Viewed: Theater

The trailer for The Golden Compass looked interesting, and I read one review that gave it a good rating. I probably should have read more reviews. It wasn’t a bad movie; it just was “meh.”

I had read and heard about groups boycotting and denouncing the movie as anti-religion (anti-Catholicism, specifically). Groups were saying that the movie director was trying to brainwash children against religion. For some reason, I found this intriguing — bad movies usually won’t get people up in arms for or against it, for any reason. It seems that most every fantasy movie gets this accusation, despite most (all?) of them having no comment at all on religion.

After hearing about the complaints, I learned that the original book was, per the author’s own admission, vehemently anti-religion. Hmm. So maybe the groups were right. The author is on record having said some pretty strong things against religion, and he apparently used his books to “spread the word,” so to speak.

I haven’t read the book, but I have now seen the movie. I saw nothing at all in the movie that could be considered anti-religion. Maybe the book rants on against religion. Maybe the author is a rabid atheist. Whatever. The movie is pretty religion-neutral.

The settings are beautiful, the acting is good, and the writing is at least decent. But the pacing of the movie is just . . . off. Until near the end, the only scenes of the bad guys seemed thrown in, not really well placed. The concept of “dust” comes across too vague; is it a good thing or a bad thing?

The whole ice bears thing feels odd, and it comes and goes so fast that I wonder if they could have just skipped that whole part and just left the kingdom concept as backdrop. What happens in the kingdom could have been completely left out and the story would not have changed at all.

And finally, the single most puzzling thing to me was why they pronounced “daemon” as “demon.” The word “demon” has such strong negative connotations — evil beasts from Hell. But the daemons in the movie were the personification of each person’s soul, in animal form. Had they just pronounced the word more like it is spelled, “daymon,” it wouldn’t have been so jarring. As someone who daily works with words to convey understanding, it bothered me that they repeatedly used a word sound that brings to mind the exact opposite of what the meaning is supposed to be.

As often as Hollywood screenwriters completely change stories taken from books, why couldn’t they have changed this one name/word? Most people don’t know the classical definition of daemon, and so they’ll naturally apply a more recent definition to the word. And that could draw the outrage of some religious groups. And it has.

There’s nothing to see at the end of the credits.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

In my mom’s attic, recently, I found one of my old coloring books: Shogun Warriors: Starring the Great Mazinga. The copyright date is 1978, so I was around 11 years old when it was new.

Looking through the book, I remember it in a general sense — I remembered the images, but I didn’t remember the story. About half the pages are colored to some extent, and I’m impressed with how neat a colorer I was. I don’t know if I could do as well now.

The story in the book is so very hokey that it makes me wonder just who writes coloring books. The names and plot read like something a 6 year old would make up: “Planet Ultima,” “Emperor Supremo.” “The Cosmic Spider Spins a Web Between the Planets.” Books I read to my 3 year old, now days, are more imaginative and make more sense.

The art is simple, but it’s clean and shows the artist had at least some basic skills. The faces and bodies remind me of old Scooby Doo characters. I’ve seen some coloring books that look like the publisher let his 10-year-old nephew draw it. (Maybe that’s who wrote this one.)

My brother and I had a few Shogun Warriors when we were kids — I had Mazinga and Dragun, and my brother had Raydeen and Godzilla. I remember playing with these toys a lot, for a long time, and those memories are wonderful. The last time I was in my dad’s attic, over 5 or so years ago, we still had the warriors. Some parts were missing, but the main toy was there.

Toys today are so much more intricate, and the stories to go with them are much more detailed — and that’s totally cool. I like the modern toys. I wonder how my 6 year old would play with something like an old Shogun Warrior? Thinking, now, of how I’ve seen him play with a mixture of toys, from small Playmobil figures, with just a couple of movable parts, to advanced figures, with “42 points of articulation,” I bet he’d get as much fun out of the old stuff.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

It was a good weekend. We’ve been so busy over the past few months, it seems I never get anything done around the house. And then when we have gotten a free day or weekend, we’ve tried to have fun as a family. But this past weekend, we decided to spend the two days actually getting a lot done that needed doing.

Furniture was moved, rooms changed around, little things fixed, old stuff put away, old junk thrown out, and follow up plans put into motion. I like the feeling of having accomplished something. I like to look around and see things done.

It was a good weekend. Things got done.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

As I’ve mentioned before, my mom owns a small restaurant in my hometown. It’s name is Byrd’s (the original owner’s last name), and it’s fairly popular for its size and location. She and my step-dad did a really good job over the years making it into a great little eatery.

For a couple years, they had a second restaurant inside a convenience store, on the other side of town from the first location. Although it was supporting itself, it was just too much work for them to keep it up. They found a buyer for the location and equipment just before my step-dad passed away. The new owners had an agreement with my step-dad (verbal, “gentlemen’s agreement”) to not use the Byrd’s name and to not serve a tenderloin biscuit (a signature menu item).

Unfortunately, after his death, that agreement was apparently dismissed. Not only do they serve tenderloin biscuits, but their new sign uses the same colors as the Byrd’s sign and logo. (This situation is what prompted the move towards trademarking everything, which I mentioned in an earlier blog post.) Other things, that I won’t go into here, proved to us that the new owners were willing to be at least a little underhanded, despite any earlier agreements. At first glance, it looks like Byrd’s is still in that location.

Recently, my mom asked me to write copy for an ad she was going to run in the local newspaper. I got the information on the ad size, and I asked exactly what she wanted to say.

She wanted to thank the customers, and at the same time she wanted her customers to know that the other restaurant was no longer affiliated with her Byrd’s. Originally, she wanted to state directly that the old second location was not Byrd’s, but I explained a better marketing strategy. After discussing the plan, which she agreed with, I wrote up the ad copy I thought would convey the concept she wanted to get across.

I wrote the text within the size restrictions, and told her to let the newspaper ad department put any graphic-artist touches on it they felt would work. I’ve worked with graphic artists many times, and I respect their abilities as much as I understand my limitations in that area. (Look at this site, for example: lots of text, very little graphic design.) I emailed the Word document to my mom, who forwarded it on to the newspaper ad department.

Here’s the text I wrote (within the actual size of the ad):

Here’s the ad as published (the discolored splotches are from the reverse side of the paper):

I think the ad turned out very nice. I didn’t see the graphic results until I saw the published ad. On my first read through, I noticed two errors.

The “G” in “best tenderloin & Gravy,” shouldn’t be capitalized. Looks like they retyped in my text; I wonder why they didn’t just copy and paste from the Word document? If they did copy and paste, how did that typo get introduced?

The Saturday hours say “6:00 am-11:00pm,” but it should be “11:00am.” (The restaurant closes before noon on Saturday.) Embarrassingly, this mistake was in my original document. Just goes to show, a writer needs an editor to at least proofread everything. I noticed this error immediately upon looking at the ad, but I never noticed it in the three drafts I wrote before sending it off.

The newspaper added the store phone number, probably at my mom’s request. That was a good idea — I should have thought of it.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com