Joe Mikolay's Blog, page 6

Fantasy Booking Game Of Throne Season 6

Fantasy booking is a term you read a lot from pro wrestling reporters. It’s essentially when they book the storylines and matches that they would like to see, not necessarily what they expect to see. So this is my fantasy booking for season six of Game Of Thrones.

Keep in mind, this is for the TV show, not the novels. Therefore stories such as the Greyjoy family drama that no one really cares about are not taken into consideration.

Right off the bat we have Jon Snow resurrected by Melisandre. We all know this is what’s going to happen so let’s just bang it out right at the start of the season. Two minutes into the season premiere, here’s some king’s blood (likely Jon’s own blood) magic gets us off and running.

For his first act, the happy-to-no-longer-be-dead Jon says “fuck ya’ll” to his backstabby Night’s Watch brethren and decides to settle all the Stark family’s debts. His next step is to recruit any of the Free Folk settled south of the Wall, wherein has gathers a nice little army en route to reclaiming Winterfell.

The first stop, geographically-speaking, would be to find Bran. But Bran can keep doing his vision quest/learning magic thing, because he’ll be needed in season seven. You’ll understand why by the end of this post. Meanwhile Rickon & Co can keep laying low wherever they are.

Jon hooks up with Brienne, Pod, Sansa & Theon before they get to Winterfell. There can be a happy reunion between Jon and Sansa, who talks him out of running Theon through since he helped her escape from Ramsey. And then we’re back to business.

We get our first reckoning, as Jon’s army takes out the Bolton Crew. Jon kills Roose Bolton himself, perhaps by stabbing him repeatedly in the belly and slitting his throat in a combo platter of what Robb, Talisa, their unborn baby, and Catelyn got at the Red Wedding. Sansa and Theon can get their own justice by killing Ramsey in an adequately gruesome fashion.

Then they venture to the Twins, where they give old Walder Frey a bunch of arrows through his chest and other sensitive parts. At this point, they’ve progressed to the Vale, where Littlefinger managed to sweet talk them out of killing him. Perhaps they bring him along, but Sansa knows to keep a watchful eye on him by now.

That brings them to King’s Landing. While the Stark Family Revenge Tour has been going on, Cersei and her FrankenMountain have been trying to deal with the Sparrow infestation. Let’s say they accomplish mixed result with it, and are still in the middle of the process when they have some uninvited guests knocking at their northern gates.

Where’s Jaime during all this? Probably grieving over his daughter and looking to get some payback of his own on the Dornish. This would involve him turning the boat around and heading back to Dorne where they can milk a substantial season-long subplot.

Meanwhile, down south, Daenerys consolidates some power by hooking up with a new Dothraki horde. She brings them to Mereen, where she apologizes for abandoning Tyrion, Daario, Varys and Jorah to go joyriding on Drogon. She then apologizes even more profusely to Rhaegal and Viserion, finally unleashing their reign of fire on the unworthy citizens of Mereen.

She takes her buddies, her Dothraki, her Unsullied and her dragon kids as she finally moves towards Westeros. Along the way, they pick up Arya who, throughout the season has pretty much finished her assassin training, and pay an unwelcome visit to the south gate of King’s Landing.

While everyone is converging on King’s Landing, the snowfall hits and winter finally comes. With it, the Night’s King and his undead army of ass-kickery knocks down the Wall via some sort of dark magic, and that’s where the season ends. This, of course, leaves season seven to deal with the real main event of every living person vs every dead person.

Unfortunately, I don’t actually expect this to be how the season plays out. But, if it were, I suspect it would be the most awesome single season of a TV show in history.

They could absolutely accomplish everything above in 10 hours of television. If you don’t believe so, then you’re most likely an HBO executive looking to milk a great show until it’s running on fumes. Personally, I’d rather to see things go down my way.

The post Fantasy Booking Game Of Throne Season 6 appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

We Need To Talk About Movie Bloat

A few weeks ago my three month old was only sleeping about an hour at a time – he’s since gotten much better. But this led me and my wife to watch a recently released three hour long movie that shall remain nameless in three or four separate segments and, honestly, it felt like a much better way to watch it than siting down for it all at once.

Historically, epic movies with a massive sprawling tale to tell tended to run about three hours. See movies like Gone With The Wind, The Ten Commandments, or Lawrence Of Arabia. But these films came out at a time when films were still competing with live theater, so two hours, followed by an intermission, followed by another hour was by and large acceptable.

Those times have long since passed. Films are more popular, more accessible and certainly more affordable than live theater. So it’s time they broke from that mold. But I’m willing to forgive a Braveheart here, a Heat there, or even the occasional Gladiator over yonder.

What bothers me is why so many contemporary movies are running up around the three hour mark, for seemingly no other reason other than the director’s ego demands you spend half your day staring at his creation.

Now, I look at the most guilty culprits and it’s easy to understand why this type of bloat is allowed. Martin Scorsese has been making great films forever, Quentin Taratino is one of the last guys can can legitimately claim the title auteur, Michael Bay’s terrible movies make a billion dollars every year, and Christopher Nolan is probably the most successful filmmaker (combining critical and commercial success) of the 21st century.

That being said, The Wolf Of Wall Street was a good hour too long. It was basically a series of events, several of which could have been excised without hurting the film in the least. But him making us watch these awful people do awful things for three hours is just an awful way to treat your audience.

Most of The Hateful Eight’s runtime takes place in a single location with maybe ten characters. How the hell do you allow that picture to explode up to three hours? I mean this is the same guy who made the same kind of movie in Reservoir Dogs more than twenty years ago, and he did it then in just over 90 minutes.

He had the right idea about ten years ago, though, when he released Kill Bill in two volumes that ran about two hours a piece. Why, then, did he decide that he would rather have his viewers slog through the whole damn thing in one sitting?

And, come one, is there anyone out there who doesn’t think Django Unchained should have ended with that first big shootout in Candie Land? I don’t recall anyone calling out for an extra monologue, Tarantino’s terrible South African accent and a second – smaller – shoot out in Candie Land. Do you?

There’s not really anything I can say about Michael Bay’s monstrously bloated, increasingly lackluster filmography that hasn’t been said before. But I would like to point out that he’s made four Transformers movies, the first of which was two and a half hours long, and each proceeding sequel was five minutes longer than the previous one.

At this rate, the next one will run all of four hours, and it will still only have about 45 minutes of giant transforming robots punching each other.

Every film Christopher Nolan makes is more critically acclaimed and makes higher box office grosses than the one before it. However, he seems to think that the way to keep that going to to make each movie longer. The Dark Knight Rises was 2 hours and 45 minutes long. I love me some Batman, but come on!

Interstellar had some really strong and interesting central ideas, along with great visuals, but it did not need to spend an hour driving around the future dustbowl with astronaut farmer Matthew McConaughey before he decides to take off into space in order to save humanity. That entire first act could have been summed up in a five minute flashback segment halfway through the movie.

The truth is that no studio is going to force edits upon these guys, at least not until one of them stumbles and puts out a three and a half hour critically reviled box office bomb. But these are smart guys, they should be able to figure out how to edit themselves to maximize a solid two hours, give or take.

My solution, revealed to me by hourly baby cries, is not really an appealing one for these filmmakers or their studios. The reason being that these films do make upwards of a billion dollars each.

Oddly enough, I really don’t have a problem sitting for three hours of a TV show on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or HBOGo. I’ve realized that this is mainly because I know I don’t need to since each episode will end in a place for a natural break. But, again, while TV may offer a legitimate artistic outlet for guys who want to film something that lasts for six hours, it will never rake in the box office millions.

To that I’ll say that I’m very happy my boy is sleeping pretty much through the night now. But I’ll keep utilizing the lesson he taught me, and watch these big fat bloaters in nice bite sized treats.

The post We Need To Talk About Movie Bloat appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Crying Like A Man

What sort of things make men cry?

I won’t pretend to speak for all men, but I’ll speak for myself and maybe that will shed some light on men at large.

Musical tends to be a major factor in firing up my tear ducts, in fact it is the most frequent culprit. A swelling string section can get to the soft, gooey center of just about any man who is not dead inside.

That’s true whether in an orchestra film score,  or incorporated into a ballad or lament. Give me the cellos stirring things up deep down inside, and then the higher pitched choir of the violins to grant the release of tears.

Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back album,  especially The Book Of Love, is a prime example of blending pop music with classical trimmings.

Same can be said about Damien Rice songs like Amie, Delicate or Colour Me In.  Something with a slow build and a big finish a la With Or Without You, Journey’s Faithfully or Bloc Party’s Sunday tend to get my emotions roiling as well. It’s that they’re working the body bag of my emotions before knocking my block off.

Thematically speaking, the idea of letting go of a dream, a belief, or especially a loved one, can often hit my soft spot. Of course, that’s usually accompanied by the aforementioned musical cues.

John Barry’s theme from Somewhere In Time calls to mind the great essence of an otherwise flawed story about love made possible by impossible circumstances and then torn asunder by the unstoppable force of time.

Meet Joe Black, is a bad three hour movie that might have made a pretty decent two hour movie buried in there somewhere. But the ending featuring Anthony Hopkins saying goodbye to his family and friends with the fireworks and the swelling Thomas Newman score building out of What A Wonderful World always gets me misty.

Stand By Me starts with a simple string rendition of the titular song and ends with the main characters having to leave the innocence of childhood behind. So it gets me every time.

James Horner’s score from Braveheart is fantastic. At one point it takes a fairly over the top torture and execution scene and turns it into the build up of a moment of pure catharsis. The musical score bangs home the idea that, while they may have killed William Wallace, they did not destroy his beliefs. It’s one of those all too rare swelling-tears-pumping-fist moments.

I can occasionally be caught off-guard by understated pieces of a story that are not punctuated by a 50 piece orchestra. Stallone’s locker room interaction with Michael B. Jordan in Creed where he briefly talks about what he’d give up for one more day with his late wife is a recent such emotional movie moment.

Another moment is in Of Mice And Men, when George kills Lenny to save him from a more painful death at the hands of the lynch mob, but also because he knows Lenny can’t help himself but be dangerous sometimes. Either way, he killed the only person who he really cared for, the only thing he really had to hold onto in the world, and that’s a button pusher for me.

As Flowers For Algernon winds down the formerly mentally handicapped narrator starts losing his super intelligence and falls back into his lesser intellectual state. You can tell that he can, and cannot, sense him losing himself again and it’s pretty heartbreaking.

And, good lord, do not even get me started on anything that involves someone’s pet or animal companion dying. That’s the one thing that breaks me down every single time, even if it’s hammy or kinda rudimentary.

At any rate, it’s healthy to have a good cry every once in a while – manly or otherwise. So I’m always happy to revisit the things that bring me the sweet release of sorrow, and you should be as well.

The post Crying Like A Man appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Wherein I Write A Broadway Musical

To get my creative juices flowing before jumping into my next novel, I’ve decided to SongFic, as the kids call it. You could also lay some blame on South Park’s Tweek x Craig episode for this little experiment.

In this case, I’m using the supercharged, overwrought, mega cheesy, impossibly melodramatic songs by Jim Steinman as the soundtrack to what would be one helluva Broadway show.

Here’s the story: a young man (let’s call him Aaron) is sent from heaven to Earth to do battle with the forces of darkness that are sent up from hell to wreak havoc.

A young woman (let’s call her Eva), meanwhile, is sent up from hell where she is the gate keeper and go-between for the devil and his Earthbound minions.

Aaron is tired of the fight and ready to give it all up, while Eva is similarly disillusioned by her own mission. Needless to say (this is Broadway, after all) they fall in love with each other. Neither the forces of heaven or hell are very happy about this relationship disturbing the balance of things, and so the situation gets pretty crazy from there.

Let’s call this show Love & Damnation.

It’s worth noting that, while I’ve embedded the available videos for these songs from YouTube, you need to imagine them being performed by the characters in a sort of gothic-neo-noir setting and costumes.

We open with Bat Out Of Hell – performed by Eva and the Minions of Hell Choir singing & dancing about all the shit they’re going to kick up. This number’s purpose is the introduce Eva’s side of the story, and start things off on a fast note.

Next up, we go to Aaron and the Heavenly Souls Choir performing Nowhere Fast, one of the massively underrated songs written for the film Streets of Fire. I’m thinking there may just be one choir who changes costumes between each number, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, we see him going about his business of vanquishing demons, but feeling like none of it’s really accomplishing anything.

Fun combo number here as Eva and Aaron each separately go to their bosses – Satan and the archangel Michael, respectively – to lament their situations. Michael, Satan and the choirs of heaven and hell all respond with Life Is A Lemon And I Want My Money Back, to declare that everyone’s life is pretty crummy so they should just get over it.

After the flat out refusal from Michael to relieve him of his duties, Aaron decides to go rogue and wander off anyway. His singing of the ballad Heaven Can Wait draws Eva’s attention and so she decides to follow him on his walkabout.

After Aaron realizes that Eva is shadowing him, they finally meet, bond a bit, and break out the rollicking duet Dead Ringer For Love.

Things are good for a while, but Eva starts suspecting that the strength of her feelings for Aaron are not fully reciprocated. At which point Aaron recounts the origin story about how his beloved was killed by a demon which led him to take on the job of heaven’s bad ass slayer. This culminates in his singing Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad to try and explain things better.

Eva goes off on her own to reconsider her feelings to the tune of Total Eclipse Of The Heart. She begins to feel like it’s worth being with Aaron even if he doesn’t truly love her, but is too proud to go to him and say so.

Luckily, Aaron comes to his senses and realizes that it’s okay to love again and that he really does love Eva. He rushes back to her and, with the help of the Heavenly Souls Choir, performs I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That). By the end of which, Eva has embraced their love by singing the last part of the song.

Everything came together nicely and culminated with a bang, so now’s as good a time as any to have an Intermission to let the audience buy some astronomically overpriced candy and bottles of water. Maybe have a bit of a pee break too.

Aaron & Eva are happily in love on a hot summer night, hence You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth. Frolicking ensues.

Holding Out For A Hero is then sung by the Minions of Hell / Heavenly Souls Choir dressed up as people (Earthbound Choir) that Aaron and Eva are helping defeat the demons in their lives. Satan and Michael take note, and are not pleased with how this forbidden relationship is affecting the balance of the battle between heaven & hell. They strike up a deal to do something to restore balance.

When Eva and Aaron start performing Making  Love Out Of Nothing At All they’re sharing a nice, tender moment. But Satan and Michael cast a spell on them, which makes them forget one another. The lovers part and wander off in opposite direction in a dreamlike daze.

Aaron reminisces about his life, death and rebirth as demon slayer while singing Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are. But the lost memory of something he can’t quite grasp sends waves of doubt through his mind and soul.

Eva is in the throes of a similar identity crisis but, with a little help from the Earthbound Choir, it all comes back to her now. First, she remember that she never actually deserved to go to hell. She was offered to the devil when she was born, and so truly owes him nothing. She then also remembers her love for Aaron, all of which is represented by her performance of It’s All Coming Back To Me Now.

Eva finds Aaron, and through the course of Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through she helps him remember their love. Once reunited, Satan & Michael drop by again to put the kibosh on things.

And so we roll right into Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young – the other great, forgotten song from Streets of Fire. The choir is split up into Heavenly Souls garb, Minion of Hell gear, and Earthbound attire. They all gang up this time to chase off the archangel and the devil by letting them know that love is truly the most powerful force on Earth, and in heaven or hell. Michael & Satan finally relent and let Eva & Aaron ride off together into the sunset to live happily ever after.

For anyone interested, you can find the full (theoretical) Love & Damnation Soundtrack at my Spotify playlist here.

Also, see if you can find me a millionaire to bankroll this bad boy.

The post Wherein I Write A Broadway Musical appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Deflating The Gate, Once And For All

With the story about the New England Patriots having under-inflated footballs for one game finally, mercifully appearing to die, and the Patriots taking on the Indianapolis Colts (who started the whole mess in the first place)  tonight, I decided to offer my final thoughts on the issue.

Two things to get out of the way up front. First, the nickname for the story is beyond stupid and will not be justified by way of writing it here. People are aware that the Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal was names as such because Watergate was the name of the hotel it occurred in, right?

Second, Tom Brady swore under oath that he did not give any kind of instructions to under-inflate the game balls, so if he’s lying that could lead to a prison sentence for perjury. You’d have to be an idiot to think that a millionaire with a seemingly idyllic family life, no history of criminal activity, and four SuperBowl championship rings would risk going to jail just to avoid being suspended for four regular season football games.

The part that really pisses me off about the way this whole story blew up is that real crimes committed by NFL players are forgotten by the public at large a month or two after they end, because the NFL wants these stories to go away as quickly as possible. Greg Hardy beats the hell out of his girlfriend, Michael Vick murders dogs for profit and pleasure,  and Ray Rice is caught on camera knocking out his fiance and dragging her unconscious body out of the elevator like a cave man. These are genuinely  horrifying actions perpetrated by employees of the NFL that, quite frankly put, should have led to these men being banned from the NFL for life and some sort of appropriate prison sentence.

However, since neither of those things happened, Commissioner Roger Goodell would like to direct your attention elsewhere as soon as humanly possible. “Here’s something that’s technically against the rules,” he’s saying “But nobody actually got hurt or worse, so let’s all watch how I deal with it.” And then he blew it anyway by overplaying his hand.

“Seems like someone tinkered with game day equipment, so here’s a fine,” should have been the resolution. He got the fine, but then his impotency complex over not properly dealing with the real scumbags led him to push things way too far.

There have been so many Performance Enhancement Drug suspensions DUI’s, and other crimes that I stopped trying to keep track years ago. Why the NFL would allow violent criminals and drunk drivers to ever have another chance to make millions of dollars representing the NFL on national TV every week, but choose to go after one of their model employees, is beyond me.

Bottom line, the amount of air in footballs should be decided by each team individually. This is not like P.E.D’s, which are actually illegal for recreational use and create long term medical problems for users. With P.E.D use, the issue is that it leads to clean players saying: “If these guys are getting an advantage by pumping steroids into their bodies, therefore risking their future health, then I need to as well in order to keep up. How is that fair?” Which is a fair assessment, because it’s not fair at all. Which is why P.E.D use carries a justified fine and a suspension.

You know what carries no medical drawbacks whatsoever? Air. There is absolutely no reason why teams shouldn’t be allowed to decide how much air is pumped into their footballs. This quarterback is more comfortable with more air, that QB is more comfortable with less air. Okay, let’s just have them do that then.

Again, we’re talking about their own team’s footballs – they are not touching the other team’s footballs. In soccer and basketball, both teams use the same ball, so it’s understandable why there would be such regulations. Every football team brings its own bag of balls to every game, with the other team rarely touching those balls. So it’s pointless to say this amount of air is okay, that amount of air is not. I’ll even go far enough to predict that in two or three years this rule will be changed, or eliminated altogether.

So, let’s lay this story to rest the way that Tom Brady and The Patriots have been laying their opponents to rest so far this year (under unnecessarily intense scrutiny, I might add). R.I.P to the under-inflated footballs during one single game story, and I look forward to be proven a prophet when this moronic and pointless rule is killed in the near future.

The post Deflating The Gate, Once And For All appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Fighting The Horror

It’s been a little while since my last blog post, and I wanted to make sure that my favorite time of the year – Halloween Season – didn’t pass without putting something out there. So, what I’m going with is my taste in horror movies and where that taste may come from.

I grew up in the ’80’s, so the focus here will be on the first horror flicks I can remember seeing and the effect they had on my scary movie proclivities. Let’s do this chronologically to give it some form of order.

I was only 2 years old in 1981, so Halloween II had been out for a few years before I ever managed to see it. It still left an impression on me, as the location of a dark and mostly empty hospital still strikes me as one of the best locations for a scary story. And it was a simple enough story, Michael Myers was seeking to finish the job by killing his sister Laurie Strode (that she was his sister was only revealed in Part II and never mentioned in the first Halloween). At the same time, Dr. Loomis was hunting for his own answers about what made Michael Myers into what he had become. Admittedly, Halloween was a better movie that Halloween Part II, but I rather liked how Loomis’ and Laurie’s arcs finally tied together better in the sequel.

1985’s Fright Night was the first vampire movie that I remember watching. Living in the suburbs myself, I really dug how they turned all the things that make people who live in the ‘burbs feel safe dangerous. Because, if you can see a vampire taking a victim and he can see you watching him then there really is no safe haven. But it ultimately had to be high schooler Charlie Brewster who dragged actor-turned-vampire hunter Peter Vincent in the battle against the bloodthirsty Jerry Dandridge. That Fright Night managed to inject a good bit of dark humor into the proceedings only made me connect with it more. As everyone knows by now, laughing and screaming are really just a short breath away from one another. The 2011 remake wasn’t too bad either.

Silver Bullet, based on Stephen King’s novelette Cycle of the Werewolf, also came out in 1985. There would be several werewolf movies from around this era that would blow away this one in my mind eventually (An American Werewolf In London & The Howling), but I didn’t see them until I was into my teens. This one was similar to Fright Night in that it set the horror in a quiet little town that couldn’t possibly be equipped to deal with it, while one kid knew the truth but nobody believed him. Swap in a werewolf for a vampire and I’m good to go!

Looking at the common bond between these first three  movies – “Watch out suburbs, here come the monsters!” I probably was just really hoping for a creature to sweep into my hometown so I could get my hero on. Of course, that would be after said creature took out some of the folks I was less fond of in my school. I, of course, would be ready to deal with the beast because…well, because I’d seen these movies after all.

Moving away from the suburbs and into the summer camp, Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) was the first of the franchise that I’d seen. Honestly, it still may be my favorite of the series. That it was the third film in the Tommy Jarvis Trilogy of Friday The 13th films helps to earn it that top spot. After confronting Jason Voorhees in the previous two Friday films (okay, technically it was only actually Jason in Part IV) he was finally a bit better prepared to fight back. I mean he was no Dr. Loomis, didn’t even have a Medical Degree, but he was the best protagonist that the Friday series ever rolled out. That Tommy and co-lead character Megan made up a poor man’s Kyle Reese & Sarah Conner combo only further endeared this film to me.

The next pair of films are more action/sci-fi than horror, but they hit my sweet spot early on in life just the same. Aliens (1986) and Predator (1987) are two of the greatest genre films of all time, and there’s nothing I can say about them that you haven’t already read five times over. Other than, perhaps, the reason I was drawn to them. I liked how Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and Arnold Scwarzenegger’s Dutch ended their respective films as equals to the monsters hunting them, and went into a final battle against them as such. In my opinion, nothing beats a good smackdown to end a movie on a high note.

1990 saw the release of the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, part one of which is still one of the greatest episodes of genre television of all time. I was about the same age as the protagonists trying to survive the terrors of Lovecraftian College of Clowning graduate Pennywise (Tim Curry adding another iconic character to his resume), and so when this one rolled around I was dragged along in its wake.

At around that point, the flood gates opened and 11 or 12 year old me was about to discover a whole lot more horror in a very short period of time. Which makes this a good place to wrap things up.

The one common strand of DNA that runs through every one of these stories is a theme that I look for in any other genre as well: the ability to fight back against the enemy. If I’m being honest, ghost stories creep me out more that monster mashes, because in many ghost stories there’s not much you can really do to battle the forces of darkness.

I suppose I’m just not really drawn to tales of helplessness, and that’s something that applies to things I watch, things I read, and things that I write. which is also why I get very flustered about stories of how the little people cannot possibly win against the sinister and corrupt power elite of society. I may not be a super optimistic person, but I certainly respond more to optimism than to fatalism. There’s more than enough of the bad guys winning in real life, I don’t need to see it in my fiction.

I believe that everyone has free will, and can fight as long as they have the strength to. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you win but don’t survive to enjoy the victory. But, as long as you’ve saved the people you care about, then it’s a worthwhile sacrifice. If you can deliver something fantastical, and stick the landing on the message above, then take my money because I’m there!

 

The post Fighting The Horror appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

100% Pure, Uncut Narcos

Pablo Escobar was a drug trafficker, mass murderer and terrorist. Which, of course, means that he happens to make for very entertaining television.

Netflix unveiled their new show Narcos a few weeks ago, and it may have been the purest example of  what the streaming service can offer that cable and network TV cannot. The first thing they did, because they must have read my suggestion to do so, is cut the episode order to 10. There is not an ounce of fat on this show or, in other words, this is the pure, uncut stuff.

They also condense several years worth of history into this 10 episodes, rather than try to milk it for a larger episode count. This does mean that the storytelling isn’t quite as rich and dense as something like The Wire, but it does a better job of delivering the goods in a tight, streamlined manner. In some ways, Narcos is like a Wikipedia hole come to life. You look up Pablo Escobar, which leads you to his life, his crimes, his pursuers and his ultimate downfall.

The first episode begins with a title card explaining Magical Realism, which doesn’t really make much sense because Gabriel Garcia Marquez this ain’t. I have to assume that they are referring to the way that events that likely took weeks or months of research in reality, happen because a third person happens to be in the room who says “Hey, isn’t that So-and-So?” on the show. Not that I’m complaining, but it would take someone more scholarly than myself to tell you whether or not Narcos is a legitimate example of Magical Realism. What I can tell you is that I really enjoyed this show.

I’m probably going to tread on some spoiler territory below, so consider yourself warned.

The first thing worth mentioning is Wagner Moura, who portrays Escobar. It’s a killer part and he effectively kills it. It seems that the showrunners and the actor all realize that Escobar was an evil man who deserves no sympathy from the viewers. So, rather that going after sympathy, they go after motivations. Escobar does most of the monstrous things that he does to ensure the growth and survival of his empire, however, he also sees himself as unfairly persecuted and disrespected. We, the viewers, see that there’s nothing unfair about it, but Moura does a fantastic job of showing us things from Escobar’s perspective. Again, this does not elicit sympathy, but it does show us the why of the character.

All of the performances are – at the very least – solid, but the others that absolutely need to be touched upon are Boyd Holbrook and Pedro Pascal (late of getting his head exploded as Prince Oberyn on Game of Thrones) as the DEA agents tasked with bringing Escobar to justice. Holbrook’s Steven Murphy is the audience surrogate, looped into the situation in Colombia at the same time as we are. He also provides voice over narration that is just informative enough while remaining brief, which keeps it from becoming overbearing. Pascal plays Javier Pena, who’s already embedded in the drug war culture at the start of the series, and so is both Murphy’s guide as well as out own. The pair play well off each other and, while they don’t have quite the same depths to plunge as Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in True Detective, they are more proactive and less philosophically brooding.

There are some tropes that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen this sort of story played out before. Corruption rots the  core of society as cops, military and politicos are mostly crooked, Meanwhile, the politicians who take on Escobar tend to end up like the drummers in Spinal Tap.

A few more thing worth mentioning without running on too long, is that Narcos is filmed in Colombia, rather than Canada or California, so it doesn’t look like any other show on TV. A deal breaker for some may be that a good half of the show’s dialogue is in Spanish. Odds are this was done so that Netflix can continue it’s endeavors of international conquest, but it also makes sense to me since this show takes place in Colombia where most of the people you meet will not be speaking English.

The only quibble I have is that the show ran at a rate that had me believing they’d wrap the story up in episode 10, so I was a little disappointed that they did not. Still, another season of Narcos is certainly not a bad thing. All in all, I’d recommend giving it a look to most people who like full throttle storytelling loaded up for their binging pleasure. Narcos is much like the mountain of cocaine on Tony Montana’s desk at the end of Scarface, so feel free to overindulge.

The post 100% Pure, Uncut Narcos appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Goodreads Giveaway

Congrats to all the winners of the DarkLight Redemption Goodreads book giveaway !

You’ll be getting your signed copies soon, and I hope you enjoy the read.

As for everyone else, you can still get the book in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com, and it’s definitely worth  a look (if I may say so myself).

The post Goodreads Giveaway appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Why I Watch The NFL

After exploring the darker side of the NFL in my previous post, I wanted to round back and actually answer the original question that I was asked: “Why do you enjoy watching football?”

The first reason is because I believe that watching football is like watching a supersized game of Chess. I’m sure there are strategies to be found when watching MLB or NBA games, but nothing as intricate as in the NFL.

Each team has eleven players on the field at a given time, and each of those players has a job to do according to the play that was drawn up by the coaching staff. A team will substitute in different players until they get the grouping of skills required to execute the play.

But it’s not just executing, either. It’s disguising what you’re doing. In many ways the best NFL coaches are like illusionists, even though they do need the right players who can help them pull off the illusion. To simplify things: Bill Belichick is David Copperfield and Tom Brady is his lovely assistant.

Alright, that’s a little bit reductive on the player side, because before the ball is even snapped, there is gamesmanship going on between the people on the field. Guys are moving or shifting, the QB is altering the play at the line of scrimmage according to what he sees the defense doing, the defense is trying to adjust to the QB’s adjustments, and every single player has to make sure they know what those changes mean or else the play will go nowhere. Teams will come out with the exact same formation, and then run a completely different type of play out of it. Or, maybe it’ll be the same play, and they’re betting on the other team thinking they’re going to run something different.

Of course there’s also the fun of watching top flight athletes doing things that no one else can do. The stopping on a dime and changing direction on a receiver route or a long run play. The leaping, one-handed catches and interceptions. The quarterback zipping a pass into the smallest space imaginable, or mere centimeters over or around a defender’s outstretched fingertips. The guys getting popped out of their sneakers by a defender, then bouncing back up as if to say “Is that all you’ve got?”

Then there’s the less flashy aspects, such as coaches trying to take a much or as little time off the clock as benefits them the most. They can utilize, or not utilize, their timeouts in ways other than if their player need a breather. Maybe they want to see what formation the other team comes out in, and then call a timeout once then have an idea about what their opponent is trying to run. Maybe the other team looks discombobulated, but doesn’t want to use their timeout while still hoping that the opposing coaches use theirs. It’s like a three hour round of Game of Thrones every week.

The benefit of having breaks between snaps is that the commentators (at least the good ones) can those break things down for the viewers either during the play or after its conclusion. Don’t get me wrong, I could do with a lot less commercial breaks during the span of a game, but at least it gives the analysts more time to revisit a play and give the viewer even more info on the intricacies of it. I may differ from many other fans, as I actually am very interested in the nuts and bolts of the plays.

The other reason why I enjoy watching football is the same reasons why people enjoy going to see their favorite band in concert: A bit of wish fulfillment: “If these people can live their dream, then maybe I can too.” And a bit of it is how watching these guys play a game that I always enjoyed playing.

Going outside in the fresh, crisp autumn air and tossing a ball around with friends or family for a little while triggers good memories for a lot of people. And that’s what keeps me coming back, year after year.

 

The post Why I Watch The NFL appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

How Can You Watch The NFL?

With football season upon us, I was recently asked “Why do you watch football? What do you get out of it?”

My immediate response was something akin to “Same reason I watch anything on TV: because I enjoy it.”

But the question did get me thinking more about it. I can give you actual reasons why I like the TV shows or movies I like. Be it characters, action, storyline twists, etc. So I started trying to narrow down the reasons why I enjoy watching football. Then I narrowed it down further, since I don’t really care about college football, to why do I watch the NFL.

Oddly enough, the first thing I thought of was “How can I watch the NFL?  Especially when taking the league as a whole.”

The NFL is an organization that celebrates violence, and glorifies the men who are best at inflicting it. This mindset has led to an ongoing concussion issue carrying over from the days when there weren’t many rules other than Touchdowns = 6 points. The NFL has thrown some money at this issue, a lot by most standards, but not nearly enough to help all of the players who are suffering from brain injuries sustained in their playing days.

Even more disturbing is how the culture of violence that has permeated the lives of current players, and how the NFL has dealt with it. Mike Vick, Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Rae Carruth, and Lawrence Phillips and Aaron Hernandez are the few (of many) examples that I can think of off the top of my head.

Vick walked out of prison and into another hundred million dollar contract. LOTS of THINGS I’d like to see happen to anyone involved in dog fighting, but getting a massive contract to play in the NFL is not among them. Rice got suspended for two games, TWO games, for knocking out his girlfriend and then dragging her limp body out of an elevator. Only when the actual video tape was made public did Commission Roger Goodell issue something even approaching an appropriate ruling.

Greg Hardy also beat on his girlfriend, and then threw her onto a bed full of guns. He got suspended for ten games, which is better than two games, but then that got knocked down to just four games. Carruth is a convicted murderer, Phillips is serving a few decades for assault and attempted murder, and Hernandez likely won’t be playing football anywhere but a prison yard for the rest of his life.

The truth is that any NFL player involved in violent crimes off the field should be banned from ever again putting on an NFL uniform. But that won’t happen, because these players are multi-millionaires and the NFL is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. In fact, many of the perpetrators never get convicted because they are subject to the same impotent rules of the U.S. Justice System as anyone with enough fame and/or money. But the NFL is not a branch of the U.S. government so, whether or not these player actually serve time in prison, they league could still ban them for life.

They never will, though. And so I can’t justify how I watch the NFL on a moral or ethical level. But those were never really the reasons I enjoy watching football anyway. It doesn’t seem appropriate to get into those reasons here, so I’ll get into them in my next blog post.

The post How Can You Watch The NFL? appeared first on Joe Mikolay.