ONE FILM A DAY UPDATE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Will I be through the piles of movies by the end of April?
   I asked myself this in January. Could I remove movies from this office? They shouldn’t have found perches for themselves on the bookshelves. And yet, there they were. All 90-odd.
   Allowing for life’s getting in the way, for the purchase of more movies in the interim, and the relentless march of an army of special features – including heavy time-consuming commentary tracks – could I make it through those piles of movies by the end of April?
   If life doesn’t get in the way, then, yes. I should manage. Comfortably. Were there rules? Vaguely. Rule number something: never waste time on truly boring mundane special features. Then there’s rule number something else: watch the movie and its special features in one day…or don’t.
   What if I don’t? Ah, rule number something or other: gather the watched movies in a pile and knock all the special features down at once. At the start of this month, I removed a dozen films from the bookshelves in one day. They all had minor special features, and I had a few hours to kill. I toppled one domino and the rest fell.
   Movie stills, publicity photos, and other galleries are all worth catching at slightly faster speed when it comes to the old slideshow mode. Mostly, you are viewing shots you’ve already seen in the movies. Trailers are best left unseen. Good trailers are rare.
   Now for a law of the jungle. Thou shalt not. And this applies to people who make movies. I’ve said this elsewhere, but it is worth stating again.
   Thou shalt not place a single frame of footage from the last half hour of thine movie into thine movie trailer. Woe unto ye who transgresseth and giveth away the fucking plot in all its twisty glory to the unsuspecting viewers of so foul and blasphemous a trailer.
   This is a wide problem. It isn’t confined to footage from the last half hour of your film. No. It’s spread across the whole movie, just like granules of sugar infiltrating coffee. No good. I won’t mention the film. But there’s a traitor in a nameless moving picture. He’s a fairly obvious traitor. And he’s fairly obviously killed off so you don’t think that he’s the traitor.
   Woe indeed, then, if you watch the trailer. For there he is, in a scene, moving dramatically into shot. This is after his death. So it will annoy you, and linger in the memory, when you watch the rascal “die” in the movie. Wait a bit. I haven’t seen this shady guy move dramatically into shot, yet. That was in the trailer.
   Either…that bit from the trailer has been cut from the movie (another trailer crime, with a rant for another time), or…there’ll be a bit of a twist in the plot, and (GASPS IN SPANISH) that shenanigangster will return to life. No, the movie you are thinking of is not the movie I’m thinking of. You are thinking of another movie in a long list of movies with spoilery fucking trailers. They all show the bad guy springing back to life. It’s like making a dodgy trailer became an Olympic sport, or something. They all trained for this special event, sadly.
   Anyway…
   When it comes to skipping “special” features attached to movies, I recommend dodging dodgy trailers. Only at the end, after the movie is screened, should you consider MAYBE watching a sketchy trailer. Just to check if they’ve broken the bit about THOU SHALT NOT. Sometimes the people who made the movies should be the ones to make the trailers. And at other times, decidedly fucking not.
   Yes, movie trailers are foolishly assembled before the finished movies come out. This leads to silliness. BATMAN BEGINS featured a trailer without the computer-generated bats in a few scenes. When a later trailer came out with the bats intact, that trailer took the concept of THOU SHALT NOT and walked it around the back of a Gotham skyscraper for a right proper bat-kicking.
   Holy END OF MOVIE IN THE TRAILER, Batman!
   GHOSTBUSTERS II suffers from the unfinished movie problem in early trailer form. People float through the action. Effects weren’t added. Later trailers show you those people are carried through the movie by ghosts. While I’m here, GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE commits a crime in its trailer by showing you a thing that would have been more fun to see in the movie itself. Not in the trailer beforehand.
   I didn’t watch any of these films for this blog post. (Was too busy watching other movies.) But I did scan the trailers, just to talk about trailers. I am meant to discuss time taken up by “special” features. The trailer is designed to interest you in the movie. Why would you put the trailer on the home cinema release? I’ve already seen the film, pal.
   Oh, the trailer is there for those who haven’t seen the trailer or the movie. If that’s the case, here’s my advice. Watch the trailer last, if you must.
   What takes up your time in watching films? Nothing overmuch, if the home cinema release is of the Vanilla Flipper variety.
   Vanilla: plain. No special features.
   Flipper: character from (checks notes) a movie/TV hybrid franchise about a brave intelligent dog named Lassie who, for copyright reasons, became a fucking dolphin.
   Lassie could swim. So could Flipper. Lassie could run on land. See ya, Flipper. How the red wet fuck is Flipper meant to foil the bank robbers inside the abandoned gold mine unless the mine is flooded and has a cave leading out to the ocean? Should have called the Ghostbusters. Or Scooby-Doo. At least Scoob can talk.
   Skippy the Bush Kangaroo could play the fucking piano with fake paws, and casually disarm a gas bomb by using a kangaroo tail at the same time.
   I could find nothing in the historical record concerning Flipper’s attempt to get Rommel. Michael Asher’s book, Get Rommel, seems a little thin on the dolphin-based details. I must stay away from lists of heroic movie and TV animals. There’s no pop-culture sustenance there.
   Flipper the dolphin can’t speak English, or German, for that matter, meaning a FLIPPER home cinema release is without an accompanying commentary. Without an annoying accompanying commentary. What’s worse than a movie without a commentary track? One with what I can only charitably at best call a movie with commentary for the blind.
   I’m looking at you, Tim Burton. Yes, I had the misfortune to sit through Sleepy Commentary, Tim’s commentary for the blind on his Sleepy Hollow movie.
   Martin Landau appears on the screen. There’s Martin Landau. He was Bela Lugosi in a movie of mine. I’m aiming for a vampire theme.
   Noted English actor Alun Armstrong appears on the screen. There’s noted English actor, Alun Armstrong. I’m making a Hammer knock-off and he played a vampire in a snooker musical.
   Johnny Depp puts in an appearance. There’s Johnny. I like to watch. Watch in the dark. My quivering victims, aware, painfully, that soon they will be subjected to the process, are all out to lunch right now.
   Christopher Lee is wheeled on for a cameo. There’s Christopher Lee. He was a vampire in an actual Hammer movie. I’m making a knock-off. But subtle, y’know.
   Peter Guinness ambles through. There’s Peter Guinness. I saw him in the Michael Mann movie, The Keep. It’s kinda vampirey.
   Michael Gambon and Michael Gough lurch drunkenly through the doorway, arm-in-arm. There’s Michael Gambon. He was in one of those Hammer knock-offs, you know the kind. The ones with Milton Subotsky’s fingerprints all over. I’m really making a Milton Subotsky movie. Who can forget Sir Michael’s near Bafta-award winning performance in The Beast Must Die…
   And there’s Michael Gough. Well, he was in actual Hammer work, with Chris Lee. At one time, Michael Gough was married to every pretty actress in England, including Michael Gambon. Yeah. Gambon had the marriage annulled. Domestic life with Michael Gough was difficult. It made the other Michael’s eyes water.
   Ian McDiarmid smashes through a window to grab a bottle of non-existent vodka. Ah, Ian McDiarmid. He’s a vampire in real life, y’know. I enjoyed his performance as the satanic facial reconstruction guy in Gorky Park. His scenes alone deserve an entire horror movie devoted to…oh, yes, back to my movie…
   Anyway…I made much of that up, just to avoid falling asleep typing a less-vibrant accurate version. Well. Damn.
   I’ve listened to Tim Burton’s audio track on his movie so that you don’t have to. Ever. In the history of ever. And then some. The problem with movies is that they’ll knife you in the front as you approach them. They’ll offer multiple commentary tracks. I think the record stands at four. This means watching the movie at least five times, and possibly six.
   Once. You watch it at the cinema or on TV. Second time. You watch the home cinema release. And then all the commentaries kick in. If someone, somewhere, somewhen, somewhow manages to corral all the major players, they’ll tell the assembled thespians not to repeat each other on these many many many tracks. We live in hope.
   The real killer? A bonus movie, added to your movie. No, that’s not it. The real time-waster is a klaxon commentary. They’ve hired a film historian, in love with the movie, to sit there and sigh in silence at the beauty of it all. That fucker should have an assistant standing in the background with a giant klaxon alarm. Anything over five seconds of silence, and BANG. You send a rocket up the film historian’s arse as a reminder to SAY SOMETHING about the film.
   I feel I’ve written this entire blog post before. And I make no apologies for that. The real rule is rule number something obvious: when a film arrives, watch the whole thing on the day of arrival. Sadly, that’s when life gets in the way. Life’s like that, a lot.
   The 90-odd movies are pretty much dealt with. What of the 45 movies I bought from January until now? Many of those are dealt with, too. But the true killer, hiding in the shadows, is the odd TV series that crept into the building under cover of darkness. And the streaming shows, while a lot rarer, still add to the endless pile.
   I now wonder how many unwatched movies will be on my shelves by the end of the year. Something to consider blogging about…the next time January strolls by. 

SHORT FAN-FICTION: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

How short is short fan-fiction? I thought about that, and remembered the Twitter. The Twitter amuses me. It readily accepts coffee in a pure state - coffee with a hashtag.
   I struggle to write coffee in stories without putting a hashtag in there.
   Rarely, I might mention my books on the Twitter. Only rarely, though. Mostly, I Tweet the #coffee, and THE STAR WARS. Sometimes I Tweet both in the same typing breath.
   Does this constitute short fan-fiction? Yes. It does. I rounded up those Tweets and sent them to a coffee shop for cake.
   These altered snippets appear courtesy the Fair Dealing and Fair Use doctrines of copyright law.
   The alteration to Fair Dealing, allowing the inclusion of parody as a category, is a relatively recent addition. Long overdue, and most welcome.

DARTH BIOZARRE TERMINATES A CONTRACT.

Wicked self-publisher Darth Sinister pilots his repainted DEATH STAR to a coffee emporium in the ill-named Chlamydia Cluster. Meanwhile, on a swamp-infested wreck of a planet ignored by the Intergalactic Freeway, Young Adult author Young Vanderkarr visits an old friend…

CODA: Hmm. That face you make. Look I so old to young baby seal eyes?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: No…allow me to lie horribly…of course not.

CODA: See through you I do, yes, I do!

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Please don’t die!

CODA: Strong am I with the Force…though not that strong. Twilight is upon me…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Love that saga.

CODA: Vampires, sparkly are they. Coda understands this not. Believes love-triangle is at heart of your obsession, Coda does.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Coda ain’t wrong.

CODA: Soon I must rest. Yes, forever sleep. Or at least, a light catnap. Earned it, I have. Mm.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: But I need your help. I’ve come back to complete my training.

CODA: No more training do you require. Some style tips, perhaps. Dye grey hair black, you might. No, no more training. Already know that which you need.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Then I am a Jedi.

CODA: To be published, you are. Proud of you, I am. Though false pride and vanity avoid, you must. Flattery. Five-star reviews. An author craves not these things. Rest, I will…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I don’t need to confront any Darths or anything like that?

CODA: Now rest I must…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Master Coda, is…Darth Biozarre my, er, father…

CODA: Told you, did she?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Not exactly. She’s a chick.

CODA: Unexpected this is.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Hell, I’ll say…

CODA: One obstacle remains…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Deciphering your weird front-to-back sentences…

CODA: Two obstacles there are…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Skip to the end.

CODA: Darth Biozarre you must face.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Perhaps she will turn to paper publishing, as I have. There is good in her. I mean, behind that façade of being a Full-Time Villain™.

CODA: Do…not…underestimate…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: The POWER of underestimation. I know.

CODA: Darth Sinister, strong with the Dark Side of Publishing™®© is he.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I remember how he tried, desperately, to tempt me to join him and his minions on that repainted DEATH STAR. Free popcorn, cheap flights, and Wookiee porn on tap 24/7.

CODA: Really? Er, distractions are they. Beware Darth Sinister you must. A formidable editor is he. Remember your own weaknesses, you should. Do not allow…your fear…of editing…to cloud your love of…writing. That can only lead…to the Dark Side™…and migraines. Rest now…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Hello? I can’t believe he’s gone.

OBI-WAN OLD FOGEY: Coda will always be with you.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Obi-Wan. I’m published. Well, getting there.

OBI-WAN OLD FOGEY: The universe is a better place for that.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Seems a bit extreme. Well, okay. I’ll buy that for a dollar.

OBI-WAN OLD FOGEY: You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own points of view. When I first met you, I was amazed at how deeply the fear ran in you. But you could write. And you overcame your fear. You have done well.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Aw shucks.

OBI-WAN OLD FOGEY: Though there is the matter of defeating some Darths…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Knew it…

*

DARTH BIOZARRE: Tum tum tum, tum-te-tum, tum-te-tum. Bored bored bored, bored-bored-bored, bored-bored-bored.

DARTH SINISTER: I sense a tremor in the Force. No…it’s just the Stormtrooper night-shift, putting all the laundry through the DEATH STAR at once. Darth Biozarre…

DARTH BIOZARRE: Can’t get that tune out of my head.

DARTH SINISTER: Kylie? I should say, Darth Minogue.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Unholy crap! Look, a Jedi Knight. On the command deck of your ludicrously-resprayed DEATH STAR.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Hi guys!

DARTH SINISTER: Everything is proceeding as planned. Join us, my Young Apprentice™.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: You are mistaken, your Highnessnessnessness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.

DARTH BIOZARRE: About that whole paternity thing…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I’ve learned a great deal on my way here. There was a twin sister I accidentally kissed at a wild party. Bantha Fodder isn’t a thrash-metal band. My X-Wing wasn’t covered for flood insurance in the swamps of Dagobah. Cheese is the devil’s food. And I saw an Ewok porno featuring a Jawa with the biggest…

DARTH BIOZARRE: So you’ve come to turn to the Dark Side™…

DARTH SINISTER: Only one obstacle remains. You must use your fear of publishing to strike down your father…Darth Biozarre…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: She can’t possibly be my father. Unless she’s a freaky sex-change time…

DARTH BIOZARRE: Traveller. Yup. You all thought you were in a parody of STAR WARS. Well, you ain’t. I’ve been sent here from the future to wipe out the leader of the resistance. Failing that, I’ll take out his mother before the kid is born.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I have a kid.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Yeah, well, I had one too. You see, the first time I was sent back on this mission I went through a freaky sex-change and snaked your mom.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Ew. But my dad…

DARTH BIOZARRE: He was busy. I shape-shifted into his form and did the deed.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: So. This parody has been put together merely to pit a Jedi Knight against a Terminator.

DARTH BIOZARRE: The B-1000. With added vitamins. Pronounced vye-tamins.

DARTH SINISTER: Vitta minz.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I say vye-tamins. We’re American. Dude, where did you dig up that accent?

DARTH SINISTER: Scotsman using English accent just to take the rise out of Americans. Occupational hazard of being a Sith Lord. (™ and © Ian McDiarmid.)

DARTH BIOZARRE: And now, your paradoxical death. Young Vanderkarr.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Wait!

DARTH WOODWARD: What did I miss? I was out on the far side of the DEATH STAR, walking under those twin moons we’ve scheduled for demolition. The exhaust ports vented a lot of steam, and I pretended I was walking in fog. London fog. With a serial killer in my very footsteps. Just an excuse to pit a Darth against Jack the Ripper on the surface of a DEATH STAR. A common fantasy.

DARTH BIOZARRE: The old WAIT ploy. Bought you a few seconds…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: If you were sent back in time to eliminate my bloodline, yet accidentally fathered that bloodline, wouldn’t it have made more sense just to stay in bed that day? Or…out of mom’s bed, given the circumstances…

DARTH BIOZARRE: Crap. Yes. Unless…scrambles for last-minute plotting…that is, unless fathering the bloodline would lead to my CONTROL of the bloodline. Diverting you from the path of aiding the resistance movement. And…cementing my domination of reality.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: That never happened.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Didn’t it? That mysterious stranger who gave you a bazooka for your tenth birthday…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I always wondered about her.

DARTH BIOZARRE: The over-convenient free stack of bodice-rippers available at that little old lady’s book-stall one wet Saturday morning…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: An education in itself.

NOISES OFF: (Bzhwwzumm, zhwum, bzzz jzh-zjzh pop pop pop pop pop!)

DARTH BIOZARRE: Pastel lightsabre, Darth Woodward?

DARTH WOODWARD: It goes well with the popcorn. This one is Strawberry Ewok. No strawberries were hurt in the making of this popcorn.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Might try that later. But first, a little lightsabre action of my own.

NOISES OFF: (Bzhwwzumm, zhwum, bzzz jzh-zjzh!)

DARTH SINISTER: Stabbed in the back by Darth Biozarre. Ah, makes a Darth proud…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Holy crap! The boss is defeated before the henchman. By the henchman. That can’t be right.

DARTH WOODWARD: Henchperson of indeterminate sexual provenance.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Consider my contract of employment…terminated.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: You’ve turned to the light.

DARTH BIOZARRE: About that…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Aw nuts.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Join me. Together we will rule publishing, as father and son.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Whoah! Back up there, Missy Terminator. Hmm. Missy isn’t cutting it as far as description goes…

DARTH BIOZARRE: Freaky sex-change time traveller, with a sex-change back. Remember? That’s how I can be your dad, and still be younger than you, AND remain female.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I’d join you, but you should join me. Otherwise, there’s all this endless sword training I’ll be forced to use on you.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Do your worst.

NOISES OFF: (Slash. Yes, we ran out of budget for the sounds.)

YOUNG VANDERKARR: There. Chopped your arm off.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Symbolic castration? I still have a cock, you muppet.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: You mean you haven’t switched back yet, from your freaky sex-change.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Uh, wait. Is this Wednesday? No. Therefore, I’m my future self…and. Changed back to being a chick. Hmm, I guess popping up all through your life dropping handy hints to betray the resistance movement…didn’t actually work.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: I have a problem with authority. Also. Terminator versus a lightsabre? Get real.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Enough of your fan-girl bullshit. Hey, Darth Woodward. Help me out, will you…

DARTH WOODWARD: You know, a girl could get used to a sexy big black throne like this one. Ooh, it has a microwave. What does this button do? Well, I never. Now no one else can either.

MOFF LARKIN: Boss?

DARTH WOODWARD: Damn straight. Set course for Canada, Moff Larkin. I’m going to iron out a few local kinks. We’ll start with hockey rules and work our way down to national legislative level.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Well if you won’t turn, Young Vanderkarr, perhaps your sister…

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Too late. I’m not really me anyway. Surprise. I’m the twin sister I mentioned earlier.

DARTH BIOZARRE: That one you met in the gay cantina?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: The Pink Stormtrooper. Huh. Guess the clue was in the title.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Then where is the real Young Vanderkarr?

YOUNG VANDERKARR: She’s younger by two minutes. That’s her flying beyond the bay window. Sneaking Darth Sinister away for a spot of redemption. Join us. Turn to the Light Side™.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Darth Sinister, turning to the light? After betrayal by me? Not a chance.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: He’s being escorted to a group-writing session, even as I speak.

DARTH BIOZARRE: Darth Sinister? We’re talking Darth Trapdoor Spider. He used the DEATH STAR to annihilate the last local writing group that tried to burn out his evil ways. Young fool. He’s only using Younger Vanderkarr as a cheap version of an escape pod. Why, Darth Sinister has made provisions in the budget for a second, even blacker, DEATH STAR. The STEALTH STAR.

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Thought you didn’t work for him. Terminating the contract and all…

DARTH BIOZARRE: True. With Darth Woodward hijacking this DEATH STAR, and your meddlesome sister out of the way, there’s nothing to stop my falling off this rail-less science fiction walkway to my personal fighter…

NOISES OFF: (Man actually saying THUD for reasons of cheapness.)

YOUNG VANDERKARR: Curses. If only someone designed science fiction walkways with actual railings or banisters. This sort of crap wouldn’t come up. Don’t get me started on faster-than-light space travel or sounds in a hard vacuum…

NEXT BLOG: A NEW HOPE.