redblog

As you know, Erika posted her redblog Writers Who Rock profile on Thanksgiving and then suggested I do the same for Christmas. So I asked you guys to help out with some questions, and you came up with some great ones. So great, in fact, that I ended up writing way too much in response and will have to split the profile in half and run the second part next weekend. Typical irony–I had to be badgered into doing this and end up going nuts on it.

This week will focus more on background information about me–next weekend will be more about my favorite films, my critical criteria, etc. If you don't see your question here, chances are it'll be answered next week. 

The first thing you probably already know about me, I'm a terrible, terrible procrastinator. So this was supposed to go up on Christmas Day. Two days late is about par for the course for me… Second thing you all know by now–I tend to run on at the pen… so bear with me…

Name: Locke Peterseim

Age: "Early 40s" sounds best–and yes a lot of the photos below are from much younger–and thinner–days!

Location: Chicago, IL (and eastern Iowa about a fourth of the time)

How did you become a film critic?  — moviegoer123

Like many film critics, I grew up loving reading and writing. And like most geeks of my generation, Star Wars changed
everything in 1977, making us see films as something so powerfully
magic. I also loved painting and drawing and in that respect film became one of the best ways to combine my love of words with my love of images.

I started keeping a journal in high school and as part of it, wrote down my thoughts about all the films I was seeing. This was in the early days of VHS, so in addition to writing about stuff I was seeing in theaters with friends and on dates, I was also starting to raid the library’s new and growing video collection to see older classic and '70s films I’d heard about but never seen.

I probably first grasped the notion of film criticism from watching Siskel & Ebert on PBS in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s—that’s where I got into the idea of taking films apart to see how and why they worked or failed, and how talking deeply and passionately about film intensifies your love of it and enjoyment of watching it, even the silly popcorn stuff.

The generation of critics just before me grew up on Pauline Kael—my generation grew up on Siskel & Ebert. (And as I’m sure many of my fellow Chicago critics will agree, it’s still odd and very humbling these days to sit near Roger several times a week at screenings.)

When I got to college, I went into journalism and tried my hand at peddling some film reviews to the school newspaper, The Daily Iowan–they were ignored. But a couple years later a very good friend worked his way into the DI arts page and soon dragged me along. I wrote film reviews and pop-culture columns for The Daily Iowan for the next four years, throughout grad school as well. (Another Daily Iowan film-critic alumni? Nicholas Meyer, who went on to write and direct Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.) When I eventually became the arts editor of the DI, I
gained a pretty good understanding of what happened to those earlier
reviews I cold submitted: They were skimmed over by a much-too-busy arts
editor, chuckled at for their clumsy ineptitude, and tossed in the
trash.

But instead of becoming a full-time critic after college, I taught high-school English for five years. Of course I often turned my language arts classes into little film school sessions. I’d show Jaws to the students to teach them about story structure, conflict, and character development—and toss in quite a bit of stuff about film making and how someone like Spielberg creates meaning with camera movement, editing, lighting, etc.

I moved to Chicago in 1997, started working for Encyclopedia Britannica—first as a copy editor and fact-checker (oh the irony, given how often I now misspell names or get facts wrong!), then later as an arts writer and editor on Britannica.com, where I created a feature called “The Annotated Dennis Miller,” which was a humorous explanation of Miller’s faux-erudite quips on his new Monday Night Football gig. (Oddly, though I’d been a long-time fan of Miller’s comedy, MNF broke him for me—but it also turned me into a football fan, which means right now I'm trying to simultaneously watch the Packers clinch a playoff spot and revisit Fellini's 8 1/2 on DVD.)

After Britannica, I spent about seven years as a freelance writer for secondary school textbooks (mostly history and social studies rather than language arts). Then about two years ago I heard from a former Britannica colleague that the new DVD rental company she was working for (DVD vending machines?! Huh?!) was thinking about starting a movie news and reviews blog. So I started auditioning for what would eventually become redblog and joined Erika and James in November 2008. It was the first time I’d been regularly writing film criticism since grad school—so it only took me about 20 years to eventually find my way back to my dream job.

I think I've seen it mentioned, but I forget what your college
major was. But your redblog profile states you were an English teacher
and you do get paid (I hope?) for your writing here. Is there a super
amazing story/novel/screenplay that you've got floating around your
head? You can take this more as a YES/NO question if you wish, as I
won't pry into what it's about. — Spaz

I entered college
intending to be an English teacher, got kinda railroaded into
journalism by an adviser who thought it offered better career
opportunities (Ha! Ha ha HA!), and then took on film as my “area of
interest” for my journalism degree.

But at the same time I couldn’t
stay away from the English classes, and eventually the journalism
withered into a minor and Film and English became my double major.
Then I went back to grad school to get a masters degree in teaching
that also included a lot of English grad work.

And yes, I do
have several super amazing stories, novels, and screenplays floating
around in my head and my notebooks. Getting them written is a whole
‘nother story. (See my initial remarks about procrastination.) The main one I've been trying to focus on the past few years is a memoir about growing up in a small town, living in a funeral home, and my dad.

Do you see a lot of movies? — moviegoer123

Before working for redblog, I probably saw about 250
films a year—a lot in theaters, more on DVD. These days that number's
probably more like 400 to 500 a year. In an average week I might see
three to five screenings or catch up with new films in the theater,
then another three to five films on DVD for redblog, and maybe a couple
more older films or movies I just watch for fun. So pretty much these
days I'm either watching a movie or writing about a movie or thinking
about a movie. Or clearing off the DVR. Or watching the Packers. (Or the Cubs in the summer.) The only drawback–and one I'm vowing to correct in 2010–is that all this has cut my book-reading time down considerably.

What film have you seen the most times, and how many? Are
you a big repeat viewer of things you like? And then how do you strike
a balance between going back to old favorites (or classic films you
might have missed) and keeping up with so many new releases? — L. Ray

Jaws, The Lion in Winter and Star Wars have probably racked up the most numbers of views, though I did see The Fellowship of the Ring
ten times in the theater. That’s a rarity for me, as I usually just
don’t have time to see a film that many times in the span of a few
months–but boy did that one ever push my teenage geek buttons. I don’t
repeat view my favorite films as often as some film geeks do. Usually,
if I like a film a lot I might see it twice in the theaters, and then
again on DVD a few months later. If I really love it, I might
watch it twice on DVD during that first year. After that, I usually
only revisit favorite films every couple of years, though I tend to
watch The Lion in Winter, Jaws, and Love Actually every year.

Keeping up with new releases both in theaters and from redbox
is tough—it takes up about 80% of my viewing time. And occasionally if
I have mixed or hard-to-pin down feelings about a film, I'll want to
see a new release twice before writing about it. And like any film or
book lover, there's always that stack of classic works on your desk you
need to either see/read for the first time, or to revisit. I saw a lot
of the classic films when I was in high school or college, which was—gasp—20
years ago and I was often too young and lacked the life—or
viewing–experience to really appreciate them. So I always have a long
list of stuff to get back and re-watch. You just do your best to
squeeze those films in when you can—and sometimes that means watching a
film you know you need to instead of an old familiar one you want to—old
familiar is comforting, but seeing or revisiting the classics is an
important part of continuing your film education and expanding your
tastes.

Any movies that made you cry? or come close to it? …Or any movies that have given you nightmares? Come on, admit it… Shaun of the Dead scared you too ;) — *kristYn from CALI*

As for being scared or having nightmares, I’ve talked a lot
about those moments this past year—you should all know them by now. No,
Shaun of the Dead doesn’t scare me at all—most horror films just
don’t, sorry! I do get nervous anticipating "jump" scares, but they
don't creep me out later. However, I did have nightmares back in the
early ‘90s about that One Scene in The Exorcist III, and later in the early ‘00s over the end of The Blair Witch Project. Some stuff in The Ring and The Grudge stuck with me a few days, and I’ve written before about having a delayed creeped-out reaction to The Strangers.

I’m a crier at movies, that’s for sure. I try to be very sly about the whole "oh, let me just adjust my glasses, I think I have something in my eye, must be my allergies" move, but no one's fooled. Watching the Blind Side a second time this week, I found it to be a lot more cheaply manipulative the second time around, but I still got very watery during several scenes. (When the movie Michael says “I stopped it” and at the very end when the real Michael Oher lumbers up on stage during the 2009 NFL draft.)

When I was a teen, I remember getting misty eyed when Richard Gere goes back to help Lisa Eilbacher over the obstacle course wall in An Officer and a Gentleman. And to this day I cannot even talk about the end of the courtroom scene in To Kill a Mockingbird without bawling. (“Stand up Miss Jean Louise. Your father’s passing.”) On TV/DVD, if I’m missing my dad and want to have a good cry about it, I’ll pop in the very end of Band of Brothers, when the real guys talk about what it all meant to them. (Especially the real Bill Guarnere saying “I'm just one part of the big war. One little part. And I’m proud to be a part of it. Sometimes it makes me cry.”)

Are there any properties (comics, old films, books, tv shows, etc…) that you would love to see made into a movie? — Fiirvoen

I have two current fantasy authors whose writing I like and would love to see someone make films of: China Mieville (steampunk magik in a Victorian other-world setting) and Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series (Tolkien-esque Worlds of Warcraft stuff, but well-written and impecably detailed). I love them both for their scope, scale, and imagination, but of course that means large effects budgets. And as we all know, in most cases the bigger the budget the more popular the source material has to be and the more watered down and corrupted the film will become to appeal to the widest possible audience (to earn the budget back).

Like many folks, I hope things continue to move forward with a big-screen version of Max Brook's awesome zombie novel World War Z. And while, like many folks, I'm awfully sick of movie vampires, if I had to toss out another horror novel idea it would be Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, which kicks off a series that imagines what Victorian England would be like if Dracula had won his battle with Van Helsing, married Queen Victoria, and established an un-dead empire. Oh, and Jack the Ripper shows up, too! 

I've written before about my appreciation of Tim Powers'
novels and their mix of magic, supernatural, and history–his On
Stranger Tides seems to be the inspiration for the fourth Pirates of
the Caribbean film. Let's hope that opens the way for film adaptations
of The Anubis Gates (time travel, English romantic poets, Egyptian gods) and Last Call (poker, Vegas, Tarot cards, Bugsy Seigel's ghost).

I'm not a huge fan of TV-shows turned films, but if I had to dig up one of my childhood faves that hasn't been done yet, I'd love to see a big-screen version of the Greg "Pappy" Boyington story in Baa Baa Black Sheep. You could do it either as a straight, serious biopic or a rollicking spin-off of the TV series (as long as a) Boyington's khaki pants are super tight, and b) someone at some point yells "They stole our scotch!!"). I love WWII history, especially that involving ships and planes–we get a lot of ground-based WWII history films, but not so many set in the air or sea.

We know I'm also a fiend for sailing ship stories, so I’d actually be all for someone new taking a crack at Moby Dick
(is Timur Bekmambetov that someone? We shall see….), and my greatest
cinematic desire at the moment is to see Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany,
and Peter Weir make more Master and Commander Aubrey-Maturin films.

I’m just now catching up with Bill Willingham’s comic-book series Fables
about exiled fairy-tale characters living in modern New York City as
they wage an epic battle with the mysterious Adversary who drove them
from their homelands. I'm enjoying the story (if not so much the
writing)–it’d be a fun one (and relatively cheap) to see on screen.
Of course like many fans of Neil Gaiman, I both crave and dread a Sandman
adaptation—it would take just the right film maker with a lot of
creative freedom to really do it right.

Warren Ellis is coming into a
rush of projects based on his comics (more on that in a news posting
one of these days), so I’d vote for his (and later Grant Morrison’s) The Authority to be the next big Watchmen-style subversive superhero adaptation. (Though given how Watchmen didn’t tear up the box-office, I doubt we’ll see another dark, violent, cynical superhero blockbuster any time soon.)

Two of my favorite singer-songwriters are Nick Cave and Tom Waits because their songs are dark mini-narratives about seedy and/or creepy underworlds. In this era of Across the Universe and Mamma Mia!, why doesn't someone take a bunch of Cave's songs and present them as a very grim, gruesome musical? Same with Wait's avant-skid-row tales of the bungled and the botched. See? Feel-good crowd-pleasers with an audience of one! Could you do the same thing with Springsteen's songs? Maybe, though the temptation to make it into cliche cheese would probably be too great.

I had mixed-to-positive feelings about Wolfgang Peterson's Troy with Brad Pitt, but I would love to see someone follow up with a huge adventurous, effects-laden version of The Odyssey–maybe if the Clash of the Titans remake is a smash hit, someone will.

Okay, that's enough for now! The Packers have won and are officially in the playoffs! I'll be back next weekend to answer the rest of your questions, but if you have any follow-up questions on all this stuff, fire away in the comments and I'll try to respond.