is in love with her best friend and they begin the story living together. But she is devastated when Pip leaves her to live and sleep with another girl. Pip had never wanted her like that. To get over it, and earn the money to pay the rent, the narrator begins work in a sex shop, being paid to perform through a screen for masturbating men. By the end of the story Pip wants her back, attracted by the narrator's new found confidence, developed through a disgusting act. However when she eventually has to remove the wig she wears for her work, the spell is broken.
"Something That Needs Nothing" is an intelligent and engrossing story about identity. It shows how sex can be a sham as well as a weapon and a unifying force. It's mostly written in a chatty style, which is crucial to not just realism and characterisation, but the impact of its points.
I'm not saying that sex can't or shouldn't be erotic on the page. "Something That Needs Nothing" and "We Didn't" both have sensual moments. But I thought a certain frankness helped ensure the quality of a story featuring sex. Fluffy and over the top, dramatic description seemed to be a one way route to cliché. However then I remembered the sex in "The Hitchhiking Game" by Milan Kundera.
This story is about a couple on a road trip, who decide to role play that the woman is a whore for a night. The deep effects of this are unexpected and again big themes like identity and relationships are covered uniquely. The penultimate passage features this line: "On the bed there were soon to be two bodies in perfect harmony, two sensual bodies alien to each other." Out of context this could be from a terrible Mills and Boon book. But the insight of the rest of Kundera's story allows him to dabble in cliché.
So perhaps there are no rules set in stone after all. Great writers can approach sex however they like, providing they have something to say about it. After all, clichés are clichés for a reason; they always contain truths.
Tagged awkward, Blog critics, colloquial, detract, enhance, good, Liam, Miranda July, My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead, reading, self concious, sex, Stuart Dybek, Trim, writing
Page and Screen: Are our favourite characters more alive in books or movies?
The idea of character is more complicated than we allow ourselves to realise. Of course put simply they are made up, fictional people in stories. But there are those who wish to challenge such a casual assumption. Some say they are merely bundles of words. Others question their independence, as we can never really know anything certainly about anyone besides ourselves. Therefore are characters simply versions of their creators? Are authors, screenwriters and actors getting it completely wrong when they try to imagine what it's like to be someone who isn't them? Should all characters be developed to a certain point? Some crop up as mere extras in a scene of a movie or a chapter of a novel but nevertheless leave an impression on us. Do they count as true characters even when we know next to nothing about them? Do we need to know anything about a character? Can we know a character at all?
Of course it's sensible not to get bogged down in such questions. It's pedantic, futile and stupid to waste energy debating whether any character can have true meaning beyond an author's words. Often characters are simply a fact to be accepted, a vital part of the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy any genre of fiction. But it can also be healthy to think about the limitations of characterisation as well its possibilities. Characters are vehicles that carry us through any story, doors onto worlds of escapism. Writing believable and engaging characters is the most difficult part of creating novels or films. Anyone can have a half decent plot idea or conjure adequate passages of dialogue but very few can mould the perfect characters with which to tell their story.
On the page the biggest challenge is getting a character moving because, as I said, characters are vehicles. Uninteresting, average or amateur writing can start by telling us about motionless characters. Great writers can establish iconic figures with very little information, which is seamlessly part of the narrative. On the screen it can sometimes be easier to get a character "in", as the motion comes from the medium itself and the viewer can be convinced by things like setting, costume or the glance of a talented actor.
Having said this it is often difficult to transform the subtleties of the written word when it comes to character depth. For example, fictional figures like Jay Gatsby and Jean Brodie make very brief appearances in novels named after them. However the books can still be predominantly about their distant personalities. The Great Gatsby is about the potential rather than the actual, with the central message that "a dream realised is a dream destroyed" according to Sarah Churchwell in The Guardian. She argues that Baz Luhrmann's forthcoming adaptation, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, is doomed to failure because by its nature the film will try to visually realise the dream of Gatsby and his grand home. DiCaprio will inevitably be more prominent than Gatsby was in the book.
Jean Brodie too is a similarly enigmatic character, observed only from the viewpoint of others. She has her image like Gatsby and she is only ever seen putting on her front. She is remembered for a bunch of catchphrases, such as "you are the crème de la crème" and "I am in my prime". In Muriel Spark's novel (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) the perspective jumps around between Brodie's pupils but we never get to know her, just her influence on the lives of her protégés.
This doesn't make her flat or two dimensional but it probably means she is not rounded either. This does not make her a bad example of characterisation. We are made to think about the people we know; do we really only know their public performances? And we imagine more than we are told or shown about Jean Brodie. Spark throws in glimpses of her pupils in the future, of their deaths and careers, prompting further questions about the novelist's power and Brodie's desire to manipulate. So we know aspects of her behaviour.
The narrative blends of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Great Gatsby are difficult to imagine on screen in quite the same way. Their stories would undoubtedly lose something or become narrowed on a particular aspect. There are narrative techniques that have no cinematic equivalent.
Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker Prize winning The Remains of the Day was adapted for the screen by Merchant Ivory in 1993. It centres on one of the most fascinating characters of modern fiction, Stevens the butler, played by Anthony Hopkins in the film. It might be that the role of a butler is the perfect lens for a multi layered story about class, identity, personality, culture and repressed emotion. Or it might be the talents of Ishiguro and Hopkins. But on the page and the screen Stevens is incredibly lifelike.
Subtleties and methods employed in the novel cannot be replicated on screen. For example the parallel narratives are largely lost and most of all Stevens' unreliable narration. He is looking back on his career with nostalgia and it doesn't take long for you to realise in the book that Stevens is deceiving himself about the past, holding back things and regularly revising his retelling. But Ishiguro pulls of the style masterfully. The half truths Stevens tells and the things he claims to forget or confuse reveal greater truths about him to the reader.
On screen Hopkins has none of these advantages to introduce Stevens to us as something more than a servant. But he does have the benefit of the visual. He can communicate with an expression or look in his eye the sort of doubt, regret and reserve it took Ishiguro dozens of pages to build. And whilst Ishiguro's execution was pitch perfect in The Remains of the Day his preference for the unreliable narrator took some considerable practice to get right. In a previous of novel of his, An Artist of the Floating World, passages like this appear so often at times, almost on every page, that they become extremely cumbersome and annoying:
"These, of course, may not have been the precise words I used that afternoon at the Tamagawa temple; for I have had cause to recount this particular scene many times before, and it is inevitable that with repeated retelling, such accounts begin to take on a life of their own."
Here Ishiguro is trying so hard to create a complex character that he is constantly alerting us to his efforts, shattering the reader's immersion in the story. He is basically overwriting. So screen adaptations can often ditch bad writing to bring out the best elements of a believable character for a good story. But then there are also bad actors.
Anthony Hopkins is undoubtedly a fine actor. With roles like Stevens and Hannibal Lecter, he has established himself as a respected and acclaimed "character actor". This term usually refers only to eccentric or developed individuals in a story. Our favourite characters can be just as alive on the page or the screen; they are simply represented in different ways. But they also need not be eccentric, developed or rounded to be alive and touching. They can come in all shapes and sizes.
Tagged actual, adaptation, alive, An Artist of the Floating World, and, Anthony, approve, Are, author, bad, Baz, blog, blogger, Booker, books, Bovary, Brodie, Buchannan, character actor, characterisation, characters, Churchwell, clumsy, Comment, Daisy, detail, DiCaprio, eccentric, Emma, favourite, fiction, film, flat, Flaubert, Flickering, Gambon, Gatsby, genre, getting a character in, glance, Hannibal, Hopkins, How Fiction Works, imagery, immersion, in, individual, Ishiguro, Ivory, James, Japan, Jay, Jean, Kazuo, Lecter, Leonardo, Liam, lifelike, like, literary, Luhrmann, Madame, Maggie, Maguire, Merchant, Michael, more, movies, Mrt'sblog, myth, narrative, novels, or, our, overwriting, Page, parallel, parallel narratives, potential, Prize, rank, rounded, Sarah, screen, seamlessly, Smith, Stevens, suspension of disbelief, technique, Technorati, The Great Gatsby, The Guardian, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Remains of the Day, theory, Thompson, Toby, Tom, trait, Trim, unreliable narrator, vivid, winner, winning, Wood, wordpress, writer, writing
Films that remind you of people – Amelie
Sometimes you really wish you could forget someone. Not because you want to but because you feel like you have to. People are forever telling you to "move on" from them, as if they were a shifty beggar in the street wasting your time. They have condemned you to the rubbish dump of their lives, so you should do the same. Whatever you manage to salvage from the wreckage of them will only remind you of the way things were before the crash, in a time you cannot travel back to. It's time for a new stage of your life, minus them.
There are days when it feels like you might be able to do it. There are loads of things to live for, more pluses than minuses dotting the horizon of the future. But the thing is life has a knack of throwing reminders your way that jolt you back to her, to him, to them, to there. Oh look, memory sneers in a stage whisper from the shadows, it's the bar you spent all night talking in, the river bank where you first kissed or the station she used to get off at. Even when you've succeeded in blanking them out from familiar places, their memories surprise you in other ways.
"This was our song" is a phrase you often hear from the devastated dumpee, just before their face melts in a cascade of noisy tears, possibly years after the breakup itself. Then there's the novel that becomes ostracised on the book shelf because of a strange connection you are suddenly seeing these days within its pages. Even their favourite paper or magazine can give you a slap in the newsagents occasionally.
Some of the worst offenders are films. There will be the trashy romantic comedy given inexplicable significance because it happened to be your first date. There will be films that divided you and films you wished them to see. And there will be some favourites of theirs you never found the time to watch.
This was the case for me as I finally watched Amelie in its entirety. I had seen bits of it but never the whole thing. I knew that the music was fantastically whimsical and enchanting. I had watched an uplifting scene via YouTube in which Amelie spirits a blind man along a street, vividly describing everything in a whirlwind of sensuous movement. I knew it was French and starred Audrey Tautou. And I knew it was one of the favourite films of someone I wish I could forget.
In a way I was desperate to hate Amelie. I knew what it would be like because I knew the people that liked it. I was hoping that it would try too hard, alienate me with its quirkyness and annoy me with its arty farty simplifications. There were times I felt a little like that. But mostly I loved it.
Why did I hope that I wouldn't? It was hard at points to be enjoying it so much because they enjoy it. How much easier it would have been to be repulsed and to have found another tiny reason to take another minute step forward and away from the past!
Amelie is about being alive, feeling alive and dreaming. It's about the smaller things, so particular and peculiar that they must be real, containing a touch of magic that makes life worthwhile. It is extremely funny and eccentric, fresh and unique.
It's the eccentricity that I thought might annoy me. I thought that Amelie might have been quirky for its own sake, as so many films of its ilk are. But Amelie's comedy is crucial to its success. It is almost self mocking at times with the ridiculous and random nature of its details.
In the opening twenty minutes I fell in love with the narration. Normally voiceover is catastrophic and awful. Perhaps Amelie's is so charming and intoxicating because it is French. Or perhaps it is that at once meaningful and light hearted tone, which doesn't take itself too seriously. Amelie feels like a novel throughout its enjoyable beginning which explains her tragic yet amusing childhood. Characters are brought to life instantly because of their odd habits and Amelie herself has baffling, childlike musings about the world which add to her appeal.
I was disappointed when the narration became less frequent throughout the film, which is extraordinary given my usual distaste for voiceover. I loved the musicality of the voice, the specific details it would come out with and the telling but mysterious insights we'd instantly learn about characters. Most of all I loved the way it seemed to mock any work of art trying much too hard to stand out.
But the retreat of the narrator brings Amelie herself to the foreground. The wonderful lines from the narrator are replaced by some witty and surprising scenes of dialogue. The visuals and sounds of the film grow and grow until modern day Paris seems like a wondrous place, with deserving and interesting souls to be saved on every corner.
I expected Amelie to be preachy, perhaps patronising or too desperate to be different. I wanted to dislike it for my own good. But in the end I am glad to have seen it. I liked it because it's good, not because of any associations it has with anyone. I thought it was unique and it made me feel alive and full of possibility, regardless of what others think. It's a beautiful and beguiling film that reminds us how life can be so too, with dreams coming true, big or small, out of nowhere.
Tagged 1997, 2001, actor, actress, amusing, arthouse, arty, au revoir, Audrey, Big, blind man, Blu-Ray, bonjour, book, box, Camilla, Charles, childhood, cinema, come, Comedy, comic, conspiracy, detail, details, Di, dialogue, Diana, Diane, director, dreamer, dreams, DVD, eccentric, eccentricity, experience, farty, film, Flickering, France, french, funny, ghost train, Guillaume, ha, happy, help, hilarious, il, imdb, innocent, insights, Jean, Jean-Pierre, Jeunet, jolly, journey, justice, Kassovitz, kindness, LA, Lady, laugh, Laurant, Liam, lies, light hearted, little, love, Love Film, magical, Mathieu, meaningful, merci, Michel, mocking, movie, Mrt'sblog, music, musings, myth, naive, narrator, Nino, nostalgia, novel, novelistic, of, Paris, pink, plot, Poulain, pretentious, Princess, Quincampoix, quirk, quirky, quirkyness, random, ridiculous, Robin, Rotten, Rue, Rufus, satisfaction, save, scene, screenplay, sex shop, simplification, small, soul, star, starring, story, sugar, Tautou, telling, The Two Windmills, Tomatoes, tragic, Trim, true, unique, uplifting, visuals, vivid, voiceover, waitress, Wales, writer, writing
Undiscovered Cinema: Missing Pieces
Most of the time the depressing aspects of the film industry escape our attention. We are happy to simply be entertained and not think about the hard work behind the scenes, the promising projects that wither and die before a general release. If you really love films or you write about them, the downsides are clearer. You will see and fall for films the general public (or perhaps the suits responsible for getting it to them) don't appreciate.
My point is that once in a while you have to say something and make a stand, however small, against the prevailing culture. History is written by people who challenged the status quo, refusing to accept that "it's just the way things are". Missing Pieces is a fantastic film, with a startling story cutting close to the core of a whole range of emotional truths. It is modern and gripping, clever and well executed. And even if others aren't as enthused by it as me, the quality is evident and it deserves a general release, which it doesn't currently have.
In a world where the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film and The Hangover: Part II are breaking box office records despite their overwhelming lack of orginality, genuinely original creations that are works of art as well as good filmmaking, slip through the cracks. My Missing Pieces review is below and can also be found here at Flickering Myth: http://flickeringmyth.blogspot.com/2011/06/movie-review-missing-pieces-2011.html
Read on if you've got two minutes spare and support it however you can. This film deserves to be discussed.
Originality is what I always strive for in a review. Why read my specific review if it's just a regurgitation of what a more learned critic said? I always feel unsatisfied if there's not something, a line of description or paragraph of praise, which feels like my signature. Sometimes though all you can do is record your reaction. A film might be so atrociously bad that all you can do is spend an hour pouring hateful words over it. Or it might be so amazingly and astoundingly good that you just gush in delight about it inadequately.
Missing Pieces is just such a hidden gem that reduces me to strings of clichés. It nails originality on the head. I was literally "blown away" and completely surprised by the way this film personally resonated with me. It is the most enjoyable and emotionally satisfying movie I have seen this year. I cannot remember the last time I identified so deeply with characters or felt so absorbed in a drama. At over two hours long it is not short but I did not want it to end.
It's the story of David, played by Mark Boone Junior (Batman Begins), who has been in a car accident. His injuries from the crash left his mind all mixed up, as if someone had taken a puzzle box and shaken it until all the pieces are jumbled. We never really see the fragmentation of their relationship, meaning that we see things almost entirely from David's perspective, but the love of his life leaves him. Played by Melora Walters (Magnolia/Cold Mountain/The Butterfly Effect) Delia appears now and then to collect her stuff, angrily shouting that she wants the real David back. This leaves him confused and hurting, determined to try every trick in the book (and more) to win her back.
Clearly David's mental state has been altered. In one striking but baffling scene he calmly smashes some cargo in an empty children's play area. In others he watches the comings and goings of two of his young neighbours. But this he does because of loneliness, not brain damage.
I don't really want to spoil the key element of Missing Pieces as I found it such a joy to watch completely uninformed. SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH if you wish to avoid it, although I suspect Missing Pieces will not lose much of its power from what I am going to say, as its plot is impossible to summarise. David becomes gripped by a self help tape and is inspired by the artwork of his departed girlfriend. He concocts a strange and deluded plan to win Delia back; kidnap the boy and girl he watches and make them fall in love. He believes if he observes true love he can learn the intricacies of successful romance.
There is a teasingly sinister undertone running throughout the distorted narrative, which heightens the suspense and pulls you to the edge of your seat. Missing Pieces plays out in the wrong order; you're not sure if plot strands are taking place before or after the central ordeal. Newcomers Daniel Hassel and Taylor Engel, as Daylen and Maggie, are superb, together and apart, as a young boy and girl with troubled families, on an odd journey from suspicion through friendship to love. They form an instant connection, vividly realised through the chemistry of the actors, but they never would have met but for being thrown together by a normally harrowing experience.
Missing Pieces is influenced by a myriad of modern movies and directors but pulls together ideas from numerous genres to tell a completely fresh story. There are strong echoes of Memento, which Boone Junior also starred in, along with components of modern horror, Paul Thomas Anderson, romantic comedies and the indie scene. It addresses themes of love, loss, sadness and happiness. It touches on far too many issues to mention but it always has something true to say. It captures a little of the human condition and the universal desire for purpose, meaning and intimacy. Most of all I was struck by its message of reaching out and ignoring the limitations of social convention to say how you feel before it's too late.
Perhaps such a message warms the hearts of young people more easily. And what makes Missing Pieces even more remarkable is the youthful team behind it. It is the brainchild of Kenton Bartlett who decided to make a movie when his carefree student life suddenly ended. A 30 minute Making Of feature is enlightening, entertaining and moving, as Kenton struggles through the unexpected scale of the challenge. It's evident the film went through multiple edits to become a staggering, coherent final product.
Words don't do Missing Pieces justice. Discovering new talented filmmakers and musicians (the film also has wonderful songs/score) like those behind Missing Pieces is the most fulfilling part of writing about movies. Its unknown actors and crew deserve to do this for a living. And we deserve to see their novel and ambitious ideas realised.
Missing Pieces is still seeking distribution. It is high quality stuff and there's no reason why it should be kept from a wider audience. Get the word out and find the missing piece in your collection of favourite films: www.FindYourMissingPieces.com
Tagged 2, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 4, acting, agent, Alabama, art, article, Bartlett, Batman, best of 2011, Birmingham, blogosphere, Boone, Boone Junior, box office, brain, breakthrough, brilliant, Britain, brothers, cinematography, cliche, coincidence, Collinson, creative, Cruise, culture, Daniel, David, Daylen, debate, debut, Delia, deserving, director, discussion, distribution, dreams, DVD, emotional, Engel, extras, favourite, filmmaker, filmmaking, Flickering, follow, free will, fresh, friendship, Gary, gem, General, general public, Gordon, Hangover, Hassel, heartbreak, hidden, horror, Inception, indie, injury, Job, Jr, junior, Kenton, kidnap, Lindale, literally blew me away, love, Magnolia, mainstream, Mark, Mark Boone Junior, Mary's Sofa, Melora, moving, Mrt'sblog, myth, narrative, new, newcomer, novel, original, originality, painting, Part II, Paul Thomas Anderson, Pirates, plot, poster, potential, project, promising, public, publicity, quote, records, rehash, release, remarkable, Review, romance, scene, seize the day, self help, sequels, share, siblings, sisters, social norm, spread the word, standout, stealer, stunning, superb, tags, Taylor, thoughts, Tom, touching, truth, twist, Twitter, UK, Ultra, uplifitng, Verdict, Walters, When It's Cold, Word Press, words don't do it justice, work, writer, writing, youth
Film Review: Ghosted
Do you think you could hack it behind bars? If you're a Daily Mail columnist you probably dispute the fact that prisons even have bars anymore. They've all been replaced you see, with tasty sticks of rock more in keeping with the dangerously liberal, comfortable satellite TV approach to treating filthy criminals. Being locked up is preferable to a five star hotel. Prisons are merely lavishly furnished warehouses for feral beasts that will be released back into the wilds of society unchanged. The fear factor has gone.
Bring back that shit yourself punishment and all of Britain's ills will be cured. All this claptrap about human rights and civil liberties has been diluting the taste of our justice system since the 60s, so that it's nothing more than a bitter sip of lemonade. Prisons should punish first and foremost, to act as a deterrent to the bad apples on the nation's tree. When they fall they need to be crushed into a pulp and left to rot as an example to others; so the argument roughly goes.
Of course films are not the place to look for a frank and faithful look at the realities of prison life. Just because I'm put off a casual mugging by the possibility of gang rapes such as those in The Shawshank Redemption, doesn't mean that actual perpetrators within the system encounter such things or that they are deterred by them. Cinema is a place for drama, tension and excitement. But a certain mould of gritty British drama always seems to capture something true about the cooped up existence of convicts, whatever the exaggerations.
In the case of Ghosted, the debut film of writer/director Craig Viveiros, the principal truth is that for many men, the haunting consequences of their crimes are punishment enough. There is also a heightened but believable look at the community of prison life, with its rival factions and dominating personalities pulling the strings. And much of the dialogue is insightful but understated, with main character Jack musing that, if nothing else, empty hours in a cell day after day give you plenty of time to think.
Jack (John Lynch) is a sensible prisoner, keeping his head down and away from trouble, serving his time. He is approaching the end of his sentence and desperate to get out to see his wife. But at the start of the film she fails to visit him and blanks him when he calls. Just as freedom is within sight his marriage collapses, destroying his hopes for a life on the outside. Gradually we find out more about Jack, eventually getting confirmation that his young son is dead. He burns most of his pictures of him because "sometimes the reminders are too hard in here".
With just months until Jack is free, a new inmate arrives in the shape of young Paul, played by Martin Compston of The Disappearance of Alice Creed fame. Paul is immediately welcomed by the manipulative Clay, who is described on the marketing material as a "wing overlord", which sounds like an all powerful evil super villain, but in reality just means a nicer cell, a mildly lucrative drugs racket and the odd fellow prisoner to bang. After the initial niceties Clay starts to use Paul, so Jack steps in and gets him moved to his cell.
This puts Jack in the firing line, resulting in some tense standoffs. The balance of the prison politics is disrupted and Clay is humiliated more than once, prompting him to get revenge. But despite the palpable sense of threat, the really interesting part of Ghosted is the relationship between Jack and Paul.
Jack is the heart of Ghosted and Lynch relished playing him, praising the creative talents of newcomer Viveiros: "It's been a long, long time since I read a script that's centred absolutely one hundred per cent on the characters". In return the director praises his cast who "pumped blood into the story". Both men are right.
Ghosted is well acted, with even the thugs coming across as something more than just two dimensional bad guys; they have their vulnerabilities too. But Ghosted is also well written and confidently directed so that it does not feel like a debut. Some of the scenes in which Jack and Paul open up to each other, often simply discussing old memories such as when Jack was in Brazil or when Paul was in care, are exemplary examples of characterisation rarely seen in today's commercial world of cinema.
Ghosted is released in cinemas on the 24th of June and will be available on DVD from the 27th. See it to support a quality British drama with an all star cast, which simultaneously pays tribute to classic prison stories and approaches the issue from a new angle. Try to spot the emotional hammer blow of a twist at the end.
Tagged action, Alice, art, BBC, blog, Britain, British, Cameron, character, cinema, cinematic, Coalition, columnist, Compston, consequences, Craig, Creed, crime, Daily Mail, date, David, death, debut, dialogue, director, Disappearance, DVD, Ed, Eddie, emotional, England, film, Flickering, football, funny, gaol, heartfelt, history, Holby City, jail, John, June, Labour, Liam, life, London, love, Lynch, Malik, Martin, movie, movies, Mrt'sblog, myth, narrative, new, newcomer, novel, opinion, overlord, plot, Politics, prison, punishment, purpose, Real, reform, release, Review, Rick, Schofield, screenplay, script, sentence, sex, story, style, The, The Living Daylights, thoughts, thug, tv, twist, Twitter, Verdict, Viveiros, writer, writing, youth
Page and Screen: The Big Sleep
Posted on June 16, 2011 | 3 comments
Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel The Big Sleep, the first to star PI Philip Marlowe, was ready made for the big screen. It had a zippy, twisting and engrossing plot, propelled at pace by short, sharp chapters that feel like scenes from a movie. It is full of characters that are enigmatic, living in the shadowy underworld of Los Angeles, but they all jump out of the page at you because they are so flawed and real. Appropriately, the whole thing plays out in and around Hollywood. And perhaps best of all, Chandler's dialogue is quick and witty, containing cool and sophisticated one liners that are easy to transplant straight from a book to a script.
The classic film version, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and directed by Howard Hawks, was released in 1946, just seven years after the original novel. Its place amongst other classics in a widely recognised Hollywood hall of fame is justified. It adds elements the novel was missing and brings screen legends like Bogart and Bacall together to successfully bring the charismatic Marlowe and feisty Vivian Rutledge to life. But it is also a largely faithful adaptation and owes its source material a huge debt.
What is the general story of The Big Sleep then? It is too complicated to properly explain briefly. Chandler's original plot negotiated a weaving path between webs of blackmail, secrets and lies, fuelled by Hollywood excess. Essentially Marlowe is hired by General Sternwood who has two "wild" daughters, Carmen (Martha Vickers) and Vivien (Bacall), each with their own scandalous weaknesses. Carmen is being blackmailed by a dodgy bookseller doing something illegal on the side and Vivien's estranged husband, who the General was fond of, has gone missing. Marlowe quickly unravels the blackmail but bigger problems continually turn up, leading him further and further into a tough investigation of gangsters, gambling and girls.
Elements of the original plot seem even more complicated on film because of the need to tone down Chandler's frank portrayal of sex and drugs. For example Carmen is blackmailed because of naked pictures of herself but in the film she is wearing some kind of Oriental robe. Carmen's attempts to seduce Marlowe, and therefore her dangerous nature, are also less overt in the film.
The best lines of dialogue are lifted completely unaltered from Chandler's prose. There are far too many to quote. Almost all the dialogue in the book is slick and crucial to the irresistible noir style. The film's script, by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, sticks as close as possible to the novel's dialogue as well as its intricate plot and is consequently one of the best and most quotable in cinematic history, line for line.
The character of Marlowe comes to life because of his smooth talking street smarts. But this doesn't mean that other characters are deprived of scene stealing lines. Even minor characters, such as a girl working in a fake bookshop called Agnes, get the odd gem. When Marlowe disarms her and asks "Did I hurt you much?" she shoots back "You and every other man in my life."
Not all of the novel's charisma could make it from the page to the screen. Despite an excellent performance from Bogart, accurately portraying Marlowe's mannerisms and speech as the reader imagines them, it's impossible to transfer the brilliance of his first person narration. Chandler gives Marlowe an incredibly strong voice and not all of the great lines in the book are spoken.
Marlowe's nature as a detective means that he rapidly describes his surroundings vividly and unavoidably the film lacks the colour of these delicious chapter set ups, because it is in black and white. Marlowe also internally sums up other characters. We cannot see these first impressions on film. Despite the glamour of Bacall and the other actresses in the production, we're denied such delicious and spot on imagery of the women as this; "she gave me one of those smiles the lips have forgotten before they reach the eyes". No actress could express such subtlety. In the book we also learn a little more about Marlowe's own state of mind and emotions, again through wonderful writing; "I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets".
One of the changes the filmmakers did make was to intensify the relationship between Bogart's Marlowe and Bacall's Mrs Rutledge. The plot remains essentially the same, with some scenes tweaked and others, like a fairly pivotal one towards the end, omitted altogether and explained elsewhere. However Bacall's character appears more often than she does in the book. The change in her character was probably for commercial as well as narrative reasons. Cinema audiences wanted to see a love story between their two big stars, not an unorthodox, cold and professional Detective teasing but ultimately knocking back a beautiful lady, as Marlowe does in the book.
Indeed the inclusion of the love story does fundamentally change Marlowe's character in some ways. He is robbed of an ingredient of his allure as he is no longer a troubled but brilliant and determined loner when he admits that he loves Vivien. But it makes The Big Sleep work better as a standalone story and is considerably more satisfying than the end to the novel, which explains things but doesn't exactly resolve them.
It is inevitable that the adaptation has its differences to the source material. And it is also essential that changes were made. I may miss Marlowe's narration from the page and even the excitement of Chandler's written action, compared to the film's set pieces which are over in a flash. But the film gives me the unrivalled onscreen chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, which sheds light on and makes the most of the flirtatious relationship from the page. It might even reveal new truths in Chandler's story, whilst lacking others. Overall though it's clear that both the novel and the movie are sublime; clever and gripping, sophisticated and cool. Entertainment at its best.
Tagged 1939, 1946, action, actors, adaptation, analysis, Bacall, Big, black and white, blackmail, Bogart, book, books, Carmen, Chandler, chapters, character, cinema, classic, classy, deceit, description, detective, dialogue, engrossing, fashion, feature, film, first, Flickering Myth, General, gripping, hall of fame, Hawks, Hollywood, Howard, Humphrey, imagery, journalist, judgement, LA, Lauren, legends, Liam, lines, Los Angeles, Marlowe, Martha, movies, Mrt'sblog, narration, noir, novel, one liner, one liners, opinion, pace, page and screen, page to screen, person, Philip, PI, pulp, quick, Raymond, Review, scarecrow's pockets, scenes, screen, setting, shady, sharp, silver, Sleep, smile, snappy, Sternwood, style, stylish, The, The Big Sleep, Trim, twisty, Vickers, vivid, witty, writing
Short story: The Lonely Tree
Posted on June 5, 2011 | Leave a comment
This is just something I rattled out, slightly in the style of Murakami:
This is the story of a boy, who was not yet a man. It's the story of his first love, his first heartbreak and the tree that fell on him.
It's the fashion to have summer romances but the boy was allergic to everyone's favourite season. It made his eyes red and his nose stream. In fact he had always thought that girls were allergic to him. It wasn't that he couldn't speak to them or that they didn't like him, but that they couldn't love him. More than anything the boy wanted to know love. One winter, when the air was crisp and the nights chilled, he thought that he did.
He couldn't believe his luck. A childhood crush, the cleverest catch around and a friend he cared for deeply rolled into one package. Her smile locked his worries away and out of reach for hours. Being with her he felt as if he wasn't alone for the first time in his life. Hearing from her was, surprisingly, almost as good. Making her happy filled the void of purpose in his life. His existence no longer felt empty. Simply put: she made him happy.
Fate had never looked so kindly upon him before and deep down he knew that her favours would be brief. But while it lasted nothing else mattered. Or rather, everything mattered more. Her dreams enriched and expanded his own, her energy and life gave them colour. He was filled with enthusiasm and a drive he did not know he possessed. He felt like a better person and fully himself for the first time.
Looking back on it he supposed the relationship would seem a short lived folly to onlookers, and this angered him. Nothing had ever meant more. At least to him. The boy had never realised just how important intimacy, close friendship and the joy of caring for someone was to happiness. When it ended, for no reason besides that she didn't love him after all, things reverted to normal. Only more so.
He wondered if that happiness had been an illusion and whether he had truly known love. He felt catapulted back to square one. He did not know what to think or feel, knowing for certain only that he was empty again. And he was alone. The dreams that had grown to new heights in her company were now mere weeds, smaller than the clumps of green nothingness at the foot of the tree in his garden.
The tree watched as the boy moped and rolled around like a pig in his misery. At first the tree felt sympathetic towards the boy, as no one knew better than him what it was to be alone. Trapped in his hollow shell with no friends to speak of, and no means to speak, the tree longed for contact of some kind. He knew everything the boy was missing and more. And then the tree realised how selfish the boy was. And how much harder it was to be a tree.
As the spring rapidly shifted into summer the boy felt every concrete trace of his love fading away, swamped by the passing of time. With each day he felt more and more like he had no right to feel anything at all. All he had left were the memories and hopes in his head. He missed so much; far too much for words, he told himself.
On a blue morning with a blazing sun and abstract strokes of white overhead, the boy had an epiphany. Well it was that day at least that he admitted to himself a truth that he had felt for a while. He said to himself: "Love is enough for me". He knew that, for the right person, he would sacrifice all the goals and ambitions he had thought essential to his well being, satisfaction and success. He acknowledged that, during his time with his first true love, he had enjoyed and derived immense contentment from even the harder things. He was glad to be there when she was upset, happy to calm her down, even if he was only a slight comfort. Caring for someone important to him, as important as that, was all he could ever need.
He remembered reading a novel in which the main character believed there were only three chances of finding your soul mate. He pondered whether for him, "soul mate", meant someone worthy of his absolute care. Plunged back into sadness and despair by the thought of having lost someone he could lose himself in and devote himself to, he ran into the garden, blinded by fierce tears. He crouched down in the dirt, sniffling as the pollen swarmed up his hostile nostrils. He pressed his back against the trunk of the tree. He stared at the world around him, confused and crying.
By this point, the tree was seething. The tree didn't know how he knew all about what the boy was thinking and feeling, but he did know, and it made him angry. The tree did not know he was capable of anger. The tree could not think, had no brain and nothing at all to account for the melancholy consciousness brooding within his gently swaying frame. The wind blew lightly across the garden, flicking the odd leaf and stroking the odd stem. The tree felt a shiver of cold. The tree felt.
The boy was gradually coming out of his panic, descending into a depressed paralysis. The loveliest, brightest petals of the most vibrant flowers looked bleak to him. His mind's eye conjured a symbolic bonfire of his dreams in the corner of the lawn. If he could be so easily tempted from them, what chance did he have of achieving such grand plans? What did they matter anyway? Forcing his head up from its slouch on his knees, he felt the bark in his hair and decided there was no point to any sensation at all without someone to share it with.
The tree was fuming with anger from its roots to its summit. It could sense the boy's sadness. His self involved and ungrateful emotion wasn't just saturating the air around the tree now, but squirming and writhing against its flaky skin. The tree couldn't stand it. It was determined not to take it anymore. It wouldn't be buffeted by nature or ignored by men today.
The boy sighed deeply, turning his face into the breeze and relishing its cold wipe. He felt the gusts get stronger and firmer in waves, as if someone were stirring the air with an enormous food blender. Pulse after pulse slapped against him. The sweat under his arms went from hot and sticky to icy and damp. His spine creaked as the tree trunk rocked a little against him. His back stood firm easily like a castle wall against the minute thrusts.
The tree was summoning all of its energy from its very furthest extremities, even the roots beyond the garden wall. The tree was straining every part of its being in pure and untamed rage. The tree was alive and a part of nature but for the first time ever it was wild. It did not have muscles to tense or bones to move but it had life and the tree channelled every last ounce of it into its rage. It didn't know what it was doing or understand the consequences. All it knew was how wrong the boy was, how angry it made the tree feel. It was trying to teach the boy a lesson, on behalf of trees everywhere.
The boy continued to feel little swellings at his back. Small pressures, surely caused by the wind, made the entire structure of the tree wobble a fraction. Leaves that had been noisily rubbing in the flower beds slowly stopped. The bending blades of grass rested and stood upright. Gradually, the trunk seemed to be moving faster, almost pushing out into the boy, like something was stuck inside. The tree rocked more and more as the breeze died away to an unnoticeable whisper. As the branches began to rattle, the boy noticed properly for the first time the firmer and firmer touch of the trunk. He glanced up towards the sky, through the canopy of crisscrossing browns and greens, only to shrug away again with a sob.
The boy's indifference only enraged the tree still more. So that, as the swaying grew quicker and quicker, the consciousness that had formed inside the tree disappeared, becoming something else entirely. Now the tree was just movement, just energy, just purpose. All of the life the tree had ever known became focused on the boy and ending his ignorant and cruel soul. The tree had never known what a soul was; would never know. It did not know whether or not the boy had one. It only knew that the boy had to be stopped. He had to be taught that at least he had tasted love, known happiness, shared warmth and feeling. He had to be shown that at least he could dream, chase dreams and possibly live them. There were always those lives that did not live, always those with truly no hope left; always lonely trees.
There was a crack. And the trunk threw its full weight at the boy, who scrambled too late from his pity. Falling branches pulled away the light and the blue from the canvas of the sky, bringing only dark.
Like in films, the boy came to gazing at sheer whiteness. Nothing else. The colour white was the afterlife? Appropriately empty he thought. And then he remembered. The tree.
He had often dreamt about his funeral. A song lyric drifted into his mind – "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had". The dreams in which he was dead were some of the best he'd ever had; terribly self indulgent fictions in which all the figures and characters of his life turned up, gushing praise and regrets. All the girls and friends he'd ever wanted poured their hearts out. He was great after all.
There was no one here he really wanted to see. The strip lights buzzed and whirred, stuffing light down his retinas. The whiteness turned out to be the roof tiles. A steady beep and blip passed the time like a clock ticking. His heart was liable to suddenly conk out. He was hooked up to a monitor like on telly. His parents were here.
They didn't believe him about the tree. When he was well enough to argue, they argued. They accused him and lectured him. They warned and scorned him. His mother ranted about the hardships of life, bemoaned his ignorance. Even his father shouted. He wasn't allowed grapes, hadn't been for years, so someone, probably his mother, had brought biscuits. His father had eaten most of them during the interrogations.
If he'd been able to text, he might've texted her, would definitely have texted his best friend. She hadn't come to see him, even when he'd asked his parents to try to organise it. He was still alone. But something felt different. His skull was cracked, his spine weakened, his legs bruised, his right ankle broken, toes misshapen, right thumb fractured, left hand in plaster, nose crooked, face scratched, knees cut, wrists sprained and buttocks sore. But he felt stronger.
When they took him home he realised what it was. The tree hadn't been dealt with yet. Its big, bulky carcass, torn in two and smashed in a heap through the fence, reminded him how bad he had felt. It reminded him that he'd realised he just wanted somebody to love. A universal truth, some might say, theme of many a song, but for him it was deeper, all his other wants were trivial and only to love was what he needed and what he craved.
Those trivial dreams might have been exposed as mostly meaningless, but somehow the tree had taught him they were still important. Months in a hospital bed had forced him to write again to pass the time. So that's what he would do. He would write more and more, hopefully better and better, churning out any old nonsense. He would write to forget, write to remember, write to move on, write to preserve, write from the heart, write from the mind, write in the night, write in the day and write to lose himself. He would write because he could. And to touch, now and again, on truths that made everything worthwhile. Even the lonely trees.
Tagged affirm, alone, ambition, America, anger, animals, author, awake, balance, best, better off, book, Britain, Buddha, care, cathartic, character, close, coma, comfort, Comment, conciousness, crave, craving, dead, decide, depressed, desire, dreams, emotion, end, England, English, enlightenment, entity, epiphany, fable, fantasy, feeling, fiction, film, films, flowers, free, friends, funeral, garden, genre, goals, grass, Haruki, healing, heartbreak, home, hospital, house, idea, ignorant, imagery, indirect, injury, inspire, intimacy, Japan, journey, leaves, Liam, life, London, loneliness, love, meaning, melancholy, metaphor, modern, moral, movie, movies, Mrt'sblog, Murakami, narrative, nature, need, novel, of, once upon a time, outrage, personal, personification, perspective, plants, poor, power, purpose, rattled, reason, rebel, reflect, Relationship, rich, romance, roots, sadness, sci-fi, screenplay, script, sensation, sentiment, share, short, simile, Sky, sorrow, soul, story, storytelling, stream, style, summit, sun, symbolic, the boy, The Lonely Tree, the tree, themes, think, third-person, thoughtful, thoughts, Tokyo, touch, traditional, trees, Trim, want, warmth, writer, writing
A quick note on the WordPress "just write" feature
I used to write all my blog pieces in Word and simply copy them. I shall probably still end up doing this in future when writing about certain things. But lately, especially writing about personal or passionate topics, I've taken advantage of the newly improved full screen mode on WordPress or the "just write" feature.
I honestly didn't realise how relaxing it would be. With nothing but your words on the screen it's far easier to find a rhythm and concentrate on your flow of thought. It's also easier to think about the quality of each individual sentence and how the whole thing will look when you're done. Whilst your typing, no matter what theme you have, it will feel clean and professional.
I can't believe that such a simple improvement in usability has spurred me on to write, about anything at all. It's made the technicalities of the process more enjoyable and exciting again. And by getting rid of distractions you feel able to deliver your best more often.
I've been meaning to write about the doubts I've been having about my writing for some time. But with the novelty of this new feature, I shall just plough onwards and try to write through it.
Well done WordPress.
Tagged 2011, blog, blogging, calm, carry, clean, Coraline, distraction, divert, doubts, each, easily, enjoyable, exciting, feature, free, full, going, improved, in, individual, just write, keep, Liam, May, midnight, mode, monday, Mrt'sblog, note, On, pleased, post, professional, quality, quick, relaxing, screen, sentence, technical, The, theme, tools, Trim, updated, white, writer, writing


Lavish CD & LP packaging is designed by Julian House. The heavyweight vinyl LP includes a free download card.
...a perfect "sense of wonder" soundtrack.
...possibly PCA's most accessible work yet, still retaining atmosphere in spades.


text:
Does Japanese Pokémon Reference Stand By Me?
Posted on March 15, 2016 by Clyde Mandelin ‧ 30 Comments
A reader named Discord_Inc asked a quick question about early-era Pokémon the other day, so I thought I'd take a look.
I was replaying Pokemon Red in honor of the series 20th anniversary when I noticed something. If you check the TV in the lower floor of your house it tells you a movie is playing with four boys walking along the railroad tracks. I realize now that's supposed to be a reference to Stand by Me, which sort of fits in a weird way.
I was curious if the Japanese version also references Stand by Me or if it has a different coming of age file. I'm also curious what the film is in other regions, but that might be a better question to ask the comments.
Here's a look at the text in question:
Pocket Monsters Red Version (Game Boy) Pokémon Red Version (Game Boy)
And here's the the text side-by-side for comparison:
There's a movie playing on the TV! There's a movie on TV.
4 boys are walking on a railroad track…… Four boys are walking on railroad tracks.
…… I better get going too! I better go too.
So it looks like the Japanese text indeed references the railroad scene from Stand By Me too, rather than a different movie altogether.
Stand By Me was such a big phenomenon in Japan that I kind of expected this to be the case. They even sold special versions of the movie so Japanese people could learn English!
And it's even permeated the Japanese boy band industry!
Getting back to games, off the top of my head I know that MOTHER for the Famicom referenced the movie too:
MOTHER (Famicom) EarthBound Beginnings (NES/Wii U)
One time when I was little I walked through the tunnel. I remember walking through the tunnel when I was young.
I went to see a dead body. I went to see what was on the other side.
I guess the removal of the dead body in the English text removed the Stand By Me reference though. But the point is that the movie has worked its way into Japanese culture in such an interesting way that I'd like to study it more myself.
You know, this gets me wondering what other Japanese games, movies, etc. might reference Stand By Me. For some reason I feel like there are plenty more, so if you know of any let me know!
If you liked this, check out my book Legends of Localization Book 2: EarthBound. It's packed with surprising info for Nintendo fans, retro gamers, and aspiring translators! (free preview PDF)
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serena March 15, 2016 at 2:57 pm
the remakes, firered/leafgreen, gave you the option to choose a female trainer. if you choose her, that particular line of text is replaced with a reference to the wizard of oz:
http://i.imgur.com/lm2cO09.png
http://i.imgur.com/n9SpAEu.png
http://i.imgur.com/7EWBsiF.png
is this reference also in the japanese version of the game?
taizou March 15, 2016 at 4:20 pm
Looks like that line is pretty much the same in Japanese, yeah.
(oh crap that was supposed to be a reply to serena's comment above, sorry)
serena March 16, 2016 at 12:46 pm
i see, thank you!
Luke S. May 28, 2018 at 10:21 am
This refrence is also in pokemon ultra sun and moon
Morgil March 15, 2016 at 4:42 pm
I'm not too surprised that the Japanese version referenced an American movie, since i've seen that kind of thing before in games and manga and such, but i find it kind of shocking just how popular this one particular American movie is over there.
Yosh March 15, 2016 at 7:34 pm
In the French version, it says:
"Un dessin animé! Un petit garçon avec une queue de singe. Bon, j'y vais!"
It translates to:
"A cartoon! A little boy with a monkey tail. Well, I'm going!"
So it became a Dragon Ball reference instead!
Cavery210 March 17, 2016 at 12:08 pm
This is actually a pretty good Woolseyism! Goku was forced into an adventure by a woman like Red was. (Bulma for Goku, and his mother for Red.) Not to mention Dragonball was very popular in France.
Adamant March 18, 2016 at 10:39 am
Red goes to see Oak because Oak asked him to come, not because his mother wanted him to.
Merle March 16, 2016 at 1:08 am
The German version also references Stand By Me and the railroad scene.
Error 52 March 17, 2016 at 5:55 pm
Kinda off topic, but in retrospect I'm kinda surprised at how decent Pokèmon Red and Blue's localization was. It's stilted, but most of it is translated well and most of the Pokèmon names are legitimately great. For a Gameboy game you can't ask for much better.
Adamant March 17, 2016 at 6:58 pm
It was translated in the late 90s, at that time it had become the standard to give video games proper translations written by people actually fluent in English.
As for the Pokemon names, a number of them were so bad Gamefreak stopped allowing localizers to come up with names on their own after gen 2, instead supplying them with notes telling them what the localized name had to convey, wanting to avoid any more "Mr. Mime" and "Wobbuffet" nonsense.
Bryn March 17, 2016 at 10:30 pm
One of the localizers for Pokemon up through Platinum version (Nob Ogasawara) mentioned that he didn't have any control over the Pokemon names at the time, and even brought up the possibility of sequels introducing gendered Pokemon when talking about Mr. Mime.
Naturally they were horrified when indeed Gold/Silver came out and you could catch female Mr. Mimes. Whoops!
Adamant March 18, 2016 at 8:33 am
Yeah, Gamefreak were equally horrified the English localizers had come up with such a name, which is why they started supplying notes on what the names needed to be like. I know I've read a comment from the member of the localization team that came up with "Piplup" as Pochama's English name that references internal notes from Gamefreak about what the name has to convey, though I don't recall where.
This was gen 4, but the presence of names like "Wynaut" in gen 3 makes it pretty likely they started supplying such notes back then.
Found the comment:
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/09/28/funny-stories-of-pokemon-english-name-localizations/
"So, we had Piplup (Japanese name: Pocchama), and the description from Japan was: 'the sound of a small pebble in the water'. That was what we had to come up with." – Seth McMahill, Assistant Manager of Product Marketing at Nintendo
ILDC March 20, 2016 at 6:27 pm
Is that why TPCI specifically tells licensees not to refer to Pokémon with gender-specific pronouns?
http://inlibdingcolor.tumblr.com/post/137466043768/rincewitch-artistickacchi-who-out-here
I'm fairly sure that's because they want to market the Pokemon as species rather than individual characters.
In terms of the anime, the gender may not be entirely clear at first either, which means a dubber may end up guessing wrong if they try using a pronoun when the original dialogue didn't have any.
It always did seem like one of those things that sound more natural in Japanese:
http://legendsoflocalization.com/qa-is-quina-called-she-in-japanese-too/
To an extent, yeah, but it's clearly a editorial choice, and they DO occasionally use "kare" and "kanojo" about specific Pokemon.
It particularly stood out in an early summary for the Diancie movie posted on the movie's official website that overused kanojo in reference to Diancie to such an extent it just felt unnatural.
Anonymous March 20, 2016 at 3:52 pm
While we're on the topic of Pokémon, I'd like to ask about the protagonist of Pokémon Colosseum; in Japan his name is Leo, while in English his name is Wes. Might you have any idea why they changed it? I could understand changing Leo to something more exotic to preserve the effect the original audience had, but they changed a common English name to another common English name.
Anomalous April 13, 2016 at 3:47 pm
Perhaps the intent was to have a name related to Hollywood? Leonardo DiCaprio and Wesley Snipes or Wes Anderson are some of the easiest things to think of with these names.
Lauri March 21, 2016 at 9:21 am
Well, I do have one request to make. You know that one scene in Super Paper Mario where Fracktail goes berserk due to Dimentio? Yeah, it would be interesting to know what they did with the Japanese version of that scene. Especially interesting to know the amount of Japanese computer lingo they possibly put there…
Omi March 21, 2016 at 10:23 am
This is a movie I've never seen, but as a kid some people at school would sing some silly "Stand by Me" song. If Japan's interested in it though I guess I might have to learn a little about it.
DJMankiewitz March 28, 2016 at 3:48 pm
It's the quintessential childhood adventure movie, right up there with The Goonies and Escape to Witch Mountain. Any kid who hasn't seen at least one of those at some point is literally a puppet! <– FACT
At the beginning of Pokémon Emerald, there is a GameCube in you room; examining it yields a description saying that a GameBoy Advance is connected to serve as the controller, but the sprite shows a GameCube controller. Was this inaccuracy present in Japanese?
DoubleXXCross March 25, 2016 at 3:33 am
Of course it is! The Japanese script reads this:
ゲームキューブが ある! GEEMUKYUUBU ga aru! (There's a GameCube!)
コントローラの かわりに KONTOROORA no kawari ni (Instead of a Controller,)
ゲームボーイ アドバンスが つながってる! GEEMUBOOI ADOBANSU ga tsunagatteru! (a GameBoy Advance is hooked up!)
widge:// December 21, 2021 at 5:31 am
Watch one video of 《Did You Know Gaming》 series made me know Pokémon has " GameBoy Advance is hooked up " function, too. And comic JOJO also has 《 Stand by Me 》 refrence. My English is bad.
Ryutaa March 30, 2016 at 9:18 pm
Final Fantasy XV just got a trailer including a cover of Stand By Me, showing off the four boys trought their journey. More influence from Stand By Me!
MasterMarkus September 16, 2018 at 5:21 pm
Oh man… I didn't even think about it until now. The game opens and closes with a cover of "Stand By Me" and I initially thought it was a weird reference that seemed directly aimed towards western players, but now that I know that the movie was super popular in Japan, it makes more sense, and the reference doesn't feel so much like misguided pandering at a specific audience.
Emerson February 20, 2017 at 7:42 pm
Railroad tracks as a symbol of a coming of age journey does appear in a lot of anime, come to think of it. All thanks to this film, huh?
Compared to things like literature and film, video games are an incredibly new form of expression, and the concepts behind game translation are even newer. So let's explore how translators have coped with new challenges while blazing a new linguistic frontier!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Home // Blog // Innovative Energy Sources and Technologies
Innovative Energy Sources and Technologies
Renewable energy and technology are experiencing somewhat of a renaissance in today's society. In recent years, huge advances in alternative energy technology have brought us solar-powered houses, wind-powered businesses and everything in-between.
It's an exciting time for the alternative energy industry, with even more innovations just around the next technological corner. During these times of expansion, however, it can be worthwhile to take stock of the industry, where it's been and where it's going. To that end, let us guide you through the history of renewable energy, where it is now and some exciting new technologies we may be seeing in the next few years.
The History of Alternative Energy Technologies
Fossil fuels have a long history as an energy source — records of China in 2000 BC describe Chinese people burning coal for heating and cooking, and natural gas usage goes back to around 200 BC, when the Chinese used it to make salt from brine in gas-fired evaporators. Petroleum oil also has its origins in China, where in the first century, it was refined as a lamp fuel, lubricant, and military tool.
Fossil fuels only really began to take over during the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century, when coal took over as a primary energy source for steam engines and other applications. At this time, coal, petroleum, and natural gas were abundant and seemingly endless, and they provided sufficient power for the steam and combustion engines of the industrial revolution.
While recent history may make it seem like fossil fuels have been monopolizing the energy industry since the very beginning, this is far from the truth. In reality, renewable energy has been around just as long as fossil fuels, if not longer:
Hydro Power:Though the origin of the waterwheel is contended, these incredible machines were invented around 200 BC and quickly spread across Europe and the Middle East for use in mills, smithies and woodworking industries. These waterwheels often replaced human or animal labor, reducing the number of resources needed in the small industries of the day and streamlining production processes. These waterwheels stayed in the public eye, and they continued to be used regularly along waterways for centuries to come, without much change to their designs — that is, until the late nineteenth century.
In 1882, the first large hydroelectric plant started to work in Wisconsin, and further attempts were made at hydroelectric power plants. In 1935, Hoover Dam was built, becoming the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world until 1948. Further hydroelectric plants have since been built and improved upon across the world, maintaining hydroelectric power as one of the more popular electricity generation methods.
Wind Power:Windmills were invented in Persia in the tenth century, designed to grind grain and pump water from wells to help irrigate gardens. From there, windmills spread across the Middle East and Asia, eventually making their way to Europe. However, windmills reached new levels in the hands of Dutch engineers, who developed windmills of greater size and efficiency than ever before, causing a jump in popularity within and around Europe.
Eventually, the windmill made it across the sea to the Americas, where it became a popular tool for American homesteaders and railroad builders in the West, who needed a cheap and efficient way to pump water from wells. These water-pumping windmills gradually took over the West, with generous estimates placing their numbers at over six million by the end of the nineteenth century.
The first windmill to generate electricity appeared in 1888 when Charles F. Brush developed a gigantic windmill for producing electricity. This massive success was able to power a home with 350 incandescent lights, two arch lights, and three electric motors consistently, with the help of 408 storage battery cells. Eventually, the idea of electricity-producing windmills caught on, resulting in the first commercial electricity-producing wind turbines being sold in 1927. Since then, wind power turbines have further evolved and grown in popularity.
Solar Power: The first solar power system was developed in the mid-nineteenth century in France, originally intended to produce steam to drive machinery. This was a development in reaction to worries at the time about the possibility of fossil fuels eventually running out. Originally, these solar power systems used mirrors to direct heat at a water source, producing steam to drive machinery. Similar solar power systems are still in use today, though they are now designed to produce electricity instead of kinetic energy.
Purely solar-generated electricity, however, didn't arrive on the scene until 1876, when William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day discovered that selenium could start an electrical current when exposed to light. This discovery changed the face of physics and introduced the idea of pure solar energy to the world. Further advancements were slow until 1953, when the first silicon solar cell was developed in Bell laboratories. Since then, further advancements have made solar power one of today's most promising alternative energy sources.
Biofuels: Numerous biofuels have been in use throughout history, from wood and agricultural waste to beeswax and ethanol. However, these energy sources stood dwarfed by the seemingly endless possibilities of coal during the eighteenth century, causing them to fall by the wayside during the rise of the Industrial Revolution.
Biofuels became especially hard-hit in the energy industry during the nineteenth century — despite ethanol's surge in popularity over whale oil as a lamp fuel during the 1830's, the ethanol industry was hit hard in the 1860's when Abraham Lincoln introduced a hefty Spirits Tax to fund the Civil War, a tax which extended to ethanol. This tax caused industrial ethanol to all but disappear from the energy industry until the dawn of the 20th century, when Teddy Roosevelt convinced Congress to lift the tax and reintroduce ethanol as a competitor to the big oil companies.
With the tax lifted, the ethanol industry began to get going again. It also allowed research on ethanol to be pursued — and that research found alcohols such as ethanol, sported numerous advantages over petroleum fuels, including cleaner emissions. The use of ethanol was even promoted during the Great Depression as a cheap alternative to expensive oil. Since then, the ethanol industry has slowly grown to the energy giant it is today.
Geothermal:In relation to the other alternative energies listed, geothermal is a much newer system. The first geothermal heating system went into effect in Boise, Idaho in 1892, serving 200 homes and 40 businesses . After this point, the world gained interest in geothermal energy. The world's first geothermal power plant was built in California in 1921, and from there, geothermal energy slowly gained ground.
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While these histories are long, complex and interplay with one another greatly, they bring us to today, where fossil fuels are now recognized as the most environmentally harmful fuel source. Therefore, worldwide economies are pursuing alternative energies to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This, in combination with the rapid technological advancement of our era, has resulted in further advancements in recent years, resulting in the booming alternative energy industry we enjoy today.
Alternative Energy Technology Today!
Today, about 16 percent of global energy consumption comes from renewable resources, with 19 percent of global electricity coming from renewables. The industry is larger than ever, and it continues to grow each year, partially due to the incredible advances made in alternative energy.
Some of the industries benefitting from these technological advances include the following:
Wind Energy:Wind energy harnesses the kinetic power of the wind and uses it to run electricity-generating turbines. This form of energy production is slowly gaining steam across the world, with a consistent global growth rate of about 20% per year. This growth is primarily because wind power is one of the cleanest forms of energy.
Despite its cleanliness, wind energy isn't yet perfect. The primary concern with wind energy is the variation in weather conditions — wind may not always blow in the areas where turbines are located, which can cause power shortages during particularly still days. Additionally, there are some concerns as to the effects turbines have on local ecosystems, such as changes in local weather and animal behavior, though these effects are barely understood.
One of the recent solutions posed by scientists is the creation of floating windmills placed 15,000 feet in the air. These crafts would be kept afloat by four propellers, which would double as turbines and feed electricity back to earth through a cable. These floating windmills would not only reduce the impact on local weather, but they would also provide more consistent energy production, as high-altitude winds blow stronger and more consistently.
Similar to these floating windmills are wind blimps, known as the MARS (Magenn Air Rotor System). These extremely lightweight wind turbines are lifted with helium and tethered to the ground to stay in place. The tether not only acts as a grounding tool, but also as a cable to transfer the generated electricity to a connected power grid or battery. Though not intended for very strong winds, the blimp is easily transportable and well-suited for remote locations.
With advances in technology and architecture, additional possibilities in integrating turbines into buildings are now available as well. The first instance of this was in the Bahrain World Trade Center, which had wind turbines installed in 2007. The twin skyscraper is designed with three wind turbine blades supported by bridges between the towers. In all, these turbines provide approximately 11 to 15 percent of the building's energy needs , which approximates to enough energy to power 300 normal-sized homes for a year.
Solar Energy: Like wind energy, solar energy requires no additional fuel to run and produces no pollution. In solar power systems, the sunlight either is captured as heat or is converted into electricity using photoelectric cells.
While desirable and sustainable, solar cells are prohibitively expensive for many, and the space needed for solar cells are often more than most people care to donate. Additionally, the productivity of these panels are subject to the weather and air conditions from day to day.
To handle these drawbacks, solar cell production companies have been developing progressively thinner solar cells, some of which come in the form of roofing tiles. Though still expensive, these roofing tiles eliminate the unattractive solar panels of the past, integrating them completely with the roof of a house so the owner doesn't have to sacrifice aesthetics for functionality.
Furthermore, commercial solar power companies are pursuing alternative designs for solar collection panels to mitigate the effects of negative weather. For example, the Archimede of Sicily is the world's first solar power plant to use molten salt as a transfer fluid.
Within this system, parabolic mirrors concentrate solar rays onto heat-resistant pipes carrying the fluid salt. This fluid is then collected in tanks and used to produce steam, which is then used in electricity generation. Unlike the synthetic oils used in traditional solar plants of this type, molten salt can work at much higher temperatures, storing enough energy to continue generating power at night or on cloudy days.
Hydro Energy:Moving water can be harnessed to produce electric power and is both an efficient and popular way to generate electricity. At current estimates, hydropower supplies about 16 percent of the world's electricity.
The more common hydroelectric plants come in the form of artificial dams, where the movement of water through the dam system moves an electricity-generating turbine. While these hydroelectric dams are common, they do come with a few major drawbacks — greenhouse gas emissions and population relocations.
It was recently discovered that hydroelectric dams can produce serious amounts of greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide and methane, through the decay of submerged plant material. In more extreme cases, these emissions rival those produced by fossil fuel-burning plants. Additionally, the creation of these dams usually involves the relocation of significant populations — during the recent construction of the Three Gorges Dams Project in China in 2009, 1.9 million people were relocated by the government and several historical sites were submerged.
Technological advances have resulted in major strides in hydroelectric technology and several alternatives to the typical hydroelectric dam. One of these alternatives is known as a Wave Snake, a British-made floating tube which harnesses the energy from the up and down motion of waves to produce enough energy to power more than 1,000 homes.
Geothermal Energy:Geothermal energy comes from heat stored within the earth and is harnessed using geothermal electric plants, typically built near tectonic plate boundaries. In these areas, geothermal resources tend to be closer to the surface of the earth, making the energy easier to access.
The largest group of geothermal power plants in the world are known as the Geysers and are located in the Mayacamas Mountains in Northern California. These plants use dry stream as an energy source, providing about 60 percent of the region's electricity demand.
Biomass Energy:Biomass energy, also called biofuel, produces around 10 percent of global energy. This common energy production process involves the release of chemical energy from organic matter, usually through burning or conversion into alcoholic fuels, such as ethanol. Wood, agricultural byproducts, and animal waste are all organic products used in this process.
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Though this source of energy is renewable, it is not clean. Burning organic matter produces large amounts of carbon dioxide, similar to burning fossil fuels. Scientists are currently looking at ways to either minimize or offset this carbon production — perhaps by growing trees more quickly than we can burn them or by breaking down biomass into hydrogen for use in fuel cells.
As an example, the world's largest biomass power plant, located in the Netherlands, runs solely on chicken manure. The plant converts around 440,000 tons of chicken manure into around 270 million kilowatts of electricity per year, enough to power 90,000 homes. Not only does this plant use a renewable energy source, but it removes the excess chicken waste in the country, which produces the greenhouse gas methane.
Advancements continue to be made in each of these fields to mitigate costs and byproducts. However, the energy needs of the world continue to rise, which is why scientists worldwide are still studying new energy production methods beyond the more traditional alternatives.
New Technology in Renewable Energy
While traditional energy alternatives continue to advance, many scientists are looking into new ways to generate and store energy. Though many are still in the theoretical or prototypic stages, the following are the newest renewable energy technologies being studied:
Antimatter Energy:While it may sound like something from a sci-fi novel, antimatter is real, and it is already being used in modern technology. Antimatter is the physical opposite of matter, consisting of the same mass, but with opposite atomic properties. When matter and antimatter meet, they cancel each other out, releasing an enormous amount of energy.
While we have yet to harness antimatter as a fuel source, physicists believe it to be possible. The primary drawback? There is very little antimatter in the universe, and though it can be created in labs, it can only be created in small amounts — at a hefty price. Storage is also an issue, considering the material's volatility. While these issues have yet to be addressed, they are currently being researched by NASA and top scientists as a potential fuel source in space flight and beyond.
Fuel Cells: Hydrogen fuel cells are far from a new technology — invented by William Robert Grove in 1838, the fuel cell, originally called the 'Grove cell' was a hydrogen-based battery, designed to generate energy without the use of coal. Though an old technology, fuel cells are experiencing a surge in interest, considered to be a possibility for future energy storage. These fuel cells generate electricity using only hydrogen and oxygen, running more efficiently than fossil fuel-run combustion engines while only emitting water as a byproduct.
The only drawback to this energy source is the fact that most of the earth's hydrogen is bound with oxygen to create water. To separate them, we need other energy sources. If those energy sources include fossil fuels, the environmental benefits of fuel cells are moot. Additionally, hydrogen can't be compressed easily or safely, meaning it requires large tanks for storage, making it impractical for vehicles. Hydrogen also tends to bleed through its containers, structurally weakening them while simultaneously losing fuel.
Ocean Thermal Energy:Ocean thermal energy conversion, or OTEC, exploits the 70 percent of the Earth covered in water collecting solar energy, using the temperature difference between the warm upper and cold lower portions of the ocean to generate electricity.
The way in which this is accomplished usually depends on the type of cycle being used at any given plant. Closed-cycle OTEC plants use a liquid with a low boiling point, like ammonia and place it into warm seawater to boil. The resulting steam operates an electricity-generating turbine, after which point the vapor is cooled with cold seawater.
In an open cycle, there is no intermediate liquid — the warm seawater is converted into low-pressure vapor and then used to generate electricity before being cooled into fresh water. Hybrid systems use a closed system to power an open cycle.
While these systems serve three duties as electricity generators, fresh water sources and marine life cultures, the OTEC plants operating today are only one to three percent efficient, making them very cost-inefficient. Until they are altered to improve upon this inefficiency, they're unlikely to be pursued by larger alternative energy companies.
These are only a few of the many novel alternative energy sources being pursued today by scientists and energy companies across the world. While these new technologies are still being perfected, however, advancing the technology for more traditional renewable energy sources is the focus of many within the industry.
Choose Summit Steel & Manufacturing
If you're looking for a manufacturer for your next alternative energy project, Summit Steel & Manufacturing can help. We provide precision manufacturing services for the renewable energy industry, serving companies in solar, wind, hydro and geothermal energy. Our 125,000 square foot facility uses the latest technology to fabricate parts with the highest quality and consistency, all while reducing lead times and production costs.
Some of the alternative energy industries we've served include:
Solar:We specialize in turning raw materials into precision parts, and our solar energy parts are no exception. Our incredible fabrication capability can bring your solar project to life on time and within your budget, ready for installation and implementation.
Wind: Wind energy enterprises need a manufacturer they can depend on for quality parts at reasonable prices. Not only do we have the equipment and technology to manufacture the highest-quality wind components on the market, but we can offer design, prototyping, packaging, shipping and logistics services as well to help support you and your company.
Hydro: We've taken part in large-scale products, and we can take on custom orders for even the largest hydroelectric plants!
Geothermal: If your geothermal plant is located across the country, no problem! We've partnered with businesses both in our own state of Pennsylvania and across the nation!
Summit Steel & Manufacturing has been a leading innovator in the manufacturing industry for over 20 years, and we continue to pursue excellence. If you're looking for experience, speed and efficiency in your alternative energy manufacturing, look no further than Summit Steel & Manufacturing.
Contact our team today for a complimentary consultation to see how Summit Steel & Manufacturing can help you on your next alternative energy project.


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National Geographic Taps Multi-Award-Winning Sigourney Weaver as Narrator for SECRETS OF THE WHALES, an Awe-Inspiring Look at the Mysterious and Beautiful World of Whales
Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer-At-Large James Cameron to Serve as Executive Producer
Latest Work of National Geographic Explorer and Photographer Brian Skerry to be Featured in National Geographic Magazine and Book Timed to the Special
Epic Four-Part Series Will Be Marquee Event Premiere of National Geographic's 2021 Earth Day Celebration
Sigourney Weaver (Photo credit: Zach Dilgard/National Geographic Channels)
James Cameron (National Geographic/Mark Thiessen)
National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry travels to Norway's remote fjords for a chance to capture new orca behavior. (National Geographic/Lu Lamar)
August 03, 2020 01:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time
WASHINGTON, D.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--National Geographic announced today that Golden Globe and BAFTA Award-winning actress Sigourney Weaver ("Alien," "Avatar," "Gorillas in the Mist") will narrate its global television event, SECRETS OF THE WHALES, which chronicles the whale way of life and their challenges and triumphs in an ever-changing ocean. Additionally, the network announced that renowned filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer-at-Large James Cameron will serve as executive producer. SECRETS OF THE WHALES will premiere globally on Earth Day 2021 in 172 countries and 43 languages.
The four-part event series is the work of acclaimed National Geographic Explorer and Photographer Brian Skerry, as he helps tell the story of a species he's been documenting for decades. Filmed across three years in 24 locations, it's a profoundly personal saga, venturing deep into the world of whales to reveal life and love from their perspective. Skerry's latest work will also be featured in National Geographic magazine and the National Geographic book "Secrets of the Whales" timed to the special.
In SECRETS OF THE WHALES, Weaver guides viewers on a journey to the heart of whale culture to experience the extraordinary communication skills and intricate social structures of five different whale species. With the help of new science and technology, viewers witness whales making lifelong friendships, teaching clan heritage and traditions to their young and grieving deeply for the loss of loved ones.
"National Geographic has long been deepening our connection to the world around us, and I'm honored to team up with them to narrate this stunning series," says Weaver. "Viewers get up close and personal and experience the extraordinary emotion, grace and power of these magnificent creatures. They get to know them intimately in order to ultimately realize just how like them we truly are."
"SECRETS OF THE WHALES has all the elements I love — new tech used for scientific inquiry, wrapped in great storytelling that visually excites and emotionally resonates," says Cameron. "I'm proud to work with my longtime partner, National Geographic, in showing incredible new insights into the inner world of whales, their emotion and culture. These majestic, mysterious animals continue to surprise us."
"Capturing these whales on film has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire life, and I'm thrilled to bring the complexity and beauty of these creatures right to viewers' living rooms," says Skerry. "It is my hope that in venturing into their world, viewers recognize themselves in these animals' joy, pain, love and relationships and are as inspired by them as I am."
One of the world's top ocean photographers, Skerry has spent more than 10,000 hours underwater, documenting uncharted territory and elucidating environmental issues, often leading to policy change. Skerry's work expands upon National Geographic's legacy of exploration and dedication to conservation and protecting the animal species that inhabit our planet as they grapple with an ecosystem under threat. On April 22, the company celebrates our wonderful world across its portfolio, raising awareness of the immense challenges facing Earth and inspiring stewardship for generations to come.
SECRETS OF THE WHALES is produced for National Geographic by Red Rock Films. For Red Rock Films, Brian Armstrong and Shannon Malone-DeBenedictis are executive producers. For Earthship, James Cameron and Maria Wilhelm are executive producers and Kim Butts is associate producer. For National Geographic, Pamela Caragol is executive producer and Geoff Daniels is executive vice president of global unscripted entertainment for National Geographic Global Networks.
For more information, visit www.natgeotvpressroom.com.
About National Geographic Partners
National Geographic Partners LLC (NGP), a joint venture between the National Geographic Society and Disney, is committed to bringing the world premium science, adventure and exploration content across an unrivaled portfolio of media assets. NGP combines the global National Geographic television channels (National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, Nat Geo MUNDO, Nat Geo PEOPLE) with National Geographic's media and consumer-oriented assets, including National Geographic magazines; National Geographic studios; related digital and social media platforms; books; maps; children's media; and ancillary activities that include travel, global experiences and events, archival sales, licensing and e-commerce businesses. Furthering knowledge and understanding of our world has been the core purpose of National Geographic for 132 years, and now we are committed to going deeper, pushing boundaries, going further for our consumers … and reaching millions of people around the world in 172 countries and 43 languages every month as we do it. NGP returns 27 percent of our proceeds to the nonprofit National Geographic Society to fund work in the areas of science, exploration, conservation and education. For more information visit natgeotv.com or nationalgeographic.com, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
Jennifer Driscoll, 614-595-9604, Jennifer.Driscoll@natgeo.com
Tahli Kouperstein, 240-401-9674, Tahli.Kouperstein@natgeo.com
National Geographic announced that Sigourney Weaver will narrate its global television event, SECRETS OF THE WHALES.


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