Spoilers ahead for The X-Files: I Want To Believe. But to be honest, I’m not really spoiling much.

Why? you may ask. Because the movie is shite.

Yes, folks, I have to tell you I freakin’ hated the new X-Files movie. I am a huge fan of the show, I’ve been waiting patiently (and passionately) for this movie, but I have to report that it is terrible.. it is deplorable… it is bile spewed from a liver-eating mutant.

It’s bad.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge X-Files fan. When I worked for CFRB on a UFO-themed radio show, playing devil’s advocate to, well, everyone, I was ranked to the dogs and back on a weekly basis by listeners (i.e., believers) who called me Agent Scully. And not because I’m a hot redhead, dig? That’s fanlove, baby. My wife, she’s in love with Fox Mulder. Not David Duchovny. Fox Mulder. Maybe not so much after tonight. That’s fine by me; maybe now I’ll finally get some attention.

Anyway, this is my long-winded way of saying that I went into this movie wanting to like it. I read the negative reviews and dismissed them. As much as I love the horror/sf/fantasy industry, I know that the fans tend be a fickle bunch, and I figured they were just being picky. That’s what fanboys do. Sometimes they nitpick because they hated the move, but sometimes they do it because they liked it, but you know, it’s not cool to say you like things, so you have criticize it to show that you’re superior to the material (“The Dark Knight” was okay, but if I directed it…). Having said that, the negative reviews are spot on. I cannot argue with them. Not a one.

Okay, so I have to tell you why this movie was bad. That’s easy: it was bad in every way. It was nice to see Mulder and Scully back together again, but that’s where it ended. The moment they opened their mouths or started following the clues through the tepid plot (such as it is), I turned off. It takes more than nods to Mulder’s sunflower-seed addiction or pencils in the ceiling to reactivate my fanlove. I kept waiting for something to pop, something to spark, something to remind me of why I love The X-Files, but it never happened. Even in the final moments I was waiting for some action, but it never happened. With the exception of a chase scene through a construction site, there is really no action at all in the movie.

As much as I like Mulder and Scully as a couple, it only worked in the final moment of the final episode. It doesn’t work when we t see them snuggling and kissing and saying “I love you.” It just doesn’t. That’s not what made these characters work individually much less together as partners. They should have left all of that behind with the TV show and continued their relationship as a strictly working one. All the talk about darkness and escaping it together made me want to cut my own head off and have it sewn onto the body of a dog.

Oh yeah. That.

Remember how Chris Carter et al. had been saying that this was going to be one of their classic Monster of the Week–style stories? Mmmmm-not quite. There are no aliens, sure, no super-soldiers, but… there’s no monster, either. I have to repeat: NO MONSTER. None. Why couldn’t they do a werewolf story or something? Anything! No, what we get are a couple of Russian organ thieves working toward some grand experiment that never happens. Mulder gets attacked by a two-headed dog, and although he’s unarmed he’s somehow able to disable the mutt, but that’s as close as we get to a monster. Unless they mean human monsters in the form of the Russian scientists, or the psychic priest who also happens to be a paedophile, which provides a too-convenient way to discredit his abilities. Laaaame.

I thought it was somewhat interesting to see Scully working in a Catholic hospital, but I still felt something was missing. Then my wife summed it up perfectly for me: “She was okay, but I miss Morgue Scully.” That’s what I missed, too. Scully up to her elbows in a dead body, not saving the life of a sick boy who looks like the live-action version of the orphan kid from The Simpsons. All he need was the hacking cough. Awful, awful, awful.

Oh man, how I wanted to like this movie. I am so easy to please, which is why I make such a lousy critic. I tend to enjoy most of the movies I see, or at least find parts of them enjoyable. I’m just a positive guy by nature. I’m easily amused. But I can’t be positive about this. It’s like someone had a decent X-Files movie and then took one of the giant stem-cell needles featured in the film and sucked all the good stuff out of it.

The truth is out there, and I have no doubt that a good X-Files movie is also out there, but this isn’t it. This isn’t even close.

They really should have gone with the aliens.

I’ve got two new stories out right now. Both are non-genre pieces, which is kind of exciting for me since I like showing people that, while I stick mostly to horror, I also write other kinds of stories.

“Camp Zombie” in Broken Pencil #40 is about an unusual summer camp for kids with sleep disorders. It’s actually one of three stories I wrote that made up what I call my “Sleep Cycle,” tales about people dealing with various sleep disorders. I used to suffer some pretty bad insomnia when I lived on my own in Toronto, and it ended up seeping into my fiction.

I remember back about ten years when Broken Pencil used to review my old movie zines and Dr. Pork comics. Now they’re publishing one of my stories. “Camp Zombie” will also reprinted in a best of Broken Pencil anthology coming out next year.

I don’t tend to discuss the money side of things, but I have to say I was a bit surprised at how much I was paid for this story. Considering the range of payment BP offers, I expected to get much less for something that was only 3,000 words long. Not that I’m complaining. I ended making more than I got for pretty much every horror story I ever sold.

The other story I have out is called “The Kid Pool.” You can read this one online in The Written Word. It’s about an unusual office pool that takes place during a hockey strike. Although I’m a proud Canadian, I think this was the first time hockey actually worked its way into one of my stories. I guess it had to happen eventually.

Anyway, I hope you’ll check out these stories, and if you do, I hope you enjoy them.

• Currently reading: Coyote Blue, by Christopher Moore

There was a bit of a brouhaha earlier this week over a blog posting Michael Cisco made regarding Prime Books. Some people believe an author is not supposed to be discussing these kinds of things publicly. But then, how are other writers, especially those just starting out, supposed to know which publishers they should work with, and which ones they shouldn’t? Especially if your experience was a bad one, why shouldn’t you be allowed to talk about it? It’s not like the writer is a former Area 51 employee who has signed a non-disclosure agreement on penalty of life imprisonment or death. The question of whether or not it’s “bad form” to post about these things is going to differ based on who you ask. Some other writers have already weighed in with comments and experiences of their own:

Nathan Ballingrud

Elizabeth Bear

Leah Bobet

Gemma Files

Prime Books (Sean Wallace) responds

Paul G. Tremblay, a very fine writer, posted a response that also included advice on dealing with publishers in general, along with some good information on contracts and print-on-demand.

Unrelated, but here are some other interesting links:

Winners announced in the 14th ChiZine/Leisure Short Story Contest

Nick Hornby on e-books

Thomas F. Monteleone on finding time to write

In other news, I’ve recently been tasked to photograph a friend’s wedding in a few weeks. Although I like to think of myself as a decent photographer, this is something I almost never do. In fact, I’ve only done it once, for Kat’s older sister, and although the pictures turned out well and the newlyweds were happy with them, it was a stressful experience because I was constantly worried about screwing up.

Still, I’m pretty excited because it will be a low-key wedding on a farm full of barn cats. I suggested to the couple that they need not hired waiters to truck around food; they merely have to tie platters to the backs of the cats and have them circulate around. Cheaper and cuter. Kat and I went to scope out the farm last night. Here’s a pic:

I also finished the re-write of that story I mentioned earlier this week. I’ll be sending it off to my readers later today, and then back to the magazine to see if I can win them over this time.

Oh, and in closing, I was thinking of The Dark Knight again the other day, specifically a line from the Joker when he crashes the “group therapy session” held by the various mob groups. “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” Although he is speaking in reference to killing the Batman, I thought his words also applied to the debate among writers regarding non-paying markets.

Of course, the Joker’s a psychopathic murderer, but still…

Not much to report lately, except that I’ve taken a short break from the novel to work on a short story rewrite request that I received from a market I’ve been trying to crack for years.

I watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog and The Dark Knight on the weekend. Both were excellent, though I felt the ending of TDK was a bit more satisfying. TDK has been reviewed on many other blogs, so I probably won’t be posting a full review here. I will say that I liked the movie a lot and feel it’s a good companion piece to Batman Begins. I liked that although TDK is a Batman movie, and Batman is in it, he is but one of many players. I was surprised, in a good way, by how much screentime the supporting cast received. With its view of the inner workings of organized crime, the mayor’s and district attorney’s offices, it really gave the film a feeling of an epic crime story. Like Heat if it took place in Gotham City.

Here are some other things I liked (possible spoilers):

1. Using the same director/actors/crew/etc. gave the film a definitely feeling of And now the second chapter of Batman…. Even the way they saved the title and credits until the end of the film.

2. I liked that even though they explained Batman’s origins in Batman Begins, they didn’t immediately jump ahead to the current, more established version in this movie. I’m guessing TDK takes place between six months to a year after the events in BB, and it shows in the fact that Scarecrow is still running around (a nice little cameo by Cillian Murphy), and Batman is still wearing his Version 1.0 armor, driving the Tumbler, etc.

3. The Bat-Pod. Our theatre was packed with people who had some serious Batman fever. The moment the Bat-Pod came shooting out of the wreck of the Tumbler, people were applauding! They applauded again later when Gordon turned out to be alive, and then saved Batman’s life. (Great line from the Joker, too, holding a knife over an unconscious Batman: “Can you give me just one minute?”)

4. Heath Ledger as The Joker. What else needs to be said? Everything about his performance was great. Great intro (that opening laugh, the disappearing pencil, “I’m not crazy. I’m *not* crazy”), great make-up, great upside down conversation with Batman at the end. “You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won’t kill you because… you’re just too much fun.”

5. The ending. Even though Batman has a working relationship with Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham police, I’ve never really thought of him as a superhero in the strictest sense. I liked Gordon explaining to his son at the end of the film why Batman is running away: “Because we’ll have to chase him.” Then going on to explain the difference between a “hero” and a “dark knight.” I wasn’t expecting it, and it was nice touch, showing that after all the hell the Joker raised things will not be going back to normal any time soon in Gotham City.

Sure, it’s a dark ending, but then it is The Dark Knight.

• Currently reading: The Dain Curse, by Dashiell Hammett

On this day in 1945, the U.S. detonated the very first atom bomb.

This may not seem writing-related, but it actually does have some bearing on my novel, which I’m really due to talk about sometime on this website.

Until then, Happy Nuke Day!

After reading John Hughes’ “Vacation ‘58″ in the new issue of Zoetrope: All-Story, I decided to re-watch the movie it spawned. Who can forget classic family moments like this one:

COUSIN VICKI: I’m going steady. And I french kiss.

AUDREY: So? Everybody does that.

COUSIN VICKI: Yeah, but Daddy says I’m the best at it.

Snap!

Yes, that John Hughes. The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Planes Trains & Automobiles, Uncle Buck, and yes, ugh, Home Alone.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a new John Hughes movie, and while I don’t know what he’s been doing with all of his time, I can tell you he has a short story called “Vacation ‘58″ in the latest issue of Zoetrope: All-Story. It’s not a new story, but rather a reprint that originally appeared in National Lampoon, and was purchased on publication by Warner Bros. and turned into the first of the Vacation movies. Hughes wrote the screenplay, although he had never even seen one before, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The story has a pretty funny opening line: “If Dad hadn’t shot Walt Disney in the leg, it would have been our best vacation ever!”

This issue of Zoetrope has a couple of other excellent stories — “The Invisibles,” by Marissa Perry, and “A Small Haunting,” by Shaena Lambert. Check it out.

• Currently reading: Forty Words for Sorrow, by Giles Blunt

Just received word that my Cape Breton ghost story, “Leaves Brown,” has been accepted for the new Ash-Tree Press anthology Shades of Darkness.

Over the years Ash-Tree has put out a number of excellent anthologies, like Acquainted With The Night and At Ease With The Dead, and I’m very excited to have one of my stories in their next collection.