Series Review: The Penguin

Leave a reply

.

2022 saw the release of Matt Reeves’ interpretation of the classic DC Comics character Batman. Taking a more film noir approach the movie emphasized Batman as a detective over the character as a martial artist. The movie also introduced us the Colin Ferrell as Oswald Cobb, The Penguin. Reimagined as a lower class criminal hungry to make a name for himself and now HBO/Max has released a limited series focusing on the character.

HBO/Max

The series opens just weeks after the events of The Batman, the underworld is in chaos following the downfall of its leading mafia bosses, the poorest areas of Gotham are devastated by disaster, and corruption remains king in the city and its administration. Oz, (Colin Farrell) doesn’t so much seize the opportunity created by the chaos as his hand is forced due to his impulsive nature and fragile pride. Scrambling to stay ahead of vicious gangsters including Sofia Falcone (Cristin Miliot) recently released from Arkham Asylum, and the consequences of his own poorly thought-out actions Oz has only on his side a naive street kid, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), left homeless by disaster and Oz’s own mother slowly succumbing to a terrible wasting neurological disease.

Where The Batman lived with the constraints of an MPAA PG-13 rating, The Penguin thrives as a gritty R-rating equivalent, awash with language and violence that is only tolerated by the rarest of comic book movies. The series is part organized crime thriller with only a single shot to drive home that this is the home of Batman and deep character study of a people trapped and formed by their tragic histories.

The past weekend Colin Farrel took home a Golden Globe for his performance in The Penguin. Farrell is utterly transformed not only by the magical make-up effects that hold up even under insanely tight close-ups but by Farrell’s own fantastic performance. His voice, his accent, his physicality all belong to a man named Oswald Cobb (yest that changed it from Cobbelpot.) and it’s a powerful and moving depiction of a man that can charm and lie and always has his own best interests at heart.

Cristin Milioti, a performed I was unfamiliar with before this series, is another stand out talent in a cast packed with talent. With the subtlest facial expressions she informs the audience that this character’s mental health is always in question and the danger she presents is never far from the surface.

The Penguin is an outstanding series that twists and turns as it walks the viewer into the hell that is Gotham’s underworld where hope has long since died.

Share

My Writing Report Card

Leave a reply

.

It is a new year and I am not one for resolutions, but it is a time to look back at what I wanted to achieve and what I did achieve.

I set one writing goal for myself in 2024, to write a full folk/cosmic horror novel before the end of the year.

Now, I did not set this goal in January but rather July, the first half of the year was finishing up the previous horror novel, getting it out the door to a publisher I had worked with before and begin the tedious process of searching for representation. All those goals were met by July with the agent hunting a continuing endeavor. That left six months to go from a vague concept to a completed first draft for the new novel.

As my last post indicated I did not quite meet that objective. The first draft landed at 84 thousand words on Jan 3rd, 2025, three days late.

Considering the unique process this book followed to its initial draft I’m quite pleased. Normally, I am an outliner, produced pages and pages of notes, characters backgrounds and a detailed map of the plot and the story as it unfolds. Not this time. With only a vague notion of what I was going to do with the story, and shockingly for me, no clearly defined ending, I just began writing.

I expected that if I made it past 10,000 words then the project had a better than fifty/fifty chance of reaching completion. I found a few sticky spots where I stopped my weekday writing to let ideas cook and figure out the next few events but generally, I maintained a steady pace of 800 to 1000 words each weekday.

In fact, had I not on the final week of the year taken two days off to detail notes for the table Top RPG I run I would have met that December 31st self-imposed deadline.

Now I need to do serious revision work. I had to create new backstory elements for the protagonist halfway through the draft and that means the first half doesn’t line up with the second half. There are characters that appeared in the second half that need to be established and such, but overall, I am happy with the draft and the project.

I give myself a solid B as a grade and look forward to the next three months as I mold this thing into its final form.

Share

Goal Not Met

Leave a reply

.

So, in late June early July I began writing my American Folk/Cosmic horror novel. An experiment for not only was it a genre I had never attempted in long form before but I began the manuscript without an outline.

My goal was to have a completed first draft, but not an edited one, by the end of the year on December 31st, 2024. Today is that date and the manuscript is not finished.

It is close, it is amazingly close, but with mere hours until the close of the year and a full day at the day-job still to complete I have to face the fact that I missed the goal.

There were writing days between July and today when I did not write. This new process of flying without a map produced a few times when in the middle of the story I became more lost and disoriented that usual. The end of the year is also a time when the day job become quite busy and pushing myself into serious amounts of overtime, while profitable, instigated migraines and cost me writing time as well.

Still, I did quite well. When I say it is close to being completed, I am talking less than a few thousand words. A day or two of writing and it will have been landed. Granted because of the no outline process the edit and revision process will be far more extensive than for other manuscripts. Halfway through the story I realized I had a motivation issue with the protagonist. What I had given her was not enough to propel her through the entire story. A change to her profession fixed that trouble, adding additional reasons for her to continue in a dangerous environment but that means new scenes and more rewrite for what had already been crafted.

Still, I like what I have written. I like the concept, and I look forward to completing the manuscript.

Share

Series Review: Dune Prophesy

Leave a reply

.

Set ten thousand years before the coming of the Kwisatz Haderach Paul Atreides the series Dune Prophesy concerns itself with the early Imperium following the Machine Wars when humanity freed itself from sentient computers and the founding of the Bene Gesserit.

HBO

Thirty years earlier the sisterhood, before becoming the Bene Gesserit, suffers a crisis with their found Mother Superior dies and power struggle erupts between factions, a struggle won by the fanatically dedicated and deeply emotionally scarred Vayla Harkkonnen and her sister Tula. With careful mechanizations over the following thirty years, they are now close to bring the emperor’s daughter into the sisterhood and through her placing one of their own onto the throne. Their plans are disrupted when a mysterious solider who apparently survived a sandworm attack appears in the court with a deep burning hatred of the sisterhood and strange inexplicable powers.

Dune Prophesy is the next cinematic adaptation of the novels and stories created by Frank Herbert and successfully brought to the movie screen by French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. With an ample production budget and a cast of veteran and new actors the series is a wonder of dramatic science-fiction television, a worthy follow-on to the pair of films from Villeneuve.

As has become typical of television of late the season is rather shot with just six episode none of which are bloated with any filler. Also, as it has become the practice in the industry the series doesn’t answer all the questions raised leaving some for further seasons.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dune Prophesy and anticipate further interesting and unsettling seasons.

Share

Season’s View: A Christmas Carol (2019)

Leave a reply

.

Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol has been endlessly adapted to stage, screen, and television often attracting some of each generations greatest actors to the role of Scrooge. The adaptations have run from dramatic to the farcical, but few are as unique as the one aired on the BBC and adapted by Steven Knight.

BBC

Produced by Knight and Ridley Scot this television adaptation retain the core plot, a miserly and mean businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce) is visited by spirits on Christmas Eve that by showing him the truth of his life and life in general effect a change to transform the man into a person of altruism and compassion. What Steven Knight however makes serious alterations to the nature of Scrooge’s cruelty and the deep emotional psychological wounds the man carries, while presenting the events in the truly terrifying nature implied by their mere existence.

This adaptation is a piece of horror fiction with the supernatural as something beyond comprehension and therefore something frightening to the soul. The series, for it was presented in 3 parts originally, is also visually fantastic. I can think of no other adaptation that wows with such amazing shots as this one. Instead of trying to make the three spirits the focus of inventive make-up or special effects director Nick Murphy works on the dream logic and unreal aspect of Scrooge’s vision and travels.

This program is not for family viewing. It deals with hard subjects of not only cruelty but also of abuse, exploring abuse in Scrooge’s childhood that he revisits in a manner on the world as an adult. Knight is clearly aware that victims of abuse often through their unhealed wounds become abusers themselves. As such Scrooge’s eventual transformation is not one created but ignorance of the world being removed but of a man facing the horrors of his past and understanding how they made him the monster he had become.

Dark, gothic, and a true piece of horror the 2019 A Christmas Carol is a wonder that terrifies and transforms. It is available for purchase on Amazon prime for a mere $2.00.

Share

Movie Review: Nosferatu (2024)

Leave a reply

.

In 1897 Stoker’s novel Dracula was published becoming for more than a hundred year the definitive text on vampires. 25 years later German director F.W. Murnau released his film Nosferatuwritten by Henrik Galeen, a script that was found to have infringed on Stoker’s novel. Despite the court ordering all copies destroyed, the fact of the international release proved a boon to global cinephiles and Nosferatu survived.

In 1979 Nosferatu climbed from its cinematic grave with a new remake starring eclectic actor Klaus Kinski.

Focus Features

And now after another several decades Christmas 2024 brought us another adaptation by celebrated horror director Robert Eggers (The Witch, and The Lighthouse.) but taking care to credit Stoker’s original novel as well as the 1922 screenplay as source materials.

It is 1834 and aspiring estate clerk Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is dispatched by his employer to a distant client, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) leaving his new bride Ellen (Lilly-Rose Depp) with close friends (Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Emma Corrin). Count Orlok, the titular Nosferatu, harbors insidious plans to leave his isolated castle and feed upon the citizens of a modern city and is particularly drawn to the virtuous Ellen. Thomas, along with friends and associates is drawn into a battle against evil and death trying to defeat Orlok.

Robert Eggers delivers a dark, moody, and gothic tale of horror and evil beyond reason, with stunning desaturated color from cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. This is not a tale that utilizes a charismatic foreigner as a metaphor for sexual desires and repressions but one of an evil drawn from the dead that desires to bring death to everywhere it travels. Orlok unlike Dracula in most adaptations does not seduce, he feeds. He is not attractive but repulsive and when he is easily visible the Count’s nature as a walking corpse becomes revolting apparent. This film depicts the horror of being the victim of the Nosferatu and of the unending torment of being one. It is not accident that the tag line on the poster is ‘Succumb to the Darkness.’ We often talk of succumbing to a disease and that is never the desired outcome.

 Eggers slips between the world the characters inhabit and their dreams and nightmares so easily that the audience just as the poor cursed characters often cannot know what is real and what is phantasm.

Perhaps the consistently best director working in horror today Robert Eggers’ filmography is one of artistic success to artistic success here is hoping that addition to his massive talent Nosferatu finds the commercial success that studios desire.

Share

Derangement Syndrome

Leave a reply

.

During the administration of G.W. Bush the columnist and for practicing mental health provider Charles Krauthammer deployed in one of his columns that he had discovered a new disorder ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome.’ This semi-satirical comment was quickly picked up by allies of the administration and hurled at every criticism of G.W. Bush. All the critiques held no merit because all the critics were ‘deranged.’ Like becomes so much easier when you can dismiss all who criticize you with a blanket and undefined mental illness.

When the administration ended such a valuable rhetorical tool could not be abandoned and so now those who stand in opposition to Trump have Trump Derangement System, and those who have issues with Musk have Musk Derangement Syndrome. It is truly the hammer that the right employs against every single person that doesn’t agree with them and thus becomes nails to struck.

The irony of this is that in that original column Krauthammer invented this imaginary in response to a leading Democrat, Howard Dean, leaving open the possibility of Bush having been forewarned of the 9-11 attacks. Krauthammer invented ‘derangement syndrome’ because of a prominent political operative engaging in a hair-brained conspiracy theory and now that slur is used for people who refuse to accept hair-brained conspiracy theories.

If standing opposed to someone who tried to overthrow a free and fair election makes me ‘deranged’, so be it.

If standing opposed to someone who knew that the coming pandemic represented a serious and lethal threat to the nation but then lied to the people as to the danger makes me deranged, so be it.

If standing opposed to someone who used vital military aid for a free country under threat of invasion for his own political gain makes me deranged, so be it.

If standing for the science of vaccines and the immeasurable good that they have produced against a man who would appoint idiots to manage our public health makes me deranged, so be it.

Share

Magneto, Musk, & Masked Villainy

1 Reply

.

Villains and heroes often present themselves as saviors of the people making it sometimes difficult to know which is which.

In the first X-Men movies, Magneto, a survivor of the holocaust perceiving a new reign of mass murder of his people, this time those with mutant abilities rather than Jewish heredity, embarks on a scheme to save his people. At a gathering of world leaders, he will deploy a device powered by his own nutant talents to transform those world leaders into mutants. The device exacts a terrible price and using it would cost Magento his life. Instead, he kidnaps a young girl and will transfer his abilities, temporarily, to her and use her to power the device, sacrificing her life for his goal. And as the character Wolverine spits out at him, “You’re so fulla shit. If you were really so righteous, it’d be you in that thing.”

There’s one way to differentiate the villains from the heroes, the willingness to pay a price versus compelling others to sacrifice.

In the final weeks of the presidential campaign Trump ally Elon Musk said in a telephone town hall that in order to get the nation’s economic house in order “We have to reduce spending to live within our means. And that necessarily involves some temporary hardship…”

It is notable that none of the proposals from the incoming administration or put forth by Musk have the slightest pain that would be inflicted upon himself or his class of billionaires. Quite the opposite. Their tax cuts would be extended and expanded and their businesses freed from damaging the environments or responsibilities to their work force. All of the pain, the actual sacrifices, would be born by others at the command of those not only paying no price but profiting from the process.

I leave it to you to determine who is being villainous here.

Share

Movie Review (sort of): Werewolves

Leave a reply

.

Because I had today off from the work, I decided to go see a movie last night and went to Werewolves. What followed is something that I had not done in many many years, I walked out of a movie before it was over. So, be aware that this review is based pretty much on the first act alone of the movie I truly did not enjoy.

braircliff entertainment

Why did I walk out? I could have gotten past the flat ill-defined characters. I could have gotten past the exposition heavy set-up and even the truly idiotic action of supposedly intelligent people. Even a character has wildly unlikely as our protagonist who was, 1) an infantry combat veteran of American’s wars in the middle east, 2) a dedicated first responder, AND 3) a world-class research level medical doctor. Such a collection of skill is well suited to pulp adventure but badly placed in a horror movie, but I could have let it slide.

No, it was the actual film making and cinematography that drove me out of the theater. Director Steven C. Miller is so enamored with lens flares as to make J.J. Abrams appeared restrained and suited for period drawing room dramas. I was literally muttering under my breath ‘enough with the lens flares’ before any story had started. Miller is also overly fond of extreme close-ups. I am talking about framing actors faces so their chin touches the bottom of the frame and forehead exceeds the top. This is used in a Heads-Up-Display much like Iron Man in the MCU but far far too often. During chaotic action sequences where the characters are suffering the consequences of their poorly thought out set up the audiences are shoved so close to the actors faces with so few cut away shots it is nearly impossible to know exactly what is going on.

All of that pales before Miller’s devotion to strobe effects.

When things turn to shit in the research center because none of the brilliant characters were able to remember that people can reach between bars of a cage the chaotic fight and flight scenes in addition to being filmed with far too many full-face close-ups is lit with so many intense strobes that I literally had to hold my hand between my face and the screen. Of course, with my hand positioned like that I could no longer follow the action and I still acquired a nice migraine. I tried for a little bit longer to watch but between the stupidity onscreen and the pain escalating behind my eyes I determine coming home was a far more intelligent option.

Share

Victory!

Leave a reply

.

Okay, it’s not a major victory like Midway, getting an agent, or a contract from a big 5 publisher but it is still a check in the ‘win’ column.

For a couple of weeks I have been thinking about a foreign tv series that my sweetie-wife and I watched on SHUDDER. We like it and there was a second season but before we could get around to starting that it expired from the service.

Years, many years, pass and here I am thinking it would be nice to locate and watch the second season except I can’t remember the title of the series. I couldn’t even be certain of the nation that produced it.

I remembered it was a Nordic nation, or maybe Germany. The title was a single word but not only was it a word in language I do not speak but it may have been a word from deep mythology as the series dealt with ancient mythological horrors in the deep deep forest. So, there was no way in hell that word was going to come forward for me.

A few cursory google searches for horror series in the possible nations of origin yielded nothing that sparked any memories.

Then, inspiration. While I did not remember the lead actress by name, I think this was the only project of note of her’s that I had seen, I suddenly recalled one of the supporting actors was the lead in the Finnish series Boarder Town. A quick look through his credits yielded the answer I had quested for; Jordskott.

Yup, that’s the series and there is no way in hell that title would have ever come to mind more than seven years after watching season one. (It was a SHUDDER exclusive in 2017.)

Sadly, it is not streaming anywhere.

Share