Wednesday, April 20, 2011
On the way to Sedalia
The Sinclair station at Highway 50 and Lover's lane is an interesting place. Its interior resembles a grocery store and they still sell Decade cigarettes, according to the sign out front. The cash register has a conveyor belt, and there are public restrooms behind the cash register. When I came there, they had plastic over the cold case. This is not a great place for getting sausage egg biscuits, but the locals probably stop there for groceries regularly. There was an algae covered pond behind the store, which was kind of unusual.
An open letter to Hank Hannagraaf and CRI
There has been a failure of communication. After I heard the Bible Answer Man program that advertised a magazine that condemns the movie Avatar as occult, I knew that your organization was using the wrong method to correct the problem. Christian groups that do protests like this only advertise the thing they intend to warn people about. When Christian groups protested Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson and Golden Compass, it only made these people richer. You are cursing the darkness instead of providing a light.
I made a suggestion that we make a product to combat the problem. A novel that is like Avatar, but Christian. I wrote it back in 2006 before the movie came out, but it's similar enough to be a good response. "Send us the review," you said. You did not read my message carefully. I was not suggesting yet another review cursing the darkness. I was proposing that we try to lighten the darkness by doing something proactive instead of reactive. So I sent you my manuscript. A pitiful spark in the very darkness you were cursing. Your response was that you didn't have time to read the manuscript. Sure, you have time to waste on things like watching Avatar and telling us how occult it is, but you don't have time to read my manuscript despite my note that I am willing to wait for a thoughtful response.
I would have even published it through Lulu had you even bothered to look at it instead of making me think you actually wanted to do something about the problem. You didn't even give my novel to someone else to review, which would have worked for me just as well. Instead you told me to send it to a major publishing house. This is like telling a man in a wheelchair to take the stairs to your office. I have been trying to get published for some time, but the novel is too Christian for the mainstream and too science fictiony for Christian publishing houses.
This is all to say that you should stop moaning and griping about the movie Avatar. You are doing nothing but advertising it, and you're a little slow on the uptake for criticizing it now instead of when it came out. I think you are just jealous of James Cameron's money, and you like how the blue creature's face makes the letters stand out on your pamphlets.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Gardenia Comics [Part 139]
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Terra Incognita by Emil Malak
Comments on the website found at:
http://tiuniverse.com
(http://tiuniverse.com)
and the screenplay:
https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://tiuniverse.com/images/stories/screenplay_done.pdf&embedded=true
I was surprised to find this guy Emil Malak actually had a website. I wanted to find a copy of "Tale of the Blue Crows" but you can't find that anywhere online. Unfortunately, if it exists, it is buried under a million websites saying what a loser he is, which really doesn't help me purchase a copy of his screenplay.
Generally, when I see stories about obscure writers suing big companies for the rights to high grossing movie productions, I tend to root for the underdog. I mean, after all, everybody has seen whatever famous movie it is that came out, and nobody has seen the writer's work, and it makes me feel like someone is repressing the freedom of the writer, gagging them so they can't express themselves. I don't like the idea of a big company silencing people, so I felt sorry for Emil.
I understand how you can feel like you've been robbed of what makes you "you", and nobody, not even your closest friends and family members believe that anything has been stolen. It hurts to think that someone has ripped off your idea, and made something that people will always consider better than your own personal work.
However, as much as I tried to like Terra Incognita, there are several problems with it.
First of all, the website is painful to use due to all the flash content, and is weighted down with excessive legal warnings, which is like putting a concrete wall over the barn entrance after the horses have all run out.
The character designs are pretty disturbing, especially the fat sumo wrestler guy and the pink panda that looks like she's posing for Playboy. I mean, what's with the excessive amounts of pandas? That certainly wasn't in Avatar. The Aztec dude makes absolutely no sense in regards to the plot of Avatar, making me wonder why exactly the author sued. The purple zebra character looks like something that ought to be on a furry website. In fact, most of the stuff pictured looks like that. Only if you squint do you come to the conclusion that perhaps the concept of half animal people is somewhat kind of sort of like Avatar. Some fairly good designs were photoshopped and slapped on generic photographic backgrounds, as if the webmaster thought that the world would end if he didn't throw all that stuff up on the website right now. The strongest characters out of the whole lot, I feel, are the weird giraffe lady with the strange ears and the giant crab guy. The rest of them are disturbing for various reasons.
The only character designs remotely similar to Avatar were the blue bird lady (she's a bird, not feline. That's a bit of a stretch) and the generic army guy (if you're going to sue over that, you might as well sue James Cameron for copying the General Chaos Sega Genesis game).
The screenplay, as much as I wanted to read it, would force me to sit staring at the screen for hours at a time. There was no text only version for the blind to put in text readers. I am not blind, but I use a blind people's text reader to avoid eyestrain. The screenplay is about 111 pages, and it's set up on Google docs, where the text is stuck in a series of png images, and sideways, so that even if I did manage to print out every single page, my text scanner probably would screw it up. I tried in vain to find his screenplay at Amazon.com, despite how I'm sure that he'd make a mint out of the controversy alone.
Alas, it was not meant to be. I tried to open the png files in Abbeyreader Sprint but it just copied a few lines, so I'd be forced to print out all 111 pages and then either scan them in one at a time or just read them during breaks at work. That's really too much work, which is a total disappointment.
From what I could glean without too much eyestrain, the plot of the screenplay involves a child in a broken home, which already has nothing to do with Avatar. If the picture of the genie and the Aztec are any indication, I think there are probably more strange differences beyond that.
So then I checked out his Youtube channel. I hoped to see some animations featuring his interesting characters, but all it had were videos of the guy and some damaging comments about how he's suing everybody in town, which totally destroys my perception of his character. A man who sues movie studios that much can't be too concerned about actually making great screenplays, OR getting a screenplay accepted. ("I still remember that lawsuit you threw at us last summer. Pass.")
It seems he gets very few comments on the website, probably because every post is screened (unlike Phantasmo's Cheese Factory). Maybe it's just because he deletes all the negative feedback or something. A shame, because by removing everything but a post a month or two months ago makes the site look dead.
Monday, March 14, 2011
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