Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Why the Classics still matter: A Tale of Two (Gotham) Cities...

SPOLIER ALERT: This post contains a MASSIVE spoiler for The Dark Knight Rises. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, go see it and come back. I’ll wait.
“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”  This is the quote from A Tale of Two Cities that Jim Gordon reads as a eulogy to the (seemingly) dead Bruce Wayne, who appeared to have died in the nuclear fireball he had just saved Gotham from. The inclusion of this quote had more meaning than just its appropriateness. From early on in the planning stages for the follow-up to The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan stated that Charles Dickens’ classic tale was a major inspiration for the plot of the movie. If you haven’t read the book, here are some of the highlights: A virtuous member of the aristocracy, a character who finds redemption after an ill-spent life, a violent revolution against the upper class, a prison storming, etc. Even the major themes of the book (social justice, the symbolism of water as a metaphor for the destructive and uncontrolled anger of the revolutionaries), were obvious influences on the movie.
Much has been made of Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and I could probably add little to it. I can only give my personal observations. When I first saw the trailer for Batman Begins, I thought “They’re making another Batman movie? And now he’s a ninja? This looks dumb.” This, of course, was on the heels of Batman and Robin, a movie MST3K’s Mike Nelson described as “not the worst movie ever, but in fact the worst thing ever. The single worst item we as a civilization have ever labored to produce”. Needless to say, my first impressions were very wrong. Nolan’s trilogy is a masterpiece, and he will be remembered in the same breath as Spielberg, Scorsese, and Hitchcock.
So what’s my point in all this? (You’re dangerously assuming I have one). Just this: The Dark Knight Rises is proof alone why the classics still matter, why they should not only be taught by teachers but paid attention to by students.
And I know that’s hard.
In 9th grade we read Dickens’s Great Expectations. My impressions at the time were that there was a really good 150 page story buried somewhere in that 400 pages of impenetrably dense prose, but too many of us were turned off to the book by the fact it was so damn hard to read. And I while I didn’t think anything of it at the time, I’m not sure any other book had a greater impact on my writing style, not so much in what to emulate but in the pitfalls of making your writing inaccessible to your readers. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve made a long and lucrative career out of making myself sound smarter than I really am thanks to a wide and advanced vocabulary, but my wife took a hatchet to all those “big words” when she was editing the updated draft of my book. As much as I chaffed at it, feeling like an artist having various shades of paint taken away, I’m glad she did. It is not so much the idea being presented as how it is presented. And if those ideas aren’t accessible, it doesn’t matter how good they are.
Any idea, any piece of art or entertainment can be great. The Dark Knight is possibly one of the best crime dramas ever, certainly the best one since The Godfather, yet boiled down to its bare essentials, it’s about a man who dresses up as a flying rodent beating up a clown. Let that thought rattle around in your brain for a minute.
Reading the liner notes for The Dark Knight Rises musical score, I was struck by a story Nolan related. When he was first starting work on Batman Begins, he fretted about the music. Danny Elfman’s Batman theme was classic, but it didn’t fit the direction he wanted to take. He wanted something heroic yet original…but composer Hans Zimmer (a musical genius who I believe is our generation’s answer to Bach or Mozart) saw a different approach. He saw not a comic book hero but a damaged man whose life was shaped by pain and loss. “Why make it heroic? Why not play the tragedy and nobility of the tale, like an Elgar concerto?” Yep, there’s that classical stuff again, working its way into our modern day movies.   
So there you have it. What’s old is new again. Parents and teachers, when your kids or students ask why they have to read this or listen to that, tell them, “Because maybe, just maybe, someday you’ll be the next Dickens or Elgar. Or the next Christopher Nolan.”
-Mike, out.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Tom Hardy as John Clark in WITHOUT REMORSE? YES PLEASE.

Because nothing would make the hyperbaric chamber interrogation of the drug dealer more badass than Clark glowering at him, "Your punishment must be more severe!"

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/21/is-tom-hardy-without-remorse

I for one am fairly excited about the reboot of the Jack Ryan movies, especially with Tom Clancy apparently being involved in writing the scripts. I've always been a huge fan of the Jack Ryan books (Executive Orders might be my favorite book of all, and my brother and I re-read those books to the point where most of them fell apart). I wish Alec Baldwin had stayed on as Ryan, he seemed like a perfect fit for the role, embodying Ryan's idealism without diminishing his ability to get his hands dirty when the job required it. For my money, The Hunt For Red October might be the best book-to-movie adaptation ever. The movie series just kind of sputtered out after that. Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger were alright, as far as that goes, but as much as I like Harrison Ford he was too old for the part. Sum of All Fears was a serviceable movie, but a hot mess as far as a book adaptation goes. Part of that was screwing with the timeline so bad. It sounds like Paramount's done a smart thing by going back and telling an original story with a young Jack Ryan (although Clancy's own attempt at that in RED RABBIT was kind of underwhelming). WITHOUT REMORSE was originally set during the Vietnam era, but it wouldn't be hard to update the story to modern times.
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So what makes a good book-to-movie adaptation? I think casting might be the key.The actors have to fit the roles well, probably more than anything else. Liberties can be taken with the story so long as they fit the spirit of the story. I think the climax in Red October looks better on screen the way they filmed it as opposed to the way it was in the book. I distinctly remember a few scenes added into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 that weren't in the book that I really liked, I felt like they added something to the story. Some movies fail because they try to be too faithful to the source material.

Hopefully someday there will be a movie of THE EIGHTH DAY for me to nitpick at :)

-Mike, out.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Gentlemen, Behold!

Welcome to my blog! With the pleasantries out of the way, it's now time for good news/bad news.

Well, the good news is I got the novel I wrote back in high school published a few years ago.

The bad news is it's selling like ice water at an Eskimo convention.

I have it on good authority that an author blog is crucial nowadays for building an audience. I am somewhat puzzled by this, being an avid reader and never actually visited one, but I'll bite.

My hope, though, is to accomplish much more with this blog than just build an audience and sell books (though that would also be nice). I think of how much reading and writing have enriched my life, yet I know neither activity is terribly popular among teen and pre-teen males (I'm tempted to add "these days" but the truth is that's how it was back when I was young too).

It's easy to dismiss entertainment like books (and to a greater extent the visual arts like movies, TV shows, video games, etc) as idle diversion. Yet these things can inspire us, even influence the course of our entire lives, regardless of their artistic merit. I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of director Tony Scott, for it was his magnum opus that shaped the course of my whole life:



When I was all of about 5 years old, my parents mistakenly thought I was asleep as they popped this primo piece of 80's cheese into the VHS player, and when they finished the movie they were astonished to look behind them to see their young son standing totally spellbound by what he had just seen. From then on I wanted to be Maverick, up until age 12 when I rode my first roller coaster and decided "fighter pilot" might not be the best occupation for me. None the less, let's look how I stacked up next to Maverick:



All silliness aside, books and movies do inspire us, to do great things and go on fantastic adventures. At age 14, I was in my bedroom reading about ocean explorer Dr. Robert Ballard's expeditions to find lost ships like the Titanic, the German battleship Bismark or the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. At age 24, I was on a research vessel a hundred miles off the coast of Virgina on an expedition to find lost Nazi submarines and maybe even a ship from Sir Frances Drake's 16th century fleet. Never would have happened if my parents hadn't gotten me hooked on reading at a young age.

So I hope this blog becomes a resource for anyone who's into books that appeal to young guys, or at least equal appeal to boys and girls (I don't see a lot of guys hanging out in the "paranomal romance" shelves of the YA section at Barnes and Noble). Don't get me wrong, I think it's great so many girls are into reading, I just think it's equally important to get boys into it too. 

Contributions are welcome! If you're another YA author and want a book reviewed, send it my way! If a book inspired you to do something cool, tell me about it! And of course, while you're at it, check out my book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Eighth-Day-ebook/dp/B004URS0C4/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1345579541&sr=8-13&keywords=The+Eighth+Day#_ 

- Mike, out.