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So this is how pathetic I am: I went to look at the local news in Orlando (someting I have been doing for months now in an attempt to be at least somewhat familiar with the community when I get there) and see the headline "Floods, landslides kill 84". My first thought was, how in the hell does a landslide kill 84 people in Florida, where the highest mountain peak is Big Thunder Mountain at Walt Disney World? Oh. It happened in Sri Lanka. Well that makes sense then.
So last night was the debut of the Deathlands movie on the Sci-Fi channel. Not surprisingly, I got a huge upsurge of visitors to jamesaxler.com and a ton of new users on the message board. Also not surprisingly, the movie was crap. I can't imagine anyone watching the movie and thinking, "Hey, I gotta run out and buy one of them books!" No, I can safely imagine people watching the movie and thinking, "what kind of braindead moron would read these books?" It is a very very bad sign when the best acting performance in a movie is given by Traci Lords. The lead charactor, a cold-hearted survivor named Ryan Cawdor, came across as a Sensitive New Age Guy. J.B. Dix, who's primary character trait is his quiet, curcumspect nature was positively loquacious. Worst of all was Jak Lauren, who in the books is a teenage albino who speaks in clipped and broken english, and was portrayed as a mutant who has to control himself or else he goes into a "mutie killing rage" and who speaks fluently. Wha? About the only good thing I can say about the movie is that it had a great visual style, all grainy and oversaturated with flickering jump cuts to make it feel like a home movie. Ah, well. I know they have optioned five more books to make into movies, but I somehow doubt they will exercise those options. They cancelled Farscape to spend money on this? Feh.
So last night was the debut of the Deathlands movie on the Sci-Fi channel. Not surprisingly, I got a huge upsurge of visitors to jamesaxler.com and a ton of new users on the message board. Also not surprisingly, the movie was crap. I can't imagine anyone watching the movie and thinking, "Hey, I gotta run out and buy one of them books!" No, I can safely imagine people watching the movie and thinking, "what kind of braindead moron would read these books?" It is a very very bad sign when the best acting performance in a movie is given by Traci Lords. The lead charactor, a cold-hearted survivor named Ryan Cawdor, came across as a Sensitive New Age Guy. J.B. Dix, who's primary character trait is his quiet, curcumspect nature was positively loquacious. Worst of all was Jak Lauren, who in the books is a teenage albino who speaks in clipped and broken english, and was portrayed as a mutant who has to control himself or else he goes into a "mutie killing rage" and who speaks fluently. Wha? About the only good thing I can say about the movie is that it had a great visual style, all grainy and oversaturated with flickering jump cuts to make it feel like a home movie. Ah, well. I know they have optioned five more books to make into movies, but I somehow doubt they will exercise those options. They cancelled Farscape to spend money on this? Feh.