• The Good Stuff

    It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage

    Thirty-eight years ago today saw the debut of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’ve been on a serious Indiana Jones kick since returning from Walt Disney World a couple of months ago, and after rewatching all of the movies (and starting in on the Young Indiana Jones made-for-tv movies, the Rob MacGregor novels, the Marvel comics, etc., et al.), I realized that character in his various outing and incarnations had a bigger influence on my tastes and interests, both in terms of what kind of stories I like to read and watch and what kinds of stories I like to tell, than any other single piece of media. As much as I loved Star Wars and Star Trek, Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Tarzan and Doc Savage, or any one of a hundred other great shows, movies, and comics, there’s probably more Indiana Jones DNA in my makeup than any other fictional character or imaginary world. It probably helped that I was exactly the right age for Raiders when it was released–I was two months away from my eleventh birthday, my mental cement still wet enough that I was very impressionable–but there are elements borrowed from that first movie that crop up in virtually everything that I write, whether consciously or not.

    It’s only been a month or so since I rewatched it last, but I think I might need to pop in the Blu-ray and fire up Raiders again tonight, in honor of the occasion. Or maybe I’ll just queue up the John Williams soundtrack as I put some time into my current work-in-progress, which definitely has more than a little Indiana Jones-inspired elements in the mix…

  • The Good Stuff

    Good Omens

    Good Omens is one of my favorite novels. I bought it the day it was released in the US in hardcover, and have probably read it a half-dozen times in the three decades since. (It’s probably my favorite thing that Neil Gaiman has ever written, and in my top five favorite Terry Pratchett works.) But despite the rumblings about possible film adaptations going back all the way to the beginning, I never had much confidence that it could be successfully adapted into a different medium. Thankfully, I was wrong. Very wrong, as it turns out. Because the six-part miniseries that was released on Amazon Prime the week before last satisfied in every conceivable way. The scripts by Neil Gaiman captured the tone and wit of the novel perfectly, and the direction by Douglas Mackinnon never missed a step. The score by David Arnold was note perfect, and the animated opening titles were fantastic. Everyone in the cast turned in stellar performances, but in particular Michael Sheen and David Tennant as the angel and demon who have hung around on Earth so long that they’ve gone native. I would happily watch another full season of those two characters just hanging out, sharing meals and bottles of wine, reminiscing about the old days.