Shade / Tough Guide to Fantasyland
Jan. 13th, 2006 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishDamian Nieman (dir.), Shade
At its core, Shade is a con movie, like The Sting or Confidence. It even opens with the lost-ring con (woman claims to lose her ring, tells the mark she'll pay a thousand bucks to get it back; five minutes later a bum wanders by and finds the ring. The mark buys the ring from the bum for a few hundred, and the bum rounds the corner and hops into the woman's convertible, with a whole case of el cheapo diamond rings in the back). In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Shade is a sequence of cons, one after another. They're all entertaining, they all startle you even when you know what's coming, and they're clever.
I've got a lot of admiration for a clever plot. I think that's why I enjoy spy movies and Cyberpunk games so much: they're all about "how clever can we be this time?" The first time through, a good plot is usually plenty to convince me I liked something like that. (The second time, you need either a really intricate and consistent plot or good characters. This is why The Score didn't hold my attention, but Ronin still does.)
Shade's plot is extremely clever right up until the end, when . . . I'm still not entirely sure what happened. That is, I know what happened, but I'm unclear as to how the scene in the bar played into it. I can't quite construct coherent motivations for all the characters. Despite that, I'd be willing to watch it again. Good characters. (Gabriel Byrne having to answer his cell phone in the middle of an extremely tense situation and say "No, I don't know anything about a ring" was easily worth the price of admission.)
Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
I'm cheating here. I'm only through the Cs and I'm tossing out a meditation already. Mostly because I love this book, and think that anyone who's read too much Epic Fantasy should hunt up a copy post-haste.
It's an alphabetized guide to everything you will find in a Conventional Fantasy Epic, set up as though said Epics are 'tours' which you will take, while meeting strange people and visiting exotic locales. Example:
It's completely lacking in Complex Plot (or indeed any other kind). I am nothing if not contradictory. It gets by on A) being the kind of thing one can easily pick up and put down, and B) extraordinarily consistent humor. Not the kind that has you laughing out loud every ten pages, but the kind where you read for twenty minutes and then realise that your face is hurting because you've been smiling for the whole time.
At its core, Shade is a con movie, like The Sting or Confidence. It even opens with the lost-ring con (woman claims to lose her ring, tells the mark she'll pay a thousand bucks to get it back; five minutes later a bum wanders by and finds the ring. The mark buys the ring from the bum for a few hundred, and the bum rounds the corner and hops into the woman's convertible, with a whole case of el cheapo diamond rings in the back). In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Shade is a sequence of cons, one after another. They're all entertaining, they all startle you even when you know what's coming, and they're clever.
I've got a lot of admiration for a clever plot. I think that's why I enjoy spy movies and Cyberpunk games so much: they're all about "how clever can we be this time?" The first time through, a good plot is usually plenty to convince me I liked something like that. (The second time, you need either a really intricate and consistent plot or good characters. This is why The Score didn't hold my attention, but Ronin still does.)
Shade's plot is extremely clever right up until the end, when . . . I'm still not entirely sure what happened. That is, I know what happened, but I'm unclear as to how the scene in the bar played into it. I can't quite construct coherent motivations for all the characters. Despite that, I'd be willing to watch it again. Good characters. (Gabriel Byrne having to answer his cell phone in the middle of an extremely tense situation and say "No, I don't know anything about a ring" was easily worth the price of admission.)
Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
I'm cheating here. I'm only through the Cs and I'm tossing out a meditation already. Mostly because I love this book, and think that anyone who's read too much Epic Fantasy should hunt up a copy post-haste.
It's an alphabetized guide to everything you will find in a Conventional Fantasy Epic, set up as though said Epics are 'tours' which you will take, while meeting strange people and visiting exotic locales. Example:
CONCLUSION. For this you will have to undertake the third (or possibly fifth) Tour of the trilogy. If you do not immediately book for the whole set, you may well find yourself stranded halfway across the continent without having completed your QUEST or discovered your BIRTHRIGHT. And the DARK LORD will still be a menace. A little extra money will soon dispel these inconveniences, and you may then have the pleasure of seeing the continent torn asunder in the final CONFRONTATION. This is a spectacular sight and should not be missed.
It's completely lacking in Complex Plot (or indeed any other kind). I am nothing if not contradictory. It gets by on A) being the kind of thing one can easily pick up and put down, and B) extraordinarily consistent humor. Not the kind that has you laughing out loud every ten pages, but the kind where you read for twenty minutes and then realise that your face is hurting because you've been smiling for the whole time.