Brian Olsen's Blog, page 8

Ten Thoughts on The Three Caballeros

I saw The Three Caballeros (1944) once when I was very little, but all I remember is the theme song and wondering why the other two caballeros with Donald weren’t Mickey and Goofy. This film is better known than its thematic predecessor, Saludos Amigos, because of more frequent theatrical and home video releases, but it’s essentially another package film, and another tour through Latin America as seen through the Disney lens.

The opening sequence, which is also the framing sequence throughout the film, is Donald celebrating his birthday (Friday the 13th) and receiving presents from Latin American friends. He receives a film projector and gets tangled in the screen while setting it up and stays remarkably composed, given his well-known history of anger management issues. The first short he watches is called “Aves Rares,” or “Strange Birds,” and Donald indicates birds by making a shadow puppet of wings and flapping them. He makes the shadow puppet of wings with his…wings. It’s very confusing. It’s like making a shadow puppet of arms with your hands. Why not just use your arms? I spent so much time thinking about this that I missed most of the strange birds.
Pablo is the titular (heh) star of the next short, “The Cold-Blooded Penguin.” He’s a penguin at the South Pole (or “Polo Sur”) who hates the cold so he makes his bathtub into a boat to sail to a nice warm South American island. It’s a fun cartoon but there’s a bit at the end where the bathtub is filling with water and he’s frantically trying to bail it out, and it only works if we don’t know that penguins can swim. Which is something they’re actually pretty well known for. I’m okay with a penguin having a bathtub but my suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
More strange birds of South America! Did you know that toucans can’t make love because they wallop each other with their beaks whenever they try to kiss? No? Me, neither. I’m beginning to think that this feature is not living up to its remit to educate its audience about Latin America.
“The Flying Gauchito” is about a little Uruguayan boy named Gauchito (“Little Cowboy”) who, while out hunting condors finds a winged donkey named Burrito (“Little Donkey” – think about that the next time you order the beef at Chipotle). First off – hunting condors? That’s a thing? Second, it’s here that I realize how much Spanish vocabulary this movie is hurling at us with no explanation, just plopped in the middle of otherwise English sentences. It’s like the screenwriters for this flick were Dora the Explorer and El Dorado from The Super Friends. Anyway, Gauchito enters Burrito in a race and he wins but then Burrito’s wings are revealed and everyone accuses him of cheating and so they fly away and – in the words of the older Gauchito, who’s narrating the story – “Neither him nor me was ever seen again as long as we lived.” The end. Uh…okay? That was abrupt. Did you fly into the upper stratosphere and freeze to death? Did you go off and live happily in the Andes with your donkey-bird? I feel like there’s more to this story. It’s all very “Poochie died on his way back to his home planet.”
Hey, José Carioca is back! He’s that sketchy Brazilian parrot from Saludos Amigos. This oughta liven things up. José takes Donald on a tour of South America, which eats up the rest of the film. Baía is first, which is lovely (it looks like foreign money) although the song is a little dull. They jump into a pop-up book to interact with the locals, including singer Aurora Miranda (sister of Carmen, who was a famous entertainer mostly remembered for wearing a hat made of fruit). Donald and José go ga-ga for Aurora in a particularly unconvincing mix of live-action and animation. Aurora has crazy eyes. Maybe it’s from having to interact with rear projection so much, but I’d play it safe and stay away, fellas.
I can’t understand a damn word either of these birds is saying.
Before we resume our tour, we finally meet the third caballero – Panchito Pistoles, representing Mexico. They sing the title song – “We’re three happy chappies, with snappy serapes, you’ll find us beneath our sombreros…” and then they all fire guns into the air. And it’s still less offensively stereotypically Mexican than what I saw on Univision at the laundromat this morning.
And suddenly a group of big-headed Mexican children straight out of a Little Golden Book are teaching me about the true meaning of Christmas and it’s all very earnest and it has something to do with piñatas and I have to check to make sure I’m still watching the same movie.
That last segment is where this movie really goes off the rails and never comes back. It’s not bad – it’s kind of great – it’s just insane. The trio of birds fly over Mexico on a magical serape taking in the sights. Why don’t they use their wings? Don’t ask silly questions. Donald starts horn dogging it again on the live-action ladies. Cartoon birds love live-action ladies. They fly over Acapulco Beach and all three birds go nuts dive-bombing the hot bikini babes. There are no men, by the way – they must all be at a different beach. (Can I go there?) The interaction between the actors and the animation is much better in this segment – at one point the beautiful ladies catch and bounce Donald in a blanket and it’s flawlessly done. I completely bought into it.
And then Donald drops acid with the animators, that’s the only explanation I can find for this last section. His unnatural lust for human women has finally driven him mad. I don’t even know how to describe it. He’s up in the sky gathering stars and he’s chasing this singer and then there’s a woman dressed like a flower and then he dances with an adorable cactus lady and José and Panchito keep appearing and inexplicably tormenting him and the flashing colors and the noise and I think the filmmakers had some issues to work out. And then Donald gets inside a bull costume made of fireworks and bullfights with Panchito but then José lights the fireworks and they explode and that’s the end of the movie. (Add tequila, churros and a donkey and it’s a trip to Tijuana I took in 1996.) The Three Caballeros isn’t a bad flick. Some of the travelogue sections get a little dull, but the humor veers between classic Disney and batshit crazy, both entertaining in their own way. Plus the theme song is catchy as hell. I give it two and a half caballeros.

Ten Thoughts on Victory Through Air Power

Victory Through Air Power (1943) is an odd film. It’s the first example of wartime propaganda produced by Disney. I had never seen it before – hadn’t even heard of it until I was deciding which movies I was going to watch for this series of posts. Apart from the opening sequence, it wasn’t ever shown on TV and it wasn’t released on home video until 2004, so it’s fairly unknown, despite it being only the eighth Disney feature. It really is blatant, unashamed propaganda – it’s based on the book of the same name by Major Alexander P. de Seversky, who appears in the film in the live action sequences giving a lecture to the American people and, most particularly, to military and government leaders, about the necessity of increasing America’s commitment to develop long-range bombing and of building a better fleet of long-range bombers. That’s it. That’s what the whole movie’s about. Like I said, it’s an odd film.

The opening sequence, “History of Aviation,” is the only part of the film that was occasionally shown over the years since this film’s release, since it stands on its own and isn’t quite as propaganda-y as the rest. It’s a cartoon telling us – well, the history of aviation. And it’s very cartoony – although the narration is straightforward, there’s a lot of humor in the animation. You could replace Orville Wright with Goofy and I’d believe it’s another installment in his “How To” series. Overall, this segment is pretty awesome. It’s entertaining and even educational.
There’s a close-up on a newspaper. The headline we’re meant to see says, “U.S. War Dept. Plans Air Corps,” but the headline beneath that reads “Rich Filipino Brings Natives Here.” I think I’d rather watch that cartoon.
According to “History of Aviation”, pilots in the first world war were quite polite to each other at first, even friendly. The very first dog fight began when a French pilot snapped a picture of his German counterpart as their planes were passing, but when the French pilot developed the film, the German pilot was making a nasty face at him. So the next time they passed the French pilot threw a brick at him. I am beginning to doubt the historical accuracy of this cartoon.
Into the first live action sequence, and Seversky is wasting no time. He starts right off with the great risk America is at of being bombed by the Germans. This was released just a few months after Pearl Harbor, by the way. The filmmakers know how to play to the fears of their audience – essential for any good piece of propaganda. And this is pretty effective propaganda. It’s very clear and persuasive. There’s an interesting segment about how Germany’s dominance of the air led to their successful invasions of France and Norway.
The music is amazing. The orchestral score keeps dropping in bits from “La Marseillaise,” “Rue Brittania,” and “America the Beautiful” (to name just a few) whenever we’re meant to get teary about those songs’ respective countries. It works. (The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Score.)
Hey, that silhouette of a WWII tank kind of looks like a Dalek! Oh…wait…I probably have that backwards…
This may come as a shock, but the segment on the importance and logistics of supply lines is a little dull.
There are a lot of impressive, effective images in this movie. A champagne bottle smashes against a supply ship, launching it. Cut to: a torpedo hits the ship in the exact same spot, sinking it.
There’s a symbolic bit where a circle with a swastika at the center, representing the German front, is besieged on multiple sides by arrows, representing the Allied forces, trying to burst through the circle to reach the war machine factories at the center, when one of the hypothetical long-range bombers flies straight through and drops a bomb which explodes in the center and then all the arrows which couldn’t puncture the circle scatter in all directions. It reminds me so much of a cartoon from a high school health class about a bunch of sperm trying to fertilize an egg. (Minus the swastika, hopefully.)
The movie ends with some severe war porn – animated shots of American planes bombing the hell out of Japan, the entire countries’ infrastructure destroyed. There are no people shown but it’s really quite disturbing. While I’m sure it was meant to inspire the people of 1943 who had just endured such a frightening sneak attack on American soil, today the delight we’re meant to take in the destruction of our enemies is rather chilling. But then there’s a giant eagle and it’s fighting an evil octopus, and the eagle kills the octopus which releases the daggers it had been plunging into the Pacific islands with its tentacles and then the eagle lands on a post and turns to gold and the post is a flagpole and the American flag is waving and The End. What the hell did I just watch?

Now on Google Play

If you’re a Google Play-er, my books are now available there! Links below…

Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom

Caitlin Ross and the Commute from Hell

This Is What He Should Have Said

Join the Hat Party

I was interviewed by Raine O’Tierney at her “Hat Party” blog. She interviews writers. The questions are unusual and the writers wear funny hats. It was a lot of fun, and inspired a new photo of myself that I love (an extremely rare occurrence). Please click through and check it out – I’ve written a steamy new piece of flash fiction and detailed my harrowing escape from a horde of burning zombies, just for the party!

Alan Lennox on sale!

My first book, Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom, is on sale this week (through Sunday 5/11) for just 99 cents! You can also get it for the Kindle, the Nook, iBooks, or Kobo. Book two is already out, so if you like this one you don’t have to wait for the sequel!

Alan Lennox has been assigned yet another soul-crushing temp job, keeping him from his first loves – drinking, playing video games, and looking for a boyfriend. But Alan’s new job proves to be anything but boring when his co-workers start turning up dead. The mysterious megacorporation Amalgamated Synergy has taken a deadly interest in Alan and his three roommates, and the hapless quartet are woefully unequipped to deal with the psychotic secretaries, murderous middle managers, and villainous vice-presidents hunting them down. 

Their investigation leads them deep into Amalgamated Synergy’s headquarters, but can Alan and his friends stay alive long enough to discover who – or what – waits for them on the top floor? 

Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom is the first book of The Future Next Door, a contemporary urban science fiction comedic thriller series. 

Book One: Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom 

Book Two: Caitlin Ross and the Commute from Hell 

Book Three: Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny (coming 2014) 

Book Four: Dakota Bell and the Wastes of Time (coming 2014)

Snazzy new covers!

I’ve had the covers for both of my books redone, and here’s the big reveal! (Well, my mailing list got a peek at Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom earlier this month, but this is the first appearance of the new cover for Caitlin Ross and the Commute from Hell.)

 

While I love the original covers, the feedback I was getting was that they weren’t necessarily giving new readers the clearest idea of the books’ genres. I’m thrilled with these new ones – I think they just scream “contemporary urban science fiction comedic thriller,” don’t you?

If you’re a fan of the originals, they’ll remain as the covers to the paperbacks for some time yet – these new ones are just on the e-books, for now. But hurry if you want them – I’ll be updating the paperback covers too at some point before the release of book three, Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny, this summer.

Oh, you want to buy them? Thanks! Here are some links for you:

Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom: Amazon, Nook, iTunes, Kobo.

Caitlin Ross and the Commute from Hell: Amazon, Nook, iTunes, Kobo.

Admitting You’re Terrible

I’m currently working on Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny. It’s the third book in my series, The Future Next Door, and it is also, not coincidentally, the third book I have ever written.

Writing is a skill, of course, and like any skill, you get better at it the more you practice it. My first book, Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom, took me just about a year to write, from first word to publication. I learned a lot as I was writing it – both from the act of writing itself, and from actually studying the craft of writing by reading what other, smarter writers than me had to say – and by the time I was finished with the first draft, I realized I needed to go back to the top and do some pretty serious revisions. It was a long process, but worth it in the end. It’s a good book.

The second book, Caitlin Ross and the Commute from Hell, came a lot easier. Not easy, just easier. It took about seven months in all. Less time because I had figured out that I’m a plotter – I need to break the story down before I start to write, not figure it out as I go along. This resulted in the first draft needing far fewer revisions. It was even more fun to write than the first book had been, and I think it shows in the end result. It’s a better book.

I say I started working on Mark Park a few weeks ago, but really, I started it at the same time I started Caitlin Ross. After I finished the first book, I plotted out all three of the remaining installments in the series – there’s an overall story building, and I had to know where I was going in order to know how to get there. So I had a blueprint in front of me when I actually sat down to write book three.

But…but but but. Something was off. Writing when I got home from work was becoming a chore to be dreaded instead of the best part of my day. I pushed through, telling myself I was just hitting a wall, I was tired, I was cranky, I needed to be changed, anything except admitting there was something wrong with what I was writing. I got through six chapters before I realized that the book just wasn’t going to work. The book I had plotted would not be a good book, let alone a better book. It would be a bad book.

So I threw it all away. All my meticulous plotting. All those weeks of work. Even the few little bits I liked. Once I beat my ego into submission and admitted that I was doing bad work, and gave myself permission to let it go, I was able to see more clearly what was wrong. And then I fixed it.

Tonight I finished my second take on the plot breakdown, and I’m bouncing up and down in my chair with excitement. I know it’s good. And I can’t wait to start writing again.

Google stories

I’ve been feeling a little creatively blocked, so I devised a writing exercise for myself. I took the top two male and the top two female first names from the 1990 US census, and typed them into Google followed by the word ‘was.’ I then used the first auto-complete as the beginning of a very short story. And here they are! I wrote all of these in the space of about a half-hour, so they’re extremely unpolished, but hopefully they’ve helped me get a little unstuck as I tweak the plot of Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny. I quite like the second story. The fourth auto-complete was so bizarre I almost chucked it, but I’d only be cheating myself… Auto-complete text is in bold.

James was what today could be termed a “snapchataholic.” He would send his friends scores of short, disposable, and by-and-large unwanted videos of himself engaging in activities which he considered hilarious and the rest of the world considered banal. Here’s James eating a bowl of cereal and shouting enthusiastically. Here’s James making the shocker behind his English teacher’s back. Here’s James sticking his tongue out on the bus home. Most of his friends deleted his snapchats unseen. Only one of James’ acquaintances never stopped checking them – she had a slight crush on James, and was hoping for a naked selfie. But he was too boring for even that.

Mary was the marrying kind. After her fifth divorce, however, she realized that she wasn’t really the “being married” kind. All five weddings were dreams, but all five marriages were nightmares. It all worked out eventually – she and Aaron have been engaged for twenty-three years now. They have two kids and a beautiful home in Palo Alto. In her spare time Mary plans the sixth wedding she’ll never have. The dress would be gorgeous and the food would be divine, but Mary loves Aaron too much to marry him. She knows that just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

John was a zombie. It was fairly dull. The last bit of meat had been eaten decades ago, so there wasn’t much to do. There was a little shambling, a little moaning, but mostly he just stood in place and waited for something to happen. He thought about taking up needlepoint but he only had six fingers between his two hands and besides, learning a new skill seemed like an awful lot of effort. Maybe aliens would invade someday. That would be something.

“Was Patricia Heaton pregnant in 1998?”

“Excuse me?”

“Was Patricia Heaton pregnant in 1998?”

“Who?”

“Patricia Heaton. The actress.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is.”

“She was the wife on Everybody Loves Raymond.  Debra was her name.”

“Oh. Okay. I remember that show, sure. My parents watched it.”

“And she’s on The Middle now.”

“Yes, I know who you mean now. What did you want to know?”

“Was she pregnant in 1998?”

“I have no idea. How would I know that?”

“The sign says ‘Information.’”

“This is a Home Depot.”

“So…”

“I can tell you where the paint is or how much lumber costs. I don’t have information about every random thing. Have you Googled it?”

“Again and again and again.”

“…”

“I’ve Googled the hell out of this question.”

“Sir, you’re making me uncomfortable.”

“I can’t find what I’m looking for. I just need a little help.”

“Google didn’t have the answer? I can’t help you.”

“Google had the answer, just not what I’m looking for.”

“Oh. I think I…um…have you tried the image search?”

“No! What’s that?”

“Well, you can search for images instead of web sites.”

“Ah! So if I typed ‘Patricia Heaton pregnant 1998’ into the image search…”

“I think you might find what you’re looking for, yes. If I’m understanding you correctly.”

“Oh, you’re understanding me. I like what I like, you know?”

“Please don’t explain.”

“I can’t help it if I have very, very specific tastes.”

“Thank you for choosing Home Depot. Please come again.”

“I will now.”

“Security to the information desk, please.”

Caitlin Ross is here!

Caitlin Ross and the Commute from Hell  is now available!

Caitlin Ross is the second book of The Future Next Door series, and the sequel to Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom. It’s currently available…

From Amazon for the Kindle,
From Barnes and Noble for the Nook, and
From CreateSpace in paperback.

It’ll be available soon from iTunes and Kobo, and in paperback from Amazon and Barnes and Noble – watch this space.

And if you haven’t picked up Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom yet, it’s available all January long at a reduced price of just 99 cents for the ebook!

Caitlin Ross is on track to be the action star she’s always wanted to be. She’s got the lead in a new play at a downtown theater, she’s got a handsome, successful boyfriend, and she’s picked up some killer new martial arts skills. But after a missing teen reappears outside her theater, disfigured and violent, Caitlin finds that there’s more to being a hero than just throwing punches. When mysterious portals start hurling her friends around New York City and into danger, Caitlin will have to make the ultimate sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe. If she survives long enough to discover the truth behind their teleporting tormentors, can Caitlin avoid the monstrous fate awaiting her in the theater’s basement? 

Alan Lennox on sale for only 99 cents

Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom is on sale for the month of January – 99 cents for the ebook! Grab it now and get in from the beginning – book two in the series will be out in just a few days!

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
iTunes
Kobo

Alan Lennox has been assigned yet another soul-crushing temp job, keeping him from his first loves – drinking, playing video games, and looking for a boyfriend. But Alan’s new job proves to be anything but boring when his co-workers start turning up dead. The mysterious megacorporation Amalgamated Synergy has taken a deadly interest in Alan and his three roommates, and the hapless quartet are woefully unequipped to deal with the psychotic secretaries, murderous middle managers, and villainous vice-presidents hunting them down. Their investigation leads them deep into Amalgamated Synergy’s headquarters, but can Alan and his friends stay alive long enough to discover who – or what – waits for them on the top floor?

Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom is the first book of The Future Next Door, a contemporary urban science fiction comedic thriller series in four parts.