Updates abound! More essays, more photos & artwork, new short stories, a novel drawing ever closer to completion, and to top it all off, in an effort to avoid creditors and ex-girlfriends (or maybe just because I’m lazy), I done grown a beard. More Wesley Wyndam-Pryce than Grizzly Adams, no worries there. Not sure how long I’ll keep it (and really, who cares, right?), but I thought I’d try something new. Yeah, I know you’re all enthralled. Chris already laughed when I told him, and Jake thinks I should go more for the Episode Two Obi-Wan look, but that’s a little too fanboy for me. And no, I won’t be posting any photos. I wouldn’t do that to y’all. Even just writin about this kind of shtuff puts me into spitting distance of blog country, and we all know how much I like that. This ain’t no live journal (or dead journal, for that matter); I don’t post the list of the books/dvds I own so you can all marvel at how much I own; I don’t talk about anything overtly personal that doesn’t relate to writing (sometimes the connections are tenuous, but they’re there); and I don’t post pics of the cats or the girlfriend or, sweet Lizzie Borden, the beard. Most of you reading this are writers, so just use your imaginations. Now, onward:
Before my website traffic blew a fuse at Rogers last month, I had planned a series of book and movie reviews leading up to Halloween. It’s one month late, but here it is. Enjoy.
The Nightmare That Is Dreamcatcher (and other stupid puns)
Dreamcatcher
Starring Morgan Freeman, Tom Sizemore, Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, and Donnie Wahlberg
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Screenplay by William Goldman & Lawrence Kasdan
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Dreamcatcher is a movie that can’t quite decide what it wants to be. Even as an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, it only qualifies as being partially faithful to the source material (nothing new there). The result is an off-balance collection of snippets from other, more successful movies that strives hard to form a cogent narrative but ends up bursting at the seams like an overripe alien head.
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill) from a screenplay by William Goldman (The Princess Bride, Misery), and featuring a cast of veteran regulars (Morgan Freeman, Tom Sizemore) and up-and-coming relatively-unknowns (Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Thomas Jane, Timothy Olyphant), the film would seem to have blockbuster written all over it – and Dreamcatcher does have its moments. Unfortunately, that’s all it has.
The story focuses on four friends who, as kids, befriended a mentally handicapped boy named "Duddits." Together they performed a heroic act and, as a result, each was blessed (or cursed) with a supernatural gift. As adults, the men lead sedentary lives (Same shit, different day is but one of their many maxims) and find their only solace in a yearly hunting trip in the woods of Maine. Unfortunately, their plans are interrupted this time around when a hunter sporting a strange growth stumbles upon their group. This growth, which looks like red fungus (called Ripley, "after the tough broad in those alien movies"), soon gives birth to one of the aptly-named "shit weasels" – an Alien-esque chestburster that takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque and comes out the victim’s ass.
The shit weasels are but a small part of a huge alien plan to contaminate the entire world. The four men and their preternatural connection with Duddits is the only thing that stands in the way of their conquest – that and the Blueboy UFO clean-up team headed by a slightly wacko Morgan Freeman and a mostly nonchalant Tom Sizemore.
The film is not great, but features some memorable moments, such as the military attack on the crashed UFO, and a tranquil sequence where various forest animals parade through the
winter wilderness. Sadly, the film degrades into Hollywood–style grandstanding and over-the-top CGI that all but screams "For your Oscar consideration." And a surprise (and stupid) twist in the final act will have fans of the book shaking their heads.
People say the book is always better than the movie, and in the case of Dreamcatcher, I’m inclined to agree. While the book told an interesting story with strong, likeable characters, Dreamcatcher the movie is an unfortunate case of SSDD.
(I had a difficult time coming up with a title for this review that didn’t harp on the blatantly obvious wordplay inherent to a movie titled Dreamcatcher. Some of these gems included:
King’s Dreamcatcher A Real Nightmare
King’s Dreamcatcher Won’t Give You Nightmares
Dreamcatcher Won’t Keep You Up At Night
Ian