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Goth Chick News: Universal Studios Goes Back to Its Roots and I Should Be Excited, But…

Goth Chick News: Universal Studios Goes Back to Its Roots and I Should Be Excited, But…

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Sofia Boutella as the Mummy of Cleopatra
Sofia Boutella as the Mummy of Cleopatra, perhaps?

This is the sort of news that should actually make me smile… a bit.

Instead, I’m pouring myself an adult beverage and doodling the word “why” all over the back of my 2015 Edward Gory calendar.

Before I explain cause of all the sadness, let’s peer into the black depths of Hollywood history…

As a fledgling movie studio in the early 1920’s Universal began to gain real public attention with its first two horror films The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom of the Opera (1925).

But it wasn’t until 1928, when studio founder Carl Laemmle made his son, Carl Jr. head of Universal Pictures as a 21st birthday present, that the studio found what became its most popular genre. Carl Jr. took his childhood taste for the “penny dreadfuls,” mixed it with Daddy’s money and created a niche for the studio, beginning a series of horror films which extended into the 1950s, affectionately dubbed Universal Horror.

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Yesterday a Wizard Entered New York With a Case: The First Trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Yesterday a Wizard Entered New York With a Case: The First Trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

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This appears to be the week for trailers. Perhaps the Friday before a new Star Wars film is a fertile time to announce new fantasy films? Whatever the case, hot on the heels of yesterday’s trailer for Star Trek Beyond, we have the first trailer for Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, the long-anticipated cinematic return to the world of Harry Potter.

Set in New York in the 1920s, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them follows the adventures of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) the famed magizoologist, as he mingles with New York City’s secret community of witches and wizards while compiling notes for his soon-to-be-famous book, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, the textbook Harry Potter and his friends still use 70 years later at Hogwarts.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is based on the slender 42-page book of the same name by J. K. Rowling, first published in 2001. It is directed by David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter films, from a screenplay by Rowling. It stars Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell, Jon Voight and Ron Perlman, and is scheduled to be released in November 2016.

“Let’s Never Do That Again”: Check Out The First Trailer For Star Trek Beyond

“Let’s Never Do That Again”: Check Out The First Trailer For Star Trek Beyond

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Now that J.J. Abrams, who directed the last two Star Trek movies, is off doing Star Wars, Paramount Pictures has brought in Justin Lin, the director of Fast & Furious, to helm the latest installment. This one sees the crew — at long last — starting their five-year mission to explore the frontier, which certainly piques my interest.

I’ve come to accept that this new generation of Star Trek is far removed from the cerebral TV show I remember. Abrams and his Fringe writing partners Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have instead turned the property into an action-movie franchise, with fist fights, explosions, and a pounding rock soundtrack. On the other hand, the script this time was co-authored by Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty and who previously wrote Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End, so that a least promises a fresh perspective. Have a look at the first trailer, just released this morning, and let me know what you think.

Star Trek Beyond is being produced by Skydance and Bad Robot Productions, and will arrive in theaters on July 22, 2016.

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: It Was Only A Dream…

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: It Was Only A Dream…

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Dallas JR EwingJust as there are certain guitar licks, walkdowns, turnarounds, and other patterns that can help with the flow and structure of a song, writing and storytelling have some generic techniques that can be used to great effect, or great failure, depending on how, when, and why they’re applied.

The most universal and familiar in fiction is probably the framing device that starts many children’s stories: “Once upon a time…” and ends them with, “And they lived happily ever after.” Those phrases are an emotional touchstone for most readers, taking them back to a magical time when stories were a centerpiece to our lives.

But most of these shortcut techniques aren’t used as often, and aren’t guaranteed to evoke a specific emotional response. Let’s look at a risky writing technique: The “It Was Only A Dream…” ending.

I generally hate this kind of ending, because it feels like a trick. It feels like the writer is chanting “Neener neener!” and laughing at the audience who fell for this prank.

However, as Eric Cherry (my frequent writing-neepery partner) and I explored specific instances of it being used, I realized that I didn’t always hate it. I just have such a strong emotional reaction when it’s used badly that it overshadows my appreciation of the times when it’s used well.

To use it in a way that respects the audience, it should shine the light of what we know about the story through a prism that reveals new facets to the story, rather than negating all that came before. It should make us embrace what we’ve already experienced within the story, and then view all of that in a new way.

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Thinking About What Makes The Shining and The Exorcist Work

Thinking About What Makes The Shining and The Exorcist Work

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Linda-Blair-in-The-Exorcist-1973
Aw, man. This just ain’t right.

Sometimes in the course of growing as a writer, you fluke into a success before you grow the skills to consistently hit that success. My second-ever fiction sale was to Asimov’s Science Fiction in 2008 and over the following two-and-a-half years, I collected nothing but rejections from them.

My 2008 story had accidentally included enough good elements that it made it into the magazine, but I didn’t understand what those science fictional elements were or how to use them properly until about 2011.

I think the same thing happened to me with a story called “Dog’s Paw.” I thought I’d been writing a lit story when in fact, I had included horror elements that eventually got it published in a horror anthology, Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, and a superb audio version at Pseudopod.org (British people make everything sound extra-good). After my experience with my 2008 Asimov’s story, I was under no illusions that I was a competent horror writer, just a lucky one.

This spring, I decided to try to write a horror story. Knowing my weakness, I deliberately tried to figure out what goes into a good horror story. And when I want to analyze story structure, I go first to movies, because I find it easier to see the moving parts.

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Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

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Star Trek the Motion Picture cast

My peak Star Trek watching years came in the seventies. Those of us who were too young to catch the show when it first aired in the mid-sixties could gorge ourselves on seemingly endless reruns of three seasons worth of shows. It was a far cry from Netflix and calling up any episode any time but we made do.

As the seventies wound down my interest in Star Trek waned and I wasn’t really cognizant of what came along later — four more TV series and a heap of movies. I sought to rectify this in the early years of the new century, watching as many TV episodes as possible and some of the movies, but my intake of the latter was sporadic.

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Check out the First Trailer for Captain America: Civil War

Check out the First Trailer for Captain America: Civil War

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Civil War was one of the biggest events in Marvel Comics roughly a decade ago, pitting Spider-Man, Iron Man and a host of other heroes against a tiny contingent led by Captain America. Marvel Studios has made a major effort to replicate the crossover impact of that event in the upcoming movie, which features a bevy of guest stars… see how many you can spot in the trailer above (hint: it’s a LOT.) Captain America: Civil War will be released on May 6, 2016.

Goth Chick News: A Final Report of the Commercial Starship Nostromo, or The Alien Saga Continues…

Goth Chick News: A Final Report of the Commercial Starship Nostromo, or The Alien Saga Continues…

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Alien Covenant poster-smallNormally, I have a personal rule against covering the same topic twice in so many weeks. Primarily this is because I have an extremely short attention span and I assume you do as well.

But I just couldn’t let this go.

Last week we joined together to lament the assumed loss of a true Aliens sequel directed by Neill Blomkamp and ignoring the mediocre efforts that were Alien 3 and Alien 4. We also shook our collective fists as the mercurial Ridley Scott who, after foisting Prometheus upon us, originally threatened to continue the torture with Prometheus 2, but instead took a hard left turn and commandeered the Aliens sequel by turning it into connective tissue between the Prometheus and Alien storylines.

We knew this from reading cryptic Ridley Scott quotes during which he referenced if not clarified his new project entitled Alien: Paradise Lost.

However, no sooner had we begun to get our brains around this when last Friday the newswire was abuzz with fresh Scott quotations, stemming from his Thursday evening appearance and the AFI Festival (American Film Institute).

According to IndieWire, Scott remarked that the project formerly known as Alien: Paradise Lost will now be called Alien: Covenant.

But buckle up, because there’s more.

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Goth Chick News: No Happy Ending for Ripley, But Hope for Prometheus Franchise

Goth Chick News: No Happy Ending for Ripley, But Hope for Prometheus Franchise

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Thankfully this all happened when I was deeply immersed in “the season,” so the enormous sadness was delayed in favor of scaring the snot out of the neighborhood youngsters.

But now the news has finally had a chance to sink in, and I am forced to seek comfort in well-blended adult beverages and berating the interns.

On October 29th, writer / director Neill Blomkamp took to Twitter to shatter our hearts:

Neill Blomkamp Alien cancelled

In the two weeks since, word is that the Alien sequel is even less than “holding” and more like entirely nuked.

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Hallowe’en Post-Mortem 2015: Needle Found in Candy!

Hallowe’en Post-Mortem 2015: Needle Found in Candy!

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Photo of a pin found in Halloween candy in Brainerd. Photo courtesy of the Brainerd Police Department
Photo of a pin found in Halloween candy in Brainerd. Photo courtesy of the Brainerd Police Department *Diligent reader: Please read to end of this blog post for an update to this story

I was watching the news the day after Hallowe’en and was distressed by two stories. The first was about a five-year-old boy who was hit by a car in Minneapolis and died from his injuries. Tragic, but it did not surprise me. Given the circumstances, it’s as predictable as knowing that every year during hunting season somebody somewhere is going to be accidentally shot in the woods. We hope that maybe this year everyone will come home safely, and if not, that it doesn’t happen to one of our own or anyone we know.

The second story took me by complete surprise. What really upset my apple cart was a report out of Brainerd that some kid had found a needle in a Three Musketeers fun-size candy!

The reason the second story came as such a shock is that I have informed people for years that the whole razor-blade or needle in the candy story is an urban legend. It is one that has been reinforced periodically by well-meaning local police departments and (lazy) journalists, causing hysteria that whips parents into a bag-checking frenzy. They comb through the stash checking each individual piece. There are even some local medical centers that offer free x-ray screenings of Hallowe’en candy! The number of cases where these efforts have averted a child inadvertently getting a free but unwanted tongue piercing? Zero. Nada. Zilch. Because it’s never happened. The time and resources would be just as well used sending search crews down into the sewer looking for alligators. Urban legend.

…Until now, I thought, with a sinking heart. Here is a case, apparently, of an urban legend being copy-catted by someone and now entering the banal realm of fact.

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