Well, I've officially hit the 50k. If we're to believe nano's bots - which we're not - then I'm actually miles and miles over the mark with 60,275 words. Now, I did say at the start that I was going to find it difficult to keep up with my overall count, and I'm pretty sure my own totals were probably a bit on the conservative side...but by 10k? I doubt it. I really, really doubt it.

Still, even by my conservative estimate I'm over the 50k now, so I think I can safely claim this as being justified:



And now that's out of the way, on we go with the rest of FPS. And for that...we need a new word counter. One that, frankly, doesn't look quite so friendly.

*Rob takes a deep breath*

Okay. Here goes:

First Person Shooter

109000 / 200000 words. 55% done!

Aaaaaargh! Run away!

Extremely close, in fact. Just over 1200 words to the finish, and if it was 10:30 rather than 11:30 - or if it was a weekend rather than a school night - I'd probably plough on and try to get to the 50k today. However. It is 11:30, it is a school night, so I'm going to be boringly responsible and head off to bed. The finish line will still be there for the hitting tomorrow - and yet again (4th time out of 6, I think), I'm going to finish nano on the 25th of November. I really am nothing if not consistent... :-P

48722 / 50000 words. 97% done!

And I should probably get there sometime tomorrow. Just another 1003 words and I'll be four-fifths of the way through nano. 11003 words and I'll have finished nano. Around... 101,003 words and I'll have finished FPS. Hmm. There's always a downside, ain't there? :-D

Anyhoo. Nearly 2400 words today, and I'm getting towards the end of chapter 14. I'm also (thank god) nearly at the point where Harry and Styx will start to figure out the various hows, whys and do-you-mind-if-I-don'ts that make up that horrible thing called the plot.

38997 / 50000 words. 78% done!

And. And...( we have a snippet! )

This is getting downright odd. I work like a maniac during the week and end up with decent word counts virtually every day, and then the weekend rolls around and - despite the fact that I've got like three times the hours to write in than during the week - I somehow can't muster the energy or the momentum to keep up the pace, let alone increase it.

Still, I did at least manage to hit the word count both days this time: 1700 words yesterday, 2250 today. Not brilliant, but not bad. And it moves the story along, which is, after all, the main thing.

I am, however, starting to drift off track a little. I'm nearly finished chapter twelve, but both Harry and Styx appear to have taken issue with my plot outlines. Basically, they seem to have agreed that I don't know what I'm doing, and so have taken over and changed course slightly. Not majorly, yet, but I'm sure that's coming. They've probably seen what I've got in store for them. Particularly Styx. I'm really going to have to keep an eye on that guy. He's sneaky. Then again, I did base him on me... :-P

34886 / 50000 words. 70% done!

Best day of nano thus far, but I have to say I'm absolutely knackered. Still, I've managed to churn out a total of 4114 words and I'm nearly up to 31,000 total, so although I may be tired, I'm also pretty happy. What's more, I'm finally approaching the point where FPS stops being a tangled mess and actually turns into something resembling a proper novel: by the time I get to the 50k, I should (hopefully) be well and truly done with the little scraps and excerpts and other entanglements and have a clear run to the finish. I just hope I can keep things a) moving, and b) on track once I get to that clear run. One positive thing about the tangles: I know where they are in the story, and I know what needs doing to sort them out. Once they're gone...it's kind of just me and my plot notes. Fingers crossed that they're good enough...

30944 / 50000 words. 62% done!

Yep, I've officially broken the back of nano. Then teased it mercilessly as it lay writhing at my wickedly dancing feet.

Mind you, I wasn't feeling quite so smug yesterday: after a goodish start, I faltered and ended the day with a paltry 1500 words, most of which I wasn't happy with. Today, however, I started a new scene and found some fresh impetus. Nearly 2600 words later, I'm nearer 27k than 25, and I'm over 90k total words for FPS. Which is both scary and awesome at the same time. :-)

Oh, and I have a new target. In my five years nanoing, I've generally finished soemwhere around the 25th (and, by finished, I mean "hit 50k and stupidly stopped"). My earliest finish was the 24th, which was (ironically) in my first year. This year I'm going to beat that: in fact, I'm going to have a damn good go at hitting 50k by the 20th. And if I do (or even if I don't), I'm going to keep right on at full pelt until the 30th, by which time - fingers crossed - I could have as much as 75k done.

Which would be nice. :-D

26830 / 50000 words. 54% done!

2500 more words today - some good, so not-so-good. Still, that's nano for you. At least the words are down on the page now: I'll get round to improving once I'm finished. Assuming I can find better ones once I'm finished, that is. Actually, the way this novel is shaping up, I might as well just apply the caveat "assuming I finish at all". A quick check on my overall word count for FPS today showed it to be around 86,500: considering that I just started chapter 11 and probably have at least as many chapter again (probably more) still to write...well, you can probably see where I'm going. This novel is going to be big.

Still, I know (more or less) where it's going, and I know exactly where it ends. A little perseverance and I'll get there.

22785 / 50000 words. 46% done!

Yep, that's another landmark ticked off on the road to completion. 2,170 more words today, and overall I'm a little over 20k for the nine days. Not bad. Not bad at all. :-D

20195 / 50000 words. 40% done!

And, for them's that are interested...( here's a little snippet from tonight's ramblings: )

...and I'm not even drinking decaf.

Silly, isn't it? I go hell for leather at nano all the way through last week, get myself miles ahead of where I need to be...and then the weekend comes along and I just stop. Well, nearly stop, anyway. Yesterday I fell the best part of 600 words short of the daily target, today I managed 2200 words - which isn't bad, I know, but I was averaging higher than that though the week, so it's still a tad disappointing.

However. However. In spite of my lacklustre weekend word count, I'm still a good way ahead, and what's more FPS is finally starting to make sense in my poor befuddled brain. I'm nearly halfway through chapter ten, I'm down to something like 12 or 13k of re-write/re-jig work left to do over the course of the novel, and my overall word count is now a tad over 82k. That'll fluctuate a bit in the next few chapters, which is where a good portion of the remaining re-write work will come in, but I doubt I'll lose too much - and it may well be that I end up adding more than I cut (I usually do. I am, after all, Mr. Verbose). Anyway. The re-write stuff probably amounts to three scenes spaced over maybe three or four chapters: If things go to plan, I should then be free of it and purely writing new stuff.

Of course, when was the last time things went to plan? :-P

18025 / 50000 words. 36% done!

No words yet today, so I'm still sitting a smidge below 15k. Which is okay. Plenty of time left in the day, so I'll pick up later on. In the meantime, I've been catching up on some new music and - frankly - have been sitting and listening in slack-jawed awe at Lovetune For Vacuum, the debut album from Austrian wunderkind Anja Plaschg (under her pseudonym Soap&Skin). It's not often I'm struck dumb by...well, by anything, really, but some of Plaschg's stuff has just blown me away. Here, for those who might be interested, are a couple of snippets.

Soap&Skin - Mr Gaunt Pt.1000


Soap&Skin - Thanatos

Managed around 2500 words tonight, and I'm well on my way towards finishing chapter eight of FPS. What's more, I'm now apparently a quarter of the way to completing nano after just five day's writing. Not bad going for someone who was struggling to write a hundred words a day just a couple of weeks back. This is why I always say that I need deadlines: give me loads of time to do something and I'll dither and muck about an procrastinate like crazy. Give me a deadline and I'll charge at it like a man possessed. What I now need to do is to keep setting myself these same kind of deadlines once nano finishes... :-P

12560 / 50000 words. 25% done!

Okay. First things first. My word count for the first three days is the best I've managed. Like ever.

7312 / 50000 words. 15% done!

See? Unheard of. 7300 words in three days near the end of nano? Sure. At the start? Oh hell no. But I've managed it. Am I happy with this? Am I jumping around like a mad thing, bounding around the room with euphoria?

No.

And why? Well, two reasons. First, despite the fact that I've never started this well before, I know I should be doing even better. A good part of yesterday evening was lost to what was officially a dreary gig (but free, so what the hey). A good part of this evening was lost to procrastination and the plot deviation fairy. If I'd applied myself tonight, I'd be over 8k. If I hadn't bothered with Rhett Miller and Steve Earle yesterday, I'd be closer to 9k - if not over it. So that's annoying.

Second, I'm beginning to realise that I've woefully underestimated the length of this novel. I had thought, in my naivety, that it was relatively simple. I had thought that my comprehensive notes (nine pages. Count 'em.) were accurate and...well, comprehensive. It would appear I was wrong, with a capital "oh my god, can you believe how WRONG this guy is?" Bottom line: I was planning for twenty chapters and an epilogue. I was planning for maybe 140-150k total. If I carry on the way I'm going, I won't hit either of those. Chapter seven has come to a close at a smidge under 45k (I actually have 68k written, but 23k of that will come later. It's complicated. Actually, it's a mess.), and my supposed twenty chapters are now looking more like thirty. Or so. Plus an epilogue.

So, yeah. The good and the bad. Which...presumably makes me the ugly. But I kinda knew that one already. :-P

Well, two realisations, really. Well, one and a half. First, however, the progress. My usual Zokutou word meter has apparently died its final death, so I'm trying a new one out this year - and here it is:

2077 / 50000 words. 4% done!

Yep, 2k on the first day. Not a bad start, although I have to admit I was hoping for more before I got underway - not least because it's a Sunday and I therefore had much more time to sit down and write than I will have on most days. Still, 2k is 2k, and I'm not going to complain.

And so to the realisations. First, the proper one.

Working out my wordage this year is going to be an absolute sod - at least to start with. See, I'm not just starting with a blank sheet of screen this time around, and I'm not simply finishing a half-completed piece, either. I'm trying to work through a mess. In places, I'm going to be writing whole new sections, but in others I'm going to be re-writing, shifting stuff about, cutting and pasting from an excerpt file I've got set up for sections without a home... Today, for example, I added just a tad over 2k to the word count I had at the start of the day - but I probably wrote closer to 3k. How much closer, I don't know, because I also scrapped a fair bit. Bottom line: it's going to be damn difficult to keep an exact bead on where I stand. But I'll try.

Which brings me to my second realisation, which is tied into that first one and therefore not really a proper realisation but more a realisationette.

It's going to be practically impossible to verify my word count with the nano peeps. Because my wordage this year is going to be scattered throughout the existing text as well as tagged to the end of it, I'm not going to be able to just cut and paste it into their verification widget. This is annoying, but if I can keep a sort-of accurate count on my overall wordage then I'm not going to worry about it too much. This nano, after all, is mostly about getting FPS as close to finished as possible. If I hit 50k but can't verify it...I can live with that. If I write so much that I've actually got a 50k chunk I can verify at the end of the day, then brilliant. But I won't be holding me breath.

Oh, yes. From tonight's FPS-slash...a snippet.


Beddoes paused as he reached the lifts and was about to push the call button when the car to his left chimed, the doors opening to reveal a concerned looking Paige. Her face lit up as she noticed Styx and she hurried over, all smiles.

‘Oh, there he is!’ she said, leaning down to plant a kiss on Styx’s forehead and proceeding to fuss over him. ‘Oh, I thought I’d lost you! Yes I did! Yes I did!’

Beddoes, who had watched this in a kind of embarrassed silence, suddenly found his voice. ‘Little fella wandered into my room about twenty minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Goodness only knows how he got all the way down here.’

‘Oh, he’s always wandering off, aren’t you precious?’ Paige said, chucking Styx under his chin. ‘Yes! Yes you are, you naughty kitty! Thank you so much for looking after him,’ she said, leaning over and kissing Beddoe’s cheek. ‘I was just frantic when I realised he’d gone!’

‘Um, no problem,’ the young man mumbled, flushing slightly. ‘Anytime. I mean…um…’

‘Oh, well I’ll just take him off your hands and get him back upstairs,’ Paige said, taking Styx and lifting him onto her shoulder. He caught a whiff of her perfume as he brushed against her hair and sneezed. ‘Oh, dear,’ Paige said, stroking his back. ‘Now you’ve caught a cold, haven’t you? Come on, let’s get you somewhere warm. Thanks again,’ she said to Beddoes as she stepped back into the lift. ‘I’ll try to make sure he stays upstairs in future.’

‘That’s okay,’ the young man said as the doors began to close. ‘Really, no prob-’ The doors closed, cutting him off mid-sentence.

‘Whew,’ Styx said as the lift began to ascend. ‘Thanks for the rescue, kiddo. I thought I was stuck with him for a minute there.’

‘Ah, he was okay,’ Paige said. ‘Did you manage to find the log disk?’

‘Found it, copied it, shed on it,’ Styx said. ‘Or at least you’d think I had, the fuss he made.’

‘Good work,’ she said. ‘Sounded like a nasty sneeze, by the way. Is my perfume really that strong?’

‘With this nose, yes. Then again, I can smell Harry’s aftershave through a closed door, so I wouldn’t take it to heart.’

‘I’ll try. You need a hankie?’

‘Nah,’ Styx said, snuggling closer to her neck. ‘But you might want to think about changing your blouse when we get back.’

‘Oh, you didn’t,’ Paige said, horrified.

‘Um…yeah, I kind of did. In my defence, I couldn’t really help it. I don’t exactly carry tissues on me.’

‘Hmm,’ Paige said as the lift doors opened on the ground floor and she started to make her way out of the White Star building. ‘Yeah, well I’ll try to remember that next time I’m on the phone to the vet. Maybe I’ll just get you spayed. Hey! No claws!’

I did a silly thing last night. Having had enough of FPS-slashing for the day, I sat myself down and started to write me a list. Specifically, a list of all my current WiPs. And then I crawled into a corner and had a little cry.

It probably wouldn't have been so bad - I mean, six novel-length pieces on the go (with another percolating in my brain along with about eight ideas for shorts) isn't that much, right? - except that I didn't just list the pieces themselves. I listed where they were in terms of writing and planning, too. And what I needed to do to kick them into shape.

Yeah. I'm that stupid.

Still, if it did one good thing, it was to give me a fresh sense of perspective. It's no wonder the last year has been such a bust (it has nothing to do with procrastination, I'll have you know). It's no wonder I don't know where the hell I am with anything - I've got no fricking focus. Lord knows, I'm not exactly the world's best multi-tasker at the best of times. I can't work on that many things at once! What the hell was I thinking?

So. Having scared myself witless with listy stuff, I've now spent a little time working out a plan of attack - for the novels, at least. And it goes as follows...

1 - First Person Shooter. I'm two years and 60k into this and I'm going to focus solely on it through November and December, which should get me to a finished first draft. I'll then put it (very happily) on the back burner for a bit.

2 - Execution Style. This is around 55k done and will be next in line for completion. Trouble is, it needs some serious re-plotting before I go anywhere near it. I'm not going to make the same mistake with this that I made with FPS, so what I'm going to do is work out how to get from my current position to the end (which I do know - yay me) and worry about re-writing the beginning once the first draft is done. Should take around two-three months, I reckon, so maybe finished first draft by the end of March.

3 - What Little Girls Are Made Of. At last! A story I actually know from start to finish! Woo! Shame I'm only 10k into it... However, this'll definitely be third in line, and should (I hope) flow quite nicely if properly focused on. It's not looking quite as long as my other Wire novels - perhaps as little as 100k - so I'll say three months to get a first draft done. That'll take me to the end of June.

4 - Reformation. My lovely little space opera/revenge story. I have a few pages of notes on this, but it's pretty well formed and will be fourth in line. Assuming I can get the notes into chapter/scene format by the middle of next year, that is. This could be a long novel, so I'm going to say four months work. That takes me to...oh, hang on. I know this one. November?

5 - The Lonely City. Which would make this, my sort-of ghost story, my nano project for next year. With any luck, I'll have what are currently rough notes fleshed out by then. If not...I'll wing it. :-P No idea how long this will take to write, but if I can get 50k done in November 2010 then I should have a shot at getting it finished by Jan or Feb 2011.

6 - The Stolen World. And thence, to fantasy (like what I've written above isn't fantasy enough). Actually, although this will start off somewhere in the sphere of urban fantasy, it won't end there. As with Reformation and The Lonely City, I've got copious notes on this but haven't made anything more than a tentative start (a few thousand words, most of which will probably go when I start working on it properly). Like Reformation, it's looking like quite a long novel - 150k+, most likely - so it'll take a while to write. Say four-five months, so draft one finished by July 2011.

7 - And rest. Having drafted six novels in a little over a year and a half.

Yeah. Hands up who thinks I'll be able to stick to that.

No one? No, me neither. Thing is, though, I work at my best when I've got deadlines in front of me (hey, five nanos completed in five years ought to prove that), so I'm going to pin myself a schedule to the wall above my PC and have a damn good crack at it. Even if I miss each deadline by a couple of months, I'll still have six novels in around three years, and a total of eight completed manuscripts. Now that's worth aiming for. :)

...for the rest of us, there's caffeine and amphetamines and RSI.

Yep, I'm all signed up for the disorganised lunacy and wrist-hurting that is National Novel Writing Month. For a sixth year. You'd think I'd know better by now. :-P

The question that of course looms like a great big looming thing over the whole endeavour is whether I'm actually ready for nano this year. I mean, in the five years I've taken part, I can honestly say that I've been ready once - and that was the first year. Since then, it's been last-minute plot-scrambling and sleepless nights re-working scenes all the way...and what do you know, this year is no different. Three days to go before the big kick-off and I'm still feverishly trying to get everything in order so that I can start on Nov 1 with a clean slate and a vague idea of where I'm going. With decidedly mixed results this far.

Actually, that's probably putting things a little strongly. I do at least know what I'm working on this year, which is an improvement on nanos past. I have copious notes, including chapter and scene synopses (nine pages of them!), and for once in my entire life I actually not only know the end point of my novel but also the last sentence.

The problem is, the novel I'm working on is the same one I've spent all year avoiding. The one I started back in the halcyon days on nano 2007 and then stupidly put to one side to do something else and never finished. The one I (even more stupidly) started editing when I was only 50k into its likely 150k entirety. The one that has become millstone, albatross and cross all rolled into one. The one I hate beyond measure.

Yes. That one.

Still, I've done an absolute ton of revision work in the last couple of weeks, and although I'm pretty sure I won't get it flat-out finished by the end of November (unless I pull off 100k in a month, which is about as likely to happen as Elvis turning up on my doorstep selling dodgy watches), I'm determined to get myself from my current position (around 60k) to at least the 110k mark. From there I can probably have a crack at finishing it by the new year. Maybe.

*Tillane crosses his fingers, then realises he can't write like that and uncrosses them again*

Watched the first episode of new sci-fi series Flash Forward this evening. It's been heavily trailed for about a month over here. It's been trailed as "from the station - get that, the station, not the writer or director - who brought you Lost", which isn't much of a recommendation as far as I'm concerned, but I digress. Point is, it was clearly being touted as The Next Big Thing and, if I'm honest, I quite liked the show's apparent central idea. I mean, come on: the whole planet loses consciousness for two minutes and everyone sees into their own personal future? How can that not be cool?

For those not in the know, the series is (loosely) based on a novel by sci-fi writer Robert Sawyer. Now, I have to be honest, the book did not really grab me. I liked the central idea, but didn't think Sawyer did an awful lot with it. Not a lot that was interesting, anyway. However, I reasoned, that didn't mean the series would follow the same path. After all, the writers and producers look to have changed a lot: for one thing, the main characters are no longer scientists, they're FBI detectives (and a doctor), a change clearly designed to allow the protagonists to run around a lot, shoot guns and be generally more proactive. Maybe, just maybe, they'd do something interesting.

Well, going on the first episode (and with the caveat that the series could pick up once they get going), I have to say I'm a little underwhelmed. It wasn't bad, per se, but it didn't really grip me, either. There was an awful lot of explaining (for which, read exposition), and while that's not surprising in an opening episode, it meant that the whole thing seemed to lurch forward in fits and starts rather than flow smoothly.

The main cast were fine on first viewing, though I do wish (and have done for a while now) that American TV execs would have the nerve to cast someone who actually looks like a normal human being rather than the usual bunch of buffed, bronzed and shiny-smiled guys that seem to populate TVland these days. I'm getting seriously close to not identifying with these guys anymore, and that's only a small step away from not caring about them. Don't get me wrong: there's room in my TV schedule for buffed, bronzed and shiny-smiled people - it'd just be nice if every now and then you saw a few average Joes in there, too. And not just as victims or hobos, please. The world does not look like The OC. At least, I really, really hope it doesn't.

But I digress - again. Like I say, the cast were fine for the most part. Joseph Fiennes does a reasonable accent and is fairly believable in the leading role, and he's ably supported by (among others) Courtney Vance, an actor I will always have time for. The actors are not the problem here.

Nope, the problem is in the script, which is clunky, cliche-ridden and tries to do way too much in a short space of time. Though I was never a great fan of Lost, it did at least take its time to introduce the characters and plot (a little too much, in the end, but that's a whole other post). Flash Forward, on the other hand, needs to pause and take a breath. There's really no great need to tell the audience everything about each character in the first ep: give us a couple of pointers, move the plot on a little, and then give us a bit more. Info-dumping is just as bad on TV as it is in a novel, and it puts the audience off just as readily.

That said, it hasn't put me off so much that I won't watch next week. I will. I'll just have slightly lower expectations. Which, come to think of it, is probably no bad thing. :-)

But mostly because I can't resist a Blues Brothers reference.

Yep, I'm just back from seeing Tarantino's latest.

*Till takes a deep breath*

Okay. I suppose I should start by nailing my colours to the mast. I'm a Tarantino fan. For the most part I love his stuff, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill 1/2 particularly. Reservoir Dogs and Death Proof I can take or leave, but the rest...great. So I was expecting fairly great thing from Inglorious Basterds. Well, moderately great things, anyway: the trailer had lowered my expectations somewhat. Even so, I expected it to be a really good film.

It wasn't. It could have been, but it wasn't. There's some really good performances in there, particularly from Christoph Waltz as a thoroughly creepy, nasty Nazi, and from Melanie Laurent as the one surviving member of a family Waltz's character massacres at the very beginning. The problem is...well, there's no easy way to say this. The problem - the dual problem - of the film lies in two places: it lies with Brad Pitt, and it lies with Quentin Tarantino. See, for Waltz ans Laurent's story to work, it would have had to have been in a different film - specifically a film made by someone other than Tarantino. A film whose atmosphere didn't keep being interrupted by Tarantino's overblown direction and by Pitt's appalling accent.

Let me explain. There'll be spoilers. Just so you know.

Okay. As is Tarantino's wont, the film is split into chapters - five of them. The first, in which we meet Waltz as Colonel Landa, is very deliberately like the opening of a spaghetti western. A young French girl and her father watch Landa and his Nazi cohorts drive up to their apparently isolated home. A Leone-esque scene unfolds, in which Landa scares the hell out of his hosts. It's brilliantly done and Landa is utterly convincing. The scene ends with the aforementioned massacre, and - because Tarantino is a Film Nerd - a shot of Waltz walking out of the house that could have almost been directly lifted from The Searchers, and of Laurent's character escaping.

If the rest of the film had continued in this vein, I'd have been happy. Very happy.

It doesn't.

Instead, we get to meet Badly Accented Brad and his Bunch of Basterds. Really, it is a terrible accent. Supposedly the character is from Tennessee, but to be honest he could have been speaking Swahili: either way, I couldn't make out half of what he said. Anyway. As far as I could see, Brad and the Basterds were there to provide the Tarantino element to the film. They were overblown, overacted and quite exceptionally violent. Now, I have no problem with violence. Like I said before, I'm a Tarantino fan. However, this really wasn't simply gratuitous - it was pointless. It was Tarantino saying "you know, for this set-piece, I'd like the three of you to shoot that guy in the nuts. From close range. Yeah, that'll be a close-up shot. Oh, and then just shoot everyone else. Okay?" I'm not kidding. That actually happens. Yeesh.

Still, it isn't all bad. We do come back to Waltz and Laurent, and when we do, we get more tension, more great acting - this time including a nice little performance from Daniel Bruhl as a Nazi war hero besotted with an understandably reticent (and later disgusted) Laurent. We get what looks like it might be a good set up for an interesting denouement...and then the Basterds show up again.

Actually, let me back up a little. Before they turn up and everything goes to overblown hell in a dynamite-filled handcart, what we actually get is a brief but interesting cameo from Michael Fassbender and an even briefer, but frankly annoying cameo from Mike Myers. But I digress.

So, the Basterds story (kill and scalp as many Nazis as possible) eventually runs into Laurent's story - and derails it almost entirely. Diane Kruger pops up for half an hour or so and provides some interest in the Basterds story, but not enough. We get the tense denouement between...oh, no, actually we don't. We get a kind-of tense denouement between Laurent and Bruhl, and then the Basterds take over, kill everyone and blow everything up. Brad and surviving Bassterd get caught, do a deal with Waltz's character and carve a swastika into his head.

The End.

So...yeah. Reading that back, you'd probably get the impression that I hated Inglorious Basterds. Actually, I didn't. There's a fair amount to like about it. In fact, there's a whole film to like about it. Shame Tarantino tried to shoehorn another, distinctly rubbish one in. :-(