[Clarion West 2k1... the saga continues]

Saturday. Good day to work on my crits for Monday and then maybe come up with a story idea for this coming week. So, did I? Nah. Ran some stuff that was cluttering my dorm room over to the house, got some stuff from the house (like a dictionary... can't believe I've been borrowing all this time) to bring to the dorm; read one story for critique and then went to see a movie with a bunch of my fellow Clarionites.

We went to see A.I.

It sucked.

There is no better way to describe this movie than to say that it sucked. It was an experiment that failed. On almost every level. The one level where it did not fail: as a rapid presentation of successive still images, it *did* conjure up the illusion of motion. Other than that, it was pretty abysmal.

Of course, here we are, a dozen science fiction writers in full-critique mode, going to see a schmaltzy pretension of a sci-fi premise. From the gushy lets-make-machines-feel-love opening scene, it was all down hill. There were some good moments, but most of them came after the movie was finally, finally over. (This movie had roughly five endings, which is why it's three hours long. Three hours!) Once this abomination concluded, the twelve of us began to dissect it. A few folks were intent upon writing new endings for it. The movie already had five endings; my humble opinion was that it didn't need any more.

Other than that, not much to report. I'm feeling a bit blue at the moment, more because of some bad memory triggers than anything else (or, maybe it was just the fact that I rushed through dinner to see that awful movie). Maybe I'll do my critique work tomorrow. That's my plan, at least.