Monthly Archives: January 2021

Godzilla 2014

 

With the year’s release of the newest ‘Monsterverse’ featureGodzilla vs King Kong a massively budgeted remake of the decidedly campy 1962 film of the same name I have decided to revisit the earlier films in the series starting with 2014 American Godzilla.

The original Toho production from 1954 Godzilla is a defining piece of cinema the created the Kaiju film genre where people in suits and with miniature models created scenes of destruction and titian battles between impossibly large creatures. However, the first film Gojira in japan was a serious commentary on nuclear weapons and the terrible price of war and following in tone but not theme Godzilla 2014 was produced with an eye towards dramatic storytelling over campy kids’ entertainment.

While the trailers heavy feature Bryan Cranston, and every movie can use more Bryan Cranston, Godzilla 2014 starts Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen whose lives, along with millions of others, are disrupted when a secret the government of the world explodes into view, that the world was once populated by Massive Unknown Terrestrial Organisms or MUTOs and that the Pacific Atomic Tests of the 50’s had been an attempt to kill one of these monstrous beasts, Godzilla. Now, following at ‘accident’ a Japanese nuclear powerplant 15 years earlier a pair of MUTOs are leaving a wake of destruction as they hunt for radioactive material to feed upon and mate, nest, and threaten humanity with a world repopulated with MUTOs.

Directed by Gareth Edwards with a screenplay by Max Borenstein Godzilla 2014 had little pretension to a deep philosophical theme or any meaningful emotional arc for its central characters but rather focuses, rightly so in my opinion, of the special effect spectacle of mighty Kaiju monsters combating humanity and each other through Japan, Hawaii, and San Francisco. It is movie built for fun. Where it is better to switch off any real-world science, nuclear and biological, and release your inner child that revels in excitement of action on inhuman scales. Taylor-Johnson and Olsen have little to do as emotional characters but we don’t watch a film like this for Kaiju version of Ordinary People.

If you enjoy massive monsters, grand destruction, and fantastic concept then Godzilla 2014 may be for you.

 

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This Did Not Have to Happen.

 

In just a few minutes I will be leaving to receive the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. This has been a really rough year for all of us and the vaccine is one step in trying to reclaim our lives.

Sadly, more than 400,000 people in America cannot reclaim their lives; COVID-19 took them. The current total as I write this is 423,645 COBID-19 deaths in the United States and for comparison in the Second World War the USA total losses, military and civilian were 418,5000.

This pandemic has been exposed the utter failure of a disengaged government. National emergencies and disasters require a coordinated national response but when the chief executive is more concerned with image and appearance than results and his party quakes in fear at the ignorant fearful and raging base that they cultivated disaster is the only result.

 

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My Favorite Season: Agents of Shield

 

I’m old enough to remember when having a favorite season of a television program would have been quite strange. Before the advent of long form story telling season may have been good or bad but that rarely became favorites.

I watched all seven seasons of ABC’s Agents of SHIELD(henceforth known as AoS) during its original broadcast run and now as an unwinding before bed I am re-watching them in order from Netflix. There is no doubt in my mind, Season 4 is my favorite of the seven.

Split between two storylines, the front half centered on the Ghost Rider with the second half focused on rogue Life Model Decoys (LMDs) and the virtual world of the ‘framework’ the two halves are united by the ancient, magical, and corrupting book The Darkhold.

The Ghost Rider is fun, told well, and takes a different spin on the character than the original source but without violating the spirit of the Ghost Rider. The twist revealing the eventual ‘big bad’ was a well-played but for me the season really exploded with the ‘Framework’, the twists and turns of the artificial Intelligence ADIA and the sheer fun of watching actors and characters we had known for three and half season suddenly get to play vastly different colors and personalities.

While Mallory Jansen has been brought in during season four to play ADIA she was hands down the MVP for playing a wide range of characters during the season. She played ADIA, the LMB and rogue artificial intelligence with an evil and yet tragic motivation, Agnes the artistic human that ADIA was modeled upon, Madame Hydra, the supreme leader of Hydra in the virtual world of the Framework, and various shadings of all of these characters from the flat affectation of ADIA when she was little more than a robot to Agnes a frightened woman facing her own mortality.

Continuing storylines can make it difficult to jump into a series these days if you haven’t watched from the start but I do think season four of AoS can be enjoyed without having the watch the previous three, though of course it works much better if you have.

 

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People Are Not Monsters

 

Last night I watched a portion of Contrapoints latest video. (The run time if feature length at 90 minutes so I will be watching it in bits and pieces.) She had a very on-point and insightful observation which I will paraphrase from memory here, ‘If you don’t recognize the humanity in monsters (referring to people who do monstrous things creatures from fantastic horror tales) then you won’t be able to see the monster in you.’

This is a viewpoint that I have long held as critically important but phrased nearly perfectly. people do monstrous things but they are and remain people. Often, they are damaged by their conditions, deluded in their worldview, but they are still us. From the mass exterminators of the Nazi and Communist regimes to community bigots and bullies they are all still human and if we insist that they are ‘monster’ then we are insisting that they are not like us and we not only absolve ourselves of our own monstrous deeds we create the foundation to justify them and future ones.

In literature there’s the adage that the villain is the hero of their own story and this is very true for reality. The insurrectionists that stormed the nation’s capital and murdered a police officer in a quest to subvert our election and impose an anti-democratic rule upon everyone were heroes in their own eyes. Recognizing their humanity in no way absolves them of their crimes, nor their leaders whom I feel are far less deluded but far more certain in their ‘righteousness.’ Their leaders so confident of their ‘enemies’ monstrous intent and deeds are blind to their own. Convinced that they are right and refusing any possibility that they are wrong forces them onto a path that leads to this sort of violence. If you are right and your ‘enemy’ will stop at nothing to do their ‘vile’ deeds it would be inconceivable to do anything less than everything to win. Their certainty creates the conditions for horrendous actions.

And it can do the same for those of us resisting. Doubt is a good thing, questioning if you are right, is a good thing, always probing yourself and judging yourself is a good thing and you must never stop.

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Deliberately Watching a Bad Movie: Sleepaway Camp

 

One of my recent podcast discoveries, Junk Food Cinema, recently dedicated an episode to the 1983 slasher movie Sleepaway Camp. Near the start of the episode the hosts recommended if you had not seen the movie to watch it before diving into the podcast and since I knew it was currently streaming on Shudder that is exactly what I did. It should be noted that the hosts do not consider Sleepaway Camp  a good movie, in fact they were covering it per a patron request, but they praised it final 10 seconds.

Sleepaway Camp is very much like Friday the 13th in that people at a summer camp are being killed by an unknown person and part of the film’s twist is who is the killer. Much like that original Friday film the killer’s motivation is tied to events years earlier seen at that start of the film. Unlike Friday every single person killed is a horrible human being which in many ways places audience sympathies, if there are any, smack on the killer’s side.

Save for the final shot the film has no originality in the cinematography with flat lighting, uninspired composition, and no real use of depth of field. The writing is terrible with some of the least lifelike dialog that has ever assaulted my ears and with character actions and reactions utterly disconnected from any semblance of actual human behavior. None of the performers have the skill to make the lines sound even close to credible.

In an unusual twist for this sort of production the women and girls are not filmed in a fetishistic manner but there is certainly the impression that men and boys are.

I have heard that this film has become a cult staple among the gay horror film community and on one level I can understand it. The killer’s eventual motivation is revealed to be in part revenge for gender identity bullying and that sort of revenge fantasy could be enjoyable in a power claim manner. However, the revelation of the killer and their motivation walks the familiar ground of transphobia.

Sleepaway Camp is not a film I can recommend other than as an exercise in understanding aspects of cult cinema. If you decide to watch it you may want to have twitter or a book handy to read while you wait for the next kill to take place.

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76,000 Words

 

My work in progress, currently titled as Murder on the Bellerophon, has reached 76,000 words and I am expecting that the finished first draft will land between 95,000 and 100,000 words. My published novel, Vulcan’s Forge available wherever you buy books, was a slim 80,000 words but at this moment I do not feel that the current WIP is in need of any serious cutting.

I am also happy to report that I have written my way through what I expected to be the most difficult sequence in the novel. When I outlined the book, my intent was to tell the tale from a single viewpoint. I think with mysteries it is best to restrict your viewpoints as much as possible. However, in the planning I developed a sequence where a character is chased by an angry mob and it was simply impossible to have my protagonist present. A part of me dreaded this essential plot development while not having my point of view right there. It is the sort of scene that can easily be boring if told via another character’s flashback or worse yet watched by the protagonist on a monitor. Surprisingly when I actually reached that section, it rolled on with the same ease that the previous chapters had.

I have a few more scenes that will be written this week and with those Act 4 will close and I will swing into the novel’s final act. Then will come revisions and editing and then the beta readers. There is always more work to be done.

 

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On Killing Your Darlings

 

There’s an adage on writing that says you must ‘kill your darlings.’ What it means it that you must be ruthless in your editing. That scene, that sub-plot, that turn of phrase that you can’t believe you wrote, that you love to read and admire, if it doesn’t belong, if it leads the reader astray, if the spoils the pacing, then it must be excised out.

While I have had a brushing encounter with this concept, I can’t say it has ever really hit me hard emotionally.

My novel Vulcan’s Forge was adapted from a novella version of the story. (A novella was far too short for what I wanted hence the book that is now out in the wild.) The novella ended on a particular line, a turn of phrase I thought perfectly summed up the character’s emotional arc. ‘I still dream of Pamela.’ But when I was doing the edit on the novel about half a page from that final line the story ended.

Yes, I really liked that line it was the point and objective of the novella but it no longer fit. That last half page vanished from the manuscript and I did not hesitate or look back.

The entire post credit scene thing that Marvel Movies love to do came about from a similar situation. The Original Iron Man was supposed to end with Star going home and have that encounter with Fury but in the editing the filmmakers instinctively understood that ‘I Am Iron Man’ was the end of the story. Under normal condition that extra scene would have been discarded much like the deleted scenes of Lewis in hopsital that would have ended the film Robocop but Marvel Studios need to promise and tease The Avengersand so the post credit scene tradition was born. Before that these scenes often called buttons did occasionally exist but held no plot meaning but were mere bits of fun such as the ‘cursed monkey’ after the credits of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

The real lesson of kill your darlings is understand your story, know what fits, what is essential and what is not.

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First Thoughts on WandaVision

 

I’m a little late to the game but here are my first impressions of the Disney + new MCU series WandaVision.

‘It’s okay.’

Admittedly this is a nine-episode storyline and trying to judge it from the first one or two is unfair but that’s all we have so far. I have been an MCU fan from the first Iron Man feature film though I was never a collector of comics themselves so things like ‘Is this an adaptation of The House of M storyline go right over my head. However, as a fan I have thoroughly enjoyed the MCU and think overall it has been a spectacular success.

The first episode of WandaVision didn’t really strike me as a solid entry. They did a very good job recreating a classic late-50s sitcom but it suffered from the ‘it’s all a dream’ trope. We know what is happening isn’t reality, and to be fair the show never expects you to accept it as reality but rather part of the mystery, so the ‘impress the boss or lose your job’ stakes are meaningless filler. The first episode doesn’t give us enough stakes or even hints of stakes outside of the illusionary sitcom to create meaningful tension.

The second episode with more unmistakable intrusions by other realities and with an ending that questions who is pulling the strings does a much better job of creating the tension that the first episode lacked and is probably the reason the pair were dropped together with the rest of the series being released one the week-by-week format favored by the streaming service. Though it was nice seeing one of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer favorites, Emma Caufield now credited as Emma Caufield Ford, back on my screen even if the role is likely to remain quite small.

I will stick with WandaVision as I intrigued by the plot but at this time I have not been wooed by the series.

 

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Trump is Gone but the Work Goes On

 

Today, 20 Jan 2021, Donald Trump, grifter, liar, sexist pig, and the man responsible for more American deaths than all of the USA’s casualties from the Second World War and the only President to be impeached twice and who inspired and incited a seditious attempt to overthrow our democratic system of government, finally loses his grip on the power he so never deserved to be become, hopefully, our first and only pariah ex-president.

While Trump, his family of coconspirators and conmen along with their retinue of henchmen, yes-men, racists, and scoundrels, have exited the executive branch the festering pestilence that gave rise to them remains unburnt shot through with the spores for the next generation of monsters.

Let’s be clear, levelheaded conservative philosophy is not the genesis of this rot but what the Republican party has become, after decades of playing to bigots of all types, is an anti-democratic party motivated by fear, hatred, and an eternal point of view that the world is forever victimizing them and in American being them victim of injustice justifies all manner of violence. From County music to Rap and in media from novels to feature films has been the glorification of revenge of the wronged and that fact that this poisonous political philosophy is not being victimized matters not at all. They believe to be true and in that find the justification to murder police officers defending our capitol. The mob has been dispersed but its members remain.

In the halls of Congress Representative and Senators furiously are trying to wash away Trump’s foul stink. Some play to his base while most attempt to play us, with words of how bad Trump was and how he lied. Yes, he lied and you stood by as he lied for your team, your cause, and said nothing. Trump’s people are not purged from the party, that control the party. The RNC chairperson dropped from her name the family surname that irritated Trump and bent her knee to him. She has retained her power and her fealty to Trump.

The GOP must be burnt to the group and rebuilt. The path ahead is long, hard, and I fear holds much violence, you cannot have literally millions of people convince that their ‘election’ was stolen without some taking matters into their own hands, but we must press on, we must fight for our republic and our union.

 

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Some of My Work

Some of My Work

What role do movies play in shaping culture? If you were building a culture from nothing how could movies help you shape the people and their attitudes?

These are two of the questions explored in my SF noir novel Vulcan’s Forge. Set on the distant human colony of Nocturnia which is isolated and without any external contact, Jason Kessler chaffs at the colonies pseudo-Americana society that he helps shape with carefully curated mass media while fascinated by the tawdry, forbidden films banned from public or private viewing. When Pamela Guest sweeps into his life offering unrestricted access to these pleasures and more Jason is drawn into a web of lies, crimes, and conspiracies that shatters everything he thought he knew about his home.

Vulcan’s Forge was released the first week of the global lockdown last year but copies are available everywhere and signed ones from my local bookseller Mysterious Galaxy.

Remember when in the original Series of Star Trek because the budgets and the technology were so limited to produce the show how often the characters encountered ‘duplicates’ of Earth? I certainly do and that inspired for the question, how could a duplicate Earth exist? What might that mean? The result of that speculation was my short story A Canvass Dark and Deep which was published by NewMyths.com and is reprinted in their anthology Twilight Worlds: The Best of Newmyths, available in both ebook and print.

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