Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

THE NEWSROOM

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Created and primarily written by Aaron Sorkin, THE NEWSROOM is a three-season drama series about the employees at the fictional Atantis Cable News (ACN) network. I caught the first two seasons, and I’m about to devour the third. This is brilliant, cutting-edge storytelling by a master storyteller.

Among the ensemble cast are notably Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), a news anchor many have compared to Keith Olbermann; his idealist executive producer and ex MacKenzie (the incredibly foxy Emily Mortimer); and various producers and reporters.

Season 1 starts with McAvoy, an amiable centrist participating in a public political discussion at a university, exploding how both the extreme right and left in America are ridiculous, which lands him in hot water. McAvoy doesn’t want to rock the boat, banking on his reputation of not offending anyone to keep viewers and his position. When his boss hires MacKenzie, he begins to embrace risk to use his position to accomplish something good, which is telling the truth.

In season 2, a huge exclusive story lands on the network, which they vet to the nth degree but discover they got completely wrong, wrecking their credibility.

Sorkin’s characterization and brilliant, lightning-quick dialogue, and tense pacing make the show a joy to watch, but I mostly stayed for the great ideas and an inside like at some important media issues. As with Sorkin’s THE WEST WING, this is primarily a story about work, with the interpersonal drama being the icing on the cake. In THE NEWSROOM, the journalists are presented with respect rather than adoration, and we get a lot of behind-the-scenes situations where telling the truth is neither profitable nor wanted by viewers. After watching two seasons, I don’t know whether I had more hope or less for the fourth estate to do its job as democracy’s watchdog.

CUTTHROATS by Robert Dick

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Robert Dick’s CUTTHROATS is another WW2 tank memoir, this one by a tanker who fought in the Pacific against Imperial Japan, specifically on the islands of Leyte and Okinawa.

With an excellent memory, Dick starts with the attack on Pearl Harbor and resulting training. His stories of Army life in the infantry on the home front are quite funny. Soon, he goes to Hawaii to train to become a tank driver, and then he’s shipped off to fight in the invasion of the Philippines in Tank 60, Company C, which the crew names CUTTHROATS.

On Leyte, the mud bogs down the 30-ton tanks, which struggle to support the infantry in chaotic jungle fighting. More often than not, the tanks served as indirect artillery. On Okinawa, the tanks took a stronger role, blasting enemy infantry out of caves and bunkers while suffering incredible losses from mines, suicidal soldiers with satchel charges, and very effective anti-tank guns. Dick’s tank is equipped with a flamethrower, which during its first attack against a cave ended up nearly setting fire to itself.

While John Irwin’s ANOTHER RIVER, ANOTHER TOWN is a very focused narrative about the savage town-to-town fighting in Germany at the end of WW2 from a tanker’s perspective, Dick’s account is more anecdotal and often action-packed, absurdly humorous, and tragic by turns. A wounded civilian woman with a baby, abandoned out of fear she was being used as bait for enemy fire, a tanker shattered because he couldn’t pull his wounded lieutenant through the escape hatch and had to leave him, harrowing misses by AT guns, souvenir shopping in enemy camps, a Japanese casualty collection hut filled with corpses–Dick’s account is filled with small stories that tell the big story of one man’s war and the war itself.

Overall, CUTTHROATS is an excellent memoir about the life of a tanker in the Pacific in WW2. Recommended for history buffs.

ANOTHER RIVER, ANOTHER TOWN by John Irwin

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John Irwin’s ANOTHER RIVER, ANOTHER TOWN provides a powerful autobiographical account of a teenage tanker during World War 2. It’s a gripping memoir about coming of age in war.

Irwin shows up at the front idealistic and wanting to be a hero fighting the Nazis. A series of mishaps and the brutal fighting during the Allies’ final push into Germany quickly cures him of both. In the end, there is only his desire to survive and not let his fellow tankers down. Through the process, a local misfit boy becomes a man. When the war comes to an abrupt finish after endless combat against SS diehards in one German town after another, there is far more a sense of relief than victory.

In ANOTHER RIVER, ANOTHER TOWN, Irwin provides an engaging memoir about what life was like in a Sherman tank fighting the final months of World War 2. Recommended for history buffs.

SPRING (2014)

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I loved RESOLUTION and THE ENDLESS by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, which were great horror movies that were low on budget but big on character and story, showing Hollywood what’s possible with good storytelling. When I found out they had another film, SPRING, I jumped on it, but found it more a paranormal romance than their usual quality horror. Great for some, but only good for me.

Quickie review, noting it’s a little spoilerly:

In the film, Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) decides to go to Italy after his mother dies, where he meets a stunning and flirtatious woman named Louise (Nadia Hilker). After a one-night stand, Evan becomes enamored with her, but Louise has a secret affliction that is heading to a big transformation. When that all comes out, Evan has to make a choice whether he wants to stay, and Louise has to make a choice whether to be a mortal in love or an immortal without it.

The beautiful scenery, interesting side characters, confident pacing, good dialogue, and overall the growing romance between Evan and Louise, who have real chemistry onscreen, carry the film, but the ending, while giving resolution, fell flat for me. The romance was fun, but I resented Evan asking Louise to give up immortality for him. It’s an incredibly selfish thing to ask, a gift that has to be given without asking.

So in the end, I loved elements of it, and I liked it overall, but the payoff at the end didn’t work for me.

BUSTER’S MAL HEART (2016)

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busterBUSTER’S MAL HEART (2016) is an artsy, surreal mystery about a homeless man named Jonah (Rami Malek) surviving in the mountains by breaking into empty vacation homes. He suffers flashbacks to the family he lost and has visions of being lost at sea.

In the flashbacks, we see Jonah working a barely-making-it night-shift job at a hotel while living with his wife and baby at her parent’s house. Malek shines in portraying a man trying to do the right thing but questioning his life and silently panicking. When a strange drifter shows up (a creepy showing by DJ Qualls) spouting about the Inversion and end of the world, Jonah is alternately hostile to and attracted to the man and his bizarre beliefs, eventually adopting them as his own when he becomes a crazy drifter himself. As the “mountain man,” as the locals call him, Jonah lives in empty vacation homes and calls local radio stations to rant. All while Jonah survives on a boat in the middle of the sea.

This is a really mind-bending film that will likely leave you with more questions than answers. Is the Inversion real? Is the drifter real? What really happened to Jonah’s family? Are the scenes in the boat the past, an alternate present, or a purgatory future? The film is like a puzzle daring you to figure it out.

Overall, I found BUSTER’S MAL HEART a bit slow but well told, excellently acted, and very intriguing. It’s real trip of a film that will have you theorizing and wondering, though I doubt there’s a single right answer as to what it all means.

THE FRONT 3: BERLIN OR BUST Now Available!

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berlin or bustAn airborne operation of German, American, and British paratroopers drop on Berlin in this exciting new episode in the WW2 zombie series, THE FRONT! This is a fun series I’m doing with the great David Moody and Timothy W. Long. You can read it as the third in the series or as a standalone.

While the Battle of the Bulge turns into a bloodbath due to the introduction of a serum designed to create super soldiers but creating flesh-eating zombies, a German paratrooper unit rests in Genoa, Italy after years of hard warfare. They celebrate an announced armistice hours before flying to England to learn the truth: Germany has collapsed due to the spread of these monsters, and they must work with their former enemies to drop on Berlin and recover a pure sample of the Overman serum.

What follows is an inside look at how the elite German paratroopers fought and their bloody homeward mission to recover the Overman serum before all Europe falls.

Realistic combat and depictions of the German Fallschirmjager, plus zombies, makes for some fun, action-packed reading.

Check it out here.