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.
Yesterday, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump had another speech and, wouldn’t you know it, again said something stupid and/or idiotic and/or dangerous and/or ill-informed and/or all the above:
CNN, among other news outlets, were quick to point out the fact that in his words above, Mr. Trump sure does appear to suggest 2nd Amendment (read: Gun folks) can “solve” the Hillary Clinton “problem” and/or her Supreme Court appointees.
How should “gun folks” solve the problem, one wonders?
Joe Scarborough, a conservative TV personality (and former congressman), wrote the following for The Washington Post regarding Mr. Trump’s latest comments:
I’ll give Mr. Scarborough credit: He doesn’t mince words like far too many Republicans have done. From the article:
The GOP nominee was clearly suggesting that some of the “Second Amendment people” among his supporters could kill his Democratic opponent were she to be elected.
While current polls show support for Trump cratering, we are still a mind-boggling 89 days from the election and, sadly, there is still time for the race to tighten or *gasp* for Trump to possibly/maybe make a race of this yet…
Then again, given the way Mr. Trump habitually self-immolates every other day, perhaps there is nothing to fear.
I’ve written plenty of times regarding interest in self-driving car technology. Of the car manufacturers out there, electric-car maker Tesla is clearly one of the companies most interested in bringing such technology to the masses.
Their vehicles already have self-driving technology on them, though drivers are warned to use this tech as an aid and to be aware/in control of their vehicle even when using this system.
Despite this, my understanding is the system is quite advanced and it doesn’t surprise me that Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, feels the self-driving cars will be a reality for everyone in just a few more years.
He should know.
Anyway, I bring all this up to present the following fascinating story which appeared on BBC…
Haven’t watched Suicide Squad yet so no review (belated or not) to offer, just my observations regarding the reaction to the movie’s debut:
Critics hated the film, at least according to Rottentomatoes.com. At this point, the film has a pretty terrible 26% approval overall from critics.
On the other hand, audiences like the film to the tune of 72%, again via Rottentomatoes.com.
The movie made a ton of money, breaking all records for a premiere at this particular time of the year…
On the other hand, there is some indication that the film may fall hard in its earnings after a very robust debut.
People appear to be divided into two camps: Those that enjoyed the film and can’t understand why all the hate is directed toward it and do not feel it deserves such a low overall critical rating. There are others who feel the film is a big mess and is another huge DC disappointment.
No, you are not experiencing deja vu.
Each of these five points could -and have been!- applied to Batman v Superman. The critics hated it? Check. Audiences liked it considerably more than the critics? Check. The movie made a ton of money? Check. Afterwards, the film lost steam, revenue-wise? Check. People dividing into two camps, one hating hating hating it while another defends the film? Check.
I don’t know what to make of this. I certainly don’t believe the whole “critics hate DC movies and love Marvel movies” some have professed yet I can’t quite understand the extreme differences in opinion.
I’ve stated before I really liked Batman v Superman and feel over time the film will be reassessed and recognized as a very ambitious work. Did it succeed completely? No. Even in the “Ultimate Edition” there were a few things I felt the movie came up short on. For example, I feel Bruce Wayne/Batman’s apocalypse dream sequence could and probably should have been removed from the film. Mind you, there was nothing wrong with the sequence itself, it just didn’t much matter in the context of the story being told and had it been left on the cutting room floor (or presented as a bonus sequence on the DVD/BluRay) I don’t think anyone would have minded.
I will eventually catch Suicide Squad, though I don’t know if it will be while its still in the theaters. Will my reaction to this movie mirror Batman v Superman?
Historians and archaeologists have, of course, worked hard to find and document lost human history.
Their work, to me, is fascinating and surprising and I have to admit this article had high levels of both.
Honestly, I never considered the idea of who is the first person in history whose name we actually know, and this article offers the answer to that question as well as several other very early historical names.
I don’t want to give away the information as I truly believe the article is worth reading, but not only the names presented are interesting, but so too are their stations in life.
That much I’ll give away: The name was found on this tablet which was, in turn, found in Iraq:
The tablet describes a shipment of barley and the first person in history whose name we know acknowledges receipt of this shipment and “signs” for it on the tablet. Get this: The first person in history whose name we know was essentially…an accountant.
The article goes on to describe the second, third, and fourth oldest names ever found, also on a tablet found in Iraq. The people named on this second tablet are a slave owner and the names of his/her two slaves.
But enough of me offering a Cliff’s Notes version of the article. Click on the link and read what the oldest known, as well as the second, third, and fourth oldest names, known to us!
If you had met me in the 1970’s, 80’s, or 90’s and asked my opinion of Clint Eastwood, I would have said something similar to what I’d say now:
He’s one of those very few actors with a screen presence so magnetic/electric that no matter how bad the film he’s in is, his mere presence makes it better.
Looking over my digital films, I suspect I have more Clint Eastwood films in my collection than films featuring any other actor. I have almost all of them, from his “Man With No Name” trilogy to Where Eagles Dare (a criminally underrated WWII action fantasy) to Kelly’s Heroes (a criminally underrated WWII…comedy?!) to his Dirty Harry films to The Eiger Sanction (Mr. Eastwood doing an “American” James Bond) to High Plains Drifter to The Outlaw Josey Wales to…
Well, I could go on and on but hopefully you understand: I’m a HUGE fan of Clint Eastwood, actor. And while I may not like all his directed works quite as much, he’s proven to be at the very least a good -and at times great- director as well.
But what my younger self probably never would have conceived of is the fact that as he’s aged, Mr. Eastwood, the individual, has become the living embodiment of the cranky “get off my grass” old man. Or, as the Simpson’s so ingeniously put it:
“It will happen to you”.
It seems to most certainly have happened to Mr. Eastwood and it seems to have started a few years back, when he famously tried to bash President Obama at the Republican Convention nominating Mitt Romney for President by speaking to an empty chair…
The speech, which Mr. Eastwood later stated was intended to be absurd humor, instead landed with a wet thud and, reportedly, Ann Romney, Mitt Romney’s wife, was furious as the speech was happening as she knew it would be -along with Mr. Romney’s campaign- ridiculed.
I suppose those were the good old days when it comes to Mr. Eastwood as he’s given an interview to Esquire magazine and some of the things he says are…jeeze…how to put it? Weird. Strident.
Ed Mazza for Huffington Post (yes, a for the most part liberal publication so take that as you will) highlights some of Mr. Eastwood’s comments:
Among some of the highlights of what Mr. Eastwood said:
“You know, (Donald Trump)’s a racist now because he’s talked about this judge. And yeah, it’s a dumb thing to say. I mean, to predicate your opinion on the fact that the guy was born to Mexican parents or something. He’s said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides. But everybody—the press and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, well, that’s racist,’ and they’re making a big hoodoo out of it. Just fucking get over it. It’s a sad time in history.”
First, Donald Trump hasn’t just stated one insulting thing against one judge. He has offered multiple racist statements. While “both sides” say dumb things, Donald Trump specifically, has made multiple inflammatory comments regarding Mexicans and Muslims. So far the worst I’ve heard from Hillary Clinton against Mr. Trump was that he was “ill tempered” to be President (something I agree with, btw). Meanwhile, Mr. Trump and his crowds that have called her a “bitch”, someone who should go to jail, or, in at least one case, labeled her the “devil.”
This quote, also presented in the above article, is even more illuminating:
“(S)ecretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That’s the kiss-ass generation we’re in right now. We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist. And then when I did Gran Torino, even my associate said, ‘This is a really good script, but it’s politically incorrect.’ And I said, ‘Good. Let me read it tonight.’ The next morning, I came in and I threw it on his desk and I said, ‘We’re starting this immediately.’”
Curious how he mentions Gran Torino in the article. While I enjoyed the film and thought it was intended to be a “final” Dirty Harry film in all but name, what I found most intriguing and disappointing about it was the fact that it didn’t have the “guts” Mr. Eastwood seems to imply it has to “go there” with political incorrectness.
What I’m referring to is the fact the character of Walt Kowalski is presented as an old generation person who, like Mr. Eastwood in real time today, bemoans political correctness and is perfectly fine spewing racial epithets yet curiously never once says the biggest racial epithet of them all.
You know, the one referring to black people that starts with the letter “n”.
I wondered why this “politically incorrect” film would, in Mr. Eastwood’s vernacular, “pussy” out of doing that. I mean, the character was meant to be a gruff, politically incorrect “old school” man who didn’t give a shit about all that stuff, yet at no point in the film does Clint Eastwood have his character say the “n” word.
Why? Its only too obvious.
Racism, like many things in the world, is tolerated by some as a matter of degree. For Mr. Eastwood, people like Donald Trump can get away with calling a woman a “bitch” or a “devil”. He can get away with labeling Mexicans “murderers” and “rapists”.
But even someone like Mr. Eastwood who decries “political correctness” knows there’s this bright line drawn when calling black people the “n” word. Suddenly, the stark, revolting reality of racism is apparent for all to see.
I suspect had Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino said such a word even once during the course of that film audiences might well have turned on his character.
Instead of finding Mr. Kowalski a crumudgeon with a “heart of gold”, we’d might well have cast him as a vile racist.
One of my all time favorite quotes comes from noted screen writer William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) which goes:
“Nobody knows anything…Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
While the quote was intended to offer insight into the movie making process, it relates to almost every artistic endeavor out there.
One could make a very long list of writers, for example, who lived their lives in poverty and/or obscurity, releasing works that would, unfortunately for them, be considered classics long after they were dead (offhand, people like Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard are but three examples).
It amuses me to read the latest negative reactions to Suicide Squad and see people write something along the lines of “Why can’t DC make a good movie?”
As if they’re trying desperately to make a bad one? If anything, Suicide Squad may prove a great example of a studio trying desperately -and with too little time to do so- make a film based on the negative reactions to a previous one, Batman v Superman.
Moving away from that, there are plenty of examples of artistic creations the artist making them didn’t think all that much about but which blew up on them and became signature works.
For example, its been stated the members of Nirvana were not happy with the released version of their seminal album Nevermind, that they felt the production made the album sound too vanilla.
I point these things out because I’m absolutely fascinated by these stories and, while listening to the radio the other day, I found another delightful example of just such a thing.
On the radio station I was listening to they played a snippet of an interview with Rod Stewart. Now, I’m not a huge Rod Stewart fan. I know plenty of his songs and consider some of them quite good but his work never really thrilled me enough to pursue.
Anyway, in that snippet of the interview Mr. Stewart talks about what is perhaps his biggest, most well known hit, Maggie May, which first appeared on his 1971 album Every Picture Tells a Story. Here’s the song for those who don’t know it:
Anyway, I can only paraphrase what Mr. Stewart said, but it went something like this:
Mr. Stewart noted that when he was making Every Picture Tells a Story, he recorded the song Maggie May last and was ambivalent as to whether to include it in the album. He presented it to friends to get their opinion as to whether to include it or not and these friends said he shouldn’t include the song, that it “meandered” and didn’t have a “hook”.
(Interestingly, I believe his friends were correct, the song does indeed not have a “hook” and it does meander. Yet even I, an admitted not-very-big fan of Mr. Stewart, nonetheless believe it is a terrific song anyway.)
Mr. Stewart then states that because the album was so very close to being released and he had no other songs ready to put into the album to replace Maggie May, he wound up including it in the album.
In that snippet of the interview Mr. Stewart then laughed and said something along the lines of “Good thing too as I wouldn’t be here today if I had cut the song out!”
Over on Rottentomatoes.com, the film is scoring a not very good 33% positive among critics (24 of 48 critics so far have enjoyed the film).
Reading through some of the negative reviews, the main thing I’m getting from the critics is that the film presents far too much in too messy a fashion.
I suppose that makes sense. The film is a team movie and it presents many of these characters for the very first time, though it appears they do so at the expense of a tighter storyline.
While negative, these same critics offer praise for Margot Robbie (who plays Harley Quinn) and Will Smith (who portrays Deadshot). There also seems to be a general consensus that Jaret Leto’s Joker was both a cameo performance and ultimately extraneous to the story.
I haven’t seen the film so I obviously have no opinion one way or another.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
I find myself in the curious position not unlike many who were predisposed to not like Batman v Superman. In the case of BvS, I saw only one film directed by Zach Snyder before that one, Dawn of the Dead, and therefore came into the film with far fewer negatives than others who had seen -and not enjoyed- more of his films.
With Suicide Squad’s director David Ayer, I have seen more of his works and, frankly, his career has been kind of hit and miss for me. He’s written some good works (especially Training Day) but his two films previous to this one, 2014’s Fury and Sabotage, were to my mind a) only ok and b) a real missed opportunity.
Of these two films, the one I most looked forward to was Sabotage and, based on the trailers, found the And Then There Were None concept applied to testosterone fueled uber-agressive drug hunting cops an intriguing idea…but after a decent start the film simply didn’t have much of a payoff, IMHO.
Fury, as I said above, was in my mind a decent film but when all was said and done it didn’t really add all that much to the voluminous WWII film genre, despite some great effects and for the most part very good acting.
I will see Suicide Squad, though I’m not sure if I get a chance to do so in the theaters. At this point I want to catch Star Trek Beyond and Jason Bourne and its been hard to find the free time to see one of those films, much less all three.
What really intrigued me was this photograph, found in the article, which shows these skeletons:
Eerie, no?
The article offers theories archaeologists have regarding the identity of these corpses, believing they might have been on the losing side of a political uprising and were rounded up and executed for their actions.
Is their theory correct? It certainly is possible but what I find most intriguing is this points out one small pocket of human history concealed from us…until now.
Makes you wonder just how much more history awaits our discovery, buried beneath layers of dirt.
For those still left, the situation with Donald Trump is perhaps one of the more fascinating to come around in recent times.
Terrifying, I’ll grant you, but fascinating nonetheless.
There were many, IMHO, highlights in the Democratic Convention from last week, from the emotional and beautiful Michele Obama speech to Cathy Giffords. But there was one speech that reverberated above almost all others, that of Khirz Khan and his wife, who lost their son back in 2004 while serving in Iraq…
Bizarrely and perhaps all-too-expectedly, Donald Trump went after Mr. Khan and his wife. Thus far (its Monday, August 1st), he hasn’t backed down.
As I said above, that was perhaps to be expected. If nothing else, Mr. Trump is an attacker. He attacks anyone that tries/dares to go after him in any way. And let’s be very clear here: Attacking has helped him considerably up to last week. They certainly helped him when he brilliantly took down party favorite Jeb! Bush by calling him “low energy”.
However, we’ve moved beyond the primaries and, as is often the case, when you get past the party’s most faithful and begin addressing the country in general, things that may work on the smaller scale of a primary might not work on a larger one.
It appears this may well be happening to Mr. Trump.
Suddenly, he has to answer questions regarding the world in general and, at least so far, his “answers” regarding things like Russia have been troublesome. Further, while Ms. Clinton is certainly a prime target to fight, going after people like the Khans is unwise and, to many, beyond the pale.
Because he is the figurehead/candidate for the Republican party, many “big” names in that party have been very reticent to directly criticize Mr. Trump’s more outlandish comments. While Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan offered criticism, they did so without mentioning the highly important identity of who they came from.
Which gets those cynical with politics in general shaking their heads.
The Republicans (and Democrats in their own way) look after their own, even if they have to hold their nose while doing so.
All is not lost, however. This morning, John McCain becomes the first high level Republican office holder to not only criticize the comments of Mr. Trump, he mentions him by name:
Last week Friday and after a few months, a French Court hearing an appeal by Luc Besson, producer and “original story” creator of 2012’s Lockout, decided the man had indeed ripped off John Carpenter’s 1981 film Escape From New York. The original judicial judgment was for €80,000 but this new decision upped the penalty to €450,000.
Read all about it here in an article by Germain Lussier and presented on i09:
So, not only did the appeal fail for Mr. Besson, it failed pretty damn spectacularly as his original penalty judgment was upped nearly six times.
Here’s where perfect 20/20 hindsight comes in: I suppose in retrospect Mr. Besson should have just taken that original judgment and accepted it then simply moved on.
I wrote twice before about Lockout, first offering a review of the film in which, among other things I stated this with regard to the “similarities” between the film and Escape From New York:
My younger, more strident self (as opposed to the more mellow person I’ve since become) might have been furious that Mr. Besson (who is also listed in the credits as having the “original idea” of this film!!!!) would so cavalierly rip off another person’s concept.
Later, when the initial case was brought before the French Courts and Mr. Carpenter won, I also wrote about that and had this to say:
…with Lockout vs. Escape From New York, there is very little doubt that one inspired (or, as the French court ruled, “ripped off”) the other. Whatever you may think of Lockout, good or bad, if you’re familiar with John Carpenter’s film, you instantly see the similarities…and they are quite significant.
As I writer, I have my own ideas regarding “original” story concepts.
There are those who say there’s no such thing as an “original” story and that any form of similarity between stories is worth nothing more than a shrug.
I disagree.
Copying a story concept is a question of degree. You can isolate all the individual elements in Escape From New York and Lockout and decide nothing in the film is original.
For example, you have a lone borderline villainous anti-hero in both films (been done, see Kiss Me Deadly to Fistful of Dollars to The Road Warrior)
You have an impenetrable/unescapable prison where the protagonist has to escape from (been done, see Escape From Alcatraz, The Great Escape, etc.)
You have a mission which must be accomplished by a certain time or else (been done, see Mission Impossible movies and TV shows, Wages of Fear, Smokey and the Bandit, etc.)
You have questionable allies helping your hero do his thing (been done, see Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone…hell, most of the movies based on Alistair MacLean novels)
You have a strong, flamboyant villain and his even more flamboyant right hand man (been done, see almost every James Bond film)
You have a very important person you have to get out of there (been done)
I could go on but I think I’ve made the point of many of those who do not feel Lockout is a rip-off of Escape From New York.
HOWEVER, what Lockout did which many other films did not is take these individual elements found in Escape From New York and present them in pretty much the same order and way but with one cosmetic change: Setting the story in space.
Otherwise, they are essentially the very same works.
