Why Cabin in the Woods wasn’t scary

Okay, so this post has only a little bit to do with books. Right now I’m reading a collection that examines the accomplished career of Joss Whedon—you know him as the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse, to name a handful. Shortly after I received the book, I went to see The Cabin in the Woods, a horror movie co-written by Whedon and Drew Goddard, who contributed to some of Whedon’s work in the past.

Imagine the supernatural “scares” of Buffy, add in a lot more humor and less camp (no singing vampires here), and you’ve got Cabin in the Woods. I had planned on waiting until my review of the Joss Whedon book to talk about the movie, but necessity calls: When someone writes an article as misleading as the one at Vulture.com, it demands a counter-response.

First off, the title: “Why Wasn’t Cabin in the Woods Scary?” I hoped the article was going to educate those who were missing the point because they were disappointed over the movie’s real nature (non-stop funny, smart, well-characterized—the list goes on, but “scary” isn’t on it), but instead the writers used it as a soap box to discuss what the movie allegedly did wrong … thus missing the point themselves.

(Warning: contains spoilers)

Hey, Netflix users! Question time

Dear fellow Netflix users,

What are your favorite movie adaptations of books that you’ve found on Instant Streaming? Any worth a watch?

The last one I saw was probably the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I’m always on the lookout for a decent film on the service.

See John Carter in theaters, then read the book

Personally, I’m not endorsing the new John Carter movie, which arrived in theaters last Friday. If you like director Andrew Stanton of Finding Nemo and WALL-E fame or have a taste for interplanetary adventures, then maybe it’s worth watching despite the splattering of negative scores that’s currently hitting Rotten Tomatoes. But for me, commercials for the movie rung a too close to Prince of Persia, a mediocre Disney film released in recent years.

Whether or not you plan to frequent the theater soon to see John Carter, you can always download the book it’s based on—and right now the Kindle version of A Princess of Mars, the first in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ science fantasy series Barsoom, is free on Amazon. That’s too good a deal to pass up, especially considering the book’s resounding four-and-a-half star aggregate customer score on the website.

Besides A Princess of Mars and its respective eleven-book series, Burroughs created Tarzan of the Apes, which led to a series of different adaptations, including Disney’s animated production Tarzan in 1999.

A Princess of Mars was previously a direct-to-DVD movie from film studio and distributor The Asylum and has inspired a number of comic books and other appearances, such as a cameo in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentleman.

Small in stature, big in heart: The Secret World of Arrietty, or The Borrowers

After watching The Secret World of Arrietty in theaters this weekend, I’m convinced that I’ve read the book it’s based on. For those unfamiliar with Studio Ghibli films, they’re a line of wonderfully animated Japanese movies (translated into English) that contain enough humor and charm to entertain viewers of any age. They’re not like most anime. You won’t see girls with bouncing cleavage or similar tropes common to the medium that tend to turn off non-otaku-loving audiences. Rather, these movies showcase a love of nature and an appreciation for life’s simpler pleasantries. These emotional, heartfelt stories have become known for their excellent sense of character and imaginative worlds.

Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote the screenplay for The Secret World of Arrietty, is probably the most talented of the Studio Ghibli crew. He’s written and directed the best productions the studio has to offer, such as Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and My Neighbor Totoro (all favorites of mine). I’ve found that the move sway Miyazaki has over a movie, the better it is.

Miyazaki didn’t direct The Secret World of Arrietty (released in Japan in 2010), but the film is worth seeing regardless. This was my first screening of a Studio Ghibli film in theaters, and being exposed to other movies in the collection, I should have known that the faster scenes of animation, where the camera pans quickly over the scenery, would be a problem on the big screen. I’m not fluent in technicalities, but the frame rate or the standard definition causes the blurry animation during these moments. Thankfully, they are few, and it doesn’t prevent the movie from looking gorgeously colored, expertly detailed, and generally amazing.

Like some other Studio Ghibli films, The Secret World of Arrietty takes awhile to reach its full stride. Overall, it isn’t one of the best movies the studio has produced, but it is enjoyable and possesses all of the aforementioned qualities that separate Studio Ghibli from other animation companies of its class.

Interesting fact: The movie fared better than Ponyo, reaching a bigger audience and earning more in its opening weekend, but both are marred by bad pop songs. If you’ve seen the ending credits of Ponyo, then you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I wanted to point out the book this movie is adapted from: The Borrowers by English author Mary Norton. I swear I’ve read this book as a kid. The book (and the movie) is about tiny people called “Borrowers” who live in people’s houses and take things that they need to survive—a lump of sugar here, a piece of string there. But a Borrower can never be seen by human beings, and that’s the source of trouble in the story.

The Borrowers (published in 1952) won a Carnegie Medal and was ranked among CILIP Carnegie’s top ten children’s books in 2007, beside classics like Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in North America) by Philip Pullman. Four sequels followed the book, recounting the additional adventures of the Clock family: The Borrowers Afield, Afloat, Aloft, and Avenged.

There has been a made-for-TV movie (1973), a BBC series (1992), a live-action film (1997), and a BBC production with Stephen Fry (2011)—none of them nearly as successful as The Secret World of Arrietty seems to be, and maybe that’s because an animated movie just makes more sense for a story this fantastical in nature. Anything else is going to look like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

What do you think of The Secret World of Arrietty and other Studio Ghibli films? Have you read The Borrowers?

Is writing our destiny?

Last night I was watching the fifth episode of the BBC show Being Human. (Wow, I started this series weeks ago, and I’m only on episode five? Good lord.) In “Where the Wild Things Are,” the vampire leader/policeman William Herrick confesses in an elevator that he once dreamed of becoming an architect because of a picture book he owned when he was a boy. The hunger of a vampire, as it happens, decided otherwise. “This chose me,” he tells Mitchell fiercely.

It got me thinking. That’s a lot like being a writer.

Now, maybe it’s wrong* to compare a vampire’s instinct to kill and drink blood with a writer’s need to write, but … bear with me here.

As writers, we’re constantly being pulled into a tide we cannot resist. If we don’t write, we drive ourselves crazy. I imagine that’s much how a dehydrated vampire feels, only with the murdering and all.

We feel better when we write, when we spill our thoughts out onto the page (okay, hold the morbidity). For me it’s almost compulsive. An idea happens upon me and I scribble it down on a scrap of paper—or off to my blog I go. My passion for writing is, I firmly believe, an innate phenomenon. I didn’t decide to be a writer any more than I decided to be born with blonde hair and blue eyes.**

Without a outlet to write, without an audience of some assemblage, I would be a very sad girl indeed.

But as any writer can tell you, writing isn’t the easiest job in the world. Far from it. But it’s an endeavor well worth the time and labor, and an addictive one at that. I write not only here on this blog, but on my other blog (on occasion)—as well as several other websites. My name will soon appear in print in a magazine as a contributor (more on that in the coming weeks, when I finally have my copy in hand). I’m busy revising my first novel, when I can spare the time. And when I’m not writing, I’m doing things that create more opportunities for me to write—reading books or comics, playing video games, watching movies … all so I can reflect on them in written form.

I admit. I do have an agenda here. I’m in the process of securing two deals for freelancing positions*** that, combined, will lighten my financial burden but severely limit my time. They also let me do what I love, and that counts for a lot. Because of these two new (please, please keep your fingers crossed for me) responsibilities, I’ll have less time leftover for blogging. But don’t think for a minute that’ll stop me from posting every week—as always, I’ll find a way. A big workload has never discouraged me before. Just be more lenient with me if my posts show up in your feed half as often.

But okay, back to my point. Writing is sort of like destiny, isn’t it? Try as we might to get away from it, it just keeps reining us in, for better or worse. I’d say right now, for me, it’s for the better.

—

P.S.: Another happy life update: I just ordered a new laptop! Insert high volumes of girlish squeals here! I can’t WAIT until it arrives. I’ve been lugging around this hunk of junk**** (that’s an endnote, not a bleeped-out swear word, although it might as well be) (my other hunk of junk, the one that’s a desktop, died on me a couple weeks ago) for far too long. I icily named it “Pandora’s Box” the other day: the source of all pain in my world. Ugh.

P.P.S.: Want to see something lovely? Go to Google Images and search “writing,” and then search “love of writing.” With “writing,” you see lonely pens on paper and disembodied hands. “Love of writing” is something else entirely. You see doodled hearts and people—people together, and people smiling.

P.P.P.S.: By the way, I manage on a lot of coffee, tea, and the comfort of cats.

*Yes, yes it is.

**For the record, I dye my hair red and sometimes brown. Shh.

***More on those when they’re finalized. Although the one involves writing evening news posts, so if you’re interested in video games, stop by GameZone.com after dark starting tomorrow.

****Thanks to my sister for passing down this hunk of junk, which has been a great gift to receive despite all its hassle.

Rewrites, remakes, and creative differences: a review of Tales from Development Hell

This script is perfect. Who can we get to rewrite it?

In his newly updated book, David Hughes gives more than a tourist’s definition of the dreaded “Development Hell.”* Like Bilbo Baggins, he’s been there and back again, and his difficulty in slaying the dragon—getting a movie made and in theaters—is a problem that plagues amateur and seasoned writers, producers, and directors alike. Tales from Development Hell: The Greatest Movies Never Made? is a insider’s guide to Hollywood’s rejects, flops, and almost-weren’t—and more so, Hollywood itself.

Like Vern’s Yippee Ki-Yay Moviegoer!: Writings on Bruce Willis,  Badass Cinema and Other Important Topics (also from Titan Books), Tales from Development Hell (the expanded version, out today) belongs in every cinephile’s collection. It profiles some of the hottest movies in years, beginning with their conception and detailing their progress and devolution from brilliant scripts to idiot rewrites, thrown about by bossy studio executives and moody actors. Most chapters strike a relevant note. For example, the Planet of the Apes story ties in nicely with the recent Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie starring James Franco, and Lady Croft’s big screen adventures are ripe for renewal now that Crystal Dynamics is prepping a total reboot of the video game series Tomb Raider. Hughes includes household names such as Indiana Jones and lesser known curiosities like Isobar, a broad selection certain to deepen the knowledge of any movie lover. Hughes even ends the book by describing his own excursions into Development Hell, reiterating the idea that regardless of a script’s quality, Hollywood is as Hollywood does.

That’s the most valuable asset of Tales from Development Hell: what it bares about Hollywood. From the outset, Hughes explains the process of filmmaking behind closed doors—a needlessly lengthy, overly complicated mess from start to finish, even in the best cases. While he doesn’t sound cynical, he isn’t exaggerating, either. Hughes supports his claims with 200+ pages of evidence that show how Hollywood dirties the handiwork of others, bringing in writer after writer, director after director, and actor after actor until the script either winds up in the trash bin or on the desk of someone who knows zilch about the project, reducing the finished film to a tenth of its original glory. That’s movie-making in a nutshell. Everyone blames the writers and often neglects to pay them for their numerous drafts. Meanwhile, actors push for fatter paychecks and meatier roles, occasionally arresting the entire development of a film. And studios turn down elegant scripts for ones that they think will resonate better with audiences—99% of the time for misguided reasons.

Tales from Development Hell teaches a brutal lesson to aspiring filmmakers and screenwriters: Even if your movie isn’t totally incinerated, you might have to trek through the bowels of Hell just to get it made. So the next time you criticize a movie for its untimely appearance, its poor writing, or even if you’re commending it for its success, keep in mind all the work—and conflict—that was dumped into it. The story is much bigger than you might think.

*This book was provided for honest review courtesy of publisher Titan Books.

Ghosts, vampires, and werewolves—oh, please

When it premiered, Being Human struck me as something a little too British for my taste. I have nothing against British television per say. I find IT Crowd downright hilarious, but I’m not so much a fan of the cheesy intergalactic drama of Dr. Who or Hugh Laurie dressed as a woman. Ich, no thanks.

I figured a show about ghosts, vampires, and werewolves would probably take itself too seriously just like every other show or movie about ghosts, vampires, and werewolves (except for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of my all-time favorites).

By now you might be wondering, “What the Dalek does this have to do with books?”

The other night I was watching (and surprisingly enjoying) the first episode of Being Human on Netflix (all twenty-two available episodes are staying in my Instant Queue now), and I started thinking about how difficult it is for a generation so desensitized to those monster groups and more (especially zombies) to write fresh material about something that’s been done a million times.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve read Bram Stoker or Anne Rice. Everyone knows a vampire by those two little dots on the neck, their miserable fashion sense, and their love of London.

And speaking of London: werewolves. The only good werewolves are running around Europe, but I’ve never seen one that doesn’t look sillier than a cat wearing pajamas.

And lastly, ghosts. Ghosts got lost somewhere along the way (err), but they’re still a big fascination thanks to reality shows like Ghost Hunters, movies like Paranormal Activity, and pretty much any Japanese horror movie out there. (I recently watched Ju-on, by the way, and it was much better than the American version, The Grudge. No offense Sarah Michelle Gellar, but you’re Buffy through and through.)

A show rarely mixes all three together, which is part of what makes Being Human so interesting. We get to see how these monsters interact as they walk all over each other’s territory.

But the real sell is in the title: “being human.” The main characters—the ghost, the werewolf, and vampire—don’t think of themselves as monsters. It’s everyone they have to deal with outside who is. And it’s that humanity, or lack of it, that has always made the fantastical a little more accessible—a little more human.

Basically writers are set for eternity. They can write about these popular monsters for as long as they please (or until they drop dead), but only if they can a) emphasize the human traits in the good characters and the inhuman ones in the bad and b) put them in interesting situations that challenge their feral nature.

What do you think? Is it time to retire the big bads, or is it impossible to get enough?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—the Swedish movie version of the Swedish book

I was reluctant to plunk down eight dollars to see the American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a book I recently read in anticipation of the film’s release, when I discovered that I could watch the 2009 Swedish version on Netflix’s instant streaming for free instead. So that’s what my boyfriend and I did.

We both read the first book* (I also read the second book and hated it, although I adored the first), so we were prepared for the inexorable scenes of explicit sexual abuse we knew we’d have to sit through. Thankfully, the movie went easy on us, but let me tell you—swearing and vile threats might not come off as bad in a foreign language, but the sound of people having sex is unmistakably universal.

I found it hilarious how the movie made Blomkvist look like a super researcher/cold case detective genius because every montage of him scouring archives and rifling through photos made it look like he just eats a sandwich and drinks coffee,** follows that with ten minutes of mystery solving, and then calls it a day as a woman unexpectedly crawls into his bed and starts getting frisky. Two more days of that and he’s done—Turbo Journalist-Detective, at your service.

But I suppose if the movie had presented the book any other way, people would have been bored and depressed for two-thirds of the movie before the plot picked up. Because while I think author Stieg Larsson couldn’t have done a better job of hooking me with his mystery-crime thriller, exciting prose is a drastically different beast than exciting cinematography.

What makes the film really worth watching—besides Noomi Rapace’s (who plays Lisbeth Salander) performance, which gets a lot better as the movie goes on—is how cleverly director Niels Arden Oplev ties in the theme and imagery of fire by borrowing details from the second book and combining them with details from the first. Stepping in with this interpretation, Oplev made a brilliant connection between Lisbeth at the end of the movie and Lisbeth as a child, a comparison I’m not even sure Larsson himself exploited in the text.

This is Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film.

And this is Lisbeth in the American film.



I still plan on seeing the new Girl with the Dragon Tattoo film, especially because now I can compare the two versions with the book and because Daniel Craig as Mikael perfectly explains why Blomkist is such a lady magnet. I mean, the man is James Bond.

Have you seen either or both of these films? Which did you like better?

*I haven’t gotten around to the third book, but people seem to like it the most. Anyone disagree?

**Ever notice how often people are consuming these two food items in the books? Someone told me it’s a Swedish thing.