Good Stuff! Mitty, Non-Stop, and The Winter Soldier

ByJohn Brown

the-secret-life-of-walter-mitty-poster-bigThe previews for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty didn’t look interesting at all. Furthermore, I’m not the biggest Ben Stiller fan. He’s a fine actor; I just haven’t been in the audience for a lot of his movies. Then someone I know recommended the film, and I decided to give it a go with Nellie.

We didn’t have high hopes. I mean, look at the movie poster. Does that get you excited? She thought it was going to be dumb. I thought it was going to be dumb. But after five minutes, we found ourselves enjoying the characters and story. We finished it, both of us absolutely delighted. I liked it so much I corralled my two daughters into watching it with me. Then I watched it again. I think I watched it four times total. And I enjoyed it as much, maybe more, each time.

Walter is a great guy who has had to play it safe and practical his whole life. When his and his co-worker’s jobs are threatened, he takes action and finds himself on a journey that starts in, ta-dum, Greenland. The movie’s got adventure, a slow-burn romance, and a cast of funny and quirky characters. But it isn’t mad-cap humor. It’s not a gushing love story. It’s something else. Something that left me feeling like my life had been leavened with a fine light joy. Give it a shot; I think you’ll be glad you did.

* * *

non-stop-movie-posterThe previews for Non-Stop with Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore looked great. I’m happy to report that it was every bit as good as the previews promised.

Neeson plays a federal air marshal. While on a flight from New York to London, he gets a text telling him that unless 150 million dollars is transferred to an offshore account, someone will die every 20 minutes. But it’s not so easy finding the killer. The deaths are almost inexplicable. And things soon start to spin out of control.

This movie is filled with surprises and suspense. And it moves. Thrillers normally move quickly, but this one was on turbo. But that doesn’t mean the story was a bunch of light and noise. Quite the contrary. The writers skillfully balance the mystery, action, suspense, and even the character backstories. A lot of folks liked Taken. I liked this better than that film. In fact, it’s one of the better thrillers I’ve seen these last few years.

* * *

winter-soldier-poster-no-maskI’m a superhero lover, have been since I was a kid watching the Superfriends cartoon every Saturday morning. But I never know if I’m going to enjoy a superhero movie. I love the genre, but for some reason so many of the films go for effect over story. It drives me nuts. The movie ends, the lights turn on, and I sit in my seat and go “huh.” So I’m happy to report that Captain America: The Winter Soldier actually delivers.

I cannot say the same for Captain America: The First Avenger, the first in this series. That movie fell apart halfway through the film. The beginning was this wonderful story about a runt trying to do his duty and volunteer. The second half lost all its heart and turned into one big yawn. So for those of you who didn’t like that first film, know that this is a case of the sequel being far better than the original.

In this one, SHIELD, the organization that directs the Avengers, comes under attack from within. Captain America and Black Widow have to uncover who is behind it and stop them before it’s too late. There are a lot of cool visuals and awesome action scenes. For example, I loved how Captain America “parachutes” into the opening mission. I enjoyed watching him and Black Widow fight in their distinctive ways. But the film didn’t focus on the tech or the super powers. It focused on the characters and the story. The plot includes a number of delicious surprises and reveals. There are funny moments and some poignant ones. And not only did this movie, unlike the first one, develop a single story all the way through, but it also echoes with our current search for national security.

If you liked Iron Man and Iron Man 3, I think you’ll enjoy Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

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  • Black Hawk Down, Pete Blaber, Not Waving But Drowning

    ByJohn Brown

    A Ferocious Battle

     I just finished reading Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. It is the most gripping account of any battle I have ever read.

    In 1992 a Somali warlord attacked and killed U.N. peacekeeping forces. As a result, the US put a $25,000 bounty on his head and attempted to arrest and try him for war crimes. On October 3, 1993, by the order of President Bill Clinton, a force of United States Army Rangers and Delta Force operators, the Army’s most elite warriors, set out to capture several lieutenants of the warlord’s militia in an area of the Somali capital city of Mogadishu that was controlled by the warlord.

    The force of about a hundred U.S. soldiers helicoptered in during broad daylight. They roped down to the streets surrounding the target building. It was supposed to take them no more than an hour. They would bag the warlord’s lieutenants, put them on a convoy of Army trucks that had barreled into the city and were waiting right around the corner, and get out.

    But the citizenry, loyal to the warlord, weren’t going to take it lying down. They began to swarm with guns and rocket propelled grenades. They attacked, almost heedless of the danger. One Somali with an AK-47 rode a cow out in a strange charge, a number of other Somali’s taking cover behind (yeah, he and the cow died). But the Americans were overconfident of their Black Hawk helicopters. They didn’t think the types of weapons the Somalis had could bring them down.

    One chopper was hit and crashed. Then another. A third and then a fourth were damaged and barely made it back to safety before they crash landed. As for the Rangers and D-boys, they were in for the fight of their life.

    The book tells the story of their courage, but it also brings in the point of view of a number of actual Somalis who fought and were injured. In the process, we get a view of the battle that is both thrilling and poignant.

    Bowden did an excellent job researching and writing this. I could not put it down. It does include some military grade profanity, but it wasn’t there to titillate or shock. I’ve talked to those who saw the movie based on this book, and I could tell the book is, per usual, better than the movie. If you’re at all interested in the military and the military operations we conduct overseas, let me recommend that you read this book. 

    Delta Force Commander Shares Insights

    Delta Force is the world’s most elite counterterrorist fighting force. Pete Blaber was a Delta Force operator that worked his way up to become a Delta Force commander and took part in some of the most dangerous, controversial, and significant military and political events of our time.

    During his time in uniform, he learned a number of lessons about life, about how we make decisions and act on them. In The Mission, The Men, and Me, Blaber writes about a number of the missions he conducted and the lessons he learned from them.

    The missions were conducted in Montana, Iraq, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. One featured a commander stupidly ordering Blaber to take his men into sure destruction. Another featured some of the first plans to capture Osama Bin Laden, before 9/11. Another included a man in a gorilla suit.

    The lessons Blaber draws from these experiences are fascinating and apply to more than military operations. For example, the lesson he drew from the operation featuring the gorilla suit is something I use every day with my writing. Anyone who leads or manages or works in groups will find other critical lessons. This was another book I couldn’t put down. Anyone interested in special forces will love this book.

    Not Waving But Drowning

    “Not Waving but Drowning” is a poem by female British poet Stevie Smith. It was published in 1957 as part of a collection with the same title. The work is her most famous poem and describes a man whose distressed thrashing in the sea causes onlookers to believe that he is waving to them, not drowning

    I hadn’t thought about this poem since I was a student at BYU. Then a local poet read it as part of his remarks at a conference I recently attended. The image and message lingered with me for hours. I thought about it off and on over the following weeks. This is, for me, an incredibly powerful poem. It needs to be read aloud, I think, to be appreciated. Not in some silly way, but with the appropriate feeling. I’m going to record a reading for my website, but you can read it aloud for yourself. Or have someone else do it for you. Then read it again.

    Nobody heard him, the dead man,
    But still he lay moaning:
    I was much further out than you thought
    And not waving but drowning.

    Poor chap, he always loved larking
    And now he’s dead
    It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
    They said.

    Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
    (Still the dead one lay moaning)
    I was much too far out all my life
    And not waving but drowning.

    How often does this happen? Those onlookers, caring only superficially, thinking it was too cold, thinking he was funning. But it wasn’t too cold. And his heart didn’t give out. He was struggling for his life, and they were too preoccupied to see it.

    Too preoccupied to really see. 

    I wonder. Is there someone around me, that if I just looked, just paused from my rush, I’d see they were much too far out, and not waving, but drowning.

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    Ender’s World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender’s Game

    ByJohn Brown

    Smart Pop publishes smart, fresh, and engaging articles on the best of pop culture TV, books, and film, with a particular focus on science fiction and fantasy television and literature.

    You want to hear what Scott Westerfield (Uglies, Pretties, etc.) has to say about Buffy?  Go to Smart Pop.

    What about Orson Card’s thoughts on Joss Whedon’s Firefly universe? Smart Pop.

    What about the venerable Lawrence Block on Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series? Um, Smart Pop.

    Strange.  Do you see a pattern emerging? 

    Whether it’s Mad Men, House, Hunger Games, George Martin’s epic fantasies, Halo, True Blood, or Alias, Smart Pop gathers together New York Times bestselling authors, television writers, psychologists, philosophers, and others–folks who love of pop culture and have something worth sharing about it–and asks them to share their insights.   

    Recently, they’ve been putting together just such a collection on Ender’s Game.  It’s called Ender’s World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender’s Game. It’s coming out February 2013.  You can read more about it here.

    I’m announcing this now because The Man was fortunate enough to be invited to contribute.  I love Ender’s Game.  LOVE IT.  How cool is it that I get to write about it in an anthology edited by the folks at Smart Pop and Card himself? And then get to read what everyone else has to say, including military strategists Colonel Tom Ruby and Captain John Schmitt.  As well as the little bits they’ll include on things like why the battle room is the shape it is and why they were recruiting kids.

    But I’m also announcing this because in addition to the essays all we Ender-lovers get to write, Smart Pop is also going to include a series of Q&As with Scott Card, and they are currently soliciting the question from readers. FROM YOU. Right now.

    You ever wonder about a character or part of the setting or event in Ender’s Game?  Ever wanted to know what inspired Card? Ever wanted to ask any question at all about Ender’s Game?  Now’s your chance. Just submit you question here: http://www.smartpopbooks.com/ask-orson-scott-card-a-question-about-enders-game/

    You can see questions already submitted at Smart Pop’s Tumblr.

    From a writer’s pov, I have to tell you that the folks at Smart Pop have been nothing but enjoyable and insightful to work with. I’m looking forward to this book!

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  • Good Stuff! The Greatest Showman

    ByJohn Brown

    I saw the previews of The Greatest Showman, the movie about the circus guy. I rolled my eyes. The circus? Come on.

    But my daughters, one by one, went to see it and came home raving.

    And then my wife went to see it and came home raving.

    And then my youngest was playing some music the other night, and I said, “Ooh, that’s nice. Good beat. Wow. What is that?”

    She said with much affection, “The Greatest Showman, loser.”

    I said to myself, maybe the previews simply stank. I said, I’ve seen movies where the previews were better than the full-length film. Maybe this was the reverse.

    I said, to my fine daughter and wife, “How about a movie night?”

    They were more than game to see it a second time. So we went and saw The Greatest Showman this week.

    Here’s the report.

    Oh. My. Holy. Freaking. Heck!

    This movie is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last few years. And get this: it was released more than eleven weeks ago, back in December of last year. How many movies do you know that stay in the theaters for eleven weeks straight? When a movie keeps attracting crowds week after week, long after the release night hype has faded, they say it “has legs.”

    Let me tell you, this one has some legs. The music is awesome. The visuals are wonderful. And the story—the story is everything a story should be. I came out of the theater having wept and cheered and bitten my nails and been thrilled with a number of the scenes. I came out of the theater happy, positive, thinking about life, thinking about what really matters.

    Look, if you enjoy musicals, if you enjoy dramas, if you enjoy Hugh Jackman of Wolverine fame, you must drop everything you’re doing right now and run to see this before it leaves the theaters. You’ll be so happy you did.

    And now, I’m going to figure out how I can go see it again.

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  • |

    The average American reads 17 books per year

    ByJohn Brown

    Americans and Reading

    The Pew Research Center has just published their findings on reading in America. It’s called “The Rise of E-reading“. There’s a LOT of fascinating information in the report. Here’s a taste:

    1. Americans 18 and older read on average 17 books each year. 19% say they don’t read any books at all. Only 5% say they read more than 50.
    2. Fewer Americans are reading books now than in 1978.
    3. 64% of respondents said they find the books they read from recommendations from family members, friends, or co-workers.
    4. The average reader of e-books read 24 books (the mean number) in the past 12 months; the average non-e-book consumer read an average of 15.

    Building an Audience

    I also want to recommend this week’s post by Kris Rusch on Audience. She has a number of interesting things to say about the dream of being a best seller and building an audience. The money quote comes as she refers to a post by Tracy Hickman:

    “The point here is that you do not have to feel as though you are in competition with the entire world. You don’t NEED the entire world to be a successful writer. What you need is an audience—just enough of an audience, mind you—who reads your words, is changed by them and wants to come back for more.”

    An audience. More importantly, an audience that reads and “is changed by” your words. Not an audience who loves them, not even an audience who likes them. An audience who is changed by them, and because of that experience, “wants to come back for more.”

    Simple. Important. Usually forgotten.

    She talks about lots more. Read the whole thing.

    My thoughts?

    First, there’s no need for authors or readers to worry about wading through “crap.”

    According to Pew, readers only read 15 or 24 books a year on average.  That’s not a lot of books.

    More importantly, it takes about 3 seconds to get a lead for a good book.  You hear something from a friend or family member, you look at the USA Today best sellers list, you browse a few books at a store or online, you read a blog and suddenly you’ve found a book. 

    Readers fill up their book reading slots much more quickly than they can ever empty them.  That’s why we all have years of reading in our queues.

    It doesn’t matter that there are millions of other books out there, a good majority of which might have been written by monkeys. There’s no need for authors to worry that readers will have to wade through a mountain of crap to find a good book. They don’t need to because they have leads for good books coming out their ears.

    Second, people purchase books that friends, family, and co-workers love.

    Which means that when you deliver a great experience to one person, it’s going to ripple out. It’s probably not going to be linear. It’s probably going to ripple out like viruses do into different population pockets. Or seeds do into different environments. It will run through one pocket, make a jump to one or more others, or it may not jump at all. Some pockets are big, some are small.

    The way to keep a virus going is to release it in a lot of places where it’s likely to thrive or in places that a lot of people travel through. And as Kris points out, writing is all about repeat business–making sure you have a stream of good product (something I hope to rectify with my own writing this year).

    Bottom line: the best way to build your writing business is to simply write the best book you can, and keep them coming.

    Third, the market is BIG. 

    If you read Rusch’s and Hickman’s articles, you’ll see that even the mega sellers only reach a fraction of those who read. This is reinforced by the statement made by Thomas McCormack, former CEO of St. Martin’s that you can read here. So just because 100,000 people read one book doesn’t mean 100,000 others won’t read mine.  

    Moreover, e-books and online shopping are broadening distribution. Brick and mortar stores only have so many slots for books. Every 8-12 weeks they rotate the old books out (like 12 weeks is old) and replace them with the new ones, unless, of course, your book is selling very well and gets “modeled” at the store.  The point is: when you only display a few books at a time, those books will get bigger sales numbers. This happens because there isn’t anything else to purchase.

    But you don’t have that limitation with e-books and online shopping. Nothing rotates out of the store. Sure, things rotate on and off the best seller lists. But the books are always there. With an ever growing selection, there won’t be as many mega sellers.  Publishers Weekly discusses this trend in their 2011 Facts & Figures articles, which list best-seller numbers (make sure you click through to the Trade Paperback article as well). The same thing has happened with TV station viewership with the explosion of channels, DVDs, and online streaming. Same thing happened with music.

    What this means is each author has a better chance of getting his or her books to those who will love them. We’ll still have best-sellers. But we’ll also have a lot more medium sellers as well. And that’s great for authors everywhere.

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    Brain Nazis and Feeling Good by David D. Burns, M.D.

    ByJohn Brown

    Have You Got a Brain Nazi?

    If you’re conscious, you’re monitoring your environment. You have to. It’s how you survive. This is not something you can turn off. It’s just one of those systems that runs automatically, like your liver. You’re always appraising the situation.

    And as soon as you encounter something that’s likely to be of importance to you or yours, your monitor kicks off a physical response to prepare you to deal with or take advantage of it.

    The problem is that sometimes a Nazi propagandist worms his way into the monitoring station. And like any good Nazi, he distorts reality.

    Sometimes those distortions lead to burning resentment, sometimes to unwarranted shame or anxiety, sometimes to eating disorders, sometimes to grave depression. When I heard of the tragic suicide that occurred in our community a few months ago, my heart went out in sympathy to the girl, her family, and friends.  I’m not a doctor. I don’t know the situation. But I’m positive she was dealing with one of these villains.

    I wished I’d been able to share something that’s been a literal life saver to me. Now, it might not have changed anything. But hopefully it can change things in the future for you and others you know who may have to deal with a Nazi in the brain.

    And you will have to deal with a brain Nazi at some time.

    This is not something that affects a miniscule portion of the population. In any given year you can expect more than 15% of a population to experience some form of this [1]. That’s roughly 238 of the estimated 1,592 people 18 years and older in the little county where I live [2]. Rates for teens are similar [3]. Besides, you don’t have to have a full-blown case of a depression for distortions to affect you. How many of us haven’t made faulty comparisons with others? “Oh, she’s so thin and has such great hair; I’m so dumpy.” “Oh, he’s doing so well, and I’m not. I’ll never be a success.”

    The question is not whether you or someone important to you will have to deal with it. The question is how prepared you’ll be when you do. Everyone deals with distortions now and again.  Which means everyone can find a little more enjoyment in life by showing their brain Nazis the door.

    So how does it all work? How do you show the villain out?

    I’m going to summarize it below, but I’ll tell you right now that the book that saved my life was Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD. This isn’t positive mental attitude. It’s not neuro-linguistic programming. It’s not the mumbo jumbo of Freud and Jung. This is practical and proven. It is the most prescribed intervention for dealing with these issues in the current medical community. It’s prescribed because it works.

    Your Brilliant Appraisal-Emotion System

    To understand this, you have to understand how emotions work. As I said before, you’re always monitoring your situation. You hear a buzz and see a rattlesnake on the path two feet away. Your monitor immediately responds. Alarm, adrenaline, increased blood flow–all of that to get you ready to deal with the situation. Your monitor writes “alarm” on your face to communicate it to those around you–to warn and ask for help. This happens in less than a blink of an eye.

    But this doesn’t just happen with danger. It happens when we encounter unfamiliar things. When we encounter positive things. You see a great friend who makes you laugh all the time. Boom, your monitor responds. You smile. Feel. Focus. You do so because you not only want to avoid dangers, you also want to seek out the things that make you happy.

    Our emotions prepare us to fight, flee, seek, and pitch woo. Our little monitoring and physical response system is brilliant.

    But there’s more. We don’t rely on just the automatic subconscious monitoring. We also have a cognitive (conscious thinking) part. Let’s go back to the rattlesnake. You walk out into the garden, step on a slither, and immediately go into alarm mode. Then you look, consciously see the slithery thing is not a snake, but the garden hose. You relax. Laugh.

    The quick subconscious appraisals keep us alive, because with snakes and other things, if you’re slow, you’re dead. We don’t have time for thought. If you touch a hot stove, you want an immediate reflex. You don’t want to ponder it for a second or two. On the other hand, the cognitive appraisals help us further appraise a situation. They bring more of our resources to bear on the situation.

    How Does the Nazi Get In?

    So there are three parts of the appraisal-emotion system: the subconscious appraisal of the situation, the physical response, and the cognitive appraisal. Each of the three parts affects the other two. And when things are running smoothly, we don’t have problems. But sometimes we get a distortion mucking up the works. We make a faulty appraisal of the situation. And therefore have a faulty physical response.

    For example, you’re a mother. You’ve had a hard day. The kids make a huge mess with flour in the kitchen. You yell, freak out. When they’re cowering in their rooms and you’re cleaning up the flour, you think, “There I go again. I’m a total failure. I can’t stand it! I never do anything right! I’m a terrible mother.” These thoughts make you even sadder.

    And that’s the propaganda. That’s your brain Nazi with his all-or-nothing thinking, telling you that you either perform perfectly or you’re a failure.

    But is that true? No, it’s not. You might be a B+ mother, filling the lives of your kids with all sorts of goodness. You might have just had a great time reading with the kids not thirty minutes before. But the brain Nazi tells you to forget that. “Vatch dis film,” he says, “und see de horrors of vut you are!”    

    And the all-or-nothing thinking gambit is just one of ten common weapons he uses. Furthermore, this happens so quick that we often don’t notice it. In fact, we’ve often repeated some of these distortions so often than they’ve become almost automatic.

    Mr. Nazi, Meet Mr. Bazooka

    The good news is that you can pull the lid off the lies. You can open the door, spot the brain Nazi that slipped in, and take him out. You can do this because one of the three parts of the system is our cognitive appraisal. This means you can consciously stop the movie, pin the distortion on the wall, and uncover the truth. Once you do that, it’s like the rattlesnake scenario above—oh, it’s a hose, we realize, not a snake, and the appropriate emotions immediately follow.

    But you need to know how to stop the movie. You need to know how to spot the lies. David D. Burns, MD tells you exactly how to do this in his book Feeling Good. (By the way, DON’T get this book confused with his Feeling Good Handbook–you DON’T want the handbook; you want Feeling Good, the book.)  In the book, Burns talks about the theory, the results, and then gets right down to the practical techniques used to blow the brain Nazi to kingdom come.

    A few years ago I hit a bad patch with a brain Nazi that had taken up residence. A very bad patch. He’d been there for quite some time. This book and a good counselor saved me. I thank the Lord for that. By the time I went to see a medical doctor to assess whether chemical issues might be playing a role, I was stable. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but I had opened the lid and found the villain at the controls. I used the techniques Burns gave me, and I’m happy to say that while the brain Nazi still comes round every once in a while, I can spot him. And I can take that sucker out.

    Go to the library and check out the book and take the assessment test. If you, or someone you know, scores in the mild range, maybe you’ve just experienced a very sad event. But maybe you’ve also got a villain in residence. Get the book. Read it. Be happy. Nobody needs to live with a Nazi at the controls.

    For Authors

    By the way, fiction authors should pay special attention to this stuff. Not because we’re more susceptible to brain Nazis than others, although we do have to deal with our fair share as we develop and share our stories. No, we should because the emotion process is exactly what we’re trying to tap into. Knowing the principles can be very useful indeed. Let me recommend you read the books on emotion listed on the Learning With Pros page.

    Sources

    1. 1. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml
    2. 2. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/49/49033.html (find your state and county and see how many folks are likely dealing with a brain Nazi in your area)
    3. 3. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/youthDepression/youthDepression.htm
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2 Comments

  1. I think we only have a little bit of overlap in our movie tastes. Here are my ratings:

    Mitty: 2/5

    Non-Stop: 1/5

    Winter Soldier: 4/5

  2. Your rating of Non-Stop is surprising to me. Did you like Ghost Protocol, Lone Survivor, or Knight and Day? How about Collateral, Valkerie, or Jack Reacher? I’m trying to think of other action thrillers that I liked. Bourne–did you like the first one of that series? How about Casino Royale with Daniel Craig? These are all thrillers that I thought were great.

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