When Netflix introduced "Marvel's Daredevil" (Not just Daredevil, MARVEL's Daredevil) I watched a couple of episodes and then stopped watching for a few weeks. This was when I had been binge-watching Star Trek (TOS) and like Spock I made the logical decision which is that Netflix could dump Trek any time but Marvel's Daredevil was new and a Netflix original so it would obviously be there longer.
Anyway, I finally got back to it and the show started to pick up momentum. It is far better than "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD" which lost me mid-first season and then only tepidly got me back for the finale. For one thing there's actual superhero stuff, which let's face it is what we want from MARVEL. Though I continue to think if they had made AoS a gritty spy thriller show (or even a less-funny version of Archer) it would have been better.
I think the biggest positive about Marvel's Daredevil this first season is it was NOT connected to anything else. Sure they mention the attack on New York, but that's pretty much it. Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, the Hulk, etc. don't make an appearance. Coulson and the Mystery Machine don't show up either. There are no setups for Avengers 2 or Ant-Man or anything else Marvel has in the pipeline--presumably. This allows Marvel's Daredevil to stand alone on an island and just worry about delivering the gritty street justice people want. That's as big as the plot gets and who really wants anything more than that?
Watching this season of "DC's Arrow" (come on DC, it's called branding) and watching Avengers 2 and reading reviews of "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD" it seems that while it's cool to have superhero properties cross over, it soon starts to weigh things down. I mean like the finale of "DC's Arrow" where Oliver's friends are all trapped in a dungeon and the Flash comes in to save them as the human deus ex machina. Just as the night before Oliver and Firestorm showed up at the end of the episode as human deus ex machinas. Which again while it's great to watch Oliver, Firestorm, and the Flash fight Reverse Flash, afterwards we have to come up with some lame explanation for why Oliver has to go away (and how did he even get there?) so he can be in his show. Just like on "Arrow" Barry has to make a lame excuse for why he can't just race to Starling City and kick Ra's al Guhl's ass. I mean if you're going to be the human deus ex machina then why play that card 3 minutes into the episode and then take it out of the deck?
From what I've read about AoS season 2 is a lot of it involves setting up Inhumans and whatnot plus they had to have a story arc to help set up the beginning of Avengers 2. That's a lot worse than your buddies showing up to help you with a fight; that's other properties actually dictating the plot of your show. Which I don't know why they're bothering with the Inhumans crap when that movie doesn't even come out until what, 2018? You really think ABC is going to keep propping up AoS that long just because of "synergy?" (It's Disney, the company that created a whole NHL franchise to promote a movie, so maybe.)
With DC bringing in 3 more shows next years (Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, and Titans) I imagine the problem is only going to get worse for their shows. At least Gotham is a lame prequel and thus can stay in its own little bottle universe.
To get back to Daredevil, like I said, the good thing is it didn't have those complications. That makes the plot uncluttered and allows you the viewer to focus on just those characters and stories. You don't need to have watched any other MARVEL show or movie to know what's going on in Daredevil, especially not the underrated Affleck movie. It would help if you had read some of the comics to get some of the references in the show. Since they were on sale I read 4 volumes of old Daredevil comics and that came in handy to know the players, even minor ones like Melvin Potter (Gladiator in the comics, which holy Easter Egg he has a gladiator fight poster on the wall of his shop) or Turk the low-level criminal who always seems to be the first arm Daredevil breaks when looking for information.
The lack of complication made for better watching and also the fact it's on Netflix, so they can use naughty words and so forth, unlike AoS. The plot is pretty easy to follow: there's a blind guy with ultra-sensitive other senses and ninja training who goes around in a mask to beat people up. At first he's taking on low-level criminals but eventually has to go toe-to-toe with Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin in the comics. They call him the Kingpin in the comics because he controls all crime in the New York area, despite that New York City is home to like a thousand superheroes. And it's pretty much the same in the show where he leads an alliance of all the major factions: Russians, Chinese, Japanese, and old-fashioned American gangsters. In retro "Robocop" and "Darkman" fashion Fisk wants to tear down Hell's Kitchen to rebuild it into Delta City or whatever. (Really I thought they already gentrified Hell's Kitchen and called it Chelsea or something in real life but I don't live in New York so maybe that was a different neighborhood.) To build his city of tomorrow he has to buy up old buildings and push people out and all that stuff. Gradually "the man in the mask" ie Daredevil starts to wear down his well-oiled machine.
If there was one problem I had it's that they introduced Fisk's future bride Vanessa too early. I mean the first few times we really get to see Fisk he's acting like a lovesick 14-year-old over this chick. He's supposed to be this big badass crime boss, not some emo kid. Then he kills a Russian guy with his bare hands (and a car door) and it's a little better. I don't know, I just think they should have led with him going Darth Vader and killing some flunkie before introducing the whole love story thing. That's probably just me.
It's good by the end Daredevil gets his real costume because that whole black sweater, pants, scarf ensemble was pretty lame. And they show his real costume on the Netflix show icon so it's like, When's he going to get that? Not until the last fucking episode because basically this whole season was an origin story.
(Spoiler) I was pretty shocked when Ben Urich, the intrepid reporter, died because obviously he's still alive in the comic books. Or at least the ones I read. Is there a Lazarus Pit or experimental brain surgery to bring him back? The thing is now that MARVEL has Spider-Man back maybe they can work the Daily Bugle into the show because in the comics Ben Urich worked there with Peter Parker, albeit Parker was freelance, but whatever. Then they can get someone to play J Jonah Jameson.
Anyway, the trouble ahead for this show is that Netflix has 2 other series coming (AKA Jessica Jones and Luke Cage) which will all lead to a Defenders movie or miniseries or some damned thing. Which means a great street level superhero story will have to start incorporating more shit to form a "cinematic universe." Or whatever universe you'd consider Netflix to be. Next thing you know Daredevil will be fighting the Kingpin and Luke Cage will come in as human deus ex machina and then the next time Daredevil is in trouble you have to wonder why the hell he doesn't just call up Luke Cage to bail him out.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Sunday, June 28, 2015
#LoveWins Get Where You Belong Free!
After the landmark Supreme Court ruling outlawing bans on gay marriage, I decided to celebrate by making my novel on gay marriage, Where You Belong, free for the next five days on Amazon. You can download it here. Or since I'm in a generous mood and you'd like it in another format, just contact me at pdilloway @ gmail.com and I'll send you a file.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Movies! 6/26/15
A few years ago the Seth MacFarlane Machine transitioned from animated shows on Fox to feature length movies with "Ted." It was an OK movie about a man and his teddy bear. Notable was the cameo by "Flash Gordon" star Sam Jones as "Flash Gordon" star Sam Jones.
This time there promises to be more story and less dick and fart jokes as Ted tries to get married and have a baby. Except he has to prove he's a person. Which is probably like a metaphor for gay marriage or something.
On the other end of the spectrum you have "Max" which is a family movie about a Marine pooch whose owner dies and so the dog goes to live with the dead Marine's family. Then it turns into "Iron Eagle" as a kid and his friends have to rescue his dad with the dog's help.
I'd expect "Jurassic World" to have another week at the top or for "Inside Out" to pass it. The two combined for like $200 million last weekend; I guess a lot of people took their dads out to movies. Next week is the oddly-titled "Terminator Genisys." I'm not sure why they spell it the same as a credit union I got a car loan from 5 years ago--or for that matter why the credit union spells it that way.
Here's something I was thinking the other day: I know I had complained why Disney released "Tomorrowland" on Memorial Day weekend and why no one else really tried to compete with it even though it was pretty weak. Then I got thinking that back in 2012 when Disney bought Lucasfilm they announced the next Star Wars would be in May 2015, probably on that Memorial Day weekend. So I guess once they decided to move Star Wars to December they pushed "Tomorrowland" into the hole and maybe by then the other studios had already scheduled all their blockbusters and didn't want to try to take advantage.
And now for a word from my sponsor: me. It has been about a week since I released the first book in a year under my P.T. Dilloway name, the Chances Are spin-off Another Chance. I released it through Draft2Digital onto Apple, B&N, Kobo, and everywhere except Amazon. So far there have been a grand total of 0 sales. Meanwhile on Draft2Digital I've sold 4 copies of Eric Filler's Transformed Collection (the mega-sized omnibus of the first 22 books in the series). At some point I have to finish editing the Kindle version of Another Chance and release it so maybe I might sell A copy at some point.
I was talking last Wednesday about Amazon's new way to calculate Kindle Unlimited earnings by pages read instead of books downloaded. Since then I've finished two 38,000-word novellas. So stick that in their pipe and smoke it.
This time there promises to be more story and less dick and fart jokes as Ted tries to get married and have a baby. Except he has to prove he's a person. Which is probably like a metaphor for gay marriage or something.
On the other end of the spectrum you have "Max" which is a family movie about a Marine pooch whose owner dies and so the dog goes to live with the dead Marine's family. Then it turns into "Iron Eagle" as a kid and his friends have to rescue his dad with the dog's help.
I'd expect "Jurassic World" to have another week at the top or for "Inside Out" to pass it. The two combined for like $200 million last weekend; I guess a lot of people took their dads out to movies. Next week is the oddly-titled "Terminator Genisys." I'm not sure why they spell it the same as a credit union I got a car loan from 5 years ago--or for that matter why the credit union spells it that way.
Here's something I was thinking the other day: I know I had complained why Disney released "Tomorrowland" on Memorial Day weekend and why no one else really tried to compete with it even though it was pretty weak. Then I got thinking that back in 2012 when Disney bought Lucasfilm they announced the next Star Wars would be in May 2015, probably on that Memorial Day weekend. So I guess once they decided to move Star Wars to December they pushed "Tomorrowland" into the hole and maybe by then the other studios had already scheduled all their blockbusters and didn't want to try to take advantage.
And now for a word from my sponsor: me. It has been about a week since I released the first book in a year under my P.T. Dilloway name, the Chances Are spin-off Another Chance. I released it through Draft2Digital onto Apple, B&N, Kobo, and everywhere except Amazon. So far there have been a grand total of 0 sales. Meanwhile on Draft2Digital I've sold 4 copies of Eric Filler's Transformed Collection (the mega-sized omnibus of the first 22 books in the series). At some point I have to finish editing the Kindle version of Another Chance and release it so maybe I might sell A copy at some point.
I was talking last Wednesday about Amazon's new way to calculate Kindle Unlimited earnings by pages read instead of books downloaded. Since then I've finished two 38,000-word novellas. So stick that in their pipe and smoke it.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Writing Wednesday: Hubris or When $3 Million Isn't Enough
Years ago I used to read Bill Simmons's columns on ESPN's website. It was mostly something to do when not doing work at work. Eventually I stopped. For one reason because he's such a homer. I mean come on not everything in the sports universe revolves around the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots. The other reason though was it's like when you listen to an indie band and then all the sudden they make it big and everyone is listening to them and it's really not special anymore. Once the dude got his mug all over TV as part of ESPN's NBA pregame show (ironic with how he used to lambast the lameness of pregame shows) and guesting on Pardon the Interruption and essentially closed down ESPN.com's Page 2 to replace it with his pretentiously named "Grantland" (which still sounds like a website dedicated to obtaining Federal grants) he got too big and I just stopped caring.
Anyway, I heard a month ago that Simmons's contract wasn't being renewed by ESPN. Which seemed stupid from both sides. Then I read this article from some of the competition and my jaw just hit the floor. Mostly from the part that said he wanted to double his salary from $3 million to $6 million.
It's like, WTF is that? $3 million isn't enough to bitch about Boston sports and make references to 80s movies? Christ, man, you know how many people go and pay to sit in sports bars or "man caves" to do that exact fucking thing? You or I would have to work like 60 years to make $3 million just once and that's not good enough for this guy for one year? It's absurd!
All I could think is that either this is a ploy because he really doesn't want to work at ESPN and so had his agent pitch a ridiculous offer they would never accept, or it's just pure hubris. The kind of hubris that ironically sports writers (and fans) are always chiding athletes about. The kind where an athlete says, "I'm better than that guy so I should get more money!" And damn the consequences! I know a while back I pointed out a stupid article on Yahoo! sports that was lauding Peyton Manning for "only" wanting as much as rival quarterback Tom Brady, which was $18 million. That heroic sacrifice still put a huge dent in the team's budget that could have been used to field a better team--one that might not have been crushed by the Seahawks in the Super Bowl--and wouldn't have needed to increase ticket prices. But hey, what a hero for "only" wanting $18 million to spite some other guy!
I'm sure if you could travel back in time to 2000 when Bill Simmons was just starting out and said, "Hey, you think you could live on $3 million a year?" he would say, "Fuck yeah!" But that's the problem once you start to make the big time. All the sudden it's not enough to make a measly $3 million; you have to make sure you're getting the "respect" you deserve by having a bigger paycheck than anyone else.
Even for those of us still down in the muck this can hold true. I used to be happy if I made $10 a month in writing sales. I'd be ecstatic if I made $30 a month! Now if I make less than $1000 I'm pissed off. A lot of that has to do with needing the money to live on, but once you get a taste of bigger money you don't want to go back. That's how money changes us. After a while you really do start to think of it as a barometer of success, of self-worth when really you should just be happy to have a goddamned roof over your head and food in your belly and stuff. It's the old Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs where once you've got the basics covered you want more and more.
It's like if you ever watched that "Cribs" show on MTV. I could watch about 5 minutes of that before I felt sick by the sheer avarice on display. I mean come on that was the whole fucking point of the show: celebrities showing off just how they can waste all the money the little people have given them. It's hard when they're showing off their shoe closet the size of my whole apartment in a house they only use for 2 months a year not to think, "Jeez, you know how many starving people you could feed for all this?" As awesome as it is that Jay Leno has one of every sports car ever built, there are millions of people going hungry or without a roof over their heads; the value of just one of those cars could sustain a guy like me for a couple of years! That's where there's a disconnect between the people who perform and the people who pay for them to do so. Yet like so many things, while we might be aware of it, we don't seem to have the stomach to try to do anything about it, which is why we complain about Wall Street and corrupt politicians and then elect more millionaires to Congress.
(Of course if I suddenly hit it big would I live like a Buddhist monk? Fuck no. I'd buy three different mansions so I never have to endure any bad weather and a whole fleet of cars, planes, and helicopters to get me there. Plus my own private security force to keep the riff-raff away.)
Anyway, Simmons should take a good long look in the mirror--a gold-plated mirror in his 45-bedroom mansion with his rocket car outside. I'm sure some desperate site will give him the millions he wants, though leaving ESPN hasn't worked out so great for a lot of people. In a few years he might have to go crawling back like Keith Olbermann or Michelle Beadle with hat in hand to work for a paltry $2 million a year.
Oh we should all have such problems, right?
Anyway, I heard a month ago that Simmons's contract wasn't being renewed by ESPN. Which seemed stupid from both sides. Then I read this article from some of the competition and my jaw just hit the floor. Mostly from the part that said he wanted to double his salary from $3 million to $6 million.
It's like, WTF is that? $3 million isn't enough to bitch about Boston sports and make references to 80s movies? Christ, man, you know how many people go and pay to sit in sports bars or "man caves" to do that exact fucking thing? You or I would have to work like 60 years to make $3 million just once and that's not good enough for this guy for one year? It's absurd!
All I could think is that either this is a ploy because he really doesn't want to work at ESPN and so had his agent pitch a ridiculous offer they would never accept, or it's just pure hubris. The kind of hubris that ironically sports writers (and fans) are always chiding athletes about. The kind where an athlete says, "I'm better than that guy so I should get more money!" And damn the consequences! I know a while back I pointed out a stupid article on Yahoo! sports that was lauding Peyton Manning for "only" wanting as much as rival quarterback Tom Brady, which was $18 million. That heroic sacrifice still put a huge dent in the team's budget that could have been used to field a better team--one that might not have been crushed by the Seahawks in the Super Bowl--and wouldn't have needed to increase ticket prices. But hey, what a hero for "only" wanting $18 million to spite some other guy!
I'm sure if you could travel back in time to 2000 when Bill Simmons was just starting out and said, "Hey, you think you could live on $3 million a year?" he would say, "Fuck yeah!" But that's the problem once you start to make the big time. All the sudden it's not enough to make a measly $3 million; you have to make sure you're getting the "respect" you deserve by having a bigger paycheck than anyone else.
Even for those of us still down in the muck this can hold true. I used to be happy if I made $10 a month in writing sales. I'd be ecstatic if I made $30 a month! Now if I make less than $1000 I'm pissed off. A lot of that has to do with needing the money to live on, but once you get a taste of bigger money you don't want to go back. That's how money changes us. After a while you really do start to think of it as a barometer of success, of self-worth when really you should just be happy to have a goddamned roof over your head and food in your belly and stuff. It's the old Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs where once you've got the basics covered you want more and more.
It's like if you ever watched that "Cribs" show on MTV. I could watch about 5 minutes of that before I felt sick by the sheer avarice on display. I mean come on that was the whole fucking point of the show: celebrities showing off just how they can waste all the money the little people have given them. It's hard when they're showing off their shoe closet the size of my whole apartment in a house they only use for 2 months a year not to think, "Jeez, you know how many starving people you could feed for all this?" As awesome as it is that Jay Leno has one of every sports car ever built, there are millions of people going hungry or without a roof over their heads; the value of just one of those cars could sustain a guy like me for a couple of years! That's where there's a disconnect between the people who perform and the people who pay for them to do so. Yet like so many things, while we might be aware of it, we don't seem to have the stomach to try to do anything about it, which is why we complain about Wall Street and corrupt politicians and then elect more millionaires to Congress.
(Of course if I suddenly hit it big would I live like a Buddhist monk? Fuck no. I'd buy three different mansions so I never have to endure any bad weather and a whole fleet of cars, planes, and helicopters to get me there. Plus my own private security force to keep the riff-raff away.)
Anyway, Simmons should take a good long look in the mirror--a gold-plated mirror in his 45-bedroom mansion with his rocket car outside. I'm sure some desperate site will give him the millions he wants, though leaving ESPN hasn't worked out so great for a lot of people. In a few years he might have to go crawling back like Keith Olbermann or Michelle Beadle with hat in hand to work for a paltry $2 million a year.
Oh we should all have such problems, right?
Monday, June 22, 2015
Grumpy Bulldog's Watchathon
I can't remember the last time I did a bunch of mini-reviews of movies. It must have been a couple of months ago at least. So here's some more stuff I've watched. Some good, some bad, and some meh. Please find something better to say than "you watch a lot of movies." I mean there are probably 50 on here by now so you must have a comment about one of them.
Ex Machina: I saw this in a theater in Louisville with my brother and his wife. It was really good if you like a smaller, slower kind of movie. The pacing reminded me of the remake of Solaris. In this case some Richie Cunningham looking guy is invited to the bunker/mansion of a billionaire software guru who reveals he has built an android with artificial intelligence. But there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. The end was just brilliant with a really great twist. It's not playing in a lot of theaters (especially by now) so be sure to check it out on Redbox/digital download. (4/5)
Chappie: After the failure of Elysium, Neill Blomkamp goes back to the formula that worked in District 9 only instead of aliens in South Africa, it's robots. In the near future the Johannesburg police have replaced most humans with "Scout" droids. A scientist for the company making them starts tinkering with AI and ends up testing it out in a junk unit. But when he's kidnapped by some crooks the robot called Chappie is left with them. Chappie is basically a child learning to see the world and obviously criminals are not the best teachers. Meanwhile a mulleted Hugh Jackman sabotages the Scouts so he can get support for his ED-209 program. Some aspects of the plot are a little silly, but overall I liked it. Basically it's like Ex Machina only with a lot more action, which would probably be preferable to a lot of moviegoers. With the involvement of robots in all his movies, it seems like Neill Blomkamp is the guy they should get to replace Michael Bay for Transformers, but that's probably too obvious. (3.5/5)
Interstellar: Most of this movie felt emotionally flat and I had a hard time suspending disbelief that some helpful aliens had told humans how to build a starship and space station and whatnot. Though then at the end it's explained how that stuff happens. The movie owes a big debt to Arthur C. Clarke, especially the end that first invokes 2001 and then 3001. It wasn't the best Christopher Nolan movie but I liked it more than Inception. Jessica Chastain's presence helps a little with that. (3/5)
Tak3n: After killing half the population of Istanbul in the last movie, Liam Neeson has a staycation to kill a whole lot of Russians. The Russians thanks to Neeson's ex-wife's husband frame him for the murder of the ex-wife, so he has to go on the run, which is helped that he used to be a secret agent of some sort and thus has access to hidden escape routes and a cool safehouse and stuff. Anyway, this was better than the second one, which isn't saying much, mostly because they actually threw in a few plot twists this time. This beefs the running time up by 20 minutes or so (depending if you watch the rated or unrated version--I watched unrated) and makes for a little more satisfying conclusion to another needless trilogy. (2.5/5)
Run All Night: If you've already seen Road to Perdition then you've already seen this movie. Seriously this is almost the same movie, except in modern-day New York instead of the early 30s Midwest. There's a hit man (Liam Neeson instead of Tom Hanks) for an Irish mob boss (Ed Harris instead of the late Paul Newman) and the hit man's son sees the mob boss's son kill someone and so the mob boss sends goons to kill the hit man's son so the hit man has to take on the whole mob (and his boss) to save his son. In this case the son is an adult, but still. The mob boss even hires an assassin (Common instead of Jude Law) whose face gets messed up and there's a final shootout at a house by a lake. It's like, jeez why'd I bother watching this when I already own Road to Perdition? (2/5)
Inherent Vice: I was interested in watching this because I usually like PT Anderson's movies and not just for the initials. Though I didn't really like his last one, The Master that much. And I didn't really like this one either. Maybe he should stop putting Joaquin Phoenix in his movies. Anyway, this starts out pretty interesting, but it just piles on all these characters and plots and red herrings that after a while you have to wonder what the hell any of it means. I just started drifting off after a while. I guess you should expect that from a movie adapted from a Thomas Pynchon book. (2/5)
Nightcrawler: Jake Gyllenhaal is a petty thief who decides to take on a more lucrative career as a freelance crime scene videographer. The interesting thing is the way he spouts all these MBA program cliches while he does it, as if it's a Fortune 500 company. Gradually he decides to get more proactive, getting to crime scenes before the cops and even staging a confrontation between criminals and cops. It's a little slow but it's probably Gyllenhaal's best work since Donnie Darko. (3/5)
Left Behind (2014): I knew I wouldn't like this movie but I just wanted to see how lame it was. In 2005 if you said a movie starred Nicolas Cage and Chad Michael Murray that would be a big deal but 10 years later they've fallen far enough to star in straight-to-Redbox religious trash like this. I never watched the probably even worse Kirk Cameron version but this mostly features a plane Nic Cage is flying when the Rapture hits. Pretty much all the kids are beamed up (because all kids are good...lol) but otherwise it seems kind of random. Why is an old man beamed up but not his senile wife? Senile people are condemned to Hell? The Rapture itself was pretty lame. There's just a flash and people are gone, including Nic Cage's son whom his daughter is hugging and yet she for some reason spends half the movie looking for him. Anyway, if you want to see an awesome Rapture there's a great "American Dad" episode that was far more entertaining. (1/5)
Batman vs. Robin: If you haven't read Batman comics in 10 years then pretty much all of this would seem new to you. It's kind of a mash-up of Batman stories from perennial Tony Laplume favorite Grant Morrison and New 52 Batman scribe Scott Snyder. Basically Batman had a kid with Ra's al Guhl's daughter and that kid becomes the new Robin, which was covered in a previous movie. Now as Bruce Wayne gets set to unveil his Delta City, he's beset by "the Court of Owls" a society of rich people who sic undead henchmen called Talons on anyone who pisses them off. (I wrote a couple of blog posts about this story arc in 2012.) The main Talon tries to recruit Robin to turn against his daddy. It's kind of awkward when Batman and Robin fight because really that's child abuse. Call Social Services! I thought it was a decent mash-up of stories but for the casual viewer it might not make a lot of sense, though I think it's simplified enough to figure it out well enough. (3/5)
How to Train Your Dragon 2: I never got around to watching this in theaters or on DVD even though I had liked the first one when I saw it on HBO. Anyway, I remember being surprised when this didn't come in at #1 in theaters last year because kids movies (and a known property) usually do big business. Maybe it's that this does have a darker tone, especially when the main character's dad dies. But I thought it was really good. My only complaint was the villain was really underdeveloped. (3.5/5)
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: I never watched the first reboot prequel thingy so I don't know if "Simian Flu" was mentioned in that but anyway, at the start of this the epidemic has destroyed all but pockets of humanity and allowed Caesar and his apes to hide in the northern California forests. That is until some humans show up looking for a dam and it ignites a war between apes and humans. Overall this was good, though I still kind of prefer the old apes from the 70s to these CGI ones. Having recently watched Avengers 2, you can see a resemblance to Andy Serkis's face in Caesar's, so I guess that's some good motion captioning. (3/5)
This is Where I Leave You: This is one of those movies I never got around to watching on DVD and then it came to HBO. Anyway, a patriarch of a family dies and so all the kids get together and their mom forces them to spend a week together because of some Jewish ritual even though the guy wasn't Jewish. The kids of course all have various problems with their marriages and relationships. It's a well-made film with a great cast but I feel like I've watched this movie before. Many times. (3/5)
The Judge: Speaking of, this is largely the same movie, only with a murder trial instead of a seder. Robert Duvall is the eponymous judge who has Iron Man and the Kingpin for sons, plus some third one no one cares about. When Iron Man goes home for his mom's funeral, his dad hits a guy he had sentenced to jail a while back with his car. So Iron Man stays in town to represent him in the trial. During which time he also reconnects with his old girlfriend Vera Farmiga. Again it's a decent movie with a lot of good actors but it feels like I've seen it before. As with his Iron Man role, Robert Downey Jr is basically Robert Downey Jr if he became a lawyer instead of an actor; by that I mean he's a former screw-up sorta making good, which again is the same with Tony Stark. One big quibble I have is that Iron Man is a lawyer in Chicago and his dad lives in a small Indiana town. Yet to get there he takes a plane? I mean to drive from Detroit to Chicago is only like 5 hours usually, so I can't imagine it taking more than 3 to get from Chicago to just about anywhere in Indiana. Seems pointless to fly and rent a car. Another quibble is in the end credits they have Willie Nelson sing Coldplay and it is just as fucking terrible as you would think it is. But otherwise it's a decent movie. (3/5)
The Prince: I think this was made by pretty much the same people. It also features Bruce Willis as a mob boss and 50 Cent as a bad guy called "The Pharmacy." But the star of the movie is Jason Patric, who's the retired hitman who has to rescue his daughter like a homeless man's Taken only in Alabama-as-New-Orleans. John Cusack cashes a paycheck as Jason Patric's buddy. It's serviceable, but not great. (2/5)
Bag Man: John Cusack cashes another paycheck as a hitman who's given an assignment by his boss (Robert deNiro): he has to take a bag to a motel and not open it. Except it's a trap! All kinds of mayhem ensues at the motel. Just to add to the cliches there's the requisite hooker with a heart of gold John Cusack befriends. Again it's serviceable but not great. (2/5)
Kidnapping Mr. Heineken: This is I guess a true story about four Dutch guys who decided to kidnap Freddy Heineken, the man behind the beer. It was at the time the largest ransom ever paid. Basically these four dopes were going to lose their business because some punks (like literally punk music fans) were squatting in a building they owned. The geniuses then decided to forcibly remove the punks, which landed them in jail. After which they rob an armored car to get seed money to stage the kidnapping. But the problem with kidnappings is getting away with the money. It was kind of boring and the end had too many title cards saying stuff that happened afterwards. Not that I couldn't read them, but it's like maybe you could have put some of that stuff in the movie? (2/5)
Retreat: An interracial couple (Cillian Murphy and Thandie Newton) go to a remote island where they find an ill British soldier (the new Thing) who claims there's a disease spreading around killing people. So they barricade themselves in their house and it turns into Cape Fear or something. For some reason neither guy seemed to die very easily; you'd think they were dead and then they'd pop up again. The end kind of makes me think of Night of the Living Dead. Anyway, this didn't really hold my attention, which was maybe more my fault than the movie's. (2/5)
The Captive: Ryan Reynolds is a lawnscaping contractor in Canada whose 9-year-old daughter goes missing. It's confusing in the beginning as it jumps back-and-forth between the abduction to about 8 years later when the girl is still being held captive. Overall it's slow and confusing and I had a hard time maintaining interest. (1/5)
88 Minutes: This is one of those forgotten (and forgettable) Al Pacino movies from the 2000s. A while ago his testimony as a shrink got some dude put in prison. The dude somehow is going to take revenge by killing Pacino in 88 minutes, which has something to do with his sister dying long ago. Jim Gordon on Gotham plays the red herring and the killer isn't all that hard to guess. (2/5)
Firewall: This is the movie where Harrison Ford wanted his family back! This after they're taken hostage by the Vision. Which there you go Disney, an idea for Star Wars 8: the Vision kidnaps Han Solo's kids. Anyway, the idea is they want Harrison Ford to get them access into a bank because he does something with computers. It's OK but a little too long. (2.5/5)
Edison Force: First off, the title makes it sound like a group that goes around changing light bulbs or something. Anyway, it's a bad movie about bad cops. It features not one but two music industry people with LL Cool J and Justin Timberlake. Inexplicably Morgan Freeman is in it along with Kevin Spacey in a bad toupee. Basically there's some squad of evil cops and Justin Timberlake threatens to expose them so they try to kill him. Mayhem ensues. Everyone in this has been involved in better. (2/5)
Chaos: This starts off like The Negotiator meets Spike Lee's Inside Man as some crooks are supposedly robbing a bank and will only talk to one guy: Jason Statham, who is a Seattle cop suspended for shooting an innocent person. (And because it was a white girl they couldn't just cover it up.) Anyway, the crooks blow up the bank and escape in the...chaos. So then Jason Statham and Ryan Philippe and a female cop whose only purpose seemed to be kissing and/or screwing all the male cops, go to find the guys. It wasn't great but some twists at the end made it better. Any good heist movie is made better when at the end a clueless cop is talking to the thief on the phone while the thief gets away. Suck it, loser cops! (2.5/5)
Crank: This is a patently silly action movie with a pretty silly premise: Jason Statham is a hitman who's injected with a chemical that inhibits his adrenaline. So unless he gets pumped up he will die. He keeps pumped with a lot of running, firing guns, shooting up drugs, chugging energy drinks, and even fucking his girl in public. It's the kind of movie that seems gleefully misogynistic, homophobic, and a bit racist too. The real question I have now is how the hell they made a sequel after he fell out of a helicopter at a couple thousand feet onto the roof of a car and then bounced onto the pavement. Did the guys from the 6 Million Dollar Man scrape him off the pavement? We can rebuild him: better, faster, stronger than he was! (2/5)
Baghead: This film from the Duplass Brothers combines an indie dramedy with a low-budget horror movie. Four people go up to a cabin in the woods to write a movie about a killer who wears a bag over his head. As tensions grow, a real Baghead shows up! It was OK though it was pretty easy to figure out who the real Baghead was; I mean in a movie with this low of a budget there aren't many candidates to choose from. (2.5/5)
American Crude: This is like a homeless man's Magnolia featuring several plotlines that interconnect. The gist is that the guy from Office Space is getting some fake passports to get an escaped prisoner and her boyfriend out of town while simultaneously throwing a bachelor party for Rob Schneider. It was pretty meh overall. Might have been better if it had Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, and so forth like Magnolia. (2/5)
Copying Beethoven: This is a movie about a woman who copies down Beethoven's 9th Symphony and some of his final works as he nears the end of his life. Someone decided that the best choice to play a long-haired German composer was a bald American, ie Ed Harris. He doesn't bother with a fake German accent even. Other than that it's an OK movie. I have no idea how historically accurate it is. Immortal Beloved starring Gary Oldman was better though. (2/5)
The Last King of Scotland: Young Professor X goes to Uganda in the 70s thinking he'll make a difference and does--in a bad way. He befriends the new dictator and becomes his personal physician. Soon though he realizes that this dictator is not a very nice guy. As you know, dictators tend to not be so nice--how do you think they became dictators in the first place? I'm sure it's not completely historically accurate but it is a good story with a riveting performance by Forest Whittaker. (4/5)
The Aviator: I had never actually watched the whole movie though I'd seen parts of it on TV. Though it's almost 3 hours long it never really drags. I guess it helps that Howard Hughes was into 3 things I like: planes, movies, and hot chicks. The cast list is pretty impressive too with stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, and Kate Beckinsale and cameos by Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Alan Alda, and even Mr. Data Brent Spiner. The only odd thing is that the movie ends in 1947 and Hughes lived until 1976, so it's missing almost half his life! But like Elvis a lot of that was just the creepy Vegas years. Still it would have been nice to at least have some text cards at the end or something. (4/5)
Blood Ties: It's the old story of a guy gets out of prison and tries to go straight. Mostly because he's on a work furlough and his brother is a cop. But when his job sucks, he decides to go back to the old life. While this has a good cast with Clive Owen (remember him?), Billy Crudup, Mila Kunis, and Zoe Saldana, it just takes too long to get to a sort of predictable ending. (2/5)
We Own the Night: In the early 80s Joqauin Phoenix runs a nightclub until his cop brother Marky Mark and his Funky Bunch bust up the place. When Marky Mark is wounded and their cop father Robert Duvall is killed, Joaquin Phoenix joins the cops to stop the bad guys. I fell asleep during the movie but I woke up to watch the end. But really it can't be too good if I fell asleep. (2/5)
Clear History: This movie has a good cast with Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, and Philip Baker Hall, but unfortunately the star is Larry David, the real-life George Costanza. He's just really irritating as a marketing guru who walks away from marketing an electric car called "the Howard" and ends up losing a fortune when the car is a hit, despite that it looks like a flimsy hybrid of a Smart car and Nissan Cube. He retreats to Cape Cod, where it turns into a Throw Mama From the Train type comedy when his old boss shows up. With a real comedic actor this would have been more tolerable, but Larry David should have just stuck to writing comedy. Fortunately there are no nude scenes in this. (1.5/5)
Son of a Gun: Some Aussie kid goes to jail and makes a deal with Ewan McGregor for protection. In exchange when he gets out, he helps bust out Ewan McGregor and Ra's al Guhl from Arrow. Then of course there's a big score that can make them all rich if it goes right, which of course it doesn't. They manage to complete the heist, but getting away with the money is the hard part. It's OK but a little long. (2/5)
The Rover: Another Australian film, this is kind of like Mad Max-Lite mixed with John Wick, which the latter is a spoiler. As if you'll ever watch this movie. So after "the Collapse" destroys Australian society Guy Pearce stops to get a drink and these three guys run their truck over some stuff and get it stuck. They decide to steal Guy Pearce's car. He manages to get their truck out pretty easily and then sets out to get his car back. Why? Because (spoiler) his dead dog is in the trunk and he wants to bury it. So he teams up with Mr. Sparkly Vampire to murder like a half-dozen people to rescue his dog's corpse. Because that totally makes sense. For a movie with several murders and a couple car chases it's pretty boring. One of those lame downer apocalyptic movies like Children of Men. (2/5)
Tootsie: As someone who has written like 45 gender swap books I probably should have watched this a long time ago. Though really if you watched the Family Guy where Stewie dresses up as a girl to get on Jolly Farm Revue you've already got the gist of this movie. An odd fact is that Bill Murray plays the straight man to Dustin Hoffman in this. Anyway, maybe I should try this tactic since no one seems to be hiring me as a man. (2.5/5)
The Karate Kid: This is another 80s movie I never got around to watching. It makes sense that it has the same director as Rocky as it's kind of the same story. I mean if Rocky were a high school kid from Newark who moves to California and learns karate instead of boxing. And if his girlfriend were young Elizabeth Shue instead of Talia Shire--definite upgrade. Am I the only one who thinks Mr. Miyagi was kind of a dick? He knocks Daniel in the water, makes him do a bunch of chores, and gives him liquor, though he does also give him a car so maybe that evens it out. This also features a lot of terrible 80s music like "You're the Best Around." Anyway, the end fight is kind of lame. I mean all he does is kick the guy in the face. Yawn. (2/5)
The Neverending Story: I don't know if I watched this when I was a kid in the 80s. If I did I must have wiped it from my memory--with good cause! The plot really made no sense. There's this kid named Bastian (is that short for Sebastian) who has a pretty terrible dad (Major Dad Gerald McRaney) who doesn't even worry that his kid never comes home from school despite there being a big storm and stuff. And what kind of school has a creepy attic? Even better: a creepy attic they leave the key lying around inside a broken glass case? There's all kinds of lawsuit potential there. Anyway, the kid reads this book that's like real or something. The whole point is he has to give this Empress chick "a new name" before "the nothing" destroys everything. What the fuck does that mean? I bet this movie makes a lot more sense if you're high. (1/5)
Family Business: This is the story of a really fucked-up family featuring Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, and Matthew Broderick. I mean Dustin Hoffman is supposed to be half-Scottish/half-Sicilian and then he marries a Jew so Matthew Broderick would be what, quarter-Scottish/quarter-Sicilian/half-Jewish? Whatever. Matthew Broderick has this great idea to steal something from a lab, so he enlists his grandpa and dad to help him because they used to be criminals. Of course the robbery goes wrong. You could see that coming from a mile away. It was OK but not great. (2.5/5)
The Freshman: This was from about the same time as Family Business, when Matthew Broderick was all the shit. Instead of working with Connery and Hoffman, this time he gets to work with Marlon Brando, who does a full-on parody of Vito Corleone. The movie even says that they modeled the movie character after him, which was about as funny as when Julia Roberts played Julia Roberts in Ocean's Twelve. Anyway, in this one Matthew Broderick is recruited to transport an endangered Gila monster from New York to Jersey (which it's ironic that about 10 years later he would chase a mutant Gila monster through New York in Godzilla) on behalf of the Godfather. Then cops get involved and the Godfather's daughter wants to marry Matthew Broderick after 1 conversation. It was OK with a couple of funny parts. I did like the scam the Godfather was pulling where he'd get these rich jerks to pony up hundreds of thousands to eat some endangered animal--except it was really just normal turkey or fish because really, who the fuck knows what a Gila monster tastes like? Probably like chicken, right? (2.5/5)
Stone Cold: Probably all I need to tell you is this stars Brian "The Boz" Bosworth in full awful mullet. Basically this uses every action movie cliche around. The "plot" is basically that the Boz is a cop who infiltrates one of those biker gangs that were featured in so many A-Team episodes. Idiotic mayhem ensues. I'm not sure how Lance Henriksen got mixed up in this as the biker gang leader. Interestingly though The Freshman said Gila monsters are endangered, the Boz has one as a pet. Maybe instead of undercover policework he should scam rich people by making them think they're eating lizard. (0/5)
Kickboxer 1-5: Remember the early 90s when kickboxing movies were huge? On Crackle they had all 5 Kickboxer movies for some reason. The first one stars Jean-Claude van Damme, whose brother goes to Thailand to fight some jerk who cripples him, so JCVD has to learn kickboxing to get revenge. Sure, why not? The sequel (written by David S Goyer, better known for Batman Begins and other superhero movies) involves another sibling who of course was not referenced in the first movie. Off screen JCVD and his brother are murdered and so this other guy has to take revenge by kickboxing someone. Makes sense to me! The third one gets into campy territory as for some reason the guy goes down to Brazil and ends up having to kickbox the champion of some drug kingpin. Um, what? The fourth one then decides to veer back to serious ground by bringing back the evil kickboxer of the first two movies, who for some reason is in Mexico now and framed our hero so he lost the wife I never remember him marrying in the first place. The only way to settle this is of course by kickboxing--to the death! The fifth one brings in a third leading man, who thankfully is not yet another sibling no one ever mentioned. When his friend is injured, he has to go to South Africa to kickbox some bad guys. Because kicking solves everything! Honestly these movies get successively lamer. But I suppose the whole kickboxing fad was kind of a precursor to the UFC thing.
Fat City: This is from the 70s instead of the 80s. It's like Rocky if it had been really, really boring. Stacy Keach is a washed-up boxer who's chopping the tops off onions and shaking walnuts out of trees and crap. Young Jeff Bridges is a rookie boxer who is fucking terrible. I guess Jeff Bridges gets better (though you don't see it) while Stacy Keach wins a match but flushes his life down the toilet afterwards. It coulda been a contender! But it wasn't. (1/5)
Draft Day: It's about as boring as you'd imagine a movie about the NFL draft would be. I mean if you like split screens of people talking on the phone it's pretty awesome but otherwise it's really dull. The only positive is Diggle from Arrow has a small part as a scout for the Browns. The insane horse-trading at the end is kind of fun, though completely implausible. And it fills out Kevin Costner's sports resume. He's been a player (Bull Durham, For the Love of the Game), a fan (Field of Dreams), a former player (The Upside of Anger), a GM (Draft Day), and a coach (McFarland USA). So that's something. (1.5/5)
Cobb: Speaking of sports movies! There's not actually a lot of sports in this. It's about a reporter (the now-forgotten Robert Wuhl) who gets hired to write Ty Cobb's biography in the last days of Cobb's life. The movie makes no pretense that Cobb was a great ball player but a complete asshole. He hated everyone and everyone hated him. And yet the public fed off his greatness and he fed off their admiration, which made for a weird, conflicted relationship that mirrors that of Cobb and the reporter. Tommy Lee Jones is perfectly cast as the curmudgeonly Cobb, the legend with the feet of clay. And speaking of Detroit Tiger greats, legendary Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell has a cameo as the emcee of a Hall of Fame dinner. This could have been a little shorter but otherwise is a good biopic. (4/5)
Atari: Game Over: There was a legend that the Atari 2600 video game of ET was so terrible the company buried thousands of copies in a New Mexico dump. This documentary (ironically produced by XBox) stars screenwriter Zak Penn as he follows a guy trying to find the games and the guy who designed the game. You can find out on the Internet if they found the games or not. It was pretty interesting, although parts of it where they talked to various nerds I didn't really care about as much. George RR Martin has a cameo to give a DeLorean to one nerd who wants to go watch the dig. Incidentally, I passed through Alamogordo last October, about six months after the dig. Anyway, the ending was satisfactory for most people even if the legend was exaggerated a bit. (3/5)
Dead Rising: Watchtower: Speaking of video games, this movie was inspired by a video game (or games) that I never played. In this universe there's a zombie virus infecting some people that can be held at bay with a drug called Zombrex. But when the Zombrex doesn't work in the city of East Mission, OR (actually Vancouver) the city is quarantined and threatened to be firebombed in 48 hours. A reporter and a couple other people inside start to find evidence of a government plot and have to try to escape zombies and a Mad Max-inspired biker gang to get the word out. Unlike The Walking Dead the zombies in this universe can use tools. like a cop zombie can use his gun and for some reason a clown has an ax. Anyway, as far as zombie movies go it's OK with slightly better production values than Sharknado, albeit a little long. You can find it on Crackle if you have a Roku or similar type device. (2.5/5)
Woke Up Dead: This was listed as a movie but from some research on IMDB I guess it was a web series that they cobbled together into a feature-length movie. The problem is that it ends on a cliffhanger that was probably never resolved. It's about Napoleon Dynamite waking up in a bathtub of icy water. He's not missing his kidneys; he's just a zombie. Except not in the traditional sense. He starts to develop superpowers like seeing in other spectrums, Wolverine-like healing, and super strength. Recording him (exploiting him) is his friend Josh Gad and they recruit a med student (Krysten Ritter AKA Jessica Jones) to try to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile he has an annoying coworker in Wayne Knight and a shadowy figure who follows him around. At the end his mom shows up claiming to know what's happening to him, which is the unresolved cliffhanger. That and who was following him around. Since everyone but Jon Heder has moved on to greener pastures I doubt this will be resolved anytime soon. (2.5/5)
Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead The first movie was actually pretty good. It used that old trope of a bunch of people going up to a secluded cabin and then being assaulted by zombies--Nazi zombies! The second one piles on a lot of silliness as the Nazis decide they should go complete the mission der Fuhrer gave them by destroying some Norwegian town. The only guy to survive the first movie had to cut off his arm in Evil Dead fashion but then doctors sew on an arm from the head Nazi zombie who lost his when they were fighting in a car. How the fuck do you put an arm from someone who died in the early 1940s on a patient in 2014? I know it was in the snow for 70 years but even so it makes no sense. The whole point of that is so the guy can go wake up the zombies of Soviet troops who were killed by the Nazis. Except the Soviets suck at fighting, so that was pretty anticlimactic. There are also 3 nerdy Americans from "Zombie Squad" who show up to lend a hand. And some Norwegian cops who contribute absolutely nothing. Of all the dumb things, perhaps dumbest is that the Nazis steal an old Tiger tank from a museum--and it has live ammo inside! I mean first I don't think museums keep the engines on historic vehicles in drivable condition and they sure as hell wouldn't leave live ammunition inside. Plus for an old tank it has really good gas mileage. Even though they kill the head Nazi and all the other Nazis seemingly die of course in the post-credits scene the head of the head Nazi has survived, as well as some zombie Nazi doctor. Overall I have to say: this plot makes no sense! Tell the people! (1/5)
Ex Machina: I saw this in a theater in Louisville with my brother and his wife. It was really good if you like a smaller, slower kind of movie. The pacing reminded me of the remake of Solaris. In this case some Richie Cunningham looking guy is invited to the bunker/mansion of a billionaire software guru who reveals he has built an android with artificial intelligence. But there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. The end was just brilliant with a really great twist. It's not playing in a lot of theaters (especially by now) so be sure to check it out on Redbox/digital download. (4/5)
Chappie: After the failure of Elysium, Neill Blomkamp goes back to the formula that worked in District 9 only instead of aliens in South Africa, it's robots. In the near future the Johannesburg police have replaced most humans with "Scout" droids. A scientist for the company making them starts tinkering with AI and ends up testing it out in a junk unit. But when he's kidnapped by some crooks the robot called Chappie is left with them. Chappie is basically a child learning to see the world and obviously criminals are not the best teachers. Meanwhile a mulleted Hugh Jackman sabotages the Scouts so he can get support for his ED-209 program. Some aspects of the plot are a little silly, but overall I liked it. Basically it's like Ex Machina only with a lot more action, which would probably be preferable to a lot of moviegoers. With the involvement of robots in all his movies, it seems like Neill Blomkamp is the guy they should get to replace Michael Bay for Transformers, but that's probably too obvious. (3.5/5)
Interstellar: Most of this movie felt emotionally flat and I had a hard time suspending disbelief that some helpful aliens had told humans how to build a starship and space station and whatnot. Though then at the end it's explained how that stuff happens. The movie owes a big debt to Arthur C. Clarke, especially the end that first invokes 2001 and then 3001. It wasn't the best Christopher Nolan movie but I liked it more than Inception. Jessica Chastain's presence helps a little with that. (3/5)
Tak3n: After killing half the population of Istanbul in the last movie, Liam Neeson has a staycation to kill a whole lot of Russians. The Russians thanks to Neeson's ex-wife's husband frame him for the murder of the ex-wife, so he has to go on the run, which is helped that he used to be a secret agent of some sort and thus has access to hidden escape routes and a cool safehouse and stuff. Anyway, this was better than the second one, which isn't saying much, mostly because they actually threw in a few plot twists this time. This beefs the running time up by 20 minutes or so (depending if you watch the rated or unrated version--I watched unrated) and makes for a little more satisfying conclusion to another needless trilogy. (2.5/5)
Run All Night: If you've already seen Road to Perdition then you've already seen this movie. Seriously this is almost the same movie, except in modern-day New York instead of the early 30s Midwest. There's a hit man (Liam Neeson instead of Tom Hanks) for an Irish mob boss (Ed Harris instead of the late Paul Newman) and the hit man's son sees the mob boss's son kill someone and so the mob boss sends goons to kill the hit man's son so the hit man has to take on the whole mob (and his boss) to save his son. In this case the son is an adult, but still. The mob boss even hires an assassin (Common instead of Jude Law) whose face gets messed up and there's a final shootout at a house by a lake. It's like, jeez why'd I bother watching this when I already own Road to Perdition? (2/5)
Inherent Vice: I was interested in watching this because I usually like PT Anderson's movies and not just for the initials. Though I didn't really like his last one, The Master that much. And I didn't really like this one either. Maybe he should stop putting Joaquin Phoenix in his movies. Anyway, this starts out pretty interesting, but it just piles on all these characters and plots and red herrings that after a while you have to wonder what the hell any of it means. I just started drifting off after a while. I guess you should expect that from a movie adapted from a Thomas Pynchon book. (2/5)
Nightcrawler: Jake Gyllenhaal is a petty thief who decides to take on a more lucrative career as a freelance crime scene videographer. The interesting thing is the way he spouts all these MBA program cliches while he does it, as if it's a Fortune 500 company. Gradually he decides to get more proactive, getting to crime scenes before the cops and even staging a confrontation between criminals and cops. It's a little slow but it's probably Gyllenhaal's best work since Donnie Darko. (3/5)
Left Behind (2014): I knew I wouldn't like this movie but I just wanted to see how lame it was. In 2005 if you said a movie starred Nicolas Cage and Chad Michael Murray that would be a big deal but 10 years later they've fallen far enough to star in straight-to-Redbox religious trash like this. I never watched the probably even worse Kirk Cameron version but this mostly features a plane Nic Cage is flying when the Rapture hits. Pretty much all the kids are beamed up (because all kids are good...lol) but otherwise it seems kind of random. Why is an old man beamed up but not his senile wife? Senile people are condemned to Hell? The Rapture itself was pretty lame. There's just a flash and people are gone, including Nic Cage's son whom his daughter is hugging and yet she for some reason spends half the movie looking for him. Anyway, if you want to see an awesome Rapture there's a great "American Dad" episode that was far more entertaining. (1/5)
Batman vs. Robin: If you haven't read Batman comics in 10 years then pretty much all of this would seem new to you. It's kind of a mash-up of Batman stories from perennial Tony Laplume favorite Grant Morrison and New 52 Batman scribe Scott Snyder. Basically Batman had a kid with Ra's al Guhl's daughter and that kid becomes the new Robin, which was covered in a previous movie. Now as Bruce Wayne gets set to unveil his Delta City, he's beset by "the Court of Owls" a society of rich people who sic undead henchmen called Talons on anyone who pisses them off. (I wrote a couple of blog posts about this story arc in 2012.) The main Talon tries to recruit Robin to turn against his daddy. It's kind of awkward when Batman and Robin fight because really that's child abuse. Call Social Services! I thought it was a decent mash-up of stories but for the casual viewer it might not make a lot of sense, though I think it's simplified enough to figure it out well enough. (3/5)
How to Train Your Dragon 2: I never got around to watching this in theaters or on DVD even though I had liked the first one when I saw it on HBO. Anyway, I remember being surprised when this didn't come in at #1 in theaters last year because kids movies (and a known property) usually do big business. Maybe it's that this does have a darker tone, especially when the main character's dad dies. But I thought it was really good. My only complaint was the villain was really underdeveloped. (3.5/5)
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: I never watched the first reboot prequel thingy so I don't know if "Simian Flu" was mentioned in that but anyway, at the start of this the epidemic has destroyed all but pockets of humanity and allowed Caesar and his apes to hide in the northern California forests. That is until some humans show up looking for a dam and it ignites a war between apes and humans. Overall this was good, though I still kind of prefer the old apes from the 70s to these CGI ones. Having recently watched Avengers 2, you can see a resemblance to Andy Serkis's face in Caesar's, so I guess that's some good motion captioning. (3/5)
This is Where I Leave You: This is one of those movies I never got around to watching on DVD and then it came to HBO. Anyway, a patriarch of a family dies and so all the kids get together and their mom forces them to spend a week together because of some Jewish ritual even though the guy wasn't Jewish. The kids of course all have various problems with their marriages and relationships. It's a well-made film with a great cast but I feel like I've watched this movie before. Many times. (3/5)
The Judge: Speaking of, this is largely the same movie, only with a murder trial instead of a seder. Robert Duvall is the eponymous judge who has Iron Man and the Kingpin for sons, plus some third one no one cares about. When Iron Man goes home for his mom's funeral, his dad hits a guy he had sentenced to jail a while back with his car. So Iron Man stays in town to represent him in the trial. During which time he also reconnects with his old girlfriend Vera Farmiga. Again it's a decent movie with a lot of good actors but it feels like I've seen it before. As with his Iron Man role, Robert Downey Jr is basically Robert Downey Jr if he became a lawyer instead of an actor; by that I mean he's a former screw-up sorta making good, which again is the same with Tony Stark. One big quibble I have is that Iron Man is a lawyer in Chicago and his dad lives in a small Indiana town. Yet to get there he takes a plane? I mean to drive from Detroit to Chicago is only like 5 hours usually, so I can't imagine it taking more than 3 to get from Chicago to just about anywhere in Indiana. Seems pointless to fly and rent a car. Another quibble is in the end credits they have Willie Nelson sing Coldplay and it is just as fucking terrible as you would think it is. But otherwise it's a decent movie. (3/5)
Redbox Specials
Set Up: This is one of those cheap straight-to-Redbox movies that used a reliable old plot. Three guys heist some diamonds but one guy (Ryan Philippe) decides to betray his two partners and take the loot for himself. But of course one guy (50 Cent) survives and goes after the guy. Which might have been fine except for some reason they include an extraneous mob boss (Bruce Willis) whom 50 Cent inadvertently steals money from. At that point the tone of the movie became campier too. I'm not sure what the heck was supposed to be going on. Interestingly Grand Rapids, MI played Detroit in this movie. (1/5)The Prince: I think this was made by pretty much the same people. It also features Bruce Willis as a mob boss and 50 Cent as a bad guy called "The Pharmacy." But the star of the movie is Jason Patric, who's the retired hitman who has to rescue his daughter like a homeless man's Taken only in Alabama-as-New-Orleans. John Cusack cashes a paycheck as Jason Patric's buddy. It's serviceable, but not great. (2/5)
Bag Man: John Cusack cashes another paycheck as a hitman who's given an assignment by his boss (Robert deNiro): he has to take a bag to a motel and not open it. Except it's a trap! All kinds of mayhem ensues at the motel. Just to add to the cliches there's the requisite hooker with a heart of gold John Cusack befriends. Again it's serviceable but not great. (2/5)
Kidnapping Mr. Heineken: This is I guess a true story about four Dutch guys who decided to kidnap Freddy Heineken, the man behind the beer. It was at the time the largest ransom ever paid. Basically these four dopes were going to lose their business because some punks (like literally punk music fans) were squatting in a building they owned. The geniuses then decided to forcibly remove the punks, which landed them in jail. After which they rob an armored car to get seed money to stage the kidnapping. But the problem with kidnappings is getting away with the money. It was kind of boring and the end had too many title cards saying stuff that happened afterwards. Not that I couldn't read them, but it's like maybe you could have put some of that stuff in the movie? (2/5)
Retreat: An interracial couple (Cillian Murphy and Thandie Newton) go to a remote island where they find an ill British soldier (the new Thing) who claims there's a disease spreading around killing people. So they barricade themselves in their house and it turns into Cape Fear or something. For some reason neither guy seemed to die very easily; you'd think they were dead and then they'd pop up again. The end kind of makes me think of Night of the Living Dead. Anyway, this didn't really hold my attention, which was maybe more my fault than the movie's. (2/5)
The Captive: Ryan Reynolds is a lawnscaping contractor in Canada whose 9-year-old daughter goes missing. It's confusing in the beginning as it jumps back-and-forth between the abduction to about 8 years later when the girl is still being held captive. Overall it's slow and confusing and I had a hard time maintaining interest. (1/5)
Seattle Slew
For some reason in the mid-2000s there were a number of movies taking place in "Seattle," actually Vancouver. Here are 4 I watched recently:88 Minutes: This is one of those forgotten (and forgettable) Al Pacino movies from the 2000s. A while ago his testimony as a shrink got some dude put in prison. The dude somehow is going to take revenge by killing Pacino in 88 minutes, which has something to do with his sister dying long ago. Jim Gordon on Gotham plays the red herring and the killer isn't all that hard to guess. (2/5)
Firewall: This is the movie where Harrison Ford wanted his family back! This after they're taken hostage by the Vision. Which there you go Disney, an idea for Star Wars 8: the Vision kidnaps Han Solo's kids. Anyway, the idea is they want Harrison Ford to get them access into a bank because he does something with computers. It's OK but a little too long. (2.5/5)
Edison Force: First off, the title makes it sound like a group that goes around changing light bulbs or something. Anyway, it's a bad movie about bad cops. It features not one but two music industry people with LL Cool J and Justin Timberlake. Inexplicably Morgan Freeman is in it along with Kevin Spacey in a bad toupee. Basically there's some squad of evil cops and Justin Timberlake threatens to expose them so they try to kill him. Mayhem ensues. Everyone in this has been involved in better. (2/5)
Chaos: This starts off like The Negotiator meets Spike Lee's Inside Man as some crooks are supposedly robbing a bank and will only talk to one guy: Jason Statham, who is a Seattle cop suspended for shooting an innocent person. (And because it was a white girl they couldn't just cover it up.) Anyway, the crooks blow up the bank and escape in the...chaos. So then Jason Statham and Ryan Philippe and a female cop whose only purpose seemed to be kissing and/or screwing all the male cops, go to find the guys. It wasn't great but some twists at the end made it better. Any good heist movie is made better when at the end a clueless cop is talking to the thief on the phone while the thief gets away. Suck it, loser cops! (2.5/5)
Crank: This is a patently silly action movie with a pretty silly premise: Jason Statham is a hitman who's injected with a chemical that inhibits his adrenaline. So unless he gets pumped up he will die. He keeps pumped with a lot of running, firing guns, shooting up drugs, chugging energy drinks, and even fucking his girl in public. It's the kind of movie that seems gleefully misogynistic, homophobic, and a bit racist too. The real question I have now is how the hell they made a sequel after he fell out of a helicopter at a couple thousand feet onto the roof of a car and then bounced onto the pavement. Did the guys from the 6 Million Dollar Man scrape him off the pavement? We can rebuild him: better, faster, stronger than he was! (2/5)
Baghead: This film from the Duplass Brothers combines an indie dramedy with a low-budget horror movie. Four people go up to a cabin in the woods to write a movie about a killer who wears a bag over his head. As tensions grow, a real Baghead shows up! It was OK though it was pretty easy to figure out who the real Baghead was; I mean in a movie with this low of a budget there aren't many candidates to choose from. (2.5/5)
American Crude: This is like a homeless man's Magnolia featuring several plotlines that interconnect. The gist is that the guy from Office Space is getting some fake passports to get an escaped prisoner and her boyfriend out of town while simultaneously throwing a bachelor party for Rob Schneider. It was pretty meh overall. Might have been better if it had Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, and so forth like Magnolia. (2/5)
Copying Beethoven: This is a movie about a woman who copies down Beethoven's 9th Symphony and some of his final works as he nears the end of his life. Someone decided that the best choice to play a long-haired German composer was a bald American, ie Ed Harris. He doesn't bother with a fake German accent even. Other than that it's an OK movie. I have no idea how historically accurate it is. Immortal Beloved starring Gary Oldman was better though. (2/5)
The Last King of Scotland: Young Professor X goes to Uganda in the 70s thinking he'll make a difference and does--in a bad way. He befriends the new dictator and becomes his personal physician. Soon though he realizes that this dictator is not a very nice guy. As you know, dictators tend to not be so nice--how do you think they became dictators in the first place? I'm sure it's not completely historically accurate but it is a good story with a riveting performance by Forest Whittaker. (4/5)
The Aviator: I had never actually watched the whole movie though I'd seen parts of it on TV. Though it's almost 3 hours long it never really drags. I guess it helps that Howard Hughes was into 3 things I like: planes, movies, and hot chicks. The cast list is pretty impressive too with stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, and Kate Beckinsale and cameos by Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Alan Alda, and even Mr. Data Brent Spiner. The only odd thing is that the movie ends in 1947 and Hughes lived until 1976, so it's missing almost half his life! But like Elvis a lot of that was just the creepy Vegas years. Still it would have been nice to at least have some text cards at the end or something. (4/5)
Blood Ties: It's the old story of a guy gets out of prison and tries to go straight. Mostly because he's on a work furlough and his brother is a cop. But when his job sucks, he decides to go back to the old life. While this has a good cast with Clive Owen (remember him?), Billy Crudup, Mila Kunis, and Zoe Saldana, it just takes too long to get to a sort of predictable ending. (2/5)
We Own the Night: In the early 80s Joqauin Phoenix runs a nightclub until his cop brother Marky Mark and his Funky Bunch bust up the place. When Marky Mark is wounded and their cop father Robert Duvall is killed, Joaquin Phoenix joins the cops to stop the bad guys. I fell asleep during the movie but I woke up to watch the end. But really it can't be too good if I fell asleep. (2/5)
Clear History: This movie has a good cast with Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, and Philip Baker Hall, but unfortunately the star is Larry David, the real-life George Costanza. He's just really irritating as a marketing guru who walks away from marketing an electric car called "the Howard" and ends up losing a fortune when the car is a hit, despite that it looks like a flimsy hybrid of a Smart car and Nissan Cube. He retreats to Cape Cod, where it turns into a Throw Mama From the Train type comedy when his old boss shows up. With a real comedic actor this would have been more tolerable, but Larry David should have just stuck to writing comedy. Fortunately there are no nude scenes in this. (1.5/5)
Son of a Gun: Some Aussie kid goes to jail and makes a deal with Ewan McGregor for protection. In exchange when he gets out, he helps bust out Ewan McGregor and Ra's al Guhl from Arrow. Then of course there's a big score that can make them all rich if it goes right, which of course it doesn't. They manage to complete the heist, but getting away with the money is the hard part. It's OK but a little long. (2/5)
The Rover: Another Australian film, this is kind of like Mad Max-Lite mixed with John Wick, which the latter is a spoiler. As if you'll ever watch this movie. So after "the Collapse" destroys Australian society Guy Pearce stops to get a drink and these three guys run their truck over some stuff and get it stuck. They decide to steal Guy Pearce's car. He manages to get their truck out pretty easily and then sets out to get his car back. Why? Because (spoiler) his dead dog is in the trunk and he wants to bury it. So he teams up with Mr. Sparkly Vampire to murder like a half-dozen people to rescue his dog's corpse. Because that totally makes sense. For a movie with several murders and a couple car chases it's pretty boring. One of those lame downer apocalyptic movies like Children of Men. (2/5)
Totally Retro
Tootsie: As someone who has written like 45 gender swap books I probably should have watched this a long time ago. Though really if you watched the Family Guy where Stewie dresses up as a girl to get on Jolly Farm Revue you've already got the gist of this movie. An odd fact is that Bill Murray plays the straight man to Dustin Hoffman in this. Anyway, maybe I should try this tactic since no one seems to be hiring me as a man. (2.5/5)
The Karate Kid: This is another 80s movie I never got around to watching. It makes sense that it has the same director as Rocky as it's kind of the same story. I mean if Rocky were a high school kid from Newark who moves to California and learns karate instead of boxing. And if his girlfriend were young Elizabeth Shue instead of Talia Shire--definite upgrade. Am I the only one who thinks Mr. Miyagi was kind of a dick? He knocks Daniel in the water, makes him do a bunch of chores, and gives him liquor, though he does also give him a car so maybe that evens it out. This also features a lot of terrible 80s music like "You're the Best Around." Anyway, the end fight is kind of lame. I mean all he does is kick the guy in the face. Yawn. (2/5)
The Neverending Story: I don't know if I watched this when I was a kid in the 80s. If I did I must have wiped it from my memory--with good cause! The plot really made no sense. There's this kid named Bastian (is that short for Sebastian) who has a pretty terrible dad (Major Dad Gerald McRaney) who doesn't even worry that his kid never comes home from school despite there being a big storm and stuff. And what kind of school has a creepy attic? Even better: a creepy attic they leave the key lying around inside a broken glass case? There's all kinds of lawsuit potential there. Anyway, the kid reads this book that's like real or something. The whole point is he has to give this Empress chick "a new name" before "the nothing" destroys everything. What the fuck does that mean? I bet this movie makes a lot more sense if you're high. (1/5)
Family Business: This is the story of a really fucked-up family featuring Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, and Matthew Broderick. I mean Dustin Hoffman is supposed to be half-Scottish/half-Sicilian and then he marries a Jew so Matthew Broderick would be what, quarter-Scottish/quarter-Sicilian/half-Jewish? Whatever. Matthew Broderick has this great idea to steal something from a lab, so he enlists his grandpa and dad to help him because they used to be criminals. Of course the robbery goes wrong. You could see that coming from a mile away. It was OK but not great. (2.5/5)
The Freshman: This was from about the same time as Family Business, when Matthew Broderick was all the shit. Instead of working with Connery and Hoffman, this time he gets to work with Marlon Brando, who does a full-on parody of Vito Corleone. The movie even says that they modeled the movie character after him, which was about as funny as when Julia Roberts played Julia Roberts in Ocean's Twelve. Anyway, in this one Matthew Broderick is recruited to transport an endangered Gila monster from New York to Jersey (which it's ironic that about 10 years later he would chase a mutant Gila monster through New York in Godzilla) on behalf of the Godfather. Then cops get involved and the Godfather's daughter wants to marry Matthew Broderick after 1 conversation. It was OK with a couple of funny parts. I did like the scam the Godfather was pulling where he'd get these rich jerks to pony up hundreds of thousands to eat some endangered animal--except it was really just normal turkey or fish because really, who the fuck knows what a Gila monster tastes like? Probably like chicken, right? (2.5/5)
Stone Cold: Probably all I need to tell you is this stars Brian "The Boz" Bosworth in full awful mullet. Basically this uses every action movie cliche around. The "plot" is basically that the Boz is a cop who infiltrates one of those biker gangs that were featured in so many A-Team episodes. Idiotic mayhem ensues. I'm not sure how Lance Henriksen got mixed up in this as the biker gang leader. Interestingly though The Freshman said Gila monsters are endangered, the Boz has one as a pet. Maybe instead of undercover policework he should scam rich people by making them think they're eating lizard. (0/5)
Kickboxer 1-5: Remember the early 90s when kickboxing movies were huge? On Crackle they had all 5 Kickboxer movies for some reason. The first one stars Jean-Claude van Damme, whose brother goes to Thailand to fight some jerk who cripples him, so JCVD has to learn kickboxing to get revenge. Sure, why not? The sequel (written by David S Goyer, better known for Batman Begins and other superhero movies) involves another sibling who of course was not referenced in the first movie. Off screen JCVD and his brother are murdered and so this other guy has to take revenge by kickboxing someone. Makes sense to me! The third one gets into campy territory as for some reason the guy goes down to Brazil and ends up having to kickbox the champion of some drug kingpin. Um, what? The fourth one then decides to veer back to serious ground by bringing back the evil kickboxer of the first two movies, who for some reason is in Mexico now and framed our hero so he lost the wife I never remember him marrying in the first place. The only way to settle this is of course by kickboxing--to the death! The fifth one brings in a third leading man, who thankfully is not yet another sibling no one ever mentioned. When his friend is injured, he has to go to South Africa to kickbox some bad guys. Because kicking solves everything! Honestly these movies get successively lamer. But I suppose the whole kickboxing fad was kind of a precursor to the UFC thing.
Fat City: This is from the 70s instead of the 80s. It's like Rocky if it had been really, really boring. Stacy Keach is a washed-up boxer who's chopping the tops off onions and shaking walnuts out of trees and crap. Young Jeff Bridges is a rookie boxer who is fucking terrible. I guess Jeff Bridges gets better (though you don't see it) while Stacy Keach wins a match but flushes his life down the toilet afterwards. It coulda been a contender! But it wasn't. (1/5)
Draft Day: It's about as boring as you'd imagine a movie about the NFL draft would be. I mean if you like split screens of people talking on the phone it's pretty awesome but otherwise it's really dull. The only positive is Diggle from Arrow has a small part as a scout for the Browns. The insane horse-trading at the end is kind of fun, though completely implausible. And it fills out Kevin Costner's sports resume. He's been a player (Bull Durham, For the Love of the Game), a fan (Field of Dreams), a former player (The Upside of Anger), a GM (Draft Day), and a coach (McFarland USA). So that's something. (1.5/5)
Cobb: Speaking of sports movies! There's not actually a lot of sports in this. It's about a reporter (the now-forgotten Robert Wuhl) who gets hired to write Ty Cobb's biography in the last days of Cobb's life. The movie makes no pretense that Cobb was a great ball player but a complete asshole. He hated everyone and everyone hated him. And yet the public fed off his greatness and he fed off their admiration, which made for a weird, conflicted relationship that mirrors that of Cobb and the reporter. Tommy Lee Jones is perfectly cast as the curmudgeonly Cobb, the legend with the feet of clay. And speaking of Detroit Tiger greats, legendary Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell has a cameo as the emcee of a Hall of Fame dinner. This could have been a little shorter but otherwise is a good biopic. (4/5)
Atari: Game Over: There was a legend that the Atari 2600 video game of ET was so terrible the company buried thousands of copies in a New Mexico dump. This documentary (ironically produced by XBox) stars screenwriter Zak Penn as he follows a guy trying to find the games and the guy who designed the game. You can find out on the Internet if they found the games or not. It was pretty interesting, although parts of it where they talked to various nerds I didn't really care about as much. George RR Martin has a cameo to give a DeLorean to one nerd who wants to go watch the dig. Incidentally, I passed through Alamogordo last October, about six months after the dig. Anyway, the ending was satisfactory for most people even if the legend was exaggerated a bit. (3/5)
Dead Rising: Watchtower: Speaking of video games, this movie was inspired by a video game (or games) that I never played. In this universe there's a zombie virus infecting some people that can be held at bay with a drug called Zombrex. But when the Zombrex doesn't work in the city of East Mission, OR (actually Vancouver) the city is quarantined and threatened to be firebombed in 48 hours. A reporter and a couple other people inside start to find evidence of a government plot and have to try to escape zombies and a Mad Max-inspired biker gang to get the word out. Unlike The Walking Dead the zombies in this universe can use tools. like a cop zombie can use his gun and for some reason a clown has an ax. Anyway, as far as zombie movies go it's OK with slightly better production values than Sharknado, albeit a little long. You can find it on Crackle if you have a Roku or similar type device. (2.5/5)
Woke Up Dead: This was listed as a movie but from some research on IMDB I guess it was a web series that they cobbled together into a feature-length movie. The problem is that it ends on a cliffhanger that was probably never resolved. It's about Napoleon Dynamite waking up in a bathtub of icy water. He's not missing his kidneys; he's just a zombie. Except not in the traditional sense. He starts to develop superpowers like seeing in other spectrums, Wolverine-like healing, and super strength. Recording him (exploiting him) is his friend Josh Gad and they recruit a med student (Krysten Ritter AKA Jessica Jones) to try to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile he has an annoying coworker in Wayne Knight and a shadowy figure who follows him around. At the end his mom shows up claiming to know what's happening to him, which is the unresolved cliffhanger. That and who was following him around. Since everyone but Jon Heder has moved on to greener pastures I doubt this will be resolved anytime soon. (2.5/5)
Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead The first movie was actually pretty good. It used that old trope of a bunch of people going up to a secluded cabin and then being assaulted by zombies--Nazi zombies! The second one piles on a lot of silliness as the Nazis decide they should go complete the mission der Fuhrer gave them by destroying some Norwegian town. The only guy to survive the first movie had to cut off his arm in Evil Dead fashion but then doctors sew on an arm from the head Nazi zombie who lost his when they were fighting in a car. How the fuck do you put an arm from someone who died in the early 1940s on a patient in 2014? I know it was in the snow for 70 years but even so it makes no sense. The whole point of that is so the guy can go wake up the zombies of Soviet troops who were killed by the Nazis. Except the Soviets suck at fighting, so that was pretty anticlimactic. There are also 3 nerdy Americans from "Zombie Squad" who show up to lend a hand. And some Norwegian cops who contribute absolutely nothing. Of all the dumb things, perhaps dumbest is that the Nazis steal an old Tiger tank from a museum--and it has live ammo inside! I mean first I don't think museums keep the engines on historic vehicles in drivable condition and they sure as hell wouldn't leave live ammunition inside. Plus for an old tank it has really good gas mileage. Even though they kill the head Nazi and all the other Nazis seemingly die of course in the post-credits scene the head of the head Nazi has survived, as well as some zombie Nazi doctor. Overall I have to say: this plot makes no sense! Tell the people! (1/5)
Friday, June 19, 2015
Movies! 6/19/15
Do you remember that show "Herman's Head" from the early 90s? Yeah, me either except the chick who voices Lisa Simpson was in it. Apparently someone at Pixar watched that show because they decided to remake it as an animated movie called "Inside Out."
So there are like different emotions and they compete for control of a young girl. And, um, mayhem ensues or something. I'm destined to watch this for my niece's 3rd birthday at the end of the month. I might have to sneak out to watch "Jurassic World" or something.
But this is Pixar (PIXAR!!!!!!) and there are no other kid movies for a few weeks so it will probably make a bunch of money. Even if it is a rip-off of a crappy 90s sitcom on Fox.
The only other new thing really is "Dope" which takes place in the early 90s and is about a dorky black kid who becomes a drug mule or something. It's not going to be a serious threat to a Pixar movie or "Jurassic World" but if it came in 3rd that would probably be considered really good. Though I'd doubt it will make it that high.
So there are like different emotions and they compete for control of a young girl. And, um, mayhem ensues or something. I'm destined to watch this for my niece's 3rd birthday at the end of the month. I might have to sneak out to watch "Jurassic World" or something.
But this is Pixar (PIXAR!!!!!!) and there are no other kid movies for a few weeks so it will probably make a bunch of money. Even if it is a rip-off of a crappy 90s sitcom on Fox.
The only other new thing really is "Dope" which takes place in the early 90s and is about a dorky black kid who becomes a drug mule or something. It's not going to be a serious threat to a Pixar movie or "Jurassic World" but if it came in 3rd that would probably be considered really good. Though I'd doubt it will make it that high.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Writing Wednesday: On Authorial Bondage or The High Cost of Success
Last week on his blog, Michael Offutt talked about how money makes slaves of us all. In a similar fashion, most of us self-published authors are slaves to Amazon. Most of the time you don't see the chains but then sometimes Amazon decides to remind you.
About a year ago Amazon started their Kindle Unlimited service, which is sort of a Netflix for books. You pay your $9.99 a month and you can get all the KDP Select books you want. Some authors have complained about it, but others like me have really profited from that program. Usually 40-60% of what I make is thanks to Kindle Unlimited borrows. For example, in May I sold 863 books between actual sales and Unlimited borrows. 350 of those (40%) were actual sales while 513 (60%) were Unlimited borrows.
How you get paid is Amazon puts so much money in the fund for the month and then divvies it up based on how many total borrows there are for all books. It's usually less than you'd get from an actual sale but my philosophy (especially now) is money is money.
I got some distressing news on Monday that starting next month Amazon is going to completely revise their formula to screw people like me who have profited by writing shorter books. The new formula is instead of the number of borrows will be the number of pages read. Which is great if you're Tolstoy or Thomas Pynchon writing 1000-page books. But considering most of my gender swap books are 50 pages or less (which is high compared to the average) I'm going to get the royal screw thanks to this change.
If you aren't clear on the concept basically each page read is like giving you 1 share of the fund. Someone reads my 50 page book I get 50 shares. Whereas if someone reads a 500 page book that author gets 500 shares. So if someone reads My Wife Changed Me Into a Pinup Girl I get 43 shares. If someone reads Where You Belong I get 520 shares. Or to put it another way I'd have to sell 13 of the former to equal what I'd get from one of the latter. But which book do you suppose gets a lot more borrows? Hurm.
Now the other caveat that's important to note is it's the number of pages READ. This is something that should really disturb privacy advocates because it's saying that Amazon will be actively monitoring your Kindle/app so they can calculate how many pages of each book you're reading. You don't suppose they'd ever do anything else with that information, do you?
The system right now seems fairly easy to keep track of but this new system will be impossible for authors to keep track since we don't have Amazon's NSA-type technology to eavesdrop on the millions of Kindles/phones out there. But you can take Amazon's word for it, right? Sure because I should definitely trust the company spying on all of its users.
Of course what I'm really annoyed about is this new system is going to cost me money. A LOT of money I'm sure. Because again I have to sell over a dozen smaller books to equal one larger one. Unfortunately I need money, so this has the potential to screw me over big time. I'm sure some smarmy person would say, "Well just write longer books." And my response would be:
I mean really do you have any idea how many books I've written this year? Crimeny. But hey just make them longer! Or I suppose I can start putting 3-4 stories together. Or maybe I'll start putting in a lot of blank pages. Like a blank page for every scene break! Or like Brian Griffin's Wish It, Want It, Do It I'll leave a third of the book blank for people to write their hopes and dreams.
The only other option is to take my books out of KDP Select and start selling them through other outlets. What's the chance I'll generate the same cash flow on Draft2Digital or Smashwords? Not a lot I'd bet.
I guess you can say this is more fair to people who write longer books and that's certainly how Amazon was couching it. I mean why should I get the same amount for a 43 page book as a 520 page one, right? That doesn't seem logical, does it? But let's be honest this isn't about "fairness" for Amazon. What they want to do is divide the pie into smaller pieces. I mean think of it this way: right now they might divide the $10 million in the fund by say 10 million books sold. So that's $1 per share. But by using pages you split that $10 million let's say 100 million ways so you're getting a penny per share. People like me will probably end up with a lot fewer shares and thus less money. Which maybe that's what Amazon wants. Maybe they want to drive people like me with my short books or people like Andrew Leon with serials out of business. I'm not sure what that really gains them, but I don't buy the notion that a huge corporation is doing this to be "fair." And CVS stopped selling cigarettes because they really care about your health.
It's a stern reminder of the chains binding authors to Amazon and how they can take advantage of that. As I wrote about in a blog entry a while back, Amazon isn't your friend; they're your frenemy. They want you to be successful--but not too successful. Though I could remind Amazon that no one said they had to keep adding money to the fund every month. If they didn't want to pay authors much money they could have just kept the fund at $5 million or so.
Anyway, I guess I really need to find a job. Even burger flipping for minimum wage is more lucrative than trying to sell books, especially once July comes.
About a year ago Amazon started their Kindle Unlimited service, which is sort of a Netflix for books. You pay your $9.99 a month and you can get all the KDP Select books you want. Some authors have complained about it, but others like me have really profited from that program. Usually 40-60% of what I make is thanks to Kindle Unlimited borrows. For example, in May I sold 863 books between actual sales and Unlimited borrows. 350 of those (40%) were actual sales while 513 (60%) were Unlimited borrows.
How you get paid is Amazon puts so much money in the fund for the month and then divvies it up based on how many total borrows there are for all books. It's usually less than you'd get from an actual sale but my philosophy (especially now) is money is money.
I got some distressing news on Monday that starting next month Amazon is going to completely revise their formula to screw people like me who have profited by writing shorter books. The new formula is instead of the number of borrows will be the number of pages read. Which is great if you're Tolstoy or Thomas Pynchon writing 1000-page books. But considering most of my gender swap books are 50 pages or less (which is high compared to the average) I'm going to get the royal screw thanks to this change.
If you aren't clear on the concept basically each page read is like giving you 1 share of the fund. Someone reads my 50 page book I get 50 shares. Whereas if someone reads a 500 page book that author gets 500 shares. So if someone reads My Wife Changed Me Into a Pinup Girl I get 43 shares. If someone reads Where You Belong I get 520 shares. Or to put it another way I'd have to sell 13 of the former to equal what I'd get from one of the latter. But which book do you suppose gets a lot more borrows? Hurm.
Now the other caveat that's important to note is it's the number of pages READ. This is something that should really disturb privacy advocates because it's saying that Amazon will be actively monitoring your Kindle/app so they can calculate how many pages of each book you're reading. You don't suppose they'd ever do anything else with that information, do you?
The system right now seems fairly easy to keep track of but this new system will be impossible for authors to keep track since we don't have Amazon's NSA-type technology to eavesdrop on the millions of Kindles/phones out there. But you can take Amazon's word for it, right? Sure because I should definitely trust the company spying on all of its users.
Of course what I'm really annoyed about is this new system is going to cost me money. A LOT of money I'm sure. Because again I have to sell over a dozen smaller books to equal one larger one. Unfortunately I need money, so this has the potential to screw me over big time. I'm sure some smarmy person would say, "Well just write longer books." And my response would be:
I mean really do you have any idea how many books I've written this year? Crimeny. But hey just make them longer! Or I suppose I can start putting 3-4 stories together. Or maybe I'll start putting in a lot of blank pages. Like a blank page for every scene break! Or like Brian Griffin's Wish It, Want It, Do It I'll leave a third of the book blank for people to write their hopes and dreams.
The only other option is to take my books out of KDP Select and start selling them through other outlets. What's the chance I'll generate the same cash flow on Draft2Digital or Smashwords? Not a lot I'd bet.
I guess you can say this is more fair to people who write longer books and that's certainly how Amazon was couching it. I mean why should I get the same amount for a 43 page book as a 520 page one, right? That doesn't seem logical, does it? But let's be honest this isn't about "fairness" for Amazon. What they want to do is divide the pie into smaller pieces. I mean think of it this way: right now they might divide the $10 million in the fund by say 10 million books sold. So that's $1 per share. But by using pages you split that $10 million let's say 100 million ways so you're getting a penny per share. People like me will probably end up with a lot fewer shares and thus less money. Which maybe that's what Amazon wants. Maybe they want to drive people like me with my short books or people like Andrew Leon with serials out of business. I'm not sure what that really gains them, but I don't buy the notion that a huge corporation is doing this to be "fair." And CVS stopped selling cigarettes because they really care about your health.
It's a stern reminder of the chains binding authors to Amazon and how they can take advantage of that. As I wrote about in a blog entry a while back, Amazon isn't your friend; they're your frenemy. They want you to be successful--but not too successful. Though I could remind Amazon that no one said they had to keep adding money to the fund every month. If they didn't want to pay authors much money they could have just kept the fund at $5 million or so.
Anyway, I guess I really need to find a job. Even burger flipping for minimum wage is more lucrative than trying to sell books, especially once July comes.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Winter of Our Discontent: Season 5 of Game of Thrones [With Spoilers!]
Worst. Season. Ever.
That pretty much sums it all up. I haven't followed Game of Thrones since the beginning like Michael Offutt, but I did catch up two years ago and then this last springs. So yes I think this was the worst season of the show. It never felt like there was really anything sustaining it except that eventually something, somewhere, someday would actually come together. But since there are still at least two more seasons, all this really does is move a few pieces along the board. And since this is Game of Thrones it takes a few pieces off the board as well.
The last episode pretty much summed it all up when all of our main characters are thrust into new peril--or killed. Stannis Baratheon burned his own daughter at the stake to appease the "Lord of Light" but ends up being slaughtered by the evil Boltons. Sansa Stark and Reek jump from a castle wall into the snow and who knows what will happen with that. Arya Stark kills some guy but then is struck blind by the "many faced god." Tyrion Lannister is left to try to quell unrest in Mereen while Daneys the Mother of Dragons is surrounded by horse people. Cersei takes the longest walk of shame ever while her daughter is poisoned by a vengeful Tyrell. And Jon Snow, the hero of the Watch, is murdered Julius Caesar style to cap it off. Jesus fucking Christ what a depressing way to end a season.
I think at this point the showrunners are actively trolling the audience. You thought Jon Snow would take the Iron Throne? Too bad, he's dead now. And otherwise let's make every other character get thrust into about the worst situations possible. Don't let one fucking glimmer of hope shine through. Come on, even The Walking Dead provides a little safe haven for its characters from time to time.
The worst part is to think it will get even worse next season! By the time the show gets to the end I think we'll all be rooting for the White Walkers to scour every last person from the face of Westeros because by that point there won't be anyone left for the audience to actually care about. I mean I'm sure right now Tyrion and Daneys are next on the chopping block because people might actually like them. Wouldn't want that.
If there was one moral from this season it's not to ally yourself with religion. Cersei courted the religious whackos to get rid of the queen and that really backfired on her. Stannis believed in the "Lord of Light" so much that he burned his daughter at the stake and that really backfired on him. Arya bought into the stupid "Many Faced God" and yup it backfired on her too. All those people believing in the Mother of Dragons, well she ain't gonna be around to help them. Basically if you're in Westeros don't believe in anything or anyone because belief is futile. Hope is futile. Winter is coming, bitch, and you're all doomed!
The End is Near!!!!
That pretty much sums it all up. I haven't followed Game of Thrones since the beginning like Michael Offutt, but I did catch up two years ago and then this last springs. So yes I think this was the worst season of the show. It never felt like there was really anything sustaining it except that eventually something, somewhere, someday would actually come together. But since there are still at least two more seasons, all this really does is move a few pieces along the board. And since this is Game of Thrones it takes a few pieces off the board as well.
The last episode pretty much summed it all up when all of our main characters are thrust into new peril--or killed. Stannis Baratheon burned his own daughter at the stake to appease the "Lord of Light" but ends up being slaughtered by the evil Boltons. Sansa Stark and Reek jump from a castle wall into the snow and who knows what will happen with that. Arya Stark kills some guy but then is struck blind by the "many faced god." Tyrion Lannister is left to try to quell unrest in Mereen while Daneys the Mother of Dragons is surrounded by horse people. Cersei takes the longest walk of shame ever while her daughter is poisoned by a vengeful Tyrell. And Jon Snow, the hero of the Watch, is murdered Julius Caesar style to cap it off. Jesus fucking Christ what a depressing way to end a season.
I think at this point the showrunners are actively trolling the audience. You thought Jon Snow would take the Iron Throne? Too bad, he's dead now. And otherwise let's make every other character get thrust into about the worst situations possible. Don't let one fucking glimmer of hope shine through. Come on, even The Walking Dead provides a little safe haven for its characters from time to time.
The worst part is to think it will get even worse next season! By the time the show gets to the end I think we'll all be rooting for the White Walkers to scour every last person from the face of Westeros because by that point there won't be anyone left for the audience to actually care about. I mean I'm sure right now Tyrion and Daneys are next on the chopping block because people might actually like them. Wouldn't want that.
If there was one moral from this season it's not to ally yourself with religion. Cersei courted the religious whackos to get rid of the queen and that really backfired on her. Stannis believed in the "Lord of Light" so much that he burned his daughter at the stake and that really backfired on him. Arya bought into the stupid "Many Faced God" and yup it backfired on her too. All those people believing in the Mother of Dragons, well she ain't gonna be around to help them. Basically if you're in Westeros don't believe in anything or anyone because belief is futile. Hope is futile. Winter is coming, bitch, and you're all doomed!
The End is Near!!!!
Friday, June 12, 2015
Movie! 6/12/15
Thanks a lot America for cursing us with at least another ten years of lame Melissa McCarthy comedies. Next time you complain Hollywood puts out only crap, remember remember the fifth of June. Fortunately her reign at the top will be short-lived.
There's really only one movie out this week: "Jurassic World." It's basically just a retread of "Jurassic Park" with some "Westworld" and "Futureworld" DNA thrown in. All of those were Michael Crichton creations, the latter two movies from the 70s starring Yul Bryner.
So this time around they got sick of trying to make real dinosaurs so they came up with dino "hybrids" which are basically just monsters they made up for the purpose of terrorizing people once they run amok. Instead of a wimp like Sam Neill or Jeff Goldblum trying to stop them, they've enlisted Star-Lord himself, Chris Pratt.
Anyway, I'm sure people will go watch this because it's got like monsters and name brand recognition and Chris Pratt. I'll probably save it for later because I don't care. Or maybe I'll go watch it some late afternoon when I have nothing else to do. Honestly this has been a really blah summer movie season. I watched Avengers 2 with tepid interest but nothing else has got me even the slightest bit stoked. Ah well, there's always Star Wars in December and Batman/Superman and Captain America 3 (or Avengers 2.5) next year.
There's really only one movie out this week: "Jurassic World." It's basically just a retread of "Jurassic Park" with some "Westworld" and "Futureworld" DNA thrown in. All of those were Michael Crichton creations, the latter two movies from the 70s starring Yul Bryner.
So this time around they got sick of trying to make real dinosaurs so they came up with dino "hybrids" which are basically just monsters they made up for the purpose of terrorizing people once they run amok. Instead of a wimp like Sam Neill or Jeff Goldblum trying to stop them, they've enlisted Star-Lord himself, Chris Pratt.
Anyway, I'm sure people will go watch this because it's got like monsters and name brand recognition and Chris Pratt. I'll probably save it for later because I don't care. Or maybe I'll go watch it some late afternoon when I have nothing else to do. Honestly this has been a really blah summer movie season. I watched Avengers 2 with tepid interest but nothing else has got me even the slightest bit stoked. Ah well, there's always Star Wars in December and Batman/Superman and Captain America 3 (or Avengers 2.5) next year.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Writing Wednesday: Arguing With Yourself
On writers.net there's this one guy who has frequently gotten into arguments with me. It was a lot more frequent when they still had an "anything goes" forum and we'd argue about politics, abortion, evolution, and all that other stuff. He's like super-religious, so it's no surprise that that comes through on his website.
He seriously has a whole page dedicated to "The Bible & God" where he basically takes old arguments on writers.net and posts them. What's funny to me is that each argument ends the same way, with him declaring "victory" by saying, "I never heard from [so-and-so] again." As if the fact someone stops arguing with you means that you're right and won the argument. All it means is the other person got sick of pointless fighting and quit. That doesn't make you right; it makes you stubborn. Even I can get sick of arguing with someone after a while. I wouldn't say they won or they're right. Actually I'd say such a person is just too damned stupid to know he's wrong.
There's another page where he shows his skills as an editor by again pasting stuff from writers.net that he critiqued. The thing is, he didn't ask permission of the authors before he did this. I think that's kind of unethical, but when I pointed this out the site moderator shrugged and said, "Meh." I personally would not want someone taking something I had submitted to be critiqued and posting it to their personal website. I mean sure I posted it to a website, but that doesn't mean I want it out there for just any schmuck anywhere to read. It seems like a violation to me, but if the site moderator isn't going to do anything, and no one else is complaining, what can you do?
Monday he put a sample of mine in there. Of course without permission, though I suppose he did notify me in advance, so that's something. I guess I could say no, but I'm not sure that would have mattered.
The writing questions thing I think is largely the same. Really he cribbed most of the content for his site from another website. It's like his "greatest hits" from those message boards. Which I did that once upon a time in the 90s. I copied a bunch of old posts from my flame wars on a Transformers newsgroup (one of those old pre-World Wide Web newsgroups) and put them on a web page. Mostly I just wanted to preserve my brilliant thoughts, though I have no idea where they went and I'm sure that old page has been taken down by AOL or Geocities or wherever the hell it was. I'd go find my greatest hits on writers.net but I don't really remember the stuff I say. Someone once referenced something I'd said that I guess was really funny and I was like, "Did I say that?"
Of course if you want to hear my volumes of wisdom you can always go read my old blogs. In the meantime, what do you think about harvesting message board posts for your author website? Yay or nay? You'd better answer in the comments or otherwise I win.
He seriously has a whole page dedicated to "The Bible & God" where he basically takes old arguments on writers.net and posts them. What's funny to me is that each argument ends the same way, with him declaring "victory" by saying, "I never heard from [so-and-so] again." As if the fact someone stops arguing with you means that you're right and won the argument. All it means is the other person got sick of pointless fighting and quit. That doesn't make you right; it makes you stubborn. Even I can get sick of arguing with someone after a while. I wouldn't say they won or they're right. Actually I'd say such a person is just too damned stupid to know he's wrong.
There's another page where he shows his skills as an editor by again pasting stuff from writers.net that he critiqued. The thing is, he didn't ask permission of the authors before he did this. I think that's kind of unethical, but when I pointed this out the site moderator shrugged and said, "Meh." I personally would not want someone taking something I had submitted to be critiqued and posting it to their personal website. I mean sure I posted it to a website, but that doesn't mean I want it out there for just any schmuck anywhere to read. It seems like a violation to me, but if the site moderator isn't going to do anything, and no one else is complaining, what can you do?
Monday he put a sample of mine in there. Of course without permission, though I suppose he did notify me in advance, so that's something. I guess I could say no, but I'm not sure that would have mattered.
The writing questions thing I think is largely the same. Really he cribbed most of the content for his site from another website. It's like his "greatest hits" from those message boards. Which I did that once upon a time in the 90s. I copied a bunch of old posts from my flame wars on a Transformers newsgroup (one of those old pre-World Wide Web newsgroups) and put them on a web page. Mostly I just wanted to preserve my brilliant thoughts, though I have no idea where they went and I'm sure that old page has been taken down by AOL or Geocities or wherever the hell it was. I'd go find my greatest hits on writers.net but I don't really remember the stuff I say. Someone once referenced something I'd said that I guess was really funny and I was like, "Did I say that?"
Of course if you want to hear my volumes of wisdom you can always go read my old blogs. In the meantime, what do you think about harvesting message board posts for your author website? Yay or nay? You'd better answer in the comments or otherwise I win.
Monday, June 8, 2015
These Are the Voyages Of...Binge Watching Star Trek
You'd probably take my geek card away if I admitted I had never really seen the original Star Trek series. I don't think it's really my fault. I mean I was born in 1977, almost 10 years after the series was cancelled and about 4 years after the animated series was cancelled. I grew up with the movies and then Next Generation, DS9, and Voyager. I caught a few episodes of the original series, here and there in reruns on a local UHF station. But really it wasn't until the 21st Century where you could watch the whole series in order without needing like 25-30 VHS tapes.
I mentioned last month about reading the original script for Harlan Ellison's episode "City on the Edge of Forever." After I read that I figured I might as well go watch the version that aired, so I looked the series up on Netflix and watched it.
Then a few days later I decided for the hell of it to start watching the original series in order. Because, why not? I didn't really have anything else in my queue that I was dying to watch.
I didn't start with the original pilot "The Cage." That episode is pretty much repeated in the first season anyway. What's funny is Netflix lists the second pilot (the Kirk one) "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as the 4th episode. I'm not sure why that is. It's pretty obviously the second pilot as the uniforms are still mostly like the ones from "The Cage." That was an OK episode and apparently the secret origin of the evil Dr. Kelso on "Scrubs" in Lt. Kelso, who is one of the first redshirts to die. OK, he didn't actually have a redshirt, but still.
I started binge watching after that. For the most part it was a lot of fun. Really I compare it to listening to a William Shatner album; you know it's cheesy and you should probably hate it, but something about its corniness is endearing. The Netflix version features "upgraded" effects that instead of hokey 60s effects are hokey 2000s effects on par with Sharknado. In a way I didn't like that as I wanted to see just how bad the original effects were but on the other hand it makes some of the episodes less cringe-inducing.
You soon realize that while Kirk is supposed to be the main character, Spock is really the star of the show. It's like how Richie Cunningham was supposed to be the main character of Happy Days but Fonzie turned out to be the star. The reason was more than the ears; it's because Spock is the only one they really bothered to write a backstory for. Otherwise every character was defined by either race or position. Kirk was the captain. Bones was the doctor. Scotty was Scottish, Uhura was African, Sulu was Asian, and Chekov was Russian. That's pretty much it. Even in "Operation: Annhilate" when Kirk's brother and sister-in-law die, by the end of the episode he's joking around with Spock and Bones. The reason people like "City on the Edge of Forever" is that it let Kirk have more emotional depth, especially Ellison's version. Even at the end of the aired version when Kirk says, "Let's get the hell out of here!" it still shows that the experience had damaged him, though of course by the next week he was fine again...even when his brother died.
On the other hand, Spock has an entire second season episode dedicated to his strained relationship with his Vulcan father Sarek. In that episode and in many others we're reminded about him being half-human. There are also episodes dedicated to how the crew doesn't really mesh very well with Spock, especially on those occasions when he has to take command. Ironically by not showing emotion, Spock actually has more emotional depth as his will is tested time and again. It's not something we see for anyone else on the show.
One thing that's known about Star Trek is it aggressively tried to preach unity and harmony. That's why you had characters of different races and nationalities all working together. There were frequently black characters as doctors and technicians, not just redshirts. In one episode there was even a black commodore. There was an Asian guy in charge of an insane asylum and an Indian woman (like from India) at the helm in another episode. There's a famous 3rd season episode that parodies our race problem with one character who is black on the right and white on the left and another who is black on the left and white on the right.
But all this talk about unity and harmony did not trickle down to the portrayal of women on the show. Which is kind of funny when many of the episodes were written by women and the story editor for the show was a woman. All you need to do is look at those miniskirt uniforms the women had to wear. (In "The Cage" the women got to wear pants but I guess someone decided that wasn't sexy enough for the second pilot.) In the early episodes it seems Yeoman Janice Rand is being pawed-up or threatened with rape in just about every episode. In "City on the Edge of Forever," Uhura's big contribution is saying, "I'm frightened!" That was of course not in the original script. In a second season episode Spock talks about how women are naturally more easily frightened than men. I bet if a woman asked to go on an away mission Kirk would say, "This is man's work!" The last episode, "Turnabout Intruder" says that female captains aren't allowed in Starfleet, to the point a woman gender swaps with Kirk so she can be in charge. The fact this woman is mentally unstable probably says something about how female captains would have been viewed. The last line of the episode (and series) is actually Kirk lamenting, "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only. If only--" He trails off but he probably meant to say, "If only she had been content to wear a miniskirt and fetch me coffee." Because unity and harmony is great--as long as women know their place.
Star Trek was referred to as a "wagon train to the stars" and as the series goes on you can see how the Enterprise was basically the pioneers and the aliens were all Indians--literally in one case they were Native Americans transplanted to another planet. The Indians come in two types: the "noble savages" and the just plain savages. It gets to kind of wear on me after a while. I mean couldn't there be aliens who were both smart and good? The Klingons and Romulans were the most notable of the evil aliens but there were plenty of others. The third season episode "Plato's Stepchildren" was famous for the interracial kiss between Uhura and Kirk, but what I found disturbing was earlier when the jerk aliens were using the away party for their amusement and had a dwarf riding Kirk like a horse--with Kirk making appropriate horse noises. That's just fucked up. It's pretty typical for how that class of aliens was portrayed. Which again is kind of funny for a show that wants to promote unity and harmony.
Another type of episode I got really tired of was the episode where they go to some planet that's pretty much exactly like Earth. This seemed especially a problem in the second season. First they go to a planet where Apollo the Greek god is hanging out. Then later there's a planet where they model themselves after Chicago mobs of the 20s. Then there's Nazi World. And a planet based on a 20th Century version of the Roman Empire. And as I mentioned, a planet where Native Americans were transplanted by aliens. I know it was cheaper to make Earth-type planets, but after a while it got kind of silly.
The general consensus is that "Spock's Brain" is the worst episode. I actually really hated the one before it, the 2nd season finale "Assignment: Earth." The problem is that it wasn't really a Star Trek episode. It was supposed to be the pilot for another show. And it's really not subtle in that regard. I mean I didn't even know it was supposed to be a pilot for another show and I thought, "This seems like they're trying to set up a spin-off." The episode starts off with the Enterprise going back to 1968 Earth...just cuz. They traveled back in time...somehow...so they could hang out and see what was going on back then. In the process they accidentally beam up a dude telepathically linked to a black cat who was kind of a Dr. Who type even with his own sonic screwdriver multi-tool thing and a "companion" in the form of a young Teri Garr. Watching it I wonder why I'm watching it because it's obvious that the only point was to set up another show that I didn't really give a shit about. I saw this same thing when I was watching Married With Children on TBS a few months ago and there was this episode that didn't even feature Al Bundy (except in a cameo); it was focused on a young Matt LeBlanc and his dad and it's just like WTF is this? It was a pretty lame way to end a season. And then starting the next with "Spock's Brain" makes you see why this show ended up being cancelled.
Probably the best thing about binging on this show is it decoded a lot of references in my favorite Trek-themed comedy, Free Enterprise. Now I know what they mean by "We'll do a special on you, Flavius!" or "She is for you Lt. D'Amato!" Or when they sing, "Stepping out to Eden. Yea, brother!" If you never watched that movie, find a way to do it because it's hilarious. And Shatner rapping, what else do you need?
And to end here are some gaffes I noticed. In the second pilot a tombstone for Kirk appears that says "James R. Kirk" which as we all know his name is (later at least) James T. Kirk. It took a while for them to actually come up with Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. I really can't keep track of the different variations they used before that. In the episode "Charlie X" at one point Kirk gets into the turbolift wearing that ugly greenish uniform with the v-neck. When he gets out of the turbolift he's wearing his normal yellow shirt. So, um, he changed his shirt in the elevator? Or maybe he stopped off on the way to the bridge to change. In the Khan episode "Space Seed" when Kirk and Khan throw down in the engineering room it's really obvious that it's Kirk's stunt double fighting. I mean I had turned away for a moment, turned back, and thought, who's that guy fighting Khan? Oh, wait, it's supposed to be Kirk. Basically every time in a fight they go to a long shot you can tell it's a stunt double instead of the actor. In one of the last episodes, "Ashes of Eden" near the end of the episode on the planet Eden for some reason the little stylized A on Kirk's shirt is on the wrong side! I'm not sure if they were using a mirror or if that day Shatner had his shirt on wrong or what. In the last episode, "Turnabout Intruder" Chekov and Sulu are at the helm and navigation stations but at one point they cut to what must have been a stock shot of the bridge and you can see Sulu and someone else instead of Chekov.
Despite all that it's still a fun show to watch. If you've never gotten around to watching it, you should. Or else your geek card will have to be revoked.
I mentioned last month about reading the original script for Harlan Ellison's episode "City on the Edge of Forever." After I read that I figured I might as well go watch the version that aired, so I looked the series up on Netflix and watched it.
Then a few days later I decided for the hell of it to start watching the original series in order. Because, why not? I didn't really have anything else in my queue that I was dying to watch.
I didn't start with the original pilot "The Cage." That episode is pretty much repeated in the first season anyway. What's funny is Netflix lists the second pilot (the Kirk one) "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as the 4th episode. I'm not sure why that is. It's pretty obviously the second pilot as the uniforms are still mostly like the ones from "The Cage." That was an OK episode and apparently the secret origin of the evil Dr. Kelso on "Scrubs" in Lt. Kelso, who is one of the first redshirts to die. OK, he didn't actually have a redshirt, but still.
I started binge watching after that. For the most part it was a lot of fun. Really I compare it to listening to a William Shatner album; you know it's cheesy and you should probably hate it, but something about its corniness is endearing. The Netflix version features "upgraded" effects that instead of hokey 60s effects are hokey 2000s effects on par with Sharknado. In a way I didn't like that as I wanted to see just how bad the original effects were but on the other hand it makes some of the episodes less cringe-inducing.
You soon realize that while Kirk is supposed to be the main character, Spock is really the star of the show. It's like how Richie Cunningham was supposed to be the main character of Happy Days but Fonzie turned out to be the star. The reason was more than the ears; it's because Spock is the only one they really bothered to write a backstory for. Otherwise every character was defined by either race or position. Kirk was the captain. Bones was the doctor. Scotty was Scottish, Uhura was African, Sulu was Asian, and Chekov was Russian. That's pretty much it. Even in "Operation: Annhilate" when Kirk's brother and sister-in-law die, by the end of the episode he's joking around with Spock and Bones. The reason people like "City on the Edge of Forever" is that it let Kirk have more emotional depth, especially Ellison's version. Even at the end of the aired version when Kirk says, "Let's get the hell out of here!" it still shows that the experience had damaged him, though of course by the next week he was fine again...even when his brother died.
On the other hand, Spock has an entire second season episode dedicated to his strained relationship with his Vulcan father Sarek. In that episode and in many others we're reminded about him being half-human. There are also episodes dedicated to how the crew doesn't really mesh very well with Spock, especially on those occasions when he has to take command. Ironically by not showing emotion, Spock actually has more emotional depth as his will is tested time and again. It's not something we see for anyone else on the show.
One thing that's known about Star Trek is it aggressively tried to preach unity and harmony. That's why you had characters of different races and nationalities all working together. There were frequently black characters as doctors and technicians, not just redshirts. In one episode there was even a black commodore. There was an Asian guy in charge of an insane asylum and an Indian woman (like from India) at the helm in another episode. There's a famous 3rd season episode that parodies our race problem with one character who is black on the right and white on the left and another who is black on the left and white on the right.
But all this talk about unity and harmony did not trickle down to the portrayal of women on the show. Which is kind of funny when many of the episodes were written by women and the story editor for the show was a woman. All you need to do is look at those miniskirt uniforms the women had to wear. (In "The Cage" the women got to wear pants but I guess someone decided that wasn't sexy enough for the second pilot.) In the early episodes it seems Yeoman Janice Rand is being pawed-up or threatened with rape in just about every episode. In "City on the Edge of Forever," Uhura's big contribution is saying, "I'm frightened!" That was of course not in the original script. In a second season episode Spock talks about how women are naturally more easily frightened than men. I bet if a woman asked to go on an away mission Kirk would say, "This is man's work!" The last episode, "Turnabout Intruder" says that female captains aren't allowed in Starfleet, to the point a woman gender swaps with Kirk so she can be in charge. The fact this woman is mentally unstable probably says something about how female captains would have been viewed. The last line of the episode (and series) is actually Kirk lamenting, "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only. If only--" He trails off but he probably meant to say, "If only she had been content to wear a miniskirt and fetch me coffee." Because unity and harmony is great--as long as women know their place.
Star Trek was referred to as a "wagon train to the stars" and as the series goes on you can see how the Enterprise was basically the pioneers and the aliens were all Indians--literally in one case they were Native Americans transplanted to another planet. The Indians come in two types: the "noble savages" and the just plain savages. It gets to kind of wear on me after a while. I mean couldn't there be aliens who were both smart and good? The Klingons and Romulans were the most notable of the evil aliens but there were plenty of others. The third season episode "Plato's Stepchildren" was famous for the interracial kiss between Uhura and Kirk, but what I found disturbing was earlier when the jerk aliens were using the away party for their amusement and had a dwarf riding Kirk like a horse--with Kirk making appropriate horse noises. That's just fucked up. It's pretty typical for how that class of aliens was portrayed. Which again is kind of funny for a show that wants to promote unity and harmony.
Another type of episode I got really tired of was the episode where they go to some planet that's pretty much exactly like Earth. This seemed especially a problem in the second season. First they go to a planet where Apollo the Greek god is hanging out. Then later there's a planet where they model themselves after Chicago mobs of the 20s. Then there's Nazi World. And a planet based on a 20th Century version of the Roman Empire. And as I mentioned, a planet where Native Americans were transplanted by aliens. I know it was cheaper to make Earth-type planets, but after a while it got kind of silly.
The general consensus is that "Spock's Brain" is the worst episode. I actually really hated the one before it, the 2nd season finale "Assignment: Earth." The problem is that it wasn't really a Star Trek episode. It was supposed to be the pilot for another show. And it's really not subtle in that regard. I mean I didn't even know it was supposed to be a pilot for another show and I thought, "This seems like they're trying to set up a spin-off." The episode starts off with the Enterprise going back to 1968 Earth...just cuz. They traveled back in time...somehow...so they could hang out and see what was going on back then. In the process they accidentally beam up a dude telepathically linked to a black cat who was kind of a Dr. Who type even with his own sonic screwdriver multi-tool thing and a "companion" in the form of a young Teri Garr. Watching it I wonder why I'm watching it because it's obvious that the only point was to set up another show that I didn't really give a shit about. I saw this same thing when I was watching Married With Children on TBS a few months ago and there was this episode that didn't even feature Al Bundy (except in a cameo); it was focused on a young Matt LeBlanc and his dad and it's just like WTF is this? It was a pretty lame way to end a season. And then starting the next with "Spock's Brain" makes you see why this show ended up being cancelled.
Probably the best thing about binging on this show is it decoded a lot of references in my favorite Trek-themed comedy, Free Enterprise. Now I know what they mean by "We'll do a special on you, Flavius!" or "She is for you Lt. D'Amato!" Or when they sing, "Stepping out to Eden. Yea, brother!" If you never watched that movie, find a way to do it because it's hilarious. And Shatner rapping, what else do you need?
And to end here are some gaffes I noticed. In the second pilot a tombstone for Kirk appears that says "James R. Kirk" which as we all know his name is (later at least) James T. Kirk. It took a while for them to actually come up with Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. I really can't keep track of the different variations they used before that. In the episode "Charlie X" at one point Kirk gets into the turbolift wearing that ugly greenish uniform with the v-neck. When he gets out of the turbolift he's wearing his normal yellow shirt. So, um, he changed his shirt in the elevator? Or maybe he stopped off on the way to the bridge to change. In the Khan episode "Space Seed" when Kirk and Khan throw down in the engineering room it's really obvious that it's Kirk's stunt double fighting. I mean I had turned away for a moment, turned back, and thought, who's that guy fighting Khan? Oh, wait, it's supposed to be Kirk. Basically every time in a fight they go to a long shot you can tell it's a stunt double instead of the actor. In one of the last episodes, "Ashes of Eden" near the end of the episode on the planet Eden for some reason the little stylized A on Kirk's shirt is on the wrong side! I'm not sure if they were using a mirror or if that day Shatner had his shirt on wrong or what. In the last episode, "Turnabout Intruder" Chekov and Sulu are at the helm and navigation stations but at one point they cut to what must have been a stock shot of the bridge and you can see Sulu and someone else instead of Chekov.
Despite all that it's still a fun show to watch. If you've never gotten around to watching it, you should. Or else your geek card will have to be revoked.
Friday, June 5, 2015
Movies! 6/5/15
I think the Rock(!!!!) will have a second week at the top of the box office as there's really not much competition this week.
First there's "Entourage" which is probably great if you watched the TV show. I never did, so I don't really care. I guess it's important to note this is the original cast, not a reboot or anything. At least I'm pretty sure.
In case "San Andreas" is full, you can go watch "Insidious, Chapter 3." Why do they release all these horror movies in winter and summer and then hardly any in October when you want horror movies? It's like stores selling bikinis in January and winter coats in July. It makes no sense!!! Anyway, I never saw "Insidious 1 or 2" but I'm sure it was better than "The Human Centipede." So that's something.
And also there's "Spy" starring Melissa McCarthy, who seems destined to become the female Chris Farley, albeit without the early death. Oh hey, this time she's a CIA desk jockey who goes undercover! Hilarity ensues. If by hilarity you mean watching a fat woman fall down a lot. Other people like that more than I do, so this is probably the Rock's most serious competition. Idea for next Melissa McCarthy vehicle: she goes undercover as a wrestler and has to fight the Rock! That's a two-fer right there.
First there's "Entourage" which is probably great if you watched the TV show. I never did, so I don't really care. I guess it's important to note this is the original cast, not a reboot or anything. At least I'm pretty sure.
In case "San Andreas" is full, you can go watch "Insidious, Chapter 3." Why do they release all these horror movies in winter and summer and then hardly any in October when you want horror movies? It's like stores selling bikinis in January and winter coats in July. It makes no sense!!! Anyway, I never saw "Insidious 1 or 2" but I'm sure it was better than "The Human Centipede." So that's something.
And also there's "Spy" starring Melissa McCarthy, who seems destined to become the female Chris Farley, albeit without the early death. Oh hey, this time she's a CIA desk jockey who goes undercover! Hilarity ensues. If by hilarity you mean watching a fat woman fall down a lot. Other people like that more than I do, so this is probably the Rock's most serious competition. Idea for next Melissa McCarthy vehicle: she goes undercover as a wrestler and has to fight the Rock! That's a two-fer right there.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Writing Wednesday: The Decline of P.T. Dilloway or How I Got Into Erotica
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Monday, June 1, 2015
A House Built on Sand or Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail
I recently read a Variety article the Geek Twins linked to that was about the failure of Tomorrowland and how it shows people don't really want originality. A lot of people have blamed the movie's marketing that never really defined the plot. I don't think that would have helped, as I think the whole concept was flawed from the beginning. The movie was based on a 50s theme park ride and was harkening back to all that old sci-fi stuff. They can bill it as a family movie, but what kid is really going to have an interest in nostalgic sci-fi? Almost none. It's a concept that appealed to aging Baby Boomers, created by an aging Baby Boomer, and starring an aging Baby Boomer, so who do you think went and saw it? Yeah, exactly. The problem wasn't originality or marketing; the problem was a flawed concept.
Of course as I mentioned in my Movies 5/22/15 article, Disney had the same problem a couple of years ago with John Carter. It was another nostalgic sci-fi movie that no matter how they marketed it or no matter how on-budget the director was, the concept was not going to appeal to mass audiences because it was based on books kids today have probably never heard of, let alone read. Like Tomorrowland it was the kind of niche concept that appeals to a Baby Boomer's nostalgia but hardly anyone else. And maybe that's why Disney keeps greenlighting these things.
About a month or so ago I watched the crummy 2014 Godzilla movie on HBO and then thought since I was watching bad Godzilla movies (at least to me) I might as well watch the even crummier 1998 version.
I hadn't seen it since I watched it in the theater back in 1998 and it wasn't any better. The thing is, it's the kind of story that was doomed before even the first second of film was shot. The problem was instead of a monster movie Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin decided to make Jurassic Park in New York. So instead of being a fire-breathing monster, Godzilla is a mere giant mutated lizard. Instead of fighting Mothra or Rodan or Mechagodzilla, he just runs around New York while army bozos indiscriminately fire into buildings. And then was the worst part, the idea of Godzilla laying eggs and hatching mini-Godzillas who chase humans around in what is very reminiscent of the raptors in Jurassic Park.
So thanks to all those bad decisions, the movie was destined to fail because let's face it when people go to see Godzilla they want to see a monster movie not a dinosaur running amok. Plus that same year there was also The Lost World which was pretty much doing the same thing. But what can you expect from guys whose idea of wit was to have a fat old guy named Mayor Ebert with a tall, bald assistant named Gene?
Another example that came to mind was when I was also watching HBO and rewatched Catwoman. What struck me is that the writers must never have read a Catwoman comic or seen the various Batman TV shows. They seemed to be under the impression that Catwoman is literally a woman with cat-like powers, much like Spider-Man is a man with spider powers. Between that and never seeming able to decide if she's supposed to be a good guy or bad guy (or bad guy who turns good like in The Dark Knight Rises) it was again doomed.
Speaking of superheroes, remember Superman Returns? I liked it for the most part but many people didn't and it eventually led to the reboot. Which is what they should have done in the first place. Instead they went with the "soft reboot" that tried to incorporate stuff from the late 70s movies; movies that were made over 25 years earlier! The problem then is most of the people you're trying to sell it to (ie, young people) weren't even born when those movies were out and as Nigel Mitchell posted about recently it can be hard to get your kids to like the old movies you do. Is it any wonder then the movie didn't really connect with the audience? As Man of Steel showed, the full reboot would have worked a lot better.
Halloween 3 is another perfect example of a terrible decision dooming the project. The first two entries were of course about super-serial killer Michael Myers terrorizing Jamie Lee Curtis. But for the third movie they decided to instead make a movie about an evil corporation that makes killer Halloween masks. The only appearance of Michael Myers was on a TV screen showing the original Halloween. Beyond just the silliness of the plot, when people thought Halloween they thought Jamie Lee Curtis battling Michael Myers, not Tom Atkins battling evil corporations. You put the franchise name on it and then make a completely different movie and it's not a recipe for anything good to happen.
Recently I rewatched the awful "Masters of the Universe" movie from 1987 starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor--not his finest hour to be sure. The Masters of the Universe toys (and TV cartoon) were about musclebound warrior He-Man whose secret identity was wimpy Prince Adam in the kingdom of Eternia. It was all swords, sandals, and magic stuff. But for this movie, someone (moron film execs probably) said, Hey, let's turn this into Star Wars! Because that made a bunch of money. So what if the property has absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars, give them ray guns and spaceships! And then send them to present day Earth because that worked for Star Trek IV. It really, really, really did not work. I mean plus Dolph Lundgren sucks and Skeletor's face was obviously a rubber mask.
While I'm talking about bad action figure movies, that GI JOE one from 2009 was another offender. Since Transformers had been a hit, why not have GI JOE guys run around in robot suits! And let's make the Baroness a good guy! And show Destro and Cobra Commander's faces! Then the second movie decided, Let's kill off everyone from the first movie! And let's have Zartan be a ninja who killed Snake Eyes's master! WTF?!
And remember that crappy Inspector Gadget movie from like 1999? Where they tried to do a kid-friendly version of Robocop? Oh and let's show Dr. Claw's face despite that in the cartoon you only ever saw his one arm.
Speaking of Robocop, sometimes it's not even so much a story decision that can screw a project over. The Robocop reboot was doomed when they decided to go for a PG-13 rating instead of an R rating, which meant it could never match the carnage and gore of the original. Not that there weren't plenty of bad story decisions either, but that simple idea to water it down for the lower rating made sure it could never be as satisfying.
Then there was the 2003 "Hulk" movie that was doomed when they hired Ang Lee, whose biggest credit to that point was "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Lee made a number of terrible decisions, except hiring Jennifer Connelly, like Sam Adams that's always a good decision. So yeah you hire the wrong director and you are fucked before you can even get a shot.
Does this happen in books? Absolutely!
I recently read this H.E.R.O. Omnibus that was just really hard to get through. The author decided to use multiple first-person and third-person points of view. Every chapter would start "[Someone's] Viewpoint." I just couldn't understand the point of doing it that way. If you want multiple viewpoints, why not just use the third-person? It would have been a lot less clumsy. Also the author was really lazy putting it together. He didn't even bother to delete all the promo stuff between books. It's like he just pasted 3 Word files together, saved it, and posted it. You could take at least five minutes to delete the junk between the books so it's not repeated.
A couple of years ago I got the chance to buy the Darkman paperbacks that were released about 1994 from a used bookstore. Reading those it was clear that the hired gun who wrote them had no idea what was going on. It's hard to tell if he even watched the original movie or if he just maybe read an outline of it. In the third book he had our masked avenger wearing the face of his mortal enemy Robert G Durant just to take a little stroll around the neighborhood. And I thought WTF? This is the guy who ruined his life; he's not going to dress up like him just to go out and get some milk from the store. That's insane!
So yeah it happens in books where you decide to tell the story the wrong way or you hire the wrong guy to write your books. And once you've locked in those decisions, you've pretty much screwed the pooch on the whole project.
Of course the problem is the people in charge of these projects can rarely see these problems until after they've already bombed--if then. Still, when you make a misstep out of the gate, it's really hard to win the race.
Of course as I mentioned in my Movies 5/22/15 article, Disney had the same problem a couple of years ago with John Carter. It was another nostalgic sci-fi movie that no matter how they marketed it or no matter how on-budget the director was, the concept was not going to appeal to mass audiences because it was based on books kids today have probably never heard of, let alone read. Like Tomorrowland it was the kind of niche concept that appeals to a Baby Boomer's nostalgia but hardly anyone else. And maybe that's why Disney keeps greenlighting these things.
About a month or so ago I watched the crummy 2014 Godzilla movie on HBO and then thought since I was watching bad Godzilla movies (at least to me) I might as well watch the even crummier 1998 version.
I hadn't seen it since I watched it in the theater back in 1998 and it wasn't any better. The thing is, it's the kind of story that was doomed before even the first second of film was shot. The problem was instead of a monster movie Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin decided to make Jurassic Park in New York. So instead of being a fire-breathing monster, Godzilla is a mere giant mutated lizard. Instead of fighting Mothra or Rodan or Mechagodzilla, he just runs around New York while army bozos indiscriminately fire into buildings. And then was the worst part, the idea of Godzilla laying eggs and hatching mini-Godzillas who chase humans around in what is very reminiscent of the raptors in Jurassic Park.
So thanks to all those bad decisions, the movie was destined to fail because let's face it when people go to see Godzilla they want to see a monster movie not a dinosaur running amok. Plus that same year there was also The Lost World which was pretty much doing the same thing. But what can you expect from guys whose idea of wit was to have a fat old guy named Mayor Ebert with a tall, bald assistant named Gene?
Another example that came to mind was when I was also watching HBO and rewatched Catwoman. What struck me is that the writers must never have read a Catwoman comic or seen the various Batman TV shows. They seemed to be under the impression that Catwoman is literally a woman with cat-like powers, much like Spider-Man is a man with spider powers. Between that and never seeming able to decide if she's supposed to be a good guy or bad guy (or bad guy who turns good like in The Dark Knight Rises) it was again doomed.
Speaking of superheroes, remember Superman Returns? I liked it for the most part but many people didn't and it eventually led to the reboot. Which is what they should have done in the first place. Instead they went with the "soft reboot" that tried to incorporate stuff from the late 70s movies; movies that were made over 25 years earlier! The problem then is most of the people you're trying to sell it to (ie, young people) weren't even born when those movies were out and as Nigel Mitchell posted about recently it can be hard to get your kids to like the old movies you do. Is it any wonder then the movie didn't really connect with the audience? As Man of Steel showed, the full reboot would have worked a lot better.
Halloween 3 is another perfect example of a terrible decision dooming the project. The first two entries were of course about super-serial killer Michael Myers terrorizing Jamie Lee Curtis. But for the third movie they decided to instead make a movie about an evil corporation that makes killer Halloween masks. The only appearance of Michael Myers was on a TV screen showing the original Halloween. Beyond just the silliness of the plot, when people thought Halloween they thought Jamie Lee Curtis battling Michael Myers, not Tom Atkins battling evil corporations. You put the franchise name on it and then make a completely different movie and it's not a recipe for anything good to happen.
Recently I rewatched the awful "Masters of the Universe" movie from 1987 starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor--not his finest hour to be sure. The Masters of the Universe toys (and TV cartoon) were about musclebound warrior He-Man whose secret identity was wimpy Prince Adam in the kingdom of Eternia. It was all swords, sandals, and magic stuff. But for this movie, someone (moron film execs probably) said, Hey, let's turn this into Star Wars! Because that made a bunch of money. So what if the property has absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars, give them ray guns and spaceships! And then send them to present day Earth because that worked for Star Trek IV. It really, really, really did not work. I mean plus Dolph Lundgren sucks and Skeletor's face was obviously a rubber mask.
While I'm talking about bad action figure movies, that GI JOE one from 2009 was another offender. Since Transformers had been a hit, why not have GI JOE guys run around in robot suits! And let's make the Baroness a good guy! And show Destro and Cobra Commander's faces! Then the second movie decided, Let's kill off everyone from the first movie! And let's have Zartan be a ninja who killed Snake Eyes's master! WTF?!
And remember that crappy Inspector Gadget movie from like 1999? Where they tried to do a kid-friendly version of Robocop? Oh and let's show Dr. Claw's face despite that in the cartoon you only ever saw his one arm.
Speaking of Robocop, sometimes it's not even so much a story decision that can screw a project over. The Robocop reboot was doomed when they decided to go for a PG-13 rating instead of an R rating, which meant it could never match the carnage and gore of the original. Not that there weren't plenty of bad story decisions either, but that simple idea to water it down for the lower rating made sure it could never be as satisfying.
Then there was the 2003 "Hulk" movie that was doomed when they hired Ang Lee, whose biggest credit to that point was "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Lee made a number of terrible decisions, except hiring Jennifer Connelly, like Sam Adams that's always a good decision. So yeah you hire the wrong director and you are fucked before you can even get a shot.
Does this happen in books? Absolutely!
I recently read this H.E.R.O. Omnibus that was just really hard to get through. The author decided to use multiple first-person and third-person points of view. Every chapter would start "[Someone's] Viewpoint." I just couldn't understand the point of doing it that way. If you want multiple viewpoints, why not just use the third-person? It would have been a lot less clumsy. Also the author was really lazy putting it together. He didn't even bother to delete all the promo stuff between books. It's like he just pasted 3 Word files together, saved it, and posted it. You could take at least five minutes to delete the junk between the books so it's not repeated.
A couple of years ago I got the chance to buy the Darkman paperbacks that were released about 1994 from a used bookstore. Reading those it was clear that the hired gun who wrote them had no idea what was going on. It's hard to tell if he even watched the original movie or if he just maybe read an outline of it. In the third book he had our masked avenger wearing the face of his mortal enemy Robert G Durant just to take a little stroll around the neighborhood. And I thought WTF? This is the guy who ruined his life; he's not going to dress up like him just to go out and get some milk from the store. That's insane!
So yeah it happens in books where you decide to tell the story the wrong way or you hire the wrong guy to write your books. And once you've locked in those decisions, you've pretty much screwed the pooch on the whole project.
Of course the problem is the people in charge of these projects can rarely see these problems until after they've already bombed--if then. Still, when you make a misstep out of the gate, it's really hard to win the race.
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