Monthly Archives: October 2023

Bits and Bobs

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Not a lot to post this morning as I awoke with a low-grade migraine. Not enough to keep me home but strong enough to require medication and to screw with my focus.

Sunday evening I stayed for the evening in a hotel as San Diego Gas & Electric had a planned outage for our condo complex that may have lasted several hours while I would have been asleep. Without power my CPAP machine will not function, and I would sleep terribly and so would my sweetie-wife due to the return of my snoring.

Also Sunday I discovered a non-fiction book I just had to read, Shot From The Sky: American POWs in Switzerland. Allied aired crew in Switzerland has fascinated me since I learned of the topic in the later 80s. This book had first-hand accounts of life while interned by the ‘neutral’ Swiss.

The Wolves of Wallace Point my Idaho werewolf novel is coming along. I have just passed 63,000 words and should need only another 17 to 25 thousand to complete this draft. This week I should transition into the fifth and final act with still only a vague and hazy sense of how to resolve everything.

That’s all for now.

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More Spooky Season with Terrific Writing: Velvet Buzzsaw

Three years before he gave us the best Star Wars ever with Andor writer/director Dan Gilroystalked the secluded, shadowy streets of horror cinema with Velvet Buzzsaw.

Netflix

Set in the world of high-end art Velvet Buzzsaw is populated with artists, buyers, critics, and agents, very few who are in any meaning of the word admirable people. Morf Vandewalt (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an insufferable, pretentious critic hiding behind a shield of ‘truth’ to remain unconcerned with the lives he casually destroys. Ruthless and amoral galley owner Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo) has abandoned art and her days as a punk rocker for commerce and profit. It is Rhodora’s protege Josephina (Zawe Ashton) that sets the plot and nearly everyone’s doom into motion when she discovers the masterful and disturbing art of her now deceased neighbor Vetril Dease. Ignoring the man’s last wishes that all of his art be destroyed upon his death and Stealing nearly a thousand pieces from Dease’s apartment Josephine and Rhodora exploit their ‘find’ launching a new, exclusive, and very expensive artist into the stratospheric heights of the art world. It is not long before those who have transgressed against Dease’s art or even art in general find that curse locked within Dease’s creations from his troubled and unbalanced mind stalks them to their doom.

Velvet Buzzsaw is not horror of the grotesque. It is not horror of sudden violence and gruesome deaths. This film is horror of the uncanny. The film is a slow burn, treading carefully from the bright artificial world of Los Angeles into a world ruled by incomprehensible forces and terrible retribution. A dark horrific satire, but by no means a comedy, this film passes judgement on those that abuse art with cynicism and profit. It is not by chance that the characters that survive the film have all in their own manner rejected the lifeless selling of art for the more honest living of life for art.

This also made a perfect companion piece to go with Pickman’s Model. Not only are both stories about artists and what they see with their eye, but Velvet Buzzsaw has a distinctly Lovecraftian vibe as Morf slowly uncovers the history and horror of Dease’s life and the trauma that propelled his art.

Velvet Buzzsaw is not for everyone. The characters, for the most part are thoroughly unlikable, but I found them interesting. This is not a horror movie with some splatter kill every ten minutes to wake up a jaded audience and it requires your attention, but for those who this is their jam Velvet Buzzsaw will bury itself in your mind.

Velvet Buzzsaw streams on Netflix.

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What I Have Learned ‘Pantsing’ a Novel

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When I first started this current Work in Progress, I didn’t even recognize it as starting a new novel. I had a vague concept for a theme exploring the often-forgotten subtext of 1941’s The Wolf-Man that the werewolf could be a metaphor representing fascism. A scene occurred to me, and I sat at my keyboard and banged it out, without any real solid idea where in this possible story the scene might take place. I read to my writing group and got back very strong very favorable responses with several expressing that they wanted more of the story.

So, without outline and only a vague sense of where this might go, I just kept writing what happened after the Nazi biker had been chased from the local working man’s bar. Soon a couple of chapters had been written and a structure for an entire tale formed in my mind. I had a very loose idea of what key events might occur in the five acts, my preferred story structure, and I began keeping a document just listing the characters because inventing them on the fly made it far too easy to forget details of the minor ones. I figured that if I reached 20,000 to 25,000 words then there was a decent chance the project would not implode, and I might get a complete novel of 80,000 to 90,000 words out of the process.

I am about to close out the 4th act with nearly 64,000 words composed and the 5th act ready to rumble. The manuscript will be finished, and it had been quite the learning experience.

I have learned to trust my instincts.

Several major characters and plot developments have occurred on the fly. At the time these people or events appeared on the page their importance and the way that they illuminated the theme in my mind wasn’t obvious until much later. The ‘gut’ feeling about the characters has yet to fail me.

I have learned that all I need is the next waypoint.

This is not to disparage the outlines of my previous works. My published noir science-Fiction Vulcan’s Forge required a detailed outline because noir is twisty and mysterious and so while in any particular section the characters and the reader may be blind to the reasons things are unfolding as they are, I needed to know that and only an outline provided that clarity. But something not as twisty, like a horror novel about a pack of werewolves in Northern Idaho, all I required is knowing where I was going a few thousand words ahead.

I have learned that being lost is not the end.

Several times I have been writing the scene in front of me, knowing where I roughly wanted the act to end up, but at an utter lose what needed to happen between those points. Instead of stopping and outlining a clear path I have discovered that so far as I write solutions reveal themselves. Sometimes the answer came while writing and other times just before sleep, but they came, I just needed to trust the process.

I do not know how I will write my next novel, but I am richer for having ‘pantsed’ The Wolves of Wallace Point.

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Spooky Season but With Terrible Writing: Space Probe: Taurus

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So, time was running late, and I wanted something I hadn’t seen before that ran for under an hour and a half. Scrolling through the options on Amazon Prime I stumbled across Space Probe: Taurus, clearly a cheesy, low-budget, bit of fare. I went in with low expectations which the film failed to meet by lightyears.

Space Probe: Taurus (SPT) has a script that appears to have been written by a terrible pantser. That is someone who doesn’t outline first but discovers their characters and plot as they write and usually then has several ‘clean-up’ passe to sculp everything into a coherent story. SPT never achieves anything approaching coherence in its plotting. The movie is a series of events that bear little to no relation to each other or any sort of overall plot or theme.

We start with a failed space expedition, Faith One, (This script has made me feel so much better about my poor naming talents.) which has ended in disaster and to prevent the spread of infection at the sole survivor’s begging is self-destructed by remote. We never mention that incident nor return to or even attempt to return to that location again.

After stock footage of various Atlas launches, we join with the new mission, going to a new place, Hope One (Hope for what? I don’t know it’s never explored.) on route to Taurus. The crew would have been cliched a decade earlier, the gruff, tough as nail, male Commander, the flippant, womanizing second, the older, wiser, and more levelheaded senior scientist, and the very attract female scientist there to ‘do science’ and get everyone their meals.

Shortly after launch, because the writer/director has literally no conception of the size of space, they encounter an alien ship floating free in space. Hard as nails commander and flippant guy board, meet an alien who attacks them and, after killing the alien then flee back to their ship. Before departing they plant a friggin’ bomb on the alien ship and destroy it. This incident will never again be referenced or have any effect on the continuing adventure.

There follows some terrible interpersonal interaction scenes with only Francine York playing the pretty woman scientist showing any acting talent at all.

Next, the ship encounters the bog standard ‘meteor swarm’ Their shields protects, mostly, but what damage their receive causes the computer to malfunction and they go very far very fast. (Shades of Lost in Space) They are not lost but must land to make repairs. Attempting to land on a planet with a surface that is only 60% water, they miss dry land, coming to rest on the seafloor. They make repairs, Hard as Nail and Pretty Scientist now decided to have a love story but are interrupted by giant crabs. The giant crabs present no danger to ship and just kind of scuttle around the tiny model.

Making to completely logical decision that while the rest repair the ship Flippant Guy should go ashore and collect a tiny, tiny box of samples. He’s stalked by a monster and attacked on his return, dying of his wounds. With the ship repaired and having learned that this planet can support life, they name it after Flippant Guy and go home.

I have seen my fair share of bad 50s and 60s SF movies. I can forgive cheap. I can forgive stock characters. But come on, you have no excuse for a script this friggin’ terrible. Paper is really cheap, and you can keep drafting until, even if you can’t get it right, you can get it better than this.

Space Probe: Taurus Do not watch. Trust me, I’ve made thsi seem far mnore interesting that it is.

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Even More Spooky Season: Pickman’s Model

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Pickman’s Model is episode 5 of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities the anthology horror series produced by and streaming on Netflix.

Netflix Studios

Adapted from the short story of the same title Pickman’s Model is presented from the viewpoint of Will Thurber, (Ben Barnes) after he encounters in is art class Richard Pickman (Crispin Glover) a talented artist but whose paintings and drawing unsettle the viewer with their grotesque imagery. Thurber flees from Pickman after having been granted a viewing of the artists more private work and for the next twenty years seeming builds a normal life, but plague by nightmares induced by Pickman’s ghastly talents. Thurber’s world crashes when Pickman returns to his life with a planned public exhibition of his work.

Screenwriter Lee Patterson and director Keith Thomas while deviating in large measures from the source material have produced the most compelling and interesting adaptation of Lovecraft’s short story. A persistent and failed by most filmmakers challenge is depicting Pickman’s art. Particularly in an age where all manner of gruesome brutality is depicted not only in entertainment but the evening news it is nigh impossible for any film to present paintings as unsettling as what is described in the short story. Thomas avoids this trap by a couple of tricks, first never giving us a full dead-on look at the art. We see the images in shaky flashes and fragments, not in a static whole shot. Second, with clever lighting and small nearly subliminal changes in the art from moment to moment we can never be precisely sure what it is we see and what is some trick of the light. I found the presentation of ‘unnatural art’ as well depicted as in Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw another fantastic piece of art inspired horror.

The performances, carried expertly by Barnes and Glover, are spot on and while depicting well-known character types never descend in tropes. Crispin Glover, donning a regional accent that avoids being overly broad, is perfectly placed as the disturbed artist Pickman.

Pickman’s Model is a perfect addition to this year’s Spooky Season.

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The Current War in the Middle East

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I have not a lot to say about the matter because I am fully aware of just how little I know, how little I understand, and how terribly complex the entire situation is. I have not the arrogance to presume the wisdom to proscribe solutions. I am as Theodoen when in the film he utters ‘What can men do against such reckless hate?’

To my eye there is no doubt that injustice has been perpetrated by all involved parties, and it is equally clear that not all injustices are anywhere close to equal.

Because one side in a conflict is evil or commits evil does not absolve its opponents or elevate them to be ‘good.’ Evil committed remains evil.

It does seem to me that both sides are trapped by the delusion that they can with acts of cruelty, vengeance, and malice ‘break the spirit’ or their enemies. This is such a rare occurrence as to be nearly unheard of. The Blitz did not break the British, nor did indiscriminate bombing break the Germans. Even in the face of Atomic horrors the Japanese people would have continued to fight, their spirit had not been broken, only a rational judgement by some their leaders and their Emperor summoned up the courage to surrender. Atrocities will not break the Israelis and cruelties will not break the Palestinians. We can only hope and work for the day when rational reasoned judgment finally brings a lasting peace because peace is never won by punishing vengeance.

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Spooky Season Continues: Sleepy Hollow (1999)

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I am going to try to alternate these Spooky Season posts between films and television I have watched before and ones I have not, Sleepy Hollow I watched in the theater during its original run.

Loosely based on the classic American short story Sleepy Hollow re-united Director Tim Burton with his favorite actor Johnny Depp for a unique take on the tale of Ichabod Crane and his encounter with the headless horseman terrorizing an isolated community.

Paramount Pictures

In this adaptation Crane (Depp) is a police constable from New York City, despised and distrusted for his belief in scientific analysis and rationality, now dispatched to the community of Sleep Hollow where gruesome decapitations have struck fear into the farming community. Upon arrival the town’s leading men advise that the murders are the work of a vengeful spirit, the headless horseman taking his revenge on the locals. Crane, a man of reason rejects their superstitious folktales assuring the men that the murderer is a man of flesh and blood. What Crane encounters in Sleepy Hollow upends his world view about reason, science, the supernatural and himself.

While the story is officially set in upstate New York in the last years of the 18th century there is no doubt that thematically and artistically the production is thoroughly English with stylistic flairs that call to mind the heyday of Hammer Horror. The cast, with few exceptions, is deeply English from Hammer veteran Christopher Lee is what is little more than a cameo to genre favorites such as Michael Gambon, known to younger audiences as Dumbledore (2) from Harry Potter and Ian McDiarmid, (Palpatine from the Star Wars franchise).

The film is photographed with desaturated color save for the blood which is rendered in brilliant crimson. The production design reflects Burton’s quirky with more than one moment evoking the ‘Large Marge’ jump scare from Burton’s first feature, Peewee’s Big Adventure.

Sleepy Hollow is not a film that will deeply scare you, leaning closer to adventure than true horror but the copious blood spurts and on-screen decapitations will test some audiences. I thoroughly enjoyed this film on its initial release and continue to enjoy it on home video.

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Nope, Not Going to See the New Exorcist Movie

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I have just read a review of The Exorcist: Believer and it confirmed precisely what I feared, and not in the good horror movie kind of way, about that sequel.

Minor Spoilers for The Exorcist: Believer

Apparently in the climatic exorcism scene the ritual to cast out the demon this time is a multi-faith exercise involving various Christian and Non-Christian faiths because as one character had stated ‘it doesn’t matter what you have faith in as long as you have faith.’

This is the sort of shit that really annoyed the fuck out of me in bad storytelling and crappy world building.

As I have said in other posts, I am not a person of faith. I do not believe that there are any supernatural beings, gods, devils, demons, or ghosts. That doesn’t preclude me from enjoying a good piece of fiction that posits the existence of any along those lines. For the sake of a good story, I can give you all sorts of impossible things. The human body is a very complex and intricate machine easily broken and turned lifeless by any number if little chemical reactions gone astray but I can much my popcorn and lose myself in a good zombie movie even while knowing that re-animated dead are an impossibility.

When a storyteller or filmmaker resorts to the ‘it’s the person’s faith’ that makes the magic and not the myth or lore of the world, the story loses its power and its meaning. If a vampire is repelled by a cross than in that world that setting I want the blood of the Christ to be what causes evil to flee and not the ego of the person wielding the religious iconography. When angels come to Earth, bringing the war in heaven here as they battle over a child’s soul, I want to answer to come from Christian myth not some misplaced ‘noble savage’ appropriation of native American faith. When Catholic priests confront a demon and with ‘the power of Christy’ compel it to leave that tells me we are in a world of Christina lore and myth. All I am saying is be true to the rules, lore, and myth you are using for your tale and do not water it down for a mass audience seeking to not offend anyone.

In the Hulu television series Reservation Dogs, the mundane world and the mythical world of the Native American co-exist. Some characters are shocked when the spirits of their ancestors appear to them and others seem to live in that liminal space between those two worlds, but throughout the series the world is simply presented as it is and as it is believed in without any muddying of the waters about ‘it doesn’t matter what you believe in as long as you believe.’

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Spooky Season Continues: The Witch (2015)

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Robert Eggers’ first feature film and the production that introduced the world to the talents of Anya Taylor-Joy The Witch: A New England Folktale is my kind of horror movie.

The Witch centers on a 16th century family that had crossed the Atlantic Ocean with a colony

A24 Studios

only to find themselves exiled from the plantation for their overly strict interpretation of scripture. On their isolated farm on the edge of a vast and wile forest the family is tormented by the ‘witch of the wood,’ going mad and turning upon each other.

The film is a slow-burn eschewing bloody gore and jump scares for methodical grinding tension and paranoia. Everything that occurs in the story feels ‘off’ and even simple hares imbue scenes with dread and foreboding. The Witch is not for everyone, in addition to a measured pace without explicit violence every ten minutes the dialog presented is authentic 16th century English, comprehensible to modern audiences but requiring a greater focus and attention.

The film’s dedication to period production design helps craft a nearly perfect illusion that the audience is witnessing events from the 16th century. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s excellent use of only period light sources, lanterns and candles, also adds greatly to not only the realism of the setting but the mood of building fear with so little of the frame fully visible. The music score by composer Mark Korven utilizes choirs and ascending scales that is discordant and continually building with clear resolution perfectly mirror the pace of the story.

The cast is uniformly great, along with Anya Taylor-Joy in the lead as teenager Thomasin, the film has Ralph Ineson as the father William, prideful and stubborn in his faith, Kate Dickie as the mother who loses all grip on reality as her family disintegrates, along with a collection talented young actor portraying the younger children.

The Witch played October 4th as part of AMC’s Thrills and Chills from A24. The rest of the month includes on 11th Ty West’s X, on the 18th Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin and concluding on the 25th with Ari Aster’s modern folk horror Midsommar.

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Appeasement Only Begats Destruction

There was a time, and not that long ago for it was within my political lifetime, when the Republican Party was the party that warned of appeasement, that at every instance, and often when it was far from justified, invoked the specter of the terrible policy of appeasing Hitler and the Nazis. It is both ironic and fitting that they are destroyed by the same mechanism that they so vocally insisted others be wary of.

As I have written before it was the ‘Southern Strategy’ that invited in the segregationists following that passage of landmark civil rights laws that first began the process of infecting the GOP with its current disease. Once invited in racism is painfully difficult to excise, particularly if that action cost you power.

Rather than face that pain, the GOP has for decades appeased it. Throwing scraps of legislation to this faction while feeding it lies and outrage in an attempt to satisfy its hunger and hatred. Of course, like the patrons of The Menu they could never be satisfied. Fed lies and outrage their appetite did not reach fulfillment but only grew. So, the GOP fed its racist hateful base more lies, more outrage in an ever-growing movement of appeasement.

With the coming of Trump, a sadly predictable event, the faction now having grown strong and large on its near endless diet, now longer needed to beg for scrap from the legislative table but rather determined the entire menu. The masters of the party found that instead of appeasement that they now paid blackmail, begging for their money and their lives with subservience to the monster of their creation.

No person better epitomizes this than Kevin McCarthy. An experience feeder of lies and sower of hatred, in his vain, egotistical quest to be Speaker of the House, paid and paid and paid the blackmailers, giving them every lie and every hatred that they demanded foolish in his delusion that he could pay off the blackmailers enough to save himself.

He had as little chance of satisfying the MAGA as the Europeans did of buying off Hitler. I weep no tears for McCarthy, he paved the road to his own destruction, delineated lanes, and posted signs to hell before he drove it to his doom. He hasn’t suffered a portion of what he has earned, but I do weep for my nation, my imperfect, flawed, but beautiful country, ravaged and on the brink of ruin by these little men and their foolish appeasement.

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