Sports Columnist Makes Junior Varsity

I had no idea that fairly obnoxious New York Daily News sports correspondent Mike Lupica was actually a bestselling children's book author (and he even writes books for grown-ups, too). He recently signed a multibook deal with Philomel to write two sports-themed books per year until 2009, all targeted at what Publisher's Weekly calls "middle-grade" kids. I'm not sure whether "middle-grade" refers to their level in school or worth as human beings, but it sounds like an awful lot of happy preteens, nonetheless. Here's a promotional poster for the first book, Hot Hands (although you might think from the image that the title of the book is Mike Lupica's) :

Penguin Young Readers Group, which helps educate our nation's youth about the value of buying books instead of checking them out of libraries, is even sponsoring a "Write Like Mike" contest. Kids will be asked to write a sports column (hopefully with more substance than Lupica's columns) and the winning writer gets $1,000 and a spot in Sports Illustrated for Kids. I like the idea, but shouldn't they have another "Write Like Mike" contest where kids write "middle-grade" sports novels for $1,000? My writing might be aptly described as "middle-grade" and I could definitely use $1,000. All I would have to do is find some dopey kid to "enter" my book in the competition. Don't worry, I'd cut him in for twenty bucks or something.

Here are my ideas for preteen-oriented, sports-themed novels that would make Lupica proud, along with lessons children can learn from my books:


A Recruit Called Hope- All Johnny wants to do is play basketball for State, but the coach can't contact him thanks to NCAA recruiting regulations. With the help of his computer savvy buddy Alan, Johnny is able to send illegal emails to the coach and secure his partial scholarship. All goes well until the star player from the neighboring suburb rats Johnny out to the NCAA Rules Commission. Relegated to junior college, Johnny must earn his way to State the hard way, by playing great basketball. Unfortunately, he tears his ACL his second year in ju-co and lives out his life in obscurity.

Kids learn the ineluctable role chance plays in everyone's life.

Benchwarmer- Arthur was the best quarterback in Paradiso High history. He had everything: the scholarship offers, the fans, he was even dating the captain of the cheerleading team. But one day a transfer student arrives and threatens Arthur's starting spot. Soon all the scouts are watching the young upstart instead of Arthur, who is left rotting on the bench. When his new adversary takes the team all the way to the state championship game and, worse still, steals Arthur's girl, Arthur knows he must act. He manages to plant beer in the new quarterback's car, getting him expelled and out of the picture. Arthur reclaims his place as quarterback but his rusty play dooms the team to a miserable defeat in the championship. Overcome by guilt, he considers fessing up to his crime until his girlfriend returns to his arms on prom night. He loses his virginity to her and realizes that God had a plan all along.

Kids discover that perseverance and cunning can prevail over justice. They also learn that sex heals the deepest wounds -- even self-inflicted ones.

A Hurricane of Opportunity

According to my favorite e-source, Hollywood Reporter, the major US television networks are planning anniversary coverage two years after Hurricane Katrina struck the Louisiana coast and devastated New Orleans. Obviously, this should come as a huge relief to anyone who lives in the Gulf Coast states. After all, everyone knows know how ornery hurricanes get when you forget their anniversaries. It's too bad, however, that the networks have only stopped to observe Hurricane Katrina's "cotton" anniversary. They missed "paper" last year and I must say I'm worried they'll forget "wood" (5 years), "tin" (10 years), "soiled, overcrowded public sports facilities" (25 years), the very special "completely gutted inner city" (50 years), and the rarely celebrated but most hallowed "incompetent federal relief agency" (75 years). But really, every hurricane anniversary is special.

Yet I'm a little disappointed the networks are only going to bring us documentaries about the disaster. We already have two 9/11 films, a film about Middle East oil politics, an upcoming movie about CIA renditions, another new release about an FBI incursion in Saudi Arabia, and two major motion pictures about Iraq already hitting the festival circuit. Clearly, the present (or the near past) isn't off limits to Hollywood. So why is Katrina?

Here are my ideas for Katrina based films.

Brownie, starring James Woods as Michael Brown.

A man on the edge. A storm on the horizon. A president who might possibly want results if, really, he, you know, stopped to think about it, um, maybe.

When the FEMA director must make hard decisions, everyone is in the crossfire.

Brownie. Would you take the blame?



When the Levee Breaks

As a hurricane gains speed in the Gulf of Mexico, a young analyst in the Army Corps of Engineers (Jake Gyllenhaal) believes he has detected a fault in New Orleans system. When his superiors refuse to listen, he travels to the city himself to try and warn the citizens before it's too late. Meanwhile, his father (Dennis Quaid), a climatologist at the National Hurricane Center, is unable to convince the president, the Governor of Louisiana, or the Mayor of New Orleans of the imminent threat the incoming hurricane presents.

Together, a father and son must fight to save a city. When no one else will listen, at least they have each other.

When the Levee Breaks. How strong are the ties that bind?

Chocolate City Showdown

Carter (Chris Tucker) and Lee (Jackie Chan) are back! This time they're planning the perfect vacation in old town New Orleans, but things get messy when Hurricane Katrina bears down on the Gulf Coast. To make matters worse, a Chinese mob boss randomly decides to set up shop in the city and kidnaps Carter's estranged sister-in-law. Uh oh! Will Chan's hurricane force punches be any match for hurricane force winds?

Two cops. One hurricane. A whirlwind of excitement.

Chocolate City Showdown. Catch the surge.

Power Rankings

A weekly look at the bestseller lists, arbitrarily reordered according to how they SHOULD be doing (with the main criterion being how quickly I can generate a mildly amusing one-liner)

[Note: due to time constraints this week, there are no movie power rankings. Sorry.]

Books

1. Play Dirty, by Sandra Brown (NYT chart position: #2)
NYT description: "A disgraced N.F.L. quarterback struggles to remake his life in the face of a strange assignment from an eccentric millionaire and the machinations of a crooked detective."

• Wow, the Michael Vick books are already hitting the shelves. Let me guess, the eccentric millionaire is Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis, the crooked cop is former LA detective Mark Furhman, and the strange assignment is to solve the Nicole Brown murder. Can Vick crack the case alongside his K-9 companion Rex, or will he surrender to temptation and abandon Rex to a high stakes dogfighting ring?
  

2. Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan (NYT chart position: #5)
NYT description: "A historical novel about the scandalous affair between a married Chicago woman and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright."

• Horan has already planned a sequel called Hating Frank. In it, the married woman's husband discovers the illicit affair after, ironically, he purchases a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oak Park.
  

3. The Burnt House, by Faye Kellerman (NYT chart position: #10)
NYT description: "Lt. Peter Decker of the L.A.P.D. and his wife, Rina Lazarus, investigate a mysterious plane crash."

• What the synopsis doesn't explain is that, in the preceding book, The Burnt Marriage, a relationship counselor ordered Decker to bring his wife along on his investigations as a marriage building exercise . . . with hilarious consequences. The whole precinct collapsed into uproarious laughter every time Decker and Lazarus got in a fight over directions on the way to a bank robbery or murder scene. And no, "Rina Lazarus" is not her undercover name.
  

4. Critical, by Robin Cook (NYT chart position: #14)
NYT description: "A pair of New York City medical examiners investigating a rash of hospital deaths uncover corporate intrigue."

• Tired of writing vacuous descriptions for cookie cutter Robin Cook novels, the promotional copywriter at Putnam was fired shortly after submitting "Forensic specialists, deaths, hospitals, big shadowy corporations, intrigue, exciting twist, etc" for Critical.
  

5. Force of Nature, by Suzanne Brockmann (NYT chart position: #3)
NYT description: "A Florida P.I. and his assistant infiltrate the circle of a crime boss who may be involved in international terrorism; the 11th Troubleshooters novel."

• Force of Nature deals with complex psychological themes, especially that of feeling "overwhelmed." This is because, in the 10th Troubleshooters novel, the assistant merely had to figure out why the printer wasn't working, even though he had clearly installed the correct driver and printed a test sheet.
  

Celebrities Continue to Attempt More Than "Looking Good in Front of Camera"

A recent Associated Press headline read, "Movie star writes whodunit." The movie star? Blair Underwood. I know, as soon as I read the lede, I also thought of Underwood's riveting performance as "geneticist" in Gattaca. And the list of films in which Underwood has "starred" just goes on and on: Covert One: The Hades Factor, Do Geese See God? (when he mesmerized us as "Man"), The Wishing Tree. It's really a "Best Of" selection from modern cinema.

Once I shook the dazzling light of Underwood's celebrity from my eyes, I was excited to read a sneak preview of his prose masterpiece, Casanegra:

It's not hard to imagine who [fictional detective] Tennyson Hardwick was patterned after. A struggling actor with charisma to spare and blessed with "The Face," a countenance so arresting that it reduces women to a mass of pulsating desire, the hero of "Casanegra" immediately evokes any number of Blair Underwood roles.

Hardwick, like many characters played by Underwood, is smooth and sophisticated, with a style that tends toward Bruno Magli shoes and Kenneth Cole leather jackets. He is also a struggling actor whose secret past as a highly paid gigolo rises up to haunt him after he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a former client, a rap star-turned-actress named Afrodite.

It really does evoke "any number" of Underwood roles, such as . . . Anyway, what I like most about this book is that it provides Underwood with a forum to relive some painful memories of the past, especially his secret past as a highly paid gigolo. Most celebrities turn to writing and music to try and prove that their highly lucrative talents are even more wide ranging than we thought. Given how well they're paid, this practice is resentful and shallow. I, for one, am glad that Underwood has the courage to see writing as a means of self-expression, of confession, if you will. After all, isn't that what writing is meant to do?

But the Associated Press review isn't all fun and games. Writes Monica Rhor:

At times, the prose seems to be trying a bit too hard, and comes off like a parody of the genre. One line in particular stands out: "I felt Death blow on my face like hot wind from a speeding train."

And she would know what "trying a bit too hard" really means. Witness the very next paragraph:

But steamy sex scenes, action-packed confrontations, glimpses into the world of Hollywood's elite and unexpected plot twists keep the reader turning the pages — and as eager as Hardwick to uncover the real killer.

What Rhor doesn't realize, however, is that Underwood was probably weighed down by non-celebrity co-writers Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due (who, by the way, are married). I blame any bad writing on them.

The sheer ingenuity of Underwood's story and his ability to transform it into a novel all while starring in so many major films raises the question: why don't more B-list celebrities write novels about secret pasts filled with embarrassing work? Their books don't even need to be about the past:

Lindsay Lohan could write a mystery about a young, burnt out actress in rehab. While there, the murder of a neighboring patient grips the entire facility in terror. Our recovering actress is the only one who can get to the bottom of the slaying, a journey that takes her to the very heart of the film industry that ruined her.

Britney Spears could write a mystery about a young, burnt out singer in rehab. While, there, the murder of a neighboring patient grips the entire facility in terror. Our recovering singer is the only one who can get to the bottom of the slaying, a journey that takes her to the very heart of the music industry that ruined her. Then she could grow her hair back.

Kelsey Grammer and Robert Downey Junior could write similar novels.

Weekly Plot

This week's plot is one of my all time favorites:

A Thief is betrayed by one of his colleagues, possibly even sent to prison. After he is either released from prison or recovers from the betrayal, he has a score to settle with his disloyal former associate. He assembles a motley crew of accomplices, each one with an affable personality quirk to complement his or her unique skill set. Perhaps some of them also harbor ill will toward the Betrayer. Together, they scheme to pull off a sophisticated theft/confidence scheme against their enemy, hoping also to get rich in the process. Everything goes according to plan, but in the end one of the members of the group himself appears to betray the cause, temporarily tipping the scales in favor of the Betrayer. Miraculously, our Thief has actually predicated this new betrayal and had accounted for it all along. Thief triumphs over Betrayer, who skulks away looking emasculated.

Sweet, Sweet Fantasy: Part II

In the first part of "Sweet, Sweet Fantasy," I distilled the common elements of the decade's fantasy film blockbusters. In this part, I want to take a closer look at the books on which these films have been based and see what it takes to turn a hit book into a hi-tech, high budget feature film.

Every film on the list was adapted from a book. We have The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series (of which only five books have been adapted), The Chronicles of Narnia (of which only The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been adapted), The Inheritance Trilogy (of which only Eragon has been adapted -- and it looks like that may be all), and soon His Dark Materials and The Dark Is Rising.

Perhaps the lesson here is that one should only adapt books that have sold well. It's simple, it's logical -- I like it. Unfortunately, simplicity and logic aren't sexy enough. They don't provide the kind of buzzwords that make a film producer's blood boil. And anyway, I'm not convinced that's all there is to it. I know many people who saw all three of The Lord of the Rings films without having read a single page of any of the books. Mostly, these are the normal people I know, the kind who had friends in high school and watched MTV Spring Break.

This lesson also fails to attack the heart of the problem: how to write a bestselling book in the first place. Creative Differences doesn't shy away from problems like this (we only shy away from loser problems like the Iraq war, climate change, poverty, hunger, blah blah whine whine). So what makes a fantasy novel irresistibly attractive to both super nerds who drink Coke to stay up and play Dungeons and Dragons all night and movie execs who snort coke so they can stay up and have sex all night?

Here are some simple rules:

1. Internal consistency: This one's for the nerds. Fantasy fiction is escapist. Nerds want to imagine that they can inhabit the world of the book and there find social and sexual gratification. This isn't possible if the fictional world doesn't follow a set of rules from which the nerds can extrapolate their own personal fantasies. Nothing bothers a nerd more than a fantasy writer breaking his own universe's rules in order to conveniently advance the plot.

2. Magic: There has to be a cool take on magic. The fantasy world the author creates can't merely be implausible in some boring way, like everyone is smart or good-looking. There needs to be something resembling what we'd call magic or (at least the supernatural). Again, this magic or the supernatural should follow a set of rules, even if those rules are themselves implausible. So if waving a wand and saying "Blue orchid" lights a tree on fire once, it should light a tree on fire every time, barring some other rule which is also rigorously followed. But the important thing is that the characters are magically lighting trees on fire. Fire is cool.

This one is also essential for film execs because they feed off of expensive visual effects. No seriously, film execs have a degenerative condition that requires them to watch insanely costly and gratuitous visual effects. It's a horrific condition that claims the lives and budgets of over 100 producers a year. Go see a terrible action film now and you might help save a life.

3. Restraint: The world the author envisions cannot be too grand, nor can the story be too expansive. Remember, the film exec is thinking about a maximum running time of 150 minutes and, with rare exceptions, only three films. If the series is too large, with too many characters, it's just hopeless. Authors who want their books made into films have to keep this in mind. And don't get all huffy about your "creative vision." You're writing a fantasy novel for God's sake. You gave up self-respect a long, long time ago.

Ok, those are the rules. Now, how about some plots? In the final installment of "Sweet, Sweet Fantasy," we'll imagine some new ideas for fantasy books, along with some suggestions on how to turn them into major motion pictures.

Marketing Reality: The Dark Side of Toys

Some things would make awful movies. Good thing we have Hollywood!

(And this time, the New York Times headline was better than any title I could dream up)


Title: The Dark Side of Toys
Release Date: September 20
Rating: R

Fresh off the Chungking Express, Cop 663 (Tony Leung) is called in to a toy factory in southern China to investigate an apparent suicide. From the moment he sees the factory manager's body swinging from the rafters, he knows something isn't right. The official explanation is that the manager took his own life out of shame when forced to recall millions of toys that had been coated with lead paint. A good cop with a bad attitude, 663 begins to suspect that beneath the layers of lead paint lies a tangled conspiracy stretching all the way to the United States. As 663 moves deep within the opaque and secretive toy industry, it becomes clear that toy executives are up to more than fun and games as they will stop at nothing to prevent him from learning the truth. But 663 must decide where his own loyalties lie when he discovers a shocking Chinese plan to poison American children, a plan that has the full cooperation of major American toy companies.

The only thing he had left to lose was faith in his country. But now Cop 663 must learn that sometimes friends and enemies play the same game.

The Dark Side of Toys

Warning: this toy contains large conspiracies which may cause choking . . .

Saving the Series: Spiderman, Part I

I just saw an illegal copy of Spiderman 3 and the Creative Differences alarm started blaring at Defcon 1. This series seriously needs some assistance if it's going to survive. I didn't see the middle 15 minutes of the film, mainly because it wasn't included with the other pirated copy I found on the Interwebs. Although, from what I did see, it was clear that I hadn't missed anything all that worthwhile.

The film itself is relatively incoherent. Peter Parker loves Mary Jane, but has become implausibly self-absorbed thanks to the overwhelming popularity of Spiderman. Meanwhile, a co-worker becomes jealous, Mary Jane resents Peter Parker's crime fighting responsibilities, the guy who killed his uncle in the first movie gets turned into a sand monster and uses his power to illicitly secure funds to sponsor his daughter's recovery from some terminal illness, a weird alien substance falls onto earth and follows Peter home, and Harry Osborn fights Peter, almost dies, wakes up with no memory, then remembers that he hates Peter and tries to kill him before realizing that Peter didn't kill his dad. They join forces and urinate all over the bad guys.

Did I say incoherent? I meant . . . incoherent. And I didn't even mention that the alien infects Peter's Spiderman suit, giving him the ability to remain impervious to shame as he walks down the street dancing to disco music with a ridiculous Emo haircut. The alien then infects Topher Grace who morphs into yet another villain.

If you don't believe me, watch the trailer for yourself.



This is a tough nut to crack but, as I see it, there are three main problems.

1. Too many villains: this is what always happens when a production company finds it impossible to develop a compelling plot for an action movie. They substitute villains for substance. In the third Spiderman film, Peter has to fight the Sandman, Osborn, the alien, Topher Grace infected by the alien, and his own self-absorption. That's five villains! No one can handle that much evil in 120 minutes.

2. The talent disparity is too great: I never thought I'd say this about Topher Grace and a guy who once starred in Wings, but I think they may actually be too good for the Spiderman franchise. What made the first two films great was a collection of mediocre talent that we've convinced ourselves "isn't that bad." Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina. Let's not kid ourselves here, these people hold their own as character actors, but they're not going to win any Oscars (I know Willem Dafoe was in The English Patient, but he was also the unconvincing gay detective from Boondock Saints, turning in one of the most ridiculous drag scenes in film history). And that's not to mention Kirsten Dunst, who has gone from promising young actress to Julia Stiles territory. These films don't need actors who are "good," they need more people like James Franco who equate stage directions like "anger" with "constipated."

3. Too many personal issues: It's important for a superhero to have personal challenges. It allows us to identify with him. But the personal struggles our hero faces can only be oversimplified versions of our own struggles so that we can yell obvious advice at him during the course of the film like "Yes, she'll care if you cancel the wedding in order to help the government save the world" or "No, you idiot, don't tell her that dress makes her look 'less fat' than the other one!" In the last Spiderman film, every scene that wasn't a battle between Spiderman and a supernatural monster was, instead, a battle between Spiderman and his own poor personal judgment. The second Spiderman film got this right: Spiderman fights Dr. Octopus, Spiderman has issues with the responsibilities of being a superhero, Spiderman has issues with Harry because Harry's dad was a villain. If one abstracts from those specific conflicts, it is possible to see how well they are organized: Hero vs. Villain, Hero vs. Himself, Hero vs. Villain/Alter ego vs. Friend. Two of the struggles take place in "separate" worlds and, in the last, the two worlds overlap.

So those are the main challenges to continuing the Spiderman franchise. Essentially, it needs to rediscover its direction. Because this was such a long post, I'll propose some solutions later this week. Can the Spiderman franchise be saved? Or will the forces of darkness overcome Hollywood's once vaunted capacity to produce action blockbusters? Find out next time in "Saving the Series" . . .

Power Rankings

A weekly look at the bestseller lists, arbitrarily reordered according to how they SHOULD be doing (with the main criterion being how quickly I can generate a mildly amusing one-liner)

Books

1. Devil May Cry, by Sherrilyn Kenyon (NYT chart position: #2)
NYT description: "A former Sumerian god, now a casino owner, must cooperate with the servant of the goddess who stole his powers; the 11th Dark-Hunter novel."

• This book probably could have been titled Reader May Cry.
  

2. Sandworms of Dune, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (NYT chart position: #4)
NYT description: "The resolution of the war between man and machine; the concluding novel of the Dune series, based on Frank Herbert’s final outline."

• Brian Herbert actually found a note at the top of his father's outline that read "Dear Brian, my last wish is that you not publish this drivel!" Thanks to Kevin J. Anderson, those sections have been edited out of the final manuscript.
  

3. Spook Country, by William Gibson (NYT chart position: #6)
NYT description: "A musician/journalist, a spy and an addict/cryptographer push back against bureaucracy, history and technology."

• It's pretty cool how Gibson combines character types. Here are some others he could try: single mother/weapons specialist, homeless guy/nuclear physicist, stripper/Navy SEAL, and copy editor/Lasik eye surgeon. Think of all the cool missions these guys could pull off, though they'd doubtlessly be weighed down by the pressures of their respective life situations. I smell compelling fiction!
  

4. Walking with Enemies, by Eric Jerome Dickey (NYT chart position: #9)
NYT description: "In London, Gideon struggles to outsmart an assassin; a sequel to 'Sleeping With Strangers.'."

• The third book in the trilogy is called Running with Scissors, where Gideon must outwit cliched safety conventions. In the riveting climax, he will be challenged to jump off a bridge because his best friend has just done so.
  

5. Fourth Comings, by Megan McCafferty (NYT chart position: #16)
NYT description: "After graduation, Jessica Darling moves to New York."

• And if that move wasn't surprising enough, Darling takes her readers on a no holds barred roller coaster ride through the New York property market. Can she find a one bedroom with good financing options in time?
  

Film

1. Superbad (August 17-19: #1, $33,042,411)
From the Yahoo description: "Two co-dependent high school guys want to hook up with girls before they graduate and go off to different colleges, but, after a calamitous night just trying to buy alcohol for a school party, overcoming their separation anxiety becomes a greater challenge than getting the girls."

• Maybe they should have called this film Superbad instead of . . . oh wait. Shit, there goes that joke.
  

2. The Invasion (August 17-19: #5, $5,951,409)
From the Yahoo description: "The mysterious crash of the space shuttle leads to the terrifying discovery that there is something alien within the wreckage."

• And the mysterious crash of this film at the box office leads to the terrifying discovery that it is terrifyingly terrible.

3. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (August 17-19: #10, $3,601,545)
From the Yahoo description: "But when an overzealous, spot-checking bureaucrat becomes suspicious, the new couple's arrangement becomes a citywide issue and goes from confidential to front-page news. Forced to improvise as love-struck newlyweds, Chuck and Larry must now fumble through a hilarious charade of domestic bliss under one roof."

• Why are overzealous, spot-checking bureaucrats always the enemies in films? Whenever a bureaucrat causes me a headache, it's because he's under-zealous and only checking the spots on his shirt from the lunch he spilled a week ago. I'd like to see a film where a horde of overzealous, spot-checking bureaucrats invades. It would be called Dawn of the Everything Got Done Efficiently and without a Hassle.
  

4. The Last Legion (August 17-19: #12, $2,746,312)
From the Yahoo description: "Rome, 476 AD. The Roman Empire, a mighty force for almost 500 years, is being threatened."

• Uh-oh. Can tyranny be saved?

5. Death at a Funeral (August 17-19: #17, $1,282,973)
From the Yahoo description: "On the morning of their father's funeral, the family and friends of the deceased each arrive with his or her own roiling anxieties."

• "Look," said the producer to the screenwriter, "I'll level with you. Your script sucks. It was so bad, I vomited just before you came in. But right now we're desperate. Can you at least give me an ironic title? According to research, irony is really hot right now."
  

Weekly Plot

Ok, I'm moving this feature to Sundays. I just have no will to do it on Saturdays.

In honor of the Bourne Ultimatum:


Agent on mission encounters unexpected snag. This hitch nearly results in his death. In aftermath, Agent realizes that he has somehow been double-crossed. Now Agent must try and figure out who new enemy is, while original enemies hunt him down. Caught between the two, Agent plays them against each other. Beautiful Girl caught up in the mess somewhere along the line. Turns out Beautiful Girl is actually part of double-cross, which, contrary to our expectations, Agent anticipates and turns to his advantage.

Breaking News! Landmark Study Confirms Common Sense; World in Shock

When I saw the the Yahoo headline "Study analyzes secrets to movie success," I though to myself, "Uh oh, Hollywood might read this and start getting things right which would make Creative Differences a past tense verb that starts with an 'f' and ends with an 'ucked.'" No, really, I thought that. It took awhile. Anyway, I actually read the article (which, on occasion, I do) and discovered that the study revealed the most stunning, shocking, epiphanic conclusions about the film industry:

"Films that earn awards and praise from reviewers tend to be R-rated and based on a true story or a prize-winning play or novel, says professor Dean Simonton. The original author or the director usually have written the screenplay.

Big-budget blockbusters — whether they're comedies, musical, sequels or remakes — don't ordinarily draw acclaim, Simonton found. Neither do summer releases, PG-13 movies, movies that open on thousands of screens or ones that have enormous box office numbers in their first weekend."

Oh. My. God. My mind has been blown. You're telling me that reviewers tend to enjoy films that are, like, about things that are, you know, serious and/or important, but they don't like watching Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker exchange pithy one liners whilst beating the daylights out of drones in a Chinese restaurant serving as a front for organized criminals? Not even when the jokes are amusing racial barbs, inevitably stemming from their unlikely partnership, which was, from the first, sure to result in hilarious consequences?

How is this possible? How have film critics lost touch with the true sense of art embedded in the soul of the common moviegoer? (Wait, what's that? You'd like me to stop asking sarcastic questions? It's getting old, you say? Ok, fine. Asshole.)

The good news is that "Professor" Simonton didn't just learn something about films. He learned something about himself . . . and then he learned something else about films:

"I had this hope that there was a difference between blockbusters and really great art films — films that can be considered great cinematic creations," said Simonton, who presented his findings Friday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco. "It was gratifying to find out they're very, very different and you can find out what's different about them."

Whew. Man, that is gratifying. I was really worried that there was absolutely no difference between Citizen Kane and Booty Call. Now I know there is. Sounds like you've really put your research funds to good work there, Dr. Simonton.

Sweet, Sweet Fantasy: Part I

Fantasy is back. It has always been a strong genre in print media (novels and comic books especially) but I'm not sure any period in film has seen as many high grossing fantasy films as the early 21st century. In the 250 highest grossing films of all time, you'll find The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (#2), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (#4), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (#6), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (#9), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (#12), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (#14), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (#16 -- and it just came out this summer!), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#20), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (#25), and Eragon (#230).* And soon to be released is The Seeker: The Dark is Rising based on Susan Cooper's series as well as the Golden Compass, an adaptation of the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series.

Clearly, it's all about appeasing the nerds in this market and if you can win at all, then you can win big. The veritable explosion in fantasy novel adaptations can probably be in large part attributed to the dramatic improvement in computer graphics animation in the last decade. The monsters and magic that form the essence of these stories can now be displayed more plausibly on the silver screen. But is that all? In it's first multi-part look at the media, Creative Differences is going to try and find out why Hollywood is catering to the nerds.

In today's installment, let's look at what ties all these films -- and the books upon which they're based -- together.

1. No girls allowed: With the exception of the Golden Compass, the two girls no one likes in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Hermione, it's basically a sausage fest. Fantasy stories tend to be about an unlikely boy discovering he has a rare talent and then coming face to face with a rising evil only he can stop. Of course, there are women in these worlds, but they're there to inspire the male hero. Men don't do anything unless it's to prove to each other that yes, they have penises. Uh, I mean, prove to women.

2. Children belong in battle: Hobbits, a school for wizards, four kids running away from the bombing of London, a small girl in an alternate universe, a young boy who steals a dragon egg -- it's all about children in these films. I'm guessing that the core audience for the original books is children and I suppose children want affirmation. I say let them have it. That's right kids, as long as you inhabit an implausible world that operates on principles totally foreign to our own, you'll get all the love and adoration you need. Well, only if you can wield magic, actually. Otherwise, be seen and not heard. No, seriously, I'm not kidding. That's it. Go to your room.

3. Animals are people, too: This doesn't apply to all of the films, but Golden Compass, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Eragon all feature sentient animals who help the protagonists navigate their respective quests. I guess a lot of people think intelligent animals are cool. I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I find this the most disconcerting part of fantasy books or films. If animals became sentient, it would really freak me out. I mean, who wants to talk to his cat or dog? It's annoying enough when they ask for food with their stupid animal sounds. Plus, it would be a lot harder to enjoy meat if the animals said things like "Please don't kill me. I have a family -- four little calves waiting at home for me."

Stay tuned for Part II . . .

*These rankings probably haven't been adjusted for inflation, but that would damage my argument, so I don't care. We can't let the facts bias the truth . . . Trust me, that made sense.

Power Rankings

A weekly look at the bestseller lists, arbitrarily reordered according to how they SHOULD be doing (with the main criterion being how quickly I can generate a mildly amusing one-liner)

Books

1. The Secret Servant, by Daniel Silva (NYT chart position: #2)
NYT description: "Gabriel Allon, an art restorer and an occasional spy for the Israeli secret service, joins the search for the kidnapped daughter of an American ambassador."

• In the exciting climax, Allon must decide between his two passions when the girl's captors hold a gun to a priceless piece of art. Who (what) will he choose to save?
  

2. Beyond Reach, by Karin Slaughter (NYT chart position: #6)
NYT description: "In defending herself from murder charges, a police officer must confront her past."

• Especially her recent past, when she killed someone.

3. In at the Death, by Harry Turtledove (NYT chart position: #12)
NYT description: "The finale to the 'Settling Accounts' alternative history series imagines an American war of secession in 1944."

• But because the majority of American troops are still overseas, this conflict must be fought by the deadliest soldiers of all: Civil War reenactors.
  

4. Bungalow 2, by Danielle Steel (NYT chart position: #14)
NYT description: "A writer deals with the effects of Hollywood success on her family life."

• Especially the acute effects of being able to provide for all their needs and ensuring that none of them ever again have to worry about money. And all the sex they garner by virtue of their association with her.
  

5. The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard (NYT chart position: #10)
NYT description: "The story of a long marriage between creative types, from romance to disillusionment to reconciliation."

• Dillard has already planned a sequel entitled, The Redwoods, the story of a long marriage between potheads, from romance, to impotence, to amotivational syndrome, to amnesia, to romance, to fatigue, back to romance, to coke, to bankruptcy, back to amnesia. Oh yeah, then death.
  

Film

1. Rush Hour 3 (August 10-12: #1, $49,100,158)
From the Yahoo description: "LAPD Detective Carter and Chinese Inspector Lee are back--back where they don't belong. The unlikely duo is headed to the City of Lights to stop a global criminal conspiracy and save the life of an old friend, Ambassador Han's now-grown daughter, Soo Yung."

• In Paris, Carter and Lee meet another unlikely police duo, Jacques and Fanon, one a straightlaced bourgeois native Parisian, the other a wisecracking Algerian immigrant. The two extremely improbable partnerships must somehow overcome their racial and national divisions--with unexpectedly hilarious consequences!
  

2. Stardust (August 10-12: #4, $9,169,779)
From the Yahoo description: "A young man named Tristan tries to win the heart of Victoria, the beautiful but cold object of his desire, by going on a quest to retrieve a fallen star."

• The working title for this film was Whipped.

3. Underdog (August 10-12: #6, $6,352,377)
From the Yahoo description: "A bumbling watchdog gets exposed to a substance that gives him the powers of a superhero."

• The film mirrors the real-life story of the screenwriter, a bumbling writer who gets exposed to a substance that gives him the power to blind studio executives to the putridity of his scripts.

4. Daddy Day Camp (August 10-12: #10, $3,402,678)
From the Yahoo description: "Dads Charlie Hinton and Phil Ryerson take over running a summer day camp. Armed with no knowledge of the great outdoors, a dilapidated facility, and a motley group of campers, it doesn’t take long before things get out of control."

• Assaulted with awful dialogue, inferior talent and poor direction, it doesn't take long before audiences get up and leave this film.

5. Bratz (August 10-12: #16, $1,420,336)
From the Yahoo description: "Four teenage girls who come from different social and economic backgrounds empower themselves by rejecting their respective high school cliques and band together, calling themselves Bratz."

• The only thing that unites them -- other than their daring and impetuosity -- is the fact that they're about an order of magnitude hotter than anyone else in the school. Can this possibly compensate for the isolation and reproach they're almost certain not to suffer? Gorgeous disaffected nerds of the world, unite!
  

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Screen Surfer

I just watched 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, sequel to the much maligned Fantastic Four, on TV-Links (possibly the greatest website ever) and have to admit that, yes, everyone was right, it was fairly terrible. But I will say that I really do enjoy the celebrity status the Fantastic Four enjoy (or, as the plot of the film suggests, don't enjoy -- at least not unanimously). Sure, it can be fun to see superheroes like the X-Men live in secret or laugh and cry with alter egos like Peter Parker (Spiderman) and Bruce Wayne (Batman). Yet in this day and age, you really have to wonder if superheroes could keep themselves secret and, more interestingly, whether or not they would really want to do so. Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) is portrayed as being in love with his iconic presence in public and spends much of the film's early minutes scheming for more endorsements. In some ways, that's my kind of superhero. Why risk life and limb if you're not going to be adored, both publicly and in the form of sex and money?

This gave me the idea that it might be fun to devise a film or television show that imagines what real-life celebrities might be like if they had super powers. We could call it Supercelebrities or Celebrityheroes or something appropriately stupid like that. They would constantly be rushing from a movie set to foil a bank robbery or saving fans at a major premiere from a scheming supervillain. The celebrities -- well, their characters -- would get a kick out of actually providing a worthwhile service to the public and the public -- well, the extras who play them -- would enjoy still another reason to adore celebrities.

Here are some possible characters:

Brad Pitt as THE CUPID, with the power to make any woman love him and, more importantly, the related power to avoid censure for his indiscretions

George Clooney as TRANSFORMO, who, following his successful transition from television to film, can actually transform televisions into anything, like ducks or balls of fire

Julia Roberts as OVERRATED GIRL, with the ability to dazzle anyone into believing she is both beautiful and a competent actress

Julia Stiles as THE ANCHOR, able to weigh down any script, no matter how well written

Denzel Washington as THE ACCEPTABLE MINORITY, infiltrating society as the black man white people love to tolerate and then use as a foil to make their racist inclinations seem more reasonable

Ben Affleck as JUDGE DREADFUL, sort of like Judge Dredd except that he has the power to take any role irrespective of the obvious damage it will inflict on his career

Alicia Silverstone as THE INVISIBLE GIRL, no seriously, what happened to her?

Weekly Plot

Yes, I know it's late, but then, we don't have any readers, so shut up you invisible horde! Anyway, promise I'll churn one out at the real end of this calendar week. For now, here's this (last) week's:

Cop is one week away from retirement, haunted by traumatic event of past. Villain comes into town, seemingly overmatches burnt out Cop. Villain threatens livelihood of Nobody, whom Cop either (a) has no quality that should elicit Cop's solicitude or (b) ought to actually incite Cop's contempt. Nonetheless, moved by Nobody's plight, Cop takes on Villain and, against all odds, succeeds by virtue of either (a) old school sensibilities or (b) ingenuity that exploits on Villain's hubris. In his battle with Villain, Cop must come to terms with haunted past.

Go nuts.

Rush Hour 3 Caught in Traffic

Jackie Chan's new film, Rush Hour 3, has been banned in China. Though China's Film Bureau only licenses 20 foreign films per year, the move comes as some surprise because the first two Rush Hour films, aptly titled Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2, were huge successes in the Chinese market. A representative of China Film Group told the media that "We think it [Rush Hour 3] will not be popular in China." Some, however, remain skeptical of the official line, convinced that China's real motive for banning the film is "a scene which features a Chinese organised-crime family that Chan and his partner take on during a visit to Paris."

I suggest that New Line Cinema re-shoot the film in order to have it approved. I know it will be expensive, but the Chinese market represents huge profit potential. In order to save director Brett Ratner valuable time, I have a quick proposal for how to make the film palatable to Chinese authorities.

Instead of encountering an organized crime family in Paris, I propose Chan and partner Chris Tucker run into an official from China's Food and Drug Administration, who is vacationing in Paris on a drug company sponsored junket designed to coax him into approving unsafe medicines. Then, when they apprehend him, Chan and Tucker summarily execute him in the name of Chinese export legitimacy (in fact, as they discharge their firearms, they should literally yell: "Chinese export legitimacy!!!").

Alternatively, they can simply cut Chris Tucker out of the film, as I have little doubt his presence is the reason Chinese officials think the film "will not be popular in China."

In other news, American film industry insiders worry that, due to Chris Tucker's role in the film, Rush Hour 3 "will not be popular in the United States."

Marketing Reality: The Circle

Some things would make horrible movies. Good thing we have Hollywood!

Title: The Circle
Release date: September 1
Rating: PG-13

John Barstow (Alec Baldwin), a former Navy SEAL turned CIA agent, is perfectly happy with his 9 - 5 desk job. But when a Russian submarine convoy ignites a firestorm of international protest by planting a flag at the North Pole, Barstow is recruited to accompany a special naval task force into the Arctic Circle. Unaware of why he has been chosen for the seemingly routine face-off with the Russian force, Barstow soon finds himself in the middle of an international intrigue, one centered on sensational secrets hidden beneath the layers of Arctic ice. Caught between the chaos of post-Soviet Russia, ruthless American admirals, and the ever fearsome Canadians, Barstow will enlist help from an unlikely ally, a Russian submarine captain named Grigory Krakovnik (Sean Connery). Together, they must disentangle a political mystery that threatens to bring the great powers to the brink of war.

From the critically acclaimed novel by Tom Clancy.

Three nations. Two men. One Pole.

The Circle

This September, the ice cap is boiling with intrigue . . .

Power Rankings

A weekly look at the bestseller lists, arbitrarily reordered according to how they SHOULD be doing (with the main criterion being how quickly I can generate a mildly amusing one-liner)

Books

1. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini (NYT chart position: #1)
NYT description: "A friendship between two women in Afghanistan against the backdrop of 30 years of war."

• A beautiful tale that reminds us that friendship is about more than going to movies or late night chats, it's also about dodging land mines and mortar shells.

2. High Noon, by Nora Roberts (NYT chart position: #4)
NYT description: "A hostage negotiator must face down her unknown stalker."

• This seems fairly cut-and- dried until you learn that the hostage negotiator's one weakness is an inability to handle high-stress situations.

3. Lean Mean Thirteen, by Janet Evanovich (NYT chart position: #6)
NYT description: "The New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum becomes a suspect when her ex-husband disappears."

• And when the local authorities place a bounty on her head, Plum faces her greatest enemy yet: irony. To overcome this challenge, she must recruit the help of her father, who is a distinguished a professor, his dear friend Colonel Mustard and, of course, her trusty candlestick. Together, they will travel to the conservatory and track down the true killer.
  

4. Justice Denied, by J.A. Jance (NYT chart position: #8)
NYT description: "J. P. Beaumont’s investigation of a murder suggests a conspiracy in high places."

• And for dinner, his investigation suggests the fillet mignon with a watercress and fresh spinach salad.

5. Thursday Next, by Jasper Fforde (NYT chart position: #10)
NYT description: "In an alternative British universe, Thursday Next, a special operative in literary detection, must cope with a killer on the loose in the Bookworld."

• The much anticpated sequel to Reading Rainbow (LeVar Burton already signed for film adaptation).
  

Film

1. The Bourne Ultimatum (August 3-5: #1, $69,283,690)
From the Yahoo description: "Having lost his memory and the one person he loved, he is undeterred by the barrage of bullets and a new generation of highly-trained killers."

• I don't mean to be a party-pooper, but I'm pretty sure what makes bullets effective is that they don't care whether or not you're scared of them.
  

2. No Reservations (August 3-5: #7, $6,588,375)
From the Yahoo description: "A top notch female chef's life is turned upside-down when she must care of her niece after her sister is killed. She now has to adapt to a different lifestyle and uses food as a means to express her roller-coaster life."

• It's the feel good weight gain movie of the year.

3. Transformers (August 3-5: #8, $6,021,472)
From the Yahoo description: "The Earth is caught in the middle of an intergalactic war between two races of robots, the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, which are able to change into a variety of objects, including cars, trucks, planes and other technological creations."

• Give Michael Bay some credit. The film is actually a modern political allegory about partisan politics in the United States, where politicians from both parties are able to transform themselves into large cash donations.

4. Live Free or Die Hard (August 3-5: #13, $2,132,768)
From the Yahoo description: "On the July 4th holiday, an attack on the vulnerable United States infrastructure begins to shut down the entire nation. The mysterious figure behind the scheme has figured out every modern angle -- but he never figured on an old-school "analog" fly in the "digital" ointment: John McClane. "

• Exactly what kind of "rash" is that "ointment" being used for? This movie sounds kind of gross.

5. Becoming Jane (August 3-5: #16, $972,066)
From the Yahoo description: "The year is 1795 and young Jane Austen is a feisty 20-year-old and emerging writer who already sees a world beyond class and commerce, beyond pride and prejudice, and dreams of doing what was then nearly unthinkable - marrying for love. Naturally, her parents are searching for a wealthy, well-appointed husband to assure their daughter's future social standing."

• Wow, that sounds like a really exciting conflict brewing. Maybe Jane Austen should have written books like that.
  

A Convenient Truth

As a part of Newt Gingrich's ongoing Contract with Newt Gingrich (of which the Contract with America was only a small, subsidiary part), he has decided to publish a book on the environment. According to Publisher's Weekly, the book will be creatively entitled A Contract with Earth and will herald "a new era of environmental stewardship." I have no idea what the details are of Gingrich's plan to initiate "bipartisan environmentalism." But I also have no reason to give Gingrich the benefit of the doubt. I'm not sure how far into the manuscript Gingrich is, but here is an idea for the book in case he's experiencing writer's block.

First, it should be a novel, since I'm guessing his ideas for the environment are either laughable or fanciful (or laughably fanciful?). He should probably call it, Earth 2050: The Final Contract, so that he can net the scifi geeks along with the hardcore conservatives. My plot idea is as follows:

Newtonian Gingraak (futurisitic enough, right?) is a young idealistic politician who wears one of those collarless jumpsuits we'll all be sporting in 40 years. He lives in a world that is experiencing a true golden age, without poverty, disease or conflict. Unfortunately, the Environment is enraged by its impotence to destroy the human race. It failed at climate change -- but it won't fail again. First, the Environment unleashes a wave of natural disasters Day after Tomorrow style, leveling most of the major cities. But that's not all. As soon as the survivors creep out from beneath the wreckage of their tattered civilization, the Environment sends its foot-soldiers into the fray: lions, sharks, bees, sharks riding on the backs of lions -- it holds nothing back.

In order to save the day, Newtonian must stop the Environment before its too late. To save humanity, he must travel to the ends of the earth and restart an old coal factory that had been shut down in the early 20th century. Can he disrupt the global ecosystem in time or will humanity be the Environment's latest victim in 4.5 billion years of brutal tyranny?

As a side note, Publisher's Weekly didn't mention it, but A Contract with Earth is actually the first of several spin-offs the Gingrich franchise is planning. Be on the look out for A Contract with Breakfast, A Contract with Lunch, and A Contract with Dinner, all introducing the bipartisan way to make all your meals healthy and delicious. Rumor has it that Gingrich is writing a dieting book entitled A Contract with Your Fat in which the main proposal to lose weight is to live under the same conditions as American welfare recipients after his 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. The final book currently in the pipeline is about Democrats and tentatively bears the title A Contract with the Devil. In it, Gingrich reveals his bipartisan plan to forcibly separate the "bi" from "partisan."

Editor's Note: Where Is This Blog Going?

I'm not actually the editor. But my guess is that the other two contributors are asleep at the moment, which makes me all-powerful for the time being. If you have or are about to read the post immediately preceding this one, you'll notice an abrupt difference in tone from the others. What is the reason for this? To explain, I'll need to briefly discuss how and why we established Creative Differences in the first place.

Creative Differences came about as the result of a week long dream we had to change the way people view popular media. Actually, that's not true. Creative Differences was our excuse to come up with fake movie and book ideas, write smarmy rejoinders to entertainment related news stories and generally air our bitter -- but clever! -- grievances against those who make a lot more money than we do.

But that's a pretty vague charter and it's hardly set in stone. That's why contributor Omar posted the jarring, incisive and important post you'll find below. It's political. It's polemic. Even he admits that some of it rehearses an ongoing criticism of how mainstream newsmedia addresses (or doesn't address) issues of violence and race. But some things, he reminds us, require reiteration if they're ever going to be different.

Creative Differences was not and is not intended to be a political blog and it was and is intended to generally be a place that you can find jokes that we think are funny (and sort of hope you find amusing as well). But Creative Differences is also a place where you will find biting criticism of the major media, in its capacity both as an entertainer and an informer. Sometimes that criticism can take the form of satire, but sometimes it must be honest and direct. Creative Differences will not shy away from those demands when they arise. To so so would be both uncreative and uncourageous.

Enjoy. [makes farting noise by placing hand under arm]

No dogs were harmed in the comission of this rape

Now thats a headline. As I'm sure a few of you have heard, Michael Vick (QB for the Atlanta Falcons, one of the few black 'faces' of the NFL) is currently on trial for allegations of dog fighting, killing dogs and generally being a douche bag. The douche bag part is probably not a federal charge like the others but its easier to prove - the Ron Mexico incident, the oh so dirty bird incident and even the water bottle incident (but I'm sure it was just for jewelry -- I hide all my bling in the false bottom of a Sobe bottle). But the big news has really been his affiliation with Bad Newz Kennelz. One of his alleged conspirators has already rolled on him and it seems as if person after person is ready to give him up to save their own asses. According to the Wikipedia page (if you haven't noticed already, I'm a responsible journalist and get all my information from the most objective source on the interweb, Wikipedia) over 50 dog bodies were found in addition to a whole assortment of dog fighting paraphernalia, the most terrible sounding one called a rape stand.

Which brings me to my real point: why does the media assume people care more about dogs than people? The first thought that comes to mind is that people really DO care more about dogs than people. My mom got a dog a couple years ago and I like her more than I like either my mom or my sister. Sure my family doesn't wake me up at 6 am and lick my face every time I go home but they also won't respond to my beck and call or fetch miniature footballs I throw out the back door. But if either one of them were killed at the same time as the dog, I'd like people to say how sorry they were that my family member died, not that they missed the dog.

On March 16th, 2006 a number of men raped a 14 year old girl and killed her entire family. Its not really clear how or how many were actually part of the rape and killing, but they have all been tried and most have either been found guilty or have pleaded guilty. It even seams as if the 'ringleader' was kicked out of the military so that they could try him as a civilian (so he could actually serve real time and possibly be sentenced to the death penalty).

Why is it that this story, about real people actually being murdered in cold blood, will be a 'big' news story for a day, maybe two, and the Vick story will go on and on for months if not years? I admit I rarely watch news on TV but I'm sure this story won't be leading very many programs but CNN and MSNBC all cut from Paris Hilton watch to the Vick story as soon as ESPN took its first breath.

Are we desensitized to stories of violence and death in the Middle East or is there something else at work? Is an Iraqi life worth less than an American? Is an Iraqi life worth less than a dog's life? If I asked 100 Americans on the street, I'm worried that 90 (in the spoke the truth) would say yes to the former and a good number would agree with the latter as well. A couple weeks ago I was listening to an NPR interview with a reporter from Al Jazeera English explaining their coverage of the Virgina Tech shootings. Obviously it was a HUGE story in America, and with good reason. He was explaining how TV news works, that each reporter is lined up a few feet from another reporter all shooting at the same general area, all basically giving the same speech about the same event at the same time. At the top of the hour everyone starting filming at the same time ... except him. The minutes just kept ticking and still he hadn't started reporting. After the 3rd story (and first break) they finally cut to him. The reason it took them so long to get to a school shooting that killed 32 people? Over a three hundred people in Iraq died on the same day. Imagine if three hundred people died in one day? And then imagine if three hundred white people in Virgina died in one day? (Yes, i know this is all shades of A Time to Kill but what am I supposed to do?)

In no way am I saying that Virginia Tech shouldn't have been the lede April 16th or April 17th or even April 18th, I'm just wondering who is choosing how we set our priorities? Do we really care about dead dogs more than dead Iraqi's or do dead Iraqi's just make for bad ratings?

Media Outlets Respond to Creative Differences

One week in operation and I think our presence is already being felt.

Item 1:

Timothy L. O'Brien of the New York Times has this to say about Martin Cruz Smith's Renko franchise (the recent installments of which I so eloquently dismantled a few days ago):

Like Holmes, Poirot, Marple, Marlowe, Smiley and other predecessors who are best in show, Renko just doesn’t know when to stop digging because he is almost dysfunctional when doing anything else. Renko’s turf is, of course, Russia. And a reading of the five Renko novels set in and around there (which means excluding his odd little excursion to Cuba in “Havana Bay”) offers an incisive encapsulation of Soviet and post-Soviet travails over the last few decades.

Oh, I see. The whole time he was giving us a behind-the-scenes look not only at Soviet Russia, but post-Soviet Russia. Yawn. Nice try, Mr. O'Brien, but I noticed the "post" you added. And yes, we all know that "post" implies, in this case, "post-fun Russia."

Anyway, Mr. O'Brien redeems himself later in the review. Well, almost:

About two-thirds of the way through “Stalin’s Ghost” Renko encounters a lovely, graceful harpist at the Metropole Hotel in Moscow. She later flirts with him before managing to lasso a garrote around his neck, nearly choking him to death. We have encountered her in different shapes and sizes in earlier books. She is Renko’s Russia: brimming with talent, lyrical and entrancing, corrupt and murderous.

No, actually "she" is Mr. Cruz Smith, strangling the life out of a concept that he's ceaselessly exploited for two decades, even when the history stopped facilitating the story. (I hope "she" doesn't come after me for saying that -- she sounds like kind of an ass).

Item 2:

On the heels of my suggestions for the third film in the National Treasure franchise, Disney has released an extended trailer which fills us in on some more bits of the plot. Apparently, one of Nicholas Cage's ancestors was part of the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln. In order to clear his family's name, he chases down the "President's Book of Secrets" which, in Cage's words "contains all of our nation's secrets."

First of all, why would you store all of the nation's secrets in a single book? I mean, seriously, can that really be very intelligent? If that's the case, then the greatest secret of all is that this country has been run by dumbasses for 200 years.

Second, let me run this by you again. He's going to all this trouble IN ORDER TO CLEAR HIS FAMILY'S NAME. Are you kidding me? He kidnaps the damn president in this movie just to prove his great great grandfather didn't plot to kill Lincoln. Look, you got your health, your wealth and your German wife who works at the National Archives, what else do you need? If this revelation doesn't place anything but Cage's ego in danger, I don't know why he doesn't just let sleeping dogs lie. Sometimes, scurrilous ancestors are better left forgotten or ignored. Redemption isn't an option for everyone. (That goes for you, too, Ted Hitler of Fremont, California, Bob Zedong of Branson, Missouri, and Ralph Stalin of Little Rock, Arkansas).

Weekly Plot

I don't think we have "readers," but that's not going to stop me from introducing some interactive features on the blog. The first of these I'm calling the "Weekly Plot," although I'm open to suggestions on a title change. The premise is basically this: I put together a canned plot and you, the readers (and/or figments of my imagination) come up with as many books, films, etc that fit that plot description. no right answers, no wrong answers, just some clonetastic media fun.

This week's plot:

Boy from lower class background meets upper class girl. Falls in love, but can't do anything about it thanks to their respective social stations. Girl drops hints that she might feel the same way, is bored of the upper class guys who treat her as prize. Upper class goons, lead by King Upper Class, give Boy a hard time, implicitly or explicitly make clear Boy can't have Girl. Enter competition for Boy to match wits with King. Thanks in part to Boy's impetuosity and King's Hubris, Boy wins competition in stunning and dramatic fashion. Boy and Girl get together.

All right imaginary readers, there it is, go run with it.

National Treasure Declared a National Treasure

The producers say that they never intended to shoot a sequel to National Treasure (not to be confused with Hua qi Shao Lin) but, for some odd reason, a $350m worldwide gross changed their minds. As you probably don't remember from the first film -- because you didn't see it -- Nicholas Cage plays some kind of ex-special forces or military engineering history buff whose family inherits the secret to a gigantic treasure passed to the Founding Fathers (who were Free Masons) by their Templar forebears. Cage then tracks down the treasure with a German employee of the National Archives after stealing the Declaration of Independence in order to keep it protected from a competing group of treasure hunters. Oh wait, why does he need to protect the Declaration at all? Because the foundational claim to American nationhood also guards one of the clues to the treasure, you dumbass! Eventually, after risking life and limb, blah blah blah, they find the treasure in a gigantic cavern beneath Wall Street in Manhattan which has apparently lain there undisturbed by centuries of underground digging that would have been necessary to provide New York with heat, electricity, water and, oh yeah, a subway. Anyway, the treasure itself is comprised of nearly every object of historical value and one half expects to see Plato himself bumbling around the scrolls from the Alexandrian library contained therein.



The new film, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, focuses on thirteen missing pages from the diary of John Wilkes-Boothe, President Abraham Lincoln's assassin. It seems the thirteen pages hold the key to an international conspiracy, one that, from Cage's vague narration in the tailer, is highly dangerous to someone somewhere.

I'm not sure how this film ends, but I think we can be reasonably assured that Nicholas Cage, his beautiful German girlfriend (the National Archives employee from the previous film), and his quirky but affable sidekick all survive and receive the sincerest thanks for saving the world (which, I'm sure, they manage to accomplish). This means it's not too early to ask, "What next?" The trilogy is a holy Hollywood tradition. How can we not expect a third installment in this exciting series of excuses to propound absurd conspiracy theories and blow things up?

My predictions:

National Treasure: Liberty Falls
The Statue of Liberty, gifted to the United States by France in 1886, stands as a shining beacon to all who would seek refuge in America. But Cage soon learns that it is more than a mere statue. Sculpted by Frédéric August Bartholdi, the symbolic edifice is actually the key to a conspiracy that originated in the waning days of the Napoleonic Empire. Unless Cage can stop them in time, the same French people who opposed the Iraq war will launch a deadly invasion on United States soil. If Cage does not succeed in deciphering the clues before his adversaries, they will destroy everything the Statue of Liberty represents.

National Treasure: The Birth of Apollo
For almost 40 years, the United States government has hidden a dark secret. Generations believed that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men on the moon. What they didn't know was that Armstrong and Aldrin actually discovered the remains of an ancient civilization, one that holds the key to explaining life on earth. Cage must break into Area 51, steal a space shuttle and travel to the lunar surface itself in order to uncover a secret so horrific it will shake the foundations of the world we know. If he fails, the entire planet may pay the ultimate price.

National Treasure: The Last Saint
In 1830, Joseph Smith Jr. published The Book of Mormon, a text that gave birth to one of the greatest religious movements in recent history. In 2007, Cage discovers that the text is actually a map to the secret tomb of Jesus Christ. Along with Robert Langdon, noted Harvard symbologist, Cage and Langdon must find the tomb before nefarious and diabolical conspirators from the world's most important religious and political institutions beat them to it. Together, they pose as polygamists in order to infiltrate Mormon circles of the highest influence. Risking his marriage (to a beautiful German curator at the National Archives) and his life, Cage must race through American history and into the ancient past before its too late.

National Treasure: The Key to the Map of Keys
One day in his recently deceased father's home, Nicholas Cage discovers a key underneath a pile of maps. He soon learns that they key holds the secret to a map, which is itself the key to finding a pile of keys which, when used correctly, reveal a book of maps. Because his rivals, a secret guild of locksmiths and cartographers, require the secret to achieve world domination, Cage must race against time in order to get the keys, I mean the maps, I mean the maps to the keys, I mean . . . Look, he just needs to get to whatever it is before they do. Anyway, once Cage gets wherever it is that he's going, he finds out that the maps or the keys are actually keys to maps and keys even darker than he could have possibly imagined.

Toy Story: Cashcows in Disguise

Just got around to seeing Transformers with The Rake. Though I found it ridiculous that the only Autobot to die in the film is Jazz, the evidently black one, I nonetheless thought the film was palatable, despite a second opening credit that read "In Association with Hasbro." On the walk home, it occurred to both of us that there are a lot of other toys out there that would make sufficiently entertaining movies. Here are our other ideas for art that imitates life imitating things more fun than life:

Weebles (category: horror)- No one remembers when they began to appear. They looked like us. They talked like us. Unfortunately, the only thing they ate . . . was us. Now their invasion threatens the future of humanity and one man must find a way to stop them before it's too late.

Weebles. They wobble. But they just don't fall down.

Barbie: Out of Ken-trol (category: romance, coming-of-age)- Barbie had everything. The dream house. The convertible. Perfect outfits and all the accessories. Even the boyfriend everyone else wanted. But everything falls apart when she discovers that neither she nor Ken have genitals. Feeling shallow and plastic, she realizes her perfect life was also the perfect lie. She decides to leave everything behind and hit the open road. Soon, she discovers a man who will change all the rules and teach her how to bend her elbows.

For the girl with everything, the only accessory missing . . . is her heart.

Monopoly (category: sci-fi, thriller)- In 2100 the greatest disaster in history wiped out billions. Resources were scarce. Chaos reigned. In 2150, a new order rose from the ashes of the old. A tyrant known only as Rich Uncle Pennybags, who appears only as a man wearing a top hat and monocle, seized control and implemented a new system of social distribution. To eat, to sleep, to own anything, citizens were required to play a massive game. The stakes? A currency called Monopoly Money, the only tender legally redeemable for food.

Some call it a game of chance. Some call it a game of skill. But all call it a game of survival.

Monopoly. Will you be the wheelbarrow?

Legos (fantasy adventure)- In a world unlike our own, Drusina was an oddly masculine female pirate who wanted little more than to plunder in peace. But when all the corner bricks go missing (you know, the little connector thingy you always need but can't find in your huge box of legos), only Drusina has the power and the courage to find them. Moving one small raised bump at a time, she will encounter strange characters from other sets and occasionally lose her detachable head. But the one thing she will never do is give up.


Lego Maniac Battle Scene - The best video clips are here