Lost Tales (or, Linda Mercury takes on Tolkien)

Argonath Bookends

The Argonath

protect my desk.

They mark the boundaries of 

Gondor. 

"Go back," 

They tell the Numinorians. 

"You have reached the limits of your land."

Maybe I should face

them the other say. I have not

yet the 

limits

of my 

land.

Monster Mash.

Welcome to my very first blog post, from February, 2009!!


Hello, world, and welcome to Linda Mercury's Blog!

Today's topic is Monster Movies. How curious is it that a woman who loves to write vampire novels doesn't watch monster movies?

I made up for lost time this week, though, by watching The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), and Nosferatu (1922) all in one week.

What exactly does a novelist take from watching movies? This novelist, at least, takes the importance of setting, body language, and story structure. How do they keep the pace going or not going? How do the film makers create a sense of anticipation and danger? Can I identify the story arc for each character? How can I translate an action scene into words? What little things 'make' each shot special? What makes a character sympathetic?

But most importantly, I get images of really hot men. I confess, I now have pictures of Arnold Vosloo and Oded Fehr pinned above my writing desk. Their physicality and charisma definitely have inspired me to write a much hotter hero than before.

 

Noferatu was a different proposition. Dracula's Secret explores facets of the Dracula myth and as such, I figure I'd better watch some of vampire classics. The print I rented through Netflix had the most distracting music I'd ever experienced in a silent film. Something about cheerful string arpeggios when Count Orlok is being his creepiest just really killed the experience. I turned the sound off and enjoyed the film that way.

What did I learn from Nosferatu? The importance of soundtrack! Listening to frothy, uptempo music when I'm writing something frightening or even sexy is self-defeating, to say the least.

What monster movies do you like? What do you get from them?