Comic Review: Fatale Book One

    I reviewed this book some time ago, but I don’t feel that I gave it enough time/space.  So here I go again.  Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have created a hybrid Noir-Lovecraft tale that spans history and delves into some existential horror in a way often lacking, even from the devotees of H.P. Lovecraft writing today.  Mood is a primary factor, almost a character in itself, in classic Noir films (and their Hard Boiled literary counterparts) as well as in the Cosmic Horror that was shaped by Lovecraft and his circle.  Fatale is dripping in mood.  From the heavy, black shadows and muted colors of the art, to the grim trudge toward doom taken by each character.  The series isn’t about mood and atmosphere, but they sure play a big part.

    With plot and character nods to the inspirational source material, genre fans should be able to hop right in.  The corrupt cops, the corruptible journalist, the violent mobster, and the mysterious vamp.  The cult murders, growing sense of deep history, and hints at supernatural natures build up the Mythos elements.  I’m a sucker for stories that build a sense of deep time, of back story for characters and plot.  And while the main story of a woman in fear, manipulating two men in a chess game played against a demonic figure plays out, we start to see that events have been building for a long, long time.  I love the little connections to historic events that are dropped in, too.

    This was my second reading of the first volume, and I found myself even more invested, paying closer attention.  At the point that I’m writing this, I’ve read the first three volumes, and am setting off on a quest to read all five in the very near future.  And I know that some of the stuff introduced in this volume pays off, or plays into what comes next.  But I’m still not sure how it all comes together.  And I can’t wait to find out.  When I read this the first time, I was captivated.  And it got my creative juices flowing.  It made me want to run an epic, generation spanning Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game campaign.  Reading it again, I see why.  Besides being a good read for Hard Boiled/Noir fans, for Horror fans (particularly of the Lovecraftian bent), it’s a great read for tabletop gamers.  It’s also another reminder of the great stuff coming out of companies like Image, who aren’t weighted down with demands for status quo maintenance.

Fatale: Death Chases Me
Author: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Sean Phillips
Publisher: Image Comics
ISBN: 978-1-60706-563-0

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: Manifest Destiny Volume 1

    It’s 1804, and Lewis & Clark have been sent out into the wilderness to explore the Western lands so that future settlers can know what to expect.  Well, that’s the official story.  In truth, President Jefferson knows that the West is full of strange and dangerous tribes, and worse, monsters.  And in order for settlers to be safe, Lewis & Clark are going to have to tame the wild and weird.

    Chris Dingess quickly twists expectations, as the expedition finds a huge arch, not unlike one we’re all familiar with, but this arch is made of branch and leaf, instead of shining metal.  And it gets much worse when they kill a native, who is a strange thing indeed.  A tribe of buffalo headed centaurs?  OK.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, when they reach La Charette to meet up with a guide, they stumble across a terrible plague.  Internal strife and external threat puts everyone on edge.  And the realization that this mission isn’t what everyone signed up for may be too much for some.  That’s when Sacagawea shows up, and boy howdy, I’m curious to see what comes of that.  I’ve enjoyed several ‘Weird Western’ stories and settings, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite like this.  I like the cast of characters and the mysteries and horrors they’ve found.  I’m very interested in where the story is heading and what it’s all going to be about.

    The art in the book is good, occasionally excellent.  The panel work is good, not causing confusion or getting in the way, while remaining dynamic.  And the coloring lends a vividness that is refreshing.  I would almost expect a horror themed story like this to be more drab, or darker.  I like that it’s quite colorful, with much of the horror taking place in the bright light of day.

    This is another example of Image Comics publishing the kinds of things I’m more interested in reading.  For people who want to try comics, but aren’t interested in super heroes, and don’t want to have to wade through decades of back story, Image is where it’s at.  From sci-fi, to horror, to spy thrillers, they’re producing a fantastic variety of graphic fiction.

Manifest Destiny: Flora & Fauna
Author: Chris Dingess
Artist: Matthew Roberts
Publisher: Image Comics
ISBN: 978-1-60706-982-9

-Matthew J. Constantine

A Fistful of Influence! (Matt’s Picks)

    OK, everything Brad said in his post on this same subject.  These aren’t necessarily my favorite films, but these are five of the films that shaped who I am as a movie viewer.  Movies have been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember, becoming all the more so when we got a spankin’ new VCR and color TV in the mid 80s.  These movies represent a few important street signs on the road map of my life in film.

5.  Star Wars:  Growing up in the 80s, Star Wars and the renaissance of genre films that followed in its wake was like a warm blanket I wrapped myself in.  The toys, the bed sheets, the Underoos, sure.  But the movies themselves.  To a lonely kid who spent much of his time inside with a TV, the Star Wars films were trusted friends.  And Star Wars itself was the beginning of it all.  I love all things (almost) science fiction, and I never held with the idea that you were either a Star Wars or a Star Trek person (the 60s Star Trek remains one of my favorite TV shows, and if I did a list like this for TV it would be right near the top).  But Star Wars had a lasting impact, even with all the later tainting of my love that came with the dreaded prequel trilogy and overdose of merchandising.

4.  Fist of Legend:  I’d watched a few Chinese martial arts films before I watched this Jet Li film, mostly Jackie Chan stuff.  But it was while watching this movie that I realized Kung Fu films could be more than just stunts and bad dubbing.  They could also be about stuff.  They could also have compelling characters and solid plots.  They could also tap into genuine emotions.  Fist of Legend has some excellent fights, but it’s a good movie, too.  So, in a way, it was the movie that really introduced me to Kung Fu films.

3.  The Phantom Empire: This Gene Autry serial was a very early viewing for young Matt the Lad.  Not only did it make me fall in love with the idea of the movie serial, but I also became captivated by the mix of genres (here Cowboy Musical and Science Fiction).  Over the years, bits of this film were always floating around in the back of my head, leaking into my fiction and into my choices of movie rentals.

What could I possibly have found to like in this?

2.  Coffy:  When I broke up with my high school girlfriend, I suddenly found myself with more time and more money than sense.  Being me, instead of re-directing those resources into doing something that would improve my life, I descended into a black whole of video rental madness.  For a couple years, I watched more movies than I could possibly count.  I mean, I watched EVERY DANGED THING I could get my hands on.  And while I’d been aware of Shaft, and I knew there were Grindhouse films that had been made in the 70s, I was largely ignorant of them, and knew little of Blaxploitation beyond a few articles in film texts.  But one night, walking through the stacks at the local Front Row Video (yeah, it wasn’t even Movie Gallery, yet), I spotted a very sexy picture of Pam Grier looking out at me from a video box.  I was in love, and my movie lust found yet another new direction to stretch.

1.  Raiders of the Lost Ark:  Almost everything about me, my tastes, and my interests eventually leads back to seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark at the old Bangor Opera House when I was five years old.  I wanted to be Indiana Jones.  I wanted to fight Nazis, travel the globe, find ancient cities, have love affairs with feisty brunettes, and live in Hollywood’s version of the 1930s.  Pulp, history, geography, the desert, the jungle, nature, religion, and so many other life long interests started here, not to mention my eventual love and fascination with the films and the era that inspired it.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Matt’s Week in Dork! (8/24/14-8/30/10)

    Not much in the way of movie viewing this Week in Dork, but I had a lot of fun and got a lot done.  So there’s that.  It all started with a journey in to DC with Rebecca, where we checked out Andrew Greene and the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra.  Turns out the Kennedy Center does a free show every evening, and Sunday night it was some Ragtime and Charlie Chaplin.

One A.M.:  Charlie Chaplin does his Drunk bit, as a wealthy guy trying to get to bed.  I would say the whole thing goes on a bit too long, even with a run time of 24 minutes.  But some of the stunts and gags are quite impressive, and a few of the laughs come from deep in the belly.  It’s an odd complaint, but this probably should have been about 4 or 5 minutes shorter, and would have been a better piece.  Still fun, though.

Altered States:  I’ve been hearing about this movie (rarely anything positive) for a long time, and nearly seeing in for nearly as long.  So, I finally sat down to watch it, and…I liked it.  It’s part of that 70s post-hippie, utopian idealist, scientific failure subgenre I enjoy so much (see also; Rabid, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Idaho Transfer, the middle seasons of Lost, etc.).  William Hurt shows uncharacteristic amounts of emotion (ironically, playing an emotionally distant character).  Bob Balaban is enjoyable.  The effects are a mixed bag, but they get the job done.  I can’t say that I loved it, but I certainly enjoyed it.

    I know I’ve found a keeper when she says to me, “let’s not go in to DC for dinner and a movie tonight; let’s sit on the couch and watch Channing Tatum films.”  Done and done.

She’s the Man:  Getting past the fact that at no point would anyone with functioning eyes or ears mistake Amanda Bynes for a guy, this is a pretty standard, kinda bland teen comedy with echoes of Shakespeare.  Young Channing Tatum displays some genuine charm with his physical comedy, even if emoting isn’t his strong suit.  Plus, isn’t it like a law (since 1972) that a girl who wants to play on a sports team is allowed to try out?

Step Up:  Typical of low budget teen films, this story of a Channing Tatum from the wrong side of the tracks and a girl from a privileged upbringing is moderately sweet, and lacking in any surprises.  Beat for beat, it follows the path you know it will in all the ways you expect.  But in that, it has its own dumb charm.  The streets and the halls of higher education must come together to save the world of dance!

    On Friday night, Ben and I sat down to another 70s classic.  I’ve been in the mood to crack back into some Blaxploitation lately.  And you can never go wrong (well…) with Fred Williamson.

Hell Up in Harlem:  Low budget, and sometimes ill made, but darned fun.  This sequel to the Godfather retelling Black Caesar is filled with crazy angles, wildly moving camera work, and NO SECOND TAKES.  So much fun, so silly, so low budget and over the top.

    On Saturday, we headed in to the National Book Festival.  This was my first time attending it for my own edification, and it was pretty cool.  Like Baltimore Comic-Con, but for book nerds.  It was held in the Convention Center, which was MUCH better than having it on the Mall.  We saw Sandra Day O’Connor and her brother H. Alan Day.  H. Alan Day has written a book about rescuing wild mustangs, which was cool.  Lynn Sherr talked about her biography of Sally Ride, which was fascinating, and hit me hard in my science organ.  Eric H. Cline talked about his book 1177 B.C., which made me really want to read it.

    I ended up with some time on my hands while in the City on Saturday night.  I was going to do some reading or something, but instead I thought I’d do some prep work for some stories or something.  Ended up actually writing a short story, which was surprising and gratifying.  A good day, and a nice end to a good week.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: Uber Volume 1

    I am a sucker for alternate timelines/histories.  No, I couldn’t really get into the Turtledove or Webber books, but still… Anyway, when I saw the Uber trade hit the store shelf, I was intrigued.  It proposes a world where, in the final moments of the World War II, just before the fall of Berlin, German scientists developed a super-soldier serum, creating giant, super-powered Nazi soldiers who turned the tide back upon the Allies, destroying a massive chunk of the Soviet army and no few Americans and Brits.  In the wake of this disaster, an Ally spy manages to smuggle out a sample of the serum, giving the Allies a fighting chance against these new Ubermensch.  I love all of that.  Yes.  ‘This comic is going to be great,’ was my thought.

    Well, my brain was wrong, and it didn’t take me long to realize it.  Let me start at the good points.  The ideas presented are really, really cool.  I like the hints of what the serum is, where it came from, and what it might do.  I like the twists on the history, and the people involved.  And I like the plot progression and where the story seems to be going.  That stuff is all great.  Now the bad; and here I’m going to start with the least offensive.  The artwork by Caanan White is inconsistent, to say the least.  Some images are beautiful or terrible, appropriately.  But others are muddied and jumbled.  Many of the characters become difficult to distinguish, especially the women, who seem to be almost universally blonde, with the same face.  At one point in the series, one becomes a redhead, and I’m guessing it was in response to readers not knowing who was the German super-soldier and who was the British spy.  And it seems like entirely too much time was devoted to drawing blood and gore.  The silly amounts of blood and guts flying around various pages started making the whole thing look like something a teenager would draw in an attempt to be ‘shocking.’  It's certainly not so bad that I wouldn't have forgiven it, had it been accompanied by good writing.  Which then brings me to the worst part of the book, the writing.  While the plot progression is fine, the nitty-gritty of dialog and captions seems to have been written by a rank amateur.  That, along with the art, made the whole thing look and sound like something you’d maybe (I stress maybe) pick up in an artists’ ally at a comic convention, where you’re more likely to be somewhat forgiving of a lack of polish, because it’s all self-published and often doesn’t have the benefit of a proper editor.  This book does not have that excuse, and author Kieron Gillen isn’t some 17 year old kid who shows some promise.  He’s a professional journalist, and has more than a decade of comic writing experience behind him.   He has no excuse.

    To sum up, Uber is a great idea for a comic series (and would make a solid background for a tabletop roleplaying game).  Sadly, this is not that comic series.  The ideas are strong, but the book is…well, it’s crap.  It’s serious crap.  It was actually kind of difficult to slog through, because the writing is that bad.  I’ve now read two samples of Gillen’s work (I suffered through a couple issues of Invincible Iron Man), and have to say his name is going on my ‘to avoid’ list of writers, right next to Chris Claremont.  While I don't love Caanan White's art in this book, he's certainly got skill, and I'll be curious to see where his career takes him.  Hopefully to working with better writers.

Uber Volume 1
Author: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Caanan White
Publisher: Avatar
ISBN: 978-1-5929-1218-6

-Matthew J. Constantine

Matt’s Week in Dork! (4/6/14-4/12/14)

    Mostly just movies this week, but good times, none the less.  I love living in the greater DC area.  The options for seeing movies, movies you just don’t get to see on the big screen elsewhere…It’s the berries.

The Raid 2: Berandal:  The Raid was a pretty intense, violent, and action packed little movie.  It has, essentially, the same story as Dredd, but set in Indonesia instead of MegaCity 1 (pick your urban hellscape).  With the sequel, the world is greatly expanded, with several factions of organized crime, corrupt cops, various heavies, and all kinds of horrible places to die.  As far as the plot goes, there’s nothing to write home about.  It’s the usual "cop goes undercover to infiltrate organized crime, using the headstrong, screw-up scion of a major crime family" story you’ve seen dozens of times.  But the cast and the action are what make the film stand on its own.  This is, straight up, one of the most violent films I’ve ever seen, and almost certainly the most violent film I’ve seen that somehow managed to get an R rating from the MPAA.  Of course, we know, you can show almost all the violence you want, so long as you don’t talk realistically about sex (or show a penis).  But even so, I’m shocked this was able to get an R.  If anything I’ve seen warrants and NC-17, it’s this film.  The action and violence are extremely well done, and in spite of a lot of handheld work, I never got frustrated and annoyed by it like I do in most of our modern ‘shaky-cam’ action scenes.  The meat-hook brutality of the combat is at times grueling.  But for action/martial arts fans, this one is well worth seeing.  So.  Dang.  Violent.  Probably the biggest surprise is that the extremely cliché character of the head-strong son of the mob boss isn’t horribly annoying.  I actually like him and his Asian Bruce Campbell cool.

12 Years a Slave:  “I don’t want to survive.  I want to live.”  I know the basics of the history.  I know how economic and religious ideas came together (with a dash of scientific quackery) in a horrible partnership that created the national shame that was the enslavement of large numbers of Africans in the early Americas through the 1800s (let’s skip the post Civil War awfulness for the sake of this discussion).  I’ve read the books and I’ve seen the movies.  But I don’t get it.  I don’t understand how it could be so widely practiced and accepted.  I know that it was.  And I know that similar things go on today, be it genital mutilation and enshrouding of women or colossal oppression of a people by their government, or whatever.  I know that it happens.  I see it.  But I don’t get it.  How did it take so long to stop what was so obviously a horrible and disgusting practice?  I don’t know.  That’s what I kept thinking through watching this movie.  How did so many people let it happen, keep it going, revel in it?  The movie itself is beautifully immersive, capturing the beauty of the land, while not shying away from the horrors visited brother against brother, sister against sister.  The story is compelling and the acting fantastic.  There’s good reason this was up for all the awards.  But it is a brutal viewing, no doubt about it.  If I have one critique of the film, it’s that I never got the sense of passing time.  I feel like part of the horror of Solomon Northup’s journey was how much of his life was lost.  But the movie felt like it took place over a matter of weeks or months.  Still, it’s a heck of a powerful movie.  Thinking about it over the course of the week, what made this movie more effective for me than some others on the same subject may be that Solomon Northup started the film as a free man, minding his own business, who gets kidnapped and taken to a hostile land.  I can relate to that more than the usual story of a person who grew up under the boot heal of slavery.  It makes things less abstract.

Particle Fever:  This movie made me want to go out and do Science! for a living.  I know that’s not in the cards.  I’m too old, and I suck at math.  But for an hour and a half, I felt like I could be part of all this wonder and the expansion of Human understanding.  Through the eyes of a handful of interesting physicists, we see the final stages of the construction and early tests of the Large Hadron Collider, a machine designed to smash particles together and see what comes out.  Some of these people had theories that were decades old, with no ability to test them until this massive machine was built.  The movie does an excellent job of showing what life on the inside of this particular fishbowl was like, while showing the passions of the people involved.  I also like that it prominently and positively featured women in science without being about women in science.  Typically with a movie like this, if they were going to have one of the key protagonists be a woman, they’d spend 10 or 15 minutes talking about the challenge of being a woman in a male dominated field.  Something that would almost certainly be off-putting for young women looking to get into that field.  Instead, we see women working right alongside men in the office, in the classrooms, and in the construction of the machine, and running the overall project, just as it should be.  No, it’s not like it was a 50/50 split.  But the mix is a heck of a lot better than a couple decades ago.  And if we stop scaring our daughters off of male dominated fields by driving home how challenging they’ll be, maybe that split will decrease more in the coming years.  A movie like this is going to be a heck of a lot more inspirational than one that focuses on the negative.  And inspirational is how I’d describe it.  I’ll admit, there were several times, when the music swelled, the camera moved  over the machine, or we watched one of these scientists’ dawning awareness of new revelations, that I got a bit misty.  Watching the work of so many people come together.  Watching the power of the Human mind to unlock the secrets of the universe, even if only in a small way.  And of course, knowing that science transcends culture and border, becoming the collective effort of our whole species to better know the nature of reality, without the weight of our hatreds and fears.  Is uplifting.

Alexandria The Greatest City:  Over the last decade or so, I’ve become quite the fan of Bettany Hughes and her passion for history.  This exploration of Alexandria is cursory, but interesting.  It makes a good deal of use of clips from the Alexandria set film Agora.  There’s not a lot to this one, but Hughes always makes it interesting, and makes me want to read more.

Lizzie Borden Took an Ax:  No, no, no.  I didn’t think this was going to be what we might traditionally think of as ‘good.’  But as soon as it started, I had that Quantum Leap ‘Oh, boy’ moment.  It’s shot like crappy TV.  It’s written like crappy TV.  It’s crappy TV.  Everyone in this should know better.  I don’t know what the idea was in using modern Black Keys wannabe music for the soundtrack.  But it was bad.  A bad idea.  On a purely shallow note, Christina Ricci did look extremely cute in the period costumes.  I wish she could have stepped out of this movie and into a good Western or whatever.

Battle of the Darned:  Dolph Lundgren teams up with killer robots to fight zombies?  Sold!  Actually, this movie is better than I expected, but that might be to its detriment.  If it was worse, it might have been more fun.  It’s not good enough to recommend.  It’s OK.  The kind of thing that if you find playing while you’re flipping channels, you could do much worse.  The camera shakes way to much (it is an action movie made after the Bourne franchise) and the CG on the robots is wonky in places.  But it’s OK.  I liked the scenes with Dolph and the robots back to back.  I’d have liked more of that.

Engineering Ancient Egypt:  Another documentary presented by Bettany Hughes, this time on two of Egypt’s most successful pharaohs, Khufu and Ramses II.  By examining the whys and wherefores of building the pyramids first, and the temple at Abu Simbel, she gets into the belief systems and key historic events that shaped the two men and their times.  As often happens, taking the time to look into history produces information that doesn’t jive with generally held beliefs.  One of the primary things I grew up with, that has been rather soundly trounced is the idea that slaves (generally thought to have been Hebrew slaves) built the pyramids.  Hughes’s documentaries are always entertaining and informative, though frequently only introductory.  They’re good starts for further research.

    On Thursday night Brad and I, and a couple others from our graphic novel group, all headed out to the Alamo to watch a VHS projection of that classic, 3 Dev Adam, one of the best Captain America films ever made.  Awesome.

3 Dev Adam (aka Turkish Captain America):  What can one say about this film?  The plot is totally unintelligible, and I don’t know if that’s because of the subtitles or the editing.  The villains have a plan, I guess.  The heroes have a plan, too.  Or something.  They fight sometimes.  In the middle of fight scenes, they often cut to people walking.  Throughout most of the film, it sounds like there are nervous horses on cobblestones, which I think is supposed to be the sounds of footsteps.  I’ve got no idea.  But it was all awesome.  A film to share with friends, for sure.  Plus, who doesn’t love an awkward puppet moment during sexual coupling?

A Touch of Sin:  I went into this film knowing nothing about it at all, beyond the poster image of the guy sitting on his motorcycle in front of a crashed fruit truck.  I recommend going into it the same way.  I won’t give away story or character.  But I’ll say this about the film; it’s beautifully shot and well acted.  It has a slow pace, but isn’t ever dull.  There are some gorgeous images of China, even when they’re of various ugly things or environments you’d never want to live in or possibly even go to.  The film feels extremely contemporary, and not just because it features a lot of people staring at their cell phones.  And if I was left with any message, it’s ‘don’t go to China.’  Very worth seeking out, though.  Know in advance that there is some rather graphic violence.

The Raid:  Having watched The Raid 2 a few days back, I decided to revisit the first one.  It’s a heck of a violent movie.  Not much in the way of plot, but that would have gotten in the way of the horrible, bone-cracking action.  Anyone into brutal action movies needs to see this one.  Good camera work, nasty violence, and excellent gun and hand to hand choreography.

Nova: The Vikings:  This documentary from 2000 does a pretty good job of reintroducing the Vikings, putting the sword to some commonly held misconceptions.  I’m always fascinated by our evolving understanding of those who came before.  This is a very cursory examination of the subject, but still managed to have some interesting bits for me to look into, especially with the Vikings in Russia.

Ninotchka:  When three bumbling Soviets in Paris screw up a deal for the Reds back home, Moscow sends along a hard-line agent to kick things into shape, in the shapely Greta Garbo.  French playboy Melvyn Douglas sets his sights on melting her heart, unleashing the charming woman hiding beneath the utilitarian comrade.  Ernst Lubitsch crafts another supremely funny, cheeky, and surprisingly sexy comedy.  It’s funny how timeless the issues of the film, then quite topical, remain.

Orca: The Killer Whale:  Obviously made to capitalize on the huge success of Jaws, this Ahab Vs. Killer Whale film looks pretty good, but is mostly just silly.  I love the cast and Michael Anderson knows how to make a good looking film.  But it’s so hackneyed.

I just wanna watch the world burn!

    I’ve been doing a bunch of reading, but from a bunch of different books, none of which I’m all that close to finishing.  Dang, Lord of Light is a dense read.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/9/14-3/15/14)

    On Sunday morning, I finished up Brian K. Vaughan’s Pride of Bagdad, the next selection of the graphic novel club.  I liked the art a lot, but the actual story was a bit obvious and pretty bare bones.  Not bad, but not something I’d ever need to read again.  But then it was off to the races on what ended up being a pretty busy week (including my ranty letter to the makers of Star Wars).

The White Queen:  Considering it’s from Starz, this show is shockingly classy.  Sure, it’s full of nudity and violence, but it’s far less crass and exploitative than Magic City or (shudder) Spartacus.  It tells some of the story of the War of the Roses, with a focus on the women involved in the story.  Though women, particularly when seen through the lens of Victorian and consequently early 20th century histories, have often gotten either a bum rap or completely ignored, the idea that women and men do not share a common history is idiotic (why I’m against the idea of ‘women’s history,’ as opposed to ‘women in history;’ to separate one from the other is to miss the point of it all), and the idea that major historic events didn’t involve women is illogical and counter to common sense.  I like that this series shows the active involvement in the changing politics these women take, while not trying to somehow take away from what the men were doing.  You often see in more female-centered history-based tales, not the building up of women, but the tearing down of men (making them stupid, sex-mad monsters, in much the way male-centered histories of the past tried to cast women as either docile or dangerously predatory [akin to the virgin/whore problem]), so this was a welcome and refreshing aspect of the series, with men and women being shown as all the shades of gray one would expect in reality.  Early episodes were a touch wonky, in part because they brought in a bit of the supernatural, which I found off-putting.  I’m assuming that’s from the novels(?).  It wasn’t needed, and distracts from the more interesting, real story.  And I think adding the magic to the female characters lessened their power as humans, by giving in to that old idea that women can only succeed through magic, manipulation, or subterfuge.  Overall, it’s not as well done as some history based shows, and some of the cast is a challenge to get behind (Max Irons, I’m looking at you!…and I wish I wasn’t).  Still, it’s mostly good and worth checking out, and series lead Rebecca Ferguson is darned good.  If this is the direction Starz is headed, who knows.  Maybe one day they could rival HBO in quality programming.  I’m not holding my breath, but maybe.

The Last Days on Mars:  This film has everything it needs…except a good idea.  The production design, the cast, the music, the setting.  It’s all great.  The film looks fantastic.  But once the central idea is revealed, it turns stupid and never looks back.  Now I can add this to the lengthening list of should-have-been-better Mars exploration films, like Mission to Mars and Red Planet.  All of them have good things going for them, yet all of them are failures, because of bad scripts or poorly conceived ideas.  And this film fits right along side.  I can not stress how annoyed I was upon realizing just how lame the central struggle would be.  There was a grimace, followed by a lot of head shaking, and at least one ‘oh, no.’  Please, film makers.  Please.  Don’t do this again.  It works in a movie like Ghost of Mars, because nobody is going to Ghost of Mars for a serious science fiction film.  It doesn’t work here.  Maybe one day we’ll get an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars that will live up to its potential.  Until then, I guess we’ll just get a bunch of this crap.

Donnie Darko:  This is a movie that really blew me away the first time I watched it.  It broke my brain in all the best ways, stayed with me for years.  But I have to admit, I don’t feel the same awe and wonder I once did.  Watching it again, I still find a lot of things to like in the film, and there are some excellent bits.  But I see more of the ‘first film’ syndrome than I noticed before.  Still a must for fans of the surreal and challenging.  But perhaps not the modern classic I’d have once named it.

Von Richthofen and Brown:  This Roger Corman WWI movie is surprisingly good, with lots of excellent flying footage.  The acting is uneven and there are some technical issues.  But for one of his more serious efforts, it’s a winner.  The star really is the flying, though.  And a lot of that is gorgeous.

The Grand Budapest Hotel:  Wes Anderson makes a very peculiar sort of film, and he does it very, very well.  This time around he taps into the Golden Age Hollywood madcap comedy films, with plenty of World War II and Cold War allusions.  It’s wistful and nostalgic for bygone eras, but not cloying.  It’s also delightfully crass, and typically surreal.  The by now trademark Anderson artificiality is on display, enhancing the old Hollywood vibe in the sets and backdrops.  The cast is awesome, and it’s so nice to see Ralph Fiennes doing comedy again, and playing someone so dashing (if sleazy).  I love that this movie revels in the wonder and visual craziness of the very medium.  It’s not naturalistic.  It’s not realistic.  But it gets to some truths, even while reveling in its fantasy world.

    Saturday was a crazy danged day.  I assisted Satnam on the set of the film he directed from a script I wrote.  It’s been a danged long time in the works.  I first conceived the idea as something I thought I might be able to do myself, building the ‘set’ in a closet in my old Brewer, ME apartment, about ten or twelve years ago.  Only one cast member, and no camera movement.  I thought I could handle that.  But cameras were too expensive and I had no skill or knowledge of how to do it.  Still, I liked the idea.  Some time after I moved to Virginia, I met someone who expressed interest in filming it, someone with skills and resources.  But it never materialized.  Lots of talk, but no action, and nothing happened.  But after assisting Satnam on a previous film, he said he was looking for another project, and I mentioned my idea.  He liked it enough to want to read my script.  Well…I don’t know what happened to it.  I’m sure if I go searching through my old disks, I’ll find it.  But, I didn’t want to.  So, I sat down and re-wrote it.  And that was it.  A few re-writes, a search for an actor, our fumbling attempts at set construction, finding other professionals to help us out with sound and make-up.  And then filming.  To say I was a ball of nerves is an understatement.  It’s kind of amazing to see words you wrote being spoken by an actor on a set.  I would not be heart broken if I had to do this for a living.

    Now that the movie is in the can, the editing and post production and all that starts up, and I don’t have anything to do with that.  So, it’s on to my next project, prepping for next weekend’s Call of Cthulhu game.  Most of the heavy lifting was done for the first session, so now it’s going to be a lot of details, extra bits, and such.  And then of course, to get myself psyched up and ready to go.  Though it may not be, I could see this being the final session of this game/story.  It might go on to a third or fourth night, depending on how their investigations go, and how deadly things get.  So I'm trying to think ahead for what folks might want to do next.  I think this group would be best suited for something light, fast paced, action and mystery packed, with plenty of room to roam.  I'm still thinking.

-Matt