E.R. Torre's Blog, page 127

Gawker, R.I.P.

I enjoyed Gawker and still enjoy the various sub-sites surrounding it.

The site was alternately irrelevant, hilarious, and informative, often providing news you simply wouldn’t find elsewhere.

And that last item is what ultimately did the website in.

I’m certain many of you are aware of Gawker’s tribulations.  In a nutshell, one day they presented a snippet of a sex tape of Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, and a woman surreptitiously recorded by the man’s wife (!).

Mr. Bollea sued and, unknown to many at the time, he was underwritten by Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech entrepreneur who spent years figuring out a way to get revenge on the site for “outing” him.

The lawsuit went very badly for Gawker and Mr. Bollea not only won but Gawker was ordered to fork over an extraordinary amount of money for presenting that sex tape.  This led to the auctioning of the company and, after it and the other websites around Gawker were purchased by Univision, it was announced Gawker would be gone.

There are plenty of more details regarding this matter and, in the site’s final posting, Nick Denton offers his take of the situation:

How Things Work

Having read about the trail and the history of Gawker, its clear there are many who admire/enjoyed the site as well as plenty of others who look upon its official closing yesterday and say “good riddance”.

For myself, I’ll miss the site though, given some of the details of that trail, I can sorta/kinda understand why the ruling went against them.

When engaged in a lawsuit, don’t be glib and/or a smart-ass.

Anyway, Gawker, I’ll miss you.

A little more on Suicide Squad and DC movies musings…

Looking over the news today, I found this tidbit at box-office mojo regarding last week’s movie take up to August 21:

Suicide Squad Threepeats at #1 while Ben-Hur becomes latest big budget flop

This summer has been an interesting one when it comes to expectations and internet fueled opinions.  Batman v Superman was the first film to face the internet firing squad well before it was actually released.  After its release, opinions appeared to be divided between those who hated the film and searched far and wide for any little or big reason to justify their hatred and those like me who defended the movie and felt it was…gasp…quite good.  Great even.

I’ve stated before (to the point where I’m in danger of beating a dead horse) that BvS, especially in its director’s cut version, is a far better film than the critics and some internet posters made it out to be.  In time (what the hell, I will beat that dead horse) I believe the film will rise in people’s estimations and may become viewed as one of the better superhero films ever made.

Once BvS played itself out, the sometimes red-hot internet hatred found its next victim in Ghostbusters.  Much of the venom, sad to say, came from people who claimed the film was “sexist” because the leads in the film were female.  To those I say: Please look up the term “projection”.  The only sexism in Ghostbusters was the one coming from those who accused the movie of it.

Nonetheless, the film didn’t do all that well at the box-office.  While I enjoyed it and recommended it, I was nonetheless not too surprised to find it underperformed.  While I still believe the movie was good, even I’ll admit it never reached that next gear of hilarity that really great comedies hit.

As the summer died out, one of the last “big” films to be released was Suicide Squad (you knew I’d get there eventually, right?!).  As I’d written before, I was curious why this film would be the next big DC tent pole versus so many other properties out there they have.

Despite that feeling, the first few trailers of the film blew me away and had me hoping for a genuinely entertaining work.  Sadly, the film, to me, proved to be a mess, storywise.  Despite that, I nonetheless enjoyed the bulk of it after its very rocky start.  Perhaps it was the performances or the giddy vibe it sustained but I didn’t feel like I’d just wasted my time and hated myself for spending my time and money on it.  On the other hand and unlike BvS and Ghostbusters, there was no way I could recommend the film to anyone.

Nonetheless, Suicide Squad is, as the article above points out, doing quite well at the box-office.  Now in its third week of release, it is still #1.

Which makes me wonder…

The critics hated BvS, liked Ghostbusters, and hated Suicide Squad.  Yet of the three, the ones that made money were BvS and Suicide Squad.  Clearly there’s a disconnect here and I wonder what it is.

BvS, as stated, had plenty of negativity from critics and many on the internet but, as I stated above, there was stuff in the film that even the harshest critics would agree was good.  Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne/Batman, for instance.  Or Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman.  The cinematography (even the film’s harshest critics can’t deny the film at times looks gorgeous, even if its palette is dark).  But moving past all that, there is a solid story, IMHO, here.  One that is far deeper than many are willing to admit and/or recognize.

Which is something I can’t say about Suicide Squad.  Despite this, the film is drawing tremendous amounts of cash.

Which leads me to wonder why the DC films made as much as they did given all the flack they got.

I’m just guessing here, but I think part of the reason is that fans are starved/primed to see big budget versions of DC comic heroes.

Marvel, for better or worse, has dominated the movie landscape these past few years but after so many films, there may be a sense of fatigue starting to appear regarding the “Marvel style” hero movies.  The fact is that all the Marvel Universe films thus far have displayed certain tendencies.  This is not surprising given the fact that the same people who run the Marvel show have been behind it since its inception.

When one gets a new toy, its shiny and beautiful and you play with it to your heart’s content.  But after a while, that shiny new toy no longer entertains you as much as it once did.  With the Marvel Universe films, they were shiny and new and intriguing but I’m wondering if audiences are starting to see through the “magic” and that shiny new toy may become just a little bit dull.

While Captain America: Civil War made a tremendous amount of money (more than BvS) over its run, I find it fascinating how little people talk about the film now.  Those who do are just as likely to disparage it, noting its plot was weak and the film, overall, was underwhelming.  That’s not to say everyone who writes about the movie does this, but it is curious how even now BvS can inflame passions and create a commentary hurricane while CA:CW engenders far less enthusiasm.

So, is it possible people are starting to tire of the Marvel movies to some degree yet remain thirsty for superhero films?  This might explain why Suicide Squad, despite its many deficiencies, manages to hold on to the box office pole position.  Despite its many weaknesses, one thing you can say about Suicide Squad is that other than having a cast of super-beings, it is nothing like a Marvel film and so too was the case with BvS.

Sometimes, variety can indeed be the spice of life.

Summer 2016 is almost gone…and a brief Corrosive Knights update

So I head out the door early this morning to do some errands and before me appears a school bus.  Its picking up kids for their first day of the 2016/17 school year.

Around these parts, obviously, today is the official start of the new school year and for many parents I’m sure its a day to finally relax.

For me, the summer was alternatively fun and frustrating.  I didn’t get a chance to take any day off and let’s see when I can actually do so but it was pleasant to have my daughters around.

On the other hand, it was difficult to focus as I wanted to on my latest Corrosive Knights novel, #6 in the series.  I’ve made progress on it and will get into more details in just a second, but suffice to say I’m not as far along as I was hoping to be by today.

So, where exactly am I?

By later this morning I’ll be finishing up reading and jotting down notes/improvements to the latest draft of the book (this is draft #10).  When last I wrote, I was finishing up draft #9 on 7/16/16 and therefore it took me a month to read through this latest draft, a period of time larger than it should have taken me at another point in the year.

On the plus side, the book is rapidly approaching the end.  After I finish my latest read through today and because I can now focus much better on the book, I anticipate it will take me not much longer than a week/week and a half to put all those corrections into my Word file.

As it stands now, the book is just a little north of 100,000 words in length.  The first half of the book, after this revision, is all but done.  The second half has some areas that need attention but after I finish this draft, that’s where my focus will be.  In other words, I’ll no longer need to re-read and revise the entire book.  We’re down to just parts of it.

And the parts that need revision aren’t all that bad.  They just need a little more clarification and editing.

So, when will the book be ready?

I hesitate to make any guesses but at this point and barring any more delays/interruptions to my schedule, it will be soon.

Very soon.

Suicide Squad (2016) a (very mildly) belated review

Bear with me here…

Way back in 1967 director assembled a large, powerhouse cast including Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, and John Cassavetes, and made what many consider one of the best “anti-hero” war films, The Dirty Dozen.

The story?  A group of volatile criminals are recruited for a top secret mission behind enemy lines.  They are considered expendable because of their history -some commited crimes which may cost them their life anyway- and the mission they’re being tasked to do has a very low probability of survival.

If you’ve seen Suicide Squad, you’re already seeing the similarities, no?

When writer John Ostrander wrote the first “new” Suicide Squad story back in 1987 and for DC comics, he was clearly inspired by the above film.  Because he was writing for a comic book universe, the “ordinary” criminals brought together were instead turned into super-villains.  Their missions were dangerous and could well get them killed.  The series proved a moderate success and, as with many comics, there were good stories to be found along with the bad but, as far as I know, Suicide Squad was never much more than a cult -or perhaps a little better- hit.

With the financial success of comic book movies of late, it came as little shock DC/Warners would eventually try their hand at creating a “shared” movie universe not unlike that found in the thus far very successful Marvel films.

After the “self-contained” Christopher Nolan Batman films were complete, DC/Warners began the process of making their version of a shared universe.  They started this with 2013’s Man of Steel, director Zach Snyder’s first crack at Superman, and followed it up with this year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (BvS from now on) and, of course, Suicide Squad.

Given what I thought was the cult nature of Suicide Squad and so many more interesting properties DC had at their disposal, it seemed odd to me this one was chosen.  Some have speculated the movie was meant to be DC’s answer to Guardians of the Galaxy.  I suppose that’s as good a reason as any for green-lighting the project.

Despite some ambivalence regarding the logic of pursuing this particular project, I will readily admit the first official trailer to the film blew me away:

So summer (almost) arrives and BvS is released…to significant controversy.  While the theatrical cut of this film did the movie no favors (see the Ultimate Cut) and was hated by most critics and engendered some incredible bile from average moviegoers…the movie nonetheless went on to be a box-office behemoth.

If you’ve been following my thoughts on this blog, you know I found the Ultimate Cut of BvS an ambitious, fascinating -though flawed (the Batman/Apocalypse dream should have been left on the cutting room floor)- work, one that once all the hysteria dies down I suspect will be re-evaluated and, IMHO, eventually viewed as one of the better comic book films ever made.

I could be wrong, but that’s my opinion.

Anyway, history sure did appear to repeat itself once Suicide Squad was finally released (Read my thoughts on that here).  You had the critics savaging the film (it, like BvS, scored a pathetic 27% positive among them) and yet audiences liked it far more (BvS and Suicide Squad are viewed positively by approximately 70% of audiences).  Further, as with BvS, there appear to be those in the media and disgruntled fans alike that were so baffled and/or bothered by these films’ box-office success that they’re intent on proving the incredible amount of money each has made/is making is really a sign of how unsuccessful the film is (Suicide Squad has made record amounts of money for an August release and even in its second week is performing well -it’s still #1 at the box office- yet some headlines make it sound like the film is a complete washout).

So, given the similar roll outs of both films and my love of BvS, would it follow that I’d feel the same about Suicide Squad?

The short answer is “No,”

While BvS was an ambitious work that carefully took on and deconstructed the superhero genre, Suicide Squad is clearly meant to be a “popcorn” film, an enjoyable romp that doesn’t aspire to terribly high cinematic goals.  In effect, this movie’s goal is to be an enjoyable/exciting summer action film and not a whole lot more.

Does it succeed on that account?

Here, its a little more difficult to provide a “short” answer.

While watching Suicide Squad, I found the first few minutes confusing and, frankly, not all that great.  Sometime shortly after the credits rolled, the film found its grove and was, for the most part, enjoyable to watch if waaay too dark.  And when I say “dark” I’m not talking about the story: I’m saying the director should have brought in more lights.  The damn film looks like it was shot in a cave with a flashlight.

Despite the murky look, the movie moved along nicely and was aided immensely by the charisma of its large cast.   is fine as Deadshot, even if he’s not stretching particularly hard.   is quite good in the film’s splashiest role, that of the Harley Quinn, the Joker’s whacked-out girlfriend.   is fine as the steely Amanda Waller, the government agent behind the forming of the Squad.   was also highly amusing as Captain Boomerang even though his character was ultimately irrelevant and unnecessary in the film (see video presented below).

Others may disagree, but I also enjoyed as Rick Flagg and as June Moone/Enchantress.  It was their story that wound up grounding the film and, though I didn’t expect it, provided an interesting and satisfying resolution (I don’t want to give away too many spoilers here regarding it, but I’ll just say I’m a softie for matters of the heart and leave it at that).

Of note too was as the Joker.  I thought he wasn’t bad taking on the role but neither, IMHO, was his performance all that memorable.  Unfortunately for Mr. Leto, he’s given something like five total minutes of screen time to take on a role made memorable by heavy hitters like Jack Nicholson and, of course, Heath Ledger.  And those actors had a hell of a lot more screen time to deliver their work.  So at this point I’m willing to give Mr. Leto a pass and wait to see what he does if given more screen time.  Maybe he’ll get that chance in the next Batman film?

I’ve beaten around the bush long enough: What of the film itself?

Well…

Here’s the thing: After that rocky start, I enjoyed myself.  For the most part.  However, let’s not kid each other: The film was a mess.

Anyone who has read anything about the behind the scenes of the film knows a) Director/writer David Ayer had to bang this out very quickly and b) the critical bile directed at BvS appears to have caused the people at DC/Warner’s to OK even more hasty re-shoots.  Word is that once the film neared release, two “cuts” were created, a more serious in tone one by Mr. Ayer and another, lighter in tone version created by the same people who made the movie’s memorable trailers.  In the end a “compromise” cut was created between the two and this was what was released to theaters.

Unfortunately, the end result is a film that very much feels like a compromise between two different visions.  Early on there are too many scenes presented with music much as they were in the trailer and while it may work wonderfully there, doing it over and over again in the film itself got annoying.  Worse still, some of the lesser characters get shorted badly, perhaps in favor of providing higher level cameos (Batman and Flash).  While I enjoyed seeing these bigger heroes appear in this movie, they didn’t really need to be there.

As for the story, this is where the film failed the most.  As a writer, I firmly believe the success of any film lies in having a strong story behind it.  In the case of Suicide Squad I’m reminded of my feelings for films such as Skyfall and Star Trek: Into Darkness.  While watching both films I enjoyed them but the moment they were over and I thought about what I just saw I realized the story made absolutely no sense at all.  This too is the case with Suicide Squad and one has to blame Mr. Ayer for that, whether he was rushed or not.

So here’s the bottom line: Flawed as Suicide Squad was -and there are significant flaws in the film- I nonetheless for the most part enjoyed myself.  Having said that, its impossible for me to recommend the film.

If you’re anything like me, you will be thrilled to see Harley Quinn, the Joker, Ben Affleck’s Batman, Flash (for all of 3 seconds), Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, the Enchantress, Katana, and, yes, Rick Flagg on the big screen and being played by flesh and blood actors.  You’ll probably also “go with the flow” and enjoy the film for what it is.  However, I know there will be those who will think back to what they’ve seen and find that the proverbial “bridge too far”.

In the end, DC/Warners has done well, financially, with their two 2016 comic book releases.  While I feel BvS was damn good, I feel Suicide Squad can only be qualified as decent at best.  Hopefully the powers that be learn from their mistakes and sharpen their next product(s), especially if they involve these characters.

POSTSCRIPT:

For those who have seen the film and liked it to those who hated, hated, hated it, this video posted on YouTube by Jenny Nicholson IMHO hilariously skewers the plot…or lack thereof of Suicide Squad.

Beware, SPOILERS a-plenty:

The collectables marketplace

For most of my life I’ve collected things.  Not “hoarder” level, mind you, as I really dislike clutter, but things that I like I tend to buy and, if I really like them, I will hold on to them to hopefully enjoy them again later on.

When I was much younger, I bought and held on to comic books (still do, to some degree).  For a very brief while I also got into stamp and coin collecting (I still have a jar nearly completely full of old coins.  To this day, whenever I stumble upon an older coin, I stick it in the jar).

I’m not alone in this.  My parents at one time had a very extensive betamax collection of movies and, when the VHS format killed it, we switched to and bought quite a few movies that way.

My sister, in particular, really got into buying Disney films when they were first released in that format in the 1990’s.  I suspect she still has a closet in her house with the movies.

I point this out because of this amusing article by Matt Novak and presented on paleofuture:

Why Do People Want Thousands of Dollars For Disney VHS Tapes on Ebay?

The upshot of this article is that somehow a rumor spread that those old VHS tapes, the same ones my sister bought back in the day, were suddenly worth many thousands of dollars.  Some of the people who believe these rumors have therefore posted their Disney VHS tapes on eBay and are asking sometimes outrageous amounts of money.

We’re talking $10,000 plus.

You read that right: Ten thousand dollars plus.  Here’s a screenshot presented by BobbiBrown, on of the people offering comments on the article:

If any of them get that kind of money, good for them and (read it in a Trump affect) very sad for the buyer.

I’ve seen this kind of insanity (how else describe it?) before, where people think something is worth far, far more than it is.

The fact of the matter is the collectible market lives on supply and demand.  In the comic book market, the reason Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1 is worth nearly a million dollars is because a) Superman is a cultural icon and this is indeed his first appearance in any medium and b) there exist very few -perhaps no more than ten- “mint” copies of Action Comics #1 out there.

But the VHS Disney films?

First off, the VHS tapes sold very well back then and I suspect there are many, many people like my sister who bought and then stored those films away, thinking they were “collectable.”  This is as opposed to Action Comics #1 which while many people bought individual copies way back in the 1930’s (some individual comics did sell in the millions), there was no sense of their having a collectable nature and therefore huge quantities were read and thrown away and, over all these years, very few “mint” copies of them remain.

Further, while you can still “use” a mint copy of Action Comics #1 (you can read it, should you own it), the VHS market is dead.  Further to that, today you can get most of those Disney films either on DVD, BluRay, or digitally, should you wish.  All these presentations are far, far better than what you would see on a VHS tape.  So it begs the question: Why in the world would you want to own an inferior image of a Disney movie via a VHS copy of the same?

In the above linked article, the author makes the same point and several comments below the article note that VHS copies of these films are available for pennies at garage sales or in thrift shops.

The point of all this is: Beware the collectable marketplace.  Just because you have something that is of value to you doesn’t mean it has an equal monetary value in the “real” world.

There’s a reason many things are worth high amounts of money but, again, this relates to their rarity and desirability, both of which are just not the case with regard to the Disney VHS tapes.

Summer Box Office losers…

We’re rapidly nearing the end of summer and in these times some, such as myself, look back at the summer movie season and wonder: Which films succeeded and which proved costly flops?

While I don’t have anywhere near a complete list, two significant box office flops -at least in terms of revenue made versus invested- are clear.

The first is the Duncan Jones directed Warcraft.  Over on ign.com Steve Watts writes about this film’s losses:

Warcraft: This is How Much the Film Will Lose Even With Massive Success in China

I’m going to offer a really big SPOILER here (though you should read the article) and note the film is expected to lose approximately 15 million dollars when all is said and done.  Now, Hollywood accounting being what it is, I suspect the film will eventually go into the green thanks to DVD/BluRay sales as this film hasn’t yet appeared on the store shelves.

While I haven’t seen Warcraft nor, I have to be honest, am interested in doing so, my understanding is that the film felt disjointed and cut up in its theatrical incarnation.  I understand some 40 plus minutes of the film were trimmed to get it into a more reasonable runtime and, like what perhaps happened with Batman v Superman, the end result might have impacted the film’s cohesion.

The second big box office failure, and its a far bigger one, is Ghostbusters.  According to Pamela McClintock at The Hollywood Reporter…

Ghostbusters heading for a 70 million dollars plus loss, sequel unlikely

I reviewed the film shortly after it was released (you can read the review here) and found it was an amusing time killer which absolutely did not deserve all the negative comments directed at it in the run-up to the film’s release.  Unfortunately for the movie, China refused to allow its release in that country as they apparently do not want any movies which feature the “supernatural” so one large potential source of revenue was cut from the film right off the bat.  I suspect the negative comments also hurt the film in the end as there were likely a sizable amount of people who simply did not give it a chance.

In the end, there’s little, however, to argue about.  While I most certainly enjoyed Ghostbusters, clearly the film wasn’t good enough to bring in the hoped for droves of moviegoers.  Certainly it wasn’t good enough to overcome the many pre-release negative perceptions.

When all is said and done, I wonder how both Star Trek Beyond and Jason Bourne, films that both received decent reviews, will ultimately perform.  Both films had strong openings but appear to be stalling.  For that matter, will Suicide Squad also recoup its investments?

I suppose we’ll see soon enough.

Optimistic future…

Couple of interesting articles which, in these days of depressing news regarding global warming and the main cause, the use of fossil fuels, highlight the fact that progress on moving away from these dirty fuels is happening.

First up, Ian Johnson at the Independent offers the following article:

Scotland just produced enough wind energy to power it for an entire day

The headline is self evident, but a few details: Scotland experienced heavy gale-force winds on that day and, being summer, electricity demands were low to begin with.  Nonetheless, the end result was that wind energy amounted to 106% of the energy used by Scotland that day.

Meanwhile, the always fascinating Elon Musk offered the following in an article by Seth Feigerman and found on CNNmoney:

Elon Musk wants to sell you an entire “solar roof”

Living in Florida as I do, I’ve long wondered why the use of solar power -a no-brainer given the amount of sunshine we get- wasn’t even more popular.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that until recently solar panels were prohibitively expensive and, frankly, not all that good.  This is changing.

What I like most about Mr. Musk is that he’s a futurist with an eye on many things, not least of which is developing cleaner, more efficient forms of energy.

His Tesla electric cars are, to date, the gold standard for these vehicles and I’m incredibly eager to see if his company can fulfill the promise of electric cars with a 250 mile range (he says this will happen with his next, inexpensive model).

But I’m equally intrigued by his ideas of putting, in essence, a large electrical storage battery in a person’s home and the above idea, creating solar panels that are essentially your home’s new roof.

Again, because I’m in sunny Florida, I’d jump at the chance to have a solar roof.  Given the amount of money I spent last month cooling this place down, I’d be most welcome to the idea of using the blistering sun to -ironically- cool me down.

Meanwhile, at the Olympics…

There’s been plenty of -mostly bad- press regarding Brazil in the build up to the Olympics.  The focus on the pollution, crime, etc. present in that country have been depressing.

However, the Olympics themselves appear to be, at least so far, well presented with only a minimal amount of “bad” news regarding the venue.

One of the stranger things to come was reported in this article:

Olympic kayaker capsizes after hitting a sofa

There is some question as to the validity of this story, that a kayaker on a practice run capsized after bumping into a submerged sofa, but it was a weird/amusing story so there you have it.

If the above isn’t true, the following most certainly is:

No one knows why the Rio Olympics diving pool has mysteriously turned green

Here are some images of the pools.  As you can see, the water in one of them is indeed green:

This wasn’t always the case as it seems the color changed overnight.  Here is a comparison of the pool’s color from one day to the next:

And here’s a longer shot of what the diving pool looked like before the color change:

I’ve read that this could be related to copper tubing but what do I know.

Fascinating stuff, though!

Just…wow…

Politics again…

Yesterday, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump had another speech and, wouldn’t you know it, again said something stupid and/or idiotic and/or dangerous and/or ill-informed and/or all the above:

CNN, among other news outlets, were quick to point out the fact that in his words above, Mr. Trump sure does appear to suggest 2nd Amendment (read: Gun folks) can “solve” the Hillary Clinton “problem” and/or her Supreme Court appointees.

How should “gun folks” solve the problem, one wonders?

Joe Scarborough, a conservative TV personality (and former congressman), wrote the following for The Washington Post regarding Mr. Trump’s latest comments:

The GOP must dump Trump

I’ll give Mr. Scarborough credit: He doesn’t mince words like far too many Republicans have done.  From the article:

The GOP nominee was clearly suggesting that some of the “Second Amendment people” among his supporters could kill his Democratic opponent were she to be elected.

While current polls show support for Trump cratering, we are still a mind-boggling 89 days from the election and, sadly, there is still time for the race to tighten or *gasp* for Trump to possibly/maybe make a race of this yet…

Then again, given the way Mr. Trump habitually self-immolates every other day, perhaps there is nothing to fear.

By the Gods I hope so.

The future creeping up on us…

I’ve written plenty of times regarding interest in self-driving car technology.  Of the car manufacturers out there, electric-car maker Tesla is clearly one of the companies most interested in bringing such technology to the masses.

Their vehicles already have self-driving technology on them, though drivers are warned to use this tech as an aid and to be aware/in control of their vehicle even when using this system.

Despite this, my understanding is the system is quite advanced and it doesn’t surprise me that Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, feels the self-driving cars will be a reality for everyone in just a few more years.

He should know.

Anyway, I bring all this up to present the following fascinating story which appeared on BBC…

Tesla car drives owner to hospital after he suffers a pulmonary embolism

As I said in the heading, the future is creeping up on us.