Pusher/ Please write his book

Sept. 13 Pusher: I cut out this National Post movie review “The Raw End of the Deal” by Chris Knight on Nov.9, 2012.  On imdb.com:

“In London, a street dealer's life spins out of control over the course of one week after he borrows money from his supplier on what's supposed to be a sure thing.”

It got a 5.5/10 from 3000 users and 2 stars out of 5 from Knight.  This is the second remake of the 1996 original.  In Knight’s review: “He plans a major cocaine purchase followed by a quick turn-around and a tidy profit.”

I saw the trailer and I was kind of eh with it.  “Eh” as in I didn’t like it and it didn’t really get me excited or interested in it.  I only liked the techno dance music that was playing in the background.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1921070/

Please write his book: I cut out this Globe and Mail article “Please Write his Book” by Guy Dixon on Jul. 10, 2012.  Here are some excerpts:

What would it be like to buy your way into a book?

A Toronto writer is offering the public a chance to find out. Writer and filmmaker Daniel Perlmutter is mixing crowdsourcing and crowdfunding to create a novel with paid contributions – the more you pay, the greater the play.

For $15, you get a sentence. For $20, you can pick a location where some of the story takes place; $30 lets you invent a character. On it goes, to $750 for the right to determine the book’s genre (sci-fi, romance, whatever); $900 for the opportunity to name the book; up to $1,000 to decide how the whole thing ends.

Authoring by crowd seems like an inevitable step in an era of running dialogues composed on social media and Twitter-based fiction. Chicago artist Willy Chyr, for instance, recently created The Collaborwriters, a novel to be written by contributors in Twitter-sized, 140-character bits (see it at thecollabowriters.com).

“There could be hundreds of characters suggested by people by the end of this thing,” he says, in much the same tone as a promotional pitch on the novel’s pledge site: http://www.indiegogo.com/unwrittenmasterpiece.

Perlmutter is primarily a filmmaker, having co-written the 2010 feature-length comedy Peepers and recently received the Governor-General’s mentorship award, in which he is being paired with comedian Eugene Levy. And the novel will be as much a multimedia piece as a written work. He hopes to document the assembly and writing process with a blog and to maintain the interactive flavour by keeping the whole thing open and public.

“It’s a legitimate project in the sense that I’m going to write this thing. But no matter what the project ends up being, it’s going to be comedic in nature, just because of the very process.”

“When you open a book, you get transported to faraway places. You flip open the pages of a novel and all of a sudden you’re in Pittsburgh. Or anywhere in Pennsylvania! It’s incredible!”

He sees it more as a celebration of mass creative production than a criticism. “I think crowdsourcing is incredible. I think it makes so much sense being able to really cut out any middle man and just have a direct relationship between an audience and a creator. “It’s a fantastic thing.”

My opinion: When I first read this article back in 2012, I was kind of eh with it.  “Eh” as in I wouldn’t crowd source a book to be written.  I would really pay to put my name in the book as a character.  There would be all these random people’s ideas and names having to be put together to make a cohesive story.

When writing a novel, it’s usually one writer.  When writing a TV show or movie, there can be more than one writer, a director, producers, and lots of people having an input into the product.

I checked out his Indiegogo campaign, and $1,330 out of the $6000 goal was accomplished.  The campaign began on Jul. 9, 2012 and closed on Aug. 8, 2012.

I will give him points for creativity in this campaign to out source a book.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/please-write-his-book-one-mans-efforts-to-crowdsource-his-novel/article4401591/

Anthony Swofford: On the same page of the Globe and Mail, there is an article “From jarhead to bonehead- and back” by Douglas Bell.  He reviews the book Hotels, Hospitals and Jails by Anthony Swofford.  Here are are some excerpts:

Swofford’s financial and artistic victories led him into a lot of hotel rooms chasing hedonistic pleasures (sex, drugs, etc.), and hospitals reporting on the awful toll war exacts on soldiers unlucky enough to have failed to dodge a bullet. The title’s third element, jail, is both a literal and a figurative reference.

More’s the point, Swofford is, for the better part of the book, locked in a jail of the mind, unable to extricate himself from the rage he feels toward his complicated, charming and ornery father (also a former military man), John Swofford.

Take, for instance, this description of his meeting with the mother of a wounded soldier: “She locked on to my eyes in a mildly wild and erotic way. … She possessed the orderly smell of all good mothers. Her son would be fine. He would be fine. He would never walk and he might not talk, but he would have his mother and somehow they would both know this and be well.”

Still, on the whole, Swofford does a reasonable job of portraying himself as the flawed-though-always-struggling-to-improve victim/beneficiary of his own success. In the end, the writer is redeemed by the love of a good woman, the birth of his child and reconciliation with his father. In the right hands, like Oedipus, that too is an old story that endures.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/hotels-hospitals-and-jails-by-anthony-swofford/article4400580/

Sept. 20 Passage of Four: I was going through my “parking lot” email where I intend to write about things later.  I found this:

 Six friends find themselves diverted from a rock gig to a fight for their lives. Lost and afraid they soon discover their refuge is not the sanctuary of a hospital they first thought and find themselves in a bizarre struggle with Lydia, a Demonic Siren who needs to keep them alive so that she can perform the Dark Passage of Four that will grant her immortality. Written by Andy Briggs 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356009/

Constantine: This is a new fall TV show.  I saw the movie with Keanu Reeves.  This show stars Matt Ryan who was on Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3489184/

Sept. 24 Ravenswood: This show is the spin-off from the TV show Pretty Little Liars.  I like watching PLL for the mystery and suspense.  I didn’t see Ravenswood because I didn’t get the channel.
 Ravenswood got cancelled and there was a kind of cliffhanger.  This article talks about the cliffhanger is solved in PLL season 5 finale.

http://www.ibtimes.com/ravenswood-cancelled-2014-will-mystery-be-solved-ending-rumored-air-pretty-little-liars-season-5

Comparisons: 

Watching someone killed on a video and they need to determine if it is real or not: It was done on CSI: NY ep “Unfriendly Chat”.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706045/?ref_

It was done on Castle in the ep “Smells like Teen Spirit”:

http://www.imdb.co=3D=0Am/title/tt3453374/?ref

The movie The Den:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2503154/?ref_