I realize this is undoubtedly just me...

...but it bugs me. Terry Gilliam has a new film, The Brothers Grimm, coming out this Friday, as I'm sure many of you know. It is (as you might expect) a big fantasy, reimagining the Bros. Grimm as two mountebanks who travel around "freeing" towns from mythical creatures for cash. All the creatures are complete fakes, so they're basically frauds. Until, of course, they run against the real thing and have to become heroes.

Sounds fun, right? So what's my problem? The ad tagline is "Discover the truth behind the legend."

The movie, fun as it sounds (and I definitely want to see it) has about as much truth in it as, say, the Harry Potter films. Y'see, the big difference (and what the movie studio's marketing staff seems to have forgotten) is that the Brothers Grimm were real people. And, amazingly, they weren't travelling mountebanks, they were linguists and folklorists, as well as serious Christians (which informed their editing of some the less savory folktales they collected). For the most part, they were academicians and not adventurers in any way. They travelled, gathering folklore, and wrote. They took place in political protests and lost their university positions over their stances. They had (especially, as I recall, William) had serious tragedy hit their lives and took comfort in their religion and their culture. They had thriving family lives and very complex psychological outlooks. (Freud had lots of fun with their writings, as I recall.) They were, in short, fascinating in real life.

This isn't to say that it isn't a great idea to make a fantasy film using them the way Gilliam is. I mean, the thing looks awesome. The problem is when you try to pass said film off as "truth," even if it's just hyperbole. Because lots of people don't know the difference...

Like I said, maybe it's just me. But it ticks me off.

Site I found with more info the historical Grimms with about a minute or two of searching: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm.html

Huh, that was good to know...

So last night, Amythyst and I went (seperately, due to her wedding errands) to Spoo's birthday party, wherein we played some games and hung out with folks. In the course of the evening, I had a conversation with Magus where we talked about his writing; what he had out to which editor, what's in progress, etc. I mentioned that I had a story in to Sheila Williams at Asimovs that had been rejected by F&SF. He said that yeah, JJ (John Joseph Adams, the assistant editor) was really hard to sell to; he has very strong ideas about what he buys. I told him about the rejection letter I got and was surprised when Magus told me that JJ almost always sends out form letters, not personal ones. Apparently, if he (the editor) said that he liked my writing, that's really a big compliment! I'm about 400 words into a new story (that's going slow as mollasses and that I already realize has a logical inconsistency) and if I finish it, it'll definitely go to F&SF. And it makes me think that maybe Asimovs might buy my old story after all....well, ok, it's still not likely, but hey. You never know.

Neat, huh?

In less happy news, Robert Moog has passed away. Love the synthesizer or hate it, he definitely changed music forever. Moog trivia: the first rock band to record a song using one of his synths? The Monkees. Wild, huh?

To the Tower....

To the tower and to the ravens
And the tale that hopes they'll
never leave.
What if they should go?
We always dread to think of them.

And hey, whoever can identify the source of my quote gets a no-prize! ;-)