Movie: Frozen

It always seems somewhat ironic to watch an American Christmas movie in Australia, and with 30 degree temperatures this year, Disney's latest animated musical, Frozen felt a little misplaced, though it was a great movie.

Frozen is a story primarily about Anna, a princess of Arendelle locked away from her people after she suffers an ice magic curse from her sister. As far as curses go, this one is pretty minor: Anna's hair changes colour and that's about it. But when her sister loses control of her powers, it is up to Anna to save the day.

Now I say this story is primarily about Anna. It has a pretty big cast of protagonists (with some surprising voice talent) which do not really fit cleanly into the archetypal characters which Disney has relied on for decades. Taking centrestage, we find Kristoff (the ice vendor) and Sven (his reindeer), Elsa (the Snow Queen) and Prince Hans (the roguish 'prince'). Supporting these, we have trolls, savvy Dukes (including the always-excellent Alan Tudyk), an animated snowman named Olaf (who gets one of the funnier songs of the movie) and a stereotyped Nordic trader. 

There are a lot of characters sharing stage, and the subplots advance rapidly. As a result, I found the movie a little confusing, the characters bouncing from one event to the other without much of a central plot line. Heroes become villains and villains become goofy side characters. Without a central villain or hero of the piece, it just seems like the whole plot is pushed forward by luck and happenstance. This is unfortunate, because there is a very strong story beneath it all, which the script could have done more for. 

The animation is excellently done, and the animators had a lot of fun with everything they could do with snow and ice, giving the whole thing a magical feel. The main characters have little quirks and it looks like Disney is making little changes each new movie to settle on a unique animated style for its characters. They really play around with the animations during the singing, particularly during song 'For the First Time in Forever'. No complaints here!

I enjoyed the movie a lot, thanks in huge part to two things. 

Elsa's inner struggle is a big
tug on the heart-strings.

Firstly, the singing is excellent. Fans of Veronica Mars would have heard star Kristen Bell singing once before (S01E12), but it still surprised me to see her name in the credits at the end of the movie. She takes a strong lead, only overshadowed by Idina Menzel of Wicked fame who brings her iconic singing voice to the Snow Queen Elsa and makes the movie feel like Wicked done by Disney. I particularly recommend 'Let It Go' and 'For the First Time in Forever' which felt like big Broadway numbers. 'In Summer' was funny, though it probably should have melted away a bit sooner. Finally, 'Do You Want to Build a Snowman' was a cute montage song for the two girls growing up. The songs aren't particularly memorable, and we probably won't be adding them to our Disney playlists alongside 'A Whole New World', 'Under the Sea' or other favourites, but they are good songs.

The second reason I enjoyed Frozen was its plot twists. While I did find the plot a little confusing and atypical to standard Disney fare, it had some of the best twists I have ever seen. Without spoiling the movie for anyone, there were two particular moments of the film that gripped me: when Anna finally returns to Hans for him to save the day, and the resolution of the snow storm at the end of the movie with its act of 'true love'. The first is a far more devious and adult twist than I have ever seen in a Disney movie before. The second turned what I thought would be a cheesy ending into a real tear-jerker and a pleasant twist on Disney's bread-and-butter "prince saves the damsel" plot.

Frozen has been out in America for a while, but for some reason Australia is only just getting it. I would definitely recommend seeing it if you get the chance, though I wouldn't say you need to go out of your way for it. Try not to spoil it too much for yourself, because that first time plot twist is a beautiful one. And while I didn't leave singing its songs, I would definitely consider putting it on TV next Christmas.

The Ups: Beautiful singing, excellent snow/ice animation, and jaw-dropping plot twists.

The Downs: No solid plot line, a good helping of random events, and subplots which seem to get away from the main plot lead to a confusing movie. 

Verdict: 3 melted snowmen out of 5

I am really pleased with the way Disney is going. This is a refreshing twist on Disney's archetypal plot lines, and an overall wonderful movie.

Storm Front - The Dresden Files (Book 1)

I walked out of Broken City (Allen Hughes, 2013) earlier this year with a sense of awe for just how well it paid homage to the film-noir genre, and with a clear vision that, “Wouldn’t it be great to mix fantasy and hard-boiled?” “No need,” a friend suggested, “Haven't you read the Dresden Files?” I took the opportunity to take him up on that last week and I must say, I was pretty impressed.

The Dresden Files is a series of fantasy/P.I. novels written by Jim Butcher (which is a great pseudonym if not his name). It was first published in 2000, with a short-run television series in 2007, so you can see I am a little late to the party here. The first book in the series, Storm Front, sees its protagonist, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden tackling a particularly tricky (and grisly) murder. 

The setting is like a modern-day Raymond Chandler: a lone-wolf P.I. working from his tiny office, a month behind on rent and living hand-to-mouth. The twist is, of course, that Dresden is a wizard. It hits all of the hardboiled keys: Dresden is a self-proclaimed loner, living in modern-day Chicago, but he alone “has seen it's true face” (in the words of Rorschach's Journal, Watchmen). As a private investigator (or wizard for hire) he has the tenacity of a lock-jawed guard dog, refusing to let go of a case even after he is dismissed from it, putting everything on the line so that, in one memorable scene, he is even picked up by the police naked on the street in a thunderstorm, battered, bleeding and bruised. And most of all, he has an unquestionable moral code that tends to get him into trouble. Butcher takes the archetypal characters from a genre defined by stories like The Big Sleep — the damsel, the reporter, the femme fatale (in Butcher's case, a literal vampire), the noble gang boss, the reclusive barman — and plants them firmly into his own world, which has a sense of familiar surrealism more reminiscent of Gaiman than Miéville.

I can see why it only made
it to one season.

The mix of wizard and P.I. is a match made in, well, a gritty alter-Chicago. Both are fringe-dwellers, with knowledge and abilities which the police don’t — or are unwilling — to use. The book has its own magical equivalent of “turn in your badge”, giving Dresden a literal deadline to solve both of his cases. Storm Front keeps its reader just-barely informed about its main character, leaving tantalising clues to his broken past but not giving us time to focus overly on them. The plot moves forward in convenient leaps of logic, intuition and (most of all) lucky breaks. In an era of high-fantasy wizards dominated by Rowling, Sanderson, Feist and Rothfuss, it is a refreshingly 'average' take on wizardry.

The book falls down a little with its mystery, leaving some aspects of Dresden unanswered (like what happened with the people in his past he killed — his old master and his old girlfriend?) I can’t decide if Butcher plans on filling us in in future books, or if Dresden himself can’t find the words. The writing is very good, though not as compelling as some other books circulating at the moment. It takes position as a good start to a pulp series, with a much-needed twist on both the wizardry and the P.I. genres, though nothing to particularly write home about.

I am greatly looking forward to the other 14 however, with the latest set to come out in January 2014. I will be interested to see what happens when Butcher exhausts the hardboiled references and fleshes out his own world more. 

The Ups: The book revels in its grittiness; creates a grand vision for its reader and leaves other parts for us to fill in; it is an original idea that untames the recently romance-strewn genre of urban fantasy.

The Downs: Keeping so close to its hardboiled roots leaves it feeling more like an homage than a book in its own right, hopefully this is just due to its position as series starter.

Verdict: 3.5 cowboy-boot-wearing pentacles out of 5

Definitely worth reading if you are after a more adult pulp series on the way home from work.

Full Circle

In 2010, I attempted NaNoWriMo. I say ‘attempted’ because it resulted in a very poor attempt which you can read about below if you have such a desire. Back then, my excuse was university, work, partner, and any number of things which I felt could excuse writing 1,667 words per day. The result? About two days of writing and then nothing. But in 2013 I gave it another shot. This time I found myself between contracts, graduated from university and having just finished my last long-term goal of becoming an admitted lawyer. 

I beat the 50k goal to write 52,210 words by November's end. 

Casually reading through some of the posts before this one, I can see immediately where I went wrong. This year's competition was different for me for a number of reasons, which I will try and narrow down to just a few. These are the things I learned from NaNo 2013.

Do Not Delete

I feel this is the most important rule of all. I write at about 1000 words an hour, and that's when I get into a writing free flow. Which means every hour I spend, I get 1000 words closer to my goal. But this also means every lot of 100 words I delete sets me back six minutes. NaNo is difficult for editors, I think, because we are all perfectionists at heart. You have to be a perfectionist to want to 'fix' something that its writer thought perfectly readable. To write 50,000 words in a month, however, you need to let go of your inner critic and just accept that it is your first draft. It won't be perfect. There will be mistakes and plot holes, continuity errors and name changes. You can fix all of that once you get through the month.

For me, I had to ban myself from reading anything I had written. I still haven't read my whole story through, as I am still writing it. It was easier not to read anything, and so not be tempted into rewriting or deleting it.

Use Your Friends

And not just the ones you abandoned to hide away and write. I suppose some authors find seclusion more rewarding, without the temptation to socialise. But I say 'use your friends' in that you should be telling them, every day if you need to, about your accomplishments for the day. Facebook was instrumental in keeping me going, because I knew if I didn't make my word limit, I would have to own up to it to them. On that note, there are other 'friends' you can use who understand you more. The Sydney NaNo group was a huge part of why I managed to keep writing this year. 

Don't Write Sequentially

I was very pleased to find the Header option of Word finally came in handy. With each chapter under its own header, I was able to leap around my book and write later chapters when I got bored of earlier ones. That way my story never stalled. This was perhaps only so helpful because I began NaNo with only a vague sense of what I wanted to write. It wasn't until about a week in that I had an idea of where the story was going; two weeks before I spent one evening making a bunch of new chapter headings and summarised what happened in them, and so realised that there was no way I would fit the book into 50,000 words (much less 100,000). Chapter numbers should not hold you back either. My chapter 32 became chapter 40, while my chapter 28 dropped to 16. It was a very organic style of writing, better suited to NaNo than to writing a setting-rich book with well fleshed-out characters. I can always add the latter in later.

Coffee Shops are Sanctuaries

The Lawrence Project (Manly) where I spent
many rainy days writing on that green sofa.

I never understood the author's fascination with coffee. The late nights, surely, but I always found myself with brighter ideas early in the morning. It is said that 10–11am is the most productive time to work. This year, however, I found myself visiting a hipster joint down the road from my partner's place any time I stayed at hers. I looked forward to it. Not for the coffee, but for the empty room filled with plush chairs and no Internet access. I suppose in the same way, I enjoy buses (though not nearly as much!)

With no distractions, plentiful water and food, a soft chair and relaxing music, I probably knocked out about two fifths of my total in a single coffee shop.

Writers Have a Reservoir, and it can empty!

Finally, I learned that I cannot write unsustained for a long period of time. There came a point in writing that I felt like I had exhausted all creative potential in my mind. This wasn't just a writer's block — which I tackled with plentiful use of dream sequences and fight scenes — this was like I had tapped the last of my creativity and had nothing left. Words I wrote felt hollow. It was then I realised I had to stop and go live life a bit. One of the suggestions of NaNo is to stop reading altogether in November. Yet I found that reading a book just made me want to write my own again. Painting helped restore some colour in my mind. And exercise (just going for a walk) and sunlight seemed to refill that reservoir. 

NaNo is over for the year but I am still going. I had the opportunity to do a daily commute into and out of the city (an hour and a half trip) every day for the last two weeks. My writing has slowed a little since November ended, but I am up to 60,000 and still going!

Hopefully this will help some of you who struggled with NaNo. But in any case, you should take heart if you tried. My first time I hit 3,000. My second I hit 10,000. I figured anything over that was a win. Look at me now!