Recently considering the words "success" and "failure" I remarked the logic underlying the use of the words. This is a matter not just of respect for the outcomes allotted by "the system" and by extension society (as Daniel Bell put it in his classic of centrist thought, The End of Ideology, society is in the end nothing but "an organized system for the distribution of rewards and privileges"), but sanctification of those outcomes. Thus are those who have been given a great deal of reward and privilege glorified, with the more the case in as those who have not been so gifted are not only put on the wrong end of an invidious comparison, but pointedly insulted and humiliated.
In the process they underline that they deserve what they get, and get what they deserve, such that they have no right to complain, and no claim on anyone else's attention or sympathy.
Some practice, that.
Saturday, June 24, 2023
The Movies of 2024 (What We Know So Far)
The recent announcement that the whole slate of upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe films will be subject to significant delay had me checking out the releases presently scheduled for 2024--which was even more appalling than I expected, especially when considering the higher-profile releases. A sequel to 1996's Twister? (How many people even remember the original now?) A Lion King prequel being compared to Godfather II? Transformers One (because that franchise didn't have enough numerical confusion as it was) and Gladiator 2 (really, who asked for this?) and, someone clearly not having got the memo about the poor chances of adaptations of TV shows from yesteryear in today's market, a big-screen version of The Fall Guy?
I fear that by the time we see the full list it will be even worse than all this portends.
But I'm sure we can count on the media claqueurs to do as they are instructed and talk up the freight train of garbage headed out way as they assure us that the Hollywood Suits are all both lovers of cinema, and geniuses at what they do.
I fear that by the time we see the full list it will be even worse than all this portends.
But I'm sure we can count on the media claqueurs to do as they are instructed and talk up the freight train of garbage headed out way as they assure us that the Hollywood Suits are all both lovers of cinema, and geniuses at what they do.
On "Success" and "Failure"
"Success" is a rather relativistic term. One can only speak of success--and its opposite, failure--in relation to some object.
Yet told that someone is "successful" at something people do not ask "Successful at what?" Rather it is taken for granted that the object is individual socioeconomic advancement, with success at that game the attainment of some given level of income and position.
There is a lot to unpack here. There is the implicit assumption that individual socioeconomic advancement is the sole proper focus of a person's endeavor--that anyone who has other priorities is behaving aberrantly. Also implicit is the idea that an individual's outcomes in this area reflect on themselves as a person--that one's choices and efforts are what make for success or its lack, all this mattering far, far more than background or chance, or for that matter, scruples or the lack thereof; that this makes the pursuit of success a "tough" but essentially fair game. Indeed, this is so much the case that those who are not "successful" are dismissed as, sneered at, as failures, without a second thought given to the cruelty involved in that.
The result is that the language of "success" and "failure" that pervades our culture is ultimately an ultra-conformist expectation that the world is some big meritocracy that rewards people according to their deserts, with those not doing so well as they would like not worth bothering about, and every utterance of these words and their derivatives in the sense discussed here reinforcing the deep roots all this has in contemporary speech, thought, feeling and action.
Yet told that someone is "successful" at something people do not ask "Successful at what?" Rather it is taken for granted that the object is individual socioeconomic advancement, with success at that game the attainment of some given level of income and position.
There is a lot to unpack here. There is the implicit assumption that individual socioeconomic advancement is the sole proper focus of a person's endeavor--that anyone who has other priorities is behaving aberrantly. Also implicit is the idea that an individual's outcomes in this area reflect on themselves as a person--that one's choices and efforts are what make for success or its lack, all this mattering far, far more than background or chance, or for that matter, scruples or the lack thereof; that this makes the pursuit of success a "tough" but essentially fair game. Indeed, this is so much the case that those who are not "successful" are dismissed as, sneered at, as failures, without a second thought given to the cruelty involved in that.
The result is that the language of "success" and "failure" that pervades our culture is ultimately an ultra-conformist expectation that the world is some big meritocracy that rewards people according to their deserts, with those not doing so well as they would like not worth bothering about, and every utterance of these words and their derivatives in the sense discussed here reinforcing the deep roots all this has in contemporary speech, thought, feeling and action.
Is the English Major in Decline Because Young People Less Often Aspire to Become Writers?
Some time ago I wondered at why we did not see more young people attracted to STEM subjects the way they were for a long time (this is changing) attracted to, for example, literature--getting degrees in the field in spite of what they are ceaselessly told are their poor income prospects.
My thought was that it was because they read for pleasure, and had opportunities to get to like reading, and writing, and even aspire to do that professionally--and that one of the problems the STEM field had was fewer opportunities for young people to get to enjoy numbers the same way. Thus math ends up something they just do for school, and unsurprisingly few develop any deep attraction to it.
Now (I did say this was changing) one sees fewer young people pursuing English degrees--plausibly because they may have been put off of them by increasingly dire warnings about an increasingly dire economy, but also because in the age of the smart phone fewer had those pleasurable experiences with reading and writing that may drive them to try and become a writer, and maybe fall back on teaching, as they went about that.
From the standpoint of gaining a living income they may well be better off for this. But it does bespeak developments that are less than happy intellectually and culturally.
My thought was that it was because they read for pleasure, and had opportunities to get to like reading, and writing, and even aspire to do that professionally--and that one of the problems the STEM field had was fewer opportunities for young people to get to enjoy numbers the same way. Thus math ends up something they just do for school, and unsurprisingly few develop any deep attraction to it.
Now (I did say this was changing) one sees fewer young people pursuing English degrees--plausibly because they may have been put off of them by increasingly dire warnings about an increasingly dire economy, but also because in the age of the smart phone fewer had those pleasurable experiences with reading and writing that may drive them to try and become a writer, and maybe fall back on teaching, as they went about that.
From the standpoint of gaining a living income they may well be better off for this. But it does bespeak developments that are less than happy intellectually and culturally.
On Athletes and Celebrity Today: A Few Thoughts
Recently writing about Aces: Iron Eagle III I found myself thinking about the niche that athletes like Rachel McLish (the film's female lead) used to occupy pop culturally, and how these days it seems smaller than it used to be. That can seem a matter of the ever-intensifying pop cultural fragmentation we now take for granted--one aspect of which has been that all but the most popular spectator sports have seen their profiles fall greatly. ("What ever happened to tennis?" I wondered not so long ago. "What ever happened to anything but football, baseball, basketball?" I could have easily asked instead.)
Going along with that was the way in which certain aspects of the entertainment world where athletes could reach an audience extending beyond their sport's fan base have declined in visibility, or disappeared altogether. In the '90s, for instance, there was an abundance of fitness shows on ESPN, and American Gladiators on the air, while World Wrestling Entertainment was in its sensationally popular "Attitude Era" all of them helping make their names known to people who paid no attention whatsoever to their sports. (Even if one did not watch wrestling, they knew who the Rock was and what he was cooking.) More broadly television tended to the use of a 22-episode-a-season "standalone" episodic structure that was accommodating of the use of "special guests" who did not really have to be able to act to perk up interest, a bill that prominent sports figures could and did fit. (Thus did the Rock play his own father in an episode of That '70s Show in an early stage of his crossover to acting--and prophesy great things for his son.) This especially went for the more action-oriented shows, especially the kind that did not take themselves too seriously (like those syndicated action hours), where the physical presences and skills of, for instance, bodybuilders, were often a natural. (McLish's fellow Ms. Olympia Cory Everson was quite the regular here in those days, as in her recurring character of Atalanta on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and other spots on shows like Renegade, Tarzan: The Epic Adventures, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., and even Home Improvement, where she appeared as herself.*)
If bits of it remain that media world is gone now, without anything quite replacing it. One consequence is that, apart from it being harder to point to a latterday McLish (or Rock, or Cory Everson), one might notice how just as all this has meant that the actors of earlier years, like Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford, overshadow newer, younger performers with regard to public recognition (even movie stars aren't "movie stars" in the old way), so does it go with sports celebrities. Thus are they the spokespersons in commercials, with Shaquille O'Neal on the screen so often to be seen hawking everything from pizza to car insurance that one might scarcely realize that he retired back in 2011--precisely because a younger, more recent, player, whatever their ability or accomplishment, simply does not have the same opportunity to become as recognizable to the public, even in sports still as popular as basketball.
* McLish held the title in 1980 and 1982, Everson in 1984-1989.
Going along with that was the way in which certain aspects of the entertainment world where athletes could reach an audience extending beyond their sport's fan base have declined in visibility, or disappeared altogether. In the '90s, for instance, there was an abundance of fitness shows on ESPN, and American Gladiators on the air, while World Wrestling Entertainment was in its sensationally popular "Attitude Era" all of them helping make their names known to people who paid no attention whatsoever to their sports. (Even if one did not watch wrestling, they knew who the Rock was and what he was cooking.) More broadly television tended to the use of a 22-episode-a-season "standalone" episodic structure that was accommodating of the use of "special guests" who did not really have to be able to act to perk up interest, a bill that prominent sports figures could and did fit. (Thus did the Rock play his own father in an episode of That '70s Show in an early stage of his crossover to acting--and prophesy great things for his son.) This especially went for the more action-oriented shows, especially the kind that did not take themselves too seriously (like those syndicated action hours), where the physical presences and skills of, for instance, bodybuilders, were often a natural. (McLish's fellow Ms. Olympia Cory Everson was quite the regular here in those days, as in her recurring character of Atalanta on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and other spots on shows like Renegade, Tarzan: The Epic Adventures, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., and even Home Improvement, where she appeared as herself.*)
If bits of it remain that media world is gone now, without anything quite replacing it. One consequence is that, apart from it being harder to point to a latterday McLish (or Rock, or Cory Everson), one might notice how just as all this has meant that the actors of earlier years, like Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford, overshadow newer, younger performers with regard to public recognition (even movie stars aren't "movie stars" in the old way), so does it go with sports celebrities. Thus are they the spokespersons in commercials, with Shaquille O'Neal on the screen so often to be seen hawking everything from pizza to car insurance that one might scarcely realize that he retired back in 2011--precisely because a younger, more recent, player, whatever their ability or accomplishment, simply does not have the same opportunity to become as recognizable to the public, even in sports still as popular as basketball.
* McLish held the title in 1980 and 1982, Everson in 1984-1989.
The Drug War-as-Actual-War Craze of the '90s and Aces: Iron Eagle III
The use of the phrase "War on Drugs" not as a rhetorical expression of seriousness of intent on the part of the speaker or analogy between an un-war-like activity and war intended to convey the intensity of the effort to which they aspired (as with a "War on Poverty"), but somehow actually a war to be fought with conventional military means, was very much in the air in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And as may be expected, military techno-thrillers, in a moment where their books were still very strong sellers, but the longtime favored choice of enemy, the Soviet Union, was passing from the scene (and which was not a particularly likely group to examine such ideas critically), rushed to depict exactly that. Thus Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger had accounts of the same satellites with which the U.S. spied on the Soviets listening in on drug lords' cell phones, the Air Force using an F-15 to swat drug-runners' planes from the skies, the U.S. Navy mounting a strategic "Flight of the Intruder" against the drug cartels' leadership the way Coonts' Jake Grafton targeted the leadership of North Vietnam, and minigun-armed Pave Low helicopters infiltrating special forces into Colombia who end up fighting a not-so-small-unit action against hundreds of drug cartel soldiers. Dale Brown, making his Drug War more war-like still, equipped his drug-runners with MiGs and Mirages and anti-ship missiles to make a . . . well, make a Dale Brown novel out of it.
Hollywood, which on top of the problems faced by the novelists was trying to figure out ways to keep making their increasingly decadent-looking action movies bigger and better and hitting on incorporating lots of "heavy metal" military hardware to do it, was thinking along similar lines, with at least two major features coming out of the tendency, notably the "Top Gun for Army aviation," Fire Birds (1990)--and the second sequel to Iron Eagle, Aces: Iron Eagle III.
Neither film was any great success, the second film less so than the first.1 Iron Eagle III, coming out in June 1992 the week after the adaptation of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games, grossed about $1.4 million on its opening weekend. Not a typo, it was about a twelfth of what Patriot Games made in its second weekend of play ($16.1 million), which put Aces at #11 on the list of the highest-grossing films of the week. The next week Batman Returns went into wide release and broke records for an opening weekend take, while Aces did . . . even less well than it had the previous week, so that the $10 million+-budgeted movie ultimately finished up with $2.5 million grossed, which even then did not let it place among the top hundred highest-grossing movies of the year. (Among "in-year" releases it was actually #142 on the list.) Moreover, time has not been kind to it in respect of the public's attention. While the original Iron Eagle has lingered in the pop cultural consciousness (getting, for example, significant mention in Ready Player One author Ernest Cline's "sophomore effort" Armada), Aces was pretty much forgotten by all except the writers of Family Guy.2 Indeed, I myself only caught the film during a few airings on cable a couple of decades ago, since which time I have not noticed it there or on streaming (the straight-to-video follow-up, Iron Eagle IV, actually seeming easier to catch there).
Still, the film has its points of interest, not least a number of details of the premise making for at least some novelty. In an era before senior citizen action heroes became routine, that is what we got in the collection of older pilots who head off to face the enemy, with a little further interest derived from the group's diversity--with General Charles "Chappy" Sinclair joined by a Briton, a German and a Japanese pilot whose teaming together at once evokes and transcends the Second World War conflict of Allies and Axis (indeed, the choice to bring Anglosphere pilots together with a German and especially a Japanese aviator seems the more interesting given its implicit break with the Germanophobia, and especially Japanaphobia, in which so much pop culture was trafficking at the time). This is all the more the case in as they all fly into action in their countries' iconic World War II fighters. Chappy goes into battle in a P-38 Lightning, the Briton in a Spitfire, the German in a Messerschmitt-109, and the Japanese in a Zero--while the villain has vintage aircraft in his own collection, notably a rocket-powered Messerschmitt-263.
There is likewise interest in the unlikely-seeming cast and crew. Here Louis Gossett Jr. is joined by Horst Buckholz of The Magnificent Seven as the German pilot, and the late martial arts legend Sonny Chiba as the Japanese, while Christopher Cazenove (who played an RAF pilot cut out of the Battle of Britain by a car accident in The Eye of the Needle) gets his chance to fly a Spitfire into action, all of which together lends the team a bit of a proto-Expendables quality. Meanwhile Paul Freeman plays the villain (Renee Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark, this time he is an actual Nazi rather than just working for and with Nazis); while also appearing are Watergate figure, then-techno-thriller movie staple and later U.S. Senator and candidate for President of the United States Fred Thompson; the same Phill Lewis today known principally as the Mr. Moseby in the Disney Channel's sitcoms has his part in the events; and bodybuilding superstar Rachel McLish in her first major acting role.3 And helming the production was John Glen--Aces one of just three feature films he made after directing all five of the '80s-era Everything Or Nothing-produced James Bond films.4
None of this makes Iron Eagle III a masterpiece, of course. But my admittedly remote and hazy memory is that taken as the silly B-movie that it unashamedly is it works well enough, while its more novel features are quite adequate to make it at the very least interesting as a curiosity--and so give the film a place, however minor, in the history of the genre.
1. All box office data from Box Office Mojo.
2. Brian was writing a screenplay--and Lois informed him that the Iron Eagle movies had already used his premise, mentioning number three specifically.
3. Fred Thompson had previously appeared in The Hunt for Red October, and The Flight of the Intruder (in the latter, replacing Married . . . With Children's Ed O'Neill in a crucial scene). Bodybuilders, and athletes of McLish's stature, seem to have had more prominence pop culturally and more chances at acting careers then, even if their careers often happened to be short. McLish's principal other film (apart, of course, from the documentary Pumping Iron II) was the straight-to-video thriller Raven Hawk (1996).
4. The other two were Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, one of two much-hyped big-budget flops which aimed to capitalize on the 500th anniversary of the voyage in 1992 (the one with Marlon Brando as Torquemada, which came out just a couple of months after Aces); and, barring Glen's coming out of retirement, his last, 2001's Christopher Lambert thriller The Point Men.
Hollywood, which on top of the problems faced by the novelists was trying to figure out ways to keep making their increasingly decadent-looking action movies bigger and better and hitting on incorporating lots of "heavy metal" military hardware to do it, was thinking along similar lines, with at least two major features coming out of the tendency, notably the "Top Gun for Army aviation," Fire Birds (1990)--and the second sequel to Iron Eagle, Aces: Iron Eagle III.
Neither film was any great success, the second film less so than the first.1 Iron Eagle III, coming out in June 1992 the week after the adaptation of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games, grossed about $1.4 million on its opening weekend. Not a typo, it was about a twelfth of what Patriot Games made in its second weekend of play ($16.1 million), which put Aces at #11 on the list of the highest-grossing films of the week. The next week Batman Returns went into wide release and broke records for an opening weekend take, while Aces did . . . even less well than it had the previous week, so that the $10 million+-budgeted movie ultimately finished up with $2.5 million grossed, which even then did not let it place among the top hundred highest-grossing movies of the year. (Among "in-year" releases it was actually #142 on the list.) Moreover, time has not been kind to it in respect of the public's attention. While the original Iron Eagle has lingered in the pop cultural consciousness (getting, for example, significant mention in Ready Player One author Ernest Cline's "sophomore effort" Armada), Aces was pretty much forgotten by all except the writers of Family Guy.2 Indeed, I myself only caught the film during a few airings on cable a couple of decades ago, since which time I have not noticed it there or on streaming (the straight-to-video follow-up, Iron Eagle IV, actually seeming easier to catch there).
Still, the film has its points of interest, not least a number of details of the premise making for at least some novelty. In an era before senior citizen action heroes became routine, that is what we got in the collection of older pilots who head off to face the enemy, with a little further interest derived from the group's diversity--with General Charles "Chappy" Sinclair joined by a Briton, a German and a Japanese pilot whose teaming together at once evokes and transcends the Second World War conflict of Allies and Axis (indeed, the choice to bring Anglosphere pilots together with a German and especially a Japanese aviator seems the more interesting given its implicit break with the Germanophobia, and especially Japanaphobia, in which so much pop culture was trafficking at the time). This is all the more the case in as they all fly into action in their countries' iconic World War II fighters. Chappy goes into battle in a P-38 Lightning, the Briton in a Spitfire, the German in a Messerschmitt-109, and the Japanese in a Zero--while the villain has vintage aircraft in his own collection, notably a rocket-powered Messerschmitt-263.
There is likewise interest in the unlikely-seeming cast and crew. Here Louis Gossett Jr. is joined by Horst Buckholz of The Magnificent Seven as the German pilot, and the late martial arts legend Sonny Chiba as the Japanese, while Christopher Cazenove (who played an RAF pilot cut out of the Battle of Britain by a car accident in The Eye of the Needle) gets his chance to fly a Spitfire into action, all of which together lends the team a bit of a proto-Expendables quality. Meanwhile Paul Freeman plays the villain (Renee Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark, this time he is an actual Nazi rather than just working for and with Nazis); while also appearing are Watergate figure, then-techno-thriller movie staple and later U.S. Senator and candidate for President of the United States Fred Thompson; the same Phill Lewis today known principally as the Mr. Moseby in the Disney Channel's sitcoms has his part in the events; and bodybuilding superstar Rachel McLish in her first major acting role.3 And helming the production was John Glen--Aces one of just three feature films he made after directing all five of the '80s-era Everything Or Nothing-produced James Bond films.4
None of this makes Iron Eagle III a masterpiece, of course. But my admittedly remote and hazy memory is that taken as the silly B-movie that it unashamedly is it works well enough, while its more novel features are quite adequate to make it at the very least interesting as a curiosity--and so give the film a place, however minor, in the history of the genre.
1. All box office data from Box Office Mojo.
2. Brian was writing a screenplay--and Lois informed him that the Iron Eagle movies had already used his premise, mentioning number three specifically.
3. Fred Thompson had previously appeared in The Hunt for Red October, and The Flight of the Intruder (in the latter, replacing Married . . . With Children's Ed O'Neill in a crucial scene). Bodybuilders, and athletes of McLish's stature, seem to have had more prominence pop culturally and more chances at acting careers then, even if their careers often happened to be short. McLish's principal other film (apart, of course, from the documentary Pumping Iron II) was the straight-to-video thriller Raven Hawk (1996).
4. The other two were Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, one of two much-hyped big-budget flops which aimed to capitalize on the 500th anniversary of the voyage in 1992 (the one with Marlon Brando as Torquemada, which came out just a couple of months after Aces); and, barring Glen's coming out of retirement, his last, 2001's Christopher Lambert thriller The Point Men.
Yogurt's Cave in Spaceballs--and Marvel's Profits
Considering Mel Brooks' more successful works one is likely to see most highly praised the two movies of his annus mirabilis of 1974, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, while 1968's The Producers is highly regarded.
Still, other films of his, if not enjoying that level of acclaim, still seem to have at least a decent-sized cult following. History of the World, Part I seems to fall into this category (enough so that the "Part II" promised at the movie's end seems to have finally materialized).*
So did it go with Spaceballs, which was popular with, at least, us Star Wars-loving '80s kids.
Interestingly, this was even though some of the jokes could not have had much significance to us. I do not mean by this anything particularly subtle or "adult," but rather the Yogurt's Cave parody satirizing the crassness of post-Star Wars filmmaking with its sequels and its merchandising. This generation--my generation--had never known any other type of cinematic world, and could not, did not, appreciate the revolution that Star Wars wrought in this way, something I only came to properly understand reading about film history in books.
Still, even if we take it for granted I think we often underestimate just how much it matters--certainly to a company like Disney. The Disney-Pixar film Cars was not the most celebrated such production--but the billions in merchandise it sold insured the sequels kept on coming.
Marvel has been at least as big that way--and anyone considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) likely longevity should remember that, not only do the MCU films remain big profit-makers even as far down as they have descended from their Phase Three peak, but that revenue stream is plenty of incentive to keep the movies coming even should their profits not look as great as they did before. That by no means guarantees the MCU another fifteen years of high-volume output of the kind we have been seeing since 2008--but it is a reminder that, if the trend has been downward it has a long way to go before reaching the kind of state that drove Warner Bros. to even reboot the DCEU, never mind shut up the shop.
* In line with the tendency in the exploitation of those yesteryear hits not likely to make for big sci-fi action spectacles the sequel has taken the form of a streaming TV series on Hulu, rather than a movie.
Still, other films of his, if not enjoying that level of acclaim, still seem to have at least a decent-sized cult following. History of the World, Part I seems to fall into this category (enough so that the "Part II" promised at the movie's end seems to have finally materialized).*
So did it go with Spaceballs, which was popular with, at least, us Star Wars-loving '80s kids.
Interestingly, this was even though some of the jokes could not have had much significance to us. I do not mean by this anything particularly subtle or "adult," but rather the Yogurt's Cave parody satirizing the crassness of post-Star Wars filmmaking with its sequels and its merchandising. This generation--my generation--had never known any other type of cinematic world, and could not, did not, appreciate the revolution that Star Wars wrought in this way, something I only came to properly understand reading about film history in books.
Still, even if we take it for granted I think we often underestimate just how much it matters--certainly to a company like Disney. The Disney-Pixar film Cars was not the most celebrated such production--but the billions in merchandise it sold insured the sequels kept on coming.
Marvel has been at least as big that way--and anyone considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) likely longevity should remember that, not only do the MCU films remain big profit-makers even as far down as they have descended from their Phase Three peak, but that revenue stream is plenty of incentive to keep the movies coming even should their profits not look as great as they did before. That by no means guarantees the MCU another fifteen years of high-volume output of the kind we have been seeing since 2008--but it is a reminder that, if the trend has been downward it has a long way to go before reaching the kind of state that drove Warner Bros. to even reboot the DCEU, never mind shut up the shop.
* In line with the tendency in the exploitation of those yesteryear hits not likely to make for big sci-fi action spectacles the sequel has taken the form of a streaming TV series on Hulu, rather than a movie.
Sam Raimi's World War 3 and the History of Science Fiction
Originally posted on March 5, 2016.
Recently I wrote about the possibility that science fiction--real, hardcore, idea-based science fiction, science fiction as H.G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback and John Campbell knew it, rather than science fiction as just some fuzzy category containing anything that smells even slightly speculative--was in decline, and that this was in part because its place in contemporary culture was being taken up by other things that performed the task as well--or in respects, even better.
These included pop science, pop technology and of course pop futurology. The last of these seems of particular importance. Today someone looking to speculate about the future, to provide a scenario in which the world is different, not only has the option of doing so by way of nonfiction (one not around when, for example, Edward Bellamy was writing, or Wells was starting out, and still comparatively limited in Campbell's heyday), but can perhaps do so more fully and effectively in that way than if they were obliged to work their ideas into a work of fiction. They can devote their full attention to working out what tomorrow might be like, in the large and the small, and how it came to be that way, rather than their trying to force it all into the background of some character's narrative (and being scorned by ever more literature-minded critics for the extent to which they raised such non-Jamesian matters at all).
That a director of Sam Raimi's stature has thought it commercially viable to take a work of futurology and make a major feature film out of it--in this case, George Friedman's The Next 100 Years (reviewed here)--would seem to be suggestive of the long-running trend. The actual film, of course, can be expected to be a work of fiction, with characters and so on, but the point is that rather than taking some novel and adapting that, the starting point has been a work of futurology.
Recently I wrote about the possibility that science fiction--real, hardcore, idea-based science fiction, science fiction as H.G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback and John Campbell knew it, rather than science fiction as just some fuzzy category containing anything that smells even slightly speculative--was in decline, and that this was in part because its place in contemporary culture was being taken up by other things that performed the task as well--or in respects, even better.
These included pop science, pop technology and of course pop futurology. The last of these seems of particular importance. Today someone looking to speculate about the future, to provide a scenario in which the world is different, not only has the option of doing so by way of nonfiction (one not around when, for example, Edward Bellamy was writing, or Wells was starting out, and still comparatively limited in Campbell's heyday), but can perhaps do so more fully and effectively in that way than if they were obliged to work their ideas into a work of fiction. They can devote their full attention to working out what tomorrow might be like, in the large and the small, and how it came to be that way, rather than their trying to force it all into the background of some character's narrative (and being scorned by ever more literature-minded critics for the extent to which they raised such non-Jamesian matters at all).
That a director of Sam Raimi's stature has thought it commercially viable to take a work of futurology and make a major feature film out of it--in this case, George Friedman's The Next 100 Years (reviewed here)--would seem to be suggestive of the long-running trend. The actual film, of course, can be expected to be a work of fiction, with characters and so on, but the point is that rather than taking some novel and adapting that, the starting point has been a work of futurology.
John Gardner's James Bond Novels
Originally Posted on October 11, 2015.
By and large, the continuations of the James Bond series written by Ian Fleming's successors get very short shrift, often rating no more than a few pages in studies of the series--like those by Jeremy Black, or Simon Winder.
And some writers get shorter shrift than others, John Gardner in particular seeming neglected, relative to his contributions.
This is partly a matter of timing. Gardner was neither the first (like Kingsley Amis), nor, of course, has he been the last (in the nineteen years since Gardner's last, five different writers have tackled the series, often in sharply different ways), which by itself makes him more easily forgotten.1
Additionally, in contrast with the prestige some of those authors enjoyed due to their more "literary" work (Amis in particular), Gardner was seen as principally a genre writer.
However, some of this has to do with more than timing and bias. Gardner's enthusiasm for the books has been open to question. His career as a novelist began with a self-described "piss-take" on Bond in the very funny parody Boysie Oakes novel The Liquidator, and he later admitted in an interview that he never really cared much for the character. And those cognizant of his other work may be all the more dismayed when comparing even his better Bond books with the sheer verve Gardner displayed in writing a book like The Liquidator, or what were by his admission his favorite novels, the books of the Moriarty series (in which he displayed more verve continuing an entirely different character).
It does not help that it was not a case of a writer growing into a task and going out strong, but rather the reverse. (Licence Renewed, for example, was at its best a deft blend of Ian Fleming with the cinematic Bond, which made for one of the overall series' most satisfying action-adventures--but he went in other directions with later installments, and the last entries show clear signs of exhaustion.)
Still, if the overall quality of the output was not all that might have been hoped for, many entries did have their pleasures, and even those books that drew more ambivalent responses enjoy the interest of novelty--like the Bond-meets-Top Gun of Win, Lose or Die. And even if they are apocrypha rather than canon, sheer mass lends them an additional significance. No one, not even Fleming himself, spent more time on the series or produced as many books in it as Gardner, who in sixteen years published fourteen original novels (and two novelizations of Bond films, those of Licence to Kill and Goldeneye respectively).
A really complete appreciation of the series requires that one take all this into account, and indeed, in my two recent books--The Forgotten James Bond and James Bond's Evolution--I have made a point of doing just that.
By and large, the continuations of the James Bond series written by Ian Fleming's successors get very short shrift, often rating no more than a few pages in studies of the series--like those by Jeremy Black, or Simon Winder.
And some writers get shorter shrift than others, John Gardner in particular seeming neglected, relative to his contributions.
This is partly a matter of timing. Gardner was neither the first (like Kingsley Amis), nor, of course, has he been the last (in the nineteen years since Gardner's last, five different writers have tackled the series, often in sharply different ways), which by itself makes him more easily forgotten.1
Additionally, in contrast with the prestige some of those authors enjoyed due to their more "literary" work (Amis in particular), Gardner was seen as principally a genre writer.
However, some of this has to do with more than timing and bias. Gardner's enthusiasm for the books has been open to question. His career as a novelist began with a self-described "piss-take" on Bond in the very funny parody Boysie Oakes novel The Liquidator, and he later admitted in an interview that he never really cared much for the character. And those cognizant of his other work may be all the more dismayed when comparing even his better Bond books with the sheer verve Gardner displayed in writing a book like The Liquidator, or what were by his admission his favorite novels, the books of the Moriarty series (in which he displayed more verve continuing an entirely different character).
It does not help that it was not a case of a writer growing into a task and going out strong, but rather the reverse. (Licence Renewed, for example, was at its best a deft blend of Ian Fleming with the cinematic Bond, which made for one of the overall series' most satisfying action-adventures--but he went in other directions with later installments, and the last entries show clear signs of exhaustion.)
Still, if the overall quality of the output was not all that might have been hoped for, many entries did have their pleasures, and even those books that drew more ambivalent responses enjoy the interest of novelty--like the Bond-meets-Top Gun of Win, Lose or Die. And even if they are apocrypha rather than canon, sheer mass lends them an additional significance. No one, not even Fleming himself, spent more time on the series or produced as many books in it as Gardner, who in sixteen years published fourteen original novels (and two novelizations of Bond films, those of Licence to Kill and Goldeneye respectively).
A really complete appreciation of the series requires that one take all this into account, and indeed, in my two recent books--The Forgotten James Bond and James Bond's Evolution--I have made a point of doing just that.
John Gardner's James Bond and the Bestseller List
Originally Posted on May 3, 2017.
During the 1980s, John Gardner's James Bond continuation novels, while not enjoying the sales of Ian Fleming at his peak, were still regulars on the New York Times' hardcover fiction bestseller list. The second book, For Special Services, was the stand-out in that respect, staying on the list for fifteen weeks, during which it rose as high as the #6 position. However, during the '80s each release lasted at least four weeks, and most broke the top ten.
By contrast, Gardner's books stopped making the list in the 1990s. To be fair, the list does show a general declining trend, the later books lasting for shorter periods, and peaking at lower ranks.1 In the view of many (myself included) this reflected his contributions' weakening as the years progressed, with Gardner either repeating himself or serving up less compelling new ideas, and the handling generally becoming more anemic. However, in fairness, lots and lots and lots of bestselling authors survive all that. Moreover, the abruptness of the drop-off, and the fact that not even the novelty of a new author (Raymond Benson) raised enough interest to put the books back on it for so much as a single week, suggests that it was not just the weakness of the later entries that was responsible.
It was also a matter of the changing times--the sharp drop in the sales of novels about spies and international affairs generally after the Cold War's end.2 Thrillers remained popular, but fans instead favored tales of ordinary domestic crime --legal thrillers (Scott Turow and John Grisham), forensic thrillers (Patricia Cornwell), psych-profiling serial killer thrillers (Thomas Harris and James Patterson). Indeed, looking back a quarter of a century later it can seem like an era had come to end.
1. 1983's Icebreaker did less well than For Special, 1984's Role of Honor less well than that--managing just four weeks, in which it failed to break the top ten. Nobody Lives Forever and No Deals, Mr. Bond each did a bit better--making the #9 position, with No Deals lasting seven weeks altogether. Still, after that 1988's Scorpio lasted just six weeks, 1989's Win, Lose or Die just four, and neither got past the #11 spot.
2. I've been going over the New York Times and Publisher's Weekly lists systematically for an upcoming book, and it looks like, save for Tom Clancy, who also did less well after the '80s, just about everyone involved really suffered, commercial giants like le Carre and Ludlum knocked out of the top spots, and newcomers appearing only rarely and briefly--Daniel Silva's sales, a far cry from what earlier newcomers scored, about as good as this seemed to get during that decade.
During the 1980s, John Gardner's James Bond continuation novels, while not enjoying the sales of Ian Fleming at his peak, were still regulars on the New York Times' hardcover fiction bestseller list. The second book, For Special Services, was the stand-out in that respect, staying on the list for fifteen weeks, during which it rose as high as the #6 position. However, during the '80s each release lasted at least four weeks, and most broke the top ten.
By contrast, Gardner's books stopped making the list in the 1990s. To be fair, the list does show a general declining trend, the later books lasting for shorter periods, and peaking at lower ranks.1 In the view of many (myself included) this reflected his contributions' weakening as the years progressed, with Gardner either repeating himself or serving up less compelling new ideas, and the handling generally becoming more anemic. However, in fairness, lots and lots and lots of bestselling authors survive all that. Moreover, the abruptness of the drop-off, and the fact that not even the novelty of a new author (Raymond Benson) raised enough interest to put the books back on it for so much as a single week, suggests that it was not just the weakness of the later entries that was responsible.
It was also a matter of the changing times--the sharp drop in the sales of novels about spies and international affairs generally after the Cold War's end.2 Thrillers remained popular, but fans instead favored tales of ordinary domestic crime --legal thrillers (Scott Turow and John Grisham), forensic thrillers (Patricia Cornwell), psych-profiling serial killer thrillers (Thomas Harris and James Patterson). Indeed, looking back a quarter of a century later it can seem like an era had come to end.
1. 1983's Icebreaker did less well than For Special, 1984's Role of Honor less well than that--managing just four weeks, in which it failed to break the top ten. Nobody Lives Forever and No Deals, Mr. Bond each did a bit better--making the #9 position, with No Deals lasting seven weeks altogether. Still, after that 1988's Scorpio lasted just six weeks, 1989's Win, Lose or Die just four, and neither got past the #11 spot.
2. I've been going over the New York Times and Publisher's Weekly lists systematically for an upcoming book, and it looks like, save for Tom Clancy, who also did less well after the '80s, just about everyone involved really suffered, commercial giants like le Carre and Ludlum knocked out of the top spots, and newcomers appearing only rarely and briefly--Daniel Silva's sales, a far cry from what earlier newcomers scored, about as good as this seemed to get during that decade.
Raymond Benson's the Union Saga (Extended James Bond Series)
Originally Posted on December 11, 2016.
When I first read Raymond Benson's Bond novels I actually found them rather more to my taste than the Fleming originals. They were more accessibly written--Benson not writing Bond as if he were writing Emma Bovary. (The "indirect glance," as Umberto called it, the nonlinearity that made the books rougher going than I expected, are absent here.) Benson's novels also--for the most part--dispensed with the less appealing bits of the characterization. (Bond is getting on in years--but much less the grouchy old Edwardian Tory civil servant overdue for a trip to Shrublands.)
The books were, I might add, more cinematic in their pacing (the overlong mah jongg game in Zero Minus Ten apart), and in their action. (Rarely on a par with the Clive Cussler novels that then set the standard for me, but satisfying nonetheless--with Never Dream of Dying almost everything one can ask for on that score.)
For much the same reason, I also preferred Benson to John Gardner.
Of course, in the years since I have become more appreciative of Fleming's strengths (and Gardner's)--and of the weaknesses of the Benson novels (apart from the obvious purists' complaint that they are just not like Fleming's, as they could not have been in a different age and market).
Still, the Benson novels have their pleasures. And of course, they are a significant part of the franchise. This is partly a question of sheer volume--there being six of them, plus three movie tie-in novels (of the last three Pierce Brosnan films).
They are interesting, too, because of their being the last literary expression of the franchise before the much-touted 2006 reboot of the Bond films in Casino Royale. Since that time the franchise has had its successes (not least the billion-dollar gross of Skyfall), but the series has been less prolific, and in its identity much less stable. In fourteen years we have had just four Bond novels--as compared with the years when Bond novels came along annually--with the series zigzagging wildly in respect of setting, premise, tone. So far no author has written more than one, while each did wildly different things with their books--Faulks and Boyd trying to pick things up just where Fleming left off in the '60s; Horowitz retreating even farther into the '50s to write a Goldfinger sequel; and Deaver attempting a radical update.
The result is that Benson offers the last real continuity with the older books, and the older conception.
And it might be added, the books are interesting for having been written by a man who came to the series out of its fandom--Benson's first public association with the franchise his authorship of the James Bond Bedside Companion.
All this makes his contributions well worth a look. To that end I review the three novels of Benson's "Union" trilogy depicting Bond's battle with a new, SPECTRE-like criminal organization--High Time to Kill, DoubleShot and Never Dream of Dying.
Also just reviewed is the follow-up, and final Benson novel, which continued one of Never's plot threads, The Man with the Red Tattoo.
When I first read Raymond Benson's Bond novels I actually found them rather more to my taste than the Fleming originals. They were more accessibly written--Benson not writing Bond as if he were writing Emma Bovary. (The "indirect glance," as Umberto called it, the nonlinearity that made the books rougher going than I expected, are absent here.) Benson's novels also--for the most part--dispensed with the less appealing bits of the characterization. (Bond is getting on in years--but much less the grouchy old Edwardian Tory civil servant overdue for a trip to Shrublands.)
The books were, I might add, more cinematic in their pacing (the overlong mah jongg game in Zero Minus Ten apart), and in their action. (Rarely on a par with the Clive Cussler novels that then set the standard for me, but satisfying nonetheless--with Never Dream of Dying almost everything one can ask for on that score.)
For much the same reason, I also preferred Benson to John Gardner.
Of course, in the years since I have become more appreciative of Fleming's strengths (and Gardner's)--and of the weaknesses of the Benson novels (apart from the obvious purists' complaint that they are just not like Fleming's, as they could not have been in a different age and market).
Still, the Benson novels have their pleasures. And of course, they are a significant part of the franchise. This is partly a question of sheer volume--there being six of them, plus three movie tie-in novels (of the last three Pierce Brosnan films).
They are interesting, too, because of their being the last literary expression of the franchise before the much-touted 2006 reboot of the Bond films in Casino Royale. Since that time the franchise has had its successes (not least the billion-dollar gross of Skyfall), but the series has been less prolific, and in its identity much less stable. In fourteen years we have had just four Bond novels--as compared with the years when Bond novels came along annually--with the series zigzagging wildly in respect of setting, premise, tone. So far no author has written more than one, while each did wildly different things with their books--Faulks and Boyd trying to pick things up just where Fleming left off in the '60s; Horowitz retreating even farther into the '50s to write a Goldfinger sequel; and Deaver attempting a radical update.
The result is that Benson offers the last real continuity with the older books, and the older conception.
And it might be added, the books are interesting for having been written by a man who came to the series out of its fandom--Benson's first public association with the franchise his authorship of the James Bond Bedside Companion.
All this makes his contributions well worth a look. To that end I review the three novels of Benson's "Union" trilogy depicting Bond's battle with a new, SPECTRE-like criminal organization--High Time to Kill, DoubleShot and Never Dream of Dying.
Also just reviewed is the follow-up, and final Benson novel, which continued one of Never's plot threads, The Man with the Red Tattoo.
The Last Daniel Craig Bond Film?
Originally Posted on October 22, 2015.
As is well known, Daniel Craig sounded aghast at the thought of doing another Bond film in a recent interview, and much of the press made a lot of the fact, as they always do when an actor deviates from the achingly bland routine of film promotion.
The reality is that while nothing is so important for an actor's career as having a franchise (so much so that anyone getting one should count themselves very, very lucky), actually having that franchise, and playing the same role again and again and again, makes them restless. This is all the more the case when it is a franchise of big-budget ($250 million!) with a great deal of location work, and long, post-production publicity tours. And of course, it's one thing to endure the grueling routine (with which few non-Bond films compare) at twenty-seven, another to do it at forty-seven.
In fact, there's a long tradition of Bonds getting fed up with just this aspect of the series, going back at least to Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice.
There is, too, the problem of lengthy association with the franchise. One can do only so many movies--and then what? In contrast with a good many other roles, the role is not identified with the actor, but the actor with the role, and especially if they stick with it for too long, what comes afterward is apt to be an anti-climax. (Take, for example, Roger Moore's long career of William Shatner-like self-parody in movies like Spice World. Indeed, even Sean Connery had a hard time moving past it, even if he did ultimately succeed.)
And again, Craig's age matters. By the time the next Bond film comes out, he could be fifty--and while in this post-Expendables age being a fiftysomething action hero is less implausible than it used to be (Vin Diesel's still playing Dom Toretto is actually much more bizarre given the youth orientation of the Fast and Furious series), the audience has a very fixed idea of Bond as eternally thirtysomething which makes it more of a problem. And it can understandably seem better not to overstay one's welcome (and spare oneself the kind of brutal press Moore was getting by the time of A View to a Kill).
Still, even the spontaneous remarks of the publicity tour are often as "unscripted" as a reality show. Craig might have been blowing off some genuine steam--but it could also have been a trial balloon, one which achieved the predictable effect, eliciting both expressions of stupid shock, and speculation about who might succeed Craig in the role.
Shea Serrano, at least, managed to be interesting as he went about the old game, making a case for Groot getting the job--which actually would be something worth writing about.
As is well known, Daniel Craig sounded aghast at the thought of doing another Bond film in a recent interview, and much of the press made a lot of the fact, as they always do when an actor deviates from the achingly bland routine of film promotion.
The reality is that while nothing is so important for an actor's career as having a franchise (so much so that anyone getting one should count themselves very, very lucky), actually having that franchise, and playing the same role again and again and again, makes them restless. This is all the more the case when it is a franchise of big-budget ($250 million!) with a great deal of location work, and long, post-production publicity tours. And of course, it's one thing to endure the grueling routine (with which few non-Bond films compare) at twenty-seven, another to do it at forty-seven.
In fact, there's a long tradition of Bonds getting fed up with just this aspect of the series, going back at least to Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice.
There is, too, the problem of lengthy association with the franchise. One can do only so many movies--and then what? In contrast with a good many other roles, the role is not identified with the actor, but the actor with the role, and especially if they stick with it for too long, what comes afterward is apt to be an anti-climax. (Take, for example, Roger Moore's long career of William Shatner-like self-parody in movies like Spice World. Indeed, even Sean Connery had a hard time moving past it, even if he did ultimately succeed.)
And again, Craig's age matters. By the time the next Bond film comes out, he could be fifty--and while in this post-Expendables age being a fiftysomething action hero is less implausible than it used to be (Vin Diesel's still playing Dom Toretto is actually much more bizarre given the youth orientation of the Fast and Furious series), the audience has a very fixed idea of Bond as eternally thirtysomething which makes it more of a problem. And it can understandably seem better not to overstay one's welcome (and spare oneself the kind of brutal press Moore was getting by the time of A View to a Kill).
Still, even the spontaneous remarks of the publicity tour are often as "unscripted" as a reality show. Craig might have been blowing off some genuine steam--but it could also have been a trial balloon, one which achieved the predictable effect, eliciting both expressions of stupid shock, and speculation about who might succeed Craig in the role.
Shea Serrano, at least, managed to be interesting as he went about the old game, making a case for Groot getting the job--which actually would be something worth writing about.
Star Wars: Another Marvel Movie Machine
Originally Posted on July 19, 2015.
Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens is due out this December.
In comparison with both the original trilogy, and the prequels, the current plan has the films coming out more rapidly--another movie every two years rather than every three.
And in the off-years, it seems, there will be non-trilogy Star Wars films. Rogue One is expected out next year, and two more untitled projects--one about Han Solo (due out 2018), another about Boba Fett (date unannounced, but somehow I don't think they're leaving it to the 2020s).
Assuming all the projects materialize, this could mean a half dozen live-action Star Wars films in the next four and a half years or so.
It seemed that what happened with Marvel Studios--the transformation of its intellectual property into a growing number of inter-linked franchises making up mega-franchises like the Avengers--is happening also with the Star Wars franchise (with the declaration of the Expanded Universe non-canonical "Legends" helping to clear the path for this course of action).
Audiences have been happy to go along with the massive output of Marvel movies so far, the popularity of movies about Big Name Marvel superheroes (and superheroes in general) enduring without break far, far longer than I ever imagined it would. It is fifteen years this month since X-Men came out in 2000--which means that there are now adults who literally have no memory of a time when X-Men movies with Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and company weren't a semi-annual event, an idea that seems to me more bizarre than anything I've actually seen in an X-Men movie. And the executives clearly expect it to go strong for a few years more, longer in fact than any previous action movie trend of the last half century (James Bond-style spies, disaster movies, loose cannon cops, shark movies, space movies, Rambo-style commandos).
However, will there be an audience for so much not just of space opera (toward which viewers have been so much more fickle), but specifically this one franchise?
Despite having been proven wrong about moviegoers' appetite for superhero movies I have to admit I'm doubtful about this.
What do you think?
Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens is due out this December.
In comparison with both the original trilogy, and the prequels, the current plan has the films coming out more rapidly--another movie every two years rather than every three.
And in the off-years, it seems, there will be non-trilogy Star Wars films. Rogue One is expected out next year, and two more untitled projects--one about Han Solo (due out 2018), another about Boba Fett (date unannounced, but somehow I don't think they're leaving it to the 2020s).
Assuming all the projects materialize, this could mean a half dozen live-action Star Wars films in the next four and a half years or so.
It seemed that what happened with Marvel Studios--the transformation of its intellectual property into a growing number of inter-linked franchises making up mega-franchises like the Avengers--is happening also with the Star Wars franchise (with the declaration of the Expanded Universe non-canonical "Legends" helping to clear the path for this course of action).
Audiences have been happy to go along with the massive output of Marvel movies so far, the popularity of movies about Big Name Marvel superheroes (and superheroes in general) enduring without break far, far longer than I ever imagined it would. It is fifteen years this month since X-Men came out in 2000--which means that there are now adults who literally have no memory of a time when X-Men movies with Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and company weren't a semi-annual event, an idea that seems to me more bizarre than anything I've actually seen in an X-Men movie. And the executives clearly expect it to go strong for a few years more, longer in fact than any previous action movie trend of the last half century (James Bond-style spies, disaster movies, loose cannon cops, shark movies, space movies, Rambo-style commandos).
However, will there be an audience for so much not just of space opera (toward which viewers have been so much more fickle), but specifically this one franchise?
Despite having been proven wrong about moviegoers' appetite for superhero movies I have to admit I'm doubtful about this.
What do you think?
Remembering Suicide Kings
Originally Posted on August 6, 2013.
I remember laughing when I first saw the commercial for Suicide Kings.
Not because it was funny, but because it already seemed so cliché--the snotty overprivileged kids, the less than half-baked kidnapping scheme which sees them quickly get in over their heads, even the casting of Christopher Walken. (The same, too, went for the pseudo-mature sensibility implicit in the title's metaphorical poker reference.)
When the movie hit cable a year later I saw it in the same spirit as most people see the likes of Sharknado, and it was exactly what I expected. The script's particular combination of humor and brutality, of quirkiness and snarkiness (Denis Leary's character going on and on and on about his fifteen hundred dollar boots, Walken's losing a finger), the conventional attempts to be unconventional (evident in the nonlinearity of the script), all lived down to my expectations.
Looking back on my response to that commercial, that seems to have been the moment when I knew that my sense of the whole indie phenomenon (especially the Tarantino rip-off/neo-noir side of it) had crystallized.
Alas, the indie films made since then have tended to reinforce that impression rather than change it.
I remember laughing when I first saw the commercial for Suicide Kings.
Not because it was funny, but because it already seemed so cliché--the snotty overprivileged kids, the less than half-baked kidnapping scheme which sees them quickly get in over their heads, even the casting of Christopher Walken. (The same, too, went for the pseudo-mature sensibility implicit in the title's metaphorical poker reference.)
When the movie hit cable a year later I saw it in the same spirit as most people see the likes of Sharknado, and it was exactly what I expected. The script's particular combination of humor and brutality, of quirkiness and snarkiness (Denis Leary's character going on and on and on about his fifteen hundred dollar boots, Walken's losing a finger), the conventional attempts to be unconventional (evident in the nonlinearity of the script), all lived down to my expectations.
Looking back on my response to that commercial, that seems to have been the moment when I knew that my sense of the whole indie phenomenon (especially the Tarantino rip-off/neo-noir side of it) had crystallized.
Alas, the indie films made since then have tended to reinforce that impression rather than change it.
Up From Development Hell: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Originally Posted on August 5, 2013.
I can't remember a time when Hollywood was not buzzing about a big-screen remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. At the peaks of their respective careers, Jim Carrey and then Steve Carrell were attached to the project. However, Ben Stiller has finally realized the project, completing a film due out by Christmas.
I recently checked out the trailer, not really expecting that it would be faithful to the original James Thurber story, or the 1947 film starring the legendary Danny Kaye--but was still surprised by how far it diverged from both. Instead of a wacky comedy about a hapless daydreamer, the movie looks like a romantic drama with prestige picture written all over it, and clearly intended to be a contender in this year's Oscar race.
Indeed, comparisons with Forrest Gump are fast becoming a cliché of the publicity--which will doubtless lead to comparisons with Simple Jack.
The buzz for the film thus far is positive, but I can't help feeling I'd rather have seen something more in the spirit of Thurber's story--wildly unrealistic as that seems to be.
I can't remember a time when Hollywood was not buzzing about a big-screen remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. At the peaks of their respective careers, Jim Carrey and then Steve Carrell were attached to the project. However, Ben Stiller has finally realized the project, completing a film due out by Christmas.
I recently checked out the trailer, not really expecting that it would be faithful to the original James Thurber story, or the 1947 film starring the legendary Danny Kaye--but was still surprised by how far it diverged from both. Instead of a wacky comedy about a hapless daydreamer, the movie looks like a romantic drama with prestige picture written all over it, and clearly intended to be a contender in this year's Oscar race.
Indeed, comparisons with Forrest Gump are fast becoming a cliché of the publicity--which will doubtless lead to comparisons with Simple Jack.
The buzz for the film thus far is positive, but I can't help feeling I'd rather have seen something more in the spirit of Thurber's story--wildly unrealistic as that seems to be.
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