The Good Dinosaur (a movie review post)

Dinosaurs were my first great love, from the moment I saw my very first one sometime around the age of four. Maybe three. I was instantly fascinated with them, and it was my goal for about 10 years to be a paleontologist when I grew up. But that's a story for another time.

Dinosaur movies, though, are not that fascinating. Inevitably, like in The Land Before Time, dinosaur movies deal with the dinosaur apocalypse and one small group trying to get to safety. So it was that The Good Dinosaur promised to be something different. A movie where the dinosaurs don't suffer an apocalypse. A movie where they live. A movie about what might have happened if they had not become extinct.

Unfortunately, that moment from the trailer, that moment when the asteroid misses Earth and the dinosaurs don't die, that moment happens with the opening credits and is over in a few minutes. The movie goes downhill from there. Downhill into being nothing original or new at all. It's just a weird hybrid of Ice Age (deliver the human baby to other humans), The Lion King, and a bunch of other stuff you've already seen.

That said, the animation, the background animation, is amazing. It's so amazing that at times I questioned whether it was CGI or not. The dinosaurs, though, are cartoony, and don't really fit their environment. They stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

The other good thing is Sam Elliot as Butch, the cowboy T-Rex. The whole thing with the T-Rexes as cowboys and the Raptors as rustlers was fairly amusing, and Elliot is the cowboy. I mean, you can't really get more cowboy than Elliot. It just oozes out of his voice.

But that's about it for the good.

The problem is that Pixar should have just let this movie die. When you have to, essentially, fire the guy who came up with the idea because he can't put the story together, you should start to re-think whether you should be making that movie. When, after doing the voice recording for the entire movie, you decide to re-write the script and re-record everything, you need to be re-thinking whether this is a movie you should be doing. Then, when you decide to dump virtually all of the voice actors and replace them, you really need to be thinking about whether this is a movie you should be doing. The Good Dinosaur was not a movie Pixar should have been doing.

I suppose I'm glad I saw the movie. Well, I am. It is a Pixar movie, and I wouldn't have been able to deal with just not seeing it, but, then, I wish I hadn't seen it. I certainly won't be buying it. It's the first legitimate failure from Pixar. There's no "Pixar" quality to it at all. It's mediocre at best, just as a movie, but, from Pixar, it's a disappointment. Completely.

Epitaph (a book review post)

When I was a kid, before I discovered dinosaurs (which I did at the age of four), the very first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. My grandfather had cows on his farm, so I figured that made him a cowboy, and that's what I wanted to be. Imagine my surprise when I got to my American history class in high school and learned that the term "cowboy" became popularized and associated with the west because of a band of rustlers operating in Arizona in the 1880s know as the Cow Boys. Yeah, you heard me; the Cow Boys were the bad guys.

Interestingly enough, it was these same Cow Boys who would create the enduring legacy of Wyatt Earp and, by extension, Doc Holliday. Wyatt Earp, who was possibly the ultimate frontier lawman... right up until he wasn't.

Of course, there are those who would argue that he was never a lawman, just an outlaw posing as one, but, mostly, those are the outlaws who accused him of that. Or men like Johnny Behan, and we know Behan was crooked, so it makes his accusations a little less believable.

At any rate, Epitaph is not really a book about Wyatt Earp. Which is not to say that it's not a book about Wyatt Earp, because it is. Mostly, though, it's about the conditions that lead up the shootout that was not actually at the O.K. Corral and the fallout after it. The enduring legacy it created.

The temptation, here, is to get into the history of it, but that's in the book. To say that Mary Doria Russell is a meticulous researcher is probably an understatement. We'll say instead that I trust her research. And, sure, I'm biased and, sure, this is historical fiction, but I believe the facts are mostly in place and the suppositions logically follow from the facts.

That said, it's Russell's ability to allow the reader to walk along with her characters that is her greatest asset. And that's where her research really shows, I think. She writes as if she knows these people, as if she spent time with them, as witnessed these things herself. It creates a completely believable world.

Basically, I can't recommend this book or Russell more highly. And, although this is a companion piece to Doc, Doc is not required reading; Epitaph is not a sequel.

Whether you think Wyatt Earp walked with the angels or the demons (and it's not unreasonable to suspect either considering that he was never shot; even when his clothes ended up full of bullet holes, he never received a wound), this book is worth reading for the insight on the situation. The incident "at" the O.K. Corral formed a view of the Old West that has never been shaken, one of showdowns and street fights that never really existed. And maybe that's okay, because it's the legends we look up to and aspire to be. Parts of me still want to be a cowboy.

Just Exactly How Life Looks (a book review post)

It can sometimes be difficult to review a collection of short stories. Especially when the stories are not linked together with a strong central them, the temptation can be to review each story individually, and that's not really helpful in answering the question of "should I buy this collection?" I will admit, though, that that is the temptation I'm having here. So I'm going to approach it another way entirely...

"The Death of the Second-hand Cowboy"

This is a great story. It's almost worth the cost of the whole collection. Not quite but almost. It deals with the rather metaphysical question of what an author (or a creator) owes to his characters (or his creation). Possibly, it's because of being an author but the idea of, basically, turning around and being confronted by one of my characters demanding to know what the heck I'm doing with him is... Well, I don't know if I would want that.

I mean, what if it was the cop from Shadow Spinner? How could I even answer the "Why?" that I'm sure would be his question. Because the story demanded it? Would that work for you if it was you asking "Why?"

Or, even worse, what if it was Tom from The House on the Corner? And that may seem an odd one for those of you have read House, but you don't know what's coming for him, and I do, and, if I was him, I would want to know why. Why him. And I don't know if those things can be explained.

So this idea of the Second-hand Cowboy showing up in the author's living room and wanting to know why is really intriguing and really frightening. And the most interesting part (at least to me) is that the author never attempts to blame anyone else even though he could very legitimately have done so.

It's a really good story.

The rest of the stories are of variable quality. One thing Pagel periodically suffers from is a lack of focus. A lack of focus can be used to good effect when it's being used purposefully to achieve that effect but, when the lack of focus ends up being just a lack of focus, it means that it's just a blurry word picture without any real discernible meaning. A few of the stories in this collection feel like that to me, like they almost say something, but they just weren't drawn together well enough to really get the message through (and I don't mean message in the sense of a moral, just message as the story itself).

Having said that, there are a few other very nice stories in this collection, "voices" in particular. Not actually knowing what it's like to be blind, I think Pagel did a good job of capturing living through sound. Also, "Panorama." I was unsure of this story until I got to the end, but it's very touching and, I think, really captures the subject matter. "Thinking the Lions" is one I probably like more than I should. It's probably a bit out of focus, but I really like the concept he's working with and, actually, think it could have been longer.

So, as I said, "The Death of the Second-hand Cowboy" is almost worth the cost, but, with 10 other stories, there's probably something else in there that will make it pay off for you. It's definitely worth a look.

And, because it's me, I have to touch on the technicals. This one came out back before Pagel really began taking an interest in editing, and it shows. Mostly, it's in the commas, which are all over the place, but there are various other things, too, along with some formatting issues. The commas, though, are probably not something that will be an issue for most people. Actually, probably the only thing anyone else will notice are the formatting errors as the paragraph indentations do sort of wave at you.