“From now on, I call you… Ricky.”
What is it that makes a blog worth adding to your blogroll or your bloglines account? What makes you feel like one particular blog is one you’ll want to keep reading?
I recently added Kung Fu Monkey to my Bloglines. I discovered them through a link from a writing website. The discussion linked to was how to write action scenes, and – among other great points – it has an analysis of the Matrix movies and why some action scenes work and others don’t.
This leads into the third sequence: Neo fights Agent Smith. Now, we’re pretty close to the end of the movie here, so we may well assume that “duh, of course Neo’s going to win.” But the Wachowski’s have done something masterful. First, even in the previous sequence, the heroes only beat an Agent when they cheat. Two on one, and they still need Neo to pull a trick he’s never exhibited before, changing the rules in mid-fight. This Smith fight is the first mano-a-mano fight. The threat and obstacle are escalated way, WAY over what they’ve been before. Second, it’s a payoff—Smith is one of the best screen antagonists of the last ten years. We wannnnnt to see the throwdown we’ve been waiting for, the one the film’s been quite consciously avoiding all the way up to this point. Third—the exterior complication of the squids arriving. Fourth—this fight is a character moment. This fight is Neo saying: “No. I’m not going to run anymore. I stand and fight and die here.” This is the moment in the film where Neo-we leave our cubicles and beat up our bosses, or stand up and fight all the bastards in suits who shove us around and make us feel unimportant. This is “Take this job and shove it” with gun-fu, and that’s a powerful gut-check moment. All those factors combined are necessary to overcome the “well, of course he’ll survive” instinct.
If you’ve seen the sequels, all I have to say is “Burly Brawl”, and you get my point.
At this point, I was thinking, “I may want to bookmark this and come back some time.” Then I flipped through the archives and found True Geek Conversations. In particular, I found I Love Lucy—Issue Zero!
Tyrone: Ethel, let us also note, was often genuinely funny. Acerbically so.
John: Yeah, that wit didn’t match her current surroundings. It seemed to me Ethel probably had a really interesting backstory we never saw.
Tyrone: Such as?
John: I don’t know … Ethel was a stripper working a mercenary bar in Central America, maybe an opium den/whorehouse in the Phillipines. Marrying Fred was her ticket out and to respectability. Hence her street smarts and sass.
Tyrone: (beat) Are you pitching the “Ethel Mertz Working a Donkey Show in Tijuana” backstory?
At that point, I was actively searching for the “Add to Bloglines” button.