All posts by ERTorre

E. R. Torre is a writer/artist whose first major work, the mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe, was optioned for motion picture production by Platinum Studios (Men In Black, Cowboys vs. Aliens). At DC Comics, his work appeared in role-playing game books and the 9-11 Tribute book. This later piece was eventually displayed, along with others from the 9-11 tribute books, at The Library of Congress. More recently he released Shadows at Dawn (a collection of short stories), Haze (a murder mystery novel with supernatural elements), and Cold Hemispheres (a mystery novel set in the world of The Dark Fringe). He is currently hard at work on his latest science fiction/suspense series, Corrosive Knights, which features the novels Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon.
General, Music

Beware…politics…and Beatles music?

I’m deeply invested in politics as the people who will run our government represent the future of this country.  Yet I also feel political opinions are too easily spread out there and it is best sometimes to listen rather than “talk”.

This is why I’m always hesitant to get into political topics here.  Considering all the things I’ve expressed opinions on these last few years, I shouldn’t be, but political options, and politics in general, have a different impact than my opinion on, say, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Which isn’t to say I don’t dip my toe into this topic from time to time, which is what I intend to do now.  So, if you’re not interested in “talking” politics, turn away.  There’s plenty of other good stuff to read around these parts…

Anyway, yesterday the Vice Presidential candidates took to the stage to have a debate and, from what I’ve heard (you couldn’t pay me to watch this one), Republican VP candidate Mike Pence acquitted himself far better than Donald Trump did in his disastrous debate against Hillary Clinton.

And the Donald, from reports out there, wasn’t all that happy:

Report: Donald Trump mad at Pence for being better than him at debate

While I suppose it should surprise me, it doesn’t.  Mr. Trump has always struck me as a classic narcissist and woe be to anyone/anything that takes away from his limelight.

Yet on the other hand, and again based on what I heard, it appeared Mr. Pence didn’t exactly go to bat for his candidate, so there could be more complex emotions going on here.

What I find the most fascinating so far with this race is that apart from being a narcissist, Mr. Trump constantly engages in what psychologists have called “projection”, which is defined as:

The unconscious transfer of one’s own desires or emotions to another person.

Many years ago and shortly after the disbanding of The Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney (and George Harrison to a lesser degree) took shots at each other via their songs.  Paul McCartney’s “Too Many People”, for example, is widely considered a song which takes aim at Mr. Lennon:

Included in the song are these lines:

You took your lucky break and broke it in two.
Now what can be done for you?
You broke it in two.

John Lennon shot right back with “How Do You Sleep”…

What was most fascinating to me was that in the Imagine film, Mr. Lennon talks about that song and says this about it:

(How Do You Sleep) is not about Paul, it’s about me. I’m really attacking myself. But I regret the association, well, what’s to regret? He lived through it. The only thing that matters is how he and I feel about these things and not what the writer or commentator thinks about it. Him and me are okay.

By the point of this quote many years had passed and the raw/negative feelings the two had for each other subsided but I nonetheless find Mr. Lennon’s statement incredibly interesting.

Sure, on the surface of the song he was going after Paul McCartney and now regretted it.  However, I suspect Mr. Lennon was very much on to something with that quote and had realized the song, while appearing to be a full on attack on Mr. McCartney, was also more than a little self-loathing as well.

Check this song lyric from “How Do You Sleep”:

The only thing you done was yesterday
And since you’ve gone it’s just another day

Once again and on the surface it is clear Mr. Lennon is referring to the famous Beatles song “Yesterday”, which everyone who knows their Beatles trivia knows Paul McCartney composed and recorded pretty much completely on his own, and comparing it -unfavorably- to Paul McCartney’s post Beatles solo song “Another Day”…

Now, in light of John Lennon’s statement, one can (ahem) imagine he realizes much of his criticism is indeed projection and that the negative statements he makes against McCartney are about him.

John Lennon was known to be very self-critical and at times displayed levels of self-loathing.  I recall reading one interview where he dismissed the entire Beatles catalogue and said if he had to do it again, he would do every song completely differently, implying all those songs they released were not all that good.

There were also interviews where Mr. Lennon expressed equal parts admiration for and jealousy of the song “Yesterday.”  It is arguably the single best known Beatles song yet, as noted above, it is entirely Paul McCartney’s work and John Lennon had nothing at all to do with it.

The success of “Yesterday” made Mr. Lennon (and the other Beatles, of course) a ton of money yet it irritated Mr. Lennon.  A confidant of his stated:

“Yesterday drove him crazy,” veteran New York journo/broadcaster Howard Smith told MOJO. “People would say, ‘Thank you for writing Yesterday, I got married to it, what a beautiful song…’ He was always civil. But it drove him nuts.”  (The full article can be found here: John Lennon was Haunted by Yesterday)

So if we are to believe Mr. Lennon in that later interview and consider the song “How Do You Sleep” as being a projection of and ultimately about Mr. Lennon, the line “The only thing you done was yesterday” takes on a completely different meaning.

Mr. Lennon is making what amounts to an incredible self-loathing statement: “The only thing I -John Lennon- am known for is the song “Yesterday”, and I didn’t even have anything to do with it!”

Perhaps this is indeed the case and Mr. Lennon had an uncanny insight into his own psyche.

Something, sadly, I don’t think Mr. Trump is capable of.

Books/Literature

Corrosive Knights, a 10/4/16 Update

Yesterday was a very good day.

I finished reading and writing my revisions to draft 11b of the latest Corrosive Knights novel, #6 of the series, now will turn to putting those written fixes into the computer.

The reason I labeled the draft 11b (and the previous draft 11a) was because these were not full novel revisions.  In the case of 11a, I read/revised a little over one half of the book, mostly the second half, because I felt the first half of the book was good as is.

With 11b, I was able to cut down the number of pages even more and found myself reviewing just a little under 1/2 of the book this time around.  I could have cut that page count even more but I wanted to read a “block” of the book to make sure one chapter flowed into the next.

As I was about to start draft 11b, I worried there might be a need for an 11c review.

This is where the “very good day” thing I wrote above comes into play:

After finishing up this latest draft, I’m happy to report the novel is pretty much done.

I found a few things that needed clarification/elimination but overall I feel the second half of the novel, the part that needed this extra look, is finally ready to be “locked down”.

So, what’s left to do?

After putting the corrections into the computer, I’m going to print the whole thing out and give the entire novel one more read through which will be draft #12.  Hopefully, following this read through and after correcting whatever grammatical errors are left, we’re done.

Finished.

Finito.

Not long now, friends.  Just have to get through Hurricane Matthew and we’ll be fine…

Corrosive Knights Book #6

Movies

Phantasm Remastered (1979/2016) a (early!) review

On Friday I discovered my VUDU digital version of the 1979 cult horror film Phantasm was replaced with the new, J. J. Abrams’ Bad Robot “remastered” version for free.  Further, because I already owned the film, I also had access to this remastered version four full days (at least up to the point I discovered the upgrade!) before the movie’s official remastered release on October 4th and two days from now.

Yesterday I wrote about my find and promised to see the film and give it a review.  Last night I did just that and here you go…

To begin, the movie looks great.  I’m reminded of when I picked up the BluRay release of John Carpenter’s The Fog and was blown away by how clear it looked versus the (ahem) foggy version I was used to seeing.

While not quite on that level of visual brilliance, the remastered Phantasm nonetheless does look damn sharp and the trailer for the remastered version cleverly points out how we old timers first experienced the film versus what it looks like now…

So for those like me who like the film and remember being absolutely terrified by it when it was released back in 1979 (I think I first saw it in 1980), getting and seeing the remastered version is an absolute no-brainer.

However…

While watching Phantasm today versus 1979 (or 1980), it is clear the passage of time has dulled the terrifying shocks I felt while watching the film back in the era it was originally released.

It’s so damn difficult today, nearly 40 years later and after thousands upon thousands of horror films and TV shows having been released which depict all manner of “creative” gory death, for something this small scale to shock us like it did back then.  For today’s viewer’s, I suspect the movie’s most shocking scene, the death by Silver Ball, will elicit at best a shrug while I distinctly remember trembling after seeing that scene way back then.

And with those shocks not resonating quite as well as they did back in 1979, we’re left with an obviously very low budget film with a for the most part meandering story and so-so acting.

Well, with the notable exception of Angus Scrimm as the movie’s villain, the Tall Man.  Clearly he’s having an absolute (ahem) ball with his villainous turn.  In fact, Mr. Scrimm’s very first appearance in the movie looked like it was cut just as he went a little overboard in his facial expressions.

I strongly suspect the Tall Man’s character was a modernized version of Max Schreck’s Nosferatu, the very first film version of Dracula which was released in 1922. In that movie, Nosferatu was presented as tall and shadowy and scary as all get-out…

Like Nosferatu, Phantasm gives us the Tall Man in very small doses.  In Nosferatu,  the villainous Count appeared for only 9 some minutes in total in the film and in Phantasm I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tall Man appears for even less.  Yet it works.  It leaves us wanting so much more.

Having said all that, Nosferatu remains, even after nearly 100 years since its release, a genuinely creepy film while Phantasm, unfortunately, is a far more muted affair, at least IMHO.  In fact, the pleasures I derived from it had more to do with the way it depicted life circa 1979, when I was roughly the age of the movie’s protagonist.

I’ll always treasure the scares the film gave me back when I originally saw it and will also treasure this new, crisp and beautiful remastering.

However, I must also be honest and say that while Phantasm delights me for its nostalgic pull which includes the pleasant and scary memories it offers me, I genuinely feel modern audiences may not take to it like I do.  While the film still works as a mad living nightmare, to some it might be a little too slow to bother with.

Sadly, this happens to the best of ’em.

Movies

The joys of digital movie collections – Phantasm Remastered

Yesterday, for no particular reason, I was looking over my digital movie collection on my iPad.

While one can have their own personal movie collection through various services, including Amazon and iTunes, mine is primarily through Walmart’s VUDU (you can check the service out here), which works -for the most part- concurrently with Flixster (you can check that service out here).

The primary reason I chose VUDU over almost all the other big digital video services was because I have a very large DVD/BluRay collection and the idea of buying all those films again weighed extremely heavily on my mind -and wallet, of course- and when I discovered VUDU allowed you to port most of your movies from their physical form to the VUDU system for basically $1.00-5.00 (the rate depends on whether you’re converting DVDs vs. BluRays and when you do more than 10 at a time the price is slashed in half!), I went on a tear going through my collection and “digitizing” it.

While VUDU didn’t allow me to convert all of my films to Digital, one of the ones it did allow me to do was my old copy of Phantasm (1979).  Recently, it was announced that J. J. Abrams and his company have remastered the film and this is the trailer for the upcoming release, scheduled for October 4th (ie, three days from now):

I’m a HUGE fan of the original Phantasm and the remastered film was certainly on my radar so imagine my surprise when, while going over my VUDU films yesterday, I noticed the graphics for my digital copy of Phantasm (you know, the mini-poster you click on to see the film) had changed to this…

Image result for phantasm remastered images

In this larger graphic you can clearly see the word “Remastered” below the movie’s title but in the very small images you have on your VUDU movie listings, I couldn’t see it.

Curious about the graphic change, I clicked on the movie and to my delight, my original, non-remastered copy of Phantasm on VUDU was, indeed, replaced free of charge with the remastered one and four days before the official release, to boot!!!  I knew it was the remastered version because the “Bad Robot” logo (encased in one of those Phantasm Balls o’ Death) appeared in the film’s opening credits.

So, if you already have a copy of Phantasm via the VUDU system and are eager to see the movie in its remastered glory, check to see if you too have the new version available.

Now, I haven’t seen the full film yet and intend to do so today.  However, of what I have seen so far, up until the point where Jody picks up the mysterious Woman in Lavender and head out to the graveyard, looks really gorgeous.

If you’re like me and are a fan of the original film yet you didn’t have the VUDU version and therefore have to wait for the upgrade, fear not.  The official release is on October 4th.

Movies

The dangers of success…

Way back in 1999 a quiet, eerie little movie -albeit one that featured a very big name actor- was released and became a huge hit.  It was on everyone’s mind and made a star of its writer/director…

The writer/director of The Sixth Sense is, of course, M. Night Shyamalan and his follow-up film, Unbreakable, is considered by many another great work.  When his follow up to that, the film Signs, was about to be released in 2002, Newsweek featured the following article concerning the very hot writer/director…

Image result for m. night shyamalan newsweek cover

Most of you know the rest of the story.

While Signs has its fans, almost everyone agrees the alien invasion film featured some really silly elements.  The biggest one being: How do technologically advanced aliens choose to invade a planet which is filled with water, something which is highly poisonous to them?!

Unfortunately, that story -let’s be kind here- peculiarity turned out to be a sign of bad things to come.  Mr. Shyamalan was pegged as the writer/director whose films had to have a shocking end-twist but this reputation may have become more a burden to him than he would admit and his follow-ups to Signs proved a case of diminishing returns.

In short order he re;eased The Village (2004) and Lady in the Water (2006).  In 2008 he reached one of several creative nadir’s with the ridiculous The Happening, which featured this much yucked about scene…

By this time, audiences had turned on the writer/director and his reputation, so sterling at the time of that Newsweek article, was in the gutter.  Fans of The Last Airbender animated series were outraged by the live action movie version he wrote and directed and which was released in 2010.

By then, Mr. Shyamalan’s reputation was so damaged that the 2013 film After Earth made it a point to avoid mentioning the writer/director’s role in the film.

Things, however, started to work for Mr. Shyamalan after that point.  The movie Devil, which he wrote and produced but did not direct, was a cult hit.  The TV show Wayward Pines, which he directed the first episode and executive produced, was also a modest success, at least for its first season.

Was a come-back in the works?

Signs (pun intended?!) point to that possibility as Mr. Shyamalan’s latest writing/directing feature, Split, is getting very good early word and the studios behind it appear bullish on it…

The reason I point all this out is because as good as the film’s early reviews are, Mr. Shyamalan’s reputation once again, to me, threatens this movie’s release as it has already been revealed that the film features, you guessed it, a final act “twist”.

Considering we’re dealing with a man with multiple personalities who kidnaps three young women, one instantly thinks: Are the young women he kidnaps part of his psychosis?  Do they exist?  Or perhaps one of the young women is the psychotic one and everyone around her is a delusion?

I don’t know but if anything, this shows the dangers of succeeding too well with something and then riding that particular success perhaps more than one should.

Will this film give Mr. Shyamalan a much needed boost after years of at best indifference and at worst ridicule?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Computers/Electronics

Blast from the (apparently still usable) past…

Ran across this article, written by Leslie Katz for cnet.com, wherein we discover…

This Commodore 64 bad boy helps drive an Auto Shop in 2016

I well remember (*hack*wheeze*) the Commodore 64.  To the young ‘uns out there that don’t, this is it:

Image result for commodore 64

That was then.  This is now:

Absolutely fascinating stuff.  Makes me want to dig out my Atari 800, the first computer I ever had, and see if it still works.

Image result for atari 800

…somehow, I don’t think it will.

General

Ancient Roman Coins found buried…

…under ruins of Japanese castle?!

Weird but true.  From the Independent…

The embedded video is playing kinda wonky so you can check the original source at this link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/roman-coins-discovery-castle-japan-okinawa-buried-ancient-currency-a7332901.html

The article’s headline essentially tells you everything you need to know: Ancient Roman coins, thought to be from around 300-400 A.D., were discovered under the ruins of Katsuren Castle in Japan.  Ottoman Empire coins, from the late 1600s, were also found on the site.

The question, of course, becomes: How did these ancient coins find their way there?

Watch the video or read the full article in the link above.

Its fascinating!

Books/Literature

Corrosive Knights, a 9/27/16 Update

Quick update here: I’m done with draft 11a of book #6 in the Corrosive Knights series (I still want to keep its name hidden)…

Corrosive Knights Covers

The journey’s been long and hard but I truly believe this book is tantalizingly close to being done.  It’s also, if I do say so myself, an amazing novel.

Corrosive Knights Book #6

I labeled the current revision 11a because I didn’t feel the need to revise the entire novel, focusing instead on roughly half of it (mostly the second half) that I felt needed cleaning up.

After doing this, what’s left to be done is even less.  I’m going to look over exactly what I’ve done today and print out what I feel still needs further scrutiny.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m down to needing to clean up only about 1/4 of the book for revision 11b.

I’m really hopeful after this revision I’ll just need to give the entire novel one last, quick read-through, mostly for grammatical/spelling issues, and be done with it.

It won’t be long now, and I couldn’t be any more excited.

Foundry Web Ad

Movies

London Has Fallen (2016) a (mildly) belated review

Back in 2013 a curious thing happened, though certainly not for the first time:  Two movies were released within a three month period of time that were, from a plot standpoint, essentially the same.

I’m referring to Olympus Has Fallen, which appeared in theaters in late March of 2013…

…and White House Down, which showed up in June of 2013…

As can be seen in the trailers, the plots of these films was essentially the same: The President is targeted by terrorists and attacked while in the White House.  A “renegade” Secret Service agent, in both cases, is there to try to save the President and mow down the villains.

It was clear White House Down was meant to be the more “prestige” feature.  It had the bigger stars and bigger budget and yet, when all was said and done, though both films are hardly considered “classics” of action/adventure, most might give the slight edge to the lower budget, lower star-powered Olympus Has Fallen.

The proof?

White House Down was ridiculed by its star Channing Tatum in 22 Jump Street while, earlier this year, Olympus Has Fallen had itself a sequel, London Has Fallen.

Going into watching this film, I tried to ignore the negative noise critics and audiences heaped upon it.  Several people, more than one would expect, labeled the film loud and, provocatively, racist.  One critic in particular called this the cinematic equivalent of Donald Trump.

Yikes.

So I plopped the film into my player and it started and…

It wasn’t that bad.

Like its predecessor, Gerard Butler is Mike Banning, Secret Service agent/protector to Benjamin Asher, the President of the United States, again played by Aaron Eckhart.  As the movie starts, we witness a party in some distant, Arabian home.  The participants are clearly rich and, based on conversation, the father of the group is a stern, “eye for an eye” type.  It is heavily implied they are a family of terrorists.

Not too surprisingly, we find one of the people in the party text a message that the father is present.  He departs before a drone stike shatters the home and we’re instantly transported to two years later.

Turns out the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has passed and all the major leaders of all the major countries, including President Asher and Secret Service Agent Banning, head to the funeral.

Bad idea, as can be seen in the trailer below…

Turns out the funeral, though a very real thing, was a creation by the aggrieved terrorist to bring all those world leaders to London and, while they are all there, the terrorist attack mercilessly, killing all the world leaders but one.

Once again Agent Manning is forced to shield his charge while a gang of highly trained and well armed terrorists hunt him down, intent on getting revenge for that drone stike.

The premise is quite simple and the action begins very quickly.  If action is what you crave, London Has Fallen delivers and appeared, at least to my eyes, like a better budgeted throwback to the old Chuck Norris film Invasion U.S.A. (you can read my review of that movie here).

Like Invasion U.S.A., the villains are indeed caricatures and therefore the charge of racism is not a inconsequential one.  In Invasion U.S.A., the evil Russian/Cuban commies were unrepentant heathens who committed heinous acts of violence on decent, God fearin’ ‘Muricans and it was up to good ol’ boy Chuck Norris to send their scum suckin’ asses back to hell.

In London Has Fallen, there is a similar tone deafness regarding Arabs.  All Arab people in this film are presented as evil, unrepentant terrorists and the fact that the U.S. and other world leaders started this carnage with their drone strike -again, it was against a party that likely featured much innocent collateral damage- is quickly swept under the proverbial rug.

Still, if you can get past the distasteful “Murica!” rah-rahing, you have a decent enough action film that features some good effects -along with some that aren’t quite so good- and a decent pace that only flags toward the film’s end.  I really don’t get why these actions films insist on having our hero go “solo” against a vast army of villains, especially when in this film he actually has backup and there’s no reason to do so!

As with Olympus Has Fallen, this film is hardly a watershed new high in action/adventure filmmaking and, quite frankly, falls closer to average than anything else.

For that reason, as well as the tone deaf presentation of Arab characters, I can’t outright recommend the movie yet I’d be lying if I said it was a total bust.  Yeah, its loud and strident and does indeed feel like seeing Donald Trump in film form, yet there’s a retro quality to it that I, as a young man in the 1980’s, found familiar…and strangely -bizarrely- nostalgic.

Take of that what you will.

Computers/Electronics, General

Stormy Monday…

Nothing like a stormy Monday.  Somehow fits the mood.

And then I get a message that there’s a Windows update.  I go ahead and do it, thinking it’ll take no more than fifteen or so minutes as I’d already done a large update a few days before.

One hour later…

Well, at least the rain’s over! 😉