Tag Archives: Influences

by | January 15, 2014 · 8:16 pm

Confessions of a Geek: Cinematic Influences, Part 2

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Seeing moments like this on the big screen for the first time was amazing!

Much like Andrew, I enjoy movies as escapist entertainment.  I had a very sheltered childhood and didn’t get to watch a lot of movies.  We did not have a TV in our house, and I was never allowed to go to movie theaters.  (This has bemused many of my friends, especially because I don’t associate popcorn, or food in general, with watching movies).  As an adult, I’ve had to catch up on a lot of pop culture references that I just didn’t understand (for instance, I was an adult before I had seen a Disney animated  movie and I still haven’t seen all of them).  I also often don’t have the nostalgic love for poorly made, cult classic movies and shows.

 I’m a little more demanding about consistency and plot than many moviegoers, which drives my movie loving friends a little crazy.  However, there ARE cinematic influences on my life.  Here are a few of them.

  • Disney’s Treasure Island –this was one of the earliest movies that my siblings and I saw.  I was probably around nine or ten.  We reenacted the movie many times in our backyard, using a large cardboard box as a ship.  Our favorite character was Ben Gunn because of a goofy line, “Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese–toasted, mostly.”  We were too young (and not British enough) to know what toasted cheese was, of course.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer—if my mother only knew how many days I would ask to go down the block to spend the afternoon with my friend Alex and her dog… but we were really watching Buffy. That was the beginning of my love of Joss Whedon, although I didn’t know who he was at the time.
  • Pollyanna—this movie was influential not because of its content, but because in my house every movie was compared to it.  It was actually a very perky, overly bright movie about a little girl who was good all the time.  We kids were supposed to look up to Pollyanna as an example, but she was mostly just annoying.
  • NOT The Wizard of Oz—I put this movie in here because it was NOT actually an influence on me.  This was my mother’s favorite movie when she was a child, and she made the fatal mistake of introducing it to her children when they were teenagers.  Of course, we make snarky comments about how cheesy the movie was, which frustrated her quite a bit.
  • The Lord of the Rings—these were the first movies that I properly “geeked out” about.  The Fellowship of the Ring came out when I was fifteen years old.  By this time, even we had the internet, so I was able to follow the process and development of the movies with intense anticipation.  I will never forget sitting for over an hour waiting for our 54k dialup to load the official trailer so that we could watch it in all its glory.
  • Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith—was the first movie I ever saw in a real movie theater.  I was nineteen years old, and was living on my own.  A friend of mine found out that I had never actually been to the cinema and dragged me along.  I enjoyed the experience but thought (and still think) that it was far too loud.

Those are just a few of the movies and TV shows that have had some profound influence on my life.  Mine are more like milestones of development, but even so, they each mark a significant piece of my life.  What movies have influenced you?  Let me know in the comments! -t

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by | January 7, 2014 · 10:10 pm

Confessions of a Geek: Literary Influences, Part 2

I lived a very sheltered childhood, and so books have been the staple influence in my life.  My mom read to me when I was very small (we started the Little House on the Prairie series with her reading to me, and ended them with me reading to her).  I was off and running into the wild world of books that ended up taking me all over the world and beyond it.  Some of the authors and books that have influenced me (and this is only a partial list) are below.

  • As a girl, I was obsessed with horses, and thoroughly enjoyed Marguerite Henry’s White Stallion of Lipizza and of course, Misty of Chincoteague, as well as Cinnabar, the One O’clock Fox (although this one was more about the fox than the horses).  I preferred the less well-known books.  White Stallion of Lipizza had me sitting backward on kitchen chairs for months, because that was how the Lipizzaner trainers would stretch the inside of their thighs to fit over the extra wide barrel of those gorgeous horses.
  • The Colored Fairy Books were another huge influence on me.  Andrew Lang took me all over the world, from the snowy, troll infested forests of Germany to the oyster beds off the coast of Polynesia.  I can’t wait to introduce my nephews to this series.
  • C.S. Lewis was a huge influence on me very early on in my life.  I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe so early that I cannot remember reading it for the first time.  I lost count of my rereads at number nineteen.  I also read and enjoyed the space trilogy.  Perelandra  was a beautiful picture of an idyllic world that made me ache for a place I had never been.  That Hideous Strength was a book that I read long before I was ready.  It was terrifying, but beautifully written.  Till We Have Faces was amazing and profound.
  • I was also really interested in all of the classic authors; Dickens, Austen, and the Bronte sisters were high on my list.  Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Illustrated Classics, abridged books for children, many of these books were ruined for me.  I couldn’t even get through David Copperfield until I was in my late teens.  That abridged series taught me to loathe spoilers.  I guess the children’s versions had some influence on me as well as the original versions.
  • I continued to read books that I could technically comprehend, but was not old enough to properly digest.  I read Jane Eyre when I was fourteen, and I was not particularly impressed.  I felt that Charlotte Bronte got lost on her way to the conclusion.  On the other hand, after I read Wuthering Heights, I wandered around the house in a funk for a couple of days.
  • One of the greatest influences on my life was a series called The Young Underground, by Robert Elmer.  These books were about a young brother and sister, Peter and Elise Anderson, who smuggle underground newspapers, and later humans, in Nazi occupied Denmark.  These books influenced me, not because of their content, but because my mom used to read them to my siblings and me to keep us close as a family after she had to go back to work.

This can only be a partial list (it’s not even CLOSE to a full one), because there were so very many books that influenced me growing up.  I am happy to say that I continue to find books that change the way I see the world, so the list continues to grow. -t

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by | January 7, 2014 · 4:58 pm

Confessions of a Geek: Literary Influences, Part 1

An artists vision of what Starship Trooper's power armor looks like.

An artists vision of what Starship Trooper’s power armor looks like.

A few weeks ago I was looking over a friend’s Facebook page and noticed they had posted a list of movies and/or books that had influenced them. It was a nicely mixed list and I soon found myself considering the books that had influenced me. I have decided to share with you three separate lists of books, movies and comics that have influenced me and a little of the reasoning behind why. Today we’re going to start with books, in no particular order (well, they’re in the order in which I thought of them).

  • Starship Troopers – This is one of my all-time favorite books. Robert Heinlein masterfully combines a science fiction, war story with Libertarian political views, without ever making it seem preachy.  While I don’t agree with all of the political things that Heinlein has to say, they do make for interesting thoughts and debates.
  • The Hobbit – Honestly, this almost goes without saying. Like many of my generation (and my parent’s generation) this was my first introduction to the fantasy genre.  The Hobbit really is just that, an introduction.  Tolkien gives just enough of all the various pieces to make readers want more without feeling as though they’ve been cheated.  It’s also a pretty light read, which cannot be said of The Lord of the Rings.
  • The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe – Keeping with fantasy for a moment, this is the C.S Lewis classic. I first came across this book sometime around third or fourth grade (maybe earlier) and was so immediately enthralled that I read the entire thing in a single night. This was the first time that I have been so in love with a book that I physically could not put it down.
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Anyone who has read Hunter S. Thompson knows exactly how bizarre his work can be. Underneath the layers of drug use and general weirdness in his books There is a surprisingly accurate and thoughtful look at America. I certainly don’t share Mr. Thompson’s political views, but from time to time there are things in his work that I find myself agreeing with.
  • Marvel Comics: The Untold Story – There are two things that have fueled my interest in comics history:  a panel about the history of censorship in comics at the 2012 NYCC and Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, which I also got at NYCC. This book was so good that despite being in the middle of two other books, I dropped everything else I was reading and read this as much as possible. It reads more like a novel than a history and makes the reader feel like they know all the people personally. It has also had the effect of driving me to get more books on the history of comics.
  • Horus Heresy: Horus Rising – I picked this book up on a whim in college and then spent every moment of the next three days that I was not in class (and probably somewhere I should have been in class) reading.  This series isn’t always very good, but it has reminded me that I can enjoy purely indulgent fiction. And I’ve read TWENTY-TWO of the books, so they’ve had to have some influence.
  • Complete Works of Shakespeare – This is cheating a little, I know. Shakespeare is not only one of the greatest works of literature in the world, but it has also had a considerable impact on my life.  I started reading Shakespeare in fourth grade and it opened up a whole new world of ideas to me. Back in high school I was vice-president of school’s Shakespeare Society.  Some of my favorite books and movies even now are adaptations of Shakespearean works.

To Be Continued…

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