Monthly Archives: January 2015

Books/Literature, Movies

5 Reasons Great Directors Eventually Make a Bad Movie…

…this list is by Daniel Dockery and can be found on Cracked.com or by clicking the below link:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-great-directors-eventually-make-bad-movie/

I find such ruminations fascinating because it seems almost everyone that has been very successful in creating exceptional work(s) of art, be they paintings, music, literature, or movies, eventually releases something that is, for lack of a better word, sour.

Director Alfred Hitchcock had perhaps one of the all time greatest careers in cinema, releasing films that were undeniably “Hitchcokian”.  These films were noted for featuring great suspense and skullduggery along with some very, very funny black humor.  His first feature was made in 1922 and his last was released in 1976, making for a career that lasted a mind boggling 54 years.

Arguably, he “came into his own” and began releasing his distinctive brand of films in the early to mid 1930’s on, reaching his creative peak (again, in many people’s opinions) in the mid 1950’s through the early 1960’s.  During those years Mr. Hitchcock directed such movie landmarks as Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North By Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963) (RIP Rod Taylor).  However, those weren’t the only films he released during that time.  Mr. Hitchcock was nothing if not proficient, but I suspect most people would site the films I list above as his “cream of the crop”.

But a very curious thing happened after The Birds: Whether it was age or disinterest or perhaps any of the other five reasons mentioned in the above link (one could argue a few might well apply) Mr. Hitchcock abruptly hit what amounted to a creative wall.  He would go on to make five more feature films after The Birds:  Marnie (1964), Torn Curtain (1966), Topaz (1969), Frenzy (1972) and Family Plot (1976).  While these films have their defenders, even the most dedicated Hitchcock fans offer few reasons to revisit either Torn Curtain or Topaz.  I’m equally certain even the strongest defenders of Mr. Hitchcock’s last decade plus of production, if cornered, have to admit none of the above listed films come close to the dizzying heights of his best works.

So what happened?  One is left to speculate.  When I was younger, I had this vision of a writer who sat before their typewriter (this was before the era of the computer) and daydreamed and then wrote whatever fancy hit him/her.

The reality is that writing, like most other artistic endeavors, is a job.  Their product is the result of work.  Often very, very hard work.

An author has to make a book that sells if s/he is to have a career in the field.  To do so, they have to please audiences as well as those who publish their work.  This entails a great deal of pressure.  For directors, I imagine, the pressure is multiplied.  To begin, you have to convince investors you have the talent and potential product that will offer these money people a good return on their investment.  Once you get the investment and production begins, these investors don’t simply disappear.  You can be certain they’re going to keep an close eye on what you’re up to and make sure you aren’t squandering their cash.

Add to that the fact that you’re dealing with a cast and crew, sometimes in the hundreds, who will have a myriad of different levels of interest in whatever you’re making.  Some may view the work as nothing more than a paying job while others may be just as invested as you are.  Then again, there’s the danger they’re too invested and have vastly different visions of how the work should be presented.  If your talent has a big enough “name”, they may demand changes that they feel will accentuate their work but which you, as a director, may feel harms the overall product.  And that’s not counting your garden variety clashes of personalities.

I don’t envy directors.  The fact that good, even great films have been produced in the past and will no doubt be made into the future shows that sometimes the stars align and a good work is made.  Sometimes, if you’re crafty and creative enough, several good films will be released under your name.

But there seems to inevitably come a time when things don’t work out as well as they should.  Hopefully, you’ll recover and learn from your experience and once again create something audiences feel matches your very best work.

Hopefully.

Movies

Supernova (2000) BluRay review…but not by me!

I haven’t received my copy of Supernova yet but figured those interested in an early review of the BluRay release of this film and what it has on it in the way of extras might like to read this:

http://www.dvddrive-in.com/reviews/n-s/supernovablu.htm

As I mentioned before, I find Supernova a deeply flawed yet (to me) remarkable curiosity of a film, especially given all the talent in front of and behind the scenes.  If you’re interested in my review of the film, you can find it here.

Please make no mistake about it: Supernova is a very, very bad film, a trainwreck from the get go that during its creation went through many hands before finally being dumped into a “theatrical” release.

Yet in spite of this I’m fascinated by the film, especially when I believe elements of it seemed to work their way -consciously or not- into 2012’s Prometheus.  I say this only because Supernova’s primary director, Walter Hill, is the producer of all the Alien films since the first one, up to and including Prometheus.

Despite the fact that the film is such a wreck, its one of those total misfires that, like a moth to light, I can’t help but look at.

Movies

David Cronenberg on Internet Criticism…

…it would appear he doesn’t like at least parts of it, including the Rottentomatoes “averages”:

http://io9.com/david-cronenberg-says-rotten-tomatoes-is-wrecking-film-1677869612

I think he has a point in that nowadays just about anyone out there (including me!) can be a critic and, sometimes, some opinions appear (to put it kindly) ill informed.

Yet everyone, including Mr. Cronenberg, should remember what by now should be an obvious fact: Personal tastes in the arts (movies, music, books, stories, etc. etc.) are subjective.  Just because someone inartfully states they found a film a failure because it was “boring” and/or conversely a success because the “effects were so cool” while offering few well reasoned facts as to why they liked/didn’t like a film doesn’t mean their personal opinion is wrong.  Others may well like or dislike a film for the very same reasons.

Where I do agree with Mr. Cronenberg is in the fact that by aggregating critical scores we’re giving equal weight to well thought out reviews as well as those that, in his opinion, aren’t.  Interestingly, he further notes that some well thought out critics that wouldn’t otherwise appear has done so thanks to the internet.  This, to him, is more the exception rather than the rule.

For me, I like Rottentomatoes if only to get a general idea of where critics (all of them!) and, more interesting, audiences stand with regard to movies.  I don’t tend to get too deeply into the reviews and only use the compendium score to get a general idea of how things fall.  Then again, unlike Mr. Cronenberg, a very successful and a times challenging moviemaker, I clearly don’t dive as deeply into the individual reviews as he does.

Like many modern things, it is the way things are.  Perhaps these aggregate opinions are harmful in the long run if they influence studios to the point that they delude the quality of film.  But it seems to me there have always been good and bad works out there and you can look long and hard to find what personally works for you.

Anyway, I’ll close on this, a list of 25 movies that critics loathed yet audiences loved, brought to you by (who else!?) Rottentomatoes:

http://www.hollywood.com/card/movies/57692333/movies-audiences-loved-critics-hated-rotten-tomatoes#234671/3

Books/Literature

James Bama Doc Savage

If you’re like me and you absolutely love the James Bama Doc Savage book covers like I do, you’ll really appreciate this link as it provides the whole run of his excellent covers, covers which really made me interested in the character and the stories:

http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.com/2014/12/james-bama-doc-savage.html

Of all the ones he did, my favorite is probably this one:

I just love the sense of adventure and mystery presented in the image.  My second favorite would probably be this one:

What Mr. Bama did so well was create this otherworldly looking main character (in the original pulps he looked more like a Buster Crabbe) and put him into a picture that beautifully hinted at the pulp adventure that awaited you in the book itself.  I don’t know what the original Doc Savage creators/writers (particularly main author Lester Dent, who passed away years before the first of these covers were to appear) might think of Mr. Bama’s reinterpretation of the character, but for me this is THE look of Doc Savage.

Check out the rest!

General

Disney World 2015

So I just came back from Disney World in Orlando and had some interesting things to add to my old Disney World column (you can read it here).

To begin, they’ve once again altered the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, this time for the worse, in my humble opinion.  I don’t mind “wet” rides, provided they’re marked as such.  There are going to be times don’t mind getting wet and others where I want to stay dry.  For many decades, the Pirates was a “dry” ride.  True, during the drop there was a chance a couple of drops of water might hit the riders, but it was rare that you stepped out of the ride very wet.

Not so now.

Though the bulk of the ride remains roughly the same (ie, post movie with the many appearances of Johnny Depp and the scrubbing of some of the more politically incorrect jokes), the drop has been changed.  No longer do you have the skull and crossbones appear just before the drop and warn you to “abandon hope all ye who enter here”.  Instead, you’re plunged into pitch black darkness followed by a drop that seems to curve a little more than it did before.

And by the time you hit bottom, the front two rows (at least) of the vessel you’re in get sprayed with a considerable amount of water.

I happened to be “lucky” enough to ride in the front of the craft with my family and the drop left my shirt and the bottoms of my pants completely soaked.

Unexpected to say the least and annoying.

You have been warned.

The second interesting thing I noticed is the “suicide” gag at the beginning of the Haunted Mansion appears to be back.  In that previous column I noted how in the “locked room with no doors and windows” the narrator notes that in such a room, how do you get out…following which lighting flashes and we can see through the roof to an attic area.  There, a figure dressed in rags is hanging from a rope, clearly the “joke” being that in a room with no doors or windows the only way out is through suicide.

During the last few trips to Disney World, that joke was considerably muted.  The figure didn’t “swing” on the rope at all, but remained very stationary and thus the punchline of that particularly ghoulish joke didn’t register.

But as of yesterday, the morbid joke was back.  The figure above you is clearly swinging on a rope.

For those curious, just thought you’d like to know!

General

2014 in the rearview mirror…

It seems that with the passing of each year, I’m on some kind of time warp.  When I was younger, it took foreeeever, it seemed, for things to happen.  To go on a trip.  To get to the weekend.  For a class to end, etc. etc.

A curious thing happened after finishing my education: Time appeared to compress.  Events whizzed by and, at times, I’ve felt like I was standing next to an interstate, watching those events fly by me as if cars on that highway.

2014 was no exception.

The most memorable event to me for the year, of course, was finally finishing Ghost of the Argus, the fifth book in my Corrosive Knights series.

Ghost of the Argus

This was the book that I had been working toward, the book that tied all the major stings together and brought all the principle characters I’d introduced in the other books of the series together.  Because the book was so important to the series and was the culmination of so many things, I took extra time working on it.  Normally it takes me roughly a year to finish a book.  This one took two.

As pleased as I am with the book, I’m equally happy to have finally gotten it out of my hair.  The fact is that writing can be very hard work, and Ghost of the Argus was very much that.

Equally memorable in this past year was the fact that I was once again contacted regarding the possibility of creating a feature film out of one of my works.  While it is way too early in the process to get too excited about what may be, it makes me incredibly proud to know that things I have created at the very least garner interest outside my own four walls.

What does 2015 have in store?

No one knows, of course, though I hope this years doesn’t pass by quite so quickly.  It would be nice to actually sit back and savor things.

To all a Happy New Year and to all my best wishes in the coming year.  Hope its a good one!