The Darkest Winter Update 9

Big news!

Ok, the wheels at Amazon are spinning! All the files have been completed and submitted.

Today I got word that the proof has been shipped. I don’t expect to get it until Friday, at the earliest. This is the last main hurdle for the paperback. In all the digital previews it’s looked good but this is the ultimate test. If I see any printing problems, they’ll have to be fixed and the file resubmitted to Amazon for review. That would be a major set back but I don’t expect this to happen.

I finished the Kindle version last night and submitted it to Amazon. I just got notified that it’s through the system and you can now pre-order it!

The book will be available on Monday, September 17th!

It’s almost here, I can hardly believe it.  Now purchase options are only for the Kindle version as I haven’t approved the paperback version (waiting on that proof to get to me). Once that’s through I’ll be able to get the paperback and Kindle edition to appear together.

Two notes for the Kindle version: If you pre-order, the book will automatically appear on your Kindle on the 17th. I have it set up that if you buy the paperback, you’ll get a discount on the Kindle edition. It’ll be .99 instead of $3.99 so if you intend on buying both (making you an All Star in life), I suggest you wait until the paperback is ready and that option is available to you.

This is nuts.

 

What’s going on?

It’s the last day in August and with the holiday weekend this feels like the end of summer. Sure we can expect warm weather for quite a bit longer but mentally when September hits it feels like winter is standing on top of us already.

So with the pending winter blues approaching, what’s going on?

The obvious is my book, The Darkest Winter. I’m waiting to hear back from Amazon about getting approval for the paper book files. When that happens, I order the proof to make sure everything is fine and dandy for public consumption. While I wait for the proof, I’ll get the ebook in order. I expect my business cards to come in next week so I think the end of next week is looking the most likely for launch. There are a ton of moving parts I’m now navigating and I’m itching to show the end result to everyone.

With September hitting, that means TV is about to pop off. Netflix dropped Ozark season 2 today and the first show on the doccet for cable TV is season 13 of Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The promo looks insane so I have high hopes. That’s on Wednesday I think. Then Bojack Horseman on Netflix! There’s a huge list of programming about to start and I’ll do updates as they start (5 weeks away from hockey season!).

Better Call Saul is going well and Ink Master just started so those have been keeping me warm along with some movies and stand up specials on Netflix that I’ve been knocking off my list:

  • Moonwalkers (good)
  • Hardcore Henry (nauseating, turned it off)
  • Wheelman (liked it a lot)
  • Bert Kreicher: Secret Time (hilarious)
  • The Standups- Deon Cole and Kyle Kinane (both hilarous)
  • Train to Busan (loved it)
  • Iliza Shlesinger: Elder Millennial (very good)
  • Demeri Martin: The Overthinker (very good)
  • I Am Not a Serial Killer (good)
  • I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (good)

I’m listening to Twenty One Pilots new track “My Blood” right now and I dig it. Their new album comes out soon and I’m sure it’ll be a smash. Eminem dropped a new album out of no where and I’m about to check that out.

The Darkest Winter Update 8

A major milestone was reached today. I submitted the book to CreateSpace. They are the part of Amazon that does physical book printing. A humanbeing is now reviewing the files to make sure everything is suitable for print. I should be contacted tomorrow. Assuming everything is ok, I order a proof and that gets delivered to me for review.

That proof is the book in my hand. I’ll check it out to make sure it’s printed right and nothing is wrong with the physical copy that will be printed whenever someone orders the book off of Amazon. This step is to insure the book I intend people to hold in their hand is being made.

So this is project is rapidly coming to completion. Release is very close, I’m thinking in a week depend on how fast I get the proof (and it passes my standards).

I still have to prepare the ebook file for Kindle. That’s a separate arm of Amazon. That is a much faster process than the physical book and I believe that will take a day or too to get sorted. Since today is Wednesday, I’ll probably get that done Friday.

Then it’s marketing time. So everything is coming together and I’ll have a release date for you soon.

Disenchanted

From the creator(s) of The Simpsons and Futurama!

I liked this so much I watched all ten episodes this weekend. I haven’t watched The Simpsons and years and consider myself a bigger Futurama fan. That worked in my favor as the writing skews more towards Futurama.

I think the easiest way to describe Disenchantment is to take Futurama and change the genre from sci-fi to fantasy. The main character here is Princess Bean of Dreamland. She’s a bit…rebellious let’s say about the whole princess gig. She doesn’t have a problem getting into trouble but when she meets Elfo, an elf also trying to figure things out, and Luci, Bean’s very own personal demon, things get kicked up a notch or two. Oh, and her Dad, King Zog is on a desperate hunt for the elixir of life.

I can’t really think of anything I don’t like about this show. I laughed like I did when Futurama first came out. It’s absurd, rude, and sincere all at the same time. The casting is perfect and I love the main trio of Bean (Abbi Jacobson), Elfo (Nat Faxon), and Luci (Eric Andre). Elfo is my favorite, a kind of magical mix of Homer and Fry. There were a few times where I swear he said exactly what I would have if I was in his situation. I even love the opening credits music.

The show covers a lot of ground in just 10 episodes. We get to see in and out of the Dreamland kingdom and while they ring the bell on the fantasy tropes for expected gags, they also do some great world building. When the main arc of the elixir comes around to its end in the last few episodes I was left wanting more. The worst part of the show is that there are only ten episodes!

The set up for season 2 looks ripe for all new adventures and I can’t wait to see where they go with it.  I avoided just about all the promo material for this so I think I’m going to go on the hunt for the interviews to dig further into the makings of one of my new favorites.

Face Off has come to an end

I’ve adored this show since it’s debut in 2011. After 13 seasons, one of my favorite shows is now finished.

I love the creativity, the artistry, and the professionalism that Face Off gave it’s viewers. Everyone they get for each season is so talented and my love for movie magic got to be treated every week. There’s no nasty garbage on this show too. Everyone is cool, there is no fighting and whenever they are able to, the contestents jump at the chance to help another fellow artist. This season was another stand out, bringing back artists who didn’t make it all the way through their season. A try at redemption on this pressure cooker of a contest, the final three artists were all very strong. I think the judges picked the right winner, so that feels like a satisfying way to go out too.

I hope Face Off is just on an extended hiatus (a lot of programming was made in 7 years) amd comes back in time. There’s nothing else like this on TV and I think aside from being entertaining, this show has been inspiring the next generation of practical special effects artists.

More, please!

Mission: Impossible-Fallout

The Mission: Impossible movies have been pretty reliable for entertainment. Especially with the release of Ghost Protocol, the franchise has found it’s groove and brought some real unique and exciting action set pieces. Fallout continues that trend.

Writer/Director Christopher McQuarrie returns for his second term helming the ship and this guy knows how to make movie magic. Solomon Lane continues to be a bother, his followers forming a new organization under new leadership. They’ve got their sights set on causing mass destruction to create a new world order and it’s up to Ethan Hunt and his IMF team to once again save the world.

Right out of the gate, the plot gets pretty convoluted. There’s a lot of double-crossing going on and it gets hard to keep track of it all. New characters get quick introductions and it’s not clear who they are, where they come from, and who they work for. Being a spy series that’s expected to a degree but it feels like a lot is glossed over and the viewer is expected just know the characters name and be willing to be whisked away to the next scene(I’m thinking of The White Widow in particular). I’m sure some confusion can be cleared up with more viewings and revisiting earlier films for a refresher (Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane was introduced in Rogue Nation). Another point of confusion for me is name confusion. Solomon Lane and John Lark have similar last names and they are often referred to only by their last names. Sometimes I wasn’t sure what name the actor said and would get confused about who they were talking about. It’s also found it weird that once again, the IMF team are cut off from their resources and government help. “We gotta do this alone!” is turning into a well-worn crutch for this series.

While those are some bothersome problems, it doesn’t ruin an otherwise fantastic ride. McQuarrie knows how to frame a scene and shoot action. This movie is oftentimes gorgeous and the action set pieces are mostly all Raise the Bar of the Entire Industry level. This is one of the few movies I’ve seen in a while that demands you go to the cinema to get the most out of it.

Every inch of the frame is utilised. They must have used some crazy new wide angle lenses because the picture looks so expansive. Gorgeous framing with eye-popping cinematography. London and Paris wrap themselves around the viewer and asks you to take a bite.

This wide-angle look is continuous throughout the movie. If you’re watching the team come up with a plan, walking through a location or on a crazy chase through a city or mountain range, you have a view of it all. Action scenes aren’t crammed in tight and cut at warp speed. You can see where everyone is and what they are doing. The positioning is clear and you can follow the madness, often feeling like you’re there.

I watched this in a Dolby Cinema room and I think that’s a big part of why this movie popped so much for me. Monsterous screen, gorgeous picture quality, and a stupidly expensive sound system. Like I mentioned, McQuarrie shoots most of this action wide so when he sticks the camera on the side of a vehicle, or inside of it, it felt like I was right there. This is especially effective in the helicopter scene where you bounce back and forth with a character shooting out of the sides. You can see a ton of landscaping flying by and it totally sells how high up you are and how small the inside of the helicopter is. Watching the actual Tom Cruise clinging to the bottom of the helicopter is memorizing and pushes a sense of realism a lot of action movies these days don’t do. Speaking of realism, the sound work on Fallout is also incredible. The report from handguns was a real stand out and kicks and punches sound so brutal.

The ads show crazy glimpses of a bathroom fight and it totally lived up to the hype. I think the last fight scene that really knocked people out is the hallway fight from the first season of Daredevil on Netflix (something that production as tried to duplicate and never achieved again, so far). It is nuts and needs to be seen. It legit looks like they are beating the stuffing out of each other. Henry Cavill looks like a monster brawler. I didn’t think they’d top that fight and then I’m served up with an absolute slobber knocker of a fight in a cabin that was riveting from start to finish. I think the helicopter chase scene will go down in history as one of the best action sequences ever filmed.

I found a lot to like here and it makes me continue to look forward to more. I think another change of pace, the likes of what Rogue Nation did, is now needed to keep this series on top. Clean up the plot and avoid those M:I cliches. On the action front, I don’t know how they can top this, but hey, that’s not my job. If it was, I’d hire every action choreographer and stunt person from this movie to do it.

The Darkest Winter Update 7

I hit my two week deadline and completed my final edits. The text is done! That’s a major milestone, it means the book is done, the story is there, and I’m never going to edit those words again.

It’s been a long journey. I’m so familiar with the story having worked on it for so long that it’s rather mundane to me. These past 2 weeks I took a slow pace to keep myself from rushing and skipping over parts. Even though the story is old hat to me, I still really love the work. I had some much needed help in this last stage from two people to  stomp out typos and continuity errors. I’m very proud of what I’ve written and I think it’s a great first novel.

Yesterday, as I was bringing it to a close I went back to some final notes to make sure I was happy with those parts. I came to realize that those last bits were nit picking. I was looking for things to change based on very little. Can I write this sentence better? Does it need to be altered? Should I change it? Will someone get hung up on this sentence or word choice? Often times when I tried to change something for the better, or an attempt to make it better, I was just changing it to change it. Or, I was making it worse. Stuffing too much detail in and making it more complicated than it needed to be. Overthinking things can make it feel like you’re drowning. With that feeling coming back more and more, I relaized the book was finished.

The cover isn’t complete, but it’s very close. I have a lot of details to hammer out, but the bulk of the work is done. I’m confident I’ll have the book for sale this week and it’ll be a hell of a day to share with you.

The Darkest Winter Update 6

Hit a milestone today. Received the full manuscript back from my editor this morning. The book is in good shape now and this marks the last half of the project starting. I’ve slotted 2 weeks for myself to do my final read through. One last check for typos,  continuity errors and any other small changes I may want to make. It’s content complete, now it’s just the details to iron out.

While I do this last bit of editing, cover work begins. I’m aiming to have that done in 2 weeks as well. Once that’s done all that remains is typesetting and getting the final file to submit to retailers (it will definitely be available on Amazon, I’m going to look at getting it on the iBook store as well, Barnes and Noble Nook too).

That last bit shouldn’t take long. An August release is very much possible and is the goal. Expect an update in 2 weeks.

We’re getting close!

Animation Block

There’s a bunch of animated movies I’ve been meaning to get to so here’s a quick hit list for you!

Moana– A beautiful tale set in ancient Polynesia, Moana is a young woman who sets out on a quest to save her home from a curse that was started by Demigod Maui. He stole the heart of the island and now Moana must find him and make things right. Fantastic, vibrant animation (think Finding Nemo: Above and Sometimes Under the Ocean) with some great characters. Dwayne The Rock Johnson is perfect as Maui and he plays great against/with Auli’i Cravalho as Moana. Cute, funny, and sweet, this is a great family movie with pops of fun action. Does a great service for the Polynesian culture, I recommend it.

The Secret Life of PetsFile this one under “It’s good, I guess.” I don’t have much to say for this one as there’s nothing much to talk about. It’s best for very young children as there is little plot to speak of. “A day in the life” is more like it as the creativity of this movie comes mostly from ideas of how pets spend their day when their owners aren’t home. Instead of having a plot that can engage all age types, like Pixar does, Life of Pets spends most of its time on figuring out how to get animals from point A to point B in different ways. Good animation and standard gags that highlight how animals behave (cats are aloof! Dogs sniff butts to greet each other!) should hold your attention enough to get you to the end. Nothing special here…I consider that it’s only 80 minutes long to be one of it’s best features.

Despicable Me 3– This one felt very similar to The Secret Life of Pets. At around 80 minutes, the movie is short but the script was clearly padded to reach a full-length feature run time. The main premise is good, Gru finds out he has a twin brother, Dru, and Dru wants to tag along and revive the families business of being a world-class villain. The main antagonist, Balthazar Bratt, is probably the best idea and follow through in the movie. It’s a very by the numbers DM movie though. The animation is fine, there are some clever moments but it’s all rather boring. The unicorn sub-plot is a complete waste of time. Bratt doesn’t do much for the run of the movie, disappearing for long stretches of time and he seemingly just sits around for most of the movie after he gets the giant jewel. Having Steve Carell do the voice of Dru seems really lazy to me and it makes the brothers too similar (they’ve been apart for something like 40 years and Gru never knew Dru existed). I never cared for anything the minions do in this movie and they’re off doing their own dumb thing (i.e. very little) for most of the movie. Only one part of this movie was worth paying attention to, the other two parts were 20 minutes or so of spinning plates to make it seem like more was going on. Disappointing.

Coco– And now here’s another showcase of why Pixar is the best in the animation business and makes all the money. Miguel is an aspiring musician at the age of 12. His family has banned music from a traumatic event that occurred two generations earlier. Miguel must hide his dream and talent from his family. Then, as Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) approaches, his family finds out when he wants to sign up for a talent show. His grandmother smashes his guitar and Miguel goes in search of a new one. When he tries to borrow his great-great-grandfather’s guitar (a legendary musician) he’s transported to the Land of the Dead where he meets his deceased family members and finds out a whole new aspect of his family.

It’s a fantastic and timely story about the importance of family and the legacy we leave behind. Lovely and endearing characters I grew to know and love, I think Coco is a brilliant example of powerful story telling. On top of the rich and complex story that has laughs, twists and turns, and heartbreak, the visuals push Pixar to the top of their craft. Ignoring the standard brilliant animation they have for their characters, the detail in everything around the characters is unmatched. The colors, the effects, it all makes a digital world come to life. The world never looks like a set made up of simple shapes and plastic, but a real place with three-dimensional depth. The soundtrack is great too! I loved Coco and recommend it to everyone.

Sausage Party– I think the goal of this project from the start was to make a crazy edgy movie like Team America. But it gets nowhere close to that quality. I think I laughed 3 times. So that’s not a good batting average for a comedy. It’s just…not good. Let’s make all the characters stereotype’s based on what food they are. Let’s curse just because we can. Let’s have half the characters be obsessed with sex because that’s….funny? To keep it from being completely shallow, we’ll make it an allegory for…religion? Oh and there’s no good way to end the movie so let’s break the 4th wall and call it a day. If you never watch this movie, rest assured you haven’t missed anything.

 

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

I loved Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. War caps what I consider one of the best film trilogies ever made.

It’s two years after the events of Dawn and Caesar, along with his remaining people are holed up in the woods. Caught in a never-ending tide of battle, the human’s keep coming in and attacking. After winning a fight (if you can call it that) Caesar sends four prisoners of war back to their leader, The Colonel, with a message: leave us alone and no one has to die. The apes are exhausted and scared, they just want to live on their own in peace. This faction of humans has a different idea.

Caesar has been deeply traumatized by the events of Dawn. The battle with his brother, Koba, took a massive toll on his mind. Koba could not let his hatred go and the results were devastating. When the Colonel sneaks into the apes home and kills Caesar’s wife and eldest son, he finds himself fighting the same demons that consumed Koba. Caesar swears revenge and puts his life, along with the lives of his people, right in the path of all out war.

Complex, engaging, emotional, and riveting. All of it can be found in War for the Planet of the Apes. Brilliant, mature storytelling bolstered by cutting-edge visual effects make this series one of my absolute favorites.

The growth of Caesar as a character through each film is a fantastic journey to follow. From an ape to a leader, one who leads by positive example for the betterment of his people, is really inspiring. The VFX are second to none, from frame one I never saw the apes (who are in 98% of the screentime) as anything but sentient beings on camera. Just look at the eyes of these amazing creations shows a production team far ahead of many of their peers.

Caesar is just the tip of the fantastic characters as everyone around him is a fantastic and believable character. I love Maurice. He’s the right-hand man, confidant, advisor, and friend that everyone should have. The Colonel is far more than a trite villain, he has valid reasons for doing what he does. Everything he does is horrible making him a fantastic antagonist to root against. His backstory adds so much to make him more than a cardboard cut out with a gun, something many movies get nowhere close to.

I found War to be a harrowing story from start to finish. I rolled through every emotion possible and by the end, I was completely blown away. I think this series that started in 2011 hasn’t gotten its fair share of attention. More people need to watch this and you absolutely need to start with Rise to get the full experience. While War (and the other two films) can stand as their own confined stories, you’ll be missing out on a lot of the meaning and purpose of this story. Please check these movies out, I really think they are some of the best works Hollywood has put out in the past twenty years.

I’ve become a huge fan of Matt Reeves because of this (directed War and Dawn, as well as co-wrote War) and knowing that he’s working on the next Batman film has me completely stoked.

The Shape of Water

Set in the 1960s, Elisa works in a secret research facility as a janitor. Elisa is a rather lonely person. Mute, her communication abilities are limited to those who take the time to learn how to sign. Her only friends are her next-door neighbor, Giles, and her co-worker, Zelda. She goes about her days in a routine, but it’s clear that she yearns for more. One day a mysterious specimen from South America is brought into the facility. It’s a large, fish-like being, and Elisa quickly finds out that this creature is far from a dumb animal that the handlers think he is. It’s an intelligent being that can communicate and understand her.

The Shape of Water is a fairy tale made for adults. Leave it to master director Guillermo del Toro to make a story like this work. It’s a tough idea to sell, a woman falling in love with a fish man. It’s so weird but I think it works because of the careful steps that are taken to get to the end.

Elisa’s character is set up well right away. We get a good idea of her wants and needs in the first few minutes and we get to see what space in this world she occupies. The characters of Giles and Zelda are strong ones, filling in the gaps of communication and feelings for the viewer.

The creature is frightening at first, one that is totally foreign to the above-ground world. But in time, as Elisa gets closer, so does the audience. It’s slow at first, how all good courtships go. Every day, Elisa makes hard boiled eggs and her first outreach to him is to offer him one. And that leads to the first communication: she signs “egg” as she gives it to him. From there she goes to visit him whenever she can, keeping their meetings as secret as she can. When the life of this creature she deeply cares about is threatened, she goes to great lengths to save him.

This movie got way more adult that I thought it ever would. There’s cursing, violence, nudity…this movie doesn’t hold back its punches. del Toro wanted to make a complete movie about love and yes, she does have sex with the creature. It’s all done rather beautifully and nothing explicit is shown, but you know exactly what’s going on. It’s a believable relationship and Giles and Zelda are used as guidance in understanding Elisa’s actions. They don’t judge her and the scene with Elisa begging Giles for his help to save the creature is one of the most effective parts of the movie.

The cast and production go a long way to make this world seem so real. Fantastic acting and the work done to make Doug Jones into the creature is absolutely top of the line. Lots of prosthetic make up make the creature a real presence and subtle CG augmentation puts that final touch of life into him. It’s a good trick, designing the creature to share strong male human traits while making him look completely foreign.

Guillermo del Toro often makes decisive movies. You either dig ’em or you don’t. Everyone agrees that they always look gorgeous but wether you go along for the ride is another question. I think this is one of del Toro’s strongest movies. It’s a take on the surreal, but one that revolves around one of our most powerful emotions and universal need: love.

It (2017)

I think I read Stephen King’s IT twenty years ago or so. It’s probably in the top three of his most well known novels. It’s a massive and weird book and the TV mini-series (1990) did it’s best to adapt the tome. So twenty seven years later Pennywise is given another crack at turning Derry, Maine into an all you can ear buffet.

In 1988, a lot of kids start disappearing in the small town of Derry. On of those kids is Georgie, little brother of Bill Denbrough. He was last seen next to a storm drain during a big rain storm. His body is never found leaving the Denbrough’s with a lot of questions. Bill thinks he could have been swept into the storm drain but no one will listen to him. When his friends help him try to find Georgia in the summer of ’89, the rag tag group of kids discover that a shape shifting monster lives under their home town.

Some (wise) choices have been made with this take, moving the story from the 50s to the 80s being the most obvious. I don’t remember all the details but watching this brought up a lot of memories so I think the movie is succesfull in hitting all the most important parts of the book. It focuses soley on The Losers Club when they’re kids, there’s no time jumping to adulthood. That keeps the direction of the story clean and straight forward.

The casting of IT is absolutley perfect. In a movie that is 99% kids, the whole film rides on the finding the right actors. All seven of The Losers is spot on. They’re believable, they act the hell out of every scene. They all have a legit chemistry with each other so that makes their friendship on screen come across as geniune. Friendship is what the movie is about so that’s insanely important for this project to work. Right down to the small moments, like when they are shooting quick insults at each other (Richie and Eddie are hilarous) are really endearing. The joy, sadness, and fear that the kids get whipped through feels real. Jackson Scott, the kid who plays Georgie, is adorable. He’s the quintecential little brother and when IT pulls him into the sewer as he sceams for his big brother’s help is absolutley heart breaking.

So is IT scary? A shape shifting monster is something to behold, but it depends. If you are scared of clowns, yeah. It’s nuts. Otherwise, not really. They got me once in the garage scene. There’s some really wild imagery and great set ups. Pennywise in the sewer talking to Georgie is riveting. It’s brilliantly shot (as is much of the movie) and Bill Skarsgard’s choice of voice is fantastic. It’s this childish…meanace that’s hard to forget. Pennywise looks striking so the voice completes the movie monster. A big reason why I liked this was because it’s very Nightmare on Elm Street. Pennywise knows it’s victims fears and it dredges them up in fantastic and horrible ways. The creativity for when IT goes after each kid is awesome. I found the problem to be that (much like the NOES remake) the filmmakers relied on the same scare tactic too much. Pennywise feeds on fear and they make it very clear that IT loves scaring people. Probably more than actually eating them. There’s this glee to it that’s a great monster character trait but it gets undercut by the constant bum rushing IT does. I think in every scene Pennywise is in, they had Skarsgard do the “shake your head while you run and we’ll speed it up in post” thing. That’s effective two or three times until it gets routine and dumb.

That grip asise, I thought IT was a ton of fun. Really looking forward to Chapter Two.