Spooky Season Symbolically: Enys Men

Neon Pictures

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Enys Men (Pronounced In-es Main) is a 2022 cornish Folk horror set on the windswept desolate island of Enys Men. Set in 1973 the film follows an unnamed naturalist as she repetitiously records the ground temperature and her observations of seven flowers growing on the island while fascinated by a tall, weathered stone figure looking out over the sea and with lichen growing upon it. Amid the repetitive actions of the naturalist the film often intersplices unsettling sequences and imagery. The film’s narrative is nearly non-existent, doing away with such traditional conventions such as character arcs or any sort of act structure, relying upon imagery to convey emotional meaning.

Enys Men is more akin to poetry than narrative film and its sedate pacing will task many viewers. The film is reminiscent of the works of David Lynch but not as lyrical nor as impactful. I think that there is a quite small audience for Enys Men and sadly I cannot be counted among them. It lacks both the weird factor of something like Mulholland Drive and a stronger narrative nature of hold on it, leaving it, like its unnamed naturalist, trapped between worlds.

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Spooky Season Pre-Code Edition 2: Murders in the Zoo

Paramount PIctures

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Released in 1933, 90 years ago, Murders in the Zoo is playing as part of the Criterion Channel’s ‘Pre-Code Horror’ selections. While some of the scenes, particularly one at the front are gruesome and would have been stripped once the production began serious enforcement this film is less transgressive than many pre-code classics.

Eric Gorman (Lionel Atwill) is big game hunter, millionaire, and philanthropist with an inflated ego is and murderously jealous of any man showing attraction to his wife Evelyn (Kathleen Burke.) Gorman murders his victim by staging animal attacks and accidents.

With a running time of just 62 minutes this movie is clearly a traditional B feature. Atwill has appeared in several early horror films and as a ‘second banana’ performed quite well, however hampered with a lackluster script and second-rate dialog he proved inadequate as a lead to carry this movie.

Murders in the Zoo has none of the sacrilegious flair of Paramount’s better known pre-code horror The Island of Lost Souls and wastes far too much time with a bumbling secondary character meant for comic relief. A few scenes are effective and unnerving, particularly Gorman dispatching a rival in the jungle on a hunt, but over all this movie is dull, plodding, and scarcely worth anyone’s time or attention. Viewers concerned with animal welfare and cruelty are advised to skip this feature as in the climax of the story big cats are forces to attack each other and no production justifies such cruelty.

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Irrational Authorial Annoyances

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Sometimes, because I spend a lot of time bending words and phrases to my will, things annoy me that I suspect flow past others unnoticed.

Last night I was reading a non-fiction book on WWII’s aerial bombing campaign when such an event occurred.

The author has just explained to the reader that when a bombing crew were briefed on what appeared to be an easy assignment with minimal chances for danger this sort of the mission was called a ‘milk run.’ That is all well and good. In the computer game 50 Mission Crush I had already encountered the phrase and always welcomed a ‘milk run’ as I tried to complete the requisite 50 mission tour of duty.

After educating the reader on what a ‘milk run’ was the author, going on about a particular mission, then wrote ‘The milk run curdled.’

I was so annoyed that my sweetie-wife in the kitchen heard me and asked what was wrong.

A ‘milk run’ is a thing, it is the noun of the sentence and ‘milk runs’ do not curdle. Milk curdles, but milk runs do not. I get what the author was going for and with a minor bit of reworking they could have achieved the effect that they wanted. Something along the lines of ‘On this run, the milk curdled.’ See? In that phrasing the curdling is applied to milk which does curdle not to a bombing mission which does not.

I am shocked that this clumsy and terrible applied metaphor not only survived the author’s first and following drafts but the editors through it also passed.

It is the following morning and this freaking sentence is still annoying me.

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Season 3 Reservation Dogs & Native Media

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My sweetie-wife and I finished watching season 3 of FX’s Reservation Dogs a dramedy set on a Native American reservation in modern day rural Oklahoma as it follows s collection of teens, their less-than-legal antics, their interpersonal events, and the lives of the larger community around them. The series, a first with American television, with all the creatives coming from Native American backgrounds explores the lives of its characters while both simultaneous·ly honoring culture and religious belief and avoid the ‘noble savage’ stereotype. These characters feel real and continue to feel real even as they encounter spirits of their ancestors, vengeful mythical beings from their heritage, and possibly even extraterrestrial encounters. The mystical never comes off as either jammed in to make the story standout from wider American culture nor overly praised for being native but simply another part of the tapestry of the story’s world.

Our interest in the show when it premiered in 2021 came from the fact that Kiwi creative Taika Waititi served as the series executive producer, but the series has very little of Taika’s erratic chaotic energy and much more the product of its showrunner Sterlin Harjo, a creative whose career I shall watch closely.

There appears to be a little boomlet in Native media and it is one I welcome. In addition to Reservation Dogs there has been the excellent Predator prequel Prey set among the Comanche during the 18th century which also presented as a viewing option the ability to watch the film with an audio track entirely in the Comanche language. A sequel to Prey is already in the works,

 

 

 

The series Resident Alien about an extraterrestrial who mission to slaughter humanity is derailed by his interaction with the Earth’s population also utilizes Native Americans among it cast and world building avoiding simple tropes and cliche presenting its native characters as actual characters.

 

 

 

 

From north of the American border came Blood Quantum a Canadian zombie apocalypse movie with much of its cast and characters coming from First Nation peoples. (The Canadian equivalent to the phrase ‘native American.’)

It is quite a privilege to watch so much media that rejects the racist or adoring portrayals of native peoples in favor of more complex, emotionally interesting, and culturally engaging fare that is now finally becoming available.

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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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