… to the Jean Cocteau.<br/><br/>Opening this Friday, July 24, we have PIXELS, for all of you who remember the videogames of your youth.<br/><br/><lj-embed id=”577″/><br/><br/>Adam Sandler. Peter Dinklage. PacMan. Looks like a hoot and a half.<br/><br/>See you at the movies.
FURY ROAD is doing great business at the Cocteau… and, indeed, all over Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the country. I saw it myself last night. It has got to be one of the most relentless action movies ever made, if not THE most intense. Pretty much non-stop from beginning to end.
I’ve often said that the climatic chase sequence at the end of THE ROAD WARRIOR was the best car chase scene ever put on film (it’s what DAMNATION ALLEY should have been, as I once told Roger Zelazny — who agreed). Well, FURY ROAD is the ROAR WARRIOR chase sequence with the dial turned up… not just to 11, but to 47 or some such.
Truth be told, I sometimes get bored during car chases. Not this one. It has a human context that gives it a power lacking in FAST & FURIOUS and TRANSFORMERS movies.
So, yes, I liked this one. A lot.
One thing I did miss, however. THE ROAD WARRIOR (a great film) and BEYOND THUNDERDOME (a good film with flaws) both ended with wonderful, moving, elegiac voice overs. The one from THUNDERDOME always brings a tear to my eye.
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FURY ROAD has no similar elegy at the end. I missed that… the poetry of it, and the sense of triumph and tragedy that it left me with, a feeling that elevated the movie into myth.
Even so, it’s a helluva movie.
See it at the Cocteau, if you can. (We’ll be showing it for two more weeks, at least). But see it somewhere, regardless.
Mad Max is coming to Santa Fe this weekend.
The long awaited fourth movie, MAD MAX:FURY ROAD, opens this weekend in hundreds of theatres acrpss the nation. One of them is our own Jean Cocteau Cinema.
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Most places will open the film on Friday, but we’re getting a jump of them with two Thursday night sneaks, one at 7:30 and one at 10:00 pm. As an extra added attraction, we will have Max’s car, the last of the V8 Interceptors, on hand outside the Cocteau THURSDAY and FRIDAY only.
Max himself may also be on hand, along with his old buddy the Gyro Captain (who isn’t in the new movie, I realize, but what the hell, he’s my favorite character).
You can buy advance tickets on line at the Cocteau website: http://www.jeancocteaucinema.com/buy-tickets/
And with every advance ticket, you get a FREE POPCORN!
We have the best popcorn in town, by the way. Organic, popped in su
So come see Max at the Jean Cocteau. I’ll see you there.
A cool new documentary opening tonight at the Cocteau: THE WRECKING CREW.
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Now that's MY kind of music.
See you at the movies.
LATER: Just got back from THE WRECKING CREW. Great, just great. Made me want to put on my old albums.
Say what you want, old codgers from the Greatest Gen. Say what you want, Generation Xers and Millenials. The truth cannot be denied. Us Boomers had the best music.
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This will be a great weekend at the Jean Cocteau Cinema.
PETER S. BEAGLE and his travelling show return tonight, with THE LAST UNICORN.
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We have one screening tonight (Friday) at 6:00, and two tomorrow at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm. Peter will be introducing each screening personally, and fielding your questions afterwards. He’ll also be on hand to sign copies of his original novel, and many of other classic works. If you missed him last year when he passed through, don’t make the same mistake again. And if you were here last year, well, come again.
In between the two Saturday screenings of THE LAST UNICORN, we’ll be showing THE SALVATION a new western in the classic tradition, starring Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green.
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Come Sunday, ELLEN DATLOW will be here with new anthology, THE DOLL COLLECTION.
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Ellen will be joined by two of her authors, Jeffrey Ford and Stephen Graham Jones. We’ll have readings from the book, an interview, a question-and-answer, and of course Ellen, Jeff, and Stephen will all be available to sign their books.
All that… and our CREEPY DOLL CONTEST! Check back here on Monday to see the winners.
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The unicorns are coming! The unicorns are coming! (Back)
Yes, Peter S. Beagle is returning to the Jean Cocteau Cineman this weekend, and he’s bringing THE LAST UNICORN with him once again.
Peter visited us last year, and we had one of our most successful days ever at the Cocteau, with three sold-out screenings and a great signing. So we figured, hell, let’s do it again.
We’ll be screening THE LAST UNICORN at 6pm on Friday, March 13, and at 2pm and 7pm on Saturday, March 14. Advance tickets can be purchased through our website at http://www.jeancocteaucinema.com/
And of course Peter will be on hand in person, to answer questions, sign books and posters and videos, and tell his stories. (He tells wonderful stories. In person, and in print).
Come join us!
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Opening tonight at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, we have KIDNAPPING MR. HEINEKEN, an offbeat crime drama based on a true story and featuring the redoubtable Anthony Hopkins.
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We are also holding over the classic Cocteau BEAUTY AND THE BEAST… the film that helped to inspire the TV show that I wrote for in the 80s, and the name of my theatre as well. Last chance to catch that one. If you’ve never it on the big screen, you’re missing something. The film has been beautifully restored.
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[“There is a girl who goes between the worlds.”
“You can buy anything you might desire from Gray Alys. But it is better not to.”
“When he finally died, Shawn found to her shame that she could not even bury him.”
Some of my younger fans and readers may not realize that my career did not begin with A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. Truth be told, I had been a professional writer for twenty years before I typed the first lines of the as-yet-untitled story that would grow to become A GAME OF THRONES. I had published four novels and half-a-dozen collections, won the Hugo and the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award, written science fiction, horror, and high fantasy.
Most of it in the form of short stories.
The lines above were the openings of three of those short stories:
— “The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr,”
— “In the Lost Lands,”
— “Bitterblooms.”
“Laren Dorr” is the oldest of the tales, and probably counts as my first foray into high fantasy. It is a deeply romantic tale, a reworking of a character that I had originally five years earlier, for a story in a comic fanzine that never appeared. I had the notion that I would write a whole series of tales about Sharra, the girl who goes between the worlds. Never got around to that, alas, but in 1992 I revived the concept for another dangerous young woman with the same power — Cat, heroine of my failed ABC pilot DOORWAYS.
“In the Lost Lands” was supposed to launch a series as well. I had in mind a series of loosely connected tales about the enigmatic witch woman Gray Alys, and those who were brave or foolish or desperate enough to treat with her. But I never wrote that second story.
“Bitterblooms” was science fiction rather than fantasy, set on a distant planet in the far far future, and part of my Thousand Worlds sequence… albeit somewhat tangentially. There is a starship in the story, but it’s a derelict, no longer capable of flight. The setting is a world locked in the grip of a deep winter, a winter that lasts for years.
“Laren Dorr” was published in 1976, “Bitterblooms” in 1977, “In the Lost Lands” in 1982. Old work, certainly, but I was always fond of those three stories, and of the three women who starred as the protagonists: Sharra, Gray Alys, and Shawn of Carinhall. None of the stories had anything to do with A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, of course, nor even with each other… but a careful reader can find hints and shadows and seeds of many of the ideas that would later bloom in Westeros in each of them. Still, even so, they remained obscure, known only to a few.
But maybe not for much longer. The German filmmaker CONSTANTIN WERNER, a director, producer, and screenwriter whose previous credits include PAGAN QUEEN, BETTIE PAGE: DARK ANGEL, and DEAD LEAVES (you can learn more about him from his IMDB page, here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1127897/ ) optioned the three stories a few years back, and has woven them together into a screenplay, under the title IN THE LOST LANDS.
And now the project appears to be moving toward production, with the exciting new that Myriad Pictures has signed MILLA JOVOVICH to play Gray Alys.
Milla is best known to science fiction fans for her starring turns in FIFTH ELEMENT, RESIDENT EVIL, and ULTRAVIOLET. Constantin tells me she’s a big GAME OF THRONES fan too. It’s a thrill to have her be a part of this, and I will look forward to seeing her bring Gray Alys to life. (Maybe I will be so inspired that I’ll finally write those other Gray Alys stories… but no, not until I finish A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, calm down, friends).
For more details about IN THE LOST LANDS, check out the reports in the trades:
http://variety.com/2015/film/news/milla-jovoich-in-the-lost-lands-casting-berlin-1201421451/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/milla-jovovich-final-talks-star-769165
http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/berlin/european-film-market/myriad-heads-to-efm-with-in-the-lost-lands/5082573.article
JUSTIN CHATWIN will also star in the film, a German-Canadian co-production scheduled to film in Germany. More casting to come, of course.
If any of you would like to read the three original stories, you can find them all in my massive collection GRRM: A RRETROSPECTIVE, also published as DREAMSONGS.
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Congratulations to GILLIAN FLYNN. Her story "What Do You Do?" from ROGUES has been nominated for an Edgar Award by the members of the Mystery Writers of America.
It's a terrific story, and Gillian is an amazing writer. Gardner Dozois and I are very proud to have had the honor of publishing it.
Fingers crossed for Gillian to bring home the head of Edgar Allan Poe when the MWA gives them out at the end of April.
For a full list of this year's Edgar nominees, go to http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html
If you'd like to read "What Do You Do?" — and a lot of other great stories about con men, scalawags, ne'er do wells, cads, scoundrels, and their disreputable brothers and sisters — ROGUES is available from your local bookstore or favorite online bookseller. And you can snag a signed copy (signed by me, not Gillian, alas) from the Jean Cocteau Cinema at http://www.jeancocteaubooks.com/
Congratulations also to the amazing and talented SOPHIE TURNER, our very own Sansa Stark, who has just landed the plum role of Jean Grey in the next X-MEN movie.
Yes, THAT Jean Grey. Marvel Girl. Phoenix. Dark Phoenix. One of the most iconic.. and most powerful… characters in the Marvel universe.
I first met Jean Grey in the first issue of the X-MEN, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced them back in the 1960s. I first met Sophie when when we were shooting the pilot of GAME OF THRONES. This is a casting made in comic book heaven. It brings out the old fanboy in me, the kid who used to write letters that began "Dear Stan and Jack."
Sophie will be terrific.
'Nuff said.
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Let's turn from the latest cheating scandal involving the New England Patriots to a much more pleasant subject: breasts.
It is completely legal and acceptable for men to go shirtless in public throughout the United States. But in many states and cities, women do not have the same right. And heaven forfend there should be a "wardrobe malfunction" during the SuperBowl or similar event that exposes the country to a brief split-second glimpse of a female nipple (actually a pastie, but don't confuse us with facts). GAME OF THRONES is often slammed for showing too many breasts as well. As are other cable shows. And of course you can't show them at all on broadcast television.
Only in America. Why do so many people in this country go mad at the sight of a nipple?
Anyway, this Friday at the Jean Cocteau we are screening FREE THE NIPPLE, the docudrama about the women who led the fight for nipple equality in New York City.
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New Mexico is not New York, of course… but our Cocteau staff will be appropriately clad to honor the fearless women who are the subject of the movie.
And we'll have Nipple-cakes too!
See you at the movies.
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