John Krasinski Made a Movie

Not only did John Krasinksi make a movie, but he also took the premise from a ridicuously difficult source material. Right now in select theaters, you can see Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, the film adaptation of the David Foster Wallace story collection. Signed off with Wallace's approval (and even apparently graceful acknowledgment that Krasinski was so able to tie the different stories together), it looks as bleak, dark, depressing, and all around hilarious as the short story collection, which you haven't read, it's worth trying. Like most story collections, not all the pieces are spectacular and you do get some clunkers, but hardly any of that comes from the hideous men segments (though "Octet" is still hauntingly amazing and achingly discomforting). Is it a good way to indoctrinate yourself to Wallace's work? Sure, why not? It was the first David Foster Wallace book that I ever read, though that's not to say you cannot be ambitious and just go for Infinite Jest or anything.

From interviews I've seen with Krasinski, he seems like a genuinley nice, warm-hearted guy, not to mention remarkably intelligent. Which makes you wonder why he did something like Liscence to Wed, unless he was liscenced for a paycheck, boo-yah. I know he's a great admirer of Wallace's work, which all right is not an ultimate qualification for intelligence, but . . . . Anyway, you can kinda tell that he's put his all into the production of this thing and it does indeed look captivating.

Here are some Hulu videos regarding the film:





I'm not entirely sure how it was recieved at Sundance, but I think it was taken fairly well and hey, why not bring it to more attention? Another interesting note: apparently after the film has had it's small theatrical run, Hulu will be streaming it on their Web site for some time. So it sounds like it might get a bigger audience.

Oh and check this out. You can read one of the brief interviews (which isn't actually so brief and you better get comfortable because this is probably the most compelling of them, the most involved, hideous, and heartbreaking, the closer of the collection [almost] and winner of a prize in fact) over here at The Paris Review. Or buy the book.

P.S. In the behind the scenes video above, what did you think of Christopher Meloni name dropping Mamet and Neil LeButte in his interview (for the Interviews; how postmodern)? Was it honest and that was where his mind went, or could it have been more of a "I know you see me as the muscle on Law & Order and one of the prisoners in Oz, but I'm smart, too, see? See?"

These Are Pretty Cool...

Just watch. Hardly any commentary necessary.

Oh Yes, It Gets Even Better....

By which I mean the new trailer for Where the Wild Things Are. WATCH.

WHOA....

This is all over the blogosphere, I'm sure, but goddammit, Warner Bros. just put up the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are and it looks...amazing. Click here for the hi-def Apple.com trailer, or just watch the YouTube thing, which who knows how long it'll last?

Remission

So I'm back in Colorado Springs for Spring Break (the ultimate travel spot; I mean, seriously, I pity all of you who went to Chicago or Mexico or San Francisco or France, because Colorado Springs is where it's at, baby) and suddenly have gone through a couple remissions. Recently I suffered through one remission when in a week I watched the entire 30 Rock series, which, because Pushing Daisies has been cancelled, is now the best show on television. Funny, smart, rounded characters (I have a friend who tried to argue with me, saying that I was looking at them on the surface levels, and blah blah blah; yet this is a kid who thinks Family Guy is funny and entertaining and is a biology major and reads Ways of the Peaceful Warrior, so it's really difficult to judge anything he says about characters and stories and effective storytelling seriously), great cast, and just spectacular joke after joke. That was all fixed up with last Thursday's episode.

You know, lately I've noticed that I've been watching a lot more TV, yet I don't actually watch it on my television set, but more on the Internet. Hulu.com is a wonderful Web site, and I seriously found the original Addams Family sitcom from the 60s -- all 64 episodes. Movies are just sort of flying back and I'll watch one occasionally, though I haven't seen anything in theaters since Coraline, which if you haven't seen, I'm very very sorry, and I don't think there's really anything interesting coming out till . . . all right, I'll be honest and admit that I do want to see that new Star Trek, which looks like it'll be a boatload of fun. The Boat that Rocked looks like the right kinds of goofy too, though is it difficult to do a radio movie? I haven't seen Talk to Me yet, but I wanted to. I haven't actually attempted a radio based story quite yet, bizarre considering I work at a radio station. Anyway, I refuse to see Watchmen because I hate both the comic and Zack Snyder, and God knows if anything good was released this week. Scorsese has a movie coming out at the end of this year; that new Michael Mann film looks interesting; and yes yes I'll admit it, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince looks fairly wicked awesome. Seeing as we got detracted from the original point, I'll sum it up at this: at the moment I'd rather watch a season or series of a good TV program (and I am picky when it comes to TV, moreso than movies or books or music) than a single movie.

Another story: I watched the very first Star Wars last weekend, you know, the one from 1977 (though it was the special edition because that's what I have on DVD; honestly, outside of some of the obvious fakeness, it doens't really bother me) and, let me start off by saying that I really enjoy those movies, that though none of the Warss match the heights of the Indiana Jones pictures (especially w/r/t Raiders of the Lost Ark), they're really a lot of fun. But that first one (Episode IV or whatever), dammit, is such a handjob to Joesph Campbell! There was a lot more exposition in that thing than I initially remembered. They don't even leave Tatooine until an hour into the movie, and the picture's only like two hours long. And there's still a lot of talking and plot to get through! Regardless, I like those movies and Han Solo, again a more flattened less badass version of Indiana Jones, is, spell it out, a.w.e.s.o.m.e.

All right. There's this nice break from KCSU, though I do like getting new music. Benjy Ferree released a concept record called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee, which traces the lift of one Bobby Driscoll, who you might know from giving the voice of Peter Pan and playing Jim in the original Disney Treasure Island. His story is the quintessential child star piece, the epitome of what happens and it goes: as a kid, Bobby Driscoll was given all the attention, actually taken under Walt Disney's wing and was living the life . . . until he hit puberty and his roles dropped off. He starred in a bunch of smaller, more adult (i.e. R-rated things, not pornography) pictures, dabbled in drugs, and in fact devoted most of his fortune to keeping up with the heroin. He ended up dead at 31, his body buried in a pauper's grave because some kids discovered his remains and they had no identification, and there's this legacy all about him. And there's the story for Benjy Ferree's record. "Fear" is a great song, looped in the doo-whop tradition and totally appropriate for what's going on.

The best release so far this year, however, I feel is still the Andrew Bird, which isn't even his best record, but still! Really, I'm holding out for the new Wilco, due out in June, and apparently (through the grapevine I've heard) returns more the the layered structures of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born rather than the jam band sessions of Sky Blue Sky, which was of course the followup (a decade later) to Being There. Wilco in any incarnation are the best band from America so I'm really excited.

Yesterday was the first day I had gone without any form of caffeine in some time -- no coffee or tea or anything -- and I had a headache by the end of the day. Today I had some and it feels wonderful. Like New York in the spring, or so I hear.

I want to share this with you before I go, it's a link through a blog that offers the a transcript of the brainstorming sessions that went into making Raiders of the Lost Ark. I guess if you're making something with somebody this might be the best way to start the writing a major sort of project. If I still wrote scripts and movies and stuff, this would be a lot more revelatory, but now it's just sort of interesting.

Story/fiction/prose writing is a lot more fun anyway. And you don't have to rely on anyone else other than yourself in order to get something done. And budgetary issues are never a problem. Of course, you get another batch of problems which at times have driven me super super crazy, but still, it's all on you to finish the drafts, before you show it to other people, and you don't have to worry about them, while reading the typescript, not showing up for the appropriate times or goofing off too much so production gets pushed behind and then trying to interject to do things that don't match the characters and blah blah blah. Egotistical and God-complexed? Sure. But I should admit that everytime I've finished a story, I've felt more accomplished than any movie.

One more thing: "Ojitos," a short story I wrote and which won me 1600 bucks through a competition has so far been rejected from three of the five magazines I've sent it to (Southwest Review, McSweeneys, and The New Yorker). I'm expecting another couple rejections in the next few weeks, but at least these editors know I exist and one of them did offer me to keep trying. Yay.

Summary

It's no secret that I really really hate the Watchmen comic book. Jason Moses, a good friend, introduced it to me my freshmen year of college and I just didn't like it. Yes, I may be in the minority on this, but regardless. It left me cold, not in the sense that it was Moore's intentions to leave me cold, but that the story deteriorated in on itself, that it got lost within its own ambitions and couldn't find a way out so it pulled the fastest punch it could think of (though this ending was obvious, the clues toward it were sprinkled in later and sometimes felt out of place). The characters want to be rounded, but were flattened in their Technicolor conventions; Moore's desire of vengence and undergrad politcal sprouts overruled any real message that they had; and it just went on and on and on and on and on and on and on, seeming to glorify the fascisim contained within more than the actual questions of watching the watchmen or whatever.

As everyone knows, there's a movie coming out at like the end of this week, and the New Yorker put out a nice little review of it, featuring a passage that ultimatley describes my feelings toward the comic book:

“Watchmen,” like “V for Vendetta,” harbors ambitions of political satire, and,
to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who
believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex, and whose
deepest fear—deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent
conversation—is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along. The
problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of
vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends
up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon.

For all I care, people can have their Watchmen, it seems to be the kind of story you love at a certain point unconditionally then outgrow (see: House of Leaves), but, come on, why read that when you have much fuller, much more impactful and important and wonderfully complete graphic novels and comic books like Maus and Blankets? In all, I still think that it's just a dreadful piece and hearing people talk about it incessently, freaking out about it as if it were to be the greatest thing this side of divinity, is getting old and silly.

Also at the New Yorker this week, a couple pieces about dear departed David Foster Wallace. There are plans, rumors brewing, that the segments and notes of his last, unfinished novel are going to be put out sometime next year, which is expected. I bet there's another short story collection in there too.

Last Night's Oscars

Such a predictable show last night. I only tuned in for some parts and luckily saw the ones that I actually cared about. Of those, there were two pretty good speeches, both coming from the Milk wins.

Dustin Lance Black's was elegant and wonderful, not preachy but comforting and welcoming and just very well delivered. Watch here:



Sean Penn's was a little long on the graitudues at the beginning, but his postscripts were....



Frankly, I don't understand why there's still all this opposition; this hiding behind facades of church and religion; this overall fear of basically nothing. How long do you think it would take people to just get over it? To make them realize that everytime they throw out an attack, make their protesting statements, say their bigoted comments, they are putting themselves in a negative light? Making themselves come off as less intelligent and more wicked? Why do people need to feel this way, projecting their own frustrations and fears onto another group of people that has no true differences than them? How can these people possibly think that they're doing the right thing?

I don't understand it at all.

I Really Want to See This Movie:

It's called Were the World Mine. And it has singing, dancing, falsettos, and, from the looks of it, a lot of half naked boys.

All Right...(?)

Grab Some Popcorn

Can't Wait to See This:

Because it's, you know, for the kids.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom the Crystal Skull

Is a very good movie.

To the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

A lot of people saw this at midnight last night, but with being a person unable to stay up into the wee hours of the morning, I get to see it today at 9:45.

This is Indiana Jones, people!

One of the Best Scenes Ever:

So it's May and very very soon Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be coming out. And we're going to prepare ourselves for it, together, as a community (of three people), and it's going to be fucking awesome because it's Indiana Jones, people. To start things off, here's one of the best scenes ever committed to film:



Loads more Indiana Jones things coming up when I think of them.

Anniversary:

On April 20th of my freshman year (2006?) I premiered the last movie that I made that was actually any decent. It was called Toilet Trained and Dumb; I kinda liked that one.

There Will Be Vader

Top 10 Lists

Everybody does them, and for some reason, people choose to do 10. Why not 8? Why not 5? Or 3? What's so special about 10? I guess it's just a nice round number.

Well, in an act of pure pretentious, pompousness, and anything else, here are my 10 favorite records and movies from the year 2007 . . . postdated by 3 months. Alas. Also, I'm bored at home and it's too cold outside to take the dog for a walk. Bummer.

MOVIES:
Ratatouille (this is actually my favorite of the year. For long moments I thought of No Country for Old Men and There WIll Be Blood, as they are the ones who recieved the most attention; but I feel -- like The Indredibles before it -- that there was no other movie so well put together, so satisfying, so heartwarming, funny, sad, hopeful, looking, and magical, yes magical! movie than Ratatouille. It's my number one.)
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
The Simpsons Movie (which stands as the movie I most watched in 2007.)
3:10 to Yuma
Juno
Hairspray
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Darjeeling Limited
Stardust

MUSIC:
The Meaning of 8 -- Cloud Cult
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga -- Spoon
Friend and Foe -- Menomena
Sky Blue Sky -- Wilco
Person Pitch -- Panda Bear
In Rainbows -- Radiohead
The Ortolan -- The Deadly Syndrome
100 Days 100 Nights -- Sharon Jones and the Dap-King
Boxer -- The National
Sound of Silver -- LCD Soundsystem

And as for books, since that's what I'm mostly all about, here are the ten best reads I had, because I don't remember all the books that are strictly 2007 (not including any re-reads).

BOOKS:
Little, Big by John Crowley (best book ever.)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (started in December of '06 and finished January '07.)
The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows by J. K. Rowling
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznik
The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

All right, I'm done . . . for now!

Quite Proud of Myself

On Friday I finished the first draft of my latest short story, called "Ojitos." I've been running through already, creating the typescript, and I think that it's all right. There's certainly some moments I'm proud of and others I'm just like, "What was I thinking when I wrote that?"

Every once in awhile someone will ask me what it's about and I tell them basically one of the characters and they go: "Oh, like that monster in Pan's Labyrinth?" And I go: "No, it's more like Minority Report." Which I hold as Steven Spielberg's strongest movie of his dark period, the one that started after Schindler's List and has continued on today (look at AI, War of the World, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, and The Lost World: Jurassic Park if you don't believe me). I love Minority Report, I don't think I've ever said that enough . . . I don't think you can say it enough. It's just so well-executed, such a great balance of ideas, character, story, and adventure.

Anyway, this is the scene in question:



This story is the first one I've ever written in first person. I mean ever. Well, I did first person plural once, but that doesn't count. I just hate the first narrator, I think it feels cheap, almost an easy way to handle things (at least I did). But writing this story was an uphill struggle and each page was written two or three times and God knows how many the typescript's going to get. At least I can say I did it and can no return to my detached third person narrator, where I can go on any tangent that I want, talk about anything that I feel like, and not always have to ask myself if the character would say that with each and every sentence. Screw that. And my third narrator is just a disembodied thing so take that.

Screw you first person. I hope you get cholera.

Oh, I also finished writing an essay, read the first half of this book called Tabloid Dreams, and workshopped a 34-page story. Been quite a productive weekend so far but I think the afternoon's shot because I want to go watch that movie now.

This May've Made Star Wars Even Better:

You know: if it were done by Saul Bass:



And the special edition:

Note:

So: in the new Indiana Jones trailer, there's a bit that looks a little computer-touched, if you know what I mean. It's maybe a minute in, right after Dr. Jones is first officialy introduced -- the thing people on the IMDB boards are calling Ray Winstones's CGI pants extravaganze. What happened, to explain it all, is that the MPAA told Paramount and Spielberg that having guns that close in the frame wasn't appropriate for all audiences, never mind the shootouts, car crashes, punches, gun cockings, explosions, and imitiable dangerous actions that follow afterwards. In the international version the weapons are intact and also the American flag has been 86ed.

Strage.

Why are the MPAA still around? What's it going to take to bring them down? Come on, filmmakers, someone out there has to have the power of Radiohead and say "Screw you" to the bigwigs. The MPAA itself, which treats us as mentally challenged children -- us! usually intelligent, grounded people -- doesn't seem like it should be that difficult to bring down; already it's too loose in its construction, barely holding together any respect or acknowledgement anymore. You don't need This Film is Not Yet Rated to tell you that (though it is interesting).

Funny how something created to protect artists from censorship became the biggest black-blocker there ever could be . . . oh wait, no it isn't. It was inevitable.