Monthly Archives: September 2020

Outline Draft is Done

As has been very clear for some time on this blog I am a plotter. I can’t even write a short story unless I know how it ends and for longer form fiction such as feature screenplays and novels I must work from an outline.

Sometimes those outlines are highly detailed, one stre3cthed out an enormous 87 pages but usually they are more along the lines of 20 or so pages and that is exactly where my latest outline landed.

To construct my outline, I first break down my story into acts, usually five these days, with an understanding of where each act ends, the dramatic turn that propels the characters onto a new course for each act change.

Then when I wrote out a prose outline populating it with characters and their motivations I discover deeper level to these acts and while the locations of the act breaks occurs they often change from external events, Character A discovers the body of Character B, to decision points Characts A starts investigating Character C after discovering character B has been murdered. It is always better when the dramatic change at the end of an act is propelled by a character choice rather than a stroke of lightening from the author.

The most recent outline for a proposal going to my editor at Flametree has been a lot of fun to craft and the subject matter is exciting me. Here’s hoping my editor feels the same.

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HBO’s Fahrenheit 451

The past Saturday I finally got around to watching HBO’s adaptation of the Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451. written in 1953 the novel is a dystopian tale about a future where books are banned and firemen respond not to structure fires but to discoveries of illegal libraries and destroy them with flame.

This adaptation seems to take inspiration from the original novel and the 1966 film adaptation while inserting new elements from the filmmakers. The final product comes off as clumsy and inconsistent. The novel’s growing threat of war and commentary that an illiterate citizenry has been dropped in favor of the much more generalized idea of a population made docile with social media and entertainment. While the social medical aspects are a clever way of updating the themes of the novel removing the external threat of war steals away the purpose of the critique.

Montag’s family life and comfortable lifestyle have been removed stealing away the concept that rebellion and free thought are not without their costs. A loner loses nothing going out on his own and I believe Bradbury was very well aware of this.

The surveillance state of this adaptation is a bungled plot device as are the use of drugs to pacify the population undercutting the social media commentary that in the original work had been fulfilled by comic books and pornographic magazines.

Perhaps the greatest failure of HBO’s film is the insertion of a McGuffin devices to try and create an action adventure third act. A single strand of DNA containing all of the world’s surviving literature becomes a motivating prop that thematically is loose and disconnected from the rest of the work and only serves to provide a ‘heroic’ victory.

All in all, this adaptation is not worth the less than two hours it takes to watch it.

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My 9-11 Memories

While 2020 seems an endless treadmill of terror the 19 years between today and 2001 seem like a flash that passed with the swiftness of a hummingbird’s dive.

September 2001, I worked the overnight  as a specimen processor at Quest Diagnostics. I ran a machine that took very little active thought and throughout the night usually listened to a ‘boom box’ tuned to a local radio station. One the morning of September 11th, as often happened, the radio’s reception turned spotty and the station alternated between clear signal and migraine inducing static. Just before reception failed entirely, I heard a breaking news report that an aircraft had apparently collided into the World Trade Center.

My first thoughts were that some light general aviation aircraft had lost its way and slammed into the building much like in 1949 when a B-25 Mitchell had struck the Empire State Building. Tragic, people had died, but not a monumental news story.

Unable to get any further news I completed my shift and left for home. At the bus stop, in those years I was bound by mass transit, a young man listening to a handheld transistor radio with a single earpiece pushed into his ear said that one of the towers had fallen.

I did not believe him but kept quiet. So often in the immediate moments after something breaks on national news there are rumors and exaggerations and still with no knowledge of what exactly had happened, I was disinclined to believe the most sensationalist version of events.

Disembarking from my bus I stopped off at a 7-11 on the way back to my apartment and on the televisions playing in the store saw the horrible truth. In that moment it changed from being a ‘news story’ to history we were living through. I called friends and woke them up and as the day passed dread for our future grew.

Since that day, September 11th, 2001, we have been in constant war. Thousands lost their lives and it’s difficult to assess that we have made any meaningful progress since then. The culprits directly responsible have mostly been dealt with but the underlying conditions have scarcely changed and the toll it has taken on our national character, it opened the door for American to be known as a nation that tortures prisoners, it incalculable.

It is no test to be moral when times are good the test is when anger burns the blood, when vengeance enflames the mind, that is when the test truly comes and people discover who you really are.

It is up to us to change the tense of that verb, from who we are to who we were.

 

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The GOP’s History of Bleeding Black Votes

Listening to a historian the other day I learned that the GOP’s bleeding of Black votes has been going on for much longer than I had expected. My thoughts were that the GOP had once been the home of the Black vote because of the warm feeling for Lincoln, the End of Slavery, and an aversion to the Democratic Party due to its explicit support of Jim Crow segregationist laws. And that this rough alignment began unraveling with the 1960s and the Civil rights legislation pushed by President Johnson, but this view is only partially correct.

The GOP was the home to the Black vote but the bleeding of that support began with the 1936 election as the Black vote started departing for Roosevelt despite that fact that at that time the Democratic party was strongly associated with southern segregationists. In 1939 the GOP commissioned a report investigation why they were losing the Black vote and what measure were required to regain it. The author, Ralph Bunche, reported that while the Black vote had no illusions about the stronger support with the Democratic party for racist policies the economic benefits of the New Deal were tangible gains for the community and to win the vote back the GOP would need to enact policies that produced tangible benefits and not simply rely on good will and historical associations.  The GOP rejected the findings and continued to lose the Black vote.

The process repeated in the 1960s where one party produced real world change that could be seen and felt and again there was a report and again the action required were rejected. Instead Nixon and GOP sought the vote of the disaffected Democratic whites that opposed the new round of civil right legislation in the ‘Southern Strategy,’ over any meaningful actions and the Black Votes continued to bleed.

2012 the GOP lost to Obama and commissioned a new report, a report that advised actual actions and again the results were rejected and the party embraced an openly racist candidate with Trump. Trump gathered a vote total that was actually less than the 2012’s losing total for the GOP but due to third party defections and strategic fluctuations in voter turnout managed his Electoral College victory.

Three times the GOP has been told by people it has hired what it needs to do to reach out and win more support from Black and other ethnic communities. Three times is had rejected the answers preferring platitudes to actions, messages to meanings, and now it has abandoned all sense of honor, morality, and ethics is it quest for electoral victory.

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Horrible Imaginings Review #6

Because of the way the online nature of this year’s Horrible Imaginings Film Festival worked once you started a feature or a block of shorts the user then had six days to complete viewing the material before the access closed. That means though I had been unable to complete all the blocks during the official run of the festival I still have several days to finish up blocks of short films before I lose the capability.

Last night after my sweetie-wife retired for the evening I watched the block of short films centered on the theme ‘We’re All in This Together.”

Perhaps the weakest block thematically as nearly every film could easily be placed into blocks such as ‘Blood is Thicker Than Water’ or “People Behaving Badly,’ this selection of film still managed to produce a few standouts.

Hammer follows a man, played by Eric Roberts, who comes home to find his wife engaged physically with another man. While a hammer seems to provide a solution, the final reveal is quite a commentary of jumping to conclusions.

House Hunting explored a possible internet craze that lay just beyond possible but not so far that it could be safely ignored.

But perhaps my favorite of this block is Make A Wish centered on a wife’s surprising and frighteningly violent but loving gift to her husband on his birthday.

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Horrible Imaginings: Reviews 4&5

I missed yesterday so this will be a double review but not doubled sized.

Sunday, we kicked off with the feature Diablo Rojo from Panama. The story concerns an owner/operator of a transit bus, his young co-worker, and witched and demons that pursue them over a dark secret from years earlier. Lost in the jungle area of the countryside with the addition of a pair of traffic cops and a priest they must unravel the mystery and put things right. Competently made Diablo Rojo was perfectly serviceable but did not manage to elevate itself above that. Too many elements were crammed into the same plot and convenient exposition fell from characters that had no justification for that information just because the story required. However, these are issues common to horror and non-horror film and this one was still fun to watch and possessed the most badass priest in a long time.

The blocks for Sunday were on the themes of Isolation and People Behaving Badly. Isolation in general did not work as well as the other block, perhaps because with often only a single character it’s more difficult to craft a good story. People Behaving Badly offered up killers and slasher and gave us more shorts that exceeded our expectations. The standouts from this block were Overkill a farce of the slasher genre, and Waffle and its disturbing take on when the gig economy invades the real of friendship.

Monday my sweetie-wife and I enjoyed the feature documentary Hail to the Deadites about the growth and power of the fandom community surrounding the Evil Dead film series.

I closed out Monday evening with the feature Repossession from Singapore. Jim is a 50-year-old engineer suddenly laid off from his employment and too proud to admit it to his family or to lose his status symbols descends into deceit and desperation to maintain his lifestyle as an evil from his past creeps back into his life bringing horror and helplessness. Repossession is an excellent example of slow burn horror. The first hour of the feature plays as a drama with only hints at something unnatural afoot and the last 30 spirals into deep supernatural terror. Hands down of the feature films this year Repossessionperfectly blending character and monsters is my favorite.

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Horrible Imaginings Review #3

The on-line at home edition of the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival continued yesterday. We kicked off the day completing the monsters are everywhere block of short films the two standouts from the completion of the block were Suspension about a fighter pilot trapped after ejecting in a tree where a monster stalks him and Malakout a haunting stop motion piece from Iran.

We then moved on to the feature film Survival Skills, presented as a narrated training movie for rookie police officers set in 1988. This filmmaker nailed the look and the tone of the 80s perfectly managing to make a satire with loads to say and plenty of entertainment.

Our house then broke for pizza and gaming before my friend and I returned to dark cinema.

Our second feature was The Return a passable tale of a young man facing the demons of his past following the mysterious death of his father. A competent Canadian entry The Return didn’t break any novel or interesting ground but managed to any critical failures.

We closed out the evening with another block of shorts the theme this time ‘Twisted Innocence.’ For me the standouts from this grouping of shorts were Bakemono where a Japanese’s girl encounters a traditional demon from folklore, My Brother Juan told entirely with a young girl being interviewed by an official of the state about her older and sick brother, and winning the award for most disturbing was Milk Teeth set in an orphanage where children pay a terrible price in hopes of being adapted.

Special mention goes to the stop motion short Kim, a charming and witty piece about a siren and her place in the grander ecology.

The festival continues.

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Horrible Imaginings Review #2

Yesterday was my first full day of streaming features and shorts form Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 11.

We started with the Feature Darkness in Tenement 45, a period pieces set in 1953 with New York City being evacuated before a suspected biological attack by the USSR. The film is set in one tenement as the residents deal with dwindling supplies and food and rising tension and paranoia. Sadly, this feature did not work for me. I think the filmmaker’s objective lay just beyond their abilities with a scrip that was functional but not quite there, talent that couldn’t quite carry the subject matter, and cinematography that capture the sense of the time.

We followed that up with a block of short films the theme being ‘Blood is thicker than water.’ This had a number of really good entries with standouts being Smiles from Spain, Separation, and Hammurabi.

At this point in my household we broke for dinner and evening board and card games.

After gaming and with my sweetie-wife retiring for the evening we resumed the festival with the feature Luz: Flower of Evil from Columbia. This feature sported fantastic production values with extensive color grading that recreated the feel on Kodachrome film that helped enhance the feature’s setting in the 1970s. It concerned an isolated community with its charismatic religious leader and their search for absolution in his repeated attempt to identify the reborn Christ. Ultimately though this feature also did not work for me. In the end the film’s conclusion failed to provide a satisfying resolution to theme or character.

We concluded with the short film block “Monster are Everywhere.” Though the evening wore too late and we shall view the final films in the block today. However, the standouts so far are Night Crawl where prisoner tunneling to escape make gruesome discoveries, Spiritual Practice, that centers on a military style training academy for exorcists, and Face your Fears where a young woman frightened of the dark engages in a terrifying game hoping to lose her phobia.

Today the terror continues.

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Horrible Imaginings Review #1 DEAD

The pandemic has forced the cancelation of many beloved events and some, like Horrible Imaginings Film Festival have move to an on-line model for 2020. So, while I have been deprived the pleasure of seeing friends and making new ones at the Frieda Cinema in Orange county this year, I have not been denied access to nearly 30 hours of horror cinema.

While the festival opened Wednesday evening with a double feature of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and its 2020 remake for me and my sweetie-wife we started Thursday night with the New Zealand Feature length horror Comedy Dead.

Dead is the story of a stoner who has discovered a combination of marijuana and neurological medications that allow him to see and interact with ghosts, the ghost of an uptight and obsessive police officer, an attorney with a drinking problem and house arrest as they search for a serial killer stalking Wellington New Zealand.

Tilting decidedly more towards comedy than horror Dead is an entertaining little movie just under an hour and half the film delivers with talents performances, colorful cinematography, and just the right blend of explicit gore to light-hearted comedy with a touch of heart all wrapped in a light air of mystery surrounding the killer.

Dead made for an excellent launch to this year’s festival and I look forward to diving into the short film block and more feature films from around the globe.

 

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Streaming Review: Get Duked!

Several weeks ago, my sweetie-wife discovered the trailer for the Amazon Original, meaning they purchased the exclusive rights, feature film Get Duked!and on August 28th it became available on Amazon’s Prime Video Streaming service.

Get Duked! (You ignore the exclamation mark) is the comedic, farcical story of 4 city boys dropped into the hinterlands of the Scottish highlands as part of a contest the Duke of Edinburgh Award but three of these young lads are delinquent youths with the final member of the quartet a naive youngster who actually cares about the prize, a laminated certificate.  However, once there are beyond the supervision of the sole adult in charge of the contest the ragtag assembly are hunted by mysterious and murderous landed gentry intent on ‘culling the herd’ of degenerate and unacceptable influences. Add into this mix of underachieving and limited intellect boys a collection of baked farmers and a local police station intent of glory beyond tracking the local and evasive bread thief and you have a movie that is pretty far from serious.

Written and directed by Ninian Doff in his feature film debut Get Duked! is a frivolous affair that is suitable for an hour and half of drama free entertainment. The young actors are capable and manage the difficult balance between being youths in trouble and characters you do not want to get injured or killed while several older actors get a chance to show off some comedic chops usually missing from the sort of parts that they play. I’m particularly thinking of Kate Dickie perhaps best known for her turn on Game of Thrones as the unbalance Lysa Arryn turning in a fine performance as the local chief constable desperate for glory and advancement.

The Scot accents in the film get a little heavy and with rapid overlapping dialog some viewers may wish to engage their television’s closed captioning systems to follow all of the voices but in general Get Duked! provides decent light-hearted escape from today’s terrible times.

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