Wolverine: Keegan's take on a movie that's being bashed

The reviews of Wolverine are so bad, they're intriguing. In fact, I found them irresistible. How in the hell could a bunch of extremely talented people (including Stan Lee and Hugh Jackman) get it so incredibly wrong?

So I went along to the 2:00pm session yesterday at the Megaplex.

Keegan's verdict? For godsakes stop reading the reviews, go and see the bloody movie, and you will discover several things.

The CG effects are nowhere near as poor as the critics are blathering on about. A couple of the shots look a little bit "fake" by the standards of 2009, but in 1999, the same shots would have blown your brains out. (Get real here: a couple of less-than-perfect CGI shots do not make unmitigated crap out of an entire movie. )

There are two, maybe three, genuinely wobbly bits in the plotting. (Get real, again: it's a comic book. Turn a blind eye to the wobbly bits and concentrate on the important element: Hugh Jackman is the sexiest thing on two legs.) Unless you are terminally heterosexual, and male, or a terminally hetero female in lust for a pixie like Elijah Wood, there is no way in any world that you could call the movie "dull" or "dry." In fact, you may need a bib, because you'll spend just under two hours in a full-on drool.

The plot is NOT "overly complex," and my guess is that the critics who employed this old chestnut as a reason to smack Wolverine with a D or an F spent one half of the time texting and the other half running out to the bathroom and/or parking lot for a smoke. The plot is not complex at all, so long as you're wide awake. The same bozo-grade critics levelled the identical lame criticism at the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Guys, let me give you a tip: drink less at the press meeting before you go to the theater, and stop blaming the movie after you anaesthetised yourself on several gallons of free champagne. I hope you had the hangovers you damned-well deserve.

And no, I am NOT blind to the fact that a couple of the CG shots are less than staggering by current standards; and the plot has a hole you could drive a Mack truck through. However, Hugh Jackman acted his a$$ off, and lived in the gym while making this opus. The results are somewhat spectacular. And in Keegan's not so humble opinion (which comes to you complete with fresh bib), he's more than enough to make up for the shortcomings of the rest of the movie. And I know, I'm biased. I paid for the movie ticket (while critics get theirs free!) so I'm allowed a degree of bias. I bought the bias option with my ten bucks.

Now, let me give you the POSITIVES that 1001 critics are falling over themselves to utterly ignore ... and it beats hell out of me why they do this:

• Fully 95% of the CG work is just fine.
• A solid cast gives sterling performances.
• The dialog is, on the whole, realistic and believable.
• The film offers unexpected, and welcome, humor.
• The cinematography is stunning, with marvelous wilderness locations.
• The sets are extremely atmospheric and evocative.
• It's an ACTION movie, hence the ACTION sequences, and there are plenty ... would you go to the ballet and then call it rubbish because of all the dancing?!
• The SOUND balance is crystal clear, sharp and admirable. I never missed a word.
• The FOLEY work is spot-on. Most of the bozo-brigade critics who're currently rubbishing this movie wouldn't even know what the word "foley" means.
• The film's visual editing is crisp and clear. There is NEVER any ambiguity in the denouement, which is more than can be said for numerous movies which have been lauded by the same critics.
• The film score, or soundtrack music, is extremely good...
• ... and did I mention that Hugh Jackman is the sexiest thing on two legs?

So ends Keegan's verdict. I'm giving the movie 4 out of 5 stars, because you certainly can drive a tank through the most major hole in the plot. For myself, I don't actually give that much of a "stuff" about a couple of off-kilter CG shots; and the remainder of the production is of a very high standard.

So ... why all the rotten reviews?

There are many reasons, I'm sure. Far too many action movies have jaded the critics, since the early 1980s, when Arnie and Sly got into overdrive. Then again, is it vaguely possible that US film critics harbor a deep-seated, possibly even unconscious resentment about the fact that Hugh Jackman is an Aussie, born and bred? More than a decade of massive special effects movies have made some people so "CG happy" that when a shot or two fall short of the expected standard, they bin the entire movie ... which would be like dumping the whole live symphony orchestra performance in the bin because a few individual musicians hit blue notes here and there. I do believe that certain critics have just had enough, more than enough, of these big action movies, and would much rather be watching something else (which is fair enough; I just wish they'd bugger off and review something else, and leave someone who still enjoys actioners to cover them) ... and lastly, I wonder how many of these critics watched the movie with their partner going consistently gaga over Jackman for two hours in the seat beside them, and growled at the screen, "I'll get you for this, you Aussie bastard, if it's the last thing I do!" The pen being mightier than the claw in our own world, they unsheathed their own ballpoint weapon and did their worst -- secure in the knowledge that professional motion picture folk never, never ever respond to critics, no matter what stupidity is printed. Such is the etiquette of the trade. If you're a movie critic, you have an official license to literally babble through your hat and say what you like. And my gods, they do.

Lastly, there's also safety in numbers. When everyone else is calling a certain movie crap, you run the risk of not being "one of us," if you tell the truth and say you enjoyed the hell out of it, and could clearly see the 85% of the movie that was brilliant -- as well as the faults!

Well Keegan -- being Keegan -- is giving Wolverine four out of five stars, and is going to go see it again next week.

And no, I don't like movie critics.

To Hugh Jackman, if anyone significant sees this and forwards it: Cheers, mate. You did good.

Ciao for now,

MK

Updates from Keegan Country

The plot continues to thicken, as THE SWORDSMAN and DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT appear in different editions, at Amazon, from Lulu.com, without me signing anything, paying anything, agreeing to anything. O...kay.

Suffice to say, I have zip, zero, nada, nil as per any idea of what goes on; but I have a sneaky feeling I might just know. And alas, it ain't good news.

Lulu is out there touting for business, right? They're actively pushing books -- mine, among those of numerous other writers, I could guess. They're doing it for nothing?? This can only mean that they, too, are feeling the recession biting, and are actively out there, selling books -- which is something they never did before.

Times are getting tougher, guys.

And audiences are getting harder to please: good gods, have you seen the WOLVERINE reviews?!!! I don't think I've ever seen a movie pounded so hard. Now, I haven't seen the movie -- and might not get the chance to, before the DVD comes out, but I really don't believe any company could spend a couple of years and about fifty million dollars on a project, and have it be as bad as the critics are saying...

• Fans of the many comic books in which Wolverine has featured will rue what has become of their favourite characters.
• Falling somewhere between noble failure and modest success, 'Wolverine' is ultimately a generic Summer film actioneer that will quickly be forgotten
• If, in real time, the dull X-Men Origins prequel actually were the first X-Men film produced, it might have been the last.
• The amount of muscle on display is the film's most remarkable aspect, unless you count how unforgivably dull it is.
• ...A story line that isn't emotionally involving and action sequences that for the most part aren't that exciting, presented within a story that's full of potholes.
• X-Men Origins is really a series of action sequences, the usual mix of bangs, chases and fights, held together by a plot so predictable that you get no points for guessing right.
• It's dull, bone-crushing, special-effects stuff, of interest only to hardcore fans who've probably read it all in Marvel comics.
• Each CGI set piece erases distance, space, weight, gravity and wit. It’s empty, soulless action -- visual noise.
• Everything that happens seems to play out as if following a checklist. It’s Paint by Numbers: The Movie.

Eep. Could it really be that bad? Could it really be that hard to sit in the dark, eating, for two hours, while watching Hugh Jackman smoldering all over the screen and rippling his abs? Maybe these reviewers are allergic to muscles.

Ciao for now,
MK

Mel at the Movies: talking dollars and sense

What a nice outcome at the Oscars! A sorta-kinda gay movie right there in the spotlight ... the award for Best Actor bestowed upon a performer in a gay role -- and richly deserved. Is the cinema-going public changing? Is there a shift in the mindset of your average popcorn-muncher in the fourth row?

Could be. Here's an interesting quote:

Jim Carey and Ewan McGregor play love interests in the upcoming movie I Love You Philip Morris which is based upon a real life incident about a man who falls in love with his cell mate while in jail and escapes four times in order to be with his lover. Some critics worry that the film will be a problematic sell given that it is an overtly gay love story. However, they do like the film.

Several straight actors have played gay, lesbian or trans characters over the last few decades without incident, and without any problem in their careers.

For Carey, this movie makes his first foray into doing so, but McGregor is an old hand at playing gay characters. Adding into that list are Tom Hanks, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, and a much longer list. The notion that audiences may not like a movie due to a gay, lesbian or trans story line may be old thinking. While Milk has not been a blockbusting success the same way, say, The Dark Knight has been, it certainly has achieved a certain amount of commercial success, and a great deal of critical acclaim.
http://lezgetreal.com/?p=922&cpage=1

From what I've learned about Philip Morris, I have a feeling the movie might be a tad bit too explicit for the average audience -- and this would explain the reticence of distributors to be involved. It costs a ton of money to strike the prints to get a movie out on the road; exhibitors have to believe they can break even or better.

Now, sometimes it's impossible to second-guess movies. Australia was initially supposed to rival Titanic, and then it was supposed to be the world's biggest ever flop, and now -- hey, it's showing critics and audiences alike that it has enough staying power to be out there earning, long after it was supposed to be getting stamped into the surfaces of a few million DVDs. However, it's not going to magically transform itself into a boxoffice success, though it might break even -- in which case, all the DVD dollars are frosting on the cake. And like The Man From Snowy River, his one will probably "go platinum" on disk.

Why? Well, because Australia cost the grand total of $130m to make, which is a fleabite these days, by comparison with the budgets of "big movies" like the Pirates of the Caribbean films. In the days of yore, it used to be that $1 in $3 of the boxoffice made its way home to the studio that put up the financing, so a movie that cost $130m to make would have to earn $390 to break even...

These days it's very, very different. To begin with, it's $1 in $5 of the boxoffice that dribbles back to the investor ... but increasingly, the studio, the distributor and even the exhibitor are all branches of the same company which, in any case, is owned by something like Gulf Western, Coca Cola, whatever.

So while various divisions of the company might be showing a loss, the parent "machine" that drives this multi-national juggernaut is sitting pretty ... and it gets better.

The DVD revenues associated with movies can, and do, outstrip their boxoffice potential. You have global boxoffice to think about; plus the network TV premier; cable TV; pay per view; the DVD release; the BlueRay release; the TV rerun(s); the Netflix subscription service; and whatever merchandizing you've been able to scare up along the way.

Any way you slice it, movies are huge business, even though box office figures the world over are far from attractive. There's a site which makes fascinating browsing: BoxOfficeMojo.com ... enter in, and prepared to be astounded.

Russel Crowe in A Good Year ... directed by Ridley Scott, himself a legend. Total boxoffice gross: just under $7.5m ... you're not reading that wrongly. Nor did I mistype it! $7,459,300.

Kathleen Turner in her absolute hay day in V.I. Warshawski -- if she can't put bums on seats, who can? $11,128,308.

Johnny Deep and Charlieze Thieron (and I wouldn't be in the slightest surprised if I don't know how to spell that!) ... same bums-on-seats remark. The Astronaut's Wife. $10, 672,566.

Let's face it: if only the top 2% of movies ever broke even, Hollywood would have collapsed by now! The truth? Boxoffice is only part of the picture, and not even a large part.

Australia is at just under $50m, and still earning at the boxoffice before they get stuck into all the rest. Hey guys ... it's not that bad, really.

Little is happening in this neck of the woods. The big news (and terms are relative!) is that I did two posts to Legends today, and here they are:

http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/chapter-nine-conclusion.html
and
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/oracle-knows.html

I haven't been able to look at Digital Kosmos for a week, and in this week I'll have to make a decision: gee, do I get five titles up on Amazon Kindle, or do I post to the photo blog. Duh. I'll get back to DK when time permits. Till them -- bear with me, guys!

Ciao for now,
MK

Blogger on the run

At last -- a few minutes to sit down and blog a little! It may be Saturday, but it's been busy in this neck of the woods. Work-wise, at least. I'd love to tell you I won the State lotto and have spent the day planning a trip to Europe, but there wouldn't be a word of truth in it.

Thanks to Aricia Gavriel for submitting Legends to one of the major online fiction directories. That was a great idea, and most kind, AG. I appreciate it. So let me give you a plug here: there have been some great posts on both of Aricia's blogs in the last week or two, including one that has me fascinated: The Thunder God commeth ... in 2011!

I had heard a rumor about a year ago that Marvel Comics was looking at (finally!) doing a movie version of The Mighty Thor, and it seems it's on -- they're casting it right now. I used to get this comic way back in the 1960s, when it was the princely sum of sixpence ... it stretched my infant imagination and no doubt helped to form it (warp it?) into the adult imagination which is behind NARC, Hellgate and so forth. So if you don't like Hellgate -- blame Stan Lee, who is at least part-way responsible!

I was also fascinated by John Barrowman and -- who? So that's Matt Smith! I confess, I never heard of Matt Smith before he was cast as the 11th Doctor. I'm trying not to say, "Goog golly, he looks awfully young to be the Doctor." I'm also trying not to say, "Good golly, Jack will eat this one alive. And come back for seconds." Anyway -- shoot over to Aricia's Album and check him out. There's another post in there, http://ariciasalbum.blogspot.com/2009/02/captain-jack-and-11-john-barrowman.html ... fascinating reading.

Little other than work is happening in my own life, and I won't drivel on here about that. I'll leave you with a couple of links, and a plea:

Come on, guys! Legends is FREE, for cripesakes. Tell your friends, get them onboard ... and for those of you who are visiting, and are wondering when the hell Soran and Faunos are going to get together, much less let it on (!) ... you need to be there now.

I did two posts to Legends today:
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/iridan-speaks.html
and
The Hand of Fate (part one)

...and the bit you've been waiting for is on.

I've also managed to get some fresh posts up to Digital Kosmos:
Strange life forms
Surf's up!
Days of steam remembered

...sorry to all concerned that I've been "down" for a few days with this project. WORK. However, I have great optimism that publishing in some form is actually beginning to bloom, and with luck I'll have more time to spend on projects in the near future.

On that note I'll leave you for now. I can't honestly say that anything is happening in the Mel-o-Sphere. The lull is actually nice; it just doesn't make for spectacular blogging.

Cheers,
MK

Not quite the perfect vacuum

Just flotsam and jetsam today: the vacuum goes on! The wait continues for any action on any front whatever, save that involving air conditioning. The split system is INSTALLED. And what's more, it WORKS. In fact, it's so bloody cold, I keep turning it off because otherwise I'll have to go put on a sweater. In summer. Woah.

Allow me to pause for one moment, pop a photo and paste it in here:

...just what you needed, right? A closeup look at the two square meters from which all of the Mel Keegan extravaganzas are launched. You were expecting a suave, sophisticated office? You were expecting, maybe, neat and tidy?! Where there's Keegan, there's usually kaos, as any reader of this blog over the last seven months or so will attest!

The ongoing vacuum makes me look beyond the norm and seek other items of interest to inject a spark into the day. This one's good -- in fact, it's utterly priceless. Apparently it's been doing the rounds in the last week or so, and I caught up with it on an Alaskan blog (I'll give you the link in a moment):

Dear World,

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible for it were replaced Tuesday night, November 4th.

Early tests of the newly-installed equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional by January 20th. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage, and we look forward to resuming full service --- and hopefully even to improving it in the years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding,
*The USA*

And here's the blog where I caught up with it: Attention: Service Has Been Restored, on the Esther Republic. That is so cool.

Another item of exceeding great coolness is this interview with Ewan MacGregor and Jim Carrey at Sundance:



Some idiot, somewhere, in a ridiculous comment on one of the news stories (LA Times??) said something about "Jim Carrey looks too old." Excuse me? Where is it written that you have to look juvenile to be attractive? You track down the place where that snippet of "wisdom" is inscribed, and I shall personally go around there with a bucket of industrial grade ammonia and erase it.

Incidentally, I Love You, Phillip Morris is being downloaded by the torrent already. No, I don't have a copy, but I've no doubt some of you do! You can see the trailer on YouTube, and a clip. Looks like a great time was had by all while they were making it, and I expect to enjoy the movie muchly.

What is massively refreshing is that neither McGregor nor Carrey is carping and whining about how hard it was to smooch another guy for the movie -- unlike both numerous other actors who couldn't wait to do just that. Far from it: both Ewan and Jim have (!) only good things to say about doing the romantic scenes. Like I said, refreshing.

Digital Kosmos continues to grow, with over 50 photos online now, of which I think about 15 or so are mine. My latest contributions have been goodies like...

Colors blaze on Stampede Trail
Storm light
Noon on the dunes
Tribute to the pioneers in Fairbanks, Alaska
Still life, with wine casks
Windows onto pure color

...I have to admit, it's a lot of fun. We could have been doing this for months.

Still waiting for a response from Google; still waiting for the proof of The Lords of Harbendane ... getting very tired of waiting for both. Working on LEGENDS -- getting the new blog in place and stockpiling posts/chapters so that real life can shove its nose in, as it always does, everything can go haywire, and the book will continue to appear on time ... there's nothing worse than a serial that keeps putting itself on hiatus.

Cheers,
MK

Going gay at Sundance -- again!

If there's a story breaking in the zone of gay fiction, film, writing and whatnot right now ... this would have to be it.

The new movie, I Love You, Philip Morris, has made its premier at Sundance, and the Internet going public is split neatly down the middle, as you'd expect...

It goes like this:

"I like the actors but don't get off on gay movies." "I like gay movies but I don't like these specific actors." "Jim Carrey looks too old." "I don't like Ewan MacGregor playing an American." "Why is Hollywood going gay?" "Gay movies are being overdone now." "How can 3 gay films be overdoing it, when there are thousands of straight ones?" "Ewww, how can people watch this stuff, it's disgusting." "You're all sick puppies and God will punish you." "Gay bashers should shut up." "I'm not bashing gays, it's my right to say what I think." "Well, everybody else here thinks you're a prejudiced, bean-brained little twerp, so shut up and go away." "Momma, momma, they're picking on me!"

Good, isn't it? You notice how fast the discussion degenerates from a reasonably intelligent, critical comment on the movie itself (albeit subjective: *I* don't like gay movies, *I* don't like the actors) to an all out, knock-down, drag-out fight.

I'll look forward to seeing this, because I like both the actors AND I like "dark comedy, and it'll make one hell of a change for a really good movie to have a gay spin and be neither a tragedy nor erotica to top it off. I'll blog about it when I've seen it -- and in this neck of the woods, it might have to be on DVD before I see it. I shouldn't think it'll play the local movie houses. Not enough bucks in it. If it's not Hugh Jackman with claws sticking out of both fists, and/or the cast are not wading up to the kneecaps in blood -- forget it.


There's a rumble on the Internet in some weird places: are Ewan and Jim really gay?!! O...kay. That's a whole 'nother question. Who knows? I guess they do -- and what's more, it's their business!

I have one more picture for you today, and then I am going to go and get WET and cool off after a long day working in idiotic temperatures:


Hey, kilts are cool. Kilts are sexy. Kilts are well, they're kilts.

Well, check this out: http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=1445 ... Gratuitous Official International Kilt Day. Barrowman, Tennant, Connery, Neeson, Tom Baker, and a whooooole lot more. Kilts. Right. Great.

Ciao for now,
MK

Ode to Boxing Day: Whoville Chainsaw Massacre (aka Grinch 2)

'Tis the day after Christmas ... and I wish I could tell you I wrote this following, but I didn't. The credit goes to Jade, from Dreamcraft. Enjoy!

Grinch 2:

Whoville Chainsaw Massacre

Twas the night after Christmas and Whoville was rocking
With the kind of wild party that brings people flocking.
The noise and the booze, all the singing and dancing ...
The racket and rumpus, the shmoozing and prancing ...
Would drive to the point of starting a riot
Any poor fellow who just fancied quiet.
And you already know who was sane by an inch:
Poised on the brink was the poor old green Grinch.

All the popping and bopping, the preening and prancing,
The swinging and zinging, and -- oh, the break-dancing!
Were more than the Grinch could guess how to endure ...
And then, all at once, he envisioned a cure,
For there by the Christmas tree, flat on the floor,
Was one lonely present. A forgotten chainsaw.

By nine in the morning even Max was vibrating
With the jackhammer jollity; it's not overstating
That not even Max could endure so much 'cheer,'
No matter how snockered one became on Who beer.
And by two in the P.M., oh, Maxie was worried,
For the Grinch looked so manic; the beast who'd been buried
Beneath fudge and tinsel, and the charm of a child
Had clawed back to the surface ... and my, he was wild!


And the Grinch had no sooner set eyes on that tool
Than he said to himself, "Grinchie, you’ll been such a fool,
To think you could bear all this ruckus and humbug,
This rumpus and dumpus, this scampus and scumbug,
This noise, noise, noise, noise, that these Whofolk call ‘fun,’
While the stores are all closed and you can’t buy a gun --
There isn’t a fowling piece (nor even a pheasant),
But one of these idiots forgot his best present!"
For under the Christmas tree, left on the floor,
Wrapped up in red ribbons lay a brand new chainsaw:

All shiny and sharpy, all toothy and jagged --
Just begging for gasoline! So, out the Grinch swaggered
With a light, empty gascan and a bag full of quarters,
To the gas station downtown, with a brain full of slaughters ...
There wouldn’t be any Who left to make noise!
They’d be peacefully absent, the Who girls and boys.
The Who-guys and ladies would be quiet as the snow --
And Cindy-Lou Who’d be the first one to go.

For the Grinch could envisage the headlines tomorrow,
When no Who in Whoville survived to feel sorrow --
Here was a task to which the Grinch felt quite equal
(And MGM’s already contracted the sequel):
GRINCH II: WHOVILLE CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Thanks to Jade for the words; and to Jim Carey for for the visualization.

Cheers to all,
MK

Cruising into Christmas

Just got back from the obilgatory Christmas "Dan Murphy's raid" ... and I just realized I have no idea if Dan Murphy's is worldwide, or if 90% of readers are saying words along the lines of "WTF is MK babbling on about now? I have a powerful intuition that Squire O'Murphy is a purely Aussie thing, so I'd better explain why it's obligatory at Christmas, and why one talks about a "raid" there.

Close your eyes. Relax. Imagine an aircraft hangar. A hangar big enough to garage a jumbo jet. Now, fill it with wine ... spirits ... beer ... liqueurs. In bins. In boxes. In crates and cartons. On shelves. On tables. On the floor. Take a cart. A big one. Fill it. Then stand in line in the checkout queue, enjoying the air conditioned coolness and thinking longingly of the beer in that case, because its too bloody hot outside, and it's still morning.

Good golly, it must be Christmas time! Which would explain why we watched Bill Murray in Scrooged last night, and will probably watch Jim Carey in a weird green suit tonight, or maybe the dudes from Halloween Town trying to usurp Christmas. Woah ... what happened to 2008?

In fact, today is a semi-special occasion, at least to me: it's six months since this blog opened. Six months! This is something like post #222 ... if only it could have been #666. Well, can't win 'em all. But when we do get to #666, we'll have a competition or something, to celebrate.

Speaking of blogging: no joy yet in the Google situation. At this point I can win searches from places like Ukraine, Nepal, Laos, Thailand, Iraq, the UAE, Nigeria, Honduras ... but as for getting back the 80% of visitors who were coming from the USA ... not yet. I live in hopes.

Also speaking of blogging: good news at last! I found a studio which publishes blogger templates which WILL INSTALL, if you give them just a couple of minor tweaks. You do need to know what you're looking at in css, but the templates otherwise embrace the Blogger engine.

Here's the studio: http://www.ourblogtemplates.com/2008/03/browse-all-blogger-templates.html -- and the good news is, they're some of the most gorgeous templates you ever saw. Kudos to these guys: they figured out what the hell it is Blogger wants, and they worked around it.

So right now I'm fiddling with the template, getting it fully configured. It's quite a process. I'm working with three columns, and it also gets interesting in the headers and footers: there's extra "bays" where you can part things. I'm also experimenting with colors and schemes (which, thank gods, is easy at Blogger), and thanks to Aricia [sounds of grinding teeth] I now know that you can edit the css and tell it to remote-load images into the background.

The digital novels will be looking every bit as good as they read. I'm still intending to start with the Atlantean fantasy -- as a memorial to Lane Ingram -- but the second one could easily be Crystal Genesis, which is future fantasy. I find myself drawn to the project more as I think about it. We've even started mucking about with logo graphics (click on this, it's 980 pixels wide, designed to suit the template I finally, finally got working):

This is going to be extremely cool. If Crystal Genesis has a 'sound' (and it does), it's a song called Inner Universe, by a band (or individual) called Origa. Below is the YouTube plugin of the whole song, which is weird and ... amazing. I know absolutely nothing about the performers, but I stumbled over the song when it was used as the theme music for the anime Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, which used to go to air at about midnight in this country, a few years ago. Adult SF anime. The music is apparently a Japanese band singing in Russian, with a sound that's unique. Enjoy.



The situation with CreateSpace is kind of "on again, off again." This morning the set-up project page would allow us to upload a new project ... and the shopping cart crashed on the way out of doing the "upgrade to the pro package." CreateSpace as an entity is extraordinarily delicate. If we can just get through The Lords of Harbendane, plus Dangerous Moonlight and Death's Head, I'm inclined to quit right there and promote the hell out of those. See what happens in 2009.

Speaking of 2009: one of the guys from DreamCraft was partying last week, and talking to a friend who works on the fringe of the publishing and IT industry. According to this guy, the idea of retrenching 50% of the writers in the USA is being kind. Apparently -- at least as far as the Big Apple is concerned -- they make 90% of their money from 10% of their writers. The rest of us could do a swandive right off the nearest cliff for all they would know ... or care. Hmmmm.

Anyway -- onward and upward into a somewhat "Irish" scenario. Says Mick to Paddy, "Did you not hear what happened to Mel Keegan, then?" Says Paddy to Mick, "Sure, didn't he give his stuff away and make a fortune!"

Here's to making a fortune by giving your stuff away!

Cheers,
MK

Gay movies: one to watch out for -- Were the World Mine

A very quick second post for today (I'm on the run) ... something wonderful just flittered across my desktop. It's not often gay movies are so absolutely delicious they're irresistible, but here's one to watch out for:


I shouldn't think it'll play in theaters in this country, so I'll be holding out for the DVD. For the full story, let me send you to the New York Times, and enjoy!

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/movies/21were.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Ciao for now,
MK

Art, Thanksgiving, and who'll design the future?

Just trivia this morning. Blogging in a vacuum is an interesting experience: nothing is happening here worth writing about ...

Update: we're still waiting for any response from Create Space, and as we go into the time frame of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, we don't expect to have the situation resolved at CS till about next Tuesday our time, which will be December 2! In other words, a javascript hiccup in the shopping cart routine at CS will have taken two WEEKS to resolve, and the whole publication process stopped dead for the duration. *sigh*
[http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/hiccups-in-create-space-process.html]

Anyway: it's all par for the course in the labyrinth of getting a long backlist to Amazon, so ... you live and learn. Tough it our, right?!
[http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/road-to-amazoncom-pavement-is-up-be.html]

Meanwhile -- Happy Thanksgiving to American readers! I actually spent Thanksgiving in the States on one or two occasions, and it's a whole lot of fun, what with the huge meal and the falling asleep in front of the football game. Also a lovely time of the year: late fall, with winter right around the corner, and Christmas in the back of your mind.

And for a dose of Americana, you can't go past the new JC Leyendecker art book. Joe Leyendecker was the conceptual artist who virtually designed what America looked like between about 1910 and 1950, and much of what we still know, today, as the quintessential handsome American male was designed by Joe.

Here's the interesting part (at least for gay readers). For most of his adult life, JC lived with the male model whose face and bod were probably the most famous in the nation ... the young dude who modelled for the "Arrow Shirts" campaigns. The model, Charles Beach, attained superstar status -- he was quite literally the Brad Pitt of his day. And was thoroughly shacked up with the artist. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. See the image right below...

In fact, Brendan Fraser's character of Rick O'Connell is probably based on Charles Beach in the shirt ads. In fact, it's a pretty safe bet that when the productions designers for THE MUMMY movies were trying to nail down the "look and feel" of the era, they made a bee-line for Joe Leyendecker's work. Check this out:

Reminds you of someone you know, right? For a lot more (and a lot of scans!) from the new book, go here: http://jcleyendecker.blogspot.com/2007/08/leyendecker-scans.html

Leyendecker designed the mid-20th century, the way Syd Mead can be said to have designed the age we're living into (or hoping to survive into!) right now now. If you're not familiar with Mead's work, give yourself a serious treat: http://www.sydmead.com/v/01/splash/

It does take a while to load because if the Flash splash, but it's well worth it. I have the old SENTINEL artbook, which was produced by US Steel about, oh, 30 years ago, and I still use it as a source of inspiration for the visual component of SF writings. It's amazing the way a couple of pivotal conceptual artists have literally designed our world. Makes you wonder who the next artist will be, and what 2050 will look like.

Anyway -- this is very much on my mind as I go into the early pre-production work on the new HELLGATE books. I'll be writing both the remaining novels back-to-back, and this will be my pet project for 2009. I might, mind you might, do the HELLGATE novels before I get into the haunted house story. Sorry about this, guys: I know I've been promising you the haunted house book for six months, but -- seriously! -- since I'm not on any contract, I go where the muse takes me. And he, she or it is taking me in the direction of, uh, the worlds of Hellgate.

More on that later.

Many thanks indeed to the folks who have given us feedback on the new calendar. Yes, I am thrilled with the results, and it's kudos to both Jade for the artwork, and Lulu.com for the printing, both of which are absolutely superb:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/mel-keegan-2009-calendar-out-now.html

To answer the most-oft-asked questions: the software used to produce the calendar itself was Serif page Plus 10; and the artwork was produced in Micrographx Picture Publisher 7, and Irfanview. If you want to know more, by all means ask, and I'll bump questions on to Jade. I keep saying, the artist ought to have a blog too, but so far, my words are falling on deaf ears. We can hope, right?




(Yep, that's an affiliate link. Serif is the driving force behind the production work of so much that we do -- when people ask how it's done, and with what, we recommend Serif. So we might as well sell it, right? Forgive the commercial ... in fact, it answers rafts of questions by itself.)

For the moment, Happy Thanksgiving to American readers!

Cheers,
MK

Wednesday waffles

The world on Wednesday is "business as usual" -- meaning, orderly chaos. Since I'm still blogging in the vacuum, I'll restrict myself to an update, and let you get back to your life!

If you've been following the CreateSpace situation in the last couple of days, you'll be interested to know that we are STILL WAITING for any intelligent response from Customer Service. At this point, we've been waiting for six days, with a jammed, gridlocked shopping cart and no ability to publish a new project -- with Christmas looming just weeks away, and the whole CreateSpace-Amazon "process" taking a month!

For the backstory on this:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/hiccups-in-create-space-process.html
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/tuesday-morning-blues.html

As Queen Victoria was heard to say on more than one occasion, "We are not amused."

We'll keep you posted.

And speaking of being posted: it just hit us (like the proverbial load of bricks) why the USPS parcel rates have shot up ... the carbon tax applied to airlines. When you ship a person (say, 60kg) from the US or UK to Aus or NZ (say, 10,000km), the tax converts to around A$275. That's A$6.25 per kilo of weight, per one-way trip. Parcels make one-way trips. And this is pretty much EXACTLY what the USPS price rise measured.

Duh.

Okay: grin and bear it -- it's for the planet. So -- so long as the megabucks raised by the carbon tax are spent on planting trees, restoring river systems, cleaning up waterways, enforcing "carbon reinjection" in the oil and coal-to-liquid industries ... fair enough. Get a Mel Keegan novel shipped to Australia, and you probably paid to plant a couple of trees. And that's cool. Puts the additional cost in a different, more acceptable light.

(The other possibility is that the carbon tax funds will be used to prop up corrupt governments and mega corporations which are too rich to begin with. This is not so cool, but only time will tell which way this particular barrow-load of manure is going to hit the ventilators.)

In other news, AUSTRALIA opened overnight ... and the critics are just short of getting out the pistols and taking pot-shots at each other: they're so widely divided, the movie is either phenomenal or rubbish, depending on who you listen to.

I'll have to wait till I see it. It opens here momentarily; the critics' preview was last week, and Aussie critics were just as divided as the Americans. Here's the best roundup of the US critical voice:
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,26278,24709251-5013560,00.html

By the sounds of it -- and being cautious and charitable -- AUSTRALIA looks like it's been fractionally overcooked, with some CGI effects here and there that don't quite work, and if you don't like Nicole Kidman, you're going to find 165 minutes of her tough to endure. To balance all that out, Hugh Jackman is verrrrry nice eye candy, and from what I've seen of the trailers, there's a lot more CGI stuff that does work than doesn't ... and the scenery, panoramic and color saturated as it is, will be advantaged by the big screen.

I'll hold my tongue on the subject till I've seen it.


Last note for today: We're putting the finishing touches to the 2009 Mel Keegan Calendar, which will be produced be Lulu.com -- NOT Zazzle, because Zazzle.com is way too expensive on calendars. I'll be posting again with a "show and tell" about this project, which should be available for Christmas ... Lulu being a helluva lot faster than either CreateSpace (who don't do calendars anyway) and Zazzle.

Ciao for now,
MK

Writers beware: it's just another scam

Everyone has a pet peeve, so it's no surprise MK should have one too. They're more ubiquitous than poodles, cost less to feed than gerbils and don't bite the way hamsters are inclined to. So, naturally, everybody has at least one pet peeve; some folks have several. I have ... a few, I admit; but the one I want to talk about today lives in the closet like Binkley's Giant Purple Snorklewacker, and periodically beats on the door and demands to be let out in broad daylight.

Like today.

And here it is: it's the "I can teach you how to be a successful writer in 12 easy lessons, no matter if you've never put pen to paper before, and instantly you'll be a successful, published, paid writer. All you gotta do is pay me US$49.95, and you can start living the life of your dreams."

There are SCORES of these offers on the Internet at any one time, and HUNDREDS of them cycling through in any two-year period. And one presumes that there enough takers out there, each with the IQ of linguine, for the publishers of these courses to make their hundred grand or quarter mill, and skeedaddle out of the field before rampaging armies of glazed-eyed, torch-wielding, would-be writers come storming up the driveway demanding their refund.

At this specific juncture in the unfolding of this particular universe, the whole industry is epitomized by one specific page, in which every single rotten, lousy stunt is pulled. I was sent the URL for it, and I am disgusted to the point where I'm extremely tempted to just paste in that URL and let you have the whole thing.

However, I fully expect to be sued if I did that, so ... taking a deep breath, we'll do it this way: I'm not going to name names, I'm not going to give any URLs. But I am going to tell you what to Google to pull up the page -- and probably 50 pages just like it.

Google something along the lines of "write for quick cash," and "write get published get cash" and "zero effort writing quick cash" ... and you'll find your way there. You'll know it when you see it. It's the one screaming this heading: "Earn BIG MONEY for 5 MINUTES of WRITING!"

Yeah, sure.

The above high-density keywords should speak volumes to you. Writing ... zero effort ... quick cash ... get published.

And here is my pet peeve: I've spent thirty years honing my skills. I'm editing my own latest novel right now, and after thirty years of experience, I'm still turning my work inside out in the editing to make it not just good, but as close to flawless as possible. After three decades of writing everything from poetry to film scripts, I can tell you that virtually everything on this entrepreneur's "squeeze page" (as they're called because they're designed to squeeze money out of you) is balloon juice.

One of this entrepreneur's "hot tips" is that you can make MOVIE PITCHES. "Write three lines" and get your name on the next blockbuster movie. Seriously -- I'm not having you on here, this is an actual "tip" on this squeeze page!

It might have been true forty years ago -- I doubt it. ("From an idea by" would have been your credit.) Here's the cold, hard facts: in today's Hollywood, YOU CAN NOT MAKE MOVIE PITCHES without having an "in" at a studio. You cannot make movie pitches even if you HAVE an "in," without being INVITED to make the pitch; and most producers and directors won't even look at a letter which doesn't come from a reputable agency.

How do I know this? Because I *do* make movie pitches. I've been making them for 15 YEARS. I'm part of a writing partnership that *has* a reputable agency and *is* invited to pitch. I've lost count of the number of scripts that have "done the rounds" in the last decade. If we'd sold something major, you'd know about it.

It's like selling a book to a major publisher. Your chances of breaking in and getting a sale worth significant money have recently been estimated at one in nine hundred thousand. It's that proverbial one in a million shot.

This entrepreneur spends considerable percentages of his "squeeze page" space talking about selling "letters to the editor." Such magazine inclusions routinely pay $5 to $50, if you're lucky ... 99% of magazines and newspapers pay nothing. Those that do pay are inundated.

The next recommendation is to look at writing jingles, little poems, for greetings cards -- Hallmark and John Sands, that kind of thing. However, these companies have STAFF WRITERS ... you'll find that you're selling your little verses to much lesser companies who will pay about $1 per line. A four line verse -- $4.

And as for the next tip, "writing captions for photographs" ... editors do this themselves, on the fly, when they're setting type. Next: writing captions for your own photos. Go right ahead ... and then climb aboard another treadmill -- now you're trying to sell your photos. Have you ever tried?! Have fun.

The steam really starts to explode out of my ears when this entrepreneur gets onto the subject of short story writing (not to mention articles and reviews), and then selling comedy to TV.

All I can say to you is, if you believe this spiel ("How you can turn your sense of humor into a STEADY STREAM of PAYCHECKS!"), then go ahead and try it. Take a shot at selling your comedy sketches to television or radio. You'll come back down to earth so hard, people have been known to break their legs.

And I'm going to close on something so stupid, I'm speechless: "A Web site where you can SUBMIT any number of MOVIE IDEAS for a modest one-time fee and get them pitched on your behalf to Hollywood producers."

Believe me (or not, if you don't consider thirty years in the business is enough to know what I'm talking about), Hollywood producers get pitched about 100 scripts PER DAY, via agencies who take them to lunch, to dinner, for drinks, on vacation ... via writers who have already sold movies and TV series, by directors who have STAFFS of writers online ... and by actors who own their own production companies (like Brad Pitt and his Plan B). Movie studios do not, nor have they ever, nor WILL they ever turn to amateur websites for movie ideas.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Every writer gets 100 for every one we write; every producer sees 500 scripts for every one for which he bids for the rights. And very often, the producer, director and writer are the SAME PERSON.

What burns my cookies is that there are people out there in the world who work for the minimum wage (maybe $5 per hour), eat noodles for a month, and pay US$49.95 to an Internet entrepreneur for an ebook full of complete drivel, and then try their hearts out and maybe get $10 here for a published letter (where the bloody magazine cost them $11.95 to buy a copy, in order to get the submission info!!), and maybe $8 for a verse sold to a greetings card company -- where the cost of postage on the paperwork, and maybe an interstate phonecall to get the sale, exceeded the income.

There, I feel better now. Pardon me for letting off steam. You can tell this is something I feel very strongly about. Strongly enough to be thinking seriously about having a second blog -- an actual "writing blog" where the focus of the whole thing is ... writing. They do say that you oughtta blog about something over which you can get passionate.

[The cartoon is from the Bloom County comic anthology Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things, by Berke Breathed. All rights acknowledged to BB and Little, Brown.]

Ciao for now,
MK

Writing: the challenge of Science Fiction

It's not often I get a reader's question that leaves me blank for five minutes, but this one did. It's a beauty, because it's so fundamental, and fundamental questions tend to be so broad in scope, they touch ... well, everything.

So, here was the question: "How do I write science fiction?"

The kneejerk reaction is to say, "Same bloody way as you write anything else, what's your problem?!" But in fact, this is too swift (and too brusque!) an answer, which doesn't do justice to a question that is, in fact, brilliant in its sheer simplicity.

And since I couldn't get the question out of my mind for the next two hours, I thought it might be an interesting topic for a post -- quite a few writers are reading this blog; some are looking for publishers, others are fully intending to use POD services, but they all have one thing in common: they write.

So, how do you write science fiction?

The truth is, anyone can write anything. It's writing something well that's the challenge, and how well we do something is what sorts the wheat from the chaff. Seriously, anyone can take a crack at writing absolutely anything, but one can't guarantee the results.

Let's say you're a massive fan of G-Force and Mecha Godzilla, it's what you like, what you read, what you watch, and where your brain is ... and somebody bets you $25 you can't write a women's historical romance. Take the bet with impunity, because -- of course you can write one ... and the person didn't bet you $25 that you couldn't write a good one.

Creative writing starts with three things: 1) the burning desire to write; 2) the energy and discipline to sit down and bash out the words, all of them, right to The End; 3) a real, genuine story that's worth reading, as well as writing.

After these three jewels, the words are on paper (or on the hard drive), the story is told ... everything else is about quality: integrity, readability, characterisation, editing, coherence, denouement, style.

Let's reverse the bet, and have someone who lives and breathes women's historical romance, and somebody bets them $25 that s/he can't write a Japanese Monsterama story.

Of course s/he can. Take the money!!

Now, if the bet had been, "I'll bet you $250 that you can't write a GOOD Japanese Monsterama story" ... well, be a bit more cagey. See if you can dragoon somebody's 12-year-old kid to explain to you what the bloody hell this genre is all about. Maybe the kid will propel you in the general direction of the video store, and you can rent some. Grit your teeth and actually watch them, right through to the end credits. Something by Toho Studios would be absolutely perfect for this purpose.

In other words ... you're doing some research, because you want that $250, and it's enough money to warrant spending a few hours on getting it juuuuust right. If you're a natural born writer, the basic skills are mostly transferable: the ability to write one thing converts into the ability to write the body copy for something else --

With one proviso. Style. The hardboiled language in which a lot of SF and detective fiction is written does not lend itself well to historical romances (!), and the often florid and, shall we say, botanical (I don't want to say 'flowery,' because someone will probably thump me) language in which a lot of historicals and/or romances are constructed doesn't lend itself well to nuts and bolts SF and hardboiled detective fiction!

So you, the writer, will be using your judgment, and you'll be re-tune your "ear" to hear the difference. You've learned your skills writing 'whatever,' and a helluva lot of it; and you're coming to the challenge of writing SF with both eyes -- and ears -- open.

It all starts with the desire to write SF, having a fantastic story that you have to tell or die, plus the discipline to get all the words down on paper.

Now, if you have this burning desire to write SF, you might have actually read some -- but then again, maybe not.

If you've read Greg Bear and Charles Sheffield, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, you're on the home stretch. Follow their lead. Do what they do: write very well, with very good grammar; keep the story on course, don't let it wander; reveal the story's pivot points at exactly the right moment -- ie., don't 'telegraph' your punches, but don't don't wait so long to throw them that the reader is bored or confused. (Bore or confuse a reader, and s/he will stop reading. End of statement.)

However, if your total exposure to SF has been Star Wars trilogy (c. 1980), Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, classic Battlestar Galactica (1980), classic Star Trek (1969), classic Doctor Who (1970s), Planet of the Apes (TV series) Logan's Run (series), Knight Rider, and so forth ... you could have a problem.

These projects are certainly SF, but their genre is very different: TV science fiction of the 1960s to 1980s vintage is a Hollywood product, designed and crafted to amuse an American audience which was naive even for its day. The plotlines are very frequently soap opera dressed in SF costumes, or World War II, Korea and Vietnam stories rearmed with rayguns and energy weapons. The characterizations are "US TV standard" for their era ... meaning, you can watch SWAT, Starsky & Hutch, and any SF show made for US TV in the era, and the characters are pretty much of a sameness. They tend to have an artificial look about them to today's eyes, because they're the product not of their era on the street, but the product of their era on TV. (Hollyweird executives designed what television would look and sound like, to make the end product squeaky clean, wholesome and acceptable in Middle American living rooms at 7:00pm. It didn't make for "real" characters.)

If this is your concept of SF -- you'll certainly write an SF story ... but will it be a good one? The person betting you $250 might have a bone to pick with the kind of story, the way it's developed, and the "artificiality" of the characterization. In other words, if you want to win the bet -- look further afield.

In fact, if classic TV SF has been your exposure to SF, yet now you're sure you have a red-hot story and you're desperate to write it -- STOP. Do some research. Read some books, find out what the real thing is like. Can I give you some recommendations? Sure. Greg Bear: Eon, Eternity and Moving Mars. Charles Sheffield, Godspeed and Cold as Ice. Arthur C. Clarke -- almost anything. Robert Heinlein: Friday, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. This'll get you off to a flying start. There's about a thousand more, you'll find them as you start to look around and do a little research.

Now, I assume the technicalities of the language are in good order before you get this far. Right? In other words, your English is nothing less that superb -- grammar, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, all those fiddling little details that make or break a writer? If they're under control, take the story by the scruff of its neck and get it written. If they're out of control --

Still write the story, but use it as a learning experience. Learn to punctuate and format text as you go. Buy some books on grammar. Seriously! Indulge yourself in The Elements of Style (Strunk & White). You don't even have to buy that slim volume, though it's still in print if you want to. You can also access it online: http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/style.html ... and for background info on the work itself, hit Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style.

In other words -- write your story while you learn to write ... then rewrite your story, using everything you've learned about characterization, denouement -- even grammar and punctuation!

The technicalities are especially important if you want to take a crack at finding a publisher, or POD publishing. You won't impress a publisher with iffy English writing skills ... and if you go POD, you won't have an editor working with you (some might say, breathing down your neck) to make sure all the eyes are dotted and the tees are crossed. When you're flying solo, you have to be very good, and very confident of your skills.

I hope this has covered the whole question! And now --

It's actually my day off, and I'm headed for the coast to do some rock hopping. Will take pictures and if anything looks especially fine, I'll put up a few images tomorrow.

Ciao for now,
MK

Mad Max, blog spam and Aussie movies on a hot morning

I'm not really having a "rant" this morning (for one thing, it's too hot! The temperature will be tickling 100 degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon, and by 8:00am it was uncomfortably hot sitting in the shade in the back yard), but ...

I do want to grumble a wee bit -- before I progress to much happier subjects! Bear with me.

It might be futile, but I'd like ask visitors not to spam this blog. 99% of users don't (and many thanks to all those who don't!), and I delete the spam fast, probably before it's even been seen, but ... still.

The spam I'm seeing is basically along the lines of 1) blatant commercial copy pasted in, or 2) some brief, inane statement of the utterly obvious, with a commercial link attached. Like this, which was blithely parked on http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/mel-at-movies-australia.html:

Mel Gibson is mythic hero Mad Max, champion of post-nuclear survivors in an all-time-great action spectacular. He always looks like he's having fun up there on the screen. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover bust loose as Vietnam vets-turned-L.A. cops after heroin smugglers. The best pure action movie since Raiders of the Lost Arc.

And yes, a commercial link was attached; and no, I'm not quoting the link -- I'm also not naming names, but -- if you're reading this, please don't park your advertising on my blog -- or, if you MUST do it, leave a proper comment, have something to say, and make sure your facts are correct. Then, I'll leave your advertisement up. We'll call it a trade.

My problems with the above comment are far too numerous for it to be taken seriously...

Mel Gibson is an actor ... Max Rockatansky was a character -- an absolute anti-hero, not a champion, in a 1978 Australian movie in which economic collapse, not nuclear war, is hinted at, on-screen in the original Mad Max, as having caused the wasteland scenario we see in Mad Max 2. (View the first movie, not the second, for the backstory and worldbuilding.) Everyone in the DVD-viewing world knows Gibson and Glover starred in Lethal Weapon -- but Glover's character, Sgt. Roger Murtaugh, was not a Vietnam veteran. Only Martin Riggs is described as having served in 'Nam. And is Lethal Weapon the "best pure action movie since Raiders of the Lost Ark?" First of all, learn to spell ARK, as in "of the bloody Covenant," not "a segment of the circumference of a circle."And then, be gracious enough to say, "imho" or similar, because with the above bald statement you're going to get a big fight from fans of virtually anything made by Arnie, Sly, Segal, van Damme, Peter Jackson, Jim Cameron, Gore Verbinski, Marvel Studios, and scores of others who are responsible for projects as diverse as Iron Man, The Mummy, Van Helsing, The Peacemaker, Terminator, Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean -- and many more action films that have been made in the two decades since the original Lethal Weapon movie was made. I would seriously counsel against making such a sweeping statement without the small, life-saving prefix, "imho."

Okay ... I'll stop grumbling now. But, I mean, really. And yes, I deleted the post as pure spam. And no, I don't at all mind you putting in a link to your own blog or page or site. Only, please -- have something to say, add something, and make sure your facts are right! A comment that adds value stays up -- trust me. I can smell pure spam from a mile away, and as soon as I notice it, sorry, but it gets deleted. The blog has been spammed by everything from glass manufacturers in India (!) to Internet marketers in heaven-knows-where. I try to be vigilant.

To clarify ... I'm not having a grumble about Raiders of the Lost Ark! It's one of my favorite movies, and highly recommended.

I also highly recommend the original Mad Max, which is very, very different from The Road Warrior. It's raw, and "honest," and doesn't have a particle of "hype" about it.

The movie was shot in Victoria, Australia in 1977 (!) and released in 1979, with a copyright date of '78, after being edited in the late Byron Kennedy's spare bedroom! Gibson was 21 ... and nope, it wasn't his first movie, either. He'd made SUMMER CITY the year earlier, while still studying at NIDA.

Of the three "Max" movies, which is the best? Depends what you're looking for. If you want "hype" then, the the third one, with Tina Turner, a bunch of cute little kids, and plenty of outrageous stunts. If you want "the kapow effect!" then you want the second, with an all-Aussie cast, and cinematography by Dean Semler, who went on to win the Oscar (T-bloody-M) for Dances with Wolves.

But if you want raw truth, total honesty, bleeding-wound emotion, with none of the Hollywood candy-coating ... watch the first one. It's not fun -- it's not about having fun. It cost A$150,000 to make, as an indie movie, and it earned over$125m at the box office -- in Japan it swiftly became a cult.

Of course, in the US is was difficult to exhibit; it had to be heavily censored ... because the violence is very realistic, and the injuries sustained by accident victims are also realistic; director and creator George Miller is a doctor ... and it also had to be overdubbed with heavy American accents, because in 1980, US audiences couldn't understand foreign accents!

[Left: the final shot of the first movie where Max, busted up and broken, takes the last of the v8 Interceptors and heads for the wasteland.]

The net effect is absolutely weird. Remember, all the cars are right hand drive, the landscape is Aussie, the cars are Australian makes and models! Yet you hear US accents issuing from Jim Goose, and Midge, The Feef and Jess, and -- Max. Yeek. I saw this cut of the movie on VHS when I was in the States a loooong time ago. Get the Australian original, uncut. The US has stopped overdubbing Aussie movies in the years since, but I imagine the old cut of Mad Max is still circulating somwehere. Avoid it, if you can.

Anyway -- there you are: Max Rockatansky, age 21 ... Mel Gibson when he was so young, you blink and shake your head. Was anyone ever that young?! Back in the days when he was as Aussie as the next cobber, before he went whacko, and ... the rest is history. (In fact, his looks still had to "settle in." He would acquire those drop-dead gorgeous characteristics in about another 4-5 years. He was a nice kid in Mad Max, though ... he was a superstar downunder when his face was still inclined to break out occasionally. Seriously. Some of us were there, and have good memories.

Right now, I'm going to close this post -- not because there isn't more to talk about (there is), but because it's getting way too hot. Both the PC and I need to cool down (and it's only 9:15am).

More later...

Ciao for now,
MK

Mel at the Movies: Australia

The posters are up and the trailers are playing for the upcoming "event" of 2008: Jackman and Kidman, together again for the first time, in...



To be honest, I don't go to the cinema much; the last movies I saw on the big screen were IRON MAN and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull ... both of which I enjoyed vastly. (I know some people are rubbishing Jones now, but I personally enjoyed the movie, so, what they hey? It had a great sense of both humor and the ridiculous; it knew when to laugh at itself; Harrison Ford has turned into a likable old codger who, in this incarnation, could go on for a long time. Okay, he's not young anymore. Where is it written that a person has to be young to be likable? Spielberg and Lucas cast an attractive young dude as Jones Jr., and Cate Blanchett gets to strut her stuff outrageously, so who's got a complaint? The movie was FUN, people.)

Having said that I don't go to the theater much, I shall certainly be sitting in the middle of one of the big ones at the Marion megaplex later this month ... Australia is a movie I gotta see.

In the last couple of days I've been watching numerous trailers. In case you've missed them, and are interested (!), here you go:


THE FULL TRAILER

and


A second, different trailer.

...There are about a half dozen trailers and sneak previews circulating right now, each giving a different perspective on the movie. One of them at least is "getting rotten reviews" as a trailer! Peanut gallery critics are not even waiting for the movie to come out -- they've got Australia labeled as a lousy movie because they found the trailer "baffling and incomprehensible."

It's true that if you don't know much about Australian history, you could be confused. It's equally true that Aussies and Kiwis might find the trailer for a movie about the American Civil War to be confusing ... doesn't mean it's going to be a lousy movie: just means that the parochial education -- necessary to understand the visual references used in the shorthand with which movie trailers are crafted -- is missing in folks from way downunder. High duh factor on that one. Same difference with the trailer for Australia. I watched the exact same 90 seconds that had rubbed this person the wrong way, and the footage made perfect sense to me.

What's going to take me to the movies to see this one on the big screen is sheer curiosity: my gods, it's a movie about Australia, with real Australians in it!!! Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, Bruce Spence, David Wenham, Bill Hunter, John Jarratt, David Gulpilil, Ray Barrett, Arthur Dignam ... they're all Aussies!!

It's seldom that a movie about Australia is actually 1) about Australia, 2) done properly and not turned into a pastiche from foreign perspectives, 3) FILMED in Australia, 3) cast with real Aussie actors.

For example ... The Thorn Birds, filmed in Hawaii in 1983, starring Richard Chamberlaine, Barbara Stanwick, Rachel Ward, Christopher Plummer, Jean Simmonds, Piper Laurie, Earn Holliman ... the dramatisation of the crash-hot Australian monster novel of the early 1980s. Not one single Aussie actor in it. Not even filmed here.

The year before ,The Man From Snowy River premiered locally with the kind of pomp and fireworks that are usually reserved for things like Return of the King and Revenge of the Sith...


In its favor were the cast (all Aussies with the exception of Kirk Douglas who played two parts and was actually very good in both ... don't count Gus Mercurio as a Yank: he'd been here for so long, he was as Aussie as any of us by '82), and the cinematography, which was so vast, so sweeping, so color-saturated and amazing ... it looked like a Marlbro country commercial half the time. Sorry, guys, but it did. In the end, the massive cinematography (reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain) looked like the cigarette commercial, and ended up as a detraction.

The big problem with The Man From Snowy River was that, for most of the audience, the whole movie ... all 102 minutes of it ... hangs on about four and a half minutes of action which, admittedly, knocks your eyeballs right out of their sockets. The thing is, you have to wade through 95 minutes of Nineteenth Century Soap Opera to get to this. Now, if you fell instantly in lust with Tom Burlinson or Sigrid Thornton, you sat there drooling for an hour and a half. If you didn't, you kinda toughed it out and waited for this:



There you go: there's The Man From Snowy River in a thimble -- at least, the bit that counts, the bit the greater percentage of the audience remembers. The rest is soap and teen romance, and glorious backdrops. This highspot is well worth the rental price of the DVD, if you have a big-screen TV. Trust me on this: you will get goosebumps.

Not quite what some of us had in mind when we imagined a movie about Australia. Sure, Snowy was as Aussie as the dog on the tucker box -- which, in a big way, was a relief. But ... a movie about Australia?

A couple of years earlier, we came close

"From a place you've never heard of comes a story you'll never forget." Whoever wrote that slogan got it right. Gallipoli is less a movie than an experience ... and it's an experience it'll take you a week to get over. Not that it's graphically violent by today's standards: if you're thinking along the lines of Private Ryan and We Were Soldiers -- wrong. To many people (myself included) too much too-graphic violence causes compassion fatigue well inside the 120 minute running length of a movie. What shocked me in Reel One doesn't rouse much of an emotional reaction in Reel Six. Gallipoli is the exact opposite. It's like an exercise in virtual reality. You are there ... you live and work with these guys (Mel Gibson in the days when he was an Aussie, and drop-dead gorgeous, and Mark Lee, who has always been an Aussie, and equally drop-dead gorgeous). And you die with them. The movie stands out in my memory as the most amazing Australian movie done to date ... but I can't watch it more often than about once in three years, because it's almost unbearable, especially in the last ten minutes or so.

Here's the sneak-preview:



YouTube has a couple of uploads of the end, but the good one of them is dubbed from a copy with what looks like it might be Dutch or Danish subtitles. I find this distracting, but give it a shot:



(Yes, of course I have a copy, and I know it line for line. I wasn't at the premier, but I saw it the first week it played here (parts of it were shot in South Australia, so it was a big event here; believe it or not, Mel Gibson used to live in this city a loooooong time ago, before he went well and truly bonkers. I can tell you, the audience was full of very elderly veterans of the actual campaign ... and you had to swim out of the theater. It was that good. That real.)

Australia opens here on November 26th, and I just have to be there. A real Aussie movie, with real Aussie actors and ... everything. From the trailers, it looks like it's going to be tremendous, and certainly Hugh Jackman will be a sight for sore eyes:


I'll talk more about the movie when I've seen it. For now, my recommendations regarding Aussie movies? Gallipoli (keep the kleenex handy), Quigley Downunder (there, now I've astonished you, right?), Man From Snowy River (learn where the fast forward button on your remote is), The Chain Reaction (if you're lucky enough to find a copy) ... and here's hoping that I'll be able to add Australia to this list very soon.

The Great Halloween Chocolate-athon

It happens twice per year ... there's no way to avoid it ... it's heaven for kids and natural born skinnies; it's hell for diabetics, dieters and health food store proprietors.

It's the Biennial Chocolate Olympics.

Now, in March or April these Olympics seem to be obsessed with rabbits, hatchling chickens and eggs ... which is perfectly understandable, when you remember that the festival of Easter started life as (!) Eostar, one of the high points of the (!!) pagan calendar, and the year's biggest, brightest, bestest (!!!) bonking tournament.

Yes: Eostar was a fertility festival ... hence the chocolate bunnies and eggs and chicks. Comparatively late in the scale of human evolution was Eostar was morphed into Easter by the early Church, which slightly renamed it. (They just weren't trying ... they could have called it Holy Hoppazoozitztide, and sworn to people it was a word that came straight from heaven, via the Ark of the Covenant, which had been stumbled over just the week before by the emperor's special operative in Judeah, Indianus Jonos, who was actually looking for the wreck of this really big, fat boat, and got a bum steer from a secondhand camel dealer who sold him the wrong map.)

In fact, Easter remained a bonking bonanza; only its name changed ... the church even allowed its very date to be set by the phases of the moon ... still true today, which is why Easter floats around like a cork in a bathtub.

And even now, 1683 years (calculators come in handy) after the Council of Nicea, where the new church's sacred days were fixed (hey, you've seen The Da Vinci Code, right?) Western Civilization is still bunny-happy, and egg-centric, and chick-obsessed, when the floating date of Holy Hoppazoozitztide -- whoops, Easter -- comes around again.

Only, we've translated the whole fertility cult into CHOCOLATE. Fertility ... sex ... procreation (if you're not bloody careful; if you're not contentedly gay; if you're not a person happily blessed with the DINK or MINK mindset) ... means the start of new life.

For the record: rabbits + eggs + chicks = sex = procreation = new life = chocolate.

Now, this explains one of the Biennial Chocolate Olympics ... or at least it explains the symbology, though I'm damned if I personally see the connection between a Mars Bar or a packet of Maltesers, and standing in the checkout line at Big W (Walmart in the US), behind an unfortunate young woman paying huge bucks for a 132-pack of Huggies ... though, I admit, the connection has been firmly established during the last several generations. It all looks a little bit weird to me, but then, what the hey, we're all human. Well, most of us are, anyway.

However, our civilization has more of this Big Fun in store. The second of the Biennial Chocolate Olympics takes place almost exactly six months later, at another renamed pagan festival: the whole place goes ballistic at Halloween, and -- whether or not you're diabetic, a dieter, or the proprietor of a health store -- you're wading up to your navel in chocolate. Again.

Halloween was last night (Here's my post: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/halloween-memories.html), and this morning we still have a pile of chocolate left over after the trick-or-treaters finished. Now, the whole Halloween celebration has become a matter of costume parties and scary movies on DVD, while a few of the adults are out "trick of beering."

As I mentioned yesterday, for those folks of the pagan persuasion, it's Samhaine ... a time where no one minds if you have a big party (pagans really know how to party), but the festival is really about communicating with your deceased loved ones -- and dodging those people whom you really got barking-mad in this life, and they're dead now, and probably just as mad with you.

In other words: dead people + Samhaine = death = chocolate.

Right. Start of life = chocolate. End of life = chocolate. A pattern emerges.

Well, so long as the equations balance, I suppose. They're probably reciprocal anyway, so it could also be shown that

L=D/C+x

Where L is the number of years you've Lived to date, D = the number of your relatives who have passed away (Died), C = the average volume of Chocolate consumed by yourself without the assistance of family members or trick-or-treaters, and "x" is the amount, expressed in eith pounds or kilos, of weight you personally gain at each of these Biennial Chocolate Olympics.

There, now the whole thing makes a great deal more sense, doesn't it?

Chocolate is life, so "just do it," and if you do it often enough, the words "Death by Chocolate" will assume a whole new gravity.

Speaking of our Halloween -- we did not watch either Chocolat or Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. We watched Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Sleepy Hollow. Anyone notice how Halloween seems to be a kind of Johnny Depp Fest? Or is it a Tim Burton Fest? Well, either one. Those two seem to go together like caramel and fudge...



These are two good Halloween movies, if you're looking for blood by the bucket-fulls and heads getting whacked off in every direction. If you're looking for the best haunted house story, I recommend THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE; and if you're just looking for something to really creep you out, well, you could do worse than tune into any political broadcast issuing from the general vicinity of the USA. Shivers.

The US "goes to the polls" in about 100 hours, and like many people around this planet, I shall be holding my breath.

To folks on the other side of the dateline: Happy Halloween!

Cheers,
MK