Monthly Archives: November 2015

General

How One Man Pranked the Presidential Race…

While I’m not usually one to enjoy pranks (I find phony phone calls, for example, to be a bore), I had great fun with this prank.  The article regarding the prank, written by Chris Moody for CNN.com, made me laugh quite a bit:

How One Man Pranked The Presidential Race

Please click on the link above and read the full story…it is worth it.

I’ll provide a summary below, but, again, you should read the whole thing and check out the video as well.

So here’s what happened: Vic Berger, a freelance video editor “with a sharp eye for absurd humor”, took a Jeb! Bush video on YouTube where the candidate talks about his love of Apple products, edits it to highlight Jeb!’s cringe factor, and got a lot of views of it…including from Jeb! Bush’s staff.

Realizing the Jeb! campaign was looking at his work, Mr. Berger communicated with them and stated he would get a Jeb! tattoo if his post hit a million views.  The Jeb! campaign, thinking this was great promotion, aided him in getting those views and Mr. Berger then did (not really) what he promised: He took a video of his visit to a tattoo parlor to get a terrible (and very large) “Jeb4Prez” tattoo on his neck.

And this is where the ingenious/hilarious elements of this prank kicked in.

Though I really wish you’d read the full article, this single paragraph notes what happened next and had me laughing out loud.  I present it in full:

Back on Twitter, an account claiming to be run by Berger’s father started sending messages to Bush and his campaign staff telling them that they had made a terrible mistake encouraging him (to get the tattoo). The man claimed that Berger had “undiagnosed issues” and that by pushing him to go through with it, he had lost his job and that his life was ruined. Berger himself began telling reporters that he no longer wanted to talk because he was repairing relations with his family after the episode.

You can imagine what happened next.  Those “encouraging” Jeb! texts/tweets suddenly disappear and the Jeb! campaign goes silent regarding the issue, thinking they’d just destroyed -or at the very least harmed- a mentally fragile man.

Read the entire article and see the absurd tattoo for yourself!

General

Acrophics (like me) beware…

This is just insane.

Insane I tell you…

Here you go: Crazy man climbing around the Eiffel Tower.

While the video stars at night-time (the man filming himself was obviously not given permission to do this climb and therefore had to enter the structure unseen), a minute or two into the video the sun comes out and we see his climb in all its vertigo-inducing glory.

I think I’m going to curl up in my bed now.

General

The Human Flaw in Self-Driving Cars…

As those who frequent this blog must know by now, I’m fascinated with what I predict is the future regarding cars: They will all be self-driving.  In fact, I predict that in the very near future people will no longer own cars at all.  We will use our smart-phone and a Uber-like app to to call in a self-driving car and it will take us to our destination for a very low fee and, when we’re done at our destination and need to go somewhere else we again whip out our smartphone and viola! call in another vehicle to take us.

It wouldn’t surprise me if my daughters’ children (or, if there’s a delay, their children) wind up being the first generation of people who never bothered to learn to drive at all.

(A random thought here: How will movies deal with the idea of driverless cars?  Will that action staple, the car chase, eventually disappear from films?)

Having said all this, we’re still a few years off from having that fleet of driverless vehicles at our disposal.  In the meantime, Tesla has released a new model of their car and it features driverless functionality, though the auto maker is clear that this should be used as an aid to driving and the driver should not take their hands off the wheel even in the driverless mode.

Will Oremus over at Slate.com offers an interesting look at the current state of driverless vehicles and, specifically, the Tesla models and I encourage anyone who, like me, is interested in this topic read his thoughts:

The Paradox of the Self-Driving Car

What Mr. Oremus gets at is the thought in some quarters that if you’re making a self-driving vehicle, you should probably go all the way toward it, like Google is doing (ie eliminating the steering wheel from the driverless car and anticipating a future where all the cars on the road are driverless and therefore human error is completely eliminated).

Mr. Oremus points out that an “assisted” driverless feature like the one the Tesla may create bad habits in drivers.  They may, for example, check whatever is going on with their smartphone more while driving using the feature, which Tesla clearly doesn’t want them to do.

But people are people and it isn’t surprising they indulge in stupid things they shouldn’t, such as…

Watch a Tesla being driven in autopilot – From the backseat

To say the least, seeing the above article/video made my blood freeze.  Yes, I’m all in favor of driverless cars but Tesla has made it clear their driverless feature is NOT meant to be used like this.

Regardless, we most certainly are living in interesting times regarding cars.  The driverless car is coming (if not already here) and, with technological advances regarding battery power, I suspect we’ll see the end of gasoline use as well.

An exciting -and, after seeing hte above video, scary!- time for sure.

Books/Literature

On Othello…

Found this absolutely fascinating article by Isaac Butler on Slate.com, exploring a concept that, I have to admit, I’ve had a curiosity about.  The question involves Shakespeare’s famous play Othello, and the question is:

Why is Othello Black?

I have to give considerable credit to Mr. Butler.  In a relatively short essay he addresses many of the questions I’ve had regarding the character and, even more importantly, why Shakespeare presented him in this way and for what reason.  There is history here and an awareness of what “black” meant to the author in the 1600’s versus what it means to us today.

The conclusions, specifically about what the play tells us about Othello the character (a noble soul driven to -and revealing- his base nature or a man ultimately betrayed by those far less noble -and beastly- than him?) as well as those around him and the questions that are never completely answered, are fascinating and had me appreciating all the more the play and its deep meanings.

A must read!

Books/Literature

On Writing…

A couple of weeks ago I read an article about the November Writing Challenge (you can sign up for it here, but 10 days have already passed!).  In essence, the challenge is to write an at least 50,000 word novel in the month.

No, I didn’t sign up for the challenge.  I’m knee deep in book #6 of the Corrosive Knights saga and the last thing I need to do is distract myself from it for a month writing another work.

When I read about the challenge, perhaps on io9.com or somewhere like it, I was fascinated by the commentary section and the various bits of advice people gave would-be authors accepting the challenge.  Though I wish I could find the actual comments, one in particular, which I’ll paraphrase below (sorry, don’t have the actual quote handy), struck me as interesting:

Leave things where they lie and write forward.  Do not go back and revise, rather write around what you originally put down.

In the context of writing a 50,000 novel in a month’s time, this is good advice.  Because of the nature of the challenge you don’t want to get stuck repeatedly going over sections of your book and/or rewriting great parts of it as the deadline looms large.

But as the advice presented is framed towards this particular writing challenge, its easy to point out it doesn’t relate to the type of novels I write.

Of course, I can’t speak about other authors.  If you are to accept what Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing, he claims to write exactly one draft of his novels, puts it away for a little while to “mellow out”, then goes over it one time before it is ready to be published.  Given the copious amounts of books he releases, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is indeed the case, that he writes along the lines of the advice presented above and then moves on to the next work.

As much as I wish I could write like that (oh, the number of books I’d have out there by now!), that’s not the way I do it.

I’ve posted bits and pieces of information on my writing here and there and I’ll likely do so again in the future.  For me, writing is not unlike creating an oil painting.

The painter starts with an idea of what it is they want to paint.  Perhaps it is a landscape or a city.  Perhaps a person or group of people.  You have some ideas of how things will fit together and you come up with a rough drawing.  Depending on how good you are, the drawing is done quickly or, more than likely, you work out spaces and where things lie on your canvas.

Your original idea(s) likely change during this stage, sometimes radically.  After a bit of work you reach a point where you have your drawing down on the canvas (if you do things that way) and you’re ready to lay down colors.  During this process of blending colors together you may have additional discoveries, either done on purpose or found by accident, which step by step further fill in your work. When you’re done, the picture you’ve created may well be very far from what you originally envisioned but if you’re successful, what you’ve completed is far, far better than that original concept.

So it is for me with writing a novel.  Usually I start out with a few rough ideas.  I may have a concept of a novel’s beginning and its end or maybe both and then have to come up with what lies between.  Rarely do I have ideas of things that happen somewhere in the middle of the book.

As for characters, I usually have an idea of the ones I want to use and their interactions, but this is often subject to change.

In the case of the Corrosive Knights novel I’m currently writing, I started out with an idea of the novel’s beginning, though this wasn’t set in stone, and its end, which was far better defined.

When I started writing the book and, unlike the advice presented above, I would very often go back over my work as I realized certain plot points worked better another way.  This is how I wound up with almost 30,000 words of material which I may wind up discarding completely.

A waste of time?  Most certainly, but the overall work is better for these unused experiments…if nothing else, they made me realize I needed to do better.

Returning to the characters, the original big bad villain of the piece, I realized, was better served being heroic (though not the novel’s hero).  Further, I added chunks of information originally conceived for the next book in the Corrosive Knights series but which I realized worked better in this one.  These chunks of information fill in historical blanks that finally give the series the 20,000 plus year history I was intent on telling.

Sometimes I wish I could transport back in time and with my latest novel in hand and present it to myself as I was beginning the work.  How would I react to being in the novel’s embryonic stage and then seeing it presented in full?  How would I react to the knowledge that the journey begun with a few small ideas would flower into something so full?

And after admiring the work done, I’d just have to tell myself who won the upcoming Super Bowl.

Might be worth a few more bucks! 😉

Movies

A little more on Spectre and other Bond musings…

No, haven’t gone to see the film.  As I said in my previous post, reading the reviews and discovering the “big” spoiler created a really bad taste in my mouth, one which I’ll get into in a moment.

In that previous post, I didn’t want to get into spoiler territory but now that the film has been out for several days and no doubt word of what this spoiler is has circulated among fans of the James Bond franchise, I feel safer in exploring it.

Of course, what I’m about to get into is still…

SPOILER TERRITORY!

You’ve been warned!

Ok, so in that previous post (you can read the full thing here) I offered a link to one review in particular, that of Drew McWeeny for hitfix.com.  The review can be found here.

There are two “big” reveals in the review.  The first was to be expected: The character of Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz) turned out to be Blofeld.  Considering this film was named “Spectre” and anyone with even a passing knowledge of the fictitious evil organization knows that its head is Blofeld, I can only scratch my head as to why they chose to “hide” this fact.

I mean, EVERYONE knew that Mr. Waltz (despite the actor’s protestations) was playing the character.  It was a weak repeat of the weak “surprise” that John Harrison was in actuality Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013).  I suppose one of the earlier examples of the use of this concept in modern times (and modern blockbuster films) was in 2005’s Batman Begins where Liam Neeson’s Ducard is revealed to be…someone else.  This concept was used again in The Dark Knight Rises (2012) with the revelation that Marion Cotillard’s Miranda wasn’t who she said she was, though even by that point audiences were already suspecting she was a certain character’s daughter.

Moving beyond this by now well worn trope, what really infuriated me -as well as Mr. McWeeny- regarding Spectre was this:

…the reason that Oberhauser became a criminal mastermind in charge of an international organization that is involved in human trafficking, drugs, terrorism, and myriad other destructive crimes is because when James Bond’s parents died, Bond was sent to live with the Oberhausers, and Papa Oberhauser decided he liked James Bond better than he liked his real son, Franz.

Yes. It’s true. Blofeld is Blofeld because his daddy liked James Bond more than him.

Wow.

I mean, wow.

Talk about cheap, pseudo-psychological crap.  One comes away feeling Oberhauser/Blofeld needs to get a grip.  I take it back: the screenwriters of Spectre need to get a grip.  How could they use this concept (already used as a joke in the last Austin Powers film!) and think it would come out as anything other than silly?

But like the “revelation” that Oberhauser is in reality Blofeld, the links between villain and hero also have a history.  A history that, by this point, has also slid into cliche.

Who can forget…

Many were totally blown away by this revelation though it, like the concept that Luke and Leia were siblings, was clearly a post original Star Wars creation.

A few years later, Tim Burton’s original Batman introduced this element which, though not familiar per se, created a sense that Joker/Batman were intertwined more than had ever originally been conceived:

In the comic books, the Wayne’s killer was a low level hoodlum named Joe Chill.  In this movie, Jack Napier/The Joker “creates” Batman and Batman, later in the film, creates the Joker.  Its one of those “neat” concepts that are perhaps a little too neat and can only occur in films that deal with the fanstastic.

Now that Spectre is out (and doing fairly well in theaters, though its box office wasn’t quite as high as Skyfall) and it might be Daniel Craig’s last go at the James Bond character, I suspect a major re-evaluation of his films is in the offing.  While the Pierce Brosnan films were box-office successes, following his departure people gave his run a second look and it turned out those films didn’t have legs.  Most today dismiss the Brosnan run as weak even though it did well enough to warrant four films.

I wonder if the same may happen with Mr. Craig’s four film run.  For my money and without having seen Spectre yet (I will, but probably not in theaters), the only really good Daniel Craig Bond film is Casino Royale, but only because it so very well created an “origin” of the Bond character.  I was hoping subsequent films would fully grasp the fun/action/suspense nature of the other Bond films but that was not to be.  Quantum Of Solace was torpedoed by a writer’s strike.  Skyfall was a beautiful film to look at and enjoy while watching it for the first time but immediately afterwards you realize the plot made absolutely no sense.  Spectre appears to be not unlike Skyfall in the sense that it is also a beautiful film to look at but one whose plot -and the character motivations- again suffer.

In time, will we look back and say that Mr. Craig made one really good Bond film and followed it up with three forgettable features?  Is this not what essentially happened to Pierce Brosnan?  Goldeneye, Mr. Brosnan’s first Bond film, is considered by many his best while the others…not so much.

Is history repeating itself?

Movies

(Very) Shaken, Not Stirred…

1 Comment

It’s my own damn fault, really.

I’m a curious guy and as much as I was (note the past tense) eager to see the 007 film Spectre, released today, I just had to read some of the reviews.

To be fair, the earliest reviews, appearing earlier in the week and following, I assume, the UK premiere of the film, were generally positive and my hopes were raised.  I’m a fan of James Bond and have a love for many of the films, even as I’m clear-eyed enough to recognize there is plenty of chaff among the wheat.

My favorite Bond is Sean Connery though even his run of films weren’t perfect.  Thunderball was a great spectacle but in retrospect was probably the first of the Bond films to show both formula and bloat but its follow-up, You Only Live Twice, was the only Connery Bond film (including the non-canon Never Say Never Again) to leave me cold.  While others loathe the tongue in cheek campiness of Diamonds Are Forever, I happen to like that film for just that reason.

Between You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever we had On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the only Bond film featuring George Lazenby in the title role.  There are many who consider this one of the all time best Bond films ever but I’m not one of them.  I found the film rather flat, though it was fun to see Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas in it.  Continuity-wise, I never understood why Mr. Savalas’ Blofeld didn’t recognize James Bond and vice versa.  Despite the change in actors, the two characters had come face to face in the previous film, You Only Live Twice.

The first Bond I encountered was the Roger Moore version.  Though many hate Mr. Moore’s take on the Bond character, I enjoyed his work.  The biggest problem, IMHO, with Mr. Moore’s Bond films is that one good film was almost always followed with a really bad one.  Further, two of the worst Bond films ever made, Moonraker (a silly Star Wars inspired affair) and A View To A Kill (an uninspired work -you need only check out the totally ho-hum opening action set piece to see how uninspired the rest of the film was) both featured Mr. Moore.  Yet the highs were very high.  The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only are two of my all time favorite Bonds.

Timothy Dalton would replace Roger Moore in the underrated The Living Daylights, a damn good Bond film that would have benefited even more had the producers/creators tailored their script for Mr. Dalton rather than Roger Moore (as good as Mr. Dalton is, there are moments in the film that appeared designed specifically for Mr. Moore’s interpretation of the character).  Mr. Dalton’s second (and last) Bond film, License to Kill, however, was a big disappointment and I wasn’t too surprised when it was announced he was out.

Pierce Brosnan, the actor who the studios originally wanted to take over for Roger Moore following A View to a Kill, would be hired for the next four Bond films which, frankly, didn’t do all that much for me.  I love the idea of Pierce Brosnan playing Bond but the films, apart from the first, felt like a cookie cutter product.  One film fades into the next and if pressed, I’d have a hard time telling you the plots of his Bond run.

Then came Daniel Craig with the 2006 “reboot” Casino Royale.  Based on the first Ian Fleming penned James Bond story, Casino Royale was what Timothy Dalton’s first Bond film should have been.  Serious, sexy, and tragic.  Here we had James Bond presented as a new agent and, by the end of the adventure when he states he’s “Bond, James Bond” it feels like you’ve just seen his origin story and away we go…

…only we didn’t.

The next Bond film, Quantum of Solace, fell victim in part to a writer’s strike and was a mess of a movie, IMHO.  2012’s Skyfall, however, hit audiences like napalm.  Critics almost universally loved the film and, when watching it, so did I.

But as pretty and adrenaline pumping as Skyfall was to watch in theaters that first time, the movie’s story falls apart even under the most modest of scrutiny.  Worse, this is the only Bond film I know of where the bad guy “wins”.  His stated goal is to kill Judi Dench’s M and then die and this is exactly what he does.  Which makes one wonder: Just how effective is this Bond?

Another thing that bothered me about the film, even upon first watching it, is that at the very end we again establish the “old” Bond setup of a male M, Moneypenny, and Bond.  Didn’t we already do a “origin” story with Casino Royale?  How come we’re now three movies into Mr. Craig’s run and yet we wind once again having an origin story with Skyfall?

Which brings us back to Spectre.

Despite the bumps in the road and the disappointing films, I maintain I’m a fan of the franchise and like nothing more than to see a good Bond film.  The early commercials for Spectre indicated, at least to me, that this new movie would offer plenty of homages to the old ones, something that thrilled me.

In my mind I’m thinking: Now that we’ve finally gotten rid of the whole origin story stuff, we’re going into primo-Bond territory with, among other Bondian staples, a bruiser henchman whom he fights on a train (Shades of From Russia WIth Love and The Spy Who Loved Me)!  You have the evil organization Spectre coming back after all these years (the organization that vexed Connery’s Bond for most of his run!  Hey, it’s in the movie’s title!).  You have car chases and snow and beautiful women (not that they ever left the series) and…

…and it looked like so much fun.

Then came the other reviews.

As I said above, its my own damn fault.  When I read this HEAVY SPOILER review by Drew McWeeny, I was beside myself:

Spectre Manages to Majorly Muddy Daniel Craig’s James Bond Legacy

I’ll try to stay clear of certain spoilery material as best I can, but one of the first things to annoy me upon reading this review is that it appears we once again have a Daniel Craig Bond film that takes place BEFORE he becomes a “full on” Connery-Moore-Lazenby-Dalton-Brosnan Bond.  In other words, we’re once again -on our fourth Daniel Craig film!- yet again dealing with a proto-Bond in an origin story.

Even worse than that was discovering in this review and others like it the identity and motives of the movie’s villain.  I’m not going to give that information away (if you want SPOILERS, click the link above or search for other reviews), but the motives of the villain are -and there is no kind way of saying this- stupid.

Extremely stupid.

How stupid?  So stupid one wonders if the writers forgot the same motivations and relationships were presented years before in one of the Austin Powers films (again, I’m being careful here to not be spoilery).  In the Austin Powers films these were presented as broad comedy and the silliness was intentional.  In Spectre they’re playing it straight and reading about it makes it feel all the sillier.

So here we are, four films into Daniel Craig’s run of James Bond and, based on some of the interviews he’s given, Spectre might well be his final appearance as Bond and, at least for some critics, if this is his swan song he’s going out on a low.

Too bad.

Books/Literature

Corrosive Knights 11/5/15 Update

Been a while since I posted an update on the latest Corrosive Knights novel, which will be #6 in the series and whose title I’m keeping to myself for a little bit longer.

Writing these books has been a blast even as they’ve also been a mighty struggle.  I’m working with a series I feel is unique in many ways.  To begin, the scope of the story is incredibly large, taking place over the course of some 20,000 plus years.  Readers are offered events in different epochs which, when put together, form a much larger story.

While there have been plenty of stories featuring flashbacks and flash-forwards, I think its safe to say no series -at least none that I’m aware of!- features entire novels that take place in sometimes vastly different times, past and the future, while (hopefully!) logically building up the larger tale.

The five Corrosive Knights books plus the one I’m currently working on have been/will be released -and ideally should be read- in this order:

Corrosive Knights

I say “ideally” but I’m not being entirely honest: The the first three books of the series, Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon could be read in any order.  They feature unique characters and take place in vastly different times and therefore one could read them in any order they choose.

However, by the time you reach Nox, Ghost of the Argus, and the unnamed Book #6, the continuity established in these first three novels kicks in and, while I think the later books could be enjoyed on their own, I HIGHLY recommend you read books 1, 2, and 3 before venturing into the ones that follow.

Now, if I were to tell the Corrosive Knights story in chronological order, i.e. each book’s main story occurring “one after the other” (and ignoring whatever flashback elements are presented within said novels), the story order would go like this:

Small Covers in Chronological Order for Web2

That’s right: The book I’m currently working on, #6 of the Corrosive Knights series, actually takes place before the events of The Last Flight of the Argus and Ghost of the Argus.  In fact, they take place a few hundred years before those books!  Yet I would absolutely NOT recommend anyone read that book when it is released in a few short months (I’ll get to that in a second) before already reading the rest of the series and, in particular, The Last Flight of the Argus and Ghost of the Argus.

Why?

Because the events of those two books in particular fill in story concepts which have a big payoff in Book #6 and propels the reader into the Corrosive Knights series finale, which will be Book #7.

Fear not, thought.  There will be an epilogue to the series, a Book #8, which will wrap certain things up that weren’t/aren’t wrapped up in Book #7.  Book #8 will also offer what I hope is a great long view of the heroes we’ve followed for so long while focusing on one in particular.  To further screw with your head, I’m already finished with the first draft of Book #8 but only have a chapter or so written (along with a general idea of the story) of Book #7.

Not only is my series presented in a quirky temporal way, so too it would appear is my creative output!

Now, getting back to Book #6:

I’ve been working on that book for many months now and have a great opening half and a great conclusion but I spent a lot of time filling in what happens between.  I’ve written bits and pieces (amounting to some 30,000 words!) of material for that section but I knew it wasn’t quite coming together.

As I mentioned in previous blogs, writing for me is like a form of OCD.  You spend almost every waking hour at one moment or another thinking about your current work and going through the possibilities of what may/may not work.

Then, about two weeks ago, I awoke at 2 in the morning (not an unusual thing for me) and my mind was racing.  I was thinking about book #6 and that missing section and suddenly I had it.  One scene after the other flowed through my mind all the way to the very end.  Instead of going back to sleep, I headed to my desk and pulled out a yellow notepad and began writing what my fevered mind was giving me.

When I was done, I had five full pages of handwritten notes laid out detailing the second act of the novel leading up to the conclusion.  I was so damn excited yet also so damn exhausted that I stumbled back to bed and crashed.

In the morning, I was so happy I wrote down all my thoughts because while I had a general idea of what I was going to do, some of the details were lost in my near dream state.

On Halloween night, while my wife was occupied with giving kids treats, I had another burst of nervous energy and wrote most of the book’s conclusion.  Two days later, on November 2nd (this past Monday), I finished the whole thing and printed it out.  I still want to go over those 30,000 words of material I wrote and see if they’re at all usable in the novel but the fact of the matter is that the first full draft is finally done and I can now move on to the editing phase.

All my novels, when reaching this phase, feel different.  There have been books I’ve finished the first full draft that I know need a lot of work to be finalized.  That doesn’t feel like the case here.  I suspect I’ll need to go over this book a few times, at least three and possibly as many as six, but I have a feeling the editing process this time around won’t require as much work as with some other novels and therefore I feel (and hope!) this book will be ready to go perhaps as early as February.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

For those who have followed the Corrosive Knights series so far, I think you’ll find Book #6 another great addition to the series.

I’ll offer updates when the book is near ready!

Movies

Dark Places (2015) a (mildly) belated review

Whenever a movie has a very limited theatrical run and/or quickly appears on direct-to-video services, one can usually guess the studios decided -whether right or wrong- said features are not strong enough to spend the extra money in promoting it and having a full theatrical run.

These films most certainly could be good but, perhaps even more easily, might be a complete bust.

Often direct to video films star lesser known actors and are low budget affairs.  This happens frequently but not always.  Sometimes these movies may surprise you by featuring one time very big name actors.  Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a trio of such big league actions stars, have nonetheless each had films released via this format.  In their prime, this would probably never happen, but time passes and these stars no longer command the best and brightest directors and writers for their work.

There are other exceptions to be found, and one of the strangest of them all, to my mind, is the film Dark Places.  Why do I feel this is a strange case?

Because the film features a very hot “A” list star in Charlize Theron who just appeared as what was arguably the star of one of this summer’s biggest box office/critical successes in Mad Max: Fury Road.  Further, the film she’s in is an adaptation of a currently very hot author’s novel.  Finally, the story featured in this movie may have drawn Ms. Theron because it touches somewhat on her own personal tragedy when growing up, which means Ms. Theron might have given the role an extra effort in the realization, perhaps something along the line of her critically acclaimed work in Monster.

If there were ever enough ingredients to expect a film would at the very least be a sure fire theatrical release it was this one.  Yet Dark Places, as mentioned, only received a very limited theatrical release before being thrown into the home video market.

With all that in mind, I nonetheless remained curious to see the film and, when given the opportunity yesterday, I did just that, though I lowered my expectations even more than usual.  So, was the film a bust like the studios felt or were they wrong in showing such little faith in this movie?

Read on…read on…

Based on the novel by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, Dark Places is the story of Libby Day (Charlize Theron) a woman who, as a young girl, had her mother and two sisters brutally murdered by what was believed to be her then 15 year old brother.  She was the only one to escape the massacre and, in court, fingered her brother for the crime.

Now an adult, LIbby is a woman who has benefited from the notoriety of this sensational crime.  She’s made money by releasing a book (she later claims she never read it and didn’t write it) and, for a time, also received money from well wishers.

But twenty eight years later, the money is drying up and Libby is in deep financial straits.  Her rent hasn’t been paid for two months and electricity to her house has been cut off.  Her financial adviser presents her with some letters from organizations and groups interested in paying her to appear at their events, events that deal with crimes.

Desperate to score money, Libby agrees to meet up with Lyle Wirth (Mad Max: Fury Road co-star Nicholas Hoult) who runs a “Crime Club”.  Though not interested in re-living the tragedy of her past, she accepts money from him to attend what turns out to be a fractious meeting of his Crime Club.  The members of the club, Libby finds, all believe her brother innocent of the murders and want Libby to re-examine the crime.  Libby tells the members off but something awakens within her.  Later on she again contacts Wirth and, while insisting this is all about money, agrees to allow him to “hire” her for 3 weeks time during which she will go over her case.

What follows are flashbacks and detective work performed, for the most part, by LIbby.  She re-establishes contact with her brother, who remains in jail.  She is terrified by him yet he doesn’t appear to be the monster she expected.  Nonetheless, the now grown man refuses to tell Libby whether he committed the crimes and that makes her believe there’s more to the story than what she remembers.

Despite lowering my expectations waaaay down with Dark Places, the movie proved a slog.  Clocking in at just over two hours long, the film feels overlong yet curiously underdeveloped.  The main mystery is never as intriguing as one would hope and the revelations, when they come, rely too much on coincidence.  Without getting into too many SPOILERS, suffice it to say that the night of the crime several events magically lined up to create this singular event…and its a whopper of a thing to swallow, as much of a whopper to swallow when all is magically uncovered all those years later.

Despite a strong cast and decent acting, Dark Places is too slow, too un-involving, and ultimately too coincidental in its resolution to accept.  It’s therefore not too terribly surprising the film wasn’t given a broader release.

Movies

…the horror…the…horror…

So we just finished up the month of October and over at the movie studios they’re wondering…

October Box Office Scare: Why So Many Movies Bombed

The above article by Pamela McClintock and presented on CNN.com, examines the large uptick in failed movie released during the past month.

While The Martian is doing well, so many other films have severely underperformed.

Films such as:

The Walk.

This movie, directed by Robert Zemekis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, etc) received generally positive reviews but audiences stayed away in droves.  Personally, I wasn’t all that interested in the subject matter.  And if I was, why would I watch this and not Man on Wire, the 2008 documentary that focuses on, and features footage from, the actual tightrope walk?

Further to that, I have a big fear of heights and, from what I understand, this film really wanted audiences, especially those going to the IMAX presentation, to experience a strong sense of vertigo.  Mr. Zemekis wanted audiences to feel the heights which Phillipe Petite (the man who did the walk) felt.

Regardless of how good the film might be:  Why would I want to torture myself like that?!

Another film that didn’t do so well was Steve Jobs.  Written by acclaimed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, and Seth Rogan (who in particular received great reviews for his portrayal of Steve Jobs’ partner Steve Wozniak), the film nonetheless also tanked at the box office…even though it too received generally positive reviews.  On Rottentomatoes.com, the film has a positive rating of 85% and yet audiences weren’t interested.

I suspect the problem here might be that we’ve already had our fill of Steve Jobs documentaries…if there ever was a desire for such a thing in the first place.  Only two years ago Jobs, featuring Ashton Kutcher in the title role, came and went and no one cared then -though to be fair unlike Steve Jobs this film was almost universally panned- so why should they care now?

Then there’s the Bill Murray vehicle Rock The Kasbah.  While I felt the trailer was amusing, this one may have fallen victim to very bad reviews.

Truth, starring Robert Redford and Kate Blanchett and focusing on the controversial George H. W. Bush military service story that sunk Dan Rather’s career also didn’t do well.  The reviews for this film were decidedly mixed but I suspect the problem in finding an audience with this movie might lie in that almost everyone -including conservatives- wants nothing more than to forget all about George H. W. Bush and his presidency.  Why go to the movies to revisit even one aspect of it?

Our Brand is Crisis, starring Sandra Bullock, in my opinion, simply didn’t look all that interesting.  Then again, like Truth we’re again dealing with politics and maybe people just aren’t in the mood at this time to deal with it.  Regardless, apart from some humorous content, the movie’s trailer didn’t grab me all that much.  Your mileage, of course, may vary:

Burnt, starring Bradley Cooper as an arrogant chef, was even worse, trailer-wise.  Does anyone want to see the film after this:

Slick though the trailer is, almost nothing about it grabbed me and the scenarios presented felt awfully familiar.  If I want to see an arrogant chef scolding his “pupils” I can watch Hell’s Kitchen.  If I want to see people making great culinary confections, I can watch any of a myriad of programs on the Food Network.  Perhaps this subject matter is a little too overexposed?

My comments above, of course, benefit immensely from 20/20 hindsight.  Though it may not sound it, I do not relish hearing about troubles at movie studios.  As an author, I know the backbreaking efforts that go into creating a work and it must be crushing to see the end results receive (as some of those features did) great reviews but be met with public indifference.  Besides, while these films didn’t appeal to me personally for the reasons I’ve listed, at least the studios were trying to do something different.

Unfortunately, it appears the studios entered a perfect storm of sorts and audiences simply weren’t buying what they were selling this past month.