Salon’s King Kaufman makes me feel better. Thanks, King. Please accept my apologies for taunting you after the Pats’ win in ’02 (his pre-Super Bowl column was titled, “Yes, the Patriots can beat the Rams! The problem is, they won’t”).
ToyFare #123…
…is out today. Go to your nearest comic book shop and get it!
9/11
It was six years ago that the world changed. I haven’t solemnized this occasion every year on this blog, but I’d like to today.
Here’s a link to Biggerboat as it appeared two weeks after the event. At the time, I was just cutting and pasting quotes from various articles to create a kind of collage of what I was thinking. I think a lot of it has only become more relevant–and in some cases, darkly prophetic–over the last few years.
Tale of the tape
I don’t know if this is true. Obviously, I hope it isn’t. And even if the employee was following orders, I’m not sure how much of an edge you can gain during the actual game.
But if it does turn out to be true, count me as one of those fans who will be disappointed, as I was with the HGH scandal. Yes, I realize how rampant cheating is in professional sports and that it was probably inevitable some of it was going on with the Patriots. But you still always hope your team is the exception, and the Pats seemed to have positioned themselves as one.
Anyway, the jury’s still out, for now. And this may just blow over–I suspect that unless there’s really clear evidence that the Pats used this information to their advantage in real-time during the game, the NFL will just let the scandal itself serve as a reprimand to the team. Still, though, it’s disheartening to have Sunday’s great win tarnished like this.
Halo 3 Mamajama
The truth can at last be revealed: the article I pitched all those months ago will finally hit stores this Wednesday in ToyFare #123. Titled “Halo 3 Mamajama,” it’s a huge article about the upcoming release of Halo 3 and the slew of merchandising that will be accompanying it.
The issue will be in comic shops this Wednesday, and it will hit newsstands (Barnes & Noble and Borders and whatnot) two weeks later, on the 26th. Be sure to grab a copy!
UPDATE: I forgot to mention–the article includes an interview with comic artist and toy maker Todd McFarlane, who’s doing the action figure line, and another interview with some folks from Bungie, makers of Halo 3.
this & that
I suppose it’s a sign of a lazy writer when I have to sit here and stare at the WordPress form for ten minutes before deciding I have no real topic and then thinking, “A ha! I’ll write about how I have nothing to write about! That’s never been done in a blog before, right?”
So instead, you’ll get a random assortment of thoughts until I can come up with something better to write about.
I’m still trying to decide what to do for Halloween Month (a.k.a. October) this year. I abandoned my plan to review every Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween movie after nearly going insane from just four Friday the 13th films. Besides, I’d like to get away from the movie reviews this time around and focus on some more original content. I’m working on an original story, and this time, I’ll finish it before posting it.
Speaking of writing, I’m currently working on a collaborative novel with Kate Racculia. The idea was to see if we could egg one another on and actually finish something for once. It’s a kind of fantasy-themed thriller, set at a kids’ summer camp in 1991.
Other things…I read Baltimore or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire last week. The book was a collaborative effort between Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and author Christopher Golden. It’s a Gothic vampire novel, set in a kind of alternate history World War I. The prose is heavy and the story tragic, definitely not for those who prefer their fiction light-hearted. But for those of us who love Gothic horror, Baltimore (inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s bittersweet fable “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”) is a wonderful revisiting of those old Gothic classics. Best of all, it’s lavishly illustrated by Mignola himself, who produced 150 pieces of art for the novel.
But let’s not forget Christopher Golden, a Massachusetts-based author whom I had the good fortune to meet on Tuesday evening when he did a reading at the Barnes & Noble in Framingham. Golden is a funny, entertaining speaker, and in Baltimore he does a lovely job of adapting the dark, Impressionistic style of Mignola’s art to prose. I highly recommend the novel.
I also read Scott Smith’s The Ruins. Smith wrote the novel A Simple Plan, which was adapted into one of my favorite films (though I haven’t had a chance to read the novel yet). Like its predecessor, The Ruins is a thriller, but this time the mood is horror rather than noir. I’ve been describing it people as The Descent meets Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” (I generally try not to describe artistic works in terms of other works–a practice gifted to us by Hollywood–but sometimes it’s just the easiest way to get the point across.) I definitely recommend it to horror fans, but beware–there’s not a lot of the characterization found in a writer like Stephen King, and there’s not much about the origin of the horror either. It’s more like a survival story that happens to have a preternatural antagonist…it’s not so much scary as it is creepy and genuinely horrific.
CSI: Miami continues to be my guiltiest pleasure. I’m working my way through the entire series on A&E. Why can’t I stop watching? I think it’s Caruso. His eccentric performance is mesmerizing. As my cousin (and future best man) Mike put it, “He always does the sideways stance…puts his hands on his hips…and delivers the cheese.” DG and I often point out certain things that would make for a great drinking game, such as Caruso’s tendency to walk out of frame after delivering a parting shot.
The show’s formula becomes really evident when you watch five or six of them back-to-back (not that I’ve, uh, ever done that…recently…like last weekend or anything). My personal favorite is how often a suspect is forced to reveal some part of their body that has been marked in some way, proving they committed the crime. I’d say that happens on at least thirty percent of the episodes. For the viewer, determining who the killer is relies less on the evidence given in the episode than on who would be the most surprising or dramatic, or sometimes simply “who did we see earlier in the episode that we forgot about?” But Caruso and the other actors (particularly Emily Procter and Eva LaRue) keep me coming back time and again.
And get this…it’s this decade’s Baywatch, the most popular American television show in the world. I guess cheese is the true lingua franca.
The Call of Cthulhu
Here’s an interesting tidbit. Last night I watched The Call of Cthulhu, a short independent film by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. The concept was to adapt Lovecraft’s famous short story in the style of the era in which it was written–that is, a 1920s silent movie.
I actually requested Netflix add the title to their collection, and they quite nicely obliged me (which was no doubt a better boon to the filmmakers than if I’d just bought my own copy). That said, I was wary; the concept seemed ambitious and I’d already seen more than one bad, low-budget Lovecraft adaptation.
But The Call of Cthulhu impressed me. The silent film conceit works well for Lovecraft’s writing style, which is low on character development and features lots of oblique references and impenetrable dialogue. The acting is surprisingly good, perfectly capturing the stage-like style of the period, and rarely seems amateurish. Most importantly the cinematography and film stock give the impression of an actual 1920s silent film, rather than a black-and-white student film that happens to have no dialogue.
The special effects are interesting too, particularly the Impressionistic manner in which the filmmakers present the “non-Euclidean” architecture of R’lyeh, Cthulhu’s sunken city.
The film is only fifty minutes long and well worth a rental, especially if you’re a Lovecraft fan. I may end up buying a copy for myself. While this isn’t the most realistic adaptation of Lovecraft, it is one of the most effective and faithful to the spirit of the work.
Today’s question
Why didn’t J. Edgar Hoover appear and destroy them?
Discuss.
Dreaming in ultraviolet near dark
Watched a few movies over the weekend. I don’t really feel like doing individual reviews of any of them, so here are my thoughts based on a five-star rating system:
Masters of Horror: Stuart Gordon’s Dreams in the Witch House
Director Stuart Gordon is the only commercial filmmaker to have made a concerted effort to bring H.P. Lovecraft’s eccentric style of horror to the big screen. His greatest success was and remains Re-Animator, which ironically was based on Lovecraft’s novella “Herbert West–Reanimator,” a work that’s one of Lovecraft’s least-regarded (by himself as well as his fans). By making it into a true dark comedy, Gordon actually improved upon the original tale, though I don’t think there’s anything particularly “Lovecraftian” about the end result.
Gordon’s next effort was From Beyond, based on Lovecraft’s story of the same name, which I haven’t seen and therefore won’t comment on. But I have seen Dagon, Gordon’s attempt at adapting one of Lovecraft’s most famous stories, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. To my mind, Gordon makes a painfully crucial error in the film by setting it in a tiny West European fishing village rather than the haunted New England Lovecraft so adored. That said, there’s enough weirdness to make Dagon one of Gordon’s better efforts, but it’s still doesn’t quite capture that true Lovecraftian feel.
Dreams in the Witch House, Gordon’s first contribution to Showtime’s acclaimed Masters of Horror series, is probably the most faithful Lovecraft adaptation I’ve seen to date. It’s based on one of my favorite Lovecraft tales (though it’s not too highly regarded in critical circles), and it features one of his most successful efforts at blending science fiction with supernatural horror.
Miskatonic University grad student Walter Gilman (Ezra Godden) somewhat reluctantly takes a room in an ancient, crumbling boarding house. Aside from the stereotypically fat and unpleasant landlord, Walter’s housemates include creepy old man Masurewicz (Campbell Lane) and single mother Frances Elwood (Chelah Horsdal). The lonely Walter and Frances are soon engaging in some awkward flirting, while Walter begins having some very odd nightmares involving a witch and a rat with a human face.
I was impressed by the acting of Godden and Horsdal. While the other characters are a bit two-dimensional, Walter and Frances are fully realized and behave as believably as one could, given the circumstances. While Frances was “Frank” in the original story (and obviously not a love interest), many of the major plot points are present. The changes made to the story (and I’m not entirely sure what they are, since I haven’t read it in a year or two) are mostly for the better, I think, adding an emotional involvement with the characters that Lovecraft was incapable of doing.
My only disappointment was the conclusion, which gets bogged down in unnecessary exposition and delays the inevitable a bit too long. The film could easily have used the original ending to the story and gotten away with it.
Overall, though, this is probably my favorite film translation of a Lovecraft story so far. Fingers crossed for that Guillermo Del Toro adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, though.
With surprising frequency, I discover the existence of cult movies I wasn’t even aware of. Evil Dead II was one of those, as was Legend and, most recently, Time After Time. While the quality of these discoveries varies, it’s always interesting to run across these nuggets of genre film.
After the punishing disappointment of Time After Time, I didn’t expect much from Near Dark (1987), which seemed very similar The Lost Boys (which had come out a few months earlier). The films have an almost identical plot: a young man gets turned into a vampire against his will and is then shanghaied by the vampire gang into becoming one of them–or else. But where The Lost Boys was played mostly for thrills and laughs, Near Dark adds a certain pathos about the vampire condition that makes it work surprisingly well.
Billed as a “vampire Western,” Near Dark features Heroes’ Adrian Pasdar as Caleb, the aforementioned dupe; Jenny Wright as the sexy vamp fatale who dupes him; Lance Henriksen as the nihilistic leader of the gang; and Bill Paxton as the resident psychotic. (Jennette Goldstein also plays a vampire, which means Near Dark features three Aliens actors just a year after that movie came out.)
The film’s most famous scene is a bloody massacre in a bar, and what makes it effective is the vampires’ truly cold-blooded attitude toward their victims. Unlike many movie vampires of late, these aren’t the flying monsters of Lost Boys or even the feral, animalistic hedonists of the Blade flicks; these are serial killers whose bloodthirst happens to be literal.
Of course, one does have to get past the psychedelic Tangerine Dream soundtrack–is it me, or is that band singularly responsible for making a third of all ’80s films instantly dated?
The last third of Near Dark is the weakest, with a terrible deus ex machina and some unrealistic behavior on the part of the normies, but overall I was surprised by how much I liked this one.
(Oh, and don’t look now, but there’s a remake on the way.)
Ultraviolet
DG wanted to watch something dumb, so we got it via On Demand. In the past, I’ve been willing to defend director Kurt Wimmer’s previous film, Equilibrium, which gets a bad rap as a Matrix rip-off even though it was filmed at about the same time and stars a better actor.
But I’m not going to defend Ultraviolet. Holy crap, what the heck was that? I mean…I guess I don’t really have anything to say. Just…wow. What a mess.
Legendary Comic Book Heroes
As I think I’ve made abundantly clear on this site, I collect action figures. I started doing so as a wee tyke, beginning with a little plastic totem of Mighty Mouse, then on into He-Man, Star Wars and the original Transformers and finally Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After TMNT, I had a brief period where I read comics and bought a few figures; then a Transformers renaissance in which I produced a fan fiction novel; and then the money that had been previously funneled into action figures was redirected to Magic: the Gathering for most of my high school career.
In my freshman year of college, for whatever reason, I started buying action figures again. At the time it didn’t seem that strange to me–after all, I’d been buying toys all my life–but in retrospect, that was obviously a turning point. I had become an adult (more or less), but I still wanted toys. And yes, I’ve had a few of the more grown-up toys over the years, such as videogames and Ipods and PCs and such, but I still spend a good amount of my income on little plastic men.
Why? I have no idea.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that the epic storylines I created with my toys back in the day were my earliest attempts at writing, and even today I think the way I write is largely a form of play. With that idea in mind, I eventually came up with my idea of the perfect action figure line. (more…)