Pro Tips From Authors Anonymous

This post is being simulcast today on the Indie Writers Monthly blog.

Recently I watched an indie mockumentary called "Authors Anonymous" that follows a writing critique group.  When it comes to writing a lot of movies still get it wrong, which is surprising because movies are written by, you know, writers who should know better than to have a character mailing their 2,000-page opus in a box to a publisher and getting a big contract.  This movie gets the writing game far righter than most.  Here are some tips on what to do and what not to do gleaned from the movie:

1.  Actually Finish Something:  Chris Klein plays Henry, the literary writer of the group who worships Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc.  (A popular writing movie trope is that everyone always worships Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and pretty much everyone else before 1950.  What about Updike or Vonnegut or the many authors since then?)  For most of the movie he's suffering from writer's block in finishing his great opus Pizza to Go.  It's only after some tumultuous events with the group that he finally gets the gumption to finish the book.  And this being a movie of course it succeeds.

2.  Don't Flog One Thing Forever:  Collette is another member of the group, who's been working on her steamy romance novel Nyet, Not Yet forever, despite that no one wants to publish it.  She finally barges into a literary agent's office with her guru, who's taken a vow of silence.  But instead of getting her book published, she becomes co-author of a book featuring the guru.  So hey she'll be a published author!  (Sort of.)

3.  How to Not Net an Agent by Creative Means:  Collette's husband is an optometrist, who considers himself the leader of the group.  When a literary agent (Mike from "Breaking Bad") comes in to get his eyes checked, the optometrist replaces the traditional eye test with a page of his wife's manuscript.  Instead of piquing the agent's interest, he just gets annoyed and leaves.

4.  How to Net an Agent by Creative Means:  By contrast Henry gets his novel in the hands of the same agent through a different method.  When he goes to clean the agent's carpets for his day job, he offers the agent 10% off if he'll read the first ten pages.  The agent agrees and likes what he sees, so he asks for more.  The difference between 3 & 4 is one is just pushing something the agent doesn't want on them while the other offers a reward.  Pro Tip:  Agents like money.  So really the optometrist should have offered free glasses if the agent would read his wife's book.

5.  Don't Revise Indefinitely:  One character worships Charles Bukowski (as do I) and wants to be a great writer like him.  The problem is he's only written 3 pages in like 3 years!  At one group session he turns in the same pages but claims it's completely different because he's changed one word.  Revision is great, but 3 years is a bit too much.  And I definitely don't think Bukowski put that much effort into it.

6.  Be Discreet When Researching:  Bukowski boy also has this habit of eavesdropping on people's conversations to write down interesting stuff.  The problem is he's completely not subtle about it.  This leads to trouble with a couple of women he's been spying on.  So if you're going to do that, be more subtle.  Or be like the NSA and just listen to phone conversations from thousands of miles away.

7.  Avoid Vanity Presses:  Dennis Farina plays an older guy who worships Tom Clancy.  He finally decides to self-publish his novel Roaring Lion with a vanity press called "U R the Publisher."   Except the books he gets back are formatted terribly.  The front cover features a tiny dog instead of a lion and the back text is in Chinese!  Of course if you do it yourself through CreateSpace or Lulu you avoid those problems.

8.  Know Your Audience:  After getting his books, Dennis Farina sets up a book signing at his girlfriend's hardware store.  This of course does not go well.  Watching it I shook my head and thought, "Why doesn't he sell them at like a VFW?"  I mean he was a Marine and he's selling a military-themed  book, so why not go to where other like-minded individuals will be located?  It's like how if I were not such a Grumpy Bulldog I'd try to have book signings for my superhero books at comic book stores and try to sell them at sci-fi conventions.  If you're going to sell books in person, try to sell them where people who might be interested in them might actually be.

9.  Keep a Recording Device Handy:  An annoying habit the optometrist has is keeping a tape recorder around for ideas of stories or characters.  The problem is that he never actually writes any of these ideas into books, which kind of goes back to my first tip.  Still, it's a good idea if you're forgetful because there's nothing worse than thinking of a story or title or something and then forgetting it later, because then it will haunt you for hours.  Or you can use a blog.  Idea for a novel:  a secret agent who's a bulldog mascot!   I'll call it Agent Double-Oh K9!

I like my wet food shaken, not stirred.

10.  Hook Up With a Famous Author:  There's one famous author who's Henry's idol, but at a book signing the author ends up hooking up with ditzy blond Hannah, who also has a book being published.  When it comes time for her book signing, the famous author has a lot of his friends show up, so it's far more successful than Dennis Farina's.  Of course it might be difficult for you to hook up with JK Rowling or Stephen King or someone like that, but keep your options open!

11.  Be Super Cute:  As mentioned in #10, Hannah is a ditzy blond in the group.  Throughout the movie she's challenged to think of a famous author and it's pretty clear the closest to a book she's probably read is TV Guide.  But she's the one who gets the big publishing deal for her novel Sleeping on the Moon.  Jealous group members suggest she got the deal because she's hot.  Whether this is true or not is debatable, but I will say not many people who look like me get mega book deals.  Now of course if you're like me it's kind of hard to actually apply this tip, but do your best.  I mean, what could it hurt?

For more tips, you can watch the movie on Netflix, Redbox, or On Demand or whatever.

Movie Round-Up 7/11/14

Here's what I watched since last Thursday:

Authors Anonymous:  I will talk more about this movie Monday on this blog and Indie Writers Monthly.  Basically it's a mockumentary about a group of would-be authors who meet in person.  When a ditzy blond named Hannah actually gets published, the ensuing jealousy and rivalry shatters the group.  While a lot of movies that involve writing and books get it wrong, this one gets a lot right, though it still has kind of a snobby legacy author view of self-publishing and ebooks.  Definitely a great movie for the struggling writer in your life, which if you're reading this is probably you. (4/5)

Lone Survivor:  Non-spoiler alert, Marky Mark survives a mission gone wrong in Afghanistan.  (It is called Lone Survivor.)  Basically him and 3 other SEALs are supposed to kill some evil Taliban guy, but when some goat herders stumble on their position, all Hell breaks loose.  A good thing is that the four guys don't look that much alike, so you can actually tell them apart during the fighting, unlike when I watched Blackhawk Down and I couldn't keep track of who was who.  And then it turns into Saving Private Ryan as we send in a bunch of guys to get the guy, which means like a dozen people dying trying to save one.  Which on one hand you admire the courage of these brave heroes and on the other it seems pretty reckless.  But if I'm the lone survivor then by all means send all the Marines, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard to get me.  Anyway, it's nice this shows a somewhat nuanced picture of the situation.  Though the SEALs are all really good and the Taliban guys are all really bad, they do at least show that not all Afghans are evil and at the same time they're not all sitting around hoping for us to "liberate" them. (3/5)

That Awkward Moment:  This is the kind of movie that you think from the commercials/previews is going to be funny.  And then...it's really not.  The bloopers in the credits were pretty much funnier than anything going on in this.   It's basically Sex and the City only with dudes.  Zac Efron is the confirmed playa, some guy who looks like young John Cusack is his confirmed wingman, and then Michael B. Jordan is a married doctor who finds his wife is cheating on him.  Then Zac Efron meets some girl who ends up working at the firm where he makes book covers.  And young John Cusack starts hooking up with a girl affiliated with their circle.  And Michael B. Jordan tries to work it out with his wife.  After a while I found myself drifting away from this.  It was just cliche upon cliche and very predictable.  And then everything gets all heavy and maudlin before the cliche Big Romantic Gesture.  Yawn. (1.5/5)  But this does explain why so many book covers feature shoes--it's because when women see shoes, it stimulates their brains.

Superman: Unbound:  In the "Silver Age" back in the 50s/60s there was this goofy notion that a Kryptonian city called Kandor had been shrunk down and stored in a bottle.  Later this was tied to Superman's nemesis Brainiac, who basically goes around like the Borg, only instead of assimilating people, he just puts a representative city in a bottle in his ship.  And when he shows up on Earth, mayhem ensues, with Superman and Supergirl having to fight the evil robot horde.  Though it turns out that Brainiac is a bit like Howard Hughes.  It's kind of weird to think a sophisticated alien lifeform can be defeated by mud.  But there you go. (3/5)

D.E.B.S:  Did you ever think it would really be awesome if Charlie's Angels went around in schoolgirl uniforms all the time?  That's essentially the premise of this movie.  A group of four schoolgirls try to apprehend the evil Lucy Diamond...except one falls in love with her.  Overall the hammy acting, clunky dialog, and sub-Sharknado-level production values made McG's movies look like Spielberg.  And I still have no idea what the fuck DEBS stands for or why anyone would think that girls in schoolgirl outfits would make good spies.  I mean, is there anything more conspicuous outside of a strip club than a hot young girl in a schoolgirl outfit?  And how would a multiple-choice test show you're good at lying?  I mean do you answer the questions wrong?  Then how do you differentiate between good liars and idiots...wait, that explains some things.  But I'm sure Sterling Archer would love to work for an agency with that dress code for female agents.  Anyway, I'm sure this never made any Michael Clarke Duncan retrospectives after he died.  With good reason.  (1/5)

There's More Than Michael Bay & Shakespeare

Like a week ago there was an article about the 10 greatest (of many) problems with the latest Transformers movie.  To which I commented that it would be nice if society would stop rewarding people for making crap.  To which someone said, "Well tell us the next time you go to watch Shakespeare, K?" 

Because clearly the only two options in the known universe are Michael Bay and William Shakespeare, right?  And word to the wise, I don't really like Shakespeare.  Unless it's Bill Shatner doing it and then I appreciate it ironically.  I mean I watched that Joss Whedon version of "Much Ado About Nothing" last year and spent most of the movie wondering what the fuck they were talking about.  I mean let's face it there's so much of Shakespeare that's dated these days.  In many cases even the core concepts are dated like "A Merchant in Venice" which is basically a lot of anti-Semitism.

OK, so I'm not going out to watch Shakespeare anytime soon if I can help it.  But again that doesn't mean Michael Bay is my only other option.  That's the problem with the world today.  People support crap, complain it's crap, and yet don't seem to realize there's an alternative that doesn't involve the Immortal Bard.  By that I mean there's a difference between say X-Men Days of Future Past, which has a story (even if it's not entirely logical) and Transformers 4, that's just 3 hours of blowing shit up.  The point being:  action movies don't have to be dumb!

The problem is those people who don't care about the distinction.  "It's an action movie, not Shakespeare!"  That doesn't mean it can't have a mostly coherent plot.  Or characters who are more than cardboard cutouts or racist stereotypes.  Or women who do more than run around in their underwear.

This kind of stereotyping is a problem for those who write genre fiction.  There's the idea that every sci-fi story has to involve spaceships or robots.  Or every fantasy story has to involve dragons and magic.  Or that every superhero story should be like the campy Batman show from the 60s and aimed at kids. 

Anyway, don't just settle for the lowest common denominator--demand better!  That's the only way you get better movies.  I mean if Batman & Robin hadn't been such a dismal failure we'd probably still think superhero movies are just cheesy 2-hour toy commercials.

And here's your Shakespeare:

Fargo the TV Series Shows Us the Real Face of Evil

Contains spoilers.  Read at your own peril.

Last month on the Movie Round-Up post at the bottom I talked about FX's "Fargo" TV series which was based on the 1996 movie.  There are a number of bad people in the show, but the plot revolves mostly around two especially bad characters.  The first is Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) a ruthless hitman who has absolutely no problem killing anyone at any time or just for the heck of it creeping little kids out by telling them the house they moved into was the site of a murder and may be haunted.  The other is Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) who starts out as a mild-mannered, hen-pecked insurance salesman.  And as the show went on I started to think that despite all the atrocities Malvo commits, it's Nygaard who's more evil.

As I said he doesn't start out evil.  Then in the first episode after getting his nose broken by his childhood bully (which leads to him meeting Malvo in the hospital) Lester snaps and kills his wife with a hammer.  In a panic he calls Malvo who shows up to help him clean it up and in the process kills the sheriff.

It's the calling Malvo where Lester's journey to the dark side begins.  The right thing to do would have been to call 911 and confess after he hit his wife with the hammer--or of course not hit her with the hammer to start with.  Instead he calls Malvo to try to cover it up.  Then the sheriff dies and over the next few episodes Lester has to tell one lie after another to the cops, friends, and family.  As they say once you start lying it's really hard to stop because they just keep piling up.

But it's not until after a near-deadly encounter with two hitmen looking for Malvo that Lester completes his journey to the dark side.  After that he realizes that he needs a patsy.  And who better than his own brother?  The brother who's been kind of a dick to him for years and also happens to have a safe full of weapons.  So Lester plants the hammer he killed his wife with in the safe, along with a pair of his wife's panties and a racy picture of her.  When the cops find all that and interview him, Lester tearfully explains he had to lie before to cover for his brother.  Since the new sheriff's an idiot he believes this.

Seeing that he's getting away with it, Lester throws out all his wife's things, replaces the washer that prompted the argument that killed her, gets some better clothes, and hooks up with the hot Asian chick in his office.  When the show skips a year we see he's married her and started his own insurance company and moved into a big new house.  All seems great for him.

He even wins an insurance award in Las Vegas.  There he happens to see Malvo posing as a dentist and foolishly decides to confront the hitman.  What he hoped to gain by this I have no idea.  But having apparently having gotten away with murder--and profited from it--his hubris I guess made him think he was a badass now.  He forces his way onto an elevator with Malvo and 3 other people and when Malvo asks if he really wants to do this, he ultimately says yes.  Which prompts Malvo to kill all 3 bystanders right then and there.  More blood on Lester's hands.  But he's able to escape from the elevator and make it back home.

You might think this guy couldn't possibly go any lower, but yes he can.  In the ultimate despicable moment he and his new wife are outside his office to get their passports so they can take off to Mexico for a "vacation."  Seeing a light on inside, Lester asks his wife to go inside to fetch the passports.  As if that's not bad enough, he gives his jacket to her.  Which of course leads to her getting shot by Malvo while Lester watches safely from outside.

And it's then I realized the really evil person wasn't so much Malvo as Lester.  OK yeah Malvo kills tons of people and he is certainly evil, but he's been a professional hitman for years so obviously he was not a good dude to start with.  Whereas Lester was an otherwise normal guy who does horrible things--killing his wife, setting up his brother, sacrificing his new wife--all to save his own ass.  You might not agree but to me all that lying and betrayal is a lot worse, especially because it is from someone normal.  It goes to show how any of us in the right situation might find ourselves doing the wrong thing and turning to the dark side.  It is frightening to think that any of us--you, me, your neighbors--could become an agent of evil all starting with one moment of rage.  As the Joker said in The Dark Knight:  "Madness is like gravity; all you need is a push."  The same is true for evil.

If you remember my Clone Wars post I chastised the prequels for not really setting up Anakin Skywalker's transition to Darth Vader very well.  By contrast I think "Fargo" did a great job of demonstrating how his fear of getting caught drives Lester down the dark path and how getting away with his initial misdeeds leads to even worse behavior.

In case you're wondering, Lester never repents.  While trying to evade the cops he ends up in the middle of a frozen lake and falls through the ice.  Which he might end up in a much warmer place to thaw after that, eh?

Movie Round-Up 7/3/14: Revenge of the Has-Beens

I decided that doing mini movie reviews monthly might create entries that are too daunting for some people.  Plus I end up talking about like 30 movies and people will only comment about one or two and so it seems like kind of a waste.  So I'm just going to do it every Friday.  Though with the holiday this week it's on Thursday.  So there.

We Are the Night:  I probably wouldn't have rented this if I'd known it was in German.  I swear the preview I saw was in English.  Not that I'm opposed to watching movies with subtitles.  I've watched movies in Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, Swedish, and Danish, but still it's nice to know that ahead of time.  Anyway it starts out like "The Craft" only with vampires as a group of vampire chicks in Berlin (hence all the German) adopt an urchin named Lena.  While soaking in a tub after being bitten Lena magically transforms from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo into German Kate Mara, which was an upgrade in my book.  At first it's kind of cool being a vampire because they have a lot of money after centuries and they drive around Lamborghinis and the like at breakneck speed because they're already undead.  But then of course she gets up to the part that sucks--literally and figuratively.  Some mayhem ensues.  It was decent for a vampire movie, though I would have preferred a little more skin. (2.5/5)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit:  If you don't know, Jack Ryan is the guy from the series of Tom Clancy books that began with The Hunt for Red October, when he was a nerdy CIA analyst who convinces American officials a Soviet sub is trying to defect.  Later he went on to be president or something.  In the movies he was played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and then Ben Affleck.  This movie is a reboot of all that and who better for Paramount to star in it than Chris Pine, the star of their Star Trek reboot, right?  In a couple early scenes we see Jack Ryan drops out of school after 9/11, joins the Marines, gets shot down and badly wounded, meets his future girlfriend Cathy at Walter Reed, and then is recruited by Kevin Costner of the CIA.  That's all a prologue to 10 years later when he has to prevent an evil Russian scheme dreamed up by Kenneth Branagh, who also directs.  It was surprising how few real surprises there were in this.  (The biggest for me was the woman who looks like Keira Knightley actually is Keira Knightley!)  I mean there's no real attempt at a big twist.  You think maybe Kevin Costner will be evil (he did play a turncoat Russian agent in No Way Out) or maybe Cathy will be a turncoat like Total Recall or something.  Nah.  It's all pretty straightforward.  I suppose a warning flag was when a movie with known actors like this was released in January, the typical cesspool for Hollywood movies.  (2/5)

The Art of the Steal:  This movie reminds us that Kurt Russell still exists.  he plays a has-been Evel Kineval type who on the side steals art until his weasel brother Matt Dillon (who also still exists) turns him in and he does 5 1/2 years in a Polish jail.  When he gets out his brother seems to have one big score for him involving a book called the Gospel According to James.  The scam in part reminds me of a Lawrence Block book I read recently.  But like Matchstick Men there's a scam within the scam.  All-in-all it was decent with a twist you don't really see coming. (3/5)

Wrecked:  Also, Adrien Brody still exists.  (There's kind of a theme to these last 3.) Remember when he won that Oscar?  And then like 10 years later he was doing razor commercials and straight-to-video crap.  This was probably straight-to-video but it wasn't crap.  About half the movie is him trying to get out of an old crappy Chevy that's wrecked in the British Columbia forest.  When he does get out then the latter half of the movie is pretty much him crawling around the forest while he's haunted by Caroline Dhavernas, who is...what?  Actually we never do really find out how she's related to him.  It gets a little boring at times, but there was a great surprise twist at the end. (3/5)

Joe:  Hey speaking of former Oscar winners who are now down to making straight-to-video crap, this is yet another Nicolas Cage movie.  He plays the titular character who lives way in the Deep South or somewhere and runs a crew of guys who illegally poison trees so they can later be cut down.  Then he meets a 15-year-old named Gary who has an old drunk father that can't keep a job.  Then it becomes kind of complicated as Joe is not exactly Mr. Nice Guy.  I mean at one point he goes all Michael Vick and sics his American bulldog on another dog that hates him--I can't imagine why a dog would hate him!  But he also helps out the kid and other poor people.  There's also a mortal enemy (for some reason that isn't really explained) who at one point shoots Joe in the shoulder but this being a movie Joe can patch it up himself and in a couple days be right as rain.  Overall it's kind of slow, though I suppose it's good in a way that it doesn't try to paint Joe one way or another because life is complicated. (2.5/5)

The Lego Movie:  I finally got around to watching this.  It was as fun as advertised.  There are enough references to other stuff in it to keep older viewers like me entertained while it's not so adult that the kids can't watch it.  And there's a great message about creativity and also for those nerds who glue Legos together and only build stuff to specifications.  Alas I wish there hadn't been so much Will Farrell in it. (4/5)

In Her Skin:  This is one of those "based on a true story" movies.  It took place in Australia in 1999 so I have no idea how true it actually is.  A 15-year-old girl goes missing and her distraught parents search for her and attempt to get the police off their asses to do something.  (Sadly no one says, "A dingo ate your baby!")  Then we jump to the woman who abducted the girl in a scheme that doesn't make much sense; I suspect it made more sense to her.  A random thought is that it must be nice for Guy Pearce to do a movie in Australia where he doesn't have to fake an American accent.  I'm sure it's the same for Brits when they can play Brits.  It's probably like a kind of vacation. (2/5)

News & Notes

Are people doing the Insecure Whiners Support Group today?  I figure not that many people will be reading blogs with the holiday this week and all--at least for Canadians (yesterday) and Americans (Friday).  Then again not that many people read my blog anyway, though I've found a solution for how to fix the problem created by the site address change.

When the address changed you probably didn't get updates in your Blogger feed anymore.  Here's how to change that, which you probably already know if you're reading this.

It's a pretty simple 4-step process:

I think I tried to just change the address and that didn't work, which is why I recommend just deleting and putting it in fresh.  Blogger is stupid like that.  Then the blog entries should start to appear in your feed again!

You can also use Steps 1 & 4 to add other Blogger blogs that don't have the Google Friend Connect or whatever.  I did that with Nigel Mitchell and David Walston's blogs so I don't (in theory) have to go to a bookmark of their feed anymore, which should make it easier.

In other news I finally got around to consolidating all of my books into just 3 names.  Now there is only P.T. Dilloway, Patrick Dilloway, and Eric Filler.  And the middle one it would make sense to change it but I haven't felt like going to the trouble of it yet.  Anyway, so every other author you see out there except for those 3 is not me.  Unless this is some weird schizo fantasy where it turns out everyone is really me and I'm imagining this whole thing.  Or you're imagining me.  Or I'm imagining you imagining me...take that M Night Shaymalan!

Mostly the last 10 days or so I've been working on some short stories to be published by my pseudonym.  I'm going to try something a little different and see how it works out.  Probably not much better than most things, but whatever.  It's something to do.  If you want to know what my pseudonym is up to, periodically check out my kick ass publisher website: http://www.planet99-publishing.com/

(Update on that last paragraph:  it sold 2 copies in the US and 2 in the UK in its first day which was enough to make it an International Best Seller on Amazon.  Which I'm sure won't last but is pretty cool.)

And hey, how about that World Cup, right?

Speed Bumps and Roadkill

I usually like to put a decent amount of planning into a story before I start to write it.  With the last story I wrote (G.A.IA.:  ROGUE STATE) I probably underdid the planning.  It was a lot more seat-of-the-pants than usual, which is probably why it didn't turn out like how I'd wanted.  Not that I consider it really bad--nothing I write is bad, ever--just that it seems to have a few plot holes.  That it ended up at only 47,000 words is a good indicator it wasn't the best thing I ever did.

Again I think a lack of planning was key.  I already described in one post (Out of Nothing At All) how I created a character out of thin air and ended up giving her a major role.  Then I decided about 3/4 of the way through to make an otherwise unrelated character into a villain as part of some big conspiracy.  The end result is that where it ended and where it began didn't necessarily line up the way thy should.

Reading through the first draft I couldn't help thinking that it really needs to go back to formula.  So I struggled with that for a little while and maybe by the time this post airs I'll have gotten something figured out.  I think a large part of the struggle was that I didn't really have much in mind for the setting.  In the first draft I ended up using some little generic town in central Africa and jungles around there.  Obviously I've never been to central Africa, small towns or jungles.  So I think that presented a little bit of a challenge.

This time around I'm trying to make better notes and get a better idea of where things are happening.  Also they say if you're writing a mystery (and there are mystery elements here) then you should start and the end and work backwards.  I did some of that, deciding who the villains are and what their whole scheme is supposed to be and how it's supposed to work--before it's unraveled by our heroes of course.  I'm hoping the end result will be a bit stronger.  But maybe not.

Anyway, that's why I try not to do seat-of-the-pants writing much anymore.  Ultimately it leads to a lot more shitty drafts than if I'd just figured things out from the start. 

Do the Angry Newbie or How Not to Respond to Criticism

Ever since the early days of the World Wide Web in 1996 I've had a talent for making enemies.  I'm pretty much like Charles Bukowski's barfly getting into one brawl after another at the great watering hole that is Internet forums.  Although as I near middle age I've mellowed a little, but sometimes I still get into the occasional dust-up.  I've found a certain pattern concerning these dust-ups on writing critique sites--or just one site really.

What happened a couple weeks ago is a pretty good example of how it goes down.  Someone posted a proposed third version of a query letter that was just godawful.  I mean it was a huge step back from the first two versions.  It was like she (I'm assuming from the screen name) had gotten bonked on the head and forgotten everything she'd learned about writing query letters.

So because I'm a Grumpy Bulldog and tired and this was pretty bad I couldn't resist a smart-ass comment comparing it to someone else who had recently written some really awful queries.  (That guy was a real piece of work.  I mean the more people tried to help the worse he seemed to get.)  Now of course we cue the histrionics.

Step One:  Sarcastic Whining:
The first thing she does is give me the old "Thanks for being so unhelpful."  Followed by "I thought this place was supposed to be for people to help each other!"

Which really people (including me) did try to help you twice already and instead of getting better you actually got worse.  Also apparently my previous attempts to help didn't count.  What have you done for me lately?

Step Two:  Passive Aggressive:
The next thing she does is make sure to heap lots of praise on everyone else who replied.  And in most cases they'll be sure to thank those people by name while making sure to exclude me.  Ooh, take that!  I find that more childish than hurtful.

Step Three:  Hypocritical Personal Attack:
When our paths crossed again (because a low-traffic forum is like a small town that way) then it was time for her to bring out the big guns.  Basically saying, "I've read some of your work recently and it's not good at all!"  They also like to sprinkle in words like "troll" and "bullying" too, though I think they have a pretty low standard for bullying.

The fallacy here is that first of all you attacking my work doesn't sting because A) You're obviously not objective and B) You're not anyone important.  Or to put it succinctly, some unpublished nobody who's mad at me saying they don't like my work doesn't really matter to me.

Sometimes they might try to go deeper into other personal areas.  The thing is if I put something on my profile on the forum or on Twitter or this here blog or wherever then it doesn't hurt when you throw it back at me.  Obviously if I wrote and posted it then I didn't care who reads it.

The other thing is this is so hypocritical.  You're attacking me personally because I said something you didn't like about your writing.  Not you, personally, but about your writing that you posted.  And I'm the big bad bullying troll?  Maybe you should look in the mirror, honey.

Step Four:  Bid for Martyrdom:
Usually these people leave pretty shortly after.  I don't even think it's me so much as this type of person isn't really joining the group so much as looking for free critiques.  (Or really just validation.)  Once they've used that up they take off.  Though often enough they have to throw a little tantrum on the way out.  "You're mean so I'm going to take my ball and go home!"  Which usually then only brings the response of, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

The thing here is usually this person hasn't made any other contributions other than asking for free critiques.  They don't seem to realize that them leaving isn't really that big of a deal because they haven't added anything of value for people to miss.  Such a tantrum is certainly not going to make me run after them shouting, "No, come back!"  Which is what I'm sure they want so they can say they won't come back or only come back on their terms.  But really if you want people to do that then actually give something back first.

I don't think I've met anyone yet who's understood I'm trying to be helpful in my own tough love Grumpy Bulldog way.  It is a dog-eat-dog business; if you can't handle one not nice comment, how are you going to handle all the rejection that's sure to come?  I've run into some nasty critiques and I don't know if it really made me better, but it probably did help to knock me down a peg.  It's so easy when you're starting out to think you're the hero of the story, the Chosen One who's going to stand out among all the others because you're you and how can anyone deny your greatness?

As they say though it's how you deal with such incidents that show your true colors.  The Angry Newbie schtick outlined above is not how to handle it.  If you don't like my "bullying" then take the high road.  Don't respond or say something bland like "I'll consider that."  And don't go into all that passive aggressive crap either like in step two.  You're better than that, right?  That's why you're the Chosen One and I'm not, right?  Don't become what you profess to hate; that path leads to the dark side.

Movie Round-Up or I Watched These Movies In the Last Month and You Should Watch Some of Them Too and Some You Shouldn't, So Read This Entry to Find Out Which is Which!

Last month's post's comments were generally, "Wow you watch a lot of movies."  Which is true.  But that was also most of the movies I'd watched since like February.  So this entry won't be as long...probably.

Crave:  a movie I have no idea how it got on my queue.  It sounds like a good zombie movie title, or something about drug addiction, but does not involve either one.  It's kind of like that Walter Mitty movie only the main character is a crime scene photographer who envisions himself saving damsels in distress or killing people who piss him off--in one case with a chain saw.  Fantasy starts bleeding into reality when he finds a gun at the scene of a robbery and pockets it.  It's kind of slow, but most of us introverts have probably felt like this guy, only maybe not the part about cutting Edward Furlong in half with a chainsaw.  (2.5/5)

The Toxic Avenger:  I'd heard OF this movie, but never actually watched it.  Then late one night I did and soon wished I'd put on something a little better like "Galaxy of Dinosaurs"--see last month's post.  Basically a skinny guy who looks like he could be Jon Heder's dad falls from a window at a health club into a barrel of toxic waste.  (Because the truck company doesn't bother to put lids on barrels of deadly radioactive toxic waste.  Well I guess it was the Reagan era.)  Then for whatever reason he starts beating up bad guys.  There was really no aspect of this movie that was well done:  used car dealer commercial-level acting, a horribly cheesy 80s workout theme song that we get treated to during the opening AND closing credits, the way the Toxic Avenger's voice is clearly dubbed, even the nudity because the women who get naked really needed to work on their tan lines.  It's hard to believe there are at least 3 sequels.  Having watched part of the other three (before I fell asleep) I guess the only reason to watch is for the cartoonishly inventive ways he kills and/or mutilates bad guys like crushing a guy into a ball and playing basketball with him.  (0/5)

Blue Jasmine:  I haven't loved Woody Allen movies all that much, but I guess since Netflix kept advertising this on the disc envelopes I decided to put it in my queue.  It was pretty bad.  Not in the same way as the Toxic Avenger, which is just bad bad.  This was more pointless bad.  Basically Cate Blanchett is the wife of Alec Baldwin, who's like a Bernie Madoff-type con man.  After he gets busted she goes to San Francisco to stay with her lower-class sister.  What I could never figure out is if we're supposed to be glad the snooty Jasmine is getting her comeuppance or if we're supposed to hope she gets her shit together.  And it's one of those where at the end we're pretty much little farther along than the beginning, so thanks for wasting 98 minutes of my life, Woody Allen.  Also I really hated that awful torch singing or whatever that stuff from like the 20s was that he used for the soundtrack.  Basically I could sum it up by saying that an hour in I checked the time and saw there was still half-hour left and thought, "Oh God, there's really that much time left?" Really you should just watch/read "A Streetcar Named Desire" which this is pretty much borrowing from, though Bobby Cannavale is no young Marlon Brando to be sure.  (1/5)

Gravity:  I know I already reviewed it earlier.  I just wanted to note I liked it as much on the small screen as on the fake IMAX screen in 3D.  It probably is the best disaster movie I've seen. It did occur to me watching it again that a disaster movie is what this movie is at its heart, which if the Academy had thought way maybe they'd given it some more Oscar love.  (5/5)

Sex Sells:  Have you ever wanted to know how a porno is made?  That's the subject of this mockumentary involving a veteran porno maker who's making one last film featuring film's largest orgy scene.  The heart of the movie though involves the relationship between the veteran porno actress and a new girl with a secret and the documentary filmmaker who comes between them.  For a low budget movie it's surprisingly entertaining. (4/5)

DCU:  Son of Batman:  This is a loose adaptation of the 2000s comics by Grant Morrison where it's revealed Batman has a son with the evil Talia al Guhl.  The son named Damian comes to Gotham after Deathstroke nearly wipes out the League of Assassins.  Eventually Damian becomes Robin, which Batman hopes will help rein in some of that assassin training.  It was OK but I never got that much into it.  BTW, at the moment Damian is dead in the comic book universe; I'm not sure if they have plans to adapt that. (3/5)

Funny People:  Sometimes you know a movie is going to suck--and then you're completely not surprised when it does in fact suck.  It starts out all right as Adam Sandler basically plays Adam Sandler:  an aging comedian who's gotten rich via a bunch of terrible movies.  Or similarly he's like Krusty the Clown in the Simpsons.  Then he's diagnosed with a rare disease and the movie gets all maudlin for the next 90 minutes.  At about 2 1/2 hours this is much, much too long and not nearly funny enough.  About the only good thing to come from this was it finally slowed the Apatow train down; it was really annoying that every comedy was advertised as "by the guys who brought you Knocked Up!"  Unfortunately Apatow learned nothing from this movie as his next movie "This is 40" was just as bloated and similarly he uses his entire family in major roles.  There needs to be an intervention against people like this in Hollywood who keep shoving their kids into major parts--I see you, Will Smith!  Anyway, life imitated art as after this dud Sandler went back to making crappy movies like "Jack & Jill." (1/5)

Her:  I liked the core concept but at 126 minutes it's really slow.  A lot of times it felt like I was watching an Apple commercial, one of those "What's your verse?" ones with all the montages to dreamy indie music, which I guess makes sense since Arcade Fire did the music.  As much as I want to rip on the dude for falling in love with a computer, it's really the ideal scenario for me, so I hope Apple or Google makes it happen soon.  Come on a Russian computer just passed the "Turing Test" so let's get cracking on this!  This does suffer from a couple of typical movie problems.  First, for a guy who has a nothing job like writing fake letters, he lives in an apartment that probably costs over $2000 a month and he has all these fancy gizmos.  Similarly Amy Adams is a terrible documentary filmmaker and she is also living high off the hog.  In LA?  Yeah, right.  Second at one point the computer sends his letters off to a publisher and of course they decide to publish them as a book.  Come on, unless you're a celebrity you haven't been able to just mail in a book and get it published in probably 40 years!  A movie  has to be slow to really pay attention to that stuff. (3/5)

Pompeii:  The pitch meeting must have gone like this:  "It's Gladiator meets Volcano!"  "Genius!"  Most of this does pretty shamelessly rip off Gladiator, like when he teaches them how to use a shield and fight together and then rides a horse around the arena.  They even use the same joke when the battle reenactment goes awry.  Then finally the volcano erupts and it becomes a disaster movie.  Which really I thought the eruption happened so fast that people were actually frozen by the ash having dinner and so forth.  The whole thing was lame and cliche, which is to be expected from Paul WS Anderson; he's not Uwe Boll but pretty close.  Poor Jon Snow (who I thought in the commercials was Orlando Bloom) is probably doomed to be typecast in sword-and-sandal type movies. (1/5)

Batman Mask of the Phantasm:  This was from the mid-90s based on the animated series of the time but I'd never gotten around to watching it.  It was really good, more aimed at adults than kids really.  It presents yet another Batman origin only in this case he adopts the Batman disguise because of a broken heart.  Awwww.  The identity of "the Phantasm" was pretty easy to figure out, but really there were only 2 possibilities I suppose. (5/5)

Unknown:  Liam Neeson punches his way through Berlin on a quest to figure out why his identity has been stolen.  It was fine except then the big twist near the end is a ripoff of "The Long Kiss Goodnight" or maybe "Total Recall" with maybe a little "Bourne Identity" thrown in.  So that was kind of lame.  He doesn't kill as many people as the "Taken" movies, which is a good thing or bad thing depending on your point of view. (2.5/5)

The Time Being:  It probably would have helped to read the description before putting this on.  I mean at first when the old guy (Frank Langella) has the young painter (Wes Bentley, the creepy kid from "American Beauty" all growed up now) film kids on a playground and stuff you think he's going to escalate his weird demands into filming a murder or kinky sex or something terrible.  But actually this is a heartwarming story about art, artists, and family.  Kind of like "Finding Forrester"--only with painting!  It's a little slow but really enjoyable. (4.5/5)

Don Jon:  I'm not sure there's much more uncomfortable for straight guys than listening to a dude talk about how many times he jacks it.  Which is mostly what this is about.  Joseph Gordon-Leavitt writes, directs, and stars in this movie about a Jersey Shore type guy who despite nailing lots of hot chicks still jerks it to porn about 5 times a day, even when he's nailing Scarlett Johannson.  Really I think if you jerk it 35 times in a week you'd have serious chafing issues.  So um I guess it's a PSA about porn addiction?  Gross. But there are plenty of beefcake shots for those who aren't straight guys. (1/5)

Nurse:  A movie about a sexy nurse who also murders people seemed like right up my alley for late night watching.  Basically this nurse works in a hospital where they still wear those old school sexy nurse outfits because I guess they never heard of scrubs.  And the one named Abby likes to go out and murder cheating men.  Then a new really dumb blonde nurse shows up and Abby becomes fixated on her.  Mayhem ensues.  As I said the blonde was so dumb that she can't see the obvious going on right in front of her.  And the evil nurse really needed some makeup to hide the bags under her eyes. (2/5)

3 Days to Kill:  One side-effect of "Man of Steel"'s success is that it reminded people Kevin Costner still exists.  So this was the second of 3 Costner movies released this year and I think it did the best of the three.  Basically he plays the Liam Neeson role in another reliable action movie from the Luc Besson factory.  Costner is a CIA agent in Paris who is dying and has (you guessed it) 3 days to find and kill some bad guy known as "the Wolf" and also to bond with his estranged daughter.  There are some kind of corny situations as he teaches his daughter how to ride a bike and dance intermingled with numerous gun fights, elevator fu, subway car fu, and the mandatory car chase.  Overall it's OK, but not as good as "True Lies" for instance. (2.5/5)

Jobs:  The problem with biopics is that people are complicated and thus it can be hard to paint a full picture.  (Or some like "The Social Network" just throw out most of the facts to make reality fit their hackneyed script.)  I think the one thing this does right is depict the contradictions of Steve Jobs.  On one hand he was visionary and he could really motivate engineers to create great products.  On the other hand he was a prick.  Most of his old friends who helped him build the company he cut out of it once they made it big.  For years he refused to his see his illegitimate daughter.  Most of the movie is dedicated to the creation of the company and the dirty corporate politics of the mid-80s and mid-90s.  It would have been nice to get a little more of the personal stuff.  I mean like when they show him in bed with some woman and I think, "Who the hell is that?"  And while it's nice they didn't gloss over all the bad stuff, I still can't wish they had a better actor than Ashton Kutcher.  It'll be interesting to see what the more official Jobs biopic looks like. (3/5)

(And I also wonder if at this point Apple isn't back to the late 80s after they pushed Jobs out, when it became far more corporate, which led to stagnation and then falling market share.  If so they're in trouble, unless they find a way to reanimate Jobs's corpse.)

Bonus:  TV I watched:

Fargo:  I could never remember when this was on FX so I just watched it On Demand.  Which I think worked better since each episode on TV was 90-120 minutes whereas On Demand it was 60-70 minutes, so do the math to see how many commercials they jam in there.  Anyway, this isn't exactly like the 1996 movie but there are certain elements that are similar.  The female deputy is brought into it when a car goes off a road in a snowy field in Minnesota.  Who was in the car and left to freeze to death soon is revealed and is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  It also involves a crime concerning a mild-mannered middle-aged guy and his wife, though it's not a kidnapping gone wrong.

This manages to replicate the feel of a Coen Brothers movie with the mixture of graphic violence and deadpan humor.  While there are a number of characters and plots I find every scene not involving Billy Bob Thornton's diabolical hitman Malvo to be largely a waste of time.  I'm sure at some point someone will count just how many people he kills in the course of the 10-episode season.  At one point he kills about two-dozen in one fell swoop.

One thing I really didn't like was in the middle of 8/10 episodes they suddenly jump a year.  So here we are like 4/5 of the way through the season and all the sudden have to adapt to another reality.  It is a bit confusing to say the least.  I'm not sure why it was necessary, though maybe it's because it's "based on a true story."  Well that's what they say and then Oliver Platt finds the money Steve Buscemi hid in the movie and I start to wonder just how much poetic license they're taking.

The final episode was pretty disappointing at the end because the female deputy who was to that point the only one to really know what was going on isn't involved in the captures of the two bad guys at all.  Her husband, a mailman who before the one year jump had been a cop who let Malvo go, doesn't exactly tell her "No, this is man's work" but pretty close to it.  It's like, you're going to put up with that and just stay behind barefoot and pregnant?  Really?  Frances McDormand wouldn't have taken that crap; she was right there at the end when Steve Buscemi got fed to the wood chipper!  So I guess the whole thing was really about Colin Hanks getting his balls back by taking down Malvo.  Who knew?  (3/5)

Double Feature: Godzilla (2014) & X-Men Days of Future Past Reviews

For as many movies as I watch I don't watch many in the theater.  It's just too expensive and Saturdays I usually spend writing so when I'm working on a story I don't really want to take time off to go watch a movie.

So I decided since I wasn't working on a story at the moment I should catch up with a good old-fashioned double feature.  I know people used to do that a lot like in the 30s-50s; I'd have to go ask the Chubby Chatterbox about that.  I've done it a few times in the last 10 years.  In 2004 I saw "Garden State" and "Spider-Man 2" and the next year "Revenge of the Sith" and "Batman Begins" and in 2007 it was "Transformers" and "The Simpsons Movie."  In 2008 I saw "The Dark Knight" twice the day it came out, which I suppose would count as a double feature, right?

Anyway, in the old days you'd just stay in the same theater and watch one and then another, but it's harder to manage that these days.  Especially since the movies I wanted to watch were older and didn't have as many time slots.

So anyway at 10:55am I went to the theater and watched "Godzilla."  Y'all on the Internet had given me high hopes--which this did not live up to.  When I pay $6 to watch a movie called "Godzilla" I want to see more than 10 minutes of Godzilla!  They needed to adhere more to Ken Watanabe's character's line:  Let them fight.

First off it took over an hour to even get to Godzilla showing up.  In that time they killed off Bryan Cranston's character, which seemed pretty lame since he was the only one worth giving a crap about.  All we had left then was his son, who was basically just a ripoff of Josh Duhamel's character in "Transformers."  Oh and hey since it's 2014 maybe we could have his wife be something other than a freaking nurse.  Why couldn't she be a doctor?  There are women doctors these days movie writers.

Anyway, so finally Godzilla shows up in Hawaii to take on Bat-Monster and does his famous roar.  Let's get ready to ruuuuuuuumble, right?  (I probably owe Michael Buffer a quarter now.)  Nope.  Instead we cut back to the lame humans and only see part of the fight on a TV screen.  Whaaaaat?  Then it probably takes another forty-five minutes for Godzilla to throw down with the monsters in San Francisco and even then they'd get going and we'd have to cut back to the annoying humans.

The thing is the humans were so freaking stupid.  Their grand plan is to set off a nuke out in the water to draw in the monsters and kill them.  Well since the Muto monsters emit EMPs we can't use a conventional bomb from an airplane or anything so we have to deliver by train and then put in some old-timey clockwork detonator that can't be called back.  So when the Bat-Monster takes the bomb and gives it to his sweetie in San Francisco the dumb humans have now put a timebomb in the heart of San Francisco.  So they send Bryan Cranston's son in via a HALO jump to stop it.  And the whole movie we hear all about how he's this hotshot bomb disposal expert...and he doesn't even defuse the fucking bomb!  He just pushes it out to sea so it can blow up.  WTF?  Why establish the guy as a bomb disposal expert and then have him "dispose" of it like Batman or Tony Stark?  Those guys at least have an excuse.  And really the gist of it was he was saving the city from himself!  WTF?

But when Godzilla does finally figure out how to use his nuclear breath or whatever that was pretty sweet.  In his limited screen time Godzilla was probably the best character, with Bryan Cranston a close second and then I didn't give a shit about anyone else.

People can bash "Pacific Rim" but at least it had some sweet monster vs. robot fights.  But the little Indian kid behind me in the theater liked it, so there.

Anyway, I know we have to waste all this time on lame humans because we need characters we care about blah blah blah (which incidentally I didn't care about them, as noted above) but really guys if I want to watch a movie with human characters I'd go watch "Grand Budapest Hotel" or something more dramatic.  When I watch a movie featuring monsters and/or robots I want to see monsters and/or robots!  (1/5)

After that I went and got lunch and hung out at the library.  Then I went to another theater that was showing "X-Men Days of Future Past" at 4pm, which was the earliest available in the area.

I liked it a lot better, though it wasn't exactly a perfect movie.  Basically as you know they're trying to mash together the first three X-Men movies of the 2000s with "X-Men First Class."  And they ignore the two Wolverine solo movies.  So having seen all of those it can get a little mushy.  Like wait Angel is dead?  Wasn't he in X-Men 3?  And how is it Beast came up with a sort of mutant cure back in 1973?  And why the hell would that allow Xavier to walk?  The Geek Twins linked to an article that had some of the more significant errors, such as:  why does Wolverine have metal claws in the future when he lost them in "The Wolverine?"  And didn't Xavier's body get vaporized by the Phoenix in "The Last Stand?"  (Though a cookie scene showed he'd transferred his mind to another body.)  The good thing is that after this movie any problems can be explained away as it's a different universe now because time travel, ie the Star Trek reboot.

Something funny to note is that since the original 2 comics came from the early 80s we're probably right now at or past the bleak future it predicted.  So there.  Anyway, I'm sure you know that in "the future" mutant killing "Sentinels" have run amok so the last mutants band together to send Wolverine back into the past, only in this case it's by beaming his mind back to his younger body in 1973, which originally was supposed to be done by Kitty Pryde but no one really gives a shit about Kitty Pryde whereas Wolverine is the most popular character.

Just like in the comics they were supposed to stop the assassination of the senator guy whom Magneto killed in the very first X-Men movie, so instead it's Mystique is going to kill Tyrion Lannister, the inventor of the Sentinels.  (Wouldn't that be an awesome crossover?)  Anyway, Wolverine has to get the band back together to find her and stop her.  Though why they really needed Magneto I don't know.  Basically they just needed Xavier to stop being such a wuss and man up about his psychic powers.  Come on, you wouldn't see Patrick Stewart being such a whiny bitch about it!

One dumb thing I remember some people bitching about is Quicksilver is supposed to be Magneto's son and some people were like, "But they don't mention that anywhere!"  Um, yeah they do.  In the elevator Quicksilver's like, "My mom knew a guy who could move metal around."  Hmmmm, I wonder who that could be?  But I guess 1973 was too early to go on Maury Povich to see if Magneto is the baby daddy.  Though I don't know why they really needed Quicksilver either; Wolverine couldn't just punch the glass with his bone claws?

In the end Magneto lifts up a whole stadium to surround the White House, which seemed kind of dumb.  I mean sure it kept out cars, but we have these new things called helicopters.  And airplanes.  Yeah, even in 1973 we had those!  Sure there were still the Sentinels, which really I seriously doubt we had the technology in 1973 to make giant sophisticated robot killing machines.

In that finale it's surprising how little Wolverine actually does.  Basically he gets wrapped in metal and drowned in the Potomac, though obviously he can't die.  You'd think since he's the most popular character he'd get more involved.

Like "Watchmen" the Nixon impersonator was pretty lame.  Is it really that hard to depict Nixon on the big screen?  I guess there's a tendency to make him too cartoonish with the nose putty and stuff.  In which case maybe they should have set it in 1974 and Ford could have been the president.  Similarly there seems no way to make Beast not look ridiculous in his blue beast mode.  It might help if they did like the Hulk and used CGI and maybe lost the clothes so he could be more beast-like.

This was the type of movie where as long as you didn't think too hard about anything it was fine.  Obviously the whole point was so they could launch a broader X-Men universe, because it's not enough to have a franchise; now you need a whole cinematic universe thanks to Marvel.  I think at this point they're running second behind Marvel in that department.  We have yet to see how DC's result is going to look and Sony's just sounds awful.

Of course the next X-Men movie is due out in 2016, providing Bryan Singer isn't in jail--or probably even if he is.  I mean Brett Ratner is probably available.

The only thing going forward is I assume we'd be seeing the McAvoy and Fassbender Professor X and Magneto, not Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, which kind of sucks.  The younger actors don't have the same gravitas for obvious reasons.  Overall I'd give this a 3/5.

So there are the results of this year's double feature.  I suppose I could do another one at some point, but it's hard finding two movies I want to watch at the same time.  If you're a single guy with a lot of free time you could always try that for yourself.