Cheat Week #3

Another week closer to the move and we're starting to pull our hair out a little, but that's okay. A little stress is all part of the adventure, right?

In the meantime...

AUDIO DRAMA!!!

The Leviathan Chronicles is, simply put, the coolest fuckin' audio drama you're ever gonna hear. Which isn't to say that there aren't many equally worthy audio dramas out there for your listening enjoyment -- if there weren't, my Cheat Week grab bag would be drastically shortened. It's just that, of all the series out there, this one isn't just the most ambitious, it's the most ambitious and successfully executed.

Part audio book, part radio drama, The Leviathan Chronicles is an epic science fiction adventure, at times comparable to the best of Tom Clancy, James Bond, Nelson DeMille, The X-Files and The X-Men. It tells the story of a research scientist who discovers a secret family legacy that places her between two powerful factions of super-powered beings and the government agency sworn to bring them all down. Created and written by first time author Christoff Laputka, listening to this series is like experiencing a serialized big budget action adventure film of Michael Bay proportions (but much more intelligently written), all without needing to open your eyes.

I first discovered the series last year during my sophomore obsession with audio drama podcasts (a person needs SOMETHING to listen to during those boring work days). I was hesitant at first because I don't typically like audio dramas that tell their story through narration. I'd only heard it done right once, in the legendary Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy radio show, and no one since had managed to do it even close to that well. Leviathan surprised me, though. Its "production values" were impressive -- a full cast of professional actors, professionally mixed, and a damn good soundtrack -- and the story and characters were intriguing. I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did. The narration only chimes in when necessary, and adds valuable detail and atmosphere to every scene.

Listen to Episode 1 here!

(though they're also available on iTunes if you'd like to go that route)

The full 25 episode first season just recently wrapped up, and they've got a pretty ambitious interim season planned out while they record the rest. Of course, ambition is pretty much the name of the game with these people, so it's no surprise. I would suggest giving it at least two episodes, as it's obvious they were still finding their feet and figuring out what works and what doesn't in the first episode. After that, I'm sure you'll find yourself as enraptured as I did.

Hope you enjoy!

Cheat Week #2

So, Cheat Weeks are going to be a little more frequent in the coming months as RC and I prepare for our grand exodus from sunny SoCal in August. I had hoped to have more full entries stored up before then, but dem's the breaks of a life in progress; it is rarely, if ever, predictable.

Luckily, I have no shortage of other people's work to sling at you while we throw our lives into upheaval. Speaking of which...

TV SHOW!

Thief was a six-episode mini-series that aired on the FX network back in 2006. It starred Andre Braugher (of Homicide: Life on the Street fame) as a career thief and family man whose double-life is thrown out of balance when struck by a personal tragedy. It featured a talented cast, beautiful cinematography, sharp writing, wonderful music, and it won Braugher his second Emmy award... so, naturally, it vanished from the face of the Earth after its initial airing. Neither hide nor hair was seen of it on store shelves or the web until last year, when it was brought to that beautiful bastion of internet entertainment, Hulu.




I first sought the series out as a fan of Braugher's work on Homicide, but I quickly fell in love with its style and story. This is not like the shiny, gimmicky crime dramas of network television. It's harsh, visceral, honest, and engaging television. One of the best shows to air in the last ten years. And now you can watch it for free! Gotta love Hulu.

Watch it here!

And when you're done, join me in clicking my heels and clapping my hands until the people at FX are finally smart enough to release it on DVD.

(The show was rated TVMA for language, violence, and sexual situations.)

Geeks of Doom Article: A Game of Thrones vs. The Walking Dead

The article I wrote for Geeks of Doom about the upcoming A Game Of Thrones and The Walking Dead, from HBO and AMC respectively, just went up!

Geek shows have gotten more recognition in recent years than they ever did in the past. Once upon a time the height of genre television was the Star Trek franchise, which, while always intelligent and ambitious, was still shunted by society into that niche of fandom reserved for the obsessive and the dateless. Thankfully, with the success of shows like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and True Blood (and we’ll just ignore the unjust deaths of shows like Firefly, Dollhouse, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles for the moment), genre television seems to have entered into a new golden age, much like comic book movies did ten years ago.

Two of the most recent — and, it could be argued, most anticipated — such shows share a unique mission statement, despite their vastly differing subject matter. Both are adaptations of decidedly adult material, from mediums often given the short shrift in live-action television. Both will attempt to subvert genres that come heavily burdened with the preconceived notions of the common audience. And both feature a surprising pedigree of creators who are dedicated to their success. Those two upcoming shows are AMC’s The Walking Dead and HBO’s A Game Of Thrones.

Read the full article HERE!

Post-Modern American Cooking Quickie: The Blossamwich

Sometimes, a baller on the go has no time for long, drawn out recipes with their lists of ingredients and cooking times and attention to detail. For those times, you need something quick, satisfying, and most of all, utterly absurd.

For those times, you need The Blossamwich.

Observe.

First, you toast two slices of any bread of your choosing (I usually prefer wheat bread because it helps me fool myself into thinking I’m eating healthy).



Then comes the cold cuts. My meat of choice is Boar’s Head’s new low sodium lemon pepper chicken breast, which is DAMN tasty, and, again, low sodium! We’re eatin’ right.

Take a decent helping of the meat (say four or five slices) and lay it on one side of the toasted bread.




Next, you bust out some 2% milk swiss cheese...

Say whaaat? Healthy like a muthafuck!

...and lay that on top of the chicken. (Depending on where you got the swiss, the slices may be long enough that you can tear them in two and overlap them; otherwise, you’ll want two slices.)




So you’ve got your toasted wheat bread, your low sodium chicken breast, and your low fat swiss cheese.


Next comes the Onion Blossom.

It's... looking at me, Ray...

This is where my delusion shatters like a piñata, spilling deep-fried cholesterol bliss over all the happy children.

Yeah, that’s right, I said Onion Blossom. You know… like the ones you get at Outback? The ‘Bloomin’ Onion’? Mmmm, they’re so delicious, aren't they? If ever a gift was sent down from the heavens just for the onion lovers of the world, it’s this. And the sauce it comes with? Holy god, it’s like a zesty orange dollup of unadulterated nirvana! Onion blossoms are amazing.

But they’re also big. Sure, a whole table of people could wipe one out in mere minutes… but at a table for two? You’re not halfway through the thing before your stomach is packing its bags and grousing about how it should have listened to Mother. Onion blossoms are not a two-person appetizer. And usually, when you’ve had your fill (and then some) you just throw the rest away, right? Such a waste.

Well, not anymore.

You take that sucker home -- not forgetting to ask for a small container of extra orange blossomsauce...

(rhymes with Awesomesauce)

...and you keep it in the fridge until the day you are ready for The Blossamwich.

Today is that day.




Slap down a layer of leftover onion strips on top of the cheese and pop that bitch in the microwave, open faced, for one minute on high.

This will melt the cheese and heat up the onions -- and somehow, the bread stays dry and crispy!

Miracles...

Final step: Pour on as much of the blossomsauce as you want (I would suggest a generous helping; too little and the flavor will be drowned out by everything else).

Aww, the Predator bled all over my sandwich!

Close it with the other slice of bread...




...and your masterpiece is complete.

Embrace it as a brother. Enjoy it like a lover.

Inspiration

Inspiration's a funny thing.

It can come from anywhere, but only at unexpected times. When you search for it, it's nowhere to be found. And when you need it the most, it finally arrives... for something entirely different.

I've got at least two unfinished Farther Room posts right now waiting on the fickle ministrations of inspiration... but instead I'm writing this.

Like I said... funny thing.

Take this dream I had the other night...

Wait wh-- awww, where's everybody going...?

Don't worry, I'm not going to go into detail about it. I'd much rather turn it into a story... which is sort of my point.

Every so often, my slumbering mind will spit these vivid scenes out at me. I'll see a person on the run from an army, or fighting giant robots in hidden corridors... I'll see a tender moment between two people, while a jealous third person watches from the shadows... my brain puts on little movies for me...

(this one time I dreamt Johnny Depp and Wynona Ryder were running away from a cross-dressing Meatloaf...)

(...but that's another story entirely...)

...and then I wake up wondering who those people were, what their story was, what their lives were about. And, whereas once upon a time I used to just let that creative charge dissipate into distracted nothingness, now, I grab it. I harness it. I turn on the computer, I grab a pen and paper, and write it all down.

And that's probably the most difficult part. JUST WRITING IT DOWN is something you learn. It's not the first instinct. The first instinct is to sit back and enjoy the mental movie... not cannibalize and plagiarize it for your own fictional pursuits. Turning creative thought into actual words can be the most difficult process this side of childbirth. It kind of IS childbirth, if you look at it a certain way.

I had this dream once (about that aforementioned quiet little love triangle), and the scene was so powerful to me... the feelings of fear and surprise and excitement and jealousy mixing in that moment were so potent... that I couldn't stop thinking about it for an entire weekend. I was in San Diego with RC, and I didn't have a laptop at the time, and I had no notebooks or pens. I could have bought one, but I wasn't as disciplined as I am now... and... something else... I knew that if I wrote it down, my mind would ease away from it. And I didn't want that.

It was my first time in a new place, and this dream -- this idea -- just would not leave. So, I nurtured it. Every new sight I saw added to the story. Every random musing triggered by every passing fancy became a scene, regardless of how disparate the elements. Every new setting, a place for things to happen. "Creepy parking garage... what if somebody just found a dead body right here." Boom. Somebody does, in the story. Like that.

Between the music we were listening to while driving around and the influx of new visual information, I had an entire setting, all the main characters, their back stories, their personalities, their relationships, their struggles, their arcs, their entire lives, from beginning to end. I knew what the first three issues -- oh, yeah, it's a comic -- I knew what the first three issues of their story were, and I know what the last three issues are... and I've got about ten different stories to tell about them in between.

In two days.

And when I got home, THAT's when I wrote it all down. It was a pretty unique experience that I've never quite been able to duplicate.

(I still don't have a title yet, though.)

(I suck at titles.)

Anyway, my point is... the inspiration... the muse... it's like a wild thing. It's a force of nature. It's like...

RARR! MUSE!

And the only way you're going to get any good out of it... the only way it becomes more than just a fun little show your brain puts on for you... is to harness it. Write it down. Think about it. THINK ABOUT IT. Every second. Ponder, rerun, explore, expand. Because once you get that fucker moving... it's like a snowball rolling downhill. It just builds! In ways you never would have expected.

And I swear to you... I SWEAR to you... the shit my subconscious has given me is ten times better than anything I've ever invented while awake.

Dreams are where our best ideas live. We're just too damn distracted when we're awake to come up with the really good stuff. Most of us are, anyway.

Hell, even Twilight was based on a dream Stephanie Meyer had! And look how that turned out!

(...well...)

So, that's how it is. For me, anyway. On a lucky day, that's my process. Every other day, I try my damnedest to artificially recapture that creative hotspot. Sometimes I'm successful, sometimes not so much, but I just keep plugging away. You gotta! And when the spark comes, you follow it wherever it's willing to take you.

Which is how posts like this happen.

Evolution: Bryan Singer's X-Men 1, 2, and 3 (Part 2)

To paraphrase one of my favorite movies:

“There was a dream that was X-Men 3…”

Sadly, before Director Bryan Singer and his writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris could bring it to fruition, they heard the siryn call of Superman Returns, and it was a call Singer could not refuse. (It was, after all, the movie he’d been waiting his whole life to make.)

I will defend the greatness of Superman Returns till my dying breath, but along with the warm, happy feelings it leaves me with, I am also left with a small ache for what Singer’s X-Men 3 could have been... the clues to which are littered throughout both previous films.

~*~*~*~

Up till this point, I’ve run on the assumption that anyone reading this blog has already seen at least the first two X-Men movies, but as I’m now about to go into the plot details of those films, I’m gonna throw up a big ol’

SPOILER ALERT

just in case. If you have never seen these movies and feel like you might actually be interested in doing so, read no further. Go rent ‘em, netflix ‘em, buy the DVDs… watch, and enjoy, and then come back here for the rest of my diatribe. Go on! I’m not going anywhere.

~*~*~*~

X-Men ends with a climactic battle in (and on top of) the Statue of Liberty, between the titular heroic mutants and Magneto’s misguided Brotherhood. Magneto intends to set off a radiation-emitting device that will trigger the X-factor (or mutant gene) in regular human beings, thereby making mutants no longer an oppressed minority in the world.

What he doesn’t know is that the false mutation triggered by his machine will eventually kill all the normal humans who are affected by it.




In the end, the machine is set off, but the X-Men are able to shut it down before the radiation can reach Ellis Island (where a UN summit just so happens to be taking place). Magneto is defeated. The world is safe. The heroes can return home for milk, cookies, and high-fives.

(just as soon as Wolverine heals up)

(silly Logan)

But all is not as it seems. In the Director’s Commentary for X2, Singer points to something that happens during that final sequence as a clue towards the events in the second movie.

The radiation engulfs the upper half of the statue, covering the X-Men and Magneto. Since they’re all mutants, though, it is believed no harm can come from their exposure to it.

Except…




After the machine has been shut down and everyone is coming down from the Near Miss of it all, we’re shown a brief moment with the team’s telekinetic, Jean Grey. Under the circumstances, it could be easily assumed that this is merely a shot of her reacting to the tension of the scene. A combination of fear and exhaustion, since the last third of the film has seen her using her powers in far more demanding ways than she’s ever done before.

But, what if something else is going on?

Could it be possible that the radiation has had some kind of effect on her?


X2. When next we find Jean, she and her snazzy new haircut are accompanying a group of students on a field trip to the museum.




While watching over them, she is struck by an overwhelming wave of ambient thought. Everyone in the room thinking at her all at once. Trying to push these thoughts out of her head, Jean causes all the television screens in the room to flicker, like their signal is being interrupted.




Scott (Cyclops) approaches, concerned. He mentions that "ever since Liberty Island" she's been acting different.

“My telepathy’s been off lately," she tells him. "I can’t seem to focus, I can hear everything.”

“Jean, it’s not just your telepathy. A month ago you had to concentrate just to levitate a book or a chair across a room. Now, when you have a nightmare, the entire bedroom shakes.”

Wonder what could have caused that.

Skip to halfway through the movie, when a missile is fired at the X-Men’s jet. In a display of power heretofore unseen, Jean disables the missile from the comfort of the cockpit, sending it spiraling off to explode in mid-air.




The effort manifests itself as a flame springing to life in her eyes, and is followed by a moment of confusion and uncertainty on her part. As though she is afraid of wielding so much power.

Later, when forced into confrontation with a mind-controlled Cyclops, Jean’s inner flame once against manifests. She releases a blast of energy that knocks Cyclops back into his right mind and severely damages the facility where the battle takes place…





...leading to the climactic moment of the film.

The X-Men have saved their students from the clutches of the evil Col. William Stryker. They are preparing the jet for take-off, but the controls won’t behave, due to the damage the jet received earlier (from the second missile that Jean couldn’t stop). They’re grounded, and sitting directly in the path of the now-crumbling Alkali Lake dam -- which was damaged by Jean’s earlier showdown with Cyclops (talk about a bed of your own making).

The dam bursts, the water races towards the X-jet. Jean places herself in the path of raging waters, using her new powers to hold back the torrent, while simultaneously repairing the jet and lifting it to safety.






As she finally accepts this new power she’s been given, her entire body erupts into flames, and a sort of serenity overcomes her as she drops her arms and lets the water take her.




The X-Men are safe. Jean Grey is dead.

Or is she?

The final shot of the movie has us moving over the serene waters of Alkali Lake (now a river, I suppose) as Jean’s voice repeats the monologue from the opening of the first movie. And as the music swells, we see a flaming, birdlike figure just beneath the surface of the water.

“...every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.”

So… what do you think X-Men 3 was supposed to be about?

Obviously, this was all leading up to an adaptation of Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s Dark Phoenix Saga, arguably the most revered storyline in X-Men history. But how could Singer & Co. translate that space-faring epic to the screen while keeping the somewhat grounded tone of the existing movies? To my mind, it was a simple matter of evolution.

Rather than the voracious cosmic entity which possesses Jean Grey and drives her to consume worlds in the comics… or the disturbed multiple-personality that Xavier locked away in Jean's mind in an attempt to keep her from abusing her enormous gifts in Brett Ratner’s X-Men 3… the story could have been about evolution. The radiation from Magneto’s machine causes Jean to evolve far beyond any normal mutant, into something with so much devastating potential it puts the whole world at risk.

With this thought in mind, I went searching the web to find out if it had ever been revealed just what Singer’s plans for the third X-Men movie were. Surely, I wasn't the first person to connect these dots, was I?

I wasn't. To my delight, the plans for Singer's third movie had been revealed, and they were even more ambitious than I could have guessed.

I was right about one thing, though… Evolution was the key.

Here’s an excerpt from David Bentley’s blog The Geek Files (full article HERE):

Author Thomas McClean's book Mutant Cinema: The X-Men Trilogy From Comics to Screen answers some of the questions raised by fans, who have been desperate to find out what Singer and his own writers Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty had been planning for their unmade version of the third film.

Dougherty had already revealed some time ago that they had wanted to cast Sigourney Weaver as Emma Frost, a comic book psychic who would be reimagined as an empath able to control people's emotions. Some reports have suggested that Frost would have been an old flame of Xavier and would have emotionally manipulated a resurrected, unstable Jean Grey into the evil Dark Phoenix.

McLean's book adds new information:
Dougherty says the resolution of the Phoenix plot would definitely have been a major part of their version: "The main element for me was Jean coming back and learning how much power she could wield - that she just became overcome by it."

Dougherty says that many of the ideas he was considering, such as Magneto trying to use Phoenix as a weapon, ended up in the filmed version. He also says that the idea of Jean using Cyclops' power to kill herself was one they liked, though they would have made it clear that only Phoenix's body was dying. Her spirit would live on, evolving Jean past mutant and into a godlike cosmic state.

Dougherty likens it to the closing lines of Arthur C Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey in which the Star-Child that was astronaut David Bowman hovers over the Earth: "Then he waited, marshalling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something."

For more detail on the plot and character arcs (I’ll give you a hint: Cyclops doesn’t die in the first act), check out Bentley’s other blog post HERE.




So there you have it. A far more faithful adaptation of the Phoenix story, and what’s more, a somewhat risky direction to take the third film of a popular franchise. From Chris Claremont to Arthur C. Clarke. From WWII to the cosmos. Singer's X-Men films were always pushing the boundaries of what you'd expect from a comic book superhero movie. Proving that truly ambitious storytelling was not precluded by the presence of a dude with knives in his hands.

Taking this into consideration, I have no doubt he could have pulled off his vision for the third film successfully. To me, Bryan Singer is still the best thing to ever happen to comic book movies.




Here’s hoping he makes another one some day soon.

Evolution: Bryan Singer's X-Men 1, 2, and 3 (Part 1)

As news of the current events in the X-Men universe floods the web, I’ve found myself in a very X-centric (heh) headspace. When not scouring the message boards for vicarious thrills in the reactions and opinions of those experiencing the comics firsthand, I’ve been digging up my old collection of X-books to revisit the bygone glories of yore.

(...what the hell did I just say?)

If I could, I would just break down and buy the latest comics myself, but the Big Move looms ever closer, and every penny saved is to be treasured.

This past Sunday, my obsession culminated in a miniature X-movie marathon, wherein I watched the first (best) two X-films: X-Men and X2: X-Men United.

(are you sick and tired of the letter X yet?)

I’ve always enjoyed both movies, though I consider X-Men to be almost an audition tape -- a proof of concept -- for what Singer would achieve in the far superior X2. The first movie is like the first season of an ambitious TV show (season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes to mind). It has all the right components, but is still figuring out how to use them to best effect.

X-Men featured a talented cast, a skilled director, an interesting story, and -- something movie studios were only just figuring out at the time -- a healthy respect for the source material that made the movie worth making in the first place. What it lacked, in my eyes, was confidence. The filmmakers knew they had something special on their hands, but also knew they had two masters to serve, each with very different expectations. There was the movie studio, who wanted a tight, entertaining, accessible action flick for the masses, and there was the comic fanbase, who wanted to see their beloved characters brought to the screen faithfully.

Singer and company achieved what seemed impossible at the time, satisfying the demands of both… but the signs of their struggle still showed around the edges. Action scenes were a little too self-conscious to be taken seriously, and edited a little too stiffly to be believable. The quiet, character-building scenes that Singer had shown a mastery of in both previous and subsequent films were edited down to quick, concise exchanges which served only to move the plot forward. The detail and nuance was there, but it was left largely implied. The entire movie is filled with scenes that you enjoy, but wish there was more of. As though something truly special is lurking just on the other side of the cut. 


(In the special features of the X-Men 1.5 DVD, we actually see some of these lost and extended moments, and a part of me wishes we could get an extended edition of the first movie, Lord of the Rings style, just to see these scenes edited into it, regardless of pacing. Sometimes, you just wanna watch the characters talk.)

The movie's plot never quite overcame a small air of stereotypical comic cheesiness, but the weight of the subject matter and characters helped to keep it grounded.

Ultimately, we're given something that satisfies on the basic principals of good storytelling, but does not yet show the chemistry of a truly great film.


That we got with X2.




Here, Singer knew exactly what he was doing, knew exactly where he could go, and went there, and beyond, with the confidence and skill of a master. X-Men was a good movie. X2 was something great. A continuation and expansion of the themes and plotlines of the first film, but with the commitment and assuredness the first film lacked.

Here, there is no rush. The quiet character moments are not only left in, they make the movie. Hell, if not for those moments, one of the most important and relevant characters might have been cut entirely, his storyline lost, and so, the deeper conflict and questions the films sets out to ask, lost as well.

The tone was darker, all pretense of “comicky” flash and dazzle abandoned. This movie was a serious science fiction adventure film. Though not without its moments of levity and humor, it never made fun of itself, never winked at the audience. It took place in a real world which only lent weight and believability to the fantastical exploits of its protagonists.

This is why X2 is a great movie.

But what made it a great X-Men movie is that little something extra. Again, a respect for the source material, not only on the superficial level that movies like Spider-Man, Sin City, or Hellboy managed, but in the deeper spirit of the material. The allegory, the world-view, the interpersonal relationships and small details that only fans of the comics would notice. The stuff that made the comic tick was there on the screen, invisible to all but the few who would appreciate it

X2 was such a great flick…

Then came X-Men 3.

...whoof… did it just get chilly in here…?

Contrary to popular belief, X-Men 3 (or X-Men: The Last Stand) was not a bad movie. It was a solid action flick, at times plenty of fun, that took a lot of those aforementioned superficial elements from the comics and plastered them all over the screen in a story that, based on its own merits, was structurally tight and formulaically satisfying. This does not a bad movie make.

But it was disappointing. Because what had come before had aspired to so much more that, well… audiences didn’t want just a fun action movie. They wanted their serious science fiction saga. They wanted greatness again.

To me, X-Men 3’s largest failing is its near-complete ignorance of the thematic elements that Bryan Singer had built into the series since the very beginning. Not the themes of tolerance or feeling like an outcast -- all of that was covered, though in a way that left many dissatisfied with the message it was sending.

I’m talking about the theme that Singer hands us as the very first words spoken at the very beginning of the first movie…

“Mutation. It is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.”

And that, dear friends, is the story of the X-Men movies. The underlying theme, which Bryan Singer even reiterates to us in the final moments of the second movie, and which Brett Ratner and his team were either unwilling or unable to carry through in the third… Evolution.

~*~*~*~

Be sure to check back for Part 2, wherein I descend to levels of nit-picky geekdom the likes of which no person in their right mind would ever want to subject themselves to...


Wait, that's a horrible teaser.


Be sure to check back for Part 2, wherein I am awesome!

See you soon.