Review: The Dust Factory

I don't remember why I had The Dust Factory in my queue. It's about a kid named Ryan who falls off a bridge and drowns and finds himself transported to a sort of limbo world (the titular "Dust Factory") between life and death. Maybe it was the fantasy world that originally attracted me; I don't know.

Whatever it was, it unfortunately didn't connect with me when I actually saw the movie. The movie is about grief and it's very possible that I didn't get it because I haven't yet lost anyone really close to me. Ryan hasn't spoken since witnessing the accident that killed his father, so he's profoundly affected by that loss. His grandmother (to whom he was also close) has also recently died, but his grandfather -- who has Alzheimer's -- doesn't even seem to realize it. His mom is sensitive to her son's feelings, but she's remarried, so there might be some feelings of betrayal going on in this kid too, which would represent yet another kind of loss. Writer/director Eric Small obviously put a lot of thought into this theme.

Where the movie loses me is when Ryan arrives in the Dust Factory. It's a beautiful, quiet place that looks just like the world did when Ryan left it. His grandfather is there, and since he doesn't suffer Alzheimer's in the Dust Factory, he and Ryan are able to communicate and form a relationship for the first time. There's also a young girl named Melanie (played by Hayden Panettiere, the cheerleader from Heroes, even more under-aged here) who's been in the Dust Factory for a while and refuses to move on. People who tire of life in the Dust Factory are given the chance to go to a circus Big Top and try to complete a routine on the flying trapeze. If they complete it, they die permanently and are sent to the afterlife (the movie wisely never tries to explain what that is), but if they fall, they hit the floor in a cloud of dust and are sent back to the world of the living. Melanie is afraid of even trying and her distrust of the process rubs off on Ryan. And I guess that's what really has me scratching my head.

The Dust Factory is a beautiful place, but it's also a lonely one. Especially for Melanie before Ryan showed up. What's keeping her there? Since the afterlife is never defined, maybe it's a fear of the unknown. If you complete the trapeze routine, do you go to heaven, or hell? Or do you just cease to exist? I suppose those questions might keep someone off the trapeze bars. Or maybe it's fear of that fall that sends you back to the living. No one who takes that fall ever screams or seems to be in pain, but it's still got to be a pretty terrifying drop.

The thing is that Melanie never explains her anxiety about the process and Ryan buys into it unquestioningly. Maybe that's to make us think and ask the very questions that I'm asking here. I buy that explanation just because it's so apparent that Small didn't write this thing in a hurry. Everything seems deliberate, even if I'm not picking up on all the details. So, maybe my real problem is that I saw a movie that starred a couple of young teens and immediately expected something light and fluffy and easily explained, instead of the dark, complicated movie that The Dust Factory really is.

I'm still not saying that I liked it, but I'm also not willing to say it isn't good. It is a good film; just not what I expected or wanted. A second viewing might increase my appreciation for it.

Writing is Hard: Review guidelines

After my post the other day about critics, a buddy of mine made a comment on the LiveJournal feed that let me know that I hadn't been clear on something. I do believe that it's appropriate for critics to talk about their own experiences and opinions and how those color a particular review. That kind of thing helps the reader know where you're coming from so that they can also know how likely they are to agree with you. My point in the post was that your review can't be just a bunch of personal reactions. For the review to be useful, at some point you've got to actually talk about specific merits and flaws of the work you're reviewing.

Anyway, clarifying that made me remember that I once wrote some review guidelines for people who want to write reviews for Comic World News. They're heavily influenced by Johanna Draper Carlson's article "How to Review," which is also worth reading for anyone interested in this kind of thing, but I also include some of my own observations.

Here's mine (slightly edited to remove requirements that are specific to CWN style):

Reviews should be between 500 - 1500 words, but this is a somewhat flexible rule. Some books, particularly anthologies, require longer reviews, but those should be the exception.

Please use short paragraphs. Densely packed text is unreadable on a computer screen.

Reviews shouldn’t just say what you think about the story. They should also be interesting to read. Start reviews with some kind of hook. Something that will make people want to read the rest of the review.

Summarizing the plot of the story is necessary, but keep it brief and spoiler-free. Imagine that you’re writing the blurb for the back cover of a book. No more than one or two paragraphs. If you can do it in a couple of sentences, that’s even better. If it’s impossible to sum up a plot without spoiling it, that’s your call, but include a spoiler warning.

Discuss what the story does well (if anything) as well as its flaws (if any). Do this in reference not only to the plot, but also the pacing, the dialogue, the characterization, and the sheer entertainment value. Give specific examples of successes and failures. Don’t forget to talk about the art. You don’t have to have studied art to know if things look the way they should or whether or not panel layout is confusing. Talk about word balloons and lettering if there’s something noteworthy there – positive or negative.

Don’t be afraid to trash a story if it doesn’t do anything well, but this should be rare. Don’t be afraid to gush if it hits every single one of your buttons, but this should be even more uncommon. Don’t be afraid to reveal your personal reasons for having a particular reaction to a story. Your personal experiences and baggage color your reviews and it’s only fair to get that stuff in the open so that readers can more accurately decide if their experience will be similar to or different from yours. They don’t need your life story; just enough so that they know where you’re coming from.

Never trash a creator. Stick to commenting on the merits and flaws of the story.

It’s okay to sound like you know what you’re talking about. You should. Just don’t talk down to your readers. Always remember that you’re doing this for them. In that light, let your sense of humor and personality show. You’re not writing an encyclopedia entry.

Happy Three-and-a-Half Dwarves Day!

Jacob Grimm would've been 222 years old today. Although Heath Ledger played him as the younger Grimm brother in the Terry Gilliam movie, Jacob was actually a year older than his brother Wilhelm. The two of them collected and published Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1812. The book included classics like Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Tom Thumb, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and Rumpelstiltskin.

Slightly different versions of some of their stories had already been collected and adapted by Charles Perrault over a hundred years earlier.

Getcher Shadow

You've probably heard all the rumor and hullaballoo over the possibility of Sam Raimi's directing a mega-pulp movie featuring The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Avenger. Well, as cool as that might be, cooler still is a reminder that my friend Joe sent me as a result of everyone's talking about these characters.

Anthony Tollin still has the rights to reprint the original Shadow and Doc Savage books, and he's posted an updated publishing schedule and ordering process here.

Link du Jour: Arturo Pérez-Reverte

I didn't waste a lot of time getting to the theater to see The Ninth Gate. I mean, the main character was a "book detective," someone who hunted down rare and unique volumes. Combining detective-work with a love of books was a sure-fire way of getting my attention. Especially with Johnny "The Coolest Man in the Universe" Depp playing the detective.

Too bad the movie blew.

It was great up until the overly fantastical ending that came out of nowhere and left me scratching my head, partly over trying to figure out what had just happened exactly, but mostly over what the heck the screenwriters must've been on when they wrote it. It ruined the rest of the film for me (the biggest crime of all), but I thought that it was so weirdly different from the rest of the movie that maybe the book it was based on, The Club Dumas, ended another way. Someone had already recommended The Club Dumas to me, so I decided that I had to figure this out. Even if the book and movie ended the same way, maybe it would make more sense in the book.

I'm not gonna ruin the book, because it's now one of my favorite novels of all time, so I'll just say that it's much more satisfying than the movie and leave it at that. It's got everything the movie has: the mystery, the suspence, the intrigue, the love of books, the danger; but it's also got an ending that works, and it has much closer ties to The Three Musketeers (another all-time favorite of mine) than are obvious in the film.

I haven't yet dug into the rest of author Arturo Pérez-Reverte's work, but it's obvious that he enjoys the same kinds of stories that I do: adventurous -- almost swashbuckling -- mysteries that even when they're set in the present have some kind of historical angle to them. I've got a couple on my reading pile right now, and I can't wait to get to them.

Bored of Shannara

I didn't need to invoke the 100-page Rule on Terry Brooks' Armageddon's Children. I knew by Page 50 that I wasn't going to make it.

Even though it was a rip-off of Lord of the Rings, I enjoyed Brooks' Sword of Shannara in the '70s. The sequel, The Elfstones of Shannara, was even better because it was an original story. I somehow got distracted and never finished the third book, Wishsong of Shannara, but I didn't blame it on the book. In fact, I remember being especially intrigued by one of the characters.

I missed the whole Heritage of Shannara series because I always wanted to finish Wishsong first and felt that it might be a good idea to revisit Sword and Elfstones before doing that, only now I was talking about a commitment and there was just too much else I wanted to read.

When First King of Shannara came out, the prequel to Sword, I read it because I didn't have to remember anything that came before it. I liked it and especially enjoyed tying together the threads between it and Sword.

Then Brooks came out with this new series, The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, and I figured that it was finally time to plow through the whole series once and for all. Only, me being me, I decided to start from the chronological beginning and read First King again, then Sword, etc. And my problem was that I kept getting bogged down in the first few chapters of First King.

I hadn't noticed it before, but Brooks fills page after page with nothing but exposition about what's been happening in the world to get you to the point where First King begins. It's tedious reading and I kept giving up. When I heard that he was going to write a prequel series that comes before even First King, I decided that that would be my chance to dig into the series again. After all, this new prequel series promised to bridge the gap between our real world and the fantastic future described in the Shannara books. It would be a great jump-on point and I could let the momentum from enjoying that series push me through the boring parts of First King and on into the more exciting parts of the series.

The problem is that Armageddon's Children, the first book of the prequel series, doesn't begin in any kind of recognizable world at all. Yeah, the city names are familiar, but technology has already crossed over into sci-fi territory, demons and other creatures have already invaded the world, a mysterious "Lady" has already recruited a scattered group of "Knights" to protect the Earth, and a supernatural Messiah has already been born. And how do we know all this? Page after exposition-filled page.

It's the oldest rule in the Writer's Manual: Show, Don't Tell. I'm interested in the demons and the lady and the Messiah and all of that, but I want to see them introduced into the narrative as it happens, not just matter-of-factly be told about it long afterwards. Brooks started his story in the wrong place and it makes me feel like I'm still not getting the whole picture; like there's yet another prequel that I'm going to eventually need to read. And I'm not up for that.

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.