I’m honored to have another poem, “Girl On A Film Screen,” published over at Dead Snakes.
Dead Snakes remains a terrific place for newer authors to find an audience. It is quite easy to submit, and Editor Stephen Jarrell Williams always seems to have an encouraging word for contributing writers.
Here is the poem:
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2014/10/eric-robert-nolan-poem.html
“You’ve got to at least TRY IT.”
That’s what my friends kept telling me about putting peanut butter on Saltines, with all of the ardor and persistence of a meth dealer.
And it was goddam amazing. Look at this expression. You can’t fake that — even with training as an actor. (Why does everyone laugh whenever I tell them I once studied acting?)
Anyway, the best things in life are free. Or … y’know, the price of Saltines.
I’m blogging some of my past movie reviews from Facebook — this is a (relatively rare) positive review of 2011’s “Conan” remake.
*****
I’m not sure why so many people panned “Conan the Barbarian” (2011); I was pretty happy with it. I’d give it and 8 out 0f 10.
Of course it cannot match the original. “Conan the Barbarian” (1982) is a camp classic. But I really doubt the filmmakers were trying to upstage Arnold and Co. They were simply trying to resurrect a profitable fantasy franchise, after Peter Jackson’s success with “The Lord of the Rings.”
I was bracing myself for disappointment after all the bad advance press, then kept seeing various things that I really enjoyed. For starters, the kid who played young Conan, Leo Howard, is off the hook. He’s a great child actor who was well cast; it’s great seeing him alongside the always-awesome Ron Perlman.
This is also a movie that is “played straight.” There is absolutely no attempt to add cheese or humor in order to amp up the nostalgia factor, as so many other 80’s remakes have done in recent years. This movie gives a fan of the original films (and the comics and novels) exactly what they want – a violent adolescent escapist fantasy. It’s like “The Lord of the Rings” if it were an angry 13-year-old on steroids.
There was very good fight choreography for the swordplay. Scenes are staged, blocked and shot so that you can actually follow the fights (a great ingredient in a “guy movie.”) Yes, it’s bloody and gory and gratuitous – but, again, that’s what true Conan fans are expecting.
Feminists and Joss Whedon fans will be pleased by some nice use of strong female characters, both good and evil. And we have a fun (but too small) supporting role by the incredibly under-recognized Said Taghmaoui, of whom I’ve been a fan ever since his brilliant turn as an Iraqi interrogator in the classic “Three Kings.”
It isn’t perfect. Some of the dialogue is just plain bad, for example. There are pacing problems. Conan here is much less interesting than the Schwarzenegger incarnation – the original Conan was a thief and a brute; sometimes he was only a great anti-hero because he was LESS of a jerk than so many people around him. Here, Conan is an altruist, freeing slaves from passing caravans on a whim. That’s fine. But it does feel as though we’re watching Sir Lancelot and not Conan the Barbarian.
Also, for a film that seems loyal to its source material, there a surprising dearth of visible sorcery and few monsters. The Conan of the comics fought everything from zombie ninjas to coyote demons to giant scorpions. There was also another weird departure from the books and comics. Conan and his clan are … secularists? Huh? Did I hear that right? Any comics reader worth his salt knows that CONAN, LIKE ANY GOOD CIMMERIAN, WORSHIPS CROM. We know this because every time three-headed snake men surprise him from the shadows, he screams, “CROM!” as an expletive.
Personal note: I was obviously a fan of the (rather subversive) comic books when I was a kid. When I was between the ages of 7 and 12, I would beg my parents to buy them for me when we stopped at the pharmacy after church in Wading River, NY. Then I carefully hid their contents. Hooboy. These books were violent; Conan eviscerated or beheaded at least half a dozen bad guys every issue. I can’t remember if this was Marvel title or if it was produced independently. In retrospect, I get the sense that maybe a lot of this stuff wasn’t approved by the Comics Code Authority (CCA). At any rate, the writing was fantastic, and the artwork was simply incredible, even though many of these books were in black and white. Great memories.
This is just too damn funny not to link to — Bad Lip Reading’s second take on “The Walking Dead.”
YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE FLOW, SON.
It’s easy for me to understand why “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is a classic. This movie held two big surprises for me, along with a lot of other things to admire.
First were the special effects. This movie was made in 1977?! That’s a little hard for me to believe. The effects here seemed at least as good as the original (and not digitally remastered) “Star Wars,” which came out the same year. Like Star Wars, it could only have used models and forced perspective. Am I crazy if I think one or two of the effects here might have even been better? There are several scenes where the smaller (scout?) spacecraft appear to revolve 360 degrees in midair, with remarkable depth and the appearance of a three-dimensional object. Isn’t this at least as good as many sequences In Star Wars, with its more static shots of ships seen from only one angle? (In retrospect, I don’t know if the version I saw of “Close Encounters” was itself remastered or “improved.”)
Second … was my favorite TV show of all time a rip-off of a 1970’s Steven Spielberg movie?! I couldn’t believe how directly the 1990’s’ “The X-Files” seemed inspired by this – right down to an international government cover-up. “The X-Files,” of course, was a horror-thriller series, while this is a family film – which did rob it of a lot of tension. How much suspense can we really feel if we know that this material is suitable for all ages? Indeed, the worst thing to happen to any of the major characters we follow is that he falls asleep from knockout gas.
To make things even more fun, I swear I saw a cameo by (an extremely young) Lance Henriksen, who had a guest appearance on “The X-Files.” (He’s one of the scientists at the end.)
There was more about this movie to like a hell of a lot too. Richard Dreyfuss is a damn good actor. So, too, is Terri Garr – despite dialogue that makes her sound like a hysterical shrew. (Cary Guffey was also a great child actor.)
The script is smart, with characters sounding like we’d expect them to sound. Scientists are human beings who get excited over amazing discoveries, instead of being amoral automatons and devices for exposition. The kids here sound and behave like KIDS, a lot like the characters behaved in the later “E.T.: The Extraterrestrial.” And the film did a great job of juxtaposing Dreyfuss’ everyman plight with larger global events witnessed by a range of other characters.
Plus, “Close Encounters” was just plain fun. I’m not big into family movies, but even I’ve got to admit, Spielberg really does project a sense of wonder here. This seems like a great film with which to get a pre-teen interested in science fiction.
I had a few quibbles, but they were all forgivable.
Still, this is a great movie – I’d give it an 8 out of 10.
… that our neckties were only an inch wide.
AND WE WERE THANKFUL FOR WHAT WE HAD.
[Thanks to Carrie Schor and Ahmad Butt (pictured) for the photo (Longwood High School, circa 1989?).]
A woman told me yesterday that I “have a dark soul.”
I am not quite sure how to respond to that.
Well, this was disappointing. Make no mistake about it – “Chernobyl Diaries” (2012) was nowhere near as good as its trailer made it look. I’d give it a 4 out of 10, and that’s primarily for a great shooting location. (This was filmed in Serbia and Hungary, but it sure as hell looked like something filmed near the titular doomed Russian nuclear reactors.)
You want a truly frightening new found-footage horror movie? Skip this and check out the Australian gem, “The Tunnel” (2011).
“30 Days of Night: Dark Days” is the second part of Steve Niles’ and Ben Templesmith’s original trilogy, and it’s a great read to which I’d give a 9 out of 10. It expands on the pretty minimal story set up in the first book; we learn more about the vampires and see Stella Olemaun’s crusade to fight them. It’sa first-rate, creepy, no-holds-barred horror comic.
My only quibbles are small. Templesmith’s skilled and atmospheric art is sometimes so murky we have a hard time following the action, or even differentiating among characters. There’s also a horrible plot point in which Stella apparently has sex with a vampire. (It is as exactly as stupid as it sounds.)
This is still a great book though.
The fantastic “The Cabin in the Woods” (2012) is a surprise-filled movie that is difficult to review without spoilers, so I can’t say much about it. Suffice to say, I really, really liked it – I’d give it a 9 out of 10.
This is a smart, inventive film that is probably the most creative thing I’ve seen in a long time – it’s safe to say that I’ve never seen anything like it. Do yourself a favor and avoid news articles or websites like imdb.com – you’ll enjoy this much more if you know little about it.
It actually takes a while to get going. I had a lukewarm response to this movie for maybe its entire first half. The end — which brings together a surprising number of story elements (I really can’t say more) – really redeemed it. The buildup to that ending is a lot of things that have long been established as horror clichés. But that’s intentional, as screenwriter Drew Goddard and producer Joss Whedon made it, I think, partly as a parody and partly as an homage to the genre.
A few caveats … if you’ve been looking forward to this movie for a while, as I have, you’re aware that it was very well reviewed. But I’m pretty sure it got so much praise because it was creative and original – not because it was the best HORROR movie ever made. The central plot device is too contrived and fantastic to be really frightening, and the movie is too self-aware to allow us to forget it’s just a movie. Parts of it were disturbing, but there’s just too much humor to make this a truly scary movie. You’re not sitting down to “The Exorcist” or “The Shining.”
Also, various reviews seem to indicate a twist that is impossible to guess. This isn’t true. Horror fans – especially fans of a certain subgenre – will know the big reveal before the halfway mark, especially if they listen to the dialogue of the story’s antagonists. Hell, I was just talking about it with another aspiring horror writer just the other day. Don’t expect a surprise on the level of “The Sixth Sense” or “Unbreakable.”
Still, this was a hell of a lot of fun. And what a GREAT Halloween movie it would make!! It would also be fun to watch back-to-back with “Cabin Fever” or one of the “Evil Dead” movies, given their similar settings.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 