Writing
When fantasy writers turn on TV, what turns fantasy writers on? (Hint: Breaking Bad)
On my way to the World Fantasy Convention in Crystal City, Virginia last weekend, I had a chat with an editor, who sighed with dismay that she’d initially packed only four or five books to bring with her for the long weekend. She wondered if that was enough. I began to wonder if I just…
Read MoreTake me now: The seductive nature of TV’s serial killers
TV can be a scary place, and some of its worst offenders are also the best-written and most seductive.
Read MoreFrom ‘Downton Abbey’ to ‘Law & Order: SVU,’ we’re all soap opera addicts now
Greetings! So glad you could make it. Welcome to the first in a continuing story … sorry, the continuing adventures of – no, that’s not quite right, either. All right, I’ll say it first: I’m a soap opera addict. I am a soap opera addict. I love stories that go on and on, with intertwining…
Read MoreFall previews suck — so here’s how, not what, to watch this coming season
It’s an old, beloved story known well by “Mad Men” fans: How their show got to air. Creator Matthew Weiner had an idea to tell the story about New York ad guys in the 1960s for years before it became a reality. He honed his skills at “The Sopranos” while “Men” sat on a shelf…
Read MoreNo paper, no pen: On the loss of Robin Williams, a great American writer
“What will your verse be?” — Robin Williams as John Keating, “Dead Poets Society” (1989) Just hours after the news that Robin Williams had killed himself broke on August 11, Bostonians opted to continue their dialogue with the late comedian. They went out to a bench in the city’s Public Garden, where Williams had filmed…
Read More‘Boyhood’ is full of storytelling magic, minus the story and any wizardry
Modern movie stories generally goes a little something like this: Hero. Hero travels to a different world (you can go metaphorical or literal on this one). Hero meets companion. (In Western society, this companion is almost always of a minority race, or disabled, or female. Look, this is what they taught me. I don’t make…
Read More‘True Detective’s’ Big Hug Mug a star in itself: ‘I should have bought up a few of those things’
There were many things to admire about "True Detective," HBO's limited series that brought together two tastes that worked great together: Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. But one of the biggest surprise breakouts of the show was … the prop Big Hug Mug that sat next to McConaughey's character Rustin "Rust" Cohle during his nearly…
Read MoreHBO’s “The Leftovers” is way off the reservation, and Tom Perrotta let it happen
“Eh, the book was better.” Said anyone who ever read a book before watching a movie or TV adaptation of said book. “The Leftovers,” the HBO series starring Justin Theroux and Liv Tyler, met “The Leftovers,” the literary novel with genre pretensions by Tom Perrotta at the end of June and … the streak remains…
Read MoreA twist in the tale: Why too many ‘Twilight Zone’ endings can ruin the surprise
One summer, I spent my days lounging around the pool, reading “The Twilight Zone.” Not watching. For one thing, “The Twilight Zone” reruns were on way late at night. I wasn’t quite a teenager, VCRs were in other peoples’ homes, and the Internet was still a good decade or so away. So I’d only seen…
Read MoreNot seeing the forest for the trees: ‘Into the Woods’ and other ways Hollywood gaffes in retelling classic fairy tales
“Into the Woods” fans, brace yourself: The Disney adaptation of the award-winning, long-running, grown-up thinking fairy tale musical by Stephen Sondheim – one of the stage’s pre-eminent writers – is getting neutered. As the New Yorker reported recently, during a master class in New York City Sondheim told the audience of high school drama teachers that…
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