Swapped!

Some time in the middle of last week, while tooling around the Internet, I came across an interesting tidbit. Lord of the Flies was getting a remake.

William Golding's classic 1954 novel about schoolboys marooned on a Pacific island had been adapted for the screen three times, most recently in 1990, so I suppose it was due, and with society seemingly in a death spiral, maybe it even seems timely. But here's the new wrinkle: this time, it will have an all female cast.

Hollywood has gotten fully on board with gender-swapping. In addition to last year's Lady Ghostbusters and the aforementioned Lady Lord of the Flies, we're also slated to see Lady Ocean's Eleven (i.e., Ocean's Eight), Lady Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Nasty Women), and Lady Splash--yes, Splash. All these films have two things in common: they are remakes or based on previous films, and they are getting the gender-swap treatment.

But what will the girls wear?

Hollywood should be commended for finally realizing that women, who make up slightly more than half the population and have considerable economic power, might actually like to see themselves with leading roles in films that aren't just romantic comedies. Even after the box office disaster that was Ghostbusters, women are getting more opportunities to carry films. As Kelly Konda noted, "Progress for women in Hollywood apparently means being allowed to fail financially."  Of course, Wonder Woman's status as smash hit should help even more.

So, it's nice to see women getting more starring vehicles. The problem, though, is that we're apparently seeing remake upon remake upon remake (and in the case of Lord of the Flies, said remake is being written by two men). In a post last week on Writer Unboxed, Jo Eberhardt wondered why we can't see more original stories with women. Says Eberhardt: "Imagine, if you will, a world in which movie executives actually think female protagonists can be authentic characters in their own right, and not merely gender-swapped versions of popular male characters." Eberhardt suggests that, rather than a remake, Ghostbusters should have conceived of as a sequel. "...it's thirty years later, and the ghosts are back. New York needs a new team of paranormal investigators. Somebody call Melissa McCarthy." What fun! And if the film had been called Ghostbusters III, it might have avoided some of the "They're killing my childhood" hand-wringing.

Gender-swapping is a tricky business. I have done it twice now, both times after discussion with Agent Carrie. One of the projects was very early, say a dozen pages and a broad concept; the other was further along, though still in extremely rough form. What I found was that gender-swapping was no simple business. It wasn't just a matter of changing names and pronouns, and maybe throwing in a reference to a skirt or bra. Changing the character from a man to a woman changed everything about that character, which in turn resulted in far-reaching changes in the story. Whether I did it well or not remains to be seen, though none of the rejections on the RiP said anything bad about my female point of view characters.

I'm hoping the two men working on Lord of the Flies will not sink to lazy writing and stereotypes, that they will not merely change names (Ralph to Renata, Jack to Jackie, Piggy to Miss Piggy), pronouns, and costumes--and on that front, let's hope they also choose not to overly-sexualize with palm frond bikinis; these are supposed to be pre-adolescent kids here. Some have gone so far to suggest that a planeload of girls crash-landing on a Pacific island would never turn into Lord of the Flies, that they would find a way to cooperate and live peacefully and build a utopia. I don't buy that. In any society, there's going to be some degree of inequality, and where there's inequality, there's strife. The question is, how is it handled? With rocks and clubs and sticks sharpened at both ends, or some other way? A gender-swapped Lord of the Flies presents us with some interesting questions. Let's hope, if the film gets made, we see those questions explored.

What do you think about the Lord of the Flies remake? Have you ever gender-swapped your characters? How did that work out?

 UPDATE: Not related to this post, exactly, but maybe of interest to some of you: Agent Carrie is looking for entries in her monthly Query Critique. Check here for how to enter! Good luck!

Happy Boxing Day

On Christmas Eve, somewhere between putting tinsel on the tree (this was my major, last-minute shopping run for the year) and baking a cheesecake for Christmas dessert, we hooked up the VCR--remember those, kids? We still have one, and it still kind of works!--and watched a couple of holiday classics, including A Christmas Story.

I remember seeing Siskel & Ebert review A Christmas Story back when it came out, and remember thinking, "I've got to see this film." As it turns out, I didn't see it for many years, but when I did, I loved it. The film itself performed moderately well, though it was not the holiday blockbuster the producers no doubt hoped it would be. It became a cult classic of the video era, and now is so big that you can't even call it a cult classic anymore.

We tried to get our kids to watch this movie when they were younger. Neither of them liked it very much, and I wondered why. In hindsight, however, A Christmas Story is a good example of the fact that having a child as protagonist does not automatically make a movie, book or TV show something for kids. While the movie is peppered with funny bits that kids can no doubt enjoy, I think this film is funnier the further away from childhood you are.  As an adult, it's easy to look at kids and say, "You got it easy. Wait until you're holding down a job, and paying a mortgage, and raising a kid!" What we forget is how intense everything is for a kid. Everything--what we love, hate, fear--is magnified because our emotions are unfiltered by time and experience. The wonderful innocence of childhood comes with a downside: everything is The Most Important Thing Ever, at the time of the experience. A Christmas Story captures that brilliantly.

We had a nice Christmas here, though it was definitely strange not having the Magpie around. She and five friends went on a little overnight excursion for Christmas which took the sting out of being 7,000 miles away from home for the holiday. Of course, through the magic of technology we were able to see her face and talk to her, and for that we are grateful.

That's all for me for now, have a nice weekend, all.

OMG! Look What Happened To....

Social media exploded this week when a Hollywood star stepped out on the red carpet for the first time in a while. I'm talking, of course, about Tony Sirico. Here he is in his most famous role, as Paul Gualtieri, aka "Paulie Walnuts," in The Sopranos:

Can peel paint from a house at distances up to 20 yards

I don't think anyone on that show could threaten with a 'look' as much as he could. Yikes. And here is Mr. Sirico recent--

OH MY GOD! WHAT DID HE DO? WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO TONY SIRICO??? IS THAT EVEN THE SAME GUY???

Well, since we're on the subject of mobster types, we ran into another guy who was especially famous for playing mobsters. Look, it's Ray Liotta, star of that film I just can't get enough of, Goodfellas! Remember him?

HOLY SHIT! RAY LIOTTA! WTF??? YOU'RE ALL GRAY! YOU'RE WRINKLED! YOU LOST YOUR TEETH! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYES???

Okay, okay, maybe that's not fair--those pictures were taken some 20 years apart, so we'll just let him pass by. Hey, wait...I think I see David Duchovny! Duchovny's great. I was a big fan of his back in his X-Files days, and I loved the first few seasons of Californication. I'm not crazy about the last few, but Duchovny was always entertaining as Hank Moody. Here he is back in season 1, just seven years ago (you know, around the same time we last saw Renee Zellweger in public). I can hear the heart's a-thumping all across the land.

And here he is this year:

HOLY CRAP, DAVID DUCHOVNY--YOU'RE WRINKLED! YOUR HAIRLINE'S RECEDING! YOUR CHEEKS ARE SINKING!!! HOW DARE YOU AGE???

Okay. Chill. Take a deep breath. Here's the thing: these people? They're PEOPLE. Like me, like you. And one thing I've noticed about people as I get older is they age at different rates, and age faster at some parts of their lives than others. Go to a high school reunion and you'll see some folks who look like they did the day they grabbed their diplomas and walked off into the sunset. You'll also see some who look ten or twenty years older than everyone. And maybe ten or fifteen years down the road, those prematurely-aging types will look exactly the same, and Mr. Youthful will look about 108. As for Renee Zellweger? It really has been a few years since she's been out in the public eye--it's natural that we'd notice a difference (especially because it looks like she went out without a super-thick layer of makeup). Did she have work done? Maybe yes, maybe no, but who cares? It's her body, her choice, right? And aside from Bruce Jenner, why aren't we howling over male celebrities who have had work done--or haven't had it done?

The shame of it is, Renee Zellweger is a fine actress who has a new movie coming out next year and is in pre-production on another. Rather than wonder about whether she had work done or not, we should be celebrating her return to the screen (first film since 2010). And the question we should be asking is, why is it so hard for women in their 40s to get good roles in Hollywood?

That's all I've got to say about that--what say you? Thanks for reading, and have a nice weekend!

Yeah, I'm Behind the Times

O M G

L O L

Back when I played World of Warcraft, there was a leader of another guild who was friends (possibly in real life, though I'm not 100% sure) with a member of our guild. The other guild was a pretty serious raiding guild, whereas our was not. They did mostly 25-man raids, we did mostly 10-man raids. Still, when his guild had raids 'on farm' (i.e., when they could speed through them almost by rote and complete the whole thing fast), or when he was looking to complete old content for achievements or legendary weapons, he would sometimes fill out his roster with people from different guilds. Because or my guild buddy's relationship to this guy, and because I was able to carry my weight, follow instructions, and not die stupidly, I sometimes got to go with him.

Communication in the raids was accomplished via a voice program called Ventrilo, or 'vent' for short, which was useful so the raid leader could hand out assignments, talk strategy, and review failures, if need be. There was also a lot of idle chatter, because getting 25 people who are scattered all across the world moving together is a lot like herding cats, and there's a lot of down time. During this idle chatter, this raid leader would actually say "O-M-G" and "L-O-L"—just like that, spelled out. Not type it out in the on-screen raid chat, but say it, out loud. I suppose he was being ironic or something, hard to say, I never really got to know him all that well. Personally, as it stands, I tend to steer clear of acronyms like those, even in internet type of communications. When I played WoW and used  guild or party chat (which was on screen), I used full words, proper capitalization, and correct punctuation where ever possible. I will admit to using 'lol' a lot when things were funny, because it turnred out to be the best way to quickly communicate the emotion. But never in spoken speech.

I watched Sharknado Wednesday night.

O. M. G.

L. O. L.

That was the biggest laugh I've had all year, and if ever there was a time to use OMG and lol, that was it. Have a nice weekend, everyone.

A Lesson From Looper

Last weekend, I finally got to see the movie, Looper.

This was a movie I wanted to see from the instant last summer I saw the teaser on television (and this will tell you what's on my mind lately: when I wrote that line, I wrote 'query' instead of trailer).




The concept is fantastic. Men recruited in the present (which itself is about thirty years in our future) to assassinate men from the further future. The targets arrive at a predetermined time and location, where the 'loopers' (killers) shoot them and dispose of the body. At some point, however, the loopers themselves are deemed unnecessary, and you get to kill your future self. Mind blown.

Time travel stuff fascinates me, but it also has the potential to overwhelm a story, and can lead to all kinds of complications. I suspect J.K. Rowling may have gotten rid of the Time Turner from the Harry Potter series after finding herself with a device that could have been too powerful, too complicated to explain, and too easy to use as a way to get Harry and company in (and especially out) of trouble.

But here's how they dealt with time travel in Looper:

Abe (the man sent back in time by organized crime to run the Loopers): "All this time travel crap, it fries your brain like an egg."

Old Joe: "I don't want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws."

Hah. I love it. The movie just presents time travel as an established fact and ignores trying to explain how it actually works. The simple truth is, none of the characters need to know how it works, thus we don't need to know how it works, either. And instead of getting lost in all that wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, we can focus on the story, which is really NOT about time travel. Well played, Rian Johnson. Well played, indeed.

Musical Monday: Stars, Inspector Javert

Friday night I became one among millions of Americans who have seen the latest version of Les Miserables (yeah, I know there's supposed to be an accent over the 'e', but I just can't work that hard at this hour).

The movie did not disappoint me. I thought most of the performances were very strong, and even Russell Crowe, whose singing voice is not the best, did a great job as Javert, the policeman obsessed with finding the dastardly parole violator, Jean Valjean. And it's Javert I want to focus on here, because I had one of those 'Ah, hah!' moments while watching the film, the same sort of moment I wrote about while watching Breaking Bad over the summer.

If you're not familiar with the story, the quickest summation I can  give you is this: After spending almost 20 years in prison for stealing and making multiple escape attempts, Jean Valjean is released on parole, which he promptly breaks. He is hounded across the years by Javert, a former prison guard now turned policeman, who doesn't care that Valjean has reinvented himself as a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist: the man is a thief and a parole violator, and must be brought to justice. Of course, the story is much, much more than that, but for the purpose of this post, that's all you need to know.

At any rate, there was a scene in the first third of the movie. Following a close encounter with Valjean, Javert sings the song, Stars (this is from the 10th anniversary concert, not the current theatrical release):

A particular line caught my eye and gave me that "Ah, hah!" moment:

"He knows his way in the dark

Mine is the way of the Lord"

What was it about this line? To me, it was a perfect illustration of that writing aphorism that gets batted about whenever someone asks about villains:

"The antagonist is the hero of his own story."

Here we have two men on opposite sides of the story. Valjean, living under a false identity, trying to be a good man. Javert trying to prove the subterfuge and uphold the law to its letter. We sympathize with Valjean because we've seen how good he is, and we probably feel that his original sentence was not just to begin with. But in this moment we see Javert as a man absolutely convinced that he is not only right in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of the Lord as well. He is the hero of his own story.

Victor Hugo's book covers Javert's backstory in great detail (Oh, does it go into great detail), so we have time to understand who he is and why he behaves the way he does. The musical does not have that luxury of time, and, given the attention span of many modern readers, we probably don't, either. But two lines in one three-and-one-half minute song out of nearly three hours gave us all we needed to know about Javert; it made him understandable, if not exactly sympathetic. We can see him as the hero of his own story, even if he's not the hero of ours.

 

Trailer: The Mistaken

The 'O' side of my family is known for being late; it goes with the name. God willing, I will be late for my own funeral (if you're going to be late for anything, that's at least a good thing to be late for). And I'm a little late with this one, because the big release for Nancy S. Thompson's book trailer was last week. Still, it can't hurt to spread the love a little bit, can it? Here, in case you didn't see it last week, is the trailer for Nancy's thriller, The Mistaken, available October 18, 2012.




I am quite excited to see this book in print. I read an earlier version last January, and it's a thriller indeed, well-written, well-paced, and with a hero who finds himself in some seriously grey territory. Tyler Karras lands in Hell, then digs himself even deeper. It's a story that is both moving and grueling (and I mean that in a good way--thrillers are supposed to put you through the wringer right along with the characters, and Nancy delivers), skillfully done. Big congratulations to Nancy. And, maybe I'm not supposed to say anything, but I will have an interview with Nancy here on October 22! Be sure to stop by and meet the woman behind this fine book.

On a side note, we schlepped in to visit the Magpie yesterday and took her to see Finding Nemo 3-D. The film, as always, was a lot of fun. Disney and Pixar know what they're doing when it comes to film making and storytelling. Still, I'm not sure 3-D really enhanced the film all that much, and the rush to convert and re-release the back catalog in 3-D (coming this Christmas: Monsters, Inc. in 3-D!) smacks of being a quick grab for cash. Then again, Disney has a history of re-releasing classics in the theaters every few generations (I remember seeing Pinocchio and Lady and the Tramp in theaters as a child, and I'm NOT that old), so it's nothing new. It is nice for new audiences to see old classics in theaters, where films are really best enjoyed.

A Quote

At the end of last week we watched V for Vendetta, a 2005 film based on a graphic novel. It was a fine film, a great blend of action, ideas, and a bit of romance. A number of things said in the film stood out, but perhaps none (for me) more than this from early in the film:

"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth."

Powerful stuff, that, and there's nothing I can add to it.

Can't Get Enough of That Movie

If everything goes well tonight I will be seeing the new Sherlock Holmes film with a friend of ours tonight. This is not a sure thing, for we have a history of sudden cancellations with the person we’re supposed to meet there, and there are some concerns about the weather, since it looks like winter has finally decided to rear its frosty head here, just in time for the weekend.

Our friend has seen this movie multiple times since it came out. I think tonight will be at least her fourth viewing of it by now. It seems a little silly, but then I realized that there are movies that I watch, over and over and over again, too, though I don’t think I’ve ever gone to the theater to do it.

In fact, there are certain movies that I’ll watch all or part of any time they’re on, no matter what. Three minutes of commercials in the first period of a hockey game? Let’s flip through the guide and see what’s on – Oh, look at that! Let me just pop in for a bit…Funny how it works, isn’t it? Or, you have one of those nights where you just feel like vegging out. So, you sit down, turn on the tube, and surf the channel guide (hey, does anybody use TV Guide or the listings in the paper anymore?)….look at that, oh, it’s half over, well, I’ll just see what they’re up to…Next thing you know, an hour’s gone by on a movie you’ve seen a dozen times. I’m sure you have movies that do this to you. Here are a few movies that I just have to watch when they’re on:

Pulp Fiction. During Christmas week, I caught two segments of this while I should have been doing something else. Right before the end of break, I watched it, in its entirety, with my daughter, who had to watch it for her Theater Arts Class. (She loves it so much that she watched it the very next day with a friend of hers who’s also in the class). Pulp is filled with characters who are, let’s face it, reprehensible. Hit men, gangsters, cheaters, drug dealers – but they’re fascinating characters, played to perfection, with some really interesting (and often hysterical) things to say. I’m not big on picking favorites in general, but I think this movie does go down as my favorite.

Goodfellas. Hmm, I think there’s a trend here, as we get another gangster film. There’s a lot less humor in this than in Pulp, and it’s also based on a true story. Ray Liotta’s portrayal of unrpepentant wiseguy Henry Hill is outstanding, and heavyweights Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci are also terrific. It’s a fascinating (there’s that word again) look inside the world of organized crime, and I can’t help but tune in if I see it’s on.

Silence of theLambs. Man, I must have some problems. There’s a ton of great things in this movie, but let’s face it, the biggest draw is Anthony Hopkins. His chilling Dr. Hannibal Lecter may be the scariest monster in the history of film.

Okay, it’s not all dark and gloomy and full of blood and gore. Here’s a fun one that I just can’t resist: The Naked Gun. Leslie Nielson is perfect as the bumbling Lt. Frank Drebin, in a film full of sight gags, puns, and outright stupidity. My wife just doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s a guy thing. Just love this sort of thing:

I’m at a loss to say exactly what it is about these films that draw me in so much. Well, with The Naked Gun, it’s probably just for the laughs. And to catch some gag that I’ve probably missed. But the others, they’re not ‘feel good’ movies, not the sort of thing where you walk out feeling warm and gooshy about the human condition. But they’re damn good entertainment, nonetheless. The acting is superb, the story and writing top-notch. And I wonder if it is more the acting, or more the story that does it. I really don’t know.

I’m running off the rails here a bit today. At some future point I'll deal with books I read over and over again. What about you? Anything you find yourself watching whenever it's on? Why? Have a good weekend, everyone.