Underneath the river bed, we burned the river down.

[greygirlbeast]

A little dreamsick this morning. Just a little. Nothing I can't shake off.

By now, everyone should have Sirenia Digest #16. It went out late last night, about 2 a.m. As always, a big thanks to thingunderthest for the PDFing. I hope to read some comments here today regarding "In View of Nothing" and "Untitled 26." There's also species_of_one, set up for just that sort of thing. Personally, I think #16 is one of the best issues yet. I do apologise for the misspelling of persistently in the prolegomena. Chalk it up to all manner of distractions yesterday.

Indeed, yesterday was a day of varied and frequent distractions, but the work got done, anyway.

Today, at last and finally, I will begin work on The Dinosaurs of Mars. It seems like forever ago that I first conceived of this story. It's been at least a year, I think, since I first used the title here. Last night, late, Spooky and I spent about an hour talking through it. This morning, I have the first lines in my head.

Last night we watched Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men. I could probably talk about it all damned day, but, instead, I will just say this. Coming to this film, I was skeptical. As a proponent of zero population growth, and with the world's human population quickly approaching 6.6 billion, it just seemed to me like the very last thing human beings need to worry about is infertility and a shortage of offspring. But. Regardless. Children of Men is a stunning piece of sf and a beautifully made film. It is quite possibly now my favourite film of 2006 and certainly one of my three favourite, together with The Fountain and Pan's Labyrinth. It is exquisite and terrible, deeply humane and completely devastating. It wasn't what I was expecting, and that's a good thing. Clive Owen is superb, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is quickly becoming one of my favourite actors. So, yes, a brilliant and important film, and I wish I had the time right now to write about it in depth (though it's hard to do that sort of thing without generating spoilers), and I am grateful to everyone who said that I should see it.

I think that's all for now. I need coffee.

Comments

[blu-muse.livejournal.com]

I'm impatiently waiting for my copy of Children of Men to come in the mail. I'm dying to listen to the commentary. I'm so glad you saw it... although if you ever get a chance, to see it on the big screen was amazing. It's a shame it didn't get any recognition by the Oscars... it is certainly as good as Babel (which was excellent), if not better, in my opinion. But then, I should have learned not to expect so much from the general public by now. And I haven't been a big fan of Clive Owen's but he blew me away in this. (Did you notice that never once, did his character pick up a gun?).

[sovay]

I hope to read some comments here today regarding "In View of Nothing" and "Untitled 26."

I do not envy you the white-room dreams, because I have enough strange ones of my own, but I am very glad for "In View of Nothing." I wake up from so many of mine knowing there was some complex story where I can only remember scattered images, and I can never reconstruct it; I can only make up some convincing excuse for the way they fit together. This has the same allusive logic as a dream, but it also has an impressive internal consistency, and reminds me of the films I've seen where the imagery is almost as good as a pass into the director's head. In short, it's spectacular.

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

I saw Children of Men under duress. Yeow. Btw, have you seen the YouTube BMW car commercials starring Owen? Funny as all get out. Especially the one costarring Madonna.

I have been a fan of Owen's since I saw him in the BBC show "Second Sight".

[stsisyphus.livejournal.com]

I could probably talk about it all damned day...

The film almost effortlessly placed the audience immediately into the world it was depicting, allowing them to completely understand what was going on, all within maybe two or five minutes. Then, out of nowhere, the film basically attacks the viewer with a hard dose of reality. I found that two-second bit - the incident immediately preceding the title card - the most important part of the movie. It told the viewer that this was not a "safe" movie, we are not meant to be reassured, punches were not going to be pulled. Best & worst of all, it presented a reality which most Americans have no conceptualization of: a reality where we are under the threat of violence & violent death on an everyday basis.

I don't think there's anything more that needs to be said about the film.

[kitsunecaligari.livejournal.com]

I've been a fan of Chiwetel Ejiofor ever since I got a unintentional double feature of Pretty Dirty Things and Serenity....

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

I understand the concept of dreamsickness all too well: for some strange reason, I've been waking up at three in the morning for the last week to dreams that someone called to tell me that Harlan Ellison had died, and I was so dreamsick that I'd wake up to find myself holding the phone and wondering why I was getting a dial tone instead of someone's voice. If sleep debt could be consolidated and sold, I'd have been foreclosed upon six months ago.

[blubeagle.livejournal.com]

I loved CoM so much, I saw it three times, when it was in the theaters. I saw it as a double feature with "Pan's Labyrinth," and thought I'd died and gone to my happy place.

[bucketopants.livejournal.com]

I'm a Chiwetel Ejiofor fan too and if you have BBC America, sometimes late at night, they'll show a short (6 episode) series I first saw him in called Trust, where he plays a fledgling coporate lawyer.

[frankiemouse.livejournal.com]

i haven't received my copy of sirenia digest yet. i checked my junk mail folder, just in case, even though i'm pretty confident that i've added the address to my always let through list. also i'd like to change the email address i have the digest sent to and i'm not sure how best to communicate with you guys about this.

[humglum.livejournal.com]

e-mail me at crk_books (at) yahoo (dot) com and I'll get this sorted out.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Top three of 2006: hands down.