Full thing at the Herald.
I have a pretty good relationship with the found-footage horror movie. I loved The Blair Witch Project. I loved Cloverfield. I.. actually, I hated the shit out of Apollo 18, but then again I really liked Quarantineand am looking forward to seeing [REC], which I hear is even better.
Yet for whatever reason, I totally disregarded Paranormal Activity when it came at, dismissing it as a no-budget ripoff of earlier stuff I liked. Which, well, it is. But I recently learned it’s also pretty great. I’m a Netflix Instant watcher, and my routine is to throw something on the TV as background noise while I’m writing–movie reviews, martial arts articles, stories, novels, whatever. Most of the time, I only pay attention to a scene or three; some movies, the credits are rolling before I’ve absorbed a single moment. But like The Wild Hunt, a movie I started paying attention to halfway through and then had to go back and watch from the beginning, Paranormal Activity demanded I watch it.
Thus I had some anticipation for Paranormal Activity 3, despite the fact third entries in horror franchises have a worse track record than Lasty from Futurama. And what do you know, Paranormal Activity 3 was much better than I expected, too.
I gush about this in the proper review, but Paranormal Activity 3 ginned up a new found-footage technique that’s fucking brilliant. The main character, a wedding photographer/video-guy, has a problem: his downstairs is too big for his camera to see all at once. (Quick plot summary: he needs to record it because he and his wife have been hearing/seeing some spooky things and he’s trying to figure out what’s going on.) To solve this, he mounts his camera on an oscillating fan, showing him slow, steady, back and forth sweeps of the ground floor.
Good God is that a great idea! And so simple! Each sweep of the camera reveals a new scare–or shows the last one has disappeared, which may be even scarier. Meanwhile, as the camera pans back and forth, you’re just waiting and waiting for what it’s going to reveal on the other side of the screen. Jesus, is it tense.
The movie’s far from perfect. The mythology’s somewhat lackluster (though handled well enough), nothing more than the odd line of exposition tossed off here and there, tied up by an unsettling final scene. And three movies in, the general premise can’t help but feel a bit threadbare. Still, the cast is pretty enjoyable, particularly the youngest daughter and the dad’s friend.
And with a $50 million opening weekend, it looks like the Paranormal Activity franchise is all ready to replace Saw as the yearly Halloween event, which thank god because the Saw series sucks like an automated sucking machine. Paranormal Activity 3 is one I look forward to ignoring on Netflix multiple times.
Full review can be found at the Herald.
Like I say over there, The Thing–the first one, I mean–is not just one of my favorite all-time sci-fi movies, it’s one of my plain favorite movies. It has Kurt Russell in a hat as large as the rising moon. Wilford Brimley bellowing and whacking a computer with a fire axe. Not some dude’s laptop, either. A 1982 computer that takes up an entire wall *AND PROBABLY SPEAKS LIKE THIS BEEP BOOP BOOP*. Beards for miles. Oh yeah, and a wickedly paranoid plot where anyone could be an alien replicant beyond the moon and the only way to survive is through the execution of makeshift yet relentless logic.
The new The Thing is supposed to be a prequel, the story of the Norwegian camp that first discovered the creature locked up in the ice. Prequel. Not remake. I said prequel.
Yet for at least the first 2/3 of its run, the new The Thing is essentially the old The Thing. Minus Brimley, Russell, David Keith, all those character actors you’ve never seen elsewhere, and any sense of suspense, paranoia, dread, or goodness of any kind, of course. You’ve got the large, ensemble cast of bearded men. Dogs in pens. Isolated antarctic base with the same set design. Grizzled helicopter pilots. A scientist discovering the Thing can thing people into new Things, then the crew struggling with how to figure out who’s still human and who’s been thinged.
There are differences, I suppose. Lead Mary Elizabeth Winstead is pretty obviously a girl. There’s no analog in the original for antagonist Ulrich Thomsen, an arrogant man of science-type. The method of deducing who’s been thinged is changed, as is most of the third act, which is simultaneously more action-heavy yet way less apocalyptic than the “well let’s just blow the whole place up!” finale of first The Thing. The thing about The Thing is it feels exactly like The Thing, except worse in every way, so it’s goddamn impossible not to compare the two and find the new one lacking.
I think this is a case of the filmmakers wanting to have their cake and eat it too: to make a prequel that’s technically not a remake while paying homage to the original by making this prequel exactly like it. It’s all there in the identical title. They took no risks and thus gained nothing. Except a crappy movie. Because The Thing is crappy. The new The Thing, I mean. The old one is great and call it and tell you that you love it. I’m waiting.
Coming into “Confidence Man,” Sayid has been KO’d by a branch, the transceiver destroyed. Meanwhile, Shannon’s inhalers have gone missing and she’s having trouble breathing. Sawyer has an alibi for the knockout, but Shannon’s brother Boone is convinced he’s behind the theft of the medicine.
And he’s got good reason. After Kate approaches him, Sawyer shows her a letter from a boy whose father was bilked by Sawyer, then killed himself and the kid’s mom. In flashback, we see Sawyer’s a confidence man. He beds a fine young lady and deftly manipulates her into pledging her husband’s money into a phony oil drilling investment. After a meeting with the husband in which Sawyer tries to walk away, the husband is ready to hand his money over to the man who’s seduced his wife. “Seduced” here means “sexed the hell out of.”
How do they attempt to wrestle the inhalers out of Sawyer? By siccing Sayid in him. Who, in addition to being a communications officer with the Iraqi Republican Guard, also did some torturing. His methods on Sawyer are blunt and to the point: sharpened bamboo under the fingernails. And then threat of knife to the eye. That’s enough for Sawyer. After coercing a kiss from Kate, he confesses he never had the inhalers in the first place. She discovers the letter wasn’t to Sawyer, it was from him; in trying to track down the fraud who ruined his family, he wound up becoming him. A disbelieving Sayid stabs him. After Jack saves Sawyer, Sayid, disgraced by his own actions, exiles himself to map the island shores.
Zero movement on the supernatural front in “Confidence Man,” then. Instead, we get a look under the hood of fully human bad guy Sawyer, who, as a tall, impossibly muscly, stubbly, long-haired blonde, shattered the glass ceiling for tall, light hunks everywhere and set the stage for True Blood‘s Eric.
The flashbacks and characterization are once again thorough yet unexpected, giving us a strong understanding of one of the leads while fleshing him out beyond the stereotype, humanizing Sawyer as a rough man driven by a much softer heart. After being stabbed, he wants to die–in fact, I thought it was pretty obvious he didn’t have the inhalers and was instead seeking punishment while forcing Dudley Do-Right Jack and others to confront the fact the world’s a pretty mean place so you got to be mean, too.
That predictability may be why I was left a little disappointed with “Confidence Man,” as if Lost has a pretty good trick when it comes to its characters, but that’s the only one it’s got. On the other hand, the career of M. Night Shyamalan proves unpredictability and twists can’t carry a story on their own; plenty of worn-out plots have made for pretty great stories. Still, Lost has, by its 8th episode, already established a pattern it seems content to repeat without pushing itself, and that can’t help but lead to diminishing returns.
On the other hand, it’s not afraid to push some serious damn buttons. An Iraqi soldier torturing an American civilian? It’s totally removed from the context of war, sure, but even so–that’s bold. Doubly so for a colossal mainstream network drama airing its first season just ~18 months after the (new) Iraq War began. Whether the incorporation of elements like that is insightful or exploitive depends entirely on the handling, of course. So far, Lost is somewhere in the middle of that range; Sayid’s former enemy soldier isn’t so far shedding any light on anything, but he’s definitely no mustache-twirling caricature, either. Frankly, he’s interesting just by virtue of being there at all.
I feel like “Confidence Man” might be an extremely illuminating episode of Lost as a whole. Strip away the monsters, the strangeness, and the mythology, and what do you have? Decent characters told well with just a little bit of edge to it. In other words, enjoyable enough–but without the Smoke Monster, there’s no chance I’d be writing about this show nearly a year and a half after its final episode aired.
My full-length review that may or may not have less swearing at the Herald.
Real Steel provoked the critic in me. Coming on the heels of my reaction to 50/50, it’s kind of funny, in a way that’s unlikely to make you laugh. With 50/50, I thought “screw my doubts, I loved it, it’s great.” Yet despite the fact Real Steel had me cheering during the big robot fights–not literally cheering, I’m far too painfully self-conscious to make audible noises to something happening on a screen–it annoyed me too much to give in to the emotional response it provoked in me.
What’s annoying about Real Steel? Hugh Jackman’s kid, mainly. He’s supposed to be 11, but he talks like he’s at least 15 and is as self-possessed as a 35-year-old. The Hollywood cliche of the unbelievably precocious kid is one that really sets me off, so if it doesn’t really bug you, bump my grade to a C+, and if you get a kick out of kids who don’t act their age, seek therapy.
But even if this is a bigger deal for me than most, Real Steel has a lot of flaws. Hugh Jackman and son’s motivations swerve wildly. In at least two instances, they completely reverse their stances from one scene to the next. This isn’t some high-minded nod to the ambiguity and indecisiveness of real life. It’s a cheap, manipulative ploy for laughs and plot advancement. And that’s Real Steel as a whole. It isn’t awful. It doesn’t blow the deceased. In fact, it’s pretty easy to get swept up in. But that’s because the people who made it are just pushing emotional buttons. The hardware supporting those buttons falls apart as soon as you open the case.
*ROBOT JOKES COMPLETE*
Regular newspaper-sized review available at the Herald.
I really, really liked 50/50. When I was driving home, I was mulling over the grade I’d give it, and my critic-brain was all “Yeah, that was quite enjoyable, but how does it stack up to the canon? What does your puny emotional response mean in the face of more than a century of classic films? Let us bestow a B+ upon it and be done.”
But then I thought about it some more, and my non-critic brain was all, “Yeah, but this movie really got to me. I thought the emotions felt really human and it was funny and the acting was great and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is like the Brando of my generation. It’s not your prototypical classic, but did we enjoy ourselves more at any other movie this year?” And then the critic-brain said, “Huh. No, there’s been some good stuff, but nothing awesome. Give it what you want.” For a funny, moving, well-written, great-actor film that had a deep understanding of human behavior and feeling? Thus was born my first A of the year.
There’s always a little hesitation to declare something great. Much easier to say “This was pretty good, but I’m not so sure about that milkman’s motivations!” and ding it a point or two. Nobody can do much complaining when they love something and your response was only mildly loving. And it’s not like loving 50/50 is that contrarian a position–its Rotten Tomatoes score is currently 93% (editor’s note: holy crap).
Ultimately, my reviews are written of the moment, composed 24-48 hours after a single viewing. It’s easy to get swept up in the moment or overly focused on some flaw that seems trivial with more perspective. With 50/50, I might look dumb a year from now. But I know how I felt in the minutes I was watching it.
I’ve blogged about this before, but novellas are a strange breed. Big paper book publishers don’t really sell them because readers don’t really buy them. They’re only good for an hour or two of entertainment–how much can you really charge for that? Many big fiction magazines will print them, but obviously not more than 1-2 per issue, because they’ve only got so much space. They’re not very widely-published in online mags, either, because they only have so much money to spend per issue and I don’t think they’re seen as very popular.
But I just finished revising my second-ever novella two days ago. After cuts, it came in right under 17,000 words. It feels great–but it’s a fantasy novella, and a quick look at Duotrope shows three pro markets for the length: Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, and the Writers of the Future contest. Expanding that to semipro pay (around 1 cent/word) turns up three more markets.
Not many options.
Let’s get specific about terms here, because the precise definition of “novella” varies. For determining awards eligibility and such, SFWA defines short stories as 0-7499 words, novelettes as 7500-14,999, novellas as 15,000-39,999, and novels as 40,000 words and up. Nobody outside the industry really pays attention to or even knows the definition of the word “novelette,” though. And the line between novella and novel is definitely wide and blurry–40,000 words is only about 133 pages, which is extremely short for a modern-day novel. Even Harlequin category romances are usually more like 50,000, and except in genres with page counts that are frequently shorter (Young Adult) or longer (epic fantasy), publishers generally won’t touch anything from a first-timer below 80,000 or above 120,000. Plenty of exceptions, but that’s conventional wisdom these days.
If you asked me to define length by some combination of industry standard and gut feel for reader expectations, I’d break it down like this:
Flash fiction: 1-1000 words; roughly 1-3 pages
Short story: 2000-9000 words; 6-30 pages
Novella: 15,000-36,000 words; 50-120 pages
Novel: 60,000-300,000+ words; 200-1000+ pages
There are some missing word counts here, clearly. I’d shade anything in between toward whatever category it’s closest to, but the in-betweeners are kind of bastard lengths. A 1200-word piece is really more flash fiction than short story; 12,000 words should probably be called a novella, I guess, but if you ordered something labeled as a “novella” online and three days later you got a story that’s only 40 pages long, you might feel a little cheated. Same deal if you ordered a “novel” that arrived as 150 pages. Technically accurate, just lacking.
It’s not a big deal, though. I’m just looking at this stuff for two reasons. One, I like numbers. I spent far too many minutes tweaking that breakdown above, because that is the type of thing my brain considers fun. Second, I think it helps conceptualize what each of these lengths means.
Looking at that, you can see a novella is somewhere between a quarter and a half the length of a shortish novel (and knee-high on a grasshopper compared to the tomes of George R.R. Martin). And it turns out that length is awesome to write.
This may be particular to fantasy and science fiction, because in my still limited experience, 50-120 pages is the perfect length to create a world that feels expansive and lived-in. You don’t have the roaming scope of a novel, where you can divert for several pages just to explain the social habits of AI or the breeding cycles of dragons, but compared to a 15-page short story, you can do an immensity of exploration. My recent novella is set in a secondary world where the day cycle is radically different from our own. This changes just about everything about the world. I couldn’t do more than hint at how in a short story. With the 60ish pages I wrote, I was able to spend a significant amount of time in both halves of the world.
Why not just write a novel? Um, good question, actually. I may just do that. I like this world and I’d like to see more of it.
But the story I had in mind didn’t have to be that long. It was big, but it wasn’t novel-big. And that’s pretty much why I wrote it this month despite being in the middle of a full-length novel: I’d had this novella idea on the backburner for months, and I got stuck about 3/4s of the way into this novel. It wasn’t fun to write anymore and meanwhile I couldn’t wait to take a shot at that novella idea I was in love with. I hate to lose momentum in the middle of a book, but eventually I said screw it and just jumped into the novella.
Where I found, yet again, that it’s possible to carry the whole story in your head at once. Maybe other people can do this with novels, but I have a hard time visualizing and tracking an entire damn book at the same time. You’ve got dozens if not a couple hundred different scenes to write. There are subplots and side characters and themes and back stories and worldbuilding flying right and left. With so much to keep track of, it’s easy to veer off course, be it starting in the wrong place, hitting a plot-swamp where you don’t know how to bridge your middle to the end you’ve got in mind, or whatever else. Point is, novels are huge and they’re messy.
Novellas aren’t huge. They’re just big. If you have a beginning and an end, it’s pretty easy to visualize how to bridge the two. It’s a hell of a lot easier for me, anyway, and when I can see where I’m going, I write a whole lot faster. If I had it all planned out and hit a hot streak, I could probably burn through a novella’s first draft in 7-10 days. And I’m kinda slow.
Instead, between pre-plotting, drafting, and revising, it took me the better part of the month. And that was a good thing. I got a lot of writing done while getting enough perspective from that bogged-down novel to start thinking I may have taken the last few chapters in the wrong direction. Now that I’ve had some time away, I don’t really have a problem scrapping them and taking a different route to my ending. I could have taken a break for short stories instead, but I was low on ideas and typically am slow to come up with them, and I would have been tempted to come back to that novel-in-progress much sooner. Maybe too soon.
Instead, I have something big to show for the month. The length is a handicap now that I’m sending it out to markets. But I’m no longer reliant on the 3-6 places that’ll buy a fantasy story of this length to see any money from it. If they pass, I’ll peddle it for a buck or two through the usual online stores and see what happens. I have a feeling novellas look a lot better on ereaders than they do as a thin slice between two covers.
As always, my professional review’s available over at the Herald.
My unprofessional review: I’m a big fan of sports, but I’m lukewarm at best towards sports movies. The dramatic arc is about as predictable as it gets. New coach rolls in, finds his team is filled with losers who no one believes in, belief in them ensues, they start winning, beginning an improbable comeback which leads to the championship, which they win, or which they sometimes lose, but you know they’ll be even better next year. Someone is hoisted onto someone else’s shoulders, credits roll, hooray.
Moneyball kind of follows that pattern but also not. Brad Pitt isn’t the Oakland Athletics’ coach, he’s the general manager. And he’s not taking over, he’s just facing the offseason loss of this three biggest stars. And if you know your recent baseball history–as a fan of the Seattle Mariners, Oakland’s division rivals, I am painfully familiar with this–you’ll know the A’s didn’t win or even go to the World Series in 2002, leaving Moneyball‘s dramatic climax to focus instead on their history-making 20-game win streak. Some of the old cliches are here, like when Pitt and assistant Jonah Hill rake together an “island of misfit toys” nobody else wanted or valued, but, well, that really happened, so. Anyway, I’ve got this theory that good stories are a balanced mix of the cliched and the original. Moneyball has both.
Pitt turns in another solid Pitt performance as a guy who failed young and can’t stand losing now. Hill’s pretty great, too, as a bottled-up geek-type whose ideas about baseball are about to revolutionize the game. Although the history’s already written, and it’s a sports movie so you know there will be triumph in the end, Pitt’s gnawing doubt and worry about whether his crazy new plan will pan out is so effective your stomach will be churning right along with him. Writers Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian paint a lot of extras into the margins; I loved how they nailed Pitt’s ex-wife’s new man as a soft-spoken, gentle, caring wussbag who’s probably the exact opposite of Pitt, the former pro player willing to take a huge gamble with an MLB franchise.
I gave Moneball a B+, and I feel like I might have short-changed (sweet pun, me) it a bit. It’s thrilling and competent in the very best way. A few years from now, we could be looking at this one as a classic.
Except at the place where I get paid to, of course.
Drive is good. You can tell Drive is going to be good from the opening scene, where Ryan Gosling, moonlighting as a getaway driver for a pair of robbers, shuttles them away from the crime scene through a net of cop cars and helicopters. It isn’t a car chase, though Gosling flips a couple sweet maneuvers along the way. It’s more of a car hide, with Gosling slipping out of view, holing up, and finally blending in with the crowd to escape being caught. It’s tense, it’s gripping, and it’s a hugely welcome break from your typical “vroom vroom VROOM bash *cop car flips over median, explodes*” chase scene.
This movie should be big for director Nicolas Winding Refn. It’s incredibly stylish and awash with righteous performances out of Gosling, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, and Oscar Isaac, who I don’t think I’ve seen before but whupped all kinds of dramatic ass as a man released from prison to find Gosling sniffing around Isaac’s wife Carey Mulligan. It’s a non-action action movie that’ll have you questioning whether Gosling is a hero or maybe just a psychopath who’s finally found the chance to lash out.
I liked Drive so much it convinced me to finally watch Refn’s Valhalla Rising, which had been languishing on my Netflix queue for some time. Unfortunately, the review never appeared online, but I liked that one too. Not for everyone, though–very moody and light on dialogue. Drive is, too, but it should have much wider appeal as–perversely–a sort of indie crime drama romance sandwiched around or possibly by meaty scenes of vicious action.
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Rob Dunbar is the world's best history professor. And with good reason: he's been alive for three thousand years, keeping his existence a secret since...
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