The Write Stuff.

You may have noticed a spurt in the posting activity of this page. I haven't posted since late April for good reason. Getting married on June 30 was just one of the good reasons. I've been very busy with running the shop, writing a novel, and maintaining two MySpace sites. I will from now on cross-post all my MySpace blogging with this blog, but what appears here won't necessarily appear on MySpace. Get it? Good!

My third attempt at writing a novel during Natiional Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, has been successful. I met and exceeded the goal of 50,000 words in thirty days; the actual count was 57, 172, but who’s counting?

This is the third year I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo, but only the second year I met the goal. Last year I stumbled right out of the starting gate, but that’s another story. I conned myself into thinking the idea would make a better short story. This year I was determined to make up for last year and prove to myself that the first year out was no fluke.

The good news is I had much more fun this year than the first go-round, and I think that caused the resulting words to form a much better work. It is certainly no masterpiece at this stage; I have lots of work left to do, such as fill in the plot holes, tighten up character motivation, and fill the book out to standard novel length, maybe by adding some more detailed sub-plotting.

The first year I did NaNoWriMo, I made some mistakes in the process that ultimately led to my not finishing a rewrite of the book. First of all, I let it go nearly two months before I went back into it. Then, when I read the first draft, I was so overwhelmed by some the books problems, I just let the project wither and die. Sure, I put it into proper manuscript form, corrected spelling and grammar errors and edited some passages out, but what I really needed to do was go back in and fix some major problems with the plot. I was so stumped about how to do this, I eventually gave up and went on to other, not necessarily better, things.


That will not happen this year. I am leery of taking more than two weeks away from the book this time. I’ve already gone back and written a few notes about what to take out and what to put in on the next draft. I’m also doing more in-depth character profiles and I’ll probably end up doing a scene-by-scene outline of what’s already on paper to help me see even more plot holes.

A second draft of this book will get done, and maybe a third, a fourth, or tenth, if need be. This book has great potential, even as a series perhaps, but right now it’s still in it’s infant stages, as is my writing ability. I have much to learn about writing, it’s true, but Tony Hillerman once told me that writing a novel is hard, yes, and I’ll want to give up six hundred times, but he said, “the secret is to never give up, keep writing.” Whenever I start feeling like I doubt my abilities, I remember these words, shake off my doubts, and keep writing.

For video fun, check out this strange ad Charles Bronson did for a Japanese men's hygene product:

WESTERNS ALL'ITALIANA MOVIE REVIEWS.

The following are three movie reviews I did for Tom Betts and his Westerns all'Italiana Spaghetti Western fanzine. They are of western films of marginal interest to the readers of the fanzine. The Seraphim Falls review has been published in a previous issue, while the other two have yet to be published to my knowledge. Westerns all'Italiana is available by contacting its publisher Tom Betts, or by visiting The Drive In Connection. The reviews are presented here for those of you not necessarily interested in Spaghetti Westerns per se, but who might still enjoy the reviews.

Seraphim Falls Stands Tall

It’s certainly not news to most of us, but the American western film no longer holds the same appeal with the mass movie-going audience as it once did. Sure, westerns get made, but they usually wind up on TV (THE BROKEN TRAIL) or going straight to video (BANDIDAS). It’s clear the studios have no faith in them, regardless of what big names may be in the cast. The treatment Samuel Goldwyn Company gave SERAPHIM FALLS, starring Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson, is a prime example.

The studio unceremoniously dumped SERAPHIM FALLS onto a small number of theatre screens in late January, a box-office graveyard usually reserved for lame comedies (THE CLEANER) or low budget teen horror flicks (BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE), and other films with little potential. Clearly, the western has now joined this list. Despite its cast, featuring a former James Bond and two Academy Award nominees (Neeson and Angelica Huston), there was virtually no publicity for the film, even in my home state of New Mexico, where most of the picture was shot.
I make it a habit to see any film made in New Mexico. It’s my way of supporting our film industry. Sadly, this has meant sitting through many stinkers, especially lately, since Governor Richardson’s tax breaks and incentives have sent countless hack filmmakers into our sunny clime to make their “masterpieces.” Some recent examples of New Mexico cinema include BEERFEST, and EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH. Heck, the last truly great movie made here was probably EASY RIDER in 1969.

This track record, its horrible release date, and the fact that only one theatre in town was still showing the film less than two weeks after its release made me think SERAPHIM FALLS had all the earmarks of a mega-bomb. But dang it, it’s a western, and I wanted to see it.

Thankfully, all these signs were wrong. Turns out SERAPHIM FALLS is the first good big-screen American western since OPEN RANGE, and the rare oater that succeeds at trying something different within the genre.

The publicity for the film calls it a combination of “the raw brutality of FIRST BLOOD with the mesmerizing beauty of COLD MOUNTAIN.” That description is not too far off the mark, but it’s a superficial one. Much more lurks under the film’s surface.

The story, at first, seems very simple. Three years after the close of the Civil War, Carver (Neeson) and his hired posse are chasing Gideon (Brosnan) across the mountains, plains and deserts with intent to kill. In order to stay alive, Brosnan starts “dropping folks like owl pellets,” usually with a humongous, deftly thrown knife or a cleverly set (bear) trap. He even finds a surprising use for a dead horse. His masterful blade skills will remind spaghetti western fans of Tomas Milian’s character Cuchillo in THE BIG GUNDOWN and RUN, MAN, RUN.

First-time feature director David Von Ancken (best known for episodes of TV’s CSI: NY and COLD CASE) keeps these chase scenes exciting and suspenseful. We stay intrigued because we don’t know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy or why Gideon must die until two-thirds of the way through the movie. Little flashback snippets ala DJANGO THE BASTARD tease us early on, and Von Ancken really whets our appetite by having both men experience the same nightmarish visions!

Once the two men finally meet up mano a mano, we learn Carver’s vengeance steams from a horrible mistake. This explanation twists our initial preconceptions, and sends more traditional revenge westerns running for the hills. Here, the film takes an unexpected, refreshing turn into allegory and symbolism. Suddenly the two men are in the middle of an isolated, hellish desert landscape, in which they meet two lone figures, a wisdom-spouting Indian, played by New Mexico resident Wes Studi (Joe Leaphorn in SKINWALKERS) guarding a tiny watering hole, and Angelica Houston as a devilish, scarlet-dressed snake oil saleswoman, who makes them offers they don’t refuse.

It’s at this point the movie will either win you over or lose you completely. If you like your westerns predictable, with clear-cut winners and losers, good guys and bad guys, you’ll probably hate it. If you enjoy a western that makes you think, challenges you, and even makes a political statement, you’ll find it rewarding.

I fall into the latter camp. The film becomes an anti-war statement, illustrating the futility of war, and drawing obvious parallels to the current situation in Iraq. I can’t recall a western since maybe THE WILD BUNCH which reflects the political mood of the time it was made quite as well as this film does. It’s also great to see an entertaining, action-packed western that also manages to be about something.

Both Brosnan and Neeson manage to disappear into their characters, making us forget their prior big-screen images. Granted, neither has many lines to deliver amongst all the action, but they both prove quite credible in the Old West milieu. Worth noting in the supporting cast is genre regular Ed Lauter, who plays one of Neeson’s men. He doesn’t get much to say, and doesn’t survive the film’s running time, but it’s good to see him back in the old west.

The film’s visual look, provided by cinematographer John Toll (THE LAST SAMURAI, BRAVEHEART) is spectacular, making good use of Oregon’s mountains in the early scenes and New Mexico’s desolate flatlands in the rest of the picture. The final scenes, shot near Lordsburg, NM, look as though they were literally filmed in Hell.

Aside from Brosnan’s knife prowess, spaghetti western fans might enjoy the opening scenes, set among snow covered mountains, which recall THE GREAT SILENCE, even down to Brosnan’s black fur coat. The final third also has a vague “spaghetti” feel to it, thanks to the dusty, barren setting. Sadly, though, there is no Morricone-style score here, only an unobtrusive symphonic one. Fans of more oddball spaghettis such as MATALO or DJANGO KILL might really enjoy this film. Traditionalists beware.

It’s a pity this film was basically disowned by its distributor. SERAPHIM FALLS is a well-made, unusual, and highly entertaining western with a great cast and amazing scenery deserving of a wider audience. Catch it when it comes out on DVD, you might like it.

John’s Rating: 4 Pistols.

Here's the SERAPHIM FALLS trailer:


Leave It To Cleavage: A Review of the BANDIDAS DVD.

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, I’m watching the DVD of BANDIDAS, a western comedy starring Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz, while my fiancée Susan is having a nap on the couch. About halfway through the film, the women, dressed in skimpy showgirl costumes, have tied Steve Zahn naked to a bed and they are straddling him, trying to get information out of him. At that moment, Susan wakes up, watches the movie for a few seconds and says “OH MY GOD, this is such a GUY flick!”

Susan really nailed this one. Not that this scene is dirty or pornographic, mind you. It stays within the parameters of a PG-13 rating. This is the movie’s most memorable scene, simply because there probably isn’t a heterosexual male in the world who wouldn’t like to be in Steve Zahn’s place, becoming the battle ground for a kissing contest between the two women. BANDIDAS knows what guys want to see.

This movie exploits the physical charms of its two stars in a wonderfully old-fashioned way – by titillation. The cleavage quotient is through the roof, both women are soaking wet on a couple of occasions, and they always look movie star fabulous. Even the bandanas they wear during robberies are oh so chic! Sure, there are probably thousands of lonely fan boys out there who’ll complain because there was no nudity, naked mud-wrestling or hot lesbian sex scene. Hey fellas, this isn’t that kind of movie. Back in my day, we used our imaginations to fill in the blanks (I still have dreams of Julie Newmar in her Catwoman outfit); get over it. The point is, no matter how lame the movie gets (and this one has a few moments), we still want to watch, because its stars are mega-sexy and appealing.

BANDIDAS, set in late nineteenth century Mexico, concerns Sara (Hayek), a European-educated rich girl who teams up with Maria (Cruz), a poor farmer’s daughter to rob banks run by an evil American called Jackson (Dwight Yoakam). He and his band of men are stealing land from Mexican farmers to make way for an American-financed railroad line. The ladies intend to give the bank’s money back to the people, but to do this, they first get bank robbing lessons from outlaw Bill Buck (Sam Shepard). The bad guys hire crime scene investigator Quentin (Steve Zahn) to help track down the bandidas, but they convert him to their cause (largely via the previously mentioned kissing scene). He ends up helping them rob more banks, and foil Jackson’s plans.

The movie is a hybrid of VIVA MARIA and BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, with a sense of humor that owes much to the Terence Hill and Bud Spencer TRINITY films. The comedy elements are a mixed bag, offering clever, inspired bits along with groan-inducing silliness. The clever stuff includes Hayek’s horse climbing a ladder, and a late nineteenth century variant on a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-style heist involving a pressure sensitive floor. The silliness includes the pair’s non-stop bickering, Zahn’s repetitive pratfalls, Hayek’s habit of hiccupping when she gets nervous, and a ridiculous MATRIX “bullet-time” shootout. Thankfully, the movie’s lively pacing keeps things moving so fast we can quickly forgive and forget the weak moments.

The biggest asset to these proceedings is a great cast of likeable and talented people. This was a vanity project for Cruz and Hayek; something they wanted to make just for fun and it is clear they are having a great time. Zahn makes a wonderful sidekick for the two women, even if at times he seems to be channeling Don Knotts from SHAKIEST GUN IN THE WEST. Sam Shepard adds a touch of old western grit and class in his near-cameo role, but it is Dwight Yoakum who shines above everyone else. His black leather clad villain is an outlandish marriage of Snidely Whiplash and Rob Zombie. Yoakum goes way over the top here and emerges as one of the most delightfully evil bad guys in recent memory.

BANDIDAS is produced and co-written by French action auteur Luc Besson, and directed by Norwegian first-timers Joachim Roennig and Espen Sandberg. As such, the movie has a distinctly European feel. I’m willing to bet all three of these folks were heavily influenced by spaghetti westerns and Spencer-Hill movies as children, since the film shows some evidence of that. The bad guys are extremely dirty, nasty, and hairy, clad in filthy dusters. Yoakam’s black leather attire seems inspired by many a spaghetti villain, as well as a few heroes, like Sabata and Sartana. Also, anyone else find it interesting that the villains are Americans? You’re not likely to find that in a Hollywood western. Finally, the musical score, by Eric Serra, has a nice degree of spaghetti twang,especially over the end credits, which should please fans of Ennio Morricone.
The movie is more or less a direct-video release in the United States, having only a very brief run in the Cinema Latino theatre chain (with Spanish subtitles) last September. European audiences got to see this one long before we did.
This is not great art here, folks. Its only intent is to entertain, and that it does. The film is never dull and uses up ninety minutes quickly. I can think of far worse ways to waste a Sunday afternoon in front of the tube. I highly recommend BANDIDAS for fans of the female leads. Counting the cleavage shots alone should keep you occupied. If you, like me, are a fan of spaghetti western comedies, in the TRINITY, PROVIDENCE and HALLELUJAH mold, you’ll enjoy it too, because you’ve probably sat through much worse. BANDIDAS is worth a rental.

John’s rating: The movie left me in a good mood, so I’ve give it a generous 3 pistolas.(B)

Oh, one final comment about the DVD itself. It contains an audio commentary track by Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz. This is a sure contender for the worst commentary in history. It seems neither woman has any idea what to say most of the time, causing some long patches of silence. Hayek tries to guide her friend, but Cruz seems extremely nervous and often confused. Worse, something interesting may be happening on screen, but they talk about something else entirely. Don’t waste your time on this “extra.”

Here is the french language trailer for the movie, you'll get the idea:


THE FAR SIDE OF JERICHO DVD Review

I really wanted to like THE FAR SIDE OF JERICHO, and for about the first half hour or so, I liked it a lot. Then the damned ghosts showed up. More on that in a paragraph or two.

THE FAR SIDE OF JERICHO is a new low budget western, shot in my home state of New Mexico. It played briefly in Los Angeles in the spring of 2007, and is now on DVD. With Tim Hunter (THE RIVER’S EDGE) directing and hard-boiled novelist James Crumley as co-writer, it was clear this had the potential to be a pretty off-beat flick. It does succeed at being unusual, but not at being a good film.

The film centers around three middle-aged ranch women; an ex-whore (Lissa Negrin), a bitter alcoholic (Judith Burnett ), and a crack-shot ( Suzanne Andrews ). It starts with the women watching their outlaw husbands, the notorious Thornton Brothers, hang for robbing the local bank. The brothers hid the loot somewhere, and everyone wants it, including the banker (Lawrence Pressman), the corrupt sheriff (Patrick Bergin), and an amoral hangman (James Gammon), who all chase the women off their land. While on the run, each woman discovers that the Thortons left her a portion of a map to the hidden treasure. Piecing the map together, they try to get to the money before the bad guys, a teenage boy, and a band of Apaches catch up with them. Along the way, the ghosts of their dead husbands guide them on their quest.

Yep, you read that last line correctly. But the ghosts are just the tip of the problematic iceberg here. The movie can’t seem to decide just what exactly it wants to be. It waivers wildly from gritty realism to humorous fantasy and old-fashioned adventure. Add in some weirdly surreal bits, like a whorehouse in the middle of nowhere and ninja-like Apaches, and you get a pretty schizophrenic viewing experience. The overall effect is like channel surfing between different movies on three or four TV channels. As the credits rolled, accompanied by an end theme sung by a slightly inebriated-sounding Patrick Bergin, I asked the television “What the hell was that?”

I just don’t think the film makers had a clue what they were doing. While some scenes are entertaining on their own, they just don’t blend together well enough to make an cohesive or consistently enjoyable whole. There is a nice sense of humor running through most of the running time, which keeps it from being a total loss, but the movie is certainly nowhere near as funny, or as clever, as it seems to think it is.

The actors don’t seem to know what kind of movie they’re appearing in, either. The three female leads give generally low-key, naturalistic performances, befitting a serious drama. Pressman’s f-word spouting banker would be perfectly at home in DEADWOOD. Gammon, as the evil hangman, seems to be channeling John Carradine from a bad Al Adamson movie, hamming it up whole-hog. Bergin just seems kind of confused, tongue somewhat in cheek, just kind of reacting to the weirdness around him. C. Thomas Howell, John Diehl, and Jason Connery, as the ghosts of the dead husbands all come off, opt to go straight for goofy and corn-pone.

Is there anything here of interest to Spaghetti Western fans? Outside of the old “put the maps together to find the treasure” ploy and the general grimy look of things, I’d say no. It sticks mostly with American western conventions. The photography goes for big, sweeping vistas, and the musical score is strictly old-fashioned Hollywood for the most part.

Something odd I noticed was that while the movie is heavily peppered with very colorful and downright filthy language, it is also a remarkably bloodless affair, considering how many people are killed in the course of the action. While I’m not much for brutality and gore, this didn’t make much sense to me. If you’ve already guaranteed yourself an R-rating with about a hundred f-words, why hold back on the blood? And about the language, I’m not sure the phrase “dip-shit” was a common phrase in the American West of the 1800s.

What’s sadly lacking in this movie is a sense of “Oompf.” It is competently shot and acted, but it never succeeds at being more than mildly interesting or entertaining. It tries to do too many things at once, does none of them particularly well, and ends up shooting itself in the foot. It might be worth a rental for die-hards, but I can’t give this one more than two pistolas.

Oh, one interesting bit of trivia; Lissa Negrin, who plays the ex-whore Bridget, apparently makes her living primarily as a Cher impersonator. Check her out at www.cherandcheralike.com.

Here's the unedited trailer:(warning there's some of that colorful language!)

The trailer is way more entertaining than the movie!

Latitude Zero DVD Review

I remember when I was a nine or ten year-old boy living in Aurora Colorado seeing both the newspaper and television ads for a movie called Latitude Zero. The movie was a US-Japanese co production from Toho Studios and Inoshiro Hondo, the man behind many of the best giant monster movies, including Godzilla. The ads featured such things a sleek flying submarine, a winged lion, giant rats and flying monkeys; stuff right up the alley of an imaginative ten year old. For some reason, I never got to see Latitude Zero, but the kid inside of me has never forgotten those extremely cool ads.

Well, it’s the DVD age now, and it seems like just about anything ever made is eventually seeing the light of home video. I must not be the only person in the world interested in seeing this movie after thirty –five years, because the good folks at Tokyo Shock have just released the movie in a wonderful two-disc edition featuring pristine widescreen prints of both the US version and the shorter Japanese version of the film. My internal ten year old is the happiest he’s been in years.

The movie concerns an oceanographic research team caught in the eruption of an underwater volcano. The team is led by Akira Takarada as Dr. Ken Tashiro, and Masumi Okada as Dr. Jules Masson (a Japanese guy not too convincing as a Frenchman). The great character actor Richard Jaeckel, plays a newspaper reporter along for the ride. A futuristic submarine, commanded by Joseph Cotton, rescues them. Cotton looks more like Hugh Hefner than Captain Nemo, dressed in an open shirt and wearing gold chains across his chest. Dr. Masson is badly injured, and taken back to the submarine’s home base at Latitude Zero, a Utopian community dedicated to eradicating the world’s ills. To do so, the captain and his crew convince the world’s greatest scientific minds to “defect” to the community.

Looking to ruin Cotton’s utopian vision is Dr.Malic, played by Caesar Romero, who commands an equally powerful submarine called the Black Shark. Malic plans to kidnap a brilliant scientist on his way to Latitude Zero, to cause Cotton and cronies to come to the rescue, and giving Malic the opportunity to kill his rivals. The plans to do this with the help of a half-bird, half-lion creature, some evil flying monkeys and a pack of giant rats.

The whole movie operates on the level of an elaborate full-color widescreen Saturday movie serial like Flash Gordon. The pace is fast, lively, and tongue-in-cheek. The special effects are a wonderful mix of terrific miniatures, and cheesy men-in-suit monsters, giving the film a ratty, low-tech charm.

The performances of the veteran cast add to the fun. Jaeckel plays the wisecracking bulldog reporter as if he just stepped off the set of The Front Page, and Romero chews the scenery like his is still playing the Joker on Batman.

We get flying submarines, jet packs, gloves that shoot flames, goofy monsters, babes in backless miniskirts, brain transplants, and all sorts of G-rated mayhem. It all ends with a nod to The Wizard of Oz.

The Tokyo Shock DVD is a 2 disc set containing both the longer American version and the shorter Japanese cut. I have only seen the US cut so far, and it is presented in beautiful edition that makes you think the movie was made yesterday. I think it is an easy bet anyone who enjoys old Toho movies, serial style thrills and old actors slumming will love this wonderful, imaginative, slightly cracked film. Highly recommended. A.