Person of Interest ending after next season…?

One of my favorite current TV shows is the faux-Batman series Person of Interest (if you don’t see the similarities between the Batman and his cast of characters and Person of Interest you just ain’t looking).

The show has more recently played up the Artificial Intelligence angle and I’ve been delighted with the story lines.  Yesterday, it was revealed that CBS was renewing the show for a fifth season but only for 13 episodes versus the usual 22-23 episodes.  This has sparked speculation that the show will conclude next season, and there has been much gnashing of teeth from fans.

Me?  Despite being a huge fan of the series, I’m not so sure its worth getting that worked up about.

First and foremost, we don’t know if this decision was made by the network or if it was the production company that requested a shorter season because they wanted to wrap things up.  We assume the network decided to give the show this shorter leash, but it isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility the Person of Interest creators simply wanted to wrap things up.

If you’ve been around as long as I have and seen as many hours of TV, you realize that sometimes the very worst thing that can happen to a good show is that it goes on longer than it should.  Look at The Simpsons.  Take a look at The X-Files.  And then consider most British TV series, which are usually presented in short bursts but which often have very satisfying -and complete- stories to tell.

If it turns out Person of Interest’s short season five was the result of an arrangement between CBS and the show’s creators who wanted to wrap things up (a big if, I grant you), I can totally understand that feeling.

Joss Whedon left the cinematic Marvel Universe after making the second Avengers film, this despite the fact that propelled him from the cult creator of Buffy and Firefly to a superstar and most likely set him up financially for life.  And while there has been fan criticism regarding Avengers: The Age of Ultron, the film is still getting high marks from critics and (yes) audiences and will most certainly make another metric ton of money.

Despite all this success, Mr. Whedon has noted the exhausting demands of working on a project like this and the time consumed.  He has stated that as much as he’d like to do more work with the Marvel heroes, he can’t justify cutting out another five years of his life on any new project(s).

Which brings me to…me.

In April of 2009 I released the novel Mechanic.  Over the following years I have written and released four more novels in what I’ve dubbed the Corrosive Knights series, with the most recent release, book #5, being Ghost of the Argus (released August of 2014).  By my calculations, I’ve been working on these books for at the very least 10-15 years, with the last six or so years spent working on them exclusively.

As proud of the books as I am, and I’m damn proud of my work on them, I yearn to write books not related to this series.  Books like my earlier works, novels that are standalone works which explore other interests I have.

That’s not to say I’m “tired” of working on the Corrosive Knights series.  Hell no!  It’s just that at this point in time I recognize the danger (and yes, there is a danger here) of getting so involved in this particular work that as an author you either start repeating yourself or, even worse, producing novels of diminishing quality.  Sometimes, you may be guilty of doing both.

And that I will absolutely not do.

At this moment, I’m very deep into writing book #6 in this series.  I have the bare plot of book #7 and some early chapters as well as the conclusion written.  I also have a rough complete draft of the series’ finale.  Will that rough draft eventually be released as book #8?

At this moment I don’t know.

There are certain things I still want to explore in the Corrosive Knights universe/series and I don’t know if/when I’ll be able to get to them.  So for all I know, that concluding novel may well be book #8 but it also could be #9 or even #10.

But the series will eventually end, and it will end on my terms.

Every day as I sit before the computer and write new Corrosive Knights material, I can find the work delightful or tedious, easy to write or surprisingly hard.  Sometimes, I experience a little of each emotion but in the end, when I do release a new novel, I know it is the very best work I was capable of producing at that given time and am damn proud to call it my own.

If Person of Interest does indeed end with its next shortened season, I hope it goes out on a high.

Regardless, I’ll most certainly be watching.

Self-Driving car accidents…?

So yesterday the news featured stories about four crashes since September in California involving “self-driving” cars.  Much was made of this.

Some was to be expected:  From some quarters alarm that self-driving cars aren’t (gasp!) perfect.  That they could get into accidents at all.  How in the world was that possible?!

To which I have to say: Really?

The self-driving vehicles aren’t in full production yet.  They’re still being tested, for crying out loud.  In California, there are fewer than 50 such cars on the streets and until now they’re under the supervision of either Google or Delphi or whomever is testing them.  Oh, and this testing has been going on longer than last September as the early trials were done in closed circuit courses before the programmers were confident enough in their product to release them under supervision to the streets.

Given the fact these companies are still testing these vehicles, and the further fact that they’re driving on streets populated with real-life drivers, it would have been more surprising to me that the self-driving cars hadn’t had so much as a scratch in all the time then the fact that there have been only four collisions.

That’s not to say, though, that Google and Delphi shouldn’t be more transparent regarding whatever accidents their cars get into.  Of the four such fender benders, the companies claim they were all caused by the other driver/car, and that in only two of the four cases were the vehicles in their autonomous mode.  Further, they state that the accidents happened at very low speeds and were very, very minor in nature.  So no Terminator-level autonomous vehicle carnage to report, thank the Gods.  Having said that, we have to take the company reports at face value as the actual accident information remains out of public reach.

Will Oremus for Slate.com provides an interesting and more detailed article regarding these four collisions and comes to many of the same conclusions I did above.  If you’re as interested in self-driving cars as I am, I highly recommend you read it.  You can find the article here:

Self-Driving Cars Have Been Getting Into Accidents.  Is That A Problem?

If you’ve read my posts in any detail you know that I’m a big proponent of automated cars.  I believe they are the future of transportation but I’m not foolish enough to believe they’ll arrive in some kind of otherworldly immaculate form, both accident and trouble free.

There will be (ahem) bumps along the road.  There may even be injuries to passengers or, tragically, even fatalities.  But every new transportation technology has had to contend with such issues and automobiles today, driven by flesh and blood humans, still get into many accidents on a daily basis and, yes, some do result in death.

Despite all this, I believe the future is bright for self-driving car and expect that in my lifetime I’ll see its full implementation and use on the roads and highways.  I would go so far as to predict that when that happens, we’ll see a precipitous drop in accidents in general and an almost overnight elimination of traffic woes.

We’ll see.

Movie “happy” endings and other things…

From the always delightful Cracked.com…

First up, 16 Happy Endings That Hoped You Weren’t Paying Attention:

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1470_16-happy-endings-that-hoped-you-werent-paying-attention/

It boils down to this: Sometimes a movie’s “happy” ending, if you think about it, isn’t all that happy at all.  Perhaps one of the best examples of this is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a very popular (and profitable) Steven Spielberg film that featured an ending that even as a youngster made me scratch my head for the very reasons pointed out in the article above:

Even Steven Spielberg and star Richard Dreyfus have realized the protagonist’s journey and ultimate resolution, presented so positively and with such a sense of Spielbergian wonder within the film itself, wasn’t quite as pleasant in retrospect.  Mr. Spielberg, if memory serves, noted that when he made the film he was a young single man and, as he grew and married and had a family, realized the ending presented in this work makes Richard Dreyfus’ character a heel (and that’s putting it kindly).

Check out the others, they’re interesting as well!

Next up: 6 Terrible Scenes Wisely Left Out of Great Movies:

http://www.cracked.com/article_22350_6-terrible-scenes-wisely-left-out-great-movies.html

What we have here are six movies based on literary works wherein the movie wisely chose to eliminate or ignore certain elements of the book/original story it was based on.  My favorite has to be the very first one presented, Die Hard.  The original book it was based on, Roderick Thorp’s Nothing Lasts Forever sounds like a real downer of a novel compared to what was presented on screen.  That’s not to say the other five didn’t wisely eliminate/alter material as well!

The only one I might quibble a little with is Up In The Air.  Yeah, the twist ending might have been more of a downer than one would have liked, but for some reason the book’s idea of the main character (SPOILER!) being terminally ill makes a certain kind of sense in the context of what he does during the course of the story, though maybe less so as a surprise ending.  Perhaps if it were part of the plot from the beginning…

Atari: Game Over (2014) a (mildly) belated review

I consider myself a part of the first generation of home video gamer fans.  I had a Pong type video game system in the mid-70’s and by 1978 or so had an Atari system (later it would be renamed the Atari 2600 system to distinguish it from later systems).

If you lived and experienced this home video game revolution, you know how incredible it was to have an Atari 2600 system.  Back then, video games were a revolution in the entertainment medium and having an Atari in your home allowed you to continue having arcade type fun outside the arcade itself.  Looking at the system and, in particular, the Atari 2600’s crude graphics today may have modern audiences scratching their heads.  Today’s games are almost hyperreal.  How in the world could anyone like that crude stuff?

Trust me, we did.

As dominant as the Atari system was, it is bewildering that in the early to mid-1980’s the system was suddenly and abruptly gone and Atari, the company that was so much a part of my childhood, faded away into oblivion.

Which brings us to Atari: Game Over, the documentary that on its surface explores one of the great legends regarding the company’s most infamous video game release, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, yet also looks back with nostalgia and sobriety at the rise and fall of the Atari Company.

The legend the documentary explores goes like this: The E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial video game, released to coincide with the release of the famous Steven Spielberg film, proved to be such a disaster that its failure sunk Atari.  Because the company produced way too many copies of the game, it was ultimately forced to dump the massive unsold stock into a landfill.

Did this happen?  And if so, could the buried copies of the game be found and the legend confirmed?

Using this as a jumping off point, the documentary that follows explores the Atari company and the people behind it.  The man responsible for the E.T. game, Howard Warshaw, proves to be the most interesting person, at least to me, in this documentary.  He talks of coming to Atari in the early days and the success of his very first game, Yar’s Revenge.

One gets the feeling he was something of a “golden boy” at the company during its good times (Yar’s Revenge was the best-sellingest video game Atari would ever release) and became the scapegoat when the E.T. game proved a failure.

In between we follow the people behind the search for the spot where the video games may have been dumped in a landfill in Alamogordo and go through the process of digging said site up (after making it through several levels of bureaucracy).

If there is one complaint I have about this documentary is that it is rather short and could have delved a little more into the life of Mr. Warshaw and perhaps a few others at Atari.

In spite of this, Atari: Game Over is a delightful documentary that explores a video game legend and, in its own way, proves to be a treasure hunt…though the treasure hunted, let’s face it, is trash.

Recommended, particularly if you were there during Atari’s golden years.

Star Wars Audition Tapes

For the fans of the original 1977 Star Wars film, here is a real treat: Actor auditions for the roles of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia:

http://io9.com/star-wars-audition-tapes-feature-a-very-different-origi-1702308808

Fascinating to see some famous faces pop up here (particularly Kurt Russell!), but in the end I guess they got the right actors to play the right roles.

Still, a most curious “what if”!

Piling on?

So Avengers: Age of Ultron has been released (haven’t seen it yet, don’t know if I will get the chance to before it hits home video) and the first night or so it made a ton of money and looked like its box office would overtake the original Avengers movie but by the time the weekend was over, the film had earned less than its predecessor.

Not that this lesser haul makes it a financial failure.  But it is a curious turn of events and at the very least may hint to the limits of profits from these features.

I believe it also hints to something regarding group mentality, something I’ve mentioned previously.

Granted I have no evidence to prove this, but I get the feeling the public at large has reached some kind of… I don’t know, tipping/saturation point regarding these particular Marvel heroes.

Where before audiences would go into these movies with an open mind and were willing to ignore plot points that didn’t make sense (there were plenty of them in the first Avengers film as well as my so-far favorite of the Marvel films, Captain America: Winter Soldier), this time around they appear a lot more discerning.  Or perhaps picky.

This sort of thing has happened before.  Remember the Christopher Nolan directed Batman films?  The first was imperfect, at least to my mind (I still feel the way Batman left Ra’s Al Ghul to die on the train was absolutely NOT something Batman would do) but so clearly its own animal that you couldn’t help but be impressed with that take of the Batman mythos.  The second benefited tremendously with the addition of Heath Ledger’s Joker.  But the third film, a film I felt in the end was on par with the others, ie entertaining yet with its share of imperfections, was savaged by many previous fans of the films as a misfire.

Which leads me to reiterate what I said above: Perhaps audiences, when given so much of a good thing, inevitably and more readily find the flaws in said products.  Maybe this is related in some way to expectations.  Your expectations become so big that anything that doesn’t quite reach those lofty realms gets jumped on.

So it goes with Avengers: Age of Ultron.  While audiences and critics in general seem to like the film, I get the feeling the reaction to this movie is far more muted while a fraction of fans have latched on to things they don’t like about the film and are far more vocal in denouncing them.

And it seems the particular thing people don’t like about this film is the way Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow is portrayed:

http://io9.com/black-widow-this-is-why-we-can-t-have-nice-things-1702333037

It’s a most curious firestorm regarding an otherwise well received and successful addition to a movie franchise.

Having not seen the film, I don’t feel I can comment on the accuracy/inaccuracy of the observations presented in this article.  But I do find it curious the way some are now hurling stones at a franchise that, up to this moment, they almost all loved universally.

Perhaps that’s just the way things go.

Why are the Star Wars Prequels hated so much?

Now that the new Star Wars sequels are coming out and they feature the welcome return of Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, there is much rejoicing along with some serious anticipation among the Star Wars fanbase.

Of course, there was similar rejoicing not so very long ago when word came that George Lucas, the director and writer of the original Star Wars film and the overseer (until these sequels) of the Star Wars empire, was working on a Prequel Trilogy.

My how things went sour so quickly!

Today, there are few who would argue the Star Wars prequels are worthy of much. Of the three prequel films, perhaps the final feature, which finds a young Anakin Skywalker becomiing the fearsome Darth Vader, is the one that people may like the most.

Or perhaps the one they hate the least

I’ve made my opinions of the original Star Wars films evident over the years (in short: I never liked them all that much, even though back in 1977 I was of the proper age and was crazy about sci-fi,  For whatever reason, these films never really clicked for me).

Even though I’m not a fan of the original trilogy, I find the prequels far worse.  Why?  Because while they feature some truly fantastic special effects, the story presented within them is alternately boring, childish (especially that first movie), silly (some of the dialogue goes beyond silly and into cringe-worthy territory), and boring (did I mention this already?).

Anyway, David Steward delves a little deeper into the why’s regarding fan hatred of the Star Wars prequels:

Why Does Everyone Hate the Star Wars Prequels?

I think he nails it.  The Prequels, unfortunately, were a victim of being not very good films that were released to a legion of fans who hoped for -nay, demanded!- new Star Wars films that were on par with the previous films.  Expectations, alas, have a way of being overblown.

But here’s the thing: Most people who grew up loving Star Wars are older, wiser (yeah, right!), and -I’m especially guilty of this- view things through nostalgic eyes.

There are things that, as a child, I absolutely loved.  Then, many years later and as an adult, I would go back to them and find they didn’t live up to my original nostalgic conceptions.  I loved Ron Howard’s first directed film, Grand Theft Auto (it has nothing to do with the video games), but when years later I bought and started watching the DVD release of it, I couldn’t last more than 15 minutes before shutting it off.

Time has a way of changing our enjoyment of certain things.  Movie pacing, for instance, has changed considerably.  Further, CGI effects have quite literally opened worlds to filmmakers and allowed them to present things there was no way they could back in the day.

I strongly suspect today’s 11 year olds will not see the original, untampered Star Wars as an 11 year old did back in 1977.

But the bottom line remains as always: For a movie to be successful, you have to present a good, interesting story along with interesting characters that draw viewers into your work.  While I can acknowledge the original Star Wars trilogy did this, the prequels failed to do so.

Are the prequels worth all the hate?

Perhaps not.  While they are, in my opinion, worse than the original Star Wars films (films I didn’t like all that much to begin with), I’ve certainly seen far more inept works in my lifetime.  The prequels, when you get down to it, are mediocre to below mediocre films that unfortunately focused on boring subject matters (trade deals?) to fill out their storyline and give their makers an excuse to show us some (then) state of the art CGI effects.

Those who lived and breathed all things Star Wars probably felt/feel the prequels were nothing less than a betrayal of their long held -and nostalgic- love for the original movies, and anything that trampled on those cherished feelings hurt them all the more.

Will the new Star Wars films defy or at least reach fan expectations…or will they fall like the prequels did?

Only time will tell.

What was the Venus de Milo doing with her lost arms…?

For those who are not familiar with the classic Venus de Milo statue (shame on you!), a refresher:

As you can see, the statue (famously) does not have its arms, having lost them in antiquity before her discovery in more modern times.

Shamefully, it never occurred to me to think what the arms were doing in the original statue, but my incuriosity happily did not fall on others who have offered theories as to what the pre-busted statue might have looked like.

Virginia Postrel offers an absolutely fascinating article for Slate.com and an equally fascinating video showing one possibility, that the statue originally had the Venus spinning thread.  Check the article out here.

If you’re too lazy to do so, here’s the 3D presentation regarding what the complete statue might have looked like.  This can be found in the above article.  Of course, this is all speculation, but it just might be close to the truth:

Venus de Milo Spinning Thread by CosmoWenman on Sketchfab

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) a (mildly) belated review

A while back my wife told me how surpsing and hilarious The Hangover was.  She caught it with some friends when it was originally released to theaters back in 2009 and, when the first sequel showed up in 2011, was curious to see it.

We did, and we both hated it.

Coincidentally (or…not…?) in 2011 another comedy was released, Horrible Bosses, and my wife managed to see that film with some friends as well.  She enjoyed it and, like The Hangover 2, was curious to see the sequel.  However, because of how absolutely laugh-free that film turned out to be, she was a little more cautious.

Nonetheless, we had Horrible Bosses 2 on our Netflix que and though the reviews for the film weren’t all that great and I worried I was heading into a repeat of the whole The Hangover 2 situation (having not seen the original Horrible Bosses and about to embark on seeing its sequel), I was even more cautious.

To make a long story short: Horrible Bosses 2 turned out to be a pleasant enough time killer provided you put your brain in neutral and ignore many of the film’s silly-to-the-point-of-completely-unbelievable plot progressions.

If it sounds like I’m not all that enthusiastic about going full bore reviewing the film, you’re right.  This film is far from a great work of comedy but it is good enough if you’re in the right frame of mind and don’t think too hard about what you’re seeing.  You will find a few things to laugh about but probably not all that much else.  And I couldn’t be happier the film wasn’t the humorless black hole that was The Hangover 2.

High praise indeed!

I have little doubt this film will be for the most part forgotten in another year or so (if it isn’t already), but what the hell…you don’t always get the filet mignon.