Review: Spy Kids movies

I'm really in the mood for some crazy spy stuff lately. Casino Royale totally fixed everything that's been wrong with the James Bond franchise because it brought the movies into alignment with my beloved Fleming books. But it also means that there's a hole that needs filling. There's a place in this world for over-the-top, wanna be world-conquerors, scantily clad vixens, impossible gadgets, and mind-blowing stunts. I don't want Bond movies to be that place, but I certainly want those things to exist somewhere.

The Spy Kids movies make a good go at filling that void. They're family movies, so forget the scantily clad vixens (Carla Gugino is gorgeous, but unfortunately, no bikini), and the stunts are all CGI, so don't expect too much there, but there are gadgets and over-the-top villains galore and it's been a long time since I've seen such sheer imagination thrown up on a movie screen. Whether it's Alan Cumming as the Willy Wonka-like host of a children's TV show or Steve Buscemi on a mysterious, Ray Harryhausen-inspired island or Sylvester Stallone playing four different roles -- all in desperate need of a hug from Ricardo Montalban -- Robert Rodriguez tosses influences and ideas into the films like a crazy man. And that's a good thing, by the way.

The movies really do need to be seen in order though. My pal Dave saw just the last one and didn't care for it, but I really think that's because he didn't know what to expect. Out of context, it does feel like a lame video-game rip-off, but when you know what Rodriguez did with the first two movies, the third one fits in perfectly as yet another celebration of everything that makes us smile.

To See: My Name is Bruce

I'm sometimes the last to know these things, but just in case you haven't heard either: adventure hero extraordinaire Bruce Campbell is directing a movie called My Name is Bruce in which he plays himself, the real Bruce Campbell. When he's mistaken for his Ash character from the Evil Dead movies, some folks ask him to help fight a monster in rural Oregon. Details are sketchy, but it looks like most folks anticipate a direct-to-DVD release.

In other Bruce news, looks like Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the She Vampires may be more than just a gag in the credits of Bubba Ho-Tep. Okay, that's more rumor than news, but here's hoping.

Link du Jour: Gail Simone

I've talked about Gail Simone before on this blog, so I'll keep it brief this time. Gail took over writing DC's Birds of Prey comic at a time when I was struggling to stay interested in it. I'd started reading Birds of Prey because I was a Black Canary fan and she was a cast member, but the focus of the series was usually on someone else. Gail changed that and not only gave my favorite character more attention; she also did great things with the dialogue, giving the all-female team a sort of Sex in the City/Gilmore Girls vibe.

Gail's said a couple of times that her success with the series is due to her caring so much about the characters in it. It's that attention to fun and interesting characters that makes me such a fan of her work; not just Birds of Prey, but all of it. She knows how to create an intriguing plot too, but I'd be perfectly happy reading an issue in which she had a bunch of characters do nothing but have lunch.

To Read: Thrilling Detective Heroes

Chalk up another Wish Lish entry thanks to Bookgasm, and specifically to novelist/Bookgasm contributor Ed Gorman. Last month, Ed reviewed Thrilling Detective Heroes, an anthology of B- and C-list detective stories in which "protagonists... are differentiated from the other protagonists through some kind of angle or gimmick" and "good vs. evil (is fought) with prim good girls and sexy bad girls, told in short explosive scenes that race toward even more explosive endings."

"There’s also," Ed says, "a long and really engrossing introduction that charts the history of the thrilling pulps."

Link du Jour: S.J. Rozan

I first heard of S.J. Rozan after her book Winter and Night won the Edgar Award. I hate picking up series in the middle, so I went back and started reading her Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mysteries from the beginning starting with China Trade. I've been hooked ever since.

It's amazing how Rozan can change her voice from book to book. The first person narrative switches between her two detectives from novel to novel. Lydia Chin stories are optimistic and light-hearted, while being packed with insight into the life of an American Born Chinese woman. You'd think that Rozan was Chinese herself.

Then again, from reading the Bill Smith stories, you'd think that Rozan had actual experience being a hard-boiled, middle-aged man. On those books, she's a modern day Chandler or Hammett. She doesn't spoof or parody or even echo those guys; she just uses words in a similar way to create the same kind of mood those guys did.

Bill and Lydia appear in each others' stories, so it's also fascinating to see how dark Bill is when he's narrating his own tale juxtaposed with the way Lydia sees him when she's telling the story. Conversely, Lydia is much less confident in herself when she narrates than she appears to be from Bill's point of view. Any novelist wanting to write convincingly diverse characters should study Rozan's work.

And so should any mystery writer who wants to learn how to pace a mystery without giving away too much at the beginning, or holding back so much that it comes out of nowhere at the end. Rozan is a master at feeding you all the necessary clues to solve the mystery, but keeping you so distracted by the entertaining characters that you don't pay enough attention to the clues and risk spoiling the ending for yourself.

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.