Monday, March 18, 2024

Remember to Plan

 Here's more writing advice I probably shared before but recently I was reminded why I said it in the first place.  With my Eric Filler stories I usually don't do a lot of planning.  I have a vague idea and then I launch into it and sorta figure everything out as I go.  The Swapping Mall Holiday Special was a good example of that where I just started in and after about 5000 words figured out where I wanted to go.

But recently I had this idea to do a heist story--with a twist.  The idea is there's a thief who gets caught by a character from a previous story.  She uses a magic watch to turn him into a teenage girl to infiltrate an all-girls school to steal a valuable painting.  But to do the job, the thief needs to recruit a crew.

Easy, right?  Not at all!  Because you can't really just launch into a heist story like that.  A story like that there needs to be a plan so you can figure out all the steps of the heist and all the characters you need.  In particular since this was an art heist, I got bogged down in trying to figure out how to get the painting out.  It got to the point where I was making it so complicated that I stopped for a week or two to work on a Valentine's Day story.  (Which I did more or less just half ass and pick my way through.)

The thief character is actually based on Donald Westlake's Dortmunder character and his name (Porter Rumsey) is actually the alias of Westlake's Parker character (called Porter in the Mel Gibson movie Payback) and Rumsey was the last name of an alternate universe Dortmunder in a short story Westlake wrote.  So while I was working on that other story, one day I went through one of the Dortmunder books that involved an art heist and took some mental notes.  That helped to clear some things up so I could get back to work.

The point though is I should have done the work ahead of time.  I should have done my research and figured out who Porter would need and what they'd need to do.  With something intricate like a heist you really need to plan things out ahead of time--like Dortmunder or Parker would do in pulling off a heist.  And with most stories that is a good idea.

It's like the old saying goes:  fail to plan, plan to fail.

Friday, March 15, 2024

A to Z Challenge Topic Reveal 2024

 For the past few years, I usually have my A to Z topic thought of well in advance.  As the 2023 Challenge approached, I had my entries for that year done, but I hadn't really thought of anything for the next year--ie, this year now.

In 2021 I just threw something together with Star Wars Black Series figures.  So then in 2022 I did Marvel Legends figures, which were also by Hasbro.  Then for 2023 I figured since I did Marvel, why not do DC Multiverse figures?  So I did. 

But that was pretty much as far as I could go with that because there wasn't another line of action figures I collected that would be broad enough to do 26 entries.  It was time for something new!

What else could I do?  I did stuff for some of my books in at least 3 different years.  I did books turned into movies one year.  I did Transformers, Robotech, and GI Joe in three other years.  I prattled endlessly about Rifftrax/MST3K movies in the the first pandemic year.  What else could I do?

I thought of music, but I doubt anyone listens to anything I listen to.  Which maybe wouldn't matter, but it just seemed kind of pointless to talk about stuff no one will want to listen to.  For me, music is something personal; everyone has their own likes and dislikes.

And as a practical matter, it's hard to share music on here.  I mean I could write entries and put YouTube video links to stuff and by the time the entries post those videos might get taken down.  Then I'm kinda screwed.  So it just didn't seem like a great idea to me.

Then I thought of something else:  video games!  At first I thought of just doing just old Atari games.  Then I decided to open it up a little more to other games I like from NES, SNES, PS2, and PC.  By the time this posts, maybe I'll throw phone apps in there.  (Actually I know at least one I played on my phone but it's also on other platforms.)

So there you go, that's the theme.  Unlike the last couple of years where it was sort of annoying that I wrote my entries long in advance and then Hasbro/McFarlane would come out with new figures to add to my entries, this is pretty static so I can do it long in advance and not worry.  Set it and forget it!

If you want a preview, a lot of the games I'll talk about are in this entry on my old blog.

One night I found this Retro Games site that lets you play a lot of old NES, 7800, SNES, PS1, etc games in your browser.  It was pretty neat and let me play some of the older games I mention and get screenshots.

One game that didn't make the cut is Tecmo Super Bowl III.  Lots of people remember the original Tecmo Bowl or Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES (there were even car commercials parodying it a few years ago) but this last sequel for the SNES was my favorite.  The 49ers had won the Super Bowl the  year before so I played them a lot  to use their good defense.  Then I made my own offensive players (except the offensive line) who were pretty awesome.  And I found that in the first and fourth quarters it was really easy to do an onside kick that would usually let you keep the ball and run up the score.  I had a few go-to plays in the passing game though the running game was never quite as good as it could have been with Barry Sanders or Emmett Smith.

One night on that Retro Games site I played an exhibition between the Lions and Packers.  Barry Sanders ran for 239 yards and 3 touchdowns--including the winner in OT--while Scott Mitchell threw for 0 yards and 3 sacks.  And the Lions blew a 14-0 lead in the final 2 minutes, which included giving up a 2-point conversion.  Only a missed field goal by the Packers in OT let the Lions come back to win.  So it was pretty true to the usual Lions experience.

That's the caliber of story you can expect.  So...see you in May?

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Good Old Days Weren't That Good - Writing Edition

 A month ago on the Insecure Writers Support Group blog there was a post misleadingly titled, "If I Knew Then What I Know Now."  The thing is, that's not really what it was about.  It was actually about how technology has changed the writing world.  Knowing back in the 70s or early 80s about MS Word, the World Wide Web, Kindles, etc wouldn't have done you any good--except maybe you could have bought stock in Microsoft or Apple or Amazon in the late 90s.  The example I used is it'd be like going back in time to the Middle Ages or even the Old West.  You'd know about cars, radios, TV, and all that but you'd have no way to reproduce them yourself because you wouldn't have the technical expertise and in many cases the processes to create even the components wouldn't exist yet.  (This was actually a Twilight Zone episode where a guy sells his soul to the devil to go back to when he was young, thinking he'll make a lot of money.  Except the minerals he knows about can't be mined with the time period's equipment and he doesn't have the technical knowledge or blueprints to make radios or TV or anything like that.  Knowing the future doesn't mean it would actually benefit you in the past.)

Despite the misleading title, there were some good points.  A lot of people want to think things were so much better in the old days, but really in the writing world they weren't that great.  As the author points out, you had to use typewriters or notebooks (and then probably a typewriter) and if you made a mistake you'd have to correct it with Wite-Out.  If you decided to change something you'd have to retype pages and pages.  You couldn't just hit Control-H and Replace All if you decided to change a character's name.

And then after you finish the story, you had to go to the public library (or local bookstore) to find a copy of Writer's Market to look up places to mail queries to.  Mail as in snail mail.  With paper and stamps.  In most cases besides the envelope to mail your stuff you'd also include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for a response.  And if you got lucky and they didn't just send you a form rejection by snail mail (or ignore you entirely) you'd have to Xerox a copy of your manuscript (which hopefully hadn't been damaged or gotten out of order or anything) and mail it to the agent.  Again, snail mail.  Maybe in a year or two the agent might sell it to a publisher and you could do some promotional interviews in newspapers or magazines.

It was a bulkier system to be sure.  I wasn't really around until it was almost over since by the time I came of age the Web was in its infancy and personal computers and word processors were much easier to get.  I wrote some stuff in notebooks and sent some queries by snail mail and stuff.  It was pretty annoying.

There were some good things about the old days, mostly from what I've read from older authors like Lawrence Block and Robert Silverberg.  There were a lot more legitimate markets then, magazines and such that would take amateur work and give you a little something for it.  None of that "exposure" bullshit on an online journal only three people will ever see.  Guys like Block, Silverberg, or even Raymond Chandler got their start in magazines (in Chandler's day especially they had "the pulps" that predated comic books) getting some credits and working on their craft.  There were also "the paperbacks" that were cheaper, oftentimes smuttier books.

A good thing back then was authors could actually work with editors.  Editors actually, you know, edited your book instead of expecting you to make it perfect yourself while they just basically sell it to the publisher.  An editor could actually make you a better writer instead of just existing as a middleman.

Something Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware could probably attest to, you had fewer scams in the old days.  There were of course vanity publishers and scam agents and stuff, but not nearly as many.  Email and websites and now social media have made it so easy to create scams (often multiples by the same person(s)) and recruit victims.  In the old days the only way a scammer could reach you is by snail mail or phone (or an ad in Writer's Digest or something) but now it's really easy for them to hit you up on email or Facebook, X, TikTok, or wherever.  And so easy to get money through PayPal or Venmo, whereas in the old days they'd have to get you to send a paper check or money order.

And obviously you didn't have "AI" generating a glut of short, incoherent crap to dump onto the market.

So there were definitely some good things.  Personally I think it was better for me about 10 years ago when I was just getting the Eric Filler thing started.  Back when there weren't so many authors in the market that I could make 2-3 times what I make now.  If I knew then what I know now...it still wouldn't have mattered.  Really I just wish I'd gotten into the Eric Filler thing a few years earlier when I might have made even more money.  That's the real disappointment.

What do you think is better now than the old days about writing?  What's worse?

Monday, March 11, 2024

The Bigger the Problem, the Messier the Story

 I've probably talked about this before, but a blog entry I read recently reminded me of it again.  And no one probably read it the last time I talked about it anyway, so why not repeat it?

This blog entry was talking about a recent issue of Action Comics.  Writer Jason Aaron recently took over the classic Superman comic after working on a lot of Marvel comics, especially their Star Wars series.  The latest story arc is about a more dangerous Bizarro who finds that he can use magic to turn all of Metropolis into a Bizarro world.  This includes Superman and his family and friends.  But then in this latest issue, Superman is able to get rid of the Bizarro influence, sometimes.  Meanwhile, the Bizarro spell starts spreading throughout the world.

The author of the blog did not like this and from the sound of it, I didn't really either.  It's a problem that I'm actually familiar with from stories I've written like Girl Power: League of Evil and the Gender Swap Outbreak.  The bigger you make the problem to solve in your story, the messier it gets.

It's really kind of a basic math:  the bigger the problem to solve, the more variables you end up with and thus the more complicated it gets.  The first Girl Power mostly just focused on four superheroes who are changed into women.  Then the second one focused on clones of the male versions of those heroes who end up turning evil.  The third story then, bad guys use the device from the first story on a global scale.

Expanding it to the whole world then brought up a bunch of questions like:  what happens to women?  What happens to people who are underwater?  Stuff like that.  It started to make the story kinda messy.  Though of course I still like it, maybe I could have localized the problem more to make things easier on myself.

I had the same problem about six years later with the Gender Swap Outbreak series.  That's about a virus that gender swaps guys.  (Kinda prescient in 2019.)  But then once it infected a whole town and then the whole world, I had to start wondering:  what happens to women?  To kids?  Stuff like that.  In both cases I didn't really want nothing to happen to some people or it'd be kinda boring.  But it makes the story a lot more complicated and as things get more complicated, it can be harder to cover everything without leaving holes.

In that blog entry the author hopes that since a bunch of people have been killed and the world devastated this is one of those things where at the end everything goes back to the way it was beforehand because otherwise the consequences are pretty grim.  It's a reminder that when your problems get too messy, it can cause an author to fall back on deus-ex-machinas to solve things.  Like in League of Evil, the Flash character is transported to the future and winds up merging with the evil clone of the Batgirl character and then with the added brainpower (and a couple of decades to putter around) finds a way to make a machine that can change people back--those who want to anyway--and brings it back to the present day.  I don't think it's exactly a deus-ex-machina because there is a rational, scientific (in comic book terms) resolution, but some people might feel that way.  When you're basically hoping for a deus-ex-machina by issue 2 of what's probably at least a 6-issue arc, that shows exactly how messy things are.  It's doubly messy because I don't think this is even one of those line-wide events across all the DC comics or even across all the Superman comics.  So it doesn't really make sense that you could fuck up the whole world and yet in every other comic everything is just business as usual.

So as I've said before, the smaller you keep the story in terms of the central conflict, the number of central characters, the number of locations, and the timeline of the story, the easier it is to keep everything focused and to avoid creating plot holes.  That Action Comics story should probably have just kept things in Metropolis to avoid getting too much going on.

It's just something to remember if anyone who reads my blog ever does any writing--besides me.

Friday, March 8, 2024

When It Comes to MST3K/Rifftrax, the Carradines are the First Family of Crap

Especially since I started watching MST3K and Rifftrax on Pluto TV in 2017, I've watched a lot of bad movies.  Just as a mental exercise I tried to go through all the episodes to figure out who had been in the most MST3K episodes and Rifftrax VODs (not the "Just the Jokes" of popular movies).  It seemed pretty clear that the leader in the clubhouse is John Carradine.

The elder Carradine was in good movies like The Grapes of Wrath and The Ten Commandments, but he was also in a ton of crappy movies too.  Here's the list I came up with (at present) with R being Rifftrax and M being MST3K:

  1. Voodoo Man (R)
  2. The Unearthly (M)
  3. Red Zone Cuba (M)
  4. Invasion of the Animal People (R)
  5. Astro Zombies (R)
  6. Terror in the Wax Museum (R)
  7. Hillbillys in a Haunted House (R)
  8. Missile X (R)
  9. Frankenstein Island (R)
  10. Jack-O (R) (they actually use footage of him from a previous movie since he was already dead)

To be fair, most of these movies he was not the star of the film.  Voodoo Man he was a henchman, Red Zone Cuba he just has a cameo at the beginning, Animal People he's a narrator, Wax Museum he gets killed early in the film, Frankenstein Island his image is occasionally broadcast with him ranting about "the golden thread," and I mentioned already that Jack-O used footage from one of his old movies since he'd died years earlier.  I don't know if it's better or worse that he's not actually the star of most of these movies.

He also sings the theme song to Red Zone Cuba, which was also known as Night Train to Mundo Fine, hence the song title:

His son David was in one Netflix MST3K episode and a bunch of Rifftrax ones:

  1. Future Force
  2. Future Zone
  3. Project Eliminator
  4. Karate Cop
  5. Martial Law
  6. Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon
  7. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II (M)

(A Fun Fact:  except for Max Havoc the rest of those movies were all made around 1987-1992.  Basically if you were making a bad movie in that time there was a non-zero chance David Carradine would appear in it.)

He had a lot more air time in most of these movies than his father did in his bad movies.  The exception being in Karate Cop he has basically just a cameo as a cannibalistic diner owner.

So the two combined have been in 17 movies at least!  I don't think anyone can top that, but there are a few who come close.

Probably the top female in Rifftrax movies is C-list martial arts star Cynthia Rothrock, though she didn't actually show up in any until 2016.  Since then there's been:

  1. Honor & Glory
  2. Star Raiders
  3. Santa's Summer House
  4. Martial Law
  5. Martial Law 2
  6. In the Line of Duty 2: The Super Cops

It's kinda depressing I can't think of many other women who might come close to this.  Most of these bad movies were horror, sci-fi, or action movies where women were just disposable, interchangeable love interests or eye candy.  Most of the women who appeared in these bad movies were not "stars" who would be used again and again.

The next closest I can think of at the moment is Noell Neill who was in the four "Teenagers" movies on Rifftrax and had a bit part in the MST3K movie Invasion USA.

Who else can approach the "glory" of the Carradines?  I'm just going to run a few names for the hell of it.

Basil Rathbone was a contemporary of John Carradine and has appeared in a few Rifftrax movies, mostly a series of Sherlock Holmes movies from the 1940s:

  1. Sherlock Holmes & the Secret Weapon
  2. Sherlock Holmes & the Woman in Green
  3. Sherlock Holmes in Dressed to Kill
  4. Sherlock Holmes in Terror By Night
  5. Sherlock Holmes & the Scarlet Claw
  6. The Magic Sword
  7. Hillbillys In a Haunted House

The Magic Sword was also on MST3K.  He's also in a short film version of A Christmas Carol that the Xumo app shows about 5 times a week around 10:30-11:30pm.

Christopher Lee is known for Hammer Horror movies, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, but he's also been in some crappy movies too:

  1. City of the Dead
  2. Sherlock Holmes & the Deadly Necklace
  3. Castle of Fu Manchu
  4. The Blood of Fu Manchu
  5. Starship Invasions
  6. Horror Express

The Castle of Fu Manchu was originally an MST3K episode but then later on Rifftrax.

Bela Lugosi was known for playing Dracula in the original Universal movie, but later he was in a lot of crappy movies, including at least 2 from Ed Wood:

  1. The Corpse Vanishes (M)
  2. Bride of the Monster (M)
  3. Plan 9 From Outer Space (R)
  4. Scared to Death (R)
  5. The Phantom Creeps (R)
  6. Voodoo Man (R)

Lugosi died during the production of Plan 9 and so to be able to keep Lugosi's name on the posters, Ed Wood used his wife's chiropractor as a stand-in during some scenes featuring Lugosi's character.

Joe Estevez is the brother of Martin Sheen and uncle of Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez.  While his famous relatives don't appear in any MST3K/Rifftrax episodes (yet), Joe has appeared in quite a few:

  1. Soultaker (M)
  2. Werewolf (M)
  3. Baby Ghost (R)
  4. Rollergator (R)
  5. San Franpsycho (R)

Cameron Mitchell, like John Carradine, started out in good movies and even co-founded the Actor's Studio.  But later in his career he was in a lot of crappy movies too:

  1. The Stranger (M)
  2. Viva Knievel
  3. Supersonic Man
  4. Space Mutiny
  5. Deadly Prey
  6. Jack-O (like John Carradine I think they used previously shot footage since he had also died)

Space Mutiny was originally on MST3K and then later a live Rifftrax show.

Recently, generic 90s martial arts guy Jeff Wincott has appeared in a few Rifftrax movies:

  1. Martial Law 2
  2. Street Law
  3. Fatal Combat
  4. Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms
  5. Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business

The two Universal Soldier movies were made for "The Movie Channel" and shot on the cheap in Canada in the late 90s.  Neither is regarded as canon.

Just like there aren't many women on these lists, you're not going to get much diversity either.  I mean in the 30-60s there weren't a lot of black, Asian, etc actors in movies.  In these movies you're more likely to get a white person in black/brown face and racist shit like Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu than you are actual black, Asian, etc actors.  Maybe that's a good thing that they didn't get to be featured in crummy movies.

When it comes to directors, who has directed the most features on MST3K/Rifftrax?  It's neck-and-neck between 50s-60s shlock director Bert I Gordon and legendary shlock director/producer Roger Corman

Gordon's list found on an old forum post:

  1. King Dinosaur
  2. Amazing Colossal Man
  3. Earth Vs. The Spider
  4. War Of The Colossal Beast
  5. The Magic Sword
  6. Tormented
  7. Beginning Of The End
  8. Village Of The Giants
  9. Attack of the Puppet People (R)

All of those but the last one are MST3K, though Magic Sword was also on Rifftrax. 

Roger Corman had a lot of bad movies, though only a small percentage have been featured on MST3K/Rifftrax.  Really most of them are on MST3K:

  1. Gunslinger (M)
  2. Swamp Diamonds (M)
  3. It Conquered the World (M)
  4. Teenage Caveman (M)
  5. Viking Women & the Sea Serpent (M)
  6. The Undead (M)
  7. Little Shop of Horrors (R)
  8. Last Woman on Earth (R)
  9. Creature From the Haunted Sea (R)

Corman had a few others as a producer but not a director.

Those two directors were mostly on MST3K.  For Rifftrax, the most-featured director is probably Greydon Clark, whose almost entire catalog has been featured:

  1. Angel's Revenge
  2. The Return
  3. Final Justice
  4. Uninvited
  5. Dark Future 
  6. Star Games

Angel's Revenge & Final Justice were on MST3K first and then later on Rifftrax.

Paul Matthews has also had a bunch on Rifftrax, including a couple just as a producer, but here are his credits as a director:

  1. Deadly Instinct
  2. Fairy King of Ar
  3. The Little Unicorn
  4. Merlin the Return
  5. Berserker

(Checking IMDB, Fairy King of Ar was originally released as Beings.)

And you might wonder:  what about the Hitchcock of bad movies, Ed Wood?  He's had at least 6 movies featured, half as a writer/director and half as just the writer and half on Rifftrax and half on MST3K:

  1. Plan 9 From Outer Space (Writer/Director) (R)
  2. Bride of the Monster (Writer/Director) (M)
  3. Bride and the Beast (Writer) (R)
  4. The Violent Years (Writer) (M)
  5. The Sinister Urge (Writer/Director) (M)
  6. The Revenge of Dr. X (Writer) (R)

(The Revenge of Dr. X was originally released as Body of the Prey and Wood used a pseudonym for the writing credit.)

Just some random things I was thinking of.  Of course it's subject to change since they're always doing new Rifftrax and at some point there should be another season of MST3K

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

A Cure For Superhero Movie Fatigue: Stop Turning Solo Movies Into Team Movies

After watching the dreadful The Marvels, the less dreadful Blue Beetle, the muddled Flash, uninspired Shazam 2, and hearing about this Madame Web movie, I thought:  why are they trying to make every solo movie into a team movie?  I suppose a lot of it is the success of the Avengers franchise.  But the problem is that good team movies are hard to do.  Good solo movies (or almost solo) are much easier.

Especially with The Marvels, Wakanda Forever, and Madame Web there was this thing where the studio really wanted to push "girl power" with a bunch of female heroes.  It's like despite the success of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, the studios didn't think a single female superhero could hold her own so they needed a bunch of extra characters.  Or maybe they thought that audiences wanted something bigger.

But as someone who literally wrote a Girl Power team-up, I can tell you that team stories have some inherent problems versus a solo story.  The simple fact is there's only so much story time (whether on screen or on paper) and it's hard to give everyone an equal share of time.  So you end up focusing on one or two characters more than others. (Besides superhero movies this was also the issue in every Star Trek movie ever.)  In Girl Power for instance the Batman character of Midnight Spectre gets the most story time--because she's Batman!  I think the Flash character might get the next most and then the Aquaman character and then the Superman character.  Really I continue to think the Superman character got short-changed, and as I've said before, this is a reason she got a big subplot in the next story.

Anyway, the point being that even in a team you're always going to have a couple of characters who get more focus than others.  Even in sports this is largely true.  There really isn't a team that's completely made up of stars.  You have a few stars and then you have "role players."  Like in football the quarterback is your star and then you have a few prominent playmakers like a running back, wide receiver, or tight end and then you have those other guys like the offensive linemen no one cares about despite how vital they are.  Probably the closest you had to an equal team was the 2004 Pistons who won the championship from the star-studded Lakers despite not having any big stars of their own; it was pretty much a whole team of "role players."

Still, the point is when you're writing a story (a book or movie) the more "main" characters you have, the harder it is to give them all time.  The problem then with something like The Marvels is it tries to develop three characters but pretty much fails to do anything with anyone.  Or a movie like The Flash that's supposed to be a solo movie but then jams in a bunch of extra characters (Batfleck, Keaton Batman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, younger Barry Allen) which makes it hard to focus on the title character.  Or Ant-Man 3 where you have Ant-Man, Wasp, his daughter, and Wasp's parents basically as a team, whereas in the first movie it was mostly just Ant-Man and the second one it was aptly titled Ant-Man and the Wasp.  Or a movie like Blue Beetle where for some reason they decided to basically make it a team movie by having his whole family plus Ted Kord's daughter assisting him, again making it hard to focus on the main character.  That Madame Web movie sounds like basically the same thing where there are all these extra characters to take focus away from the supposed main character.

Superhero movies that have worked in the last few years are pretty much the ones that don't do this like The Batman and Shang-Chi.  (Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is the exception.)  In The Batman you have Batman and Selina Kyle and then role players like Lieutenant Gordon and Alfred.  In Shang-Chi you have him and Awkwafina and then some role players.  Or even in Joker you have Arthur Fleck and then some support characters.

The science here basically says you have a main character, a nearly-main character (usually doubling as the love interest), and your role players.  Even look at the original Star Wars:  you have Luke as your mainest character and then Leia and then Han is more of a role player in that he doesn't get a lot of background or anything; he's just the scoundrel who develops a conscience.  And then you have your other role players in Chewie, Ben Kenobi, and the droids.  It's still a two or two-and-a-half situation and that allows the story to work.

Contrasting to Girl Power, the Tales of the Scarlet Knight series starts out focusing on primarily Emma Earl as she finds the armor and becomes a hero.  Then there are the role players:  Becky, Dan, Lieutenant Donovan, Percival Graves, and the witches.  In the full version some of those role players got a little more time, but in the version that went out first a lot of that got cut and so it mostly keeps a tight focus on Emma.  Then over the next seven books those role players get some more time.  Some are killed off and new ones are added as well.  But it probably wouldn't have worked if I'd tried to jam a couple more heroes in there and made it Tales of the Scarlet Knights.

Anyway, the point being if Hollywood still wants to make superhero movies, stop trying to jam a bunch of excess characters in there.  One or two main characters are all you should have unless it is a team like the Fantastic Four or X-Men.  That is generally how "the MCU" started.  I mean Iron Man just had Iron Man and his supporting cast.  Thor just had Thor and supporting characters.  And so on.  It was only after those first five movies that they did the big team-up.  Then it mattered less if there wasn't a lot of character development because the characters had already been developed somewhat in their own movies.

Point being, solo movies should be solo movies--or nearly so.  Getting back to that will make the movies stronger and then maybe people will want to watch them again.  I'm not that optimistic about the new Superman movie since they announced it'll have Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, and others in it.  Sounds like the new boss isn't much different from the old boss.

(PS:  This actually demonstrates another reason why pure Marxist theology never works.  Everyone--including you and me--thinks they are the star of the show.  No one thinks they are just a role player.  But pure Marxist communism only works if everyone accepts being literally a role player as in they do their role.  No more, no less.  In the real world, just about everyone will think they're the star of the team and thus they should get more.  In sports you often sees what happens when someone thinks they should be making more:  the team has to cut back in other areas to compensate or else the player goes somewhere else and then the team has to replace him.  Either option usually weakens the team, which is a reason why it's so hard to win championships year after year.)

Monday, March 4, 2024

Stuff I Watched in February

The Marvels:  Like most people I didn't see this in a theater.  I watched it on Disney+ on Super Bowl Sunday instead.  It became clear then that this was not "superhero movie fatigue" so much as "shitty superhero movie fatigue."  This was a pretty doomed project from the start by taking Captain Marvel, who did well in her debut movie in 2019 but hadn't been seen outside two cookie scenes since Endgame, and pairing her with Ms. Marvel (from that 2022 TV show) and Monica Rambeau, who was like the fifth most important character in WandaVision back in 2021.

At less than 2 hours there's really not much time to essentially introduce two new characters (mostly to each other) plus another disposable villain.  The story doesn't do them any favors by literally copying the main plot of Spaceballs.  Like Dark Helmet, the Kree villain is trying to steal atmosphere (also water and sunlight) from other planets to save her own.  A "quantum bracelet" like Ms. Marvel's can somehow do this scientifically impossible thing.  Like when James Bond ripped off Austin Powers 3 in SPECTRE, it's pathetic for a "real" movie to rip off a parody.

And the alien "cat" Goose is pregnant and laying eggs, because we needed to waste a few minutes with this.  The payoff is the "cats" help to evacuate the Earth space station.  Though since Valkyrie had used the Bifrost to beam a bunch of Skrull to Earth earlier, why didn't they just call her up?  Or Dr. Strange/Wong who could have magicked them to Earth.

There's a lot of stuff that was poorly set up in advance and poorly executed in the present.  I'm not sure the actress playing Ms. Marvel was really ready for a big feature film but then most of her early screen time is screaming and/or crying.  Monica Rambeau is better but her heroic sacrifice doesn't mean much since the character previously had about 10 minutes of screen time when she wasn't in some weird fake TV show.  Then there's another lame, disposable villain and aliens who are all humanoid rejects from an early Star Trek or Dr. Who.  There's just so little to like about this.  After Ant-Man 3, Eternals, and Wakanda Forever, the bloom is really off the MCU rose. (2/5) (Fun Facts:  One cookie scene has Ms. Marvel meeting Kate Bishop to start some kind of Young Avengers team with...Ant-Man's daughter?  Ironheart?  Hulk's son?  They don't have a lot of sidekicks to work with so I'm not sure who else they have.  The other cookie scene has Monica in the Fox X-Menverse with crappy regular Kelsey Grammar Beast replaced by crappier CGI Kelsey Grammar Beast.  Since it's a parallel universe it's not adding the X-Men to the MCU; we'll have to see what happens in Deadpool 3 with that.  One crappy alien race mostly communicates in song, which gave Brie Larson a chance to sing, which she did early in her career.)

Across the Spider-Verse:  It's hard for sequels to eclipse the original, but if this doesn't do that it comes really close.  There is definitely an Empire Strikes Back vibe here as the end is not Happily Ever After.  Like Empire, our hero--Miles Morales--finds out some unpleasant things and is nearly killed by in this case many relatives.

Six months or so after the previous movie, Miles is trying to juggle being Spider-Man and being a regular teen.  But then he meets a sorta ridiculous new enemy called "the Spot" who has the power to create portals between locations.  When the Spot is beaten, he escapes and vows to gain enough power to defeat Spider-Man.  Meanwhile, Gwen Stacey (Spider-Gwen, Ghost-Spider, Spider-Woman, or whatever) has joined a team of Spideys from around the multiverse and goes to visit Miles.  He follows her back to their headquarters and then something happens that puts Miles on the run and puts Gwen into the position of having to choose between her friend and her duty.

Overall it's just about everything The Marvels wasn't.  There were fun parts, especially with all the different versions of Spiders, but serious parts that actually meant something because the characters were actually developed.  There are stakes that aren't ridiculously taken from a parody movie.  The Spot isn't a great villain but in a way he isn't the real villain of the piece.  I would have liked to learn more about Miguel O'Hara (aka Spider-Man 2099); while I haven't read a ton of the comics I'm a little familiar with it.  The comics character is sorta like Batman Beyond, or Batman Beyond is like him, whichever happened first.  Anyway, maybe that will happen in the third movie.  I am definitely here for that. (4/5) (Fun Facts:  Obviously there are tons and tons of Easter eggs when they show the various different Spideys.  Besides animation they work in some Legos--appropriate since it's produced by the directors of The Lego Movie--and live action clips from the movies.  There's even a live action Donald Glover as a Prowler in the multiverse headquarters.  It is widely known that Glover wanted to play Miles Morales but was too old before anything could happen, so there's a little nod to that when he meets Miles.  Most of the alternate Spideys from the last movie aren't really seen much until the end of the movie; hopefully the next movie will feature the return of Nic Cage as Spider-Noir and John Mulvaney as Spider-Ham.  Fact:  There are no cookie scenes, which seemed weird.  You'd think Sony would have put something in there for Madame Web or another project.)

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968):  I was writing a story about an art heist, which I thought was the premise of this, though I think that's the 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan as Crown.  This is about a bank robbery in Boston with Steve McQueen as businessman Thomas Crown.  He cunningly manipulates a bunch of out-of-town businessmen to pull off a heist despite never having met each other.  The last one takes the money to a cemetery, where Crown picks it up and then deposits it into a Swiss account to pay the other guys over time.  Why does he do this?  Kicks, mostly.  In an early scene he seems to be doing well enough in business.  He just needs the excitement and challenge.

Faye Dunaway is the insurance agent who zeroes in on him and falls in love with him.  She tries to engineer a surrender for Crown so he can work out a deal, but things get complicated.  For the most part I enjoyed it, though the theme song is annoying but mostly it bugged me that Dunaway's character seemed to figure out who Crown was based on nothing more than looking at a picture.  Since they didn't establish that she's psychic, it made no sense that just a picture could tell her he was responsible.  Similarly, she figures out most of the caper without any kind of actual evidence.  It was a pretty weak setup.  Otherwise it's worth watching if you like heist movies. (3/5)

Bullitt:  Tubi brought this up after the previous Steve McQueen movie.  I had heard about the famous chase scene but never watched it.  So what the hell, I watched the movie.  I don't know if it was really the first to establish a lot of tropes used later, but Steve McQueen is Lieutenant Bullitt, who plays by his own rules, is usually hungover, and has a cool car.  Unlike some later movies like the Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon movies, his captain doesn't scream about his wild card shenanigans and stuff.

A mob guy is trying to turn state's evidence and Bullitt is assigned to protect him, but doesn't.  He then tries to hunt down the killers, who also killed his partner.  Robert Vaughn plays the DA who wants to make a big name for himself with this case and will serve up Bullitt to the press and Feds if the shit hits the fan.  There's also a token love interest played by Jacqueline Bisset.

As for the famous chase scene, it's good if you like that kind of thing.  I'm not a big fan of car chases in movies.  Even good ones like Bullitt or Ronin don't leave the actors a lot to do and all it really contributes to the story is whether the good guy catches the bad guys then or not.  Chase scenes in general are just kinda lame to me because there's a lot of physical action but no real emotional action.  Sex scenes are usually the same way.  What I really wondered was why these two old guys have a cool Dodge Charger muscle car.  The one guy looks like an accountant who should have a sensible sedan or station wagon.  I guess that would have made it too easy for Bullitt then. 

Otherwise the movie is a good action story that really inspired movies for the next 55 years.  (3/5)

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999):  Since this wasn't on streaming except Cinemax, I bought an old DVD because I did still want to watch it and that was about as cheap as renting it from Amazon or Vudu.  I didn't really learn a ton about art theft, which was what got me interested in the first place.  Still, this was a good remake that has some similarities but a lot of differences.

The obvious difference is that Crown steals a valuable Monet in the beginning instead of robbing a bank.  He does this by hiring a crew of Romanians to stage a robbery.  Then he helps to thwart that and in the confusion, makes off with the Monet.  Rene Russo plays the insurance agent who  tries to find who did it.  Unlike the original, she uses a little more actual detective work, like finding out Crown had previously bought some Monets at auction.  Denis Leary plays the cop she partners with who would like to bed her if she weren't so into Crown.  There's also a young woman who seems to be Crown's mistress--seems to be, wink.

This version of the movie focuses a bit more on Russo's character than Pierce Brosnan's Crown.  But as before, while she starts off just looking to bust Crown, she starts to fall for him.  There are a few more twists and turns and a happier ending.  Overall it's an improvement on an original that was also good. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts:  There's an instrumental version of the original's theme song and Sting sings a cover of it over the closing credits, which is an upgrade.  Faye Dunaway has a small role as Crown's therapist.)

The Truth About Charlie:  I watched this back in 2002-2003 when it came out on DVD and generally liked it.  Recently on the Rifftrax app they added their riff of the 1963 movie Charade, on which this movie was based, so since this wasn't streaming I bought a used copy.  Overall I don't think I liked this as much as back then but it's not bad.

Like Charade, this was sort of an off-brand Hitchcock movie.  Regina Lampert (Thandiwe Newton) comes home from a trip, ready to divorce her husband Charles only to find Charlie has disappeared and sold everything in their Paris apartment.  Three of Charlie's former associates get after her to find out what Charlie did with some diamonds he stole from them.  She's helped by a guy going by different names (Mark Wahlberg) who seems to be working both sides.  And there's also a government agent after the money (Tim Robbins) who wants Regina's help.  There are some twists and turns then before the final showdown.  

In some ways this improves on the original in being a little less cheesy.  Thandiwe Newton holds her own in the Audrey Hepburn role, though it's hard to replace such an iconic actress.  Mark Wahlberg is mostly a downgrade from Cary Grant except obviously he was a lot younger than Grant was to make the romance with Regina more believable.  I'm not sure if Robbins was trying to do a sort of Boston accent or a Walter Matthau imitation (Matthau being the original actor in Charade) but it wasn't really great.  The bad guys are softened a little to the point the female one seems to have a crush on Regina.  They were not really great replacements for George Kennedy and James Coburn.  And it's too bad they didn't include the maybe not extremely famous scene at Charlie's funeral where each bad guy storms in to make sure Charlie is really dead and not faking.  But at least they kept the way that Charlie conceals the money he took, which was pretty neat.  An old woman is added as Charlie's mother which didn't really add a lot.

The strangest thing is that while this was based on Charade, director Jonathan Demme uses a lot of references to Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, including the eponymous piano player showing up to do a couple of musical numbers.  It made it a little odd unless you really like French "New Wave" movies, which obviously I haven't really watched.  Anyway, having watched the original a couple of times, I mostly like that better. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  I remember watching it the first time and being really impressed with Thandiwe Newton and thinking she should get some good roles out of this.  Other than a part in Chronicles of Riddick, not a lot happened for her though until Westworld almost 15 years later.)

Friday, March 1, 2024

Are Movie Theaters Another Industry I'm Supposed to Save?

 On Super Bowl Sunday, former Forbes movie "expert" Scott Mendelson posted this Substack headline:

My first reaction was:  why the hell is it my job to save movie theaters?  I don't even like going to movie theaters for big movies like the MCU/DC superhero ones or other big popcorn movie franchises, let alone small movies like Lisa Frankenstein, which to me just looked like a remake of an 80s Tim Burton movie like Edward Scissorhands.  Nor do I really want to watch a poorly-reviewed movie like Argylle.

Again, like I said pre-pandemic: movie theaters kinda suck.  Tickets are expensive, you have to be there at a certain time, you can't pause if you want to use the can or buy snacks (which are also expensive), and you have to sit in an assigned seat with probably annoying strangers on phones and stuff.  Where is the advantage over streaming for small movies?  Then you throw in the pandemic and the risk of getting a serious illness and it's only worse. 

And in part thanks to the pandemic and strikes, movie studios have had to delay movies and are stretching those they have to cover the important times like "summer."  That's left some holes in the fall and winter schedules so for weekends like Super Bowl Sunday you really have nothing people would want to go see.

But, hey, it's MY fault as the consumer, right?  Because I don't want to go out on Super Bowl weekend to plop down $15 for a ticket for a movie I don't care about, plus money for concessions, at a time and place that's totally inconvenient.  Yup, it's MY fault.  Not Hollywood's fault for only releasing shitty movies because they tried to screw actors and writers.  Not theaters for having an increasingly unworkable business model that to me is just a step above the hassle of going to concerts (which I stopped going to years before the pandemic even), going to the doctor/dentist, and flying somewhere.

Like I said on BlueSky, for the price of watching one mediocre movie in a movie theater, I could buy at least one whole month of a streaming service.  Throw in concessions and it might be two or even three months of a lower-priced service.  Can we really blame people, especially in these times of "inflation," for making the smart financial choice for themselves instead of for the movie theater industry?

When someone says consumers need to prop up a business, it brings to mind other failing industries like department stores and newspapers.  Chiding people or begging them to subsidize those industries is not a viable strategy.  Because in the end, why the hell should I?  What's in it for me?  Nothing much.  If theaters want my business then they have to do something to earn it.  Provide a competitive advantage over streaming. For some people that's a bigger screen and better speakers for a popcorn movie, but as I said years ago there's not much advantage for small movies.  

People like Mendelson keep beating this dead horse in the same way that when we talk about eBooks, people will blather about how physical books are better because they like the feel or smell or some dumb shit like that.  Some people might like shelling out a bunch of extra money to sit in the dark with a bunch of strangers at an inconvenient time, but I think we're seeing that most people do not unless it is something big that they feel is worth their time and money.

And yet theaters--and their supporters--still refuse to accept the reality and change to find a way forward.  In which case they're likely to end up out of business like all those department store chains. 

As an aside, something I thought about is in a way movie theaters are like malls.  In the 80s and 90s they started to move away from the smaller 1-4 screen theaters and open up these huge multiplexes with 20-30 screens.  Like the expansion of malls in that time it seemed like a good idea, but only a generation (or generation-and-a-half) later these huge commercial complexes have become dinosaurs because of online shopping and now streaming services.

If anything, the handwriting was more on the wall for multiplexes than malls.  I mean by the early 90s there was already home video while there wasn't really online shopping, so you can forgive the builders of malls for not being able to see right away that these things would be an anachronism in 20 years.  But with multiplexes it really should have been more obvious that home video was going to get better, allowing people to stay home more to watch movies.

If you think about it, multiplexes have tried to adapt by making their theaters more like stadiums.  And that's largely how audiences are treating them by mostly going when there's a big game, ie some big popcorn movie franchise.  But people don't need stadium seats, 3D, Dolby whatever sound, etc. to watch Lisa Frankenstein or Drive Away Dolls or some would-be Oscar contender.  It'd be like paying Super Bowl ticket prices to watch your local senior center shuffleboard teams compete at the rec center.  Very few people are going to do that.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Some Potpourri Before Leap Day

 A couple of little tidbits to cram into one entry:

You probably haven't noticed yet but on the list of links below the header is a new section for Virtual Voice Audiobooks.  Since Amazon doesn't make a convenient link to share, I decided to make my own.  

First I did the Eric Filler ones on that blog.  I brought up my Eric Filler author page and sorted by "audiobooks" and then I put the titles and links onto a list.  And since it just brought them up pretty randomly I sorted out the series--as many as I had.

Then I realized that Amazon's stupid buggy software hadn't just brought up audiobooks; some of the links were Kinde books!  Which would be fine if all the Kindles had audiobooks, but they don't so some of them were linking to books that didn't even have an audiobook!

So because Amazon's dumb software can't handle a simple filter job that some giant mainframe using punch cards in the 1960s probably could have handled, I had to go through and audit the list and make a bunch of changes.  Then go through it again and catch a couple more.  Hopefully now it's finally right.

It was easier to do with the PT Dilloway ones because there weren't nearly as many.  I threw the Patrick Dilloway books on that list too.  All of the books are $3.99 or $1.99 if you have the eBook already.



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I've talked a couple of times about the Movie House app.  It was an app on my Roku where if you watch their crappy movies and TV shows you get credit towards a $5 gift card to Amazon or Vudu.  Then they added a daily spin where you got extra points.  At first after 5 spins you got a free gift card.  Then later they downgraded that to 50% towards a gift card.  Then 40%.

It was pretty awesome for a while as I got hundreds of dollars in gift cards for doing relatively little.  I mean, I hardly ever watched the actual content and I set an alarm on my phone to do the spin once a day.  I think it was a good deal and y'all slept on it.  Sucks for you.

But now it's over.  First without saying anything they downgraded the wheel again so instead of getting 40% you get...another spin.  And of course that extra spin is rigged so you'll usually get 5%.  So basically it's going from 40% to 5%.  The only good thing is the bonus would kick in after 4 days instead of 5 but still not an improvement.

When I finally did get 100%, which took almost twice as long as it used to, there were only Vudu gift cards.  I mean sure I could use that to rent some movie, though most of the newer ones are $6 or more so I'd still have to spend money.  But really, I don't care about Vudu.  I can't buy stuff I need with that.  So fuck it.  I'm done.

(And Vudu gift cards suck.  The one I got for $5 I saw Across the Spider-Verse on sale to buy for $5 so I'll just use it on that, right?  Nope, it's only for rentals.  OK, so it's $2.99 to rent and I haven't seen it yet, so fine I'll just do that.  I should have $2 left, right?  I mean that's how every other gift card works.  Nope, the rest of the amount just vaporized.  So, yeah, fuck Vudu.)

Like I've said before, the failure of this should go into a business textbook for college students.  There were so many things they did that were just dumb and so many things mishandled that I'm shocked it took this long for them to implode.

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Last December my Amazon Vine account was terminated.  Not just that but they terminated my "community" account so all of my reviews (non-Vine and Vine) for over 20 years was deleted just like that.  When I emailed them I got a really lame explanation that then basically just said, "WE HAVE SPOKEN!!!" and then they just ignored any other emails.

A problem I found out a few days later when I looked in my Spam folder is the night that they suspended my account there were like 37 emails saying I had reported a review as fake.  The thing is, all of these emails were made when I was asleep, so how could I have done that?  Unfortunately the emails don't say what reviews were reported as fake, though I suspect they were my own reviews, because why else would my account be suspended?  But of course no one wonders why I would be reporting on myself.  Nope, just destroy my account.  Then refuse to answer any questions.

When I email their "community help" I just got ignored.  I went online to talk to drones and was told all they can do is email the "community help team."  So, what, this "community team" is some autonomous entity that doesn't answer to anyone?  It really doesn't make sense.  It's especially annoying because this was a lot of suspicious activity on my account.  It would be really nice if they took that seriously.  At one point since I'd tried emailing them a few times with the whole list, I sent each one separately.  They of course ignored all 37 emails.  It's utterly ridiculous.

At this point I'm less concerned about getting my account back than figuring out what the hell happened to it.  It seems really shady.

And it got even shadier when I read a review on Goodreads where my longtime Amazon friend Ethan Cooper said he had the same thing happen to him.  Amazon deleted all but one of his reviews--including those on my books--because of "fake reviews."  Which is utter bullshit.  Maybe Coop was a little easy on my books for instance and maybe I was a little easy on his, but it wasn't fake.  What's wrong with some authors knowing each other and reviewing each other's books?  I'm sure Stephen King never reviews any books for authors he knows, right?  Yeah, I'm sure.

Now I'm wondering who else they went after in their latest purge.  They have overcompensated before to combat "fake" reviews with their Gestapo tactics.  It's still pretty ridiculous that they don't have any kind of due process for this to prevent people from losing their accounts for no real reason.  Meanwhile I'm sure there are plenty of actual fake reviews they haven't done anything about.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Why is Every Streaming Service Doing the Same Wrong Thing?

 For years, companies have often been pretty secretive with streaming data.  Companies like Netflix and Disney haven't been extremely forthcoming in saying what people are actually watching.  It was a little enlightening then when Nielsen (you know, the ones behind TV ratings since ever) listed the ten most-streamed shows of 2023.

As you can see there are 2 kids shows (Bluey & Cocomelon) and the rest are all shows that originally aired on network TV.  Not a single "original" streamer show like The Mandalorian, Power of the Rings, Stranger Things, or whatever.  Most of the shows are dramas or maybe dramedies (Friends is the only one of these shows I ever watched any of and that was only like 3 seasons) that aired on traditional networks from the 90s-2010s.  The top "original" series was Apple's Ted Lasso with 16+ billion minutes watched, which would probably be something like 12th-15th place on that list. 

I don't really know how accurate this is.  I mean I don't know if this counts everyone--like me for instance--or only a sample size.  Still, this should probably be a wake-up call for these streaming services throwing millions of dollars at "original" IPs.  

The thing is, almost every streaming service--even some of the lesser ones like Crackle or Tubi--has employed the same strategy.  They have some old stuff but they try to create "original" shows to gain attention and get people to sign up.  Disney has leaned on a lot of Marvel and Star Wars shows since the pandemic while Amazon invested big in Lord of the Rings and comic books like The Boys and Invincible.  Paramount+ made a big investment in Star Trek and Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan.  Netflix probably has the most "original" content in a variety of genres.

But now what we see is this strategy doesn't really work because people aren't watching this expensive "original" content as much as shows that in the case of Friends has been off the air for 20 years.  Really I think a lot of this is Americans are a pretty provincial people.  If you label something "Original" that's saying it's "New" and new is scary.  New is unexpected.  It's better to watch something you've seen before so you aren't surprised.  That's safe.

When it comes to entertainment, Americans have a pretty bland taste too.  And you can see most of the shows on that list are pretty bland.  Nothing that would probably be more than PG-13 rated at most.

The list of movies is almost entirely kids movies, most of them from Disney.  Almost all of them were released in theaters first, not streaming originals.  And as I just said all PG-13 and under, most being PG or less since they're for kids.  

I suppose it makes sense that if you and the kids (or just the kids) are home streaming they'll put on a movie for kids, right?  Maybe a surprise that Moana, which is from like 2016, is at the top of the list.

Something I was thinking is most of the shows and movies on these lists were put on regular TV or movie theaters before streaming.  Maybe provincial Americans need that seal of quality to try it.  Sort of like how a lot of people wouldn't read a self-published book because they think it won't have the same quality.  Streaming isn't self-publishing, but maybe there's the thought that it's not as good as something that's on regular TV or in a movie theater.

Anyway, you have to wonder now if streamers will prioritize older content over "original."  Not only is it cheaper and easier, it seems to be more popular.  The obvious problem though is there's only so much of that stuff people want to watch.  I mean when MAX locks up Friends that takes it off the board for the others so no one else can have it.  The same for the others.  You can't really make more of the stuff.

I wouldn't be surprised then if there is more of a push from companies to lock up older series.  That of course makes it suck a little more for people who can't afford (or just don't want to have) a ton of streaming services.  In which case some of us might have to just go back to DVDs to watch our old favorites.

And if you want another depressing nugget, looking at that list of shows, you don't have a ton of diversity.  I mean some of those shows have people of color in them, but predominantly they're shows starring white people.  That's pretty unfortunate.  The movies are more diverse with Moana, Encanto, and Wakanda Forever on there.  I'm not sure what that says--people can tolerate diversity in small amounts?  Kids are less racist?

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