The Great Gatsby…

You hear the description ‘visual feast’ too often. Far more often than it actually applies, in fact. But in this case it is accurate. When someone told me that in this film the flappers would be dancing to hip hop and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book would be a distant memory, I wondered whether Baz Luhrman had gone too far.

The answer was no. Moulin Rouge was an exceptional film. Romeo and Juliet was impressive too. The Great Gatsby is a delightful assault on the senses – another phrase that is probably used too frequently but again is accurate here. The critics have been too harsh if you ask me.

First off the book is certainly far more present than I was led to believe. Carraway narrates the story from its enticingly mysterious opening through to the melancholy ending, and much of the story is in place where it should be and is more than recognisable.

The soundtrack contains some modern music, as I was pre-warned, but is also chock full of powerful jazz saxophone and piano melodies that reflect the mood of the scene, and somehow Luhrman manages to make this look perfectly right alongside the luxurious settings and lavish costumes of the 1920s, which feel totally correct in their accuracy.

Besides the amazing visuals, Leonardo DiCaprio craved the most attention, as is fitting for the character, and he looks more comfortable in his own skin these days. His portrayal of Jay Gatsby was exactly what I wanted, and despite the character’s age being lowered for the film, again it worked.

Yes, there are elements of the film that I would have changed, and there was a great deal of creative licence used – necessary in some parts when one remembers the length of the novel and the lack of detail and dialogue surrounding some elements of the story – but I can’t fit the criticism I have read with the film I watched. I loved it and as soon as it finished I was left with the feeling that I wanted to watch it all over again.

Elloise Hopkins.

Secret Eaters…

Channel 4’s Secret Eaters has me fascinated. Those who know me will know I’m not much of a tv watcher and particularly not into ‘reality’ or ‘junk’ tv. But after hearing about this at work I gave this series a go and quickly became addicted to the gob smacked experience that is watching an episode. For the peoplewatchers of the world (myself definitely included) this is a joyous snippet of human life.

The premise, roughly, is that members of the general public who are struggling with weight loss go on the show and endure a week’s scrutiny, involving hidden cameras, private investigators and undercover agents, to work out why they are not losing weight. The answer is always very simple – they are eating too much; generally at least twice as much as they need in a day and twice as much as they think they are.

The format of the show has become pretty dull after watching a few episodes, but still I watch. What scares me the most is that the people on the show (for argument’s sake I am pretending it is all real and there are no actors or scripts, nor is there any editing or sensationalising going on) have no perception of what they are eating. The programme uncovers the ‘secret calories’ they consume, and there have been some shocking examples. My favourites include the ‘healthy eaters’ that used an entire block of cheddar cheese in a cheese sauce, the most humongous roast dinner I’ve ever seen followed swiftly by a bowl of double cream with a token slice of apple pie in it for good measure, and the numerous fizzy drink and alcohol guzzlers and takeaway scoffers.

I’m not professing to be all righteous and healthy, but when I go out drinking or eat a big meal, when I pick at crisps and snack foods, when I indulge in chocolate or pile a salad high in mayonnaise I know that I am not, in that moment, being healthy. But then I was raised by people who understand food and always provided healthy home-cooked meals. Is food education in general so bad that it has spawned these generations of processed food lovers who think they eat healthily? Quite possible, I concede, when I think back to my cookery lessons at school – the sandwich was a highlight(!), along with the ‘decorate a yule log’ session.

Anyway, I digress. There is so much I could discuss from the show but I think the main lesson to learn is that ‘diet’ products are generally not doing their consumers much good. The perception seems to be that because something is ‘diet’, or ‘reduced fat’, or low in sugar/salt/anything then there is licence to consume as much of it as you want, because it is ‘good for you’. What a terrible misconception to have. It amazes me that people can consume food and drink all day long and think that they are eating healthily and only taking in the recommended daily amount of calories. Frightening.

I have to stop watching it now because I’m becoming too disturbed by the world around me, as usual. But here are my lessons children:

1) If you eat all day you are eating too much.

2) If a product is billed as being a diet product it does not mean it contains nothing bad or no calories.

3) If you think that fizzy drinks, alcohol, crisps, chocolate bars, six meals a day and constant snacking is the healthy way to live, then there’s no hope for you, but watch the show anyway because it’s funny.

Elloise Hopkins.

Ranty, ill-informed, public accusations…

I’m all for a good rant, as readers of my blog will be aware. But whenever I rant, I first make sure I am well enough aware of the subject/person/thing/animal before I rant about it. I ranted about 3d movies because I have experienced 3d movies and have done 3d animation. I ranted about paying attention to detail because I have encountered many a lack of it in my time. I ranted about the errant apostrophe because, well, let’s face it, that deserved it. You get the idea. I only rant about topics that I feel qualified to rant about given the realms of my experience.

What I don’t do is see one comment/picture/video clip/tweet/whatever and jump to a conclusion about the subject/person/animal/thing/things and immediately launch into public accusations against them. Because that would be remiss of me. And spontaneously immature. And irritating to all those people who are vastly more informed on the matter than myself. And hurtful to all those people who are genuinely fighting for the very thing I am ranting about but are going about it in the right way, and who are actually making a positive difference. For me to completely disregard that in my ignorance would be rude, and would damage me as much as it would damage them.

So before you make public attacks against people/animals/inanimate objects/whatever, ask yourself ‘am I qualified to rant about this?’.

·      Do I know anything about it?

·      Have I done my research?

·      Is my information up to date?

·      Have I actually thought about what I’m saying before I rant?

·      Am I confident that I’m not just blindly throwing ill-informed accusations around?

If the answer to any of these is ‘no’ then keep quiet and don’t launch into ranty, ill-informed public accusations.

If you are inadequately informed on a subject or if you are not qualified to comment on in, then don’t. 

It belittles you and damages the very thing you are campaigning for.

Elloise Hopkins.

Don’t blame the music!..

Last Friday night I caught an episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, and apart from being an incredibly frustrating and irritating hour of television, days later I am still fuming about some of the content. The whole episode, in fact, was fairly poor, considering the powerful storylines that are sometimes offered by the series. This particular one relied on generic, stereotyped characters that were weakened by their familiarity, and brash delivery of subjects that unfortunately lost all meaning because of the way they were explored.

What has particularly stuck with me, however, was the first part of the episode, in which a generic ‘vampire wannabe’ was allegedly going around the city biting necks and draining his victims dry. What really annoyed me was the fact that this menace was dressed in a long, black, leather coat, had long hair and liked rock music. Of course, because what other kind of vampire could possibly ‘exist’ in the realms of television? And what leap did the writers make after strike one? Immediately the man’s issue must be a direct result of the music he listens to. Aren’t we all bored of this format yet? Haven’t we realised that listening to rock music doesn’t automatically turn us all into vicious killers? The very fact that I am still a free woman testifies to this.

The band in question was described as being like “Black Sabbath or Judas Priest, only sicker and more violent”. Sabbath and Judas Priest sick and violent? Sick and violent? Really? In this day and age we consider them to be sick and violent? What songs were the writers listening to? What lyrics were they traumatised by? What videos scarred them for life? Why this constant assumption that every bad deed is a result of rock music? I am so bored of this narrow minded attitude that refuses to place any blame for peoples’ bad deeds actually on them. Gods forbid we should be responsible for our own actions!

And this line was delivered by none other than Ice-T, a rapper whose career history, coloured with gang affiliation and parental guidance stickers, could far more easily be described as sick and violent than Black Sabbath. I’m not having a go at Ice-T, you understand, nor transferring blame onto any other kind of music or influence. I’m merely illustrating the contradiction here. Anyway, Black Sabbath. I’ve seen them live. I’ve had a pint with Tony Iommi. I assure you there was nothing sick or violent about them, nothing at all untoward beyond that melodramatic style that accompanies rock music from the era.

I could rant about this all day, and probably already have spent a large part of my life ranting about the fact that rock music doesn’t make us violent, so we need to end this continual blame that is placed on the music. I shall continue to rock on and attempt to rise above these ridiculous refusals of people to take responsibility for their actions.

Elloise Hopkins.

Novel update April 2013...

I finished the first run through of my novel around this time last year and to my surprise had found the first full write through of the story, all 120,000 words, give or take a couple of less motivated moments, incredibly easy. My test readers liked it and I was hugely satisfied with the story itself. But, and here is the but, in terms of structure, pace and time spent getting to know the characters at the beginning, it was lacking. Even I knew that before I listened to my critics, I just didn’t want to face writing the whole thing again. I was so pleased that in six months I’d written a whole novel, I didn’t want to accept that the creative process of finishing a fantasy novel takes much longer than that in reality.

But face it I did. I’m working on the re-write at the moment, and as much as I love my story, revision is tough. It is satisfying to be shaping my story, tightening my writing and injecting more tension and conflict into the piece, giving my characters more personality and giving my readers (hopefully) more reason to love them in the same way I do. I carry these people around with me everyday, and they feel real to me. I want them to feel real to my readers too. But it is hard going over something that you are so proud of, and butchering it into something better. My usually flawless motivation is being tested at this stage. I don’t think it helped that I used the novel opening as my major MA project, so the association of the piece with university deadlines and stress has been hard to shake off.

But I persist because I love this story and this is something I really want to do. I think I remember spending moments of my childhood visualising myself writing a novel; it is all so long ago and vague in my memory now. I can see myself holed up on an island with only my computer and a beach for company for months at a time. Whether it has always been in me, or whether I discovered it late, I have a burning a desire to write a story that, hopefully, others will love as much as I do. To see my book amongst the shelves of writers I admire would be a true accomplishment, and I can only hope that is the direction I am moving in.

I am nearing the end of part one of the novel re-write at the moment, which has become a much-expanded version of the previous part one. Some new scenes give more heart to the settings and the characters, and the mysteries of my world are becoming much clearer and fuller. This version feels much more complete, much closer a representation to the ‘real’ version I see in my head.

The words are flowing, the patterns are forming, and the Aethera are coming into their own. Book one is truly taking shape.

Elloise Hopkins.

3D Movies…

I rarely go to 3D movies. Call it age or whatever but they just don’t really do it for me. So this week when booking into one of the last local showings of Oz: The Great and Powerful, 3D was the only option. Ok, I thought. Should be great for a film like that. Glasses a gogo and off we went.

First off: the trailers. They did my head in. My conclusion: 3D animation filmed in 3D is way too much! Ok so the extra dimension does make things look more accessible, the cinema somehow becomes a more interactive experience, but the thought of sitting through 90 minutes or more of that is way more than I could cope with.

All those weird semi-transparent elements that appear to drift towards you from the screen are just annoying, and 3D animated characters in all their grotesque detail are just too hideous when they look like they are right in front of you and could reach out and touch you. I dread to think what kind of effect prolonged periods of that would have on the mind.

So onto the actual film itself. I’m putting the rather-weak-in-places story aside and ignoring the fact that a Disney Oz without the ruby slippers (rights to The Wizard of Oz MGM film now owned by Warner Bros.) yet with a giant wizard’s head projected among smoke and fire that funnily enough looks very much like the MGM film (rights now owned by Warner Bros.!) is just wrong. So with those aside and ignoring the fact that a lot of it felt a little lazy and rather too much into sensation rather than delivering a great product, the 3D experience of it did not fare a whole lot better than the trailers.

The trouble is, and I think I’ve managed to pin it to this detail, that while all those semi-transparent things like flecks of fire and flower blossoms are floating around ‘in front’ of the screen, the beautiful animations, costume design, special effects and staging that are happening ‘on’ the screen are not getting the full attention they deserve.

When you’re trying to take in, for example, the scale of the Wicked Witch’s army and the clever detailing on the creatures' faces and wings, it is hard to concentrate on that when every 10 seconds part of the action is staged just to give the opportunity for someone to throw a spear in your direction or flick a branch into your face.

The only way I can see it is that everything in a 3D movie is designed to take your focus off the plot, character interactions and the original magic of the cinema. Why would we ever want to leave those things out of the experience of going to the movies? Why would anyone want to sit through two hours of opaque imagery and unnatural movements resulting in semi-concentration and a rather flaky experience?

I do believe this is one of the ‘new’ technologies (of course 3D film is not a new development but it has come back in a new way over the last few years) that has been taken too far in its application. Back in the red and green glasses days they had it right. 3D was for the sensation – movement, interaction, shock and awe – and not for storytelling.

Elloise Hopkins.

Macs Through the Decade…

I think it was about a decade ago when I bought my first Mac and changed my loyalties for life. Up to that point now feels like a different lifetime; a lifetime of disappointments, freezing, not responding, egg timers and constant arguments with inanimate objects.

My first Mac, a cute little iBook, opened my eyes to a whole new world of computers that actually did what you wanted them to do without needing to use harsh words, coddling or technical kicks up the arse. And not only that, he did it all in style. Inside and out he was aesthetically pleasing and I haven’t looked back since.

So that was my first home Mac, and rather uninspiringly I named him Mac. He stayed with me until I went to uni and was then traded in for Megamac. Now he was impressive. My first MacBook Pro. Shiny silver, backlit keyboard, 15” screen, dual core and the biggest hard drive I’d ever seen, with the exception of the fully loaded iMacs at uni.

At the same time as Megamac I also acquired an old iBook clamshell as a side project. I never gave that one a name as it was always going to be a Mac that I tinkered about with, upgraded and then sold on. I did that twice with clamshells during my time at uni and sorely regretted selling them both times, even though it was mission accomplished.

Well, Megamac was ‘the one’ during all this, and he did me proud, but when his rapidly aging specifications started to struggle with handling huge graphic files and 3d animations, I upgraded to Mechamac – bigger hard drive, more RAM, wider screen and in every way better than his predecessor. But I was so sad the day I sold Megamac and said my goodbyes.

You see, Macs aren’t just inanimate objects, they are companions – reliable, supportive, talented, individual, and always there for you, just, in a way, like friends.

So Megamac made way for Mechamac and he was put through some really tough times. That dual operating system worked him hard. I still shudder to see Windows running on Macs – there is just something inherently wrong about it. Although, of course, I still didn’t have to look at those dreadful words ‘not responding’ – funny how that never happened when Windows was running on the Mac! Enough said.

Anyway, part way through uni times were changing and I decided to transfer my degree to the University of New South Wales in Sydney and flee the UK. Mechamac was too big and too precious for that adventure, so I switched to Mac number four: Meteormac. He had a smaller screen and a tougher outer casing but was bigger in every other way. That was 2008.

For five years Meteormac has been everywhere with me – beaches, mountains, planes, trains, hotels, hostels, through good times, bad times, more change than I can remember and now, over five years on, somewhat older and a little bruised, bashed and scraped, it is time to put him into graceful retirement. I’m really finding the prospect of selling him hard – it’s hard letting go of someone who has been with you a long time, but when you love someone, sometimes you have to let them go for their own good. And yours.

So now I enter a new decade and a new era with Ultimacia (yes, that is a deliberate misspelling of a Final Fantasy boss there) at my side. She is beautiful, powerful, radiant, and in every way superior to her predecessors, but the important thing to remember is that without them, without the past, I would not have the present.

Yes, this may be a tour of my companions from the last several years, but it is also a reminder that where we have been, what we have done, who we have known, how we’ve felt, and why, has shaped us into who we are today.

It is important not to forget that.

We are the sum of our experiences, and our experiences are the sum of our imagination.

Elloise Hopkins.

Pantomime, The Re-Read…

I read a lot of books. On average I get through three novels a week. Some of those I may not ever read again. Some I know as soon as I’ve read them I will want to read them again. They get spirited away onto the bookshelves that I end up rearranging after each new release and they get re-read in the next few years. And there are some that I want to read as soon as I finish them and I will go back and re-read them as soon as I can.

But I don’t think any book has nagged me quite so much for a re-read as Laura Lam’s Pantomime did. I read and reviewed it last October before the release (the review is here if you aren’t familiar with the book) and thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters are so well depicted, the story itself is compelling and I knew this would be the kind of book that would be just as rich a reading experience the second time around.

So, five months on the nagging had become too much and I went for the re-read. Even though I already knew what was going to happen and had already experienced the tension, the drama and the secrets unfolding, I enjoyed the book as much as I did the first time. There were little details that perhaps I did not notice or register on the first reading, and there were elements of the plot that I had forgotten only to be surprised and impressed by them once again.

I can’t put my finger on exactly what is that makes this book work so much for me. It explores identity in terms of discovering who we are and being true to ourselves rather than shaping ourselves to how other people say we should be. This is a topic close to my heart, being a firm believer that no one should have to comply with the expectations society places on them or change elements of themselves to suit another person or situation.

So that is possibly why I feel such a connection to this book. It could also be the skilful storytelling; the arranging of a narrative in such a way that its secrets and mysteries are revealed slowly, little pieces of the puzzle coming together here and there to always be simultaneously rewarding the reader for coming this far and tempting them with the promise of more. Events in the present are interspersed with various moments from the past to complete the story whilst at the same time raising more questions.

Whether it is the exploration of identity, the narrative structure or the elements of magic and the inherent appeal of the circus that makes Pantomime such an absorbing read, I cannot say. For me I think it is the combination of all of the above. It is a story that conceals as much as it tells so perhaps the appeal is the reader’s desire to know the full story. It is a book that has a lot to say and a wonderful world and story to tell it in. I know it will be one that I will read time and again and maybe I will never quite know why, but the only way I can categorise it is ‘spellbinding’. Whatever magic it weaves I have been truly captured.

Elloise Hopkins.