Brad Witing

Let's See How Long I Can Sustain This Nonsense

Conrad would guess no more than 21 minutes, as that's how long it is until I have to begin work.  Less than that, actually, since there's a series of Bitlockers and apps that have to be opened before one can answer the phone, and some of the apps are a little - shall we say 'sluggish' - when trying to access them.

     Okay, so let's break down our title for today.  Art!

One for the ladies

          There you go, just a 'Brad' posted at random, no ulterior motive at all. None whatsoever.  Comelpetely artless.

     Okay okay okay, enough with the shallowness of physical attraction.  I could have gone with Brad Dillman, you know, South Canadian character actor whose name you probably don't recognise but whose face you do, bec

     ANYWAY we're down to 11 minutes.  "Brad" is obviously an abbreviation of "Bradley" - and I could have gone with Field Marshall Omar Bradley, you know, instead of an actor - which means "Broad Meadow" and derives from the Old English.

     "Witing" is a little more obscure.  Okay okay okay, a lot more obscure.  Again with the Old English, it means "The fair one" and is derived from "Hwit".  Art!

Brad(ford) Dillman.  Dark as they come.

     Talking of dark, Ol' Brad's schtick was being the sleazy, creepy, morally-deficient character on screen, which the odd casting director took advantage of when he played the good guy.  Or not-so-bad guy.

     ANYWAY none of the above is anything to do with what we're really on about in this Intro, which is - BAD WRITING!

     For yes, we are into another of The Critical Drinker's Five Step Plan To Save Hollywood From Itself Open Parentheses If It Wants To Close Parentheses.  Ol' Critty's fourth critique was about Bad Writing.  He added in a quote from "Film Threat"  that 'Old, pale and male is stale', which is pithy and you can find cause for it in a few recent releases <coughcoughthemarvelscoughcough>.  Now, diversity in films is no bad thing - but to make it central to the film and ahead of the plot is just asking for trouble.  Put a cart in front of a horse and get nowhere slowly.  Art!

<whistles innocently>

     Ol' Critty makes the point that older, wiser, more experienced (NO! I will not use that wretched word 'based'!) writers tailor scripts to what can realistically or - perhaps even more importantly - affordably done.  None of this "Yes we need a galaxy exploding and then cut to a crowd screen with five thousand extras on a submarine aircraft carrier inside the volcano as it erupts with intelligent lava" and if this crops up on-screen in future I WANT ROYALTIES.

     TCD further lambasts the current crop of studio writers, who cannot put together a smart, consistent character-driven script.  As we said yesterday, it's all FLASH! and no substance.  Writing film scripts is a long, arduous process that requires experience and ability acquired over years and years.  Basing a plot, characters and dialogue off a list of seven tick-boxes is not going to end well.  Art!

     This cheerful chapess was Leigh Brackett, a laydee whom wrote lots of sci-fi before moving into scripting for films, where she had a thirty year history.  Experience, you see.  You'd best know her as doing the script for a minor cult favourite called "The Empire Strikes Back".  It won a Hugo Award.  Ability, you see.  Does wonders for the end product.

Speaking Of The Above

O dearie me, "Madam Web" is not having a good run at the box office, to put it mildly.  We now have the box office figures for the first seven days and -

     It's not looking good.  Art!

          It's actually worse than it seems, because Late Breaking News! their budget has been revised upwards from 'only' $80 million to the coyly-phrased 'low hundred millions' total.  So - what happened to jack up the budget so much? because that's a quarter of the budget again on top of the original total.  Sony are now chasing $300 million just to break even, which, given the above, is becoming ever more unlikely.  The usual culprit in these shananigans (which are even worse than shenanigans) is weeks of reshoots.  Doubtless it'll all come out in the wash.  Bring on the popcorn!

"City In The Sky"

Battle has been joined!  Rather furtively, with a lot of ducking and diving involved.

Aliens: 1 Hom. Sap. (including the Doctor): 0

     A storm of glass shards flew in all directions amidst the rain, both materials twinkling, and a geyser of super-heated steam flew upwards with such force that the invisible flying eye flipped end-over-end with rain flying off it’s exterior.

     ‘Howzat,’ muttered the Doctor.  ‘Own goal.’  He slithered across the roadway and under the  fire-engine’s tarpaulin cover, taking a knife with him.  Once underneath he cut a long, narrow horizontal slit in the smelly material and stuck the hose nozzle there.  When the second flying eye came into view and range he loosed the release valve and flayed the hiding craft with a torrent that reached over a hundred metres in height and flipped the craft upside-down.

     After that both stayed high, but they came after him and the fire-engine.  The engine’s water tank exploded with enormous force and sent metal shrapnel thudding into nearby houses.

     ‘Good job you got out,’ said a relieved Billy. ‘I got your cooking pan like you asked.’

     Feeling damp and worried, the Doctor brushed rain from his brow where his holed boater allowed rain in.  He peered around the misted glass walls of a house with crazed windows and missing panels. More glass shrapnel fell around them with high-pitched pings and tinkles and another geyser of steam erupted towards the town hall as another house succumbed.

     Urban renovation courtesy thermal assault.

The Island Of DOOM!

I had to play it up, merely putting up "Another abandoned island" with a picture doesn't get either the heart beating or the visitors a-visiting.  Art!

     This is Clipperton Island, and the caption provided by the feed is particularly garbled and unhelpful.  Note that there's nothing in the picture above to give a sense of scale <martyred sigh> Conrad is going to have to do a bit of digging here, isn't he?

     Okay, digging has been done.  Art!

     That's it's location in the Pacific.  It was formally claimed by the French in 1858, after which the ignored it, and it fell to the Mexicans to emplace a small colony there in 1905.  Things did not go well thanks to the Mexican Revolution, which completely isolated the island, and most of the inhabitants died.  The survivors were rescued in 1917 and after that the only people visiting are the occasional scientist or trespassers.  I can't imagine there are many of the latter, just look at how far it is from land.  Art!

Having A Waler Of A Time

The word "Waler" has cropped up fairly often in my "Military Operations Egypt and Palestine" and "Official History Of Australia In The War Of 1914 - 1918" and from the context it obviously means a variety of horse.

     What kind of horse?  And why "Waler"?  Art!

Dobbins of Doom

     Their name is a typical Ocker abbreviation, as they were originally a breed from New South Wales, hence 'New South Walers' which inevitably got chopped down to just 'Walers'.  They proved to be an incredibly hardy horse in the Middle East, able to function for long periods without water, almost to the extent of camels, and yet retain their ability to gallop.  A waler approaching at full speed with an angry Australian in the saddle was the last thing many Turks witnessed.

Finally -

We are gradually crabbing and edging our way towards the end of February, which marks PAYDAY! and Your Humble Scribe's dry month will thus end on 29/02/2024, which is a Thursday, so no gin snifters until 01/03/2024.

Chin chin and pip pip!