Safety Last!

The silent comedy masterpiece with Harold Lloyd! I challenge anyone to watch this film and not laugh out loud or hang on the edge of their seat during the iconic building-climbing scene. And check out our discussion on the Cineverse podcast.

"A Royal Affair" on the Cineverse Podcast

This is a link to another recent episode of the Cineverse podcast I took part in, where we discussed the historical love story, “A Royal Affair.” Interesting seeing favorite Hollywood villain Mads Mikkelsen and “The Man from UNCLE” film’s Alicia Vikander in this Danish drama based on a real love triangle between the mentally ill king Christian VII, his wife Caroline and his doctor Johann Struensee. 

"Ammonite" on the Cineverse podcast

So here’s a recent Cineverse discussion update: Check out our discussion of an overlooked, haunting film, “Ammonite,” directed by Francis Lee and starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan whose characters spark and unexpected romance.

Left Coast Crime 2022

I still can't believe how time flies by when you're getting back to the real world after a literary conference. Last week I had the pleasure of taking part in the Left Coast Crime 2022 event in Albuquerque, New Mexico, not only listening to some of the top authors in crime fiction, but also fans, other debut authors in the genre, and the chance to discuss my work,  FATAL POSE, and the writing process. For fans, authors, and aspiring authors - as fandom and writing really overlap since everyone writing in a specific genre must also really be a fan of such literature - events like this I would highly recommend. It is a fantastic way to discover and interact with very active and exciting communities.

The Cineverse Podcasts: Breathless

For just over a month now, I had the pleasure of taking part in the weekly podcasts of the CineVerse film discussion group, run by Erik J. Martin who produces the superb Cineversary podcasts commemorating the anniversaries of major films that have had an impact on American and world cinema. I had been a guest on Erik's Cineversary podcasts before for the 50th anniversaries of "Easy Rider" and "The Last Picture Show." So I was definitely excited to join this group of film devotes to discuss an eclectic collection of films, both major blockbusters and small independent films, American films as well as films from around the world. I will be putting up a series of links to the various films we had analyzed recently.

In a bit of a backward order as I'm catching up on blogging, this is the link to our recent discussion of French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's seminal 1960 film "Breathless," starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. The film is recognized as one of the major works giving rise to the French New Wave movement.

Check out the discussion and by all means watch "Breathless." The film is definitely a unique experience, and one I recommend to people and film students to see how they react. Truth be told, it's not a film I greatly enjoy viewing, yet one that needs to be understood and appreciated as an interesting artifact of a certain time and culture. Volumes had been written about "Breathless" and Godard, so suffice it to say here that the film is an odd, intellectual experience. It's very raison d'être is to break cinematic rules, to defy conventions. To that end, the film is full of jarring editing techniques, dialogue, and plot twists and turns that are designed to confuse and confound its viewers. There are moments where the story rushes along at a hyper-paced clip, using a series of off-putting jump cuts, and then there is a very, very long and slow, plodding scene of the two main characters are stuck in an apartment, reciting dialogue that is often confusing and meandering. Overall, the film is forcing its audience to engage with it, to think about what it wants to say about cinematic conventions, and how so many of the conventions we take for granted in films, especially Hollywood films, are artificial constructs.

Again, it's an odd and confounding film, but perhaps one that we can appreciate in an age when Hollywood cranks out little more than mindless superhero epics or preachy virtue-signaling award-bait films that leave little to the imagination and personal interpretation. 

So listen to the podcast and give "Breathless" a try.

If I were to film and cast and score "Fatal Pose."

Whoa! Where did the time go? 

Well, life and the job and various other circumstances got in the way of updating the blog in a while, so I wanted to post this link to the latest interview I gave about FATAL POSE recently. Hermione Lee, the incredibly talented young author of the the young adult romantic fantasy IN THE NAME OF THE OTHERWORLD, recently interviewed me for her Facebook Blog, "Writers and Writing."

We discussed everything from my inspirations for the book to who I could see cast in the lead role if it would ever be made into a movie and what music would be ideal for the soundtrack.

The short answers are in the following order: the inverted mystery format from the classic TV detective show "Columbo," Henri Cavill in the lead role as Gunnar Marino, and classic Sammy Hagar-era music by Van Halen in the soundtrack.

So right now, you want to click on the link to Hermione's page. And right now you want to read FATAL POSE by going to its Amazon page. Just do it right here and now! 

Forget the losers who make fun of you for enjoying Hallmark Christmas movies!

Forgetting to Google myself often enough, I missed this article from October in Cosmopolitan where I was quoted on how people feel pressured to say the actually “hate” certain types of entertainment they usually consume. This pressure has given rise to a sort of oxymoron of a phrase called “hate watching,” or how people who watch a certain show regularly would then turn around and claim to watch just to reinforce their hatred of that show.

 

The term is quite foolish and the article correctly points this out. There is no such thing as “hate watching.” You enjoy watching something but you feel embarrassed to admit it when all your friends make fun of your favorite entertainment.

 

In my quote, I make the point that most often female-centric entertainment gets most of the disrespect and the pressure on their fans to justify themselves. Traditionally, women who enjoyed watching soap operas or reading romance novels got most of the grief. These days relationship-oriented reality shows like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette get piled upon as well.

 

Since we’re in middle of the holiday season as I write this, just between Christmas and New Year’s, it makes me think of all the people who enjoy piling on the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas movies. I wonder how many fans of those movies claim to be merely hate watching in order to “know how bad they really are.” What I would suggest to all those Hallmark Christmas movie fans—while Hallmark Christmas movies are not really my thing, I do enjoy watching Hallmark’s various cozy mystery series—is that they should first give all their critics the middle finger and then ask those very sophisticated and hip friends of theirs if they haven’t yet gotten sick of Batman and Spider-Man reboots. I mean, how many times can you really tell the same old story about how witnessing his parents’ deaths warped Bruce Wayne and created Batman? Or the significance of Uncle Ben’s death to Peter Parker’s psyche.

 

Watch whatever you like and ignore the losers who give you a hard time for it!