Writing for the Ann Arbor Review of Books, I’ve reviewed a trio of Mark Wahlberg films ahead of what’s sure to be his greatest work yet, the Michael Bay directed weightlifter crime comedy Pain & Gain.
I’ve watched and reviewed The Other Guys, Ted, and Boogie Nights – three films I’d not previously seen. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised – though still with a few reservations.
Either it’s raining, or he’s got dandruff on his jacket.
I only used one ‘Marky Mark’ reference, which I would claim is a sign of restraint, but the truth is that I’m only very vaguely aware he was in New Kids on the Block
I’ve been a bit busy writing for a few sites over recent days. First up is a piece I wrote for We Are Going Up – basically a look back across Hartlepool United’s awful, awful season.
It’s been a season when Pools have set a new club record for games without a win, a new club record for least amount of goals scored by the top scorer, and have lost by 5 goals on 4 occasions.
On the plus side, I still think the ground looks awesome.
On Friday, nominations for the PFA Player of the Year award, and PFA Young Player of the Year award were announced – the winners will be announced at an event on April 29th.
Writing for Squawka in an article published yesterday, I’ve looked at what the Squawka Performance Scores have to say on the Premier League’s top young players, and looked deeper at Squawka’s statistical breakdowns, to see what else the stats have to say about the quality and style of the top 5 players.
Eden Hazard taking on Norwich defenders, while storing nuts in his cheeks.
The Squawka Top 5 young players has some of the same players the PFA members have nominated, but some that have been overlooked – this includes one tidy but not eye-catching player I like, who wasn’t nominated. More importantly, there’s no place for Danny Welbeck in the top 5, which I’d argue makes my/Squawka’s list more legitimate than the PFA’s.
This is going to be just about the geekiest post I’ve written on the blog, so feel free to mock me in the comments. I won’t be offended if you do.
Despite the majority of my writing in the last year and a half being on other subjects (football, television, film and book reviews, analysis and rants mainly) my ultimate aim as a writer is to be a professional writer of fiction.
I prefer the blank canvas, the ability to create my own characters and tell my own stories, to the non-fiction writing I’ve mainly wrote and linked to in the year and a half writing this blog.
I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve got a lot of half-started fiction, things I started with a huge sense of ambition, excited about what I could do, and then more or less gave up, convinced that my story, for whatever reason, didn’t work.
It’s for that reason that I’ve started writing fan-fiction, using characters taken fro the Marvel Comics universe. (Though my interpretations of the characters are mainly based on those that have appeared in the recent films and 1990s cartoons.) Essentially, the idea is that, by using characters and scenarios created by others, I’ll have guidelines of sorts.
Either this Spider-Man’s a woman, or the spider-bite had a very strange side-effect.
For instance, in the early chapters of what I’ve been writing, I felt like I wasn’t quite capturing the personality of Peter Parker the way I wanted. I was able to look up some old episodes online, to have a definite idea of how I wanted the character to speak – the sense of both humility and sarcasm. (My favourite version of the character is the one in the 90s cartoon series. While Toby McGuire and Andrew Garfield’s performances are decent, both are a little too geeky for me.)
Nothing is created in a vacuum – every writer who’s ever lifted a pen has been inspired by something. There’s a space opera short story concept I’ve picked up and abandoned many times over the years. Essentially what I thought for this would be the moral metaphors of Star Trek, in a darker and grimier world, more like Alien or Battlestar Galactica.
I’ve a hero that I wanted to be similar but different to common ideas of how a dynamic leader should behave… and it’s difficult working out the precise characterisation.
But with fanfiction, there’s something to consult, something solid that’s been made, to look at as an example of how a particular character should behave, what their home should look like, the kind of stories that work with that character.
My first plan was an episode by episode rewrite of Star Trek Voyager, which seems to have been a slightly ambitious idea.
My second project, which I think is more sensible, is to write a series of 500 – 1000 word chapters telling stories of Marvel Comics superheroes. (Spiderman, the X-Men and The Avengers are some of Marvel’s more popular characters, if you’re not aware which is which.)
I’m not a big comic reader – in fact the only Marvel comic I think I’ve ever bought was a Spiderman comic where he fought a guy on gigantic stripey stilts. For some reason I fail to comprehend, that villain hasn’t made it into the movies yet.
But I’m a fan of the movies, and grew up watching the 90s Spiderman, X-Men and Fantastic Four cartoon series.
What’s more, looking around various wikipedias – the Marvel Wiki, and of course, Wikipedia itself – it’s fascinating to see different incarnations of the same characters, the different ways the same stories have been told. Thousands of years ago, people will have gathered around campfires, reinterpretting and reimagining cool stories they’ve heard before, and I think comic stories are the modern equivalent of this.
I’ve started adding my own contributions to this continual reimagining. Early chapters of The Marvel Universe are now up at Fanfiction.net, where I’ve been telling three stories across different time periods – the stories of Spiderman and The Hulk’s origins, and Nick Fury’s early days in SHIELD.
Hulk angry! Hulk smash!
I’m using the fanfiction essentially as a way of getting myself into motion, getting myself to write, to stay in motion and keep my instincts sharp. I’ve written recently about a story I’ve submitted for publication, and I don’t think I’d have written that if it weren’t for the fanfiction.
As I said, I’ve started putting chapters up at Fanfiction.net. I’ve enjoyed writing it, and you may enjoy reading it. Stranger things have happened…
I do have a bad habit of neglecting this blog from time to time…
During the week, the latest Lower League Week was published at Bornoffside.net.
Portsmouth were taken over by their fans, but, along with Bury and Hartlepool, were relegated from League One with two games to play. Yeovil vs Oldham saw father and son managers on the touchline; Torquay’s new chairman is a lottery winner, and the country’s highest positioned female chairman; Danny Wilson was sacked by Sheffield United; and Coventry have outdone themselves in their battle over the Ricoh Arena.
This weekend sees the American premiere of 42, a biopic of the American baseball player and race pioneer Jackie Robinson.
It’s written and directed by Brian Helgeland, the writer of some of some very good films in the last two decades – LA Confidential and Mystic River among them.
LA Confidential starred Russell Crowe as a good man with a fierce temper – a character type he’d go on to repeat in Gladiator, American Gangster, and real life.
Writing for the Ann Arbor Review of Books, I’ve reviewed six of his more notable films, all of which he wrote, some of which he also directed. Those films are LA Confidential; Payback (also directed); A Knight’s Tale (also directed); Mystic River; Man on Fire; Green Zone.
Yes, you read that right – the same man who wrote LA Confidential and violent revenge fantasies Payback and Man on Fire also wrote and directed the tale of a jousting knight, set to Queen’s We Will Rock You.
In football, it’s an unargued truism that managers deserve loyalty, that the best course of action is to back the man in charge.
But what if the man in charge has spent over a year in charge with no definite sign of forward progress (Martin O’Neill) and there’s a danger of relegation. Should he be allowed more time?
Martin O’Neill looking slightly sad. He probably cheered himself up by attending a murder trial or two.
When a boss who’s got a good reputation as a coach, but hasn’t done much as a manager, and is taking the team down the table (Michael Appleton), should they be persisted with? Even when the former caretaker manager had a better record, and is still on staff?
I wrote about this dilemma on Friday for Bornoffside.
After missing last week, I’ve written a Lower League Fortnight, which has just gone live today.
Typically, there’s been some biggish stories breaking while the column was being checked over by the editor, but there’s still been a fair bit going on.
It was decided pretty quickly that Coventry were talking out of their backsides when trying to avoid a points deduction by claiming it’s only an arm of the club that’s gone into adiministration.
This place has caused them a hell of a lot of problems.
Walsall, Port Vale, and Portsmouth have all been in good form; Notts County and Stevenage have appointed new managers that the fans will be familiar with; the Football League Trophy final has been played, with a pro singing the anthems and everything; and Crawley Town decided to stop their local reporter interviewing their manager and players, because they didn’t like the headlines above a few of her articles.
Writing for Squawka earlier today, I’ve taken a look at some of the goalkeepers Arsenal are rumoured to be interested in pursuing, comparing their performances from a statistical perspective.
Rene Adler, Victor Valdes, Asmir Begovic, Pepe Reina, Michel Vorm and Petr Cech are amongst those who’ve been linked, and I’ve also looked at Wojciech Szczesny, Lukasz Fabianski and Vito Mannone – the three keepers used by Arsenal this season.
I’ve compared their goals conceded and clean sheets; their amount of saves made; success in claiming balls into the box and their distribution.
I’m going to write about a short story I’ve just submitted for consideration for publication.
It’s set in a supernatural world, with the ‘creatures’ in that world being fairly classical ones.
There’s always the chance people will think I’ve jumped on the bandwagon merely because the genre is popular, but I promise I’ve not just seen a crowded market place, and decided to yell out “Me too!”
Although I much prefer science fiction to either fantasy or supernatural as a default, there is a lot of fiction that’s well written in both of those genres.They all tend to be grouped together, as they tend to be stories of larger than life adventures, and each tends to deal with fears and moral issues in an abstract way.
I spent a large amount of my youth watching the Buffy and the X-Files (which is generally more supernatural than sci-fi, despite the presence of the over-arching alien plotline) love Being Human, Dracula (the novel rather than any adaptation) and enjoy what I’ve seen of Supernatural.
Though the ‘supernatural’ genre isn’t my favourite, I have a relatively strong familiarity with it.
SciFiFootball 