Rant against non-lineral story telling.

1,2,3,7,8,9,3 That's how my daughter counts. Cute? Sure. Informative or useful? Not so much.

Know what hollywood fad cheeses me off, that they SEEM to finally be pretty much done with? Non linear story telling.

Sure, many of them do it simple... start with a massive exciting or interesting scene, then closeup to the protagonist:
"I guess you're wondering how I got in this situation..." Aw man, here we go again.
Rewind 3 weeks, watch from the REAL beginning of the story until you get to the point where the movie started, blah blah. If you can't write an interesting actual starting scene, don't feel the need to jerk me around and pad the movie by 15 min with a replayed sequence. Heck, a lot of books do that too.

CHAPTER 1
EXCITEMENT, PUZZLING EVENTS!! HERO LIGHTS A FUSE ON A BOMB UNDER A GIANT ALIEN CYBER MULE!!!

Chapter 2
50 years earlier: (and you're lucky if they bother telling you that this isn't just a confusing continuation from chapter 1)
"I was a dirt farmer. Most people think that means I farm for stuff that grows in the dirt, but no, i just farm dirt. Ever try to get dirt to grow? I tell ya, it ain't easy."

Shut up, shut up, shut up! I don't care! I was ready to see a giant cyborg donkey blow up! Screw this, skip ahead, skip ahead. Second last chapter? Aww screw it. Where's my playstation controller?

If you wanna get deliberately confusing, you can keep throwing in unannounced flashbacks, or worse, SOMEONE ELSE'S FLASHBACKS, and while you're at it, don't ever show the flashbacks in the order they happened. These kinds of gimmicks just scream "I NEVER HAD A STORY WORTH TELLING TO BEGIN WITH" Why don't you just write a fanfic of Voyager, or some other unoriginal time travel shlep?
It's late, I'm cranky. My household has one member less today, and my cat won't stop farting. Kthx, bai.

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire…

Last day of VCON, I'm heading out, rollin' down to waterfront station. On the way, I pass the big convention centre.

I spot a freaky looking cop car. "Polizei" on the side. I ask a couple girls taking pictures of each other in front of it. "Is that German, or Russian, or?"

"German, I think." By now, I'd spotted several more of these 'German police cars' (The real thing doesn't look as funky as these ones did) along the road, as well as a "LuftPost" van or some such. All around, signage on buildings was covered up with German variants. Set crew moved tables, and a "crew only" catering table sat nearby. I wheelied over cables, around random bits of movie-set junk, trying to play it cool while I tried to look for clues.

Finally, I imposed a little, when I saw a couple actors/extras sitting down to munch an early dinner sandwich. My eye was drawn to the redhead sitting at the end for some reason. "Hey, alright, I'll bite. What is this, can ya leak a little info?"

She smiles, "The A-Team movie!" El Oh El. I had heard rumors about an A-team movie, but I certainly didn't expect to stumble onto the set. "We're in 'Stockholm' next."

Half a block later, I ran into a gal who WANTED to be an extra, as she's a big fan of Liam Neeson (Hannibal). The directions she gave me were totally wrong... Maybe she was bitter for not being able to be an extra, or maybe her sense of direction cost her the gig somehow. Either way, I pity da foo.

It was a strange side-event in my VCON weekend.

I plan to be blogging a lot about the con over my next few entries, but the short version is: It was great. Crazy nerdy fun, sold a heap of both Lifehack and Watching Yute, got great feedback, and have already set myself up for next year. I'm still recovering sleep. Next post: Day 1, part 1.

28 weeks later..... totally ripped me off.

Nah, I kid, but a few events in 28 weeks had me saying to myself "man, I SO did that first.." Mind you, they did it in shiny pretty graphics.

Overall, I really liked the movie. I used to say "Yeah, I love zombie movies", but then I watched more of them. Dawn of the dead springs to mind. DOTD features quite a few scenes that are more gore than I need, tyvm.. especially one very painful looking one for a certain HypaSpace hostess.. it instantly depressed me. It was the final straw that ruined the movie for me.

Then there's things like Saw. The first had an interesting concept. I watched it hoping for some dark physiological stuff, but to so huge surprise, that aspect didn't go that deep. I skipped #2. #3 was picked despite my vote against it at a friend's house. It was just an excuse for a snuf film. Why do people pay to see that kind of meaningless suffering? What kind of person MAKES it?

But back to 28 weeks later... both it and it's predecessor, 28 days, are my kind of zombie flick. Yes, there's blood and gore, but really, not much more than is entirely necessary to tell the story of civilization being overrun by maniacal cannibalistic folks.. Well, aside from one or two bloody scenes that almost seemed comical.

But the story was interesting. It wasn't just "Enter room, watch someone die slow and horribly, go to next room". It was more of an adventure. So many horror movies feel the need to kill EVERYONE, to leave zero hope- often for the world.

Well, I could ramble on, but I'd end up repeating myself. Maybe I should watch the new Day of the Dead... that one was run by romero again, right? Maybe I can see some of his alleged consumerism metaphors in it... meh.

Anyway, this leads into Lifehack. Yes, there's zombies. Yes there's a fair handful of gore. But it's not gore for gore's sake. I'm the first to say the book isn't scary. It's not meant to be. The gore that's in there us just there to illustrate the events. I don't want to scare anyone. With Lifehack, I'm telling a story of adventure and love, with just enough of a twist to not be cliche.

And lasers.

(Actually, I don't think there ARE any lasers... Oh wait! The P90 laser sight. Ah, there. mmmmmmmm, lasers...)