Wednesday Reviews: King's Speech

Let's face it, I love and adore Colin Firth. So of course I was going to see The King's Speech. I've seen everything else he's in (including the utterly humorous St. Trinian's and the truly horrible What a Girl Wants.)

This movie did not disappoint, despite my high hopes for Colin Firth and an historical setting. *le sigh* OK, so I may be biased given my Colin love...just a bit. But let's face it, he rocked in this roll. You can see the growth from the quiet Bertie to the King who doesn't stutter when addressing his people on the eve of World War 2. Not many actors can play a roll with only facial expressions (I'm talking the classics like Cary Grant etc.) but Colin always pulls it off.

Geoffrey Rush was, as always, superb. If there's a part he can't play, I've yet to see it. And the same equitable and long suffering qualities you see in pretty much everything he plays (including Barbosa) can be found here. I found it ironic that Jennifer Ehle (Elizabeth Bennett in BBC's Pride and Prejudice) was Myrtle Logue, Rush's character’s wife.

(Am wondering if they cast that specifically. I've noticed that several Colin Firth films have either copious references to Mr. Darcy like St. Trinian's or that somehow the writers/directors/actors manage to get a dig in at some movie he did.)

Helen Bonham Carter...she's an actress that has a diverse acting background yet I found to be a perfectly wonderful addition as the roll of the Queen Mum. Granted, I can't picture her as the adorable 101 year old woman with the Corgis in perfectly matching hat, coat, shoes, and white gloves shaking hands with everyone and always with a smile on her face, but as a younger woman, yup. Totally there. Of course, this wasn’t about her, and it’s a shame she’s more background character than anything but the story is about Bertie and Lionel and the friendship there.

Guy Pearce...I kept thinking he looked familiar, that I'd seen him in something. According to IMDB, only this. But I did discover he played Errol Flynn in Flynn. And I'd never heard of the movie let alone seen it. I suspect it'll be bad and a huge disappointment, and filled with half-truths from that biography I read years ago that I can't remember the title of but was subsequently debunked. Alas, if I can sit through What a Girl Wants, I can sit through this. Cause it's about Errol Flynn!

Lots of familiar themes like friendship over class boundaries and the power of other's beliefs in you. But it's a classic for a reason, and that reason is that we all enjoy happy endings, whether it's good over evil or personal triumph over some sort of adversity.

Monday Musings: Swoon-Worthy Hero

Swoon worthy heroes!

Brace yourselves: Shameless plug coming up!

Noble and brave men, relentlessly loyal women, scalawags and blockade runners all combine to highlight one of the most difficult times in our country's history. All the stories are good, but Ross and Roman deliver scalawags that will make readers swoon. Civil War buffs will love the well-written, well-researched stories in this must-have collection. ~Romantic Times Book Reviews.

That review was for Northern Belles and Southern Roses anthology from The Wild Rose Press.

So what constitutes a swoon worthy hero? I'm sure you have lots of opinions, for every woman there's a man who makes her swoon. Might not be the same as me (*cough Colin Firth cough*) but there's someone out there who has the that makes your knees week.

He's got to be handsome but that has more to do with your imagination running away with you or picturing Brad Pitt's better looking alternate universe evil twin. He also has to have confidence, or the appearance of confidence even if he's not an alpha hero.

Heroes can go through their own character growth which involve deep seeded conflicts or insecurities but they always have to have an area they are truly confident in. Otherwise, they become the wimpy secondary character.

However, confidence can also be a tricky slope, one that can easily turn into arrogance. Now, that doesn't mean that an arrogant hero is a bad thing, it just mean you have to know your hero. Plan him out before you start writing (let's not talk about inconsistency!) and make sure he compliments the heroine no matter what you write about either of them.

Plot his growth to compliment and coincide with the heroine's, make sure whatever it is he learns/does/is/wants doesn't make a romance between them seem unlikely. There's nothing worse than a reader wondering why the heroine fell in love with the hero.

But how to make him swoon worthy? I have no idea. I can tell you how I wrote Jack in In the Shadows...he loved Marion enough to join forces with her. He didn't regulate her to the background or belittle her mission, and in the end, he saved both their lives.

What about you? What's your swoon-worthy hero?

Amusing side notes

Vacation has come and gone and I feel like this last week has flown by in a blur of confusion. In between working on writing projects, RL, day job, and quite a bit of sleeping, I've rediscovered my Colin Firth love. Ahh, Colin...

*ahem* where was I? Yes, side notes. Colin is not one of them....yum.

I'm over at Sky Purington's A Writer's Mind all week, stop by! I'm giving away a copy of Temptations and Treachery, she's graciously offered a $5 gift certificate to The Wild Rose Press, and you never know what else I'll give away. A evening handbag perhaps?

Trying to gather everything to send out to judges for the Hearts Thru History contest, Romance Through The Ages. Entries are du at midnight tonight, and I volunteered to be the Time Travel/Paranormal coordinator. Gotta make sure everything's good to go and all!

Also gathering covers for the RT I'm doing in July. Yes, it was expensive, but I think it's a great investment in my writing future, since the chances of me marrying dear Colin are slim. Actually none, he's already taken. Pity...

Saw the link on Un:Bound, thought it was hysterical. Seriously, #'s 4, 5, and 6 cracked my up. Course #9 is classic. :) What do you think?

By the way…your laptop is your wife.
James K. Walker, editor for Left Lion at speaker at the upcoming Writing Industries Conference shares his Top Ten Tips for writers.

1.Read your work out in public. You’ll develop a new found appreciation of tone, rhythm and punctuation. See the reaction of the audience as a kind of verbal editing. When they don’t laugh at your funny character, it’s because he isn’t funny.

2.Join a writing group and open the windows when you leave the flat. It will smell lovely and fresh when you come home and your girlfriend might finally agree to come over.

3.By the way…your laptop is your wife. That cute one that comes over when the flat smells nice is just your bit on the side. Treat her as such. Your loyalty is with your wife and a wife is for life.

4.Walk to work. This way you don’t have to waste valuable writing time joining a gym. There is no greater betrayal of the imagination, than joining a gym. Before you know it you’ll be slipping into your imagination and going over the various scenarios of your book.

5.Take a pencil and paper with you as you’ll be stopping every ten seconds to scribble these ideas down. It’s probably a good idea to invest in a pencil sharpener, finances permitting.

6.Buy a memory stick and type up everything you’ve just written when you get to work because you’ll lose the scraps of paper.

7.Get a job where you can write in peace and preferably one without too much responsibility. I strongly recommend the public sector. The perfect job is one in which you are able to do eight hours work in three, thus enabling you to write for the other five. This is the closest you’ll ever get to being a regularly paid writer. Feels great, doesn’t it.

8.Ensure you have a boss who doesn’t mind you being late. (see point 5)

9.Write a blog. It’s like having a regular mental workout and a good way to track the development of your thoughts. I don’t have a camera and so the blog is the closest thing I have to a photographic album. It’s also a great place to outlet those thoughts you know you’ll never have time to turn into stories but will eat away at you regardless. Like the one about ‘the strange man who used to crouch down every ten seconds by the side of the road to scribble something down. Nobody knew what he was writing or why he did it but…’

10.Don’t write a list of top ten writing tips when you haven’t had your novel published yet. It’s arrogant, delusional and distracts you from what matters. As does reading funny quotes by Philip Pullman on a Saturday afternoon.

What's on your agenda this week?