Monday, August 22, 2011

Tonight's movie: "Doctor Who and Chekov versus Bullseye and McLovin in 3D!"

Went out and saw the remake of Fright Night on Sunday, and unlike quite a few attempts to catch lightning in a bottle again, this was rather well done.  I'd say part of the reason is that it was written by Tom Holland, who wrote and directed the original movie.  If you haven't seen the original (aka "Cornelius and the Herman's Head guy versus Prince Humperdink and Marcy Rhodes in plain-jane 2D") then you might miss a few in-jokes, but otherwise it stands perfectly fine on its own.  It's funny and terrifying at the same time with some good "gotcha" moments (which are definitely enhanced by the 3D), and if you're a Doctor Who fan, you have the added pleasure of watching David Tennant swear and drink and do lots of other un-Doctory things that will have you howling with laughter.  Matter of fact, I'd say the twenty or so F-bombs they drop is what earned this movie an R rating, as there's no nudity (seductive moments, yes, but no T&A) and the gore is limited mainly to bloodsucking and the occasional contusion.  I suggest taking a Twilight fan to it and blowing their little emo mind with what REAL vampires are like.

Most of all, I'm glad my husband enjoyed it.  He loves the original Fright Night, and was very eager to see what they did with it.  We even met the first Evil Ed, Stephen Geoffreys, at a horror con earlier this year, and Jamin was thrilled for about a week afterward.  When the credits were still rolling on the remake last night, asked him, "What's the score here?"

"If there was something between an A- and a B+, that's what I'd give it," he said.

"And a comparative score to the original?"

Looking somewhat aghast, he replied, "How can you beat an A++?"  I should have known he'd feel that way, as we do have a decent amount of Fright Night merchandise in our collection: both movies (original on DVD, sequel on VHS), the soundtrack on CD, the novelization (which isn't all that good, really: Jamin says it's "the best worst book I've ever read"), and a few issues of the NOW Comics series (which rates lower than the novelization).  Aaaaand that's it, really.  Unless you get the movie posters or other swag like that, no one has made anything Fright Night related.  It's not a Freddy Krueger/Jason Voorhees money-making machine, honestly, and that's a shame, because it'd be great if NECA or someone would make toys of it, especially the original.  C'mon, you know you want a Chris Sarandon action figure that says "Welcome to Fright Night...for real!" or a Roddy McDowall that comes with an in-scale "Peter Vincent: Vampire Killer" kit.  Maybe if the box-office numbers go up (the flick ranked in 6th place for the weekend, despite good reviews) we'll get some toys later on.  Until then, I shall have to be satisfied with pretending to make our 10th Doctor action figure swear his brains out as he fights invisible vampires.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Got a hankerin' to go buy me some war bonds now.

Had a Cap-tastic day today.  Went to the comic shop for my bi-weekly fix, and while there, I found Captain America (vol.4) #1-6 on the 99-cent rack.  For those unfamiliar, this was the Marvel Knights revamp of Cap that began in 2002, roughly seven months after 9/11, and that tragic event forms the spine of the title's opening story arc.  It draws parallels between the World Trade Center and the Allied bombing of Dresden during WWII, as well as bringing up a few other nasty truths in the ongoing debate of "us versus them".  Overall, John Ney Rieber and John Cassaday deliver a story that is both action-packed and deeply moving, and I highly recommend picking it up if you missed it the first time around.

A few hours after devouring those issues, we went out to finally see Captain America movie (in glorious 2D, 'cause we're cheap).  I am soooooo glad it isn't as glossy-looking as some of the commercials made it out to be!  To be sure, it's leaps and bounds better than the Cap flicks I talked about a few weeks ago.  This had action and heart and enough fanboy in-jokes to keep me entertained throughout.  I did glance at my watch once, but that was only because it seemed like we were approaching the end, story-wise, and I was shocked to see that we'd only been in the theatre for an hour.  "Geez, if this is only the first half, what else is coming up?" I thought.  Turned out a whole lotta stuff was coming, and as we approached the real end of the movie and it looked as if Cap was going to die, I actually found myself getting a little choked up...even though I knew good and well that Captain America was gonna be in the upcoming Avengers movie!  Bonus points to Chris Evans for achieving that all-important connection with the audience.

Oh, and in case you haven't seen the movie yet, please remember to stick around for the extra scene after the credits.  Of course, everybody who's watched a Marvel movie in the past few years knows by now that you can't just get up and go when the house lights come on, there's always one last scene to see.

Friday, August 5, 2011

I'm famous on the Internet

As I mentioned a few months back, I'm a writer, or I at least fancy myself to be one.  I guess it depends on whether or not you define a writer as someone who gets paid to do so.  If you do...well, then I'm just some dope that's deluding herself.  But if you merely define it by talent and recognition of such, then I suppose that I've earned the title.  I've got fans that eagerly wait for me to put out another story, and I've received notes from published authors that tell me to keep up the good work.  But money?  Actual dollar-amount compensation for all the time I put into the craft?  I haven't made one thin dime yet, and some days I wonder if I ever will, seeing as how I've sent my 300-odd page manuscript off to roughly twenty different publishers and agents only to receive nothing but rejection slips in return.  Yet if you put "Susan Hillwig" into a search engine, my name pops up all over the place, with most entries acknowledging me to be an author.

How the heck did such a dichotomy come about?  Simple: I write fan fiction, a strange little offshoot of the usual sort of fan activity that genres like comics and movies tend to attract.  It's not something that the non-fans hear much about (though TIME recently did an article about fanfic), and even some who are well-immersed in fandom don't pay it any mind at all.  But it does exist, and for the past six years, as I've tried to get my original manuscript published, I've cranked out a score of stories that I cannot legally get paid for.  The short explanation is that, since fan fiction utilizes characters owned by other people, it's considered "fair use" so long as no one makes any money off of said fan fiction.  So I can write fics all the live-long day and be praised to high heaven for the results, but I can't make a living as a writer by doing so...at least not without getting sued.

You'd think the lack of monetary gain would scare off writers, but it doesn't.  There's all sorts of crazy things that fans do simply for the love of the genre, and that's where my involvement comes in.  I wanted to write a story that filled in a very large blank in a certain comic book character's history, namely Jonah Hex and his ill-advised trip to the future.  I had a very solid idea, and I knew DC most likely would never resolve the problem of their own volition, so I stepped up to fill in the blank.  The result was The Long Road Home, and it pretty much sealed my fate as it relates to fanfic.  The overwhelmingly-positive response encouraged me to keep going with this thing, so I wrote another Hex-related fic, then expanded into other DC Western characters, and before I knew it, I'd made a name for myself in this non-business, one that now seems to be inexorably linked with Jonah Hex.  I'm not complaining about that, mind you, but I don't think I really expected this outcome when I sat down to write my first fic.  To be sure, I never expected this, either:



No, that's not some Photoshop trickery, it's an actual panel from Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #34, wherein Jonah decides to leave his old life behind and live under an assumed name...and Hex writers Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray decided to tip their hats in my direction by giving him the alias of "Hillwig".  I just about fell off the couch when I read that panel, and my husband (who has no real love for the character) went about for a week or so occasionally muttering "Mister Hillwig" with a smile.  That's not to say that other fans haven't gotten their names slipped into the series (I can think of about a half-dozen guys that I know fairly well who've been given that honor), but it's the way it was done here that tickles me so.  Over seventy issues, J&J have had Jonah use an alias on two other occasions: once as "Albano" (who created Jonah Hex along with artist Tony DeZuniga) and later as "Fleisher" (who wrote Jonah for about 15 years straight and established almost his entire history).  So forgive me if I'm reading too much into it, but having Jonah use my last name in such a way feels like J&J acknowledging me as a person who's contributed something of import to the character.  It's not money, it's not a byline, but it's the closest I've ever gotten to payment for my work.  Trust me, permanent enshrinement in the Jonah Hex mythos equals some serious coin in my heart of hearts.

Anyways, that's about all I have to say regarding "real fame" versus "Internet fame" and my place in it.  I realize the latter may be fleeting, and it doesn't really mean a dang thing to the world at large, but I'm having fun with it while I can.  And for those of you who are now interested and want to see what exactly I've been doing to earn things like name-drops in comic books, look over to the left and click on some of the entries under the heading "My Bibliography".  I apologize in advance if reading any of it curtails your work productivity (I've been told I have this effect on some readers), but if you like it, please send me an email.  Especially if you're a publishing agent, 'cause I've got something with a more profitable angle just sitting here collecting dust.

Monday, August 1, 2011

It was 30 years ago today...

...that MTV launched, corrupting children for generations to come.  In case you missed it, they were running a 30th anniversary marathon of classic MTV moments all weekend....on VH1 Classic.  No, that wasn't a typo: so far as I could tell, the formerly-named "Music Television" (MTV dropped the moniker years ago) made no move to acknowledge the day, choosing instead to run a Jersey Shore marathon while leaving all the hard work of actually noting the occasion to the only network that still plays videos all dang day.  Sad state of affairs, I think.  Best I can figure is that MTV doesn't want the teeny-boppers who tune in to watch their current slate of non-musical programming to know that they're 30 years old.  Because for those teeny-boppers, 30 is dust-fartingly ancient!  How can something that's been around for 30 years be relevant?  Well, in MTV's case, they really aren't, at least not to me.  You won't show videos anymore, old or new, then I have very little need to watch your channel.  I'll tune in when Beavis and Butthead return to the airwaves...wait, I forgot, that's going to be on MTV2.  Okay, I definitely have no need to watch MTV at the moment, then.

As I type this, VH1 Classic is showing MTV's first hour of programming, commercials and all, which just makes it even trippier (I just saw an ad for Superman II, now in theatres!).  Figure by now everybody knows what the first video shown was (if you don't, go look it up, it's the only thing the band's famous for these days anyhow), but do you know what the second video was?  Why, it was this little ditty right here:


Gawd, this was the best we could do in 1981?  I know we had better music than this!  Problem is, the concept of marketing a band by making videos was still rather new at the time, or at least not used with great effectiveness, so there probably wasn't a ton of variety in the beginning.  Give it a few years, though, and the entire music industry would be leaning on MTV like a crutch.  Matter of fact, thinking on this, I'd say that MTV's phasing out of videos is the real reason that the music industry is losing bucketloads of money these days.  It's not file-sharing, it's not changing tastes, it's MTV knocking away that dang crutch by discontinuing the very reason they were created.  The RIAA needs to sue MTV for loss of revenue!  Yeah!  Then MTV will be so broke, they'll have to go back to showing videos because they won't have the dough to produce crappy reality shows about sluts and goombahs in New Jersey!

Yeah, I'm really digging on this idea now!  Who's with me on this?  Huh?  Say it loud, say it proud...I WANT MY MTV!!!