Late Updates and Shrek Sequels

Posted 12:15 5th July 2007

Hello people out there in radio-land I hope you are all having a wonderful July - this is what summer is all about and it's one of my favourite months of the year. First up I want to apologise for the late updates - the past two comics were an entire day late by UK reckoning, maybe late at night on the West Coast. I will not offer up any excuses other than it has been a busy week. Still, the comics are there and no harm's done.

I saw Shrek 3 the other day. I wan't thoroughly impressed. I heard they were making five or six of those films. Only hope the next two or three are better than that one was. My favourite of the three is definitely the first because it has the strongest plot by far. There's nothing I love more than the satisfying execution of the three-act structure. Fellow writers will know what I'm talking about - everyone else I would recommend you don't look it up because it could well ruin your enjoyment of most if not every subsequent film or book you watch or read. Good examples of tightly-plotted films are Spider-man 2 and the Lord of the Rings films. Shrek has what those films have. I think the Hollywood term is 'story-telling'.

The sequel was funny and it had a plot. I enjoyed the introduction of the new characters and something interesting was done with the concept. They wrote in too many anachronisms, though, and it felt like the second film wasn't set in the same world as the first. It looked pretty, though.

This third one introduces only a few new characters, the plot was thin on the ground and not without a few holes, the ending was really unsatisftying and most of the characters (in fact all apart from one - and it wasn't Shrek) were extraneous to the plot. Puss in Boots and Donkey had nothing to do in this film and as a result they became annoying. This is just me, of course. I mean, the film made me laugh all the way through. It wasn't bad as such. It's just that the most satisfying thing about films for me is plot so I came away quite dissatisfied, especially considering the film was only an hour and twenty-five minutes. How can they make a film that short and with such little story? It felt like it should have been a straight-to-video release. Pixar would never have made a film like that.

Anyway, I'm going to write some of my book now (cue pretentious laugh) and later on I'm going to cook dinner. Have fun out there and don't forget to...

Vote!