Why I Like Russia

Cabal the dog is braver than lions. He's braver than elephants and braver than generals. But, I discovered last night, he doesn't like thunderstorms, and turns into a worried two-year old child when the lightning strikes and the thunder roars. Which is why I got very little sleep in the small hours of last night.

Anyway...

The email from Paramount that came in earlier today contained good news -- Stardust opened at Number 1 in Russia, and took 3 million already -- and bad news -- we were Number 4 on Friday night in the USA and took 3 million. Which means, it went on, that the projections are that we'll easily break $100 million internationally; and that as the majority of US reviews are good to excellent*, and the exit polls they've done on people coming out are as good as could be hoped for, that Stardust will hang around for a little while longer in the US (which is, after all, about 40% of the theatrical market) and hope that word of mouth does what the ad campaign has significantly failed to do.

* Stardust reviews can be read at
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/stardust

and
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/stardust/

(Although the review collections leave out the NPR review at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12688902
which I like mostly because it describes it as reminding him of the Princess Bride with a healthy dollop of Blackadder.)

There's a fascinating article about Stardust and The Princess Bride, and about how Paramount marketing seem to have come a cropper on the same pitfalls that The Princess Bride did:

http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2007/08/stardust-stirs-.html

Meanwhile as an author, the thing I found strangest last night was being able to watch people, more or less in real time, come out of the cinemas and go on to Amazon and order a copy of Stardust in one edition or another. There's a new Amazon Feature which rates the most popular items for an author individually rather than lumped together, and as I type this there are four editions of Stardust in the top five of my things on there (with the audio book of Stardust now in my Amazon top twenty -- hurrah!) http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/15213/.

...

Could you, by any chance, post the mole footage? I know it seems silly, but of all the animals I've seen living in Minnesota (foxes, deer, bears, minks, otters, grouse, pheasants, giant snapping turtles, chipmunks, bald eagles and a few pelicans), I've never actually seen a mole. I feel very curious about the look of the thing.

Sure -- let me see if I can figure out how to put it up here directly through blogger without putting it onto youtube or something first. It's just film from an old phone, and it's small to begin with.

...

I really enjoyed this presentation and annotation, by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, of a letter from an Australian bookselling chain who think they deserve more money from small publishers, so are trying to charge them for the privilege of being stocked, and the reply from an irate but sensible publisher:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009263.html

...

So a few months ago I noticed that things had stopped working. The Slingbox. Various computers. The house network didn't do what it used to. Something was wrong.

I got the electrician who had redone the junction box, where all the cat 5 cables come out to the house, while I was away. "You did it wrong," I told him. "Everything worked before you came." He inspected all the cabling and told me, no, it was all fine.

It wasn't fine. A couple of computers were okay, but the rest of them couldn't get on to the network. Even the network printer didn't work.

Yesterday he came back and we tried to figure out what was wrong.

"I don't understand it," he said. "I mean, I hooked them all up right..."

I went on to the web and checked what where the Cat 5 cable wires are meant to go. There was a huge illustrated colour diagram showing all the different wires, orange and green and blue and brown and their stripy equivalents, and where they fit in the head. "So you did them like this?" I asked.

"Er..." and he looked, and he checked. "No. No, I didn't." It turned out he'd put them in in an order of his own devising. The strange thing was that a couple of the computers had managed to get on the network anyway, despite that.

So he put all the wires where they should have been. As if by magic, things started working...

Except for the Linux computer in the attic, which can no longer find the network.

...

And for those of you looking for your own falling stars...

I don't know if you're aware of it or will even be in the right circumstances to watch it, but tomorrow (Sunday) night around 11ish to Monday morning 6ish the Perseids are making their appearance. The peak of Perseids will be during the predawn period Monday. The professionals are saying it will be a wonderful shower with a lack of moonlight and the shower peaking at 80 meteors per hour. Even Mars will enjoy the show. Anyway, I thought this would be something you'd enjoy.

Labels: cables, making light, Stardust movies, Thunder and lightning, why computers are bloody-minded tools of the devil

As Dr Johnson said...

I was meant to be on NPR's TALK OF THE NATION tomorrow. But their schedules have shifted and I'll be on the radio this afternoon -- Wednesday the 8th of August. I think that http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5
is their website. I'll be on towards the end of the second hour (the hour that some stations don't get).

John Scalzi writes wisely, as usual, over at his blog about Stardust and how he thinks it'll do:
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/2007/08/07/stardusts_chances.html
and I couldn't see anything there to disagree with.

I have no doubt at all that Stardust will do brilliantly around the world, rock out on DVD, and become one of those films that is beloved. But how it will do this weekend... ah, that's a mystery. I was fascinated by this article about success and failure -- and, more importantly, the perception of success and failure -- in movie box office:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/hollywood-where-ignoran_b_59464.html
(link via.)

I remember the first time I went to Hollywood, with Terry Pratchett, in 1992 I learned that you could frame any conversation about something you wanted to do in a plot that Hollywood Execs didn't understand or had a problem with if you referred to another movie that they'd seen. ("So why don't they...?" "Because they forget about it, um -- just like at the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK." "Oh. Got it.") And it was useful for talking about the feel of things -- you simply positioned what you were talking about against or with other films.

By 1996, when I went back to Hollywood, something had changed. I remember naming a movie in one of those conversations -- talking about look and feel or about lighting or about something like that -- and having the Exec look at me as if I had something unpleasant on my shoe, and he said, simply, "But that film didn't make any money." He couldn't understand why I would even have brought it up.

...

Over on Charles Vess's blog you can see a photo of us at the end of the premiere, me in a tuxedo and him not, because he forgot his shirt studs.

The birdchick does a honey from our hives taste test over at http://www.birdchick.com/2007/08/go-see-stardust-and-little-about-our.html

Hi Neil, I was wondering if you knew what's up with Rich Horton's Fantasy: Best of the Year 2007 Edition. There are three authors touted prominently on the cover of the mass market paperback: you, Gene Wolfe, and Peter S. Beagle. Of the three of you, Beagle is the only one who actually has a story inside. What happened? Was there a story of yours that was supposed to be in it? And what about Gene Wolfe?

It was a screw-up - the publisher reused the names from the previous year, by accident. They wrote to me and apologised, and I told them that somewhere in my basement I have a handful of copies of the UK edition of THE SANDMAN BOOK OF DREAMS in paperback, which proudly lists Stephen King on the cover as having written a story, for reasons no-one was ever able to explain. That time we were lucky, and we caught it in time to pulp the print-run. But sometimes you can't.

Hi Mr G,
Can I download the clip of Maddy's interview of you? I want to hear it over and over again to boost myself. It's just inspiring to listen to a daughter interviewing her dad. It makes me want to write more too, just like you; and just like you, you write for the people important to you.
Thanks,

JPB

PS. Please say HI to Maddy for me. :)

Easy (well, easy after a quick Google anyway). It's at the Harper Collins Digital Media cafe -- http://harpercollins.iamplify.com/ -- and the direct link to the free download is http://harpercollins.iamplify.com/product_details.jsp?productId=807

As you'll ultimately be getting one of the Coraline puppets, I thought you might like to see how they're being made: http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/beginning-to-build-coraline/

That would be cool even if I wasn't getting one...

Wow. Hey! Why have you stopped putting a "stardust"/"stardust movie" label on posts that involve Stardust? (Of course the choice of labels is completely your prerogative, but it would make it a lot easier to find certain posts, and it seems like this would be an ideal time to make use of the label function - is there a particular reason you have stopped using the labels in this case?)

Ignorance, madam. Pure ignorance. Or at least, ineptitude when it comes to labelling.

Labels: Coraline, honey, John Scalzi, labels, more Stardust mostly, one of those posts that covers lots of things I can't be bothered to label, radio, Stardust, Stardust movies

may be comin' to your town...

There's a lot of travel coming up, some of it Stardust or Beowulf related. But I thought I should start to put some of it down here. I just realised that the stuff I've put up recently over in the Where's Neil blog hasn't posted, and I haven't been updating the Google Calendar thingie, so we need to untangle that. But for now...

I'll be at the Chengdu international conference on science fiction at the end of August. I wish I could go from there to Worldcon in Japan but it doesn't seem likely. I'll be flying from there to Budapest and from there to Italy...

(Googling the Chengdu festival, I found this fascinating article on SF in China -- parts one, two and three. We learn that In the early eighties, the Party considered Sci-fi an evil, which could lead the public astray. All sci-fi writing across China ceased. The magazine Science Fiction World was the only survivor of the crackdown. But that things change..."Sci-Fi writing is now supported by Chinese government as it is considered to be a genre that can inspire the whole nation's ability to think imaginatively and popularizes science nationwide, " Yao Haijun, the editor of Science Fiction World magazine, said.)

I'll be at the Mantova (Mantua) Literary Festival on the 7th and 8th of September (I just found some details at http://www.neilgaimania.it/html/view2.php?id=32&nomedb=articoli).

I'll be in the UK at the end of September: The Bath Children's Literary Festival. (Bath as in the beautiful town, not as in a festival dedicated to literature about bathing children. My event is http://www.bathkidslitfest.co.uk/event_J19.htm) There will be an evening reading and Q&A that may also be a signing on Tuesday the 2nd of October. Then the UK Stardust premiere in Leicester Square on the 3rd of October.

I learned this morning that there may be a trip to Sweden and one to Japan in there, but I don't have details and confirmation yet. And probably more to come. (Actually, there is definitely more to come.)

...

I'd promised myself I wouldn't keep linking to Stardust reviews but then I learned that " This summer, Hollywood will release a romantic fantasy adventure movie again, its likes a long time we never seen this genre made by Hollywood. " And I'm still wondering if the review was translated from another language, or if there was some awful compositing accident in which the words were dropped and jumbled, or if the person who wrote it uses English in their own way. Either way it's very charming, if rather odd.

A more normal one is http://media.www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2007/08/02/LifeArts/A.Modern.Fairy.Tale.To.Enchant.Us.All-2929151.shtml which concludes by saying, To say that "Stardust" bears some similarities to "The Princess Bride" would be fair. This movie measures very favorably against that earlier classic and is the best young adult oriented "modern" fairy tale since. It truly is "The Princess Bride" for this generation. Which is nice. I've tried to explain to interviewers that, no, I don't think it has much in common with The Princess Bride, they're at present the only two things in that genre.

James Vance, is a fine writer and an old friend who has a terrific blog over at http://www.james-vance.com/jvblog/. He's done an interview with me about Stardust at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=070804_8_H6_spanc37312 where he asks a few different questions and, as a result, gets some different answers.

And here's the San Francisco Chronicle -- http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/05/PK27RB3233.DTL&type=movies -- which begins "That disturbance in the universe you may have felt is the potentially unholy alliance between Hollywood and Neil Gaiman..."
...

Dear Neil ,You do sound a little grumpy.Here's one more thing that might - I hope - put a smile back on your face:
http://dailymotion.alice.it/video/x2aj1j_a-gentlemens-duel_shortfilms
Don't miss out on it, it's wonderful. Greetings from Rome.
Nathalie

You know, oddly enough, I saw this a few weeks ago -- Francisco Ruiz, who made it, was one of the storyboard artists on Hellboy 2, and we shared a bus in to the studio each morning, and when he went back to the US he left me a DVD. Which proves there really are only 500 real people in the world and they all know each other. Or just that the world is a very small place indeed.

Labels: Bathing Children - a good thing?, China, Stardust movies, Tristan or Tristran?, why don't I stay home and walk the dog?

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.

Labels: Beowulf, San Diego Comic Con, Stardust movies

A band of bandits

The promotional world for Stardust is starting, which has a nervous author who was convinced that no-one in the world is going to know about the movie, or that it's good, starting to breathe a sigh of relief. There are free screenings starting to get the word out, and according to Google news, if you buy stuff at French Connection you can get free tickets...
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-shoptalk0713,0,2458209.column?coll=ny-entertainment-promo


And I got a phone picture from my friend Kelli Bickman in New York letting me know that new posters have been spotted in Manhattan. They take some elements from the original poster and rearrange them...

(And Kelli says -- Neil.. S.O.S. i've recently fallen prey to a real-estate con-artist who is trying to steal my rent stabilized apartment/studio of 12 years and I don't have the resources to fight the court battle. Is there anyone out there who can help find me a pro bono real estate attorney in Manhattan (or will barter art)? or if there is anyone out there who has considered buying my work or commissioning a painting but hasn't gone the distance, now is a Very Good Time. Help me save my home and squash this con artist. A court date has been set for July 23. Thank you ten billion times for your help. kelli bickman - www.kellibickman.net I've known Kelli for about 15 years, she's a great artist and a very nice, kind person, so I'm happy to post this. Any New York lawyers who like art out there?)

Anyway, here's the International version of the original poster, which is a bit more golden than the US version.

I just realized this morning that the weekend Stardust opens is also the weekend of the Perseids meteor shower, one of the most active times for "shooting stars" of the year; so it wouldn't be unheard of at all for people to see the movie, walk out of the theater, and actually see a shooting star themselves.

Was the opening planned that way (if it was, this is an incredibly cool bit of marketing that I'm surprised I haven't seen mentioned yet), or was this just an amazing coincidence?

It's an amazing coincidence. But now I've told people, maybe it'll be a key wossname in the marketing strategy, in those parts of America where you can still see the stars.

...

It's all animal world here at the house. The last two cats came home from my assistant Lorraine's (she got a jungle kitten and decided she had too many cats in too small a house), while Fred the Unlucky Black Cat, who had vanished for several weeks, reappeared last night slightly the worse for wear -- he had an injury on his thigh that smelled like rancid cheese, which I washed with peroxide, and a new scar on his forehead, and he's now in the basement recovering and appreciating not being outside any longer. He now goes floppy whenever he gets picked up. I've gone from two and a half cats (the half being Fred outside in the garage) to six cats in a couple of weeks.

Fred's garage, which has a magnetic lock on the cat door, so only he can get in, has recently been invaded (which may be why he'd vanished, and also why he had a new leg injury). Birdseed was scattered everywhere. So the Birdchick set up a camera to find out who could be doing it, and how.

The conclusion -- not entirely unexpected -- is that a magnetically locked cat door is no obstacle to a family of determined raccoons...

(Overexposed photo tweaked by Bill Stiteler.)

Labels: birdchick, Fred the Unlucky Black Cat, masonic raccoon pictures, rescue Kelli Bickman from her predicament, Stardust movies

Badger. Mushroom. Snake. Well, only badger really.

Stardust will be screening at the Edinburgh Festival -- http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/films/stardust/. No idea if I'll be there or not. Like so many things I found it at about the same time as the Stardust News Blog did, but Martyn finds so much other stuff I miss. http://www.stardustnews.info/ is the site, and it's worth bookmarking

Right.

I think this is the best news story today. It's better than the tree man one. Honest.

THE Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a scary rumour – giant badgers are stalking the streets by night, eating humans. The animals were allegedly released into the area by British forces...

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22056684-5001028,00.html

(I found a picture of the whoo scary scary badger in question.)

I saw the "Teen tie in" edition of Stardust at my local B&N. The cover was just blue with stars on it and the word Stardust. It looked really ugly and dull. Why do you let them put covers like this on your books?

Um. In this case, because I didn't get any say in it. Paramount didn't approve any of the covers that Harper Children's proposed, and the book had to have a cover, and finally -- and I think it was more or less at the point where the book was going to press -- Harpers offered the blue cover with the logo and Paramount accepted it. I was on the road while all this was going on, and not in a place where I could see email attachments, so I missed it all. Ah well. These things happen. There are many editions of Stardust with pretty covers on them. Like this one...

(I just stole this picture of the new Hardback illustrated edition from Charles Vess's blog over at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/181)

Labels: badger, Stardust movies

Catching up

So, I'm home and writing this in bed before the day starts and the phone begins to ring. Am expecting the jet lag this week to be pretty hellacious, as it was last time I did one of these "nip across the Atlantic for a few days" jaunts.

Let's see...

The screening for 50 People on Sunday night was nerve-wracking (these were not people chosen for their diplomatic abilities -- if they'd disliked it, I would have known) not least because this was the first time I'd seen something close to a finished cut.

I put up some links to reviews in the last entry. I've noticed a few more: Here's big hairy Mitch Benn on his myspace blog, for example.

Monday morning I had breakfast with Michael Chabon, who had also been to Hay and was staying in my hotel, and then it was interviews, from early in the morning -- mostly magazine pieces with long lead times, but also some TV and radio, most of which will come out in the UK in October when the film does. Lunch was on Rotten Tomatoes UK, and was recorded in a Japanese restaurant for a podcast which will mostly consist of chewing noises I expect.

The oddest moment of the day was being interviewed by the BBC for a BBC4 documentary on Fantasy. They did the interview in an old church in Paddington, in the crypt, and as the car pulled up I had one of those feelings of deja vu that you only get when you really have been somewhere before. And as I went down into the crypt, I knew. "We filmed Neverwhere here!" I told the interviewer. "This was the Black Friars' place." I was being interviewed where Richard Mayhew was given his nice cup of tea, before the ordeal.

Then back to Soho for food -- Ten Ten Tai in Brewer Street, which is my favourite unpretentious little Japanese restaurant in London, and is also the nearest eating establishment to Paramount London, so when I'd eaten I walked around the corner and went downstairs and was interviewed by The Man at the Crossroads, Paul Gravett, and answered questions for people who'd just seen Stardust.


Dear Neil,

I was lucky enough to be at the Stardust screening in London on Monday where you also talked about the process of writing the original story, and about your involvement in the film.

I wanted to ask you how it feels to see your original idea filtered through so many different people - going from you, through (in some regards at least) Charles Vess illustrating it, and then through Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn in production of the film's script. How does this process change your feelings about & connection to that original idea - if at all?

You see, I really did want to be intelligent and to ask this on Monday. But I was so excited at seeing the film that my brain went a little bit gloopy and wouldn't work properly. So instead I asked about your dog.....

Lou M


The expression on Paul Gravett's face when he realised that the first audience question was "How's your dog" was a wonderful one.

You always fall short of the original idea. Sometimes you make something else on the way. But I feel like Stardust, especially the illustrated one, is very similar to the thing I set out to make in the first place.

The film is a film (and a really good one) which squeezes and pushes and slides in order to tell the story as a movie, and, I think, succeeds beyond my dreams. I think I must like collaborating.
...

Anyway yesterday Holly and flew home. My dog was happy to see me. Maddy and Holly and Holly's friend Sarah and I watched the first part of the Dr Who two parter (how could I not like an episode which begins on my minus forty-seventh birthday? And has a little girl holding a red balloon?). I had a fight (well, a difference of opinion) with Holly and Sarah about them not watching the next episode without us, of the dammit this is a communal family TV watching experience variety, which I suspect in retrospect I only won because they didn't know where the second half DVD was, so we'll all watch that today. Lovely stuff, Paul Cornell should be justly proud. And an enormous relief after the last couple of episodes.

And then bed and, with my sleep schedule all mixed up, not much sleep at all. Oh well.

Hi Neil,

BBC Radio 3 is repeating the documentary on HP Lovecraft you contributed to -- Sunday 10th June at 20:00 BST.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/sundayfeature/pip/96knh/

Best wishes

Tom

Particularly good news as I missed it the first time.

Also, this coming Saturday the Times (the UK newspaper, which is just called the Times) will be publishing an article of me talking about H. G. Wells's short stories.

Which reminds me...

Why is your voice different when you're talking to some anonymous interviewer about Lovecraft from when you're talking to a con audience about Fragile Things? Your "I can't tell you why that is, other than that Lovecraft is Rock and Roll" voice is much lower than your "They're buying my books, just waiting to get sued" voice. Do you deliberately modulate the pitch of your voice to match the situation, or did you get your soul eaten along the way, rendering your voice higher for some unfathomable reason?

which just left me shaking my head in puzzlement. (Does your voice always sound the same, and not change with what you're talking about?)

I met Lynn Hacking from Final Draft at a trade show this weekend, and he told a very funny story about being caught between you and Roger Avery in an argument. So I have to ask: one space or two after the period?

You can actually tell from a script Roger and I have collaborated on who wrote what, because I always put one space after a full stop, and he puts two. The reason you can tell now is because he has finally sighed and stopped carefully going through anything I write and inserting that extra space, having given it up as a lost cause.

...

Friends of Amacker's (and those who worry) can follow her medical progress as they put her back together over at http://bullwinkle.org/amacker/, which is the blog her brother is keeping.

...

And I feel guilty I didn't mention this before, as some of the events have already happened, but go to http://www.wkrac.org/stardust/stardust.html to learn about the exhibition of Charles Vess Stardusty stuff at the William King Regional Arts Center "serving far Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee". They have amazing Charles Vess original art, along with the books I handwrote the story in and lots of other cool things.

Labels: Doctor Who, get all the way well amacker bullwinkle, jet lag, Michael Chabon, Neverwhere deja vu, Roger Avary, Stardust movies

ulp

This was meant to be a post about how I got to see an (almost) complete version of STARDUST with lots of friends today, and how wonderful it was, but I just got an email letting me know that my friend Amacker Bullwinkle, who was out at our place for the last couple of weeks while I was mostly on the road, to do a bit of dog training not to mention design ziplines to take us to the bees, was in a serious motorbike accident and is in critical condition, and honestly I don't think I could put a blog entry together right now if my life depended on it.

You can read what Martyn Drake at Friends of English Magic had to say about the Stardust preview at http://www.foem.org.uk/?p=308 and what Roz Kaveney has to say at http://rozk.livejournal.com/154527.html. What I've got to say will wait a couple of days...

Labels: get all the way well amacker bullwinkle, Stardust movies

A new pair of ears

In the UK. I was in the car on the way from Gatwick to the hotel when the phone call came in asking if I could stop off in Soho to listen to the Stardust dub, being a fresh pair of ears, so we changed course and I soon found myself in a large room in DeLane Lea, sitting on a sofa while the film rolled and the music played (on the same sofa where, oddly enough, I'd been sitting about a month ago, while David Yates played clips with amazing whooshy sounds on the next Harry Potter film). I ate some sushi, not sure if it was a very early breakfast or just some lunch, had a cup of tea, and then, very impressed, nipped out to check in to the hotel and to meet Holly-who-is-in-the-Uk-too-right-now. Where I am now.

I watched the clips I'll be introducing tomorrow at the Hay festival. Got an email from Paramount telling me that Stardust now has a myspace account at http://www.myspace.com/stardustmovie and they want lots of friends. Discovered that some sort of error meant that last night's blog entry hasn't gone out as a feed. (Oh well.)

Right. Now back to the dub for a bit, then down to Hay. (Waves cheerfully.)

Labels: clips, dubs, In London, other technical terms, Stardust movies

a harum scarum life

Off to the UK in a few hours to present some clips from Stardust at the Hay on Wye festival, and then up to London to be interviewed a lot and to see an ALMOST finished cut of Stardust. I've been holding out these last six months against seeing the incrementally more finished versions of Stardust, wanting to see it with all effects and music in place. We aren't quite there yet, but I'm finally going to get to see it anyway, and will report back. Then home on Tuesday. Too much bloody globetrotting going on, if you ask me.

Occasionally I grumble about low standards of journalism out there in the world, but I was fascinated to see how the Independent created their "cell phones are destroying bees" story out of, more or less, thin air. They were obviously proud of their article -- and as they said in a follow up about a town that had banned cellphone masts because of the damage it would do to bees. Last month, The Independent on Sunday reported exclusively that exploratory research at Germany's Landau University suggested the radiation interferes with bees' navigation systems. Read this Herald Tribune article, as they explain that the Independent article was "a good story....

except that the study in question had nothing to do
with mobile phones and was actually investigating the influence of
electromagnetic fields, especially those used by cordless phones that work on
fixed-line networks, on the learning ability of bees. The small study, according
to the researchers who carried it out too small for the results to be considered
significant, found that the electromagnetic fields similar to those used by
cordless phones may interrupt the innate ability of bees to find the way back to
their hive.... cellphones and cordless phones emit different types of radiation and what you learn studying one type is not necessarily significant to the other, according to the researchers.

Which means that it's not science, it's just bad reporting. End of grumble.


And finally, before I leap into a car and drive to the airport, here's a sneak preview of the cover of Smoke and Mirrors that will be out, er, I'm not sure actually. The trade paperback (oversized) US Harper Perennial editions of the books will be getting new covers in a uniform edition. They will all, for the next few years, look sort of like this. Which is to say, both respectable and odd. For reasons that I do not understand (but doubtless some of you do) the colours went utterly weird when I tried to upload it to Blogger, so I imported the jpg into Picassa and tried to wrench the colours back to where they are on the version I was sent, except the picture in the window window isn't blue, it's a sort of a mustard green...



Hang on. I'm going to try again. Maybe if I juggle it between formats....





Hmm. Well, the version I got from Harper Collins was a sort of a cross between the two... perhaps the best thing is for you to use your imagination, and it will look like that.

...

And now I have to run. Or at least, drive.

Labels: bees, smoke and mirrors, Stardust movies, too much globetrotting and not enough staying at home with the dog

Advertising: threat or menace?

Let's see. There's good, exciting movie news that I'm not going to talk about before it's a bit more real and solid. But it's a happy thing and good, and as soon as I can talk I will.

I just got an email from my agent letting me know that the Czech edition of ANANSI BOYS by Neil Gaiman Won Best Fantasy & Horror title of 2006 by The Czech Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror (ASFFH). This was announced during the ceremony at the Prague Book Fair "Book World" on May 5th. I really need to go to Prague. People keep telling me...

I am tired out in a good way -- the continual walking the dog (and running the dog) seems to be agreeing with me. Today, we had to pick a name so that his microchip papers could be sent off, so we picked Cabal. But he does tend currently to get addressed either as Dog or Doofus. It's odd -- there are acres of woodland around here and I've almost never walked it on my own. Now I'm starting to walk it continually, and am promising myself that there's a lot of work that needs doing -- dead trees to clear and paths to restore and so on...

...

At Ain't It Cool, the mysterious Moriarty (who can, incidentally, be seen getting kissed by Harlan Ellison over at http://www.creatvdiff.com/harlan_ellison.php -- click on An Evening With Sharp Teeth to see the smooching incident) talks about his trip to New York, where he saw Stardust at the super-cool screening everyone was at except me (because I was in Montana, signing books and meeting librarians).

There are a handful of spoilers in there, but the review is very positive. It's at http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32575.

I spent a phone call the other day trying to convince an old friend that the Stardust movie wasn't an all-swordfighting extravaganza, the impression she'd got from the trailer.

I told her it wasn't. That it was a good movie, and that the places it deviated from the book were either about translating something from one language into another, or, infrequently, about time or budget. (We wanted a Lion and Unicorn fight. We simply couldn't afford one.)

What makes me happiest right now is that people who have seen it like it. The word of mouth is potentially there. Now we just have to hope it sticks around enough for the word of mouth to do some good.

So you don't go to the cinema often? Why not? Is it just a general aversion or do you get recognized or is it something I haven't thought of but should have been terribly obvious if i'd just shut up and thought about it for a moment? Any how, yes, 'Hot Fuzz' is a lot of fun. If you really liked it you should watch (if you haven't already seen it) their previous film 'Shaun of the Dead,' which is in the same vein only even better. 'Fuzz' was funny but lacked a heart to it, 'Shaun' has that heart and is the superior film.

Logan M. G.

I thought they were very similar films, doing very much the same sort of thing, just doing it in different genres. The "heart" is just the difference between a romantic comedy and a buddy movie. (Your mileage of course may vary.)

And yes, I go to films. I like films, and have never worried about being recognised (nobody recognises authors out of context anyway). What I meant in the last post was that I always go as a social activity, with someone or someones, not on my own, which made this an almost first. (I finally remembered the last time I went to the cinema alone -- it was in London in 1984 for an every-Sunday at Midnight double bill of Eraserhead and whatever they were showing Eraserhead with. Someone on the world wide web will remember, but I do not.)

...

My favourite disturbing article recently is this one from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2073012,00.html.

The idea that an ad agency would create an "off the peg" rock group whose function is to make music to order for corporate clients that pretends to be real music (however you define "real") seems like the plot of a bad movie (as they fight to get free of their corporate overlords and make real music, or perhaps one lone member of the band slowly discovers that their souls are owned by Coke). There's a horrible wrongness to it, along with the idea that one day every band will be owned by an ad agency, and all songs will secretly be jingles.

Suddenly Bill Hicks seems wiser than ever...

Labels: Advertising in rock music seen as definite evidence of the hand of Satan in our affairs, Czech Awards, Moriarty, Movies, Mystery News I Am Not At Liberty To Talk About, Stardust movies

like cats and dogs

I just went to the movies by myself for, I think, the first time in my life (if you don't count the years I spent in the 80s as a film critic), to see Hot Fuzz. (Nobody else wanted to go but me.) Which I loved, didn't think was too long, and wish it wasn't only showing in one small cinema in a 50 mile radius of my house. The delight in making it came through all the way.

Hi,
Earlier this year you posted link to a podcast by Penn Jillette in which he mentions you and National Gorilla Suit day. I think that the podcast is no longer accessible. If it is, can you point me to the right place? I wanted my husband to hear it.

Thanks,
Heidi

I've searched and I think I've found it at
http://www.pennfans.net/view/Audio_Archive/PennRadio/Penn.Jillette.Radio.Show.2007.01.31/

Hi Neil! As I'm more of a cat person, I 'feel' for your cats! Are they jealous of your new dog? ~ Cancan =)

Jealous? No. Princess is alternately furious with me and desperately affectionate, Coconut (Maddy's cat) is mostly blase but also a bit more affectionate, and Fred is plotting on ways to get revenge on the dog for having treed him yesterday evening. It's the kind of thing I could be really funny about, but the truth is it's rather worrying -- the dog is convinced he needs to protect us from Fred, and has only actually barked twice since we got him, each time inside the house to warn us that Fred was walking around outside and might get us if Dog didn't protect us,meanwhile Fred on seeing the Dog arches his back like a Halloween card cat, swells to twice his size and makes strangled yowling noises to indicate his extreme displeasure. As far as the two mostly-house cats go, I think we'll be fine at getting them more or less to tolerate each other. Fred, however is a law unto himself, and it's going to be interesting.

...

There was apparently a Stardust ad in the LA Times today -- details and the ad at http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/05/06/stardust-movie-posteradvertisement/

Not sure about that tagline. Hope they can come up with something sharper before August. (My own suggestion, "Stardust. It's not a sequel to anything," was appreciated but, probably wisely, rejected.)

Rupert Everett (who plays Secundus) talks about Stardust at http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=20235

Somewhere I have a wonderful photo of all the ghosts sitting on a green screen mantelpiece -- I'll see if I'm allowed to post it here.

...

The bees on the apple blossom are some of them recognisably from my two hives, but there are also at least three other kinds of honeybee turning up. Which is a good reason to post a link to http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/05/where_the_bees.html...

Labels: apple blossom, bees, Cats, Dog, Fred the Unlucky Black Cat, Going to see films on your own, National Gorilla Suit Day, Penn Jillette, Stardust movies

bees and stuff

I'm home again. (There wasn't a blog entry for the last two days because the hotel in Helena, Montana, had such an intermittently dodgy internet connection -- it would sort of work during the day and then stop working at night, just about the point I'd think "Time to write a blog entry". So I'd sleep instead.)

The Moth event on Thursday night (http://www.themoth.org/) was wonderful and scary -- Pico Iyer, Jonathan Ames, Edgar Oliver, Laila Lalami, and a terrified me telling the last story of the night (about my day on Liverpool Street Station in Easter 1977). A quick google found a review up at http://wordriotpress.blogspot.com/2007/04/moth.html.

I've come away from the PEN World Voices event with a real respect and a great deal more understanding of what PEN is and does. http://www.pen.org/ is their website, and I commend it to you.

Then I went to Helena. Got in late on Friday night. Saturday morning, I talked -- first to librarians about the history of comics and comics censorship and the CBLDF and what it does, then about digital stuff (acknowledging myself to be a pixel-stained technopeasant wretch), then for a lunch I talked to librarians about writing and how I became someone who does that sort of thing, and then I talked to an audience of people from Montana mostly. I read to them, then I answered questions, then I signed books for many extremely nice people, and had to confess to most of them that I hadn't really seen much of Montana, what with being in a hotel talking all day. I have to go back -- what I saw was lovely.

While I was signing books in Montana, Charles Vess was in New York, going to a screening of Stardust.

He writes about it over on his blog...

Posh seats for, at most, 50 people. Filling those seats were several of the
movie’s stars (Robert DeNiro, Clare Danes, Charlie Cox), producers (Lorenzo
DeBonaventura, etc.) and many faces both recognizable and not. Matthew Vaughan , the director, introduced the film and the lights went down. Nervous couldn’t half describe how I was feeling at that moment. What if I found myself cringing at what had been done to “my” story. What if everyone started walking out? What if, what if…

And you can find out what he thought of what he saw at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/153.

I don't think I'm going to see it until the beginning of June at a screening in the UK. By that point everything will be finished, and I'll see a completed print. Like Charles, I'm a bit nervous -- I last saw a test screening with lots of stuff not there and not finished, but Charles's blog entry and Harry Knowles's comments the other day on AICN are extremely reassuring. (The longer UK trailer for Stardust, with ghosts, is up at http://www.stardustmovie.com/intl/uk/).

Charles Vess is giving a lecture in New York on May 2nd at the Society of Illustrators, and signing the new hardcover of Stardust on May 4th -- details at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/152.

I have worn my white bee suit today and gone and met the bees. The plumtrees are in blossom. And I have to make Maddy's dinner now.

Labels: bees, Charles Vess, librarians, Montana LIbrary Thingummy, Moth, PEN world voices festival, Stardust movies, weirdly normal labels

Stardusties

A couple of tiny bits of Stardust news.

I was thrilled to hear that Paramount moved the date of release to August 10 2007. Which means we're no longer up against the Simpsons Movie etc.

And Ben Barnes, who plays young Dunstan Thorne (and is thus, apart from Ian McKellen, the first speaking part in the film) was just cast as Prince Caspian. And may be sued by the National Theatre for jumping ship on The History Boys according to the Times.

Labels: Ben Barnes, not being crushed by The Simpsons, posting real actual bits of news without going off on any kind of interesting tangents, Stardust movies

Not quite authorised, not quite not

[Edit to add -- right now if you click on the link you'll just get an Error message, as it wasn't ready to go public and it was running too slowly and so on and has been taken offline. I'll put something up as soon as it's back. Sorry.]


[Later Edit. It seems to be back up -- give the video a chance to load before playing, though, or it will be a bit stuttery...]


I'm not quite sure how widely this is meant to be spread, but Paramount have decided to change direction on their Stardust website at www.stardustmovie.com. Which means the website will take a bit longer to come out, and be a bit different when it does.



Meanwhile they've had a finished version of the early website ready to go for some weeks, containing a few video interviews with me, some answers to Stardust questions, Stardust wallpaper and even a do it yourself Charles Vess colouring thing (which is much too much fun). So we talked to them and they talked to us, and the webelf did webmagic, and if you just happened to click on



http://neilgaiman.com/stardust/



you might find yourself somewhere that looks very different and has Paramount copyright notices and things all over it, but is actually here on www.Neilgaiman.com.

I'm not sure how long we're going to be allowed to keep this up, so if you're interested you should probably go and play with it now, and tell anyone who might be interested that it's here.

Labels: sort of illicit pirate websites that may have to go down again very soon, Stardust, Stardust movies, stardust photos