Richard Kelly seems to be in the news a lot these days. The director of "Donnie Darko" is teaming up with Eli Roth, the director of "Cabin Fever" to write a movie based on a Richard Matheson story called "The
Box."
Also, director Lucy Mckee will be releasing his new movie "The Woods" on Oct. 1. McKee directed a great low budget horror movie, "May."
With all these guys working, I think things are looking up for horror in the movies.
At the DarkEcho blog, Paula Guran says:
Okay, so I am glancing through my new issue of LOCUS (#520) and I come across a favorable review of a book that does not even deserve ink in the magazine. Am I the only reviewer in the world who wants to pick up other reviewers by their (no doubt ass-like) ears and shake sense into them?
She goes on to wonder if reviews (and Guran writes reviews for Cemetery Dance magazine) really matter, which brings us back to Ed Gorman's point.
Over at Ed's Place, author Ed Gorman says:
"Variety pointed out that this year five different movies that have been scourged by critics not only opened at numero uno but even had legs. This weekend's 'Van Helsing' is the latest example. I probably read eight or nine reviews of it. None had even one good thing to say about it.
"I'm pretty sure publishing operates this way. A number of bestselling writers are consistently trashed by reviewers but it hasn't damaged their careers. That's why I'm usually reluctant to show prospective editors my good reviews. How nice, they say, being polite. But they know and so do I that reviews generally don't sell books. It's like saying to the editor, My Mom thinks I'm really swell."
It is interesting, no? I know more than a few people who say they look at reviews and whichever movies are given bad reviews, they go out and see them.
I, on the other hand, like reviews. But I rarely like just one. I want to read a whole bunch of reviews to get a sense of what the movie is like and what reviewers have problems with. This is why Rotten Tomatoes is brilliant. In one burst, I can see a whole lot of reviews. And looking at Van Helsing, I can pretty much say it's not going to be very good.
But this isn't always true. Take Deep Rising, an earlier Stephen Sommers film. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 26% rating, just 2 points over Van Helsing. All right, admittedly it's kind of stupid and is all about giant monsters and explosions. But it doesn't sell itself as anything else. In fact, it gives you some characters and humor to boot.
And horror movies, I almost never trust reviewers on gory horror movies. They seem to get so blinded by blood and guts that they can't comprehend the rest of the movie.
So what do you do? I'm not sure. I usually only go to the theaters to see movies I'm sure about it. When I'm renting movies though, I'll pull out anything that vaguely interests me and give it a try. This means I miss a few good films in theaters and I suffer through a lot of bad ones at home (although at home I can turn it off without losing $10.)
In the book world, things are a bit different. I only use reviewers to tell me about books I know nothing about. Otherwise, I stick with authors I know, classic books or books recommended by authors I love.
So, use my new comment feature, tell me how you use (or don't use) reviewers.
Richard Kelly says Donnie Darko will be dramatically revised for its re-release to movie theaters.
"Ultimately, for me, I'm just psyched I finally got to finish the film," he said. "While I'm proud of the theatrical cut, I feel like there were some elements that were never fully realized that I'm excited to be able to realize now. It's been a dream come true, and I'm really lucky to have gotten to do it."
I'm really mixed about this. There's no doubt that "Donnie Darko" is a flawed movie. Unless you start looking at a lot of the supplemental material, there's no way you'll understand all the manipulated dead and chest spears things that are referenced in the film. But that's also part of the charm, things are left a mystery and the film becomes personal to you.
Not to mention I'm mixed on the whole idea of going back and revising your movie (or whatever artwork you've created) after it's been in the public eye.
"Star Wars" is always the thing that comes to mind for me. George Lucas went back and changed all the special effects and made a few other changes. It has always upset me that Greedo fired first in the new version. And some of the Jabba part is a little silly. On the other hand, I did like the new special effects and most of the other additions were either helpful or not a problem.
And we've all come to expect director's cuts, right?
So maybe I'm just worried over nothing. And, anyway, I've got my copy of "Donnie Darko" on DVD anyway, in case I don't like the new version. (Unlike Star Wars, which will most likely never be released on DVD in its original version.)
OK changes have been made succesfully. Now everyone can post comments and they will forever be attached to my entries. The template has changed. There's a few more futuristic, bubble type designs available, but I like this more subdued look. Do you agree? Leave a comment! I've updated a few links but have yet to add any more. All right, now with luck I can get back to more regular posting.
S1ngularity publishes a new interview with Peter Crowther. Crowther is a horror writer, a publisher of fine science fiction, fantasy and horror novellas and is now becoming a magazine editor. He's one of the most important people in the speculative fiction field right now, so the interview is well worth your while.
Beatrice does 5 Questions With Nick Mamatas. Nick has a LiveJournal here and here's a listing for his novel, "Move Under Ground."
Aargh. Blogger has added all kinds of new elements, most importantly permalinks and a commenting system. Well, I've managed to get the permalinks working, but the comments defy me at every turn. In the meantime, all the old comments have been deleted. Sorry. Once I get the new comments system working, they'll be attached to the permalinks so your writings will never again (theoretically) be lost in the great Web void. If anyone else with a Blogger site has had problems with comments, let me know and tell me how you got through it.
In San Francisco, the Shooting Gallery will be hosting "The Tokyo Monster Show 2004."
The Shooting Gallery is excited to pay tribute to Godzilla and his friends with “The Tokyo Monster Show”. Over 30 artists will take part in this homage to Japanese monster movies. Paintings, photography, sculpture and drawings will all be on display for everyone to enjoy. Never has there been such a gathering of creatures since “Monster Island”, when Godzilla proved he was The King of All Monsters
The site has a few examples of the giant monster paintings. They're very good.
Trained dolphins are being used to search for a secret American submarine. I think it's amazing the things dolphins are being trained to do these days. In southern Iraq, dolphins were used to clear mines.
It all reminds me of a science fiction story by Alexander Jablokov called "A Deeper Sea" (it was also rewritten into a novel, but I didn't read that.) In the story, a Russian scientist learns to communicate and control dolphins. What, at first, he doesn't know is that he's also torturing them. The dolphins are used as soldiers in a global war. It's a good story and made the Year's Best Science Fiction anthology for 1989. Jablokov's last book, "Deep Drive," (which I enjoyed) came out in 1998. His Web site hasn't been updated since then. I wonder what he's been up to.
The Great Mahakali Write-A-Thalon is another novel writing contest. This one asks you to write a 35,000 word novel between 9 a.m. May 14 and 7 p.m. May 16. Considering it takes me the whole 30 days to write a 50,000 word novel in a month, this would be quite a challenge. Unfortunately, I work weekends, so I can't miss the sleep I'd need to in order to participate. Still, sounds exciting, good luck to all those participating.
If this is the kind of thing you're into, there's also Anvil Press's Three Day Novel Writing Competition which takes place on Labor Day weekend.
Ah what some of us will do for a deadline.
UPDATE: The Anvil Press Three Day Novel Writing Competition has apparently come to an end. Ah well. Thanks to Rohit Gupta for the heads up.
ANOTHER UPDATE: All right, maybe that Three Day Novel Writing competition still exists, but it's not easily found. There is this under construction Web site, which may yield something in the near future.
Speaking of horror comics, there's something I wonder if any of my readers could help me with. When I was a young teen, in maybe 1981 or so, I bought a comic book at a fair. It was a collection of Polish legends and fairy tales. I remember liking it, but I can remember very little of it. I haven't seen it anywhere in years. The only story I remember had something to do with a king, many rats and a flood. It was in color.
I know it's unlikely, but does this ring any bells for anyone?
Apparently, it's been 50 years since William Gaines, publisher of EC Comics, appeared before a Senate committee to defend his horror comics. Richard Corliss discusses the history of EC Comics and their gory fun in this interesting article from Time magazine.
The Comics Journal did a nice issue a while back that had interviews with many of the creators of the EC comics. Unfortunately none of it seems to be online.
The link was found through the DarkEcho newsletter. And I should also mention that DarkEcho now has a blog. It just started, so I'm not sure where she's going with it. But Paula Guran is always interesting, so it's worth keeping an eye on it.
This opinion piece shows a side to Pat Tillman that we haven't been getting elsewhere. Using quotes from the memorial service, Tillman is shown as a much more complicated person than the prescribed story would make you think.
Tillman's youngest brother, Rich, wore a rumpled white T-shirt, no jacket, no tie, no collar, and immediately swore into the microphone. He hadn't written anything, he said, and with the starkest honesty, he asked mourners to hold their spiritual bromides.
"Pat isn't with God,'' he said. "He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.''
There's a lot more. It's a good article check it out.
By the time the ceremony ended, after his brother and brother-in-law sipped the Guinness that Garwood poured in Tillman's honor, the funny, thinking, wild, crazy man had come to life. The family's loss, the loss of every soldier's family, seemed more real.
Connecticut man saw a UFO over Iran. Apparently, this is becoming increasingly common in that country. Skeptics say people are seeing the planet Venus filtered through the night sky, while others say it's spy planes.
Ah, the return of the snakehead fish. The snakeheads were a big story last year. It's a Chinese fish that eats everything in a pond and then will travel over land to the next pond where it starts eating again. The fish can wipe out ecosystems pretty fast. This year, Maryland is considering banning the fish. Pine Lake in Maryland was drained and cleaned out after a fisherman found a snakehead there last week.
SFGate.com has a couple of articles on Godzilla and the original print of the movie.
But Godzilla isn't just the bomb -- he's hate and anger, war, the poisoned environment -- in short, he is mankind itself, the destruction wrought by the rage within us, an inner ugliness we can never quite seem to shake.
There's an article on the making of Godzilla and a timeline of Godzilla films and reality that influenced it.
The New York Times takes a look at the first Godzilla movie -- that is, the Japanese version, sans bad dubbing and Raymond Burr -- on its 50th anniversary. The article looks at Godzilla as a metaphor for the A-bomb and what that really means:
The most peculiar thing about Godzilla as a metaphor for the bomb is the creature's simultaneous status as a legendary beast of Japanese islanders' mythology: surely a more precise representation of the disaster that befell the country at the end of the Second World War would be an agent of destruction from far away, unheard of even in legend, not this native, almost familiar monster. Is Godzilla, then, also on some subterranean level a metaphor for Japan's former imperial ambitions, which finally unleashed the retaliatory fury that leveled its cities?
Maybe. But the the runaway metaphor of [director Ishiro] Honda's Godzilla isn't nearly so easy to pin down. It's more ambiguous, more generalized and perhaps more potent than that. And its significance can be glimpsed only in the Japanese version of the movie, because what Honda's "Godzilla" is most fundamentally about, I think, is a society's desire to claim its deepest tragedies for itself, to assimilate them as elements of its historical identity.
The article says the later films seem to subvert the message by turning Godzilla into a hero. Actually, I think the metaphor was simply dropped. None of Godzilla's sequels have been as serious as that first movie. And "King Kong vs. Godzilla," the film that revived Godzilla's career and was the template for the next 20-odd movies, was intended as a humorous monster bash.
The only Godzilla movie that attempts to be as serious is Shusuke Kaneko's "Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack." But "GMK" seems to be confused as to what it wants to say and its rushed filming schedule shows.
(Thanks to Professor Hex for the link.)
