Way to take an eleven day break, Kris...

Sorry for lack of updates. There was a confluence of various things the last week or so, but God-willing, I'm back on track.

Quick Hits: 2/1/2010

What randomly flashed before my eyes in the last week or so.

Rest Stop 1 & 2: The first one was a pretty damn good little movie. It built up the tension, made the gore worthwhile, fleshed out the character of Nicole(and to a lesser extent, the cop whose name I forget), and gave us a simple, gritty horror movie. The finger biting scene and the death of the cop scenes, in particular, where quite well done. The 2nd movie took everything that worked in the first, and flushed it down the shitter. Annoying comedic relief, one-note characters("Hi, I'm a nerd!" "Hi, I'm a drunk slut!" "I simmer with brotherly rage!")somehow less gorey, and a horrible end. I do appreciate the ghost sex though, I do.

Transiberian: It started off as a good, atmospheric thriller set on the Transiberian railroad, with a solid cast(Ben Kingsley, Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer) but turned into a mindless, predictable schlock. Characters act without any reason, and Kate Mara wasn't nearly naked enough.

Second Skin: A documentary about people who play MMORPGs with a religious fervent. While it do a good job explaining why people like games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest, it really focused on the negatives of that subculture. Game addiction, Gold-farming Chinese sweat shops, and a son's suicide are the main threads of the movie. If it wasn't for the quirky love story(yes, there is a love story) and the section about a group of hardcore gamers preparing for the Burning Crusade expansion, the movie would be a total downer. But those two story threads keep it afloat, the fractured love story(Boy & Girl meet over online game, fall in love, then finally meet in real life) being the highlight of the entire doc.

Zombiemania: A short(less than an hour) little documentry about the resurgence of zombie popularity. It hits all the usual notes, spends a good deal of time on why Romero's movies still work today, and delves a little bit into how the zombie f/x has evolved over the years. Pretty much a light, fluffy little doc, but anytime you get interviews with George Romero, Tom Savini, and Max Brooks, you have yourself a good time.

Joe The Barbarian: A comic book by Grant Morrison(writer) and Sean Murphy(artist), is essentially the Lord of the Rings-meet-Home Alone. And it is amazing. The first issue, as this is, is a little slow, laying the groundwork for the rest of the series, But Murphy injects life into each page, that it is really worth getting, even if you aren't a comic fan.

Books Will Never Go Away

And by books, I mean actual, real books. In your hand books. The Kindle, the iPad, the eReader, etc., all have real merit, but books will still be around, in some fashion. Certain mediums, such as newspapers and magazines, I can see becoming completely digital.Books, though, will stay paper, to an extent. Even comics, which I primarily read digitally, will be around in paper form. There is something about reading a story in your hands, putting it on the shelf, just having it, that will keep them around. I read Grant Morrison's Joe the Barbarian last week, on my laptop. Then I went to the comic shop, and bought the issue. When I read it, the exact same story I had read on my laptop, is was much better. There's something about having the story, seeing the art in your hands, that cannot be replicated on a screen. Maybe it's my collector mentality, but if I like something, I want it in my ahnd. I downlaod movies, but if I love a movie, I need a copy of it on my shelf. I can go to a website and read Dylan Thomas poetry, but I'd rather have the book in my hand, to go through the pages of his poetry. It just isn't the same on screen.

With that said, I think the Kindle and devices like it have merit. People don't read anymore, especially kids, and that's criminal. But publishing companies don't help themselves at all. A non-discounted book can run you anywhere from $15 to $50. Even a relatively cheap book, say Animal Farm, is $10(via amazon.com). While not expensive, most people wouldn't elect to spend $10 on a novel. Especially a kid. They'll go and buy a DVD, a video game, fast food, etc. Comics, a medium that should be aimed at getting young kids to read, is even worse. The averahge price for a Marvel/DC comic book is $2.99, and they have already begun the process of getting readers used to paying $3.99 for comics. Comics, generally, vary between 22 to 32 pages of content, including advertisements. There is a distinct lack of content to price, there.

This technology gives me hope, that we can get books into the hands of kids. Most schools already use laptops in the classroom, the next step is to go completely digital. Maybe not a full-fledged Kindle, but one streamlined for students, filled with required reading and/or novels for them to read. Comic publishers could drastically reduce their prices, since the cost of paper has been their excuse for raised prices. The comic book demographic has shifted in the last 20 years, from young kids/teenagers to men in their 30s & 40s, who grew up on comics and collect them. This is not sustainable at all. Get those comics in kid's hands at an early age, give them a love for the characters and reading, and you have a new batch of consumers for the next 20 years or so.

I doubt what I want will ever happen, but I'll stay cautiously optimistic. Either way, I'll keep buying my books, and putting them on my shelves.

Fragments of a Dead Story 3

In simplest terms, this is a brief conversation between an old man and a young man about love. I will go back to this story eventually, but with a different approach. Originally about a young man finding a purpose, I think it should become more about the relationship. An old, lonely writer dying and a young man figuring everything out. Of course, it comes down to love and whiskey. The two most important things there are, am I right?

"The next few hours are a blur. We sit, and we talk. About life, about love, everything. At various intervals, Barano jots something down in a notebook.

“My first story, well, I was a little boy, obsessed with cowboys, so my first story was a cowboy story. I must've been eight or nine. But I wrote a story about this masked avenger, riding the plains on a stallion, righting wrongs. I may have been influenced by the Lone Ranger.”

“I was different, my first story...well, see I took a creative writing class in high school, I needed an english elective and this girl I was into was taking it. So I take the class and the very first day, we have to write a short story. I've never done this before, I've got nothing, so I just start writing what is happening. You know “Nick is stuck in class...” etc. I ended up writing a story about how I was writing a story ad nausem.”

Barano starts laughing, a hungry laugh, lifting his head up to the sky.

“Yeah. I got a C+ on that one.”

“So how'd it end up with the girl?”

“We dated for a while, a few years.”

“It's her, isn't it?

“Who?”

“The girl, the one you always write about. She pops up in everything you write.”

“Yeah, yeah I guess she does.”

“Nicholas, you never get over love, but you do have to accept when it's over.”

He looks at me, his glasses outlining his eyes.

“Yeah, I know, Professor. It's just...I don't know if it should've ended.”

“If you still love her, do whatever it takes.”

“I mean, yeah, you can say that, but who's to say this is even love? You said it yourself, young men don't know what love is.”

“I met my wife thirty years ago, when I lived in Europe for a spell. She was breathtaking, long brown hair, caramel eyes. And the way she looked in a dress...she broke necks. I met her through a friend, and we went on dates, and eventually I was able to call her my girlfriend. We took a weekend trip to Italy one time, exploring the vineyards in the countryside. It was a nice trip, the perfect kind for new couples to go on. One afternoon, while we were walking around one of the vineyards, it started pouring raining. So we run up to this gazebo, but of course we're soaked by time we get there. We laugh at this, at our dumb luck, when I look at her, and she just looks...I couldn't help myself, I went right to her, and I kissed her. I knew at that moment I loved her, and always would. We stayed under that gazebo as it rained, just her and I, and it was wonderful. We eventually got married, went through all the pains husbands and wives go through, and then she died. Cancer, five years ago. A year after her death, I returned to Italy, and drove around the countryside, lost in my thoughts. Out of nowhere, I see it:that gazebo, from that night. It looked like it hadn't changed a bit. I get out of my car, and walk onto it, the wood creaked beneath my feet but this was it, it was the exact same gazebo. I close my eyes, and I tell you Nicholas, I was there, on that gazebo, kissing her. It'd been years and years but I could still...I could still taste the rain on her lips."

Best Movies of the Decade #28

28)The Proposition


"Australia. What fresh hell is this? "

Ray Winstone's character, Captain Stanley, utters that phrase early on in the movie, and it pretty much encompasses what this movie is about. Stanley has captured Charlie & Mike Burns, two of Australia's most infamous outlaws 9 days before Christmas. Stanley offers the older Charlie a choice: Hunt down and kill his older brother, Arthur, and they'll be pardoned. Don't and they will hang on Christmas day. So Charlie heads out into the wilderness to track down, and kill, his brother.

This movie is unpleasant. The characters are all unlikeable, yet compelling. Charlie Burns is a murder, true, but damned if he doesn't love his brother. Stanley is using the law for his on purposes, trying to bring a sense of civility to a raw land. and Arthur Burns? Scary is an understatement.

But it works, as a story, it works. As a western, it excels. This is the closest thing to a Sam Peckinpah western to be released in a decade or so. It's violent, raw, and fucking amazing. You'll never look at Christmas dinner quite the same after watching the end of this film.

" I will civilize this land. "

Fragments of a Dead Story 2

I think it's good to go back and reread what you've written before, it's the only way you can get better, I believe. Right now I've hit a wall. I had hoped to have a chapter done by the end of the, but so far it looks like that will not be possible. Words are coming out but it doesn't feel write, and if it doesn;t feel write than it isn't right. So I'm looking back at another failed project of mine: The Elridge Barano Project. Essentially about an older writer dying, a younger writer following in his footsteps, and everything in between. I wrote 5 chapters for it, the 5th one being the strongest, a fairly dark chapter where we learn about someone dying and the crumbling of a young relationship. But in the middle of all this gloom, there was this:
"Sin-Choo relates to me his story:He was at a party, talking to a young, foxy little thing. The kind of girl that portly Asian stoners never get with. She was small, skinny, and perky, a cheerleader with blond hair. They started talking about the usual(music, school, weed) when finally, the perky cheerleader dragged Sin-Choo out to dance. Sin-Choo had never had something like this happen to him, and was nervous as she wrapped her arms around him, swayed her hips with his. Eventually, the girl kissed him(Sin-Choo would've never had the confidence to make that first move), long deep kisses. She leaned up to his ear, and whispered “Let's go upstairs.” before dragging him by the hand up to a random room in the house. After some more kissing, the cheerleader looked at him and bit her lip, asking, “Do you have anything we can smoke?”. Sin-Choo brought out some joints(“Always gotta be prepared, bro!”) and he and the cheerleader inhaled a hefty dose of that Bea Arthur bud (“Shit will make you a Golden Girl, nah' mean?”)The two get promptly high off their ass, and do what comes naturally. After about an hour of stoned sex(“Weed is the new Viagra!”) the cheerleader's boyfriend walks into the room. He takes a moment to analyze the scene, his girlfriend on top of this chubby Asian kid's dick with a joint in her mouth. This would piss off anyone, but would piss off a straight edge male cheerleader even more. He throws the cheerleader off of Sin-Choo and starts hailing down on him with punches, but after a few seconds stops. He reaches up to his face, right above his lip, and wipes off something and looks at it. Sin-Choo, bloody and bruised can't help but laugh. You see, when the boyfriend grabbed his girlfriend off of Sin-Choo, Sin-Choo was finishing up. At the exact moment. So what the boyfriend had just wiped off his upper lip, and was staring at now, was a big load of Sin-Choo's man juice!"

Fragments of a Dead Story 1

Sometimes I'll work on something, for days at a time, only for it to fall apart. Usually what I'm left with is bits and pieces of decent writing, but with no story. That's what happened with "Songs for Claire". Originally an adaptation of a script I once wrote, about a guy whose girlfriend passed away and the only way he can come to terms with his grief is to compile a playlist of songs, a soundtrack to their relationship, as it were. And truthfully, it started off really well. It's a challenge trying to incorporate music into a soundless medium, but I gave it a shot. Well, mid-way through writing the story, it took a sharp turn. It veered into a dark, depressed place. It became an unnerving story involving lies, deceit, etc. There was too much time wasted at the begininng setting up this sweet story for it to take a u-turn mid-way through. Maybe for a full length, it could work, but not as a short story. So I scrapped the entire thing. Still, there are some parts of it I'm proud of, including this section of the story:

"Jude did what he usually did on evenings such as this: He fell back, stuck to the corners and shadows. It's not that he wasn't having fun, he was; but his mind was always churning, the little gears moving in his head. So while his friends would wander off, mingle and dance, Jude would find himself sitting at the bar. He would order whiskey on the rocks, and start doodling on cocktail napkins. This never failed to garner some kind of attention from the opposite sex, curious women interested in the quiet artist with wavy brown hair and two days worth of scruff on his face. They would love the way he looked at them, his blue eyes piercing them as they asked him to draw them. Jude would always oblige of course, constantly drawing a woman's face on a cocktail napkin whenever he was out. He wasn't shy, he held is own during conversations and frequently went home with women, much to the approval of his friends. The next day, they would ask him, “How did it go?” expecting stories detailing Jude's love-making skills. Jude was smile and wink, not letting them know a thing. Jude let his friends believe he was this amorous Irish seducer, able to charm the panties off the ladies with his blue eyes and deft skill with the pen. In truth, half the time he would walk these women to the door, and say good-bye with a long kiss. He would walked away, never looking back to the woman who's heart he just broke and lifted at the same time. Jude would walk home, and go straight to the drawing board, and work manically. He made a habit of drinking, loving, drawing, and then sleeping. To Jude, nothing is better than sunrise after a long night, and he would smoke his one cigarette of the day before he crashed, sleeping until the afternoon. Or until Barry barged into his apartment, waking him up for reasons monetary. As Jude sat at the bar, whiskey in hand and pen behind ear, he assumed that tonight would be just like those nights. Until, that is, he saw Claire. "