¿Qué el protagonista desea?

I was pleased as punch that What Does The Protagonist Want? was been linked to by the popular Spanish-language comics blog La Carcel de Papel.free stats

I admit I was a little confused when I discovered the reference to me the other day — it’s exceedingly rare that anyone confuses me with an authority on comics, much less someone from the Spanish-speaking world.  I read the piece with great interest, but alas, my Spanish is no better than what I have picked up by watching Dora the Explorer with my daughter.

The piece begins:

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Programming note

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Due to a rather pressing assignment, I haven’t been able to spend as much time watching movies as I have intended this week. I am working my way through the tricky, labyrinthine plot machinations and Bergmanian psychological drama of the 1966 Batman, and will post my analysis soon.

Then, at the request of jacksonpublick , I’m going to analyze Steven Spielberg’s Munich before I move on to the rest of the Batman movies. Fair is fair, it’s the only Spielberg movie I have left to analyze and it doesn’t seem fair to keep it hanging like that.

Last night, Urbaniak came over, as well as LA theater maven Lee Costello, and we watched The Miracle At Morgan’s Creek, about which I may have something worthwhile to say when I have time. In the meantime I beg your patience.

FYI

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I am now on Facebook. Whatever that is. Continuing my brave march into the 21st century.

UPDATE: If you make a friend request for me, please do mention that you know me through this journal, otherwise how would I know?

Metablog

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It’s that time of year again, when I ask my readers to step forward and introduce themselves to me, and each other.  This should be an ongoing communal celebration, and we should all know something about each other.  Who are you people, where are you from, what do you do, how did you find out about this journal, what makes you come back, what do you like, what do you dislike, what would you like to see more of.  This goes double for my anonymous lurkers.  My intent is for this journal to become much more purely about screenplay analysis, but God knows my mind wanders, and my kids won’t stop doing cute things.  Many thanks for your continued attention, I am in your debt.

blog note

I am currently doing my holiday traveling with my family. Due to security issues, I cannot divulge my location — however, the above photo is the view from my hotel window. I will continue blogging if I have something of interest to say, but will not be analyzing any screenplays for a week or so.

After I get back on 12/28, I willbegin my analysis of the Batman movies. For those of you who cannot wait that long, you may read my informal thoughts on 1966’s Batman: The Movie here.

Happy solstice-related holiday!

Nota Bene


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I have a couple of important meetings coming up in the next few days, preparing for which will prevent me from the kind of in-depth blogging you folks have come to expect.  My apologies.

Like many Americans this week, I spent more time than I really had available with my DVD of The Dark Knight. If, by some strange quirk of fate, you have not yet obtained a copy of this motion picture, and if you are blessed with a large enough monitor screen, I highly recommend the blu-ray edition. (Oh, and you’ll need a blu-ray player, which you might as well get in any case.)  The whole movie looks great, but the action scenes, which were shot in Imax, are simply jaw-dropping in their detail and picture quality.

When I return, before I finish up my Spielberg analysis, I plan to sit down and do a thorough, multi-part, act-by-act, scene-by-scene analysis of The Dark Knight, the densest, most deceptive, most accomplished, most compelling screenplay I’ve encountered in many a year.

(I was also planning on analyzing all the other Batman movies, to better place The Dark Knight in context, and I may still, but I think I will do The Dark Knight first.)

Then Munich, hopefully before Christmas, but you know me.

Tweets for Today

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UPDATE: Seriously, what the hell is this?  I have no idea.  There must have been a box that I checked somewhere a couple of months ago, I’ve never seen this before.  Now if I could only find out how to either:

*use it
*un-check it

Any 21st-century people of the future out there?

Also: iChat — my new laptop seems to think it’s something everyone uses all the time.  WTF?

Blog blog

This blog has hit the big time — Shane Richmond at Britain’s Telegraph newspaper mentions me in his blog-roundup column with regards to my Katrina piece (“a great blogger, by the way” — now there’s a money quote).

(And here I thought my numbers had doubled because of the penny-stacking link.)

Anyway, it’s always nice to have a professional journalist point to my work, and not being familiar with the Telegraph, I looked it up online. Wikipedia refers to it as a conservative newspaper, and, given the tenor of my thoughts on Katrina, it surprises me that I caught the interest of one of its columnists.  Now why would a conservative newspaper want to direct their readers to my blog, given the “strong words” I have for the Bush administration? 

I don’t know what it means exactly, but I like to think that, perhaps, “conservative” in the UK means, you know, actually conservative in one’s political views, which is the opposite of what it means in the US.  “Conservative” in the US means “espousing a conservative viewpoint while actually doing the exact opposite,” like declaring that the government needs to be smaller while making the government substantially larger, or decrying “tax and spend liberals” while wiping out a decade of economic growth and plunging the country into a debt that will take generations to pay back, or advocating “morality” and “family values” while looting the treasury, taking bribes from lobbyists, doling out patronage in the billions, preying on teenage boys and playing footsie in airport men’s rooms.  A conservative politician I can respect — what I can’t abide is a Republican politician.

(For the record, Mr. Richmond seems interested in the piece primarily for my confession that I get my news from blogs — which makes the tip o’ that hat even more intriguing — coming from a newspaper and all.)

(Wait a minute — Shane Richmond isn’t

, is he?)

UPDATE: It occurs to me that, in addition to being a nice mention, Mr. Richmond’s nod contains not a single untruth, distortion, misrepresentation or mean-spirited smear against me –making it unique among my experiences in print media.  A columnist in a “conservative” newspaper in the US would not be able to mention my Katrina piece without first characterizing me as “far-left blogger Todd Alcott” or “tinfoil-hat-wearing leftist blogger Todd Alcott” or even the milder “One-hit Hollywood hack screenwriter Todd Alcott.”  So the Telegraph is okay by me.

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very subtle


spambot waves hello.

A brand new comment left on my Tower Records post, from several months ago:

The question from a new user

Hello everybody! I am new to the site toddalcott.livejournal.com
Could anyone, please, advise if there is a lot of
spam and unscrupulous advertising. Can I trust
all this information, which is present at this forum?
Sorry for stupid questions, I just really want know which
information I should trust or even pay attention.


No, spambot. Please do not pay attention.  You cannot trust all the information, which is present in this forum.  This forum is filled to the brim with unscrupulous advertising.

I get two or three of these a week, but this is, so far, the most, shall we say, "character driven." Gotta love the viral advertising. hit counter html code

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