* Here is the trailer for the next Clive Barker-based movie, Book of Blood. The Radiohead remix adds hella production value, I think. Also, how nice is it to see a Barker adaptation retain the original English setting and accents?
* And here’s a promo reel for the next Barker flick, Dread–featuring interview snippets from Barker, director Anthony DiBlasi, and the cast, as well as boobies and some pretty horrifying things involving bleach.
* Meanwhile, I still haven’t seen Midnight Meat Train–I didn’t have it in me to try to OnDemand it the night before the election as originally planned. I know reviews from those I trust have been lukewarm, but Christ, if ever there was a movie I need to see for myself! Meanwhile, just so I can keep it straight in my head, I think the two Films of Blood on the way after Dread are The Madonna and Pig Blood Blues. Even if all of these films turn out kind of dull, I’d rather the horror section at Best Buy be filled with dull churned-out shingle-based horror movies based on great Clive Barker short stories that theoretically could find a new audience through them than dull churned-out shingle-based horror movies based on nothing in particular.
* Looks like George A. Romero’s next …of the Dead flick is, in fact, going to be called …of the Dead. I can get behind that. Please be good.
* I really admire the obvious amount of thought and heart that went into Shaun of the Dead star Simon Pegg’s Guardian-published essay about why zombies should be slow, but I also find it really silly (albeit admittedly so) when it tries to support that assertion on the grounds that fast zombies aren’t “realistic,” and really wrongheaded when it claims that speeding up zombies strips them of metaphorical power. Eve Tushnet, Bruce Baugh, and I beat up on that idea pretty good in a comment thread a while back. (Via Jason Adams.)
* Speaking of Bruce, here he runs down World of Warcraft’s creation myth. Actually, that’s an inaccurate word to describe it because in the game world, these things factually, demonstrably happened–there are Old God corpses lying around to prove it and everything. Anyway, it’s an intriguing, “art of enthusiasm”-style mix of Lovecraft, Greek mythology, and Tolkien.
* If I had to rattle off the names of, I dunno, the 10 people most directly responsible for my life being what it is right now in terms of the prominent role comics play in it, Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas would be on there thanks to their construction of so-called “Nu-Marvel” in the early ’00s. Therefore I’m really enjoying their reunion interview with Jonah Weiland at CBR. Jemas in particular is an interesting case: His ideas and approach really did shake up the company and make superhero comics much, much better on a qualitative level, but then as best as anyone can tell he kind of went a little ego crazy, and he was relatively quickly shuffled aside by his superiors. I think there are similar executive trajectories one can point to that were not brought to an end nearly as early, with the results you’d expect.
* This interview with Dan DiDio offers the first hints of an official confirmation that the art changes and scheduling delays for Final Crisis are due at least in part to tardy scripts from Grant Morrison. God knows I love the Mad Scotsman, but his work does tend to run into these kinds of problems, and the common denominator is, well, him. I’m not even complaining about the lateness (the calvacade of artists, now that I have some beef with from time to time)–it just has long seemed a shame to me that it all got laid at the feet of either the artists or the editors or the executives.
* I’m also excited to read that my friend and former boss Brian Cunningham will be involved via his new editorial capacity at DC in the upcoming Green Lantern (and i think overall DCU) event Blackest Night. If you look back at the past couple of years at DC, a lot of attention was given to Countdown and its countless spinoffs and tie-ins, none of which really merited it; but at the same time, you’ve seen pretty tremendous and momentous work on Green Lantern, Superman, and Batman from Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison. If, after 52, DC had done everything exactly the same–published Countdown, Countdown to Adventure, Countdown to Mystery, Countdown Presents the Search for Ray Palmer, Countdown: Arena, Salvation Run, Amazons Attack et al–but just made the mental and promotional adjustment of declaring Johns’ and Morrison’s main titles and events–Batman, Green Lantern, Action Comics, The Sinestro Corps War, The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul–the so-called “spine” of DC’s superhero line instead, I think you’d have a very different landscape to look at right now. Anyway, I think these missteps have badly undercut Final Crisis in terms of fan reception, but clearly the emphasis placed on it and Batman R.I.P. and Superman: New Krypton and Flash: Rebirth and Blackest Night indicate that DC is now aware of where its bread is buttered.
* They’re gonna make a movie out of Paul Pope’s yet-to-be-published cyclopean fight scene graphic novel Battling Boy.
* What can one say about being married to a woman whose first thought upon the election of the new president is “this reminds me of ‘The Battle of Evermore'”?
I find something especially happy in my belly when I hear you say you don’t mind if adaptations of works from one of your favorite authors end up as sloppy messes as opposed to the general fan reaction of, “aw, man, they fucked up one of my favorite stories!”
In all my years in nerdom, I’ve never once heard anyone take your positive “well, maybe this will at least get someone to check out the original material its based on” approach to a bad adaptation. Good on you!
You know, part of me would love to see a short film based on “In the Hills, In the Cities,” and yet I doubt even with today’s SFX they could capture the sanity shattering awe of Barker’s story. When I first read that years ago, I thought an animated short, done by someone like Gerald Scarfe, would have been killer but even that wouldn’t capture the humanity and the sheer scale of the imagery in that tale.
Would people really seek out the source of a film that sucked?
Under the terms of Sean’s example, we’re not talking about loose adaptations that are still good by their own right. We’re talking about dull, subpar adaptations. Why would that lift Baker’s star among the uninitiated?
I could see somebody enjoying an interesting and good film, being told it’s a very loose adaptation of something, being told that the original is different but also quite good, and then seeking out the original.
But why do we think somebody would go, “God dammit, that’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back. Perhaps, wisely throwing good money and time after bad, I can redeem this disaster by committing even more time and money to searching out the source. Sure, there’s a chance the movie is crap because the source is crap. Indeed, as Sean has posed it, we have hypothetical shelves of subpar work here – all of it crap and all from the same source. But correlation is not causation. Despite the strong but circumstantial evidence, I’m willing to bet the source is awesome and I just saw one (or possibly several) bum adaptation(s).”
That doesn’t make sense.
“Disloyal” adaptations that are still good probably help push a writer’s work, sure. But crap flicks don’t seem like they’d help anybody.
My theory is just that SOMEONE seems to like all these 8 Films to Die For-type lines of horror movies, even if maybe they’re not so hot, so maybe someone with less discerning taste than you or I might see a lame Barker adaptation and like it and end up reading a really good Barker original. But even using your parameters, there are certainly people I know who’ve sought out, say, The Ruins even though they thought the movie was weak, thinking (rightly) that the book might be better. That’s a not uncommon phenomenon.
In the scenario you constructed, it isn’t a matter of taste. You said that the films would be cranked-out and dull. So it isn’t a taste call to say that the films sucked, that was part of your premise: A bunch of crap flicks based on Baker works would be better than a bunch of crap flicks based on nothing in particular.
A scenario in which the films are good, or at least good enough that some viewers might actually like it and go hunt down the sources, is a different premise. (To use the Films to Die for parallel: for every “Butterfly Effect: Revelation” there’s a “Mulberry Street,” so we’re not talking about a mono-craptacualar thing.)
The latter I can get behind. The former seems like it wouldn’t do anything but link Baker’s name to long string of embarrassments. Hence my confusion over the theory and Rick’s enthusiasm over it.
But if you’ve seen it happen, then it must happen.
Nah, I don’t so much think it’s going to always work that a bad adaptation will bring in loads of new fans to said badly adapted work – I just applaud the silver lining motivation behind Sean’s thought.
And, dang, speaking for myself, after watching a recent adaptation of The Girl Next Door, I def sought out info on the book it’s based on. Of course, I can’t bring myself to trying out the book, but I did search for it. Same thing kinda happened with the recent film Dark Floors, which is part of the Ghost House Underground series. It was odd and kinda plain bad in some parts, but I looked it up afterwards and discovered all this stuff about the band that the film centers around. So sometimes, I guess, it DOES work.