StanleyWheeler

The dark, quadrangular oculus* bid me welcome this week and sought to entertain me with stories both dark and fey. I accepted the challenge as reward for my fair to middling (or less) progress on the new novel.

*I know oculus refers to a circular or oval aperture and is therefore inconsistent with quadrangular but I've recently renewed my poetic license and mean to make profligate use thereof.

First up was Orson Welles in Black Magic from 1949. It's based upon Dumas' novel Joseph Balsamo of which I had neither read nor even heard until now. Welles plays Cagliostro, a man with amazing hypnotic powers which he decides (unsurprisingly) to use for personal gain and influence. His good fortune goes sour when he attempts to substitute a ringer for Marie Antoinette. I'm a little foggy on the details because that is about when I fell asleep the first time. I resumed the movie sometime the next day only to succumb to the muse of snooze once again. I did manage to watch the end. There's a trial where Cagliostro uses his power to get a witness to exonerate him--but wait, there's more! Another hypnotist appears and mesmerizes Cagliostro into confessing that this film is a boring dog of an excuse for entertainment. Welles gives a swell performance and the costumes are nice (but they can only be of limited dazzle in black and white), but the rest of it is entirely forgettable--or was I hypnotized during the film to think that, and instead of sleeping I was typing my personal identifiers and credit card information into the dark web database?

Dungeons and Dragons (2000) features Jeremy Irons and some other people who have never been in my kitchen.* The beginning of the film held promise. Irons plays a mage named Profion who has an unquenchable desire for power and a hankering to control dragons. Ridley and Snails are a couple of thieves who decide that it would be a good idea to make a big heist at the local Hogwarts. The idea turns out not to be so great. They get sucked into the imbroglio (which sounds like a word that should be sung by men in small, feathered caps and lederhosen in the Swiss Alps) that is Profion's plan to seize power from the empress. Some mage understudy catches them in their thievery at the same time as the counselor to the empress is being separated from his life by Profion's hench Damodar. Everybody wants something called the Rod of Savrille (I can hear David Lee Roth singing that). Cutting to the chase: An Elf and a Dwarf become part of the adventure party; the rod is found; the rod is lost to Damodar and Profion; Snails dies; Profion is about to succeed when Ridley discovers how to destroy the power of the rod. The ending seems to set it up for a sequel which would have to try really, really hard to be worse than this movie.

The film wasn't as bad as I had imagined. It wasn't very good in the same sense that hitting your thumb with a hammer isn't very good. The characters are shallow stereo-types, and poorly drawn ones at that. The actors weren't bad (Irons was great as always) but the script didn't do them any favors. One character was so annoying that I wasn't sorry to see him go: Snails. The character had potential but the script never allowed him to play more than one or two notes which were about as fun has having someone yank out a wad of your arm hair. If that sounds a little like torture to you, you've understood correctly. The special effects, or course, were something else--being in a class from say, 1984.

*See the Cheers episode where Norm Cliff goes on Jeopardy.

True Grit (2010) featuring Jeff Bridges as John Wayne, Matt Damon as Glen Campbell, Josh Brolin as Plasus Jeff Corey, and Hailee Steinfeld as Kim Darby; I particularly enjoyed Barry Pepper as Robert Duvall. I might have seen this sooner if I had realized that it is almost as fun as the original and is 18 minutes shorter. All of the actors do an excellent job of impersonating the actors that I remember in the roles--except Jeff Bridges. Bridges either couldn't or wouldn't do a good John Wayne; he played Jeff Bridges instead and managed to do it convincingly.

I laughed at least twice during the film--both times when Bridges kicked children; I know that sounds bad but in my defense, it was very funny. The film retains much of the dialogue from the original. The best dialogue in the original, in my opinion, was between Kim Darby and Strother Martin (one of the best character actors ever). Part of that dialogue is retained. Also preserved throughout is the articulate speech pattern that uses complete sentences, few contractions, and superior diction. The writing is what makes this movie soar, the actors embrace it and ascend on its wings; and the directors didn't ruin it.

***

Now for something completely different. I've finished chapter 8 of the new novel, which takes me through part IV of my XII part outline and hits the 40K word mark. That number usually indicates the halfway point but in this case, it is probably only about the one third mark.

If you're a sample reader and want an update to the current progress, let me know.

You can purchase Justice Resurgent for only $0.99; and Justice in Season for only $1.99 for a limited time. The link buttons are at the top of the page. All of my books make great last minute Christmas gifts--but seriously, you don't have to buy them all.