The Duck Speaks

There are a lot of B-movie review sites out there. More to the point, there are a lot of good, and some great, review sites. Which leaves me with a bit of a dilemma; just how the hell am I going to attract your attention? And now that you're here, how am I gonna keep it? I can't offer tubs of money, or pictures of naked women, or pictures of tubs filled with both; I can't even offer a good back massage, the medium being what it is. (Also, whenever a back is present, a neck is close by, and despite the purest of intentions, I am often driven to squeeze what should not be squeezed…)

So I need a niche. I can't say, "I'm gonna cover movies," cause that tells you nothing; I can't even say, "Just B-movies," since then you'll run off to StompTokyo or the Bad Movie Report or And You Call Yourself a Scientist or Jabootu, and you'll laugh at me, and the webmasters will laugh at me, and I'll go down into my basement and work long hours on the project that should destroy you all, but instead brings bloodshed, tears, and my own eventual

immolation. And nobody wants that. (I hope.) In order to prevent such destruction, I need to find my own little corner of the web. But how?

You hafta go with your strengths, really. Admittedly, that would mean giving up this review site and spending the rest of my life playing Super Mario games, but let's try and look at what we have to work with here. I've got a Bachelor's in Theater and English. I fancy myself a writer, and I act quite a bit. I've worked in a library the past five years of my life. I've read a ton of books, seen a bunch of movies, and I'm very good at holding forth.

Wait. Go back a second. A book reader, huh? A novel reader, to be more specific. And I like to write, which means, hopefully, I've got a decent grasp of story values. Considering that a great many novels are turned into movies, and that a great number of those movies are absolute crap, well, we might have something here.

How about: I will review movies and their source material. I am willing to watch anything once, and read anything once, and I have a feeling that willingness will be soon tested; about the time I try a Harold Robbins marathon, p'rhaps. But I am strong, I am smart, I have watched Children of the Corn: Revelation and lived to tell the tale, and I have nothing better to do.

The Standard Template:

Source: In the first section, I'll give a basic outline of the source material, be it novel, short story, manga, placemat from Denny's, what have you, as well as a mini-review on how well it works.

Screen: Second section, basic movie outline and another mini-review. I'll do my best in this section to be as open-minded as possible in terms of not comparing the adaptation to the original. After all, some movies work horribly as adaptations, but are still great films. (See Kubrick's The Shining.)

Compare/Contrast: Here's the nitty gritty part, where I try and justify my measly web site's existence. I'll point out what was changed from the source, why I think the change was made (and I will do my best to not always write "'cause studio execs are morons"), and whether or not I think it was justified.

Then we'll get the ratings, which shall be done in Quacks.

Q= Abyssmal. Not even worth watching/reading for academic purposes. I resent the writer, filmmaker, actors, publishers, producers, perhaps even God Herself for allowing such awfulness to be released upon the world.

QQ= Eh. Not painful, but not particularly exciting either.

QQQ= Pretty damn good. Definitely worth a rental, or a search of the local library.

QQQQ= Excellent. If you haven't seen this yet, you need to, and if you don't own it, you should.

There might be realms above and below 1-4 Quacks; but we'll have to use our

discretion when the time comes.

And that's that. Feel free to e-mail me with any comments/suggestions/death threats (keep in mind on that last one: I have a disintegrator ray, and I'm not afraid to use it) you may have, and I hope you enjoy. Remember, not all Librarians have webbed feet.

Only the great ones.