2023 Box Office Top Ten

I've been blogging these results here in one of my efforts to make it not just a chronicle of my writing but as a suggestion of my other interests (although I have a blog I've maintained since 2002 it used to be featured in, and a whole blog about movies, but here's to recent consistency!), and it seems movies released in 2023 have reasonably slowed enough to provide an accurate look at the top hits, both nationally and globally...As always, numbers are from Box Office Mojo, are good as of the date this post is published, and are registered either in millions or billions of US dollars...

Top Ten U.S. Box Office

1. Barbie ($636 million) The biggest surprise hit in years, probably, as well as a clear indication that audiences are interested both in something new and familiar, plus enduring interest in Margot Robbie, one of the clear defining actors of this generation at this point, and finally a lead role that proves it.
2. The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($574 million) The fall of Disney as the blockbuster machine across multiple studios led to another nostalgic hit at the box office.  My nephew was certainly among its biggest fans.  Can we finally move past that earlier version that most people still can't admit was just a knockoff of Beetlejuice?
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ($381 million) My favorite Spider-Man movies remain the least popular ones, the Andrew Garfield/Marc Webb duology.  These animated ones are a little too akin to the spastic entertainment I wish weren't so prevalent these days.  Also, get off my lawn!
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($358 million) This belated conclusion to the trilogy is once again proof that the MCU never met a story it didn't really want to end.  As standalone stories not really a lot of complete storytelling going on in these films.
5. Oppenheimer ($329 million) Standing close to toe-to-toe with Barbie over the summer, this was the film that finally allowed critics to appreciate Christopher Nolan as much as the rest of us.
6. The Little Mermaid ($298 million) Disney's biggest claim, besides the MCU entry above, was this latest live action remake.  
7. Wonka ($218 million) Timothy Chalamet is one of this generation's leading talents, so it's nice to see him score in something other than Dune.
8. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($214 million) I loved the first two in the series, but am ambivalent about this one, which seems less interested in the title characters than setting up a villain whose actor ended up canceled.  But even that was botched, giving Kang way too much attention and allowing him to be...defeated, in a much more decisive fashion than Loki prior to Avengers...Confounding, as the MCU frequently is for me...
9. John Wick: Chapter 4 ($187 million) This is one of those movies whose value only seems to increase the more I think about it, and I'm also glad it performed well.
10. Sound of Freedom ($184 million) Here's the other original piece of filmmaking to crack the chart, a word-of-mouth success story that suggests we're not as lost in modern blockbusters as we sometimes seem.

Global Top Ten

1. Barbie ($1,445 billion) It tends to be a consensus at top, but it's doubly rewarding for a surprise like this to mark the achievement.
2. The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1,356 billion) International audiences ate up the same animated hijinks, too.
3. Oppenheimer ($965 million) The first significant difference in the charts is greater appreciation for Nolan's masterpiece.
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($845 million) Online we don't often think of how our opinions are being swayed by other countries.  When it's a hit elsewhere, too, that's often how you'll see the truly positive reception.
5. Fast X ($704 million) The biggest difference is this one, where it was much more popular elsewhere.  I'm glad the series continues to be enjoyed somewhere.
6. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ($690 million) At some point someone'll care how terribly all these modern Spider-Man movies have been titled.  There're future generations that'll have no real way to tell 'em apart.
7. Wonka ($632 million) It's nice that we're in an era where at least we aren't complaining there's another movie with this guy...
8. The Little Mermaid ($569 million) The elephant in the room is that this is the one everyone complained online played the diversity card too hard.  At work I had colleagues who were genuinely happy to see themselves represented.  It's mermaids, people.  
9. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One ($567 million) After the huge success of Top Gun: Maverick, I think a lot of people expected this to be a much bigger success.  Internationally it was.
10. Elemental ($496 million) Pixar still has clout in other countries!  For me, this just seemed like another of the studio's rehashes.  They've got a lot of those.

Have submitted Children's Crusade to New Directions Novel Prize 2024...

So, just submitted Children's Crusade to New Directions' Novel Prize 2024 contest.  I last attempted to submit to the contest in its first iteration in 2020, but the process screwed up, the file didn't load, and I ended up losing the file when my computer died a few months later (a significant revision of the middle section from In the Land of Pangaea I've never had the heart to revisit, much less a needed retooling of the whole manuscript).

I'm mean, it'd be nice to be published by anyone, but New Directions would be particularly ideal.  It's the publisher behind most of Roberto Bolano's English translations, Helen DeWitt's home, and the house that put out Javier Marias's Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, all among the greatest treasures of my reading experience.  

Heck, if the criteria had specifically forbidden it, I would've submitted In the Leviathan, too.  

Sure it's a pipedream, and has been for decades, now, but it's still nice to be able to dream.  I think Crusade came out nicely, but that's my extremely biased opinion.  I have so much more I'd love to write, including a whole series of historical fiction I was dreaming up earlier today, plus stuff like A Centaur Died., Book of Doom, and of course the Danab Cycle, which demands so much more space than I reasonably have working full-time.

Just have to wait until, oh, January...

Having finished Children’s Crusade…

Just finished writing The Children’s Crusade. Still in shock.

The story clocked out at roughly 55,000 words. Got the first 50,000 words in at the old NaNoWriMo pace, not even intending to, just trying to get the story done during Lent, but the writing just flowing, the urgency of getting it done…

I hadn’t written something this long in about a decade. Recently I’ve tackled a lot of projects just getting the instinct back to par, and I guess it worked. Everything else I wrote, it culminated here. It was a story I outlined in the spur of the moment last year, and intended to write this year, and last month I started and this month it’s actually done. A lot of what I’ve written recently, there were significant breaks, even if at times I “caught up.” This time every time I “caught up,” I just got further and further ahead.

Until I reached this point. I hadn’t written since Tuesday, since hitting the NaNo mark, and I honestly didn’t know when I was going to write again. Lent still has two weeks, after all. I didn’t write yesterday, or this morning, and until I was actually writing I thought it would be the same this afternoon. And then it just happened. 

So all that feels good.

Having begun Children’s Crusade…

Having begun writing The Children’s Crusade, it reminds me all over again the rush of writing, of really writing, of the ideas coming fast and furious, how to write the story, how it’s different from when you’re only planning, how the story seems to write itself…

This is how I define being a writer. It’s not just writing or even selling actual books (although that would certainly be nice, too), but the thrill of the experience, of tackling the project, of knowing there’s a long way to go, but I can get there because I know how to get there, and I know it’ll be worth it, even if no one reads it ever, because the story is the thing, and it takes on a life of its own…

So anyway, it’s early yet, three chapters in and hopefully two more later today, and only forty-five after that…But I’ve got this. These days I’m tackling shorter chapters. The last time I was really in novel-length mode I’d gotten into the rhythm of much longer chapters, and that worked then and this works now, they make sense in context, and it would be nice to write long chapters again but for now shorter is better…

Anyway, this is to say I feel happy about this, and since this one is a long one and it’s a completely original idea and I already know the whole thing but little things will keep popping up as necessary, and I want this done in forty days or so…I am locked into a zone. This isn’t always how these things play out or even need to or should, but when it happens and it looks very clear and true and doable…

So I’ve begun writing. And I will, once again, continue.

Not-the-Tonys 2024

Gosh, I’m not very good at keeping these up, but let’s go ahead and have a brief look at what my favorite things from 2023 were…

Movies

This one’s pretty easy. Like a lot of critics (for a change!), my pick is Oppenheimer. I’ve been a huge fan of Christopher Nolan since Memento, and so have followed his career eagerly ever since. This is clearly a career high (and as a big fan this is an amazing statement).

Before seeing Oppenheimer last summer my answer would’ve been Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, which I still highly recommend. Other highlights from the year include Napoleon, Asteroid City, The Creator. It was a good year for movies.

Books

My favorite new book of the year was J.K. Rowling’s seventh Robert Galbraith Strike/Ellacott mystery The Running Grave. Favorite read in general was Milton’s Paradise Lost, favorite graphic novel Lemire, Kindt & Rubin’s Cosmic Detective, and taking a stab at a monthly comic probably Tom King’s Human Target, which finished last spring.

Music 

Gosh, I’m gonna give this one to The National, who I finally got into last year after discovering them at the end of Warrior back in 2011. The Beatles released “Now and Then” at the end of the year, Darius Rucker dropped a new album.

TV

I haven’t been exploring a lot of new things since the streaming era took over, so it was a lot of just continuing favorites like various Star Treks, Yellowstone, Ghosts, Survivor, even a revival of Frasier. Did get to see The Mandalorian and Sandman at the very end of the year thanks to physical releases.

Writing Projects

I tackled exactly two projects last year, In the Leviathan and Liz & Pepe. Both were well worth the efforts. Did a lot of prep work for other things, and I’m really, really close to starting up again. 

Favorite Family Time

The two visits with my niece and the rest of her clan! Obviously! The highlights of the year!

Closing in on The Children’s Crusade

You may be aware that the subtitle of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is “The Children’s Crusade,” and you may also know that during the Crusades there was an actual children’s crusade, which is the point at which people tend to agree they officially went off the rails.

My version is a little different. I first conceived of and sketched it out last year after finishing In the Leviathan, flush in the accomplishment and wanting something similarly meaningful (but for different reasons) to tackle next. Then I sat on it for the rest of the year.

Today I revisited the outline and revised it with a few key tweaks (including a timeline), so that the multiple character arcs play out in context to each other. This will be a tapestry of a story, tackling themes of responsibility, faith, and existential crisis, a commentary on the modern age that looks backward and still looks hopefully into the future.

I figure I will probably begin writing the thing soon. 

A monster of a tale…

This morning I finished writing a short story I’ve been plucking away at since 2015 but haven’t touched since 2017. I think at one point I submitted a clearly unfinished version to a friend for one of his anthologies, which he rightly pointed out. It’s something I realized I had to do to get back in the writing groove, last month, so it was good to get it done. It’s another story that is from various vantage points, which is something I’ve realized works very well for my style of fiction. I especially like the idea that different people know different things, and so assembling such stories is like putting together a puzzle. Sometimes this can work in macro, and sometimes micro, which is what this one was. It also allows me to juggle the scope of the story, where I can pull out dramatically as a kind of commentary, or dial in closely. 

Naturally I began thinking I could definitely put together another short collection with it and various other works, although first it’ll finish out its run at my writing blog. I’ve still got a lot of interesting things just sitting there waiting for a permanent home.