Periscope Depth

shooting from the hip, yeah boy, I shoot to kill

I saw Mission Impossible 4: Spooky Operating Procedure with Sylvia over the holiday weekend. A slam-bang action flick, to use the Variety term, but a little breathless in the writing. And I use that in both the laudatory and pejorative senses: the action never lets up, but the speech gets a little nasally as a [...]

wherever you go, there you are

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, like so many cult films, does not hold up under repeat viewings. The editing is just bad, almost MST3K-worthy. The motorcycle chase that caps the first act is a perfect example. Banzai and the Red Lectroids he’s chasing are never onscreen at the same time. He [...]

sterling, cooper, lensherr, xavier

X-Men: First Class: Best X-Men movie since the first one. Stylish, engaging and yet still good fun. In my oft-cited contribution to the Why We Overthink thousand-post milestone on OTI, I defended my snobbery by saying “mere enthusiasm is not enough to make something Good Art.” X-Men: First Class supports my claim. While the stylistic [...]

I’m Michael Scarn and I’m here to say

I needed to kill 22 minutes while eating dinner last night, so I turned on The Office for the first time in years and watched “Threat Level Midnight.” Quick question: has the entire cast been paired off by now? Jim and Pam I knew about, but Michael’s apparently made good on his crush with the [...]

I’m a level higher than the intermediate

I checked the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven off my Netflix queue this weekend. It’s an interesting movie, but I can see why it didn’t captivate hearts and minds the way the producers must have hoped. It’s certainly not shot like an epic. Much of the cinematography has that dim, bird’s-eye perspective that can [...]

stars with evil eyes stare from the sky

In The Heat of the Night: I knew going in that this was Sidney Poitier’s movie (and it is, and no dispute there). But I had no idea it would also be Rod Steiger’s movie, too. Steiger turns in such a natural performance that you’d swear he was a Mississippi native. He approaches every crisis [...]

fish like little silver knives

In The Loop: when talking about dark comedy in the past, my benchmark has always been Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. On the spectrum of absurdity, there’s a line somewhere. For each of us this line is personal. Before that line, our reaction to the absurd is a laugh. Past that line, our reaction is a gasp. [...]

hello again, friend of a friend

I had the day off work on Friday, so I saw three movies. Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The most fun I’ve had at the theater since Iron Man. The opening credits are better than most movies and the soundtrack is cooler than your best haircut. The pacing struggles a little in the first reel: [...]

whether it’s two weeks, two years or just tonight

Inception: this past Friday, Overthinking It marked its thousandth post with a survey of why the writers read so deeply into pop culture. I talked about the need to treat pop culture seriously and with a literate eye – especially among geeks, who aren’t known for a lot of notches on the spectrum between “SQUEE!” [...]

nothing is better than this

There’s a bald guy with a scraggly beard who sits at the bus station outside the Boston Public Library most afternoons. He makes popping and clicking sounds with his mouth. He doesn’t appear to me making them at anyone – not the ck-ck of the cartoon wolf leering at a dame in a checkered skirt. [...]

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  • Periscope Depth

    The website of John Perich, author of TOO CLOSE TO MISS and editor for Overthinking It. He's learning about writing, marketing, publishing and promotion, and he encourages you to learn along with him.

    perich@periscopedepth.com

  • TOO CLOSE TO MISS




    "... opens with a bang and never relents ..."
    "... from chapter one, I couldn't put the damn thing down ..."
    "... already looking forward to Perich's next book ..."

    Mara Cunningham knew that sleeping with a married man was a bad idea. But when her lover shows up in the hospital after his wife and son are murdered, the rumors about her turn dangerous. Now she's the prime suspect in a double homicide, and the real killers will stop at nothing to silence her ...

    Buy the book that readers are calling "a great, suspenseful thriller" at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers.



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