Monday, July 16, 2007

SCREEN WRITING on MassLive


Posts may be a little sporadic here since I've been asked to write a blog for MassLive. It's called SCREEN WRITING and can be found here. Please pop over and visit. I'll be updating there more than I ever did here.

Thanks.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Day the Clown Cried

Reading Material

Two new books will be published this summer that have me salivating. Now, if you know me, you know about my... well, let's just say my book fetish. I have a deep seated compulsion for collecting books. It's not quite an obsession, but I do return from every vacation or business trip with about 10-20 new books culled from the various used book stores I seek out when out of the area. Many of these books, of course, end up unread for months or years, but I'm always reading at least a books at a time, so I'm constantly trying to catch up.

In July, my time will be sparse because Tim Lucas is FINALLY releasing his book on Italian director Mario Bava, ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. Lucas is the offical Bava biographer, and his tome will be the first, middle and last words on the man. Tim has been promising the book for years (I pre-ordered mine at least three years ago), but, as he explains on his blog here, IT EXISTS.

The second highly anticipated book is Mike Dobbs' ESCAPE! HOW ANIMATION BROKE INTO THE MAINSTREAM IN THE 1990's. Mike a good friend of mine, and I respect him both as a writer and a animation historian (I actually respect him for many things, but those two jump to mind). For years, he has been regarded as one of THE voices in the world of animation -- as a columnist and as a publisher; Mike was the editor/publisher of two national magazines, ANIMATO! and ANIMATION PLANET, both of which I have near complete runs of.

Find out all about Mike's new project on one of his many blogs, links to which can be found here.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

TRANSFORMERS


I love summer blockbusters. Love 'em. The bigger the better; the more audacious, the more enjoyable. I loved INDEPENDENCE DAY, I like the SPIDER-MAN movies, and I actually liked THE LAST ACTION HERO.

In terms of a being a successful summer blockbuster, TRANSFORMERS does a couple of things right: First, it has giant robots. And second, it's directed by Michael Bay. Now, I'm not a huge Bay fan, but the guy knows how to direct an action picture. BAD BOYS 2, for me, is a sublime exercise in insanity. The epitome of audacious. When the Cannes Film Festival gave David Cronenberg's CRASH a special prize for "Audacity" in 1996, they would have been well-served to pony up a second award a decade later for BAD BOYS 2.

TRANSFORMERS looks amazing and it sounds amazing, but it never really connected with me the way ARMAGEDDON did, or THE ROCK did, or BAD BOYS 2 did. This is not say that these are great movies... but they ARE great summer blockbusters.

Many think Michaal Bay is evil, that he represents everything that's wrong with contemporary filmmaking. Not me, baby. I say keep 'em coming. If he want's to make THUNDERCATS or THE HERCULOIDS next, I'm first in line.

Monday, July 02, 2007

VOTE!

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