The genesis of my A to Z topic was kind of like that old Reese's Peanut Butter commercial where one guy has chocolate and the other has peanut butter and they get mixed up and one is like, "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!" And the other is like, "You got peanut butter in my chocolate!" And blammo, Reese's peanut butter cups! Only in this case it was, "I like books. I like movies. Why not write about books that were turned into movies!?" Freaking genius. I'm sure someone else has done it before, but this time it's ME doing it, so that means it's way more important.
I would have liked to find all books I've read that were turned into movies I watched, but sometimes life doesn't work out that way. Some letters were pretty hard to come up with an entry for. X was pretty well impossible as you can imagine. You know what the next hardest was? K. Freaking K! I looked through my bookshelves and my movies and looked up stuff online and it was really hard to watch a movie I'd seen based on a book. Maybe you have a suggestion for that, though I did come up with something.
Anyway, each entry will be either a book I read or a movie I watched that's based on a book--or both in many cases. The one where I've read/watched both I will try to compare and contrast them to decide which is better.
So hold on to your butts, because it's going to start Friday with...wait for it...A! And then B. And then C. You should know the drill. I mean even my nieces know the freaking alphabet and one's 5 and the other 3.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Batman v Superman Gets the DC Universe Off to A Bumpy Start
I finally went to see Batman v Superman Monday afternoon. I think I can sum it up by saying that like Man of Steel it's a decent action movie so long as you don't take the time to poke holes in it. Because honestly there are probably as many holes as my colander.
In case you don't know the plot, Bruce Wayne (ie Batman) is pissed because Superman destroyed one of his buildings while fighting General Zod. And so he decides to try to bring down the Man of Steel. Fortunately some random people diving in the Indian Ocean found some kryptionite, which is what can weaken Kryptonians like Superman. At the same time Lex Luthor is trying to destroy Superman for...reasons and is also trying to bring the Kryptonite into the country. Meanwhile Superman is being subjected to public scorn for all the people he has inadvertently killed. This all culminates in a largely pointless fight between Batman and Superman and then fighting against Luthor's Frankenstein monster better known as Doomsday.
There are a lot pieces strewn around for DC's cinematic universe, quite a few of which are pounded together with a sledgehammer. There's Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg all introduced, the last three hastily added in meaningless cameos. There's also the threat of Darkseid, the big bad rock monster who lives on a crappy planet called Apokalips, where he's sort of a god. A lot of it feels as forced as Avengers 2.
The biggest weakness though is with a couple of the main characters. Lex Luthor is a complete deviation from the comic books, where he started as a mad scientist and then in the 80s became an evil businessman and for a little while even POTUS. This Luthor is a twitchy computer dork with Asperger's or something. It's not really clear why he hates Superman so much. In the comics it's usually because Superman overshadows him along with good old-fashioned xenophobia. In the movie...just cuz. I'm not sure what his master plan really was either. After Doomsday killed Superman, then what? Was he going to use his new pet to take over the world? And why would he want to signal Darkseid? He hates one alien who tries to help people but wants to help another who would enslave humanity?
For the most part Ben Affleck's Batman isn't exactly as terrible as Frank Miller's Batman in The Dark Knight Returns, but he's still a pretty big asshole. He has a little more motivation to want to kill Superman, but still he lets his rage blind him so completely that he dances to Luthor's tune. Batman is too smart for that. In the fight against Doomsday he's pretty much just a decoy while Superman and Wonder Woman do the real fighting; really Lois Lane contributes as much as Batman to that final battle. Kind of disappointing.
In The Dark Knight Returns, the fight between Batman and Superman actually meant something. After new kind of Soviet weapon threw a lot of ash or whatever into the atmosphere, it set off a nuclear winter that led to widespread looting and rioting around the world. Batman, with the help of a lot of ex-gang members, brought order to Gotham, which showed up the government. To stop his success, Reagan sent in his lackey Superman. So there was actually some purpose to their fighting. Whereas in the movie it's just that Batman is pissed off and doesn't care about anything else going on until Superman snaps him out of it by saying the name of his mother. For some reason I had never realized before Batman and Superman's mother are both named Martha. How weird.
By comparison, Superman comes off a lot better in this than Batman or even himself in Man of Steel. In most of that movie he was running from his powers, but now that he's "come out" so to speak, he has to try to figure out how to use them without doing too much damage and to still have something of a normal life. And then in the end he has to make a heroic sacrifice to save the world. Really as the only one trying to do the right thing, he seems a lot better than the prior movie.
It's funny that for years and years we were told that it was just too darned hard to make a Wonder Woman movie and no one would want to see it anyway and yet her cameo at the end seems to be what most people like the most. She does get to make a big entrance and contribute a lot to that final battle. So, hey, maybe it wasn't that hard after all, Hollywood.
I mentioned plot holes and there are a bunch. How does Lois Lane know to go back and get the Kryptonite spear? How did Superman know Batman is Bruce Wayne? Why does the Kryptonian ship's computer speak English? Did either of the writers ever watch Silence of the Lambs or stuff like that? I mean, you don't shave a prisoner's head and when you're going to cuff them you don't have them stand at the back of the cell facing the wall. Cell doors have a slot in them that the prisoner puts his hands through to be cuffed.
The biggest plot hole I hadn't heard anyone talk about is when Superman carries Doomsday into space and then they're hit with a nuclear missile. (First off, unless we're at like DEFCON 1 I don't think there are nuclear missiles you can fire in like two minutes.) Second is after Superman gets hit with the missile he's floating dead in space until the sun shines on him and he instantly regenerates. (This mimics The Dark Knight Returns when Superman took the brunt of a nuclear blast and regenerated with the solar energy stored in plants he fell on.) Which traditionally Superman's powers come from the yellow sun...except in Man of Steel it was Earth's atmosphere, not the sun that gave Kryptonians powers. So what should have happened is Superman should have fallen through the atmosphere and regenerated once he got back into our air. Which actually would have been a cooler sequence--as he falls through the atmosphere he starts to get more and more normal and then zip flies away to go face Doomsday.
But if you can ignore plot holes like that and the fuzzy motivations of 2/3 of the main cast, then it's good enough. Not a great start to the DC cinematic universe but at least it has all the pieces in place without completely embarrassing itself. All the while it eschews the Marvel formula. I'd give it 2.5/5.
BTW, with Superman "dead," now's the time to make Tim Burton's infamous Superman Lives--though maybe without giant spiders and Nicolas Cage.
Tomorrow the A to Z Challenge begins when I announce my topic for the month!
In case you don't know the plot, Bruce Wayne (ie Batman) is pissed because Superman destroyed one of his buildings while fighting General Zod. And so he decides to try to bring down the Man of Steel. Fortunately some random people diving in the Indian Ocean found some kryptionite, which is what can weaken Kryptonians like Superman. At the same time Lex Luthor is trying to destroy Superman for...reasons and is also trying to bring the Kryptonite into the country. Meanwhile Superman is being subjected to public scorn for all the people he has inadvertently killed. This all culminates in a largely pointless fight between Batman and Superman and then fighting against Luthor's Frankenstein monster better known as Doomsday.
There are a lot pieces strewn around for DC's cinematic universe, quite a few of which are pounded together with a sledgehammer. There's Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg all introduced, the last three hastily added in meaningless cameos. There's also the threat of Darkseid, the big bad rock monster who lives on a crappy planet called Apokalips, where he's sort of a god. A lot of it feels as forced as Avengers 2.
The biggest weakness though is with a couple of the main characters. Lex Luthor is a complete deviation from the comic books, where he started as a mad scientist and then in the 80s became an evil businessman and for a little while even POTUS. This Luthor is a twitchy computer dork with Asperger's or something. It's not really clear why he hates Superman so much. In the comics it's usually because Superman overshadows him along with good old-fashioned xenophobia. In the movie...just cuz. I'm not sure what his master plan really was either. After Doomsday killed Superman, then what? Was he going to use his new pet to take over the world? And why would he want to signal Darkseid? He hates one alien who tries to help people but wants to help another who would enslave humanity?
For the most part Ben Affleck's Batman isn't exactly as terrible as Frank Miller's Batman in The Dark Knight Returns, but he's still a pretty big asshole. He has a little more motivation to want to kill Superman, but still he lets his rage blind him so completely that he dances to Luthor's tune. Batman is too smart for that. In the fight against Doomsday he's pretty much just a decoy while Superman and Wonder Woman do the real fighting; really Lois Lane contributes as much as Batman to that final battle. Kind of disappointing.
In The Dark Knight Returns, the fight between Batman and Superman actually meant something. After new kind of Soviet weapon threw a lot of ash or whatever into the atmosphere, it set off a nuclear winter that led to widespread looting and rioting around the world. Batman, with the help of a lot of ex-gang members, brought order to Gotham, which showed up the government. To stop his success, Reagan sent in his lackey Superman. So there was actually some purpose to their fighting. Whereas in the movie it's just that Batman is pissed off and doesn't care about anything else going on until Superman snaps him out of it by saying the name of his mother. For some reason I had never realized before Batman and Superman's mother are both named Martha. How weird.
By comparison, Superman comes off a lot better in this than Batman or even himself in Man of Steel. In most of that movie he was running from his powers, but now that he's "come out" so to speak, he has to try to figure out how to use them without doing too much damage and to still have something of a normal life. And then in the end he has to make a heroic sacrifice to save the world. Really as the only one trying to do the right thing, he seems a lot better than the prior movie.
It's funny that for years and years we were told that it was just too darned hard to make a Wonder Woman movie and no one would want to see it anyway and yet her cameo at the end seems to be what most people like the most. She does get to make a big entrance and contribute a lot to that final battle. So, hey, maybe it wasn't that hard after all, Hollywood.
I mentioned plot holes and there are a bunch. How does Lois Lane know to go back and get the Kryptonite spear? How did Superman know Batman is Bruce Wayne? Why does the Kryptonian ship's computer speak English? Did either of the writers ever watch Silence of the Lambs or stuff like that? I mean, you don't shave a prisoner's head and when you're going to cuff them you don't have them stand at the back of the cell facing the wall. Cell doors have a slot in them that the prisoner puts his hands through to be cuffed.
The biggest plot hole I hadn't heard anyone talk about is when Superman carries Doomsday into space and then they're hit with a nuclear missile. (First off, unless we're at like DEFCON 1 I don't think there are nuclear missiles you can fire in like two minutes.) Second is after Superman gets hit with the missile he's floating dead in space until the sun shines on him and he instantly regenerates. (This mimics The Dark Knight Returns when Superman took the brunt of a nuclear blast and regenerated with the solar energy stored in plants he fell on.) Which traditionally Superman's powers come from the yellow sun...except in Man of Steel it was Earth's atmosphere, not the sun that gave Kryptonians powers. So what should have happened is Superman should have fallen through the atmosphere and regenerated once he got back into our air. Which actually would have been a cooler sequence--as he falls through the atmosphere he starts to get more and more normal and then zip flies away to go face Doomsday.
But if you can ignore plot holes like that and the fuzzy motivations of 2/3 of the main cast, then it's good enough. Not a great start to the DC cinematic universe but at least it has all the pieces in place without completely embarrassing itself. All the while it eschews the Marvel formula. I'd give it 2.5/5.
BTW, with Superman "dead," now's the time to make Tim Burton's infamous Superman Lives--though maybe without giant spiders and Nicolas Cage.
Tomorrow the A to Z Challenge begins when I announce my topic for the month!
Monday, March 28, 2016
Stuff I Watched: March Edition
This is a few days early with the whole A to Z Challenge thing coming up. I decided to change it up and put them by star rating instead of title. That makes it easy to find the good movies.
5 Stars (Awesome!)
Beasts of No Nation: The heart-wrenching
story of an African boy whose father and brother are killed and is separated
from his mother and baby sister by government troops. Running into the jungle
he's taken by Idris Elba and a band of child soldiers and trained to be one of
them. Basically imagine Platoon only with a small African boy
instead of Charlie Sheen. If this hadn't been released through Netflix I
think it would have gotten serious Oscar consideration. (5/5)
The End of the Tour: I haven't read any
David Foster Wallace but like many people Infinite Jest is on my pile to
be read (or on my Kindle in this case). Anyway, in this movie a young
reporter just starting at Rolling Stone goes to interview Wallace in
1996 at his home in Illinois and then to the last stop of his book tour in
Minneapolis. They have a lot of deep conversations, but where the movie
really succeeds is showing the nuance in their relationship that despite how much
they share, they never really become best buddies. There's a lot of good
writing-related stuff in here, so definitely watch it if you're a writer.
My thought on watching this was I'd like to watch it again to help absorb some
of the things they talk about. Now whether this is true or
"true" (in the sense of any Aaron Sorkin-written biopic where
Facebook/Zuckerberg and Apple/Jobs existed but the rest is pure horse plop) I
can't really say. Obviously I didn't know Wallace and from the movie you
get the sense not many people really did. But then how many people really
know someone else as in all facets of them? (5/5) (Fun Fact:
Much of the movie was filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan which according to
novelist Richard Ford we say as "Gren Repids"--more horse plop.)
Room: I read the book five years ago or
so; it was one of the first I read on my Kindle. The movie (written by
the book's author) does a good job of being faithful to the book. A woman
has been kidnapped and held in a room for 7 years, 5 of those spent with her
son Jack. To Jack "Room" is the only world he has ever
known--until they escape. Then in the second half of the movie both
mother and son try to adapt to the outside world. For Jack the whole
world is alien while his mother is more like an astronaut who has returned home
after years in space--everyone is older and the world she knows is completely
changed. Overall, an excellent movie. (5/5)
4 Stars (Very Good)
Bridge of Spies: I wanted to see this in
the theater but never got around to it. Anyway, it's at least the 4th
time Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have worked together since 1998. This
time it's a Cold War tale of an ordinary lawyer who was assigned to defend a
Russian spy and had the foresight to ask the judge not to have the spy executed.
Later when the Soviets shoot down a U2 spy plane, the lawyer trades that
Russian spy for the U2 pilot and another prisoner, all of which was very
complicated. Interestingly the movie was written by the Coen Brothers of Fargo
and No Country for Old Men fame. (4/5) (Fun Fact:
In the first volume of Wild Cards--edited by GRR Martin--the U2 pilot is
rescued by a CIA analyst who has been hiding superpowers from his bosses.
That movie might have made more money, right?)
The Hoax: Long before James Frey, the
biggest literary scandal was when author Clifford Irving (no relation to my
favorite author John Irving) faked an autobiography of Howard Hughes and got
McGraw-Hill to pay a million bucks for it! What you also may not know is
this helped to bring about the Watergate scandal when Hughes indirectly
contacted Irving to give him some dirt on favors he did for Nixon. So in
large part Watergate happened because of a down-on-his-luck author trying to
scam Big Publishing. A really interesting movie on the sleazy underbelly of
the publishing industry. (4/5) (Fun Fact: Though John and Cliff
Irving are not related--probably--there is a common thread in that The Hoax
based on Cliff's book and The Cider House Rules based on John Irving's book are
both directed by Lasse Hallstrom. Small world.)
3 Stars (Good)
Mississippi Grind: A compulsive gambler
deep in debt meets a happy-go-lucky traveler (Ryan Reynolds) who seems to be a
good luck charm. They gamble their way from Iowa to New Orleans in search
of a high-stakes poker game. But along the way they become better people
too. Maybe a little too long but otherwise very good. (3.5/5)
Batman: Bad Blood: This sounds
like it should be a vampire movie but it's not. Like the previous
animated Batman features it combines several old comic book stories.
Batman is captured and so Dick Grayson (Nightwing) takes up the mantle and with
Robin, Batwoman, and Batwing they try to find him. The comics had more
time to do this better but it was OK. I wondered why they introduced
Batwoman and Batwing and yet they hadn't introduced Batgirl yet. But then
she shows up at the very end, so presumably she'll be in a future movie. (3/5)
The Exorcist: Often imitated, never
duplicated. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Max von Syndow was only 44 when he
played the old priest in this. I had to look that up because I thought,
"How the fuck old is he to still be alive 40 years later to be in Star
Wars?!")
The Forger: John Travolta gets out of
prison ostensibly to forge a Monet painting, but mostly he wants to spend time
with his son who's dying of a brain tumor. So it's a family drama with a
caper involved. (3/5)
Fun With Dick & Jane (1978): Dick
loses his job at an aerospace company and so to maintain their
upper-middle-class lifestyle he and his wife Jane take to robbing stores and
finally a big score at Dick's old workplace. There were a few things
bordering on racist, but otherwise it was pretty funny. God knows a few
times I've considered doing what they did. (3/5)
The Ghosts of Ole Miss: In 1962 Kennedy
forced Ole Miss to admit a black student, leading to riots. The school
would have closed down with spite but if there's one thing Mississippi loves
more than white supremacy it's football. Since the football team was
undefeated they had to keep the university open and grudgingly accept
integration. Yay, football! Reporter Wright Thompson examines this
event. Though I couldn't help noticing most of his interviewees and the
girl singing "Dixie" are white. Just saying. (3/5)
The Guru of Go: This documentary focuses
on the Loyola Marymount basketball team in the early 90s that scored a shitload
of points and seemed poised to go far until a heart defect killed their star
player. (3/5)
Justice League: Flashpoint Paradox:
Based on the Flashpoint event series of comics, the Flash goes back in time to
save his mom from being murdered. That creates a horrible parallel
universe where Aquaman and Wonder Woman are at war, Superman is MIA, and Batman
is actually Bruce Wayne's father. It stays pretty close to the comics for
the most part but the comics develop it a little more. This is definitely
not one for the kids with graphic violence and gore. (3/5)
Pentagon Wars: 1998 HBO movie about the
military-industrial complex in the 1980s. An Air Force colonel gets put
in charge of testing the Bradley APC prototype but finds the process seriously
rigged to get positive results. He manages to get the vehicle fixed but
it's a Pyrrhic victory as he ruins his career while those in charge go on to
profit. As terrible as the subject is, this is a pretty funny satire in
the mold of Catch-22. (3/5)
Silly Little Game: ESPN documentary on
the Rotisserie League, the first-ever fantasy sports league. Basically a
bunch of writers and editors in New York created fantasy baseball in 1980 and
then failed to patent the game and thus everyone but them made money off of
it. The documentary is filmed with dramatizations and graphics that actually
make it pretty funny, like a real-life version of FXX's The League.
(3/5)
2.5 Stars (OK)
The '85 Bears: The
best NFL team ever...according to them at least. Da Bears won the Super
Bowl in a blowout in 1986 with a cast of characters. But then dysfunction
prevented them from even making another Super Bowl until 2007. Still they
have one more Super Bowl win than their division "rival" Lions.
(2.5/5)
Blue Mountain State: The Rise
of Thadland: This Kickstarted movie came about in lieu of a
fourth season of Blue Mountain State, which aired on Spike a few years
ago. The show was already raunchy on basic cable, but an unrated movie
lets it be even more so as the football team essentially has an orgy on
campus. The real problem is that since this was a few years removed, none
of the actors look as if they should be in college anymore. (2.5/5)
Enduring Love:
I think I read the Ian McEwan novel this is based off of but it was a while
ago. Anyway, a runaway hot air balloon comes down in a field and Daniel
Craig and a bunch of other guys in the area try to wrangle it down but can't
and one of the guys dies. Another guy starts stalking Daniel Craig, madly
in love with him. And then mayhem ensues. (2.5/5)
Final Analysis:
Richard Gere is a shrink who has a hot patient with a hotter sister in Kim
Basinger. She supposedly suffers from alcohol psychosis, which means she
flips out if she drinks any alcohol. After drinking some cough syrup she
murders her abusive husband. Or did she? It went on a little too
long but was otherwise OK. (2.5/5)
Final Girl: The girl from Little Miss Sunshine is trained by the creepy boy from American Beauty to be an assassin. Then she's sent off to kill four psychopath boys who routinely murder teenage girls. At 85 minutes this doesn't waste time with much in the way of exposition. (2.5/5)
Final Girl: The girl from Little Miss Sunshine is trained by the creepy boy from American Beauty to be an assassin. Then she's sent off to kill four psychopath boys who routinely murder teenage girls. At 85 minutes this doesn't waste time with much in the way of exposition. (2.5/5)
Free Spirits:
The story of the Spirits of St. Louis, which was briefly an ABA basketball
team. They never won a championship but had one decent season before
dysfunction tore them apart and they were then disbanded after the ABA folded
into the NBA. But the owners of the team got a sweetheart deal from the
NBA where for about 40 years they've been getting TV revenue despite the
handicap of not having an actual team. Would we could all be that lucky.
(2.5/5)
Friday Night Lights:
(the movie not the TV show) In a football-crazed Texas town a scrappy
underdog team gets to the state championship--and loses. Interestingly
the next year they won it all. Why did we not focus on that team?
It would have been a lot happier. (2.5/5)
Hot Bot: Two
dorky teenagers in Salt Lake City find a hot blond sex robot. But of
course don't actually have sex with it. They get in trouble when a
senator's henchmen come after them to get the robot back. (2.5/5)
The Imitation Game:
Socially awkward and homosexual Alan Turing tries to break the German Enigma
code. It was a little confusing in that it bounces from after the war to
during the war to before the war almost randomly. (2.5/5)
Machine Gun Preacher:
Gerard Butler is a bad guy who gets religion and decides to set up an orphanage
in the Sudan. When rebels mess with him, he starts going Rambo on their
asses. Lacks the punch of Beasts of No Nation though it covers much of
the same subject matter. (2.5/5)
The Night Before:
Why not watch a Christmas-themed movie in March? Three friends go
partying every XMas Eve because one lost his parents so the other two are
basically trying to keep him from getting too depressed. But after 14
years they're drifting apart and decide on one big last bash. There's a
lot of drug-fueled mayhem and some heart too, though it runs a little
long. Since Seth Rogen is involved of course James Franco has a cameo.
(2.5/5)
Panic: William
H. Macy is a hitman who has been seeing a shrink (the late John Ritter).
But then his handler (also his father) gives him his next target: the
shrink. Awkward. (2.5/5)
Pony Excess:
Southern Methodist in Dallas in the early 80s was a top football
school--because they bribed recruits to a ridiculous extent. It earned
them the "death penalty" or a two year ban from all football
operations. Which in turn has really kept them from really getting close
to their former glory. Excess is a way to describe this documentary's
runtime as well. (2.5/5)
2 Stars (Meh)
Crimson Peak: A
rather dull Gothic horror story--with ghosts! It's not really a horror
movie though because the ghosts don't do a lot. And the movie didn't do a
lot for me either. I did probably get back the 27 cents I paid for
it. So there's that. (2/5)
No Vacancy:
Late 90s movie about the seedy inhabitants of a seedier motel. It didn't
really hold my interest. (2/5)
Spectre: This
was written to be the last appearance of Daniel Craig as Bond and presumably
Sam Mendes as director. There are a lot of little Easter eggs to tip the
cap to previous Bond films, like at the end when Bond drives off in the car
from Goldfinger. As with most of the Craig movies it's a lot of
chase and action scenes strung together with a few beats of quiet
inbetween. I've always thought Craig is a lot better in the non-action
scenes. Anyway, this felt as if it were 4 hours long. I'm pretty sure it
wasn't. (2/5)
Youngstown Boys:
ESPN documentary on Maurice Clarett, who was briefly a running back at THE Ohio
State University (Ugh.) But aspirations of going pro early and being railroaded
by the NCAA led to a spiral that ultimately took him to prison for a few
years. Much less attention is paid to his coach Jim Tressel, who looked
the other way when Clarett got in trouble and then years later had more players
get banned by the NCAA. But since he made millions of dollars (unlike his
players who got busted for tattoos and such) he didn't have to sell drugs on
the street or anything. Now if the movie had played up some of that, it
would have been better. (2/5)
1 Star (Crap)
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: That's where a lot of critics would put it. I'll probably watch it this afternoon and review it on Wednesday.
A Good Marriage: Boring Stephen King "thriller" about a woman who finds out her husband is a serial killer. (1/5)
A Good Marriage: Boring Stephen King "thriller" about a woman who finds out her husband is a serial killer. (1/5)
Scissors:
Bizarre melodramatic thriller where Sharon Stone warms up for Basic Instinct
as a woman who's attacked in an elevator and then completely goes unhinged.
You know since her shrink was the evil executive in Robocop that he's up
to no good. I have a "friend" on Facebook who would appreciate all
the creepy dolls in this. (1/5)
Friday, March 25, 2016
Top of the Heap
There's something cool about having a #1 book on an Amazon list, even if it's a free book in a relatively obscure category. Still lets me feel like a winner and that's always a good thing. It actually stayed number one for about two days, which was nice. Happy Good Friday!
 |
| Click to embiggen! |
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
The Big Short (NOT a Movie Review Post)
Last week I finally jumped from the ranks of the UNemployed to the ranks of the UNDERemployed. Hooray!
Sadly I think it's about six months too late to avert the financial apocalypse for me. Unlike the actual apocalypse, I've known this has been coming for a while now. But what could I do? Oh, right, get a job. Except that wasn't really up to me, was it?
At this point in time I have like $700 in my checking account, three credit cards that are maxed out and one that has maybe $10 on it. And of course at the end of the month I have rent and health insurance coming up to be paid.
Then there's the olive to top this shit sandwich: $11,000 I owe to the IRS! Plus another $1000 to the state of Michigan. But on the plus side I get back $6 from the city of Detroit. Don't spend that all in one place.
And you might wonder how I wracked up such a big tax bill. It's basically like this:
If you wonder why I Feel the Bern it's because I'm practically being forced into bankruptcy by the current system. That penalty on the 401K is especially bullshit. That rule only exists to help out Wall Street. I mean the last thing Wall Street would want is for us ordinary schlubs to be able to take money out of their precious mutual funds whenever we want. You know, the way they buy and trade stocks. What's doubly bullshit is the Federales already took like $10,000 in taxes from when the check was cut to me. So they already took 10% and now they want to wet their beak for another 5% after the fact.
It's amazing how cutthroat the tax system is for us little people of few means. I mean if you're GE or GM or Donald Trump you get all sorts of tax breaks and incentives. Trickle-down economics is still very much alive in the idea that if we prop up the big companies they'll shower benefits down on the rest of us. (Which doesn't stop them from trying to weasel out of what few taxes they already pay.) Meanwhile the rest of us are fair game because we don't have an army of lawyers and lobbyists to buy steak dinners for Congressmen and take them golfing in Maui and other such bullshit.
The one thing that bummed me out the most in my job search is thinking that I had been a good citizen and done everything like you're supposed to. I stayed in school, didn't get in trouble, went to college, got an accounting degree, (eventually) got a job that paid decent and had decent benefits, spent sometimes beyond my means to prop up Corporate America...and then I was dumped on my ass and left for dead for pretty much 18 months. I couldn't help thinking of all those sneering Republicans looking down on the poor people as lazy or just not trying hard enough. Yet here I had done what they wanted of me, what was expected of me, and in the end I got hosed. I'm certainly not alone in that.
It was worse in January when Corporate America decided to play a little practical joke on me. A week before Christmas I heard from a temp agency about some long-term assignment. They had me go piss in a cup at an urgent care center for a drug test and then made me wait, and wait, and wait all through the holidays for a background check that really should have taken about two minutes to run. I mean all that's on my record would be speeding tickets.
But then finally the first Wednesday in January they call me and say the next day I can report for work in Ypsilanti, in some office in the GM plant there. And I'm stupid enough to think, "Whoopee, my problems are solved!" The money wasn't great and the commute would kind of suck, but hell, money's money, right? I get there, which was a bit of a process in finding the right gate and stuff (I had emailed them to ask the night before where I needed to go and the smart ass reply was "If you have trouble finding the plant let me know." As if I was asking where to find the fucking car plant you can probably see from space.) and go through all the security stuff and waiting in the lobby a half-hour for the smart ass from the night before to show up and lead me to the office. Then she had me shadow someone all day. I just pretty much sat there and watched and took a few notes. At the end of the day I go to my car and look at the phone and see a message from the temp agency. I was naive enough to think they were just calling to see how the first day was. Nope. The company decided they didn't need the position anymore. So they literally paid me $100 to sit on my ass and do nothing. I keep wondering what I might have done to piss anyone off, but I didn't actually DO anything! They literally had me do nothing, so it's not like I fucked anything up. I didn't get into any arguments with anyone or any fights or anything. They probably just didn't like my face.
Wasn't that a funny joke? Make you wait about three weeks for a job and then pull it out from under you in one day. But I did get like $95 so that was something.
Lately the challenge has been trying to scrape together some money to avoid the complete nightmare of bankruptcy. I've been going from one lending site to another, basically because as one says no they say basically, "You're screwed, but try here and maybe you'll have better luck!" So you fill out one application after another, almost like trying to get a job, and they just keep saying no. Or one or two say, "Well, we'll offer you $4000 at 35% interest." Not that I wouldn't mind 4 grand but it's really a drop in the bucket. And 35% is pretty much usury. It reminds me of a scene in Fun With Dick & Jane (1978) where the unemployed formerly upper-middle-class guy and his wife go to the bank to try to get some money to avert their financial apocalypse and the loan manager is like, "Hmmm, well, I'll give you $1000 at 18%." And they're flabbergasted by 18% but thanks to Republicans now we can be charged twice that!
In the movie the bank gets robbed a few minutes later and the unemployed couple decides they'll get money the old-fashioned way: by stealing it! You might think it's just a movie but desperation breeds that kind of thinking. I tried not to get too desperate as the days crept on and the bank balances crept lower. This month was where I really started to get desperate. I signed up for a couple of "work at home" things that looked like scams--and at least one of them was. I figured they were probably not legit, but it got to the point where it didn't really matter anymore. I literally had nothing left to lose! If you ever wonder why there's so much crime in the inner-city it's not because blacks or Hispanics are just no good (aka the Trump way of thinking) it's because when you're desperate and have no hope all those goody-goody rules start to go out the window. Taking drugs and alcohol to try to escape the desperation only compounds the situation. I haven't really drank a lot and I don't know where to buy drugs, so that hasn't been part of my problem yet.
Since I really don't seem to have much other recourse left, I decided to start a GoFundMe page. My last attempt to raise $4000 to avoid losing a couple of teeth or not waiting to die from the infection in the teeth (which I'm told can eventually spread to your heart and kill you, though they might have just been trying to scare me) raised a grand total of $0 in like two months. This time I'm being more aggressive about it. I mean all these jackasses can give money to the largely fake GoFundMe for Kanye West or give $10,000 for some idiot to make potato salad, so why can's I, who actually has a very real need, get some money? If every American gave like $.00004 I'd hit my goal in no time!
So if you'd like me to not languish in financial Hell for the mistake of my workplace being eliminated and being slightly successful at selling books, contribute to my GoFundMe campaign and spread the word!
Of course I'm not actually expecting much. I already went to one (former) "friend" to ask him to contribute $5 to get the ball rolling and share it on Facebook. Nope, couldn't be bothered with that because it's his "policy." I'm sorry, but $5 and a link is next to nothing. Especially when you brag a little over a month ago about the 4K 3D TV you bought. You have thousands of dollars for a stupid TV you don't need and you can't spare $5 for me? No, of course not, because that $5 would start a bank run like in the Great Depression where everyone would start asking you for $5, right? Ha.
But thanks to Sandra and Cindy, my only contributors so far--other than me. Since Scrooge McDuck wouldn't throw in $5 I did it myself. Unfortunately I can't chip in the rest of the $11,960 dollars myself as well.
So please give til it hurts! I'm not serious about a lot of things or only semi-serious about a lot of things, but on this I am deadly fucking serious. Help me, [your name], you're my only hope!
Sadly I think it's about six months too late to avert the financial apocalypse for me. Unlike the actual apocalypse, I've known this has been coming for a while now. But what could I do? Oh, right, get a job. Except that wasn't really up to me, was it?
At this point in time I have like $700 in my checking account, three credit cards that are maxed out and one that has maybe $10 on it. And of course at the end of the month I have rent and health insurance coming up to be paid.
Then there's the olive to top this shit sandwich: $11,000 I owe to the IRS! Plus another $1000 to the state of Michigan. But on the plus side I get back $6 from the city of Detroit. Don't spend that all in one place.
And you might wonder how I wracked up such a big tax bill. It's basically like this:
- 40%: A penalty for having to empty out my 401K so I could live this year instead of 30 years from now. (News flash IRS: You can't retire when you're 65 if you're dead at 38.)
- 50% A penalty for selling books on Amazon. I mean really the roughly 35% I get charged is basically punitive. It's really an incentive not to sell books. If you don't sell a lot of books, then be grateful.
- 10%: An inheritance from my uncle who passed away last year, plus other miscellaneous stuff.
If you wonder why I Feel the Bern it's because I'm practically being forced into bankruptcy by the current system. That penalty on the 401K is especially bullshit. That rule only exists to help out Wall Street. I mean the last thing Wall Street would want is for us ordinary schlubs to be able to take money out of their precious mutual funds whenever we want. You know, the way they buy and trade stocks. What's doubly bullshit is the Federales already took like $10,000 in taxes from when the check was cut to me. So they already took 10% and now they want to wet their beak for another 5% after the fact.
It's amazing how cutthroat the tax system is for us little people of few means. I mean if you're GE or GM or Donald Trump you get all sorts of tax breaks and incentives. Trickle-down economics is still very much alive in the idea that if we prop up the big companies they'll shower benefits down on the rest of us. (Which doesn't stop them from trying to weasel out of what few taxes they already pay.) Meanwhile the rest of us are fair game because we don't have an army of lawyers and lobbyists to buy steak dinners for Congressmen and take them golfing in Maui and other such bullshit.
The one thing that bummed me out the most in my job search is thinking that I had been a good citizen and done everything like you're supposed to. I stayed in school, didn't get in trouble, went to college, got an accounting degree, (eventually) got a job that paid decent and had decent benefits, spent sometimes beyond my means to prop up Corporate America...and then I was dumped on my ass and left for dead for pretty much 18 months. I couldn't help thinking of all those sneering Republicans looking down on the poor people as lazy or just not trying hard enough. Yet here I had done what they wanted of me, what was expected of me, and in the end I got hosed. I'm certainly not alone in that.
It was worse in January when Corporate America decided to play a little practical joke on me. A week before Christmas I heard from a temp agency about some long-term assignment. They had me go piss in a cup at an urgent care center for a drug test and then made me wait, and wait, and wait all through the holidays for a background check that really should have taken about two minutes to run. I mean all that's on my record would be speeding tickets.
But then finally the first Wednesday in January they call me and say the next day I can report for work in Ypsilanti, in some office in the GM plant there. And I'm stupid enough to think, "Whoopee, my problems are solved!" The money wasn't great and the commute would kind of suck, but hell, money's money, right? I get there, which was a bit of a process in finding the right gate and stuff (I had emailed them to ask the night before where I needed to go and the smart ass reply was "If you have trouble finding the plant let me know." As if I was asking where to find the fucking car plant you can probably see from space.) and go through all the security stuff and waiting in the lobby a half-hour for the smart ass from the night before to show up and lead me to the office. Then she had me shadow someone all day. I just pretty much sat there and watched and took a few notes. At the end of the day I go to my car and look at the phone and see a message from the temp agency. I was naive enough to think they were just calling to see how the first day was. Nope. The company decided they didn't need the position anymore. So they literally paid me $100 to sit on my ass and do nothing. I keep wondering what I might have done to piss anyone off, but I didn't actually DO anything! They literally had me do nothing, so it's not like I fucked anything up. I didn't get into any arguments with anyone or any fights or anything. They probably just didn't like my face.
Wasn't that a funny joke? Make you wait about three weeks for a job and then pull it out from under you in one day. But I did get like $95 so that was something.
Lately the challenge has been trying to scrape together some money to avoid the complete nightmare of bankruptcy. I've been going from one lending site to another, basically because as one says no they say basically, "You're screwed, but try here and maybe you'll have better luck!" So you fill out one application after another, almost like trying to get a job, and they just keep saying no. Or one or two say, "Well, we'll offer you $4000 at 35% interest." Not that I wouldn't mind 4 grand but it's really a drop in the bucket. And 35% is pretty much usury. It reminds me of a scene in Fun With Dick & Jane (1978) where the unemployed formerly upper-middle-class guy and his wife go to the bank to try to get some money to avert their financial apocalypse and the loan manager is like, "Hmmm, well, I'll give you $1000 at 18%." And they're flabbergasted by 18% but thanks to Republicans now we can be charged twice that!
In the movie the bank gets robbed a few minutes later and the unemployed couple decides they'll get money the old-fashioned way: by stealing it! You might think it's just a movie but desperation breeds that kind of thinking. I tried not to get too desperate as the days crept on and the bank balances crept lower. This month was where I really started to get desperate. I signed up for a couple of "work at home" things that looked like scams--and at least one of them was. I figured they were probably not legit, but it got to the point where it didn't really matter anymore. I literally had nothing left to lose! If you ever wonder why there's so much crime in the inner-city it's not because blacks or Hispanics are just no good (aka the Trump way of thinking) it's because when you're desperate and have no hope all those goody-goody rules start to go out the window. Taking drugs and alcohol to try to escape the desperation only compounds the situation. I haven't really drank a lot and I don't know where to buy drugs, so that hasn't been part of my problem yet.
Since I really don't seem to have much other recourse left, I decided to start a GoFundMe page. My last attempt to raise $4000 to avoid losing a couple of teeth or not waiting to die from the infection in the teeth (which I'm told can eventually spread to your heart and kill you, though they might have just been trying to scare me) raised a grand total of $0 in like two months. This time I'm being more aggressive about it. I mean all these jackasses can give money to the largely fake GoFundMe for Kanye West or give $10,000 for some idiot to make potato salad, so why can's I, who actually has a very real need, get some money? If every American gave like $.00004 I'd hit my goal in no time!
So if you'd like me to not languish in financial Hell for the mistake of my workplace being eliminated and being slightly successful at selling books, contribute to my GoFundMe campaign and spread the word!
Of course I'm not actually expecting much. I already went to one (former) "friend" to ask him to contribute $5 to get the ball rolling and share it on Facebook. Nope, couldn't be bothered with that because it's his "policy." I'm sorry, but $5 and a link is next to nothing. Especially when you brag a little over a month ago about the 4K 3D TV you bought. You have thousands of dollars for a stupid TV you don't need and you can't spare $5 for me? No, of course not, because that $5 would start a bank run like in the Great Depression where everyone would start asking you for $5, right? Ha.
But thanks to Sandra and Cindy, my only contributors so far--other than me. Since Scrooge McDuck wouldn't throw in $5 I did it myself. Unfortunately I can't chip in the rest of the $11,960 dollars myself as well.
So please give til it hurts! I'm not serious about a lot of things or only semi-serious about a lot of things, but on this I am deadly fucking serious. Help me, [your name], you're my only hope!
Monday, March 21, 2016
Works Every Time: Moments of Connectiveness
Last month I was reading Joyland by Stephen King and I got up to this part of the book:
I don't know why, but it was really an emotional punch to the gut for me. For whatever reason I could just see the scene so clearly in my head, how the little girl's joy at seeing the dog mascot instantly turns to terror when she starts to choke.
I'm not sure so much if it's about the actual story or writing so much as just me. I felt something similar to a lesser extent when I watch Jurassic World and the two kids go to the petting zoo and the older one is whining that it's for babies and such. Something about the innocence of childhood being ruined gets to me maybe.
Of course there are scenes in movies that can really get me emotionally too. Like in Star Wars The Force Awakens both times I watch it there's that moment when Rey calls Luke's lightsaber to her hand that for some reason almost makes me cry. I have no explanation for that. In Titanic it was the moment at the end when the old lady dies and her spirit goes back to the ship and they show all the people who died gathered by the stairway, waiting for her.
Everyone is different, so what moments in books or movies get the room dusty for you?
 |
| Click to embiggen! |
I don't know why, but it was really an emotional punch to the gut for me. For whatever reason I could just see the scene so clearly in my head, how the little girl's joy at seeing the dog mascot instantly turns to terror when she starts to choke.
I'm not sure so much if it's about the actual story or writing so much as just me. I felt something similar to a lesser extent when I watch Jurassic World and the two kids go to the petting zoo and the older one is whining that it's for babies and such. Something about the innocence of childhood being ruined gets to me maybe.
Of course there are scenes in movies that can really get me emotionally too. Like in Star Wars The Force Awakens both times I watch it there's that moment when Rey calls Luke's lightsaber to her hand that for some reason almost makes me cry. I have no explanation for that. In Titanic it was the moment at the end when the old lady dies and her spirit goes back to the ship and they show all the people who died gathered by the stairway, waiting for her.
Everyone is different, so what moments in books or movies get the room dusty for you?
Friday, March 18, 2016
Variations on Stupidity
I'm not sure who invented the idea of a "variant cover" for comic book issues but I recall it was something that gained prominence in the 90s to try to prop up sales. Because you couldn't reboot your series every month or "kill" and then resuscitate your character every month. The idea is that you have the same issue of a comic book but there are different covers. TV Guide used to do that too sometimes. That way obsessive (or idiotic) collectors will go out and buy the same issue multiple times to get all the covers. And then...profit--at least for the publisher. For the collector, not so much.
Maybe it's just me, but this seems to be happening a lot recently. DC has been doing it a lot, mostly because they're getting their ass handed to them by Marvel. What they've been doing is they'll recruit some legendary old artist and then have him draw covers for a month for all their comics Or with The Dark Knight Returns III (Or I guess Dark Knight Re-Re-Returns, right?) they have a whole shitload of different artists each do a variant cover to the tune of 52 or so. I don't feel like looking up the real number but it's something completely obscene.
Of course other publishers do it too. I saw an article about a new Power Rangers comic that has 16 different variant covers. The article posed the question: are you going to buy them all? Um, no, because I'm not a fucking moron. Even if I had a job and more than $500 in my bank account I wouldn't waste my money buying the same goddamned comic book 16 times. Sometimes they would do variant covers that would all form a picture, which I guess you could at least display those, but what's the point of buying 16 completely unrelated covers? It's freaking stupid.
I suppose some people do it because they're OCD and just need to have every single issue. Others are under the false impression that these covers will actually be worth something. But when you print a million of each variant and these obsessive collectors put them right into a Mylar bag, you know what those covers are worth: nothing. The old comics like the first appearance of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, etc are worth a lot of money because they're rare. Kids read them and their moms threw them away so there weren't that many left. These variant covers are probably never going to be rare because they printed a shitload and most of the people who buy them aren't going to throw them away. You know who pretty much said all that? Stan Lee! Seriously, it was in the 2003 History Channel documentary Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked referring to the "comic book bubble" of the 90s. But since comic book companies, like Wall Street, don't learn from history, they're blowing up another bubble that's bound to burst when these geeks realize that these variant covers are worthless. But, hey, they probably look real pretty in their Mylar bags.
Of course when I mentioned this on Facebook, comic book geeks were just like, "Whatever. You're a jerk. I can waste money if I want!" Personally I think like the lottery it's pretty much a tax on stupidity. I suppose the silver lining is it helps to prop up the comic book industry, which like newspapers and magazines face declining circulation.
Really though if you want to do something more worthwhile with your money, you can donate it to me. I'll put it to much better use.
Maybe it's just me, but this seems to be happening a lot recently. DC has been doing it a lot, mostly because they're getting their ass handed to them by Marvel. What they've been doing is they'll recruit some legendary old artist and then have him draw covers for a month for all their comics Or with The Dark Knight Returns III (Or I guess Dark Knight Re-Re-Returns, right?) they have a whole shitload of different artists each do a variant cover to the tune of 52 or so. I don't feel like looking up the real number but it's something completely obscene.
Of course other publishers do it too. I saw an article about a new Power Rangers comic that has 16 different variant covers. The article posed the question: are you going to buy them all? Um, no, because I'm not a fucking moron. Even if I had a job and more than $500 in my bank account I wouldn't waste my money buying the same goddamned comic book 16 times. Sometimes they would do variant covers that would all form a picture, which I guess you could at least display those, but what's the point of buying 16 completely unrelated covers? It's freaking stupid.
I suppose some people do it because they're OCD and just need to have every single issue. Others are under the false impression that these covers will actually be worth something. But when you print a million of each variant and these obsessive collectors put them right into a Mylar bag, you know what those covers are worth: nothing. The old comics like the first appearance of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, etc are worth a lot of money because they're rare. Kids read them and their moms threw them away so there weren't that many left. These variant covers are probably never going to be rare because they printed a shitload and most of the people who buy them aren't going to throw them away. You know who pretty much said all that? Stan Lee! Seriously, it was in the 2003 History Channel documentary Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked referring to the "comic book bubble" of the 90s. But since comic book companies, like Wall Street, don't learn from history, they're blowing up another bubble that's bound to burst when these geeks realize that these variant covers are worthless. But, hey, they probably look real pretty in their Mylar bags.
Of course when I mentioned this on Facebook, comic book geeks were just like, "Whatever. You're a jerk. I can waste money if I want!" Personally I think like the lottery it's pretty much a tax on stupidity. I suppose the silver lining is it helps to prop up the comic book industry, which like newspapers and magazines face declining circulation.
Really though if you want to do something more worthwhile with your money, you can donate it to me. I'll put it to much better use.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Wave 2 of the Superhero Shows Brings Girl Power
Over the last couple of years, superhero shows have seen a boom. The resurgence really began with Arrow on the CW and then there was Agents of SHIELD. And Arrow begat The Flash while Agents of SHIELD begat Agent Carter. Fox joined in with Gotham. And then there was NBC's stillborn Constantine. And then Netflix entered the fray with Daredevil.
This season has brought on an increasing roster of superheroes with Supergirl, Jessica Jones, and DC's Legends of Tomorrow. The interesting thing here is that female heroes are starting to rise to the fore. And again there's some awkwardness for me as a writer of several female superhero novels, because just as with a number of female superhero comics, I'm just not that much of a fan.
Supergirl is an OK show, but I quickly got sick of all the "my cousin" crap in reference to Superman. And of course we can't ever see Superman on the show, despite that it's pretty obvious that this is not taking place in the Man of Steel universe. The real problem for me, though, is the same problem I had in trying to watch The Cleveland Show: it feels like we've already done this. You can watch Family Guy and American Dad because they're two different shows with different styles even if they're both created by and starring Seth MacFarlane. In the same way you can watch Arrow and The Flash because they're so different tonally, with Arrow being grim-and-gritty and The Flash a lot more upbeat. Where The Cleveland Show just felt like Family Guy recycled, Supergirl feels like The Flash recycled. A few episodes seem like they just took scripts from The Flash and changed all the pertinent character names and locations. For instance, the Toyman I know is a long-running Superman villain, but the whole booby-trapped toy thing and planting multiple bombs thing had already been done in Trickster episodes of The Flash, so I just yawned and said, "Been there, done that." A lot of people might not mind, but for me to care about the series long-term, it needs to find something to differentiate itself. But then it is on CBS. They're not exactly known for original programming; I mean, most of their comedies still rely on laugh tracks.
I already related some of my struggles with Jessica Jones in an earlier post. The pilot episode was so messy that it really made it a struggle to continue watching. As the series ground on, it became clear to me that the biggest problem was this wasn't a superhero show. With the themes of stalking, abusive boyfriends, rape, and abortion this was more like a Lifetime movie-of-the-week. I tuned out a lot of it while multitasking. Really I don't give a shit if there's a season 2, but it did make me interested in seeing the Luke Cage show--at least if that's a little more of an actual superhero show.
Only a quarter of the heroes on Legends of Tomorrow are women, but I suppose that's something, isn't it? I haven't really warmed to the show yet. I'm not a big fan of time travel for the most part. I did like Quantum Leap but this is obviously different. But maybe this is one of those shows that takes longer to gel. A couple of weeks ago there was an episode where they were in space fighting "time pirates" and I Tweeted that next season they should say the heck with the time travel crap and just do a Guardians of the Galaxy-type thing. Or Firefly with superheroes. I think that would be a lot less limiting than the time travel thing.
I have to say though that the best representation of a female hero so far is on the Playstation Network series Powers. The show focuses on a male hero who lost his powers and now works as a cop policing superheroes, but in the show's universe the top dog among superheroes is Retro Girl. I think what makes her stand out is she is pretty much Superman--only female. Throughout the series she's shown as an inspiration to other heroes and yet facing that Superman-like struggle on how best to use her powers while still having something of a life. I think what her character has that these other shows lack is maturity. I guess because for the most part we're not dealing with her origin or anything. Anyway, beyond that the show is not really for the casual viewer. It's a lot like Watchmen in how it examines the superhero community, not always in a positive light. The plot also has a lot of intricacy that can be hard to keep track of. I did mostly enjoy it on Crackle and I'd watch a Season 2 if given the chance. I'd probably watch a Retro Girl spinoff too, though it'd have to be a prequel since (spoiler) she dies in the last episode.
I'm not sure what properties are going to be adapted next beyond Luke Cage and Iron Fist for Netflix, but there are still plenty of male and female heroes available. More than a decade ago the CW (or WB maybe back then) tried a Birds of Prey show. Since they've already introduced Black Canary and Huntress, all they need to do is find a Barbara Gordon to put that together. Though I'd probably hate it. Now a Scarlet Knight show, that would be awesome. Call me, CW!
This season has brought on an increasing roster of superheroes with Supergirl, Jessica Jones, and DC's Legends of Tomorrow. The interesting thing here is that female heroes are starting to rise to the fore. And again there's some awkwardness for me as a writer of several female superhero novels, because just as with a number of female superhero comics, I'm just not that much of a fan.
Supergirl is an OK show, but I quickly got sick of all the "my cousin" crap in reference to Superman. And of course we can't ever see Superman on the show, despite that it's pretty obvious that this is not taking place in the Man of Steel universe. The real problem for me, though, is the same problem I had in trying to watch The Cleveland Show: it feels like we've already done this. You can watch Family Guy and American Dad because they're two different shows with different styles even if they're both created by and starring Seth MacFarlane. In the same way you can watch Arrow and The Flash because they're so different tonally, with Arrow being grim-and-gritty and The Flash a lot more upbeat. Where The Cleveland Show just felt like Family Guy recycled, Supergirl feels like The Flash recycled. A few episodes seem like they just took scripts from The Flash and changed all the pertinent character names and locations. For instance, the Toyman I know is a long-running Superman villain, but the whole booby-trapped toy thing and planting multiple bombs thing had already been done in Trickster episodes of The Flash, so I just yawned and said, "Been there, done that." A lot of people might not mind, but for me to care about the series long-term, it needs to find something to differentiate itself. But then it is on CBS. They're not exactly known for original programming; I mean, most of their comedies still rely on laugh tracks.
I already related some of my struggles with Jessica Jones in an earlier post. The pilot episode was so messy that it really made it a struggle to continue watching. As the series ground on, it became clear to me that the biggest problem was this wasn't a superhero show. With the themes of stalking, abusive boyfriends, rape, and abortion this was more like a Lifetime movie-of-the-week. I tuned out a lot of it while multitasking. Really I don't give a shit if there's a season 2, but it did make me interested in seeing the Luke Cage show--at least if that's a little more of an actual superhero show.
Only a quarter of the heroes on Legends of Tomorrow are women, but I suppose that's something, isn't it? I haven't really warmed to the show yet. I'm not a big fan of time travel for the most part. I did like Quantum Leap but this is obviously different. But maybe this is one of those shows that takes longer to gel. A couple of weeks ago there was an episode where they were in space fighting "time pirates" and I Tweeted that next season they should say the heck with the time travel crap and just do a Guardians of the Galaxy-type thing. Or Firefly with superheroes. I think that would be a lot less limiting than the time travel thing.
I have to say though that the best representation of a female hero so far is on the Playstation Network series Powers. The show focuses on a male hero who lost his powers and now works as a cop policing superheroes, but in the show's universe the top dog among superheroes is Retro Girl. I think what makes her stand out is she is pretty much Superman--only female. Throughout the series she's shown as an inspiration to other heroes and yet facing that Superman-like struggle on how best to use her powers while still having something of a life. I think what her character has that these other shows lack is maturity. I guess because for the most part we're not dealing with her origin or anything. Anyway, beyond that the show is not really for the casual viewer. It's a lot like Watchmen in how it examines the superhero community, not always in a positive light. The plot also has a lot of intricacy that can be hard to keep track of. I did mostly enjoy it on Crackle and I'd watch a Season 2 if given the chance. I'd probably watch a Retro Girl spinoff too, though it'd have to be a prequel since (spoiler) she dies in the last episode.
I'm not sure what properties are going to be adapted next beyond Luke Cage and Iron Fist for Netflix, but there are still plenty of male and female heroes available. More than a decade ago the CW (or WB maybe back then) tried a Birds of Prey show. Since they've already introduced Black Canary and Huntress, all they need to do is find a Barbara Gordon to put that together. Though I'd probably hate it. Now a Scarlet Knight show, that would be awesome. Call me, CW!
Monday, March 14, 2016
Mad Dogs is the Breaking Bad Successor You've Been Waiting For
Last month my Facebook "friend" (and illustrator of the Scarlet Knight comic book) Al Sirois mentioned a show on Amazon called Mad Dogs. It sounded interesting so I gave it a try. And as the title says, the show is the successor to AMC's Breaking Bad that people have been hankering for since that show left the airwaves in 2013.
The similarity is that both are crime series with a touch of the darkly comic that involve ordinary people getting embroiled in a life of crime for which they are woefully unprepared. In Breaking Bad it was a chemistry teacher who becomes a meth kingpin. In Mad Dogs it starts off with four middle-aged friends going to visit an old friend at his awesome villa in Belize. It seems like they're just going to hang around and have a great time in a tropical paradise. Though you can tell early on that their friend Milo has some shady dealings going on.
Then Milo takes them out on a boat that they find out is stolen. He disposes of a mysterious package and then they take a dinghy back to shore. In one of those darkly comic touches a dwarf wearing a Grumpy Cat-type mask shows up to ask Milo where the boat is. When Milo tells him to fuck off, the dwarf shoots him dead.
From there just about anything that can go wrong does go wrong. There are Swedish drug dealers, Mennonites, corrupt local cops, CIA agents, FBI agents, drug dealers, and "The Cat" all trying to kill or arrest them. Even when it seems they're going to escape, something else goes wrong. Like at one point they get on a fishing boat to Guatemala only to be turned back by a smallpox outbreak. Everything keeps spiraling more and more out of control until it all comes to a head.
It was a lot of fun to watch to see how things would go wrong next and what would happen to these poor American dumbasses. I think in a way I could empathize with them. I mean if I went to Belize I wouldn't be much better prepared than these guys. Although I did take 3 years of Spanish, so maybe I could pick up some of the language.
Like Breaking Bad, I thought it was a great blend of action, drama, and dark humor. In a way I suppose it's actually like Breaking Bad meets The Hangover. If there's a Season 2 I think they'd have to do an American Horror Story-type thing where they have different people because there's no way these guys could go through another season like that and survive. It's be like The Hangover 2 or Home Alone 2 where it's like, "Come on, how could they be so dumb to do that again?!"
Like Man in the High Castle, it's free to watch on Amazon Instant Video if you have Amazon Prime. There is a 2012 version that aired in some other country, but I have no idea where you can find that.
The similarity is that both are crime series with a touch of the darkly comic that involve ordinary people getting embroiled in a life of crime for which they are woefully unprepared. In Breaking Bad it was a chemistry teacher who becomes a meth kingpin. In Mad Dogs it starts off with four middle-aged friends going to visit an old friend at his awesome villa in Belize. It seems like they're just going to hang around and have a great time in a tropical paradise. Though you can tell early on that their friend Milo has some shady dealings going on.
Then Milo takes them out on a boat that they find out is stolen. He disposes of a mysterious package and then they take a dinghy back to shore. In one of those darkly comic touches a dwarf wearing a Grumpy Cat-type mask shows up to ask Milo where the boat is. When Milo tells him to fuck off, the dwarf shoots him dead.
From there just about anything that can go wrong does go wrong. There are Swedish drug dealers, Mennonites, corrupt local cops, CIA agents, FBI agents, drug dealers, and "The Cat" all trying to kill or arrest them. Even when it seems they're going to escape, something else goes wrong. Like at one point they get on a fishing boat to Guatemala only to be turned back by a smallpox outbreak. Everything keeps spiraling more and more out of control until it all comes to a head.
It was a lot of fun to watch to see how things would go wrong next and what would happen to these poor American dumbasses. I think in a way I could empathize with them. I mean if I went to Belize I wouldn't be much better prepared than these guys. Although I did take 3 years of Spanish, so maybe I could pick up some of the language.
Like Breaking Bad, I thought it was a great blend of action, drama, and dark humor. In a way I suppose it's actually like Breaking Bad meets The Hangover. If there's a Season 2 I think they'd have to do an American Horror Story-type thing where they have different people because there's no way these guys could go through another season like that and survive. It's be like The Hangover 2 or Home Alone 2 where it's like, "Come on, how could they be so dumb to do that again?!"
Like Man in the High Castle, it's free to watch on Amazon Instant Video if you have Amazon Prime. There is a 2012 version that aired in some other country, but I have no idea where you can find that.
Friday, March 11, 2016
One Weird Trick for Making a Writer's Group Hate You
Last month on writers.net there was some person who joined and was really frustrated that the site revised its policies so you have to make 5 posts before you can post links and samples. A lot of new people who join the site use those posts to respond to old threads. Sometimes they pick a thread that's months or even several years old, at which point I usually make fun of them.
This prick decided that instead of even pretending to give a fuck about the group, he'd just post one thread after another whining about not being able to post his link yet. And that he could only post 1000 words.
So basically this guy's agenda was to join the site, post a lengthy sample, get his critiques, and split. If you really want to turn off established members like me, go ahead and act like that. Throw your little tantrum about how you should be allowed to spam the group right away.
But I think you'll get a much better reception if you actually pretend to give a fuck about the group. I like it when people seem to want to be there for the long haul, because usually all people are interested in is getting critiques and then moving on, probably to another group. Because honestly it's just selfish to demand people give you critiques while you do nothing for anyone else. That is sadly our me-first culture these days. But you probably know that old saying that you catch more bees with honey than vinegar or whatever it is. If you pretend like you might care about more than yourself, people might treat you better.
Then again if you're only planning to stay a couple of days, why not be a huge, whiny bitch about it?
This prick decided that instead of even pretending to give a fuck about the group, he'd just post one thread after another whining about not being able to post his link yet. And that he could only post 1000 words.
So basically this guy's agenda was to join the site, post a lengthy sample, get his critiques, and split. If you really want to turn off established members like me, go ahead and act like that. Throw your little tantrum about how you should be allowed to spam the group right away.
But I think you'll get a much better reception if you actually pretend to give a fuck about the group. I like it when people seem to want to be there for the long haul, because usually all people are interested in is getting critiques and then moving on, probably to another group. Because honestly it's just selfish to demand people give you critiques while you do nothing for anyone else. That is sadly our me-first culture these days. But you probably know that old saying that you catch more bees with honey than vinegar or whatever it is. If you pretend like you might care about more than yourself, people might treat you better.
Then again if you're only planning to stay a couple of days, why not be a huge, whiny bitch about it?
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Why So Serious?
For many the greatest example of flash fiction ever is this:
For sale, Baby shoes, Never worn.
It's attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but there's apparently dispute over that. I've gone on record in one of my other blogs with saying this isn't a story at all. It's a prompt. It asks the reader to fill in everything to create a scenario. But the thing is, everyone pretty much comes up with the same basic scenario: something tragic must have happened! The baby is dead! Maybe it was stillborn or died shortly thereafter.
Whether this is a story or not is debatable, but what we should be more interested in is why everyone comes up with a negative scenario. I mean, if you just look at those words, there's no logical reason to assume something horrible happened. Maybe the parents bought too many shoes; if you have a baby you know how fast they go through them. Maybe some colorblind relatives bought a really ugly pair of shoes. There are plenty of perfectly ordinary scenarios.
My buddy Jay Greenstein said "The story is clearly a tragedy, and the denouement is inherent in the fact that it's an advertisement." That's just silly. There's no "clear tragedy." There's no tragedy at all. It's only because we imagine it a tragedy. That says something about human beings, I think, that we instantly go to that place. I wonder if any psychologist has studied the phenomenon? If not, it seems like something for a grad student to do a paper on.
Maybe it's just that if someone asks us to make a story out of it, we assume tragedy because that's what makes the best stories. Though you could make it a comedy out of someone giving the parents a really ugly pair of shoes and they try to get rid of them without the person who gave them to the parents finding out. That'd make for a good episode of a sitcom. But maybe like Monsters, Inc we assume screams are more powerful than laughter until we find out differently.
For sale, Baby shoes, Never worn.
It's attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but there's apparently dispute over that. I've gone on record in one of my other blogs with saying this isn't a story at all. It's a prompt. It asks the reader to fill in everything to create a scenario. But the thing is, everyone pretty much comes up with the same basic scenario: something tragic must have happened! The baby is dead! Maybe it was stillborn or died shortly thereafter.
Whether this is a story or not is debatable, but what we should be more interested in is why everyone comes up with a negative scenario. I mean, if you just look at those words, there's no logical reason to assume something horrible happened. Maybe the parents bought too many shoes; if you have a baby you know how fast they go through them. Maybe some colorblind relatives bought a really ugly pair of shoes. There are plenty of perfectly ordinary scenarios.
My buddy Jay Greenstein said "The story is clearly a tragedy, and the denouement is inherent in the fact that it's an advertisement." That's just silly. There's no "clear tragedy." There's no tragedy at all. It's only because we imagine it a tragedy. That says something about human beings, I think, that we instantly go to that place. I wonder if any psychologist has studied the phenomenon? If not, it seems like something for a grad student to do a paper on.
Maybe it's just that if someone asks us to make a story out of it, we assume tragedy because that's what makes the best stories. Though you could make it a comedy out of someone giving the parents a really ugly pair of shoes and they try to get rid of them without the person who gave them to the parents finding out. That'd make for a good episode of a sitcom. But maybe like Monsters, Inc we assume screams are more powerful than laughter until we find out differently.
Monday, March 7, 2016
House of Cards Topples in Season 4
NOTE: I know, you probably haven't watched Netflix's House of Cards. But not every entry I write is meant for YOU, narcissist. So if all you're going to say is "I haven't watched it," come back Wednesday.
House of Cards is the rare show where I jumped on the bandwagon almost right away. I don't think I watched it the same day it came out on Netflix, but it wasn't like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, or Walking Dead where they were a few seasons in before I decided to watch. The reason is that I love politics, or at least political theater. Though strangely I never got into The West Wing; I think because it seemed too bleeding heart, do-goodery to me. I prefer the grimy underbelly like Primary Colors. What House of Cards is is a tawdry political soap opera and like a car crash or Donald Drumpf's candidacy I just can't look away from it.
A quick recap of the show is that Congressman Frank Underwood (SC-D) is spurned for Secretary of State by the new president. He then decides that he will do everything he can to undermine the presidency and ultimately become president himself. In season 1 he deposes the Secretary of State nominee for one of his choosing and then maneuvers himself into becoming vice-president. In season 2 he then creates such havoc in the White House that the president steps down in disgrace and ta da Frank is president. Season 3 focuses on his struggling presidency and the beginning of his reelection campaign.
While I think the first season was brilliant for the most part, the next two seasons were weighed down by his wife Claire. The fourth season only makes that problem even worse, to the point it brings down the entire series. A few months ago I read the novel on which this is loosely based (which was from back in the 80s and is set in Britain) and Frank's wife is pretty much a non-entity who shows up in one or two scenes without doing much. But in this series his wife is his partner in crime. In season 1 she runs her own little non-profit the Clean Water Initiative, which they could really use in Flint. After Frank becomes VP, though, the show's writers have struggled to find things for her to do and yet since Robin Wright got a lot of recognition and awards and stuff for her role they can't just force her into the background. So in season two there's this whole forced plot where she encounters a general who raped her 20 years ago and word about some abortions come out. Then in Season 3 it's not enough for her to be First Lady (because First Lady is boring) so she whines to Frank to make her ambassador to the UN. When the Senate doesn't want to confirm someone with no actual experience in diplomacy, Frank gives her the post with a "recess appointment," mostly so the series can have her do something more interesting than host tea parties and meet Girl Scout troops and all that boring shit the First Lady has to do. After she's forced out as the ambassador, she petulantly walks out on Frank.
Which is where season 4 picks up. She flies down to Texas to stay with her mommy and decides to run for a Congressional seat. OK, sure, Hillary ran for Senate while she was still First Lady, but that was when Bill was in his last year of office. Claire's trying to run for Congress at the same time her husband is running for re-election. Is she fucking brain dead? I'm not sure that would even be legal unless she divorced him. If she did get elected and he got re-elected that would be a huge conflict of interest.
When Frank outmaneuvers her out of that stupid notion, she decides on a stupider one: Vice-President! And then through a bunch of gymnastics that involves an assassination attempt, Frank getting a new liver, and an "open" vote on the floor on the Democratic convention, the whiny baby gets her wish by being put on the ticket with her husband. And I just shake my head and think, "Are you fucking serious?!"
Look, I don't hate the idea because I hate women or don't think there should be a female president or any of that, I hate it because in 227 years since the Constitution was written, there has never been anything like that. Just imagine if Bill and Hillary Clinton had run as the ticket in 1992 or Barack and Michelle Obama as the ticket in 2008, do you think they would actually have won? I honestly don't because the idea of your vice-president being your wife, who has never held elected office for a single moment, is moronic. Because God forbid something happen, you're going to have an untrained amateur in charge of the whole freaking country! It's an absurd notion and yet I'm supposed to swallow that is what's happening? Nooooope. Sorry, can't buy that even for a dollar.
As I Tweeted as I watched the show, "I don't expect House of Cards to mirror political reality, but this is just insane." I get that this is fiction, but this isn't science-fiction or fantasy so it should be the least bit credible. Otherwise you might as well make Season 5 about an alien invasion or zombie outbreak.
And this really, really makes me hate Claire's character. As I've characterized it already, she comes off as this whiny crybaby stomping her feet and bawling, "No fair you get to be president! I wanna be president now!" She's supposed to be a lot smarter than this. And while you might not think so, I'm too smart to believe that. I cannot suspend the belief nearly enough.
It's unfortunate that's the core of the season because the rest of the season is vintage House of Cards stuff: crushing the other Democratic nominees, crushing the Republican nominee (the guy from the shitty Robocop reboot and the potentially shitty Suicide Squad movie), taking on a thinly-veiled ISIL group, and fending off an expose about all the shit Frank did to become president. But this whole Claire debacle moves the series from a tawdry soap opera to a farce. It's a real shame.
House of Cards is the rare show where I jumped on the bandwagon almost right away. I don't think I watched it the same day it came out on Netflix, but it wasn't like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, or Walking Dead where they were a few seasons in before I decided to watch. The reason is that I love politics, or at least political theater. Though strangely I never got into The West Wing; I think because it seemed too bleeding heart, do-goodery to me. I prefer the grimy underbelly like Primary Colors. What House of Cards is is a tawdry political soap opera and like a car crash or Donald Drumpf's candidacy I just can't look away from it.
A quick recap of the show is that Congressman Frank Underwood (SC-D) is spurned for Secretary of State by the new president. He then decides that he will do everything he can to undermine the presidency and ultimately become president himself. In season 1 he deposes the Secretary of State nominee for one of his choosing and then maneuvers himself into becoming vice-president. In season 2 he then creates such havoc in the White House that the president steps down in disgrace and ta da Frank is president. Season 3 focuses on his struggling presidency and the beginning of his reelection campaign.
While I think the first season was brilliant for the most part, the next two seasons were weighed down by his wife Claire. The fourth season only makes that problem even worse, to the point it brings down the entire series. A few months ago I read the novel on which this is loosely based (which was from back in the 80s and is set in Britain) and Frank's wife is pretty much a non-entity who shows up in one or two scenes without doing much. But in this series his wife is his partner in crime. In season 1 she runs her own little non-profit the Clean Water Initiative, which they could really use in Flint. After Frank becomes VP, though, the show's writers have struggled to find things for her to do and yet since Robin Wright got a lot of recognition and awards and stuff for her role they can't just force her into the background. So in season two there's this whole forced plot where she encounters a general who raped her 20 years ago and word about some abortions come out. Then in Season 3 it's not enough for her to be First Lady (because First Lady is boring) so she whines to Frank to make her ambassador to the UN. When the Senate doesn't want to confirm someone with no actual experience in diplomacy, Frank gives her the post with a "recess appointment," mostly so the series can have her do something more interesting than host tea parties and meet Girl Scout troops and all that boring shit the First Lady has to do. After she's forced out as the ambassador, she petulantly walks out on Frank.
Which is where season 4 picks up. She flies down to Texas to stay with her mommy and decides to run for a Congressional seat. OK, sure, Hillary ran for Senate while she was still First Lady, but that was when Bill was in his last year of office. Claire's trying to run for Congress at the same time her husband is running for re-election. Is she fucking brain dead? I'm not sure that would even be legal unless she divorced him. If she did get elected and he got re-elected that would be a huge conflict of interest.
When Frank outmaneuvers her out of that stupid notion, she decides on a stupider one: Vice-President! And then through a bunch of gymnastics that involves an assassination attempt, Frank getting a new liver, and an "open" vote on the floor on the Democratic convention, the whiny baby gets her wish by being put on the ticket with her husband. And I just shake my head and think, "Are you fucking serious?!"
Look, I don't hate the idea because I hate women or don't think there should be a female president or any of that, I hate it because in 227 years since the Constitution was written, there has never been anything like that. Just imagine if Bill and Hillary Clinton had run as the ticket in 1992 or Barack and Michelle Obama as the ticket in 2008, do you think they would actually have won? I honestly don't because the idea of your vice-president being your wife, who has never held elected office for a single moment, is moronic. Because God forbid something happen, you're going to have an untrained amateur in charge of the whole freaking country! It's an absurd notion and yet I'm supposed to swallow that is what's happening? Nooooope. Sorry, can't buy that even for a dollar.
As I Tweeted as I watched the show, "I don't expect House of Cards to mirror political reality, but this is just insane." I get that this is fiction, but this isn't science-fiction or fantasy so it should be the least bit credible. Otherwise you might as well make Season 5 about an alien invasion or zombie outbreak.
And this really, really makes me hate Claire's character. As I've characterized it already, she comes off as this whiny crybaby stomping her feet and bawling, "No fair you get to be president! I wanna be president now!" She's supposed to be a lot smarter than this. And while you might not think so, I'm too smart to believe that. I cannot suspend the belief nearly enough.
It's unfortunate that's the core of the season because the rest of the season is vintage House of Cards stuff: crushing the other Democratic nominees, crushing the Republican nominee (the guy from the shitty Robocop reboot and the potentially shitty Suicide Squad movie), taking on a thinly-veiled ISIL group, and fending off an expose about all the shit Frank did to become president. But this whole Claire debacle moves the series from a tawdry soap opera to a farce. It's a real shame.
Friday, March 4, 2016
Common Wisdom is Often Wrong
I'm just going to give you a couple of bits of common box office wisdom that have turned out to be wrong in the last few months.
First off, everyone knows that you want to release a big blockbuster in summer, right? Although summer has been getting farther and farther from actual summer, to the point now that big movies are being released in March like Batman v Superman. Yet May is still the coveted month, with studios racing with each other to plant their flag on select dates first.
This common wisdom persists despite that the three biggest movies were not released in May. Or June. Or July. Not August. Not April either. Nope. Titanic, Avatar, and Star Wars Episode VII were all released in December and went on to make about a billion dollars each. (Of those Titanic is probably the most impressive as you didn't have 3D or fake IMAX and the global marketplace wasn't nearly as huge in 1997-1998.) The "biggest movie of 2014" was technically American Sniper and again it was a December release, albeit in only limited markets. It made its over $300 million mostly in January, which is usually a dumping ground for shitty horror movies and the trash projects studios didn't want to waste a real release date on, ie Mordecai.
Last month Deadpool broke two bits of common studio wisdom. First that February isn't really much better than January in terms of the quality of movies released. Second, for a superhero movie to make it, you have to make it rated PG-13. R-rated movies never make any money! R-rated superhero movies like Watchmen and the two Kick-Ass movies didn't really help to dissuade that common wisdom. So none of the so-called "experts" really pegged the movie to make back its relatively small budget, let alone turn a profit. And yet the movie opened huge, breaking records for R-rated movies and topping every other X-Men-related movie before it, all of which were rated PG-13.
Almost right away Fox announced the next Wolverine movie would be rated R. Which seems pretty ridiculous. It's not about ratings. It's not about release dates. If you make a movie people like, they'll see it no matter what rating it is or when you release it. I give a lot of credit to Ryan Reynolds for relentlessly promoting the movie for months, which I think helped prime the pump for people to want to see it. That's not something I see working for a lot of other properties.
Anyway, if you want an inspirational thought for the week it's that when people say "this is how it's always done" remember that's there's always an exception to the rule. The common wisdom might be right 99 times out of 100, but there's always a chance that you can be that 1 who makes it. Isn't that what our whole American Dream is these days?
First off, everyone knows that you want to release a big blockbuster in summer, right? Although summer has been getting farther and farther from actual summer, to the point now that big movies are being released in March like Batman v Superman. Yet May is still the coveted month, with studios racing with each other to plant their flag on select dates first.
This common wisdom persists despite that the three biggest movies were not released in May. Or June. Or July. Not August. Not April either. Nope. Titanic, Avatar, and Star Wars Episode VII were all released in December and went on to make about a billion dollars each. (Of those Titanic is probably the most impressive as you didn't have 3D or fake IMAX and the global marketplace wasn't nearly as huge in 1997-1998.) The "biggest movie of 2014" was technically American Sniper and again it was a December release, albeit in only limited markets. It made its over $300 million mostly in January, which is usually a dumping ground for shitty horror movies and the trash projects studios didn't want to waste a real release date on, ie Mordecai.
Last month Deadpool broke two bits of common studio wisdom. First that February isn't really much better than January in terms of the quality of movies released. Second, for a superhero movie to make it, you have to make it rated PG-13. R-rated movies never make any money! R-rated superhero movies like Watchmen and the two Kick-Ass movies didn't really help to dissuade that common wisdom. So none of the so-called "experts" really pegged the movie to make back its relatively small budget, let alone turn a profit. And yet the movie opened huge, breaking records for R-rated movies and topping every other X-Men-related movie before it, all of which were rated PG-13.
Almost right away Fox announced the next Wolverine movie would be rated R. Which seems pretty ridiculous. It's not about ratings. It's not about release dates. If you make a movie people like, they'll see it no matter what rating it is or when you release it. I give a lot of credit to Ryan Reynolds for relentlessly promoting the movie for months, which I think helped prime the pump for people to want to see it. That's not something I see working for a lot of other properties.
Anyway, if you want an inspirational thought for the week it's that when people say "this is how it's always done" remember that's there's always an exception to the rule. The common wisdom might be right 99 times out of 100, but there's always a chance that you can be that 1 who makes it. Isn't that what our whole American Dream is these days?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
LinkWithin
