There’s a lot of misinformation about the treatment of cancer, what to expect, and the aftermath.  Much of it is from movies, television, and those “feel good” charity commercials.  They all want you to believe we’re in this fight together and that a support system will magically appear around you when the shit hits the fan.  I wish that had been the case.

Let’s be honest, there’s no Dr. Wilson from House M.D. coming to shower you with infinite compassion and a crack team of doctors.  What you get is a brutally efficient system of treatment that, in my case, happened so quickly I didn’t even have time to understand what I was undergoing.  Diagnosed on a Monday, surgery the next week, and my 1st chemo the very next day.  You may remember how well that turned out, with a severe reaction to Rituxan and a single nurse keeping her cool while half a dozen others stared at me as I convulsed.  Good times.

Some people were nice, but many were either ignorant of the process or indifferent to it, sometimes cruelly so.  I still vividly remember the nurse who tugged on my power port like it was bolted to my chest with rivets instead of just skin.  The way she jammed a syringe of morphine so quickly into my port, in spite of my protests, that I almost threw up on her shoes.  No blissful euphoria there only a terrible twisting of my stomach and dizzying bout of nausea.  Pumped full of painkillers I still couldn’t sleep as she stomped in and out of my room on her hourly checks, ignoring the fact that me and my wife (cramped in a chair next to me) were trying to get some meager semblance of sleep.  These were just a few lovely moments from the ordeal of my treatment.

Another fallacy I encountered was the idea that there’d be an instant outpouring of support from my friends and family.  My tale played out a little differently.  There was me, rocketed through surgeries and treatments at a breakneck speed.  Then there was my loving wife who watched as her husband deteriorated before her eyes, on several occasions not knowing if I’d survive the night.  And finally there was… no one else.  No family, no friends, nothing.  I received less than a handful of concerned calls while my wife received zero.  The closest I came to a visit was when I hallucinated a friend coming to see me when I was in the neutropenic ward.  A 106 degree fever will do that to you.

I really don’t know why things turned out that way.  Some people told me, after I had already recovered, that they were afraid and didn’t know what to say.  “Hello” would have been nice.  Others got defensive when I called them out on it saying I should have asked them to visit.  Really?  My slow agonizing death wasn’t enough of a clue that you should see me because, quite frankly, I might not be alive tomorrow?

After the turmoil, pain, financial drain, and slow crawl back to normal, all I’m left with is an overriding numbness.  I wasn’t imbued with a new lease on life or a spark in my heart.  That’s for Hollywood endings.  I’m beaten, war-torn, and exhausted.  The little energy I have remaining is focused on climbing out of the abyss that cancer opened up beneath me.  My body is still rebelling against its brush with death.  My power port still sits in my chest as a constant reminder that I’m not done yet.  The broken pieces of my life are not just shattered, but incinerated.  I sit here amongst the smoldering remains with a tone ceaselessly playing in my ears, similar to the aftermath of an explosion, wondering what the FUCK happened.

Social media has infiltrated our lives more than any other Internet phenomenon.  It’s on our computers (both at work and home), it’s on our phones, and it’ll soon be on our glasses.  Ubiquitous is an understatement.

Portions of social media have been very useful to me, such as building creative relationships through Twitter, but others have been time wasting distractions like the big blue monster to my right.

When I first joined Facebook I was working in the UK, making friends, and building my business network.  LinkedIn was kinda crap and Facebook still had a cool vibe to it, so I jumped in.  For many years it was the best way to keep in touch with my overseas and out-of-state pals.

Lately, it has morphed into a Pavlovian clicking experiment where I spend my hours doing little more than “liking” inane bullshit.  Creating material to share on the site took a backseat and I turned into a pure consumer.  After the shitstorm that was 2012, I knew that wasting my time like this was a slow death sentence.  Something had to change.

So Long, Farewell

I decided to take a break from Facebook.  Not “take a break” and visit the site less, but deactivate my account and remove the app from my phone.  This may sound extreme to some.  For me, it was an absolute necessity.

The whole purpose of this blog was to get me back into writing and move closer to the goal of becoming a published author.  I’ve tried several times this year to jump start my own creative engine:

• I unitasked for 30 days (with middling success)
• I helped a fellow writer hammer her manuscript into fighting shape (which has been inspiring, but I did nothing with the creative energy)
• I even started Chuck Wendig’s “Very Simple No-Fuckery Writing Plan To Get Shit Done“

It was the last one which really opened my eyes.  Keeping a daily spreadsheet of my writing gains showed me just how full of crap I was.  For all my talk, I was doing little to actually make things happen.  I started Wendig’s plan in March.  By the end of the month I was negative 6390 words toward my goal.  That’s the moment I knew that Facebook had to go.

The past 16 months of my life have been a fucked up Etch-a-Sketch scribble which I’m frantically trying to shake away.  My life expectancy now has a giant question mark above it and this injects a wicked sense of urgency into my dreams.  It also helps me cut through my own bullshit.  Surfing a website is NEVER going to help me become the writer I know I can be.  Only sitting in a chair and pounding words into a laptop screen will get me there.  I can’t avoid putting in the work any longer.  Life has already shown me what happens when I ignore my true calling.  It ain’t pretty.

If you’ve ever met me in person or followed me on Twitter then you know I’m a fan of the occasional expletive.  Some days I salt my conversations more liberally than others, but I’m always guaranteed at least one nugget of joy.

I’ve never understood the societal aversion to cursing.  Language is a rich experience and to limit yourself with arbitrary boundaries only dilutes the experience.  There are those who think the words are naughty and should be forbidden to all.  There are others who think it signifies a lack of intelligence.

Curse words are like any other tool and when used properly can achieve breathtaking results.  Here are some examples of what I believe are solid executions of profanity which not only enrich the story they’re telling, but elevate it to a level it would never achieve without swearing.

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet

A modern masterpiece about flawed human beings scrambling to prove their own self worth.  For a movie that’s purely driven by dialogue it’s more riveting than most modern day action films.  The speech patterns have a beautiful cadence almost like a symphony orchestra effortlessly flowing from one movement to the next.

Al Pacino was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Ricky Roma and the play on which the movie was based on won the Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for four Tony awards.  Does any of this sound lowbrow to you?

These characters are vividly brought to life in a manner which few other films have achieved and their language is an integral part of that accomplishment.  Those who dismiss the film as vulgar because of its profanity are missing the world that these words weave together.  Curse words are used to seduce and entice, they’re used to destroy your enemies, and most famously, they’re used to motivate.

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Miriam Black knows how you’re going to die.  Her ability, activated through simple touch, has alienated her from anyone with a pulse.

She’s human flotsam, trapped in the swiftly moving currents of our nation’s highways.  Keeping off the grid and in the shadows, she sticks to the underbelly of society because that’s where she feels most comfortable.  The warm embrace of foul mouthed, hard drinking, people who just want to make it through the day.

Blackbirds was one of those books which refused to let me go.  I couldn’t help but glue my eyes to each page and absorb every delicious word.  Miriam’s creative vulgarity isn’t an affectation, but the result of many hard years on the road.  When you’re surrounded by bikers, truckers, late-night diner waitresses and noonday drinkers, some of their dialect is bound to rub off.

If someone were to do something as foolish as censor her swearing, you’d find yourself with a boring tale and a cardboard character.  Her swearing isn’t an attempt at being cool, but a heady mixture flowing within her veins.  Miriam without her cursing is like Romeo without his soliloquy, utterly pointless and painfully banal.

Again, you’ll find those who will dismiss this book solely because of its word choice.  To be honest, who needs those boring bastards as readers anyway?  My only concern with the suburban masses is when they plan to ban (or burn) a book in order to “save the children”.  If it were up to them we’d all be trapped in a G-rated Disney hell.

I thank Chuck Wendig and his delectably vulgar mouth for making our world just a little bit more interesting.

Personally, I’m a fan of people with a little dirt on their hands. Those folks who have experienced the darker times in life and still choose to enjoy it.  I avoid the teetotalers who think “damn” is a curse word and whose idea of letting loose is unbuttoning the top two buttons on their shirt.  If you read this article and think I’m full of shit, so be it.  For the rest of you, I’ll see you at the bar and the first round’s on me.

Do you know of any other examples of swearing elevated to an art form? Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

When it comes to creative projects I often suffer from analysis paralysis, with so many options to choose from I end up doing none of them.

My goal is to do one thing for 30 days straight or until it’s completed, whichever comes first.  By removing the need to choose I hope I’m removing the procrastination, stress, and frustration I’ve been feeling.

• Writing: Power Lines – My comic book idea only has 1 issue fully written with another 5 outlined.  The goal is 12 issues total.  I keep setting aside this project because even though I have a loose structure mapped I’m still hesitant on the direction to take it in.
• Reading: I have a very juicy manuscript for Thersa Matsuura’s first novel.  You may know her from such gems as A Robe of Feathers, her collection of Japanese folk-lore influenced short stories.  I’m honored to be one of her Beta Readers and I need to (lovingly) tear into her book with a blood red pen.
• Movies: Goes without saying that I still need to feed the beast.  Business as usual in this department, but with a minor twist.  I’m going to start taking notes about every movie using the framework I learned in Save the Cat.  It may be about theme or structure or characters, but every film I watch will get at least one scribble.

Focus has always been an issue and my fingers are crossed that this exercise will move me in the right direction.

Anyone else trying to buck the habits of modern living? Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

As of today, it has officially been 6 months since my doctor told me I was in remission.  There have been no life altering epiphanies or secret wisdoms revealed to me, only a hard-won smile from having kicked cancer square in the beanbag.

There is so much about this disease that you never see on TV or in movies: the weight gain from steroids, the palpable fear in the air of an infusion center, the utter numbness that consumes your being.  Writers wax poetic about the nobility of facing down such an evil opponent or the transcendent quality you gain in your perspective, but oftentimes it’s an incomprehensibly frightening experience that happens so fast you can’t understand what’s going on even as it happens to you.

No one tells you how difficult it is to pick up the pieces of your shattered life.  They don’t let you know that the reason some of your friends disappeared was because they didn’t know what to say (hello would have been nice).  How weird it is to slip back into a normal routine when your core has been stripped raw or all the little ways your body has been irrevocably changed.  Beating cancer was fucking difficult.  Living afterwards may be even harder.

This is a minor milestone—though a welcome one—and the best I can do is keep moving forward.

This little experiment, which started in January of last year, was born of a curiosity regarding my favorite obsession, movies.  How many hours of my life were spent enjoying films and which genres did I watch the most?  What other interesting tidbits could I garner from an accurate catalogue of my own viewing habits?  Thus One Year of Movies was created and I started on my journey.

Here we are, 243 movies later.  I’ve compiled all the big ticket stats (total hours, total movies, etc.) and some more nuanced stats along with a few milestones (i.e. 100th movie).  I definitely didn’t fall into any typical demographic.  My tastes are all over the place and my viewing habits are probably on the extreme end of the scale.

There were a couple of disappointing duds and a few films which pleasantly surprised me.  Some were so niche that almost none of my friends saw them while others were old standbys.  There were even a handful of films which inspired me to pick up a pen and write.  In spite of 2012 being a shitty year in general, I did experience some great movies.

The Big Picture

• Movies Watched: 243
• Total Minutes Watched: 26843
• Total Hours Watched: 447.4
• 1st Movie of 2012: I Am Legend
• Last Movie of 2012: The Witches of Eastwick
• Most Watched Movie: Tie @ 4 times each (Labyrinth, Puss in Boots, The Avengers, Star Trek [2009])
• Most Watched Genre: Comedy (61 Films)

Genre Breakdown

I spent a staggering 447.4 hours watching movies.  To be honest, I would have loved to have broken through the 500 hour barrier along with 300+ movies watched.  Slowing down near the end of the year was unfortunate, but unavoidable with the insanity life had in store for me.  I’m surprised I got any films in during that time.

2012 was packed with a lot of laughs.  Comedy, both of the film and standup variety, kept me going.  Action films were a close second with 51 movies logged.  My least watched genre was Musicals with only 4 seen.  This isn’t because I dislike the genre, but because they don’t make them as frequently as they used to.

I didn’t see as many foreign language films as I would have liked.  THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC was a standout in that category.  I kept starting DAY WATCH, but just couldn’t get into it which was weird because I absolutely loved NIGHT WATCH.  Perhaps I need to recalibrate my subtitle senses.  Documentaries barely made a dent.  Truth may be stranger than fiction, but it’s not nearly as entertaining.

Horror had a solid showing at 23 movies.  Sadly, the quality of those films was very inconsistent.  Many of them were old favorites I had revisited.  Of the new batch, only a smattering were worth a damn: CABIN IN THE WOODS, FRIGHT NIGHT (2011) <—surprisingly, and ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER.  I chewed through a ton of trailers for horror flicks, but many of them looked poorly put together or clichéd from the outset so I decided to skip them altogether.  I don’t understand why movie studios use horror as an excuse for shitty writing.  It’s a real shame.

Sci-Fi was in a similar predicament.  The oldies were just as good, but the newer stuff tended to disappoint.  MEN IN BLACK 3 was much better than anticipated and so was CHRONICLE.  If I could, I would punch IN TIME in the throat for destroying a beautiful premise.  I love this genre, I’m just not a fan of what it put out in 2012.

The Devil & His Details

Here are all the smaller details scattered throughout my spreadsheet.

• Longest Film: 200 minutes (Henry Rollins: Provoked)
• Shortest Film: 56 minutes (Dana Carvey: Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies)
• Average Length: 110.47 minutes or 1.84 hours
• Oldest Film Watched: Gigi (1958)
• 100th Movie (Movie, Date): Blink, 04/17/12
• 300th Hour (Movie, Date): The Matrix Reloaded, 06/03/12
• 200th Movie (Movie, Date): Romeo+Juliet, 08/21/12
• 400th Hour (Movie, Date): Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,10/27/2012

Monthly Breakdown

Normally I would include a listing for Worst Film, but there were several movies vying for the title so I thought it best to focus on the positive while letting the horrible fade from memory.

It’s A Wrap!

This experiment will most certainly be continued into 2013. I won’t be doing monthly breakdowns like I initially did because they generated little interest.  Instead I’ll keep writing the milestone posts which people seemed to enjoy.  I’m still open to suggestions on other statistics to record or reveal, so feel free to leave them in the comments.

This was more fun than I thought it would be. Even with all those hours spent watching movies, it never felt wasted or tedious. I truly am a film nut.

How did your year of movies shape up? Are there more stats you’d like me to share? Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

Being a huge fan of both shows I tend to recommend them as a single entity when my friends are looking for a new series to watch.  Of course, I then immediately have to explain how best to intertwine the viewings.

After having this conversation for the umpteenth time I decided to put together an article for future reference.  I listed the shows by entire season because I didn’t feel it necessary to get more granular than that.

What makes this listing different from others you’ll find on the Internet is that I’ve included links to view the numerous special episodes (minisodes, Comic Relief, Children in Need) that are scattered throughout the series.  Also, I’ll update this list as the new Doctor Who and (hopefully) new Torchwood episodes air.

• Doctor Who Season 1
• Doctor Who – Children in Need 2005 Special – Born Again (7 mins leading into Christmas)
  • http://youtu.be/InESh_-DrZ4
• Doctor Who Christmas 2005 Special – The Christmas Invasion
• Doctor Who Season 2
• Torchwood Season 1
• Doctor Who Christmas 2006 Special – The Runaway Bride
• Doctor Who Season 3
• Doctor Who – Children in Need 2007 Special – Time Crash (8 mins leading into Christmas)
  • http://youtu.be/x0cyxb2kG9E
• Doctor Who Christmas 2007 Special – Voyage of the Damned
• Torchwood Season 2
• Doctor Who Season 4
• Doctor Who Christmas 2008 Special – The Next Doctor
• Doctor Who 2009 Special – Planet of the Dead
• Torchwood Season 3 – Children of Earth
• Doctor Who 2009 Special – The Waters of Mars
• Doctor Who Christmas 2009/New Year’s 2010 Specials – The End of Time (2 part episode)
• Doctor Who Season 5
• Doctor Who Christmas 2010 Special – A Christmas Carol
• Doctor Who – Comic Relief 2011 Special – Time and Space (2 part episode, 3 mins each)
  • Part 1 – http://youtu.be/51JtuEa_OPc
  • Part 2 – http://youtu.be/RkmiefoRcfU
• Doctor Who Season 6
• Torchwood Season 4 – Miracle Day
• Doctor Who – Doctor Who Confidential 2011 Special – Death is the Only Answer
  • http://youtu.be/CHQCLdgIn5c
• Doctor Who Christmas 2011 Special – The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
• Doctor Who – Blue Peter 2011 Special – Good As Gold
  • http://youtu.be/c_TfU8bTpqo
• Pond Life (series of small videos leading into Season 7)
  • http://youtu.be/9ZkWjkvaKpA
• Doctor Who Season 7 – Up to “The Angels Take Manhattan”
  • P.S. – Epilogue for “The Angels Take Manhattan”, unfilmed but storyboarded and voiced-over
    • http://youtu.be/XWU6XL9xI4k
• Doctor Who – Children in Need 2012 Special – The Great Detective (prequel to Christmas, 3 mins)
  • http://youtu.be/G17_B4uACgg
• Doctor Who Christmas 2012 Special – Vastra Investigates (prequel to Christmas, 3 mins)
  • http://youtu.be/Rirju6is4Sw
• Doctor Who Christmas 2012 Special – The Snowmen

I didn’t include “behind the scenes”, documentaries, animated, or special event (The Proms, Tonight’s the Night) episodes.  I verified the air dates of the specials through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_serials

Do you think Doctor Who and Torchwood should be viewed as one?  Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

In this article I’ll be discussing plot points for The Angels Take Manhattan and the series in general.  You have been warned.  There Be Spoilers Here!

The handoff from Tennant to Smith was explosive (literally) and reinvigorating. The writers wanted to make a very clear delineation between the eras through the internal destruction of the Tardis along with the Doctor’s regeneration routine.  For such a beloved Doctor this kind of jarring break was absolutely necessary.  It cleansed the palate and laid the groundwork for a new direction.

Matt Smith’s tenure on Doctor Who has been an interesting one with plenty of twists and epic villains, but no one has defined it better than his red-headed companion, Amy Pond.  Yet as enjoyable as many of her episodes have been I wasn’t sad to see her leave the show, but instead relieved.  The character she had turned into was a far cry from the wonderful start she was given.  Some of it was the writers’ fault with their ham-handed handling of both her and her husband Rory.  Some of it was Karen Gillan’s fault with the character choices she made which skewed her to be more annoying than amazing.

Overall, I was tired of her presence and very happy to see new blood injected into the series.  For those of you gnashing your teeth at my opinion, here are some of the reasons why I think that letting go of Amy Pond was the best move this show has done in a long time.

Too Much of a Good Thing

At first Amy Pond was an intriguing character.  The little girl who grew up next to a crack in time and space.  She shared fish sticks and custard with a raggedy man in a blue box and was the girl who waited, never giving up hope of seeing her friend once again.  This was the best introduction of a companion I had ever seen.  Emotionally poignant while retaining a subtle mystery which sowed the seeds for her tremendous character growth later in the series.  Their adventures tied to the cracks in time and space were a fantastically wild ride and set the bar quite high for future storylines.

Amy Pond was the longest running companion of the Doctor Who (2005) reboot, clocking in at 35 episodes according to IMDB.  She beat Rose Tyler by a single episode, though considering that many of Rose’s later episode appearances were brief cameos, Amy Pond won by a huge margin when it came to actual presence in an episode.  This was both very good and very bad.

It gave the writers an opportunity to really develop her character, but after bringing back the entire universe through her memories and giving birth to River Song what else was there for her to do?  She wore out her welcome yet the writers didn’t know how to give her a proper exit.  Instead her charms began to grate with her savvy turning into hubris.  She was stuck in a character rut and couldn’t get out.

Rory: The red-headed step child of Doctor Who

Rory’s initial trajectory was the same as the incredibly annoying Mickey Smith: love interest of the Doctor’s new companion, begrudgingly dragged along for the ride by his partner only to be treated as a third wheel.  Rory’s formula was slightly tweaked by his marriage to Amy, making him less disposable than previous third wheels… at least in theory.

Rory’s penchant for dying quickly became a running gag on the show akin to South Park’s Kenny.  His death carried little emotional weight because it happened so frequently.  Between the deaths, duplicates, and resurrections it was hard to keep track of what state of being he was in.  When he wasn’t meeting an untimely death he was being treated as an incompetent fool.  The writers really didn’t know what to do with him, vacillating between badass centurion and lovable oaf, never giving him a clear character arc.

Amy’s treatment of Rory was no better, frequently emasculating and dismissive, in spite of his numerous sacrifices.  For Christ’s sake, the man spent 2000 years guarding her in the Pandorica and she treats him no better than if he remembered to take out the trash.  The one episode that I felt finally touched on Rory’s mistreatment was The Doctor’s Wife, in which we saw the logical conclusion of his continued abuse and abandonment by Amy.

Rory was nothing other than a loving, doting husband who would do literally anything for his wife, but who got shafted by the show, especially in the Pond’s final episode.

The Last Straw

The Angels Take Manhattan was the heavily foreshadowed departure of the Ponds.  It had big shoes to fill in terms of emotional high notes: both Rose and Donna’s departures were heart-wrenching affairs, so the bar was set high.  The Weeping Angels’ return was another big moment brimming with expectations.  The ingredients looked great for this episode, but sadly the recipe’s execution was lacking.

The Weeping Angels creating a farm to keep them fed was a brilliant idea along with their disruption of the time/space in that era.  The Statue of Liberty being an Angel, not so much and honestly more of a sight gag than a menacing villain.  We’re given another needless death for Rory and a trap that could’ve been seen from a mile away.  In general, the episode felt very rushed at the end not really giving the final scenes the climactic weight they deserved.

And speaking of climactic scenes, we find Rory on the edge of a rooftop once again sacrificing himself for Amy.  This is Rory’s final moment to shine and Amy shoehorns herself in, not because she fears losing Rory, but more from fear of being alone.  She has always clung to Rory, but I often felt that she gave her best to the Doctor and took for granted her partner in life.  The paradox solution ended up working out and led to another emotional punch at the graveyard.  Here we see Rory unceremoniously tossed into the past and then Amy delivers a tearful monologue before joining him.

In many ways I felt that Amy being stuck in the past, with no hope of rescue from the Doctor, was the only way that she’d make Rory a priority in her life.  And poor Rory, so often relegated to third wheel status was even denied a beautiful epilogue which would have added so much depth to his character.  Bungled throughout and definitely at the end, the Ponds were weighed down by too much story baggage and inconsistent writing.  With their departure I think we’ll finally see more of Matt Smith’s Doctor growing as a character now that he’s no longer constrained by Amy Pond.

What are your thoughts on Amy Pond’s departure?  Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

OneNote has been an invaluable tool for me as both a writer and an IT consultant.  It has let me organize my projects, create a searchable repository of my story ideas, and made collecting data from the internet a breeze.  I’ve been using the product since 2008 and it’s one of the few essential programs that I must install on all my machines.  Not being able to use OneNote has been a deal breaker when considering Linux or Apple as replacement OS’s.  It’s that important to me.

So you can imagine my shock when the following error reared its ugly head just days ago.

The first thing I checked was my OneNote notebooks to make sure they hadn’t disappeared.  Once I knew they were safe and sound I scoured the Internet for a solution to this HUGE problem.  I’ll list out the steps I took in my troubleshooting in case others are experiencing this issue, but as you can already guess from the title of this post only one solution fixed it for me.  I’ll also detail exactly why I chose that option.

Baby Steps

Quick background info:

• Issue first appeared after the Dec. 2012 Windows Updates
• I’m running OneNote 2010 on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit version

The error message is pretty clear in what it believes the problem to be.  Checking for free space is a simple task in Windows 7.

1. Open Windows Explorer by either click on the folder icon in your taskbar or by going to Start –> Run and typing explorer. 
2. Once it pops open, select Computer in the left-hand pane.
3. You should see something similar to this:

If you’re out of free space then you know you have to do some hard-drive housekeeping.  If you have plenty of space, like I do, then you’ll move onto the next step: checking the permissions of your OneNote cache file.

1. Open Windows Explorer (if it isn’t already) using the steps mentioned earlier and paste the following into the address bar: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote
2. You should see something similar to this: [my version is 14.0, but an earlier version would show 12.0]:
3. Click on the folder and you will see a folder structure that looks similar to this:
4. Right-click on the OneNoteOfflineCache.onecache file and select Properties
5. Click on the Security tab and verify that your user account has FULL CONTROL
6. If it doesn’t then add it.  If it does, like mine did,  then we move into the advanced steps

Kick It Up A Notch

The deletion and re-creation of the OneNote cache file was the first major step I encountered after the initial ones listed above.

 *WARNING* This may lead to minor data loss in your OneNote notebooks.

Personally, I’m a fan of retaining files for recovery purposes, so I merely renamed OneNoteOfflineCache.onecache to OneNoteOfflineCache.onecache.BAK.  This allowed me to keep the file while making OneNote think it was missing.  This would lead OneNote to recreate the cache and presumably open correctly.

If you do decide to delete the cache then you can simply delete it through Windows Explorer or do the following to open up OneNote’s Critical Error Recovery dialog box.

1. Go to Start –> Run
2. Type in onenote /safeboot
3. The following screen will pop up:
4. You can clear the cache by clicking on Clear Cache

Clearing the cache failed to work for me as did deleting the OneNote settings (another option in the recovery screen).

The Nuclear Options

None of the previous steps resolved my issue, so I finally gave into the dreaded Uninstall/Reinstall.  I won’t go over those painful moments, but I will say it ALSO FAILED to resolve my issue.

I almost gave up hope on ever using OneNote again.  I re-read through the forums and noticed mention of UAC being a possible culprit.  It made ZERO sense that Microsoft’s User Account Control would prevent Microsoft’s flagship product OFFICE from working, but stranger things have happened.

I first tested this by giving the OneNote executable RunAs Administratorprivileges and seeing the results.

1. Go to your Program Files and click on Microsoft Office
2. Click on the Office folder [mine was Office14]
3. Scroll down till you see ONENOTE.EXE and then right-click the file and select Properties
4. Click on the Compatibility tab and you should see the following:
5. Check the box labeled Run this program as an administrator and then select OK
6. When you go to open OneNote you should see the UAC box popup asking for permission to run the application
7. Click YES and OneNote should open normally

This is the one step that finally worked for me.  I was able to get OneNote open and could see my notebooks once again.  There was just one more thing to test before I was home free.

Printing to OneNote is a major feature and one that I use daily.  The EXE could now run with administrative privileges, but what did that mean for the print functionality?  I made several tests, even giving the ONENOTEM.EXE admin privileges, yet nothing would get the print functionality back.  This was a major setback.  Without the print functionality OneNote became severely limited.

And that is why I was forced to disable UAC completely.  Here are the steps for those who are equally screwed.

*WARNING* Disabling UAC is against Microsoft’s best practices. Do so at your own risk.

1. Go to Start —> Run and type UAC
2. A listing for Change User Account Control Settings will appear. Click it.
3. You will see the following screen: [this is the default setting]
4. Lower the bar all the way to the bottom which should change the info in the right-hand pane to:  
5. Click OK
6. A UAC box will popup. Click YES.
7. You will then see a notification balloon appear:
8. Click on it to restart your machine or simply restart the PC through the usual means.

That’s it. UAC is now disabled.  I think that’s one of the worst solutions to a Microsoft Office problem, but sadly it’s the only one that worked.  Will Microsoft fix this screw up?  No clue, but according to the forums I’m not the only one who’s pissed off at this turn of events.  It is truly another one of Microsoft’s WTF moments.

Have you had similar WTF moments with an application?  Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

Hollywood is not a business built on risk.  They like bankable stars in four quadrant films in order to maximize the return on their investment.  Plots are formulaic to meet the general public’s entertainment needs, plugging into their sitcom derived expectations of a happy ending.  Focus groups are used to taste test the product before distribution ensuring it satisfies the palate of average America.

When it comes to safe bets there’s nothing safer than a movie or property that has already made money.  The sequel has always been a hallmark of this thinking working under the Hollywood mandate of “Give me the same thing… only different!”  Taking this ideology even further we now are being treated to a parade of reboots and remakes.  Reboots are shock paddles to the heart of a dying franchise (think Batman in the 90′s) wiping the slate clean and hoping to recapture the magic of its former glory.  Remakes are straight regurgitations of already seen films with occasionally a better budget, plot or cast.  Both hope to leverage an existing fan base in an attempt to get as close to a guaranteed return as you can in the world of movies.

Sometimes these flicks are incredible successes further cementing the re-hash path as a viable option in Tinsel Town.  Other times they are miserable flops making us wonder who thought it was a good idea in the first place?  Here are some examples of both sides of this colorful spectrum.

The Good

Star Trek had a mountain of expectations working against it.  A long, sordid past of lackluster films, TV shows that had been banished to syndication hell and egos of epic proportions (William Fucking Shatner anyone?).  In spite of this massive handicap it ended up being one of the best examples of a reboot ever (up there with Batman Begins).

Respect for the source material is a must for any successful reboot and Star Trek had it in droves.  They kept the sense of adventure from the original series, threw in enough fan favorites to whet the appetite (tribbles, red shirts, green chicks) and handled the characters with the loving care they deserved.

The writing was exceptionally tight in this movie.  Strong character development was shown across the board leveraging well focused scenes to flesh out the characters without drowning in exposition.  Spock and Kirk’s childhood moments encapsulated their inner turmoil perfectly, revealing not only the characteristics which would make them clash so fiercely, but the similarities that would forge their friendship.

They even worked around the continuity issue by tweaking the story just enough to give the writers more flexibility with canon while still maintaining suspension of disbelief for a science fiction audience.  The ensemble cast was treated as a whole, not allowing any one role to be pushed to the sidelines, weaving characters together for parallel development which kept the pace moving well and avoided juggling too many separate story threads at once (i.e. Spiderman 3).

If more reboots work toward making the concept better instead of just re-hashing it then we could revive some much loved franchises.

The Bad

Psycho.  Do I really need to go into this?  I guess I must.

First of all, you can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice.  You’re lucky if you ever do it at all.  Hitchcock was a genius because he consistently churned out amazing films in a style that was groundbreaking and unique.  Why anyone could think to follow in those footsteps is beyond me.  If you were to go as far as trying to redo a master director’s work then the best you could hope for is to adapt the essence of the film instead of a straight remake (i.e. Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai transformed into Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven).

Gus van Sant did fantastic jobs with Good Will Hunting, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, but that was all within his own directorial style.  Trying to play the game with someone else’s rulebook just doesn’t work.  It’s like The Three Tenors trying to do a concert a la The Rolling Stones, as talented as they may be in their own respect, it will only come off as awkward and sad.

Treading on hallowed ground aside lets compare casting choices.  A film is only as good as its performers and as much as I love Vince Vaughn’s perpetually tired visage he can’t hold a candle to Anthony Perkins.  I commend him for trying, but in the same way you patronize your buddy who sings in a cover band, he may think he’s a rock star, but he’s not.  Same goes for Anne Heche.  No one really stood a chance in this film.  There was too much history around it and it was too iconic of film especially to attempt a scene-by-scene retelling.

I liked this flawed little film’s chutzpah, but it was a text book case of how not to do a remake.

The Ugly

Just about every horror movie remake falls into this category: Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Halloween, etc.  I’m a huge fan of the genre in both literature and film so I’m not bashing it as a whole, but these remakes tend to scrape the very bottom of the barrel.  Horror is as much about the essence of a time and place as it is scary scenes and ominous music.  What most of the retreads fail to capture is the atmosphere that spawned the original.

The gritty realism and documentary feel of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is what captivated audiences when it first came out.  The slick remake missed it completely as did Rob Zombie’s attempt at homage with House of 1,000 Corpses and Devil’s Rejects.  Just like Orson Wells’ radio broadcast of War of the Worlds will never fool the public again, these nuggets of fear cannot be recaptured because the audience’s beliefs and perspectives have changed.  Newer generations of audience members have been desensitized to the violence and shock value that many of these older films contain which makes a scene-by-scene remake fail so miserably.

The only reason the Freddy vs. Jason reboot was successful (though some might disagree with that statement) was because Robert Englund tapped into the mischievous fun of the Freddy character and adapted it for the current audience instead of relying on tired old popcorn scare tactics.  Seeing Krueger before he became the master of dreams was an incredibly disturbing scene which effectively repositioned the fear of a child murderer into a more modern framework.

Reboots and remakes are here to stay as long as the Hollywood studios think there’s a buck to be made.  Hopefully the directors wrestling with these projects will learn from the obvious successes in the field and avoid the horrible mistakes of the past.

Which reboots do you think have made it and which have missed the boat?  Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

When a writer creates his medium is rather straightforward.  The finished product may may be a movie or a graphic novel or even a radio play, but the starting point is always a blank page.  Artists, on the other hand, have much more freedom to create and their medium is virtually anything.  Performance artists use their own bodies in the execution of art, sculptors use any manner of materials, and musicians can make music from the sounds found in everyday life.  The freedom available is amazing.

I wanted to share a couple of artists that caught my eye with the way they used common mediums to create uncommon pieces of art.  One works in video games and the other in music, but both their portfolios display an intense level of creativity combined with a constant need to push boundaries.

Paul Robertson

Paul Robertson is a pixel artist who has worked on some great properties like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game and Gravity Falls.  I first came across his art when I saw Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006.  Yeah, it’s a mouthful.  This was Robertson’s attempt at creating the side-scrolling fighting game he always wanted to play.  It’s hyper-violent, extremely tongue in cheek, and filled with an insane number of references.  I was immediately hooked.  His art style isn’t for everyone due to its occasional NSFW nature and weird melding of images, but his raw creativity is apparent in everything he produces.

What inspires me about his work is that he released it into the wilds of the internet completely free and without DRM.  He even provided multiple locations where you can download the films.  This was done before it became vogue for musicians to do the same thing.  The last full length animation he created was Kings of Power Four Billion %.  It’s even more hyper-violent than Pirate Baby and also has NSWF elements, so be careful where you click play on this one.

Kings of Power 4 Billion % on Vimeo.

Sound Taxi

Make The City Sound Better was a project put together by headphone manufacturers AIAIAI and sound artist Yuri Suzuki.  Using a heavily modified—and incredibly awesome—black cab they recorded the ambient noise of London and turned it into a soothing score for the city which was then projected through the 67 speakers installed onto the cab’s exterior.

People tend to drown out city noise through their iPods or smartphones and create audio “blinders” to the world around them.  This project transformed what is typically an ignored component of urban living into an engaging experience.  It pulled the citizens of London out of their usual routine and gave them a moment of unexpected art.  I love this concept and wonder if they are considering it for other cities as well.  Comparing the sonic footprint of major metropolitans would be a great extension to this already unique project.

Here’s a behind the scenes teaser about the project.

Yuri Suzuki x AIAIAI Sound Taxi Preview from AIAIAI on Vimeo.

Here’s one of the tracks created while driving around London.

Where have you unexpectedly found incredible art?  Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

During a conversation with an artist friend of mine (the talented Charles Rouse-Rodriguez) he asked me what my 5 most inspiring sci-fi films were.  His only condition was that I not include any Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, etc. in my response.  Normally I’d rattle off a ton of films from the top of my head yet this one had me stumped.  It wasn’t what I considered the best made or well written, but the most INSPIRING films.

What makes a good movie and what inspires a person can be two very different things.  Most movies entertain the viewer leaving them satisfied, but little else.  Few films leave you with a desire for action, taking momentum from the creative energy ingested and turning it into something new.  Those rare gems are truly above simply entertaining or even great films.  They hold a quality unto themselves which is difficult to capture in any medium let alone on-screen.

Here are 5 films that have inspired me to become a better writer, to create something as amazing as what I just watched, and to take my thoughts in completely new directions. [Warning Spoilers Ahead]

Immortal (Ad Vitam)

From the moment I laid eyes on the DVD cover in the pages of Video Store Weekly (yes, I had a subscription and yes, I’m that much of a movie geek) I had a burning need to see this film.  I even made my local indie video store (remember those?) order a copy which I was the very first person to rent.

Enki Bilal, an artist whose style inspired the look of Blade Runner, took his graphic novel straight from the pages of Heavy Metal and transformed it into this beautiful movie.  Egyptian gods hovering over a future New York City in a giant flying pyramid, Horus given 7 days on Earth before his immortality is removed, and a beautiful blue-haired woman who holds a secret power that she isn’t even aware of.  The premise of the film and Linda Hardy drew me in like a siren’s song.

This film was one of the first to be shot exclusively in front of green screens, coming out within a wave of films employing the same technique (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Casshern).  Immortal (Ad Vitam) pulled it off beautifully just like Sin City would a year later.  This movie was unlike anything I had seen before.

Inspiration: Bilal took his story, trapped in the static images of a graphic novel, and reshaped it into a moving visual medium thus re-creating his art without repeating it.  It forced me to look at my work not only in its current form as I create it, but from other perspectives as well, sometimes bringing a spark to the tale it would otherwise be missing. Also, the juxtaposition of old with new made me look at combining elements I would normally overlook.

A Scanner Darkly

This film caught my eye with its trailer and its pedigree; another entry in a long line of Philip K. Dick inspired films. Keanu Reeves plays an undercover cop whose identity is secret even to his fellow officers. His mission was to help bring down dealers peddling a drug named Substance D, one so potent that there were only two types of people left in society, those who were addicted and those who had never tried it. This may sound like a straight forward cop drama, but you quickly realize it’s something very different.

The style in which the movie was created is the same rotoscope animation they used in Waking Life. This lets the audience know immediately that there’s a fluid nature to the events they’re watching even going so far as to have a drug induced hallucination for the first scene.

The movie is filled with ripples in reality. Reeves’ drug use caused his brain to split into two personas, one who’s an undercover cop and one who’s a dirtbag drug dealer, leaving him uncertain as to which was in control at any given time. He’s also flooded with memories of a married life he may or may not have had. Freck, a druggie friend in their dysfunctional little circle, attempted suicide out of apathy only to meet with unexpected results. Nothing is as it seems in a much more subtle way than other Dick inspired films like Total Recall. A Scanner Darkly’s future is right around the corner and in some cases already here which makes the paranoia prevalent throughout the film not such a far fetched idea.

Inspiration: This movie made me look more closely at playing with layers of reality—one of my favorite themes—in my writing. It also made me further examine the unreliable narrator as a technique to employ. Using the protagonist to both tell the story and hide the story is juggling act I hope to one day master.

Inception

Dealing in dreams is the ultimate question of reality. Everyone here has at one time had a dream so intense that we were certain it was actually happening only to be yanked out of the experience by an angry alarm clock. The characters in this film weave the stuff of dreams and architect worlds of subtle complexity. Layers upon layers are built in a tightly interlocking fashion. A Mobius strip of enigmatic reality.

The first time I saw this movie was alone in a hotel room a few feet from a 40″ LCD screen. When the film started and until it ended everything else faded away; the room, the hotel, and the city I was in. I hadn’t been so engrossed by a film in a very long time.

The plotting in this movie is the tightest I’ve ever encountered. Scene linked to scene with an exquisite precision. The timing in the latter half of the film was a thing of beauty unto itself, creating tension across three storylines all gaining momentum toward an epic climax. Forget edge of your seat, I was teetering on molecules, enthralled by the images before me.

Inspiration: This film seriously inspired me to one day create a masterpiece, a combination of effort and talent, which would define my legacy. That is how astounded I was by the movie’s flawless execution. I know I will have to work harder than I ever have before (it took Nolan 8 years to make this) in order to even touch the level of excellence this piece of art embodies yet if I ceaselessly, almost obsessively, focus on my craft I feel I can achieve it.

The Matrix

This is the first film I ever saw multiple times in the theater. Five, to be exact. I simply couldn’t get enough of its thought provoking premise, industrial soundtrack, or breathtaking action sequences. I was hooked from day one. I won’t go into the plot because no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

Reeves (once again) plays a protagonist who doubts his own reality. He feels like there’s something more just beneath the surface and if he can scratch it in the right spot it’ll all peel away like a band-aid.

The first in the trilogy was the most ground breaking. Layers of meaning are sown into the dialogue and visuals of this film. Foreshadowing is strongly employed while philosophical concepts are discussed in the movie without sounding academic, an extraordinary feat in itself.

The characters engaged in a lot of action sequences during the movie yet it was the motivation behind those scenes that elevated the story. They not only battled robots and Agents, but authority, control, and fate; fighting to steer their own lives instead of being corralled by outside forces.

Inspiration: Foreshadowing is used extensively in this film without being heavy handed. It impressed upon me the importance of utilizing this technique to develop richer stories which lead to readers coming back for repeat viewings. Also, it inspired me to think of my plots on much larger scales and that even esoteric concepts can be successfully injected into the core of a story.

Brazil

Brazil is one of the best dystopian futures to have graced the silver screen. It didn’t achieve this through fancy CGI or an extravagant budget, but through an oppressive saturation of every element available on the screen. At times it felt oddly retro, with its tiny televisions enlarged through bulky magnifying screens. Other times it felt futuristic, with its painful looking yet astonishing plastic surgeries. All in all, it wasn’t Brazil’s sci-fi attributes that made it frightening, but how similar it was to our current society. For a film made in 1985 it was incredibly prophetic.

Jonathan Pryce was brilliantly cast as a tiny cog in the grinding bureaucracy of a sprawling government agency; happy to be unnoticed,  unrecognized, and blissfully left alone. As he reveled in mediocrity his life was derailed when he came across the woman of his dreams, literally.

Terry Gilliam has inspired me with almost every single film he’s made from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to Time Bandits to any of the Monty Python films he directed or wrote. The man himself is inspiring for such an array of strong creative vision. When you watch a Gilliam film his stamp is undeniable.

Inspiration: Brazil is inspiring on so many levels, but one thing that stands out is how the world itself is a character. The oppressive claustrophobia of the environment, the overly complicated and inefficient technology, and even the constant bombardment of explosions. The minor characters are just extensions of this dysfunctional society, a symptom of the rot within. This isn’t world exploration like in Lord of the Rings. It’s using the world as a device to impede the protagonist, but giving it enough personality that it could rightfully be considered a character. In this case, you don’t think the world’s out to get you… you KNOW it is.

What Sci-Fi films have inspired you and how? Do you disagree with any on my list? Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

As my year of movies keeps chugging along I find myself searching for different and unique film experiences. Movies that don’t follow an easily discernable formula or which challenge an audience accustomed to spoon-fed stories. Movies that leave an emotional mark once the credits start rolling.

People like to quip that all movies are just rehashes of older films. They dismiss the possibility of something new because they only seek out films which support their narrow viewpoint. The two movies discussed in this article are far from your traditional Hollywood fare. They can be disturbing, forcing the viewer to observe things they’d rather not encounter. They can be existential, questioning reality and man’s place in the world. They can also be provocative, triggering emotions which might surprise you. They all have a spot close to my heart. Favorites that I always recommend to those looking for something new and intriguing.

Buyer beware: I will be discussing plot points and spoilers in this article. If you haven’t seen the films please don’t let me ruin them for you and instead watch them as soon as you can.

Dellamorte Dellamore (aka Cemetery Man)

DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE is not your usual Italian horror film. Yes, it contains fantastically gory special effects, but the plot plays out more like an Albert Camus story than a Lucio Fulci splatter-fest. Starring Rupert Everett as Francesco Dellamorte, our protagonist is the guardian of a cemetery in a small Italian town. Assisted by his grunting companion Gnaghi, they must put down the bodies of the deceased who have risen from their graves 7 days after their burial.

There are a couple of elements in this film that elevate the story beyond its horror trappings. First is “She,” the nameless woman who enters Dellamorte’s life. He is instantly struck by her beauty when she visits the graveyard for her husband’s funeral. His obsession is immediate, but their connection is not. He screws up their first conversation, being used to dealing only with the dead, and is luckily able to salvage the second encounter when he shows her the graveyard’s ossuary. From that moment on, surprisingly, the sparks begin to fly.

This wouldn’t be a decent horror film if the protagonist were to win so easily. As the lovers enjoy their first tryst, the husband decides to reanimate and takes a chunk out of “She.” Of course, his one true love dies. Many more people die, resulting in a new Mayor, and upon their first meeting Dellamorte’s introduced to the Mayor’s assistant… “She.” Again nameless and again drawn to Dellamorte like a moth to flame. This reoccurring theme was one of the most intriguing pieces. Each time “She” appears it’s with a different personality, but the same passion for our hapless hero. It ties in beautifully with his questioning of reality in general which brings us to the second point.

Another element which stands out is the utter pointlessness of Dellamorte’s actions. His frustration with the town coupled with his feelings of imprisonment lead him on a dreamlike rampage in the village, killing scores of the living in the same detached manner with which he dispatches the undead. The next day the police knock on his door, with Dellamorte fully expecting them to slap on the handcuffs, only to find out that they don’t consider him a suspect. Later he indulges in a little more killing—college girls this time—but the rap for the murders is taken by his only friend, Franco (Gnaghi doesn’t really count). Even when he screams out a confession to the crimes there’s no one around to hear him. His inability to affect his own life pushes him to desperation and results in a very strange yet oddly poignant movie ending.  The existential dread that the protagonist feels, in his actions and in his life, mixed in with the absurdity of his world adds a fantastic layer to what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill zombie film.

Crash (1996)

James Spader plays a bored TV producer in a bored marriage to an equally bored Deborah Unger. They take to having illicit affairs and then describe them to each other in an attempt to renew whatever spark they once had. One night Spader’s distracted driving leads to a head-on collision, killing a man and leaving his wife (Holly Hunter) alive. They both end up at the same hospital, Hunter hobbling around on a crutch and Spader sporting serious metal pins in his leg. This is where Vaughan (Elias Koteas in yet another stellar role) enters the game and things get very weird.

When it comes to creating stories that challenge your preconceptions there’s few better than David Cronenberg. This movie will make a vast majority of people very uncomfortable. It intertwines graphic sexuality with intense automobile accidents and their subsequent fetishization. James Spader is once again fearless with his portrayal of the emotionally detached yet sexually supercharged protagonist.

CRASH pulls us into a subculture that takes auto-eroticism to a whole new level by using car crashes as “a fertilizing rather than a destructive event, a liberation of sexual energy mediating the sexuality of those who have died with an intensity that’s impossible in any other form.” (as per Koteas’ monologue). Puts a whole new spin on le petite mort. What I find incredibly fascinating about this film is that these characters are utterly detached from everything. The few moments they actually come alive are either post crash, reliving their crash moments, or during clothes ripping sex… in cars. At times the film feels like a documentary following these damaged creatures with a passive interest and no judgment regarding their actions.

That’s another thing I find wonderful about the film, there is no commentary on the character’s behavior. It just is, without filter and without criticism. This leaves all the processing of themes and subtext to the audience. Of course your typical audience will never give this movie a chance instead dismissing it as “extreme car porn” while bemoaning its graphic nature, never realizing the multitude of layers they’re ignoring. You can’t put this film in a box and for many that automatically disqualifies it.

A slight warning, this movie falls firmly into “the journey is more important than the destination” territory. There’s no big reveal or explosive climax at the end. The story is presented as a slice of life to be experienced and absorbed. Some people enjoy this kind of film while others are driven batshit crazy by it.

*****

There are many other films I could dive into that are equally off the beaten path (i.e. ERASERHEAD, BOXING HELENA, DEAD RINGERS, THE FOUNTAIN, etc.) If you’re a fan of these types of articles I’ll gladly whip some up. There’s nothing I love more than sharing hidden gems of cinema greatness.

What off-kilter films do you enjoy? Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

When I watched my hundredth film of the year it was purely by accident.  I stumbled upon it one late night while channel surfing.  For my 200th film I instead made a calculated decision after considering several movies for the milestone.  I ended up choosing a film which I had written about before and that means a lot to me personally.

I first saw Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet in the theaters.  The moment it started I was floored, from the TV set introduction to the trailer within the title credits, I knew this film was unlike any other I had seen before.  The movie was HUGE.  Big sound, enormous visuals, and every character played with an intense passion.  There was nothing small about this picture even though it was filled with subtext and nuance.

It was one of the few films I’d seen whose theatrical experience was near perfect.  I was transported away from the plastic padded seats of the movieplex and directly into the world Luhrmann had crafted out of Shakespeare’s words.  Bold, energetic, and unique, Rome + Juliet instantly became one of my favorite films and still firmly holds the title.

In Fair Verona

Luhrmann not only updated Shakespeare’s classic to modern times, but he also made it accessible to a multitude of people who would have otherwise skipped the Bard’s clever wordplay and heart wrenching story.  Verona is transformed into a Brazilian style seaside town with rundown neighborhoods rubbing shoulders alongside powerful family empires.

Everything has a particular style in this tale.  The cars are all custom rides, chopped and lowered, as are all the weapons showcasing a clever twist on the concept of swords.  Even the clothing has a certain flair specific to each of the houses (Montague and Capulet).  It all drips with a visual pizazz which is unique to this movie.  If you were to ever come across an untitled clip there’s no mistaking what film you’re watching.

Sound also plays an integral role in this update.  The grittiness of the city is exemplified by One Inch Punch’s “Pretty Piece of Flesh” blaring from the Montague Boys’ bright yellow convertible.  The ensuing gunfight between the Montague and Capulet Boys is a hyperkinetic Western of operatic proportions leading into a Mexican standoff between a police helicopter, Tybalt, and Benvolio.  You’ll need to crank the volume to 11 in order to properly saturate yourself in that opening scene.  Hell, leave it at 11 for the rest of the film and you won’t be disappointed.

Mercutio

Mercutio is the glue that holds the entire film together.  He’s the bridge between the families, the catalyst for the story, and even what propels the story into its third act.  His casting was crucial to the movie, more so than Romeo or Juliet, because he moves the plot along like no one else.  If his performance had fallen flat then the entire movie would have been ground into the dirt.  Whenever he’s on screen the story is turbocharged by his presence.  Harold Perrineau plays this roles so beautifully that I can’t imagine the film without him.  His wordplay in some of the best in the story and delivered flawlessly.  Mercutio’s monologue about dreams and Queen Mab sucks you into his carefree nature while hinting at an inner pain which fuels his larger than life personality.

Leguizamo gets the style points while DiCaprio and Danes nail the innocence of love, but Perrineau is hands down my favorite character in the film with his over the top dance routines and boisterous joie de vivre.  His performance is simply electrifying.

The Year So Far

Here’s a look at my statistics for the year up until this point.

GENRE BREAKDOWN

The forerunner in movie genres appears to be Comedy with 47 films clocked.  I included comedy specials in my tally since they’re essentially mini-movies.  Runner-up was Action which is my “go to” whenever I want to switch off my brain.  Seems I wanted to do that a lot this year.

STATS

• Total Minutes Watched: 22240
• Total Hours Watched: 370.67
• Longest Film: 186 minutes (Watchmen: Director’s Cut)
• Shortest Film: 60 minutes (Gabriel Iglesias: Hot and Fluffy)
• Average Film Length: 111.2 minutes or 1.85 hours
• 100th Movie (Movie, Date): Blink, 04/17/12
• 300th Hour (Movie, Date): The Matrix Reloaded, 06/03/12
• 200th Movie (Movie, Date): Romeo+Juliet, 08/21/12
• Most Watched Movie: Tie @ 4 times each (Puss in Boots & Star Trek [2009])

It’s interesting that Animation and Sci-Fi are my top watched films.  Puss in Boots is an absolute delight to watch and I can’t get enough of the new Star Trek.  I could play that on loop 24/7 and be perfectly ok with it.

What are your thoughts on Romeo+Juliet or my one year of movies?  Also, if you’re running this little experiment at home let me know how it’s coming along in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo.  If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.

It’s amazing how quickly my life shifted from the break-neck pace of “figure out what the hell is wrong with me” to the post diagnosis frantic rush of “kill it with fire.” On the heels of a both a bone marrow and lymph node biopsy I was now going to have a port implanted into my chest. That’s 3 medical procedures, two of which involved twilight anesthetic, within the span of less than 20 days.  In between all the slicing and dicing my days were littered with doctor’s visits, surgical consultations, and phone calls tracking down the various test results.

I was on over-drive trying to keep my head above water after being thrown into the deep end of the cancer pool. There was never a moment to reflect on what was happening to me or how I felt about it. All I could do was go through the motions as the events unfolded around me. When my first chemotherapy session was scheduled I didn’t have time for questions or even fear. It was just another step in the marathon I was blindly running through.

Hotel California

My first chemo session was the day after my port surgery which sadly landed on February 14th. Definitely a buzz kill. My surgeon had assured me that the port was safe to use soon after its installation, going as far to say that I could have used it the very same day it went in. Call me old fashioned, but I was glad that at least 24 hours had passed before they started pumping poison directly into my heart. Going to a hospital for my first chemo didn’t raise any red flags because honestly I assumed that’s how the process started. In hindsight maybe I should have raised my hand and asked a question.

The room they put me in was nice enough by hospital standards. My expectation, and that of the nurses setting me up, was that I’d go through my chemo in less than a day and then be released back into the wild. Fun fact about chemo, it’s poison in a bag that’s shot into your veins to destroy cancer cells (and the occasional healthy cells that get in the way). Let me re-iterate, it’s basically poison and even though its purpose is to cure you of your cancer there are some nasty side effects that come along for the ride. I’m not talking about the usual nausea or hair loss, but the drug specific ones depending on the cocktail they’ve mixed for you.  Steroids and other lovely substances were thrown into my breakfast blend, but the Billy Badass drug that was specially geared for my flavor of cancer was Rituxan. That sucker opened a can of whoop ass on my cancer cells. The only problem was that its side effects were severe on a good day and downright scary when it really didn’t like you.

Shit Hits the Fan

The chemo cocktail is put together by your oncologist based on the type of cancer you’re fighting with additional drugs thrown in to make the treatment more easily accepted by your body like steroids and antihistamines.  As scientific as this sounds there’s still a lot of guesswork involved such as what order to administer the drugs in and how quickly to pump them into your veins.

The prep drugs were shot into me first (‘roids and Benadryl) to smooth the way and completed without incident.  Then the aforementioned Billy Badass, Rituxan, was hooked up to my IV.  They started with a 50ml push and after a while kicked it up to 100ml.  3 minutes after they upped the dosage my body temperature felt like it had dropped 30 degrees.  Then I started convulsing.  This wasn’t a “bite your tongue” seizure, but an equally painful and uncontrollable shaking known as Rigors.

Every single muscle in my body clenched with the effort of an Olympic power lifter while my teeth chattered like a wind-up toy.  My body immediately curled into itself and I was unable to straighten myself out.  The nurses, wild-eyed young things reeking of fear, threw blankets on top of me thinking it would help.  They tried putting a heart rate monitor on my fingertip, but I couldn’t open my hands and they couldn’t pry my fingers apart.  When it was finally attached I just watched as the numbers climbed… 150, 160, 170.  My bed was surrounded by 5 nurses, all staring at me, as I flexed my jaw as hard as I could to keep my teeth from breaking on impact.  I pleaded with them to help me through strained words that struggled past grinding teeth and by pouring my eyes into theirs, hoping they could read the thoughts frantically racing behind them.

One of them tried to hold me, but I rocked her like a mechanical bull.  The others stood paralyzed.  I honestly don’t know if I even registered as a human being to some of them instead playing out like a live action snuff film.  The one sentence I remember being able to get out, over and over again, was “call my wife… call my wife.”  The nurses assured me everything would be fine, but even in my state I could smell their bullshit.  I was paralyzed with the fear that this would end me and I wouldn’t be able to see Ra one last time.  They didn’t call and I was incapable of dialing a phone, so I continued shaking while they scrambled about like the Keystone Kops.

I don’t know how long the entire episode lasted, but Ra did walk into the room, having already been on her way to the hospital, to find me in the thick of it.  She moved the nurse I had bucked off earlier aside and held me as tightly as she could.  For the first time since the Rigors started my body slowed its shaking.  If that’s not proof I was meant to be Ra’s I don’t know what is because my girl’s touch was a comfort unlike any I had ever felt before.

The lead nurse, aptly named Grace, was the only one to keep any semblance of sanity during the entire ordeal.  She cut off the Rituxan and pushed delicious pain-killers, I think Demerol, into my twitching body.  Between Ra and the narcotics my heart finally started to slow down even though the muscles still fiercely spasmed.  At some point I was able to uncoil my body.  After that I just focused on breathing.  The doctors later informed us that my rigors were a well known side effect of Rituxan.  I’m glad they knew, but it would have been real fucking helpful if the nurses and I had been let in on the secret.

And with that my one day of chemo suddenly transformed into a full-fledged hospitalization.  I wish I could tell you that this was the worst of it, but the week that followed will forever go down as the worst of my entire existence.

Part two of this lovely tale will delve into the joys of hospitalization, fun with drug interactions, and further proof of the axiom “not all nurses are created equally.”  Hit me up in the comments or on Twitter @gabrielnovo if you like.  I can’t be the only person to have experienced this level of insanity.  You can also have these nuggets of joy delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.