Gareth S. Young - - 1000 Trillion Suns

This is part four of my 100 Favorite Movies. Counting down from  070-061 . Part 1 can be seen here:   100-091 Part 2 can be seen here:   090-081 Part 3 can be seen here:  080-071 ...and now for Part 4... 070  The Mothman Prophecies (2002) - This one is a slow burner...you have to be patient. Richard Gere stars as a reporter who is drawn to a small town in West Virginia where the locals report seeing a mysterious Mothman and other strange occurrences. He is drawn to the story because of things his wife said to him before she passed away after a car accident. His obsession with the Mothman is increased further when he learns of the small town and starts to experience some unexplained things for himself. And then one night in his motel, the mysterious Indrid Cold calls his phone. This one is creepy rather than scary. Are things happening because of something easily explainable or because of some mysterious creature who seems ...

This is part three of my 100 Favorite Movies. Counting down from 080-071 . Part One can be seen here:   100-091 Part Two can be seen here:   090-081 Ready for part 3? What you waiting for? Read on... 080  Iron Giant (1999) - A giant robot crashes to the Earth and befriends a small boy in this wonderful animated movie. Set during the Cold War, it's a deceptively simple tale with a powerful message and it works for both children and adults. The animation is old school hand drawn stuff, except for the Giant which was Computer Generated. Surprisingly, this mix of styles doesn't clash and actually helps make the Giant stand out and look different to the world he crashed into. Brad Bird directed and co-wrote the screenplay and it basically got him his gig with PIXAR, directing The Incredibles. This has allowed him to break out into working with real humans with his latest movie being the newest Mission Impossible. With Iron Giant he pitched it perfectly and it has to ...

As a reader, there was nothing I hated more in a book than having a main character vomit their entire life history in an attempt to explain some previous reaction or inaction. It's a classic case of violating the SHOW don't TELL mantra that writers all chant to themselves in their darkened basements. It's also just sucky. As a writer, it's important that your characters have some sort of history to make them three dimensional. It informs how the characters would react in a given situation and can allow you to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to entice the reader to follow. Take a classic example from the movies: Darth Vader. Using a nice little bit of misdirection with Obi-Wan Kenobi - telling Luke his father died - the reveal in The Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader was in fact Luke's father caused the world to choke on its popcorn. From recent internationally best selling books you have the character of Severus Snape. Harry Potter spends almost the entire run...

Here's one for the geeks...Marvel Comics was so broke a in the late 80's and early 90's they sold the film and television rights of a host of their major characters to keep afloat. That's why SONY (Columbia Pictures) owns Spider-man and Ghost Rider, Fox owns X-Men/Wolverine, The Fantastic Four and Daredevil/Elektra, New Line (Warner Bros) owns Blade and Lionsgate had the Punisher. Now, after a time, if these film studios aren't producing something using the characters, the rights revert back to the owner... Marvel got their own studio up and running off the back of one of their second tier franchises: Iron Man, which was a massive hit. This year The Avengers became the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time so Marvel Studios is now happily building their Universe on their terms. Sony are not letting go of Spider-man...not yet at least. They just rebooted the franchise...so Spidey isn't headed back to Marvel anytime soon. Fox have a Wolverine and X-Men movie...

This is the second part of my 100 Favorite Movies blog feature. Here I'm counting down from 090-081 . You can read part one here:  http://1000trillionsuns.blogspot.com/2012/07/100-favorite-movies-100-091.html And now, the countdown continues: 090  Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan's first appearance on this list but certainly not his last. Memento is a tricky movie about a man, who can't create new memories, searching for the killer of his wife.Guy Pearce plays the man, his body tattooed with notes he makes so that when he wakes up each morning he can continue on his hunt. The movie is smart, and devilishly clever, told basically in reverse, and the ending provides an intelligent little twist in the tale. That word will get bandied about a lot when I describe Nolan's films - intelligent. As a director, Nolan has a grasp for both the intimate details and the big picture. His biggest asset is that he handles everything with intelligence and never "talks dow...

Ah, the nerdish beauty of a big list! First of all, a big shout out to my friend Alan Bain. He started this one. He sleeps about as much as I do so, he has to find ways to fill in the insomnia hours. He sent me his Top 100 and thus the debate was started. Secondly, feel free to offer comment and critique but know that I'm RIGHT and you're WRONG...or I just forgot one. And Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, this list is not about critical darlings or most important movies ever, just my FAVORITE movies. They're not in a particular order but I've tried to keep them in the ballpark of where they would lie if I thought harder about it.  The top 3 are separated by the thinest of slivers...but that's later. Let's start at 100 and work our way back... :0) 100  POLTERGEIST (1982) - Yeah I said it! Without apology, I put forward Poltergeist as one of my favorites simply because I have enjoyed this movie since the first time I saw it. A wonderfully likable c...

You may have noticed that the frequency of my posts has severly diminished in the last few months. This isn't due to a lack of interest or even due to the fact I'm chained and trapped in the basement (help me, these chains are chafing...), instead it's entirely to do with my lousy time management skills. I mean to improve in the coming weeks but I'm trying to squeeze 28 hours worth of stuff into a 24 hour day. So, I either figure out to change the rotation of the Earth (my early calculations relied on having Superman available - turns out he's not due to the filming of his new movie) or, give up sleeping entirely. Luckily (?) for me, I don't need much sleep to operate. Sure, I shamble along like a zombie and frighten small children when I point at them and growl "Braaaaiiinzzz" but, my four hours a night doesn't seem to be effe....zzzzzzzz... ...ummm... As you can see, my lack of sleep barely effects my writing performance. This is a great ...