Week Eighteen: The Temptation, Still Typing, and the Awesome Avengers

May 6, 2012

Read
I started reading The Temptation, a new YA novel from best-selling author Alisa Valdes. The Temptation, which was released on April 24^th, is the first in Alisa’s supernatural romance Kindred trilogy. It’s about a girl who begins a strange and dangerous journey after her car crashes in a snowstorm and she is rescued by a mysterious young man with healing powers. The author, who lives in New Mexico, gave a talk and book-signing at Bookworks in Albuquerque last week. I will post more details on Alisa’s talk later this week. I am also still reading On Writing, which leads me to—

Write
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”—Stephen King’s first editor, from King’s book On Writing.

I’d like to be rewriting, doors open or closed, but I’m still typing, often times while eating dinner. I wrote a lot of freaking pages that need to be transcribed, so, yeah, I’m still typing. Coffee is my best friend, and I am two episodes behind on Mad Men. You’d think with all the typing I’m doing that my speed and accuracy would improve, but no.

Bliss

Albuquerque Studios provided sets for The Avengers.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was up until 2:00 a.m. Saturday, all because of The Avengers (parts of which were filmed here in Albuquerque). When my friend and I got to the theater on Friday night, all the shows were sold out until eleven o’ clock. So we got tickets to the 11:00 p.m. show and whiled away the time at a nearby Asian restaurant and ate and talked until the smell of bleach told us the crew was cleaning—and closing the place. We went back to the movies a half hour before showtime, and as soon as the previews ended, people started clapping. I couldn’t be happier that Joss Whedon (whom I adore for Buffy and Dollhouse), broke opening weekend box office records and had people applauding before the movie had even started. The Avengers popped with Whedon’s particular brand of off-beat humor and snappy bicker/banter, and he characteristically turned the traditional female role on its head with one statement from Black Widow: “I’m in the middle of an interrogation!” I loved how he wrote the sad, haunted, emotionally isolated Bruce Banner, whom Mark Ruffalo portrayed perfectly. My favorite line: “A little secret—I’m always angry.” The entire audience laughed, clapped, and cheered throughout the movie, causing my friend to jokingly gripe, “People are acting like they’re watching live theater.” That is how much we were moved by The Avengers.

Related articles

• ‘Avengers,’ Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson And More Stars On The Set Of Marvel’s Superhero Epic (news.moviefone.com)
• THE AVENGERS – Movie Production Fun Facts (geektyrant.com)