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The Dark Knight Rises

Sep26

Title: The Dark Knight Rises

Cast: Christian Bale (Actor), Christopher Nolan (Director)

Genre: Comic Book

Watched: September 22, 2012

Summary: Unrelenting dark

According to Box Office Mojo, the latest Batman film cost $250 million dollars to make. Some of these effects are understated, but this is certainly one of the largest scale movies in a long long time. Not only are there a bewildering array of main characters (many played by top actors), but the notable secondary roles are legion. Plus, the entire city of Gotham (New York reimagined) joins the cast. This is a big city movie that really feels like it’s in the big city.

It’s also dark. Unrelentingly and violently dark.

The plot itself is baroque to say the least. Lots of characters, lots of heroes, lots of villains, lots of ambiguity. Our main heavy, Bane, is a creepy truck of a man hidden behind a bizarre gas mask. Unlike the Joker, he has absolutely no sense of humor. He is, however, fairly frightening. His motives, even by the end of the movie, are cryptic. This is one of those stories where the villains have a ton of different plots in the works which serve mostly to set up grandiose scenes. I had the same feeling about the Joker’s machinations last time around. This year, the end goal, destroying Gotham with a nuclear bomb, sort of negates all the intermediate steps. Bane and crew seem to live by the mantra: “the journey is more important than the destination.”

This journey seems to involve taking over the city and creating an atmosphere of terrifying martial law. Plus locking Batman, who like all superheroes in their second or third film, is losing his powers, into a mysterious hole in India. There, because the existing six or so villains weren’t enough, he is visited by the shade of Ra’s Al Ghul.

Plot aside, it’s a very good film, bordering on great (if you like this sort of thing, and I do). The Hans Zimmer soundtrack is so dark and bombastic that it smooths over 99% of the problems, lending an epic quality to the whole proceedings. I’m not understating matters, as in Inception, the score is vital here. It creates the mood. It sells the scale. And there are some showcase crazy over-the-top scenes here. The opening with the airplane is pretty impressive, particularly as it tilts back and the wings rip off. Very Inception like, but taken to the next level (although I like Nolan’s more intellectual mind-bending prior film slightly better).

In TDKR, the acting is, for the most part, excellent. Bane is creepy, if a tad flat. Staples Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Liam Neesen deliver their usual slam dunks. Even in the midst of that star studded firmament, newcomers Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Blake/Robin) and Anne Hathaway (Selina/Catwoman) deliver with feisty charisma.

Overall, the film draws upon the Batman mythos and reinvents itself with a dark nihilistic 21st century zeitgeist. Stripped of camp, free of post-modern self-reference (which The Avengers is packed with), shorn of sentimentality, I’m not exactly sure what we’re left with. But Christopher Nolan pulls it off.

Spectacle is delivered.

For more Film reviews, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (25)

Posted in: Movies

Tagged as: Art, Batman, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Comic book, Comics, Hans Zimmer, The Batman, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Warner Bros

Untimed Characters

Sep19

My upcoming novel, Untimed, features an amusing cast of characters, so I gathered up their likenesses into a rather oddball “family” album which can be found here.

Longshot: Shoot first, ask questions later

By: agavin
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Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Art, Dave Phillips, Fiction, Illustration, novels, Untimed

Untimed Cover Reveal!

Sep05

I just received the final version of the Untimed cover painting by Cliff Nielsen. I’d thought Cliff knocked The Darkening Dream cover out of the park (it’s even won a number of awards) but this one is on fire.

The art above, cool as it is, isn’t intended to be a complete composition. This is a book cover painting, and so there is extra space to work with around the central figure as well as fairly monochromatic areas for the titles and to the left for the back cover (paper edition). I crop different sections out of it as needed for different uses, such as the banner above or the current front cover composition to the left. The logo and text composition aren’t set in stone yet, either, I’m still noodling on them.

You’re probably wondering who the hell the clockwork man is. Meet Rapier. He’s nearly indestructible, dresses in time appropriate blue uniforms, carries a sword, and kills time travelers on sight. History is his playground. He can be anywhere or anywhen. And no one has a clue what he or the other Tick-Tocks want. Which is all a bit of a bummer for our time traveling protagonist, Charlie.

The scene above is inside the church of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, in the year 1725. At the time, a young Ben Franklin worked there (oddly enough, the building was used as a print shop). When Rapier gets in on the action, the paper is literally hot off the presses!

Be sure to leave your thoughts on the new cover in the comments!

Vote on logo options here, check out some interior illustrations, or

Game of Thrones – Renly’s Armor

Jan05

I can’t resist a little continued geek out and bringing you a video on the making of Renly Baratheon’s armor for season 2 of Game of Thrones.

What’s most impressive about this is not the look per se, but the incredible attention to detail lavished on each and every little item and prop. Truth is, you can’t obviously TELL that this is a unique “fashion prince” take on scale mail, but it’s part of what makes the show look fairly medieval, and not all lame shiny like say… King Author. Oh and then there is the fact that it’s well written. And that’s the most important thing of course.

My full episode by episode coverage of season 1 can be found here.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Television

Tagged as: A Song of Ice and Fire, Armor, Art, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, Mail, Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire, Television, World of A Song of Ice and Fire

New Cover Art is here!

Dec22

The new cover for The Darkening Dream is almost done! To the left is the current mockup (click the double spread below if you want to see a large version). It still needs a few tweaks and real titles (those are NOT final titles), but it’s real close.

As I’ve discussed before, I commissioned a new cover a couple weeks ago from artist Cliff Nielsen, worked through a whole batch of ideas and sketches, shot the model in the studio, and voila!

I’ve basically got the E-Book interiors done too, having learned over the last two days how to generate MOBI and EPUB files from my base HTML. I even caught and reproed a bug in Calibre which a super responsive programmer fixed in an hour. These files took a lot of work but they look really awesome with all the little interior illustrations and very nice, clean, formatting.

My last thing is to get real titles done and then I’m ready to go with the E-Book version by around the New Year! Although, titles and Amazon approval might drag that out by a couple days.

Please write in the comments what you think of the cover.

The old cover -- made by yours truly

To see photos from the cover shoot, click here.
For more info on the new cover artist, click here.
For more information on The Darkening Dream.
For more posts on writing, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (6)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Art, Book Cover, Cliff Nielsen, Cover art, Darkening Dream, E-book, The Darkening Dream

Cover Commission

Nov15

Cliff painted this gorgeous cover to steampunk novel: The Map of Time

I’ve officially signed a cover artist for The Darkening Dream. His name is Cliff Nielsen and he’s a very experienced artist using a cool ethereal multimedia style. You can check out his work on his website but I pasted two into this post. I originally found him though this image of the dude with the watch. I was searching the web for “clockwork men” since the villains in my second novel, Untimed, are… you guessed it… clockwork men. Google brought up this image and I had to find out who the artist was. Then I discovered I already owned a decent collection of books he drew the covers for (e.g. City of Bones, which I reviewed recently).

My homebrew TDD cover

A lot of covers these days are just simple photos (like my homebrew tree cover below) or stenciled vector art. But I’ve always been partial to “painted” covers, so in researching cover design options I kept coming back to commissioning an original illustration. Perhaps it’s because of my early years as a 70s and 80s Science Fiction and Fantasy reader, where nearly every cover was painted. Back then, photographic covers were always a sign of some cheesy film tie-in.

In any case, Cliff’s art resonated well with my own style. Although it must be noted that the above clockwork man is far too 19th century for the mysterious “Tick-Tocks” in my second book (who blend their outfits into whatever era they visit), but it’s still a great image and very evocative.

Another Cliff cover: The Thief and the Beanstalk

So Cliff is reading/skimming the book and I hope to have some content sketches back shortly. I can’t wait. One of the best things about working with artists (and I was fortunate to have worked with dozens of great ones at Naughty Dog and my other companies) is seeing your ideas realized in a visual form.

For an interview with Cliff, and a photo, see here.
For more information on The Darkening Dream.
For more posts on writing, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (8)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Art, Book Cover, Cliff Nielsen, Cover art, Illustration, Illustrators, Photoshop, Science Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Darkening Dream, Visual Arts

The Maltese Falcon

Jun02

Title: The Maltese Falcon

Author: Dashiell Hammett

Genre: Detective Noir

Length: 217 pages

Read: May 25-26, 2011

Summary: Pure awesomeness.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

There are so many reasons why this is the archetypal detective novel. It’s pure pleasure from start to finish.

Let’s start with the writing. The prose is lean, but it has a way of sparing with the reader, a delightful economy and turn of phrase. Things are handled in a straightforward sequential manner. Simultaneously spartan and luxurious. There’s actually a surprising amount of description. Nearly every character is detailed on first meet, often with a good full two paragraphs. But they’re worth it (more on that later). Spade‘s actions are spelled out in exquisite and exhaustive detail — there must be at least fifty cigarettes rolled and smoked in this tiny book and countless details of dressing, moving from place to place, etc. Somehow these don’t drag, not at all. Action too, is quick, but handled in a kind of cold clear detail. What there isn’t, is one whit of interior monologue. The closest we get is the occasional, “Sam’s expression contained a hint of smugness” or “her hands twisted in her lap.” And more than anything, the prose is fun to read.

Plotting. The story is byzantine, and involves no one knowing exactly what’s going on, but Sam being a damn good judge of what’s likely to happen. There’s perhaps a bit too much action happening off screen, and a little too many coincidences or startling reverses. And for a book with so many shootings and double crosses, it’s mostly filled with dialogue scenes. But that isn’t a problem because…

The dialogue rules! Oblique, snappy, it crackles back and forth like a gunfight. The rules for writing quality dialogue could have been modled on this novel alone. Characters interrupt, they’re impatient, they lie (and lie again), they argue, they betray. They do a lot of talking. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Characters. Hammett really shines here. The villains are a bit over the top, but I adored them. The sinister (and limp wristed — oh so pre-politically-correct) Cairo, the fatman, the kid. The author uses a combination of amusing descriptive characterization (Gutman’s bulbs of fat — “He waved his palm like a fat pink starfish!” — or Cairo’s effete details — “when slapped he screamed like a woman”) and highly distinctive dialogue. Gutman’s is a real riot. Overblown, threatening and complementary at the same time. Sam himself is an interesting figure. Tough, incredibly competent, but also prideful, belligerent, and self interested.

Atmosphere. This is nailed, nailed cold and hard like a corpse left out in January. It oozes late 20s San Francisco. The dangerous dames, the cartoony gangsters, the police always one step behind. The tension in the way that the backstabbing moxie Brigid uses her feminine wiles eerily foreshadows basic instinct and countless followups.

The book’s been a classic for 80 years, and with good reason.

For more book reviews, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (5)

Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Art, Book Review, Book Reviews, books, Cairo, Dashiell Hammett, Detective, Fiction, Maltese Falcon, Novel, Sam Spade, San Francisco

Done Again, Hopefully

Mar07

My freelance editor, the awesome Renni Browne, has officially declared my novel, The Darkening Dream, done, and ready for agents!

Now bear in mind that “done” is a highly subjective term, and that as soon as anyone gives me an idea worth doing, I’ll probably do it, and that agents and editors are bound to ask for changes. Which as long as I think the ideas make the book better, is a good thing.

The new version is 5.00i, but this is my ninth full major draft. Woah.

I remember reading Sol Stein‘s awesome book on writing, where he mentioned that The Magician took 10-11 drafts (I was then on my second) and thinking: that’s crazy! I guess not. Totally coincidentally, Renni also edited that novel, published in 1971!

So it’s been a busy week, working only on The Darkening Dream (I’ll get back to my new novel shortly). In the last 10 days:

1. We finishing our big line edit

2. I rewrote the ending again.

3. I read the entire book and made minor mods.

4. Renni and Shannon (her additionally awesome co-editor/assistant) reread the beginning and the ending and did another quick line edit.

5. I went over that.

6. I got back a critique on the beginning of the book, and made some changes based on that.

7. This inspired me to write two entirely different beginnings.

8. We eventually decided the original was better, although I moved a few nice tidbits from the new stuff over.

9. I reread the whole first half of the book, and the ending again, and made some more improvements.

10. On Sunday I rested.

So now I return to the agent game (referrals very welcome), and to the agonizing internal debate about the relative merits of self publishing in the modern (and very rapidly changing) market. And back to the first draft of my new novel (about 25% done).

If any of you beta readers want a copy of the new improved 95,000 word The Darkening Dream, drop me a note.

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Art, Book, Darkening Dream, drafts, Editing, Fiction, Novel, Proofreading, Sol Stein, The Darkening Dream, Writers Resources, Writing, Writing and Editing

TV Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer – part 6

Feb11

CONTINUED FROM PART 5 ABOVE.

The rest of the series can be found here: [1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6]

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS:

Season 7:

So at long last we meander to the final, and worst, season. Not that it’s awful, but it does suffer from a number of serious problems.

1. The big bad is diffuse. This season, in an effort to be even more apocalyptic, they decided on an incorporal season villain called “the first evil.” A vaguely couched badness that takes the form of dead people, often Buffy herself (she did, after all, die twice). Frankly, the first is kinda lame, and not very funny. It certainly doesn’t measure up to Glory or the Mayor (although it occasionally looks like the Mayor). It’s “first” appearance (haha) where it slowly winds back through all the villains in reverse order is however kinda cool.

2. The slayerettes – About 40% into the season Buffy is inundated by a collection of 17 year-old idiots known collectively as the slayerettes. They totally suck, are just anoying, gum up the relationships we really care about, and often get themselves killed (good riddance). Only Kennedy has any redeeming qualities — mostly in the form of implied girl-on-girl action with Willow.

3. Andrew – For some reason, this lamest and most annoying of the “Trio” is held captive in Buffy’s house, where he can serve to annoy us, the viewers. He does have his occasional moments and lines, like “Episode one boring?” But mostly he grates on the nerves of the cast and viewer alike. Oh Andrew, why at least couldn’t you have died in “Chosen?”

4. Mysterious documentary-style shooting – Certain episodes have a more documentary style that is not evidenced anywhere else in the series. Notably “Storyteller” (deliberate there for sure) and bits in “Touched” and “End of Days.” It felt amateurish and out of place.

5. No good creative episodes – Nothing like “The Body” or “Once More with Feeling.” Nothing. They may have tried with “Storyteller,” but it was lame lame lame.

At least the writers knew it would be the last season, and so in a neat and orderly manner arced the story toward a decent conclusion. And the first half of the season starts pretty decently. The new character, Principal Wood is good. “Help” is a great episode and the Anya episode, “Selfless” has some totally priceless 1,000 year flash back scenes between Anya and Olaf the troll — totally priceless, and made all the better for being in some Germanic/Scandinavian tongue and subtitled. “Conversations with Dead People” and “Sleeper” aren’t bad either.

Ug. Then enter the slayerettes. The only compensating bit being the sub-boss bad guy, the “ubervamp” who is pretty cool and kicks some ass, including Buffy’s.

The second half of the season is uneven, including my least favorite episode in a long time “Storyteller,” but the pretty good “Lies My Parents Told Me.” The new sub-boss Caleb is decent too. Then we have “Empty Places.”

I don’t know what they were thinking, but it’s obvious the writers decided they had to separate Buffy from her friends for dramatic effect, and so they stage a show down in which they all turn against her. In no other episode of the entire series is there a moment where so many characters just act completely out of character. I can buy a few of them turning on her like this, but the writers failed completely to give each and every one of them a valid personal reason visa-via their relationship with Buffy to do so. I could barely watch it.

The return of Faith however is good, and the last three episodes are pretty strong, particularly the series finale “Chosen.” Despite the lame cameo from Angel, it does all end up in a pretty good place, and reasonably satisfying — a difficult thing to do after such a long and emotional series. Overall, it’s certainly a must watch, but just not on par with the magnificent pair of seasons that preceded it.

As with the previous two times I’m depressed that it’s over. This time I’m going to make a serious effort at Jos Whedon’s season 8 in comic book form.

By: agavin
Comments (11)

Posted in: Television

Tagged as: Alyson Hannigan, Art, Buffy, Buffy Summers, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Fiction, Joss Whedon, Kennedy, Mayor, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Spike, Television, tv, TV review, Vampire, Willow Rosenberg

The Darkening Dream

Feb07

Since I’m always cryptically referring to my novel in progress, I figured I’d post a few words about it.

The Darkening Dream is a historial dark fantasy. It’s currently 95,000 words and I’ve just finishing up the line editing and polish. [ Updated 3/16/11 ] I’m looking for a literary agent to help me start slogging through the process of publishing.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

As to the thing that matters — the story [ Updated 3/25/11 ]:

An ominous vision and the discovery of a gruesome corpse lead Sarah and her friends into a terrifying encounter with a fledgling vampire. Eager to prove themselves, the young heroes set out to track the evil to its source, never guessing that they will take on a conspiracy involving not only a 900-year vampire, but also a demon-loving Puritan warlock, disgruntled Egyptian gods, and an immortal sorcerer, all on a quest to recover the holy trumpet of the Archangel Gabriel. Relying on the wisdom of a Greek vampire hunter, Sarah’s rabbi father, and her own disturbing visions, Sarah must fight a millennia-old battle between unspeakable forces, where the ultimate prize might be Sarah herself.

To read about my second novel (in progress), click here.

Or here for the index of all my Creative Writing posts.

By: agavin
Comments (47)

Posted in: Books, Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Art, Author, Book, books, Creative Writing, Egyptian pantheon, Fiction, New England, Novel, Publishing, revision, supernatural thriller, Synopsis, The Darkening Dream, Thriller (genre), Writing

TV Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer – part 4

Jan18

CONTINUED FROM PART 3 ABOVE. And the whole series [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS:

Season 5:

Season 5 and 6 pretty much tie for the best of the seven! Pretty incredible how this show just keeps on getting better and better until the final season. With this season everything slips into a serious groove, but what’s really surprising is the depth of emotion pulled out of the viewers. Nearly gone are the episodic “one off” episodes (discussed in my Lost vs The Love Boat post), instead the story just rolls from one episode to the next with only a few exceptions.

The first episode (“Buffy vs. Dracula“) is light, but it ends with a shocker, one that is reinforced in episode 2 (“Real Me“). Suddenly, and without explanation only-child Buffy has a little sister named Dawn. What casually might seem like a gimmick to spread the show demographic younger in fact becomes completely central to the season’s plot and deepens the character interactions immensely, particularly for Buffy. The season’s “big bad,” Glory — my second favorite after the Mayor — is a Hell God in need of a magical key to break open the barriers between dimensions. Some crazy monks rebuild the entire reality of the world to hide the key as Buffy’s sister, having altered all reality and history such that she existed all along. Pure genius.

What this really does is turn Buffy’s nice little dyad with her mother into a full-fledged family, upping the personal stakes immensely. And it isn’t all supernatural. Joyce (Buffy’s mom) develops a brain tumor in a long and very emotional arc that ties in brilliantly with the family aspect and with Dawn’s growing understanding of her esoteric nature. This comes to a series of shattering culminations in “Blood Ties” and “The Body.” This last episode is probably the best of the entire series, or at least tied with “Once More with Feeling,” and is a stunning piece of television. Written and Directed by Joss (as most of the great episodes are), it is a tour de force of film making. Free of music, almost free of the supernatural, but jammed packed with horror, reality, and emotion, this is a seriously tear inducing hour. And it includes network television’s first on-screen lesbian kiss!

Wisely after the disruptions in some of the formulas from the first three seasons that college (season 4) brought on, season 5 brings the gang into a stable new orbit. Giles has purchased the Magic Shoppe and this replaces the library as the central hub. Xander and Giles are back in full orbit, and Anya, Tara, and Dawn integrated into the team. But it’s Spike, and his new every episode role and gradual character transformation that really livens things up. In an amusing, poignant, and brilliant turn he falls for Buffy (hopelessly — at least for now) and she literally ends up making him a better man. But this doesn’t stop him from still being sordid, hilariously. “Fool for Love” in particular is a brilliant episode in which Buffy forces spike to recount the story of his creation (by Drusilla) and his killing of two other slayers. Plus the Buffybot is pure genius, and real Buffy’s turn playing the bot to get the truth from Spike truly touching.

There are some serious themes of loss and alienation going on here, growing and growing as we head toward the dark territory that is season 6 — Love it! The weight of the world, the family crises, and the burden of protecting Dawn, take their toll on Buffy. This comes to the world shattering conclusion in the finale, Joss’s brilliant “The Gift,” which even on the third viewing had me crying. Seriously, this show is that good!

As the poignant music surges, and Buffy runs from Dawn to dawn across the platform — Death is your gift!