Monthly Archives: August 2020

Streaming Review: Sputnik

With the pandemic closing exhibition theaters movie watching has transitioned to on-line model and experience and the selection of feature on-line is expanded from what would normally be available at the local megaplex showing mostly tent-poles movies with a very few scattered smaller films in the smaller auditoriums. This weekend a friend and I discovered a Russian science-fiction horror film that had been released August 14th for Video of Demand and not at the ‘theater at home’ price of $20 but a mere 7.

Sputnik is set in 1983 during a time when the Soviet Union still existed and competed with the Americans both globally and beyond. Dr Tatyana Klimova, (Oksana Akinshina) a brilliant but unconventional psychiatrist is summoned to a remote facility on the steppes of Soviet Kazakhstan to treat the sole survivor of a recent orbital mission, Konstantin (Fyodor Bondarchuk). Konstantin suffers from specific amnesia and can’t recall what happened during the mission, the return to earth, of is even aware that his fellow cosmonaut was killed. Convinced that she has not been given all the pertinent facts Tatyana forces the officer in charge Col Semiradov, to reveal what has been kept from her and the reason that everything has been located in this isolated facility, Konstantin did not return alone but now harbors an alien parasite but all attempts to separate the cosmonaut from the creature have failed and Semiradov fears that Konstantin is withholding something from them all.

When we rented Sputnik based on the strength of its trailer, we honestly expect nothing more than mediocre Alien clone but the film exceeded our expectations. While it is far from a perfect film Sputnik is competently written, acted, and directed taking its time to reveal the horrors both alien and human as secrets drip from the script like water from a leaky faucet. Akinshina is well cast as the troubled doctor and Bondarchuk manages both the ‘Hero of the Union’ aspect of his cosmonaut while slowly revealing the character’s more human and sometimes darker nature. The cinematography is atmospheric and moody with the visual effects of alien credible in every scene.

While I would seriously hesitate to recommend this as an expensive ‘theater at home’ rental, for a more usual video on demand rental fee I was quite satisfied and willing to suggest this to fans of moderately graphic SF horror.

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Trump is a Wounded, Rabid, and Cornered Animal

There is no doubt in my mind that with Trump and this election we are facing the most dangerous political moment in our nation’s history. Even when Lincoln won the 1860 election and the Southern States traitorously rebelled sparking a war that killed hundreds of thousands, they still respected the electoral process, Trump is very likely to not.

I chose my description of Trump with care not only top present an image of snarling, biting animal dangerous to approach but with each qualifier signifying a particular aspect that is challenging our electoral process.

Much of the analysis about Trump fighting to remain president seems centered on a very traditional model of political behavior that people who become president and want to remain president do so from political motivations and in his re-election for Trump this is a very minor factor.

Trump is wounded because his life of likely crimes has been dragged into the bright daylight and his vile bigoted personality makes it impossible to ignore. Should trump be removed from office he and his family will face a vast array of criminal investigations. There is already a mountain of testimony from former associates about his criminality and the office of president is the only thing shielding him. To lose the office is very likely to go to prison and so wounded in the manner you should expect that he will have absolutely no limits in what he will attempt to retain the presidency.

Trump is rapid because his own narcissism and idiocy make it impossible for him to manage is problems in a rational and effective manner. The pandemic which had it been managed with even the barest competency could have actually boosted his re-election chances, but because he has never actually solved a difficult challenge but always lied, blustered, and bought he way past them. His fumbling attempts, that may very well succeed, to hamper a free, fair, and open election are the clumsy machinations of someone without any skill, talent, or industry in political life. The sabotage of the Postal Service is blatant and exposes him to greater danger rather than reducing all because he is incapable of acting subtly. He always has to shout the quiet parts out loud.

Trump is cornered because the polls are against him. His popularity never crossed the fifty percent line and only the electoral college gives him a chance at actually winning re-election. What talent his team once possessed has been lost as he purged them for sycophants and co-conspirators. This makes him doubly dangerous because as legitimate victory slips out of his grasp the need for victory, to escape a possible looming lifetime in prison, he will absolutely employ more and more illegitimate methods of holding onto his power and his safety.

We have never confronted a president like this, never faced a man so lacking in decency and morals in our highest office and we must be ready for anything in our compelling needs to remove him from the Resolute Desk.

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Taika Waititi’s The Hunt for the Wilderpeople

2016, a year before his enormous popular and critical success of Thro: Ragnarök Kiwi writer/director Taika Waititi enjoyed praise for his more modest release The Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

Wilderpeople is the story of Ricky Baker a rootless boy in foster care bouncing from home to home until he winds up in the care of Bella and her gruff husband Herc. Bella manages to pierce Ricky’s defensive anti-social shell but Herc remains aloof, and distant to the troubled boy. The film’s central genre, mismatched odd couple, flowers when Herc and Ricky end up on the run from the authorities and are forced to survive for several months in New Zealand’s wild and mountainous bush country. While the premise and even the eventual mutual understanding the characters achieve are typical for the odd couple genre Taika’s unique and slightly absurdist style both visually and in the script elevates Wilderpeople to a charming emotional ride with the sort of unexpected gut punches that Taika would later deploy in films such as JoJo Rabbit.

The Hunt for the Wilderpeople is currently streaming on Hulu and should not be missed.

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Joy in Creation

I have started the process of working out the details for my next novel. Now I had previously worked out a novel and its synopsis before, submitted it to my editor and after a very friendly discussion about it themes and ending, we came to the conclusion that it was not a novel for that press. I could have moved on to writing it, it’s a dark cynical story that is kin of adjacent to cosmic horror without being a horror novel but I decided to follow a new idea that had recently arrived in my brain and would be a perfect fit for the press.

So yesterday I began the note process where I do the majority of my world building. This is sort of like explain on paper to myself how the world works and how the characters interact with the world and its social structures. It’s me telling myself the background of the story without getting into the plot details. I have a clear understanding of the sweeping outline of the plot, I know the story’s central mystery, the protagonist, and the resolution, but within those grand sweeps are nearly countless details and tones that I have to nail down before I can outline the actual story.

What’s a joy is that the worldbuilding solves plot problems before I even get to the outline. This new novel will take place on a ‘generation ship,’ one that travels slower than light and generations of people are born, live, and die on the ship before it reaches its colonization target. How do you organize people as a society that both meets the needs of a ship, with a rigid command and control structure and meets the needs of a free people living their lives in a vast spinning cylinder? How do you direct populations to prevent any sub-group from becoming a dead end genetically preserving both diversity in the gene pool and freedom for the population? Answering those question not only helped me make, at least in my mind, a more credible world but also gave concrete solutions to plot problem I had already seen but not yet answered.

This is the fun puzzle solving stage of creation. There will be more challenges to overcome and new puzzles to solve but right now it is mostly slotting the framing pieces into place.

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A Grab Bag of Items

The Haunted Palace

This is a Roger Corman movie that supposedly is part of his Poe cycle of the adaptation but in reality it is a film version of The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward. A single line from a poem by Poe is used to justify the pretense adaptation but as a Lovecraft film it actually works pretty well. It’s always nice to see Vincent Price in one of these moody atmospheric films. I’m glad I sent away for the Blu-ray from the U.K.

The NRA

Last week the Attorneys General for the State of New York and the District of Columbia files suits to dissolve the National Rifle Association. The NRA operates as a non-profit organization dedicated education and training of the general public on matters related to firearm use and ownership with a supposedly side interest in lobbying and political work. The suits however are not related to lobbying and political activism but rather focus on corruption and the senior leadership using the non-profit as their own personal profit centers and in that respect the suits are not dissimilar to the ones used to dissolve the Trump Foundation that had also engaged in serious financial corruption.

There are those who advance the idea that this is an election year political ploy by the various Attorneys General to harm the GOP in the upcoming election but I have serious doubts about that hypothesis. This action is likely to energize the GOP base and provoke them to turn out in greater numbers and with less than 90 days until the election it is highly doubtful that these suits can sideline the NRA before the voting. Legal gears do not turn that quickly. I think it is clear that the New York AG was hostile to the NRA but it is also clear that the NRA suffered from deep systemic corruption.

Horrible Imaginings Film Festival

Next month is the 11th annual Horrible Imaginings Film Festival and the first year that the festival will be entirely virtual. The pandemic has been terrible with the economic damage and the loss of life that is nowhere near ending and in these dark fearful times it is good to find what little joy and light there is and one of those things is the festival dedicated to horror films short and long from around the world. I have taken days off around that weekend and while I will desperately miss the in-person event at the Freda Cinema I will thoroughly enjoy the films.

 

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Late to the Party: Blood Quantum

Okay I really should have watched this months ago when it premiered on Shudder and that streaming service is still the only place to view the new zombie film.

Hailing from Canada Blood Quantum is a zombie movie set in 1981 on a Canadian Native-American reservation. Produced, directed, written, and starring member of First Nation Tribes the film approaches the now tired zombie sub-genre from a thematic perspective of colonization and does a damn fine job of it.

The story centers on Traylor, his estranged wife Joss, their son Joseph and his pregnant white girl friend and Joseph’s half-brother and Traylor’s delinquent son ‘Lysol.’ The movie unfolds in two distinct periods, the first day, the day the Zombie plague erupted and six months later as winter approaching and the tribe is dealing with an influx of refugees to the safe harbor that they have created on the former reservation. The twist to the genre and source of the film’s title is the quirk that Native Americans are immune to the infection bites of the zombie and do not rise up as walking corpses. All of the is driven by the Native-American characters with their interpersonal dynamics and prejudices propelling the plot. Much like the little seen Maggie this is a family drama that unfolding during a zombie pandemic but albeit with much more Dawn of the Deadinspired blood and gore effects.

Blood Quantum is a shining example of how to use speculative fiction and its unreality to explore issue bedeviling our real world without pulling out a tired soapbox or losing track of the entertainment required to keep an audience engaged. If you have access to Shudder this is a movie well worth watching.

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YouTube Discovery

So, with movie theaters closed along with everything else I have been spending quite a bit of time streaming various channels on YouTube. In addition to my history and technology viewing there’s a lot of cinema YouTube and the algorithm recently suggested something that turned out to be quite interesting, The Russo’s Pizza Film School.

The Russo Brothers, Joe and Anthony, are responsible for my favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe films, The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and End Game. During this enforced lockdown they have been holding a virtual film school, focused on screenplay and structure, exploring films that influence their tastes and craft. The films are a diverse lot ranging from Blue Velvet and No Country for Old Men to genre and cult favorites such as The Evil Dead and 1980’s Flash Gordon.

They also bring on guests to help them discuss the movies ranging from film critics to actors and directors. It’s named the Pizza Film School because they suggest ordering a pie from a local shop, to support small local businesses, and enjoying a slice or two as they explore what makes these films tick and work.

If you have an interest in story structure and how these films influenced a pair of truly talented film makers check out the Pizza Film School, I’ll link to the Flash Gordon episode as a starter. The episodes mostly run about an hour long, mostly.

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Moments of Transition

I think that some of the most vital moments in a story, and it doesn’t matter if that story is told through a visual medium such a feature film or a narrative medium such as novel, are those moment when the character crosses a transformational threshold and enters a new phase of their journey of change.

The best stories are stories about a character’s change where at the end of the tale the character makes choices that would have been beyond them at the start. But along the way to those ultimate transformations the characters cross smaller thresholds that build upon one another until the full transformation takes place and those smaller moments of change are often powerful moments in the story. Here are just a few examples from popular films, and I am going to use older movies because it does dip into spoiler territory.

Jaws

Chief Brody’s transformation from a man who fears water to a man able to venture comfortably forth on the sea is clear but a vital moment of change comes at the hand of Mrs. Kintner. The fishermen have brought in their tiger shark and everyone is celebrating the end of the threat. The moods crashes when Mrs. Kintner slaps Brody because her son is dead, he knew the beaches were unsafe and left them open anyway. It’s a powerful emotional scene and Brody after it cannot go back to who he was before her accusation. It is crossing this threshold that propels him to do a ‘half-assed autopsy on a fish’ and make his first foray onto the ocean and stiffens his spine in encounters with the Mayor. Mrs. Kintner literal slaps his character onto a new path.

Alien

Alien is a tricky beast. The film’s opening acts it hides the identity of the main character. Ellen Ripley, and she didn’t get a first name until the sequel Aliens, a first presents as a person who avoids direct conflict and dangers. She doesn’t volunteer as part of the expedition to investigate the signal, and she’s evasive with Parker and Brett over the bonus situation. Ripley’s first moment of transformation occurs when Dallas and Lambert return with the stricken and ridden Kane. She makes the hard call and denies them access to the ship, almost certainly dooming Kane to death. This is a threshold the character had avoided but faced with an unknown danger she steps across it and after Ash violates the quarantine she is more willing to confront other characters over their misdeeds and actions. The sequence at the airlock is not only vital to the plot, getting the alien aboard the ship, but vital to Ripley’s character development.

When you are craft the important moments of your story look to the one-way door of transformation it is vital to your character.

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It is Okay to be Non-Productive

Perhaps this post is for myself more than it is for others but it is okay to be stalled and uncreative during this crisis.

A lot of people have been facing forced idle time as the pandemic shuttered their businesses, their schools, and their recreation and for the creative among them there has been a sense that this time at home should have been a time of productive expression.

That feeling is a false one and ignore a critical component of the creative processes, the artists mental health and well-being.

These are incredibly stressful times. A lethal disease is sweeping the world and if you live the United States of America the situation is made worse by Federally led bungling incompetence. Too many of us are vulnerable to the virus, too many of us have preexisting conditions to ignorantly approach this disease with careless caution and too many of us have already watched loved one die. This is not an environment for fruitful speculation and creativity.

If you are finding your creativity, that is good. Heaven knows that some of the inspiring, emotional, and comedic creations have helped many through these dark trials but that sort of creativity under pressure is an except not the norm.

My productivity as a writer has been nearly zero, and my day to day life has remained mostly unchanged. I have a day job that I still leave home to work so stifling cabin fever has not been one of my issues. But I have loved ones in this disease’s path and one who has been taken far too soon. I’ve found, aside from some large-scale plot concepts and one of those I really love, I haven’t been able to write and that’s okay.

It’s okay that much of my free time has been with movies, sessions of Call of Duty WWII, and puzzling out spreadsheet to making running my Space Opera RPG easier.

Be good to yourself and know that these times will pass.

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Anticipation

This year there has been precious little to look forward to. It started well with the release of my book in March and my first in-person author event at the tremendous Mysterious Galaxy but the pandemic swept the globe, shuttering society, collapsing the economy, and leaving a terrible toll of death in its wake. In the face of cataclysmic events my little novel and its release seemed such a small thing. Still, I am grateful to everyone who has been ordering on-line and those who have left such positive reviews. Honest, I did not pay them for that.

Normally science-fiction conventions are events that help moderate my mood but naturally those have been canceled or moved to purely on-line gatherings.

Luckily the pandemic has not stolen from me entirely one of the year’s most enjoyable and anticipated events the Horrible Imaginings Horror Film Festival.

The festival was founded in 2009 by my pal Miguel Rodriguez and year after year has grown. Due to scheduling and other real-life issues I was never able to attend until 2015 but each year after that this has been one of my go to jams for good times, good people, and great discoveries.

Naturally this year there is no in-person festival but there will be an on-line celebration and exhibition. This is not as fun as a few hundred attendees jamming into the terrific Freda Cinema in Orange County for big screen presentations of short and feature length horror films from around the globe but there still will be new and exciting cinema to discover. I have already experienced the on-line presentation with Miguel’s quarterly mini-festival Campfire Tales and the process works well and while it is no substitute for a proper theater screen my 55” 4K television is passable for experiencing new and exciting film.

I have already purchased my all access pass for the festival and the next year’s worth of Campfire Tales so September should have a least a few moments of horrifying escapism to make life more bearable.

 

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