E.R. Torre's Blog, page 112

On Writing…technique: Simile

A few days ago I examined literary techniques via a book that was advanced to me (you can read the article here).  I provided an example of a passage in the novel and why it was problematic to me as it was in the middle of an action sequence and focused on something that didn’t advance that chapter’s main purpose: To build suspense.

Now, let me get into another literary element: Similes.

What are similes?  A full description and definition is offered in the link below:

Simile: Examples and Definitions

To spare you clicking the above link, here are some examples of similes:

He collapsed like a bag of potatoes.

The car wheezed as if a severe asthmatic.

The gunfire was like a series of explosions.

The bottom line regarding similes is that you compare something with something else, usually using the word “like” of “as” to make the comparison more direct.  The purpose of this is to give you an idea of the degree of the item(s) being compared.

Taking the above examples, the person didn’t just fall to the ground, he did so “like a bag of potatoes”, ie with great force and complete chaos.  The car wheezed like a severe asthmatic because that implies not only a failing motor, but one that is dangerously failing.  The gunfire wasn’t just loud, it was explosive loud.

Got it?

Good.

Now, and at the risk of having someone point out my own hypocrisy: I really don’t like using similes, at least for “serious” writing.  And it’s fair to say up to this point most of my writing has been fantastical but relatively “serious”.

Yes, I’m certain I’ve used similes in the past.  I don’t doubt that if someone goes through all my past writings they will find examples of me using them.  But I really don’t like them.  I really, really, don’t like using them.

Why?

In part its because most of the times similes are incredibly lazy.

I mean, how many times have you read about someone falling “like a sack of potatoes”?  Or that gunfire being like “explosions”?  Or how about these, presented as examples in the link above: Something being “as dry as a bone” or someone being “as cunning as a fox”?

Blah.

But there is another big reason for my lack of enthusiasm for the literary device and it involves, of all things, the Naked Gun films of Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker.

Bear with me here.

Starting in the late 1960’s and going through the 1970’s, disaster films were all the rage.  You had the “classics” like The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure (which, btw, featured a cameo appearance by one Leslie Nielsen).  These gave way to bigger and bigger disaster films like Earthquake and Roller Coaster and The Swarm and Beyond The Poseidon Adventure.

But one of the bigger “disaster” hits in the 1970’s were the Airport films.  The first movie, released in 1970, featured a huge, all star cast and was an equally huge hit.  It was followed by Airport 1975, Airport ’77, and The Concorde: Airport 1979.

In 1980 the above mentioned Abrahams and Zucker Brothers released the classic comedy Airplane! which parodied the living hell out of the “airliner in distress” movie genre.  However, I would argue the film also took great glee at parodying all disaster film tropes.

So good was the film at pointing out the many absurd cliches in airplane/disaster films that if you look carefully at the films released post Airplane!, you’ll see that the airline disaster film was all but gone for years afterwards (though some may argue The Concorde: Airport 1979 didn’t help the cause) and that big scale disaster film also were much more muted as well.  Sure, there have been disaster/airline-type films released since but they haven’t ruled the box office quite like they did up to that point.  In fact, the only big successful disaster film I can think of in recent days is probably the original Independence Day.

Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers would go on to make the Naked Gun films and within them, at least to me, they laid a similar wrecking ball to the use of similes, something which was a commonly used literary device in the type of crime drama the Naked Gun films so beautifully parodied.

Here are the biggest/most hilarious lines, IMHO, featured in the three Naked Gun films:

Like a blind man at an orgy, I was gonna have to feel my way out.

Like a midget at a urinal, I was going to have to stay on my toes.

I like my sex the way I play basketball, one on one with as little dribbling as possible.

As Airplane! did with airliner/disaster films, these twisted -and hilarious!- similes affected my writing.  As much as I may want to use a “serious” simile in a passage, when I use the word “like” in comparing one thing to another I can’t help but recall one of the three above lines.

If I were writing a comedy, these lines would be inspiration.  But for “serious” writing?

Nah.

Don’t Breathe (2016) a (mildly) belated review

One of 2016’s bigger hits was the suspense/horror movie Don’t Breathe.  Here’s one of the movie’s trailers…

The movie’s plot is, essentially, a thematic inversion of the 1967 Audrey Hepburn/Alan Arkin film Wait Until Dark.  Here’s the trailer for that film…

In Wait Until Dark, a trio of thieves enter Audrey Hepburn’s character’s home and, eventually, terrorize her as they seek heroine they are certain is hidden within the place.

In Don’t Breathe Rocky (), her sleazy boyfriend “Money” (), and the clean cut/not-so-secretly-pining-for-Rocky Alex () form the trio of thieves who use information Alex gets from his father’s security company to break into homes, disarm their alarms, and steal whatever items they can get their hands on.

It turns out Rocky has a very good reason for engaging in these activities: She lives in a highly dysfunctional home with her very sleazy mother and much younger sister.  She hopes to get enough money to be able to flee this hellish house with her young sister.

So while her methods are bad, her goal is noble.

When the trio hear about a man, as it turns out a Blind Man (, absolutely terrific here), who may have as much as $300,000 hidden away in his home in a deserted slum within Detroit, they figure they’ve found the right mark and haul that can finally get them out of their individual bad situations.

Unlike Audrey Hepburn’s character in Wait Until Dark, however, Stephen Lang’s Blind Man turns out to be far from helpless…or, for that matter, good.  There be terrible secrets hiding within his house and our “heroes”, or perhaps more appropriately “anti-heroes”, are about to enter a very dark (no pun intended) world from which they may not escape from…alive.

Don’t Breathe was made by the same team, and features the same star, Jane Levy, of 2013’s Evil Dead remake, a film that, frankly, I didn’t much like (you can read my review of that film here).  Unlike the bloody and gore filled Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe uses very little actual blood and almost no gore in telling its story.  Instead, this movie relies on building tension through the strength of the actors and situations they are in to convey the terror of their situation.  While I’m not adverse to gore in films (I loved the original Evil Dead films and the first two were filled with gore!), this movie benefits tremendously from the decision to forego the bloody stuff and focus on situational tension.

Before I go, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that those who faulted the film felt its second act and the big reveal regarding what the Blind Man was up to in his decrepit house was a little too much.  Frankly, I can’t argue against those who felt these things were unnecessary.  Indeed, these elements could have been cut out and the film and we therefore might have had a leaner and meaner feature.  However, these revelations didn’t bother me as much as it did some others.

In the end, Don’t Breathe is an easy recommendation to all fans of good tension/horror films.

Criminal (2016) a (mildly) belated review

Several years ago I saw and reviewed Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011) (you can read the full review here) and noted the following:

Have you ever seen a film that, upon exiting the theaters, you could tell it underwent some major revisions in the story it was trying to tell?

In the case of MIGP, if felt to me the film took a major deviation in its climax and I strongly suspect (still do!) the movie’s bad guys were intended to be Hanaway (a character who apparently dies in the opening act…a strange choice to have a fairly recognizable actor like Mr. Holloway in what amounts to little more than a cameo role) and his girlfriend/fellow agent, Jane.

The film, IMHO, leads to this revelation up to the sequence in the very tall building in Dubai.  It was there I was absolutely certain Hanaway would be revealed as not dead and Jane, seemingly distraught at the death of her boyfriend and wanting revenge, was really a double agent working alongside him.

For whatever reason the film’s makers decided not to go there and, as I explained in my review, the movie’s climax was hurt (but, to be fair, not fatally) by this change.  I suspect MIGP would have been far better/shocking -and made more sense- had they gone that way.

I had similar feelings, though on a smaller scale, with the movie Criminal.  The film was an entertaining action/thriller with a small yet significant sci-fi element whose use reminded me a little of the John Woo directed, John Travolta/Nicholas Cage starring Face/Off.

The movie opens with Bill Pope () in the process of doing …something… in London.  We know he’s on the run and avoiding some suspicious people who are after him.  He gets a bag full of money and a passport and, we find, is not only being chased by some dubious characters but also tracked by a CIA office run by Quaker Wells ().  Wells is frantic to figure out where Pope is going and provide him protection.

While fleeing Pope manages to call his wife Jill () for what will turn out to be the last time he speaks with her…ever.  Not long afterwards Pope is captured by the people pursuing him but not before hiding the money he got.  Despite being tortured, Pope refuses to tell the bad guys what they want to know.  By the time the CIA finds him, he’s already dead.

Whatever Pope was up to was big league stuff and the CIA, desperate to figure out what exactly he was up to before he died, contact Dr. Franks ().  Dr. Franks is working on a way of transferring the memories of one animal into another.  The CIA tasks him with transferring the memories of the deceased Bill Pope into someone else so they can figure out what he was up to before he was killed.

Enter Jerico Stewart (), a psychopathic -and imprisoned- killer who had severe brain trauma as a child and cannot feel or distinguish emotions or right versus wrong.  His frontal lobe never developed due to this brain trauma and therefore he is the one, the only subject which Dr. Franks feels may be successfully used to transfer Pope’s memories and find the information the CIA is so desperate to get.

All the while, the clock is ticking…

I won’t go into too many more SPOILERS and please note what I’ve written above occurs in the movie’s first fifteen or so minutes.

Suffice to say Criminal centers around the psychopathic Jerico as he struggles with Pope’s emerging memories…all while the villains are closing in.

Criminal is a pretty good action film, IMHO, that could have been even better had the script been tightened down a lot more (You knew I was going to get back to that Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol stuff eventually, right?).

The fact is that the movie’s opening minutes are far more confusing than they should be.  For whatever reason Pope’s mission was kept under wraps until later in the film and this was a mistake.  They could have told audiences just how important the mission was right off the bat and that would have made us care more about Pope and, later, Jerico.

When Jerico is brought in, there is a choppiness here as well, as if parts of the script were tossed in favor of keeping the movie’s runtime reasonable (the movie nonetheless clocks in just shy of 2 hours).  We quickly hurry through introductions to Dr. Franks and Jerico so we can (also very quickly) get him to England and then out on his own.

Despite the choppiness, the film settles down and, to its great credit, Kevin Costner is quite good in the central role of Jerico.  He is something of a Frankenstein monster, gruff and confused yet slowly -and sometimes angrily- reacting to the humanity that is starting to spread for the first time into his system.

The movie features an astonishingly large cast of recognizable actors, many of whom, amusingly enough, were previously featured in comic book or sci-fi fantasy type films.  Let’s see now: Kevin Costner/Waterworld & The Postman, Man of Steel/Batman v Superman, Gary Oldman/Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Tommy Lee Jones/Two-Face in Batman Forever, Gal Gadot/Wonder Woman, Ryan Reynolds/Green Lantern & Deadpool, and, finally /Star Trek.

I point out Alice Eve last and here, again, I get the feeling her character’s place in the movie as released is a good example of what had to be major script changes.  Alice Eve’s character, Marta Lynch, is a CIA agent and, I can only guess based on her very limited role, Quaker Wells’ right hand man.

As presented in the film, Marta Lynch is little more than an extra who could have been played by anyone.  One can argue whether Ms. Eve is an “A” list actress or not, but she has a very long resume and has been featured in several very big movies yet her role here is so small and anemic that one wonders why a) she took the role and b) why the movie’s producers would hire her as she no doubt commands far better pay versus a smaller, lesser known actress.  Again, I can’t help but think there was more involved in the character of Marta Lynch but as the film was made her role was chopped down to near nothing.

Despite these oddball elements, I recommend Criminal.  It may not be The-Very-Best-Action-Film-Ever-Made© but it is a pleasant enough diversion whose chief strength lies in a very enjoyable acting turn by Kevin Costner.

Before I go, here’s the movie’s official trailer.  If you decide to see it, beware…it comes perilously close to revealing a little too much about the film.

On Writing…technique

The other day I received, unsolicited, a Kindle copy of a book currently available through Amazon.com.  The reason the author (or his representatives) sent out the book to me was not because he/they knew I was an author but because I reviewed a book on Amazon that they thought was similar enough to their book that it would appeal to me.  They were hoping I’d read and write a review for their book and post it to the book’s listing on Amazon.

I can understand the reasons for him/them sending me the book.  The more reviews a book has, and especially if the reviews are positive, the more “popular” it appears to the casual book buyer and, hopefully, the better the chance more people will purchase said book.

I looked at the offered book but found it not all that interesting to me.  There was nothing wrong with the book’s plot, per se, its just that the story wasn’t my proverbial “cup of tea”.  I checked its listing on Amazon and sure enough it had quite a few reviews and, for the most part, they were positive.  I must admit, sending out copies of your book to people who have offered written reviews is something to consider and may well be helpful in getting a boost on your review numbers (By the way, thus far I’ve gotten more reviews on Goodreads than through Amazon.  The six books in my Corrosive Knights series are currently clocking in at -and I’m very proud of this fact- 4 stars out of 5).

Anyway, out of politeness to the author I decided to give the first chapter of this book a try.  Alas, it solidified the fact that this book wasn’t for me.  Further, having written as much as I have, certain technical aspects of the author’s work stuck out…negatively.

Out of deference to the author, I will neither name him or the book he was writing but I will provide some examples of things I found bothersome.

To begin, the book is advertised as a James Patterson-like thriller.  In reading the first chapter, which is a setup for what follows, the author presented an action scenario that took place in a famous location and one he took pains in describing.  Some authors like to do this.  If a book is set, say, in a particular neighborhood in London an author may go out of their way to provide readers a detailed geography of the land.  To some this may be quite fun but to me there is a fine line between offering this type of information and getting a little too focused on geography to the point where one loses the steam an exciting action scene should have.

While this author didn’t go overboard with descriptions he got, IMHO, awfully close.  Again, this is a matter of personal opinion: I like my stories to move and I don’t like to dwell too much on ancillary things or too much description.

When writing, one of the things I’ve learned is that you should constantly be focusing on telling the story as best as you can.  Each sentence and, indeed, word builds your story because every word counts.

Let me offer one sentence from this first chapter of the book and offer a critique of it.  Please note the sentence is just one sentence and does not represent the bulk of hte chapter I read (though to be fair, there were other things I found to be bothersome here and there).  Finally, this sentence is NOT presented completely verbatum as, again, I’m keeping the author and the novel secret.  Nonetheless, the below sentence is very, very close to an actual sentence in the book:

“Stop or we’ll be forced to use stronger measures!” yelled the senior officer in Spanish, who sported a five-o’clock shadow on his chiseled face.

This sentence, as written, is very clunky.  A better way to state the same information is:

“Stop of we’ll be forced to use stronger measures!” the senior officer, who sported a five-o’clock shadow on his chiseled face, yelled in Spanish.

While better this sentence is still not all that good.  By the time we read this passage, we already knows the country this part of the story takes place in and therefore should know the language spoken by the “senior officer”.  Thus, in the interests of brevity, the sentence could have gone like this:

“Stop of we’ll be forced to use stronger measures!” the senior officer, who sported a five-o’clock shadow on his chiseled face, yelled.

Better yet still not great.  I strongly suspect the “senior officer” presented here is a very small character whose only appearance in this novel is right here (I can only suspect this because I haven’t read the rest of the novel).  I know and can appreciate the author wanting to give this small character some kind of “life” in this brief appearance but the “five o’clock shadow” and “chiseled face” is at best a rather obvious descriptor and at worst a very cliched one.

Given the likelihood this is the only appearance of this character, his facial description isn’t as important as his purpose, which is to be a menace to the one he’s shouting at.  That being the case, instead of focusing on the character’s face perhaps it would have be better to focus on the threat he conveys.  How about this:

“Stop or we’ll use stronger measures!” the senior officer shouted as his right hand reached for and gripped the gun strapped to his side.

I make absolutely no pretenses about literary mastery here and acknowledge what I wrote ain’t quite Shakespeare or Hemingway but on the other hand this sentence is better at getting to the heart of what this character’s purpose is:  To impart a sense of threat/danger to the character he’s yelling at.

Writing a story, whether it be short or long or massive involves an incredible amount of thought on the part of the author.  Every word counts and you should try to maximize what you write.

This is not an easy task!

I’ve mentioned before that it took me 12 drafts before I was happy enough with my last two novels to release them.  The reason for these drafts is because I too struggle with making sure what I’m writing is as good as is possible.

I took great pains to not point out who this author is or what book he’s promoting and the reason for that is because it is unfair to do so.  I’m just as guilty as he is, perhaps even more so, of writing clunky sentences or not focusing on elements that should be focused on as I made an example of above.

Not every time you go to bat do you hit a home run.  Sometimes, you’re lucky to just get to first base without striking out.

Corrosive Knights, a 2/27/17 Update

It’s been a little while since I’ve provided an update on the Corrosive Knights series and, specifically, book #7 in the series.  This book concludes the main story line (though there will be a book #8, an epilogue, to the series).

So, what’s the news?

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What you’re seeing in this photograph and lying underneath the previous 6 books in the Corrosive Knights series is the finished first draft of Book #7.  On Friday, February 24, I finished that first draft and printed it out so that I could get to work on the second draft.

Mind you, the first draft of this novel, as big an accomplishment as it is, is nonetheless still far from the finished work.  I’ve mentioned before how my two previous novels, Ghost of the Argus and Foundry of the Gods, required 12 drafts before I was happy with the overall product and deemed it good enough to be released.

However, let’s not rain on this particular parade: The fact that I’ve gotten to the point where I’m happy enough to print out this first draft, and it is as complete as it is, fills me with optimism that this novel will not take quite as long to finish as those last two books.  Bear in mind I started this novel in mid-November, worked through roughly half of December (vacations and kids coming home inevitably meant less work being done), then January and February.

To get a first draft of a novel done in what amounts to approximately three months -give or take- is extraordinary and bodes well for the book’s eventual completion and release.

Of course there are still plenty of things needed to be done.  The first draft clocks in at approximately 66,000 words yet I’m certain when all I get to that final draft this novel will be north of 110,000 words.  This means there are maybe 50,000 more words left to write.  Where will the bulk of these to-be-written parts come from?  From a subplot I decided to sketch out while sticking to the novel’s main plot in this draft.

Regardless, I’m incredibly excited by the book’s progress and intend to hit the gas hard in the coming months.  Will I get the novel done before the year is over?

Hard to say as I’m still so early in the book’s process but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope so.

Wish me luck!

Bill Paxton, R.I.P.

Yesterday came the shocking news that actor/director/writer Bill Paxton had passed away at the age of 61.  The cause of death, as listed to date, was “complications from surgery”.  You can read an article about Mr. Paxton’s passing by Holly Yan and Amanda Jackson over at CNN:

Bill Paxton, actor in Twister and Aliens dies at 61

First, my condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Paxton.  Last year my aunt passed away and the cause of her death was also “complications from surgery”.  That descriptive statement, at least with regards to what happened to her, sounds a whole lot nicer than the hell she -and her immediate family- went through.  I very much hope Mr. Paxton and family didn’t go through anything similar to what she did.

The passing of Mr. Paxton does, inevitably, lead one to reflect on the man’s career.  One can check out his list of credits on IMDB:

As is the case with actors whose careers span many decades, there are plenty of works they were involved in which, over time, were by and large forgotten.  In the case of people like Mr. Paxton, there were highlights which were incredibly, incredibly memorable.

I suspect if you were to focus on one role Mr. Paxton is best known for, it has to be Private Hudson from the seminal film Aliens.  While many love to quote the “Game over, man” line, the knife scene, to me, was a highlight.  Here audiences quickly realize Hudson’s bravado isn’t all its cracked up to be…yet we cannot hate the man because how else would anyone react to this?

By the time Aliens reaches its climax and Hudson meets his fate, we’re squarely in his corner and lament his passing.

Hudson was perhaps the quintessential Bill Paxton character:  At times loud and obnoxious yet very much someone we ultimately root for…even if we know they’re doomed.  That’s not to say all his roles were like that.  Mr. Paxton’s career included appearances in classic films like The Terminator, Near Dark (where he reunited with two of his fellow Aliens cast-members and played a very fearsome villain), Tombstone, Apollo 13, and Titanic, to name a few.  He also directed and had a small role in Frailty, a film that deserves a second look.

Another critically successful film he starred in is One False Move.  This movie, ironically enough, may have fallen victim to having a little too much good early word of mouth.

I say this regarding One False Move because, if memory serves, the film was originally supposed to be released straight to video but the critics and audiences who saw it early loved what they saw and this encouraged the studios to give it a full theatrical release.  By the time the film made its theatrical release, the early word of mouth was so good that I suspect many people went into the film expecting to see filmic nirvana and wound up being disappointed the film didn’t quite literally blow their socks off.

One False Move is a damned good film but there was no way it could live up to the ultra-high expectations that swirled around it.

As for me, I’ll always remember Mr. Paxton primarily as Hudson in Aliens.  I suppose its inevitable.  I’ll miss his work and miss the at times wicked charisma he brought to the screen.

Before I go, a trailer to one last film of Mr. Paxton’s I really enjoyed.  Trespass, released in 1992, was perhaps director Walter Hill’s last really good film.  In many ways it was a typical Walter Hill “B” movie, gritty and action/testosterone filled.  This movie also featured a cast that today is very well known.  There’s Mr. Paxton, of course, but also William Sadler and the duo of Ice-T and Ice Cube.

It’s a good, gritty little action film and worth catching, provided you can find it…

Rest in Peace, Mr. Paxton.  At the very least you’ve left behind a wonderful legacy in film, something many actors today hope they can, too.

Back….to the Future!!!

When I was (much) younger, there were two major ways to own music: Either through vinyl records or cassette tapes.  Yeah, for a brief moment there you could buy 8-Track Tapes and there were reel-to-reel tapes (a rarity), but this, my friends, was it:

Then came the CD…

The CD pretty much spelled the end, and in a fairly short period of time, for Vinyl and Cassette tapes.

Why?  Because it was the proverbial better mouse-trap.  You could store more music on a single CD versus Vinyl albums and many cassettes.  CDs were also small enough that you could take them anywhere, including -very importantly!- to your car to play them on a CD player.  But the most important thing CDs provided, in my humble opinion, was durability.  Unlike Vinyl albums or cassette tapes, CDs didn’t degrade.  They appeared to last forever.

Then came the MP3 file.

Suddenly, you didn’t need to have actual physical media but rather some kind of memory device and, almost overnight, the CD became an afterthought.

This past weekend I wandered around a Best Buy and was not all that shocked to see their CD section has shrunk down to perhaps 1/5th the size it used to be.  Now there were only two shelves worth of material available, though a sign put up nearby helpfully stated customers could order “Thousands” of CDs through Best Buy’s website.

Thus, music is exclusively a digital media now, right?

As many of you know, not quite.

For years there have been vocal proponents of the vinyl album.  Those proponents insisted -and continue to insist- there is a big difference between hearing music via vinyl album versus through digital means.

Personally, I dunno.

Yet the vinyl album, something at least I thought was all but obsolete, is instead making a rather strong comeback.  So much so that musician Jack White has invested in a vinyl company, as reported in this article by Adam Graham for The Detroit News…

Jack White makes vinyl beautiful at Third Man Pressing

Obviously there are those who swear by Vinyl.  I like music quite a bit and have a very large collection amassed over many years yet hardly consider myself a music connoisseur.  I’ve listened to vinyl in my younger days and, at least to me, I don’t find a significant difference between the formats.

Yet I will not discount those who swear by that particular medium and, further, wish them all the luck in the world that what they find enjoyment out of continues to not only survive, but thrive.

I also suspect the artists who create music must also be thrilled.  Vinyl albums, because of their fragile nature, wear out.  I strongly suspect this fact contributed to some “classic” albums, like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, to sell so incredibly well over many years.  If your vinyl copy of that album, or any other favorite, develops a nasty pop/hiss or *gasp* skips, you are willing to shell out the money to buy a new copy of the vinyl album and replace the now defective one.

Good business for artists, good business for the vinyl companies.

The fact that Vinyl has made such a strong comeback after being on the edge of extinction is certainly a surprise.

Perhaps one day soon we’ll see Record Stores returning?

One can always dream…

Alien: Covenant “Prologue”

Yesterday this clip was released to the internet…

This clip, listed as a “Prologue” to Alien: Covenant, was supposedly not directed by Ridley Scott (who made the original Alien, Prometheus, and this film) but rather his son Luke Scott.  The clip, obviously, is intended to get potential audiences interested in the upcoming film and will likely NOT be in the film itself.  This clip features no blood, no guts, no “horror” but subtly references the original Alien.

IMHO, it is a freaking bore.

Sorry, but nearly five minutes of seeing these uninteresting people -and one robot- talking (for the most part) nonsense before giving us a little hint toward the horror that one imagines is to come didn’t work for me.

Worst, it reinforced another fear I have: That Alien: Covenant is a subtle remake of the original Alien.

Yeah, the cast is larger and the effects are better and instead of “space truckers” we’ve got colonists going to the mystery planet, but otherwise it looks essentially the same.  Check out the movie’s actual trailer:

Let’s see…we got a disparate cast of “regular” people who go down into a planet (at night, with rain/bad weather, another original Alien element), they explore, they find a crashed ship with an “egg”, one of them apparently gets the face hugger, and all hell obviously breaks loose and an Alien creature has a target rich environment in which to operate.

Okay.

To be fair, there are other things here, one of which is hinted at it the movie’s trailer.  The bug that heads for the man’s ear, for example, may be some kind of permutation of the alien creature as well, though given its size its also quite possible this is something else.

There is also the question of the movie’s relationship with Prometheus and, more specifically, actress Elizabeth Shaw.  IMDB revealed she is in the film and I can’t help but wonder just how big a role her character has in this, especially when this is the plot description Twentieth Century Fox provides for this movie:

Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discover what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world, whose sole inhabitant is the synthetic David, survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

Is Elizabeth Shaw dead?  Will we see her only in video and/or flashbacks?  That would be a shame given the way Prometheus ended.  Now, I’m not a huge fan of Prometheus (one of the more beautiful nonsensical sci-fi films I’ve seen in recent years), but in Elizabeth Shaw we had a survivor.  A woman who faced incredible horror, including being impregnated by the alien creature yet managing to rid herself of it, before leaving the plague planet in search of answers to the questions of related to the Aliens and those who created them.

It would be a big shame, again IMHO, if it turns out her character is dead.

Anyway, I’ll be a damned liar if I said based on what I’ve seen so far -which, again, is rather disappointing- is so disappointing I plan to miss the film.

I caught Prometheus in theaters and even though I thought it wasn’t all that good, I do not regret going to see it.  I was just too curious to see Ridley Scott take on the universe he started so brilliantly with Alien.

Yes, I will catch Alien: Covenant, most likely at some point during the first week of its release.  Unlike Prometheus, I’m going into this film with far more guarded optimism.

Surprise me, Mr. Scott.

Please!

Uber’s self-driving cars…

I’ve noted many times before my fascination with what I feel is the inevitable future of transportation: Self-driving cars.

When this happens (and it will), there’s going to be a domino effect that will cause considerable benefits for many and economic hardship for others.  To begin, when self-driving vehicles become a reality, why would anyone own a car?  If a fleet of self-driving vehicles becomes a reality and its as easy as summoning one to pick you up with an app and pay a minimal amount to take you where you need to go, then pick you up afterwards to take you back, then why have your own car?  Why spend money on fuel, insurance, and service?

And if that becomes the case, think about how many businesses will be impacted.  If people don’t have their own cars, there will be less and less need for gas stations (that’s already happening to some degree with electric powered vehicles), car insurance (the companies and all they employ), and car dealerships (ditto).

Anyway, Uber’s thinking is clearly along my own, as the following article by Andrew J. Hawkins for theverge.com, demonstrates:

Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Are Now Picking Up Passengers in Arizona

If this experiment proves successful, it is but another step on the way toward having a fully autonomous vehicle industry.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr together…again?

Just read this article by Ed Mazza for Huffington Post…

Surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr Reunite for Recording Session

There are some neat photographs there so I suggest you check out the article…which I will now spoil for you:

Ringo Starr is working on a new album and its another of his “all star” affairs which feature many other musicians.  Paul McCartney, of course, is the pre-eminent one to join in and whether he is featured on one song or more of the upcoming album, its nice to see he and Ringo remain cordial enough to help each other out.

A little help from a friend, so to speak, no?