Quick Thoughts on Lovecraft Country

I have completed HBO’s adaptation of the Lovecraft Country set during Jim Crow America as a Black family fights for survival in a world that in addition to racism contains magic and monsters.

Overall, I rate Lovecraft Country as Good but not Great and I know that puts me at odds with a number of my fellow genre fans. That’s okay, art is subjective and as I often say in my writer’s group meetings, ‘Your mileage may vary.’

The performances are stellar, the production is fantastic, and the writing of each episode overall is excellent so what doesn’t work for me are issues that may not matter to someone else.

For me the narrative momentum drifted in the middle of the story giving it some second act issues which gave some of the middle episodes the same overall feeling of a classic Doctor Who escape, run around, and get caught again episode. Information was gleaned, some characters issues advanced, but the plot remained stuck in place.

I never understood why Christina invoked a convoluted plan that involved bequeathing a fake inheritance to Leticia to maneuver her into buying the old home instead of just going there directly to recover the orrery.

At times thematically it felt a bit heavy handed.

For something invoking the concepts of Lovecraft’s work the absence of cosmic horror is startling.

It was good and should be watched but for my money I think HBO’s sequel/extension of the graphic novel Watchmen is a better series.

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Seasonal Review: Death Line

Death Line (AKA Raw Meat) is a 1972 British thriller/horror film starring Donald Pleasance with a cameo from Christopher Lee and directed by Gary Sherman.

When an important member of the Ministry of Defense vanishes from a tube Station Inspector Calhoun (Pleasance) starts investigation discovering that the station in question has a history of missing persons. More people go missing and one turns up murdered after being impaled by a broom handle. With the assistance of a college couple the mystery is eventually solved and the threat ended.

Death Line is a slow film taking its time to unwind and even at an hour and half it feels a bit long and padded. The concept when revealed is better suited to an hour-long anthology than a full feature film. There is one very impressive single-take tracking shot but overall the film suffers from too slow of a pace.

Pleasance has been noted for giving one of his most eccentric performances and that is well deserved. He doesn’t chew the scenery, but the Calhoun’s characterization is quite unlike the sort of the role one would associate with Pleasance.

Death Line is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of the collection 70s Horror.

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Quick Hits

Suffering a little headache so just a few quick observations and notes this morning.

My Work in Progress novel is coming along nicely, 11,000 words on the rough draft and exploring/discovering aspect of the story within the confines of the outline has been going well.

I have been re-watching Downfall about the final days in Hitler bunker as the Soviets take Berlin and frankly it feels like I am spying on Trump Campaign Headquarters with true Believers unable to accept reality, bootlickers scrambling to save themselves, and rank and file only just realizing that they have been led by a madman to their doom.

Did not watch the Presidential debates. Any event, however unimaginable, that would dissuade me from voting against Trump will be far larger than any verbal contest.

Going to spend at least some time this weekend with a virtual convention.

Have fun everyone.

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A Seasonal Viewing: Horror Express

This week my sweetie-wife and I re-watched 1972’s Horror Express starring those icons of horror film Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing with an additional appearance by America’s favorite lollipop loving detective Telly Savalas as Captain Kazan.

In 1906 Alexander Saxon (Lee) boards the trans-Siberian express heading West with a secret and astounding scientific discovery he found in remote Asia. Also aboard the train is Dr Wells (Cushing) a rival English scientist though not a villainous one, a Polish Count and his wife along with their mad priest very much in the style of Rasputin and an assortment of other curious and dubious characters. Even before the train departs the station a thief attempting to breaking Saxon’s secretive crate mysteriously dies with his eyes suddenly turned an opaque white. En route more terrifying deaths occur turning the passenger cars in a slaughterhouse. Really, for Lee and Cushing movie from the early 70s this movie has an astoundingly high body count. The express stops briefly to board Captain Kazan and his men apparently dispatched on orders from Moscow to deal, ineffectually, with the crisis.

In genre story construction a general rule, particularly in film, if that you ask the audience to accept only one truly fantastic thing in your story. The filmmakers of Horror Express have utterly no regard for this concept. Among the out of the world elements pushed into the plot are, beings frozen in ice reanimating after millions of years, alien visitations, the telepath absorption of someone entire mind, and mind transference. Despite the ‘junk drawer’ approach to genre story Horror Express is a fun watch. Lee and Cushing are great together and unlike many films where they share billing the movie centers on their relationship rather than using the actors as mere advertising props. Savalas revels in playing the cruel Cossack sent to sort thing out and the cast in general are quite enjoyable.

Horror Express is currently available as a VOD rental from Amazon for the princely sum of 99 cents.

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Can Ideas Go Stale?

The answer for me is an unqualified yes. I know that when an idea for a story, a game, or any other sort of creative endeavor first arrives in my shriveled brain that is a window in which if I do not start working on the concept it will never become fully realized.

It doesn’t matter if I have taken the time to produce detailed notes or outlines the idea itself seems to go stale and lose life the more time passes between its inception and its execution. I have folders on my computer of half-started ideas that I failed to follow through on in time and are now adrift without direction or propulsion.

Curious enough this does not seem to apply to any concept that is executed fully and then set aside. If I write a novel centered on a concept and the set that novel aside, I can come back ten years later, re-read it, and its vibrancy is still there, but if it’s only an outline or a synopsis. Nope, that’s as dead a week-old corpse.

Because of that fact or limitation in my creative process I am plowing ahead on my novel without having a signed contract in my back pocket.

The work is not wasted. No writing ever is, it is all honing the craft, but also even if my editor and I cannot come to terms, and that’s an outcome I doubt we have a great working relationship, there are other houses and other editors so forward I go.

 

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Captain America and Magneto: Marvel’s Original Anti-Fascists

It is interesting to contrast Marvel’s best-known Anti-Fascists, one nearly the Platonic Ideal of a modern comic book hero, Captain America, the other a genocidal villain driven by trauma and terror, Magnet. Both gained their anti-fascism during fascism’s original run, World War II but reacted in diametrically different manners. In discussing these two characters I will be referring to their cinematic presentations, Caps’ from the very successful Marvel Cinematic Universe and Magento from Fox’s more erratic X-Men franchise and associated films.

Steve Rogers was an underweight, under-sized, unhealthy man when American entered the war but driven by his intense sense of justice he desperately wanted to serve in the US Armed Forces despite being categorized as ‘4-F.’ After coming to the attention of Dr. Erskine Rogers was recruited into an experimental program to enhance human ability and attempt to create a ‘Super Solider.’ It’s important to note that in his interview with Erskine when asked if he ‘wanted to kill Nazis’ Rogers replied that he didn’t want to kill anyone but that he doesn’t like bullies. With an ideology that was already solidly anti-fascist Rogers also already possessed his most heroic qualities. The Super Soldier Serum may have granted him transhuman capabilities, but it was his moral code that defines his anti-fascism and also governed it limits.

Erik Lehnsherr a Polish Jew who would eventually take up the alias Magento was subjected to the horrors the Holocaust by Germany’s genocidal Nazi regime and while his mutant ability to manipulate all forms of metal was already present its development and his control were insufficient to protect either himself or his parents. Surviving the mass murder of Jews only because the attention of Dr. Klaus Schmidt aka Sabastian Shaw, Erik comes to his anti-fascism as a reaction to the brutal treatment of himself, his family, and his fellow Jews rather than from an innate moral code, despite as a younger man being a man of faith. Following World War II Erik adapts a personal mission as a NAZI hunter particularly interested in finding and taking revenge on Dr Schmidt. After successfully preventing nuclear war in an alternate history version of the Cuban Missile Crisis and targeting for destruction by the government that fear his and other mutant’s powers Erik adapts the name Magneto and identifies more as a mutant than with his Jewish ancestry. Taking the lesson he learned at the hands of Nazi brutality that humanity’s prejudice will lead it to always destroy those who are different he makes mutant survival and dominance his objective. Eventually Magneto attempts a massive attack to transform many of the world’s leaders into mutant regardless of the danger and death his machine will unleash because his objectives have transformed in obsessions.

Here we can compared critical moments between the two characters and how character plays into the importance of these moments.

Rogers, still a scrawny specimen without the benefits of Erskine’s serum, is suddenly confronted with a grenade during training, unaware that is a practice dummy round and while the rest of the trainees run for safety, he throws himself on the device attempting to shield everyone from the blast. He understands on an intuitive level self-sacrifice.

Magento’s mutant creation machine requires his unique abilities as a power source and the power levels needed are likely to kill him. Rather than subject himself to that risk and danger he kidnaps a teenage girl with the ability to steal his power and forces her to bear that risk. Erik’s terror and trauma has transformed him into his own version of fascism sacrificing others for his own goals.

And therein is the critical difference between the character and the moral difference in ways to combat fascism. You cannot adopt fascist ways without becoming a fascist yourself. It is noble to offer yourself up for the cause it is evil to offer up others.

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The Importance of Good Cinematography

I have a bit of a time crunch this morning so this will simply be a quick observation.

During the week I started a re-watch of From Beyond the second H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from Stuart Gordon following his version of Reanimator with returning cast member Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs.

While the script is far from stellar it was perfectly serviceable, at least at the start before it veered into distinctly non-Lovecraftian area of BDSM and sexuality but right from the start the film is undercut and severely damaged by its cinematography.

The scenes are well lit, and everything is clear and shop from the foreground to the background and that is the trouble. Now I do not know if this was because of some budget restraints, directorial edict or simply a stylistic choice by DOP Mac Ahlberg but it doesn’t work.

Even when the characters are supposedly in a darkened space and using flashlights the scenes are well-lit and everything is perfectly visible. There is no use of shadow and darkness of create danger and mystery in the character’s space a serious failing for any horror film. There is nice work when the ‘resonator’ is engaged and the scenes become bathed in lavender and purple as the other-worldly dimension intrudes into our own, but had the other scenes been lit more realistically, with more care to the light and shadow then the drastic change during the inter-dimensional events would have been more effective.

 

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Novel Nordic Noirs

For some time my sweetie-wife and I have been enjoying murder shows from the far north of Europe. Recently we have added two more programs to our rotation of after dinner entertainment.

Arctic Circle is a show set in the Lapland region of Finland. This is the part of the world where you get reindeer and lots and lots of snow. It is also the area of Finland that seems to analogous to American’s relationship with Appalachia, rustic and suspicious of outsiders and with a dose of religious fundamentalism. The show follows Nina a local cop who usually is dealing with drunks and poachers now entangled in a case involving cross border human trafficking, the Russian Mafia, and a novel and deadly virus while dealing with the issues of a single mother  with a special needs daughter and a growing affair with a foreign scientist.

The show is well produced, well acted, and is thoroughly engaging.

The second program is Jordskott a police thriller with horror overtones. Produced and set in Sweden, though it features the lead from the Finnish serries Bordertown now playing a heavy, this show centers on Eva a police detective who has returned home after the death of her father and the unresolved disappearance of her young daughter seven years earlier. Atmospheric and moody Jordskott, which translates roughly in Soil Shot, unfolds at tits own pace with just enough mystery and strange reveals the keep the viewer engaged.

Arctic Circle is currently streaming on the Roku Channel Topic and Jordskott is a Shudder exclusive.

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But 2020 is 2020

Yesterday I gave you a number of reasons why the election in 2020 is not a repeat of 2016 with plenty of nuggets to raise your spirits and cool your fears. Today we are going in the other direction and I’m going to go over a few possibilities how this election could go wrong. And by go wrong I mean yield an illegitimate result. Trump is very unpopular and has a practically non-existent chance to win the popular vote and very slim chance, 13% as of today at 538, but we have more to fear this go around than another electoral misfire.

1) Who decides on the electors?

In our system we do not actually vote for president we vote for a slate of elector to represent our state at the electoral college who had promised to vote for our choice in the presidential contest. In some states it is not force of law that selects the electors and there is nothing legally from preventing a legislature from voting to send a slate of electors of their choosing. So, if Florida goes by a bare margin to trump thee governor and thee state legislature could simply choose to ignore the results and send a GOP slate delivering the state’s electoral college votes to Trump. If Trump is defeated soundly in a number of states this avenue of election rigging is closed off but if it comes down to a single state and the GOP control the state it is a possibility.

2) A Delay in Certifying the Electors.

If the election and the electors are not certified in time, then a state may not send their electors to the college to vote on the president. Such an outcome could make it impossible for any candidate to cross the 270 line in which case the selection of president would be made by the House of Representatives with each state having one vote. There has been reporting that the Trump campaign have been readying a large number of lawyers to contest elections and slate of electors in a number of states with the intention of not winning these legal challenges but consuming so much time that the electors cannot be certified and throwing the election to the house.

The Congress that would vote in the new president is the incoming class and there have also been reports that the Democrats under the leadership of their Speaker have been targeting particular House Seats with an eye focused on gaining control of a majority of state delegation in addition to their current majority in total members.

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Why 2020 is Not 2016

There are at the time of this writing 20 days until the United States Official Election day though people are voting now by mail and in person by way of early voting and the possibility remains that closer than expected contest may delay results by days or weeks.

As we approach the critical time for our republic and for the world many people are having tense fearful reactions to Biden lead in the polls recalling Clinton’s lead that evaporated and left the nation dealing with a narcissistic corrupt man-child at the head of our government. While the only poll that reallymatters is the actual vote tally here are a few reasons to keep in mind as to why 2020’s election is not the same as 2016’s.

1) Joe Biden is not as a reviled figure as Hillary Clinton.

Rightly or wrongly Clinton carried 30 years of negative political baggage creating a contest between two despised candidates. That dynamic is missing entirely.

2) Joe Biden is consistently breaking the 50% barrier in polling.

Hillary Clinton while often outpolling Trump rarely if ever managed to score above 50% in the polls and in the final weeks of the campaign remained below that critical measure.

3) There are no major third-party candidates.

In an election as tight as 2016 with the outcome turning on less than a few hundred thousand votes nationally the presence of third-party vote drainers such as Jill Stein proved critical.

4) 2016’s ‘unthinkable’ is our reality.

In 2016 is was commonly accepted wisdom that the electorate simply would not elect Trump as President. Despite 538’s giving Trump a 1 in 3 chance of emerging victorious people simply assumed it would not happen but in 2020 we have sadly been forced to accept that it can and that it did happen. Now no one dismisses Trump’s chances as ‘unthinkable.’

5) The polling has been unusually stable.

Look at the charts from 2016 and you’ll see wild gyrations in support for the two candidates but in 2020 the difference between Trump and Biden has been fluctuating over just a few points and never enough to cause the two to swap places. Biden’s lead has remained at 6-8 points for months.

6) Trump is no longer an unknown.

While Trump in 2016 possessed in some people’s mind at almost unknown potential as President in 2020 his qualities are well known. It is now plain to all but his core support that the erratic, ignorant, insulting, and racist style reflects who he truly is and now merely a ‘show.’

7) The Electorate is motivated.

Voter turnout in 2016 was depressed and Trump winning the election received a lower percentage of votes than Romney’s losing campaign in 2012 but in 2020 early voting, mail-in voting, and fund raising all indicated a high energized voting population on track to shatter all voter turnout records.

8) 207,557 dead Americans.

2016 did not provide the stark and undeniable reality of with candidates’ failure to manage a crisis such as COVID-19 has done for the Trump administration. From the face that Trump was aware of the deadly nature early and tried to ignore it, to the reports that the administration’s considers death’s in ‘Blue States’ unimportant Trump’s handling of the pandemic has demonstrated clearly, plainly, and lethally he is utterly unfit for the office and the price we will all pay if he remains in it.

All that said the most important thing is to VOTE. In person, early, or by mail, no poll matters but that one.

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