Monthly Archives: April 2018

Movie Review: A Quiet Place

When I first viewed the trailers for this movie my expectation was that I was going to give it a pass. However upon several decent reviews from critics whose tastes fall close to mine own I decided to give the film a go.

A Quite Placebelongs to that sub-genre of horror films, the monster movie. Following in the tradition of Tremors, albeit without that films comedy, A Quiet Placenever explains precisely what the monsters are, how they came about, or even if they have anything beyond a predator’s cunning. The set-up for the film is simple, 89 days before the story’s opening scene mysterious monster appeared in the world and began slaughtering. Each movie monster needs a gimmick and this is that the monsters are blind, operating on passive sound detection to hunt. To survive means to be quiet. This is a movie without nearly any traditional dialog and not since Buffy The Vampire Slayer’sepisode Hushhas a story rotated so central around characters robbed of speech.

The film follows the Abbott family struggling to survive following civilization’s collapse in an environment where noise brings deaths. The Abbotts have an advantage in the scenario, their daughter Regan is deaf and the entire family is fluent in American Sign Language. This silent communication allows the Abbotts extraordinary coordination but is limited by line of sight and distance. When the characters communicate this way the film supplies subtitles. Great stretches of the story occur when character have become separated resulting in a film that carried by silent performances.

The filmmakers followed in the talents of Ridley Scott and refrained from showing the monster except in bit, pieces, and flashes until the climax of the action. Some have criticized the creature design are uninspired and while it hardly breaks new ground for me 0t did not spoil the film.

Though there are a number of credited screenwriters, usually the sign of a muddled and failing screenplay, A Quiet Placeclearly benefitted from Writer/Director/Star John Krasinaki’s vision for what he wanted to achieve, yielding a unified plot and atmosphere normally absent with so many writers. Emily Blunt stars as Evelyn Abbott and a couple of talented young actors round out the family besieged by ravenous monsters. The sequence of events is logical, the tension of taunt, and the characters are both realistic and relatable. Over all this is a good film and well worth watch. I think it benefits from a good theater experience and mine was a good one. The audience remained quiet, engrossed in the drama and the terror. If you wait for home video please make sure you watch this without undue interruptions.

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A Surprisingly Poignant Song from Weird Al

Now, this song is a cut from an album a few years back but I only recently got around to getting a copy for myself. Weird Al has had a terrific run as a humorist. His skills are so much more than ‘filking’ popular songs as a profession. He’s a writer, a director, and a man with a sharp eye for what the culture is up to at any particular moment.

This song. Skipper Dan has a pathos to it that just tugs at my heart. It isn’t a funny song, though it’s performed in that same style he will use for his fake love songs, but rather captures in just a few minutes the pain of a dreams that refuse to realize.

For all the dreamers that life has rolled under its’ impersonal tires, I give you Skipper Dan.

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Thoughts on Sequels

As I have been working editing a sequel novel my thoughts have turned to the tricky nature of sequels in general. There is no place more in love with sequels that Hollywood. Given the sums of money on the line, both for production and potential profit, the idea of returned to a tried and true success if often one that movie producers cannot resist. Yet time and time again the sequels that are produced often are disappointments both commercially and as entertainment. Publishing has a similar thought relationship, albeit though with greater success than feature film in producing satisfying sequels projects. What is it about sequels that makes them so challenging?

The first impulse when a sequel is produced it simply to copy the parent project. You need look no further afield than Jawsand Jaws 2for an example that is nearly a platonic ideal of this principal. This tends to fail because what made the parent project so fresh and innovative simply cannot be fresh a second time around. We have literally seen it before and the desire for new ground, new stuff often overpowers the desire for a repeat performance. A successful sequel must break new ground, giving the audience something that they did not know that they wanted.

It is also possible to be too new and break so afield from the previous works that the audience simply has no interest and this new thing you have sold them dressed up as something it is not. This issue happens far less often than the rote copying of the previous work but it can be seen in Halloween III, which ignored the previous two films of the franchise in an attempt to establish the title as part of an anthology brand. The filmmakers wanted a wholly new concept but the audience wanted more of a slasher wearing a painted over William Shatner mask,

The third major way a sequel can go astray is to destroy the emotional investment the audience paid with the previous works. When someone truly loves a piece of narrative work they have infused that project with serious emotional capitol, paying with their apprehension and their concern for the stakes that characters faced. The emotional profit that they reap from the experience exceeds the tension that they endured during the narrative. Some sequels, in an attempt to break free of old patterns and find that elusive new ground, undo the rewards from the previous encounters and in effect tell the audience that they had been suckers for caring about the previous outcomes. A perfect cinematic example of this is Alien 3. Aliensa nearly perfect sequel that blended the established character with new situations quickly became a favorite but for many its sequel, Alien 3is thought of with scorn and hatred, Some people even insist that Alien 3ruined for them the previous film Aliens.I believe those harsh reactions are a direct result of the filmmakers, unintentionally mind you, telling the audience that they had been fools to emotionally invest in the well-being of Hicks and Newt. Every erg of emotional energy spent caring about those characters; feeling scared for those characters, cheering their survivals had been a con. Killing those characters in an off hand manner devalued the story of Aliensand naturally devalued any emotions wasted on Hicks and Newt.

Creating a successful sequel requires navigates these three major pitfalls, you cannot simply copy what transpired before, you cannot venture too far from what has been established, and you must not negate the emotional investment made in the previous projects.

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We Need a Strong National I.D.

First I am sorry that my weekday posts dropped off a bit over the end of last week and some of this week. My desktop computer had been throwing off issues and that consumed far more time than could be pleasantly endured. Things seem to be better now.

 

America is fairly special in the developed world in that as a major power it has no real form of national identification card or paper. The Social Security numbers, developed during the Great Depression, was never intended for that purpose and does that job particularly poorly. SSNs made people vulnerable to identity theft were fairly easy to forge, and their use as a default identification has imperiled millions. Until this year a person’s Medicare claim number was their SSN with an additional letter or letters tacked on to the front or the end as huge gaping security hole. (New Medicare ID numbers are rolling out now but it will take years for the industry to switch over.)

Our country needs a national identification system that secure, strong, and flexible. There is even at least one person running for congress advocating using public key encryption for a national ID card, not a bad idea at all.

There are a number of benefits that we would gain from a good national ID system.

1) It could Curtail Identity theft.

2016 saw 13 million people suffer some form of Identity theft with a cost to our economy of nearly 16 billion dollars.

2) It could curtail illegal immigration and illegal work practices.

Unauthorized border crossing are at a near all time low but even so it is in the public’s interest to keep all employment legal and by the regulations. Instead of focusing on the workers it would be a better use of the government’s resources to go after employers and executive skirting workplace laws and regulations.

3) It could help secure our elections.

In personal voting fraud is nearly non-existent but our national voting system is vulnerable to attack, as we have seen, and securing it can raise public confidence helping drive higher turn out and rob demagogues of one of their divisive tactics.

4) It could help better track ‘prohibited person’ and keep them from obtaining firearms.

A number of mass shootings and other maniacal events with guns have been perpetrated by persons who legally could not have purchased their weapons but we have a leaky system for tracking such people and a strong national ID could address that.

5) It could curtail Fraud and Waste

Government benefits, medical and otherwise, are prime targets for criminals seeking to bilk the public coffers. A strong national ID would make such fraud much easier to detect.

 

These benefits are only the ones off the top of my head. It is clear to me that a 21st century world power needs a 21st century system of identification.

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Sunday Night: Movie The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

Last night I was in the mood for something playful, genre, and most of all not infused with important themes. Scanning my library of DVD and Blu-ray I quickly settled on The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

Released in 2001 Lost Skeletonis a love letter and satire of the terrible B-movies dealing with aliens, monsters, and scientist from the late 50s through the mid 60s. Shot of video with the color removed and without complex camera tracking movements the film recreates the feel of those productions striving to capture material that lay beyond the filmmaker’s budget and abilities. The dialogue is comically stiff, the acting more wooden than a lumberyard, and the characters exist only in a continuum of stereotypes. All of this combines for a hilarious satire made with love from people who like myself wasted far too many late night hours devouring any sort of SF or horror film.

Dr. Paul Armstrong, a scientist, and his clichéd wife Betty as come to a remote cabin searching for a fallen meteorite made of the rarest of radioactive elements, Atmospherium. Also in the dry parched mountains is Dr. Paul Fleming, an evil scientist who has come searching for the Lost Skeleton in hope of using its ill-defined abilities to become the most powerful man in the world, however to awaken the skeleton from its slumber he requires Atmospherium. Completing the triad of search characters are the space aliens Kro-Bar and his wife Lattice. Their ship was forced to land in these same mountains, their pet mutant has escaped, presenting a lethal danger to everyone on Earth, and the power source of the ship has been depleted. Of course their ship is powered by — you guessed it — Atmospherium. Rounding out the cast as secondary characters as Forest Range Brad, the Lost Skeletonhimself, the Mutant, and Animala played with seductive style wearing a body-suit, gloves, and slippers as an ‘animal’ costume. Hilarity ensures in a story that sets back male/female relations several decades. I think it is worth noting that this film fully passes the Internet’s famed Bechdel Test while never leaving the sexist tropes of the late 50s and early 60s.

I saw this movie in an art-house theater on its initial release and it was quite refreshing to find something this light, this fun, playing in the same venue where deep and serious foreign films often screened. The cast reunited for a sequel, naturally titled The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, and while the follow-up film plays well it is not quite as fresh as that first pure experience. For anyone who loved those bad, cheesy, Black and White genre movies this is something you should give a scan.

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We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

There are those who think the recent increase in firings and chaos at the White House is a symptom of Trump feeling the heat from Mueller’s investigations. This may be the case. It is true that Mueller has been working his way up the food chain apparently flipping people and finding things that had been hidden. His team is reported to be among the best in the business as unraveling complex white crime cases and it should not be forgotten that Mueller was the man who brought down the ‘Teflon Don,’ so the pressure on the Administration must be intense. Still, this is taking place in a fantastically favorable environment.

A major news organization is dedicated to defending the administration, many of the ‘Never Trumpers’ writers from before the election have now climbed aboard defending the administration, the President’s approval rating floor remains in the high 30’s to low 40 despite the speed and intensity of the chaos. And yet we are told that the man at the center of it rages at staff, lashes out on social media, and generally reacts as a person in a siege who has no hope of relief.

People, it may get a lot worse.

One aspect of the environment that I did not mention was a favorable congress. Both house are controlled by the President’s party and have run a successful campaign of interference on his behalf. With the coming elections later this year the Democratic Party may very well take control of the House and less likely but not as unlikely as historically viewed, they could even gain the Senate. (That is a very long shot and for the moment let’s assume the GOP retains the upper chamber.)

Not only would Trump lose the friendly interference from a GOP House, but the Democratic committees would undoubtedly launch intense investigation of their own, investigation backed by subpoena powers. Should the Muller investigation reveal unquestionable evidence of crimes by people close to Trump or Trump himself he will lose the support of the GOP elected members as they cut their losses to save themselves.

I think that 2019 is going to be a very dangerous year. It is the year we will see Trump faced with threats from all sides, court cases proceeding along that may force his depositions, and as it has throughout his life, all his money, all his bluster and all his bullying will not save him. Yet he will still retain command of the most powerful military on the planet, he will still have a Department of Justice that instructs it’s Federal Attorneys to seek the death penalty in drug cases whenever possible, and he will have proceeded along with the firing of ‘disloyal’ ‘deep state’ professionals.

We must go through this dangerous time.

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Speeding Along

It’s a little shocking to me just how quickly the revisions to my novel are proceeding. The first act has been corrected and locked, the second act has been turned over to my sweetie-wife for her excellent review and I started in on the third act this week.

Most people write in a three-act structure but lately I have been experimenting with a five-act format. I like how it breaks the story down into smaller elements and that the elements themselves have in general a better defined nature than establishment, conflict, resolution. So even after my third act is fixed that still leaves two more to complete.

I am also a bit surprised by how quickly the story is progressing. The nature of the plot and of the story, those are separate elements in my opinion, caused me a bit of a concern that it might begin rather slowly and beginnings are so terrible important. In fact when I wrote the first draft it originally had a prologue and it was the type that promised drama and action for later in the story but I have no awakened from my dread and I am cutting the prologue. It looks to me that the character and his troubles start at the opening scenes and the prologue was simply a mistake.

(Of course I still may be deluding myself, but that is what beta-readers are for.)

I have also received word that an editorial team at a comedic SF anthology likes my writing and have invited me to submit to their next anthology. That is very flattering and their submission window is still open. The question is can I compose something that is funny and within the tight but not impossible deadline? Comedy is very much outside of my skill set and my comfort zone and yet I am always advising fellow writers that they should attempt things outside of their comfort zone. I have a couple of ideas, but for me the forging of ideas into plot and story is the most challenging aspect of creation.

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Sunday Night Movie: The Last Starfighter

The mid 1980s, a period when Star Wars dominated studio thinking demanding escapist adventures, and every movie had to have a slew of pop songs imbedded in the soundtrack. Not at all bucking those themes The Last Starfighter did break startling new ground in the realm of visual effects. Utilizing the most advanced super-computers in the world, this movie presented the first feature film to present photo realistic, that phrase used generously, special effects for the big screen.
The story is simple; Alex Rogan is a teenager in a forgotten corner of California. He lives with him mothers and little brother in a tiny trailer park where Alex helps out with the repairs and maintenance while planning to go to college and have a life bigger then just being a super. The Starlight Star Bright trailer park is so devoid of excitement that the entire community turns out to witness Alex’s besting the arcade game Starfighter. Alex’s girlfriend Maggie is torn between hi dreams of a big life in the city, that nebulous unnamed metropolis presumably just over the parched mountains that surround the trailer park, and her fear of leaving home and the great unknown. Needless to say Alex somehow is pulled from the bland, boring existence and is drawn up into a galactic war with the fate of hundreds of worlds hanging on his particular gifts.
Even by the middle of the next decade the cutting edge SFX in The Last Starfighter were surpassed and not by the newest generation of super-computers but by banks of home computers. However one does not watch The Last Starfighter for its visual effects but rather for the charming, innocent, and a little naive story of Alex Rogan and his voyage into destiny. The cast had a number of 80’s up and comers, Lance Guest as Alex, Catherine Mary Stewart as Maggie, a blink and you’ll miss him appearance by Will Wheaton before not only Next Gen but before Stand by Me as well. In addition to the young cast member the films also boasted a pair of Hollywood veterans, Dan O’Hierlihy as Grig the gung-ho iguana and Robert Preston as Centauri an interstellar version of the same character he played in The Music Man.
The Last Starfighter never found the love that many genre films of the 80s acquired. The very dated special effect certainly hurt the film in terms of cable and broadcast airtime leaving this project as film with a small but devoted following. It would be interesting if instead of some studio launching a remake of the property if they simply replaced all the VFX with start of the art CGI and left the rest of the film untouched. IF they do such a thing or not The Last Starfighter remains a movie that I can always turn to in order to raise lowered spirits.

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