Journal

Showing posts with label Beowulf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beowulf. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2007

winter butterflies



I don't know where the butterflies come from. It's a big empty house, and it's winter. There aren't any flowers or greenery inside the house. Outside the trees are bare. The doors and windows are all closed. But every day or so there's another butterfly, fluttering through the house like a flower, sitting by the windows or fluttering crookedly through the kitchen.

I'm getting better, just in time to go home with rather less work done than I was hoping for. I've slept a lot, and consumed several pots of honey, two whole ginger roots and a dozen or so lemons, though. And I've coughed a great deal. ("Was that you coughing was it?" asked the occasional housekeeper, passing through the other day for the first time in a week. "I thought it was a dog barking.")
...

Nothing to add to what Warren Ellis said about this astonishingly disturbing Westboro Baptist God Hates The World song video, so I'll link to Warren's post at http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=5361.

(Well, actually, I'm also fascinated by the idea of a God who is so consumed with disgust with humanity for, amongst other things, not universally making homosexuality a capital crime, that he would, literally, hate the world (except for about 60 people, and a really cute, scary baby girl). And the idea of a group for whom every disaster, natural or manmade, happening to anybody, is a visible, magical, literal demonstration of their rightness and God's hatred for the world.)

...
I see that Beowulf is coming out on DVD in February:



Really interesting article on where we re right now with the Uncanny Valley, talking chiefly about Beowulf and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 at http://www.vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=3494.

...
A couple of people have written to ask me why the audio books I did of Neverwhere, M is for Magic and Fragile Things are up on the US iTunes store, while Stardust isn't. I have no idea.



(And you can get an MP3 of Miss Maddy interviewing me for 15 minutes there as well.)

I was already starting to feel remarkably ignorant about my own stuff. Then this came in...

I hadn't seen any ads for Stardust coming out on DVD so the first I saw was here. Lucky for me I was going shopping anyway, so I picked it up. I thought people would be interested to know that at Borders they have an exclusive (or they say it is) version. For $3 more you get a 10 page book of Charles Vess's drawings which, for someone like me who doesn't have the graphic novel, is really great to have. I figured people would want to know. :)

and I had to write to Charles Vess to see if he knew anything about it.

Charles says

Yes, it is true. I'm holding several copies as DC just sent me a batch of
the pamphlet inserts.It's a bonus item which reprints 8 pages of 'sketches' from
the supplemental material in the new edition of our book along with one now
fully painted image that acts as a cover (to the insert). I believe that it's a
Border's exclusive.
That cover image will also be featured as one of the next three s&n
prints in the deluxe Stardust box set (available only from GMP) but, of course,
printed ever so much better in that form. All of the next six and final prints
in the set will be newly painted images rather reprints of already existing
illustrations.
Here's a jpeg of the cover art so you can take a gander at it...

And I include it here so that you can gander likewise.

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Monday, December 03, 2007

strikes and scripts and stuff



I'm feeling like a particularly bad sort of striker. The WGA strike was called the day before I left LA for the UK, and I've not been within a thousand miles of anywhere that we're picketing since. I get nice emails every day telling me where in New York the pickets are going to be, but New York's a long way away -- for the time span of most of the emails, it's not even in the same country as I am. And now I'm starting to get a bit frantic about the last couple of chapters of THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, I may go to ground to finish them and vanish completely.

But in case anyone had any questions (and judging from the FAQ line, a few people have), yes I wholeheartedly endorse and approve of the strike, and, for whatever it's worth, voted for the strike powers (along with about 95% of the WGA membership, so no surprise there).

The bit of this that puzzles me most is that elsewhere in the world, the idea that the writers get paid when the work is watched online is one that's been taken for granted. If I wrote a TV series for the UK, I'd get less money upfront (not much less) but I'd be well recompensed for repeats, DVDs, internet downloads and so forth. (For whatever it's worth, I get 125 times as much in royalties on a hardback novel as I'd get on an equivalently priced DVD.)

At the very end of this post -- in case they break the various RSS feeds -- I'll put two video summaries of the issues. Partisan, of course.


...

Hi Neil,
I went to see Beowulf as soon as it came out and I liked though it didn't quite match up to Stardust which blew me away.
Anyway I thought I had found two mistakes in Beowulf.The first was the mountains of Denmark. This is something Denmark is famous for not having and is a major point for jokes by Icelanders as myself about the country which used to rule us. But then somebody pointed out on the imdb.com forums that though this does not conform to reality it does fit the poem which says:
"'......sailors now could see the land, sea-cliffs shining, steep high hills, headlands broad.' "

Oral tradition does these things to poems. The version was probably not written down by anyone who had ever seen Denmark. Somewhere there might have been versions that speak of the great flatness of Denmark but those are forever lost to us. The other point might be a little harder to explain away by the poem. Iceland is mentioned at least twice in the movie which is out of place since it was probably not inhabited at that time nor is it likely that anyone who might have known of it would have called it by this name. Was it just your love of the country that made you mention it or are there other reasons? Or will you take the high road and blame your co-author? Icelanders will probably not be offended as they do like to hear the country mentioned. Anyway, thanks for writing this journal, it is especially fun for me since you tend to mention both folklore (I am a folklorist) and libraries (I am a library and information scientist) a lot and very favorably too.
warm regards from Cork, Ireland,
Óli Gneisti Sóleyjarson



Yes, the cliffs and high hills are from the poem.

In the script the line of dialogue was,

"They sing our shame from the middle sea to the ice-lands of the north."

I'm not sure whether that's what Anthony Hopkins actually says in the film, though. (And I have no idea where the just-as-anachronistic Vinland line from the Skylding's Watch came from, either. Wasn't in any draft by Roger or me.)

Incidentally, I thought I'd mention again that the Beowulf script book has a lot of the answers to this kind of thing in it, and that none of the descriptions of it currently online seem to explain what kind of thing the book is.

I found a review (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07320/834312-44.stm) which says,

How does a script filled with guts and gore and f-bombs become PG-13 animated fare? Witness "Beowulf: The Script Book" (HarperCollins Entertainment, $16.95), which is actually two scripts, both by graphic novelist/author Neil Gaiman and
Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary.

The first script is what you get when you combine the writer of "Pulp Fiction" (Avary) and the writer of "Sandman," "Stardust" and "American Gods" (Gaiman), with no rules or outside interference. The second is their draft of the final studio script.

Avary provides a Foreword and "Middleword" that describe his decades-long obsession with "Beowulf" -- a centuries-old, 3,000-line poem -- and his growing compulsion to re-create it onscreen. He eventually, wrenchingly, gives up on directing "Beowulf" in the face of Steven Bing's big bucks and director Robert Zemeckis' passion for the project. Gaiman gives the Afterword, in which he says of the introduction, "Roger Avary is much too honest about getting the script made.
That's because Roger is a Holy Madman."

Gaiman and Avary first huddled in Mexico in 1997 to create the tequila-fueled first draft, in which the monster Grendel's penchant for human flesh knows no censorship. It does, however, follow the timeline of the original Old English poem.

Later, they have Zemeckis' input about taking cinematic liberties, along with his blessing to let their imaginations run wild, as his innovative Performance Capture animation process (as seen in "The Polar Express" film) knows no bounds.

The timeline and the setting is changed in the final draft -- instead of a story in two parts and in two countries, Beowulf begins and ends in King Hrothgar's court. Beowulf is awarded Hrothgar's throne rather than return home. Instead of meeting Beowulf as the strapping dragonslayer he becomes, we first meet old King Beowulf in his court ... and it's apparent you're in for a different experience than in the first script.

Just as intriguing as the script changes are those honest Avary moments. For instance, he finally finds peace with giving up his "baby" to Zemeckis when "Z." agrees to use Crispin Glover to portray the monster Grendel. The director had a contentious relationship with the eccentric actor during "Back to the Future 2," which resulted in Glover suing Zemeckis when the director inserted the actor's image into scenes. "To this day, the verdict protects actors from having their
likeness used without their blessing," Avary writes.

Still, Glover got the job, and Zemeckis used his newfangled technology to make him into a monster onscreen, which may have been payback enough.

The book of "Beowulf" scripts also contains artist Stephen Norrington's renderings that were commissioned by Avary when he believed he would be directing his first version, further fueling the question asked by presenting two visions back-to-back: "What if ...?"

(The mention in the song, though, is completely my fault. Sorry.)

...

Hi Neil, I'm a Swedish fan who was hoping to buy some your books from Audible.com, but apparently Audible doesn't sell them to Swedish people. Can you tell me why this is? As there is no Swedish or even European reseller of your books in audio form, this mean nobody gets my money and I'm stuck listening to Orson Scott Card.

There are lots of rights issues around the world that mean that companies selling audio things like songs and books don't always sell everything everywhere. On the audio books, you can always buy the CDs and rip them yourself. And there are even some audio books that come with MP3 CDs so you don't have to rip them, just drag them to your MP3 player.

(I just checked and Amazon is currently discounting the ANANSI BOYS MP3 CDs, so it's the cheapest way of buying the Anansi Boys audio.)

Neil, I was wondering what you thought about Philip Pullman's books and and the controversy in the united states about the new movie based on his first book.
Jessica


I like Philip Pullman very much, I like his books ditto, and I think the controversy is stupid. Does that help?


...

And here are the videos:




and here's another,



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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Me in Manila

Let's see... I'm in the Philippines. Lots of travelling yesterday, and the international date line erased my Tuesday. Just woke up with Mike asleep in the next room. He got here a few hours after me, around 5.00am (on a different plane), and I'm letting him sleep.

An email from Penn Jillette (subject line of email: You Whore) let me know that Amazon have released the Kindle, which was, as a few of you have guessed, the mysterious device I was playing with earlier this year.

Yes, I was sincere (and unpaid) in my enthusiasm for it. They made me send the one I was test driving back a couple of months ago and I still miss it (especially on the planes last night, when I had to grit my teeth and only bring what I could easily carry -- so I read the latest two Russell Hoban books with pleasure then I wrote, but missed having a few dozen books to choose from).

I think it's a bit overpriced at $400. It's a delivery system, after all. Interestingly, they're not yet really pushing some of the things that sold me on it (how easy it is to put your own content onto it, for example, whether Documents or PDFs or downloaded Dr Who novels). But when I was in Hungary, Maddy read a bunch of books on it as she sat in the film studio, and I watched it sell itself to whoever went by, and I watched her treating it as a library or a bookshelf (so when she had finished the Meg Cabot books I'd downloaded as we were leaving, she read Stephen King's Cell, some P.G. Wodehouse and then Dracula, because they were on there). I imagine it's going to get prettier as it goes on, much as the iPod did.

Hi Neil,I see that you're featured on Amazon's Kindle page, providing a favorable review of the technology. Criticism (regarding DRM) is popping up: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-reading and http://daringfireball.net/2007/11/dum What's your take? DRM aside, I feel the device is too expensive. They're competing with tradition, here -- and to do so, they need to offer a compelling product. (I liken digital books to screw-cap wine bottles vs. corks.) People love the feel of paper as they read, and an expensive, proprietary device isn't the answer, is it? Better to sell the device for next to nothing -- if they're going to charge for books, or build a year subscription into the price of the device and charge little or nothing for the books. I also like John Gruber's idea of giving away a Kindle digital book with every print book bought from Amazon.With the current pricing structure (and the DRM issue), I fear the device is destined to flop. There's no compelling reason (that I can see) to own a Kindle device. I'd rather just buy an actual book.

For me it's closer to CDs and iPods. If I'm at home, my iPod tends to sit, half-forgotten, in a pocket or a bag. It's easier to grab a CD and put it on, and I like looking at the packaging, the audio quality is (or feels) better, and the listening experience is different and probably closer to what the artist hoped for. The iPod is, for me, for the road, and I couldn't survive without it.

I don't see that there's a DRM problem -- there's nothing stopping you either reading books on someone else's Kindle or putting non-rights-managed stuff on your own. I don't think everyone has a right to digitally copy and distribute books they bought to others, any more than I think they have a right to, say, photocopy and distribute my books, or to print their own copies and sell or give them away. I'm all for authors giving stuff away if they want to, but authors are at least currently, allowed to decide in what way they want their books made available in the marketplace (Cory Doctorow isn't releasing the individual issues of the comics adaptations he's currently doing under Creative Commons, because the publisher feared it would upset retailers but will be releasing the graphic novel collection as Creative Commons. Fair enough).

...

Dear Mr. Gaiman,I'm the member of an online baby names group, which is rather beside the point except that someone brought up your middle name. Kindred? And then there was a lot of posting on whether people like it or think it's dumb or whatever, but I was curious whether (1) your middle name IS Kindred, and (2) there's a story behind that?

1) I'm afraid not
2) I think the story is that they were thinking of Phillip K Dick's middle name

...

I recently saw “Beowulf 3-D,” which having worked on CGI projects, I still have problems grasping what a mammoth undertaking the finished film represents. However, I had a problem with the storyline, so being a long time fan I concluded “Why not just email Neil.”

So here it is having seen the film only once, I was unclear on what we where supposed to take away from it. By which I mean: “The Hero-Beowulf” the last of the great heroes ends up being as weak and flawed as all common men are nature. “The Demon-Grendal’s Mother” the last of the pagan deities is denied and destroyed at the end. The Christian religion, which offers an alternative to pagan beliefs is championed by a cowardly murderer whose faith doesn’t protect from the power of the pagan dragon.

So is the point that “all men are weak by nature and doomed by there flaws.” The pagan gods are gone (which is good) since the Christian faith offered no man protection against them. So, in the end we are left with no heroes, no demons, no pagan gods, left only to chose between an impotent faith like Christian or the inherent flawed power of mankind. This seems different from many of your others works which seem to always offer some kind of alternative “meta-physical / supernatural” notion outside our common understanding.

That’s pretty much it. By the way thanks in advance, for taking the time to read this and I look forward to a reply if you get a chance (even if the reply is “it’s just a bloody movie not a belief system).

Thanks;

Bryce Southard


I think one of the most interesting things about creating art is that once it's out there, people are free to make their minds up about what you did, which means that your take on the plot is as valid as mine (particularly because I have all the other drafts and the cut scenes still in my head). But no, that wasn't my take on the people or the events at all, or even on the religions of the time.

Of the reviews I've been sent so far I guess that Henry Gee's over at NATURE http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/henrygee/2007/11/19/bigging-up-beowulfand Roz Kaveney's at Strange Horizons http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/11/beowulf-comments.shtml would both be closer to my own thoughts about what Roger and I were trying to do in the script, although I don't think that either Roger or I could speak for what Bob Zemeckis intended.

...
Hey Neil, I saw "Beowulf" on Sunday and noticed a few things.1) You wrote the lyrics to "Olaf's Drinking Song", which I got a kick out of. 2) Even Lorraine's name is featured in the credits.and 3) The monster form of Grendel's mother is seen in the reflections of the water and once (wholly) on the ceiling of the underwater cave camouflaging with the gold treasure cluttered up there with it. Am I correct? Or was I just seeing things that weren't there? Thanks, Ken

You're perfectly correct.

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Flying Away Now

Hi Neil,Are you aware that Beowulf has got a paticularly outraged review from the CAP movie ministry guy, (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/beowulf.htm) and is summed up as "quite probably the most heinous culprit for stealing childhood from children ever made". You didn't quite do well enough in the scoring system to get a perfect zero (not enough impudence/hate - please try harder next time), but this does mean that Beowulf is rated worse than Natural Born Killers, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, et al.Chris Reynolds

There you go. Then again, this is probably the first animated movie aimed at adults to go on broad release in the US for a very long time, and the idea that it's not actually intended for children is a hard one for some people to cope with. Interestingly, the Christian reviews I've seen so far -- Christianity Today and the Catholic News Service -- both liked the film, and were very sensible.

(It's one of those pleasantly surprising things that the Google News thingummy threw up, like the articles from local papers where they have English teachers and professors explaining that this Beowulf is rather more faithful to the original material than they had expected.)

Dear Mr. Gaiman;Firstly, I would like to say that I have just seen "Beowulf" and it was indeed a great movie. I read the poem many years ago and your story was one of the more interesting interpretations of the original poem.That aside I read up on the long process it took to get this film off the ground. As with what typically happens in Hollywood, there was a rewrite. As I'm sure you know, the final confrontation with the Dragon was rewritten. This discovery did not surprise me because the final confrontation just did not seem to be your style. Just what was your version like?
Robert M. Sharples


Ah, that one's easy. There's a script book, which contains our original 1997 script, two long essays by Roger intended mostly for film students about the realities of Hollywood (one on how he went into it in the first place, and then how I got involved and how we wrote the script together, and one on how he was persuaded to sell the script to Steve Bing and Bob Zemeckis), some of the storyboards for Roger's original version, the shooting script we wrote with Bob Zemeckis that they went into the 2005 shooting with (which is of course different to what they wound up actually making) and an afterword from me about how and what a film script is and isn't.

So you can read the original script or even the shooting script and make a film in your head and see how it differed from what made it to the screen. (I found a review of the book at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07320/834312-44.stm -- for some reason, none of the Amazon or Harper Collins sites make it clear what kind of thing the script book is.)

...

Right. Lots of people in the Philippines writing to ask how long I'll be there (until Sunday) and what I'll be doing. So I googled, and found http://heartofadream.wordpress.com/ a blog which seems to have all the information on it.

And the car to take me to the airport is outside, and I'm not yet dressed, so I will take my leave, vaguely regretful that I haven't done a big post on the writers' strike yet. Or even linked to the David Letterman show writers strike blog at http://www.lateshowwritersonstrike.com/ or Matt Selman's TIME Nerd bloggery at http://www.time-blog.com/nerd_world/2007/11/.

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Friday, November 16, 2007

still brainless after all these years

Steve Bissette and Hank Wagner are out here until Sunday interviewing me for an unauthorised book about me that Hank and Chris Golden are writing (Steve's writing a few of the movie chapters, and is here because Chris can't be. It's a pleasure to see Steve here again, and amazing to think we've known each other for 22 years.) I'm happy to help, although am also happier that it's unauthorised -- biographies and things are like lifetime achievement awards, and they make me uncomfortable. After all the travel and suchlike I do not yet have anything resembling a brain, so the interview mostly consists of me going "Ummmmm." They are very patient.

When I go online right now I compulsively and automatically check the Beowulf rating over at http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beowulf/. (73% fresh as of time of writing.)
My favourite review so far today -- in terms of feeling that it reviews the film we wrote -- is Ty Burr's at the Boston Globe.

I expect I'll stop checking in a couple of days.

And I just picked up Maddy and her friends from a screening of Beowulf. Maddy found it just as scary as last time, and I am unconvinced that an audience of 13 year old girls is entirely what Beowulf is aimed at. "What did they think?" I asked Maddy.
"They think you're weird," she said.
"Oh. Sorry."
"But don't worry. I explained that you wrote it with Roger Avary, and that all the bits they didn't like, Roger wrote."

I trust that when she is old enough, Miss Gala Avary will adopt the same tactic.

Two new art blogs -- Mia Wolff's at http://wolffbrain.blogspot.com/ and Jill Thompson's at http://jillthompson.blogspot.com/ (go down until you find the page from Magic Trixie).

The BBC World Service Anansi Boys radio adaptation goes out Saturday 20.00pm GMT (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/schedules/internet/wsradio_sat.shtml) and then for a week should be at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/world_drama.shtml

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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Pretty much a test post

Hi, Neil,

I was trying to read your last post at your Journal (the one titled "Roger and me"), or what my RSS agregator points like your last post, but I'm redirected to an Error Message page (404 - page not found).

Well, uh... Thanks,

K


Apparently Blogger is having problems right now and things aren't posting. Why they are happily appearing on the various feeds but appearing late or not at all on the journal is a mystery, but one that shall I have no doubt be resolved in time...

So this is more or less a placeholder blog entry to see if publishing it is likely to make it or any previous entries show up.

This photo from last night is possibly the only photo ever taken with me in it in which someone else is wearing a leather jacket and I am not.

As I said the other day, I'm happy about the Beowulf early reviews that are coming in, because I had got really tired of the amount of on-line silliness I'd been reading by people who were exercising the ancient internet privilege of writing confidently about things they didn't know anything about.

I don't think everyone will love the film, no more than everyone loves any film, but I think it's a lot more of a movie than people might have been expecting, and am taking possibly too much pleasure in the tone of "I thought it was going to be rubbish but then I saw it..." early reviews that have started to trickle out. This one in animation magazine -- http://www.animationmagazine.net/article/7565 -- says things like

...It’s a thoroughly engrossing and thrilling achievement, and everyone who worked on it should be very proud.

From the monster Grendel’s first attack on King Hrothgar’s mead hall, it’s clear that this is not The Polar Express. Beowulf is bloody, bawdy, cheeky, sexy and generally cool. The year is 518 A.D. and the title character has come to the Danish kingdom of Herot to rid it of its demon. Boastful, cocksure and overly macho, he comes off at first like a close cousin of the Gerard Butler character in 300, but eventually proves to be a deeply flawed hero more akin to the subjects of Greek tragedies. The screenplay by Neil Gaiman (Coraline, MirrorMask) and Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) takes some liberties with the original tale and weaves a smart and tangled web that suggests that the epic poem passed down through the oral tradition was only half of the story.

I’ve often questioned the logic of going through the trouble of making realistic CG humans when you can simply photograph real actors, but it makes sense with this particular project because it’s important that the humans and the monsters look like they belong in the same world....

...It’s a shame the film probably won’t be qualified to compete for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Academy Awards because most people will see it as animation. On the other hand, it might not be fair to lump it in with films involving performances that are completely animator-driven. As it stands, Beowulf is in a category of its own and the Academy doesn’t know what to do with it. But it may be forced to come up with something, especially if it proves to be a major box-office hit.

Beowulf succeeds in delivering where most of the summer “event” films have failed this year. It’s solid entertainment with a gripping story and complex characters that aren’t off-the-shelf clichés. It’s not a perfect movie, and one that is sure to have its critics, but I think it’s one of the year’s biggest surprises and deserves to be seen by a lot of people. I’m sure it holds up in standard projection, but do yourself a favor and drive the extra distance to an IMAX theater and see it in 3D.


Anne Thompson's Variety Blog entry on Beowulf -- http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2007/11/beowulf.html -- quotes Stephen Schaefer's review, which begins
Seeing is believing with Robert Zemeckis’ mighty, monumental “Beowulf,” which opens Nov. 16. This extravagant adaptation of the epic poem about a cursed kingdom invents a 6th century A.D. Denmark that is so richly detailed, romantic and engrossing it’s like seeing the Prince Valiant comic strip brought to blazing, 3-D life, a childhood fantasy realized in such a complete way you’re stupefied with delight.
and ends
Big Oscar Question: Is this in the running for Best Picture or Best Animated Feature?
And my favourite quote came from the LJ of someone who was at the premiere last night --
It's always fun to go into a movie with no expectations and then realize, as the credits roll and the final moments sink in and the exhilaration of powerful storytelling lights up the crowd -- the applause, the dropped comments and overheard conversation as we work our way up the aisles -- that you were one of the first to experience what will be a major hit, and you came to it fresh, without buzz or hyped-up expectations or knowledge of the story's main revelations, which will soon be impossible for audiences everywhere except for those who might be emerging from under logs and rocks. And that it will be a hit not because it was a manufactured hyped-up corporate Event (and the sequel of a sequel of a sequel), but because it's just good, right down to its well-structured story bones, and people will just like it and tell other people how much they liked it. Like I'm telling you now. How positively quaint and old-fashioned.

...

(Here's more or less the complete transcript of the Beowulf Press Conference from which the Angelina Quotes were taken out of context, all around the world.)

Incidentally, I think the educational pack done for Beowulf is simply wrong. Part of the point of the Beowulf movie that Roger and I wrote is the places it diverges from the story of Beowulf, and the ways it explores the relationship between a person and a story about a person. I don't think they should be putting the stuff we made up on material intended for schools -- it seems like a way of justifiably irritating teachers, who have enough to put up with when they try to teach Beowulf without us making their lives harder. It would have been much more interesting to have put up either the original, or one that talked about the differences -- I'd absolutely encourage high schoolers to see our version and talk about what changed and why.

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Sunday, November 04, 2007

Failing to sleep in

There's nothing like a day when you can sleep in, especially when you are in a hotel a long way from home and you don't have to take anyone to school or take anyone for a walk. It almost never happens -- normally if I'm in a hotel I have to set alarm clocks. And the whole sleeping in bit is made even better when the day before was long and exhausting, and made better than that by the fact the clocks have gone back an hour so I can really sleep as long as I want to plus an hour...

But the front desk phoned at seven a.m. to let me know I had a driver I didn't want or need or order waiting to take me nowhere at all. And that was that on sleeping in for the morning. So I shall write a slightly sleepy morning blogpost instead.

It's weird. They call these things junkets. It's a word that means either "a sweet dessert", "a party" or "a trip made for pleasure at someone else's expense". And the pleasure trip aspect is certainly there for the journalists, who get flown to somewhere nice by the film company, put up in hotels, see the film and then spend a day or a few hours talking to the people who made it. When I was a journalist, getting on a junket was always considered a good thing -- a small amount of work for a fair amount of pleasure and adventure.

Having done a few of them now on the other side of the press conference table I think it's worth mentioning that they aren't really junkets for the people organising them or for the people being interviewed. They are work.

We assembled yesterday morning early in a hotel back room. A lady did hair and make up for the cameras (which means, in my case, a bit of powder, and then her looking at my hair and asking "Is it meant to be like that?" and me saying, um, yes, sorry). Then into a back room to be led onto the stage for a press conference. Ray Winstone and Crispin Glover had just seen the film and loved it (Crispin: "And mostly I don't like films I'm in,"), John Malkovitch, Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie haven't yet seen it. Bob Zemeckis was there but decided some years ago not to do things like interviews and junkets and press conferences (very wise, and I rather wish I could do likewise).

I like Angelina. She's nice, very professional, and has a slightly goofy sense of humour. Last time I met her was November 2005, when she was doing the acting bit of Beowulf. Even then, it had already been reported in the papers that she had closed down production on Beowulf by walking off the set after a fight with Ray Winstone -- two weeks before her first day on set. I realised that where she was concerned the press were happy to simply make up stuff that sounded credible. It didn't need have to have any basis at all in reality.

It was obvious during the press conference that a large contingent of the press just wanted to talk to her and talk about her private life, something she declined to do and handled with grace and aplomb. Overall, the press conference went well (I think my favourite bit was the way Ray Winstone, answering questions, always refers to me and Roger Avary as "The Boys", as if we're a couple of writing hardcases who will come over to your house and beat you up with our typewriters.)

And then on to interviews. Round tables: a dozen journalists in each room, and Roger and I go in, talk for half an hour and are then moved to the next room, where another dozen journalists are waiting to ask the same questions, while Anthony Hopkins, always one room behind, is moved into the room we were in.

And then it was off to hotel rooms for individual interviews, and telephone interviews with journalists in Kansas and suchlike places. And then, brain dead, we were done.

The reaction to the film from the journalists and interviewers, who had seen it the previous night, seemed overwhelmingly positive, which was a relief.

It's nice that people have started to see the film, and are now actually talking about the thing they've seen. (I got a bit tired of reading online "reviews" of the film, which were always mash-ups of what people thought they'd seen in the trailers with what they imagined we were doing to the story, along with complaints about visuals they hadn't properly seen yet, which then normally concluded with the loud and proud announcement that as they knew they wouldn't like it, they wouldn't be seeing it, and it certainly wouldn't be Beowulf. Several of them were written by people who should, I thought, know better. I've never minded getting bad reviews, but in the past they've always come from people who had at least read or seen the thing they were complaining about.)

Anyway, now we've started screening it, real reactions are coming in.

Here's a letter Jeff Wells that he put up at his blog in advance of his review appearing, which he's posted I think partly because he was embarrassed by having said nasty things about Beowulf last week before seeing it http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/archives/2007/11/beowulf_2.php
Here's someone who saw a preview screening at UCLA - http://strstruckdreamr9.blogspot.com/2007/11/beowulf.html
and another early screening blog http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=43263288&blogID=325323587
Moriarty reviewed it over at aintitcool -- http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34678 -- and I'm sure that lots of other reviews are going to start surfacing now that people are seeing it. (It's not that we were playing the completed film close to our chest. It's just that it wasn't completed -- the film, in its final form, was only emitted from the computers this week. And the Imax 3D print people started seeing on Friday afternoon was only completed on Friday morning.)

...

Dear Neil,

About two or three months ago I was found a book in the New Release section by you and Micheal Reaves. Being a fan of yours, I bought the book, presuming it would be good. It was good.

However, it didn't seem to be your style exactly so I checked the release date: 2007.

I was surprised that I hadn't heard anything about this book on your blog since I have been reading it for about a year, maybe more.

I thought that maybe, albeit doubtfully, there was someone else in the world named Neil Gaiman.

Nope. Under OTHER NOVELS FOR YOUNG READERS BY NEIL GAIMAN, was Coraline.

The book is called Interworld.

Just asking why you havent mentioned it at all on your blog.

-Camille

I'm posting this to remind people that there is a SEARCH function on the www.neilgaiman.com pages. They take you to http://www.neilgaiman.com/search_form/. If you typed in Interworld it would give you about 15 hits from the website, first among them http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/Interworld.html which is all the times I've labelled a blog entry Interworld since I've been doing labelling on this blog (basically this year). And which would answer all your questions...

Hello, Neil!

Sorry if this is old news, but your journal has been nominated for Best Literature Blog on the 2007 Weblog Awards.

http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-literature-blog-1.php

The voting closes November 8 and you're currently in the lead!

Best of luck,

Leanne

Thank you! What fun. (Which left me suddenly wondering what happened to the "Bloggers Choice" awards -- looks like they get handed out next week in Las Vegas.)


...

Lots of people asking what's happening in the Philippines in a couple of weeks. I'm talking to an ad congress -- I don't think the event is open to the public -- and doing something with Fully Booked (I googled but only found http://www.fullybookedonline.com/adsdetail.php?id=53).

Anyway. Maddy is here -- I've told her she has to blog the Premiere please -- and I am going off to be a dad now. (In the interests of fairness, I should add that an apologetic fruit basket has just arrived from the people who sent the 7.00 am car and driver, putting me in mind of the Elvis Costello bit on the old Larry Sanders Show. And that Maddy has been eating the gummi bears out of it.)

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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Hallowe'en

You can download a podcast from Beowulf of me being interviewed about the film last week, almost immediately after I'd seen it all the way through for the first time.

Dave McKean says thank you, and he has now found his origami crabmaker. (And I say thank you too, to all the volunteers.)

Edit to add: Dave says...

Neil,
Please post a note thanking everyone for such a wonderful response.
It's great to know you can get an origami crab in an emergency.

d


Neil, I wanted to be sure someone told you that someone did a pumpkin rendition of Death (here: http://www.hommage.us/gallery/displayimage.php?album=8&pos=1) and entered it in the Wired "Show us your geeky pumpkins" competition (here: http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/10/show-us-your-ge.html).

I don't know how that compares to the previously posted Neil o' lantern but I have to admit that I bounced up and down in my chair when I saw it; it's always so cool to find more proof that Gaiman fans are legion ...

Cheers,

Betsy O'Donovan

How cool! and for more (not me-related) pumpkins...



Hi Neil, I thought you might enjoy this. www.duarte.com/halloween


Duarte Design specializes in presentation graphics. (We did Al Gore's slides for An Inconvenient Truth.) See what our designers came up with this Hallowe'en.

I'm a new employee here, and my husband and I had a BLAST carving our first entry to the contest. Enjoy!

and then there are the costumes...

Hello Mr. Gaiman.

I hope you don't mind it when, instead of using this form to send you interesting questions, people use it to send you delightful photos of themselves in their Delirium costume which they made for Hallowe'en. Because, (in case you haven't already guessed) that is my exact intention.

Also, I love your stories, and wish you continued inspiration and good fortune!
Love from Canada
Andrea
(You'll find the pictures here. Sorry if there's a better way of doing this, I'm not very computer-savvy.)

http://neilgaimanboard.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=733605825&f=68210996141&m=48010555241&r=29010566241#29010566241


I really don't mind posting it at all. If someone wants to create a Picassa or Flikr or something place that people can upload pictures of them in costumes inspired by stuff I wrote, I'll happily put up a link to it here.

...

Hi there. My name is Erin and some of my community members suggested I write to you and tell you a little about myself and see if you'd be willing to pass a link on to your readers.

I'm suffering from two neurological conditions that keep me from working, but not bad enough for SSA to find me eligible for Medicaid so I can have brain surgery, which would allow me to go back to work. I started a "grass roots" campaign that is getting larger every day. It's called Project Download and it gives a person the chance to help save my life by making one small click a day. Details can be found at http://projecterin.com/.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and possibly considering sharing it with your readers. It would mean the world (literally) to me.
Warm regards,

Erin Bennett

I wasn't going to, but I was impressed enough with Erin's FAQs (http://projecterin.com/faq.html) that I'm happy to put this up. Hope you get the clicks, and the medical treatment, and good luck.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Embed Time Stories

I'm typing ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS currently. Am wondering whether to change the title to Odd and the Frost Giant, because only one Frost Giant ever comes onstage (as it were), although there are others in the background, and of course there's always Loki.

I was just looking at the new expanded Beowulf website, over at http://www.beowulfmovie.com/. They had TV spot trailers up, and I was pleased to see in this new one had lots of little bits of footage that weren't in the stuff I've seen so far (which is minutes 15-30 approximately) -- shots from the Race with Brecca, of Beowulf from the last part of the film as an older man, bits of Dragon footage, and a lot more than just Grendel's Mum in human form. It says it's easily embeddable, so I will give it a shot.

Am really looking forward to seeing it all and finding out what it is that Bob Zemeckis and his team actually made.

(The video's acting a bit oddly when I put it into Blogger. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it behaves when I post this. And if you're reading this on an RSS feed and it cuts off here, click on the link to the actual neilgaiman.com/journal webpage to keep reading)

[Deleted because too many people complained about it being really irritating and autoloading. Sorry -- Paramount had promised they'd get it click-activated.]


Meanwhile... the web takes you odd places. I mean, I'm out of Marmite. Not a problem in the UK, but problematic in the US. So I google to find out how to order Marmite, and the next moment I'm discovering that you can make Marmite go white by hitting it for half an hour. FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, WHO ORIGINALLY HIT MARMITE FOR HALF AN HOUR AND DISCOVERED THIS? It's at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuunsaiki/303084929/

Hi Neil,Thanks for link to the Wikipedia entry on cants. Now I finally have a word to describe Carny Talk, a language my grandparents taught me, that they used in the carnival back in the 30's. I'm always looking for more information about that. Here's the page where I discuss the version I was taught: http://www.winterscapes.com/carny.htm
-Kate Winter

Thanks, Kate. I loved your link to http://welcometothefair.com/lingo/ and thought I should link to it here for people who are planning to write Novels in November. After all, half of those words are plots...

I was fascinated by this Guardian article -- http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/observer_books.html -- not only because it links to the winners of the Guardian "graphic short story" prize (suddenly I find myself turning into Eddie Campbell, and wanting to explain that Graphic Novel just means comics anyway, and Graphic Short Story actually means er, comics), but I was bemused by the view of history in which quality UK newspapers started reviewing comics seriously in 1996, about eight years after the real reviews started. I think what the writer is actually saying is that he was surprised when he started editing the book page to find that his reviewers were doing reviews of graphic novels, but to his surprise these reviews and the books they were reviewing were as good as the other books they were writing about.

Bill Stiteler sent me this link to a set of photographs from a parallel universe -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamhundley/sets/72157594235409275/

Joshua Middleton has some lovely pictures up from a Sandman project that didn't happen at http://joshuamiddleton.blogspot.com/2007/10/one-that-was-put-to-sleep.html

and I think I should offer congratulations to Holly Gaiman on becoming employed.

...

Thanks to Dan the mighty WebGoblin, people who go to http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/01/you-think-theyre-cuddly-but-i-think.asp, or who just click on the final link in this post can once again download or hear The Sinister Ducks song.

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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

to putter about the house?

This came in and was really helpful, so I'm putting it up in full.

Poor Neil! The whole concept of maid cafes is indeed pretty strange, but I guess somewhat understandable if you know some things about Japanese pop culture. Maid cafes are a type of cosplay (costume play) restaurant -- basically it's not too different really from going to Medieval Times or something like that in the US. (There are also Butler cafes, by the way.) The thing that probably makes it weird is that Maid cafes (and presumably Butler cafes too) are all about moe (mo-eh)! Which basically means that yes, it's about a fetish. I think what is weird to most Westerners is that Japanese fetishes aren't necessarily things most people not Japanese are going to find particularly sexy.

I think the person who wrote in about pedophilia yesterday is probably slightly misunderstanding the term "Gothic Lolita" and is applying it to the concept of moe/maid cafes. Gothic Lolita is a style of fashion/lifestyle in Japan ... and it doesn't actually have anything to do with the book Lolita or little girls. The term originated with a clothing line called "Young Gothic Lolita" (the men's line was called "Young Gothic Aristrocrat") that began being sold in the 90s. Most people into Gothic Lolita fashion had no clue that a book existed until it was published about in a magazine targeted towards the movement. I would say the attraction of the fashion for women is just a desire to emulate Victoriana, and for men it's a sort of strange sexual attraction to the primness associated with Victorian costumes. I mean, Gothic Lolitas do not typically bare a lot of flesh. Neither do the maids in maid cafes.

However, I would say that there is a sort of mainstream acceptance of vaguely pedophilic attitudes in Japan (mostly contained to fiction -- quite a few popular manga/anime series include overtones of it, including "Loveless", "Negima!", and "Enzai" -- all released in the US). I just wouldn't say the maid cafes are necessarily an example of that.

Sorry for going on so long,

Annalisa


and I just got this --

Hi Neil,

I'm the video guy at MSN UK and we've just been given the exclusive Beowulf trailer that was featured on Film 2007 last night.

If you think your readers would be interested in watching it, they should follow this link: http://video.uk.msn.com/v/en-gb/v.htm and click the massive Beowulf banner at the top of the page.

(I'm not so much acting as MSN corporate pimp here as much as I'm pimping that massive Beowulf banner. I'm also one of the photoshop guys here and I'm pretty pleased with that one.)

-Antony


and was surprised to see that the trailer was one that I'd not seen at all. It's fascinating where Beowulf is concerned (for me, anyway) seeing new bits of footage as the computer emits them. Can't wait to see the film in its entirety and find out what it is.

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Thursday, July 26, 2007

Here and Now

I'm rather hoping that Maddy will take over this blog while we're here in San Diego, but she is fast asleep right now so it's up to me to say that a) we're here, that b) I signed piles of books and the 50 CBLDF prints, and that c) this evening Roger Avary and I presented 20 minutes of 3D Beowulf footage to the world.

And while I can't show it to you in 3D, and it's Not Really The Same as seeing the Actual Thing, the trailer is now up at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/beowulf/

...and the Beowulf website has gone live at http://www.beowulfmovie.com/.

After the presentation there was a party-reception-thing on a rooftop. I don't think I moved more than five paces from the entry in the two hours I was there, saying hellos and doing mini-interviews and the like and occasionally watching people with plates of nibbles go past but never coming near enough for me to actually find out if there was anything on the plates I wanted to eat. Sigh. I am crap at parties. At the point that I realised that any attempt to say goodbyes would mean I would be there for another hour, I slipped off down the stairs and went back to my hotel, still wondering what kind of nibbles had been on those distant plates....

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Tuesday, July 24, 2007

One of those long posts that goes all over the place...

Sooner or later, Stardust will have come out, and no-one will be interviewing me about it, and I won't be linking to things about it, and I'll have a life back again, and this won't be the *Stardust movie blog guest starring Me and the San Diego Comic-Con*. But that's what it seems to be tending to turn into right now, for which I apologise.

There are a lot of Stardust preview screenings happening currently around the US. (I think on the sensible assumption that the word of mouth is good from people who've seen it, and that we need a lot more of it.) I'm not going to post them all (I don't find out about most of them) but if you google "free stardust screening" or "stardust preview" or similar you'll find them -- here's one on Thursday in Boston, for example, along with competitions, like this one for free tickets in Canada. Then there's a bunch of extremely strange things I didn't even know about before I started googling just now, like Stardust make-up, and Stardust Jimmy Choo shoes...

(Heidi MacDonald sent me a "review" of the Stardust poster, which I thought was wonderfully silly. It's at http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/114557.html.)


(Here are some Stardust dead princes watching the action. From left to right: Sextus, Tertius, Primus, Secundus, and I can't for the life of me remember whether Julian Rhind-Tutt and David Walliams are Quartus and Quintus or the other way around. Sorry. I checked the IMDB thingie and it was quite useless. It didn't list either of them, but it still has someone listed who, I assume, simply told them she was in it to pad her resume.)

Comicon is nearly here, hurray! I was browsing through the schedule and must say I expected to see Maddy's name in this panel listing. Would she consider doing this sort of thing in the future? She seems to have fun when talking about her Dad!

Sunday, July 29

12:00-1:00 My Dad Makes Comics!— What does a comics career look like from a kid's eye view? Find out with Sky and Winter McCloud, daughters of Scott McCloud (Making Comics); Alexa Kitchen (Drawing Comics is Easy (Except When it's Hard)), daughter of Denis Kitchen; and Brennan Wagner and Amanda Wagner, son and daughter of Matt Wagner (Grendel, Mage) discuss what it’s like living with dad, the cartoonist. Room 5AB


Maddy was meant to be on that panel, and was looking forward to it, but she has to walk down the red carpet for Stardust later that afternoon, and we can't be in both places at once.

She bought a dress yesterday. It has accessories. She's just had her hair cut. I have no doubt that she will outshine me, and I will be so proud.

...

There's a very sweet UGO interview with me up at http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=17568&sectionId=2 although it has the kind of little transcription mistakes that it's all too easy to make on a phone interview. I didn't actually say that the protagonist in The Fermata was "masticating" on naked women, for example, and I think I was talking about Tales of the Norsemen, not the Lensmen...

...

Cat Mihos has come off tour with Tool to help me survive San Diego. She'll be helping move me around and dealing with all the people who want time with me, and being cruel but fair. (She wants me to tell the whole wide world that she really really really needs a Batgirl costume. Does anyone out there make Batgirl costumes?) As I type this she and Charles Brownstein are busily trying to sort out the logistics of signings at the CBLDF booth on Thursday and Friday.

Hello Neil, I have read your bit about attack dog fans at comicon and dissapointed as I may be, I have decided not to molest,pester, or otherwise stock you at comicon on Friday. If you should perhaps detect me breaking this promise, I will be the wide eyed blonde crying profusely, dressed in black leather....

Sigh. I think people may have taken what I said the wrong way. What I meant was, it's work for me. I don't get to go to San Diego Comic-Con to enjoy the con. I have a bodyguard/crowd handler with me at all times, just to allow me to get from place to place on time. It used to be Kevin Starr and is now Pam Noles (for whom this is the best time of the year in the whole wide world and who offers amazingly important advice for anyone going to the con in this blog entry so read it). I'm not there on holiday and I'm not attending the convention to do things and go to panels (which may be part of my frustration); I'm working. I love meeting people, but it's been 15 years since I was able to really enjoy a San Diego Comic-Con, because there are too many people there.

I don't have "attack dog fans". I have lots of nice readers and there will be an enormous number of people who are coming to San Diego to see me and to see the other Guests and panels, and that's a good thing. I'm not asking people to leave me alone, or not to say hello or whatever. I like it when they do. (Yesterday I happily mentioned on this blog that I'll sign stuff when I can, and suggested that people not drag around copies of Absolute Sandman because it is heavy.)

I'll be working around the clock every day, doing panels, signings, interviews, meetings, promoting the CBLDF and so on. It's an unmissable experience. But -- and this was the point I was making to the Hollywood Reporter question -- it's not something I'd ever do for fun. There's a reason why I've limited doing the full five day Guest of Honour bit to every four or five years: it's exhausting. The last time I did it, in 2003, I wrote, on the Sunday,

Yesterday was fun, although the schedule was slightly punishing, and around 5:30pm I wound up with a clear-cut choice between attending a dinner, two receptions and a meeting before I did the CBLDF late night reading, or going to my hotel room to sleep for a couple of hours. Holly and Pam Noles, who is moving me from place to place at this thing, ganged up on me (it didn't take much) and I went off and slept, before going down to the end of the CBLDF Auction (the Quilt Michelle Made went for $2600) and doing the late night reading.

...and that's mostly what the latter half of that con is like in my memory. A blur of signings and trying to be in two places at once. I don't doubt that this will be very similar.

In previous years I'd take the train there, so I'd get some work done, and take the train home, so I could decompress and spend three days each way not talking to anyone and just watching the world pass by. This time I can't do that -- immediately after the con I fly to the UK to do a Beowulf presentation...

I was perusing some comic-con stuff and noticed under vendors, it said "Neverwhere--Neil Gaiman Merchandise." Just curious as to what this merchandise this might be? Thank you for all the helpful info, too. The Comic-con schedule is a bit overwhelming, so seeing it broken down like that was useful! Good luck this weekend!

It's actually Neverwear, a pun I ought to be more embarrassed about than I am, and it's Cat's project. There will be two tee shirts on sale at the con, an Anansi Boys one, with art from the upcoming (apparently coming sooner than later now) Hill House edition by Dagmara Matuszak, and the Scary Trousers tee shirt with art by Kendra Stout. I may even have a picture of the latter by the time I'm ready to post this.

I've now got more signing information -- this just came in from Charles Brownstein:

The CBLDF will host two very limited members' only signings at its booth. Because these signings are on the show floor we can only accommodate a very small amount of people.

Signing tickets will be offered as a thank you to anyone signing up for new or renewal membership at the Con. Tickets will entitle the bearer to one signature from Neil. People signing up for membership at $100 or better will also receive a set of Black Phoenix Perfume Imps from the Anansi Boys & American Gods collections, while supplies last. Card carrying members with a current membership card (expiration date 7/31/2007 - 7/31/2008) can get a ticket by making any donation to the Fund.

Signings will be:

Thursday 6:00pm
Friday 6:00pm

Please do not line up more than 15 minutes prior to the signing. Because this will occur on the show floor, starting the line up as close to the starting time of the signing will ensure everyone's safety on the floor. Please do not line up if you don't have a ticket. While we'd like to accommodate everyone, we need to strictly limit tickets to ensure that the floor is safe for all attendees and other exhibitors.

Tickets will be available at the CBLDF booth (1831) at the START of each day, on the day that the signing occurs.

...

(And I think I'm now allowed to say that there will be something cool and Coraline related at 7:00pm on Saturday and that you can get tickets for it from the Focus Pictures booth. (Could this be anything to do with the five minutes of Coraline they mention in the Variety blog will be screened at Comic-con ? I can neither confirm nor deny this. But given how hard I'm hinting, if I were you I'd have suspicions.)

...

There's a sneak peek at Beowulf in the LA Times, with quotes from me and Steve Starkey at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-beowulf25jul25,1,4436117.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews
...

And finally this came in on the FAQ line. A story of great oddness, in a small sweet kind of way. And it was prefaced with the statement:

I'm getting married in the...

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/28/30_28mysterybride.html

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Monday, July 23, 2007

Stardust at Comic-Con. Beowulf Preview ditto.

I'll be putting up a whole post -- possibly later today -- with all the information about my movements and signings and so on at Comic-con. But I'm getting this up first...

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci07prog_paramount.shtml

Only at Comic-Con!

Paramount Pictures announces special offsite screenings for Comic-Con attendees!

Paramount Pictures has announced two special screenings at Comic-Con which will take place at offsite theaters. Tickets for these events are available on a first-come, first-served basis only at the Paramount Pictures booth (#4423) in the Comic-Con Exhibit Hall.

On Wednesday, July 25, be among the first to see footage from Beowulf. This World Premiere screening will take place at 9:00pm with a special introduction and Q&A with Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. Repeat showings will occur on Thursday, July 26 at 5:00pm and 6:00pm.

On Thursday, July 26, see the new film Stardust, with introduction and post-screening Q&A with Neil Gaiman. This special screening is at 9:00pm.

Once again: Tickets for these events are available on a first-come, first-served basis only at the Paramount Pictures booth (#4423) in the Comic-Con Exhibit Hall.

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