Slime balls and fire balls, it's Under the Mountain

Like the director's sister, my daughter tried out for the part of Rachel (the film not the TV series), but was too young and didn't have red hair. It was too late, she was already smitten by the Maurice Gee book, the upcoming movie and the passion of the director, Jonathon King, whom we heard speak at Te Papa. She's been waiting to see Under the Mountain the movie ever since and the two of us went along tonight and really enjoyed ourselves.

The script is smart and funny, the red-headed twins [apologies for not knowing their names] are fantastic together, their cousin and his girlfriend are nice comic relief, Sam Neill does a good turn as a fading fire-maker, the setting [Auckland] is pretty damn cool with the water and the volcanoes... and there is a nice contemporary feel to the movie from the million dollar plus seaside concrete home to Rach reading Elizabeth Knox's The Dreamhunter to the cuz having a poster of The Flight of the Conchords on his wall....

I had some quibbles with the slimy aliens - it felt abit late 70s/early 80s to me. I know Gee wrote them like that, but getting these slimeballs onto the screen three decades on could have led to a facelift [perhaps a digital one? deal to all that dripping? but then again the die-hard fans might have objected.] And I also felt there needed to be a bit more happening than there was - more glimpses of the baddies, more bad guesses, more creeped out kids, more chasing..... Issy, on the other hand, had no quibbles. Oh and we both love that scene when Rachel turns into a great ball of fire and unites with her flaming bro.

If you didn't follow the link above.... Jonathon King's sister is award-winning writer Rachael King who writes on her blog about her love for Under the Mountain, and her brother's success with the movie. And it is a success, I reckon - a great Christmas/New Year/Holiday movie to take the whole family to.

Body Thinking - the real sixth sense

Many - most? - all? - writing tutors will talk about using all five senses to write, because it's in the particulars of sensory experience, which is actually the only way that we can encounter the world, that we persuade readers that everything else we've invented is authentic too. So, next time you're imagining a scene, don't just think of the smell of the Gauloises or the taste of the coconut milk, the rattan of the café chair under your thighs, let alone the colour of the doves wheeling around the belfry or the feathery rattle of their wings. Here comes the lover, or the enemy: how does your body feel the move forwards, the spring up, the knees straightening and the ground newly hard under your feet as you stand, with your hand still pressed onto the table, to steady your heart.

More on the need to include 'body thinking' or proprioception in sensory writing on Emma Darwin's blog This Itch of Writing. My daughter is a dancer and she's just been accepted into a select dance crew following an audition on Saturday [she's only 13, but this crew rehearses after school]. I am fascinated by the way her body so effortlessly embraces and remembers movement, and yet she has trouble remembering mathematical facts or even what month it is.

Inspiration

Lovely word in-spi-ra-tion. The breathing in... the oxygenation of the brain... the suggestion of the divine. The Marie Antoinette piccy above is an inspiration award for my blog from Aspiring Writer (ah, another one: a-spir-ing) whose blog I like to visit. And I am touched especially as I have been a bit quiet on here recently.

The idea is I pass the award onto seven others now, link to them, let them know and generally spread the love. The trouble is, five of the seven bloggers Aspiring Writer (Joanne Ganley) has picked are on my list of seven anyway! I see those five have said the same thing. It's a funny world the internet - it seems so big, but inside it are these tight little communities like villages.

Anyway, here are seven of my inspiring blogs - I can't say much about them because I should be packing ....

1. To Joanne who is Aspiring Writer and is enthusiastic and smart and keen as mustard to write and has lovely pictures of her garden 2. To Vanda Symon - a driven woman! She writes a book a year, raises two children, seems to have created her own mountain range of laundry and hosts a book show, and still keeps smiling all the time. 3. Gondal Girl who is quirky, mad on Emily Bronte, has finished her first novel, looks a bit like Nicole Kidman and seems - from her blog - to share so many of my preoccupations including birds. I feel I know her but we've never met. 4. Rachael King who is stylish and clever and honest to a fault, and driven to complete novel no. 2 while also sharing her love of collecting and a form of dance with a name that escapes me and some lovely music. 5. Andrea at acatofimpossiblecolour who captivates with her honesty about her life as a Zimbabwe immigrant in NZ. She writes madly and buys clothes crazily and collects gorgeous tea cups and shows all this off with such style and warmth. 6. Denis Welch at Opposable Thumb who refuses to be pigeonholed and will write intelligently, fluently, and beautifully about anything from the sound a car door makes when it shuts to his view on the Israeli-Palestinian issue to books he's enjoyed. 7. David Cohen's This is not a Blog Post - incisive and provocative media and political commentary by the Master.

Finally 8. (aren't I allowed a number 8?) Bookman Beattie's mad book site which he updates many times a day - full of stuff about books and writers. It gets a thousand hits a day from all over the world. Couldn't do without it.

Actually I have a number 9, too, Fifi, and a 10, Shroedinger's Tabby .... better stop...

I think my brain is a little lacking in oxygen at this late hour and a plane to catch tomorrow for one of those long, brain-numbing flights. I have packed my clothes and gifts for the family, and helped by daughter (and travel companion) pack her things. She has been far more efficient than me. I asked if she'd brought some jewellery (for when we hit the high spots in New York) and she said, 'I'll be wearing it.'

She has also chosen to bring the heaviest book in her collection of books to read, it's the third book in the Inkheart trilogy by Cornelia Funke and called Inkdeath - at least 500 pages long by the look of it and in hard back. This writer is one of Issy's faves, but couldn't a lighter book be found for the trip? I dragged A Suitable Boy around Samoa for six weeks and know how important it is to 'travel light.' But my daughter just smiled sweetly and pushed Inkdeath into her back pack.

She's a lot better by the way. Just hope those muscles of hers are up to lugging that back pack around Canada and the US. Then again, I suppose I've got my laptop and a small selection of books of my own. More on that later.

I'll try and blog while I'm away.