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

Why PC Companies Fear Amazon

Fascinating article from Time Magazine regarding something I find fascinating:  Views on the general direction of technology and retail sales, and how Amazon.com is rapidly becoming something other large technological companies fear:

http://techland.time.com/2012/09/24/why-pc-companies-fear-amazon/

I’m fascinated by Amazon.  Yes, my novels are available through the service, and I will forever appreciate the fact that they allowed people like me to have an avenue for promoting and selling our works.

I also admit to having some trepidation about the company.  I’ve always felt that competition in the marketplace results in the best products, and one fears that Amazon.com will eventually become the one-stop be all and end all of purchasing almost all products, from music to books to clothing to electronics.

I suspect the people at Amazon are working on doing just that!

The reality is that Amazon is successful because it is so damn good.  I have purchased many items either directly through them or used through a second hand seller operating within Amazon’s structure.  To this day and after many purchases, I can honestly say that I’ve never had a bad experience.  The closest I came to a “bad experience” was when purchasing a used book via a second hand seller through Amazon and, after waiting two plus weeks without receiving it, I sent an email to said seller asking if the book was on its way.  That same day I received a reply email from the seller saying they were sorry but they could not fulfill my order and would immediately refund my purchase charge.  This was done right away!

So, yes, I’m a fan of Amazon beyond even my own personal (and modest) for sale items present on the service.

I just hope that Amazon maintains its thus far high level of customer service and broad range of available items.

General

USB…typewriter?!

Absolutely fascinating article from Stylelist about Jack Zyklin, an individual who has taken old, obsolete typewriters and allowed them to “interface” with computers, thus giving writers the old time feel of typing on a typewriter while being able to simultaneously use the latest computer technology.

The article can be found here:

http://www.stylelist.com/2012/09/19/usb-typewriter-etsy_n_1896793.html

There is an included video in the article, which I’ve embedded below:

There is a certain whimsy to Mr. Zyklin’s work that appeals to me, as unlike him I can recall the time when typewriters were still the way to write.  By the time I reached High School, personal computers were just starting to come out and the concept of a word processor, introduced to me in my sophomore or junior year of High School, portended the demise of the typewriter.

As an author with seven novels and one graphic novel behind me (and more to come!), I’ve thought long and hard about how fortunate I was to be born when I was.  As a young child, I was completely fascinated with writing and by the time I was in third or fourth grade knew that I wanted to be an author.

However, I quickly realized I was a perfectionist and whatever I wrote needed to be refined before it was “good enough” to satisfy my taste.  Early writing was frustrating because this meant that whatever I wrote needed to be completely re-typed (and re-re-typed and re-re-re-typed) whenever it was revised.  Depending on the length of the original story, this could mean many hours of grueling and tedious work.  It was hard enough to get the original first draft typed out, but the idea of returning to the draft and re-typing it as many as five to seven times (or more!) made the task all that much more daunting.

Thus, the arrival of computers and the word processor couldn’t have come at a better time for me.  I still longed to be a writer and hadn’t yet given up on that dream.  The word processor allowed me the freedom to write longer and longer works.  After reviewing the printed versions of them, all I had to do was make the necessary revisions without having to completely re-type the entire manuscript.

Had I been born even five years earlier, I suspect none of my works might have ever come to light and I might have drifted into a different career.  My latest novel, Nox, required seven full revisions and a whopping eleven revisions of Chapter 50 (the BIG chapter, storywise) before I was satisfied enough with the manuscript to go ahead with publication.  Needless to say, I’m happy with my computer and its keyboard, though the thought of getting one of those USB typewriters does seem attractive…in a retro kind of way!

Movies, Uncategorized

Green Lantern (2011) a (mildly) belated review

I’ve mentioned before my love for what is arguably the first -and equally arguably the best– “modern” superhero film, 1978’s Superman.  This is a film that offered viewers an incredible array of material.  You had drama, you had tragedy.  You also had slapstick, romance, and (of course) high adventure.  Heck, there was even a quasi-musical/dance number thrown in, to boot!

What is most amazing is that with all those different elements, tones, and styles, the movie worked.  Through clever writing, directing, acting, and editing, all that stuff came together into a wonderful whole and the film never felt excessive or overwhelming (In the theatrical print…I’m not quite as enamored of the “extended” cut released to DVD).

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the 2011 film Green Lantern.  As I finally watched the film a couple of days ago, I couldn’t help but feel that the people behind the cameras were hoping to match Superman‘s mojo.  They offered a big story that featured a big cast and took you to quite literally the ends of the universe.  The movie also features a hero that would prove his worth before an awesome foe, all while re-connecting with the love of his life.

Unfortunately, all those ideas are thrown at the viewers without the skill of a Superman.  Instead of a fascinating whole, the film works only in spurts and seems content to throw out comic books characters after characters and hope that that alone makes the film interesting.

It doesn’t.

Now, I’m a fan of Green Lantern, particularly the silver age iteration as illustrated by the incomparable Gil Kane and, just a little later, Neal Adams.  I think the character’s back story and supporting cast are interesting and naturals for film.  However, did the film really need to have Dr. Amanda Waller in it?  Worse, given all the things thrown out (including Waller’s character herself!), did we also need to spend precious screen time showing her “origin”?  And while the character Tomas Kalmaku, unlike Dr. Waller, was a big part of the early Green Lantern comic books stories, he was mostly irrelevant in the film and did nothing more than take up screen time that could have gone to Blake Lively’s Carol Ferris.

The movie offers us two big villains, but given what ultimately happens with Hector Hammond, the Earth-bound villain, I can’t help but wondering if it might have been better not to have Hammond appear at all and instead focus the main conflict entirely on Parallax.

Or, even better yet, why present Green Lantern arch villain Sinestro in his “pre-evil” form at all?  He would have made a far better villain instead of being shown as a noble member of the Green Lantern Corps that (inexplicably) succumbs to evil after the credits roll.  That’s like giving us a new Batman film with the Joker featured prominently within it as a good guy and then teasing us only at the very end that he’ll be the bad guy next time around.

Sometimes, the next time doesn’t come around.

As for the acting, the two leads, Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern and Blake Lively as Carol Ferris, are…ok.  While they didn’t display the charisma Christopher Reeves and Margot Kidder had in Superman, I thought a better, clearer, and more focused story might have helped show them off much better.

In sum, count me among those that cannot recommend this film.

Movies

Wrecked (2010) a (mildly) belated review

I first heard of the movie Wrecked back when it was nearing release in 2010.  Then, nothing.

In fact, the film seemed to so effectively disappear that I couldn’t help but wonder if it was released at all.  I guess it was.  IMDB lists the film as having made a paltry $4821 in a two week run on a single screen.  Considering the film starred Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody, that alone is stunning if not unusual in this day of modest or direct to video releases.

Nonetheless, when I spotted the film airing on IFC, I set the DVR to record it, sat back, and gave it a whirl.

So, did the film deserve a better fate?  Was it unjustly dumped?

The answer, frustratingly, is yes and no.  Wrecked concerns a man (Brody) who awakens to find himself sitting in the front passenger seat of a very bad car crash.  The car is at the bottom of a forest ravine.  In the back seat is the corpse of one of the other passengers of the car.  Several feet before the remains of the vehicle lies the body of the presumed driver.

The lone survivor has no memory of how he came to be in this predicament nor who the corpses of those around him are.  He too is injured, and his leg is pinned down hard under the car’s dashboard.  For the first half of the film he drifts in and out of consciousness and tries to recall who he is and what he was doing before the crash while trying to simply get out of the wreckage.

Soon, ominous hints as to who he might be appear.  He finds a handgun under the driver’s seat and has flashes of memory of a possible robbery.

Is he a bad guy?  Did he kill someone?

The questions haunt him even as he tries to escape the wreckage of his vehicle.

I won’t go into too many more details, but suffice to say the film does  hold your attention for most of its run time despite the fact that what we have here is for the most part a one person/one setting story with very little actual dialogue and plenty of symbolism.  Some of the symbolism, I felt, worked well while others left me more confused than illuminated.  Unfortunately, the movie also runs out of steam after a while and, particularly in the later part of the second half, becomes something of a chore to sit through.

However, where the movie fails the most is when it finally does offer a resolution and explanation as to who our protagonist is and why he was in the car.  The explanation, unfortunately, is quite banal…almost too simple.  It makes you think that this film could have made a good one hour episode of a mystery TV show rather than a 91 minute full theatrical feature.

There is one other thing that I found very bothersome, but to get into that requires SPOILERS.  They follow the movie’s trailer…

SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

As the movie progresses, it is clear our protagonist is having hallucinations.  While the dog he encounters may or may not actually be with him (I believe it to be a hallucination, too), he also sees a woman in and around his immediate area…a woman he slowly begins to think might have been a victim of his (possible) crime.  Considering the film’s eventual resolution and the woman’s actual identity, the way our protagonist deals with this hallucination is very bizarre, to say the least.

Regardless, Wrecked is an intriguing film that, unfortunately, ends with a whimper rather than a bang.  Too bad.

Movies

Daybreakers (2009) a (mildly) belated review

An interesting attempt to create a vampire “culture” while adhering to vampire lore, Daybreakers is nonetheless a disappointment despite some pretty good ideas.

The movie cleverly examines a world where vampires are at the top of the food chain and humans a rung below.  Unfortunately, the vampire race is immediately presented as being in danger.  Their main source of food, human blood, is rapidly running out and vampire scientist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) tries to find an “artificial” blood which could be used to feed the vampire culture’s voracious appetite while keeping humans alive.  Dalton, as presented, is a conflicted character.  While being a vampire, it is clear he has sympathy towards humans and realizes the vampire culture is corrupt and in decline.  Later in the film, we also discover that he longs to return to his own humanity.

The vampire culture within the film is well thought through.  The vampires drive cars that offer protection from the daylight and they live in appropriately dark abodes.  Child vampires and vagrants run along the streets, their souls obviously much older than their outward appearances.  All long for blood, and the deprivation of their source of food turns these vampires into hideous creatures who cannot be controlled.

Into this milieu Dalton finds Lionel Cormac (Willem Dafoe), a man who was a vampire yet somehow was able to turn back to human.  It is this search for the cure to vampirism that forms the bulk of the second half of the film.

The movie’s main problem, however, is that it was clearly intended to be a much longer, much more detailed work than what we ultimately see on the screen.  Indeed, watching Daybreakers is like reading a CliffsNotes version of the same…so many characters and situations are thrown at you and dealt with so quickly that you can’t help but wonder how much of the original screenplay was left behind or on the cutting room floor.

I suspect that the original concept and story was much better fleshed out.  Had the film been, say, a half hour or so longer and allowed more time for story development, we might have felt more sympathy for some of the characters and their fates (whether good or bad).  Instead, we have a film that feels like it rushes through what it wants to present to us and never allows us the opportunity to fully immerse ourselves into what we’re seeing before reaching the inevitable end.

Books/Literature

Chameleon and Nox

For those interested, my latest novel, Nox, is now available through Amazon.com both in paperback and e-book format.

Starting tomorrow, September the 9th and for five days, the e-book version of both Nox and Chameleon will be available for FREE to anyone interested in picking it up.  Before reading Nox, I strongly recommend reading both Mechanic and Chameleon, both of which are also part of the Corrosive Knights series.

To get the Chameleon e-book, click on the link below:

http://www.amazon.com/Chameleon-Corrosive-Knights-ebook/dp/B0063LNB8S/ref=la_B006061H50_1_2_title_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1347130935&sr=1-2

To pick up the Nox e-book, click on the link below:

http://www.amazon.com/Nox-Corrosive-Knights-ebook/dp/B0096EFGNW/ref=la_B006061H50_1_7_title_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1347130935&sr=1-7

Enjoy!

Computers/Electronics, General

Distance record set for quantum teleportation…

Fascinating article from MSNBC.com concerning a new distance record for the process of “quantum teleportation”:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48933348/ns/technology_and_science-science/

The subject matter is intriguing and opens the door to what may lie in the future regarding the next generation of the internet, an internet that will be considerably faster and far more secure.

Intriguing stuff!

General

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

One of the more intriguing things to be found on Sirius/XM satellite radio is the RadioClassics channel.  This particular channel is devoted to replaying the radio dramas, mysteries, horror, and comedy of the past before television essentially took over the medium.

Nonetheless, in listening to the radio classics station I’ve found that much of episodic television originated here.  Gunsmoke, for example, was a popular radio mainstay for many years before reaching television and making its mark there.  Likewise, if you ever find Lucille Ball’s My Favorite Husband playing on radio classics, you quickly discover that this show was very obviously the genesis/basis for I Love Lucy, perhaps the most groundbreaking -and arguably still one of the most popular- of all sitcoms.

While some of the shows on the radio classics channel haven’t aged all that well, particularly some of the many comedies (though I can’t get enough of the wonderful Jack Benny Show), there is one show among them all that intrigues me the most:  Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

This detective series starred many different actors in the title role of Johnny Dollar, an insurance investigator who managed to get himself into plenty of hard-boiled (and action packed!) mysteries.  Of those various actors who played the title role for the series 12 year run, the most intriguing of the lot is easily Bob Bailey, and the best of the best of the series are the 5 part episodes that allowed for greater character depth and mystery.  The series, alas, ran In this particular format for just a little over a year, but I can’t get enough of the stuff.

I sniffed around Amazon and found the following link for a 2 DVD set of some 732 (!) episodes.

http://www.amazon.com/YOURS-TRULY-JOHNNY-DOLLAR-DVD-ROM/dp/B004I4KR1G/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1346941328&sr=8-5&keywords=yours+truly%2C+johnny+dollar

I suspect the 732 episodes presented here are what remains of the 811 total episodes of the show recorded, which means that a little less than one hundred of them may be lost forever.

Still, this set, priced at a very reasonable $10, gives you more than enough Johnny Dollar to last you many, many hours of drive time (indeed my iTunes lists the total run time of these two DVD discs at a whopping 10.9 days worth of listening!).

So, if you’re in the mood for something truly unique and entertaining -and, no, I don’t receive any royalties from the sales of these discs- you might want to give Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar a look.

Movies

The Guard (2011) a (mildly) belated review

So I was in one of those “lulls” with my Netflix queue.  While waiting for a couple of movies to be released in the next few weeks, I had my pick of films I was curious about but not necessarily waiting with bated breath to see.

Among them I chose The Guard, a 2011 comedy featuring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle.  I recalled the movie received positive reviews upon being released even if the film seemed to disappear rather quickly from theaters without garnering all that much attention from audiences.

So I gave it a whirl.  I didn’t expect all that much, which made what came next all that more delightful.

The Guard is, to put it bluntly, one of the most consistently funny films I’ve seen in a very long time.  From the beginning to the end I found myself laughing out loud at the situations presented and the very clever dialogue.

The story: Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is a walking contradiction of a police officer.  He operates in a very small town in Ireland and is viewed as a “loose cannon” by those around him.  He is alternately vulgar, seemingly corrupt (to a point), and, some may think, dim witted.  However, there’s much more to Boyle than meets the eye.  Over the course of the film, he becomes involved with a group of shady, violent, and surprisingly eloquent (!) drug runners as well as a very “fish out of water” American FBI agent (Cheadle) who is hunting them down.

Those expecting big action sequences will likely be disappointed.  However, those same people should be won over by the movie’s clever and hilarious script.  If, like me, you’re a little too accustomed to American English, feel free to use the subtitle feature to capture every delicious bit of dialogue.

It is rare to see a comedy that manages to sustain its energy level throughout its run time.  Though The Guard wasn’t one of the films I was “dying” to get to on my queue list, I’m very happy to have given it a try.  Highly recommended.

Movies

Worst Opening Weekend of All Time?!

This is from Entertainment Weekly, concerning the dismal box office take of the film The Oogieloves, released this past week:

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/09/02/oogieloves-big-balloon-adventure-worst-box-office-debut-flop/

These are the most telling numbers regarding what the movie earned over the weekend (I’ve bolded the truly jaw dropping stats):

According to studio estimates, the colorful toddler-targeting entry, which is being distributed by Kenn Viselman Presents (Viselman formerly found massive success as producer of The Teletubbies), earned a truly awful $448,131 from 2,160 theaters in its debut three-day weekend.

That gross yielded a per theater average of $207. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: $207!

Just how low is that? Let’s pretend that the average ticket price for each customer was about $7 this weekend. That would mean that only 30 people saw Oogieloves at each theater — across all its showings — over the past three days.

Yikes!

Perhaps the worst part of all this is that, according to the article, the movie’s budget was an incredible $20 million to produce and another $40 million to promote!

Yikes, redux!

Saddest of all was the fact that I caught actor Chazz Palminteri on one of those morning shows on Friday promoting the film.  He seemed like he was pleased with it and happy to have worked on something intended for very, very young viewers.  But…he’s Chazz Palminteri.  Whenever I think of him, what floats in my mind are mob/crime dramas.  Adult fare like The Usual Suspects.  Yet there he was, surrounded by people dressed in the Oogieloves’ costumes.  Needless to say, he looked really out of place.

Looking at the cast of the film over at IMDB.com, I was surprised to see so many recognizable names among it.  Did they actually appear on film or simply provide voices to the characters?  I don’t know.

I’m not all that interested in finding out, either.