Tag Archives: Movies

Why I Never Watch the Academy Awards

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Last night was the big night for overexposed movie stars to rub shoulders with each other and then give each other awards. The rest of us, sadly enough, weren’t actually invited. And if we showed up, we’d be arrested and escorted off to some place where we would never bother the rich and famous again.

A bunch of movies were up for awards. A bunch of people who were in those movies were up for awards. Supposedly, songs that were sung or played in those movies also got put up for awards. In the end, very rich people rewarded each other on national television and gave speeches about how humble and wonderful they are. The rest of us, because we’re essentially peasants in comparison to the rich and famous, were allowed to watch them on television and cheer them on. If we were lucky, we could go to one of their movies and spend $10 to see how wonderful they were.

That’s kind of why I don’t care about the Academy Awards. It’s a hoo ha kind of show that’s designed around rewarding people who have somehow elevated movies to something more significant than Nobel Prizes every year, where someone’s movie gets more media exposure than a brilliant writer or peace champion who has risked life to make the world safer for others to live in. Movie stars and that crowd have elevated themselves to the new royalty, except they have basically done nothing different than wandering minstrels used to do only centuries before, except the wandering minstrels were usually chased out of town once they used up the local charity.

I don’t hate movies. I love watching good movies, and I recommend good ones to all of my friends. But I don’t worship the people who make them or who star in them. Okay, maybe Woody Allen in his day and perhaps Sean Connery in his, but that’s about it. Today’s stars are somewhat irrelevant to me, as I don’t find any of them to be all that impressive. I find most of them interchangeable, and quite often unrecognizable. Whereas people used to lust after the next appearance of Marilyn Monroe or the next movie starring Humphrey Bogart, that doesn’t happen anymore. Today’s stars are insignificant and overhyped. We spend more time trying to know about their personal lives than we ever did before, mainly because I don’t think people are all that interested in their movie star appearances any longer. None of them have the sustaining power to cause us to jump up for joy as we used to do in Alfred Hitchcock’s day.

This is why I don’t care about the Academy Awards. They’re generic, overhyped and irrelevant. During yesterday’s show, the studio heads tried so hard to hype the show for the youth of the world by showcasing two younger actors, and it fizzled and died. People just didn’t care. The days of Bob Hope or Johnny Carson headlining the Academy Awards are gone, mainly because the interest in the vehicle died a long time ago.

Last night, I watched the last four episodes of the 6th season of Weeds, a show that was so much more enjoyable than anything that might have occurred during the Academy Awards. And this wasn’t even their best season of Weeds.

Part of the problem is that we stopped making great movies and now just make movies. Generic movies. Boring movies. Remakes of remakes of movies. And we pretend its all new and fascinating. We have our “stars” go on talk shows and talk up how great their current projects are, even though they’re talking about a remake of Batman, or whatever generic intellectual property comes to mind. Creativity is gone, mainly because Hollywood tends to think that writers are afterthoughts, something you call in after the “geniuses” run out of ideas. And then every now and then one great glimmer of hope will show up, and then be milked to death before anyone can think of something creative to do with it.

That’s why I stopped watching the Academy Awards. Hopefully, things will get better one day, but I’ve been saying that for a few decades now, and it hasn’t happened.

I don’t have a lot of hope that things will.

What’s Going on with Duane These Days? Could it be transmogrification?

Memoirs, , ,

I realized just a little while ago that almost all of my posts have been about something, rather than about me. I know that sounds a little strange, but what that means is that I haven’t really updated what’s going on with me these days. So, I thought I would clear that up, even if I’m the only one who seems to be reading what I have to say anyway.

First off, I’m still at the hospital. My job hasn’t changed, even though I keep hearing that it might. That’s been one of those songs that’s been playing on repeat over and over again to the point where I’ll believe it when I see it.

My writing isn’t really moving all that forward these days, which does bother me. It’s not because I’m not interested in writing, but because I’ve gotten really frustrated with the whole writing business industry. I have written so much, but my writing career isn’t doing anything. Instead, I keep seeing really crappy books being published by celebrities and people who shouldn’t be writing. My writing is actually very good, and I just can’t seem to get an inroad into an actual career. So my career has kind of stalled, mainly because even though I believe in myself, I don’t believe in the publishing industry any more. I haven’t given up, but I’m not really actively seeking success either.

I may be taking the LSAT in June and then possibly enrolling in law school in September. It’s all kind of up in the air right now, but I’m really bored. And that causes me to either just jump ship and do something stupid, or to think about it and try to do something constructive. This time around, I’ll try something constructive. I’m trying to save up money so I can afford tuition, as I can’t really borrow any more money through the government, nor would I even if I could. I figure three or four years later, I’ll have a law degree. Not the quickest route, but hey, doing nothing doesn’t get me anywhere closer either.

I bought a keyboard (music kind) a few weeks ago, and I’ve been playing around with that lately. It complements my electric guitar, so even though I’m never going to be a great virtuoso or famous singer, at least I can play around with the instruments and explore my creativity. Like my writing, I don’t believe in any industry backing me up on anything I do, so I’ll be creating music for myself. Everyone else can really go screw themselves, for all I care.

Other than that, I’m working on teaching myself how to write a decent screenplay. I have a few movie project ideas in my head, including the one that Chris is working on, so once I get through this book, I’ll sit down and start constructing. We’ll see what happens from there. Like I said, I have a few projects right in front of me right now, so we’ll see what I can do with those. I know the movie industry really sucks for writers, so I’m not putting a lot of stock in any type of career there. I’m more about the creativity anyway.

Other than that, I’m teaching two classes at Grand Rapids Community College (political science and interpersonal communication). Nothing really all that brilliant there as both classes are introductory courses. Half the time, I’m convinced none of my students care one iota about what’s going on in those classes, so I show up each day and hope that something will rub off on them. One student told me she thought I was a great teacher, and I guess I’m so screwed up these days that I attribute it to brown-nosing rather than sincerity. Yeah, I see the whole negativity thing, too. That doesn’t make it go away. It’s like the old adage on paranoia (“just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean the world isn’t out to get me”).

That’s about it. I consider my current existence in life as an outsider watching a television show about a television show that’s about real people. Because I’m just an observer on the outside, I get the distinct impression that nothing I do makes a difference, and no one really cares what I do or don’t do, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their own agendas. I’ve stopped believing I’m significant or that I really have anything of importance to contribute to this world any more. I feel more like a shadow that sometimes gets noticed by others who tolerate me because they notice me there sometimes but wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t. Other times, I feel like a writing Van Gogh, scoffed at by the neighbors while trying to create masterpieces that aren’t recognized enough to get me a drink at the local bar in trade. I often wonder if that realization was what finally caused Van Gogh to commit suicide at the end there, convinced he was fooling himself into believing he had something significant to contribute but suspecting that he was only fooling himself.

Anyway, that’s my rambling for now. Nothing great. Nothing horrible. Just a blah existence leading into a blah circumspection. Oh, and I wanted to say transmogrification. I didn’t really have anything to say about the word, but it’s a really cool word that I’ve been itching to put into a sentence, so there it is, even if it really doesn’t have any signficant context. Cool words rarely need to. Transmogrification, I say, and thus I have.

What it All Comes Down to

Computer Games, Economics, Memoirs, Movies, Politics, Social Networking, Television, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I guess it’s time for another update on what’s going on, what’s on my mind, and where I think things are going.

1. My Readership. I suspect I really don’t have anyone reading this blog (my main one). It gets printed also on Open Salon, which might grant me a few readers there, but even there it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not anyone actually reads (or cares about) anything I have to say. I also import my blogs to my Facebook profile, and even though I have a bunch of “friends” there, I suspect practically no one reads anything I have to say there either.

It’s a real problem for a writer who wants to be taken seriously when no one reads anything he has to say. It gets really frustrating. I mean, Snooki can write a book and it becomes a bestseller based on her outrageous behavior alone, but a consistent writer generally has to kill someone in order to get anyone to read his stuff. And they wonder why so many literary types kill themselves before they ever become famous, often discovered after they blew their brains out over the frustration of trying to actually make it as a writer or an artist.

This means when I post my blog, I get tons of traffic, but I suspect it’s a bunch of bots that are trying to get people to buy their shit rather than actual people reading my blog. My spam filter logs dozens of spam messages a day, which are all the type that say something like: “Read your posting, and I completely agree with you. You should try out this new version of sex medication which can be found at….” Yeah, it gets really annoying and frustrating.

But just because I suspect one of my stuffed animals might be reading this by tapping into my wifi at home, I’ll continue….

2. Snow. I really hate it. I do. I’m not from Michigan, even though I live here. I’m from California, and if I could afford to live there or could have ever found a job there, I would be there right now. I hate the snow. I hate the cold. I turned on my heater two nights ago for the first time (been using an electrical set of heaters all Winter long), and it was so much nicer than just being able to heat up one small room, and not very well either. Even though my electrical heater could get the room up to about 70 or so, it felt like it was 45. I’m now using my real heater, even though it’s expensive as hell. But I can’t take the cold any more. I really hate it here.

3. The Whole Nook vs. Kindle Debate. I’ve written a few articles on this because I bought both a Nook Color and the $189 Kindle 3G + Wifi. I’ve completely given up on the Nook. I had two subscriptions to magazines with the Nook Color (Consumer Reports and the New York Times Book Review). I gave up trying to get the Nook to download Consumer Reports. It would start to download and then just stop. I would check the wifi signal, and it would register as fine. After three days of trying to download a magazine I already paid for, I gave up, cancelled my subscriptions and I will never use the Nook again. Contest over. The Kindle wins. It might not look as nice, but at least I can actually get content onto it. The Nook Color is a piece of shit that should never have been sold to people. I will never recommend it to anyone ever again.

4. Egypt. Things are probably going to get really interesting now that Mubarak went on the air and basically told the protesters: “I hear you, but I just wanted to say go fuck yourselves. Have a nice day.” He’s decided that even though people are out in the streets risking their lives, he’s not leaving. The Army has now backed him, which means that one of two things are probably going to happen. They’ll crack down on the protesters, and this will be one of those sorry moments in human history that people try to forget when talking about how great a people we are, or the people are going to end up going the way of the French Revolution, overthrowing the government and killing Mubarak if he doesn’t escape out of the country first. If you’re a dictator, and you pretty much give the finger to your people when they demand you step down, you really don’t have a lot of options that can play out from that moment on. I mean, all sorts of things can happen, but right now, it’s going to be a slaughter of people unless a whole lot of people back down, and when people are backed into a corner, they usually strike back instead of back down. Unless they’re Americans. Then they either sue you or back down and say that they want to spend more time with their families.

5. Relationships. I don’t know anything about this subject. I’m not in one. I don’t recognize one when I am in one. I don’t even know what women are, although I see movies with them in it, so I do believe they might exist, although I can’t verify it in person.

6. Politics in the USA. We’re going to be heading towards another presidential election with no electable people in the Republican Party, a current president who has done nothing to be reelected, other than make arousing speeches that don’t translate to actual action, and a whole lot of self-important politicians who think they deserve to be the next leaders of the free (in theory, at least) world. Right now, the front runners for the Republican Party seem to be Sarah Palin (the joke that keeps giving), Newt Gingrich (a pompous airbag that comes installed as standard equipment), a just-announced “I’m seriously considering it” Donald Trump (another rich buffoon who thinks that being rich translates to leadership potential), and a bunch of other people no one knows, has ever heard of, or cares one iota about whatsoever. So, right now, I’m calling it a boring presidential election where we reelect Jimmy Carter, um, Obama.

7. The Academy Awards. A bunch of movies I didn’t see, don’t want to see, and don’t care about, are competing for the top honors this year. As you can guess, I’m holding my breath in anticipation.

8. SyFy Becomes Shark Attack Channel. I don’t know when this happened, but my favorite channel (I remember actually asking a television station provider if they carried the SyFy Channel and not caring about any others) went from being a station with original science fiction programming with shows like Stargate SG1. Atlantis, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Battlestar Galactica (then Caprica), some variation of Star Trek, and lots of that sort of stuff. Now, it’s Man-Killing Shark and really bizarre movie of the week crap that stars Erik Estrada as a small town sheriff who is fighting a shark that has grown feet and chases people on the beach, but Estrada, who plays Skip William, is afraid of sharks because a shark killed his family in a drive-by shooting in Compton. Okay, that’s not a real show, but it should be. Who stole my SyFy Channel?

9. The Federal Budget is Out of Control. Um, when has it ever not been? We’re approaching the debt ceiling in February, when they told us that if we didn’t do things right, we’d be hitting that debt ceiling by September. Um, it’s FEBRUARY and we’re already arguing for having to increase the limit. And this is the government that’s trying to FIX the economy? Really?

10. Facebook Went Public. I laughed my ass off when I heard it was going to happen. If ever there was a bubble corporation that has absolutely no value whatsoever being sold for so many billions, I couldn’t find one. At least GM makes cars. At least Microsoft puts out a browser or operating system every now and then. But what does Facebook actually produce? Your content. Your friends. Your information. In other words, not a damn thing. Yet, they’re bad boy of leadership is now a multi-billionaire, and they’ve been launched as a fake IPO (a real one wasn’t done because the SEC would have hit them with all sorts of legal injunctions, which should automatically tell everyone something’s not on the up and up, but even that doesn’t cause people to take notice). Yeah, I use Facebook, but it’s such a non-entity in the grand scheme of things and is really only as important as it is at any one moment, knowing that it can go the way of Myspace in a second. Or like AOL, which still tries to regain some importance. Or sadly, like Blockbuster, that sad commentary of a video rental store that hasn’t realized it was obsolete ten years ago.

11. Verizon’s iPhone. Finally. Not that I want an iPhone on Verizon, but now I don’t have to read 10,000 stories manufactured by CNN about how great it would be to have the iPhone on Verizon. It’s there now. Leave me alone and stop hyping the stupid thing on your news site. Nobody really cares, as we discovered when no one lined up at the early Verizon Store openings that day, letting the event come and go without much fanfare. Nobody really cared.

12. Groupon’s Super Bowl Ad. All of the people who are upset about this incident don’t want to even deal with the ramifications of what really happened. First off, they all got upset at the ad where Groupon poked fun at itself by using the controversy of China and Tibet as its canvas. Well, here’s what they’re not getting, won’t get, and especially won’t ever own up to. The humor went over their heads. Not that they didn’t get it. It went OVER their heads, meaning they had to be smart enough to realize what was going on. Consider the source. It came from the direction of Christopher Guest, who is well known for creating comedy that not everyone gets, mainly because it pokes fun at people who are on stage and represents entire groups of people who when they watch it don’t always realize they’re being seen as the morons they really are because they’re so locked into their own little worlds that they are incapable of realizing the rest of the world sees them as ridiculous. It was the exact same humor used with Groupon, and of course, the people watching it were not Christopher Guest fans. They were Super Bowl fans, which I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we’re talking about two completely different intellectual mindsets here. Fill in the blanks to figure out which one I’m probably insulting here. I don’t really care. I’m not selling ads. Those people just didn’t get it and went nuts against Groupon. Why am I not surprised? I’m also not surprised that no one else is either.

13. Lindsay Lohan’s Theft Charge. Okay, I’ll admit it. I enjoy reading about the many demises of Lindsay Lohan. I don’t know her, I’m not a fan, and I probably shouldn’t care. But it’s like watching a train wreck happen in front of me. I probably should call 911 for help, but I can’t stop watching. I don’t get the same trill out of Charlie Sheen. Nothing about him fascinates me, nor does his drama. Lohan’s, on the other hand, completely fascinates me because I keep thinking that ir probably won’t get any worse, and then it does. I don’t even think she stole the thing, but that’s not even what keeps me interested. What keeps me interested is how someone can take her fame and continue to destroy her career, her future and any support from the community that she might ever have. Just the other day, her legal team says that it’s not going to deal with the allegations in public; they’ll deal with it in court. Then the first day of the trial, Lohan tweets her whole ordeal to the public, trying it out in the public again, even though that’s exactly what they said they wouldn’t do.

I can’t stop watching.

14. Writing. I’m taking a break from my current novel and working on a screenplay. Then I’ll be working on a word text game app that I’m designing for the android platform. I realized recently that there aren’t a whole lot of word text games out there any more, and I think it would be fun to create a new one. I remember how fun they were to create back when we were first designing computer games for the early systems, before graphics took over the industry.

That’s really it for now. If you’re actually reading this, let me know. I’d really like to know that there are people actually reading the blog.

The Struggle of the Independent Film Creator

Movies, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Small Change Movie 

I have a friend of mine who makes movies. They’re independent films, but at the same time they’re very well done and obviously put together by someone who understands how to make movies. The interesting thing is that he’s relatively unknown, and the chances are pretty good that he will be completely unknown for the rest of his career. But not because he’s not any good. It’s because independent movie makers generally have about zero percent chance of making it these days.

He’s currently in the process of completing his latest film, which he made for about $15,000. Now, if you didn’t make movies, you might think that’s a lot of money. I mean, it’s more money than I have to spend. I mean, let’s face it: With my expenses for online porn, I really don’t have a lot of money to spend on anything else. Oh wait, did I say that out loud?

Anyway, he’s made a few movies before that didn’t do very well because there’s a certain amount of stigma that comes with being an independent film producer. Those of us who watch movies are very critical, and for some reason, we want high-quality, big budget productions, even when the movies being made aren’t big budget productions that can afford to have such high-quality. Yet, we expect it, so if a movie doesn’t blow $15 Million on its budget, we’re probably not going to watch it.

Which means, fewer and fewer independent films get made. Which also means we get more and more crappy remakes because Hollywood has never really been all that innovative when it closes off the spigot of new visions, which often can’t afford such budgets.

Think about one of the biggest independent successes in our time: Clerks. It was made on a shoestring budget that was essentially paid for on the director’s credit card. Granted, he made it back in huge returns, but most independent movie directors don’t succeed that way. Generally, they go into serious debt, pawn the car and then live the rest of their lives in dire destitution.

The old way of breaking into the industry was to do a shoestring budget film and then have it shown at one of the independent film festivals. Well, if you notice the current crop of movies that show up at these independent film festivals, you might be interested to know that the definition of “independent” is becoming very skewed lately. Nowadays, big stars figure on breaking out of their connections to the big studios, so they fund huge independent films, and THAT is what shows up at these festivals. The low budget guy has been forced out by the big names with deep pockets that make movies often with venture capital funding.

Our ability to see new ideas is slowly being turned off so that the future is going to be nothing but Explosion Man VII types of presentations.

My friend is currently trying to do all of the work that big budget films have hundreds of people doing the work. It’s kind of amazing to see how he goes through such stress just to try to get his movie into its first movie theater.

Is it a perfect movie? Probably not. I mean, what film ever is. But it’s probably going to be something different than what you normally get to see. And it’s completely independent, and unfortunately it’s part of an endangered species that we could easily support by actively looking for independent features and supporting them. But we won’t because we’re finicky movie watchers, wanting stuff that’s only perfect and highly produced with lots of Hollywood money. And that’s why we’ll lose in the end. It’s like appreciating a mom and pop store, but never going there, always shopping at the local Wal Mart and talking about how we have to do something to save the local mom and pop stores. Sadly, so many people do exactly that.

So, here’s your chance. I guarantee that somewhere in your community someone is trying to get an independent movie seen. Support that person or lose that creativity forever. I mean, it really is your choice, and in a day where we don’t even get to choose who we get to vote for, you have to grab onto those little opportunities while you can. Or you lose them. But remember, it was your choice.

(the image is of the poster for Small Change, the independent movie that was the impetus of this article)

Independent Productions and How They May Be the Survival of the Future

Computer Games, Movies, Writing, , , , , , , , ,

Over the years, there has been a tendency to avoid the big budget productions of numerous fields and focus on independent producers. This has helped us find some really innovative creators out there in numerous areas, including film, writing, software development and music. But part of the problem has always been twofold: First, an independent producer has very little money to draw upon, limiting the outcome of the product being produced, and second, because the production has little marketability due to a lack of a budget to handle that, almost no one knows the production is happening in the first place.

But several little productions have managed to go big time regardless of the obstacles placed in their way. Although we know that the big studios make the big bucks, every now and then a little guy creates something so good with almost no budget that that person becomes one of the big guys almost overnight. We saw that with Kevin Smith and Clerks. With music, it’s happening every day with overnight sensations showing up and overwhelming the studio produced big names. What’s so cool about it is that it happens so fast that the big guys can’t do anything about it, and it’s always nice when the underdog wins big time.

But this isn’t about underdogs becoming big. There’s enough of that in every Slumdog Millionaire story out there. What I do want to talk abut is how we’ve sort of forgotten that a lot of these big studios that control everything really were nobodies a short time ago, yet because they managed to rise to the top, they want to control pretty much everything else in their realm of creativity. Let’s talk about a few of them.

Apple and Microsoft. Go back twenty years, and they were both essentially operations created in someone’s garage. While they may or may not have made their mark stealing technology from other people, discounting that as significant, what is important to point out is that they are now the big boys on the block, and they are doing everything physically possible to control the marketshare when it comes to their corners of the software and hardware universes. Think about it for a moment. These guys started from nothing and are huge colossus behemoths now. Why can’t someone else come along and replace them? Well, aside from patent control by these entities, there’s really nothing stopping anyone else from rising up just as well.

The big book companies appear to have been around forever, but they haven’t been. They rose up not that long ago, and they’ve been trying to control the market ever since. Amazon is probably the biggest book seller in the world right now, and it came along after Apple and Microsoft, and is competing against them. I still remember Amazon’s first ads where they tried to play like they were this really, really big bookstore and were looking to lease space to hold all of their books. It was a cute joke, but they have become nothing but massive since those days. But why can’t someone else show up and do it again?

Game software development is probably the one area I know the most about because I was in this business from the beginning, and surprisingly a second generation is now on the scene that doesn’t remember how things actually took place. In the 1980s, software developers were creating games on floppy disks, copying them, and then selling them in little plastic sandwich bags. I’m not kidding. That’s how the gaming software industry was created. Some of the largest companies of today were doing that sort of thing, including Electronic Arts and a whole group of others that have risen and fallen (and quite a few have been bought by EA). But what’s interesting is that as more and more of these software behemoths keep announcing that PC gaming is dead. what I don’t think they realize is that as they do more and more to piss off their customers (which they are doing a lot of these days), the more likely they are going to make it that people are going to go back to the beginning and start creating their own games and distributing them much like we used to do before (although probably through easier online distribution). Look at Zynga. This is a company that came out of nowhere, and now is one of the big boys.

The point of this post is that I don’t think the big guys realize how vulnerable they still are, even as they try to completely control the market they currently dominate. A friend of mine recently made a full length movie for about $20,000. I was watching a special on independent movies, and some small studio guy said that it was impossible to make a movie for less than a few million these days. Even the guy who made the $20,000 movie keeps saying almost the same thing. But people are doing it. And I think that’s what’s going to completely change the industry because what we’re seeing is a lot of studio people who don’t know anything different. They’ve been taught that you have to have millions to make a movie, or it can’t be done. But then someone comes along and makes one for thousands, and everyone just shakes their heads and says, “wow, never saw that happening.” That’s what happens with revolutionary change. No one ever sees it happening.

And I suspect that this is going to be happening a lot more soon. Book companies are about to be hit big time by e-readers, and innovative people with little money are going to see a way to get rid of the producer middlemen and make the industries brand new again. But no one will see it coming because they’ll be so focused on RIAA lawsuits and maintaining control over their little fiefdoms, that they’ll never realize how insignificant they’ve become.

So keep your eyes open, or start producing independently, because it’s going to happen. Unfortunately, everyone is so tied into the current paradigm that they’ll never believe it until they’ve become completely replaced and discarded.

When a GREAT book is made into a movie

Television, Writing, , , , ,

I have always been a fan of espionage writer Ken Follett. Although he’s written a few books I didn’t care for, like the Modigliani Scandal, which is a horrible book in my opinion, he’s also written some of the greatest thrillers of our time, like Eye of the Needle and Key to Rebecca. But a few years back, after a hiatus where we didn’t see much from Follett, he came out with an unassuming book called Pillars of the Earth. Unlike any of his previous work, this was an historical novel that follows the adventures of a mason who has the solitary desire of building a cathedral in medieval England. The characters he creates in that story are brilliant, and the long-reaching arc he employs in the craft of the story is masterful. It has easily become one of the t0p books on my list of books to recommend ovre the years. Recently, he released a sequel to the book, World Without End, and it, too, was a wonderful book.

Well, they’ve finally come around to making a TV movie out of the first book, and I’ve been torn about this. Some books I’m fine with being turned into a movie because they were okay books, and I was curious to see what they would do with it. But when a masterpiece is turned into a movie, I’m very apprehensive about watching it, because no amount of casting, screenwriting and cinematography can do justice to a masterpiece.

Now, I’ve been wrong with this a few times, like with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Great movies, and they complemented the great books and didn’t diminish them in any way. Other than Excaliber, which isn’t really a movie about a book but of an entire concept, I’m torn on finding another one that was as successful an adaptation as Lord of the Rings was. I don’t think there’s a single movie out there based on a book where I haven’t been disappointed. Okay, maybe Star Wars, but the book was more based on the movie (even though I know the book was written first), so it didn’t really have that sort of problem.

On the other hand, I know there are so many people out there who will never take the time to read a book that is over 1000 pages long, no matter how good it is. So this might be the only chance for them to ever experience the world that Follett created. But it leaves me thinking that so many people will come away from the experience thinking they read the book, or managed to do enough, that the book is no longer necessary to read. It reminds me of the dorks in school who would be assigned to read a book in a literature class and then at the last minute watch the movie, thinking they got the whole experience of the book. And they would write their report on the movie, pretending they read the book. And it was so obvious they got a limited interpretation of the book (the screenwriter’s interpretation). It used to really bug me because they’d think they “got away with it” when they really missed the reason the book was assigned in the first place.

So, I’m torn as to whether or not I’ll watch the movie. But secretly I want to see what they did with it, but internally I keep feeling that if I see it, and I hate it, then it might forever taint my enjoyment of the book that I once had. Probably not, but it’s always something to think about.

Why E-Readers Just Won’t Take Hold in America

Movies, Television, Writing, , , ,

There’s been a lot of hype over the last couple of  months because of the emergence of the IPAD, which has been predicted to usher in a new age of reading. This has caused all of the other e-reader makers to ramp up their business models, each one of them vying for the ultimate control of this incoming market. But I have bad news for all of them. That market’s not coming. Sorry, but it’s not.

You see, there’s a funny thing happening on the way to the the emerging market. There’s been an interesting fantasy that’s been playing out in the American public that is somewhat identical to the reason why so many Americans are fat. Every now and then, we look in the mirror and realize we’re fat, so we tell ourselves (and everyone around us) we’re going to go on a diet. And for a few days, we feel good about ourselves. And then we order that hot fudge sundae for dessert, and well, the diet kind of goes away. Oh, we rationalize it with promises of future exercise, but we know deep down that we’re going to go back to our old ways. And we do. Then we continue to get fat, and then we suddenly wake up, look in the mirror and then announce we’re going on a diet. Rinse. Repeat.

That’s what’s happening with E-readers. For the longest time, the majority of Americans stopped reading. We started watching TV, playing video games and doing anything but anything intellectual. Our reading output in this country is abysmal, and we know it. But every now and then, we promise to start reading again, and we go to the bookstore and buy lots of interesting books that we put on a shelf and never read. Oh, we might start reading, but then something else comes along and we stop. Rinse. Repeat.

So, when the E-reader came along, we all jumped up with joy and said we’d start reading books now because they’d be easier to read. So people went out and bought IPADs. I’m guessing that after the new car smell disappeared from the devices, they stopped being the most important carry item for those planning to read. Or they started using them for other reasons.

In a few months, publishers are going to start wondering what happened to that emerging market of electronic books. Sure, some will sell, but nowhere near the amount that was promised when this new technology was going to usher in a new era of reading.

You see, on the surface and deep down, we’re kind of lazy. Some of us read a lot. Most of us don’t. But we won’t tell you that because everyone wants everyone else to think we’re all little Einsteins walking around with encyclopedias for brains.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I suspect I’m not. But one can hope for better results than the usual expectations. As a writer, it bothers me that more of my country folk don’t read. But what can I do? Our medium of communication is movies and television. And even in those areas we aren’t all that impressive as we tend to focus more on reality programming and sports programming than anything else.

But that’s why E-readers probably won’t take hold in America. We’re too busy pretending to diet while watching people getting voted off the island.

Some updates, cause you know you can’t live without them….

Computer Games, Movies, Politics, , , , , ,

1. Blizzard changed its mind. I wrote recently about game companies jumping the shark, and how Blizzard Entertainment was making a seriously, horrible mistake by intituting REAL ID on its customers. The customers went nuts and protested until they practically couldn’t do it any more. The CEO of Blizzard wrote a Blog Post in which he stated, “um, sorry, we hear ya and we’re not going to do what we said we were going to do.” Wise move, and you have to admire the maturity of a company for knowing when it needs to take a step back and reconsider an action. The whole thing was obviously about trying to capitalize on their customers and make insane profits above their already normal INSANE profits, but fortunately they didn’t derail their whole company to try to increase their profit.

2. Stupid politicians. I hate political season, which seems to be almost year round these days. This morning, I was on the shuttle bus when I heard a campaign ad that essentially went something like: “Michigan is suffering badly. It’s performing the worst in the entire country. So send Justin Amash to Washington to fix things!” Or something as stupid as that. Basically, I’m thinking, um, Michigan has problems, so sending a State Representative to Washington is NOT a solution. It means sending someone from a messed up state to Washington to make a messed up country. Sometimes, I think these people just don’t think these things through. It’s not Washington they’re complaining about in that ad. It’s Michigan, so unless their plan is to send Amash OUT OF MICHIGAN TO FIX MICHIGAN because he’s responsible for screwing things up, I don’t really see the point.

3. Stupid corporate contest campaigns. Pepsi is running one right now that involves Major League Baseball. The point is: You collect bottle caps until you have three of them that match, and then you send them in for a free baseball cap. Really? That’s it? I’ve had about 40 diet Pepsis that are part of this campaign, and today was the first time I actually got one that was a duplicate of another (meaning I got two of the three I need). Now, mathematically, I didn’t even think that made sense, but I don’t even have three of the same, and I’ve already gone through 40 sodas. Stupid contest, and the pay off is equally stupid. For the 50 or 60 sodas I’ll need to drink, at least give me the chance to win something cool. Oh, and every now and then I get a cap that offers me 15% off of MLB crap. Really? And read the fine print. It is valid ONLY if you buy $75 worth of stuff. I don’t think there’s $75 worth of MLB junk I would ever want in the first place, regardless of the discount.

4. Movies. They’ve sucked lately. This whole summer should have been discontinued. Not a single movie really worth the money. And the prices of movie are astronomical. No good news on that front at all.

That’s really all for now.

The Hurt Locker…an interesting peek into the abyss and shopping for cereal

Movies, Television, , , ,

I finally got a chance to watch Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker over the weekend. It was interesting to see a movie that covers the military in a way that doesn’t seem like it’s a miltary advertisement (I’m looking at you Transformers 2) or a condemnation (I’m looking at pretty much every Iraqi movie that’s been made so far).

The story is pretty simple. It’s about an EOD specialist whose main job is to defuse bombs. His team works as back-up to him, and the movie follows the events he and his team experience during a rotation in Iraq.

What really stuck out to me was the “team” emphasis the movie explores. This is one of those nuances that happen within the Army involving specialized groups, specifically those with a set mission that rarely can be handled by a regular unit. The main character is a former Ranger, and his team consists of a former mission intelligence sergeant and a specialist-ranked noobie who is pretty much learning his place in the greater scheme of things. I think it covered the specialized nature of the team very well, and it was interesting to see it carried out on film where there was little attempt to glorify it or diminish it with some stupidity (like Platoon, which while it was a decent film ended up focusing on dysfunction rather than function).

One thing that really hit me hard with this movie is a very soft scene after a return to the U.S. when the character is asked by his wife Kate (or whatever her name was…she was played by Evangeline Lilly, the woman who plays Kate in LOST, and she was honestly the only actor in the entire movie I recognized) to find a box of cereal in a supermarket where they’re shopping. This man who is so perfect in a world where it may end at a moment’s notice with people all around him who might be trying to kill him, stands in front of the entire aisle of boxes of cereal and can’t move because he’s overwhelmed by the choices in front of him. This is the sort of person who spends his every moment deciding between green and blue wires (the Hollywood equivalent of a bomb defusion choice, which THANK YOU was not an issue ONCE in this very well done movie), and he was unable to choose a simple box of cereal. That one moment brought the reality of this fictionalized world home for me, and I’ve never seen it done so well.

In the end, I think the movie is deserving of the awards is received. Granted, I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that it was up against a lot of dismal films that year, which is becoming more of a norm than an exception. Even though that was the year of Avatar, a very visual film, at least the Academy recognized that that was ALL it had going for it.

The acting was done well, and the writing was what should be expected from a Hollywood film of this magnitude. Strangely enough, I had trouble finding any acknowledgement of the writing from the closing credits, although it might have flown by me and I didn’t realize it. I was looking for it, however, and was somewhat annoyed that everyone else and his brother was acknowledged, but the writing didn’t seem to be all that important to the makers of the credits.

I Want a Hollywood Romance…or an East Berlin one at least

Movies, , ,

Every now and then I put a movie into my Netflix queue that leaves me wondering months later, what was I thinking? That happened last night when I finally got around to watching a movie that was in my queue called Wings of Desire. To be honest, I don’t know how that movie got into my queue because it certainly doesn’t match any criteria I attribute to movies I tend to add. Going down my checklist, there were no hot Asian women in leather jumpsuits who do Kung Fu, Arnold wasn’t seen once carrying a huge bazooka and chomping on a cigar, not a single Starfleet communicator chirped once during the movie, and even more important, not a single French clown cried at all during the two hours and seven minutes this movie aired (although it was one of those movies where it could have happened at any moment).

The movie was a several hour poetic metaphor on the meaninglessness of life. The two main characters were male angels who seemed to spend the entire movie walking around 1987 East Berlin listening to the mindless rantings of humans who lived in a state of black and white despair. During their wanderings, they seemed to latch onto a huge library that resembled the one from The Breakfast Club, where they went person to person and listened to their inner thoughts. One of their focuses was an old man who supposedly was writing the great American novel in East Berlin, so I guess it was the great German novel. The old man kept talking about how he was the only one who could write down the story, and that without him all of humanity was doomed. And I thought I took myself seriously as a writer!

There are two other main characters that the angels attach themselves to. One of them is a beautiful woman who happens to be a trapeze artist for a circus that is going out of business. This is where I kept waiting for the inevitable crying French clown, but he never showed up. The other character was Peter Falk (of Columbo fame) who was playing none other than Peter Falk who happened to be in East Berlin filming a movie that seemed to be about a couple of guys who have a fist fight in a beat up building that has no roof. I was reminded of the great operatic, Tempest like story that was mentioned by Danny Devito in Throw Mama From the Train, which he describes as “a man with a hat kills another man with a hat.” But I digress. Without getting too far into a plot I still don’t understand (my understanding is that you need a Ph.d in this particular movie to actually understand more than 5 percent of it), let’s just say that Peter Falk plays himself and just so happens to be a fallen angel himself who guides one of the angels after he decides to become human.

And the reason the angel decides to become human is because he falls in love with the trapeze artist. And that’s what I wanted to talk about with this post. You see, when he finally becomes human and can experience love, he goes into this punk rock music hall she goes to every night and sits at the bar while the “concert” is going on. I won’t describe the music, other than it was the most bizarre music rendition of punk I’ve ever seen, and all I can say is that I believe the director had to be a fan, or the lead singer was his son, or something like that, because I spent more time trying to figure out how the lead guitarist was actually producing the sounds that were coming from his musical device. Anyway, the beautiful trapeze artist leaves the music area and goes into the bar where the angel is sitting, plops down on the seat next to him, and then begins to explain for the next twenty minutes why she is empty inside and needs to find the solution to pi or something like that. To be honest, I had trouble following what she was saying because it had to be the longest data dump I’ve ever experienced from one individual. The angel said nothing, and when it was done, he kissed her, and somehow they managed to live their entire lives metaphorically forever together.

And this got me thinking, how come East Berlin women don’t sit down next to me in bars, pour their heart out to me for about twenty minutes without me having to say anything, and then we live happily ever after? Is it because I don’t know Peter Falk? Do you have to be an angel to make this happen? Or am I missing something here. How come when a woman like that sits down next to me, and I say, “hi, I’m Duane” it’s usually followed up with: “Oh, I have a boyfriend.”?

Movies like this keep making me think that somehow I just haven’t got it all figured out, and that bothers me. Is something this epic only possible if you happen to live in some Communist country that is about to transition to democracy and future unification? Where are all the unemployed trapeze artists that I seem to be seeking?

Anyway, interesting movie. I’d recommend it if there had been a crying French clown involved. Not surprisingly, there are too few movies being made these days with crying French clowns. And that’s just sad.