Remake Hell

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I am not one of those movie watchers who decry the very concept of remaking a film. Quite the contrary, there are several films where the remake is the classic that we revere to this very day. 1941’s The Maltese Falcon was the third adaptation of the novel, while The Thing from 1982 is a wonderful and unique adaptation of the source material while leaving the original film version standing as its own version and a classic. This applies to foreign film remade into English language version as well with Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia crafting a better film than the 1997 Norwegian production. There are also films crying out for a new version, such as Starship Troopers, which while having its fans, so thoroughly inverts the themes and point of the novel as to be like an adaptation of 1984 that crafts Big Brother as the hero.

But, with all that said, there are certainly mountains of remakes that exist for no purpose and that terribly miss the mark, skill, and heights of the films that they imitate. The made for television version of Double Indemnity drops a crucial subplot and an entire act and spends its time with a lifeless cast that only serve to remind the audience why John Huston once proclaimed that he solves 90 percent of his problems by casting the film correctly.

Last night my sweetie-wife and I began watching the 2016 production of Ben-Hur on Amazon Prime. This, like the ’41 Maltese Falcon is the third adaptation of the 1880 novel by Lew Wallace, the first being a silent film from the ’20s and the well-known and massive production which made a star of Charlton Heston from 1959. We decided to watch this 2016 version because we are fans of the director, Timur Bekmambetov who directed the Russian fantasy/horror film Nightwatch. We have watched about half of this Ben-Hur and while we will complete the movie I can already announce that it is a terrible remake that missed the point of the story and presents the audience with visuals that are meant to excite but instead provoke, at least in me, laughter, such as oar-powered galleys judging by the bow-wake that are slicing through the seas at nearly twenty knots.

In the sprawling story of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ Judah Ben-Hur and the Roman Messala are friends closer than brothers, torn apart when Messala, made the military commander of the local legion, demands the names of Jews agitating against Rome and Ben-Hur refuses. Messala, following an accident that nearly kills the Roman governor of Judea, condemns Ben-Hur to enslavement aboard a galley. By a circuitous sequence of events Ben-Hur returns years later burning with hatred and a thirst for revenge for the treatment of his family at the cruelty of Roman occupation and even the death of Messala was unable to lift the hate from his heart. However, witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion transforms Juda Ben-Hur, making him a believer in the Christ and turning him away from hatred and revenge.

This version’s Judah Ben-Hur begins as a pacifist making the presumed ending as a return to baseline rather than a transformation of a hate filled man into a devout Christian. The accident from the source is changed into an actual assassination attempt with Ben-Hur giving the would-be killer time to escape, changing an unjust political conviction into one that can only be judged as fair considering Ben-Hur’s guilt in not turning the man over. The entire revenge plot of the story, both in the novel and in the previous adaptation turns on the fact that Ben-Hur and his family were actually innocent, removing that element weakens the story beyond measure.

Beyond the changes to the plot, the 2016 movie only throws into sharp relief the genius of the 1959 film. Director William Wyler never showed the face or allowed the audience to hear the voice of Jesus, but instead as in every great horror film, left it to the audience’s imagination, showing the effectthis man had on others, how this face that we never see caused hardened Roman warriors to quell their spirit and to wordlessly lower their swords.

We, my sweetie-wife and I, will finish this movie but what I have seen already is more than enough evidence that it should have never been produced.

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Momentum, Inertia, and My Writing Style

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Inertia in physics is the quality of an object to resist any change in motion or direction and that property is directly related to the object’s mass. High mass items require more force to start, stop, or change their motion. Momentum is the quality of a moving object and is determined by both the object’s mass and by the object’s velocity.  A low mass item moving at high speed may very well have more momentum than a much heavier object that is moving much much slower.

How do these concepts of physics apply to the esoteric and decidedly far less physical activity of my writing?

To me, projects, be they short stories or novels, seem to possess qualities very much like inertia and momentum. The idea, the character, the plot, and the themes of the piece can all exist in that void that I call my brain, but until I overcome the inertia at my keyboard, it does not move from the fog of imagination to the concrete existence of words, sentences, paragraphs in a document.

Once that inertia is overcome and the words flow out of my mind and onto the page, then the project acquires its own version of momentum. It doesn’t want to stop but it wants to continue moving forward, gathering speed as it hurtles towards its conclusion. This is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that once I have passed some ineffable point the project becomes self-sustaining and the probability of it crashing and burning before the tale is told shrinks with each passing word and page. A curse in two manners, 1) I cannot work on more than one project at a time. Even a little short story can overturn a novel in progress by stealing all the momentum for itself and 2) if anything seriously disrupts the process, like a derailed locomotive the project crashes and can be very very difficult to get back onto its track and moving again.

The latter is what I am dealing with at the moment. The week I spent out of commission while I dealt with a case of RSV, get your vaccinations I sincerely believe mine kept me out of the hospital, has killed all the momentum of the novel I was working on. Now, with so much more crafted about it you might think that it would be easier to get the thing moving again but reality seems to operate in the opposite. It feels harder to get the thing rolling down the track but I am determined to do so. I am determined that before 2026 is done I will have my Cascade mountain folk horror drafted.

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No False Flags

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Even as people fled the scene of this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association’s dinner, others safely at their keyboards asserted with the confidence of fools that the shooting had been manufactured as a ‘false flag’ to either generate sympathy for a historically unpopular president or distract the people from other massive troubles dogging this administration.

The WHCA shoot was not a false flag.

The Butler assassination attempt was not a false flag.

The Golf Course ambush attempt was not a false flag.

The Las Vegas mass shooting was not a false flag.

The Unite the Right March and killing was not a false flag.

Sandy Fucking Hook was not a false flag.

False flag attacks do in fact occur, but it is nearly always a state attacking another state, such as Nazi Germany claiming Poland attacked them in September of 1939 and as in that example they are also nearly always so terribly transparent as to fool no one. America is a nation of violent people with easy access to weaponry. It should shock no one that our political leaders face the threat of violence so often.

I have decried and denounced political violence repeatedly here on my blog, from the very deadly and serious attacks on any president or corporate officer to the street level assaults of ‘punch a Nazi.’ Political violence is a beast that, like cancer grows on itself, and once loosed is difficult to excise. I am glad that the assassination attempts against the idiotic, narcissistic, petty, vengeful, and cruel person have failed.  Should a major blood vessel in that rotting matter he calls a brain burst like an ancient bicycle tire, and he dropped dead, you would not find one portion of grief in me, but should you confess a plot to murder him, I would turn you in without a moment’s hesitation.

Murderers and would-be murderers must face the law in a court that resolves their matters without fear or favor, and the political troubles must be solved politically and not from high-speed projectiles.

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Movie Review: Over Your Dead Body

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Last week I published a list of the summer movies I anticipated going out to the theaters to enjoy and here is my review of the first film on that list, the black comedy, Over Your Dead Body.

Independent Film Compan

Married couple Lisa (Samara Weaving) and Dan (Jason Segel) Burton have retreated to their isolated wooded cabin for the weekend, ignorant of the fact that each has plotted to murder the other as a solution to their marital troubles. Wholly inept as would-be killers their plans are exposed to one another but before either party can fulfill their rather simple and highly unlikely to succeed plots, the couple is confronted by a trio of strangers,  Pete (Timothy Olyphant), Allegra (Juliette Lewis), and Todd (Andre Eriksen), that present a far more credible, if not equally comedic, threat to them both, resulting in the film climaxing with over-the-top, farcical, Sam Raimi-like gore.

 

Over Your Dead Body, adapted from the Norwegian film, I Onde Dager, (Streaming on Netflix with the English language title The Trip) works as broad comedy with a strong sense of the absurd. All of the actors involved play their characters well, walking that fine line between believable, credible persons and exaggerated caricatures, never straying so far on either side as to damage the entirety of the story or the project. The director and the screenwriters, Jorma Taccone and Nick Kocher & Brian McElhaney respectively, played an expert level of set-up and payoff through the film, with several moments that are first presented seem minor color details later revealed to be clever and subtle foreshadowing.

Perhaps the most elegant and deft piece of screenwriting centers around the possibility of a sexual assault that threatens one of the characters. (It is not the character that you would expect that is threatened, providing an inversion of the trope, sliding away from the terrible titillation that often accompanies such sequences in lesser movies.) Once this element arose, I became seriously concerned about the rest of the film. It looked as if the writers had maneuvered themselves into a nasty, ugly little corner. If they took the scene to its conclusion the tone of the movie would irreparably rupture never to return to its comedic color and yet once begun it looked as if there was no way but to play the scene out as it threatened. Their solution displayed the genius of the scribes and saved the movie. I salute such brave and inventive writing.

The film’s final act escalated into cartoonish, wildly impossible, and, for my tastes, hilarious gory violence. I suspect for some it may be a bridge too far which shatters their suspension of disbelief but for those who had correctly calibrated their engagement and understand the movie’s attitude, it should play perfectly.

Over Your Dead Body is a movie that is best seen in a theater, with few distractions and preferably an engaged and laughing audience.

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And Now the End is Near (For My TV)

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March 2018, using the money I earned in overtime working the Annual Enrollment Period for Medicare from the previous 6 months, I purchased a 55″ 4K LED smart TV by Chinese manufacturer TCL.  I launched my new bigger video experience by hosting friends for a Cold War mini-Marathon of three films. (The Manchurian Candidate, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,and Dr. Strangelove.)

For the past 8 years this television has performed quite well, though for the last 12 months or so it has seemed that the app running through the Roku interface have become more sluggish often with a delay on some streamers that can be very annoying. When you hit ‘pause’ on a Netflix program you want it to pause right then, not a second and a half later. Honestly though, the lag in some responses is a minor inconvenience.

What is becoming evident is that the screen may now be showing premature signs of wear and age. I have noticed very faint but still visible lines running vertically on the far-left side of the monitor. During dark or even rapidly changing sequences they are so faint as to be nearly, but only nearly, imperceptible. The same cannot be said for brilliantly lit or lightly colored scenes which make the line stand out.

My research has indicated that there is the possibility that the board controlling the backlight for the set may be at fault and a period of absolutely no power, not merely switched off, may correct the issues by allowing the logic in the controller to reset.

However, should that fail, then I must begin preparing to replace the television. At the moment the lines, however annoying, are actually faint enough that for most of the time I can ignore them, letting them slip from my notice, but if it is the backlight, the problem will not diminish but grow until it forces me to replace the set with a newer model.

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Summer Movies

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While not every movie being released over the next four months or so is to my taste, there are enough to make this summer something to look forward to cinematically.

In roughly release order but with no particular preference, here are some of the films and movies that I plan to see in the theater.

Independent Film Company

Over Your Dead Body – A black comedy about a couple’s weekend plans to off each other. Samara Weaving has sold me that her performance in these types of movies is worth a ticket alone.

 

 

 

Black Bear Pictures

Hokum– An American and a haunted hotel in Ireland. It’s not a slasher or adapted from a video game so that grows my interest.

 

 

 

Amazon/MGM

The Sheep Detective – The favorite script from the man who wrote Chernobyl  and show-runsThe Last of Us, returning to his comedic roots as sheep set out to solve the murder of their shepherd.

 

 

 

Black Bear Pictures

In The Grey – Guy Ritchie, action and crime film with a lighthearted tone. His action movies have worked for me and my sweetie-wife in the past, particularly when they have that light tone to them

 

 

 

Blumhouse

Obsession – Horror movie about the dangers of getting what you wished for with a what looks to be a side statement about male entitlement.

 

 

 

Lucasfilm/Disney Studios

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu – Do I really need to say anything here?

 

 

 

 

A24

Backrooms – Atmospheric horror adapted from a viral YouTube short film. This could be very good or it could become too self-important. It will all be in the script or not.

 

 

 

StudioCanal

Pressure – Weather forecasting as drama leading up to the Normandy invasion on D-Day turning on the very real historical fact that access to north Atlantic monitoring may have turned the war.

Masters of the Universe – Live action, tongue in cheek adaptation of the 80s toy selling cartoon. I was out of the age range, too old, for the cartoon but the silliness of the trailer has sold me on this as ‘popcorn fun.’

 

Universal Pictures

Disclosure Day – Steven Spielberg returning to aliens and conspiracies, launching the conspiracy that this is a stealth sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

 

 

 

 

Signature Entertainment

Hungry – A rogue hippopotamus stalks unlucky tourists in the Louisiana bayou. Hollywood still chasing the Jaws high but this looks to be a ‘turn off your brain’ creature feature and have fun.

 

 

 

Universal Pictures

The Odyssey – Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the ancient classic.

 

 

 

 

Disney/Marvel Studios

Spider-Man: Brand New Day – The next Marvel Cinematic Universe feature.

 

 

 

 

Ketchup Entertainment

Coyote vs ACME – The movie that the studio tried to kill in favor of a tax break. As a Baby Boomer, I grew up on these cartoons, and the trailer looks interesting enough and I despise the ‘tax loss’ argument so much that I must see this in the theater.

 

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I am no Salesman

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I have long accepted the fact that the talent to sell things is simply not part of my personality or skill set. Many years ago, so many that the event lay in the last century, during a job interview for a telephone customer representative position with a cable company I was tasked with selling the interviewer on ‘buying’ an ink pen from the desk. I failed and I did not get the position. When I have worked retail, it has always been the straight-forward cashier role, never a position that required me to upsell or convince anyone that any particular product is what they really needed or desired.  The closest I have ever come to that sort of service was working in a video rental store and recommending films to customers when they asked, but even then, that was always based on what the customer told me about their previous tastes.

It is with terrible dismay that I have come to the conclusion that this failure to ‘sell’ people may also be my greatest stumbling block as I seek traditional publishing for my novels.

A recent reply from an agent that passed on my 80s, gay, cinephile, southern California horror novel read in part, ‘ I’m afraid I didn’t feel as though your pitch and concept were quite strong enough for me to confidently present in today’s market’.

The query process, where an author sends off an introductory letter along with the opening pages of the novel is in fact a sales pitch. I recognize this. You are trying to sell two things simultaneously, the novel in question as a marketable book ready to compete with others in its genre for shelf space and sales, and yourself as a professional, able to work with others such as agents, editors, and the like, in the publishing world.  There is the rub, that is get past the gate, to transition into that world I need to sell myself and I need to sell my writing, utilizing the very skill that I most suck at.

Now, being aware of the problem, knowing its existence, is the problem half solved, but only half. This is forcing me to reframe precisely how I approach the crafting of query letters, recognizing what they truly are and just how far my skills fall short in that area. I can’t very well quit, that is simply not an option, so I have no choice but to try, and no matter what that little Muppet says, there is a ‘try’. It is time to become a salesman and hope that I am not in that damned play.

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Virginia Votes Today

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Today the state of Virginia votes to gerrymander the hell out of its Congressional districts, taking the current map of 11 districts from a 6 for the Democratic party and 5 for the Republican party to a 10 for the Democrats leaving just a single district that favors the GOP.  It is the latest front on the mid-cycle redistricting war that has raged across the nation since the GOP operating under their total fealty to Trump began redrawing districts in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, and potentially Florida, hoping to staunch the bleeding to come with this fall’s general election. Unwilling to simply lie back and take it, the Democratic party across the United States has redrawn maps where they possessed the power to do so, in California going to the voters with a special election as is the case in Virginia today.

Gerrymandering is a perversion of the basic principles of democracy. Instead of the voters choosing and electing their representatives the representative, sitting on a treasure trove of data, draw their electoral maps, choosing the voters that will most likely elect them to their seats. In the age of networked computers and artificial intelligence growing quickly in capabilities, the drawing of election maps that can accurately and reliably produce desired outcomes transforms from an arcane art into a sinister science.

With the Supreme Court of the United States having declared that gerrymandering for blatantly political purposes as ‘non-justiciable’, that is beyond the scope of any court, the floodgates were not thrown open on the process; the entire dam was demolished.

I have, for decades, been an opponent of the gerrymander. The process deeply offends my sense of what is right and what is wrong, but with that said I am also a realist. The Republicans, have fewer spines that an amoeba, supplicating themselves to a conman, a criminal, and sexual abuser giving away any remaining elements of honor and moved the conflict from a knife to a gunfight requiring the Democrats to drop their knife and match the warfare that is actually being waged.

I want Virginia to pass its constitutional amendment and fight fire with fire and then maybe in 2029 if we are fortunate enough to have a Democratic trifecta nationally pass legislation to end political gerrymandering once and for all.

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Detective Hole Can’t Stop Digging So I Will

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Mentioned some weeks ago on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Netflix began streaming a new Nordic noir Detective Hole and, being fans of Nordic noir, my sweetie-wife and I gave the series a go. And, after four out of nine episodes, we have let the show do its merry way unconcerned with its resolution.

Working Title Television

Detective Harry Hole is a haunted alcoholic detective in Norway trying to live down killing his partner in a drunken car crash while in hot pursuit of a murderous bank robber. Now, with a new partner, a new significant other, and trying to stay on the wagon, Hole is presented with a fresh set of crises, his new partner is murdered while trying to locate a low-level drug dealer and a serial killer is stalking the streets of Oslo, pushing Hole back into the bottle and off the force.

That single paragraph synopsis could be for almost a countless number of second-rate, trope-filled, cliche-riddled police procedurals of which Detective Hole is merely a foreign language example.In addition to the stock characters, settings, and situations the series presents with a nearly comical lack of understanding of modern forensic work and evidence.

When Hole’s partner was killed, it was an on-screen scene so we the audience know that the murderer was in actuality fellow detective Waller who was the low-level drug dealer’s upper management. Waller shot the dealer in the stomach, then pursued the partner who had witnessed it, fought with her, put her in a sleeper chokehold, before arranging for the still dying dealer to be holding the pistol that killed the partner. Waller then presented himself as the heroic cop who came in just too late to save her fellow officer, shooting and killing the dealer.

None of the physical evidence supports such an outlandish lie. The dealer has a gunshot to the stomach which bled for several minutes into his abdominal cavity before being killed by a shot to the head. He also would present with no bruising, scratches, or any other signs of a life and death struggle which the dead partner does, or at least would, have.

I grumbled and, not happily, let them have that however that bit of silliness, but it got far, far worse.

Investigating the serial killer, Hole asks the forensic team if the same pistol was used to kill both women and he is told that it is ‘very difficult’ to determine if the same gun fired both rounds.

What the actual fork? Are the writers so ignorant of modern police procedures that they are unaware of rifling? That the grooves of a gun barrel are like a firearm’s fingerprints?

Unwilling to let their absurdity rest there the creatives, in addition to the serial killer sub-plot, the crooked cop sub-plot, and the cliched drunk cop plot, added yet another layer, a secret society of cops and politicians flooding the streets with weapons, provoking gangland warfare so that regulations would be changed allowing police to go about armed.

That was too much for me and my sweetie-wife, there are far better shows to watch.

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This and That

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.April has been a chaotic month.  The most impactful event, so far, has been the bout of RSV that I managed to contract. Respiratory Syncytial Virus as the name suggests is a virus of the respiratory system, specifically the upper respiratory regions which in the very young, the aged, or the immunocompromised can be a very serious illness. A vaccine for RSV has been developed and two years ago, because I am not an idiot, I took that vaccination. Now, people often think of a vaccination as a perfectly protective shield, but that is not the case with all vaccines. In many cases what a vaccine will do if it doesn’t prevent infection and illness is reduce the severity of that illness when contracted, The fact that I contracted RSV and was ill is not evidence that the vaccine had no effect. In all probability the fact that I was vaccinated likely saved me from a hospitalization as I am no longer a spring chicken and the medication that keeps my arthritis in check compromises my immune system. Note that while I was home sick for a week, coughing my lungs out and having a terrible time, my sweetie-wife was exposed to the virus and has not, now more than a week later, shown any signs of catching the bug. For her the vaccination looks to have been that perfect shield.

It was a week and a couple of days ago that I returned to work and I am just now starting to really get back in something that feels normal health-wise. The coughing has subsided greatly and I am managing to reclaim much of my former energy.

Last night, April 16th, was the season finale for the second run of The Pitt, the medical drama that I never thought I’d get so totally sucked into. Season one turned the final few episodes into a massive dramatic sequence with a spree shooter at a local music festival and many fans, including myself, expected some major event to drive the second half or later of season two, but that was not the plan by the show’s creative team. Instead, with much of the focus on its central character of Dr. Robby, this season seemed to be much more focused on stress for the characters and just how much they erode under its corrosive pressure. A wise choice to avoid repeating the form of season one, keeping the writing fresh and the fans off balance.

I have little to say on the state of the world. The government of the USA is out of control, violating its and international laws with abandon as we suffer the whims of a malignant self-absorbed moron whose petty and greedy nature shatters the post war world order.

After the break in coherent thought brought on by RSV I have returned to my Cascade mountain set folk horror novel with the outlining process now under way.

My best to everyone, stay safe, stay hydrated, and remember don’t be mean.

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