Archive for the 'Film' Category

Comicon ‘09 & Westercon ‘09 — My god, it’s made of swag!

Kevin Andrew Murphy July 29th, 2009

I’m now back in town after Comicon and Westercon before it, and it’s time for my annual con wrap-up.

In twenty years of Comicons, I have never gotten so much swag.  Yes, there was the year of pogs, the year of posters, the years of posters and bags.  But never before have I gone to a con, come back laden with more bags than I could reasonably carry (or take as my onboard luggage), and then realize I’d left two behind at my friend Albert’s.

I was told by dealers that they weren’t seeing many credit cards, but everyone was paying cash–a sign of the economy.  But it seems another sign of the economy that Hollywood is just throwing free stuff at people as promotion.  I came back with four free DVDs (one random one given to me by a little kid in the hall, another box set of The Rose, Hello Dolly and 9 to 5 I’d got as a door prize for being one of the few people to look at “The Middle”) then came home and found a Coraline DVD waiting for me, prize from a raffle I’d entered at Westercon.

But now that that’s all said, let me go through the days of the convention in order.  I flew down Monday early to visit, and while doing so, found myself sitting with the staff of Slave Labor Graphics, going down to staff their booth.  (Tuesday, I went to the museums in Balboa Park.)

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Spoilers: or, The Joy of Reading and Viewing Without Preconceptions

Kate Elliott March 4th, 2009

Some folk cannot abide spoilers–it ruins a book for them–while others read for process not goal and therefore do not mind spoilers.  Now, it makes no never mind to me whether a person hates spoilers, or doesn’t mind spoilers, or checks ahead to see who lives and who dies because the anticipation is killing them.  As I say, let a person be the reader they want to be.

As for me, I personally prefer to read or view for the first time without knowing what is going to happen;  I like to experience the plot “in real time” with all the surprises, setbacks, revelations and shocks that may entail.  I enjoy the experience of my own reactions, and if I really really like a book or film I will read/see it again, which provides yet another experience, the experience of watching the known story unfold and anticipating or recognizing the way the narrative builds and twists.

Others will approach the reading (viewing) experience differently, and that’s as it should be. Continue Reading »

Memo to Hollywood: How to do (and not do) an adaptation

Kevin Andrew Murphy December 31st, 2008

I have just watched The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, a year after it came out (DVR is your friend, except maybe in this case) and I’m gasping in horror at how bad it was, and for no good reason.  You’ve got all the elements that would seem to make a great movie:  Beloved children’s classic as source material?  Check.  Lavish sets?  Check.  Gorgeous costuming?  Check.  Actors ranging from competent to excellent?  Check.  Impressive and appropriate special effects?  Check.  Script by a competent screenwriter?  Um, well, I understand they got the guy who did the adaptation for Trainspotting, which I understand was a decent movie, but….

First off, let me make one thing clear: Departure from the source material is fine.   The Wizard of Oz dumped the scene in the Dainty China Country from the movie adaptation because it was boring, extraneous, and painfully lame.  Glomming the Good Witch of the North and Glinda the Sorceress of the South together makes sense from a dramatic perspective, though making her a bubbly airhead was a bit much (although the MGM version does have her fans).  Having the Wicked Witch of the West be responsible for the poppies is fine for purposes of drama, and having them be foiled by snow as opposed to field mice is likewise fine for purposes of staging.  Mary Norton’s The Magic Bedknob and Bonfires and Broomsticks do not contain Nazis, musical numbers, a young Miss Price, or magical football matches with talking animals–though all of these things are very fun in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a movie I adored as a child and had to thank for introducing me to the equally good (if significantly different) book.  And Alfonso Cuaron’s version of A Little Princess took numerous liberties with the original novel, including but not limited to moving the setting from London to New York, making Becky black instead of Cockney, and most significantly, having Sarah’s dad not be dead of bad investments in India but instead poisoned by mustard gas and MIA in WWI.

The difference here is that The Wizard of Oz, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Cuaron’s A Little Princess are all great movies.   The reason The Seeker isn’t is not because elements were changed, but because elements were changed for the wrong reasons and the wrong way. Continue Reading »

The Fortress of Solitude

Constance September 23rd, 2008

Superman Flies Lois Over Manhattan

What do you think? Was the 1978 Superman the best movie made from a comic book, with all other attempts going downhill after that, with the exception of the first two Spidermans (2002 & 2004)? And maybe, Batman Begins (2005)? Oh, wait! There was also the excellent first X-Men (2000).

We shall not even mention the ludicrously exacrable awful X-Man ast Stand (2006) — which seems to be more generally the quality of comix-to-movies and / or video / computer games-to-movies, alas and alack-a-day!

Back to Superman, 1978, the past prophesizes the future. We begin not on the planet of Krypton, but in the Depression with voice over telling us specifically that this is the 1930’s and a world-wide economic disaster has taken place, while black-and-white comic book pages flip. One wonders why, since after that we get the credits, and then the movie properly begins and we’re on Krypton.

However, with the 1930’s global Depression invoked, the trial on Krypton of traitors to the state, and then the denial and rejection of brilliant Jor-El’s warning of coming planetary destruction by the same power elite that passed judgment of the traitors, it feels like today’s headlines.

It’s lovely how the director does not rush us through any of this. The film takes just the time it needs to set-up what needs to be set-up. It remains interesting to look at through this leisurely beginning, leisurely despite the tension and pressure of special effects planetary destruction. Partly this is because the Intro is mostly narrated by Marlon Brando as Jor-El, just the first on-screen member of this all-star cast.

Then we finally get to the best parts of the movie, Superman’s adoption by the Kents and his growing up in rural Kansas. The photography’s tenderness in recording the small details of that life provokes one to wonder whether the director or the cinematographer grew up there too. The glory of the wheat, gold and rose in the lingering sunset glow, sleeping with the bakelite radio tuned in to the local R’nR station, the paper window shades with circle string pulls, the vane windmills, the barns — I know all these details intimately also from my childhood. Then Clark must leave the warm, nurturing pastoral nest, to begin his adult super education via Jor-El’s technology, in the Fortress of Solitude, grown via that same technology out of the empty ice blades at the top of the world.

Next follows assuming a mask and courtship, simultaneously. Such cute bits: no phone booths into which he can change from Kent to Superman, the most extreme looking-up-a-girl’s-skirt scene ever, as Lois Lane dangles from the helicopter teetering at the edge of a skyscraper’s roof deck, x-raying Lois’s lungs through her clothes with his super vision when he advises her not to smoke.

It’s all foreplay and courtship from the moment Superman (not Kent, despite Superman’s Kent mask’s attraction to her) and Lois Lane set eyes on each other. Innuendo, double entendre, her interview of the man who saved her, giving him his name — Superman — gathering his vital stats, most importantly that he’s neither married nor has a girlfriend. She asks if he can, um, well, eat? Meaning, do you, can you fuck? Even better, there is no way that Margot Kidder can be described as anything but, well, homely. This is all lead-up to that marvelous overflight of New York City, which neither Vaquero nor I have ever forgotten. Seeing this movie again for the first time since 1978, seeing the Twin Towers — the flight is even more magical.

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Forthcoming Vampire Films – London Times

Constance August 17th, 2008

This article deals with vampires in the movie versions only, even if the movies mentioned were adapted from original novels.  It includes a brief chronology of vampires on film which can be a quickie refresher for those who have read any or all of the books published on this subject, and watched all the films.  Oddly, Buffy’s not mentioned.

This forthcoming film sounds interesting, so I’ll be watching out for it:

Meanwhile, although the vampire in Let the Right One In is altogether more dangerous, she symbolises as much the dark side of the human psyche as an external threat. “I was thinking about these two characters as though they are mirrors,” Alfredson, the director, says. “She is everything that he is not. She is awake when he is asleep: he is very afraid, she is very brave; she is strong, he is weak; she’s dark, he is blond. She is everything that he would need to be to survive. They are two sides of the same coin.”

The vampire craze shows no signs of abating. An English language remake of Let the Right One In has been announced. With three remaining books in the Twilight saga, there is potential for a vampire franchise. And although the Twilight books series is complete, Nash reveals that “Stephenie does have the bare bones of a chapter of a book provisionally titled Midnight Sun, which is the Twilight story but from the point of view of the vampire not the human girl”.

  Love, C.

Comicon International 2008 — Dr. Horrible, The Dark Knight, and me

Kevin Andrew Murphy July 30th, 2008

Back from Comicon. Also back from Westercon. Thoughts….

First off…wow. Comicon was amazing. In over twenty years of attending, Comicon’s managed to outdo itself again, mostly by dint of those who came, both industry types and fans. I don’t know how many, but numbers of over 200,000 were rumored and probably underestimated.

Second thought, what’s up with the art shows at all the cons? At Comicon, I saw more winged kittens in the art show than superheroes, or for that matter, any comic book characters. Yes, I understand the cottage industry of marketing to dragon and cat fetishists, but seeing the same dracokitty art recycled from Westercon to Comicon was surreal given the difference of the rest of the convention.

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“Mongol”

Constance June 24th, 2008

Cross-posted with my LJ.  Mongol, the first installment of a Russian trilogy featuring Genghis Khan is currently playing in a single theater here in Manhattan.  Go here and here to see trailers, stills and more information.  The film is supposed to have a larger release here in the U.S.  It had terrific popular and critical reception in Europe.

The best parts:

–The locations, the vistas, the action, the people — none of them are digital.  This is all location and real people riding real horses.  It does look different, and so much better, I do say.

–The landscape, as one expects, has the leading role in Mongol.   You will not be disappointed.  Vistas of snow, of arid slopes, green rolling spring grass, doesn’t seem foreign to someone who grew up on the Great Plains, though, no we didn’t have mountains where I grew up.  But I did visit the Black Hills, which are really mountains, often on family summer vacations, and the Badlands, in both South Dakota and North Dakota.  The Missouri-Platt system meanders through parts of both these states on their way to the Mississippi, so I saw those too on summer vacations.  These are true vistas and landscapes, from my own life, and the lives of these characters in

What’s Wrong with “The Golden Compass”?

Kevin Andrew Murphy December 10th, 2007

I just went to see The Golden Compass, along with a couple other friends, who all decided to see it despite being advised by one friend that the movie made no sense and by another that he didn’t want to see it because he hadn’t liked the book.

I have the book, but on the “I’ll read it when I get around to it” shelf. But it was a nice outing with friends and I wanted to see airships and Nicole Kidman in a series of improbably lovely costumes. And going in with such low expectations, I was not disappointed, except by everything else.

First off, well, my biggest criticism is what I said after the movie was over: “I suppose it will all make more sense after we read the book and watch the expanded version on DVD.” This was after watching a nearly two and a half hour movie, mind you. I’m not certain whether to blame the screenwriter, the film editor or both, but there seemed to be a concentrated effort to shoehorn in every significant scene in the book, regardless of the exposition or transition or set-up for character motivation.

As it stands, the movie has the worst case of “beloved child” syndrome I’ve ever seen. The protagonist, Lyra (and I’m probably wrong on the spelling), wanders around and simply bumps into people who decide to fight and die for her “Just because.” I can understand it with the head witch, since she’s at least got a prophecy to go on, but she’s still canny enough to check out whether the kid can read the Golden Compass. But Sky Captain Wild Bill? I’m blanking on the name of character, but if you took an old American character actor, had him play Wild Bill as conceived of by someone who’d only seen British Wild West shows, gave him a jackrabbit familiar (voiced by Cathy Bates) and then made him an airship captain…well, that’s who we’ve got, who not only immediately takes a liking to this random kid, but offers to take her along in his airship, and also tips her off to the location of an alcoholic talking bear, who is less entertaining than he sounds. The bear decides to follow the kid because she finds his armor, but the only reason they aren’t immediately blown away by the Cossack police is because the sea gypsies keep randomly appearing whenever the cavalry is needed. Even in the middle of the frozen glacial wastes.

Then there’s the Magisterium. I understand it’s supposed to be the unholy spawn of the Catholic church and Big Brother, but if you’re going to spirit away kids to do insane arcane medical experiments on them, there must be a more convenient place than an ice sheet in the middle of the Norway analogue. But more than that, why steal children when you can just buy them? Or get parents to give them to you for free? There must be a few parents who’ve already drunk enough of the Kool-aid that they’d hand over their children no questions asked, rather than steal the child of the well connected sea gypsy matron? Or the kitchen boy from the university where there are loads of nosy people just looking for a mystery to crack?

Of course, the number of brain dead people is pretty amazing. There’s horror movie stupid. Then there’s opera stupid. Then there’s this. One really wonders what the scholars are thinking to let their child of prophecy go running around rooftops with the cast of Oliver at the beginning of the movie. One also sort of wonders whether a world with all sorts of arcane science wouldn’t be able to figure out who poisoned a wine decanter if just by taking fingerprints. And the uspurping Bear King? Does he know that “gullible” is not in the dictionary?

Then there’s the trouble of giving your protagonist an amazingly useful power and forgetting to use it. Lyra gets a Golden Compass, which once she figures it out is basically a deluxe Magic 8 Ball that can answer any question, no problem. So when later in the movie, the wicked Mrs. Coulter says “Lyra, I’m your mother!” wouldn’t it be prudent or least sensible to twiddle with your Golden Compass and ask “Is that psycho really my mommy?” Of course this scene may have been left on the cutting room floor, so it’s not possibly quite at the level of the recent Heroes finale where Peter forgets he can walk through walls if he wants to and instead dramatically uses his telekinesis to rip the door off a bank vault, getting a nosebleed in the process. But still….

I should probably not get into the other troubles but the line “Tell the children to get their warmest coats!” is going to stick with me for a while. You get a bunch of kids who were spirited away to an icy wasteland via airship and you expect them to walk to safety? Of course an electrocuted traumatized child was able to walk all the way to the next valley and hole up in an unheated trapper’s cabin without freezing to death, so I suppose anything is possible, but….

Yargh.

How Does the Story End?

David Louis Edelman October 23rd, 2007

As part of the planning process for how I’m going to wrap up my Jump 225 trilogy of novels, I’ve been thinking a lot about the structure of story. I think it’s useful for us writers and readers to occasionally step back from the process to remind ourselves of one crucial thing: stories are artificial. They’re constructs.

I’m not just talking about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. I’m talking about the very idea of storytelling itself. It’s an art form, which means it’s a product of the human intellect, which means it doesn’t exist naturally in the world.

‘Batman Begins’ posterSometimes readers get so heavily focused on plot mechanics that they mistake the plot — which is simply one element of the art, albeit a crucial one — for the story itself. What happens at the end of the Jump 225 trilogy? they ask me, as if that’s the only question worth asking. Let’s say I tell you what happens at the end: Natch vanquishes his enemies and learns to live in peace with himself. Or, Natch dies heroically. Or, Natch and his enemies join forces to take on a different enemy altogether. You know the broad strokes of any ending I could possibly think up, and you’ve seen them all a million times before. So obviously the important question is not what happens at the end of the story, but why and how.

I just watched Batman Begins for the umpteenth-plus-oneth time the other night. Spoiler alert: Batman defeats Ra’s al Ghul. He chats with Lieutenant Gordon at the end, only to discover that there’s a new villain named the Joker out there causing trouble. Roll credits.

So what happens after the cameras stop rolling? We assume that Batman goes on to defeat the Joker (and indeed, we’ll find out next summer when The Dark Knight hits theaters). And then he defeats another villain, and then another, and then another, until Bruce Wayne dies in battle, hangs up the cape, or hands the keys to the Batmobile down to the next guy in line. We can safely assume that Batman will never completely succeed in vanquishing crime, that there are certain villains that will always elude his grasp.

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The Golden Compass Film

Constance August 30th, 2007

A long and interesting piece about some of the challenges to producing, filming and editing the film from Pullman’s novel is published in today’s New York Times Arts section.  A link to a trailer is also available on the article’s site.

 A couple of pulls follow:

 [ . . . . New Line, of course, reinvented fantasy with its “Lord of the Rings” series, directed by Peter Jackson. But each of those films cost far less than what is being spent on Mr. Weitz’s movie, the most expensive the studio has ever made. ]

[ With “The Golden Compass” much still hangs in the balance. Its filmmakers completed a four-month shoot in England, Switzerland and Norway last January, and Mr. Weitz screened a cut for top New Line executives in May.

But as recently as last month Mr. Weitz, who wrote the script’s current version, following earlier drafts by the playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard, was revising scenes that set up the movie’s complicated story about a girl’s struggle against repressive authority.

Mr. Weitz, speaking from London, said the latest changes were largely intended to bring clarity to a tale that depends on obscure elements, including a powerful cosmic substance known simply as “dust.” “Dust is kind of like our version of the force,” said Mr. Weitz, referring to a bit of “Star Wars” mythology. “But somehow the force is much easier to explain.” ]

[ The project’s extraordinary expense was due in large part to the business of the daemons, which had to be inserted in not just major set pieces but even simple dialogue scenes.

“It’s like directing that character,” Ms. Forte said of the myriad appearances by a snow leopard, jackal, ferret, mouse, ermine, chameleon, golden monkey, various birds and others, not to mention those non-daemonic armored bears. ]

Love, C.

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