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I try to enjoy movies for what they are. If you want nuanced internal dialogue, you’re not likely to find it at the multiplex in August. In the mood for explosions, one-liners, light nudity and ghastly vengeance? There’s a matinee at 12:30.

I’ll also confess to a certain morbid curiosity about movies that are universally despised. If something is just ‘bad’—Mortdecai, Chappie, that sort of thing—I’ll probably either pass (Mortdecai) or get it off Netflix (mmmaybe Chappie). But every now and then Hollywood spits out something that whips critics and audiences alike into a 2 minute hate. In such cases I often check out a matinee.

Partly it’s morbid curiosity, partly it’s contrarianism, and sometimes I end up liking the movie. I thought Hudson Hawk was hilarious, and it remains one of my favorite movies of the nineties. Similarly, to this day I have no idea why John Carter didn’t do well. Still, more often than not I find that the universally panned movie is, in fact, pretty bad.

Which brings me to Fant4stic. In those cases, I still like to have context for the frenzy of “what went wrong” articles on the movie sites. (This one is pretty funny.)

I actually didn’t think it was that bad. Not good, certainly, but I’ve definitely seen things I enjoyed less. Off the top of my head, I disliked Elektra, Ghost Rider, Jonah Hex and all the other Fantastic Four movies more than this one.

The really tragic thing is that if you look closely at the wreckage of Fant4stic, you can see the bones of a good movie in there. For instance, right after they get back from the trip to the alternate dimension that (spoiler) gives them their powers, there’s a scene where Reed is trapped under a girder. (The dimension thingy blew up.) Reed is straining to get to his buddy Ben, who appears to be trapped under a bunch of rocks. He looks down and you can see that his legs have stretched in a manner that can only be described as ‘grotesque and horrifying.’ I loved it. The six-year-old sitting next to me, maybe not so much.

Therein, I think, lies the root cause of this particular trainwreck.

Reportedly, Trank’s original vision for the movie was very Cronenberg-esque. I believe it. Certainly grotesque, stretchy Reed was thematically akin to Brundlefly, and the guys who got their heads blown up by Doom in what we will charitably call the third act were about as dead as the guys who got their heads blown up in Scanners. That part was kind of neat. Meditative Cronenberg is great in his own way, but I sometimes miss body horror Cronenberg. I think it would be great if someone picked up his slack.

I suspect that the studio heads agreed in principle, at least initially. Maybe as the release date grew closer they screened some test footage and saw that the body horror was, in fact, kind of horrifying. Then they considered the budget spreadsheet in light of all the metaphorical six-year-old-kids in the next seat. I’m guessing that was the point at which things started to derail.

Also reportedly, Fant4stic as originally conceived was claustrophobic, set in a fluorescent lab with few-to-no outside shots. This in contrast to the Avengers or even Dark Knight Rises, where everything is outdoors and bright-ish. That also didn’t happen, but I’m guessing that some of the second act derring-do where Reed and Ben were dodging special forces in the jungle was one of the reshoots.

Anyway, for whatever reason, Fant4stic might most charitably be described as ‘disappointing.’ Despite how it may seem, I’m really not piling on the hate train. My heart sincerely goes out to everyone involved. HBO’s Project Greenlight gave me a much better appreciation for what goes into making even a small movie. Putting together something like Fant4stic has to be as complicated as D-Day. Making up a story is hard enough when you’re working alone—I can’t imagine how much more difficult it would be trying to do it by committee. To me, the surprising thing is not that you occasionally get a stinker; I’m amazed that any good movies ever get made at all.

Vaya con dios guys. Better luck next time.

 

I’m extremely pleased to report that the audio book version of Library at Mount Char, narrated by Hillary Huber, has just won an Earphone Award.

A little back story: like a lot of Atlanta commuters, I’ve been using audio books to take the sting out of the daily commute for years now. So it was natural that when I was writing Mount Char I would occasionally daydream about the possibility of one day hearing it on audio. Can’t hurt to dream, right? To my pleasant surprise, the audio rights did sell. That was great, but when the day actually came I was also ever-so-slightly anxious. “My baby,” et. cetera, et. cetera. When I found out Hillary was going to do the narration, I relaxed–I’d heard a couple of her other books, and I knew she did good work.

We talked on the phone once, to sort out pronunciations of the made-up words and character accents. She clearly got the story, and I could tell she was going to put her heart in the work. She’s also got a naturally fantastic voice—I could listen to her read the phone book.

Even so, I was floored by the final result. I really, honestly could not be happier with how the audio book turned out. I’m fairly familiar with the story at this point (he said dryly), but I’ve listened to the whole thing twice just to hear what she did with the voices.

So, anyway, please join me in a long and richly deserved round of applause for Ms. Huber. My baby could not have been in better hands.

Bookriot has a feature called Genre Kryptonite where guest writers post about genre stuff they can’t get enough of—so, like, time travel, or magic libraries or whatever. I hoisted my nerd flag.

I did a Q&A with Fresh Fiction where we talked a bit about what gave rise to the story elements – things like how the characters drove the direction of the plot, world-building, under the hood stuff.

I did an interview with Absolute Write where we talked about the writing and publication process. It includes a bonus photo of my office, including editorial dogs. Try to contain yourselves.

I think I already mentioned this on Facebook, but I did a post for the guys at Suvudu describing the librarians and their catalogs that recently went live.

 

I threw away a lot of pages when I was assembling Mount Char into final form. Some of the stuff that got cut was just plain bad, but there was also a good bit of stuff that was fine except didn’t advance the story. Anyway, a couple weeks ago the guys at Suvudu asked me to put together an article with some more detail about the librarians and their catalogs. The following anecdotes are, for the most part, from those cut scenes. I’m glad they finally get to see the light of day.
You can read them here.
 
 

Today is book launch day, and I’m seeing the fruits of my publicists’ labors for the first time–reviews, articles, guest posts, all kinds of stuff.  It’s fun, and I will by-God link to every single post, but I also thought it might be nice to take a moment and talk about something that isn’t book related.

I like to cook. It’s one of my main hobbies. People have to eat, right? Also, there’s only so much you can say about summer movies. So I’m going to blog about food occasionally.

Here’s a simple, inexpensive recipe that’s ridiculously tasty and not too bad for your arteries. It’s called Picadillo. I never heard of it until a couple years ago, but apparently it’s a Latin American staple. It turns out to be dead simple to make at home.

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
  
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 medium onion, chopped
  
• ½ green bell pepper, chopped
  
• 1 pound lean ground beef
  
• 1/3 cup green olives, chopped
  
• 1 tablespoon capers
  
• 2 tablespoons raisins
  
• 1 8 oz. can diced tomatoes
  
• 2 envelopes Goya sazon seasoning (I found it at the local supermarket with the taco stuff, YMMV)
  
• 1 tablespoon cumin
  
• 1 tsp white sugar
  
• Salt and black pepper to taste.
  

Preparation

Heat the oil in a largish skillet. Sautee the garlic, onion and green pepper until translucent, about five minutes. Add the ground beef and cook until browned. Stir in the olives, capers, raisins, diced tomatoes, Sazon. Cook for ~10 minutes, then stir in sugar and salt.

The whole thing takes maybe 20 minutes to put together, plus another ten or so for cooking time. Also, it seems to be one of those recipes where it gets better after it sits overnight.

Serve over rice. I like mine with a little Cholula sauce.

Variations and Notes

Picadillo is apparently one of those recipes where everybody’s grandmother has a slight variation. I saw a couple versions that used potatoes—I haven’t tried that, but it sounds good. You can adjust the raisins up or down—personally, I think ¼ cup is too much, but that’s a pretty common amount. Peas and carrots often make an appearance.

If you can’t find commercial Sazon packets at your supermarket, you can approximate it with equal parts coriander, cumin, paprika, garlic powder and salt.