by Melinda Snodgrass | Mar 27, 2016 | About Writing, Blog, TV & Movies
I’ve done a lot of adaptations. It’s a tricky skill, but fun. You have to take from the underlying material the essential themes, the emotional sense of the work, keep the characters relatively intact, but be willing to make changes because film and print are two different mediums and they tell stories in different ways. The emotional impact is ultimately the same, but how you get there is different. You have to know what to cut and what to expand. Right now I’m watching...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Mar 20, 2016 | TV & Movies
I just finished watching Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace back to back. Guess what — Quantum isn’t a bad movie. The problem was that it was the second half of a movie that got broken into two parts. Quantum seems to pick up like one day after the end of Royale, but for viewers two years had passed and by then we’d forgotten a lot of the details. Bond is killing his way through people as he tries to find out who was behind Vesper’s death, but his rage and obsession...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Feb 4, 2016 | TV & Movies
Tuesday night George and I were having a long conversation via text. (Yes, Mr. Wordstar is a texting monster. He’s the reason I had to go with unlimited texting.) Truthfully we should have just picked up the phone and talked, but oh well. Anyway, GRRM wanted to know if I had watched the latest episode of The Flash yet. I hadn’t because of the time difference between L.A. and Santa Fe, but we ended up talking about how the Star Labs Scooby gang keep locking people up in the basement in...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Feb 1, 2016 | TV & Movies
After writing for most of yesterday and staying warm while the rain and wind battered the house I decided to spend the evening on a movie binge. Guardians of the Galaxy was on followed by Avengers — Ultron. Boy is Guardians a _much_ better movie than Ultron. There was a seed of a good movie in among all the endless and often pointless action sequences in Ultron, but it gasped and died under the weight of the CGI action. I noticed something else. When Whedon thinks something is going...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jan 13, 2016 | TV & Movies
I went over to the Cinépolis last night for a second watch of The Force Awakens, and I’m ready to discuss the movie. There are going to be a SPOILERS so if you hate SPOILERS and if for some reason you haven’t managed to see this film yet don’t read anymore because there are going to be SPOILERS!!!!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! I had seen the film on opening day with Len Wein and Chris Valada. As with the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek film I liked the “feel” of the movie. What I hadn’t expected...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 17, 2015 | TV & Movies
I have really enjoyed the first two Hunger Games films. Jennifer Lawrence proves forever lays to rest the argument that women can’t be action heroes. Her portrayal of Katniss Everdeen is fierce and powerful. I wanted to be ready for the final installment of the franchise so I streamed Mockingjay Part 1 to the XBox and gave it a watch. They should have made one really long movie rather then break it up. I understand why they did — the financial incentives to milk this for all...
