Category: FICTION

Best drunk in a film – Time to Vote!

Okay time for a final vote now we have had plenty of time to deliberate. I have a few additions though so if anybody else has, please add them now:

Original list:

1. Walter Matthau in Earthquake (this is also definitely my funniest)
2. Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagons
3. Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou (I’m still going to check out Paul Newman in The Sting though)
4. Paul Newman in The Hudsucker Proxy
5. Shelley Winters in Alfie
6. Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now (thanks for suggestion El’Phantasmo)
7. I forgot Nick Cage in Leaving Las Vegas
8. Embarrassing one this but Oliver Reed in Oliver! Okay, okay I know the film is a bit of old hokey’ but he really is very menacing – and he was Carol Reed’s nephew.
9. Okay – the butler in Dinner for One, although I am not sure I have seen this. I will look on YouTube
10. Cary Grant in North by North West. Actually this is pretty good too.
11. I am actually adding in George Peppard in the Blue Max because the book from which the film was made was actually about alcoholism and I think on reflection Peppard is trying to convey something of this.
12. Peter O’Toole in Murphy’s War
13. Lee Marvin in Shout at the Devil
14. Robert Mitchum in El Dorado

That’s all from me. If you have none to add you can vote straight away. 10 pts for your favourite down to 1 point for your tenth favourite (we do PR here)

Also been trying to think of my ‘6 films you have got to see’ but it’s actually extraordinarily difficult. Mainly because I am trying to think of not my personal 6 favourites but 6 which I think everyone should see. So far I have only thought of 2.

Finally don’t miss the UK film 1066 which is currently in production. It’s the first UK film ever to be selling shares to the public and it has the biggest cast ever for a UK film. It has Lewis Collins as Earl Godwin too, which should be fun. Perhaps at last he will get some recognition. It also has Mark Lester (remember Oliver!) as King Harold.

Stop Press: there is a competition to win a day on the set of the film 1066: go to http://www.lewiscollins.info and click on ‘Competition’.

Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate Submission

I have had a heavy period of writing. Mainly starting the sequel to Iron I: Too Bright the Sun.

Also I submitted Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate to BigAl’s blog for review. If you missed it his blog went viral last week when he reviewed a book by Jacqueline Howett and she blasted him for picking up on her grammar. A whole load of people then backed him up which made her even more furious. If you haven’t read it, it’s here:
https://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html

I thought his review was very fair.

Unknown Place, Unknown Galaxy

If you are wondering why I have been so quiet it’s because I have started tentative work on the follow-up volume to Too Bright the Sun (which I am still waiting for a female reader to have a go at before I start the editing process).

I have tried a very different kind of opening to anything I have tried before. It’s a strange kind of hook if it is a hook at all but as they say, rules are there to be broken and a I have heard it said that not one rule in writing has not been broken at least once successfully.

Also today I saw an article on slashdot about selling kindle E-books for 99 cents and how this is the trick that earned one author over 350K dollars since 1 January. The article has some big inaccuracies though so I have commented on these and offered some thoughts of my own. I am posting under the username Kite43:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/09/0618234/Crime-Writer-Makes-a-Killing-With-99-Cent-E-Books#comments