Tagged: movie

FORTIER PLAYS A REVIEW DOUBLE HEADER WITH HARD CASE CRIME!

  • News
  • August 25, 2011

ALL PULP REVIEWS-Reviews by Ron Fortier

GETTING OFF
By Lawrence Block
(Writing as Jill Emerson)
Hard Case Crime
335 pages
Release Date 20 Sept 2011

One of the classic traits of a noire crime story is the protagonist being an unsympathetic character. The history of American literature took a sharp left turn when this new genre came into its own, evolving from the hardcore crime pulps of the 1930s. Till then, the majority of books generally portrayed the central figures as worthy of the readers’ admiration when the behaved in true heroic style, or sympathetic when they did not. But either way, one was able to identify with the characters.

Noire changed all that and GETTING OFF is a truly fitting example of the genre as the lead character is a female sociopath without a conscience. Early in the tale we learn that Kit Tolliver was sexually abused by her father from a very young age. But whether that abuse caused her unrelenting psychosis is not argued in the slightest, as her personal response to it is to coldly murder total strangers. Block does make it clear that Kit is in some bizarre mentally deranged way killing her father over and over again with each new man she sleeps with. What he does not do his judge her for it and therein lies the perspective that is truly unsettling.

At times the book’s heavy handedness slips into black comedy territory and the prevailing humor is twisted in its perversity. Along Kit’s journey of life, and death-dealing, she logically encounters partners who are just as sick as she is. In those scenes it is all too easy to start rooting for her as if she is somehow more worthy of survival then the other monsters she has crossed paths with. The last noire thriller to have bothered me this much was Jim Thompson’s classic THE KILLER INSIDE ME. And like that book, this one is not for the faint of heart.

In the end, GETTING OFF is a cautionary tale about the sexual mores of our times and the dangerous waters singles, and cheaters, swim in. Let them read GETTING OFF and I guarantee you they will think twice about their next plunge into those dark depths where the toothy sharks prowl.

QUARRY’S EX
By Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crime
211 pages

Available 20 Sept.2011

Review by Ron Fortier

Max Allan Collins started writing his Quarry books back in 1976 with The Broker. It was the first time we were introduced to the Vietnam vet turned paid assassin. In that tale, we learned how Quarry, not his real name of course, came home to find his wife in bed with another man. He murders the guy by dropping a car on him and then, because of his service record as a war hero, is acquitted by jury. Shortly thereafter he is recruited by a man known only as the Broker to become a professional killer.

In the books that have appeared since that stellar debut, that opening scenario has often been retold many times to bring the new readers up to speed. Recently, since becoming affiliated with Hard Case Crime, Collins has begun filling in specific details of Quarry’s life, each more compelling than the last. In this particular book, we are told what happened to Quarry’s ex-wife after they divorced and parted. But Quarry’s personal life is, as always case, only the subplot of the story.

Quarry has come to a small Arizona town where a movie studio is shooting an action B movie. When he discovers that the director of the film is the target of a hit, Quarry approaches the man and offers his own lethal services to both eliminate the threat and discover who put out the contract in the first place. It is this neat little twist combination of mystery and crime thriller that makes this series so original and fun. Quarry is no knight-in-shining armor private eye out to save the world. He’s a killer who makes a good living taking out other killers.

Once the first part of his contract has been efficiently resolved, Quarry is a master of death-dealing, he then becomes a detective chasing down the person who put out the contract on the moviemaker. As always, there are plenty of juicy suspects from the mob boss who is financing the project to the director’s wife who inherits all if he dies. The problem is the woman is Quarry’s ex-wife. The second he lays eyes on her, old familiar feelings he thought long dead begin to resurface, complicating an already precarious situation.

Paying homage to the potboilers of the 40s and 50s, Collins laces his tale with the most outrageous sexual encounters; all done with a sly, sharp wit that is ingratiating. At the same time he balances that adult humor with explosive violence that is as mesmerizing as it is ugly. His prose falls into place with the deft touch of a contemporary poet, each line awakening a new possibility in how we see the world. Reading Quarry is an education in human psychology taught from the barrel of a silenced automatic.

(Postscript – This review was written and posted last year when the book was first published by Dorchester Press. Shortly thereafter Hard Case Crime parted company with that firm and this new edition is now being released by their new British publisher, Titan Books.)

GOING BEHIND THE VEIL WITH SEAN ELLIS

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  • August 25, 2011

BEHIND THE VEIL by Joshua Pantalleresco





Sean Ellis is the talented author of multiple novels, including Heaven’s Shroud and The Chessmen series.  He is also the creator of his own New Pulp character, Dodge Dalton, which has currently two books out in his series.  Dodge Dalton In The Shadow of Falcons Wings and Dodge Dalton and the Outpost of Fate are as high adventure as they sound and after talking to Sean, Dodge’s origins come Ellis’ own sense of adventure .

Sean admits, “When I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark as a kid, I fell in love with adventure stories, and I really became fascinated with the pre-World War II time period. It was a turning point for the way we saw the world in terms of exploration and technology.　 The world of the 1930’s was still pretty big and there were a lot of unexplored places.　 If you wanted to find a lost city or something like that, you couldn’t just jump on Google Earth and do satellite reconnaissance and then fly directly there in a helicopter.

That fascination for the time period, and the fact that I was making a serious bid to write for the (now mostly defunct) Indiana Jones novel series, led me to the pulps, and particularly Doc Savage.　 I had a passing familiarity with pulp fiction, but once I started doing some research, I realized that there was a lot of potential for a new pulp renaissance, not just in terms of content, but in the way books are published.　

I had the idea to launch a series where several authors would be working simultaneously to produce titles for a single series—much like Charles Ardai did with the Gabriel Hunt series a few years later—and so I enlisted some friends to help me draw up the characters and brainstorm some plots.　 My original dream didn’t quite happen as planned, but the process got the ball rolling creatively.

The concept that came out of that mix was a passing of the torch story loosely based on Doc Savage.　 The pitch went something like this: An evil force is rising and the world needs its greatest hero…but he’s been missing for years.　 A young journalist tracks down the hero’s associates in an effort to find the missing hero, battling the villains every step of the way, and eventually becomes the world’s new champion.

As much as I was influenced by the Doc Savage concept, I didn’t want my hero to be larger-than-life.　 Instead of being a war-hero, surgeon, inventor, etc. with unlimited resources, he would be young and inexperienced, but intelligent and resourceful enough to outwit the villains and earn the respect of the old champion’s team of seasoned veteran adventurers.”

The desire to be an adventurer and a writer perhaps is the biggest connection between Ellis and Dalton.

“One of my favorite tropes has always been the writer as protagonist.　 I like the idea of the writer trying to imitate his literary creations, probably because my childhood dream was to be a writer/adventure hero.

In the story, Dodge is a sportswriter for a New York newspaper, who get tapped to ghostwrite stories about a war hero named　Captain Falcon, as told by one of Falcon’s purported associates, “Hurricane” Hurley.　 Dodge thinks that stories are fiction, or at the very least exaggerated from a factual account, so he writes them that way, and they become a runaway success.　 The idea of becoming an adventurer is that last thing on Dodge’s mind…at least until the bad guys show up, demanding to square off with Captain Falcon.

I suppose in that respect, I’m quite a bit different than Dodge. One of my earliest sources of inspiration as a writer was Clive Cussler.　 I still remember reading the bio in one of his early novels; it talked about how he spent his free time searching for shipwrecks and lost mines, just like his hero Dirk Pitt. When I read that, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.　 And while I haven’t found any lost cities, I have managed to have a few adventures along the way, and I’d like to think some of that comes through in my novels.”

While Sean didn’t divulge any details of his own adventures, his experiences definitely help color his action scenes.
“There are some scenes in the first Dodge Dalton novel where Dodge is underwater and trying to get back to the surface; when I write that, I try to tap in on my own memories of making some deep free dives and thinking: ‘Why is it taking so long to get to the surface? I really need to breathe…starting to panic a little.’ I like to get a little of that adrenaline rush onto the page. You don’t really get that from watching a movie, where the hero–Bond or Indy–can calmly react to whatever life-threatening situation comes along.”

Both books are available on amazon.com. 

Surveying Keanu Reeves More Interesting Performances

  • News
  • August 23, 2011

Keanu Reaves is no stranger to the crime genre!  Films like Point Break and Street Kings come to mind, but we think he got his start officially in the TV crime drama, Night Heat.  In Henry’s Crime, which is out on Blu-ray and DVD today, Reeves stars as Henry Torne, a wrongly accused man who winds up behind bars for a bank robbery he didn’t commit.  After befriending a charismatic lifer (James Caan) in prison, Henry finds his purpose — having done the time, he decides he may as well do the crime.  But his outlandish plan to rob the very same bank spins wildly out of control, as he finds himself performing in a stage play and falling in love with the production’s seductive leading lady (Vera Farmiga).

To celebrate the release of Henry’s Crime, our pals at ThinkJam put together a list of our favorite law-breaking and abiding Keanu films. We know they skipped the obvious like Bill & Ted and The Matrix Trilogy but did they miss anything?

Speed – 1994

It all started with, “There’s a bomb on the bus!” This one really put Keanu Reeves on the blockbuster map. With its non-stop high action sequences, and bombs on the bus, train, Sandra Bullock, this movie is an action flick-junkie dream.

Street Kings – 2008

In this fast-paced action-crime film, Keanu portrays a disillusioned LAPD detective haunted by the death of his wife.  We love it when he breaks rules and butts heads.

Chain Reaction – 1996

How progressive.  This film about alternative energy delves deep into a sociopolitical dialogue that involves the FBI, CIA and basically Big Brother chasing our beloved scientists down!

Point Break – 1991                

Classic.  This box office success melded surfing with bank robbery, making it by far one of Keanu’s most bodacious films to date.  And orphan surfer girl Lori Petty just sweetens the deal.

Henry’s Crime – 2010

Working as a toll collector, Henry gets swept up in a crime he didn’t mean to commit.  Now that he’s done the time, he had a lot of time to think about reaping the rewards if he had

The Watcher – 2000

Mr. Reeves plays David aka your worst nightmare if you’re a woman.  Talk about a misleading first date.  Once you feel like you can trust a man, he’s meticulous about the way he kills you.

Constantine – 2005

Supernaturally tubular Keanu solves mythical crimes in this wild and epic film that plunges viewers into the afterlife and spiritual worlds beyond this realm.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Enough with the Superhero Movies?

Not long ago, I was chatting with a movie guy (yes, that was me, riding shotgun in the gold Ferrari, tooling down Rodeo Drive, heading for Brad and Angie’s…) and he said that the summer of ’11 could be make-it-or-break-it time for superhero flicks.

As you know by now, there have been four – count ‘em four – such entertainments released in the past several months, raising the question: Have we had enough?

Hard to say. Three of the four films were solid profit-makers and the last will probably limp into the black eventually, if it hasn’t already. So the chair-fillers aren’t reacting against super-doers, but if you squint, you might be able to detect signs that the honeymoon is over. A hundred and ten minutes of a dude in a funny suit doing grandiose stunts and bashing other dudes, also in funny suits, is no longer box-office surety. The novelty value is gone.

Remember when kung fu flicks first hit the U.S.? (Okay, most of you don’t because that happened before you were born, but indulge me.) For some of us, including me and my post-toddler son, any martial arts movie was the right martial arts movie and we spent a lot of afternoons in sticky-floored theaters watching them. The new approach to action-melodrama, the exotic casts, and – oh yeah! – the nifty fight-acrobatics (and whatever amusement could be gotten from bad dubbing) were enough to engross us, regardless of these Asian imports’ other merits or demerits. Then along came Bruce Lee and Enter the Dragon and then Jackie Chan and…

And, eventually, kung fu became just another genre, like westerns and war and romance and family comedies and raunchy comedies… Another genre. I still watch and enjoy martial arts films, particularly those with acrobatics, particularly acrobatics as practiced by performers from Thailand, and you can enjoy them, too, because your local Blockbuster has a goodly selection for rent and you don’t have to troll too far on your cable TV hookup to find one or two or…

Another genre, yes, but one that comes in a lot of sizes and shapes and languages and one you might patronize because of the virtues of a particular movie, not because of that movie’s label.

Superhero movies are, I shyly contend, undergoing a similar evolution. Already, perhaps, some of you don’t go to see a Marvel flick, you go to see Robert Downey, Jr., doing his Iron Man, and it’s well worth the trip. The acting is improving, the themes becoming more complex and the special effects…well, sometimes you aren’t aware of them as effects; they exist to serve the narrative, not to make us ohhh and ahhh as though we’re watching a spectacular fireworks display. It’s about story, not spectacle.

Spectacle is fine, but narrative offers other rewards, and most movies are narratives. The best special effect I’ve seen all summer happened early in Captain America, when somehow the cinematic wizards grafted Chris Evans’s head onto someone else’s body – seamlessly, perfectly realizing a plot element. No explosions, no shattered planets, just splendid storytelling.

Recommended Reading: The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir by Michael Uslan.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

REVIEW: Griff the Invisible

REVIEW: Griff the Invisible

Where do you draw the line between fantasy and reality? Can that line be the same for everyone, or can it be redefined from person to person? Those questions are addressed in the charming and quirky Griff the Invisible, opening nationwide this Friday.

Griff lives in a fantasy world, one with electronic surveillance and a red hot line phone connecting the costumed Griff with the commissioner of police. He is an athletic threat to the scum and villainy that prowl the streets of an unidentified British city. The real Griff literally blends into the scenery as shown early on by the writer/director Leon Ford. He works in a nondescript job, trying to keep to himself but becomes the butt of jokes from office bully Tim.

His only friend appears to be his older brother Tony, who has protected his brother and intimations are made that Griff has suffered in the recent past, forcing his sibling to relocate his life in order to keep an eye on him. Tony, though, has met Melody and is besotted despite her own shy and quiet ways. She lives in her own fantasy world, certain she can find the exact point where her molecular structure can line up with that of a wall allowing her to pass right through the seemingly solid barrier. While Griff has trouble interacting with the exterior world, Melody functions better but is clumsy and apt to trip over her own feet with amazing regularity.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVZdQE93Jkw[/youtube]

When Griff and Melody meet, it is also the meeting of two complementary fantasy worlds, igniting a truly unique love story. (more…)

Mickey Rooney Talks The Fox and the Hound

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  • August 13, 2011

In the mid-1920’s, an up-and-coming young animator had a brief encounter with an up-and-coming child star.  Although they only met in passing, Mickey Rooney remembers Walt Disney as “a very charming man.”  More than 50 years later, in 1981, Rooney would find himself starring in one of Walt Disney Studio’s most beloved animated films, The Fox and the Hound.  Rooney voiced the character of Tod, an orphaned fox cub who forms an unlikely friendship with Copper, a coonhound voiced by Kurt Russell.   The film also stars Pearl Bailey, Pat Buttram and Jack Albertson.  The Fox and the Hound and its sequel The Fox and the Hound 2 will be released in a 30th Anniversary 2-Movie Collection on August 9, 2011.

Although he is quick to deny it, Mickey Rooney is the definition of a Hollywood legend.  With a career that spans nine decades, he has defied the odds in an industry that often typecasts performers.  He got his start crashing his parents’ vaudeville act while still a toddler and, just a few years later, he became a silent film sensation; starring in the popular “Mickey McGuire” shorts.  In the 1930’s Rooney made a successful transition to sound films, headlining in the long-running “Andy Hardy” series and teaming with his friend Judy Garland in such classic musicals as Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy.  Rooney was awarded a special Juvenile Oscar at the 1939 Academy Awards ceremony and the next year was nominated in the competitive Best Actor category for Babes in Arms, the first of four Oscar nominations.   He also won an honorary Academy Award in 1983 in recognition of 50 years of memorable film performances.  Having also won an Emmy and two Golden Globes by that time, many actors would be content to rest on such precious laurels but Mickey Rooney, now 90, continues to work on stage, screen and television and recently wrapped a cameo role in the highly anticipated Walt Disney Pictures Holiday 2011 release, The Muppets. (more…)

“Paul” Bonus Clip: The Musical That Wasn’t

“Paul” Bonus Clip: The Musical That Wasn’t

  • News
  • August 9, 2011

[[[Paul]]] was an underrated humorous movie aimed at us. Sadly it performed poorly at the box office this spring and you’ve probably forgotten all about it.

Today, the movie from Simon Pegg came out on disc, available in a combo pack complete with Blu-ray, DVD, and digital copy. The best part may be that it has the Unrated version as well as the Theatrical version. We’re eagerly awaiting to see what was missing.

Universal did send us this Bonus Clip  with film stars Bill Hader (Haggard), Joe Lo Truglio (O’Reilly) and Kristen Wiig (Ruth Buggs) deciding to come up with their own musical version of Paul on the set in this behind-the-scenes clip from the “Paul the Musical”. The clip is also included on the DVD so you can cherish it forever.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvJT2K8tK_g[/youtube]

Paul reunites Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) as two sci-fi geeks on a pilgrimage to America’s UFO heartland, where they accidentally encounter an alien who sends them on an insane road trip that alters their universe forever. Written by Pegg and Frost, Paul boasts a star-studded cast that features Seth Rogen (The Green Hornet, Knocked Up) as the voice of Paul, Sigourney Weaver (Avatar), Jason Bateman (Hancock), Kristen Wiig (Date Night, Knocked Up), Jane Lynch (“Glee”), Bill Hader (Pineapple Express), Joe Lo Truglio (Role Models), Jeffrey Tambor (“Arrested Development”) and Blythe Danner (Little Fockers). Directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad), Paul comes loaded with in-depth, behind-the-scenes features, bloopers, filmmaker and cast commentary and more, to take viewers on a comical journey behind the making of this critically hailed film. (more…)

Lucasfilm and Sony Partner to Release Alembic 1.0 Software

  • News
  • August 9, 2011

We love cool, new technology, as much as the next guy. But when the technology comes from Lucasfilm, where so much movie magic has been conjured up since 1977, it caught our attention. This press release just arrived:

VANCOUVER, B.C. – August 9, 2011 – Alembic 1.0, the open source project jointly developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks and Lucasfilm Ltd. was released to the public today, it was announced at ACM SIGGRAPH conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Alembic is the computer graphics interchange format developed by the two entertainment giants last year and focused on efficiently storing and sharing animation and visual effects scenes across multiple software applications. It was designed to handle massive animation data sets often required in high-end visual effects and animation, which are routinely developed and produced by companies such as Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm Animation Ltd and Sony Pictures Imageworks. The studios each saw the need for a tool like Alembic, something that would fit within existing pipelines and allow for customization at the facility level without impeding the ability to share work.

In addition to the features announced at last year’s SIGGRAPH, Alembic 1.0 includes automatic data de-duplication. The software automatically recognizes repeated shapes in complicated geometry and only writes a single instance to disk. This makes Alembic 1.0 use dramatically less disk space than promised without requiring any extra steps on the part of the user and can improve both write and read performance as well. In the case of hero deforming humanoid characters, including hair, shot caches have been reduced by more than 70%.  For complex, deeply hierarchical and mostly rigid assets like the Transformers characters, tests have shown cache reduction in the order of 98%.

The code base for Alembic is available for download on the project’s Google Code site and more information can be found online at: http://www.alembic.io

Joint development of Alembic was first announced at last year’s Siggraph by Lucasfilm’s visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic and Sony Pictures Imageworks. The companies joined forces when it became apparent that they were independently developing software designed to solve a problem universally faced by the visual effects and animation production community: how to easily share complex animated scenes across a variety of disciplines and facilities regardless of what software was being used.

Alembic includes tools that allow collaboration while working with a generic, extensible, data representation scheme. In essence, it distills complex and often proprietary, animated scenes into application-independent files with baked geometric results. These baked results can be fully re-importable across the range of supporting software.

“Alembic addresses a fundamental issue in a world where assets are shared across many companies. Alembic’s production-ready ability to seamlessly translate shapes across a wide variety of applications saves time and resources,” said Rob Bredow, CTO of Sony Pictures Imageworks. “By releasing Alembic as an Open Source project, users have the opportunity to improve the software based on their needs and experience. We’re really starting to feel the positive effects of Open Source, as a community of visual effects and animation professionals come together to solve problems more effectively today than ever before.” (more…)

This Time The APES Get It Right

The “experts” said it wouldn’t work, but RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES still made big box office. ROPTA Director, Rupert Wyatt, explains how he was challenged with making this APES unlike what had come before. Plus a hot new Image comic gets picked for a movie deal.

The POINT RADIO 24/7 Feed is coming back – 8am THIS Wednesday (Aug 10th). You can listen FREE on any computer or mobile device at The Point Radio – and please check us out on Facebook right here & toss us a “like”.

Fortier takes on CONAN THE BARBARIAN and Survives!!!

  • News
  • August 3, 2011
ALL PULP REVIEWS-Book Reviews by Ron Fortier

CONAN THE BARBARIAN

By Michael Stackpole

Berkeley Boulevard

Movie Tie-In

292 pages

It appears you just can’t keep a good barbarian down.  Conan the Barbarian is a hero and well known iconic figure in American fantasy. He was created by writer Robert E.Howard in 1932 via a series of fantasy stories sold to Weird Tales Magazine.  Howard was born and raised in Texas and spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains.  As a boy he dreamed of becoming a writer of adventure fiction but was not successful until the age of twenty-three.

Howard’s Conan is a character whose literary imprint has been compared to such fiction greats as Tarzan, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond.  With Conan, Howard created the genre known as sword and sorcery, inspiring a legion of imitators and giving him an influence in the fantasy field rivaled only by J.R.R. Tolkein.  On the eve of publishing his first novel, he committed suicide at the age of thirty. That he remains a highly read author, with his best works continuously reprinted speaks volumes for his place in the ranks of American masters.

As for Conan, he has appeared in hundreds of licensed paperbacks, Marvel comics, films, television programs, video games, roleplaying games, and even a board game.  In 1982 he came to big screen portrayed by bodybuilding champion turned actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger who recreated the role in the sequel several years later.  Producer John Milius had planned a trilogy, but the proposed third film, Conan the Conqueror was never produced.  Now, almost three decades later, the famous Cimmerian warrior from the mythological Hyborian age once again comes to the silver screen in a brand new production from Millenium Films, Lionsgate, and Paradox Entertainment.  And to promote what they hope will be a huge summer blockbuster, their marketing department commissioned a novelization of the screenplay by Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Sean Hood.  The writer given the job was Michael Stackpole.

Many book lovers detest such novelizations believing them to be mere carbon copy retellings form the screenplays with nothing new to offer readers who plan on seeing the movie. In many cases, that is exactly all they get. On the other hand, when such a task is given to a true fan of the material, then what results is something much deeper and more complete than the screen treatment.  Stackpole is a gifted professional who clearly knows Conan and his original exploits as chronicled by Howard.  He not only tells the story laid out by the screenplay, but at the same time enriches it scene upon scene with authentic references to the Conan canon which totally elevates the narrative beyond being a mere reflection of the movie.

Born on a battlefield, young Conan grows up amongst the mountain people of Cimmeria and is taught to be a warrior from the day he can hold and wield a sword.  But as he matures, his father relates how his unique birth is regarded by seers as a powerful portent of the fate that awaits Conan. Not only will he be a great fighter amongst his people, but there are signs that he will one day be known throughout the civilized nations as mighty hero of unrivaled strength and daring.

As always, we have to assume that there will be people picking up this book who have absolutely no idea of who Conan is or Robert E.Howard, but have seen the trailers for the movie and are curious about it. For them, this is as good an introduction to Conan as any other that has come along in the past thirty years.  The book is fun and does its job well; it makes you want to go see the film.  So please, save me the aisle seat.

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