Where have I been these past few days?  Why, making tremendous progress on LUCY, that’s where. I managed to get through the high-action parts of Act 3 and wrapped up yesterday with the death of my bad guy.  No big spoiler there; if you read the story, you know it’s inevitable.

All that remains now is the resolution and denouement, then going back and tightening a few things up, including a recent idea for a small subplot.  I may actually make my self-imposed pre-Wondercon deadline by a few days.  Nice.

I hadn’t looked at it as a whole for almost a week, so I had forgotten how big and imposing it seems at first glance.  Once this draft is finished, I’ll probably go through and hack it down. More darlings may be killed, but I’m willing to sacrifice a sequence like the buffalo stampede rather than keep the whole thing bloated.

I have to keep reassuring myself this is just a first draft and the end result may be extremely different.  Lucas’ original draft of Star Wars about Luke Starkiller is a good example of the benefit of rewrites.

Movie of the Moment: SALT. I’d heard it was a good, fast-paced thriller clocking in at 90+ minutes.  Pretty accurate so far. I can’t remember the last Angelina Jolie movie I saw where she wasn’t utilizing an accent.  Some of the movie requires much suspension of disbelief (freeway chase, assassination of Russian president), but it really moves and keeps you wondering how she’s going to get out of each particular situation.  I also find it amazing that any piece of clothing she steals fits her perfectly.

V is off for spring break this week, so there’s a lot of TV and Wii going on at our place (more than I’d like there to be, but that’s another story).  I took a break from the outline yesterday so we could watch ALADDIN.  I’m fairly certain this was from the tail end of Disney’s “animated Broadway show” period.  I didn’t realize two of the four credited writers were Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, future writers of the SHREK and PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN series.  A quick check of IMDB shows that there were 19(!) writers connected to this.  Further proof that story is everything.

It’s still a fun movie, especially the Robin Williams/Genie scenes.  Talk about perfect casting.  V really liked some of those parts.  Although it was a little sad to see some of the very dated pop culture references such as the William F Buckley and Arsenio Hall impressions.  I suspected she’d like it, but I’m not holding out for THE LITTLE MERMAID.  All that girly stuff just ain’t her thing.