Tyson Adams

Putting the 'ill' back in thriller

Archive for the tag “entertainment”

Unfunny Comedians

Earlier this week comedian Stephen Colbert was able to make a tragic event funny, touching and uplifting, all in the same monologue. For that moment the world was a little brighter. Then I accidentally clicked on a Steven Crowder Youtube video and I immediately despaired for humanity that this man could call himself a comedian. He is to comedians what Norman Bates is to hotel/motel owners. In the interests of the interwebz, I’m compiling a list of “comedians” whose performances may cause lasting damage to your sense of humour.

Steven Crowder
His only funny moment was when he tried to pretend he didn’t pick a fight with a union rep at a rally.

Dane Cook
I’ll be fair to Dane, he has turned in some halfway decent acting performances (E.g. Mr Brooks). Pity he can’t act like a comedian. Even his Twitter feed ‘jokes’ make you question why he isn’t limited to less than 140 characters.

Adam Sandler
I’ll admit it, I have a copy of one of his comedy CDs. Of course, jokes about peeing your pants and lunch ladies have an expiry date of seconds after the joke is told.

Jay Leno
The unanimous decision of the interwebz is that Coco is the comedian, not Jay. A real comedian, Bill Hicks, had some interesting things to say about the Jay Leno Show.

Carrot Top
Ranggers already have a tough time in this world, Carrot Top made it worse.

Dave Hughes
The funniest thing about Dave Hughes is that he has managed to forge a career as a comedian in Australia.

Choosing a location for your story

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As much as I love America, does every crime and thriller novel written have to be set there? Wouldn’t it be great if more stories chose some other locations?

Before anyone jumps on me, yes, I know, there are plenty of stories set in diverse locations. My comment is more about the way writers are so often told that people only want to read stories set in the US, that it has to appeal to the US market. I think we all know that this is a presumption on behalf of the industry for us readers. Let’s try and push for the more challenging locations in the stories we read.

Perth Writers’ Festival 2013

Another year has come and gone for my local writers’ festival. Once again I joined my fellow reading nerds and aspiring authors to descend upon the grounds of UWA. This year there were 30,000 of us who felt the need to spend three days of lovely weather discussing books.

This year I spent a lot of the three day in writing workshops and less time at discussion/interview sessions. There is always room for improvement in writing, so what better way than sitting down with an expert and two dozen peers to discuss and practice. I’d like to thank the various experts who all had some interesting insights and tips: Susan Midalia (short stories – literary focus), Belinda Castles (finding your voice and turning that story into reality), LA Larkin (thriller writing, great tips and she is also running a longer course with the Sydney Writers Centre) and Parker Bilal (crime writing, developing the characters and structure).

This isn’t to say that I didn’t get the chance to see any talks. The discussion of Antarctica was fascinating and puts it on the list of places I’d like to visit before climate change has its wicked way with it. The discussion with Major General John Cantwell and former WA premier Geoff Gallop about why it is necessary to help remove the stigma around mental illness was fantastic. John managed to pretend he wasn’t suffering PTSD for 20 years, which is just amazing considering some of the the ramifications it was having on him. Another great session was with David Petrarca, Sue Masters and James Bradley discussing how TV storytelling now rivals cinema and literature. It is quite clear that subscription TV and services like Netflix are changing the game for production of TV, which is why we are seeing great writing, great acting and decent budgets to give us programming I actually want to watch. James Bradley made a very poiniant comment: we have to stop ragging on Master Chef and other boring and mindless TV shows, their popularity allows decent TV to be funded. Finally, on Sunday I was introduced to two new (for me) authors in the panel discussion on thrillers with Andrew Croome, LA Larkin and Steve Worland. I’m looking forward to reading Andrew and Steve’s books, and of course Louisa’s new novel Thirst.

But, now the festival is over for another year. This picture sums up the take home message for me from this year’s Perth Writers’ Festival:

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Movies that needed claws

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Hugh Jackman is a genuine movie star and his recent Oscar nomination for his role in Les Miserable is well deserved.

But, and there always is a but, Hugh has appeared in some films that could have been greatly improved with one simple addition. I give to you the list of movies that would have been improved if Hugh had popped the adamantium claws and gone berserker.

Van Helsing
Let’s face it, anything would have improved this schlocky mess of a movie. Instead of Hugh turning into a werewolf toward the end, if he had turned into Wolverine and shniketied some vampires, this would have been watchable.

Australia
Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have Wolverine living in outback Australia? Then he could have taken on the invading army during the WW2 scene.

Scoop
Imagine a Woody Allen film with Wolverine in it! Imagine the boat scene with Hugh going Wolverine on Scarlet Johansen’s character, and Scarlet going Mystique on him!

Deception
Imagine if this film didn’t suck. I think adding Wolverine to the mix would have done wonders for this lame movie.

Real Steel
Wolverine versus Robots. I rest my case.

Swordfish
Who else wanted to see Hugh decapitate John Travolta in this film?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Wouldn’t it have been great if Hugh was playing Wolverine…… Wait a minute. This movie sucked even with Wolverine in it.

Book Review: Lockdown by Sean Black

LockdownLockdown by Sean Black

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometime last year Matt Hilton recommended a few authors to me, one of them being Sean Black. I dutifully downloaded a sample of Lockdown onto my Kindle, just letting it sit there, doing the electronic equivilent of gathering dust. Actually, in the digital age, I wonder if we will develop so many little phrases like “gathering dust” since the electronic medium has a lack of physical presence to have relatable descriptions assigned.

Over a year later I finally started Sean’s first novel, bought the full Kindle version, and plowed through this fast paced novel. I really enjoyed the brisk narrative and I could see similarities to Matt’s writing, which is probably why he was recommending Sean’s work.

Guess now I have to find more of Sean’s books.

View all my reviews

Book to movie revisited

I’ve written before on the lovely job that Hollywood does in translating books to the big screen. This cartoon pretty much sums up the process nicely.

The evolution of concerts

Last night I went to see the best band to come out of Canada: The Tea Party. They rocked!

I’ve been a fan since about 1994 and have seen them just about every time they have toured Australia, even managed to see Jeff Martin’s solo concerts on several occasions. Perth is like a second home to The Tea Party, Jeff Martin’s son was actually born in Perth. Jeff, Jeff and Stuart are a great example of what three fantastic musicians can achieve. Did I mention that they rock?

But something was driven home to me last night. When I started going to concerts it was all about seeing the band live. Then digital cameras came in and the response was to confiscate them before you were allowed into the venue. Now it seems that you don’t come to see a band play live, you come to film the concert on your smartphone to upload onto YouTube. Call me a purist but crappy video, and even worse sound recordings, is just not as fun as rocking out to one of your favourite bands (or artists).

Jack Reacher One Shot Movie

Jack Reacher – 1:2 scale

As any Lee Child and Jack Reacher fan knows by now, Tom Cruise is bringing the book One Shot to the big screen. What some may not be aware of is that Hollywood has had a few financial issues of late. They’ve had to scale back productions and advertising. Paramount Pictures didn’t want to cut back on advertising or budget for the Reacher film, so they halved the size of the main character – Jack Reacher 6’5″ 220-250lbs, Tom Cruise 5’7″ 147lbs.

The good news is that Reacher has been bumped up the release schedule and will be coming out in cinemas in December. This should be great for Lee Child fans, especially as A Wanted Man, the new Reacher novel, will have been released a month prior.

Lets hope that they film Cruise from some very low angles, because I want to see Reacher kick some ass!

Book Review: Temple by Matthew Reilly

TempleTemple by Matthew Reilly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m a little sad. Not because of this book, this book was great. I’m sad because I’ve now read all of Matthew Reilly’s books at least once. I have to wait for his next book to be published: wait!!

If anything, Temple is probably one of Matt’s best books. In typical Reilly style it redefines fast paced and action packed, but this also feels more complete than the Jack West Jnr series. It is also one of his longer books, so plenty of entertainment in this novel to keep you going.

In short, read it.

For those Matthew Reilly fans like me who are awaiting Matt’s next release, it seems he is back writing again after the tragedy last year. Hopefully he is on the mend emotionally as well and can continue to entertain us. Apparently his fans have been out in force to see him at the Supanova events, including the Doc.

A harem of Leias?

Guess this makes Matt the taller version of Marty McFly.

View all my reviews

Neil Gaiman follow up – someone made good art

The speech Neil Gaiman made to graduates has been inspiring many. This cartoon is just one of many, click on it to see more work by Gavin at http://zenpencils.com

Neil Gaiman’s speech to graduates

At my graduation ceremonies we had some bureaucrats being given honorary doctorates for their services to political backroom handshakes. Needless to say, their speeches were less than inspiring. While I’m not a fan of giving away honorary degrees to celebrities, it is good to see they are giving them to some deserving people who can give an inspiring speech to graduates.

Take it away Neil.

Make good art, especially when the zombies take over.

Compulsory viewing for thinkers

The first time I came across Brian Brushwood it was a video on how to escape from hand restraints and using those restraints to shim a door lock. I swear that I was educating myself so that I could write an escape scene in my novel. You can’t prove different!

Anyway, this video is part of a lecture that covers a lot of the scams that are going around and how to spot them. Once you’ve seen this video, check out the rest of the lecture here.

Book to movie

If there is any one thing that Hollywood does well, it is taking terrific books and turning them into terrible movies. When was the last time someone said “Well the movie was better than the book”?

I’ve opined on this issue before: Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher; why movie studios bother with buying a book when they make a movie that doesn’t resemble the book in any way.

And here it is happening again:

Any movie starring Katherine Heigl is always doomed. She ranked in my article on actresses you don’t want in you book adaptation. Clearly Janet Evanovich signed the movie rights before she read my article. So you have to ask what is happening in Hollywood, aside from the hookers and blow?

Clearly the first thing that is happening is the movie rights. Author agents are clearly trying to make some money for their authors so that the author can give up the day job and write more. Sorry, that should read, they want a commission. The movie studio hands over some spare change they have lying around and grab the book. Then they ask a script writer to give them a script, usually in the same amount of time it would take the script writer to actually read the book. So the script writer hands over a script they already have lying around, after changing a few of the character names to match. The studio then launders finds some money from “business associates” to start casting and shooting. The casting agent looks at the budget and sorts through the least desperate actors in the appropriate pay scale, to find the person who least embodies the main characters.

By the time the movie hits cinemas there have only been two people in the entire process who realise the movie is based upon a book, one of whom may have read it. This, of course, doesn’t really matter because the ten people who have read the book that go to see the movie are sitting in a packed cinema with people who don’t read and are generally confused by plots that can’t be explained in a one-to-two sentence monologue from a minor character.

Clearly Hollywood knows what it is doing, I mean, they cast Tom Cruise as Lestat. And authors love getting money from Hollywood, they can actually afford to pay the rent that month. So maybe it is time writers started writing for Hollywood. Oh wait, they already do that….

Magazines and Newsletters that never took off

Our local bookstore is actually the newsagent, so you have to walk past the magazines to find the book (yes, not pluralized). I can’t figure out why some of these magazines never took off with readers.

Particle Physics for the Left-Handed Extrovert

A big field, from what I hear.

American Jihardist Today

The contacts and personal pages must get a lot of attention.

Better than your Neighbour’s Home and Gardens

I believe this has been renamed to Better Homes and Gardens.

TV Shows You Missed

Nothing like hearing about the stuff you missed while you were busying doing something important.

At the Movies with Ben Stiller & Adam Sandler

Why are they still allowed to make movies!?

Outdoor Activities for Agoraphobics

The equestrian edition would be very interesting.

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The news can be funny

Usually the news does little to inform us, but sometimes it can bring us laughs.

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