Bob’s Thirsty Thursdays: NOS4A2, Need for Speed, and the trailer for Chrstine
My new favorite thing is my Kindle Paperwhite. I used to have a Kindle Keyboard (one of the early ones), but after awhile it started tripping out and became a giant pain in the ass—constantly restarting and dying on me. For Father’s Day this year, the family gave me the new Paperwhite and it’s fantastic. Especially now, preparing to live the Tiny life and all, the importance of my Kindle is even more prevalent. Why keep bins and boxes and shelves full of books when I can have an entire library on my Kindle, taking up the equivalent space of a single slim paperback? Plus, you can borrow books from the library via the Kindle (free books are awesome), and when there are books you wanna buy, they’re super cheap. Of course, the weight of an actual book and the act of flipping of actual pages can’t be matched by the Kindle… but it’s close. I just bought a set of classic horror novels (with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and 13 others) for 99 cents. 99 cents!
I just read the latest book by author Joe Hill titled NOS4A2, and let me tell you… it’s a fantastic read. It’s faced paced, dark, gritty, mesmerizing, and about as close to early Stephen King as it gets. Hill also wrote HORNS (which will be a new movie later this year starring Harry Potter), and while I really enjoyed that book… I think I liked NOS4A2 even more. There’s a surreal supernatural side to the story, about a child murderer who feeds off the souls of said children in a middle-world called Christmasland, which I really dug. Plus, since it’s Kings’ kin, there’s references to the being in the same world as Pennywise the Clown in the small town of Derry and the band of drifters from DOCTOR SLEEP — both of which were really cool to see. While I still love reading Stephen King, I think Joe Hill is swooping in to take his place as my new favorite author. If you’re looking for something to read during the last few weeks of summer, I highly recommend NOS4A2.
I’m still watching THE STRAIN, as there’s enough crazy vampire shenanigans to overlook all the stupid shit that’s going on, even though there’s more and more stupid shit with each new episode. If this were a Fall series, this shit wouldn’t fly, but it’s passing the void of Summer programming just fine. I finally checked out NEED FOR SPEED and concur with Law and Moreno that it was a surprisingly fun movie, and about as spot-on as a video game adaptation as there ever could be when said video game is a car racing game. There are some cool POV car shots during a few chase sequences that actually make the movie feel like the game itself, which I appreciated. Too bad Imogen Poots didn’t give me more points in the Hottie Draft for this movie. Ah well, that’s a sinking ship that’s well past disaster at this point. Eff the Hottie Draft.
Last week I treated you to THE TRAGEDIES OF MACBETH. As promised, here’s another video from the VHS archives. The same English teacher assigned another book report, this time a book of our choosing, and he gave us a few options—one of them being create a movie trailer for the book. With the success of MACBETH, it was obvious I would pick this option. But like many directors whose debut efforts were met with critical acclaim, the expectation for perfection this time around was especially high. I chose the novel CHRSTINE by Stephen King to make the trailer, and with the help of my friends, I made the most true-to-book trailer possible (which I think is why I don’t particularly like John Carpenter’s version of CHRISTINE… because mine was so much better).
A few things of note: the music I used is from John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN and the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE soundtrack. I kept with the whole stop-motion animation thing for the car chase sequences using a few Micro Machines I still had from when I was a kid. The audio gets real crappy in a few places, making the dialog totally useless—I know it sucks, but there was nothing I could do about it in post-production. And at 7 minutes, it may be the longest trailer in history (I think the assignment required that it had to be a certain length, but I don’t remember). Anyway, while it’s not as good as THE TRAGEDIES OF MACBETH, I’m proud of a lot of aspects of this thing: the spot-on adaption of the book, the quick-cut Michael Bay style editing of the action sequences (like any true trailer would ), the use of music, and my cameo appearance as the guy selling Christine (actually, no… that part is horrible). Check it out below, enjoy, and stay tuned next week for another video from the archives.