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.
Movies

5 Movies That Were One Flaw Away From Being Classics…

…at least according to Bobby Roberts for Cracked.com:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18455_5-movies-that-were-one-flaw-away-from-being-classics.html

Boy, do I agree with #4 on the list, that True Romance and Natural Born Killers might have been absolute classics had Quentin Tarantino, the screenwriter of both, also been the one to direct them.  At the time, of course, Mr. Tarantino wasn’t yet well enough known as a “director”, and thus Tony Scott and Oliver Stone, respectively, were behind the cameras for each instead of Tarantino himself.  While both films have their fans, I suspect that had Mr. Tarantino been given the opportunity to direct either at the early stages of his career, his reputation today might be even greater than it is.

Thinking about the great “what ifs?” with regard to films invariably leads me to my greatest one: The for the most part forgotten 1978 film The Driver.  Written and directed by Walter Hill, the movie’s lead role was originally intended for actor Steve McQueen.  However, he ultimately didn’t take the job and the role went to…Ryan O’Neal.

With all due respect to Mr. O’Neal…I would have killed to see McQueen in the role…especially going up against Bruce Dern’s demented police detective!

Even so, The Driver is still a great work.  Its story and central character were obviously inspired by author Donald E. Westlake’s Parker books and could easily fit into that universe/series.

But, again…I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Steve McQueen played that title role.  If he had, I’m certain The Driver would be considered a classic film instead of being for the most part -and sadly- forgotten.

Movies

3 Days to Kill (2014) a (right on time!) review

It’s rare to get the chance to actually go to the theater and see a film, and when the opportunity arises, often the films available aren’t terribly appealing.  In the case of 3 Days to Kill, I can’t say I was dying to see it, but of the films currently screening, it was the one that most appealed, if I can use such a strong word.

OK, so I went into this expecting at best a mediocre and at worse a terrible film.  In that respect, I was pleasantly surprised.

3 Days to Kill’s story goes like this: Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner, exuding cool charisma and graceful ageing) is a CIA hitman who, after his most recent job and a collapse at its end, goes to a doctor who informs him he is dying of cancer and has at best three months left to live.

Renner decides to spend the short time he has left in the company of his estranged daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) and wife (Connie Nielsen), but a CIA handler (Amber Heard) has other plans and needs him to finish the job he started at the beginning of the movie and take out a dangerous terrorist.  Her incentive to get him to do the job despite his grim prognosis?  An experimental drug that may allow him to live a longer life.

3 Days to Kill is a hybrid action/comedy with a surprisingly big heart.  When we first meet Renner, he’s presented as a hard-ass killer but during the course of the film not only does he have to deal with a teenage daughter -and issues relating to being a teen- but also with a large family of squatters who have taken over his apartment along with his target’s aids…two of whom he handles in surprisingly funny ways.

While 3 Days to Kill is not a “superb” film and may well be forgotten as soon as it leaves the theaters, I found it enjoyable and liked the way it transitioned from action to comedy and back again.  The film’s success lies for the most part on the shoulders of Mr. Costner who, after seemingly disappearing from films, delivers a warm and weathered turn.

Recommended.

Movies

Escape Plan (2013) a (mildly) belated review

After all these years, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger finally team up and co-star in a film.

Yes, they shared screen time in the first two Expendables movies, but the first one featured not all that much more than a minute or so of them sharing screen time while the second featured a more extended cameo from Mr. Schwarzenegger -and a whole host of other 1980’s action stars!- but a cameo nonetheless.

Was the team up worth the wait?

Sorta.

Escape Plan involves Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone), whose profession can only exist in the fantasy world of movies: He’s hired to break out of jails to test their integrity.  Right off the bat, you have to swallow this little bit of craziness.  Let’s face it, you don’t hire someone to check out your prison’s security after spending many millions of dollars building the damn place, right?  You hire the guy/gal to check the security before you commit all those millions of dollars and…

…it’s just a movie…it’s just a movie…

Anyway, that quibble aside, Breslin is hired to check out a CIA backed fortress/prison that houses prisoners meant to never be released.  Breslin is betrayed and realizes that the warden of this prison, Hobbes (Jim Caviezel, essentially playing a bad guy version of his John Reese character from Person of Interest) has it in for him and is determined to keep him locked up.  Thus Breslin, with the help of fellow inmate Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), must find a way out…or be imprisoned forever.

I find it interesting how many “prison escape” films Mr. Stallone has appeared in through his career.  Just off the top of my head I can think of at least three of them, from 1981’s Victory (Allied POWs escape from their Nazi captors via Soccer) to 1989’s Lockup (Stallone is locked up (duh!) and must deal with a sadistic new warden just as he’s about to be freed) to 1989’s Tango and Cash (Stallone and Kurt Russell team up as a pair of salt and pepper cops who are framed and sent to jail, where they escape).  And that’s not including films with tangential prisoner related themes such as the Rambo films.

How does Escape Plan measure with the others?  Frankly, of the three I mentioned (excluding the Rambo films), Tango and Cash probably remains my favorite, if only because of how balls-to-the-wall crazy it is.  Having said that, of Mr. Stallone’s more recent action films, Escape Plan winds up being a pleasant enough time killer that is far more coherent than some of his other works, even if it isn’t quite as exhilarating.

Movies, TV

How “Breaking Bad” and “House of Cards” killed the Oscars…

I guess I wasn’t the only person not all that interested/invested in this year’s Oscars.  This article by Anne Thompson for Salon.com offers great insight into what may well be ailing the theatrical movie industry and why:

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/01/how-breaking-bad-and-house-of-cards-killed-the-oscars/

I agree with much of what Ms. Thompson’s analysis.  We’re entering a new age in so many ways thanks to the digital/computer revolution.  As I’ve mentioned many times before, stores we used to frequent, such as music and book sellers, are fading away when we can simply, easily, and conveniently download said material from the internet…hopefully doing this legally.

The theatrical movie industry is starting to feel the pinch as well.  Yesterday I noted (you can read it here) how few of the films nominated for the Oscars I had actually seen.  In going over that blog post, I didn’t make it as clear as I should how little I cared to see these other films.

These were the nominees for best movie of the year:

12 Years a Slave (the winner), American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

As I stated before, I’ve only seen Gravity.  Of the rest, the only one I’m somewhat interested in seeing is American Hustle.  But I’m hardly “dying” to see it.  It looks like it could be good, but then again so did Argo (last year’s big Oscar winner) and I found that film to be a pleasant enough diversion but, frankly, nothing exceptional.

A weak batch?  For me certainly, though I stress this is just my opinion alone.  For whatever reason, my personal movie interests didn’t coincide all that strongly with what was considered some of the best movies released this past year.

Yet there is another element to this picture, and that is what Ms. Thompson points out in her article.  The fact is that there are some really terrific TV series out there that draw my attention far more than many theatrically released movies.  Why?  Because these TV shows feature some of the best talent in Hollywood today, both in front of and behind the camera.  And instead of a story that is told in an hour and a half to two hours, TV shows have the ability to present viewers a longer, more involved, and deeper story than a single feature film can at times provide.

Sure, I can envision a Justified motion picture, but seeing the adventures of Raylon Givens and the motley crew of lowlifes around him play out is something that works extremely well in an hourly episodic fashion.  I suspect that’s what has drawn so many to Breaking Bad and House of Cards as well.  Again, a movie version could be made of each, but what thrills you is seeing the story play out in a longer format.  These multiple episode features, of course, are perfect for streaming services who have enriched themselves providing these services and therefore have deep enough pockets to pay for top talent in their features.

And this brings us to another element to the equation.  If the money is moving away from the theatrical releases and to the TV series, where do you think the talent will go?

As with many things, this may be a temporary change.  Perhaps in another year or two audiences will bore of long TV series and the theatrical movie making companies will get their mojo back.  It only takes a couple of big successes (witness Jaws and Star Wars) to revitalize and refocus an industry.

Books/Literature, Movies

Jonathan Livingston Seagull…

…and the Rise of Simpleton Wisdom, a fascinating article by Heather Havrilesky for Slate Magazine:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/03/jonathan-livingston-seagull-new-edition-with-fourth-section-is-dumb-as-ever.html

If you’re like me and were a child of the 1970’s, Richard Bach’s novel Jonathan Livingstone Seagull was one of those books that seemed to be everywhere.  I remember seeing it in drug stores, libraries, bookstores (where it was very prominently featured), left behind at bus stops or schools, etc. etc.

I tried reading it way back when but found the whole thing rather…silly.  I mean, a book about a seagull that somehow finds its Nirvana?  To this day it fascinates me what people react to and make a big part of their culture, and Ms. Havrilesky astutely points out why this book may have become as popular as it was, a revelation to me (I never cared enough about the book, despite its popularity, to find out the why’s related to the same).

By the way, so popular was the book that they made a movie out of it (it bombed).  The movie featured the music of Neil Diamond.

Oh yeah…

…oh my….

Music

Royals…

Teenage musician Lorde created a really good song in “Royals”.  I love the music and the message and in my opinion the song is quite an achievement for someone so young…

Apparently Bruce Springsteen likes the song as well.  Certainly enough to cover it in Lorde’s native New Zealand:

Movies

About the Oscars last night…

1 Comment

Used to be I was a movie watching fanatic.  Couldn’t wait until the weekend to see whatever new features were out there.  I envied the hell out of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel and their (*smirk*) “job” as movie critics…what in the world could be better than having a job that pays you to watch films?

Over time, work, family life, and general life obligations made it increasingly harder for me to find time to get out to the theaters and see the latest films.  Somewhere along the line I also realized the film critic’s job is not one to envy.  Quite the contrary, being a film critic was something I began to find terrifying.  A lesser known film critic noted that in one year s/he (sorry, don’t recall who it was exactly) watched something like five hundred films that year, both in theaters and in the film fest circuit.  That meant that in a year this individual saw approximately 1.4 films each day…and probably wrote about almost all of them.

Much as I love films -and I absolutely love them- I couldn’t bear the rigors of being a film critic.  Of being forced to see not just the films you want to but taking it upon yourself to see as many films as you can.  And if you’re an honest critic, you have to enter the theaters to see a film like Citizen Kane with the same neutrality as Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.  There are commercials for rom-coms that look absolutely dreadful and I have no desire at all to see.  A movie critic dedicated to his/her job willingly goes to see these films while I can ignore them completely.

So the 2014 Oscars came and went last night and CNN provided a great summary of the films, actors, directors, technicians, musicians, etc. etc. who won the prized statuette:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/02/showbiz/oscars-2014-winners-list/index.html

Looking over the list I’m surprised, yet not terribly shocked, by how few of the film winners and nominees I’ve seen over the past year.

For most of the “big” categories, such as Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, etc., I’ve seen a grand total of…one film: Gravity.

You trek down lower and lower on the list and get to the Visual Effects award and there you’ll find the most number of nominated films I’ve seen.  Of the five listed (including the winner, Gravity), I’ve seen four of them.  The one I have yet to see?  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  And therein lies the reason I’d make a terrible movie critic.

As much as I loved the first two films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I found myself really burnt out of all things Hobbity by the time the third movie in the series was released.  When I heard director Peter Jackson was working on The Hobbit, and then that it would be two film…then three!…I thought: No mas.  I didn’t catch the first Hobbit film and likewise ignored the second.  Take a wild guess as to whether I’ll catch the third.

So much for my dreams of being a film critic.

General

8 Surprising Historical Facts…

…That Will Change Your Concept of Time Forever, at least according to Todd Van Luling for The Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/26/historical-facts-time_n_4832325.html

I’m not going to spoil the whole relatively short list, but my favorite bit has to be number 3, that the Ottoman Empire still existed the last time the Chicago Cubs won a World Series!

No, I’m not a Chicago Cubs fan nor, for that matter, all that much more than a very casual baseball fan, but I am keenly aware of the struggles that long suffering club and her hometown has had.  The last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series was way back in 1908, years before the beginning of World War I and, yes, before the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.

Amazing.

If that one intrigues you, you’ll enjoy the other 7.  My second favorite item is the first one listed and involves Betty White.

I’ll spoil things no more!

Movies

The Lone Ranger (2013) a (mildly) belated review/autopsy

History repeats itself in more ways than one.

Way back in 1981 a big budgeted “new/updated” version of The Lone Ranger, a classic western pulp adventure series which at that point was known mostly for the famous 1949 to 1957 TV series starring Clayton Moore, was set to be released.  Early word wasn’t all that encouraging, and when The Legend of the Lone Ranger finally arrived in theaters, the critics were incredibly harsh.

That film proceeded to flop.  Hard.  How hard?  Newcomer Klinton Spilsbury, the man who played the title role of the Lone Ranger, has not appeared in another movie or TV show since.  The Legend of the Lone Ranger remains his one, and only, movie credit.

In 2012 Walt Disney Studios were set to release another big budgeted would-be summer blockbuster.  Based on a popular early pulp novel series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter took on a life of its own -all negative- even before its release.  Leaked missives hinted at the studio’s displeasure with the product while extensive re-shoots were reportedly made.  By the time the film was finally released, audiences were poisoned against the product.  Sure, there were those who defended it along with the many who knocked it.  In the end, I fell somewhere in the middle and felt that while the film wasn’t as atrocious as others felt it was, it was at best a decent time killer but certainly not something worthy of its incredibly big budget (if you’re curious, my review of John Carter can be found here).

A year later, the very same Walt Disney Studios got director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp, both of whom hit mega-pay-dirt with Pirates of the Caribbean and its sequels, to once again take on The Lone Ranger.  Released in the summer of 2013 this film, like its 1981 predecessor and last year’s John Carter, turned into another embarrassing big budget flop for that studio.

So…what happened?  Was this film also the victim of bad pre-release press?  Was the movie’s failure further proof that the western genre is dead?  Had there developed a backlash against Johnny Depp and his sometimes “out there” characterization/acting?  And perhaps the most important question of all: Was The Long Ranger really as bad as many said it was?

When I finally sat down to watch the film, I tried to keep my mind as neutral as possible.  There were far more people, it seemed to me anyway, that had a negative opinion about this film versus John Carter.  And yet, there were also many who staunchly defended it.

During the first few minutes of the film I was rewarded with something that…wasn’t all that bad at all.  In fact, I wound up enjoying the first thirty to forty five minutes of the film quite a bit.  I was certain I’d fall into the “I like it” camp.

And then…

…and then…

Let’s be brutally honest here: The Lone Ranger clocks in at a ridiculous 149 minutes long according to IMDB.

Two and a half hours?!

Seriously?

As good as the movie’s opening segments were, as the film reached its middle, I began to feel restless.  During the course of this mid section of the film we were introduced to strange/ferocious/mutant(?) rabbits, a prolonged and increasingly less amusing bit involving a child in 1933 being told the story we’re seeing by a very old Tonto who may or may not be an apparition in the kid’s head, an Indian tribe about to be massacred, and Helena Bonham Carter as a madam with a prosthetic ivory leg she hides a rifle in.

Seriously?!

Most of what I mentioned above could have been eliminated from the film without seriously impacting it.  The Indian tribe massacre sequence was particularly egregious as we’re supposed to be horrified by it yet immediately afterward (we’re talking seconds after the two main characters realize this noble tribe has been wiped out!) we’re hit with a joke regarding a horse on a tree.  The ferocious/mutant rabbits really had me scratching my head.  I guess whatever the filmmakers were going for must have really worked on the page but was completely lost in the translation to film.  I found the rabbits neither interesting nor humorous nor worthy of being in the film at all.  What I came to realize is that the middle segment of the film featured a lot of ideas presented without any real focus.  I was now thinking I’d fall into the “didn’t like it” camp.

But then, like the Lone Ranger himself, the film heroically rises from that messy middle to deliver a genuinely thrilling ending.

In sum, we have a film with a pretty good start and end jammed between a mediocre and bloated middle.

So, back to the questions at hand:

Was the film a victim of its negative pre-release?  I suppose.  Like John Carter there was early word that the film wasn’t all that good and when the first images of Johnny Depp as Tonto were released, he looked rather ridiculous.  Still, I suspect people found what they saw and heard about The Lone Ranger confusing, and I’m sure that didn’t help to bring ’em to the theater.

Was Johnny Depp guilty of delivering another of his highly stylized characterizations and is it possible audiences had finally had their fill of this?  Absolutely.  The character of Tonto takes up quite a bit of space versus the Lone Ranger.  Having said that, if Mr. Depp’s Tonto wasn’t in the film and wasn’t as humorous and engaging as he was, the film would have been a far, far worse experience.

Is the movie’s failure a further sign that the Western is dead?  I suppose one could make that argument.  However, if there is one genre that was even deader than the western it was the pirate film, and that didn’t stop Pirates of the Caribbean from being a hell of a success.  If the makers of The Lone Ranger could have kept the middle section of the film as good as the beginning and end, I suspect things might have turned out very differently.

In conclusion, I can only give The Lone Ranger a mild recommendation and in this it shares the same impression John Carter gave me a year before.  The Lone Ranger is a decent enough film and, in my opinion, an overall better one than John Carter, but considering its bloated budget one expected something that was overall far, far better.  A shame.