Books/Literature, Movies, TV

Richard Matheson, RIP

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Found out a bit belatedly of the death of one of the 20th Century’s most influential authors, at least to me, Richard Matheson.  He was the rare author whose works spread out form “mere” novels and short stories to include screenplays and many, many famous episodes of classic TV shows, including The Twilight Zone.

Richard Corliss of Time Magazine offers a great essay about the works and influence of Mr. Matheson over his career:

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/28/richard-matheson-1926-2013-the-wizard-of-what-if/

For me, the ultimate Richard Matheson story was/is Duel.  There’s something about the idea of facing off against a mysterious -and homicidal!- truck driver that intrigued and terrified me.  The first movie I ever recall seeing was Duel, which was also director Steven Spielberg’s first big hit and an obvious template for what would become his first MEGAhit, Jaws.

But even taking Duel out of the equation, there are plenty of other memorable movies and concepts he created which are buried deep in my psyche.  The novel I Am Legend (and, more specifically, the Charlton Heston starring second movie version of the same, Omega Man).

There was also the very chilling Trilogy of Terror and that doll…

And let’s not forget the classic Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet!

I could go on, mentioning such classics as Kolchach: The Night Stalker or Legend of Hell House or The Incredible Shrinking Man…but suffice it to say, for the most part I’ve been delighted by Mr. Matheson’s work over the years.  Given the volume of said work, there were bound to be some disappointments and, sadly, my most recent experience with Mr. Matherson’s writing was the novel Hunted Past Reason.

Do yourself a favor and, if you haven’t already, check out the stuff I’ve mentioned above.  But avoid that last novel.

General

Stars who were once homeless

Recently Jennifer Lopez noted that she was homeless at one time before achieving stardom.  Here, from Time magazine, is a fascinating list of ten celebrities who were also homeless for a time before hitting it big:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/07/11/stars-who-were-once-homeless/

I’m fascinated by the list because it proves, to some extent, that even when you’re at your most down and out, there is a chance you can pull yourself up and make something of your life.

Sadly, I suspect these are the only few examples of the extreme exceptions to the rules, people who were down and out and turned it around completely.  There are others, of course, who may try and never can get out of extreme poverty.

Books/Literature, General

Orson Scott Card…again

A while back (you can read it here) I noted the controversy regarding sci-fi author Orson Scott Card and his views on homosexuality.  I’m not a big fan of Mr. Card’s works, though I have read what is arguably his most famous novel, Ender’s Game, which will soon be released to theaters as a major motion picture.

I noted in the previous column that the controversy surrounding Mr. Card may wind up hurting the film’s box office prospects, and it would appear that Mr. Card is himself worried about the very same thing and has tried to address the main controversy regarding his previous comments:

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/09/orson_scott_card_gay_marriage_issue_has_become_moot/

In many ways, I feel for Mr. Card even as I can’t find sufficient sympathy to excuse his previous comments.  I feel for Mr. Card because he’s a victim of his own verbal venom in an age when such comments are easily accessible via the internet and difficult, if not impossible, to expunge.  It is possible, for example, that over the years Mr. Card’s opinions have changed and he’s softened his stance toward homosexuality and homosexual marriage.  I’m not saying this has happened, mind you, only that it’s possible.  Unfortunately for Mr. Card, those previous comments he made will remain available for anyone to see and read and will always follow him, even after his passing.

More recently, Hugh Howley, the author of the hit “self-published” sci-fi novel Wool got himself into some similar trouble when he posted a blog entry verbally lashing a woman he met at World Con (http://www.dailydot.com/culture/hugh-howey-the-bitch-from-worldcon-rant/).  Unlike Mr. Card, whose anti-homosexual comments can be found over the years, Mr. Howley appeared to realize rather quickly that his rant was inappropriate and offered an apology (http://www.hughhowey.com/to-those-whom-ive-offended/) and opened himself up to interviews where he further elaborated on the blog post and offered explanations as well as apologies (http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/CultureShock/archives/2013/04/19/hugh-howey-explains-why-he-removed-controversial-blog-post)

I suppose the point is this: Think about what you’re saying, whether it be to someone else or something you yourself post online.  It’s common sense.  On the other hand, perhaps it is also a good thing to look inside yourself and evaluate your own feelings and philosophies.  After all, if you’re a public figure (or even a casual facebook user) and are “smart enough” to not make any controversial public rants, yet have such strong feelings, perhaps you should consider, and re-consider, them.

In the long run it might make you a better person.

General

I could watch stuff like this all day…

As you watch these video clips, after a while you figure you’ve seen enough.  I mean, after a while, things have to get a little repetitious, right?  After all, how many times and ways can you see amateur parkour “talent” running into a wall…or the ground…or water.  How many times can you see cars/motorcycles/people on skateboards/etc. wipe out?  How many would-be “extreme” athletes can you still find amusing once they land crushingly on their backs or heads?  And what of the adventures of the very drunk, as they stumble around and inevitably fall?

There can’t be much else, can there?

And then, suddenly, you’re at minute 13:55 of the video and you see a bunch of Mensa candidates find out what happens when you stick a knife into a toaster.

As I said before, I could watch stuff like this all day…

Movies

You’re doing it wrong!

A fascinating list of 15 films based on the lives of real people and their true stories that received a backlash from those people…because they felt their depiction in the movies was incorrect:

http://styleblazer.com/152963/youre-doing-it-wrong-15-movies-based-on-a-true-story-that-received-backlash-from-their-real-life-characters/

Haven’t seen all that many of the films referenced there, though two of the bigger exceptions are Ed Wood and The Doors.  I enjoyed both films though Ed Wood clearly tried to create a “happy” ending for the film, that Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space somehow was a triumph when ultimately released instead of an object of complete ridicule.  As for The Doors, Val Kilmer nailed the Jim Morrison role, but the story presented, even to one as fond of the music of the Doors as I am, simply wasn’t all that interesting.  By most accounts, the real life Jim Morrison lived a life of excess, both with drugs and alcohol.  While he found incredible success with his music, those excesses ultimately resulted in dying far too young.  Other than the music and his copious use of alcohol and drugs, I have a hard time recalling other elements of his story as depicted within the movie, which I suppose explains the family’s scorn for Oliver Stone’s film.

Of the films I haven’t seen, I feel for most for  Fritz Ostermueller’s daughter, the pitcher depicted in the movie 42 as a racist headhunter (she noted evidence that suggested this was not the case) and Marc Schiller, one of the victims presented in the recent comedy Pain & Gain.  In the later case in particular, it feels really tasteless for filmmakers to make a comedy of the near gruesome murder of a person, one who wound up in a coma because of the actions of the central characters in said film.

If there’s any lesson to be taken from this list, its that making a movie based on “real life” events and people is tricky enough, but it’s especially hard when the people behind the stories (family or otherwise) are still alive and can voice their displeasure.

Movies

Django Unchained (2012) a (mildly) belated review

After sitting around for several weeks, I finally plopped the Django Unchained DVD into my machine last night and gave it a whirl.  As it started up, I thought back to the very first time I ever heard of director/writer Quentin Tarantino.  It was many, many years ago, back in the pre-internet intensive days of 1992 when his first major motion picture, Reservoir Dogs, was making quite a buzz at film festivals and newspapers (remember those?) lauded the work of this wonderful new director.  By the time the movie finally reached my area, I absolutely had to see it.

Watching Reservoir Dogs proved quite the experience, like sitting in the passenger seat of a car which was being driven by a complete maniac, all the time wondering when/if you’re going to crash.  Other than the somewhat ambiguous ending, I loved, loved, loved what I saw.  Never mind that later we found the movie “homaged” (or, if you’re less tolerant, ripped off) City on Fire.  Regardless, Reservoir Dogs was such an incredibly unique experience, at that time, that I had to see more of Tarantino’s works.

His follow up film, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, cemented his reputation as a director/writer to watch, but as much as I liked it, it wasn’t as good an overall film, IMHO, as Reservoir Dogs, mainly because for me the Bruce Willis segment was lacking (though I would hasten to add that I did love both the prologue to this segment, featuring Christopher Walken’s demented “watch” sequence, and the non-chronologically revealed fate of John Travolta’s Vincent Vega).  Mr. Tarantino’s follow up films, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill (Volume 1 and 2), unfortunately, didn’t do all that much for me, though I’ll admit up front I’m in a minority with those particular feelings.  Jackie Brown, for all the fascinating actors, never really engaged me story-wise.  Kill Bill appeared to be Mr. Tarantino doing his personal version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, only using 70’s karate-type action instead of the wild west.  The question I had after seeing the film(s) was why bother with Mr. Tarantino’s version when I can just watch the Eastwood original?

Mr. Tarantino’s next major motion picture, Deathproof, part of the two-part Grindhouse motion picture set, was absolutely great…at least in the latter half of the film.  I absolutely, positively loved the film’s second act while absolutely, positively felt the complete opposite about the surprisingly uninteresting dialogue-filled first half.

Inglourious Basterds was next and proved one of the first BluRay purchases I ever made…but I have yet to actually see the film.  One day soon.

Which brings us back to Django Unchained.  As you can probably imply from the above, my one time love for Quentin Tarantino’s works has fizzled over the years.  Given that I haven’t found the time or inspiration to sit through his last film and the length of time it took me to get to his most recent one, my frame of mind while watching it wasn’t the best.

Yet as Django Unchained rolled out, I was very much into the film.  It was bloody, it was violent, it was profane…and yet also quite hilarious (the movie’s best bit has to be the whole pre-“hooded raid” segment…the dialogue there by the actors, and Don Johnson especially, was hysterical).

Sadly, this highlight of the film led into the second and final act, which while reasonably entertaining was nowhere near as good as what preceded it.  Like Death Proof, we had roughly one half of a great film.  Unlike Death Proof, the better stuff was in the first half.

Before I go any farther, a quick recap of the film’s plot:  Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave in the days just before the Civil War.  He was separated from his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and longs to get her back to his side.  In comes Dr. King Schultz (the excellent Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter, who needs Django to identify a trio of criminal brothers he is hunting.  He frees Django and, after getting his prey, takes a liking to his new partner.  King asks Django to continue to work with him for the winter and, following that, will help him find and free his wife.

It is after winter (and the aformentioned Don Johnson sequence) that we proceed to the movie’s second act, where King and Django find that Calvin Candie (a slimy Leonardo DiCaprio) purchased Broomhilda and has her at his plantation.  The duo attempt a variation on the Trojan Horse (this movie features plenty of echoes to mythology) to try to spirit the woman from his clutches.

The problem with this half of the film is two fold.  For one, it feels disjointed, as if Mr. Tarantino realized belatedly while filming that the movie was running too long and was forced to cut a lot of material in the telling of this last half of the film.  For example, Candie’s sister Lara Lee (Laura Cayouette) is presented in a total of perhaps three or four very brief scenes and barely has any dialogue…and yet I get the feeling the audience is supposed to view her as every bit as evil and slimy as her brother.  However, we simply see too little of her to get much more than a hint of possible incest between brother and sister and almost no real sense of evil.  We’re also briefly introduced to Candie’s “trackers”, a group of mysterious gunfighters in the man’s employ, and the most intriguing of the group is Zoe Bell’s female tracker, a woman who is seen a grand total of maybe two times, who wears a blood red scarf to hide the lower half of her face.  Who is she?  How did she end up being part of this all male gunfighter group?  Is she indeed a deadly gunfighter?  Why does she hide the lower half of her face?  All good questions, NONE of which are ever resolved.  She appears very briefly in one scene and the next time she appears Django kills her and her crew in a matter of a few seconds.

Really?

So, assuming I’m right, Mr. Tarantino was forced to trim an awful lot of material from the second half of the film and it hurt.  But nothing hurt the movie so much as what he had Dr. King do toward the film’s end.  I won’t spoil things too much, but suffice it to say that after all this time, I would have expected this professional bounty hunter to act in a far more professional manner than he did toward the film’s first major climax and not risk his life and the lives of both Django and Broomhilda because of his own stupid pride.

Or, to put it more succinctly for those who have seen the film:  Really?  All you had to do was shake the man’s hand!  Shake it already!

Still, despite a weak and at times confusing closing half, I enjoyed enough of Django Unchained to recommend it, especially to fans of Mr. Tarantino’s unique mix of humor and violence.

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Computers/Electronics, Movies, Music, TV

Is the Internet worth it?

Fascinating article by Andrew Leonard for Salon.com regarding something that has been on my mind often of late:  Despite all the great stuff it offers, what of the negatives regarding the Internet?  Is all the good worth all the bad, both potential and realized?

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/05/creative_destruction_government_snooping_is_the_internet_worth_it/

Mr. Leonard’s focus is mostly on governmental “snooping” and journalism but it also can relate to the general impact of the Internet on everything, including loss of privacy both unintended and unrealized.  For example, I recall in the earlier, wildly popular days of Facebook that some clever thieves realized that some posters on that social media website would over share their day to day activities, to the point where they posted information about upcoming vacations, including where they were going, when they were going, and for how long.

Which meant these clever thieves now knew when a poster’s home was potentially unguarded and empty and for what specific period of time, making it a perfect target for theft.

Revelations about the Government’s internet snooping should be alarming to most people, but there are other economic factors that I’ve were influenced by the rise of the internet.  I’ve mentioned before how certain “mom and pop” type stores simply cannot compete with full service internet “stores” like Amazon.com and how even some bigger retail chains, including bookstores and electronic stores, now are in danger of closing their doors because of the increasing ease of purchase and seemingly unlimited stock available online.

But there exists yet another big threat created by the internet, one that personally scares me for different reasons:  The possibility of creative destruction.  If you think about entertainment, you think about a few things: Music, movies, television, books/novels, comic books, etc.  All of these creative endeavors are now victims to pirate websites.

Looking for the latest album by artist X?  Download it for free…sometimes before the album is officially released!  Looking forward to seeing movie X?  Same thing.  Novels?  Comic books?  Television shows?  Ditto, ditto, and ditto.

Where will this piracy of creative ideas eventually lead?  If you’re a struggling artist, there’s precious little money to be made in your works.  Whatever little bit you can scrape together is helpful and may allow you to hone your craft and allow you to make better and better product…provided you can indeed pay your bills.  But what if your current work(s) find their way to pirate websites and whatever meager amount of money you might have earned on your current, best works takes a hit because of illegal downloads?

And what of established artists?  Will movie/music companies become more and more fearful of signing off on a big budget item if the worry about how much they’ll lose on the illegal downloads of said item?  Is it possible some companies will simply give up on funding films/TV shows/music albums entirely?  And where will that leave many of us, audiences hungry for new entertainment?

As Mr. Leonard put it in his article:

…we are increasingly sensing that we have no idea where this techno-roller coaster is ultimately headed. There’s a sense that things are out of control. Our growing uneasiness doesn’t jibe well with all the hype about how the world is being made a better place by a proliferation of smartphone apps.

Uncategorized

Why Should A Writer Retire?

Absolutely brilliant short essay by Jimmy So for Newsweek that touches upon a subject near and dear to me, the actual “work” involved in writing:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/06/26/why-should-a-writer-retire.html

For me, writing falls very much in the category of work.  Heavy, often frustrating and almost always mentally draining work.  The moments are few when I don’t think about skipping the work of the day/hour and getting out of my chair to “take it easy”.  Yet there is another huge chunk of me, paradoxically, that looks upon the works I’ve already done and is so damn proud of them and craves and encourages and demands I continue working and get even more books or short stories out there.

To be a writer, you have to be disciplined and willing to spend long hours alone in your mind, often being a harsh task master and culling the good ideas from the all too frequent bad ones.  And then, once you’ve got that magical first draft done, you switch roles and become your own harshest critic, dissecting each work and sentence and paragraph and chapter over and over and over again until you finally feel your work is ready to be released.

Once released, you can enjoy your accomplishment….at least for a minute or two.  Its not too long before that voice in the back of your head tells you to get working on your next story…and make this one better than the last, OK?

Which is my cue to get back to the latest book of the Corrosive Knights saga, sitting in the hard drive patiently waiting for me to get to her…

TV

Enough with the TV Anti-Heroes…

First, sorry once again for the dearth of blog entries.  Vacation was spent far from easy internet access and, thus, there was little time or opportunity to get online.  On the other hand, seeing (and hearing!) glaciers first hand was an incredible, once in a lifetime -unless I were to go back or the glaciers melt away!- experience.  Highly recommended.

Now, onwards…!

The following link is to an article by June Thomas and is posted on Slate magazine.  At its surface it concerns the new Showtime series Ray Donovan but of course addresses something far more populous (perhaps too populous) in today’s TV, the “anti”-hero:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/01/the_tv_anti_hero_from_tony_soprano_to_ray_donovan_why_so_many_and_when_will.html

A personal story which I recounted before:  A long, very long time ago, when I was a very young child, for whatever reason I developed a strong sense of what a “good guy” and a “bad guy” were.  To my mind, a “good guy’s” characteristics were not unlike the old-time serial westerns.  You know, white hat, always helpful, never mean, never underhanded, etc. etc.

Boring, I know, but I was maybe six-eight years old and had a mind heavily into comic books and cartoons when I developed that notion.

Along came the TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man and, if you were a young child from that era, you know how popular the series was.  After a trio or so of “pilot” movies, the official series kicked off in January 1974 with the episode “Population Zero“.

I was one of probably millions of viewers that night and absolutely loved the episode…until, that is, the ending.

But let me back up just a moment:  The episode was very much a homage cough:rip-off:cough of Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain, at least in its initial sequences involving a small town where seemingly everyone has suddenly, abruptly, died.  To be fair, after that opening premise, the SMDM episode did go its own way.  The small town, it turned out, wasn’t wiped out after all, but somehow the entire population was simultaneously knocked unconscious by some kind of high tech sonic weapon.  The creator of that weapon, it turned out, was a scientist that held a bitter grudge against the government because funds for his weapon were cut in favor of, you guessed it, the Bionic Man program.

The fact that Steve Austin, the man who benefited from the Bionic Man program -indeed was the Bionic Man program, gets involved in the case turns out to be more of a coincidence than it probably should have been, but our hero investigates the situation and is eventually captured by the bad guys who, because they know about his abilities, also know his weaknesses.  The lead villain orders Austin put into a large meat freezer.  His bionic limbs are vulnerable to extreme cold and, therefore, this would be the way they would get rid of him.

So Steve Austin is locked in the freezer and the villains head off to a mountain range, intent on using their weapon on another town, upset the government hasn’t paid them their ransom demands and intent on pushing the settings of their sonic weapon from “stun unconscious” to “kill”.

Meanwhile, Steve Austin breaks out of the cooler and, in one of the better sequences of the story, stumbles about, unable to fully use his bionic limbs, desperate to get to the villains before they murder an entire town.  As Austin moves in the sun, his bionic parts limber up and he begins his heroic run, eventually reaching a point where he spots the villain’s van parked a short distance away.

Steve Austin also notes a small square fenced off area and runs to it.  He grabs one of the fence posts and pulls it from the ground, complete with cement block, and runs at the van.  The villains spot him, aim their weapon at him, but before they can eliminate the Bionic Man he hurls the fence post javelin-style at them.  The post slams through the van’s outer wall and the van and villains go up in a ball of explosive flame.  (You can see the entire thing I’ve just described here)

The young child I was back then was very disturbed by Steve Austin’s actions.

As I said before, my idea of a “hero” was pretty strict, and one thing a hero never, ever did was kill.  Especially not in a premeditated fashion.  Yet this is exactly what Steve Austin effectively did.  When he was hurrying to the van, he knew very well the villains needed large amounts of electricity from the power lines around them to juice up their machine.  When he pulled out the metal fence post, could he have flung it at the power lines around the vans and simply disabled their weapon rather than gun for them directly.

But even if the power lines were difficult to get to, how was he to know the villains would spot him as he ran toward them?  Granted, they did, but what if he managed to run up to them and simply rip the power cord between van and power line before they spotted him?

The fact is that Steve Austin pulled that metal post out of the ground with one idea and one idea only:  To use it exactly as he did and hurl it at the van, intent on at the very least hurting and at the most killing all the villains he was up against.

A big no-no to my child’s mind back then.

Today, of course, heroes killing hapless/helpless villains is hardly anything new or startling.  And, going back to the article above, the genre of the “anti-hero” has taken off…and off and off to the point where I’m in agreement with the author that this has become a rather boring -dare I say it- cliche.

That’s not to say that some of the “classic” anti-heroes have lost their luster, only that the most recent batches appear to offer us little in the way of something new.

Who knows.  With the way things have gone thus far, perhaps the next big thing will be the hero I imagined in my youth.

Or might that prove to be a bit too boring in this more cynical age?

The Blog of E. R. Torre