Monthly Archives: March 2024

A Weekend of Classic Genre Cinema

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This weekend, while still losing the damned cough that start almost two months ago, was one for enjoying some classic, that is old, genre cinema.

Columbia Pictures

Saturday Night my sweetie-wife and I streamed The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973.) After coming into possession of a fragment of a legendary table Sinbad, (John Phillip Law) is thrust into a race for power and riches against an evil wizard (Tom Baker) while saving a bewitching slave girl Margiana (Caroline Munro.)

With stop-motion effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is a prime example of pre-Star Wars genre cinema. Simple, direct, and doing the best that they cane with limited budgets and resources. Still, it is fun little film not meant to tax the old grey matter.

Sunday was this months Film Geeks San Diego screening of another Showa era film of the Godzilla franchise, Mothra vs Godzilla as part of their year celebration of the big lizard’s 70th anniversary.

Toho Studios

After a monstrous egg washes up following a typhon and quickly grabbed by greedy capitalists twin tiny ‘fairies’ arrive pleading for the egg’s return. They are rebuffed despite the efforts of a noble reporter, scientist, and photographer. Awaked from his slumber in the sand by the typhon, Godzilla, in his final Showa era turn as a villainous monster, rampages through the area and the ‘fairies’ convince Mothra to come and battle the radioactive beast.

Despite a decidedly clear turn towards children’s entertainment Mothra vs Godzilla still retains enough ‘serious’ matter to have value for adults watching as well as the kiddies in the audience. It’s message of mutual respect and the abhorrence of Pacific island nuclear testing grounds the film in the period of its production without actually dealing with the tense geo-political realities of the mid 1960’s. Watching this for the first time on a big screen, even if the theaters is a micro one seating only about 50 people, was a joy for nostalgia.

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Time for the Next Novel

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Well, the query letter has been composed, the synopsis written and once they have survived the sweetie-wife’s sharp eye for error I will climb back into the query trenches and The Wolves of Wallace Point will begin seeking representation and a home.

The best thing to do once a writing project is done is move on to the next project. My next novel, also a horror, will combine the sentiments of a 70s disaster flick, large cast, dispersed storylines, not plot armor for anyone, with my favorite style of horror, the ghost story.

I have no working title for this piece, but I have discovered one important thing about it. I cannot write this one by the ‘pants,’ as I did with Wolves. It’s going to end up too intricate, with multiple points of view and interweaving narratives. There are authors who could writ that without an outline, but I am not one. So, for this next novel I return to my usual process and will begin with a 5-act structure outline, but in this case one that breaks down the five acts among the five plots.

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Partial Series Review: The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin

Apple+

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With the crushing news that Our Flag Means Death is not renewed for a third season many in fandom had their moods depressed as the loss of the irreverent, gloriously queer, ahistorical pirate series. They may find some so solace in Apple+’s original program The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin.

Like Taika Waititi’s pirate series Dick Turpin is inspired by an actual historical persona, a highwayman whose status and legend are more products of vivid exaggeration that his actual crimes and exploits.

Starring comedian/actor Noel Fielding as Dick Turpin. An imaginative man desperate to be something other than a butcher’s son Dick leaves home and becomes a highwayman and member of the Essex Gang, the nearly worst rated gang of highway thieves in the area. Together with the oddball members of the gang, Turpin engages in hijinks as a highwayman while dodging a local Lord and the godfather of organized crime Lord Wilde (Hugh Bonneville.)

While not as flamboyantly queer as Our Flag Means Death, Dick Turpin manages a modern sensibility and pacing in its humor. Despite its 18th century setting the characters and tone are decidedly 21st century. Produced in the United Kingdom, the series is populated with familiar actors and comedians if you are a bit of an Anglophile. The crime and violence are played for laughs, and it is not the sort of program that will leave you with deep questions about the nature of life and humanity but rather help you spend half an hour not thinking about such deep subjects. It is escapism but there are times when that is your highest duty to yourself and your sanity.

The first two of six episodes are already available to stream with the remaining four being delivered on a weekly basis as is the standard practice for Apple+ programing. If you have access and need to forget the terrible mess that is our current world you could do far worse than engrossing yourself in The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin.

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Writing the Book was Easy.

 Writing the Book was Easy.

Beta reader feedback is coming in on The Wolves of Wallace point and the signs are good. There aren’t any major issues that people have a consensus on and as such no major rewrites or revision required at this stage.

I have drafted a query letter to use in the search for an agent to represent me and my horror writings but before I can start that process, I must tackle the toughest part of the writing, the synopsis.

I recall an interview with the master Japanese director Kurosawa when the interviewer asked him what the message in his latest film Ran was. Kurosawa replied, through a translator, that if the message was simple enough to be an answer to a question, he wouldn’t have made the film he would have just stood on a corner with a sign.

It took 97,000 words to tell the story of The Wolves of Wallace point and now I must retell it in something like 1000 words and still make it compelling, interesting, and engaging.

This is way I would rather just jump into the next book.

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Movie Review: Dune Part 2

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This weekend the long-anticipated completion of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s landmark Science-Fiction novel, Dune, hit wide theatrical release with Dune Part 2.

Dune Part 1 released in 2021 after a delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic introduced audiences to the Atreides family, one of the Great Houses of a far future galactic Empire, an Empire riven with feuds and competing power-centers. Following betrayal and a surprise attack that destroys House Atreides that film’s protagonist, young Paul Atreides, and his mother flee into the deep desert of the planet Dune seeking sanctuary with the planet’s indigenous inhabitants, the Fremen.

This film, Dune Part 2, completes the adaptation as it follows Paul and his mother as they attempt to integrate themselves the Fremen’s culture and deliver justice or revenge upon their enemies while avoiding a cataclysmic galactic war that Paul’s precognitive powers foresee.

For those familiar with the source material this will be a fairly faithful adaptation of that story, though there are major elements that have been omitted, fans of Alia of the Knife are sure to be disappointed, and the timescale of the second half of the novel has been greatly compressed rather than sped through as with the earlier theatrical adaptation by iconoclast director David Lynch. The essential beats of the story are there, and the final resolution remains generally unchanged. Villeneuve and screenwriter Jon Spaihts have brought forward some of Herbert’s thematic elements that were made clear only in sequel novels, yet not so much as to spoil another entry in the franchise as Villeneuve has stated he would like to conclude this adaptation as a trilogy.

Hans Zimmer, himself a fan of the original novels, returns to score this film with a soundtrack that tonal matches his work in Dune Part 1. The cast is enhanced with Austin Butler, Christopher Walken, Florence Pugh, Lea Seydoux, and an uncredited Anya Taylor-Joy providing a glimpse of what a third film might include. Greig Fraser’s cinematography continues to the outstanding and he and Villeneuve’s experimental work with infrared photography adds an alien ‘otherness’ to some scenes.

All in all, those who consider themselves fans of Dune Part 1 are likely to be fans of this conclusion with anticipation for the next installment from this quite talented filmmaker.

Dune Part 2 is currently playing in theaters worldwide.

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