» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

The Cold Goodbye

jelewis8 — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 06:50:31 +0000

It is done, inasmuch as done means “until the next revision.” There’s always edits that can be made to a text. They’re still working on the Bible, from what I understand. A jot or a tittle may need to be adjusted here and there, but from what I can tell, the text is solid.
It’s got a new look, too, different from the two separate books I put out. It’s got a more 1980′s feel now, as opposed to 1950. The Communist red text offsets well with the cobalt blue of the rest of the cover, giving it a sense of menace, maybe even dread, whilst the imposing buildings rise like sentinels, with the illusion of shaking to subtly hint at things to come. The back is far more abstract, dealing with issues of light and dark in syncopated patterns that more or less represent visually the thematic material present in the book. The dark, monochromatic visual should be iconic without being specific. I think, overall, the cover depicts what I want it to without being overly bold or outlandish, rather presenting the material as understatement, leaving an initial first impression of curiosity. What is this “Cold Goodbye”?
The back text explains the barest hint of a plot, along with a selected/edited quote from the book itself which best wraps up and summarizes the main idea of the story, without giving away too much. This was a simpler task to accomplish than you might imagine. Which may not be a good thing, I don’t know.
I hope the full version will make you as happy as it has made me. It’s 418 pages, 6.00″ x 9.00″, perfect binding, 60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink , 100# exterior paper, full-color exterior ink. As with my other endorsements of Lulu, the quality is unexpected in its superb presentation and production.
I may do a bit of media blitzing on this thing for a while, though hopefully I can keep most of it off the blog. However, I do encourage you to purchase this or one/both of the other two books (Apophenia and Caliph) which comprise this full version copy, just printed and published as separate volumes. If you would like your copy autographed, contact me before ordering. We’ll arrange for something. I’m not saying I’ll be famous or anything after this, but I have gotten some requests for autographs already, so I figured I’d throw it out in case it was on your mind.
And yes, I will be famous after this, though not necessarily for this. If anything, my fame will involve a Slip ‘N’ Slide, a barrel full of monkeys, and a 30 aught six. But it never hurts to get a piece of the action before it occurs. Ebay is mighty friendly to collectors of John Hancocks.

Lady In The Water

jelewis8 — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 14:39:52 +0000

I was under the impression that the single-most destructive force on the planet was a simple Texan named Chuck Norris. Next to him is the power of the atom, which, when split, releases the primal energy of the universe into a mushroom shaped cloud of death, destruction, and nuclear radiation for miles and miles.
These elemental forces are merely prelude to M. Night Shyamalan’s script for Lady In The Water, which doesn’t merely suck; it actually sucks big time. Hearing the expository dialogue explain every jot and tittle of Night’s whacky fairy tale gone amoke, your soul is thrust–nay, flung into a black void of eternal night. Thank goodness I had a granola bar and a pack of bubblegum, otherwise I would have starved out there in the inky depths of a timeless and interminable hell.
That’s not to say the movie was all bad. It was mostly bad, with a side helping of not unbearable. The highlights of the film were the beautiful cinematography by Christopher Doyle, and James Newton Howard’s score, both of which covered up a multitude of sins in both writing and casting. The acting does service to the film, making the very best of a clunky and insouciant story, and a script that feels as real as the Michelin Man. Paul Giamatti comes away a hero, as his character Cleveland Heep, is as sympathetic as any come across this summer. He exudes a quiet warmth and a sad unspoken history, and his amusing stutterings hide a depth of despair that Shyamalan uses to good effect in a particularly noteworthy scene near the climax. Bob Balaban is also a worthwhile character actor, filling the big role of the hated Critic Harry Farber (clearly the butt of Shyamalan’s ire and directorial angst), but he manages to make the character worth watching, despite the obvious nature of his besmirchment in Shyamalan’s feckless hands. Even Shyamalan turns in a decent performance as the Vick Ran, a moody writer who is prophesied will create a piece of written work so powerful and provocative that it will change the course of human history, even influencing a future leader of the free world, though it is difficult to get past the smarmy, ego-driven claptrap that passes for character evolution, especially in Ran’s case.
However, the fatal flaw of the film is its script. It is, from the very faux-provocative narrative opening, expository and self-indulgent. Instead of images, we get words upon endless words, spoken by various characters, as Shyamalan attempts to convince us of the world he’s created and its particular mythology (which is, to put it lightly, ponderous). We’re confronted with words like Narf, Scrunt, and Tartutic, given a long-winded backstory through the mouths of Young-Soon Choi (Cindy Cheung), a “me ruv you rong time” style Korean girl, and her mother (June Kyoto Lu), but it’s all carbohydrates in an Atkins diet plot.
The premise – a water nymph named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) residing in the swimming pool of an apartment complex filled with colorful characters, who must overcome some evil and return to her people – is mildly interesting and meant to be full of childlike wonder, but in Shyamalan’s ham fingers, plays like you’d expect a silly and pretentious plot to, without the charm of some of his previous efforts. Added to these shortcomings, the cast of characters is drawn into the plot to help Story with nary a question or plausibility check. All the residents of the apartment complex seem preternaturally aware and sensitive to the direness of the situation. Arbitrary rules guide the plot, with Shyamalan’s dialogue emerging like dictation, revealing characters and forcing the plot into turnings that seem unnecessary and contrived. In the end, we have little to hang onto that doesn’t smell of overt moralizing with no moral.
The script underwent some pretty heavy criticism from Disney’s Nina Jacobson, causing Shyamalan to take it to Warner Bros. in a fit of creative diarrhea. A major theme of Lady is that perhaps man has forgotten how to listen. Shyamalan should be more mindful of that the next time he receives script feedback.
Fringe Rating: out of 5

The Flaccid Species

jelewis8 — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 08:37:12 +0000

We live in a universe of wimps, pansies, and lily-livered narcissists. Just turn on the evening news. The latest proof that there are very few real men and women of courage and self-sufficiency comes in the form of some cartoons published by a Danish newspaper depicting Mohammed in various ways. My current masthead features one of the twelve cartoons that were published, along with some subtle mocking of Islam’s moderate and extremist position on the offensiveness of the cartoons. The imbroglio is about as ridiculous as one might expect from a gutless, pusillanimous, unmanly religion that encourages and supports responses ranging from cries of protest to burning of embassy buildings.
Still, one can’t expect too much of a religion whose dictates include wiping off the face of the planet anyone who does not submit to their way of thinking. They are children; barbaric, senselessly violent, systematically simple in reason, unbearably intolerant of any jot or tittle that offends their delicate spiritual digestion. They have no respect for life, no fear of God, no ounce of tolerance, no hair of sensibility, and no ability to distinguish the sacred from the profane. They claim to be the servants of Allah. If they are, then Allah’s minions are no more than butchers and death dealers with a sadistic worldview and just enough intelligence to construct the necessary number of suicide vests and lead pipe bombs to make the world in their image, or break it to pieces, ball bearing by ball bearing. Their goal is nothing less than the complete and utter dhimmitude of the planet.
However, the real proof of the debilitated state of humanity, the milquetoast acquiescense that defines us as a species, comes in the form of our own precious gatekeepers of truth and fact. News organizations such as CNN, the New York Times, and other bastions of the written and televised journalistic treatises that we regard with such awe, are responsible for the coddling of these villainous religious cretins who deem twelve tame cartoon depictions of Islam’s most holy prophet worthy of annihilating buildings with flame, rioting en masse on government installations, and delivering their gutless, invertebraic whinging as if were Allah’s own word and deed. These news institutions, so brave to publish images profaned images of Jesus in past times, have deemed the publication of these cartoons as “adding fuel to the fire”.
Would it be impertinent of me to remind these venerable organizations who set those fires in the first place?
The Fourth Estate’s pablum that passes for justification of their policy is the thesis of docile calfs waiting to be slaughtered. In it we can hear the faint-of-heart editorial board room meeting talks, their decision making quorums, voted without the merest opposition, to suspend, abdicate, reduce, and deny their chosen field’s most basic tenet. With one deft motion, the media has chosen to give the reigns of their most able horses to the hordes of unreasonable religion.
And they do it all in the name of free speech.
We, sodding and plodding people of the West, accept and shrug our shoulders. We fear no burning buildings here. We fear no toxic invasion from the East. If only we knew. If only our gatekeepers would tell us of the impending doom of our species. Instead, they’re blurring out pictures of the Most Holy Prophet.
Religion is safe to offend only when the offended doesn’t have the clear and precedented will and ability to cut off your head with a sword. Religion is only safe to offend when its followers don’t possess keys to vehicles filled with C4 and shards of metal. And the bottom line for a limpwristed society is that survival means acquiescence to the guy wearing the suicide vest. Even at the cost of honest reporting, free speech, and self-respect.
Are we men? Far from it. We’re better than the butchering children who seek to enslave our cultural mindset and overwhelm us with fear, intimidation, and overt displays of barbarism and savagery one associates with the most base of animals. But only barely.