Monthly Archives: July 2022

Movie Review: The Black Phone

From the Writer/Director team that brough us Sinister and Doctor Strange comes the cinematic adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story The Black Phone.

Set in a Denver suburb in 1978 The Black Phone focuses on a pair of siblings Finn (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeline McGraw), their abusive alcoholic father, (Jeremy Davies) and the child abductor/murder dubbed ‘The Grabber’ (Ethan Hawke.) Things turn dire for the brother

Universal Pictures

and sister when Finn is the next victim of the serial killer, trapped in a soundproofed basement while The Grabber taunts and terrifies the young boy. In the basement a disabled telephone, it landline wires severed, rings and voices of The Grabber’s pervious victims attempt to help Finn survive and escape his ordeal.

The Black Phone is the second horror film I have watched this year with a nostalgic view of the later 1970s, the other being Ti West’s A24 release X. While X felt like someone had been told about the 70s and reproduced the period from that secondhand dissemination The Black Phone is more authentically accurate without the jarring anachronisms, Adult as missing persons on milk container, 24-hour UHF stations, and the like, of X. This film is peppered with beloved detritus of the 70s, the TV show Emergency! and if you look closely issues of Starlog Magazine. The only real violation of the period is Finn’s miniature penlight Saturn V which was far too bright and lasted for too long for the incandescent flashlights of the era.

The performances are consistently good to outstanding. The children characters are both written and directed as realistic children avoiding the ‘overly adult’ manner often found in child protagonists. Thames and McGraw are particularly standout as actors, giving performances that make both ends. terrified and determined, of the actions credible.

Brett Jutliewicz’s cinematography is unsettling and naturalistic, capturing the gloom and cold of the killing basement while just slightly off from reality that supports the supernatural aspects of the story. C. Robert Cargill’s and Scott Derrickson’s script is tight with little wasted time, moving the story along with a clean pacing that carries the audience through the story. Not everything established is critical but everything critical is established in the film’s first act showing a proper deference to Chekov without smashing the elements over the audience’s head.

The Black Phone is a solid entry in the horror genre and well worth seeing either in theaters or at home.

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A Space Opera Advantage

There is no doubt in my in mind that FGU’s role playing game Space Opera has one of the worst edited rulebooks from a major game company. Typos, contradictory rules, vital rules dispersed in various sections, and the lack of any index at all produce a set of rules that without ‘search’ when using the PDFs would make running the game quite challenging.

That said I do adore the game, its bold attempt to sweep in rule for nearly every conceivable SF setting, and its sheer naked ambition.

Recently, in the campaign I have been running since May 2019, I have come to appreciate another advantage to Space Opera, the lack of an experience point system for character abilities.

In Dungeons and Dragons players begin the game as low-level adventurers, dealing limited damage, easily killed, and marginally skilled. With each adventure the Dungeon Master awards Experience Points to the characters that advance their skills and capabilities, no adventure, no experience points, no advancement.

Space Opera using skill learning. Characters devote themselves to study and practice to become better at their skills and advance in capabilities from piloting to the sciences. As long as the character can continue their studies they can continue to advance.

This is an advantage when the real world collides with the role-playing world. Is a player in a D&D game misses one or more adventures, their character fails to gain experience points alongside their compatriots, falling behind in skills and toughness that may be fundamentally unfair. Real world responsibilities should always outweigh play. It is a mark of adulthood.

With Space Opera the missing player’s character, while not investigating the slave clone trade can continue to study and practice the skills they have committed themselves to advancing. When the player returns to the table, they suffer no in game penalty for attending to pressing real world duties. As long as the gamemaster is keeping careful track of the time passed, for which I have spreadsheets that have proven invaluable, and when the player is eligible to advance their skills, the system is fair to all players.

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The Strangest James Bond Film

Since the release of Dr, No in 1962 EON production’s James Bond films have taken the character on wild adventures. Some were smaller in scale, From Russia with Love and For Your Eyes Only, some have threatened the world and have seen the character in orbit above the Earth. For my money that most unusual entry into the franchise that introduced the wildest element was Live and Let Die.

Released in 1973 and riding on the cycle of Blaxploitation cinema this movie presented a new

Eon productions

Bond, Roger Moore, and small threat. Instead of a world ending or dominating plot Bond works to stop a Caribbean criminal from dominating the New York heroin trade.

Now, none of this, while different from many Bond adventures, is terribly unique but there is an element in the film that had not appeared in previous movies would never be revisited.

Magic is real.

The villain, Kananga, has a virgin priestess Solitaire, a strangely non0suggestive name for a Bond Woman, who, with tarot, can accurately predict the future and far see distant events. This is not a delusion or cold reading trick. Solitaire repeatedly and correctly advises Kananga of coming threats and dangers. her prescient powers are tied to her virginity and when Bond seduces her, as he is wont to do, and her life is no endangered by Kananga, Solitaire flips and aids Bond.

Just to make sure that it is not missed that magic and the occult are real in the Bond-verse, one of Kananga’s henchmen costumes himself in the manner of Baron Samedi a supernatural being of Haitian culture with association over the dead and resurrection. During an action sequence near the film’s end Bond throws this particular henchman into a coffin of venomous snakes where he is killed.

And yet at the end of the film the character, played by the same actor, Geoffrey Holder, appears laughing and very much alive at the front of a speeding train. Apparently, we are to assume that this was not a henchman costumed as Baron Samedi but actually Baron Samedi himself.

While Bond has broken free of the constraints of physics and natural law before and after Live and Let Die, the films have never again addressed that they take place in a universe with magic and supernatural spirits.

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Movie Review: NOPE

This weekend Jordan Peele, writer/director of get Out, and US, released his third feature film again playing in the fields of horror with Nope.

The film centers on brother and sister Otis Jr (Daniela Kaluuya) and Emerald (Kiki Palmer) as they struggle to save their ranch and film horse training business following the sudden, tragic, and bizarre death of their father Otis Sr (Keith David.) Between encroaching visual effects

Universal Pictures

wizards rendering live horses almost inconsequential and a local western themes amusement park seeking to expand by buying up the failing property the survival of Haywood Hollywood Horses is in grave doubt. It is in this dire situation when a threat descends from the clouds that both threatens the inhabitants of the ranch and simultaneously offer the possibility of financial salvation.

If you saw the previews for Nope you might be tempted to think that Peele was moving into the alien invasion sub-genre of horror and science-fiction and to enter the theater with that fixed as an expectation is to invite disappointment. Nope is closer akin to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, individuals isolated and under threat than the grand global menace of War of the Worlds. Modifying your priors and you are far more likely to enjoy Nope than if you expect the film to be something it is not.

That said Nope doesn’t entirely gel. It has ideas, characters, and settings, the backstory and subplot of Steven Yuen’s Ricky Park, a former child star and now owner and proprietor of the western-themed amusement park, is tragic and horrifying but only symbolically belongs in the same film as the threat hanging over the ranch. It was the sequences where we see the source of his trauma and its repercussions that truly unnerved me and produced the most tension. Uts failure to fully integrate into the main plotline left me unsatisfied.

However, there is a lot to praise Nope. Kaluuya continued to demonstrate that he is a terrifically talented actor able to inhabit with utter authenticity his characters. Palmer is more manic in her performance which is an excellent choice for Emerald and her willingness to push and chase a dream beyond the bounds of reasonableness. The visuals of the film can be spare in a manner that accentuates the isolation and vastness of a distant and secluded California Ranch. Perhaps once of the greats slight of hands in the film’s cinematography is the way Peele, Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema, and VFX artists capture fleeting glimpses of something in the skies that is enough for the audience and the characters to know that something was there but not enough to describe the thing.

Nope was an enjoyable if somewhat scattershot movie with enough character and threat to carry most audiences through the rougher patches but not achieving the heights of his debut film Get Outwhile avoiding the too fantastical ‘rationalist’ explanation of Us.

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Final Thoughts: Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes

My sweetie-Wife and I have finished watching the Netflix Norwegian series Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes, which presented a fresh and novel take on the Vampire story.

Set in the isolated rural community of Skarnes Norway the series follows the troubles of a family-owned funeral parlor facing bankruptcy due to the lack of business. The daughter Live is found dead in a field but reawakens on the autopsy table kicking off the supernatural/vampire plot, along with the mystery of who attacked and killed her.

Post Mortem avoids overt displays of the supernatural stripping vampirism of many of its flashier powers and abilities revealing a much more humanistic story that serves as an analog for addiction. The vampires of this setting do not required blood for sustenance and as such can endure avoiding the harsh consequences of not obtaining any with far less than would be needed as ‘food.’

Begin Rant

I’m going to digress for a moment and state I have never liked supernatural vampires that burn in sunlight and flee from crosses substituting cow’s blood for human as an alternate food. These revenants are not consuming blood for the fats, carbs, and proteins floating in the flow, it is a magical fluid that sustains them and plasma from bovines does not fit that bill.

Rant Over

The characters inhabiting Skarnes, the local police chief Judith, the annoying yuppie-like businessman, the eccentric attendants at the forensic morgue, and more are all entreatingly sketched and performed giving the series a vitality. As with all successful stories it is the characters, their problems, and their humanity, even as vampires, that pulls you in and keeps you watching.

The series answered all the major questions it posed, completed the plots it started, and left enough open that a second season would fit nicely, or it can be considered resolved and complete with just these six installments. I approve; I detest cliff-hangers.

Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes is worth your time.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel, Vulcan’s Forge, available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and is the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and his desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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A Writer’s Most Important Skill

Recently on Twitter someone asked what is the most important skill a writer needs to possess?

Now, in one respect that is a difficult question. Crafting compelling characters, devising interesting and engaging plots, mastering transporting dialog are all vital skills and having any one of these missing will seriously damage any book.

That said we all know published, both traditionally and independently, novels that not only had some of these flaws but still managed to find success and readers.

There is one skill that all writers need to master if their work is going to find readers and any measure of success.

You must finish the project.

The worst book you ever read, the one you hurled across the room in frustration at its lack quality was completed. That writer kept at it, worked through the hard parts, wrote when everything looks dark, and they could not see the way forward. they, persisted and reached the end.

A completed but bad manuscript can be fixed. Words can he cut out, can be added, can be rearranged. New chapters added or deleted, sequences can be reordered, new character created to fill out those thin sections.

None of that will save an unfinished story.

Worse yet abandoning a story when it’s not working, or when the plot has slipped through your fingers can become a habit. The stumbling block in the next story makes it easier to give up on that one too.

That is not to say you never abandon a project. I certainly have, but it is a fate that needs to be avoided whenever possible. Just as abandonment can be a habit so can complete and when finished it can be saved, it can be fixed. Steven King tried to abandon Carrie, but his wife refused to let him. Where would he or we be if he had?

Finish that book, that script, that short story. It may still stink but you will be better for reaching the end.

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What I Hate Most About Trad Publishing

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like traditional publishing, I have no real skills in marketing, layout, or cover design so it is a good thing to have paid professionals preforming those vital functions. My goal is and remains for the traditional publishing route. (And that’s no slight on those who take the hybrid or solely independent paths. In fact, it’s mad respect for managing all those skills.)

I have gotten all manner of rejections going to trad route, form cars, form emails, personalized rejections, and feedback on why didn’t work for the editors reviewing the manuscript. All of these I can take. Strangely I am rarely devastated by a rejection but move on to the next market. So, rejections cold and impersonal or detailed and inviting of further submissions I do not hate.

It is the lengthy time it takes that drives me bananas.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary for my submission to a major SF publisher of my SF murder mystery novel. Six months since I was contacted by the acquisitions editor that it has been pulled for closer consideration. It’s waiting more than year that I find so hard to endure. (But I do for I have no real other options.)

My previous traditionally published novel, Vulcan’s Forge (A SF novel that evokes film noir) sat on my former agents desk a year unread but gloriously but sold to the first editor I sent it to. Had I not lost that year the novel would not have released the week the world went into lock down at the start of the pandemic.

Like Inigo ‘I hate waiting.’

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It’s Not ‘Mary Sue’ It’s J.J. Abrams

I was recently wandering through some YouTube comments on a reaction video to someone wh0 had just watched for the first time the original trilogy. Naturally there were comments from those who dislike the sequel trilogy complete with ‘woke’ as a pejorative and declarations of ‘Mary Sue.’

Now, I am not going to wade into the Rey debates, people can make up their own minds on the character and frankly heated debates over imaginary characters are dull and boring.

What I think is worthy of observation is the idea that it’s not a ‘Mary Sue’ problem but rather a J.J. Abrams has no concept how the world works problem. Abrams seems to think that skill acquisition and mastery is something that ‘heroes’ do quickly, easily, and magically. It is what happens with Rey in The Force Awakes progressing from utterly obliviousness of the Force to influencing weak minds with ease but it’s not Abrams first display of this sort of ‘easy to be the best’ mentality.

in the 2009 reboot Star Trek James Kirk enters Starfleet Academy as a cadet proclaiming he will be a captain in four years. And then doing so by the end of the movie. Ensign, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, these are just words to Abrams and not the ladder of ranks once must climb to reach Captain. All that doesn’t matter because Kirk is the hero and an Abram’s story that cloak of heroism confers all abilities required of the plot regardless of training, work, and history.

Abrams is a competent filmmaker and director, albeit with a habit of copying others’ styles, but he is a terrible crafter of story and character.

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The Essential Difference Between Ragnarök and Love and Thunder

I adore Thor: Ragnarök and found Thor: Love and Thunder a slog and I have identified one of the key structural difference that I think drives my varied reactions.

Ragnarok structurally has twin parallel plotlines that converge in the film’s final act. After some
set-up in act one the twine storylines are first Thor and Loki on Sakaar and the second is Hela conquering Asgard.

Hela’s conquest of Asgard is presented in a straight-forward tone and manner. It is fairly devoid of jokes, that is not to say it is without humor but rather the humor in it is not in a set-up and punchline format nor does it engage in large scale exaggeration of characters for effect. Asgard is presented as genuine peril with stakes that related to characters we have known.

Sakaar, from its production designs, its saturated color palate, and it very broad characters is over the top in its quips, jokes, and japes. Characters are painted in very broad strokes and exaggerated traits giving the audience a funny ‘fish out of water’ story as Thor fights to escape and confront Hela.

When the two plots converge it is on Asgard and plays fairly consistently by the rules setup for dramatic effect during Hela’s conquest. The stakes are real and humor becomes less broad for a quite satisfying conclusion.

Love and Thunder has several locations and except for a few brief scenes all of the characters in

Disney Studios

all settings are painted broadly and are exaggerated. This film is seeming composed of only Sakaar-like sequences with a Hela plot to counterbalance. It is a diner that has only desserts, which sounds like a good idea but ultimately it is not satisfying.

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Series Review: Ms. Marvel

Disney plus this week completed its latest MCU limited series Ms. Marvel. The shows centers on Kamala Khan, a 1st generation Pakistani-American high school student, her friends, family, and obsession with the MCU’s real-life superheroes, particularly Carol Danvers AKA Captain Marvel. When a mysterious artifact from her grandmother unlocks hidden powers within Kamala, she is thrust into a conflict that will set her against agents of the government, extra-dimensional beings, and that will propel her back the traumatic partition of India.

Iman Vellani does a good job portraying Kamala Khan which just the right balance of immaturity appropriate for a teenager but with potential that should bloom as she matures. The multi-ethic cast overall is well portrayed with the diversity within the Islamic faith is displayed without being shoved into a spotlight like a lecture.

Ms. Marvel’s tone is light with an emphasis on comedy but not fully goofy, but rather a character-based humor with just enough stakes to give the series some dramatic heft.

What appears to be the central threat and conflict is actually dealt with in the penultimate episode leaving the finale for a different and not entirely satisfactory complication. That said over all I enjoyed the series, while it was not a bold as Loki nor as experimental as WandaVision the show was entertaining, well written and acted and presented a likeable main character that was easy to empathize with.

Mild Spoiler Follows

IN the final episode Marvel Studios used the series as an opportunity to introduce a long-awaited fan addition to the MCU — mutants, complete with a musical cue from the 90s animated X-Men series.

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