IT’S A– …Wait, what?



The job hunt is officially on, my eyes are finally recovering and I really enjoyed Iron Man. Bring on Batman and Hellboy, hell Hancock even, I’m already there.

Don’t ask me how, but I ended up on a satisfactory little blog about the peculiarities of language and formal grammar: Invented Usage is some fun stuff. I found their Ackbar Retrospective particularly amusing. The only possibly improvement to this gem:

…would be to somehow also work in DeNiro or To Kill A Mockingbird. What’s going on with that DeNiro/Pacino thing anyway? I worry the longer it is until its release, the greater the need for concern.

As close to a BWAHAHAHA! film as I’m likely to get.



Not that you can even correllate the likes of WATCHMEN to the sugary goodness of JLI… but in my mind I’ve got a lot of the Ditko inspired stuff tied together, which always means that I’m lumping Vic Sage in with Blue Beetle, Booster Gold and Guy Gardner.

Vic then inevitably comes to a bizarro connection with Moore’s WATCHMEN through Rorschach and I’m always partial to the Question exhibiting some of the paranoid traits of his Inky-highness.

And there’s a point to all this comic blathering, really- namely the secret image hidden in the 300 Trailer.

Which really only looks to be a proof type thing since WATCHMEN isn’t in production, but still rad. And yes, I am a total dork, but I honestly haven’t been jazzed about a comic book movie since V FOR VENDETTA. All the other upcoming adapts are leaving me lukewarm.

since I’m up, let’s talk about dream scripts



Your eyes do not deceive you, dear readers, that meter to the right is indeed creeping upward. Stupidly tonight however, I physically cut myself off from adding to it, but the slack will be picked up tomorrow. In the meantime, I decided to take a look at some other scripts sitting on available hard drives.

And there it was.

My dream script.

It’s really a pretty pathetic thing. A script I’ve mused and day dreamed about. The script I would rather write on than breathe. A while back in a moment of weakness I let myself write just an opening scene. Twenty pages later I tore myself away from it and vowed not to write another word and it’s managed to stay 20 pages. But no matter what mood I’m in if I crack the file and start reading, I get the giggles and joy and warmth I get from my favorite movie experiences. My soul cries out to write this script. Simply because I love the fucking shit out of the idea.

I suspect most writers have scripts like this. I can’t say for sure, but when you set out to tell stories, certainly the desire to channel something you love back out into the world is natural. Share the love, right? But the advice you get when, like me, you haven’t so much as cut teeth with the original material is don’t do it! And I can see it, if you want to do an adaptation- god forbid something that someone’s heard of and already has it’s rights wrapped up in a chartreuse 3M cocoon, it is not worth the fucking bother. Spend your time and energy on something original. Perfect your craft before you have the gall to take something from someone else, because your craft ALWAYS needs work.

But I’m weak. I really want to write it. I constantly remind myself that legal problems aside, there’s a lot of reasons to put attention elsewhere: You’ve got to be realistic, writing is a craft and it’s supposed to be work. Can’t always be fun. Giving into the desire to write the dream script is probably not going to help work through the hard lessons, and if your skill isn’t up to it, you just do the awesome a disservice. Even worse, you run the risk of falling into the quagmire of fan service which is all good and well here in the inter-tubes, but kinda not so good in the reality of the end goal of getting a movie made. Adaptations catch flak. Sequels catch flak. So if I were to cop to writing, oh, MEN IN BLACK 3, I would seem incredibly immature, delusional, and honestly a little weird- cause did we really need MIIB? Not that the fictional MIB 3 is my dream script- and hey if you’ve written MIB 3 I might be interested in reading it. I’m uh, definitely not knocking it.

It’s futile. Nothing I say diminishes the desire to write my dream script. Which is why it’s a dream script. Plenty of folks must have wanted to write TRANSFORMERS. If you’re a fan of material and it does make it to the screen, the least you can hope is that the writer is a fan. But that too is probably ‘dreamy’. And maybe somewhere some day I will HAVE to write it and move on. Someone else may very well write it. Or I may forget about it. Or die in a car crash or something, it doesn’t matter. It’s nice to have dreams, right?

Share with me if you have one of these dream scripts. If you’re dying to write another GODFATHER installment, let me know. I’ll feel less insane. For the now I’ll read my 20 pages, and reaffirm the vow not to write it until I can and put my nose back to making my own stuff awesome.

But goddamn, it’s a fucking awesome 20 pages.

not that it matters much



Expressing an opinion online is like talking to your favorite stuffed animal- sure it may have eyes and ears, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anyone’s listening and there’s a good chance by doing so that you’re certifably insane. But for the sake of hearing myself talk, I continue to ramble on without meaning and today my ire has been raised by talks of Ryan Phillippe in the running for Harvey Dent in Christopher Nolan’s next Bat-flick.

Now, yes, I do have an irrational attatchment to the character Harvey Dent. He is my favorite Batman rogue. He represents a sort of chaos theory take on old Bats- two guys with the same goal who ended up in very different, and yet not all that dissimilar, places. I like what Harv represents and I like the potential he has. Does he ever get used to that extent? In the previous media, not so much. Batman Forever isn’t worth the time to argue over. But all the merit in Harv can be immediately recognized by dropping two names - Loeb and Sale. That’s right- The Long Halloween. Just about the most perfect Two-Face origin there is to be had. It’s sexy, it’s noir, it’s fucking rad is what it is. If Nolan puts even a shred of the Harvey Dent from The Long Halloween/Dark Victory in his next picture, then I will probably be happy. I say probably because of what I mentioned before- Ryan Phillippe.

There’s nothing overtly wrong with Philippe, it’s just that he’s very pretty. But, you say, irony! That’s whole point. No, no, no. A gorgeous, proud Harvey Dent who gets scarred and goes crazy is all well and good, but this ISN’T SE7EN! Harvey Dent has substance and convictions! He’s a paragon of JUSTICE. If you make him a Ken doll who goes nutso because he can’t look in the mirror, that’s hugely selling the character short and undermining the development of Batman. So you’re damaging more than just Harv here.
I know Phillippe has chops and I don’t sell him short. The Way of the Gun and Crash, and Gosford Park, yay. Good stuff. But I’m thinking a lot about dynamics here, and the Bruce/Jim/Harv dynamic is so important, that I just can’t get on board because he’s younger than Christian Bale, Phillippe’s miles and away from Gary Oldman and after the Heath Ledger news, I just uhg… is pretty Joker going to scar pretty Harv and we’re just going to get pretty pretty Gotham city with only pretty supervillians? Where’s the grime and corruption- the dark brooding menace that makes Gotham, Gotham? This is unacceptable. This has me very worried for the fate of Batman. One villian per movie please. No blacklights. For godsake. Let’s learn from history here.
But not to completely abolish Ryan Phillippe, cause I don’t really dislike him, he might make a good Thomas Elliot. And that would be an excellent fresh story that Nolan might make good use of. When challenged to name a better Harvey Dent- and I’ve thought this over many times- my best thought is Sam Rockwell. Or Mark Ruffalo. Maybe Henry Thomas or Sean Patrick Flanery. Someone less fair, more brooding, and potentially volitile.
So what about you? Best Two-Face?

melty



It’s like the inside of an overcooked pizza pocket (liquid hot MAGMAH!) all over the place, notably in non-bedroom portion of my apartment which includes everything except, well, the bedroom since it has the only working a/c unit. Speaking of apartment, I renewed the lease, because I just wasn’t about to move in this crap. Also my Xmas tree is still up. It’s still a little bit of a thrill to wake up and see the lights on, even if it is frickin’ August.
I need some E-10. Or some E-15 even. I don’t care, I just want some of that cheap corn-gas. But it appears the state of NC only has one public ethanol station. One. And it’s in Fayetteville- which, if I did the math MIGHT work out to still saving a bit, BUT the drawback of driving to Fayetteville simply for gas is enough to nix it. It is Fayetteville after all- the armpit of the state. It would be nice if it was kinda on the way to Greenville or somewhere else I might plausibly drive to. I am not that lucky. But I’ll be keeping my ears peeled for some new availability. It’s really out of control these days.
Going to plug http://www.vicsage.com because it the snazzy new place of Faceless Fans to hang out and obsess over one of the coolest comic book heros out there - The Question. I babble about him some more, but the link holds much more information and coherence than I could possibly hope for. The message boards are slick and give me distracting ideas on top of the ideas I already have trouble dedicating appropriate time and effort to.
Running low on the Nero Wolfe, though I did pick up one orignal and two continuation- that is not by Rex Stout, books last week. Still not sure how I feel about the continuation thing, reminds me of fanfiction, but we’ll see when I crack the book. Elsewhiles I am reading a Poe collection, some Vonnegut essays Megan and Jeremy gave me and that Charles Dickens I took with me to the wedding but never really got through. Oh and Gertrude and Claudius by Updike, which I was doing pretty regular until I found some more Wolfe. Wolfe takes precidence over ALL. Which is as it should be. Pfui!