Dominic Balasuriya

Why should you read this blog? Well, with any luck, it’ll have a mix of magazine-style feature articles and topical links with commentary. The focus will be writing, publishing, and books: which makes sense, since I’m a writer.

I live in Sydney,^{The one with the Opera House and Kangaroos, not the one in Nova Scottia} and I mostly write short stories of the literary variety. ^{What does that really mean? Well, a simple (but fairly useless) definition of a literary short story is: a story that appears in a literary magazine. Going deeper could take an entire blog post, but it’s probably easiest to just read ‘literary’ as ‘some kind of realism’.} But I still have a fondness for genre, so expect to see writing about books of all sorts on this blog. From time to time, there may also be other miscellanea, from the arts in general, but also from technology. ^{My other field of interest: I have a background in computer science. For instance, I designed the theme for this blog myself.If you’re curious, it’s hosted on Amazon S3 via Cloudfront, from a set of static files generated by Pelican. I’m very interested to hear any feedback on the design.}

Of course, whenever you put new words out into the world, there’s always the danger that they’ll simply disappear, unheard. So, if you’ve enjoyed something on here, or if you’ve got something to add, let me know. The easiest way to reach me is on Twitter: @domwrites.

So, welcome. Let’s see where this goes.

Javier Sandoval on The Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Join Medium:

People blog because they have something to say and want other people to hear them. They want the limelight and attention. Medium’s collaborative focus can help with exposure, but by making writing communal, the attention leaves the independent writer.

Without knowing, Medium may be stripping away the main reason people blog.

So, Medium clearly isn’t an individual-centric blogging platform. Writer accounts are nominally linked to Twitter profiles, but that relationship isn’t transparent to readers: there’s currently no way to follow writers on Medium.

Instead, Medium’s focus is on delivering the best content to readers, no matter who wrote it. That’s Evan William’s take on the modern web magazine, except unlike most other magazines, the majority of Medium contributors are unpaid.^{It’s worth noting that Medium has recently begun to partner with professional writers, paying them competitive freelance rates, but this mostly seems to be aimed at seeding Medium with high quality content, to attract other quality writers.}

So what’s the incentive to put your writing on Medium, if you’re not getting money or followers? Well, as Sandoval points out, the tradeoff is exposure.

Significantly, if you don’t already have a large social media following, Medium could also potentially help you reach a much larger audience. And since you can put any text you like in a Medium post, some writers are already appending biographical footers to their posts, with links to social media and content they want to promote.^{I’ve even seen pull quotes used as text advertisements.}

A better question to ask: what will happen when Medium is eventually monetised? Advertising seems likely, and while ads will interfere with Medium’s clean, minimalist design, they probably won’t greatly reduce reader numbers. Medium could potentially move to a subscription model, but that seems at odds with Medium’s emphasis on freely moving from one good piece to the next.

So, at least for now, Medium looks like a great way to get more eyeballs on high quality content. Personally, I’m going to be experimenting with cross-posting some of my blog posts on Medium.^{Of course, additional footnotes like this one will only appear on this blog.Medium doesn’t currently support footnotes.} I’ll let you know how that goes.

If you liked this post, why not follow me on Twitter?

The New York Times :

Alice Munro, the acclaimed short-story writer… told a newspaper interviewer, “I’m probably not going to write anymore.”

At eighty-two, Alice Munro joins other writers who have laid down their pens, including Philip Roth, who announced his retirement late last year. But unlike Roth, Munro’s oeuvre is composed entirely of short stories: sixty-two years spent cultivating a single genre.^{Other notable writers who have made the same choice: O. Henry, Raymond Carver, George Saunders.}

The results have been extraordinary. It really isn’t an exaggeration to say that Munro is responsible for the astonishing flexibility of the modern short story. In his introduction to the “The Best American Short Stories 2012” ^{Munro’s short story, “Axis”, appears in this collection.}, editor Tom Perrotta wrote:

The fact that it’s no longer considered risky, or even especially noteworthy, to tell a story from multiple perspectives— or to range freely across the expanse of a character’s life … —owes a lot to Munro’s formal daring, her insistence on smuggling the full range of novelistic techniques into the writing of her short fiction, and the influence she’s had on her contemporaries.

If you’re wondering where to start reading her work, Munro’s most recent collection, “Dear Life: Stories” , is an excellent place to begin. ^{And if you’re already well versed in Munro’s writing, here’s one you might have missed: “Dimensions of a Shadow”. Her very first published story, it appeared in the college literary magazine Folio in 1950, and was only recently rediscovered and republished.} “Amundsen”, a portrait of a young school teacher who arrives in a frozen Canadian town, is freely available on The New Yorker’s website.

I’m definitely going to miss reading new stories by Alice Munro, but it’s good to know that her influence on fiction is here to stay.

“Elysium” would be just another summer blockbuster, if not for the fact that its director, Neill Blomkamp, was also responsible for a very different film: “District 9”. Sure, both films feature near-future dystopias, complete with gritty violence. But “Elysium” is missing much of what made “District 9” such an effective piece of science-fiction.

It was, I admit, a little surprising.^{Even The New Yorker’s reviewer seemed ebullient, calling the film “something angry and alive” amongst this summer’s other blockbusters.} “Elysium” was made with a budget almost three times larger than “District 9”: on the face of things, surely we should expect a much bigger film? Yet somehow, “Elysium” feels a great deal smaller in ambition.

Things start to make sense once you realise the kind of film Blomkamp was setting out to make. Tellingly, in an interview with Boing Boing reporter Colin Berry, Blomkamp revealed that:

“My whole goal was big-scale cinema and archetypal storytelling. It will probably be the most expensive film I’ll ever make… But to have a bunch of low-budget, super edgy films and not have something cinematic? I wouldn’t be happy not to have that in my body of work. Elysium really is the film I wanted to make.”

Spoilers Begin Here

The real issue is that what passes for “cinematic” today is mostly flash, not substance; with good-looking CG and action often used to paper over other shortcomings.

For instance: it seems that the plot of a blockbuster doesn’t always need to make perfect sense. At the start of the film, we see gang-leader Spider sending rogue shuttles up to Elysium^{The eponymous space-station that serves as a luxurious paradise for the very rich, with universal healthcare for all.}. These people are risking a lot^{Just a single shuttle makes it, and the hundreds of people in the other shuttles perish when they’re hit by missiles.}, but when they get there, they don’t seem to have any kind of plan for dealing with Elysium’s security forces. Just one mother has the right idea: she manages to get access to a med-bay to heal her daughter, before both are deported. For the rest, it just seems like a bizarre suicide mission.

But a more egregious breach happens at the end of the film: hundreds of medical ships pour out of Elysium, going down to fix things up on the previously-neglected Earth. It’s definitely a feel-good moment, but as you start to think about it, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Why would Elysium have all those ships just standing idly by? After all, every home on Elysium already has a med-bay.

Plot shortcomings could be dismissed, if “Elysium” was filled with characters we cared about. But with paper-thin heroes and villains, it’s hard to engage with what we’re seeing. The relationship between protagonists Max and Frey largely rests on a few frames of flashback to their childhood in an orphanage. Playing a power-hungry defence minister, Jodie Foster is largely wasted: her motivations beyond simply wanting to seize control are never explored. And Sharlto Copley, who played the fascinatingly ambiguous Wikus van de Merwe in “District 9”, is reduced here to the one-dimensionally aggressive Kruger.

It’s a real shame, then, that “Elysium” doesn’t live up to its potential. Blomkamp’s next film is set to come out in 2015 : entitled “Chappie”, it’s about an AI robot who’s stolen by gangsters. An intriguing premise, to be sure, but everything depends on whether Blomkamp decides to return to the engaging characters and strong storytelling that made “District 9” such an effective film.

Enjoyed this review? Why not follow me on Twitter: @domwrites?

Time magazine, reporting from the Venice Film Festival:

“Miyazaki has decided that ‘The Wind Rises’ will be his last film, and he will now retire,” Koji Hoshino, who runs the director’s Studio Ghibli, announced.

What will Studio Ghibli look like without Hayao Miyazaki? At 72, he’s retiring from a studio he founded in 1985, after the success of animated classic “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”. Since then, he’s directed nine of the studio’s feature films, including the Academy-award winning “Spirited Away”^{Ghibli films have enjoyed enormous financial success in Japan: “Spirited Away”, for example, overtook “Titanic” to become the highest grossing film in Japanese history.}. It’s fair to say that Miyazaki is synonymous with Ghibli: he’s had a hand in almost every film, even those that he didn’t direct.

With his retirement, Studio Ghibli will surely have to change. For the short term, things will go on as usual: another film is slated for release in 2013, directed by Isao Takahata, the other director most strongly associated with Ghibli films. But at 77, Takahata is older even than Miyazaki , and it seems plausible that he too might retire in the near future.

That leaves Gorō Miyazaki. The older Miyazaki son, Gorō was initially reluctant to follow his famous father into animation, spending several years in landscape design. But in 2006, after several years as director of the Ghibli Museum, Gorō was asked to direct his first picture, “Tales from Earthsea”. Rumor has it that his father was initially unhappy about this decision, but upon seeing the finished film, felt that Gorō had proved himself. Reviews were mixed, but the film still had Ghibli’s trademark brand of fantasy.

Gorō’s sophomore picture, “From Up On Poppy Hill”, was very different. Set in post-Korean War Japan, the animation, of course, was breathtaking. But the film told a high-school love story with a much smaller scale than any of Ghibli’s fantasy epics, and yet without the sweetness of “My Neighbour Totoro” or “Kiki’s Delivery Service” ^{Roger Ebert’s review of “Poppy Hill” begins: “This was a day I didn’t see coming. The latest film from Japan’s Studio Ghibli, which sets the world standard for animation, is a disappointment.”}

It’s also worth noting that so far, Gorō has focused only on adapting existing stories^{“Tales from Earthsea” was very loosely based on Ursula Le Guin’s “Earthsea” fantasy series, and “Poppy Hill” was based on a manga series of the same name.}. Indeed, every Ghibli film of the last ten years has either been directed by Hayao Miyazaki, or adapted from an existing book. Nothing wrong with adaptations, of course, but some of Ghibli’s best films have been Miyazaki’s original creations.

But an uneven beginning is not necessarily a bad thing — his father spent almost 25 years working in animation before he directed his first successful feature — Gorō still has time to catch up. The elder Miyazaki is expected to speak about his retirement from Tokyo later in the week, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he continues to be involved in film-making in some capacity. And with Studio Ghibli founder Toshio Suzuki staying on as producer, there’s no reason why they can’t keep making excellent films.

Wherever Studio Ghibli goes next, the films of Hayao Miyazaki will long be remembered in cinema history. It will be at least a few months before “The Wind Rises” is released to international audiences, but early reviews suggest it will certainly be a fitting capstone for a long and illustrious career.