The Blank Page — Long Words

Nostalgia, big lizards and teenage mood swings

Okay, I don’t do this very often. I really don’t. There was a time when I wrote reviews of every movie I went to see. Not for this for website, though. Not for anyone. I wrote them for me. For no reason at all, really. Spot the only child.

This is was back when I used to stick every cinema ticket to my bedroom wall. Which took a lot of blue tack and left a lot of holes when I moved out of my parents’ house.

Anyway, this weekend, I managed to watch a few movies, so I thought why not share my findings with the rest of the class.

The Big Screen Cometh

Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to review Infinity War here. There is a near infinite number of people on the internet who are going to do that today. No, what I wanted to talk about was opening night. I love the opening night of a big movie. I truly do. The atmosphere. The anticipation. The reactions in the room, after the lights have gone down.

Movies, Trailers, Heroes, Movie reviewChristopher Long27 April 2018Avengers, Infinity War, DC, Blockbuster movies, Opening night, PopcornComment

Player 2 Has Left the Game

There are some people in the world of cinema whose name becomes synonymous with what they do. You can spot them quite easily. They normally get the word ‘esque’ stuck on the end of their name to tell you another director has tried to respectably rip them off. It’s a sign that their talent has sewn them into the fabric of the cultural landscape. Steven Spielberg is very much one of those people. Although, unlike so many other directors who share that honour with him, he’s transcend the need to be seen as connected to only one genre or style of film. When it comes to Tarantino, Hitchcock, Fellini, Lean or Kubrick, you know roughly where the movie is going to take you. Whereas Spielberg feels more of an iconoclast than the rest of them. Or, at the very least, he appears to have a few extra clubs in his bag.

Movies, Movie review, NostalgiaChristopher Long6 April 2018Ready Player One, Movies, Spielberg, Sci fi, 80s music, 80s moviesComment

A Return Visit

I only book a stay at The Overlook Hotel occasionally. Every visit always leaves me with a different souvenir. I go in with pieces of the mystery set firmly in my head, ready to help me decrypt what I’m seeing. The native American mythology. The reference to The Donner Party. The many, many other theories the truly mind-bending documentary Room 237 has implanted into my thinking. Regardless of those intentions, by the time I get to the end I’m always too unnerved to think past the overwhelming sense of escape.

Hyper Bowl

Expectation is a tricky thing. We generate it ourselves, but we don’t have a lot of control over it. We merely light the fuse. Our subconscious does the rest. It fans the flames and spreads the fire. It makes us crave what lies ahead. Before we know it, we’ve taken something we’re interested in and turned it into something so much bigger. Something that feels bizarrely pivotal to our happiness. Sadly, this process doesn’t always work out well for us or the thing we’re waiting for.

Movies, Nostalgia, Movie review, Novel writingChristopher Long6 October 2017Blade Runner 2049, Hype, second novel writingComment

Broadening the Mind

From past experience, I know that elements of the past few days are going to creep into my writing over time. It’s happened before. The section in Something Needs Bleeding called The Blind Walls came from a trip to Austria, where I ended up getting out the lift on the wrong floor and not realising until I turned a corner that wasn’t on my own floor. A trip to Bury St Edmunds became The Wooden Walls and a Monday night spent in a chain hotel in Bristol became the inspiration for the first section of The Righteous Judges.

Writing, Movie review, Holidays, StorytellingChristopher Long29 July 2017Writing, Working, Travel, Dunkirk, Christopher NolanComment

Infectious

Now, being a horror writer, I suppose I should have been fine with all of this. After all, there is plenty of scope for sickness in my world. Vampirism is a form of blood disorder. True, it’s often peppered with doomed romantic intentions or teenage angst, but it’s a disorder none the less.

Writing, Movie review, ZombiesChristopher Long21 February 2017Writing, Zombies, SicknessComment

Gangster Thursday: A Murky Trip into the World of Genre

I saw Live by Night on Thursday. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. It’s long, I’ll give it that. If you’re looking for value for money, then Live by Night certainly delivers on running time.
On the way home, me and my wife, Sam, worked out that there’s an interesting story buried at the heart of the movie.

Movie review, WritingChristopher Long22 January 2017Genre stories, Writing, MoviesComment