Writing is Hard: Reviewing the reviewers

I ran into this article a while ago and never got around to posting about it. It's interesting to me partly because it's about Pirates of the Caribbean, but mostly because it's about critics and the responsibility that critics have to do their job well, whether or not they're getting paid for it.

I completely agree with the writers of Pirates when they say, "The thing that you really want are reviews that are critical, that are analytical, eloquent, insightful and actually help elevate the understanding of the movie."

Because most comics critics and bloggers don't get paid for their reviews, I guess I expect a certain amount of amateurism from that group. It's interesting to me though to read these screenwriters' perception on film critics who -- presumably -- are getting paid. Of course, I don't know what specific reviews they're referring to in the article, so they could be talking about unpaid bloggers. But regardless of whether or not you're getting paid for your work, if you're going to write a review of something, you should follow these screenwriters' advice and give some thought to the actual subject you're reviewing. A "three-paragraph-long extended metaphor where you're comparing the movie to something that happened to you at Disneyland" is just silly. It makes you look bad; not the movie.

Review: Interstate 60

So, you take Bob Gale, writer and producer of the Back to the Future movies, and turn him loose writing and directing a film that stars James Marsden (Cyclops in the X-Men movies; Superman Returns) and Gary Oldman with cameos by folks like Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Kurt Russell, Chris Cooper, Ann-Margret, and a couple of gals from Felicity (Amy Jo Johnson and Amy Smart). You're golden, right?

Right.

Especially when the movie is a road flick about a young man named Neal (Marsden) who really needs some direction in his life and how a North American wish-fulfillment legend/trickster hero (Oldman) screws around with him enough to give him some. With the aid of a truly magic 8-ball and a hot set of wheels that he doesn't even want, Neal takes off in search of Interstate 60, a highway that doesn't appear on any map and goes to places that no one's ever heard of before. In one town, highly addictive drugs are not only legal, they're distributed by the police so that after partying all night the junkies provide menial labor for the clean, crime-free town. In another place, every citizen is a lawyer and all of the gas stations and grocery stores are operated by passers-through who've been held prisoner by endless strings of frivolous lawsuits. Chris Cooper plays a hitchhiker who insists on employing (complete with contract) the drivers who pick him up.

It's a zany movie with tons of great ideas, but the real beauty of it is that they all work together to teach Neal something by the end. It's light-hearted, not preachy, but it has a point. Though that's just icing on the cake of another movie in which you get to see Gary Oldman completely and brilliantly disappear into yet another role.

Happy Hobbit Day!

Today would have been J.R.R. Tolkien's 115th birthday.

Not sure that anyone would want to read the trilogy he became famous for, Tolkien wrote about The Lord of the Rings that "my work has escaped from my control. I have produced a monster... a complex, rather bitter and rather terrifying romance."

Good on ya, Professor!

Link du Jour: Rick Remender

You guys know how much I dig the pirates right? Well, even I have to draw the line someplace and I was pretty convinced when I first heard about the Sea of Red comics series that "vampire pirates" was going to be the place. (I would also be willing to draw it at "ninja pirates," just in case you're wondering.) Still, there was something about the design of Sea of Red, with its parchment-like paper and unique mixture of red and black ink. It was too pretty not to give a closer look, and I'm glad I did because I learned that writer Rick Remender has the same attitude towards genre that I do: ignore it.

Remender took a silly high-concept and made it work because he concentrated on telling an interesting story about sympathetic characters. Rather than being locked in by the restrictions of its genres, Sea of Red quickly became a book in which anything could happen.

Remender's follow up book, Strange Girl, about a teenager stuck in the demon-infested, post-Rapture world, did the same thing. It's a post-apocalyptic horror/adventure story with healthy doses of drama, comedy, intrigue, and theological exploration.

Next, Remender came up with Fear Agent, a series dedicated to putting the sexy back into scifi, another cause that I can absolutely get behind. And Fear Agent's focus on action and adventure proved that Remender was just the right guy to write Dynamite Entertainment's comic based on the classic version of Battlestar Galactica.

Remender's a great example of a writer who obviously loves genre, but doesn't feel trapped by it.

Review: Timeline

After the disappointing Sound of Thunder, I was prepared for Timeline -- another time travel movie -- to be pretty bad too. Not so much, though.

There've really only been two time travel movies that I've liked: The Terminator and Back to the Future. Outside of those, figuring out alternate timelines and resolving paradoxes and keeping track of all the rules that scifi writers create to do those things just makes my brain hurt. Fortunately, Timeline -- like Sound of Thunder -- is more of an adventure story than real scifi. It surpasses Sound of Thunder though by trading in bad CGI for believable characters. A group of time traveling archeologists go back to the Middle Ages, get stuck there, and have to figure out a way home without getting killed by either the French or English armies that are battling in the past over a castle.

The time travel technology is unimaginative and hokey, and there's a lame subplot about an "evil" scientist who's really much more lazy than wicked, but the medieval scenes are convincing and everyone does a nice job of helping us to care about the travelers who get stuck there. It's kind of like watching a time-travel episode of your favorite scifi TV show, only you're not sure who's going to make it out of the past alive and who's not.

Not that it's completely unpredictable though. When the archeologists are studying the castle/battleground in the present and uncover a husband-and-wife tomb, they wonder about the story behind the couple. Not only are you sure that the couple's story will be told once the archeologists go back in time, you're fairly certain that one of them will be intimately involved in it. After all, you've seen at least one time travel movie in your life already, right?

So, the movie has no big surprises and doesn't add anything meaningful to time-travel theories. It's just a fast-paced, entertaining adventure story, and viewed as such, it succeeds. I bought into the various relationships and really wanted to see the characters make it back to their own time.

Link du Jour: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I had dinner with a buddy last night and the 100-page Rule came up in conversation. We talked about how there are too many great page-turners out there and not enough time to read them all, so we've got no business forcing ourselves to read books that aren't grabbing us. I offered Preston and Child's The Relic up as a recent book that I couldn't get through fast enough. It's too bad the movie that was made from it was so average, but the book is exciting and chilling and just keeps pushing you forward until you're done.

That, plus the fact that Preston and Child have inter-connected their stories by having characters and organizations crossover from book to book, makes me very interested in reading more by them.

To Read: For Edgar

You all know how much I love the historical and/or literary mysteries. For Edgar is in the latter category since it's about a serial killer called "The Raven" who bases his or her crimes on gruesome deaths from Edgar Allan Poe stories.

That's a great premise, but it doesn't tell me anything about the execution. Fortunately, Bookgasm's Rod Lott takes care of that when he calls it "a worthy successor to Silence of the Lambs."

Turbines to speed.

Wow. I sucked at posting over Christmas. Sorry about that.

This isn't even a real post here, but just a quick, engine-revving note to let you know that I'm back, and to remind me that now I also have to write reviews of The Dust Factory, the Spy Kids movies, and The Polar Express.

I'll save my whining over the loss of Rose Tyler for another occasion once I'm back up to speed.

Happy Spielberg Day!

Today is Steven Spielberg's 60th birthday. I'm not a hardcore fan of his, but when I think of movies like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Schindler's List, I wonder why not. The answer is in movies like E.T., Empire of the Sun, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and A.I., but there's still no denying the man's talent and I'm glad that for all of that, he's still a horror/sci-fi guy at heart.

In other news, I'm on vacation this week and am likely to blow off posting some. I'll try to keep up with movie reviews (next up: Timeline and Interstate 60) because if I get behind in those, I'll never catch up. But I'm definitely letting Link du Jour go until after Christmas.

I'll also try to find time to tell you why I gave up on Armageddon's Children after only 50 pages and how that's probably the last nail in the coffin as far as me reading any more Terry Brooks goes.

30 Days of Night Movie Update: Another Still

Another image from the 30 Days of Night movie. This one's via Ben Templesmith's blog.

Review: A Sound of Thunder

You might expect that a movie based on a Ray Bradbury short story might not live up to its source material. But if it's got a gun-toting, chiseled hero leading an expedition across a futuristic, jungle-covered city that's inhabited by sea serpents, giant bats, and baboonosaurs... well, that's got to be awesome, right?

Not so much.

I've never read Bradbury's original version of "A Sound of Thunder," but I've read comics adaptations of it, so I'm familiar with what happens. Even though Bradbury's story says that changing history by altering the past can't be undone, I figured that the movie would mostly be about just that. And that's okay. Really, Bradbury's story makes its point and then just ends at a rather unsatisfying place, so I've got no problem with the idea of continuing from there and having the heroes try to fix things. Especially if doing so involves futuristic, jungle-covered cities and baboonosaurs.

Unfortunately, the special effects in the film version of A Sound of Thunder are beneath bad and into "laughable" territory. The dinosaur in the prehistoric sequences looks like it was created for a video game, and the blue screen work -- which puts the characters into the setting of futuristic Chicago -- is ridiculous. Thanks to flat imagery and goofy lighting, you never for a second believe that the characters actually inhabit the backgrounds in the exterior shots of the city. There are even a couple of shots of characters walking through the city where the actors are very clearly walking in place as the scenery moves past behind them. The baboonosaurs and other monsters are all well-designed, but no more realistic than the prehistoric dinosaur.

The acting by the main cast is absolutely fine (I mean, it's got Ben Kingsley in it, for goodness sake, and Jemima Rooper from Hex), but I actually gasped at how poorly some of the bit part actors delivered their lines.

It's a shame, because this could've been a fun, simple, adventure movie, even if it wasn't an intelligent adaptation of Bradbury's story. Glaring parts of it are so amateurish though, that I was never able to just sit back and enjoy the cheese.