#the action figure can do it too but again: Max so doesn't fit in it and he would definitely not stay in it lmao

[lea-andres]

I'm not confident either one of them will stay on it long enough for any long-term enjoyment (it was SO not built for them lmao), so I snapped a pic fast!

[movienotesbyzawmer]

August 30: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

(previous notes: Mission: Impossible III)

I bet the powers that be at the Mission: Impossible movie factory didn't lose any sleep over the stupid colon in the title that screws everything up. I mean, just look at that up there with the colon after my date, then the colon in the middle of the OG title, and then it's like, well, you can do whatever you want with punctuation but we're adding a subtitle after it now and you just have to deal with it. On posters and stuff it's just "Mission: Impossible" and then underneath those words they put "Ghost Protocol" so they don't have to deal with it. What a mess. I tell you it is a damn mess is what it is.

Anyway, we have arrived at the M:I movie that, more than any of the others, just really hit the spot for me when I saw it upon its original release. I saw it at the end of a frustrating and tiring work day and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. At some point in the middle I realized that I was enjoying it thoroughly without having to tolerate the kinds of flaws that were apparently part and parcel of this kind of movie. Maybe there were flaws that I just wasn't registering. We'll soon see.

Continuing the tradition of making very hip choices for the directing duties, here we have the live-action directorial debut of Brad Bird, who started off directing episodes of The Simpsons before moving on to no less than The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. Dude had two Oscars on his mantle by the time he showed up for this. Press play already!

Um Sweet Christ those opening shots look gook in 4K like HOO boy

Whoa, neat opening where Sawyer from Lost is chased off the top of a building in Budapest but his jacket deploys an air mattress right as he almost-hits, but then he's shot by Lea Seydoux in an alley, rat-a-tat-tat with the action here, like what is up

Simon Pegg is back, and he's being tricksy with the tech in a prison! He's opening cell doors and the prisoners are surprised and delighted with that twist! He plays them a jazz standard on the intercom and Ethan Hunt suavely emerges from one of the cells. Fun silly things ensue involving Ethan's rebellious and confident independent strategy and a small riot that seems kind of like a bar fight.

He has made a pal in the joint and he's breaking him out. Some kind of cool tech creates a really sweet vortex-y hole in the floor and they are swooped up by their helpers, it's fun.

We're introduced to Paula Patton who is a new team member, and then the credits roll, and they are spirited in a way that recalls the first movie, also showing real scenes from later in the movie.

Flashback to the thing that was happening with Sawyer shows how that botched operation, something about a file and a courier, got Sawyer killed because lots of bad guys were all over the place there. AR contact lens technology figures prominently, and that is a good idea (plus we totally might have those soon, right?).

0:18:16 - Once again we begin the movie without the leading lady from the previous one, but we're starting to get an explanation here. Or just a tease of one I guess.

And quickly we get a sneaky-style self-destructing message that sets up that Ethan has to disguise himself as a specific Russian and sneak into the actual Kremlin. This movie 100% gets what a Mission: Impossible movie is supposed to be.

This time, they aren't using fancy masks or voice shifter things, just costumes and a fake mustache. They comment about that in the dialogue but don't explain why.

0:24:52 - Dialogue mixed SO QUIET here I have no idea what SP just said. It seems like you're supposed to have heard it.

But that is quickly forgotten when they use the coolest spy gadget of them all - a screen that is placed in a corridor that makes the guy at the other end of the corridor think it’s the corridor, but it's a screen and SP & Ethan are hiding behind it and it is super super neato I love it

Then just when it's cool that that is going well, it's suddenly cool how NOT well it's going because someone is spying on their spycraft! The thing they were going to heist isn't there, and someone deliberately makes their comms thing be heard by the bad guys!

And THEN we see something we really didn't think we'd see and it is kind of mind blowing - Ethan escapes from the Kremlin with a very smooth quick-change of his disguise that we see him do in all one shot… but then the Kremlin totally explodes and it explodes all over Ethan as he's running away! It looks amazing!

Right after that there is some fun with subtitles - Ethan is in the hospital all damaged and concussed and stuff, and the news is talking about the obvious big story, and the subtitles are in Russian. At first I was like, "hey is my home theater tech busted?" but no, the subtitles become gradually more in English as Ethan starts to come out of it. Then we see with subtitles that Ethan is reading lips about the police people that want to be bad guys to Ethan.

After Ethan escapes, we shift to a wholesome-looking Russian family we haven't seen before. The scene is a nice little piece of drama about how the dad sees the Kremlin news and wants to get the family out of there, and very quickly that goes south and thugs have them all at gunpoint, it's nicely done

Ethan is being extracted by two new characters played by accomplished, Oscar-nominated actors Tom Wilkinson and Jeremy Renner… the conversation is dire and I don't want to type during it gahhh gah gah gah I am watching because holy shit this goes south too! TW informs Ethan that the DoD is going to frame him for blowing up the Kremlin and his only choice is to escape. He's telling him HOW to escape in a funny way, but they are attacked and it's visually very interesting and TW is headshot and they are in the water and it is such bad news for Ethan and his new colleague played by Mr. Renner, I probably typoed a lot during that because it was so hard to look away.

So Ethan is on the hook for the terrorist attack of the century and he's being chased by a little battalion of thugs who just shot that important spy boss, and he's in Russia. It is very not good for Ethan.

He's with JR and JR is playing a different character for him. He's a bookish analyst guy who feels very out of place in action-land.

We're learning about the main bad guy, Hendricks, who was the guy that screwed everything up in the Kremlin. He's a super-smart theoretical physicist or something who has big, well-thought-out ideas about destroying the world with nukes, and he took nuke codes from the Kremlin. So things are just really really hairy and it's effective storytelling is what I'm saying.

Also effective is that they met up with SP and PP on a neat secret train car thing that is well appointed with spy gear

And VERY VERY EFFECTIVE is what happens next, which is a series of establishing shots of Dubai which KILL ON MY TV. I am glad I have a 4K panel, kids. This begins what I recall as being an extended sequence of sweet-ass suspense. Ethan has to break into a server room by climbing the outside of the 130th floor of the Burj Khalifa using glove-gadget tech that will hopefully work. There is at least some actual Tom Cruise clinging to the side of that building. It's so cool looking. And to make matters worse, a dust storm approaches! Or should I say "to make matters even cooler looking". Yes I should. Please read that part.

Paula Patton's character seems underdeveloped so far, especially compared to her teammates Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner.

Jeez you guys, if you like suspenseful action scenes about barely surviving climbing a skyscraper this movie is for you.

1:05:34 - In the middle of a tense conversation we see that they were using the maskmaker but it wasn't working. They just don't want us to have mask fun in this movie. They hate mask fun. Why does Brad Bird hate mask fun.

Oh then this scene which is neat - bad guys are meeting with LS… but Ethan and JR are taking their place, and PP is taking LS's place for the real bad guys one floor down. The movie explains it better than me, but it is pretty exciting, the two meetings happening at the same time with opposite trickery.

Hah, SP does a sweet fake-hand trick to get the diamonds from the bad guys so he can get them to Ethan and JN, and JN is doing the thing where he uses the contact lens tech… gosh why are you even reading this, just watch the movie. I really like the tricksy espionage.

It all falls apart because LS spots the contact lens in JR's eye. The plot is moving along in a way that, I'm once again noticing, would normally require more half-assed-ness. It's just a solid spy plot. Which probably makes these notes more boring. Poor you.

LS dies by getting kicked out of the open window of the Burj Khalifa with a brewing sandstorm in the background! Neat looking!

And then a thing where Ethan is in a thick dust cloud and he's tracking the important paper thing with his tracker device, and it starts moving quickly at him and we realize just as it's too late that it's in a car that's gonna run him over! Then that mechanic gets used in a car chase in a dust storm, which we don't see very often outside a Mad Max movie, and that climaxes in a really cool looking collision, followed by the reveal that one of the nuclear code bad guys was Hendricks in a supermask. So we DO like mask fun after all! Except why do we care that it was Hendricks?

A scene where JR is confronted for maybe being a double-crosser has a beautifully choreographed gun-get-grabbity-grab thing that was probably super fun for the actors.

1:27:05 - JR tells a story that at first we think is that family we saw briefly almost scramming, but no, he's talking about Ethan, and what seems to be a story about Ethan's wife (Julia from the last movie) getting killed in Croatia, and Ethan killing six Serbians for revenge, and that's why he was in prison in the beginning? It's still a little mysterious and kind of complicated. It doesn't quite fit with what we think we know.

Dubai imagery is pretty. I have been to Dubai. I am standing by for your marriage proposals now.

I didn't really follow how we got to this point, but Ethan went for a walk and met with some underworld Dubai person and made a deal the ended up with a huge cache of spy gear and a private plane to India. I went to India like right after Dubai. I have my own car and a job kind of so you might need to calm your hormones at this point.

A probing exchange with PP establishes that indeed Ethan's story is that he killed the men who killed his wife. Doesn't really seem legit, though. There's more to the story, clearly.

One of the tech things they play with on the plane is the most magic-seeming one. It is a suit that looks like tight chain-mail, and it floats over a cart, like a magic carpet that you wear.

We're introduced to Brij Nath, whose name I had to look up so I could tell you how it is spelled. He has an access code that they need, which seems like they just kind of simplified the situation, and he's one of those only-kinda-bad bad guys that's really just a pawn, for our heroes as well as for these storytellers.

The wearable magic carpet gadget is fun and funny! SP has to remote control JR wearing the floaty-suit and JR is trying not to freak out too badly, and maybe on purpose it recalls the scene from the first movie where Tom Cruise hovers parallel to the floor.

Hendricks is now in a secret room in the place where they all are, and he has a bad-guy briefcase computer and orders some subordinates to do something with a virus, and I don't actually understand what's really happening but am I to believe that Ethan et al are thwarting literal nuclear terrorism here in Mumbai? Right here at this pleasant party at the palace of an only kinda-bad bad guy?

1:48:30 - Ha, the climax of the wearable magic carpet thing involves JR barely surviving by doing an acrobatic stunt that seems oddly intuitive and satisfying. You'll just have to watch the movie to know what I mean.

The spy-tech car they have is rad.

They fail to prevent the launch of a nuclear missile! We see it come out of the sub and start missiling toward its destination which we have learned is California! Hendricks mutters things about how that should get the ball rolling making world powers hate each other and nuke each other and may there be peace on Earth, he also, yes, says that.

A chase on foot has Ethan and Hendricks suddenly brawling on an exotically elegant robotic parking ramp. Platforms move around mechanically and transfer unmanned cars to different areas, and it is against that video gamey backdrop that Ethan and Hendricks struggle to get that sinister suitcase which is all bouncing around that environment. Unexpectedly, Ethan's hope of grabbing it is thwarted by Hendricks suicide-jumping down several stories! We see it! He definitely does that! Ethan drives a car off a thing to follow him, plummeting down hood-first, and the airbag saves him! He gets the briefcase and barely saves the day in time!

Again a denouement making it very clear that everything is really shockingly okay and tidied up. Even the thing with Ethan revenge-killing Serbians and the thing with his wife is cleaned way up, but with an elegance and sweetness that elevates this movie above the others. She's not dead after all, just fake-dead for her protection. And they're only where they are in Seattle so he can glimpse her lovingly across a marina.

So! I feel strongly that this is the best Mission: Impossible movie! It is an extraordinarily deftly-constructed spy thriller! It's got all the funnest types of things that are in the other movies, and other fun spy thrillers, but with so much less garbage! They did a great job and they should be proud.

[pens-swords-stuff]

How can I make my writing sound more eloquent, and less "elementary school level"? When I use sites that "grade" what level your writing is, I never score above a fifth grade level. My writing doesn't flow well, and I can't construct "beautiful" sentences. I feel like my writing style is too straightforward: "He did this. Then he did that. Then the other character did this." I love my ideas, but when I try to write them, the tone of my writing doesn't sound mature enough, and it's disappointing.

You’re not alone anon, I think that’s a very common problem that a lot of writers encounter. I think a huge part of it is practicing and being bad at writing sentences and paragraphs that flow for a really long time until you slowly figure it out.

I used to have a problem with extremely choppy writing, and I think I’ve grown out of that (more or less, I’m by no means great or perfect yet), so here are some things that helped me out!

Readability Level

First things first, when you say that you use sites that ‘grade’ what level your writing is, I think you’re referring to a readability level. 

Readability level doesn’t mean that your writing is at a fifth grade level and that a sixth grader can writer better than you; it means that a fifth grader can understand your writing with ease. There’s a lot of factors that go into this like sentence structure, complexity of words, how legible the writing is, etc.

The point is: An elementary-level readability score does not mean that you are bad at writing, or that your writing ability is below what it should be for your age. It’s to help identify the accessibility of writing to certain age groups. It’s a really great resource for teachers especially, or if you’re aiming to write for a younger audience.

Don’t worry about your readability level! 

I know it’s super tempting to grade yourself, but I really don’t think it’s something you need to worry about. I think (based on limited information, don’t take my word as gospel, you know yourself more than I do) you should be more focused on practicing getting your words out on a page and figuring out how to fit them together — finding out what your writing’s readability level is, is not something that is going to help you.

How to make your writing flow better

Vary your sentence length

So based on what you told me in your ask, it sounds like this is what your writing might look like right now.

John saw Emily. He walked up to her. He looked at her nervously. “I have something to tell you,” he said.

Emily looked at him. “What’s up?” She asked. She sounded worried.

John didn’t know what to say. He shrugged. Then he turned around. “Never mind,” he said.

So let’s take a look at the sentence structure. All of those sentences are extremely simple, straightforward, and short. They also have a similar structure where ‘Person did action’. They also all start with the words John, Emily, he, or she.

Here’s what this same passage would look like with varied sentence structure.

John saw Emily, and walked up to her. Looking at her nervously, he said “I have something to tell you.”

“What’s up?” She asked, sounding worried.

John didn’t know what to say. He shrugged. “Never mind,” he said as he turned around.

I didn’t really add or take away too many things. For the most part, I just switched some words around, made some sentences longer, combined some things, and can you see how much better that flows? The sentences have different amounts of words, some are long, some are short and this variability really helps with the flow of writing.

Here’s another famous example of this.

The variance of sentence length is the first thing I look at when I feel like my writing is too choppy. Are there too many similar length sentences put together? How can I change that up? Just by changing up the amount of words in a sentence, the difference is night and day.

If you have a very uniform, consistent number of words in every sentence, it sounds really monotonous, like a boring textbook or a teacher lecturing you on a subject you’re not interested in. By changing the number of words in a sentence, it makes it sound more interesting. It’s like a conversation. It’s easier to read.

Changing your sentence structure

The way your writing reads can completely change just by adjusting your sentence structure. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about grammar to tell you the specifics like clauses and whatnot, (I think these have something to do with dependent and independent clauses) but I can give you some examples of how to do this!

Despite having a huge fear of heights, Amanda climbed up the tower.Amanda climbed up the tower, despite having a huge fear of heights

Max agreed to get chocolate cake because Jane wanted it, even though he wanted red velvet cake.Even though he wanted red velvet cake, Max agreed to get chocolate cake because Jane wanted it.

I just flipped the two parts of the sentences around, and they sound completely different even though they say the same thing. Messing with how your sentences are formed, switching around parts can help vary your sentence structure to help with the flow.

Playing with Show and Tell

I don’t know if this applies to other people or you, but for me personally, I always find that when I do too much telling and not enough showing in my writing, it’s always choppy. It might just be a me thing, I don’t know. But I can fix the flow of my writing if I do more showing, and maybe this would be helpful to you too.

Let’s look at this example again.

John saw Emily. He walked up to her. He looked at her nervously. “I have something to tell you,” he said.

Emily looked at him. “What’s up?” She asked. She sounded worried.

John didn’t know what to say. He shrugged. Then he turned around. “Never mind,” he said.

There’s very little description here, it’s all tell and no show. I’m telling you what John is doing, but I’m not describing anything. If I were to add more description to this…

John saw Emily out of the corner of his eye. His heart was pounding as he walked up to her. “I have something to tell you,” he said hoarsely.

“What’s up?” Emily asked. Her eyebrows furrowed together in concern.

Words failed John as the lump in his throat made itself known. Instead of speaking, he shrugged as he spun around on his heel. “Never mind.”

I personally find that adding more description helps with how choppy a paragraph might seem because it gives me more words to work with. Now that I have more words and more description, if I find that it’s still a bit too choppy I have more leeway to make changes without having to add more words.

My policy in writing first drafts is this: It’s always better to have too much rather than too little. It’s easier to cut things out rather than figuring out what to add.

Alternatively, maybe you’re showing too much and describing too many things that you don’t need to. Maybe you need to add some shorter ‘tell’-esque sentences to help bring variety to your writing.

Play around with what you’re writing, not just how! If you find that all you’re describing are actions, maybe describe some emotions. Maybe instead of just description of the scenery, you can add some things about what your characters are thinking/noticing.

I think my advice post on static vs dynamic description might be helpful to you in terms of making descriptions flow more! By mixing up static and dynamic descriptions, you can create more of that varied sentence structures and length that make your writing flow more naturally and make it easier to read.

That’s all of the advice I have for now. Thanks for asking! Good luck on your writing and don’t give up! Even if your writing isn’t where you want it right now, you’re constantly improving and maybe this time next year you’ll have a different opinion of your writing!