How We Came to This -- a ramble on editing

Hello out there in internet land! I'm actually making a blog post that isn't just me regurgitating opinions on the latest and greatest in film. No, no, instead of inflicting my massive ego on you by proclaiming my thoughts every week, today you're going to get me talking about myself! Great change, huh?

Whoa, whoa, don't click CLOSE on that tab yet. Come on back. I promise I'll do my best to make this interesting. How so? Well, y'see, this blog is gonna be about writing. You know, that thing I claim I do but never talk about? Today we're going to talk about it.

I've been kind of not writing since early in the year. After NaNo, I burnt out on the whole writing thing for a while. I toiled slowly towards the finish line of the NaNo 2008 novel, and then set the whole thing aside. It had been somewhere between not-great and aggressively shitty, so a respite was in order.

That respite has lasted until three weeks ago.

One might ask how a little break can turn into 7 months of dicking around, but really, it's pretty easy. I have a lot of interests, movies and video games and hanging out with friends and just existing on the internet. That takes up gobs of time. I spend more time refreshing twitterfox each day than I do in my entire morning routine. Not reading twitter, just physically refreshing twitterfox.

The internet is the world's second best waster of time, behind the incredible power of Man to ignore his own agenda in favor of anything else.

But now that's not what's happening. Somewhere between hearing one of the writers I follow was getting represented by an agent (congrats again Kristin!) and feeling the days starting to drift into the long hot bulk of summer, I realized that it was nearing time for NaNo again and I had accomplished fuck all in the interim.

Me! The guy who's always been so sure of what he wanted to do with his life, puttering around without purpose for months!

There's an excuse for taking a break, but the break had become a habit of neglect. And somewhere along the line I kind of snapped a little. Not the guns-blazing-soon-to-be-a-made-for-TV-movie snapping, but the quiet kind where I feel something shift inside of me and suddenly you resolve to things with the kind of conviction that surprises me, because normally I'm a pretty mellow (or, y'know, slothful) guy when it comes to responsibility.

But I'm editing now. I decided to take a crack at my NaNo 2007 novel, Way's to Commit Suicide When You're Bored (shortened to WTC here and elsewhere), the third novel I've ever written and quite possibly the most personal of the books. It was written at a pretty dark period in my life, when I was just starting to wrap my head this whole 'being a writer' thing.

Going back to it has been a conflicted experience. On the one hand, I'm feeling really engaged with the writing process again in a way I haven't felt in almost a year. That alone has made the whole endeavor worthwhile. But at the same time, undertaking editing this is easily the most complicated, difficult thing I've ever done. I'm not a great editor, and this book is big and complex and parts of it are in really rough shape.

So I've been working on the edit for the past few weeks, and so far it's going okay, though a bit slow. I have a hard time getting started, though once I do it all seems to go pretty good. I might take a week or so off in September and just cut myself off and do a lot of work, see how that goes. So far I've just been managing about 1000 words a day, sometimes more and sometimes less. I'm still readjusting to making my writing into a part of my daily life. Hopefully in the next fortnight it'll become a habit and then the start up process will go faster and I can get more done.

Of course, aside from the basic mechanics of doing a full draft/rewrite of a novel, there's the emotional factor. A novel is a huge project, and when one is particularly personal it becomes a reflection of the person who wrote it. This novel, WTC, is imbued with the spirit of who I was in late 2007. Where my head was at, who I was as a person and how I related to the world, all these things are dripping from every paragraph.

The problem is, I'm no longer the person I was in 2007. And that makes approaching this book like opening up a time capsule. There are things that I can still relate to, but even after only two years, it's like looking in on someone else's life. The world view of the author is different than the world view of the editor. But at the same time, I feel so connected to it by the tethers of my memories, that separating the experiences of writing it then, working on it now, and seeing it for what it can be becomes an intricate knot of priorities that ... well, frankly, the editing tends to make me exhausted.

I'm not yet at a pace where this book's going to be edited by the time NaNo 2009 rolls around, but I'm starting to get ideas for that and I'm really excited to come off of this and write a new novel. So here's hoping that I finish the edit before then, or I'll be juggling an edit and a first draft at the same time, which sounds about as close to writing hell as I ever want to get.

And that's really all I have to say about the editing job. Maybe I'll have more later, but I really just wanted to write out where my headspace was at when it comes to the work, lately. I'm not exactly the most communcative when it comes to my writing, and this was originally supposed to be a blog about a writer talking about writing. Unfortunately, writing novels doesn't leave a lot of energy to write extra and isn't so dynamic and fast-paced that I regularly have things to say.

I still might check in now and again. This editing experience is new for me. I've never done a project quite like this, and it's a learning experience (and will continue to be so). So ... thanks for following along so far, and hopefully for listening in again in the future.

Oh, and as a parting shot, I'll put up a rough synopsis for Ways to Commit Suicide When You're Bored here at the end so you can see what it is in abstract. I might talk more about it later, in more specifics, but for now this'll have to suffice.

Max has hit an interesting time in his life—he’s dropped out of college, stuck in a dead-end job in the middle of Nebraska, and longs to have someone, anyone, pull him out of the mire that is his existence. It's become so bad that he's started retreating into his own dark imagination for respite. But when an old friend shows up at his door, he leaps at the possibility of winning her heart and escaping from his dark corner of the world.

The problem? She's knocked up, wanting his help in getting rid of the baby.

Now he's left trying to help her while struggling with his ideal of their relationship. But his mental world is starting to take over his life, manifesting in the real world and blurring the lines of what happens in his head and what happens in real life. What starts out as a complicated situation becomes a struggle to deal with his demons and confront the ghosts of his own mind, before he becomes a prisoner of his own mind forever.

Movie Rundown - July 13 to July 19

All right, ladies and gentlemen! We're up to our asses in films this week, so let's not beat around the bush.

Movies incoming!

Benny & Joon (**)
I checked this one out on the recommendation of one Elizabeth Ditty, who typically has great taste in film. Perhaps that still holds true, but I found Benny & Joon to be a frustrating, empty experience. In short, a man caring for his schizophrenic sister takes in an offbeat layabout (played by Johnny Depp) who acts like Buster Keaton. Antics ensue.

There's some stuff about mental health and other stuff about a budding romance, but it's pretty light fare. The problem comes from the actions of the titular Benny and Joon, both of whom are basically entirely unlikable and spend the entire movie doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons until the writers ran out of pages and let them all live happily ever after.

There is something very charming about Depp's performance, back in the day when he hadn't yet learned how to play Movie Star Johnny Depp. But unless you have a thing for him or a high tolerance for sappy-at-the-expensive-of-all-else kind of movies, stay away.

Reclaiming the Blade (****)
A documentary about swords. Seems straightforward enough. But this is a movie with an edge. More to the point (okay, I'm done) the film is about the history of these weapons of legend, from their first developments to their use in modern day in sport, reenactments, movies, etc.

There's quite a lot to love here. It explains the sword in function and theory, and the Western infatuation with the blade. There are interviews with actors, sword trainers, martial arts experts, blacksmiths, scholars. It's pretty exhaustive, though even after an hour and a half I was ready for more.

Of particular note are two sections, one on how fencing bears little to no resemblance to any sort of actual swordfighting, a reduction of a skill to a sport and how the proliferation of fencing nearly ruined the heritage of European martial arts. And secondly, of the rediscovery of the true European martial arts, both of swordfighting and grappling, that has risen up very recently.

If you love movie fighting, real fighting, or just documentaries in general, this is for you. It's on Netflix Instant, for anyone who's interested. And it's well worth the investment.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (***)
This is going to be short. Either you're A) a Harry Potter fan and are going to see this one no matter what and nothing I say is going to sway you one way or another B) someone who hates all the Harry Potter garbage with a passion and nothing I say will get them to watch this or C) someone who's kind of meh about the whole thing.

I fall pretty heavily in category C. But I encourage all Category C people to go ahead and see this one. It's solid enough, not as flashy or pointless as the last two felt, not as whimsically stupid as the first two. It's not as good as Prisoner of Azkaban, but it's a decent movie that had to do a lot to get away from the soggy trainwreck of a novel that is the Half Blood Prince book.

I don't really have much more to say on the subject. The films are bigger than my opinion. I thought this one in particular had an eye for how to shoot a dynamic scene and the actors gave much better performances across the board than they ever had before, but the story itself is kind of long-winded and ineffectual, as penultimate stories typically are.

That said, it's a worthy setup to the two Deathly Hallows movies, and if you've come this far through movies 1-5, you're probably going to see this one anyway. So yeah. Harry Potter. Another one. Woo.

Dogma (****)
Dogma is the next in the Kevin Smith project, and one that had already been highly recommended to me many times before. It's an amazing movie, funny and smart and surprisingly well-paced especially for a Kevin Smith movie.

The story of a young woman who is drafted by Metatron, the voice of God, to stop two angels from fulfilling a plan to lead to the destruction of all creation, Dogma is part quest film, part road movie, and part religious satire. Along the way, the woman runs into the 13th Apostle (Chris Rock), the Muse Serendipity (Salma Hayek) and more.

There's a lot of things I'd say about this one, but instead I'm going to tell you to go and watch it. Much of the comedy would be spoiled by a bigger, better explanation. But I will say that as long as you don't mind some punches being thrown at the Catholic Church and Christian religion, you're going to have a great time. Guaranteed.

Cannibal Holocaust (*)
I don't know if you've heard of this, but if you're a fan of horror or exploitation or controversial movies in general you should have. In fact, you've probably seen it, as it's one of the most ubiquitous exploitation movies of all time.

Which is unfortunate, because it's terrible.

The movie charts a professor who goes into the jungles of South America to find a missing film crew. In doing so, he stumbles upon a wild tribe who have the rolls of film, and then returns to New York City to view the grisly footage on display.

The problem is the film is a trainwreck. There's a hamfisted message about how civilized man is worse than cannibals in the wild, because while cannibals are just doing ritual slaughter modern man comes and destroys and rapes and pillages.

Of course, the film has no qualms about going around showing you just how bad the film crew is. There are multiple murders, and multiple rapes, to the point where something's getting screwed, shot, or stabbed about every three minutes in the last half of the film. And it's all done with a flair for the graphic detail, which leads to an onslaught of gore and hyperviolence that permeates the second half.

The problem is, for all that fury it ends up shooting itself in the foot. You watch so many people get hacked apart, so much raw looking flesh get eaten, and so many people violated in so many ways that it just ceases to be affecting and becomes slightly queasy and slightly boring. When they talk about the deadening affect of violence in media, this could be the poster child. For all its atrocities, they're all misused and stripped of context until it all becomes meaningless and stupid.

But, sadly, this is still a significant film. And despite my hatred for it, I know how it exists and why it's so regarded and controversial to this day. Any film person is going to have to give it a go sooner or later. And while I absolutely hated it, maybe ... just maybe, someone else will see something in there I don't.

(as a final note, I know some people are really weird about animal cruelty, and know that this movie has real images of real animals having bad things happen to them on camera. none of them are so cuddly as dogs or cats or anything, but ... it's there, and it's as gratuitous and exploitative as the rest, but worse for being real )

Moon (****)
Imagine a future where Earth gets all of its energy from a substance called Helium-3 mined on the far side of the moon. It's a mostly automated process that only needs limited oversight. So there's a single man who signs up for a three year contract on the moon base, watching the harvesters and doing any necessary repairs.

This is the world of Moon. And in many ways, it's a world of isolation. It's about what happens to a man when he's cut off from the world, and what that can do to a person in stages of their life. The film is basically Sam Rockwell in a single set the whole time, kept company by an AI built into a mobile console played by Kevin Spacey.

It's when Sam (Rockwell's character) gets in an accident and wakes up in two places at once that things get dicey. The two versions are both identified by the AI as being the same person, and they both share the same memories. And it is the interplay between the two versions of the main character and the AI that become the driving force of the film.

And guess what? It works. Really well. There are multiple layers to the story, and whenever I figured I had it pegged and was like 'huh, it'll end on this level and that'll be kind of cliche' it went ahead and took it further. There was just so much atmosphere, and the performances were so great, that it was impossible not to get sucked in.

Well recommended. Easily one of the best sci fi movies I've seen in years and years.

Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (***)
I can already tell you exactly whether or not you'll like Jay and Silent Bob. Are you into his other movies that came out previously? Do you like the things that Kevin Smith is into (Star Wars, comic books, movie nerdism, etc)? Can you appreciate fan service? Do you like Jay and Silent Bob as characters?

If so, you'll like this movie. It's entirely a fan service project, a movie that Kevin Smith made as a love letter to the other movies in the same universe, where characters exist together and everything is touched upon. Actors play two different roles if they were in two of his movies, just about every familiar face returns, and the whole thing is kind of a goofy romp through the world that Kevin Smith created, seen through the eyes of his dumbest characters.

At heart a buddy road movie, Jay and Silent Bob isn't very good, but it's great fun. I mean, the climactic battle involves Kevin Smith as Silent Bob facing off with Mark Hamill (doing a barely-disguised Joker voice) in a lightsaber dual in a batcave knockoff.

I think this is the movie with the highest barrier to entry of all of his, because it does have so many callbacks. But for a part of the movie project? It was like a love note to what I had been doing, taking in these movies so rapidly. Just don't expect a masterpiece. At the end of the day, Jay and Silent Bob go through life smoking weed and telling dick and fart jokes.

Nosferatu
I really debate rating movies like Nosferatu and others in the silent film genre, because of how far removed we are. That movie is literally 87 years old, and generations of movie advancement apart. How good it is at that point becomes really abstract, requiring a lot of context and knowledge that I might not necessarily have. So ... I think I'm going to abstain from rating it.

That said, it's an interesting retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula, focusing more on the first half of the novel. Guy goes to sell a mysterious Count a house, gets trapped in the castle, Count turns out to be a vampire who is infatuated with guy's young wife, heads to England to drink her blood.

The movie itself takes plenty of liberties with the source material (though, then again, it's not a direct Dracula adaptation). But all in all it's very well put together. The makeup on Nosferatu himself is well done, going for a rodent-like appearance over a charming count. And all in all, I think it's a far better portrayal of a monster than trying to humanize it. That said, if you're into horror movies, vampires, or silent films, it's well worth watching. It's endured through the ages for a reason.

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And that's all for today! I didn't get through one of my netflix discs, but it'll show up next week. Also on the agenda is Clerks 2, the last of the Kevin Smith project. Past that? Who knows! Gonna be playing it by ear a bit more next week.

Movie Rundown - July 6 to July 12

All right, I've been working on one of my previous books, rereading it in order to get an edit job going in the next week or so. So to be honest with you, I really didn't have much time or energy to watch many movies. This was compounded by work being extra special plusbad difficult last week, so ... the fact that I decided to watch a bunch of movies this weekend is the only thing that really guaranteed I'd do one of these this week.

An eclectic bunch, but nothing new, so let's just get started.

Hellboy (****)
I rewatched Hellboy for the first time since 2005 on Friday, a nice blu-ray copy on a friend's nice television. Aside from making me crave my own BD player, the movie was a nice reminder of just why I originally fell in love with the work of one Mr. del Toro.

Hellboy's aged pretty well. This was the extended edition, so there were some scenes (especially some nice ones with Selma Blair) that really rounded out the characters nicely. But the movie itself remains as fun and well-made as always. With the higher resolution, some of the CG doesn't hold up, but I think that's mostly true across the board.

That said, I think I've finally decided that of the two the original movie is the superior product. What little I know of Hellboy as a comic I think was likely much better captured in the first film. The second film, for all the things I enjoy about it, certainly feels like del Toro ran with his own fever dream visions much more so than he did. Which is fine, but detracts from the original Mignola style of the comics and first movie.

Moon Child (****)
Moon Child is a Japanese film starring pop singer Gackt and L'Arc-en-Ciel guitarist and lead singer Hyde. Hyde plays a vampire who is discovered by a young orphan. The two become fast friends, and as the young orphan grows up (played by Gackt) they become a team taking on crime-ridden streets and living a life of abandon.

The movie is surprisingly touching, given the fact it stars two music stars. The movie explores what it means to grow up, and what happens to friendships over time based on the choices people make. It's heavy stuff, full of death and betrayal, with an emphasis on typical gangster fiction played out as the backdrop to the personal drama.

The movie itself was touching, but more surprising is the fact it exists at all. Yes, the stylish action and goofy humor at times make the movie feel uneven tonally, but I could never imagine an american musician ever making a film half as deep or complex as this one. If you're into either of the musicians, or into Japanese films, or vampire movies in general, it's well worth seeking out.

Chasing Amy (*****)
The latest in my ongoing Kevin Smith project, Chasing Amy comes on the heels of last week's Mallrats, which I wasn't much into. However, things have come around and in a big way. Chasing Amy is not only fantastic, but might be my favorite romantic comedy of all time.

Why? Well, that's hard to explain. But the movie itself feels very grounded and very real, with characters who act in ways that I could identify with and didn't seem cliche at all. That's the key, how relatable the characters are, that makes Kevin Smith's best work so great. These people are all fucked up, some a lot and some a little, but they're fucked up like you or your friends. And so, the situation doesn't seem trite or rehashed, but real and meaningful and (when it all clicks) very moving.

Of particular note here is Ben Affleck, who continues to grow on me with just about every movie I see him in. Here he is endearing and infuriating and it all works in a way that feels right. He's a leading man who doesn't lead anything anywhere. And in his understated performance, he sells the entire situation.

Go see this movie. There are some minor complains that maybe I could make, especially thematically, but they're well beyond the scope of this write up here. Just go see it. It's wonderful. I'm not sure what else I'll get out of Kevin Smith, but this movie alone makes the entire project a rousing success.

Scoop (***)
Scoop. Oh Scoop. I picked this one up on recommendation of one Elizabeth Ditty, who normally has solid taste in movies. This time, though, I'm going to have to disagree with her.

Scoop is a Woody Allen movie, and is admittedly the first one I've seen, but I was very unimpressed. A offbeat comedy-mystery starring Allen himself, Scarlett Johansson, and Hugh Jackman, it's a light movie that kind of trundles along at its own lazy, happy pace. In reality, though, the whole thing felt a little too empty. At the end of the day, I felt like I had watched something in line with Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys, young bumbling detectives who figure out a case and ...

Look, the movie's fine. It's cute, sometimes it's genuinely funny, but it's pretty harmless all in all. I was looking and hoping for something with some more oomph, maybe a little deeper meaning, and I was left feeling a little hollow. I don't know if that was just an expectation problem, but at the end of the day the film left me more annoyed with it than pleased.

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And that's it! As of the time of this writing, the Netflix website is down, but I'm hoping in the next week to see Dogma and, if it's out on DVD yet, Tyson. Also up is the new Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Bloated Penultimate Book, which I have very low expectations for. There might be something else thrown into the mix, but I couldn't begin to tell you what at this time and date.

That's all, friends! I might post a bit about my editing process, maybe throw up some notes or whatever. I don't know. Writing books doesn't make for compelling blog content, I've noticed. Especially since right now I'm not doing much more than reading and making notes.

Oh well. See you on the flip side of the week, if nothing else!

Movie Rundown - June 28 to July 5

Not much to say about movies this week. My movie project procedes as usual, and my most anticipated movie of the summer turned out to be kind of a bust. That said, there are several notable things in movie land this week.

First off, the arthouse theater in town is showing The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly at the end of the month. As one of my favorite films, and I think the best shot film I've ever seen, I'm very very excited to be able to experience it on the big screen. Going to be an experience.

Second, from the creators of Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police (both amazing, amazing movies) comes this trailer this week. Watch it, and enjoy it's awesomeness! Movie reviews will follow below, and we'll see you next week with another one of these!



Gran Torino (****)
Clint Eastwood's latest movie about a Korean war veteran set in his ways. The movie opens on his wife dying, on the family that is spoiled and estranged from him and his old fashioned ways. His life is one out of time, the kind of man that doesn't exist anymore, a man who can fix things and keep a strong face and knows his shit. Which is when a Hmong family moves in next door and he's thrust into a living world that actively tries to bring him out of his shell.

The interesting thing about this movie is that it plays off of the traditional antihero action guy role that Eastwood has been playing his whole life. By referencing it but placing it in the background of this angry old man, it lends a certain amount of sadness and an undercurrent of dark humor to it. Clint Eastwood has been the baddest of badasses, but watching him groan to reach down and pick something up is both heartbreaking and endearing.

The movie itself deals with what it means to be American in the 21st century, and an older generation learning to accept a new generation and new realities while still understanding how they're relevant and what they can contribute to the world even long past their prime. I couldn't help but watch the movie and think of my own father, who is of a similar age and acts in very similar ways sometimes. And in creating something that would probably speak to his own generation and say something to people my age, Eastwood has made a movie that feels realistic but also a great postmodern twist on Eastwood's ancient action persona.

Mallrats (***)
The second in my Kevin Smith project, and a disappointing entry. Mallrats, especially coming hot off the heels of Clerks, feels kind of hollow. Sure, the film has a budget, and it's in color, and it is determined to give you a good time. But in doing so, the heart seemed to be missing from it.

The characters seem far more cartoonish than they were in Clerks, and the comedy is a lot of running around and doing things without any of the subtext and deeper meaning that Clerks had. Clerks was about finding direction in a life that was going nowhere. Mallrats is just about some guys trying to win the hearts of some women.

Funny, but ... disappointingly lacking.

My Name is Bruce (****)
Bruce Campbell. Either you know what I'm talking about or you don't when it comes to the man best known as simply The Bruce. If you don't know, this isn't for you. But if you do, let me spin you a tale.

Bruce Campbell is a B-movie star of such films as Evil Dead, Bubba Ho-Tep, and Man with the Screaming Brain. He's got a slimy agent, a bunch of nerdy fans he hates, and an ex-wife who hates his guts. But suddenly, a fan shows up and kidnaps him, taking him to a backwater town. The reason? A real demon has been unleashed, and the town decided that the best way to fight a demon would be to hire a guy who made movies about fighting demons.

Makes sense, right? Problem is, Bruce thinks its just an appearance gig.

This movie is a no-budget horror production. As it should be. It's hilarious, awesome, and full of Bruce. Bruce. Seriously. If you like Bruce, see this. The man is in almost every scene and is nothing but magnificent.

Bruce. Accept no substitutes.

LolliLove (**)
A mockumentary written, directed by, and starring The Office's Jenna Fischer. It charts the fictionalized attempts of her and her then-husband, James Gunn, to get a homeless charity off the ground. It's a ultra-no-budget affair, a bunch of people messing around with commercial cameras on the weekend sort of thing.

It's not bad, but it's ... amateur. The whole thing is short and kind of lame, but Jenna Fischer is her typical endearing self. All in all, though, I'd say that you'd be fine just not bothering with this. It exists, but you're not missing much.

Public Enemies (***)
Where to begin with this one? I don't want to seem harsh, but this isn't a great movie. It's an okay movie, with some solid performances but some serious flaws. Among them? It's WAY too long, WAY too slowly paced, and the cinematography that Michael Mann uses to great effect to explore modern urban areas is wasted here, becoming a jumbled mess that feels brutish and ugly.

In making a film about John Dillinger, Mann has spent most of the film so in love with the idea of making a biopic that he forgot to make a satisfying story. One might argue that with prior warning, that would be fine, and in the hands of another filmmaker I would agree. The problem is, Michael Mann doesn't make biopics. He makes crime dramas. Out of his element, the film doesn't have a lot going for it when it comes to plot or direction, and it shows.

That said, the actors do amazing jobs. Johnny Depp turns in what is probably his best performance in years, reigning in his usual Depp-ness in order to portray a much more reserved, much more down-to-earth man in Dillinger. The film banks on his name, and he carries it well.

Sadly, Christian Bale wasn't so lucky. He's become something of a go-to guy these days, but with his terrible southern accent and his blank demeanor, he's basically wasted here. It's a shame, too, because the film seems primed for a meeting of the minds much in the way of Heat. Sadly, that never comes to pass.

It's an okay movie, and worth seeing (especially for Depp fans, or Michael Mann fans) but ... be forewarned. It's a frustratingly disappointing film on multiple levels.

Movie Rundown - A long list of movies

Okay, so here's a big catchup post of movies from the past three weeks or so. I don't remember exactly how long, but ... yeah. Long time. I think I'm getting back into movies, and I started another movie project, so hopefully this'll be a little more regular after this.

Maybe.

Sorry for the short intro. Work's been busy, and I'm trying to keep my rambling for a minimum. Hand troubles and all. So let's begin.

Kids (***)
This is one of those movies that's worth watching, but isn't a very good experience. The movie itself is fine, don't get me wrong, but it's depressing through and through in every aspect. The story of teens in New York City, it's about sex, violence, and the spreading of AIDS. And it's not happy, heartwarming fare. Nor is it comfortably tragic a la RENT. It's bleak. Refreshingly so, but ... it's not going to bring smiles to any faces. For people into depressing experiences only.

UP (*****)
Go see UP. Look, Pixar's never made a bad movie, even if I'm not really into A Bug's Life. This one is easily their best and miles above Wall-E. It's fantastic, it's beautifull, it's sad. Then after you watch it, go watch Kiki's Delivery Service and Howl's Moving Castle by Miyazaki and realize that they get their magic by emulating the master of magic.

But mostly, just go see it. It's wonderful.

Drag Me to Hell (****)
Look, I have a love/hate relationship with Sam Raimi. I really love Evil Dead 1 and 2. I'm not as into Army of Darkness. And I'm really ambivalent about Spider-Man. One was okay, two had it's great moments, but three was the blockbuster trainwreck of that year. Hated it. Hate hate hate.

This, however, is love. It's much more like Evil Dead. If you go into this as a straight up horror film, you'd be sorely disappointed. You see, Raimi has a fetish for torturing his characters. And so Drag Me to Hell, much like Evil Dead, exists in the little-explored region of horror/comedy. If you're into that sort of thing, go see this. It's brilliant. If you're not into that, no amount of explanation will ever make you see this. Which is sad, you closed-minded bastards.

Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (***)
Look, have you seen Tremors? No? Because it's a CLASSIC. And the second one isn't too bad either. If you're truly a masochist, you need to go ahead and watch Tremors 3. It's awful, almost completely irredeemable, but ... then you get to this. The ghettoist ghetto. Tremors 4. A prequel to a movie that most people have never even heard of.

And guess what? It's pretty good. I mean, it's silly, sure. And it has almost no budget. But as a monsters-in-old-west story it plays pretty well. It knows what it is and that it has to tell a modest story and it does that handily. Just for the setting and genre alone I'd say go ahead and give this one a watch, assuming you like Tremors as a franchise (such as it is).

Miami Vice (****)
Michael Mann. That enough is gonna get me to see a movie. And this one is pretty much a Mannstravaganza (which sounds, in retrospect, like something WAY different). It's full of fast-paced dialogue and ambiguous characters on either side of the cop/criminal divide. It has a few action beats that are vicious and feel realistic and have impact because they're so minimally used. It's not Heat, but it feels a little more measured in terms of the character portrayals than heat. Of particular note is Colin Farrell, who I've never really been into but really surprised me here.

Easy Virtue (*****)
I already reviewed this one, and basically I feel the same way as I used to. So go HERE, read this review, and then go see this movie in any way you can.

Clerks (****)
Okay, so I started a new movie project this summer (last summer was the Coen Brothers filmography) and I chose Kevin Smith. I don't know why I chose Kevin Smith, other than I had really been feeling like comedies lately and Kevin Smith movies are all films that I wish I had seen but haven't ever gotten around to seeing.

So, Clerks. I assume most everybody's seen Clerks. Its one of those movies that is everywhere and I hear jokes referencing it all the time. So I was expecting the movie itself to be bereft of much of its original voice and impact. Surprisingly, that wasn't the case. In fact, I found this movie to be surprisingly relevant to now even if it's well over 15 years old now.

The story of a bunch of apathetic convenience store clerks over a single day, Clerks is a no-budget slice of life comedy with a good eye for dialogue and a perfect sense of how guys talk when nobody's around. I know, because this movie very much feels like it's out of my own life. While I'm not sure how much people who aren't just out of their late teens/college years would like it, I felt that it was heartfelt in its vulgarity because it was so true. It really connected to me, on a multitude of levels, where I actually related to the characters in a way I typically don't.

So ... yeah. Clerks is great. And I'm looking very forward to watching the rest of Kevin Smith's movies.

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So, that's done. Who knows whats on the agenda this week, aside from my much-anticipated viewing of Public Enemies on Friday and Mallrats sometime this week. My friend Adam is trying to rope me into watching Twilight, but ... I don't think anybody wants that, other than him.

And he's a bastard.

Is this fiction? I was supposed to write fiction.

I'm supposed to be writing a short story right now. At least, that's what I agreed to. I was sitting here, idly munching on a slide of provolone cheese and drinking a strawberry Fanta when some miserable harpy of guilt and responsibility alighted upon my window sill.

TAP TAP went the sound of her gnarled beak on my window.

"Nooooo, no no, I'm not going to let you in," I said aloud to an empty room. This is, believe it or not, not uncommon behavior for me. So you're just going to have to roll with it.

TAP TAP was the (predictable) response.

I knew the game here. If I was to acknowledge the tapping, I would get all sorts of disapproval. You see, I like to make intimations that I'm some sort of writer. Hell, for a while there, I was even acting like one. With drafts and novels and career plans and all that happy crappy.

But lately, man. Let's just say that the guilt thing would be both well-placed and sorely unappreciated.

"Go away! I'm on vacation. I don't want any. No solicitation. It's on the sign!" In truth I have no such sign, but surely solicitation so early in the morning by something so horrible is never a welcome thing. And even if I DID have said sign, I'm pretty sure the harpy would have happily ignored the proclamation of my disinterest. Besides, bird-things don't read, to the best of my knowledge.

TAP TAP. TAP.

I waited patiently several minutes for the tapping to stop. Maybe if I ignored it, it would go away and torment some other poor soul who was much more deserving of its nightmarish dedication to upholding idealistic dreams than I. Someone who had woken up sometime normal. I have been awake since 3 PM the previous day. Not a huge amount of time, I'm not ready to hallucinate yet, but it's been a long day and the last thing I need is a mental trip down self-loathing avenue. I do enough of that on my own.

I'm a conveniently long-sleeved shirt and a bad dye job away from being the emo poster boy of reluctant artists everywhere.

With better taste in music, though.

I was just getting ready to settle back into my drink, maybe check webcomics or the daily woot deal, when suddenly there was a single, resonant TAP. Clear. Declarative. Firm. This was no request for idle entry. This was a command. A seige in a sound. An order in an onomatopoeia. An anguished attempt at alliteration.

All these things, and more. I was compelled!

Idly, I opened the window. There was the accursed Harpy! I will spare you the labored description of such things, but I will tell you if you had been there to see the shrieking, gesticulating, emphatic menacee, you too would be reaching deep down into your bag of adjectives and finding that there was nothing that properly reflected the horror that you felt.

"Good morning," I ventured idly. A strong sense of apathy is just the thing to defeat those who would try to influence you emotionally. Especially when they're prodding your sensitive bits. No, no, not those sensitive bits. The sensitive bits of the psyche. No, the ones left of those. Yep, you got it.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" This was an unhappy Harpy.

"That's a terrible way to greet someone," I replied. Because, protip: beginning a conversation with anything including the word fuck? Bad form. Bad form indeed.

"You really should be writing," the Harpy began without a moment's hesitation. It's a single-minded beast, sent only to prey upon my deepest neuroses. I can respect that kind of dedication.

"Look," I began, holding up a hand to cut it off before it really began a tirade. "I'm on vacation. Work was really busy, and I typed my hands into uselessness and pain, and I took some days off in order to recover and shit. I don't need you showing up in the eleventh hour and trying to get me to pick up the yoke of your literary oppression all over again. Remember what happened with the script? I remember. I'll always remember."

Cue the thousand yard stare. If I had a soundtrack, there would be an overlay of furious typing drifting away into swearing. The sound of glass shattering. Paper burning. Maybe an explosion for good measure. Why half-ass it, right?

"That was like ... months ago. When are you going to grow a pair and act like you know what the hell you're doing?"

"That's just it. I don't. I can't get started and it's all crap and I hate myself and I hate life. Leave me alone! I was on vacation. Vacay. Last day. Does that mean nothing to you? Do you have to violate this last sacred bastion of my blissfully empty existance?"

The Harpy arched one skeptical, sculpted eyebrow. "Blissful, huh? You don't seem very blissful to me."

"SHUT UP!"

"Real mature, dude. Listen, you should write."

"Last day. No bueno. DO. NOT. WANT. Were you not listening, or do I have to break it down a little further? Kiss my ass, and don't let the balls hit you in the face on the way down."

"Colorful. Maybe you should be putting your snark to good use and ... y'know, maybe put out some fiction. You are supposed to be a writer."

"I don't know who you've been talking to, but those are lies. Foul, foul lies. I never claimed anything of the sort."

"I really don't want to point to your blog, or your twitter bio, or your facebook, or anything like that. But I will if you insist on being stubborn like this."

It was at this point that the harpy had a point. And also when I realized that I'd probably never get to properly finish my dinner of cheese and fruit soda. So I bit the bullet.

"Vacation. I'm supposed to be R&Ring."

"That's not a verb," the Harpy offered.

"Who's the writer here?"

"Technically, I am. You claim to be, but I don't see it." Ooooh. Burn. This Harpy was a real Witch-with-a-B.

"What the fuck? That's ice cold."

"Hey, I call it like I see it. You're supposed to be all rockin' the world with your books and shit, but you haven't filled out a postit note in months."

"But ... last day ... vacation."

"C'mon, you can do better than that. What better time to write than when you have nothing better to do? What else were you gonna do? Watch TV? Surf the internet? Tweet a bunch?"

"Those all sound like pretty good options to me."

The Harpy rolled its beady little eyes. "Do yourself a favor, write something. Anything. It'll help get you started. A short story, even. Nothing serious. Just something. Be a writer. Pretend for a little while. Maybe you'll surprise yourself."

"If I do this, will you leave me the hell alone?"

"No, but I might stop bothering you for a little while."

"You're a real dick, you know that?"

The Harpy climbed back up to the window. "Aren't all Harpies female or something?"

"Hey, I don't know. You're the Harpy, you tell me."

"I think this metaphor's been stretched far enough. Good luck, kid, you'll need it." And then, cackling at the trauma it had just inflicted upon me, the wretched beast flew off. I was alone. With a sudden, reawakened sense of my own responsibility as a one-time writer and oft-time proponent of doing something with my life.

So I pulled up google docs. There were the two novels to be edited. That was right out. In my prime I couldn't wrap my head around editing. If I was a race horse right now, I'd be part glue. No way I'm ready for that.

Then there's the crazy short story project Miss Ditty roped me into. Nope, that's not going to work. That's all like ... concept stuff. I can barely type a sentence without descending into madness. How would I ever work on something like that?

I tried in vain to write something new. Something relevant and witty and gripping in the way that good fiction gets. I got as far as some interesting first sentences such as "When the barista disturbed Teresa he got a faceful of 'fuck you'" and "When the electricity in my part of the state finally went out, I could have sworn I still heard a TV putting out the distinct electrical hum associated with being on but not displaying a picture."

These were not great opening salvos in the war against the rusted gears of this creaky word-weaver.

Instead, I contemplated doing nothing. The Harpy was gone. She would not return today, and I could ignore her for a little while longer. Why do today what you can put off until whenever, or whatever. I could carry on as before without anyone to answer to but myself.

But for a moment, a voice spoke up. "Dude, could you really live with yourself if you took this moment, when you literally have no excuse, and gave up without even really giving it a try?"

And I stared really hard at my computer screen, and I answered that little voice. "Dude, no. You're right. Let's DO THIS!"

And so I thought for a minute, and decided to let the muses decide. I pulled up blogger, I clicked on New Post, and I typed the opening line:

I'm supposed to be writing a short story right now.

My Strawberry Fanta is probably flat. That's okay. I have some more in the fridge.

Movie Rundown - April 20 to May 10

My apologies for this taking so long. Things have been kind of hectic, with the failure of my Script Frenzy attempt and some family issues. I'm probably not going to talk about either here on the blog. Maybe the Script Frenzy thing. On a day when I'm feeling particularly self-destructive.

I haven't been much in the mood for netflix movies lately, so this list is going to be short for how much time it covers. I've just been watching The Office in my spare time. Good stuff. As for the movies, here we go!

Resurrecting the Champ (****)
Josh Hartnett plays a struggling sports journalist who discovers that a homeless man who goes by Champ (played by Samuel L Jackson) is a former boxing contender to a world title. He tries to form a bond with Champ in order to write his story, a sure-fire hit.

It sounds like it could descend into the saccharine, but I found it a really good movie. Hartnett, who's never really set me afire, is surprisingly solid in an ineffectual everyman sort of way. The real star here is Jackson, though, who forgoes his typical blaxploitation schtick to turn in a great performance. Champ is run down, ancient, wobbly and screechy, and Jackson's portrayal is at times heartbreaking and others repellant. It's the backbone of the movie, and it carries it well.

2 Fast 2 Furious (**)
The second move in the series of things that are Fast and Furious, this is widely regarded as the worst of the series. And I'm willing to agree with that. This movie is kind of messed up from the get go. It just plods on with a formulaic adherence to mediocrity that's startling. There are moments that are fun, but there are (minus one) no moments that are great.

For a big budget summer action movie? That's inexcusable.

Also, there's a crazy amount of CGI used in this movie, especially at the beginning. It got better over time, but at the beginning it was nearly insufferable. The rule of car movies needs to be "NO CG." And its lack of faith in the subject matter is disheartening. For completionists only.

Diva (***)
I had never heard of this movie until I read an essay from Tom Robbins where he answered the question "What is your favorite movie character?" He cited this movie and one of the characters in it. The joy of the modern world, I could have it in my mailbox within a week.

This is a French movie about a young man who records a singer who refuses to record her work for his own use. But when his tape is mixed up with a tape incriminating the leader of a prostitution ring, the young man is tossed into a world of intrigue and blackmail.

The movie itself is strange, with an odd surrealist quality to everything. Tom Robbins' favorite character dances around the periphery of the story like some sort of mad monk, which is probably what appealed to him. But the action itself takes on this strange dreamlike quality where the danger feels almost unimportant in the face of people's desires as they go through the story. That detachment I'm almost certain is on purpose, and I like the dreamlike nature of it, but I wouldn't say it's particularly gripping. If you like strange French thrillers, go right ahead and watch this, though, and you won't regret it.

Earth
I'm not rating this one, and you might say that's a cop out but I'm going to defend it. Simply put, there was a narrative here, but my enjoyment of it was completely independant of whatever storytelling they were trying to do.

We all know the story. Disney nature documentary using footage from the Planet Earth miniseries from a year or so ago. There's a story about some families of mammals in the struggle to survive on a dynamic ecosystem such as ours. There is some talk of global warming and whatnot.

But what this truly is is nature porn. It's the landscape and the creatures upon it as art in themselves, presented in the most breathtaking ways. This is one of those films that thrives on camera technology, on the ability to shoot HD and slow motion and from far away with a Steadicam and still get detail. And what it picks up is amazing, from slow motion footage of a cheetah bringing down prey to a time lapse of a frozen forest coming to life. It's spellbinding in a way that is all about the image and very little about anything else.

I highly suggest anyone who is into things beautiful go see it, if it's even still playing. The nicest screen you can find it at. This is one that benefits greatly from the HD experience. I would probably not been as affected had it been on a TV running a plain old DVD.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (*)
I was going to write up why this movie was completely fucked from end to end, but you could get that from a lot of places. It stands as the worst movie I've ever payed money to see, from the terrible CGI used all over the place in glaring ways to the insipid script that ruins perfectly good actors on material that would have been at home with the Super Friends. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber try their hardest to add some gravitas to the proceedings, but it's not enough, nor is the typically solid Harry Gregson-Williams score. Whoever made this movie like this messed up huge. It's trash. Garbage. Don't give them your ticket money. Simple as that.

Star Trek (****)
This one is easier to write about, because it's easy to gush. So I'll keep it short. Star Trek is a reboot of the franchise that everyone all over the world has heard of. It's a new Kirk, Spock and McCoy back when they were just starting out on their first adventure. It's made by J J Abrams, who apparently is pretty popular these days.

It is also fantastic. Every bit works, from the pitch perfect casting to the balance between being faithful to the fans of Trek and making a movie that nonfans would actually care about. It's emotionally strong, it's fast paced, it's interesting, it's full of actual danger and real risks and they pay off big time in surprising ways (which I won't go into, but have ramifications for any sequels that come about).

Go see it. I don't care what you think about the original Star Trek. I was sorely tempted to give it five stars, but even at four, I think that it's a movie that everyone needs to see and a movie that'll find its way onto my Top Movies of 2009 list later this year. You need to see it. It's a movie that's bigger than a fanbase, and bigger than serious moviegoers. This is THE event film.

( Also, because I have to give shout outs to the best parts of the movie, Karl Urban as McCoy is BRILLIANT. I could have watched a whole movie about him. I've been behind him since I saw him in The Two Towers, so seeing him really put in that strong of a performance is thrilling. Also, Michael Giacchino, the composer, does an amazing job of providing strong thematic material to help underscore the movie. It's big and bombastic, but it rarely feels heavyhanded. In fact, I'm listening to the score as I write this. Giacchino also did the scores to the underappreciated Sky High and Speed Racer, and the rightly appreciated Incredibles. He's a man I'm going to watch, because I ALWAYS enjoy his work. )

The Soloist (***)
I slipped this one in on Mothers Day and came away kind of ... unenthused about the whole thing. The story is easy enough, the tale of a Juliard dropout with schitzophrenia who's living on the streets playing music when he's discovered by an LA Columnist who takes an interest in his story. I'd heard of the story when the book was released, and the movie does a good job of retelling it.

The problem is that the director doesn't seem satisfied with letting the actors do their job. There is a bombardment of jump cuts and surround sound wankering with voices to help illustrate the schitzophrenia. There are strange, surrealistic scenes plopped in seemingly at random. And there's an absolutely mood-breaking moment of synesthesia placed smack dab in the middle of what should have been one of the most affecting parts of the movie. But instead of trusting Jamie Foxx to do his job, the director seemed more interested in how he could play around with his tools.

Disappointing, I say again. Solid performances, but the filmmaking itself left a lot to be desired. I wouldn't say its a waste of time, but it's nothing special.

------

And that's a wrap. I'm going to be trying to start writing again this week as I try to get out from under all the problems that aren't my creative work that have been pressing me down. I've also go the madness of a younger brother graduating high school this week, but ... I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get some output.

See you on the other side of this week.