Archive for August, 2025

movies

Superman

Part of my birthday celebration last week was taking myself out to a movie — for the first time since the pandemic began. I went to the movie theater downtown to see Superman. This theater is vintage 1930s Art Deco, though with upgraded seating (recliners with footrests) and modern digital projection and sound. It seemed apt for Superman, like the kind of place Clark Kent would have gone to a movie in the earlier incarnations of the character.

Anyone who’s read my books would probably have guessed that I loved it because Clark/Superman here is basically an Adorkable Wizard. I’m naturally going to love a dark-haired guy with superpowers who’s still a bit dorky and awkward and generally good.

I’ve never been a huge superhero fan, mostly because I never got into comic books (no snobbery, I just never encountered them other than compilations of newspaper comics). I only knew superheroes through TV and movies, but occasionally really got into those. I remember running home from the bus stop every afternoon to get home in time for the daily Batman rerun, I watched the 1970s Spider-Man and Hulk TV series and the various superhero Saturday-morning cartoons. I saw the 1978 Superman movie and some of the sequels, then the Lois & Clark series in the 90s.

Out of all that, I’ve always been fond of Superman because I like the idea of the guy with great powers who isn’t dark or edgy and who uses his power to help other people. I tend to prefer the presentations with the idea that Clark is who he really is and Superman is merely an identity he puts on for his good deeds in order to protect his family and himself so he can have something of a normal life. I’m intrigued by the conflict inherent in that, when he gets all kinds of recognition as Superman but is ignored as Clark.

So, basically this movie was all the things I like about the idea of Superman, put together in one story, with Clark struggling with identity and purpose while remaining a ray of sunshine and an absolute cinnamon roll of a guy. I also love this version of Lois Lane and her being smart and snappy, the kind of dame you could imagine being in a 1940s movie. This version of Lex Luthor was a little eerie given what’s been going on with billionaires. You could think of him as Elon Bezos, though I think it would have been more realistic if he’d bought the Daily Planet so he could control the messages about both Superman and himself.

The way they used the 1978 John Williams Superman theme woven into the score brought goosebumps every time. That’s become such an iconic piece of music, so I couldn’t have imagined Superman without it, but it’s interesting seeing how they updated it. I just wish they’d also woven in the love theme from the 1978 movie because it somehow became an earworm after seeing the movie, possibly because I’m most familiar with the Superman March arrangement that incorporates it, so hearing the main theme without the love theme made it feel unresolved, and that made my brain try to resolve it. Oddly, it was the pop ballad version that really got stuck in my head, so I had to track that down on YouTube.

I don’t know if this is going to be a buy it on Blu-Ray kind of movie for me, but it was good for a smile and some inspiration. It was the kind of story that made me want to be better and do better. I don’t have superpowers, but what do I have the power to do?

Books

Rewriting Dickens, With Bonus Magic

A few weeks ago when I was wondering if anyone had used Dickens as a foundation for fantasy books the way people use Shakespeare, the book A Far Better Thing by H.G. Parry was recommended both here and on Blue Sky. I read it last week, and it was so good.

This book is a retelling of A Tale of Two Cities, told from Sydney Carton’s perspective, with the premise that Charles Darnay was his changeling. Carton was abducted by fairies as a small child, with Darnay left as his changeling, then Carton was returned to the mortal world and given a new identity, but he’s still under the command of the fairies as a mortal servant. Mortal servants aren’t ever supposed to meet their changelings, but a court case brings them together, and Carton starts to suspect that there’s something going on in the fairy realm. When the French Revolution happens, Carton finds himself dealing with a family history he’s just started to discover, multiple factions of fairies and their own conflicts, plus the effects of the fairies interfering in the mortal world, along with the woes of the mortal world.

I haven’t read A Tale of Two Cities since I was in high school, so I don’t know if this meshes perfectly enough with it that you could read A Tale of Two Cities and imagine that this is what’s going on in the background and behind the scenes, but that’s the feeling I get from it, that the two books would mesh pretty well, with this one explaining things in A Tale of Two Cities, like two entirely unrelated people being so identical that they can pass for each other. I was the weird kid in high school who actually enjoyed reading A Tale of Two Cities. We were assigned a certain number of chapters a day, but I ended up just reading through the whole thing, and I remember crying at the end. Now I want to re-read it with this book in mind. I was on team Charles Darnay because I tend to like the nice guys rather than the bad boys, and the drunk wastrel of a lawyer held no appeal for me. This book explains why Carton’s a drunk — the fairies have a harder time finding him and knowing what he’s up to when he’s drunk or when alcohol’s around. I also now have a very different view of Carton based on this new backstory.

I found this book to be utterly engrossing. Even though I knew how it would end (unless it somehow changed the ending), I kept turning pages to see what happened. The depiction of the fairy Realm was interesting (and somewhat reminded me of my version from my Fairy Tale series — we seem to have used some of the same folklore source materials, though I never got into changelings and related topics and I took it in a very different direction). Really, the whole thing is a clever and fresh kind of fantasy.

Though I still think it would be interesting to take the plot of something like Bleak House and put it in a fantasy world. It might also be interesting to see what this author could do with Our Mutual Friend, set in this same universe, since that one also involves unrelated people who are identical enough to be mistaken for each other. That one might be a bit more challenging, though, since the double who’s not the book’s main character gets killed early in the book, so it would have to be a prequel leading up to the events of the book to give much of his point of view.

Life

Birthday Week

According to my parents, once you get to my age, you get to celebrate your birthday all week, so I’ve had a birthday week. Wednesday after I got my car serviced, I went shopping for birthday presents and bought myself a few things. Then late that afternoon I walked downtown to see the new Superman movie. There’s only one movie theater in town, a vintage 1930s theater downtown. They have upgraded the seats to cushy recliners with footrests and the projection and sound are modern, but when you see the front of the theater and the lobby, you feel like you’ve gone back in time. One other modern touch is that they show the movies with captions. The state school for the Deaf is here, and we have a large Deaf population, from the students to faculty to the former students who decide to stay in town, so I guess it makes sense to show movies with captions. I don’t know if it’s every show or if I happened into a captioned one. For once, I actually caught all the names of the characters because I could read them. I’ll discuss Superman more once I’ve had a chance to process it.

For my actual birthday, I did more shopping (mostly errands, but I bought some fun stuff, too), then spent the afternoon reading on the deck before walking downtown to have dinner at a bistro with a sidewalk cafe. We’ve been lucky to have had a cool snap this week, so it was a perfect evening to dine outdoors. When I got home, I sat on the deck and read some more.

Today I’m easing back into “normal” life because there are chores that have to be done. While it’s still cool, before a heat wave hits next week, I spent the morning working in my lawn, cutting the grass (the lawn is small enough and hilly enough that I use a weedeater instead of a mower) and digging up some bad invasive plants. When I heard the church bells from downtown chime noon, I figured it was time to come in and take a break.

I’m waiting on a delivery from one of my birthday gifts to myself, a new desk chair. The one I have is so uncomfortable that it limits my writing time, so I got a fancy one with an adjustable lumbar pillow and a softer seat. It also looks like it should be on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, so I’ll have to start my writing sessions by saying, “Engage!”

Life

Book Recovery

It’s the week after I finished a book and am emerging from my cave to deal with everything that didn’t get done and it’s my birthday week, so it’s a week of errands and housework but also some fun stuff. Today’s fun (which is interrupting my usual posting schedule) is getting my car maintenance done and doing some shopping. Then I might do something crazy like go to a movie. My plan is to do my main work for the day while I’m waiting for my car and then use most of the rest of the day for fun.

I got a start on emerging from the cave last weekend when we had a block party. I live on a short dead-end street that’s one block long, and it’s a fairly tight little community of mostly creative people. We have artists, fashion designers, and a theatrical costume designer who does shows all over, including the local Shakespeare theater. And me, the writer. There’s also an international flight attendant, who took care of the bar. All the liquor was in tiny bottles, and I’m not going to ask where that came from. The neighbor who organized the party also invited people from around town and who are visiting the town, including a couple of musicians here from the Netherlands for the big classical music summer institute they have here.

My social life has definitely increased since I moved to this house. It’s also reached the point where it can take me longer to walk down the block to my house than it takes to walk from downtown if people are out in their yards. But since so many people are artists, they understand when I say I’m working on a book and need to focus on it.

I think my main plan for my birthday is to take myself out for lunch at one of the downtown restaurants, but I may also do some shopping, depending on how much I get done today.

Grand Day Out

Late post today because I got a bit sidetracked. I finished my draft, which was exciting enough to block out everything else. Then I decided to celebrate by going out to lunch. There was a chamber music concert at the Shakespeare theater downtown, which I’d been planning to go to, and I decided I could go downtown early and have lunch before the concert. I had just enough time to get dressed and get things together. Then I was halfway to downtown before I remembered that I should have made a blog post.

But the book is done and I had a Grand Day Out. I had a bowl of soup at a little cafe I’ve passed by a number of times and frequently planned to stop at, but it never seemed to be open. Today, I caught it open, and it was really cute. It turns out that it closes at 2, so it’s just a breakfast and lunch place, and I’m more likely to be downtown in the afternoon. I had a little time to kill before the concert, so I did some window shopping and spotted a dress I fell instantly in love with in the window of a vintage shop. I decided to go back and look at it after the concert.

The concert was incredible. In the summers, they have a music institute here in which young string players from all over the world spend the summer getting coaching and training. Part of it is that they’re put into string quartets and have to work on pieces, then they do free afternoon concerts to practice performing for an audience. They have to introduce the piece and give notes on it, and they’ve clearly been trained in the protocol of entering and leaving the stage, taking bows, etc. This summer, they did the concerts at the American Shakespeare Center, which, for some odd reason, is in this little town. They built a replica of the Blackfriars Theatre — the indoor theater Shakespeare’s company moved to when he moved up in the world and the company had a charter from the king. The theater is designed for acoustic performance. They don’t use microphones, which means the theater is made to carry sound, and it’s an excellent chamber music venue. You feel like you’re inside the instruments. Today I snagged one of the box seats that’s practically on the stage, so I could really see the nonverbal communication among the musicians. Today’s performance was two Schubert string quartets, and though these were young musicians (teens and 20s), they were outstanding.

On the way home, I stopped back by the vintage shop, and the dress didn’t seem to be my size, but since it’s vintage, it’s hard to tell, and when I tried it on it fit beautifully. The price on the tag was low enough that it was a steal, but it turned out to be on sale, and it’s tax-free weekend for back-to-school shopping, so I really got a deal. I’m not sure what vintage it is. It’s got a 50s vibe, but I suspect it’s newer than that. It’s classic enough that I can’t tell how old it is.

Then it started raining as I walked home, but I had an umbrella, and it was a light enough rain to make it not an unpleasant walk. Now it’s cool and drizzly, and I had made a pot of tea and put it in a thermos before I went out, so I’m going to enjoy an afternoon of drinking tea and reading so my brain can recover.

Of course, while I was at the concert I came up with an idea for a future book, including the main character and her first name (the name of one of the musicians sparked the idea), but I’m not going to start working on it yet.