Michael Offutt's Blog, page 123

Rejoice horror fans because vampires are about to be terrifying again

The FX Network has really surpassed my expectations with American Horror Story: Coven, and now, I have finally watched the first official trailer for Guillermo del Toro's The Strain. I've talked about this show before HERE. Even though there's really not much to see in this video, I am excited. Vampires are about to be vampires again, and that means "TERRIFYING!"

Natural organic food is filled with chemicals you can't pronounce

So my unique friend Eli has gone with this all vegan, all natural, raw food diet complete with cleansing enemas and for all the trouble he's going to in order to stick with it, I'm left scratching my head and asking the question, why? He is not the first person that I've known that is into extreme diets either. But his excuses for eating healthy (and wanting to live in some Third World country in the southern hemisphere) are amusing enough to keep me interested with a "Is this conversation really happening?" face more than anything else. Unfortunately, the answer is yes: this conversation is happening. I've easily lost 20 minutes of my life in listening to the evils of:

1) Fukushima. The radiation spilling into the oceans is mutating all the fish and it's slowly going to kill us all unless we can move to a corner of the earth that's safe from Fukushima irradiated fish.

2) Anything that's exposed to over 115 degrees Farenheit experiences a change in which all the good enzymes, vitamins, and nutrients are destroyed.

3) Non-organic foodstuffs are filled with harmful chemicals. So only eat organic!

This last part (3) is especially annoying because organic food is incredibly expensive. To those of you who are turned off by chemicals, here is what the ingredients of four common foods would look like if they had labels on them like other stuff (images courtesy of chemist James Kennedy)



THE LESSON: Don't be afraid of chemicals people. Our food is full of them.

Winter is coming and that of course means Sochi and not the White Walkers

This trailer for the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics is frickin' awesome. At first I thought I was watching a trailer for HBO's season four "Game of Thrones" especially since it's narrated by Charles Dance who plays Tywin Lannister. Well it turns out that this is just superb marketing. And yeah, despite the fact that Putin is a complete bigot, I'm excited for our athletes to bring home some gold. 
Had you seen this commercial? If so, what did you think of it?

I won't be posting Monday (as its a holiday) so I'll see you next Wednesday.

SyFy's Being Human is an expert in taking a cliffhanger and resolving it as blandly as possible

Yay Being Human is back on SyFy. Above: Family Portrait of ghost, two werewolves
and a really old and powerful vampire. Do you know which is which? This series
is all about family values, only the family they have is not anything like the kind
you or I can relate to (at least I hope that's the case).Yay, Being Human is back on SyFy. As much as I love this series, however, I have one small bone to pick: it's an expert in taking a good cliffhanger and resolving it as "meh" as possible. This is not how cliffhangers should pan out people! If you blow up a planet, the next season shouldn't be, "Now that was just a hologram. Good thing it didn't really happen..."

Allow me to explain further:

Last season, the American Being Human series ended with ghost Sally being dragged into what looked a lot like Hell by the witch Donna. This left me on the edge of my seat shaking my fist at the screen. And seriously that's where it ended. It was just as bad as season 3's ending that had Aiden buried in the ground, Sally lost in Limbo with her voice coming over the radio, and Josh in a fatal gunfight with the werewolf that made him.
I guess I should just celebrate that Sally is back. Only I wish it had been just a LITTLE harder.I waited a whole year for the resolution, and this is what I got: Sally's consciousness basically couldn't handle the purgatory in which she got imprisoned with Donna so naturally she created a "happy place" that resembled a day spa where she could get massages and lounge by the hot pools. So there had to be some trick to escape from this horrible place, right? Well it turns out...not so much.

See, Sally is a very "powerful" ghost (as expert witch Donna has labeled her) and all she had to do to get out of said place was come to the realization that she had all this power and could leave anytime she wanted. Just like that, she found the exit and got away from Donna. And thus we are off to a whole slew of new episodes and plot lines. Sadly, Sally's dilemma is resolved in like five minutes (if it even took that long) and I'm feeling very unsatisfied.

The writers behind Being Human are far from "inventing the wheel" on taking the easy way out to what looks like a difficult situation. Author George R.R. Martin made the most infamous cliffhanger in fantasy when he wrote (in A Feast For Crows) that Arya wakes up blind.

Martin seriously did this and then made us (the patient readers of the world) wait eight fucking years for the conclusion in A Dance With Dragons! The answer (major spoiler ahead) was that it was only temporary. Meh. She gets her eyesight back in just a few pages because it's induced by this stuff she drinks in the House of Black and White in Braavos (which is training her to be an assassin).

I LOATHE this kind of cliffhanger: the kind where the stakes are so high that it seems everything in the world has now changed yet is resolved in one paragraph of text.

If you still can't relate to what I'm saying, imagine reading the following words of a beloved character: "The woman clutched her chest, fell back, and her face filled with intense pain." Only to turn the page a year later and read, "A horsefly bit her, she squashed it, and went back to drying the dishes."

What the hell? Who does this? Why are writers using these kind of cliffhangers? I'm at a loss to explain the phenomenon, but it really is starting to bother me. Could it be that they have no ideas in their heads and want to write something so that it comes across way more interesting than it actually is?

Can you think of other examples of cliffhangers that turned out to be way over-hyped and anticlimactic? Does this kind of thing bother you or am I the only one?

As a side note, I do like the whole Ladyhawke-esque thing that SyFy is doing with their version of Being Human. In Josh's storyline, the role of his human part has flipped 180-degrees with his wolf part and he is now "human" only once a month, and this single day just happens to coincide with the only day his wife must turn into a wolf. So they can only be together for 30 minutes. The heart aches with how awful this must be, which is why I must watch the entire season to see if Aidan, Sally, and Nora can find a solution for poor Josh.
Ladyhawke. I hope that you guys have seen this show.Oh and I'm also glad that Kenny is back and isn't the horrible monstrous looking Kenny and back to being cute. I just hope he isn't a bad guy. He seemed like a really sweet person last season and maybe it's time that something went right in his life. But if I know this series, no one can stay happy for very long.

Berke Breathed's vision of the Grinch looked so much better than what we got with Ron Howard.

Now that Christmas is over, I of course stumble across a Christmas topic that piques my interest and makes me a little sad.

You see, Dr. Seuss's widow, Audrey Geisel, decided to choose Ron Howard's vision of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (ala Jim Carrey) over Berkeley Breathed's vision of it (as revealed in his concept art). I just can't see how she thought the Jim Carrey version would be better.

For those of you who don't know, Berkeley Breathed was the comic artist who gave us Bloom County. Sure there was Outland that started up after the very popular Bloom County ended. But I liked loved Bloom County. Outland just didn't have the same feel.

I know Mr. Breathed felt that he needed to end Bloom County because he didn't want it to become...well...Garfield. And for those of you who still like Garfield, I guess I'm sorry (not really), because I think Garfield stopped being funny twenty years ago. Seriously, Garfield needs to die.

I still have a cut-out of "Bill the Cat" at work tacked to my wall board. It's a before and after thing meaning "before work" and "after work." The "Before" picture is one of "Garfield" and the "After" is Bill the Cat (used to illustrate how I feel after a long day's work). If you aren't familiar with "Bill the Cat" I seriously recommend picking up Bloom County Babylon. That book had me in hysteric fits because it was so funny. However, part of what made Berke Breathed so laughable was his ability to play off of political headlines and other important things present in pop culture (like Michael Jackson). So its "time" may have passed as (I think) a good joke has to strike a nerve with its audience, and a conditon for this is that they must be "in the know" before a joke can land properly.

Anyway, take a look at this concept art. Hopefully you are as sad as me that this didn't get made. *Shakes fist at Hollywood. Oh and the voice of the Grinch would have been none other than Jack Nicholson. That's a way better choice than Jim Carrey on any day that ends in a "y."
Click to EMBIGGEN Click to EMBIGGEN Click to EMBIGGEN

The first 15 minutes of Helix is cut awkwardly in parts but still manages to reel me in

Notice the black goo dripping from this guy's left ear. Chilling, isn't it?So Helix starts tonight on SyFy, and if memory serves me correctly, we get another episode tomorrow night as well. But don't quote me on that (I think I saw something on my DVR).

My first impression in watching the trailer and then the first 15-minutes was that it has a setting I like, i.e., Antarctica, and it looks to kind of be an end of the world thriller about a disease that turns your blood black, leaves its victims disfigured with horrific black veins all over their body (and bleeding from every orifice), and also imbues them with maddening strength and just sheer crazy.

There were parts of it that are cut awkwardly to truncate conversation and maybe not reveal so much to the audience. That's okay as I'm willing to watch the uncut pilot tonight. I know that they're just trying to pique my interest, and I consider this "mission accomplished" by the cliffhanger left in the last few seconds.
This is my favorite story that takes place in Antarctica. It was remade by
John Carpenter into a great all male film that still leads me to question
which of the survivors at the end was the Thing and which wasn't? Maybe
Helix is going to take this question and say that the disease is going to
have some kind of outer space origin. That would be really cool.There are a few questions that come to mind. Most notably, I ask, "So is this a reinvention of the whole zombie apocalypse?" If it does turn out to be that I won't care much. I love zombie-esque stories. I also love stories where the stakes are incredibly high (as in the movie "Outbreak" with Renee Russo and Dustin Hoffman).

Additionally we are treated to a real science fiction atmosphere with the base in Antarctica. This is no remote all male outpost with the survivors of The Thing from Another World eeking out an existence amid sled dogs and low technology. The base more than anything, resembles the facility you saw underground in Cabin in the Woods, with glass elevators that descend into the ice for thousands of feet to vaults where dangerous disease strains are held in cryogenic storage away from the population centers of the world.

So here is the question of the day: Are any of you out there going to either record or watch Helix tonight? I've been excited about it for a few months now, but still don't know much about it. I guess I shall see soon enough.

The most empowering commercial of 2013 addresses insecurity in a remarkable way

About a year ago I saw a commercial for Allstate insurance (of all things) that was "extraordinary." Is it weird to say that an advertisement touched me emotionally? This one did, and I agree with everything it says about insecurity and about life.

The commercial is called "Good Life" and here's a transcript of the words (as said by a little girl):

"There are man-eating sharks in every ocean, but we still swim.

Every second, somewhere in the world, lighting strikes. But we still play in the rain.

Poisonous snakes can be found in 49 of the 50 states, but we still go looking for adventure.

A car can crash.
A house can crumble.
But we still drive and love coming home.

Because I think deep down...
We know all the bad things that can happen in life, yet they can't stop us from making our lives, good."

So empowering, and that is what overcoming insecurities of all kinds is all about.
Let's make life good for 2014 and shatter through all of our fears together.
I'm changing my posting schedule for 2014.

I will only be posting three times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And yes, I'll still be as random as before. Thanks for following along.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

--from Calvin and HobbesIf there is magic in Christmas, it is all of you who create it. Thank you for being a part of my blog and for reading my posts. I will see you again in January 2014 for the Insecure Writers Support group. Until then, take care, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

This Christmastime chūshingura prequel drips more coolness than any Desolation of Smaug trailer.

I absolutely love this poster for 47 Ronin.This Christmas, fans of Japanese samurai and magical worlds are getting a real treat in the form of a super-ambitious high quality live action movie starring Keanu Reeves. My fear though is that some people in America may not realize that 47 Ronin is a Chūshingura and may just dismiss what could be the greatest fantasy film of 2013 (yes...I'm saying it could be better than Desolation of Smaug) and miss out on it entirely because of their unchecked prejudice.

So what is a chūshingura exactly? Well, they are fictionalized accounts in Japanese literature, theatre, and film that relate the historical incident involving the 47 Ronin and their mission to avenge the death of their master, Asano Naganori. Including the early Kanadehon Chūshingura (仮名手本忠臣蔵?), the story has been told in kabuki, bunraku, stage plays, films, novels, television shows and other media. With ten different television productions in the years 1997–2007 alone, the chūshingura ranks among the most familiar of all historical stories in Japan.

So this new telling of 47 Ronin is nothing different. In fact, it is a tradition in Japan, and you should embrace it wholeheartedly. Also, "I hate Keanu Reeves" is not a valid excuse to avoid this film. Keanu is a pretty decent actor and he's poured his heart into this role, even going so far as to become fluent in the Japanese language (he's also half-Japanese so he has more cred to be in a Japanese film than Tom Cruise).

However, despite 47 Ronin being so well-known across the Pacific, audiences here risk confusion as to what this particular chūshingura is about. Have we ever seen one replete with dragons, ki-rin, tengu, and other such monsters? To prepare those of you who've been bitten by the curiosity bug, there's an animated prequel to the movie done in comic book style and I've embedded it below. It's so wonderful, I wish book trailers had this kind of quality. Heck, I'll take one please! All kidding aside, you should watch it and marvel at the really cool art panels and how the whole thing is reminiscent of those beautiful silk screens for which Japanese art is famous.Some terms you may need (in order to understand the prequel) defined by me with essential text lifted from Wikipedia's extensive knowledge base:

Bushido: This word means "the way of the warrior" and it is a code that defines a samurai's life. The western comparison might be chivalry, although this is a "loose" comparison as chivalry mostly developed out of medieval misogyny (the fear of women). And if you're surprised to know this then I'm sorry to burst your little bubble. Yes, chivalry was developed because men feared the power and association women had with Satan (and it all goes back to Genesis when Eve got Adam kicked out of the Garden of Eden and we've paid for it ever since).

Bushido originates from the samurai moral code and it stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and honor unto death. Born from neo-Confucianism during times of peace in Tokugawa Japan and following Confucian texts, Bushido was also influenced by Shinto and Zen Buddhism, allowing the violent existence of the samurai to be tempered by wisdom and serenity.

Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, aspects of bushidō became formalized into Japanese feudal law.

Samurai: the military nobility of medieval and early-modern Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany persons in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau. In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean "those who serve in close attendance to the nobility," the pronunciation in Japanese changing to saburai. According to Wilson, an early reference to the word "samurai" appears in the Kokin Wakashū (905–914), the first imperial anthology of poems, completed in the first part of the 10th century.

By the end of the 12th century, samurai became almost entirely synonymous with bushi, and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai followed a set of rules that came to be known as bushidō. While the samurai numbered less than 10% of Japan's population, their teachings can still be found today in both everyday life and in modern Japanese martial arts.

Ronin: A rōnin (浪人) was a samurai with no lord or master during the feudal period (1185–1868) of Japan. A samurai became masterless from the death or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master's favor or privilege, and it usually meant losing all your land. Imagine how devastating it would be to have your house and job taken away from you. To add insult to injury, poor Ronin were oftentimes the butt of jokes and faced ridicule when the government should have set up a social safety net. But then we wouldn't have great stories like 47 Ronin now would we? It just doesn't have the same ring to it if the story is 47 Ronin who got approved for Social Security.

Are these what the vampires in The Strain for FX will look like?

In 2009, film maker Guillermo del Toro gave us the horror novel The Strain. He followed it in 2010 with The Fall, and in 2011 with The Night Eternal. Together with writer Chuck Hogan, del Toro explored the world of vampires that he had begun with the movie Blade 2. Do you remember the Russian vamps that could split their lower jaw in two halves revealing a larger mouth filled with all kinds of terrible things? Yeah, those vampires were a precursor for what del Toro planned to do with vampires. Let's just say (for the sake of convention) that these vamps are a far cry from Edward in Twilight. Rumor is they even defecate on themselves while feeding on humans. Gross but probably something I'll be drawn to watch. I'm a fan of well-done horror that crosses science-fiction boundaries and if del Toro is behind it, the production values should be incredible.

From what I gather, del Toro is exploring vampire biology in The Strain (the sciency twist). He views them as parasites. They introduce a capillary worm into a host's system in the most invasive of ways (del Toro has a thing about vaginas and vagina-like orifices in all of his films) and of course it introduces a virus that changes the host into, well, a blood-sucking vampire. Anyway, I've been looking at comic covers for The Strain to get an idea of how the vampires are going to look when the series makes its debut on FX, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be a fairly accurate reproduction of these panels:
I seriously would not want to be this hapless fellow. This isn't a herd of zombies. It's a herd of vampires. Zombie Vampire apocalypse
is where the action is at. Wouldn't you agree? I love the atmosphere in this piece...down to the exposed bloody ribs
of the human victim on the ground. The fact this act took place in what
appears to be a garden shed hints at the horror that engulfs the world.
Even suburbia isn't safe. DEAD BODIES EVERYWHERE!!!! Anatomical sketches of the vampire head.I kind of wonder if The Strain series will follow the path blazed by The Walking Dead. In other words, will they start with a band of survivors just trying to find a safe place to hole up in the ashes of a vampire apocalypse? Like The Walking Dead, The Strain has potential to just keep going season after season with new and different tidbits revealed about the vampires and by rotating the cast (killing off characters with abandon) in fall/season finales.

Have any of you read The Strain comic book or picked up the three novels? If so, what did you think of them?