Monthly Archives: May 2018

Movie Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story

There are really two ways the deal with this sort of prequel movie, explore untold aspects of the backstory to deepen our understanding of a character or perform ‘fan service’ giving answers to some of the character’s known aspects. Taking the first route runs the danger of running your narrative aground in a manner that is inconsistent with what has already been established as well as telling a story that no one wanted while the latter runs the risk has being all sizzle and no steak, an exercise in call-backs and in-joke references that have little appeal beyond a core fan-base.

So which route did Solo: A Star Wars Storytake? Both. And achieved middling success on both fronts leaving us with a film that is competently crafted but largely empty of any real theme, story, or substance.

Solotells the back-story of Han Solo, rogue, smuggler, and surprising hero of the Battle of Yavin. It does not seek to subvert the know aspects of Han’s character, as the surprising good Pink Fivedoes when it tackles the Battle of Yavin, nor does it reveal anything that we did not already understand about Han. Solotakes time to show us key moments we already knew about from Han’s history, getting the Falcon, meeting Chewie, and the film also shows us things we hadn’t know about his early life and early loves, but it doesn’t do this in a manner that tells a compelling character arc but rather attempts to dazzle the audience with thrilling action and daring exploits. The action is well staged, the heists and capers interesting and fit well into the Star Wars universe delivering a film that modestly fun, watchable, but falls short of having a real story.

As I have said in another post I draw a distinction between plot and story. Plot is the physical task and objectives for a character, can Bond stop Drax from nerve gassing the entire world is a plot. Story is the change in the character, Bond learning to love and giving up the service is a story that ends up being tied to a plot.

Solois nearly all plot and what story there is is underserviced. I think the producers and LucasFilm were caught in a bind and lacked the courage to tell what I think would have been the essential story that could have formed to core of the film. When we meet Han Solo in Star Warshe is a self-centered cynic, a man who breaks the law for his own enrichment, and who sticks his neck out for no one. He undergoes a transformation by the Battle of Yavin when he returns, adding just enough to flip the battle and save the day, putting himself on the path that leads to heroism. Han can’t end Soloas that heroic figure and enter Star Warsas that cynic. To me the story should be one where he starts as an idealist, gets that beaten out of him and ends as a cynic leaving him set up for redemption in Star Wars. Soloattempts to split that difference and as such ends up with empty action that is fun to watch but lacking in meaning and emotional punch.

The cast is uniformly with stand-put performances from Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian and a scene stealing turn by Pheobe Waller-Bridge as Lando’s droid L3.  My final judgment is that Solo: A Star Wars Story is a middle grade movie, not a bad one but not a really good one either. Given the large-scale action it is fun to watch in a theater but it will in all likelihood not join my growing physical media collection.

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Movie Review: Deadpool 2

If I have to tell you who or what a Deadpool is then this movie is not for you. Following on the heals of the surprise box office success of the first Deadpool20th Century Fox green-lit a serious R-rated superhero film Logan, and the audience rewarded with another resounding financial success. Given those two data points it is hardly surprising that the sequel toDeadpoolwould not only be green-lit but a substantial budget increase, allowing for more special effects, a larger cast, and an expanded scope. The question is can Deadpooljustify a larger cast, more special effects, and an expanded scope?

The answer is yes.

Where Deadpool fulfilled the customary checkboxes for a superhero origin story, Deadpool 2delves deeper into the character and he tortured transition into a semblance of a hero. Playing a familiar theme, an invincible time-traveling cyborg with a murderous mission, Deadpool find himself bereft of his usual emotional support and grappling with the meaning of family.  In this respect, defining family and what it means, Deadpool2shares significant genetic material with the aforementioned Logan. Where Loganapproached the material as a western tragedy Deadpool 2utilizes the sharp incisive tool of parody and satire to dissect their themes and characters.

As with the first film this sequel revels in set piece action sequences, graphic bloody violence, and fourth wall shattering commentary. The comedy comes as quickly as the bullet hits and broken bones, from the first sequence to the parody of Marvel’s post-credit buttons, Deadpool 2never forgets the funny, while weaving also a story about something, about the things that give life meaning. The movies never dragged and never felt long, sprinting from the start to the finish.
If you enjoyed the first Deadpoolthen you need to see this one in the theater.

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Memorial Day

Well, the long weekend has passed and we have now returned from our beaches, our grills, and our games to perform our daily services but as this holiday recedes let us not forget the people it was intended to honor; our fallen service men and women.

Fallen does not have to mean combat. Though we have been in active operational combat continuously since later 2001 I think it is a factor often overlooked just how dangerous military service is even when you are not participating in combat operations.

The men and women of our armed services practice, operate, and maintain complex and dangerous system, devices, both weapon system and support system, that very easily present a danger to life and limb.

In my brief service as a member of the United States Navy, a life that I was ill suited for; such tragedies stuck my own ship. I took part in a single deployment to the Western Pacific in 1981and on that cruise two men lost their lives. One was a marine who fell from a helicopter during operations, and from a great height the sea is no more forgiving to a falling body that the cold hard ground. The second death was a navy Chief who testing repairs on a helicopter when a bad roll of the ship caused the aircraft to strike the deck as a sharp angle, shattering the rotors, sending their shards as shrapnel across the deck, and tumbling the helicopter over the side. Men were maimed but the accident and we never recovered the chief.

Remember and think upon all the dangers our men and women face everyday in their service to our nation, our ideals, and our safety.

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But the Underdog is Supposed to Win

Narrative fiction, at least in the western tradition, pretty much bakes into the cake the idea that the underdog is supposed to win. There is little dramatic tension is the protagonist gas significant material advantage in their quest that assist them in overcoming the hurdles between them and their goal. The more overmatched the protagonist is the more we thrill to their eventual victory. (Excepting, of course, tragedies and the literature that descends from that tradition.)

This expectation that the underdog emerges victorious is even more pronounced in American fiction. American mythology’s foundation of rugged colonialists making a new nation against the backdrop of hostile natives, starvation, and overcoming the most powerful empire on the planet to win their freedom, all conspire to make us the most rebel loving people in the world.

This cultural background is the reason I suspect that 1998’s romantic comedy You’ve Got Mailis one of the least loved films staring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. There are spoilers in the essay.

Based on a play that was later made into an earlier film The Shop Around the Corner, Mail, is about two business rivals locked in a fierce and unequal contest that unwittingly have been falling for each other by way of anonymous chats and emails. Ryan, playing Kathleen, is the owner of a beloved local bookstore and Hanks, as Joe, runs a massive bookstore chain very much like a fictionalized Barnes & Noble. Hanks and Ryan have a tremendous on-screen chemistry and the pairing off of these two actors has yielded a number of beloved films including Joe versus the Volcanoand Sleepless in Seattle, but ask people about this movie and you’ll often get a fairly negative response. As in most romantic comedies by the end of You’ve Got Mail the destined pair are a couple, having overcome all the obstacles that attempted to bar their love, one of which was the capitalist competition between their businesses. That ended with the bankruptcy of the beloved little bookstore. The underdog lost. Pluck, heart, and fierceness did not carry the day, no amount of spirit could overcome the massive economies of scale that advantaged Jo’s chain over Kathleen’s store, It wasn’t personal, it was business and he crushed her, a plot turn that I think very few could forgive and certainly never forget. (Though of course if you extend the story forward Joe’s business, Fox Books, eventually gets crushed by the on-line retailer Amazon.com because the wheel always turns.)

You’ve Got Mailis one of my favorite romantic-comedies and one I often re-watch, but I can understand why so many people have a visceral unease about the movie, it violates in a non-tragedy plot, what we have always come to believe is the only just outcome, the Underdog wins.

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Honest Loyalty Cannot be Forced

“Say you love me or you’re going to get it.”

That invented quote is of course absurd, any utterance of affection under such a threat steals away the possibility of meaning and sincerity from what is spoken. One aspect and definition of patriotism is love for one’s country, and just as with personal love that cannot be forced. Dictatorships around the globe force people to stand, sing, and praise and it fools no one. It results in the ultimate expression of symbolism over substance and that is the same outcome for the NFL’s anti-protesting rule.

For a sport already facing a growing backlash over its treatment of its players and apparent lack of concern over their health I think this latest move is of questionable strategic value. There have already been a number of people uneasy about their enjoyment of the sport’s spectacle and giving even more ammunition and reason for people to boycott the games and the telecasts if less than wise.

The owners changed the rule without consulting with the players’ union and frankly if I were the players I would start building support for a strike. This heavy-handed shut up and do what I say approach is not one that will smooth the rough waters.

There are those who bemoan that politics has invaded every aspect of life, but I have found very few of those are willing to throw out the playing of the anthem as a solution, even though it’s performance is a recent addition to the show. In general people only gripe about a ‘political invasion’ into sports or the arts when it is a branch of politics with which that they do not agree. Given the apparent lack of concern about assaults, domestic abuse, animal abuse, and all manner of unsavory behavior NFL players have displayed over the years it’s unconvincing that the Owners are taking any sort of moral high road with this action but rather the poor beleaguered billionaires are acting as toadies to the President. The owners are not billionaires because they own football teams they own football teams because they are billionaires. They have vast economic interests, interests that the federal government influences and this move is yet another example of Trump’s corrupting influence on our nation.

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The Between Projects Break

Sunday I sent out the first of five acts from my latest Work in Progress to my Beta readers. This leaves me, at the moment, without an active writing project on my desktop. Oh, there’s a secret project that I work on intermittently as practice and an experiment into adaptation, though steering clear of anything that’s still under copyright, but for original material that I’d be sending straight to a market, nothing is currently in progress.

I don’t know if it is a good sign or a bad sign but for the novel that has just started its beta read process I have really good feeling about it. I am quite happy with how it turned out and it’s overall tone and effect seemed on target. That said I have had a few projects die at the beta read step. It’s hard when you’ve worked on a novel, banged out 80-90 thousand words and the result is a flawed piece that needs to be rewritten from the ground up. Though it is hard to hear that news it is also important to accept it, to look upon the wart and faults with honest eyes and learn from the failure. Failure teaches far more than success provided you listen to its lessons.

So with no active projects that means I have more time for relaxation and recharging the creative juices. Luckily I recently obtained a number of cool Blu-rays with tons of bonus material and the 15-episode documentary The Story of Film. This is perfect for soaking in knowledge and growing as an artist while I lazily sit on the loveseat not writing.

One of the movies I picked up was the most recent Blu-ray edition of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension.The documentary is longer than the film it documents and has been wonderful to watch. Its interesting to speculate on what sort of film it would have been had Tom Hanks been the lead, as apparently nearly happened, or if Jordan Cronenweth, the cinematographer who shot Blade Runner, had remained as the Director of Photography.

This pause in creative output will not last very long. My mind is already banging out the rough structure of my first horror novel and I can feel the anticipation and drive building, soon the muse will once again be in command.

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Who Knew that Kim Jong-Un Read Peanuts?

A few months ago, though really I think it has been a matter of weeks, things looked strangely good for Trump as a diplomat. He brought the North Koreans to the table apparently willing to talk about giving up their nuclear weapons and his followers chanted ‘Nobel’ like it was a sports championship.

But now it seems that thing are falling apart and it seems the North Koreans are unwilling to surrender their prized and expensive nuclear weapons.

Some have blamed this on Bolton, Trump’s senior National Security Adviser and a man who still thinks that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a good idea. Bolton has compared the North Korean talk tot he deal made with Libya, you know that place where the citizens revolted, overthrew their dictator, and killed in cowering in the street, Granted that image I am certain does not prompt good feelings and pleasant dreams in the mind of Kim Jong-um, a man, despite his resemblance to the Pillsbury Dough Boy, brutally slaughters his own family members. I do not think it was merely Bolton’s mouthing-off that has now derailed the summit.

Trump has announced a date and place for the summit and after he did that Kim comes out and yanks the prize away. This leaves Trump with two options, go to the summit with the one things the rest of the world really really wanted, North Korea nukes off the table, making the summit a prominent propaganda coup for Kim, and make no mistake sitting at the table as an equal with the President of the United States, even this one, without having to even discuss surrounding his bombs is a huge win for Kim, or Trump cancels and is humiliated on the world stage by ‘little rocket man.’ Kim will gain a win no matter what Trump does and we will be left with a bunch of commemorative coins proclaimed Kim as ‘Supreme Leader.’ (Just imagine Fox news if Obama or any Democrat had called Kim by that status.)

My bet is that Trump will go, rather than face public humiliation but I would place money on that.

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Sunday Night Movie: The Beyond (1981)

Originally, I had planned to watch my new Blu-Ray of The Adventure of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, but in the end I decided I wanted a fresh cinematic experience rather than the comfortable pleasure of re-watching an old favorite. Following some comments from the Cinema Junkiepodcast, I discovered that Shudderhas The Beyondavailable for streaming and so Italian Horror won out.

Part of Lucio Fulci’s ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy, preceded by City of the Living Dead(which I have seen) and followed by The House by the Cemetery(which I have not), The Beyondfollows the story of Liza (Catriona MacColl) and young woman from New York who has inherited a closed hotel in Louisiana. Having run out of financial options in Liza is committed to reopening the hotel and making it work. Accidents during renovations start injuring workers bringing in a local doctor (David Warbeck) and the two are drawn into the hotel’s history of murder, sorcery, and attack by the undead.

The Enlightened let loose upon humanity that concept that the world is ultimately a rational place and can be understood by way of the powers of reason. This concept is so ingrained in the Western culture that it permeates even our supernatural stories with explanations for who ghost, demons, and all assortment of otherworldly events transpires. This usually provides for horror stories a roadmap based on mystery. Once the character discover the clues and assemble them in the proper manner not only an explanation but a solution to the horrific emerge. Methods for closing gates, laying souls to rest, or even just understanding and surviving in the new conditions follow by the power of reason.

This is not how The Beyondis structured.

The Beyondtakes its structure from dream-logic.

That is to say there is no logic, there is no cause-and-effect chain of events, but rather the story is a sequence of events, each building in horrific intensity, each less moored to conventional reality, until at the end of the movie, staircases connect disparate locales, reason falls away leaving only madness.

As such The Beyondis a movie that some will adore for it unconventional narrative and others will find only frustration as ultimately nothing is explained and the chaos reigns. I actually fall in the middle; I found the structure interesting enough to watch the entire feature but the lack of a cohesive narrative ultimate robbed me of any emotional investment with the characters and their plight. I will also state that the tarantula sequence, while inventive, dragged on far too long. The Beyondis from that branch of horror cinema that features graphic, gory, and gruesome death scenes, another aspect that does not work for everyone.

In the end I do not regret spending my Sunday Night Movie slot on this horror film but your mileage may vary.

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And Now for Something Different

For several years now I have had vague notions bouncing around my skull for a potential trilogy of horror novels. While I have written a number of horror short stories and many years ago even a horror film script I have never attempt a novel of that genre.

The notions bouncing around I like but they had refused to assemble into a full story or even a decent plot; so I just kept them bouncing hoping that someday that they might finally fall into place.

The other, while listening to the Cinema Junkie podcast, something a guest said sparked that final epiphany that I had required. The approach, the theme, and most important of all, the ending of the first book suddenly snapped into focus. I can see how it opens, the general shape of the rising action and stakes, and the new balance that is achieved at the end of the tale.

I am still finishing up work on my military SF book and once that is out the door then I can start outlining and beating into shape the details of my first horror novel.

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Style versus Genre

I fist started seriously think about style versus genre on the subject of film noirand what mattered more to classifying a story as a noir, the content or the stylistic elements. My thoughts have expanded and I find myself looking at other divisions and wondering just how far can this analysis go?

Consider science-fiction, just as with film noirit too seems to possess a slipper definition that comes down a great deal to personal taste. For the most part SF is fairly easy to define, stories in which a technological or scientific advancement or theory plays a critical element in its structure; so critical that if removed the story collapses. The novel and the film The Martianis a perfect recent example of a piece meeting this definition. However at the other end of the spectrum we have a film such as Star Wars, which is a story about space knight, space princesses, and space wizards in a grand conflict dealing with good and evil. While the film takes place in outer space, and the characters utilizes technological weaponry and transportation everything about that tech and setting is fanciful ignoring that facts of science.

The Martianfits if we define SF as a genre with boundaries and rules that delineate what is and more importantly what is not science-fiction. Star Wars fits if we define SF as a style, stories that have the look, feel, and trappings of advanced technology but are unconcerned with valid scientific underpinnings or theories.

Here is the crux of so many debates over what is and is not science-fiction. Some people use the style model while others use the genre one and quite often the people themselves are not aware of their mode of thinking and so when a person of one camp engages in a discussion with someone from the other discord and unresolvable debates follow because at heart they are speaking of two very different viewpoints.

As with all art there is no ‘right’ answer to selecting between the viewpoints and we

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