2012 was a thrilling year for J.R.R. Tolkien fans everywhere, as they were finally able to witness Bilbo Baggins’s foray into the magical world of Middle Earth on the big screen for the first of three The Lord of the Rings prequel movies Despite The Hobbit’s several deviations from the 1937 book, most would agree that it’s still …
Tag: movies
Tim Hildebrand’s acting career stretches from Caronport to Cannes
I wrote this article for Refined Saskatoon; you can see it in the context of the magazine here. Back in 2007, I performed with Tim in Beauty and the Beast at Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon, the very first show in the then brand-new theatre. (Our Beast was Paul Alexander Nolan, currently heading to Broadway again …
Why books are better than the movies made from them
My 11-year-old daughter Alice and I, during a before-school stop in a coffee shop this morning, were discussing books that have been made into movies: specifically The Hunger Games, which won several People’s Choice Awards last night. “Why are the books always so much better than the movies?” asked Alice. A question for the ages. …
Saturday Special from the Vaults: The Bounty Mutiny: From the Court Case to the Movie
One of the more interesting projects I undertook for Enslow Publishers was a history of the famous Mutiny on the Bounty, comparing the real-life events to the way they were portrayed in the movie starring Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian that came out in the 1980s. I’ve always enjoyed …
From Squid to Eternity
Margaret Atwood (in)famously referred to science fiction as “talking squids in outer space,” a remark to which I would take great umbrage if not for the fact that my DAW novel Lost in Translation contains a character, Karak, master of the Guild of Translators, described thusly: Free of the watersuit and its exoskeleton, his shape was nothing …
The first sentence I wrote today…
…for Blue Fire was: The much-diminished caravan of Freefolk Clan Diannan had only been on the road for an hour the next morning when the attack came. Words today: 2,277 Words thus far: 42,652 A good morning’s work. I’m getting close to 200 manuscript pages on this story. I think it’s going to need considerable …
Lensmen: the movie
This is cool news: J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the late, lamented Babylon 5, has written a script for a movie adaptation of the Lensmen series by E.E. “Doc” Smith. I devoured these classic space operas as a kid. The scale of, well, everything was enormous: ships the size of moons (long before the Death …
My review of Saturday’s Regina Symphony Orchestra concert…
…is now online, headlined “RSO scores again with movies.” Here’s how it starts: Halfway through the second half of the Regina Symphony Orchestra’s 10th annual The RSO Goes to the Oscars movie-music concert, Maestro Victor Sawa commented on the versatility of movie composers, who may find themselves writing theme music for sharks in one movie …
My preview of the Regina Symphony Orchestra’s movie music concert…
…, RSO Goes to the Oscars, is in today’s LeaderPost. Here’s a bit from the middle: For Sawa, switching from symphonies to soundtracks is natural. In a strange way, he says, “we owe a debt of gratitude to the Nazis. Oscar Hammerstein, Max Steiner, Eric Korngold, Bernard Hermann, Franz Waxman — they all came over …
A defense of "hokey" endings
I’ve been enjoying Andrew Breitbart’s new BigHollywood group blog very much, and liked this quote, from John Nolte’s commentary on the Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious, in which he takes issue with those who think its ending is “hokey”: “Hokey” isn’t the result of a story point, “hokey” is the result of the execution of the …
Books, movies, reality are all equally disgusting–and that’s a good thing!
I write nonfiction (obviously), but I also write science fiction and fantasy. We who write such stuff are occasionally asked (and occasionally wonder) if our works can continue to compete in a media universe in which “science fiction” and “fantasy” conjure up for most people Hollywood special-effects extravaganzas first, and the written word second (if …
Willett of the Day: Dr. Willett, H.P. Lovecraft character
Some Willetts–though not myself–are entirely fictitious. Such is the case of Dr. Marinus Bicknell Willett, the family physician of Charles Dexter Ward, and ultimately the hero of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. (The image at right is of the late actor Frank Maxwell, who portrayed Dr. Willett in Roger Corman’s 1963 …
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