Ed Gorman's Blog, page 111

Martin Scorcese: Rebel Without A Cause from Salon

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'Rebel Without a Cause'Posted: 11/01/2013 12:10 pm
So much has been said and written and expressed about James Dean in the 58 years since his death. So many tributes and memoirs, so many songs and plays and movies, so many posters fashioned from Dennis Stock's famous black and white photograph of Dean on Times Square. Over time, as those who knew him have died out along with the people who were so deeply affected by his pictures when they were first released, it has all started to harden into a distant legend.And then, you go back and actually look at the pictures again, and you're confronted not with a legend but with a living, breathing human being, in a wild surge of creativity. That's the power of cinema: no matter how old the film, it's always right here and right now. It's always the present tense.And when you see those pictures meticulously restored, that sense of the present becomes even more potent. In the case of Rebel Without a Cause, it's overwhelming.Inconceivable as it might seem to us today, Rebel began shooting in black and white. Early on, the studio recognized that the picture was going to be something special and they started over in CinemaScope and WarnerColor. It's impossible to separate the power of Dean's presence and his extraordinary impact on teenage viewers (like me) from the fact that his two key pictures were made in color and Scope, which was being used for the first time by Elia Kazan (in East of Eden) and Nick Ray -- the shape was new to them and new to us too, and to see it creatively keyed to the energies of a misunderstood teenager was intoxicating. I can close my eyes right now and experience Rebel as a series of visions -- James Dean's red windbreaker and Natalie Wood's blazing red lipstick, the emotional minefield of Dean's family defined and re-defined within the frame, Dean splayed in torment across the length of the frame on his red couch, Natalie Wood jumping up and down as she gives the signal for the cars to start racing toward the cliff... We'd never seen anything like it then. We still haven't.It took a lot of work to restore Rebel Without a Cause, on the image (the original color negative was scanned at 8K resolution) and the sound, which had to be reconstructed from original release prints and then digitally cleaned. The work was done by Warner Bros. and made possible by Warners, Gucci and The Film Foundation.After seeing Johnny Guitar and Rebel Without a Cause, the great French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in 1956 wrote, "One cannot but feel that here is something which exists only in the cinema, which would be nothing in a novel, the stage or anywhere else, but which becomes fantastically beautiful on the screen." Watch this stunning restoration and you'll understand exactly what moved him to write those words.fgc

My apology for the Bob Clark piece it worked fine then-not SKETCH O'THE WEEK SHEMP SHEMP FOREVER!!!!

Sketch o’the Week- Shemp!
This week’s subject is Stooge Shemp Howard., done digitally on a Cintiq in PhotoShop.

A Retro Slasher Salute to Bob Clark Retro/Slasher

Browse: Home / Features / A Retro Slasher Salute to Bob ClarkA Retro Slasher Salute to Bob ClarkBy Thomas Ellison • December 24, 2010 There’s a story circulating among slasher fans that goes a little something like this:  Bob Clark took this young guy named John Carpenter under his wing to help show him how to direct feature films.  While serving as an apprentice, Carpenter learned Clark was working on sequel to Black Christmas calledHalloween.  A few years later, Carpenter stole Clark’s Halloween concept and created the modern slasher film.  At least some parts of this slasher urban legend are true.  Carpenter was associated with Clark at one time and Clark had an idea for a film calledHalloween that would’ve featured the return of the killer from Black Christmas.  But when asked about the connections between his holiday slasher and Carpenter’s classic, Clark claimed Carpenter never stole anything from him.  Whether the story is true or not, it sheds light on how Bob Clark is seen by some as a major influence on the slasher genre.Another contribution to the slasher genre can be found in Clark’s ultra creepyDeathdream (AKA Dead of Night).  This underrated fright flick shot in Florida just happens to be Tom Savini’s first film.  Clark liked Savini’s work so much that he kept him around forDeranged, a film Clark produced for his friend Alan Ormsby.  Savini went on to become the sultan of slash and splatter after working with George Romero and Sean Cunningham.  But Bob Clark gave Savini his start in horror films.  Blue Underground’sDeathdream dvd contains a brief interview with Savini who shares his memories about working with Clark.Popcorn is a favorite here at Retro Slashers, but the production was so troubled that it destroyed the friendship between Clark and Alan Ormsby.  Bob Clark produced the film and was forced to fire Ormsby three weeks into filming after the financial backers got nervous.  Mark Herrier, who’d acted for Clark in Porky’s, was brought in to finish the film because Clark thought the actor could handle the responsibility.  Despite some flaws,Popcorn is still an entertaining entry in the genre Clark influenced with Black Christmas.If you would like to see some of Bob Clark’s non-genre films, then check out Fox Movie Channel.  FMC usually plays Porky’s, Porky’s II, Turk 182, or Rhinestone several times a year.  Hell, it seems like Porky’s is shown several times every month.  A Christmas Storyairs for 24 straight hours on TBS every Christmas.  If you’re in the mood for high camp, hippies, and re-animated corpses, then check out Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things.  But if your in the mood for a double dose of goosebumps, then I suggest you watch Deathdream and Black Christmas back to back.As for Bob Clark’s version of Halloween, one can only wonder at what horrors might’ve been unleashed on the silver screen if Clark had completed the project.  Clark’s notes might be lost, but I like to think a rough draft or an outline for a script is sitting in a draw or an old box just waiting to be discovered.  Right now Clark’s Halloween has to be considered a really lost slasher.  In a few years, who knows.  Maybe one day Clark’s story will see the light of day.

PRO-FILE: BILLIE SUE MOSIMAN EDGAR AND BRAM STOKER WINNER

BILLIE SUE MOSIMAN EDGAR AND BRAM STOKER WINNER



1. Tell us about your current novel/collection. 
My newest story collection consists of 14 new stories written in 2013, several of which will be featured in anthologies and magazines. The title is SINISTER-Tales of Dread. All the stories are dark and vary from horror to detective noir.
.
2. Can you give a sense of what you're working on now? 
I've just sold my latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER to Post Mortem Press. It's due out April/May 2014. At the moment I'm working on a book titled LOSTNESS, a sequel to my novel, BANISHED. I'm also writing a travel book while on the road traveling the USA.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career? Being free to do what I love most--write.

4. What is the greatest DISpleasure? I can't think of one.

5. If you have one piece of advice for writers just starting out? 
Give it everything you've got, leave nothing out, dare to be who and what you are, which is unique and it's all you have.

6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to seein print again? 
THE SALTMARSH MURDERS by Gladys Mitchell. Here's a quote from the foreword in the book: "Adultery, high jinks, horseplay, an illegitimate birth, a hidden baby, rumours of infanticide, exhibitions of lunacy, a couple of murders, a lost corpse, an illicit trade in pornography, even a spot of incest all keep things lively for Gladys Mitchell's benighted villagers before Mrs. Bradley gets to the bottom of the imbroglio."
And there's THE HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN: A NOVEL by Somerset Maugham that should be back in print. It's a wartime mystery drama and pure Maugham. I've always loved Maugham's writing and think all his works should be in print and in front of the public.

PRO-FILE: Billie Sue Mosiman

Deliver to:ed's KindleEd's 3rd KindleEd's Kindle for MacKindle Cloud Reader Transfer via Computer   Try it freeSample the beginning of this book for freeDeliver to:ed's KindleEd's 3rd KindleEd's Kindle for MacKindle Cloud Reader Transfer via ComputerHow sampling worksAvailable on your Mac Anybody can read Kindle books—even without a Kindle device—with the FREE Kindle app for smartphones and tablets.



















BILLIE SUE MOSIMAN EDGAR AND BRAM STKER WINNER




1. Tell us about your current novel/collection. 
My newest story collection consists of 14 new stories written in 2013, several of which will be featured in anthologies and magazines. The title is SINISTER-Tales of Dread. All the stories are dark and vary from horror to detective noir.

.

2. Can you give a sense of what you're working on now? 
I've just sold my latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER to Post Mortem Press. It's due out April/May 2014. At the moment I'm working on a book titled LOSTNESS, a sequel to my novel, BANISHED. I'm also writing a travel book while on the road traveling the USA.

3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career? Being free to do what I love most--write.


4. What is the greatest DISpleasure? I can't think of one.


5. If you have one piece of advice for writers just starting out? 
Give it everything you've got, leave nothing out, dare to be who and what you are, which is unique and it's all you have.


6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to see
in print again? 
THE SALTMARSH MURDERS by Gladys Mitchell. Here's a quote from the foreword in the book: "Adultery, high jinks, horseplay, an illegitimate birth, a hidden baby, rumours of infanticide, exhibitions of lunacy, a couple of murders, a lost corpse, an illicit trade in pornography, even a spot of incest all keep things lively for Gladys Mitchell's benighted villagers before Mrs. Bradley gets to the bottom of the imbroglio."And there's THE HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN: A NOVEL by Somerset Maugham that should be back in print. It's a wartime mystery drama and pure Maugham. I've always loved Maugham's writing and think all his works should be in print and in front of the public.

What sells ebooks by Dave Zelterserman

What sells ebooks by Dave Zelterserman



There's no question we had a gold rush period with ebooks where the market was immature and both indie/self-published and mid-list authors could do well by advertising in the right places and taking advantage of certain Amazon features. As people should've expected things have changed as the market has matured. What used to work no longer does, and sales are down across the board with both professional and self-published writers I talk to. So in this ever-changing climate, what can authors do now to sell ebooks?

From my own experience, observations, as well as conversations with a number of other authors (and with a focus geared towards amazon), here's what I've seen in the area of mysteries, crime, noir, horror and thrillers (I can't comment about other genres, although my gut is fantasy & sci-fi ebooks are following along these same lines, and romance is a completely separate beast):

Advertising: Early on in the ebook era, advertising in the right places, like Kindle Nation, Pixel of Ink, and EReaderNewsToday could generate a flood of ebook sales, but their effectiveness over time has worn off. Right now Bookbub probably generates the highest number of sales, but their ads are expensive. Last year and early this year, you had a good chance of making money with a Bookbub ad, but now most authors I know who've used them over the last 6 months haven't broken even, and with the changes in Amazon's algorithms, these ads have become a losing proposition.

Free promotions: For a short time after amazon started their KDP Select program, they rigged their algorithms so that authors could generate a huge number of sales by giving away free books. After about four months of this, amazon changed their algorithms to make this less effective, and have since made further changes, both with their affiliate program and with their algorithms to make these free giveaways virtually useless. Originally they needed the free giveaways to help push kindle sales, but once they dominated the ebook reader market they needed to stop these free giveaways to keep ebook prices from moving to $0, and in effect, they've removed any value from authors now doing this. As far as free giveaways leading to future book sales by winning over new readers, forget it. Stephen Colbert recently joked on Colbert Nation how the kindle is a great device for storing 1000s of books that he'll never read, and kindle readers grabbing free ebooks are mostly hoarding 1000s of ebooks that they'll never look at.

Online book reviews: Web reviews seldom sell more than a couple of books--print or ebook the same.

Newspaper reviews: I've never been reviewed by the NY Times, so I can't comment on their effectiveness, but I have been reviewed very positively in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, LA Times, Orlando Sentinel, Newsdays, as well as others, both here and in the UK, Italy, Germany and France, and even rave reviews seldom sell more than a few hundred print books, and very few ebooks. The one place where I've been reviewed that does sell a lot of books is NPR.

While newspaper reviews might not sell a lot of books, one thing that they're very effective at is getting Hollywood to notice you. 

Web short stories: I've never seen anything more than a small uptick in ebook sales from this.

Magazine & anthology short stories: I've gotten relatively small upticks in my Julius Katz ebook sales whenever Ellery Queen publishes a new Julius Katz story, but never more than 50 sales. I've gotten smaller upticks when I appear in print anthologies.

Social media: Social media might've worked early on in selling ebooks, but with 10s of thousands of authors doing it, it has long ago reached a saturation point and has no effectiveness anymore in selling ebooks, although it can still have a positive value in making more readers aware of you.

Killer cover: There was a time when a certain author was proselytizing that all self-published authors needed to be successful was a good cover and a good book description. Like any other snake oil, this sounded too good to be true, didn't it? Well, I doubt this was ever true--I think there were other factors on how Amazon could be gamed that contributed to early success of some self-published/indie writers, but to set the record straight, while an unprofessional cover might hurt you, a killer cover isn't going to sell anything.

Membership in a group to jointly market ebooks: I started Top Suspense with Ed Gorman and Harry Shannon because we thought that if we provided readers with a safe place to find high quality mysteries, thrillers, horror ebooks readers would gravitate to us. So how has that worked out? I think it has helped somewhat, but not as much as I expected. Where the greatest value with this group has been is to be part of a group of fellow pro writers for sharing information and ideas. From what I can tell, other groups that formed after Top Suspense have also had limited success.

Amazon: Bingo! Other than being a bestselling author, having Amazon promote you is the only clear way to sell ebooks now. Amazon has proven to be incredibly powerful in pushing ebooks--originally with ebooks that were triggered by their algorithms, and now the books that they're publishing and choosing to get behind.  They've proven over and over again that they can sell 10s of thousands of copies through their direct marketing and recommendations. 

Given all this, and given how unlikely it's going to be moving forward for a self-published/indie author to get Amazon behind them, it seems most likely that the vast majority of self-published/indie ebooks are never going to recoup their production costs (covers, proofing, formatting, etc.). So what should new authors and midlist authors do moving forward?

Face facts. The gold rush period is long over. More and more ebook sales are going to either writers Amazon's promoting or to bestsellers. If you're a midlist author, try to stick with traditional publishing, and if you bring back your backlist as ebooks, try to either contain costs, or go with someone like Crossroad Press who is able to make deals with B&N to feature their books. If you're a newer writer who is serious about having a writing career, keep working toward being published traditionally. It's your best chance of gaining real readers and establishing a career. 

'The Counselor': 5 Things That Went Wrong

'The Counselor': 5 Things That Went WrongBy Meriah Doty4 hours agoMovie TalkBrad Pitt and Michael Fassbender in 'The Counselor' (Photo: 20th Century Fox)"The Counselor" seemed to have everything going for it. Star power (including the holy grail of celebrity clout, Brad Pitt). Early buzz. Mega-director Ridley Scott. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Cormac McCarthy.But the cinematic tale about the seedy power players of the drug-trafficking underworld failed miserably as it opened over the weekend, making only $9 million during its very wide release — playing in more than 3,000 theaters (that amounts to just less than $3 thousand per theater, mere pocket change for a film that cost more than $25 million to make).Here is the breakdown of what went wrong.1. Audiences Don't Like Dark.
Cameron Diaz — whose career has been built on being sunny and funny in the "Shrek" series and in romantic comedies dating all the way back to "There's Something About Mary" (1998) — was very much the opposite of that in "The Counselor." And yeah, everyone else — including Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Michael Fassbender, and Pitt weren't at all redeeming, either. "It's clear that moviegoers just weren't interested in a bleak drama about the drug trade," says BoxOffice.com editor-in-chief Phil Contrino, who contends that filmgoers make their movie selections based on their respective premises. (Remember how everyone booed at Ryan Gosling as street fighter-slash-drug smuggler in "Only God Forgives" at Cannes?) "'The Counselor' proves yet again that A-list stars cannot guarantee strong box office receipts," Contrino adds.2. But Was It the Worst Movie Ever Made?
Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com thinks so, calling it "a self-referential commentary on its own terribleness." O'Hehir's opinion aside, "The Counselor" received a litany of bad reviews amounting to a paltry 21 percent score among top critics surveyed on Rotten Tomatoes. "Novelists don't always make good screenwriters — this is the first film for which [Cormac] McCarthy has written the screenplay himself," points out Slate's Forrest Wickman, who adds that the film's "nihilism soon becomes tedious." Incidentally, O'Hehir's lengthy denunciation of the film included the observation that it seemed like it was "made by coked-up rich people for 100 bajillion dollars."Diaz evokes a feline in more ways than one in 'The Counselor' (20th Century Fox)3. Cameron Diaz's Love Scene … With a Car.
It's that part of the film you can't un-see. Without getting too graphic, Diaz goes at it with the windshield of a Ferrari. And most reviews have warned moviegoers of its overall awfulness. Lisa Kennedy of the Denver Post was vocal in her opposition to the scene, calling Diaz's casting "a spectacular blunder." Some writers have taken to poking fun at the unfortunate snippet of celluloid while others discussed its shock value. "'The Counselor' Features the Year's Most Outrageous Sex Scene," blurted IGN's headline. Peter Travers also found the film to be quite unsexy. When it came to Fassbender and Cruz in between the sheets, the RollingStone critic wrote, "As eroticism, it's, um, unconvincing."[Related: Cameron Diaz Is a Man-Eater in 'The Counselor']4. If It's Not Oscar Bait, Why Bother?
There are just too many stellar movies out right now to let "The Counselor" skate by. "It has become difficult for many films to distinguish themselves and become breakout hits in this virtual traffic jam at the multiplex," says Rentrak box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian, who names "Captain Phillips," "12 Years a Slave" (also with Pitt), and "Gravity" as just part of the film's "intense competition." "New and notable films being released week after week have made this a harsh environment for some titles," he notes. Still, Dergarabedian predicts the film will eventually recoup its $25 million once it has opened across the globe.5. Brad, Where Were You?
Fassbender and Bardem did a small amount of press ahead of the film's opening (including an interview with our partners at omg! Insider). Cruz was a little less than quiet, discussing the film with an Australian outlet. But overall, the cast kept tight-lipped leading up to this past weekend's release. Diaz and Pitt were nowhere to be seen last week when it came to peddling their wares. Even when movies are poorly received, stars typically come out in full force — as did John Travolta and the rest of the cast for Oliver Stone's similarly-themed 2012 drug-cartel film "Savages." Heck, even the normally vocal director Ridley Scott did very little press for the film — and we know poor reviews don't typically deter him (see the criticism for last year's "Prometheus"). Of course, Fassbender and Pitt have the much more acclaimed "12 Years a Slave" also out now, so it makes sense they'd put their promotional efforts into the stronger film.So why did you skip "The Counselor" at the theater this weekend? Or if you were one of the few to actually buy a ticket, what did you think of it? Tell us in the comments.Watch 'The Counselor' Theatrical Trailer: 

Follow me on Twitter (@meriahonfiah)

They’re ... They’re Still Alive! EC Comics, Vilified in the 1950s, Thrive 60 Years Later

They’re ... They’re Still Alive!EC Comics, Vilified in the 1950s, Thrive 60 Years Later
Fantagraphics BooksThe Comics That Refuse to Die: The popularity of EC Comics’s horror and humor still flourishes.
By DANA JENNINGS
Published: October 24, 2013FACEBOOKTWITTERGOOGLE+SAVEE-MAILSHAREPRINTREPRINTS
This is a chilling and improbable tale of the living dead: Even though they were savaged by the politeness police and left lifeless some 60 years ago, EC comic books, which spawned notorious titles like Tales From the Crypt, Shock SuspenStories and Mad, have become the comics that refused to die. Connect With Us on TwitterFollow@nytimesarts for arts and entertainment news.Arts Twitter List: Critics, Reporters and Editors A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.Go to Event Listings »Just last month, Fantagraphicsreleased two more albums in its EC Comics Library, started last year, and will soon publish its first volume of illustrator interviews in “The EC Artists.” Dark Horse Comics has revived the EC Archives, and will continue the series with “Tales From the Crypt: Volume 4,” next month.IDW Publishing is producing stunning, portfolio-size Artist’s Editions, with work by EC all-stars like Wally Wood, Jack Davis and Harvey Kurtzman (who created Mad magazine) and others. IDW also put out biographies this year of Wood and EC’s indispensable editor-writer-artist, Al Feldstein.So why, decades after its death, is EC still alive — and even thriving?Gary Groth, Fantagraphics president and editor of its EC Library, thinks he knows. “The EC line represents a high-water mark in the history of commercial comics,” he wrote in an e-mail. “They were arguably the best commercial comics company in the history of the medium, and their list of artists and writers between 1950 and 1955 represents a Who’s Who of the most accomplished craftsmen working in comics at that time.”And in an essay this year, he wrote: “EC came as close as a mainstream comics publisher could to being the comics equivalent of Barney Rosset’s Grove Press. What other comics publisher would even think of adapting stories from The Saturday Evening Post, use stories by Guy de Maupassant or steal from the best — Ray Bradbury?”The best-selling horror novelist Joe Hill, who also writes the comics series Locke & Key, has a slightly different take. “Tales From the Crypt was the most famous of the horror and crime comics that were destroyed by the 1950s-era show trial put on by Congressman Estes Kefauver,” Mr. Hill wrote in an e-mail. “And I think that in the very act of making a thing forbidden, you make it seductive. Congressmen and respected psychologists didn’t want you to have it ... therefore it had to be great.”EC’s pulpy cultural DNA, which pulses in comics like Crypt and Weird Science, has proved hardier than anyone could have imagined. Those gruesome, fantastical and slapstick chromosomes course through the films of Joe Dante and George Lucas, of Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino, and in the novels of Stephen King and Mr. Hill, Mr. King’s son. And don’t forget that Mad was born as a 10-cent EC comic in 1952 before becoming a 25-cent magazine with its 24th issue. (The first 24 issues of Mad can be read in DC Comics’ “Mad Archives,” Volumes 1 to 4.)“You start with Mad and wind up mainlining Vonnegut and calling yourself a conscientious objector,” wrote Mr. Hill, whose latest novel is “NOS4A2.” “Mad magazine has had its finger up the nose of pop culture since 1952 and has never stopped unearthing fresh glistening gems. Their sense of humor informed National Lampoon, ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘Jackass,’ Eminem’s music, one out of every seven tweets on Twitter, and every gross joke in every comic ever.”EC’s glory (and gory) years were 1950-1955, when it mutated from Educational Comics to Entertaining Comics, stopped printing tame titles like Saddle Romances and Tiny Tot and shifted to Two-Fisted Tales and The Vault of Horror. In this new, skewed world, axes were rarely used to chop wood, and meat grinders weren’t for shredding beef. Buxom bombshells lounged on distant planets, cannibalism was a hobby, and the dead just didn’t know how to stay dead.for the rest go here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/art...-
1950s-thrive-60-years-later.html

Great Jake Hinkson Pro-File of Robert Siodmak from The CriminalElement

  Robert Siodmak byJake Hinkson


The classic era of film noir was notable for the incredible amount of talent behind the camera. Famous directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles produced notable work in the genre, while lesser known talents like Phil Karlson, Ida Lupino, Anthony Mann, Andre De Toth, Jules Dassin, and Robert Wise (just to name a few) got their chops directing moody, violent crime stories.Perhaps the director with the finest list of noir credits, though, was Robert Siodmak. Originally from Dresden, he was born into money and a certain social privilege—with a successful father and an artistically inclined mother. At 18 he went to Berlin, which in those days was the swinging, cultural capital of Europe.  During the 1920s, Siodmak, along with his brother Curt (who would himself become an important force in filmmaking), worked his way into the bustling German film industry. It was an incredible time—the age of German Expressionism—and Siodmak worked alongside future film masters like Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Fritz Lang. Not incidentally, all of these men would make important contributions to film noir.Then came the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, and like so many other artists (especially the ones of Jewish descent) Siodmak fled the country and came to America. Here he developed an approach to crime films that was striking and distinctive. Though he was a master of suspense, Siodmak’s American noirs were not as nerve-rattling as Hitchcock’s, and they were not marked by the kind of rough-and-tumble violence that drew attention to Karlson or Mann. What Siodmak did—as well as, or perhaps, better than anyone else—was to create the noir mood, an atmosphere of doom, of anxiety giving way to destruction. His films are, almost without exception, beautifully visual. If you want to learn about noir style, Siodmak is probably the best place to start. His films take place in a world of shadow and light, of footsteps in the dark and smoky doorways in the night.Here’s your beginner’s guide to Siodmak:for the rest go here:

http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/...-
director-robert-siodmak?tm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+
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national lampoon covers early 1970s