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Last weekend, I saw the film Dream House. If you have seen The Amityville Horror, The Shining, Shutter Island, or The Number 23, then you have also seen the film Dream House.
My immediate thought upon exiting the theater: At least Daniel Craig got a wife out of the movie. And a hot wife, too!
As I’m sure I’ve said before, I’ll pretty much see any horror movie. There are only a few things that are beyond my tolerance level, and even those I usually end up watching anyway, because I’m a sick, twisted individual. I think there’s only ever been a couple times in my life I’ve been so disturbed by a movie image that I wondered why I was subjecting myself to this horrid torture. The first was during the opening of the film, Ghost Ship, where about forty people are cut in two by an errant guide wire, and then flop around for a few minutes before they die. Even writing that makes me want to grab my stomach and go “eeeee!” I think the second moment may have been during Piranha 3D. There were so many mangled legs and torsos and decapitated heads and dismembered members, that I had to stop for a moment and think, “Really? You couldn’t go on in life without seeing a piranha eat its way through the back of a porn star‘s head?” But other than that, I’m up for anything. Except maybe The Human Centipede. That's just nasty.
Dream House, however, wasn't nasty, or gory, or disturbing. It was just boring. Even the handsomeness of James Bond couldn't save it. SPOILER ALERT. I’m about to tell you exactly what was so bad about it, so if you’re going to ignore me and the reviewers who gave it a whopping 8% on rottentomatoes.com, then maybe you should go back to playing words with friends on your iPhone.
This movie is very difficult to describe, due to its awfulness, but I’ll give it the old college try.
Daniel Craig decides to give up his cushy job as a publisher to build a dream house with his family and write a novel. Only none of that is real! He murdered his family for no reason, and then forgot about it and was really in a mental hospital. But they had to let him go because there was actually no evidence he actually committed the crime. And now he’s seeing either the ghosts of his dead family, or just hallucinating because he’s crazy pants. Only that‘s not entirely true either, because some other dude killed his family, and he just forgot that, too! But not Naomi Watts’ character, the kindly neighbor across the street. She never gave up hope that her best friend Daniel Craig was magically not the murderer after all, which he wasn’t. The movie ends with Daniel Craig staring at a bookstore window, where his novel he wrote "Dream House" is now a bestseller. Really, Dream House? A published novel balances out family murder? This is almost as bad as A Beautiful Mind where they claimed love cured schizophrenia.
There was a half-hearted attempt to throw in some creepy visuals, like a millisecond shot of the two daughters blending into the wallpaper in a ghostly fashion, as he realizes they are in fact, either spirits or delusions. The house shifts back and forth from moldering pile of wood to cozy fantasy home. Other than that, the only scary parts of the movie was the horrid dialogue.
Oh, the dialogue! Not since poor Natalie Portman in the new Star Wars movies have I ever seen such a abysmal case of good actors gone bad. I don’t like to throw around the word atrocious, because it makes me look like a pompous twit, but the dialogue in Dream House was atrocious. And unnatural. I think maybe the film was written by a robot, and not David Loucka as the internet claims. It relieved me to learn that both Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig were unhappy with how the film turned out and threatened not to do press for it. That’s scruples for you!
If there is one silver lining of this film, is that it made Rachel Weisz leave her fiancé, Darren Aronofsky, who I have never forgiven for creating the movie Pi.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Wash Your Hands After Reading
A lot of people have been asking me about the movie “Contagion,” which came out in theatres a couple weeks ago and directed by Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies & Videotape, Traffic, Ocean‘s 11-13). It seems weird to say I enjoyed it, but I did, though it certainly lacked a strong story arch of typical Hollywood films. It’s more of a factual timeline: what procedure would we follow if this sort of global health crisis actually happened. Who are the important players. How bad could this situation actually get? The answer seems to be pretty damn bad. The good news, you get to see Gwenyth Paltrow cheat on Matt Damon and then die. The bad news is, after watching it you will probably think you are going to die. I know I did!
The movie starts with a woman (Paltrow) at the airport in Chicago, talking on the phone to the man she just cheated on her husband with. She looks tired. If you walked into the theater without reading the title or knowing anything about the film, you’d think this was some sort of relationship drama or thrilling crime movie where a husband goes insane and kills his cheating wife. This movie is not that exciting… in a typical sense. Again, you’re fascinated to see how bad things will get before they turn it around, and the answer again is quite bad. But the film has a very slow pace and focuses more on presenting a ton of factual evidence than titillating us with gruesome death scenes.
In fact, they kind of gloss over the five billion people dying part. We see mass graves, lines of carefully packaged bodies (they mention they’ve run out of body bags so have to make due with taped trash bags) and empty streets with garbage piled up. We see many people die, but only one main character. This is Kate Winslet, who plays a young CDC worker in charge of organizing disease control in one city. As she tries to make the local government officials see just how terrible the situation becomes, she eventually succumbs to the illness herself, dying in one of the very makeshift hospital facilities she helped to set up.
The mystery of how the disease started and spread definitely added to the “excitement,” almost like it was a CSI episode, showing close ups on different characters as they encountered Paltrow’s character and in turn were infected. The waiter who picked up her martini glass. The Japanese business man whose dice she blew on in a casino. The British model-type who picked up Paltrow’s phone when she forgot it on the bar counter. It both fascinated and terrified me, even if you ignore everyone around you, you can’t ignore the germs they’re shoving in your face.
I think that’s what is most compelling of all. Not the film itself but my reaction to it. It has in the time since made me so conscious of how often I touch my face. There’s actually a line in the movie, we touch our faces something like two thousand times a day. That seems insane. But then you add on to that number every time you hold your phone up to your face, after you set it down on a table, or in a pocket, or dropped it on the ground. Not to mention if you eat something and use silverware, which unless you just washed it before eating has either been sitting in a tray or worse for hours before you shoved it in your mouth. It all takes me back to my History of Sickness and Disease course back at U of M. Remember the days when we didn’t know about hand washing? No wonder we all died from the flu. And movies like Contagion seem to suggest that sure, our science and our knowledge of hygiene has improved, but as humans, we’re still disgustingly filthy creatures. How many times have you been in the bathroom at a public place and watched someone half ass wash their hands after using the facilities? Enough to make a movie like Contagion seem chillingly possible.
The movie starts with a woman (Paltrow) at the airport in Chicago, talking on the phone to the man she just cheated on her husband with. She looks tired. If you walked into the theater without reading the title or knowing anything about the film, you’d think this was some sort of relationship drama or thrilling crime movie where a husband goes insane and kills his cheating wife. This movie is not that exciting… in a typical sense. Again, you’re fascinated to see how bad things will get before they turn it around, and the answer again is quite bad. But the film has a very slow pace and focuses more on presenting a ton of factual evidence than titillating us with gruesome death scenes.
In fact, they kind of gloss over the five billion people dying part. We see mass graves, lines of carefully packaged bodies (they mention they’ve run out of body bags so have to make due with taped trash bags) and empty streets with garbage piled up. We see many people die, but only one main character. This is Kate Winslet, who plays a young CDC worker in charge of organizing disease control in one city. As she tries to make the local government officials see just how terrible the situation becomes, she eventually succumbs to the illness herself, dying in one of the very makeshift hospital facilities she helped to set up.
The mystery of how the disease started and spread definitely added to the “excitement,” almost like it was a CSI episode, showing close ups on different characters as they encountered Paltrow’s character and in turn were infected. The waiter who picked up her martini glass. The Japanese business man whose dice she blew on in a casino. The British model-type who picked up Paltrow’s phone when she forgot it on the bar counter. It both fascinated and terrified me, even if you ignore everyone around you, you can’t ignore the germs they’re shoving in your face.
I think that’s what is most compelling of all. Not the film itself but my reaction to it. It has in the time since made me so conscious of how often I touch my face. There’s actually a line in the movie, we touch our faces something like two thousand times a day. That seems insane. But then you add on to that number every time you hold your phone up to your face, after you set it down on a table, or in a pocket, or dropped it on the ground. Not to mention if you eat something and use silverware, which unless you just washed it before eating has either been sitting in a tray or worse for hours before you shoved it in your mouth. It all takes me back to my History of Sickness and Disease course back at U of M. Remember the days when we didn’t know about hand washing? No wonder we all died from the flu. And movies like Contagion seem to suggest that sure, our science and our knowledge of hygiene has improved, but as humans, we’re still disgustingly filthy creatures. How many times have you been in the bathroom at a public place and watched someone half ass wash their hands after using the facilities? Enough to make a movie like Contagion seem chillingly possible.
Friday, September 9, 2011
If Rats Could Hold Scissors, This Is What Would Happen
From the man who brought you the Hellboy movies, and that freaky white eyeball hand monster in Pan’s Labyrinth, comes a brand new horror film based off of a 1973 TV program where the monsters are a hoard of tiny gray hunchbacks armed with scissors. That film is: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, written and produced by Guillermo del Toro.
I heart this man. He makes fun movies, and he makes lots of fat jokes about himself. What’s not to like?
So, the latest bit of awesomeness from Mr. del Toro is not only this film, but a companion book entitled “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Blackwood’s Guide to Dangerous Fairies.” Leave it to Guillermo to turn fairies into murderous beasts. It’s not the most original recipe for horror. You start with your average creepy New England house and throw in a supernatural creature that only one person can see. In this case the baddies are evil, teeth-eating “fairies,” who try to lure the young, mentally-unstable Sally into their fiendish games to chomp on her chompers. But del Toro couldn’t be average if he tried and the resulting film is anything but boring. (Though to be fair, the fairy attacks get a little redundant before the final girl vs. fairy battle royale.) Highlights include an old timey Victorian nature painter getting sucked into a furnace after he smashes out his maid’s teeth and Katie Holmes being thrown down some stairs. Weeee!
If you like the sort of flick where a person may or may not be getting her head ripped to pieces in a bear trap, then this is not the movie for you. If however, you enjoy suspense and creepy houses and insane historical figures, then by all means you should definitely see this film. I can’t compare it to the original, because in my opinion, the 1970s never happened, thus the original doesn‘t exist. Sorry to everyone ages forty-one to thirty two. YOU WERE NEVER BORN!
It’s a tricky thing basing a movie around a child protagonist. Even if the film deals with serious story matter, many adult viewers simply tune right out whenever they see a child in the lead. But del Toro certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem pulling it off. Pan’s Labyrinth proved that for sure, and I feel Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark fairs just as well in that track.
The movie is fun, but to be honest, the book is what gives it that added air of mystery. Remember that dude who got shoved into a furnace in the movie? Well, that’s the alleged Blackwood who “wrote“ Guillermo del Toro‘s book. Think Audubon, a.k.a. the dude who painted every single picture in every single bird book ever printed, ever. Imagine if that dude went insane after coming across some less than typical “creatures” on his nature hikes. Imagine that those same “creatures” tried to eat his face off, and then he wrote a book so that others might avoid the same fate.
Then he went insane and bashed out his own teeth before getting turned into an evil fairy himself.
Blackwood’s illustrations are beyond weird and disturbing, which is exactly why you should at least go leaf through the book at your local purveyor or lender of bound paper goods. The cover alone displays a terrified child, entwined in villainous, Poltergeist-style tree branches, being held just inches above a sea of dark, spindly, twisted claws, ripping forth from the soil to drag the child down to hell. You will want to tear out the page and tape it on your wall so it can haunt you and inspire you to write or draw something equally deranged and brilliant.
Oh Guillermo del Toro! What amazing thing will you do next? Wait, I know this one. The answer is help write the Hobbit movies and down the line do a Cthulhu movie.
And you all wondered why I wanted to name my child after him.
I heart this man. He makes fun movies, and he makes lots of fat jokes about himself. What’s not to like?
So, the latest bit of awesomeness from Mr. del Toro is not only this film, but a companion book entitled “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Blackwood’s Guide to Dangerous Fairies.” Leave it to Guillermo to turn fairies into murderous beasts. It’s not the most original recipe for horror. You start with your average creepy New England house and throw in a supernatural creature that only one person can see. In this case the baddies are evil, teeth-eating “fairies,” who try to lure the young, mentally-unstable Sally into their fiendish games to chomp on her chompers. But del Toro couldn’t be average if he tried and the resulting film is anything but boring. (Though to be fair, the fairy attacks get a little redundant before the final girl vs. fairy battle royale.) Highlights include an old timey Victorian nature painter getting sucked into a furnace after he smashes out his maid’s teeth and Katie Holmes being thrown down some stairs. Weeee!
If you like the sort of flick where a person may or may not be getting her head ripped to pieces in a bear trap, then this is not the movie for you. If however, you enjoy suspense and creepy houses and insane historical figures, then by all means you should definitely see this film. I can’t compare it to the original, because in my opinion, the 1970s never happened, thus the original doesn‘t exist. Sorry to everyone ages forty-one to thirty two. YOU WERE NEVER BORN!
It’s a tricky thing basing a movie around a child protagonist. Even if the film deals with serious story matter, many adult viewers simply tune right out whenever they see a child in the lead. But del Toro certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem pulling it off. Pan’s Labyrinth proved that for sure, and I feel Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark fairs just as well in that track.
The movie is fun, but to be honest, the book is what gives it that added air of mystery. Remember that dude who got shoved into a furnace in the movie? Well, that’s the alleged Blackwood who “wrote“ Guillermo del Toro‘s book. Think Audubon, a.k.a. the dude who painted every single picture in every single bird book ever printed, ever. Imagine if that dude went insane after coming across some less than typical “creatures” on his nature hikes. Imagine that those same “creatures” tried to eat his face off, and then he wrote a book so that others might avoid the same fate.
Then he went insane and bashed out his own teeth before getting turned into an evil fairy himself.
Blackwood’s illustrations are beyond weird and disturbing, which is exactly why you should at least go leaf through the book at your local purveyor or lender of bound paper goods. The cover alone displays a terrified child, entwined in villainous, Poltergeist-style tree branches, being held just inches above a sea of dark, spindly, twisted claws, ripping forth from the soil to drag the child down to hell. You will want to tear out the page and tape it on your wall so it can haunt you and inspire you to write or draw something equally deranged and brilliant.
Oh Guillermo del Toro! What amazing thing will you do next? Wait, I know this one. The answer is help write the Hobbit movies and down the line do a Cthulhu movie.
And you all wondered why I wanted to name my child after him.
Friday, September 2, 2011
This Book Could Only Have Been Improved With A Batboy
As I’ve mentioned before, when I’m trolling the bookstore for new reads (and new nerd boyfriends) there are key words I look for when reading dust jackets. These are words like “wizard,” “viking wizard,” “airship,“ and “magic orb of doom.” Is this the best method for picking out a book? Probably not. Which is why I look at the cover, too. It’s a very serious process.
This week my literary fishing yielded me an excellent choice. The title: “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” written by Ransom Riggs. I think the fact that the author sounded like a 1800’s cowboy was also a selling point. On the cover was a black and white photo of a girl dressed in a flapper-style dress… floating an inch off the ground. Peculiar indeed!
Here’s the story. Jacob, a modern day young man hears stories from his grandfather about escaping Poland before WW2. Leaving all his family behind, he went to stay at a safe house for children in Wales. Except it wasn’t just a safe house, it was a school for kids with weird abilities and powers. An invisible boy. Another with bees in his stomach. A little girl who can fly. Of course, like every obnoxious sarcastic teen, the main character doesn’t believe his grandfather, until LIFE CHANGING EVENTS force him to seek out grandpa’s alleged school of freaky tots.
Danger. Monsters. Thuggish 1940’s Welsh village folk. Other than the occasional awkward moments of teen romance between Jacob and one of the “peculiar“ girls, I thought it was an excellent story, surpassing the rather narrow framework of most young adult fiction. I liked the historical elements tied in, the attacks on the small island town by Nazi planes, the ideas of xenophobia vs. tolerance. I don’t mean to detract from the enormity of those real historical tragedies that occurred during this time period, but making Jacob’s family Jewish just added to the complexity of the work. We’ve seen over and again the Christ mythology creeping into the works of famous fantasy authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, so it’s interesting to finally see a character with a different religious background interacting with some fairy people. I’m probably reading too much into this idea, but whether or not Riggs intended this to be something of note, it certainly got me pondering. Let me clarify though, this is not a book about the Holocaust or Jewish culture. It’s just the story of a boy with Jewish ancestry who finds out his Holocaust surviving grandpa grew up to be a kin to Buffy the vampire slayer.
What really set the book apart though were the included pictures. Throughout the text, Riggs placed authentic vintage photos taken from various artistic collections to match characters being mentioned. Some were simply old-fashioned and creepy, and only gained greater meaning through their pairing with the novel. Some, however, were rather curious indeed, like the floating girl on the cover. Now in a world of modern photoshop, such pictures aren’t really remarkable, though Riggs insists that they haven’t been altered. Him, I believe, but what about the weirdos who shot the photos back in 1930 or whenever? Who knows. Maybe someone did have a second mouth growing out of the back of their head, or maybe there was a primordial dwarf who was so small they could fit her inside a mason jar.
If nothing else, real or not, the photos prove that people at the turn of the century were some real freakshows. For example, one picture shows two identical twin children in weird clown outfits with one pulling a rope out of the other’s mouth. Why was that photo taken? What does it mean? Is it part of a circus show? Or was Mommy and Daddy hitting the cocaine a little hard before family portrait day? Who knows? The book just goes to show you that even if magic doesn’t exist in our world, we will never lack for things that are peculiar.
This week my literary fishing yielded me an excellent choice. The title: “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” written by Ransom Riggs. I think the fact that the author sounded like a 1800’s cowboy was also a selling point. On the cover was a black and white photo of a girl dressed in a flapper-style dress… floating an inch off the ground. Peculiar indeed!
Here’s the story. Jacob, a modern day young man hears stories from his grandfather about escaping Poland before WW2. Leaving all his family behind, he went to stay at a safe house for children in Wales. Except it wasn’t just a safe house, it was a school for kids with weird abilities and powers. An invisible boy. Another with bees in his stomach. A little girl who can fly. Of course, like every obnoxious sarcastic teen, the main character doesn’t believe his grandfather, until LIFE CHANGING EVENTS force him to seek out grandpa’s alleged school of freaky tots.
Danger. Monsters. Thuggish 1940’s Welsh village folk. Other than the occasional awkward moments of teen romance between Jacob and one of the “peculiar“ girls, I thought it was an excellent story, surpassing the rather narrow framework of most young adult fiction. I liked the historical elements tied in, the attacks on the small island town by Nazi planes, the ideas of xenophobia vs. tolerance. I don’t mean to detract from the enormity of those real historical tragedies that occurred during this time period, but making Jacob’s family Jewish just added to the complexity of the work. We’ve seen over and again the Christ mythology creeping into the works of famous fantasy authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, so it’s interesting to finally see a character with a different religious background interacting with some fairy people. I’m probably reading too much into this idea, but whether or not Riggs intended this to be something of note, it certainly got me pondering. Let me clarify though, this is not a book about the Holocaust or Jewish culture. It’s just the story of a boy with Jewish ancestry who finds out his Holocaust surviving grandpa grew up to be a kin to Buffy the vampire slayer.
What really set the book apart though were the included pictures. Throughout the text, Riggs placed authentic vintage photos taken from various artistic collections to match characters being mentioned. Some were simply old-fashioned and creepy, and only gained greater meaning through their pairing with the novel. Some, however, were rather curious indeed, like the floating girl on the cover. Now in a world of modern photoshop, such pictures aren’t really remarkable, though Riggs insists that they haven’t been altered. Him, I believe, but what about the weirdos who shot the photos back in 1930 or whenever? Who knows. Maybe someone did have a second mouth growing out of the back of their head, or maybe there was a primordial dwarf who was so small they could fit her inside a mason jar.
If nothing else, real or not, the photos prove that people at the turn of the century were some real freakshows. For example, one picture shows two identical twin children in weird clown outfits with one pulling a rope out of the other’s mouth. Why was that photo taken? What does it mean? Is it part of a circus show? Or was Mommy and Daddy hitting the cocaine a little hard before family portrait day? Who knows? The book just goes to show you that even if magic doesn’t exist in our world, we will never lack for things that are peculiar.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Magicians Are Like Lying Wizards
This is not another attempt to talk crap about Christopher Nolan, I swear. I actually really liked his movie “The Prestige” when I saw it back in 2006. What was there not to like about this movie? Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale play two finely sculpted magicians in Victorian England AND David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla!!! Seriously, more famous musicians need to play famous inventors or scientists. I would now like to write the film where Tom Waits and Eddie Vedder play the Wright Brothers.
My point is, I liked “The Prestige.” It’s great. You should totally go rent it, or Netflix it, or however it is that people watch movies these days. “The Prestige” is an enjoyable movie. But do you know what was even MORE ENJOYABLE? The book.
Yup, it’s based off of a book, like almost every other movie in Hollywood right now. A fabulous book actually, written by a fellow named Christopher Priest. It reads sort of like if Jane Austen wrote a book about magicians trying to kill each other.
This is one of those stories that talking about it in too much detail kind of ruins the whole party, so I’ll try not to let slip too many spoilers. I think it’s safe to say that the book is a lot clearer on what the heck is happening than the movie. The movie is all mysterious and suspenseful, but the book relies more on possibly untrustworthy narratives and misinformation to hide its secret plot points. Still, I felt at the end I had reached a satisfactory conclusion, which is something Mr. Nolan seems hesitant to offer up in any of his films.
Wait, I promised not to talk crap about Christopher Nolan. Okay, back on topic. The book.
Priest’s “The Prestige” is far creepier than the movie. Again, it’s a matter of carefully revealing enough about… certain events… to make readers wonder what these characters are talking about, but never fully coming out or showing you until the very, very end.
Okay, enough of the vagueness. Now I’m just going to throw a bunch of buzz words at you so as not to ruin the experience but at least give you a little taste of what the story holds:
Racks of dead bodies.
Insane foreign inventors.
A ghost with a knife.
Dark family secrets.
Childhood electrocution.
If my memory serves me correctly, the movie only had two out of five, so my sheer math, the book should be better, right?
The book version also throws in a whole present day sub-story where the descendants of each magician meet up again to uncover their ancestors’ torrid past. At first it seemed like an annoying stutter step to the real action. But just when we think the magicians’ demises will never be explained, Priest snaps us back to the present, into a darkened cellar, for one final chapter. This chapter turns out to be one of the most intense, terrifying, parts of the whole book. Everything up to that is a character study, a mystery, but that last chapter is like a shot of adrenaline mixed with hillbilly moonshine: intense and crazy.
So this is why I like the book better, not because the director did a poor job, but simply because there wasn’t enough time to tell the full story. Nolan’s film runs two hours and ten minutes even after cutting out huge chunks of the book. But if you read it, you’ll see how readers are left with an entirely different feeling at the end of the book than at the end of the movie. The book is darker, more haunting, but in my opinion more satisfying in the end.
My point is, I liked “The Prestige.” It’s great. You should totally go rent it, or Netflix it, or however it is that people watch movies these days. “The Prestige” is an enjoyable movie. But do you know what was even MORE ENJOYABLE? The book.
Yup, it’s based off of a book, like almost every other movie in Hollywood right now. A fabulous book actually, written by a fellow named Christopher Priest. It reads sort of like if Jane Austen wrote a book about magicians trying to kill each other.
This is one of those stories that talking about it in too much detail kind of ruins the whole party, so I’ll try not to let slip too many spoilers. I think it’s safe to say that the book is a lot clearer on what the heck is happening than the movie. The movie is all mysterious and suspenseful, but the book relies more on possibly untrustworthy narratives and misinformation to hide its secret plot points. Still, I felt at the end I had reached a satisfactory conclusion, which is something Mr. Nolan seems hesitant to offer up in any of his films.
Wait, I promised not to talk crap about Christopher Nolan. Okay, back on topic. The book.
Priest’s “The Prestige” is far creepier than the movie. Again, it’s a matter of carefully revealing enough about… certain events… to make readers wonder what these characters are talking about, but never fully coming out or showing you until the very, very end.
Okay, enough of the vagueness. Now I’m just going to throw a bunch of buzz words at you so as not to ruin the experience but at least give you a little taste of what the story holds:
Racks of dead bodies.
Insane foreign inventors.
A ghost with a knife.
Dark family secrets.
Childhood electrocution.
If my memory serves me correctly, the movie only had two out of five, so my sheer math, the book should be better, right?
The book version also throws in a whole present day sub-story where the descendants of each magician meet up again to uncover their ancestors’ torrid past. At first it seemed like an annoying stutter step to the real action. But just when we think the magicians’ demises will never be explained, Priest snaps us back to the present, into a darkened cellar, for one final chapter. This chapter turns out to be one of the most intense, terrifying, parts of the whole book. Everything up to that is a character study, a mystery, but that last chapter is like a shot of adrenaline mixed with hillbilly moonshine: intense and crazy.
So this is why I like the book better, not because the director did a poor job, but simply because there wasn’t enough time to tell the full story. Nolan’s film runs two hours and ten minutes even after cutting out huge chunks of the book. But if you read it, you’ll see how readers are left with an entirely different feeling at the end of the book than at the end of the movie. The book is darker, more haunting, but in my opinion more satisfying in the end.
Friday, August 19, 2011
The 90s Were A Weird Time For Everyone
Over twenty years ago, a young Steinho got her own TV in her bedroom. This was partially due to wee Steinho having sleeping problems, which in turn was possibly due to dreams about man eating pigs and alien death worms, which is a story for a different day so back to the TV. It was an old TV without a remote, where you literally had to push buttons on the box to change the channel, and there were only eight buttons.
Some of the programs I liked to watch included “In Living Color,” “The Arsenio Hall Show,” and the home shopping network. I can’t explain these choices, other than that I thought Arsenio Hall was simply a newscaster, and then his opening monologue was not a series of jokes, but the same as watching someone like Peter Jennings. I remember after the whole Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of the pope situation, Arsenio had “the Pope” on his show to rip up a picture of her. I actually believed it was the pope, and was quite impressed that this holy man would take the time to amp up his cool image by visiting a late night talk show.
Anyway, in the grand scheme of evening television watching, I was exposed to a lot of weird programs in my battle with insomnia. Probably one of the strangest ones came in 1992, going on my tenth year on this planet. It was a post apocalyptical sitcom entitled “Woops!” It only aired I think nine or ten episodes, but the fact that it lasted even that long remains puzzling.
Here’s the logline of “Woops!” in a nutshell. Six crazy characters survive a nuclear holocaust and live on a farm. And it’s a comedy!
The show included such fascinating stories such as this golden nugget: the feminist plain jane discovers a magical crystal that makes her boobs grow bigger! See, that’s the good thing about starting with such a wacky concept for your show. Once you set the bar, things like magical crystals are totally acceptable! And how about this gem of an episode! The only black survivor happens to be a scientist, and the smartest one of the bunch. But when the former business man gets amnesia and believes he’s still living in a pre-apocalypse world, he thinks the sophisticated scientist is really his old black chauffeur! And he makes him sing Old Man River? Say whaaaat? These are the sort of wacky shenanigans you can only get on a one season failed sitcom. And on the Fox network no less!
Now, I don’t have a photographic memory, but I do have a pretty good one. I don’t know why “Woops!” stuck in my head. Yet, there it was. A shining beacon of bad TV. I can still picture the white dude being driven around on a tractor while poor scientist man sang Old Man River. I must’ve been only one of ten people to ever witness this scene, because I’ve been asking people for the last 20 years if they’d heard of the show, and no one ever said yes. And it was so crazy of an idea, no one could believe such a show could actually exist. I am not kidding when I say at some point, I wondered if I’d imagined it. After all, I’d been ten-years-old and prone to insane night hallucinations.
Then I read Phil Rosenthal’s book (blog post from March 23rd) and in a casual reference he mentioned the TV show. Oh, Phil Rosenthal, thank you! And not just for hugging me when I met you back in March. You gave me the gift of sanity.
You’re probably wondering, why the fizzle am I talking about a TV show that was canceled twenty years ago. Well, the honest answer is simply because it’s comical and I was thinking about it today. The intelligent answer, is that I’ve learned a lot about the television business in the last two years. The lesson of “Woops!” is how difficult it is to actually make a successful TV show. First you have to write an amazing pilot episode, and find a network/production company who wants to produce this pilot. Then if the pilot is good, maybe the network will pick it up for a certain number of episodes. And even then, if they don’t like the first ones you film, they can take those episodes back at any time. Twenty episodes can become thirteen can become six. If you look up “Woops!” on the internet, you‘ll see there were a few more they made that never aired. There are probably heaps and heaps of unaired shows, or shows that only ten people have seen before they were pulled. Most of these are terrible, but sadly some are really great, and were canceled simply because not enough people liked them. “Firefly” and “Freaks and Geeks” are two that I lamented the end of.
But there’s two sides to every coin. Yes, a lot of good shows get canceled too soon. Then, there are the shows like “Woops!” which lasted ten episodes. That’s ten more than a lot of scripts get and the fact that it got made at all just gives me hope. Because no matter how bad some of my ideas are, they’ve got to be better than “Woops!”
Some of the programs I liked to watch included “In Living Color,” “The Arsenio Hall Show,” and the home shopping network. I can’t explain these choices, other than that I thought Arsenio Hall was simply a newscaster, and then his opening monologue was not a series of jokes, but the same as watching someone like Peter Jennings. I remember after the whole Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of the pope situation, Arsenio had “the Pope” on his show to rip up a picture of her. I actually believed it was the pope, and was quite impressed that this holy man would take the time to amp up his cool image by visiting a late night talk show.
Anyway, in the grand scheme of evening television watching, I was exposed to a lot of weird programs in my battle with insomnia. Probably one of the strangest ones came in 1992, going on my tenth year on this planet. It was a post apocalyptical sitcom entitled “Woops!” It only aired I think nine or ten episodes, but the fact that it lasted even that long remains puzzling.
Here’s the logline of “Woops!” in a nutshell. Six crazy characters survive a nuclear holocaust and live on a farm. And it’s a comedy!
The show included such fascinating stories such as this golden nugget: the feminist plain jane discovers a magical crystal that makes her boobs grow bigger! See, that’s the good thing about starting with such a wacky concept for your show. Once you set the bar, things like magical crystals are totally acceptable! And how about this gem of an episode! The only black survivor happens to be a scientist, and the smartest one of the bunch. But when the former business man gets amnesia and believes he’s still living in a pre-apocalypse world, he thinks the sophisticated scientist is really his old black chauffeur! And he makes him sing Old Man River? Say whaaaat? These are the sort of wacky shenanigans you can only get on a one season failed sitcom. And on the Fox network no less!
Now, I don’t have a photographic memory, but I do have a pretty good one. I don’t know why “Woops!” stuck in my head. Yet, there it was. A shining beacon of bad TV. I can still picture the white dude being driven around on a tractor while poor scientist man sang Old Man River. I must’ve been only one of ten people to ever witness this scene, because I’ve been asking people for the last 20 years if they’d heard of the show, and no one ever said yes. And it was so crazy of an idea, no one could believe such a show could actually exist. I am not kidding when I say at some point, I wondered if I’d imagined it. After all, I’d been ten-years-old and prone to insane night hallucinations.
Then I read Phil Rosenthal’s book (blog post from March 23rd) and in a casual reference he mentioned the TV show. Oh, Phil Rosenthal, thank you! And not just for hugging me when I met you back in March. You gave me the gift of sanity.
You’re probably wondering, why the fizzle am I talking about a TV show that was canceled twenty years ago. Well, the honest answer is simply because it’s comical and I was thinking about it today. The intelligent answer, is that I’ve learned a lot about the television business in the last two years. The lesson of “Woops!” is how difficult it is to actually make a successful TV show. First you have to write an amazing pilot episode, and find a network/production company who wants to produce this pilot. Then if the pilot is good, maybe the network will pick it up for a certain number of episodes. And even then, if they don’t like the first ones you film, they can take those episodes back at any time. Twenty episodes can become thirteen can become six. If you look up “Woops!” on the internet, you‘ll see there were a few more they made that never aired. There are probably heaps and heaps of unaired shows, or shows that only ten people have seen before they were pulled. Most of these are terrible, but sadly some are really great, and were canceled simply because not enough people liked them. “Firefly” and “Freaks and Geeks” are two that I lamented the end of.
But there’s two sides to every coin. Yes, a lot of good shows get canceled too soon. Then, there are the shows like “Woops!” which lasted ten episodes. That’s ten more than a lot of scripts get and the fact that it got made at all just gives me hope. Because no matter how bad some of my ideas are, they’ve got to be better than “Woops!”
Friday, August 12, 2011
There Are Worse Imaginary Friends Than An Octopus Monster
I am very fortunate to work in a profession where my nerdliness is not only tolerated, but encouraged to grow like some kind of heinous, flesh eating monster plant. Such was the case this past week when the subject of conversation turned to H.P. Lovecraft, specifically the Cthulhu mythology. Much to my surprise, it would appear that far less people know about Cthulhu than I imagined. Shocking, I know! It’s sort of like that time my sister didn’t even know what a necromancer was! I thought doctors were supposed to be smart!
Anyway, who the heck is Cthulhu? Well, the simple answer is he’s a bad ass octopus-dragon-man being who’s trapped in a frozen underwater city, because if he wasn’t, he’d be busy taking over our dimension or at the very least, hanging out with his fleet of Cthulhu cult worshippers. Lovecraft first brought Cthulhu onto the literary scene in 1928 for the pulp magazine “Weird Tales.” A fairly appropriate title, I’d say.
I’ve always wondered, what exactly was going on in the brain of young Howard Phillips Lovecraft, considering just how weird his tales are. I mean how crazy does a man have to be to invent a maniacal squid alien monster living in an ice city? He certainly has an interesting history, riddled with despair and mental disease. With all that happened, I suppose the real wonder would be if Lovecraft had become a boring, stable investment banker instead.
The family madness goes all the way back to when little Lovecraft was only three years old, when his father, a traveling jewelry and precious metal salesman, was first institutionalized after going “acutely psychotic” in a Chicago hotel room. What on earth does that mean? Well, apparently it means he had syphilis and went mad from it. Sources are unsure if young Lovecraft ever knew the true nature of his father’s illness, though, so if you’re reading my blog, ghost of H.P. Lovecraft, sorry you had to read about your crazy father‘s STD on a web diary.
Thank goodness Lovecraft wasn’t completely alone after his father’s death. No, he had Whipple Van Buren Phillips to take care of him. Suddenly the name Cthulhu doesn’t seem all that weird. Seriously, I want to time travel back to this era just to meet Whipple Van Buren Phillips and say, “Hello Mr. Phillips,” and have him say, “Please! My friends call me Whipple!” Anyway, we science fiction/horror nerds should all say a little thank you to good old Whipple, for he was the first one to introduce young Lovecraft to the macabre and strange, telling the boy ghost stories he’d written himself, much to H.P.’s mother’s dismay. Well, dear old Ma had very little to say in the end. She ended up in the same mental institution as her dear husband did, though not necessarily from the same STD. And despite Lovecraft’s moderate success, he only continued to grow poorer and poorer the older he got, until finally dying of intestinal cancer, Bright’s disease, and malnutrition at the age of 47.
In conclusion, writers have horrible lives.
No, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. I would simply like to pose the question, was it the harsh circumstances of his life that lead Lovecraft’s mind to wander to these dark, disturbed worlds? Had he been wealthier and happier with more stable, less diseasy parents, would his lack of misery led to a lack in creativity as well? Or would his mastery of prose simply have churned out brighter stories and adventures? How fine is the line between genius and totally whackadoodle crazypants?
And if you have an answer to this question, I’d love to hear it. Because, I may or may not have written a story where some sort of demonic earth monster rips a bunch of gold prospectors to pieces before nailing their body parts to a tree, and I’d kind of like to know exactly how crazy that makes me.
Anyway, who the heck is Cthulhu? Well, the simple answer is he’s a bad ass octopus-dragon-man being who’s trapped in a frozen underwater city, because if he wasn’t, he’d be busy taking over our dimension or at the very least, hanging out with his fleet of Cthulhu cult worshippers. Lovecraft first brought Cthulhu onto the literary scene in 1928 for the pulp magazine “Weird Tales.” A fairly appropriate title, I’d say.
I’ve always wondered, what exactly was going on in the brain of young Howard Phillips Lovecraft, considering just how weird his tales are. I mean how crazy does a man have to be to invent a maniacal squid alien monster living in an ice city? He certainly has an interesting history, riddled with despair and mental disease. With all that happened, I suppose the real wonder would be if Lovecraft had become a boring, stable investment banker instead.
The family madness goes all the way back to when little Lovecraft was only three years old, when his father, a traveling jewelry and precious metal salesman, was first institutionalized after going “acutely psychotic” in a Chicago hotel room. What on earth does that mean? Well, apparently it means he had syphilis and went mad from it. Sources are unsure if young Lovecraft ever knew the true nature of his father’s illness, though, so if you’re reading my blog, ghost of H.P. Lovecraft, sorry you had to read about your crazy father‘s STD on a web diary.
Thank goodness Lovecraft wasn’t completely alone after his father’s death. No, he had Whipple Van Buren Phillips to take care of him. Suddenly the name Cthulhu doesn’t seem all that weird. Seriously, I want to time travel back to this era just to meet Whipple Van Buren Phillips and say, “Hello Mr. Phillips,” and have him say, “Please! My friends call me Whipple!” Anyway, we science fiction/horror nerds should all say a little thank you to good old Whipple, for he was the first one to introduce young Lovecraft to the macabre and strange, telling the boy ghost stories he’d written himself, much to H.P.’s mother’s dismay. Well, dear old Ma had very little to say in the end. She ended up in the same mental institution as her dear husband did, though not necessarily from the same STD. And despite Lovecraft’s moderate success, he only continued to grow poorer and poorer the older he got, until finally dying of intestinal cancer, Bright’s disease, and malnutrition at the age of 47.
In conclusion, writers have horrible lives.
No, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. I would simply like to pose the question, was it the harsh circumstances of his life that lead Lovecraft’s mind to wander to these dark, disturbed worlds? Had he been wealthier and happier with more stable, less diseasy parents, would his lack of misery led to a lack in creativity as well? Or would his mastery of prose simply have churned out brighter stories and adventures? How fine is the line between genius and totally whackadoodle crazypants?
And if you have an answer to this question, I’d love to hear it. Because, I may or may not have written a story where some sort of demonic earth monster rips a bunch of gold prospectors to pieces before nailing their body parts to a tree, and I’d kind of like to know exactly how crazy that makes me.
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