Tag Archives: movies

Fiction

YA Fiction and Superhero Movies

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Alan Jacobs is laying out the facts on Twitter right now.

“Noteworthy: the real problem with YA fiction (much of it is bad) is the same as the problem with superhero movies (most of them are bad).”

“If you think there is something *intrinsically* juvenile about stories that concern beings with superhuman powers, then you’re committed to saying that the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, etc. etc. are juvenile. Which is manifest nonsense.”

“So the problem is not that we have too many superhero movies, but that those movies are unimaginatively conceived and incompetently written.”

“Much dislike of YA fiction & superhero movies is grounded in two things:19c pref. for realism & Modernist pref. for ‘difficult beauty.’ But if you go pre-c19 you can find plenty of aesthetic models that don’t privilege either realism or difficulty. The Modernist preference for difficulty was consolidated by the professiorate: we need difficult texts to justify our jobs.”

“But some of the most beautiful poems I’ve ever read are perfectly clear and call for little or no professional interpretative assistance.”

And Alex Knapp chips in: “Clarity doesn’t mean simplicity and difficulty doesn’t mean complexity. But oh how critics love to assume that this is the case.”

Fiction

16 Book Adaptations for the Movies This Year

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15 book-to-film adaptations coming out before the end of 2014. Children’s books have been popular. Why hasn’t anyone approached me about adapting “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb”? It would make an awesome comedy trailer or short film.

One film not on this list is Edge of Tomorrow, which looks fun. It’s based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill. Get a brief review of the book here.

Non-fiction, The Press

Crowdfund a Movie on Kermit Gosnell

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This is where we are in the world today. We self-publish our own books. We can solicit our own funds for movies. We can circumvent the nightly news, if it still exists.

Here’s a trio, who have made award-winning documentaries in the past, wanting to blow the lid off the media silence on the man they call the most prolific serial killer in America.

There are at least two angles on the media silence on this case. The biggest one is that Gosnell is an abortionist operating within the scope allowed by those who have argued they want abortions in our country to be safe and rare. This man’s clinic was nowhere near safe, so the political agenda doesn’t support exposing him at the risk of undermining the most scared battleground for the political left.

The second angle is not as politically defined as the first. It’s what Ann McElhinney describes in the video below. The women who were murdered were poor, unseemly, and minority–the kind that gets killed everyday in some cities, so what’s the news? You might think those who cry loudly about the rights of woman and minorities would cry out about this too, but perhaps their classism gets in the way. Maybe it just doesn’t trump the first angle. Abortionists are priests in the Church of Ne’re Do Ill. The blood on their hands is only red fruit punch.

If you have the funds to contribute to this, I encourage you to consider it.

Fiction, Writing

Are Movie Titles Getting More Bland?

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An upcoming animated film, based on the book The True Meaning Of Smekday, will be released as Home. Which of these titles is more interesting to you? Studios may have a habit of preferring bland titles over interesting ones.

Reviews

Film review: “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”

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The main takeaway that I take away from watching The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, second in Peter Jackson’s very fat movie adaptation of a fairly thin book, is that I have no interest in buying the DVDs. I want to see the movies in theaters, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t find in my heart any desire to buy them and watch them again.

The main reason, I think, is that there’s too much Peter Jackson here. The mix works out to about 50% Tolkien’s story, 50% Jackson’s special effects indulgences. He promised us a Hobbit fleshed out with material from the Silmarillion and other Tolkienian sources. But in fact most of the added stuff is just fluff – improbable chases, a Rube Goldberg strategem for fighting the dragon (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, and wonderful to see in itself), and an entirely implausible romantic subplot. Also a fighting female elf, unknown in the original material.

As with the first film, it’s visually wonderful. Glorious, beautiful, dazzling. But I kept getting pulled out of the story by Jackson’s self-indulgences. I don’t think he trusts the material. In the classic moviemakers’ tradition, he wants to do the story the immense favor of improving it in his own image.

I kept wanting to tell him to sit down, shut up, and let Tolkien talk.
My movie companion thought it was better than the first one. He may be right. But I continue to feel that great opportunities were lost here.
Cautions for frightening scenes and fantasy violence. OK for kids above, oh, eight, I’d say.

Oh yes, I wanted to mention that the wise old dwarf Balin is played by Ken Stott, who played Inspector Rebus in the second Rebus TV series, reviewed here.

Reviews

Netflix review: "Solomon Kane'

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The 2009 film version of Robert E. Howard’s second most famous fantasy hero, Solomon Kane, came and went almost without my notice. I think many people, even fellow Howard fans, had the same experience. But I caught it on Netflix yesterday, and found it considerably better than I expected, though not without faults.
For a writer of no particular religious belief and rather freethinking sexual views, it was an odd choice on Howard’s part to create a character who was an English Puritan. Of course he made up for that by essentially having no idea what Puritans believed, and the movie shares that ignorance. Still he created an interesting character – more a type than a character, really – who lives and travels the world for the sole purpose of fighting evil.
This movie, intended as the first of a trilogy, is an origin story for the character, giving us background Howard never bothered with. In this imagining Solomon is the son of an English West Country nobleman, banished by his father. At first he traveled the world as a sort of pirate, cruel and greedy but unmatched in his fighting skills. Then, after an experience when his lust for gold brought disaster to his crew, he retired to what appears to be a monastery in England (which is historically problematic, as the story date, though uncertain, must be later than Henry VIII’s dissolution of Catholic institutions). There he comes to the questionable conviction that he can achieve redemption by living “a life of peace.” Continue reading Netflix review: "Solomon Kane' →

Uncategorized

Avoiding Message Movies

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Writer Bill Kauffman and director Ron Maxwell both hate heavy-handed message movies, so they worked together to give us a Civil War story that doesn’t paint in primary colors. Christian Toto writes, “Copperhead… examines an aspect of history Kauffman says is often ignored—the side of the argument told by those who lost the war.

“‘We tend to sweep the losers down the memory hole as though there was only one side in any debate,’ he says. ‘The guys who lost … we paint Snidely Whiplash mustaches upon them.'”

Reviews

Film review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

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So I finally saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. And I enjoyed it. And yet… I understand why some people were disappointed. I suppose I was a little disappointed myself, though that shouldn’t be taken as a thumbs down.

First of all, the good parts. Martin Freeman is a wonderful, wonderful Bilbo Baggins. I can’t imagine how the role could have been better played. Superb casting, superb job.

I liked the visuals. Some people, or so I’ve read, have trouble with the unusually high resolution in which the film was shot, but it didn’t bother me at all. As you’d expect, I saw it in 3D, and I liked that too. There were some wonderful color effects. One of my major take-aways from the whole thing was just how lovely it looked.

My reservations are complicated, and I suppose I’m still thinking it out. A lot of material has been added, in order to grow the original story, which is a pretty quick read, into a twin to The Lord of the Rings. Much of this ought to be legitimate enough for the most exacting Tolkien fan. Instead of taking things out of the story, as they had to do with the first trilogy, Jackson and people put stuff in, and the most substantial of the additions come (or so I’m told, I’ve only actually read The Silmarillion) from Tolkien’s own writings about Middle Earth. Continue reading Film review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey →

Religion

More Angels in Movies

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Joel Miller, author of Lifted by Angels: The Presence and Power of Our Heavenly Guides and Guardians thinks now is a good time for Hollywood to make more movies with well-drawn angels in them. “Perhaps all this newfound interest in biblical stories and characters offers Hollywood a chance to do it right for a change. Forget sappy, romantic, and cute. In researching my new book, Lifted by Angels, I was struck by how overwhelmingly powerful and even frightening angels are.”

Hollywood doesn’t understand frighteningly awesome angels because they don’t believe in a frighteningly awesome God. They see God mostly like Odin from Marvel’s Thor, wouldn’t you say? But as Joel says, the industry based in Los Angeles needs to overcome their biases at least once.

Non-fiction

Blue Like Jazz Movie

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Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality has been praised by a variety of folks for years, and Steve Taylor has adapted it for the big screen. It opens this weekend, though not in my area. It may gain a wider release next weekend. World Magazine as a good review here. Tiffany Owens writes:

While the movie successfully explores themes of forgiveness, authenticity, and the question of God’s existence as it follows one man’s journey to find God, it struggles to offer a clear explanation of the gospel.

I’m sure Blue Like Jazz is funny, and it’s probably uncomfortable. Hopefully, it’s also rewarding. Here’s the trailer.

Donald Miller talks about the themes of the movie and the criticism he’ll probably get on his blog. He says, “I get it. Criticism is hard. And not only this, churches get criticized for stuff that happened hundreds of years ago. I’d venture to say most criticism is unfounded and ill-informed. It can also be spiteful and hateful. So, I don’t want to be lumped in with the haters.”

Thomas McKenzie does One Minutes Reviews (which usually aren’t one minute, but hey!) and he talks lightly about the movie. This puts a positive spin on it for me.