THE AUSLANDER IS BACK

Good news for the followers of my pulp character, The Auslander (all four of you).

The Amnesiac Austrian returns in "A Taste of Treachery" which can be found in the newest issue of Astonishing Adventures.

It's been a while since the last issue, but the wait was worth it. The layout is much improved and the print edition will be available on Amazon soon. The PDF version, however, is available right here (free). First issue here.

The man known as The Auslander awoke in an American hotel room one day in 1943 with shock white hair, an array of false IDs and no memory of who he was, save for what comes through in his dreams. Those fragments lead him to incidents of stateside Nazi sabotage as they are about to happen and to stop them. In the process, he discovers pieces of his past as a German spymaster.

His greatest fear is that his next mission will trigger the full return of his memory and with that the return of the monster he once was.

Until then, he can only answer the question of who he is in one way.

"Ich bin ein Auslander."

I intend to keep this up for as long as the good folks at Astonishing Adventures will have me (or as long as they can keep it up, being that they're a small operation in it purely for the love of pulp fiction). Hopefully, by then, I'll have enough to publish them all in a book through some on-demand service. It'll look cool on my bookshelf. And it'll be a real collector's item, because there will probably only be two or three in existence.

"NEVER EVER SICK AT SEA"

How do you know when you're an hardcore Aaron Sorkin fan?

When you're the only person in the theater laughing their ass off at the Gilbert and Sullivan reference. And not because it's funny, but because it's a flick written by Sorkin and you knew that there had to be one in it somewhere and there it is. And it's the same reference used in Malice, which comes in one of the most Sorkiny moments of that not-very-Sorkinesque flick.

I had the same concern about Charlie Wilson's War that I did about The Farnsworth Invention. It's material based on actual events and real people and maybe...maybe that is limiting(?). It is not the product of the machine that cranked out Sports Night or The West Wing, and a writer's voice is modulated by the production it goes through.

Well, Farnsworth was dripping with Sorkin. Even the most casual, but reasonably informed, observer would notice that.

Charlie Wilson's War was not so heavy in the voice (certainly not quite as much as his other films), but it was very much there and there were surely a line or two where it just hit you on the head with a congressional gavel. There was a taste of The West Wing, big surprise being set in the halls of Washington (among other places).

I enjoyed the fuck out of it. Gust Avrakotos and Charlie Wilson are characters unlike any Sorkin's taken on before. It also had a M*A*S*Hyness to it, with it's liberal slant and the dramedy aspect. Charlie Wilson, despite being an actual guy, surely has roots in Hawkeye Pierce.

I wonder if Sorkin has ever even seen an episode of M*A*S*H? And if he did, did he like it?

Go ahead Aaron, you can answer in the comments.

And you know, the movie does seem to highlight the how the gap between liberal and conservative has grown and become ridiculous and totally counter-productive.

I was also a little relived that Julia Roberts wasn't actually a massive presence in the movie. Not because I don't like her, I just don't think she was right in this part.

Oh, and Sweeney Todd was cool, despite Anthony Stewart Head only being in it for 2.21067 seconds...and uncredited.

A VERY GRUBER X-MAS

Aye, last night I hit the Die Hard/Bad Santa double feature at the Aero with another noted scribospherian. At first, I failed (in my infinite dull-wittedness) to note they were both Christmas movies, but I also failed to realize, they're both "safe-cracking flicks."

A good time was had by all. This is really such a theater movie. People get into watching this on the big screen, even twenty years later. It's just so well put together. Damn.

I'd never been to the Aero, but it's a nice place with ample free parking and I'm inclined to go back, maybe for Persepolis.

As I am among the few survivors of the holiday plague that causes the L.A. area streets to empty out, my Christmas plans are decidedely non-Christmassy, which is kinda how I roll most holiday times ("how I roll?" WTF izzat?).

Another double feature is on tap, i.e. Sweeney Todd and, of course, Sorkin (Charlie Wilson's War). I just don't know which to start with.

And there will be writing. Lots of writing. The final episode of what is now being called Area Five will go down, if not this extended weekend, by the end of the year. Then, I move on to logistics of shooting my web series. Sets, casting, coding up a site, etc.

I've also got less than a month to get my "Serling competition script" done and sent in. Scarcely big money or massive rep gains, but it's got Rod Serling's name on it, I gotta give a go.

And, a page one rewrite on my Dexter spec, which in the final few episodes of this last season was utterly obliterated. I know your pain, Josh. Fortunately, I'm ready to roll on the same theme, same title, even the same B-plot, but a brand new A-plot. And I think it's going to be better than the previous version, so blessing in bloody disguise.

And with that, may you get what you want when you deactivate the electromagnetic seal under your tree.

And if it's 640 million in bearer bonds, might I prevail upon you for a note or two?

THE END OF THE YEAR IS NIGH...MUST BE TIME FOR A STUPID FUCKING LIST

Every two-bit and even some four-bit critic got their best of the year list, and then there's the default best-of lists, like the Golden Globe nominations (and whatever doubts I may have about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association), the WGA noms (a list of series I just can't much argue with) and the AFI awards. Though I don't know about any awards selected by these guys. -->

So what did I like in 2007, you may be asking yourself. And if you are, you're probably referring to yourself, but I mean me. You make your own list.

Me? I'm forgoing the list. No bullet points for you. I'm going for something a little more conversational, though largely one-sided. Though there is a comment button, I invite you to use it, especially if you disagree with me but also because I'm probably forgetting something, but make no mistake, I am not forgetting Californication.

As evidenced from this post, Doctor Who rocked my TV so hard, it was in danger of breaking the DVR and knocking some things off the wall. Paul Cornell and Steven Moffat are the latest to to be added to my personal pantheon of shiny golden gods.

And Moffat wrote Jekyll, which kicked lion ass and left an opening to do more...and I hope he does. He's right on the edge with that one.

Mad Men was all kinds of cool this year, from meeting Matthew Weiner and getting the awesomest reaction from mentioning that I was adding a Mad Men spec to my arsenal to the actual show itself. I must like it if I spec'ed it. Why would you ever spec a show you don't like? It will totally show through in the worst way. It'll make you look like a hack that doesn't get it.

30 Rock. Go ahead. Click it.

I've always dug House, but after writing my spec earlier this year and seeing it do really well in the Screenwriting Expo competition, it deepened my love of the show. I look forward to it more than most other series at the mo' and the change-up with the Survivor-format was inspired and I think it worked beautifully. I fear change not. And I got a little crush on Thirteen maybe.

And speaking of the Screenwriting Expo, that was just fun. Not for the classes and seminars, no. For the people first and foremost. People like Emily, my partner in crime for a couple of days, and also meeting Fun Joel and Shawna Benson. Secondarily, the writing competitions, the aforementioned teleplay one and also the crazy CS Open, which yielded me this short piece that I like so much I want to do something with it, like get it illustrated as a comic, or animate it or something else I don't have the skill to do.

There were also the missed meetings that I hope to rectify, like fellow Expo finalist Jane Mountain, who wrote a fantastic Ugly Betty. Maybe after New Year's, eh?

And hey, I met Josh (after the Expo and a missed SDCC phone call) too. He's cool and a half (times six). You watch out for him, you'll be seeing his name in places soon.

Joss Whedon brought me new Buffy and made me do a little happy dance. Usually licensed comics kinda suck, but this is straight from the man. Season eight. If you liked Buffy and you're not reading this series, then you might be the kind of peson who enjoys living but just stops eating, wearing seatbelts and taking medicine for no good reason. Buh-bye.

That Buffy is the highpoint of a year where a lot of comics and comics companies were consistently letting me down by pushing all manner of nonsensical crossover destruct-o-crap at me. Though, there was one crossover (smaller in marketing scale but huge in story) that knocked my socks off at every turn. Had I been wearing sneaks at the time, it could have caused damage.

Geoff Johns's exquisitely crafted Sinestro Corps War was a solid twenty-two pages of power in every book it touched. You have to wonder why it took so long fro someone to come up with an opposite Green lantern Corps, but it's so much better for the time it took, incorporating Qwardians, the best Tales of the Green Lantern Corps story ever (by Alan Moore), Manhunters, and even that verdammt Anti-Monitor and Superboy Prime (I'll call him what I want).

In film, the two flicks I've most looked forward to haven't opened yet. Sweeney Todd and Charlie Wilson's War. It takes a lot to get me into the theatres these days, no matter what praise is heaped on it. I'm a great Coen Brothers fan, to be sure, but I'll probably hold off until Netflix gets No Country For Old Men. I've, however, long held a special place for the Demon Barber, and of course anything written by the Sorkin gets an automatic.

Speaking of the Sorkin, seeing The Farnsworth Invention last March was energizing. Now that it's on Broadway, if you're anywhere near New York or planning to be, go. I exhort you. Heh. I exhorted. And I remain amused that my post on the play remains the number four Google hit for the title and the highest review, ahead of the New York Times.

Some nice DVD sets came out. Like Veronica Mars Season Three, which filled me with rage over the the glimpse of a fourth season I have been denied. Not unlike the still painful Global Frequency fiasco.

Twin Peaks. Finally. Complete. Damn fine discs.

What else?

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

[rant]

The problem with the entertainment industry is that they won't even do what is good for them unless forced to by disastrous circumstances.

They treated VCRs like it was the 28th coming of the anti-Christ, and now they have a very lucrative home video market. They still fear the internet more than they harness it. Now it takes a fucking writer's strike for the development cycle system to finally go bye-bye.

"One good thing that might come out of a strike ... it would give us an excuse to shake things up," Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly said in October.

You don't need a fucking excuse. You do it or you get static. Both definitions.

This whole development season/pilot season/staffing season system of doing things seems almost designed to make sure that nothing can ever be quite as good as it could be without it costing at least five times more than it should.

Everybody winds up competing for the same money, the same talent, the same slots and this total network/studio adherence to fall as being the time when you launch 75-90% of everything all but guarantees that whatever you have that might be good is squeezed out by what is safe or what can stand out in the ridiculous crush of new series. How many good series have we lost because in the massive onslaught of a fall season, it couldn't find a slot and got micromanaged into oblivion trying to compete. Firefly.

Then you've got the midseason to look forward to. A scant few new series and holdovers maybe. Then, the summer...until, it seems, this last year when only the cable nets got on things with Burn Notice and Mad Men, was a barren wasteland.

This past summer, about a dozen scripted series premiered on ad-supported cable. Seven of them -- TNT's "Grace," FX's "Damages," USA's "Notice" and "The Starter Wives," Lifetime's "Army Wives," TBS' "The Bill Engvall Show" and AMC's "Mad Men" -- were picked up for a second season.

Reality shows seem to pop up continuously, but scripted series? What? It's not development season! Don't care?

People...you know, real people? The ones that the Nielsen boxes represent? They watch TV all year. Why only give them new stuff in cycles?

Also, this may have a calming affect on the ridiculousness of pilots that has developed lately, where they're costing ten million dollars and wind up being not terribly representative of what the series would be like.

Reserved in the past for rare cases like Dick Wolf's "Law & Order" spinoffs, NBC has applied the straight-to-series approach to three scripted projects this year, the hot Tom Fontana drama "The Philanthropist" and two dramas the network picked up at a reduced license fee -- the anthology series "Fear Itself" and action-adventure "Robinson Crusoe."

It stands to reason that the same network that started jumping to series order over the questionable pilot system would be the first to bring up the abolishment of upfronts, but again...why does it take the possible scuttling of a development season to do something they they've been wanting to not do anyway.

[/rant]

And as a writer, I would find the lack of a "staffing season" would make things less blerg.

Picture of Eliza is just because I like her. What, you think I'm going to put up a picture of Ben Silverman or something? Geez.

BLACK LIST IS THE NEW BLACK LIST

Allow me, if you will, to perform a slight public service.

I'm not a film guy, but the Black List, in its brief history, fascinates me. The Black List having less to do with Dalton Trumbo and more to do with the most liked "unproduced" screenplays of the year.

And what pleases me about this year's list is that the number one spot is held by Danny Strong, a.k.a Jonathan from Buffy and Doyle from Gilmore Girls. Who Emily just happened to meet this weekend. Jealousy ensues.

And it should be a genuinely interesting movie, unless you're a right wing flake who takes everything as a personal attack.

Clicky on yon pic to download the full list.

THE ADVENTURES OF LIL' OMAR

How cool is this?

Need to get your fix of The Wire? Check out these 2 and 3 minutes shorts that Amazon's got on the page for the fourth season DVDs (which came out yesterday, got mine already).

There's three altogether, one with young Prop Joe, one with the first meeting of Bunk and McNulty and one with little Omar Little.

As for my rant on how "if you're not down with The Wire then maybe you just don't know what is best in life, Conan," let's just say I did it and move on.

I'll leave you with this promo for a couple of behind-the-scenes type specials that will air in conjunction with the fifth and final season.

LOOKING FORWARD

Cuz' the right now ain't a lot a fun. More strikey stuff at United Hollywood.

It seems to me that AMC is effectively positioning itself as the next cable drama destination (assuming we still have TV, wow is that an apocalyptic outlook or what?). I'm going out on a limb with this, as only Mad Men has aired, but they're starting to look like FX did in 2002/03 with a season of The Shield having mad it's appearance on the scene, Nip/Tuck coming out and Rescue Me just over the horizon.

AMC's follow-up is Breaking Bad. I'm going to go ahead and assume this will rock because Vince Gilligan is the guy behind it. He wrote a delightfully odd flick called Wilder Napalm and he was on The X-Files for a good long while. From when it was at its best all the way on down. In fact, if you liked any episodes in the final two or three seasons of X-Files, there's a damn good chance it was his.

It's got Bryan Cranston (already more points in it's favor) as a high school chemistry teacher who, upon learning he has terminal lung cancer, stops living by the rules of society and, among other things, sets up a rolling meth lab to provide for his family.

I'm just wondering why AMC didn't push the hell out of this while there were still eyes on Mad Men (not a tremendous number, but...you know).

Now if they wouldn't mind getting Warren Ellis' Dead Channel going, I'd be a happy camper.




And here's a little weekend weirdness. A brief concentration of the scribosphere when I was meeting one noted scribospherian at an obscure non-industry screening of an equally obscure (but good) documentary feature and just happened to run into another noted scribospherian.

DOCTOR WHO: "TIME CRASH"

Apologies for the sporadic posting being increased to...more sporadic. There was the blight. I come bearing temporal anomalies. The best kind of anomaly.

So much swearing in it, though. Douglas Adams reference.

And if you're a hard-core Who-watcher, you need to have Doctor Who Confidential immediately after, so here it is.

Steven Moffat needs only less than eight minutes to rock it. You probably get a little more out of it if you're an old skool Who fan. I thought it was brilliant and great little ode to an old Doctor. Every Doctor is someone's favorite. Even the Doctor's.

That's one of the great things about the show and about those who have followed since forever. A lot of older fans cite the Tom Baker version as their favorite...and he was the first Doctor I watched (in reruns, and then rapidly the fifth), but it was the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, that became my favorite...for a while. He had a sense of a dark sinister past, which I've learned was the result of the "Cartmel Masterplan." Then the show was canceled after 26 years.

As I said. He was my favorite for a while. A good long. Now I've got another. I look forward to the day, a long time from now, when perhaps another actor will inhabit that guise and get to meet a past self with a rumply work-suit, trainers, and a penchant for boiling down complicated temporal physics down to "wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey stuff." and put on a pair of smarty glasses and say "I got that from you. You were my Doctor."

The best show currently on the air. Period.