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I saw Wanted the other night. The reviews were good, the trailer looked decent, the movie looked decent, I’m a fan of James McAvoy, I’m a fan of action movies — how could I go wrong?

I hated it.

It’s not that it wasn’t stylish and it’s not that the actors weren’t good (it always amazes me when someone with an accent as thick as McAvoy’s can pull off and sustain another accent for so long). It’s that the whole thing was so heavy-handed and internally inconsistent. And that it turns out the trailers gave away almost all the good sequences, but since every trailer seems to that now, it’s my own damn fault for believing them.

The things that bugged me most (slight spoilers):

Look — it’s a symbol! Overuse of web imagery. The loom pulling threads from a wall of bobbins. The loom, broken, turning into a tangled web. Morgan Freeman playing cat’s cradle. Ow, stop hitting me!

One big train wreck. Admittedly this sequence didn’t make it into the trailers, which was nice, but it spoiled the whole illusion for me. Up until this point, there have been no bystander casualties really — car crashes, maybe someone shot in passing but (and this may sound callous) if anyone died, you didn’t see them. Train crash, people with faces, massive fatalities. No consequences for the heroes — in fact, no heroes. What happened to kill one to save a thousand? Instant loss of empathy.

Myth-ing link. This one is really probably just me, but I like a little myth, a little back story. Wanted teased us with it, but didn’t deliver. A thousand year-old fraternity of assassins started by weavers. Fabulous arcane bullets, funky weapons, a healing bath. I want to know more! Or things could just blow up some more instead.

Asking too much. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them but I can’t make it do acrobatics. A few little inconsistencies I can handle but there were just too many of them to string together. Why was the Russian out running around when it seemed like he was so damaged he just stayed inside? How did an archive full of paper and scraps of cloth survive a fiery explosion when it was specifically shown as a location filled with incendiary devices? Why was it such shocking news that the mysterious source of ammunition for the rogue assassin was a monk living in the monastery where the Fraternity had its beginning? Didn’t anyone else get their ammunition there? Maybe from a different monk. And, wait — didn’t the Fraternity start as weavers, not monks?

All around, a let down and that’s with me going in expecting nothing more than a decent shoot ‘em up. My partner (who really hated it) compared it to Desperado or Fight Club (which admittedly he also hated). I think Fight Club is a very good comparison especially given Wanted’s closing line, but I found Fight Club ten times smarter. There were good bits: the action sequences were indeed very nice (the final one has beautiful flow), the hero’s cheating best friend ran away with his scenes, McAvoy was a highlight, and I’m not going to stop playing the soundtrack. Other bits were like the hero’s anguished bellows of “Sloane!”– I wanted to stand up in the theatre and scream “Khan!!”

(Oh, and just as an aside, Team America: World Police has permanently and brilliantly destroyed my ability to watch a training montage without snickering, but that’s hardly Wanted’s fault.)

Those of you familiar with the Eberron line (the setting for my Dragon Below and Legacy of Dhakaan trilogies) will also be familiar with Sharn, the fantastic city of mile-high skyscrapers. Check out this project announced for Dubai. Doesn’t this sound like something from Sharn?

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Dubai plans ‘moving’ skyscraper

Yes, it has been a wee while since I posted anything. But I have excuses. Excellent excuses in fact.

Excuse #1: Insanely busy. May whizzed past in a blur, mostly because I was working on a rather intense freelance assignment that involved a lot of work and a tight deadline. Actually, there were two assignments, one of which is now complete while the other is on going. The deadline was a little more intense than it could have been, largely because of Excuse #2.

Excuse #2: VACATION! Yes, I have been not only away from the blog but away from my computer for a good long chunk of time. Three weeks, in fact (which, although the trip was great, was a little longer than I really needed). My partner and I started off with a weekend in Chicago (American Memorial Day holiday long weekend), then flew to Copenhagen for a week touring around Denmark visiting his relatives, then took the train (via a ferry) down to Germany for another week in Berlin and Cologne. It was a fantastic holiday. I’ve been to Chicago before and love it, but this was my first time in either Denmark or Germany. Denmark is a beautiful country and Copenhagen is lovely (and has the highest proportion of beautiful people wandering the streets I’ve ever seen anywhere. And skinny. I felt completely obese by comparison). Berlin was astounding and we stayed an extra day. My personal favourite city, though, was Cologne. The Cologne Cathedral (world’s largest Gothic cathedral) is breathtaking. I may have to go through my photos (467 — the curse of the digital camera) and post a few.

Much beer was drunk. Mmmm… good beer. That could be a whole separate post.

Excuse #3: Euro 2008. Okay, not such a good excuse, but I’ve gotten into it far more this year than previously. It doesn’t hurt to have been in Europe when it started. Every restaurant in Berlin (where we were at the start) and Cologne had a TV set up in the window or on the patio. It was insane and a lot of fun — we watched Germany’s first game on a big patio at Wittenbergplatz at one end of the Tauentzienstrasse (big shopping street) and it was fantastic. We watched a couple of games in Cologne in a nice little gay bar called Ex-Corner that had decorated the ceiling with a green fake-fur soccer pitch (brilliant!). Naturally I bought myself a Deutscher Fussball-Bund t-shirt and am rooting for Germany this year.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an excuse to stop the post because Germany is about to kick off against Portugal (and probably lose, sadly).

“Great tits cope well with warming”

(not what you might think it’s about)

One of the best parts of a recurring freelance gig I do (writing catalogue copy for a Canadian publisher) is getting to read books before almost anyone else, and today I read a really good one. I can’t say anything about it now, but when the book is announced (although the author has announced the sale and publication on her website), I will tell you about it. It’s really, really good.

In the meantime, why don’t I tell you about some books that I wrote copy for previously, that have now been announced, and that are pretty amazing in their own right? One of the other nice parts of the gig is that I end up reading books I normally wouldn’t, so these aren’t to my typical taste, but they are all good. You should check them out (all fall books, btw).

• Margaret Visser, The Gift of Thanks — a really interesting anthropology of gratitude. Read it and you won’t say “thank you” again without thinking about it.
• Helen Humphreys, Coventry — I’m not generally a fan of literary fiction, but Humphreys is great to read. Plus things burn.
• David J. Bercuson, The Fighting Canadians — again, not a fan of military history, but this is quite engaging in its details and scope.
• Mo Hayder, Ritual — creepy! First book in a new series that I think will really take off.
• Susan Juby, Getting the Girl — fun YA. Annoyingly, not on the website yet, but take my word, it’s good. From the author of Alice, I Think and Another Kind of Cowboy, but better, IMHO.
• Max Turner, Night Runner — also YA, also not on the website yet. This one’s a vampire novel and I’m fussy about vampire novels (comes from having written them early on), but this one has a great twist I enjoyed. Author needs to get himself a web presence, though.

News from SFScope that an anthology of science fiction for a YA audience publishes today. The collection sounds great, which annoys the hell out of me, because a year or so ago, I started thinking “Hmmm… there’s not a whole lot being published in science fiction for YA that isn’t techno-distopia or eco-themed. I’ve got an idea that would work…” But I didn’t write it (or at least I haven’t yet), so it’s really just sour grapes and I should be over it all by the time I have my morning coffee.

If nothing else, it should kick me in the butt and remind me to get writing when I have an idea come on strong. However, it is nice to know that once again my publishing instincts are good!

Here’s the link to the story on the anthology:

The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows publishes today

I’m nearly finished reading The Man from the Diogenes Club , an anthology of stories by Kim Newman. It’s good. Really, really good. I started it a while back and didn’t get into it but I picked it up from the bedside table again recently and have just been racing through. I’ve just read “The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train” and I’d seriously consider it to be one of the best short stories (okay, maybe a novella — I’m not going to get hooked on semantics) I’ve read in a long time. Exciting, creepy, atmospheric. Just great.

I’m really glad that I picked up the “sequel” anthology, Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, when I had a chance recently. It has one story in it (the brilliant “The Big Fish”) that I’ve already got elsewhere, but who cares?

Both titles come from Monkeybrain Books, BTW.