Writing Challenge: "A Great Day"

This challenge was posed to me by Ann Goza, from my "Beginning Writers' Workshop" student group on Facebook. I am to write 500 words or less on the subject, "You know it's going to be a great day when..."

A GREAT DAY

You know it’s going to be a great day when you get to sleep in. Not only is it your day off from work, but if you have kids, they’re on a field trip for school - and you DON’T have to chaperone. So, at 6:00 AM, you snuggle back under the covers and enjoy at least three more hours of rest. Your pet joins you as a comfy bio-pillow.

When you finally do get up, you discover that your significant other has finally broken out the cappuccino machine that you gave him/her last Christmas. Over a steaming cup with extra foam, you engage in friendly discourse whilst still in your pajamas. With a sultry wink, you’re asked the question: “Should I take a shower before…or after?” You respond in kind, according to your preference, surprised that such a high pronunciation of the word “Yee!” can emerge from your throat post-children. You, my friend, are on a roll.

Thus satisfied on both the gastrointestinal and libidinal fronts, you “start” your day after discovering that it’s actually 11:00 AM. Out of a simultaneous sense of habit and duty, you glance toward your treadmill in the bedroom. No, you think, casting a baleful glare at the contraption. I don’t have to do that today. Instead of putting in your required thirty minutes of hard labor outside of the office, you open a book. You haven’t had any time to read it lately. Your favorite mystery/romance/horror extravaganza has been almost permanently replaced by The Poky Little Puppy and, disconcertingly, Walter the Farting Dog. 

Thankfully, the kids aren't here, but do you know who is? Your favorite talk show host during lunch. Your significant other is out doing something or other. Therefore, you revel with perverse glee in the eternally-shocking paternity revelations of Maury Povich, If you’re a more health-conscious sort, you watch that one  episode of Dr. Oz that you’ve had on DVR for two months. Duly admonished, you wash the dishes and promise that you’ll get back to the treadmill and vegetables tomorrow. Today you had to have grilled cheese.

When your significant other returns, s/he poses you a challenge: Another round of you-know-what, or a round of competitive golf on Xbox Kinect? You pick the golf first, with the other activity as a little forfeit. The loser has to submit to the winner’s best impression of Christian Grey from 50 Shades. You’re game. Against all odds, you also emerge victorious! Then again, you dimly suspect that your SO was “showing off” some brilliant “parking lot shots”. However, who cares? To you go the spoils of both love and war.

You eat an early dinner at your favorite Italian place with actual wine, because the kids aren’t around. You even share a portion of tiramisu for a “pick-me-up” that you know you’ll need tomorrow. Oh, well. To finish off your great day, when you tuck your little ones into bed, they decide to give you five hugs apiece.

Short Story: "Called to Account"

This is a writing challenge posed to me by Chris and Jerri Schlenker from my "Beginning Writer's Workshop" course:

CALLED TO ACCOUNT

A 500-Word Short Story by Rainey Wetnight, a.k.a MsFicwriter

“Mister Edmonds? Would you step into my study for a moment?” 

“Certainly, your lordship.” This isn‘t good. If Lord Marsdale wants something, he summons me to the parlor or dining room. I’m being called to the carpet, but what ghastly infraction have I committed? 

Once he’s seated behind his mahogany desk, he places his fingertips together in a pyramid shape. “It seems that two thousand pounds has gone missing from my bank account.”

“Sir?” Calm down. Keep your tone neutral. 

“I find it rather odd, Edmonds, that just one week ago you were requesting some time off.” 

“I - That is true, but I don’t take extravagant holidays. A fortnight in the country is enough for me.”  

He ignores this. “The only three people on these premises with access to my finances are my wife, my valet Coe, and you - for household expenses. Have you been making withdrawals without my knowledge?”

My spine stiffens. “I would never do so, sir, especially for such a large sum. Have you questioned Coe?” 

Lord Marsdale raises an eyebrow. “I shall, but I thought I’d start with you. What are you not telling me?” 

Square your shoulders. Head high. Stand up straighter. “I have been perfectly aboveboard with you.” 

“Yes, you have, and I applaud you for that. Such is why I’m surprised at your reticence now.” 

“Reticence? My lord, I have done absolutely nothing. Theft is far below me, and these accusations, with all due respect, are far below you.” Good. Keep questioning his honor, and putting him on the defensive.  

“Sit down.” 

He’s kept me standing this whole time. Foolish move. I could have bolted, but didn’t. Why? With cautious grace, I take the one seat across the desk from him. I want him to speak next, and to keep on speaking.  

“Have you been having any financial difficulties lately, Edmonds?” 

“Related to my duties, sir? Of course not. I make a point of budgeting wisely, for this estate and myself.” 

My employer leans forward half an inch. “What about the evening gala for Lord Steyne and his wife?” 

I cringe. “It was their anniversary, and so I purchased food and wines according to their particular taste.” 

“Aye. In this case, ‘their particular taste’ happened to dig us five hundred pounds into the hole…” 

The edge in his voice is growing sharper. I’ve got to nip this in the bud. “What can I say?” I shrug. 

“The Steynes were quite pleased, but I was not. I gave you a reprimand, which you seem to have ignored.” 

“No, sir! I’ve striven to be frugal in our dinners, especially in the servants’ kitchen - less meat, more meal.” 

“Bravo.” He lets his hands slip down onto the desk, and then curls them into fists. “Now I want the truth.” 

I give him a slow, oily smile. “Why don’t you ask your wife? Your beloved Mabel, who is now my beloved?” 

Movie Review: "Borgman"

Beguiling Borgman

By Rainey Wetnight

“I saw a magician.” -Isolde, the daughter of one of the two main characters in this fascinating fable

Camiel Borgman (Jan Bijvoet) first appears in the lives of an upper-middle-class family as a homeless man. All he wants is a bath, he says, because he is “quite dirty”. One might wonder why he doesn’t ask housewife and artist Marina (Hadewych Minis) for something to eat first, but it turns out he has his reasons for wanting to be clean right off the bat. Her high-profile TV mogul husband, Richard (Jeroen Perceval) is immediately suspicious - so suspicious that he attacks Borgman and almost kicks him to death. To make up for this violent outburst, Marina offers the gray-bearded tramp not only a bath, but a meal and a night in her summer house. “I’m sorry,” she says, but Borgman replies sympathy won’t cut it. “I’m in pain,” he informs her. “Nurse me.” She does, over the course of a few days, but Marina is the one who needs help.

Why? Clue number one: One opening scene of Borgman involves a priest. Two: There are also two men with the holy Father, one with a makeshift spear and the other with a shotgun. Three: See the italicized quote above. However, our villain is not just any magician, or even any evil magician. He can make a little girl’s fever vanish (as well as himself), but for what purpose does he need a surgical team? Like a regular stage prestidigitator, he has several assistants, namely Ludwig, Pascal, Brenda and Ilonka. “You’re early,” he tells two of them that Marina can’t see. “Off with you”. However, they’re currently in greyhound form.

With all this supernatural weirdness going on, what’s just as intriguing are the tense familial dynamics. Marina feels underappreciated, mostly by her husband. A gardener (disposable yet biodegradable) looks after the grounds, while a beautiful nanny named Stine looks after the children. Surprisingly, there’s none of that kind of hanky-panky going on, but someone sure is looking to wreck this supposedly happy home.

The best scene in the movie is a late one, a family dinner to which Borgman and his friends are invited. However, despite their malevolent nature, their being present isn’t really necessary in order to make these solid suburban citizens tear at each other’s throats. Richard has just been fired, and the son of his former boss also happens to be at the table: Stine’s new boyfriend. As before, Richard springs into action. He aims to pummel this threat as he had the bearded, tattered old one, but Marina immediately stops him. Later she asks her gardener for a favor: “He has to die, Camiel.” Is her request utterly unreasonable?

What director Alex van Warmerdam excels at is subtlety: the sound of flies buzzing whenever a certain character is around, shots of glasses of dark red wine, the harried scraping of a knife on buttered toast, and metaphors of kisses and a white child near a lake. Even though his touch is deft, sometimes it’s almost too light. You might start wishing that the protagonists would just go off the proverbial deep end already and quit standing on the diving board. However, once they do, it’s absolutely riveting to watch.

In most movies about a capital-A adversary, the main character knows pretty quickly with whom s/he’s dealing. Negotiations ensue, the rate of exchange for temporal happiness is revealed, and a deal is made (blood-signed contract optional). In this one, though, the Tramp can take his time. In one hour and fifty-two minutes, he slowly worms his way into the hearts and minds of his human prey, discovering and warping their desires. “There will be consequences,” Borgman warns Marina when she wants to hire him as the family’s new landscaper. However, she barely bats an eyelash. Does she not suspect…or not care?

Calamity befalls us in several ways. We can lose our jobs, our homes, even our families, due to events that we neither plan nor control. However, with actual evil - as with a fictional vampire - you have to let it in.

RAINEY’S RATING: 3.5 STARS

Movie Review: "Night Moves"

Night Moves, Then Darkness Dawns

By Rainey Wetnight

“I’m not focused on big plans; I’m focused on small plans.” -Jackie Christianson, eco-filmmaker

Here’s a thought experiment: If you knew that according to science, marine biodiversity would be gone by the year 2048, what would you do? If you also knew that protests, online petitions, “Likes” on Facebook, and even environmental filmmaking wouldn’t catch most people’s lasting attention, how far would you go to get it? That’s the question three young people have to answer in Kelly Reichart’s Night Moves. Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning) are organic farmers living at a cooperative which they and their fellow environmentalists call Nature’s Harvest. Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) is Josh’s brother, a former Marine trained in demolitions. These three seek to make their cause known with a bang, not a whimper.

The Green Peter Dam, on a certain unnamed river, prevents salmon from swimming upstream to spawn. They perish with their purpose as fish unachieved, and with no fish, the river’s ecosystem will collapse. Thus, so must the dam. All it takes is five hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, wires, a detonator, a timer, and an unassuming rich senior’s named speedboat - from where the film’s title comes. Early on, the eco-terrorist trio shows more remorse about destroying the boat than the dam. “Well, we don’t really give a [expletive] about longevity,” one of them comments with a rueful look in his eyes. They plan their attack so carefully, pondering each step with as much concentration as a chess grandmaster considers his moves. Nevertheless, even the smallest missteps can cause monumental repercussions.

The most tension-fraught scene in the whole film is not the one at the fertilizer store, but the one on the edge of the obsidian-colored reservoir where the gang plants their boat. They notice that on the opposite side, someone gets a flat tire and has to change it. Meanwhile, there’s only fifteen minutes left until ‘big dam go boom’. “That’s not a good spot,” Dena murmurs in a near-whisper. “No,” says Harmon. He returns to the loaded vessel, looks at the bomb timer, and waits. In the end, however, he must decide: Whose life is more important, especially in the long run? Is it worth turning back when so little will be changed?

Afterward, all of them believe that they’re - in fact, they are counting on - going back to normal, as if nothing happened. (Why is it that criminals in movies almost always think this, and then their conscience betrays them? Since the days of Dostoevsky, this has been true more often than not). What two of them realize too late is that nothing will ever seem normal again - eating dinner with one’s friends and family, working, listening to gossip, or even sorting vegetables for CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture). They’ve all worked so hard to support life through what they do, and in the end, they’re prepared to take it.

Half of this film’s excellence lies in its powerful nature shots: the dam being turned on in the morning and spilling an effervescent geyser into the reservoir, the reservoir itself under cover of darkness, the woods, and most powerfully, a forest of dead trees standing up in the middle of the river being dammed. This is the price we pay for our digital gadgets, our mass-produced food, and industrialization in general. Nothing comes without a cost, without sacrifice. Unfortunately, the trio here is prepared to sacrifice not only their own lives, but the lives of bystanders and strangers, to teach the world (or at least the locals) this lesson.

The question that haunts me at movie’s end is this: How much of an impact did they really have? As one of Josh and Dena’s coworkers mentions: “One dam? You’d have to blow up twelve dams to make a difference. I don’t call [what the perpetrators did] a point. I call that theater.” Real-life terrorists know that scale is crucial: the more people who die, the more attention they’ll get from the media and governments. What Dena, Josh and Harmon do is terrorism, yes, but it causes no widespread panic. Even though their crime makes the national news, there’s (oddly?) no nationwide manhunt. What they thought was a “big plan” ultimately turned out to be small potatoes, at least in terms of people’s response to their message.

My only other critique is that the ending of this film is so dull and anticlimactic that it will resound with a thud in viewers’ minds. None of their questions, or mine, will truly have been answered.

RAINEY’S RATING: 3½ STARS

Movie Review: "The November Man"

Bittersweet November

By Rainey Wetnight

“WHAT DO YOU DO?” -Pierce Brosnan as Peter Devereaux, shouting at his fellow covert agent

Welcome to the grown-up world, Mister Bond. You’ll still find malevolence, mayhem, and gore galore, but no longer will any of your female conquests bear suggestive names revealing their actual purpose. Along with your daily doses of cranial junk food - death, fear and copulation - you’re going to have to choke down vegetables of virtue, moralizing as you’re murdering. Preferably afterward, but you know what I mean.

I am speaking, of course, to you, Pierce Brosnan. You’ve played the iconic role of 007 in four films. Most of them were unintentionally hilarious. We audience members could be forgiven for grinning at your chiseled face being superimposed upon stunt doubles’ heads through the subtle wonders of CGI. As you told the world how you liked your martinis, over and over, we couldn’t help but roll our eyes like you’d roll an olive across a bar counter. We even tried to hide our guffaws until after the ending line in Goldeneye about “debriefing each other”. Now there’s no more time for monkey business. You’re in a different zoo.

Instead of a name pronounceable in macho, monosyllabic grunts, you’re going to have to grapple with the moniker “Peter Devereaux”, coined by Bill Granger. I’m sure you know how to pronounce that first name, but the last one might be a bit of a stretch. Hint: It doesn’t rhyme with “sex”, although there’s plenty of it. I am also sorry to inform you, but the main scene is between your young rival David Mason (Luke Bracey) and a nightclub-loving blonde named Sarah (Eliza Taylor). For you, there’s Alice Fournier (lovely Bond girl Olga Kurylenko). Look, but don’t touch. That would almost be pedophilia at your age, so keep it zipped.

Your present plot is - well, a naturally-convoluted series of plots. Who are the good guys, the bad guys, the good bad guys, and the bad good guys? Add to that some raucous QueasyCam™ car chases, rear-kicking explosions, and gun battles that make those in Treasure of the Sierra Madre look like child’s play. If you’re looking for depth of character a la your role in Remember Me, remember you’re the November Man. ‘When you pass through, nothing lives.’ Which makes me puzzled: what’s up with the ending, then?

Let me be frank with you for a moment. This movie is schizophrenically unsure of what it wants to be, as RogerEbert.com critic Matt Zoller Seitz has so clearly pointed out. If it were a video game, one moment it would be Grand Theft Auto V, and the next moment Mass Effect. I once read that there were only two kinds of plots in the whole world: those of forza and forda, or body and mind. If you try to mix them up, audiences usually get confused, and the less they’ll want to see of one or the other. Nine times out of ten, what they’re looking for is much less mind (a la Agent Hanley, played by Bill Smitrovich) and much more body (Kurylenko). The issues presented in The November Man are very salient, and the villains’ raisons d’etre more believable than the ones in any of your Bond movies. However, I would have preferred that you turn down the volume of blood and turn up the intrigue, a la Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with Gary Oldman.

The character that had me the most interested in your latest picture is the one with the least screen time: Natalia Ulanova, played by Caterina Scorsone. She’s the reason why you do what you do, or why Peter Devereaux does what he does. If it weren’t for Natalia, then you wouldn’t be trying to off David Mason as he tries to boff his latest girl (What was her name again? Remember, man?) “WHAT DO YOU DO?” you bellow after you yourself do something beyond despicable. I almost stopped rooting for you at that point. Then I recalled that you’re the…hero?…and you wouldn’t (would?) stoop so low. I understood perfectly.

In closing, Mr. Brosnan, you’ve earned the right to gravity - and gravitas - through your silver hair.

Embrace it. Let this bittersweet November be a draw, half-win, half-loss, in your considerable career.

RAINEY’S RATING: 3 STARS

Movie Review: "The Master Builder" (1958)

Master Builder, Master Destroyer

By Rainey Wetnight

“Homes for human beings…” -Donald Wolfit as Halvard Solness, on what he designs 

In high school, I had a thing for Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. While my classmates devoured the latest teen magazines and YA novels, I slowly savored A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler. I can’t recall reading A Master Builder back then, though, and in retrospect I’m glad. To understand this master work and what makes it tick, it takes a lot more maturity than my sixteen-year-old mind could have mustered. It centers around several opposing themes: youth versus age, desire versus duty, light versus darkness, and life versus death. Which characters embody which concepts, and at which times during the play? I have chosen to review the 1958 made-for-television version, distributed by BBC Films and 2 Entertain.

Halvard Solness (Donald Wolfit) is a man on a mission. Just as driven as Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Solness’ goal is to slay the great white whale of “the younger generation”. The eponymous middle-aged architect is afraid that one day youth will replace him, crying “Make room! Make room!” Therefore, he has practically enslaved his former employer Knut Brovik, Brovik’s young but slightly-stooped son Ragnar, and his bookkeeper mistress, Brovik’s niece Kaia (Catherine Lacey). Ragnar has definite talent, but Solness yearns to keep him under tight control. Kaia yearns for Solness, even though she and Ragnar are engaged. Knut yearns to see his son branch out and build on his own, although he fears this won’t happen before illness overcomes him. At the beginning of the movie, he begs Solness to let Ragnar go. “Am I to die in such poverty?” he rasps. To which the Master Builder replies: “You must die as best you can.”

Also dead are Solness’ wife Aline, in a spiritual sense, and the two twin boys they once had. Rather than consider this dire misfortune to be what it is, he believes it’s the source of his remarkable luck in business. Once their former residence, Aline’s ancestral home, is consumed in a fire, the Builder is free to parcel out the land and build “happy homes, [for a] mother, father, and a troop of children” - the ones he lacks. His own house is a dark mausoleum, a monument to the past, with no less than three (!) separate nurseries. Who will occupy them now? Enter Hilda Wangel (Mai Zetterling), a lovely sprite of twenty-four who knew both Solness and Aline ten years before. She appears out of nowhere, dead broke and seeking lodging.

Why has Hilda returned after all this time? What does she want from Solness, and what is she prepared to take from his family? Those are the central questions of the play, and I won’t spoil it entirely. I’d much rather explain why, two centuries later, The Master Builder casts a spell over those who cherish drama.

This play is, first and foremost, a character study. All of the explosions and special effects are the ones secretly churning in the human heart, searing everyone they touch once they boil over. It’s also about our longing to relive and correct the past, especially if it contains tragedies we’d rather try to hide. Solness’ struggle is our own, on a profound level. As he attempts to build high towers and “castles in the air”, so do we. He is no longer satisfied with what he promised (and what he shouted at God) that he would do. He craves much loftier things, even though he’s now terrified to glance down from a second-floor balcony.

However, what separates the Builder from most of the rest of us is the true source of his strength. It’s most clearly expressed in his greatest delusion of grandeur. Solness believes that he is one of a very few “special people” who can cause events to happen if they simply wish hard enough. (Did he write the massively popular self-help book The Secret two hundred years in advance?) He calls “helpers and servers” to him, uses them, and then discards them like apple cores. Indeed, one can almost say that he consumes them, as one consumes food, attributing their positive qualities to himself while projecting his own negative qualities onto them. He is a Narcissus in love with his own reflection, and the Impossible Dream. There is nothing he would not do for what he wants, and for the people he supposedly loves.

Solness is a master destroyer, a false Odin - god of the sun - taking human sacrifices unto himself.

RAINEY’S RATING: 4 STARS

Movie Review: "Jack"

Jack Be Simple

By Rainey Wetnight

“It’s too soon! It’s too soon!” -Diane Lane as Karen Powell, “Jack’s” mother

It’s only fitting that an absurd fable about a ten-year-old boy in a forty-year-old-man’s (Robin Williams’) body begins with an entourage dressed as the cast of the Wizard of Oz in the delivery room. “Jack’s” mother (Diane Lane) is the Wicked Witch of the East with ruby slippers; his father (Brian Kerwin) is a tearful Tin Man. “Don’t rust up on me now!” Lane exults as her baby boy is born seven months early. It is, perhaps, the funniest line in the whole movie. Certainly, his condition isn’t meant to be funny, but pitiful.

So, what exactly is wrong with Jack? He doesn’t have progeria, as a doctor explains early-on in the film, which is “devastating to the child”. Rather, his cells mature at four times the normal human rate, but he’s otherwise healthy. Why being so different from his peers would not be devastating to him is just as much a mystery as his main trait, and indeed, Jack is viewed as a monster by some curious neighborhood kids. Nevertheless, he’s just as happy-go-lucky as any typical ten-year-old boy, and as distracted. His tutor, Mr. Woodruff (Bill Cosby) comes to Jack’s house every day to teach him, but Jack wants to go to regular school instead. “We’ve seen how people react,” his mother says in defense of keeping him at home, “and we don’t want Jack to have to face that.” What Jack must face, of course, is other people (kids and adults) looking at him like he’s a child molester instead of a child - or, in this case, a man with a child’s mind.

So he goes off to school. He wakes up late, in his blue print pajamas. His mom makes him a lunchbox. He has a rather dorky plaid shirt and a backpack that’s half a size too small for him. The only differences are that Jack has to shave and his dad tells him he can come home any time he wants to, a luxury that ordinary kids lack but often wish they had. His new fifth-grade teacher, Miss Marquez (Jennifer Lopez) is too gorgeous for her own good. Let’s face it - a romance between her and Jack would technically be pedophilia. Knowing this, she loops her arm through his and introduces him to the rest of her class just as if he were a child-sized new student. Unfortunately he’s not, and promptly tips over in his child-sized desk.

Such sophomoric hi-jinks are only the beginning of Jack’s journey through the world of middle school. His shoelaces come untied. He doesn’t realize that he can easily navigate the balance-beam ledge. The other kids laugh, point and stare. “He’s probably planning on kicking our butts or something,” one neighbor boy with glasses says. If only, but this is a kids’ movie, and Robin Williams can’t unleash Jack’s inner beast. Instead, he gets poked with a long stick by two snooty little girls and ignored by the basketball team. Will he have his revenge a la Carrie, or eventually win them over? Even a ten-year-old knows the outcome.

The trouble with this movie is not Robin Williams, or even director Francis Ford Coppola. It’s the inane plot, flat characterization, toilet humor, vapid dialogue, and utter lack of insight into Jack’s character - until he starts getting gray hair. By then, the poignant fear he feels at growing truly old is too little, too late.

What are we supposed to learn from Jack? Accept those who are different? Yes, but why couldn’t Coppola have directed a movie about a real person with a real disability instead? Live life to the fullest? Yes, but why couldn’t Robin Williams have learned that lesson as a forty-year-old man in mind and body? Jack’s graduation speech is supposed to sum everything up, but the entire movie Dead Poets Society does the exact same thing in a much better way over the course of its running time than this movie does. Jack is insulting on so many levels, and to so many kinds of people, that it’s a wonder it was ever made.

I’d like to close this review with a modified Mother Goose nursery rhyme:

Jack be simple, with such schtick,
Jack’s so dumb that it makes me sick.

The late, great Robin Williams deserved better for bringing out the wishful, wondering kid in all of us.

Robin Williams
1951-2014