Oh what fun i had last weekend in boston!  Check out the pics from Saturday’s PAX EAST cosplay event.  Man, people must have some amazing jobs to let them afford some of this stuff.  Enjoy!

Amusing dialogue of the night: Discussion about how there needs to be more Taken movies (tongue firmly in cheek, of course). We came up with the following:
Taken 
Taken 2 (electric boogaloo*)
Taken 3: Re-taken
Taken 4: The Takening
Taken 5: TOOK

*there’s a house rule here at the Cook Ozog household that all pt 2s should have Electric Boogaloo tacked onto the end.

We’re only a few days away from Elmira’s ONLY comicbook convention, Hero Bot Con! I hope to see many of you there on Saturday, so stop on by my booth.  I have a number of new prints, as well as some old favorites, available.  ALSO, if the Gods are good and my printer doesn’t screw up, I hope to offer a sneak peak at my upcoming short story collection: “Sold for Parts”!  

So cross your fingers everyone, and help me kiss sleep goodbye because there is going to be A LOT of editing and swearing going on in this household until 1am Friday. 

**editor’s note: it’s late, i’m exhausted.  I shall proofread this tomorrow, bear with me you grammar nazis.

My friend, Tina Crossgrove has put out a sneak peek of something she’s working on over at her blog, The Bleeding Typewriter.  It’s good stuff, folks so please take some time to check it out!  

It’s funny, the title of her blog has got me thinking: We writers really do put ourselves through some shit sometimes. 

I don’t mean to make this sound like i’m bitching, i’m not.  I love it!  I don’t think i could survive in a world where i wasn’t allowed to give birth to a story now and then, but that’s a good way of describing it we’re giving birth, and sometimes it can get messy.  

The writing process is not an easy one, nor should it be taken lightly.  I can’t tell you how many of my students are surprised that people like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut do rewrites.  Somewhere in our education system we’ve failed students and allowed them to think that “natural writers” can just pump something out on the first try. Please kiddies, don’t do this.  At best, it only leads to sub-par writing.  Famous case in point: Stephen King threw out his first draft of Carrie.  His wife saved it from the “circular file” and told him where he was going wrong with it (oddly enough he wasn’t being cruel enough when depicting teen girls, or at least that’s what she said).  likewise, Neil Gaiman became so frustrated with his script for the Dr. Who episode, “The Doctor’s Wife” that he let Stephan Moffat help him out. Together they finally created a strong enough draft that won a Hugo award!  Of course they aren’t the only examples, Kurt Vonnegut’s daughter has gone on the record recently to say that living with him was a bit like living with an elephant trying to give birth to something twice its size.  Obviously he wasn’t just pulling his stories from the air, tossing them onto the page and going “Done!”  

What’s my point here?  Simply put, I find it amazing that we keep doing this. That so many of us writers come back, despite practically banging our heads against our keyboards.  Why would we put ourselves through all this stress to do this stuff?  Personally, I think it’s an addiction.  More than anything  I love seeing where my stories will take me and i really enjoy visiting with my friends, the character I have created.  Just like you, dear readers, writers want to see how this is all going to play out.  And for that reason i’m super excited to be writing again.  

Tonight’s bizarre kitchen moment:

Jesse (on floor putting away dishes and a bit clueless as to where stuff goes, he’s reaching for our muffin baking pan): Do you know-

Me (serious): The Muffin Pan?

Jesse: The Muffin Pan?

Me (can no longer answer because i’m laughing too hard): Oh God.  The Muffin Pan…HA!

Jesse: Where does it live?

Me (laughing harder): The lane?

Jesse: Oh good, so i wasn’t the only one thinking we were doing a bit here. Seriously though, where the hell does this thing go?

I’ll be appearing at the RIVER ROAD EXPO this Saturday, October 6th at Tioga Downs Casino.  I won’t have my own booth (instead I’ll be running about helping others), However I am running a panel on webcomics.  More info to come!  Not sure on the time for the panel yet.  

ALSO:

It’s confirmed now, I am indeed going to HERO BOT CON at Chemung County FFC on Saturday October 27th!  Prints, and hopefully some other special items, will be available at my booth so come on by! 

Finally one last announcement:

You’ll see that we now have a section dedicated to short stories and script that I’ve posted here on the blog.  New Artists are welcome to work on any of the free sample scripts that I have posted. Enjoy!

Jesse running madly into the room, “Oh, thank God!”

A very sleepy me looking up from updating my tumblr account, “hmm? what?”

“It’s just your song.”

Me suddenly very confused, “the white stripes?” **

Jesse, completely serious, “yeah, from downstairs it sounded like the cat trying to throw up.”

Me falling into a fit of laughter.  

Jesse, “seriously, the beat sounds like hurk, hurk, hurk from downstairs,” and just like that, exit Jesse. 

Me, still chuckling, “I’m not sure what that says about Jack White’s music.”

**the song was The Glitch Mob’s remix of the White Stripes 7 Nation Army.

So last night i think i might have realized that we’re one step closer to hell freezing over.  I watched a remake and an original movie (albeit the last part of a trilogy) and the REMAKE was BETTER!

Did i just blow your mind?  

One of the things that I love the most about living in this area is that we have one of the few remaining WORKING Drive-ins in New York.  This is awesome because a) Drive-ins are actually a lot of fun; when it runs off your FM radio of course AND b) you get TWO movies for $8.00.  TWO.  You can barely get one matinee for that price anywhere else in this area (the Palace in Corning lets you in for $7.50 for all shows, so that’s nice, but they’re super limited engagements).  Of course when we heard that the new Batman flick was playing along with Total Recall, Jesse and I filled the car with snacks, and the Puggle, (did i mention you can bring your DOG to the drive in!?) and we were off. 

Putting aside the discussion about being there just on time, unlike our usual 30 minutes early/better spot routine, and complaints about smoking with your windows open so that the rest of us get to choke on your habit (not saying you can’t, i’m just saying can you have a hair more respect for your neighbor), let’s jump right on into the film reviews and figure out just how hell might have frozen over last evening in our fair “city”.

Let’s start with the surprise dark horse:

Total Recall:

Starring: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bill Nighly, Bryan Cranston, and Jessica Biel.

I’m sure many of us reading this blog have heard of the 1990 Schwarzenegger film.  Hell i was a huge fan as a kid, watching my vhs tape of it until it finally died a heroic death of it’s own during a spilled bleach accident during a return trip from college.  *cue a soft trumpet playing TAPS*.  It was a fun little romp to Mars, full of mutant hookers, murderous “wives”, bored secretaries with cool pen/nail polish stylus, and great one liners like, “consider this a divorce.” and “see you at the party Richtor” after ripping some guy’s arms off.   Basically it was campy as hell, but perfect for the 90s.   I didn’t really think it needed to be revisited. 

Then came the remake.  Or rather i should say the re-imagining.  Apparently Hollywood is starting to shy from the name remake.  Perhaps their “people” are starting to hear the rumbling from the huddled masses that we think our films are fine the way they are and we’d like some new stuff, please.  Maybe not, but that’s what i’m hoping.  Anyway, the title of re-imagining does sort of sound less offensive, although I’m trying to NOT be a sheep and let them just lead me blindly down the remake road while picking my pockets.  The last thing i want is to be told it’s steak and find out it’s a hamburger shaped steak. 

Thankfully, the 2012 reboot of Total Recall is a different type of steak.  

The first thing you should know about this series is that they’re both based off of a Phillip K. Dick short story called, “We can remember it for you wholesale.”  I have yet to get a hold of a copy of this to read, although i’d like to.  That said, I do know that the 1990 film went nowhere NEAR the source material.  I wish i could tell you just how close this telling gets, clearly i will have to post again once i do get a hold of a copy (which I am currently on the hunt for).  What I CAN tell you is that this film was able to balance on the line of “originality” (as much as any modern film can) while being respectful to the fans of the previous film.  There were a number of little nods to the 90s flick and i appreciated that fully.  Likewise the acting was probably the best I’ve seen out of Colin Farrell since Phone Booth.  Come to think about it, this is probably the only Farrell flick that I’ve enjoyed SINCE Phone Booth.  To avoid giving away too much plot, let’s just say that the pacing works (something that many films miss today), the dialog is better than most action flicks and the overall story arc makes sense (but i won’t lie, i missed a section because i was busy tending to the dog, and had to have my boyfriend explain to me why the president wanted to “invade” the colony.  So that was on me, not the film lol).   All in all i give Total Recall a B+/A-.  I didn’t leave the drive in pumped and still thinking about the film for days, but it DID end up being worth the money and offered an entertaining 2 hour sci-fi escape.

Then there was last night’s second feature: Batman. 

The Dark Knight Rises: 

Starring: Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman 

This was the point where the night didn’t quite go BAD, per say, but it didn’t go quite RIGHT either. 

As far as trilogies go, this did wrap up the story nicely.  I honestly believe the end of this film is what saved it from being banished entirely into a C grade movie.  That said, it had a lot of issues. 

First off, what has happened to Christian Bale?  Is he just dialing stuff in for paychecks now?  I’m a huge fan of College Humor’s parodies of the Dark Knight franchise.  They make Bats look like an idiot with a sore throat.  Obviously they played it up and exaggerated it to be funny.  Only i think Bale might have been watching and started copying them back.  Every time he had the costume on, i found myself wondering if he realized he was breathing through his mouth, which was seriously distracting.  

Building off that, i found myself asking, why is Batman in this film?  Seriously.  This film would have been so much better if they had stuck to their guns and kept the bat completely out of it.  Making the audience ask the question of “what’s happened to batman” LONGER would have been a great improvement.  

What surprised me was how much I enjoyed Anne Hathaway as Catwoman (although I still wish they went with artist Adam Hughes Audrey Hepburn inspired short haired Selena, but what can you do).  Joseph Gordon Levitt was also very amusing as Det. John Blake.  Watching his journey from beat cop to detective and hero was VERY interesting.  Clearly Nolan spent time crafting each of these characters, but by doing so he let fan favorites like Alfred, Lucius Fox and Gordon to dangle at the edges of the story.  Suddenly they were unimportant.  It was sad, really.   Even Bane, seem unfinished.  Sure actor Tom Hardy’s choice to grab at his lapels like a presidential candidate from Teddy Roosevelt’s era was highly amusing.  I began calling him Philosopher Bane, which if you know the character well, fits.  But by tying him in with a not so surprising reveal at the end, audience was cheated out of seeing how truly complex his character is.  Instead he came off like Joker lite for much of the film, with his intentions so obscured (again so that “twist” pays off later) that he helps the film just seem like a repeat of the first two stories. 

In fact that was my BIGGEST gripe about the film (other than loads of exposition).  Nolan seemed to recycle so many plot points from his previous film.  When Bane busted in on a board meeting, i couldn’t help but feel like it was the Joker dinner party all over again.  Later another bomb plot is reveal that is so similar to the Joker boat criminals vs civilians that i actually groaned out loud when it was announced.  Sure it led to some interesting character development between Selena and Blake, but over all I found myself wondering how any writer could think that viewers wouldn’t see the similarities.   

So overall I was disappointed, but I do want to say that the film HAD merit.  It wasn’t the Batman film i had hoped for, but there were bright spots and the end completely pulled the movie’s ass out of the fire.   And for that reason I’ll give it a solid B-.  Now I can’t wait to see someone re-edit the film online to turn it into the Det. Blake, Selena Kyle show with Batman showing up at the end.  THAT could be interesting.