3-D or Not 3-D?

I love it when things are done for the right reasons, especially when it exposes things that are done to the contrary. There's a reason, for instance, why DreamWorks Animation's "Megamind" is still at the top of the box office this week: because it delivers what it promises -- an entertaining movie with brilliant 3-D effects put to use for the sake of the effect and not to fatten the wallets of the studio executives. I have to say that I was more than a little annoyed a few weeks ago when Warner Bros. announced that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I" would not be released in 3-D due to the studio's inability to make the 3-D transfer in time. Were they implying that Warner Bros. was willing to stoop so low as to use one of its most beloved movie franchises to squeeze out a few more bucks at the ticket window when the movie could have in fact been released in 2-D all along?

I'm at the point now where I believe that 3-D technology should be reserved for CGI animation only, where the effect can be used to its maximum potential to create a true virtual world from scratch on the screen. Otherwise, with the exception of movies like James Cameron's "Avatar," where the live-action film is shot using 3-D technology, I can't help but feel like I'm being ripped off over and over again. I'm talking to you, "Clash of the Titans," and to you, "Alice in Wonderland," and to you, Wes Craven's "My Soul to Take," where I spent most of the movie with the glasses on top of the same bald head I was scratching.

Going to a movie is always a gamble as far as whether or not you're going to get your money's worth. So why should we now have to add the side bet of whether or not the 3-D we paid to see is going to be worth a shit? Kudos to DreamWorks for keeping up the good and honest work, and shame on Warner Bros. for contributing to the corrosion of my sense of wonder.

First Draft

Well, here it is, the first draft of my third novel, completed today at 1:47 p.m. When I spanked its newborn ass, it had come in at 466 pages and approximately 116,500 words.

But the real work has just begun, as now I get to dive into it red pen first and start sculpting this thing into something that can compete in the market. Admittedly, this second step in the process is my favorite, and this will be the first time that I've written a draft from start to finish without obsessively going back and re-working every page before moving forward. The idea here is that now I should be able to edit the book objectively and take the ride almost as if for the first time, finding out what works and what doesn't, what characters need to be flushed out, and most importantly, if I've been successful in saying what it is that I wanted to say.

Not a bad way to end the week!

"The Human Centipede (First Sequence)" (2009)

I'd first heard about Tom Six's "The Human Centipede (First Sequence)" via Internet buzz, with post after post about how this was the movie that dared the viewer to watch it. With a premise that's simple enough -- a retired Siamese twin surgeon decides to stitch three young people together mouth to anus joined by a common digestive tract -- I think that this movie would have made a much better first-person narrative novel. Perhaps it was the watered-down Wal-Mart version that we were able to get our hands on (it's not the easiest thing to find a video store where I now live in the country), but I still hold the same opinion of the movie that I held before I'd even watched it. I'm sure there's an unrated version out there, but I doubt it would've changed my mind.

If I were to walk up to you and pitch this gruesome idea, wouldn't the image that I've stained onto your mind already be enough? What more would there be to show on screen? And after watching the movie, I kept my resolve on this conclusion. I'm thinking that what would have made this story much more frightening in a psychological horror kind of way would have been to maybe get it from the perspective of "B" -- as she was referred to in the movie -- the middle section of the centipede and according to the demented surgeon (played with unsettling method skill by German actor Dieter Laser), the absolute worse part of the gig. But I don't think we needed him to tell us that.

However, it's still a good-looking piece of work, especially the almost performance-art way in which we see the centipede crawling around the grounds of the post-modern house, joined together like a living sculpture.

Welcome to TedTorres.com

Welcome to my new literary home on the Internet, TedTorres.com!

Here you will find everything you need to know about me and about my work, including information on my books, personal essays, media reviews, and for all of my fellow writers out there, updates on the completion of my new third novel manuscript.

So be sure to check back regularly as I continue to update this site, and thanks again for stopping by!