Hi BBs! What’s new? My webhost disabled my site because the CPU usage was too high or something. I hope this means I am internet popular. Then the new layout I loved went pfft, which I guess is good because no one was excited about it as I was (Megan, I’m looking at you). While I was gone today, they put my site back online and the ugly default layout was up. Boo. I hastily went to work, so what you are looking at now is the old layout with elements from the new layout. The end.

My mom finished Cracked Up to Be! It was an agonizing experience, waiting for her to finish it and to share her thoughts. I am really happy with what she took away from it, though slightly skeptical of her accolades, because you know. She birthed me. I am pretty much flawless at everything in her eyes. In any case, here is the blurb she provided for me, for promotional purposes:

After I finished Courtney Summers’s debut novel, CRACKED UP TO BE, I gladly returned the bribe money she gave me and told her, “No, Courtney. It was MY pleasure.”

Love you, Mommy!

So that was really nice.

In other really nice news: I’m getting A NIKON D80!

This turn of events came as a bit of a surprise, which I’m sure no one will believe as I’ve wanted one for so long (even more when my D70 went to camera heaven). But I truly didn’t expect that I’d be capping my lovely Christmas by ordering a new digital SLR for myself. And then my mom was like, “Hey, Courtney! Check out Futureshop’s online holiday sales! Wow! Look at that D80!” And then I was like, “Really? Should I get it? *angsty back-and-forth*” And then she was like, “Oh look, they have a limited quantity! Oh look! Someone bought one while you were thinking about it! Oh look! There goes another one!”

I didn’t know it then, but Futureshop was giving my mother a commission.

In spite of her camera pushing, it took a couple of hours to take the plunge and order it. And then I felt terrible afterwards. As of today, I am at peace with the decision and I can’t wait to hold that sexy beast of a camera in my hands. I’m going to put it to good use and try things I haven’t tried before. I miss taking photographs so much.

And then I saw 28 Weeks Later!

< spoilers, blah, blah >

Before I start eviscerating it, I should say 28 Days Later is one of my favourite movies of all time. It is so impossibly good and effectively disturbing, that even now, I have a hard time finishing it. That is a mark of a good horror movie as far as I am concerned. Seriously. It is so perfectly tense and terrifying. The characters feel so real and honest, it gives an incredible emotional heft to a movie about a Rage Zombie Apocalypse (who would have thought?!). AND it was filmed digitally (I embrace teh digital technologies, obviously). The aesthetic was gorgeous and gritty. PERFECT. The whole movie just brought respect back to the horror genre. Where it belongs.

28 Weeks Later’s opening gave me a false sense of hope because WHAT AN OPENING. Really. So much tension you could snap in half. What a desperate chase and escape that opening was, seriously thrilling and brilliant and brilliantly filmed. Robert Carlyle leaving his wife behind to get eaten by The Infected because he had no other choice?

WOW.

Unfortunately, that opening made me get a little ahead of myself. As soon as I saw that, I started envisioning the course the movie would take. I thought, oh my gosh, this is going to be a movie about a man who made a hard, but ultimately right decision.

(Dear family and friends, if there comes a time when there are Rage Zombies between us and I’m by the nearest exit and you need saving, well… I love you enough to live for both of us. Love, Courtney)

So I thought, given the perfection of the first movie and forgetting the Sequels Generally Suck rule, the rest of the movie would be this fantastic survivalist tale about Robert Carlyle living with the decision he made until The Infected breached the parameters of the safe zone, and he was forced to make the same decision with the remaining members of his family–WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN AMAZING, Y?

Seriously! It would have made 28 Weeks Later a horror movie that’s fearless enough not to punish its lead character for being a a flawed human being and then the audience would have to struggle with the character’s choices but find it almost impossible to condemn him for them! No eye for an eye! No vigilante justice! Just flat out SURVIVALISM! ROBERT CARLYLE MAKES IT AND HAS TO LIVE WITH HIMSELF.

WHAT A CONCEPT! IT BLOWS MY MIND EVEN NOW.

But that was not what the movie was about. Instead, I get this:

Robert Carlyle has a useless (and boring) son and daughter.
Robert Carlyle’s wife lives.
And is an immune carrier of the Rage Virus
but doesn’t know it.
Robert Carlyle’s wife could provide a vaccine for the virus but–
oh wait.
That plot thread will be dropped mid-movie because
all we really need Robert Carlyle’s wife for is to infect Robert Carlyle.
And now that Robert Carlyle is infected, it’s SQUARE.
EVEN. JUSTICE.
Because anyone who doesn’t make a likeable choice
should be punished for it! Especially in movies and books!
Because GOD FORBID WE BE INTERESTING.
So now it’s just useless boring son and daughter.
Infection, infection, infection
run, run, run
escape, chase
blah, blah, blah.
Interesting adult characters gratuitously introduced
and gratuitously killed off.
Useless boring son and daughter live.
Except son is now an immune carrier of the Rage Virus
so now if he so much as sneezes on someone
Rage Zombies will take over Paris.
Which is exactly what happens.

Suck.

My level of annoyance and disappointment is probably unreasonable. I know this. But when you misuse Zombies and you misuse ROBERT CARLYLE (who is AMAZING)…

IT’S AWN.

I just think it would have been so much more interesting if Robert Carlyle’s character had carried the movie by making the same choices over and over again, until he was all alone and had to live with them for better and for worse. Surviving in every sense of the word!

WHY DIDN’T THEY MAKE THAT MOVIE? IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME.

Sigh.

And that is what is new with me.