Movie Musings: REAL STEEL

If you think you’ve seen REAL STEEL before you’re absolutely correct.

STEEL is the literal embodiment of every ‘child manages to overcome great adversity and succeed beyond his wildest dreams’ movie that you’ve ever seen, complete with the obligatory ‘emotionally distant parent realizes their deep and temporarily misplaced love for their son\daughter” subplot. It jam packs all the strong-enough-for-an-adult-but-made-for-a-kid stereotypes into a single film. A third of the way through the movie I was online looking to see if STEEL was produced by Disney*, because you couldn’t come up with a more Disney-esque film if you cloned Michael Eisner and made him create this movie using nothing else but the sweat pooled at the bottom of a Disney World Mickey Mouse costume and childlike whimsy.  

And its really damn good. Note perfect in fact.

Just because all the plot points are incredibly predictable and the character arcs and story progression even more so doesn’t detract from the fact that STEEL consistently and irrefutably gets it. Slick and smartly crafted STEEL makes its mark through polished film making and charastimatic performances from its leads. although for the love of God can’t we find something better for Evangeline Lilly than ‘obligatory love interest’.

Yes, the film suffers at times from a sense of the overfamiliar, but let’s face it Hollywood is so full of retreads and remakes and reboots and reimaginings that most of what they put out these days can be teased apart by even the most casual moviegoer before the end of the first act.

Don’t dismiss STEEL just because you know what’s going to happen next. After all, people don’t stop watching their favourite movies or listening to their favorite songs just because they’ve seen\heard them before.

*Huh, Dreamworks. Disney’s hipper edgier kid brother.

Movie Musings: THE EAGLE

Given my deep and endless aversion to Charming Potato I went into THE EAGLE with the lowest of expectations. Damned if the film didn’t hurdle them with ease.

It’s a weird kinda film with a buddy-cop-polar-opposites thread* woven into a swords and sandals epic. THE EAGLE makes an earnest attempt to strive for some sort of historical accuracy then falls all over itself in the execution.

But my biggest complaint is that it’s so very American. Seriously, I don’t need my Roman Senators talking like they’re the small town sheriff in a low budget remake of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. If you’re not going to talk with some sort of Roman accent** then can you at least make an effort to construct your sentences in a way that doesn’t sound like grade schooler learning about nouns for the first time.

Come on! At least try to get flowery and pretentious on me every now and again, pretend that powerful dialogue is something to be embraced not avoided.

Anyway, it didn’t suck. At all. No matter how much I wanted it too. So that’s one for you Charming.

*He’s a cop! He’s a slave! Together they’ll fight crime and find…THE EAGLE!

**No, I don’t know what a Roman accent sounds like either, but a misspent youth in front of a television set tells me it sounds very British.

Doctor Who: Series 6 Re-Watch, Better The 2nd Time? Surprisingly, yes!

I found myself with a number of free hours on Saturday, and had recently picked up ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S DOCTOR WHO cover issue, which made me yearn for Series 7 to start.

Unrelated Sidenote: The EW article is kind of a double-edged sword for me. While I LOVE that DW is getting large enough press that a mainstream American publication is paying it such service, a part of me likes the fact that my nerdery still has a cult following, if now a somewhat larger one than it used to have. That said, with a wider global fanbase, the show will get more money thrown at it and that will only enhance and embed the show for our future consumption. So I shouldn't complain.

So what this lazy Saturday ended up producing was a small desire to finally sit down and re-watch Series 6 (which I had previously purchased on BluRay) in its entirety. And I paid special attention to the fact that I had only cracked the package open when I bought it to re-watch my fave episode, the Neil Gaiman-penned THE DOCTOR’S WIFE (which is still the best ep of the lot, BTW), and I had left the rest to languish on the shelf unwatched.

I was you see, at the time to set was released, still burned by my lackluster experience with Series 6. A Series that divided fans and casual watcher’s alike. I recall watching it as it aired and other than the two-part opener (THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT and DAY OF THE MOON), THE DOCTOR’S WIFE, and THE GIRL WHO WAITED, the rest of it left me mostly flat…with the first part of the middle Series cliffhanger, A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR, actually pissing me off. The comeback ep after that, LET’S KILL HITLER, did actually soothe my jangled nerves and was a solid (if not perfect) return to form but it wasn't quite enough. This all amounted to a grumbly Scott who talked about this being his least favourite Series since the show returned in 2005, and lead to posts like my very popular and yet controversial “RTD VS Moffat Comparison” in which Moffat (a writer I love) comes off in a rather bad light in comparison with his predecessor (whose work I feel is the best the show has ever been). I have, however always maintained that one day (probably prior to Series 7’s debut) I WOULD sit down with the 6th Series again and give it another go.

The result was Saturday’s re-watching (in which it should be noted that I actually skipped THE DOCTOR’S WIFE because I’ve watched it 3 times since I bought the set, twice with Gaiman’s commentary track on).

What do I have to say now? Well, I’ve surprisingly come away with a MUCH less vitriolic outlook after my second viewing. In fact, I’ve found that the series not only benefits from the second viewing, but I will probably tell anyone now that a second viewing is REQUIRED. Now, my dauntless Co-Blogger Chris will probably say the following: “You should not have to re-watch the Series for it to be good.” And while I agree with that sentiment, I must qualify my statement. Watchers of the entire RTD-era of DW since 2005 who have found Moffat’s series to not be remotely as good…should re-watch Series 6. Why? Let me give you a few reasons.

A Combination of Newness-es

As stated by Chris in a previous comment thread, we had to adjust to not only a Doctor regeneration, but we also had to adjust to a stylistic shift between the original showrunner (RTD) and the new one (Steven Moffat). And I quote Chris: “The show feels like a different show because it IS a different show”. Adjusting to a new Doctor (known as “Regeneration Jitters”) is a difficult (if not wholly unexpected) thing to have to do. It usually takes nearly an entire series for that new Doctor to get his mannerisms down, and for him to imprint upon the viewer. Now, with a showrunner/style change (especially one where Moffat was trying to give the show back to kids, without removing its coolness factor) the length of that adjustment period is apparently significantly longer. In this case, 2 whole Series. If we are honest with ourselves we can be very sure that Matt Smith’s Doctor didn’t have telltale things going on with his version of the character until at the very earliest the Series 5 finale THE BIG BANG. I’m saying that Moffat-WHO has taken that much longer as an adjustment on the whole. Consider it like this. I can recall watching the early Tennant episodes like THE CHRISTMAS INVASION, NEW EARTH and TOOTH & CLAW and thinking “That is NOT the Doctor”, yearning for Christopher Eccelstone…meanwhile Tennant ended up becoming my all-time favourite Doctor ever by the end of that Series. So I can NOW go back and re-watch those early Tennant episodes with my fave Doctor and enjoy the heck out of them!

Hi! I'm The Expectation Fairy. 

This is super key here. When we watched Series 6 initially we had some really hefty expectations. I think we can all agree that though it had a few missteps, Series 5 was a fairly solid first year for Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Moffat. On the tail end of such a fantastic two-part finale we were left wondering a few things. Who are the Silence? Who is River Song? What did she do? What are Amy and Rory and how do they fit into things? Series 5 basically primed us for the goods, and when Series 6 began, if you were like me, then you had the TV on, snacks ready, and cursed every commercial that aired during THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT. We were expecting the best of the best of the best…and quite frankly those first two episodes delivered in spades. They were mysterious, actions packed, and pretty stellar all around. I think that’s where the first crack in the armor begins.

SIDENOTE SERIES 6 RUNDOWN: 
Because of how good they were, we expected that level throughout the Series. And I think we all though that the revelations we were awaiting would be bigger than they were. So when we moved on to the Pirate episode (THE CURSE OF THE BLACK SPOT) after the tricky, clever, strange, excellence of THE DAY OF THE MOON it is not only found wanting, but seems distastefully bad in comparison. “Where is the main Arc story?! What is this simplistic nonsense?” we chanted.

Breathe.

Most DW fans would feel, this is an anomaly. It won’t happen again.

And we were briefly proven correct as the 4th episode is Neil Gaiman’s THE DOCTOR’S WIFE which is probably one of Matt Smith’s finest performances in his tenure, and features a wonderfully simple, yet engaging story. “Phew!” We thought. “That was close. Here we go, now the Series can get properly underway”.

So then came along a moody, dark two-part episode THE REBEL FLESH and THE ALMOST PEOPLE. A unique idea (people in harnesses manipulating FleshTM clones of themselves), but for all intents and purposes seems heavily incongruous to the main story Arc (It didn't end up being such, but it's how we saw it at the time). I recall being non-plussed by the heavy-handed “slavery” and “Artificial Intelligence being sentient” angles in the plot as it seemed…easy? Pandering? I guess. So, another road bump but not a totally derailing one. Just one that left me a little cold.

But wait! Here comes the mid-series finale. A huge, twisty, “game-changer” of an episode according to Moffat and Co. So aired A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR…and it fell incredibly short of those hyped expectations, and the only real reveal is that of River Song being a future version of Amy and Rory’s child Melody Pond. Conceived in the TARDIS, giving her TimeLord capabilities-ish, and kidnapped as a baby to be raised to kill the Doctor. It was cobbled around a number of side-characters who are cool enough in their own right to have had whole episodes. They don’t get that time to develop and so the episode feels extra-crammed and a lot of what is meant to come across as depth of plot and excitement comes across as cardboard cutouts and rushed scenes. The River Song revelation (too long in coming IMHO, since her Series 4 intro) ends up being “par for the course” or at least "expected" and certainly not enough to justify this “game-changer” moniker. I recall being VERY annoyed. The biggest kitchen sink episode ever.

We then had a break (which I have always maintained was a BIG mistake on the showrunner’s part) of a few months in which I stewed, and simmered about what had been happening to my WHO…it was so bad that when the show was preparing to come back with LET’S KILL HITLER I was…not exactly excited.

Now thankfully that episode moved past a lot of what made the first part bad and gave us good stuff like: earlier incarnations of River Song, a much more helpful Amy & Rory than normal, a very interesting alien menace with the Tessalecta robots, and lastly an emotional Matt Smith Doctor (last seen in THE DOCTOR’S WIFE). I was excited again and enjoyed the episode thoroughly. Why? It was the opposite of A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR. It was simple, straightforward, and well acted. But it made me question the fact that if the two-parter had been spread out better we might not have needed the kitchen-sink-ness of the 1st part, and could have had a stellar, connected Two-Parter. So while I was back and enjoyed, I had REALLY begun questioning the showrunning.

Then along came NIGHT TERRORS, another dark and moody episode. Was it good. Err, yes. Was it amazing? Not really. It was a quiet little introspective episode, but it was kind of forgettable, with the Companions doing little.

Then the much talked about THE GIRL WHO WAITED, which really is the second best of the Non-Moffat written eps and was pretty damned good all the way through. It was bright, well-acted, decently paced and a very solid episode of DOCTOR WHO. But I was still off-kilter from the previous letdowns of the Series to really allow myself to enjoy it as much as I should have.

Then comes the second dark, moody and seemingly forgettable episode in the “stuck in a haunted hotel” THE GOD COMPLEX, which while good was fairly by-the-numbers. What is going on?

I was able to enjoy the next episode CLOSING TIME mostly because it featured the return of the Craig Owens character from last Series THE LODGER, and watching him interact with The Doctor is always amusing…but they also spent the episode treating the Cybermen as secondary citizen villains and that put me right off.

So that was where I sat going into the finale THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG. I was grumbly, annoyed, not really that excited and basically put off. It turns out that the finale was going to be another dog’s breakfast of an episode that would tie together the events of the opening two-parter with the River Song revelation. It was…kind of a mess. I was left at the end feeling wholly let down by the 6th Series as a whole.

Audience As Companion (AKA no go-between)

Now, the last reason why you should re-watch is this. Something I wasn’t expecting to realize on a re-watch. During his tenure RTD always concentrated on the Companions stories. He did so because that is who OUR link is from the audience to the Doctor. It begins in ROSE that way on purpose. We can’t relate to this alien being, but we can relate to the girl who works in a shop. And through her (and subsequent Companions) we can relate to him. This is conspicuously absent from Moffat’s WHO most of the time. We rarely see Amy & Rory’s family and friends, and more often than not we aren’t THAT invested in the two companions themselves. On my re-watch I’ve suddenly realized why this is. Moffat has decided that the show should shift the focus from the Companion(s) and put it directly on the Doctor himself. No go-between or Buffer for Audience and Doctor this time. And if you watch the 6th Series with this in mind you realize that spotlight is almost ALWAYS on The Doctor and really Amy and Rory are purposely on the sidelines. This is the key reason why we never get all that involved with Amy and Rory. We are spending our time getting to know the Doctor again…but we are doing it without the help of the Companion this time. If you will allow the analogy WE ARE the companions. The Audience. This is why our fave moments from Series 6 are the moments when this colder, angrier yet more madcap version of the Doctor expresses human emotions. Saying goodbye to “Sexy, the TARDIS” in THE DOCTOR’S WIFE, lying prostrate and dying; asking for help from Mels in LET’S KLL HITLER, emotionally telling Rory that Older Amy can’t get in the TARDIS with modern Amy, and even from the most recent Christmas Special THE DOCTOR, THE WIDOW & THE WARDROBE when Amy and Rory tell him that there is always a place set for him at Christmas and he sheds that lone tear. Seriously, re-watch THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT and see how Amy and Rory don’t really ACT like companions. They sit there ribbing on the Doctor aloud for making a spectacle of himself throughout history to get noticed. They leave him out of the revelation about his impending death. They act less like Companions and more like secretive versions of HIM, especially River Song.

So, allowing those things I’ve mentioned above and re-watching the eps of the whole Series you come away with a truly different mindset, especially about the forgettable or annoying episodes.

THE CURSE OF THE BLACK SPOT – This becomes a standalone episode in which the key point is that it’s a Doctor/Nurse program attempting to take care of injured people. With expectation removed you can enjoy this one for what it is. With the added focus on the Doctor, with little help from Non-Companions Amy & Rory he experiences the love of family VIA the ships' Captain, and the need to heal VIA the stroppy mermaid.

THE REBEL FLESH & THE ALMOST PEOPLE – Again with expectations removed and the Non-Companion-centric nature of the show and being able to watch for a bunch of REALLY blatant clues that the Doctor went there on purpose because he KNEW Amy was a Ganger and had been kidnapped in Episode 2. He actually hesitates on a number of cues in those eps. But what we really get from those now is the Ganger Doctor and Amy’s reaction to him when she mixes them up, coupled with Rory’s misguided attempt to save Non-Ganger Jennifer. The purpose of the entire thing is to set us up for the chilling reveal when Amy is shown to be a Ganger. With that in mind as its purpose, it works MUCH better. Again, with expectations removed we can enjoy the two-parter for what it is.

A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR – I still don’t love this episode, but now at least I can understand properly WHY I don’t and it has less to do with writing (as I'd previously assumed) than pacing. With the expectation removed about the River Song revelation, and being able to assemble it together with the dénouement in LET’S KILL HITLER I can fully see what was being attempted. The multiple characters ought to have been introduced in other episodes leading up to this one and not crammed into the prologue, Rory should have been allowed at LEAST a whole episode alone with the Doctor stewing about where Amy is to build up to that prologue moment where Rory the Roman shows up to annihilate a Cybermen ship, The Headless monks needed far more setup, and The action setpiece needed to be more drawn out to maximize effect with characters we knew and loved already. So basically this ep needed another hour or more and it would have been good. Perhaps a 3 or 4 episode arc would have sufficed for what Moffat was attempting to do. But he jams it almost all into an hour, and that’s where it falls flat. All the ingredients are in here for a really good tale, but the cake was taken out of the oven too soon and uncooked batter is gross.

NIGHT TERRORS and THE GOD COMPLEX – When you look at both these episodes on their own and with the normal “Companion as link” factor they come off exactly as they did to me the first time, but with the Companion feature removed and the Doctor in the focus…all of the sudden it becomes something completely different. In fact, these are probably two of the most intimate portrayals of the Doctor as a character in Series 6, all his faults bared for us to see. These two hammer home the “Audience As Companion” thing to me.

CLOSING TIME – I always was bothered by the fact that this episode seemed tacked on and was part of my upset of the finale not being a two-parter like last Series since it fell in the penultimate spot usually where the first part of the finale would reside. But upon a re-watch it really has been constructed as both a prologue to the finale, and as a strong link to the opening Two-Parter. It shows us where the 1103-year old Doctor who gets iced by the Astronaut in TIA on that desert lake has come from. It shows us the world weary man who must go to a demise he knows is coming. That notion also sets up the finale as well. So it's FAR more clever than I initially gave it any credit for.

THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG – Still a dogs breakfast suffering from the exact same pacing symptoms of AGMGTW, the kitchen sink syndrome. Attempting to do WAY too much in an hour…BUT, upon my re-watch I noted something that always stuck out to me and caused much of my ire for the Ep... was wrong. I always said that River basically stopping time to be able to have the Doctor to herself and stop him dying was the polar opposite of what he would want. That he would consider such an act, which had killed millions so he could live, would be reprehensible to the Doctor as we know him and that she seemingly gets off light for the act. I also always assumed that River’s “dreaded day when the Doctor would hold her in more contempt” and when he found out what “she did” was the fact that she was kidnapped, raised by the Silence for the purpose of killing The Doctor and that she does ultimately in fact shoot and kill him. Then on my re-watch I discovered something unexpected. The Doctor TELLS her about the Tessalecta version of him “Look into my eye”…so that means that when River (in the space suit) kills him on the Beach, she is aware that he won’t die, the Tessalecta will recreate the Regeneration effects, he’d get shot a second time and meanwhile the TARDIS and real DOCTOR would disappear from the Tessalecta Doctor body alive and well. So if River KNEW she wouldn’t kill the Doctor, and so did he (coupled with knowing that she could not have helped it)…then rationale dictates that couldn’t be the thing she was dreading him finding out. And then it dawned on me, like being hit in the head with Jim The fish….the event she was not looking forward to, the one the Doctor would have a hard time forgiving, the thing that would make him perceive her differently…was the time stopping, the killing of millions to have him live. He DIDN’T let her get off lightly…and in fact my guess is that he treats her with a little contempt beyond that moment for having done that…and that’s why she’s always so sad about it, since he no longer looks at her as he did and instead looks at her as someone who did the one thing he really could not forgive (even though in the end it was all righted which was why he DOES kind of let her off but that doesn't mean he's forgotten she did it). That revelation blew me away and it makes me REALLY enjoy THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG in a totally new way.

So, the result of my re-watch? I was actually able to enjoy Series 6 FAR more than I had been able to the first time. Removing expectations, realizing that the focus isn’t the companions, but the Doctor himself has made the transition to Moffat’s WHO be different. It’s not a perfect Series and doesn’t have as many good beats as Series 5 did. It’s got some problems (most of which stem from that overstuffed A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR debacle), but upon a re-watch those problems gain perspective and make me admire what Moffat had set out to do…and even though he didn’t REALLY achieve it, I can feel the effort now. What’s more is that I can see where he’s going with the Series, and I’m hopeful that Series 7 may be Moffat’s best yet.

So I recommend to any who felt Series 6 didn’t live up to it’s potential to re-watch it. Give it a fresh chance and attempt to see it VIA the angles I’ve discovered. It makes for much more compelling watching and makes me eat a BIT (not a lot) of crow from my previous stance of “This is pretty awful”. I honestly never thought I’d day that, and I didn’t think that Series 6 would ever have anything to offer me.

Is RTD’s tenure still my fave? You bet your ass it is. Is David Tennant still my fave? Yuppers! But being able to appreciate what Moffat was striving for with my expectations removed, that’s pretty priceless.

The best part of this Re-Watch has been that it makes me THAT much more excited for Series 7 to debut later in August. 

Omni Review the First: THE FALL, BOSSYPANTS, THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLD and WILDCATTER

All my writing time lately has been taken up by a new project I’m working on. Fortunately my reading time is still unsullied. So I’ve got all these books that demand reviewing but no time to do it. The solution? An Omni-Review.

THE FALL by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan (Book 2 of The Strain Trilogy)

Surprisingly not full of suck.  The first book in the series was bogged down by seemingly endless pages of unnecessary exposition and convoluted setups. Thankfully, the second book tosses all that mind numbing research aside and just concentrates on telling readers a good story. There are a couple genuine WTF moments that I really enjoyed and on the whole this book feels like a beach read hopped up on speed. This series officially stands at 1:1 in the win:loss ratios.

BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey

After a couple chapters Tina Fey’s dogged determination to turn everything in this book into a knee slapper began to undermine my attraction in the story she was telling. I don’t know if she’s afraid to tell a story straight up or just incapable of it. But after endless nudges in the ribs, bald innuendos and blatant double entendres I just got bored with the whole thing. Which is unfortunate, because underneath the endless layers of jokes I got the sense there was a really interesting story hidden inside. I picked up BOSSYPANTS because I wanted to know more about a comedian and writer who is funny, talented and unlike anyone else working in the biz. In the end I put it down, worn about by her inability to know when it was time to switch gears.

THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE by Stephen King

KEYHOLE is set inside King’s Dark Tower world, which is always a personal favourite of mine. This book is actually a story, within in a story, within a story. It’s almost Shakespearean. Once you take into account that the core story of the book actually deals with one man murdering his friend so he can marry his wife and take over his business the Shakespeare reference starts to seem more and more apt. KEYHOLE doesn’t really add anything new to the Tower mythos, rather it sort of fills in the blanks around some of the series’ smaller mysteries. But it’s still nice to check in Roland, Susannah, Eddie and Jake nonetheless. If you like King, you’ll like this book. If you like the Dark Tower, then you’ll be thrilled to know there’s more story to tell.

WILDCATTER by Dave Duncan

Stop. Go back and reread any review on this site I’ve ever written about Dave Duncan’s work. Then erase the title and replace it with WILDCATTER. Exploring new worlds and new civilizations is probably best left up to the big corporations. After all they’re the ones best set up to do the job. But what happens when the little guy decides to get into deep space exploration? How do they compete against the Goliaths of the game? Duncan does his typical top notch work here, delivering a ripping yarn in his trademark understated manner. It was nice to see him dabbling in sci-fi again.

Movies Musings: THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT is an examination of the changing makeup of the family unit told through a faux Indie lens.

Mark Ruffalo's character seems to unfairly bear a disproportionate amount of the blame for bad decision making in the film and indeed he is punished by not being given any meaningful resolution to his character's storyline. Which, in hindsight, makes him less of a truly nuanced character and more like a convenient (and cuddly) tool for the screenwriter to disrupt the status quo and generate some conflict.

KIDS is a solid movie that manages to be serious and dramatic without being grim and tedious. It punched above its weight during award season, but don’t let such a mealy-mouthed endorsement of its worth throw you off.

Book Review: Bitter Seeds - Ian Tregillis

 

It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between

Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.

When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities—a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present—Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.

How can you tell when a book has really affected you?

By the quality and quantity of “Book Hangover” you get after finishing it. Basically that great gaping, sucking hole you experience after a particularly fantastic read. The kind that makes it very difficult to read anything else afterwards because the reverberations of the narrative are still rattling around in your skull. Basically leaving that world behind is tough.

I experienced this with Ian Tregillis’ Alt-history / Urban Fantasy / Sci-Fi novel BITTER SEEDS. The first in his “Milkweed Triptych” series, the novel is a look at WWII-era Europe. In this version of the events, the Nazi’s have spent the last 20 years or so perfecting the Super Soldier. Through conditioning from childhood with kidnapped orphans, and including attaching battery-run electrodes directly into the skull and into the brain itself, the Nazi’s have been able to create people who can walk through walls, set things on fire, become invisible, and even see the future. Set against this is a secretive portion of the War Office in Britain where a discovery is made that for centuries mad British warlocks have been summoning/negotiating with entities that could only be a cross between Lovecraftian gods and Demons. They decide that their only chance of stopping the Super Soldiers may lie in dealing with these otherworldly creatures and attempt to wrangle them into service. But the price they require of humanity is high.

The book was an absolutely unexpected treat for me. I picked it up on a whim having heard scattered good things about it, and didn’t think I’d get much from it. The book totally surprised me though and was totally gripping from the outset. Very descriptive without falling into overdoing-it territory, with a cast of characters that it was easy to get involved with. No one was cardboard and even the smallest character was given enough depth to be cared about.

The setting of WWII Nazi Germany and Blitz-era London are both quite well realized and never feel Alternate. Basically the alternate reality stuff is fused quite well into existing history, up to and including major events, like the Russians pushing towards Berlin causing all sorts of havoc on the German home front. I was talking the other day with an historical fiction author and I said that it was KEY (from the Reader point of view) to try to write your story and weave it into existing events otherwise you lose credibility. Well, Tregillis does this SO well that I began to imagine that the ideas of Nazi Supermen and British Warlocks dealing with Ancient Gods actually COULD be what happened. He basically makes it all seem quite feasible.

The characters within the pages (British and German alike) are so well crafted with realistic human style reactions to the events that I was truly impressed all the way through. In the characters of Marsh and will you have what are essentially old college buddies, who throughout the war begin to change as a result of their respective duties. When that relationships begins to fray around the edges you really FEEL it. The same goes for the German characters of Reinhardt, Klaus and his sister Gretel. While they are on the villainous side, you can feel as they go through their lives attempting to understand that they are just weapons to the German High Command and nothing more. The only one who realizes is the sociopathic, future-seeing Gretel, but even she hides her own ulterior motives. They feel suitably evil for what it is they are doing, but there was also a growth there, largely in the form of Klaus (who’s eyes we see through most often). It was a compelling aspect of thew narrative to have such insight into the villains of the piece.

Overall, I was wholly impressed with the book. Once it gets going and you get the German call signs and speech patterns under your belt, and things really pop off then the pace shifts into high gear and is relentless. I found it a very difficult book to put down at times because I always wanted to find out what came next.

The ending is a standalone result, and some of it is not at all what I was expecting. Some of it even decidedly uncomfortable to read (but in a good way), and then there is a cliffhangery aspect to the last bit. But it’s not enough of one to mean you HAVE to read the next volume…

…Ah, who am I kidding, if you read BITTER SEEDS you will be like me and chomp at the bit to read the sequel THE COLDEST WAR (which comes out tomorrow thankfully!). A very well-written Alt history sci-fi book with believable characters, a hell of a setting and a infinitely fascinating premise, I’m upset with myself for having waited so long to get around to it. A real triumph!

Movie Musings: CONTAGION

For a film about a developing global pandemic, CONTAGION is a reserved and bloodless movie.  With an ensemble cast and no central protagonist to carry the story, the film assembles a coherent plot from bits and pieces of other people’s stories.

The feeling of emotional distance keeps cropping up. The film is shot in cold, pale washed out colours, often heavily tinted in an array of blues and greys.

The soundtrack is simple and counterintuitive at times with an almost retro feel, one person fiddling around on a child’s keyboard\synthesizer.

And there are very few moments for the cast to wail and gnash their teeth, no moments of high drama where the lantern jawed hero turns things around at the last minute, instead director Steven Soderbergh  lets the camera rest on his actors, using their reactions to establish the emotional resonance of the film.

This clinical detachment makes for a very cerebral experience when watching CONTAGION, stripping emotion from the film and replacing it with a cold awareness of how powerless and alone we all are.

Movie Musings: THE THREE MUSKETEERS

THE THREE MUSKETEERS is one of those franchises that seems to be in a constant stage of reimagination and reinvention.  And I think the reason for that is that the source material is never really taken all that seriously.

Essentially the Musketeers’ franchise exists to showcase to throw a bunch of good looking guys onscreen wearing period clothes and swinging their swords around for an hour or two (DOUBLE ENTENDRE ALERT). There’s a bit of intrigue, a bit of romance and everyone has a good time.

But unfortunately I’ve never seen what I consider to be a definitive take on the Musketeer story. Instead the franchise only seems to exist in order to shoehorn any number of artistic interpretations onto its beefy frame. You might say that proves the story is flexible and open to a number of different readings. I’d say that you were wrong.

Anyway, the 2011 version is apparently informed by a combination of steampunk and 3d action film sensibilities (hand flap-screen-booga-booga). Its mindless good fun and it will leave absolutely no impression on you after you finish watching it. So. Enjoy?

Movie Musings: THE THING (2011)

John Carpenter’s version of THE THING is one of my favourite films of all time. So if you want to harp on me for being overly critical of this entry, by all means, feel free.

But, in all actuality, it’s not too terrible.

It suffers from an overdependence on using previously established motifs from the earlier entry and that makes the whole movie feel overly familiar. Why would I want to watch the 2011 jump through the same old hoops when I’ve seen the pleasure of watching the 1982 version do it all first?

The filmmakers clearly decided to run down a list of “things people expect to see in THE THING” and chose to pass up on one or two really good opportunities to make their own mark on the franchise.

This is the commercial pseudo-remake version of the film. Its light, frothy and more concerned with not fucking shit up then it is swinging for the fences.

Movie Musings: THE RUM DIARY

Remember when Johnny Depp used to be a really interesting actor who mixed up his weird and wacky roles with the occasional ‘serious’ turn?

Neither do I.

Depp has become walking slapstick in an outlandish costume. And while the costume is missing and the slapstick toned down a notch in THE RUM DIARY the whacky jokester shines through regardless.

If you want to watch Depp do his thing in a good Hunter S. Thompson bit check out FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS.

If you want to watch meandering film that plucks delicately at the themes and substance of Thompson’s work but wholly fails to understand the meaning behind it, then by all means, check out THE RUM DIARY.

Movie Musings: INVINCIBLE

Statement: This is a football movie based on a real life story of Philadelphia Eagles footballer Vince Papale.

You can tell this movie takes place in the past because…

1.       The look of the film is so washed out that its one step away from being shot entirely in olde tyme sepia tones.

2.       Marky Mark’s hippie hair swirls around his chiseled jaw line with all the grace and delicacy of a Russian ballerina.

You can also tell it’s a sports movie because whenever anyone so much as glances at a football everything. starts. to. move. in. slooow. motion.

INVINCIBLE is best watched with one hand over your heart and the other fisting a Keg-sized brewski. If that doesn’t help counteract the overwhelming urge to heave at all the Disney-esque shmaltz just apply large doses of Good Vibrations and repeat as necessary.

Movie Musings: SANCTUM

If you think SANCTUM is a film about a bunch of cavers\explorers\adventurers\Hollywood b-listers trapped in a series of underwater caves you'd be dead wrong.

The film's chief preoccupation is convincing you what a hard ass caver-in-chief Richard Roxborough’s character Frank McGuire is. And he's not afraid to tell you repeatedly by barking ferociously at every character unfortunate enough to wander in front of his line of sight.

Even though the film is more action adventure than anything else it follows strict horror movie rules, picking off its cast characters in an easy to predict sequence. (All the while reinforcing the film’s primary theme, Frank McQuire a god damn hardass.)

But despite all that nonsense SANCTUM is a very good film.  It does a great job at using its enclosed and claustrophobic locales to great genuine moments of queasiness and fear. And when the film does shift gears into smaller character moments it does so without pandering to the cloying treacly sweetness that often accompanies those beats. If the film suffers slightly from an unfortunate sense of predictability its execution is second to none.

Movie Musings: QUANTUM OF SOLACE

As good as CASINO ROYALE is, it’s not until the Bond films hits QUANTUM OF SOLACE that you realize how far the franchise has moved from the depths of camp and satire that had permeated its skin and rotted out its bones.

James Bond has been fleshed out from just a wise cracking, smooth talking brit spy. Now he has motivation and hidden depths and you start to wonder if maybe those endless martinis are indicative of a larger problem than just maintaining a playboy lifestyle.

And the whole visual look and structure of the films have changed as well. They've injected flashes of art and directorly auterism into Bond's perpetual smarmy grin. Suddenly the flashy teenager has grown up and realized that its substance that audiences want and not just endless adolescent hijinks.

My greatest concern is that the series will regress, that gradually more and more of the comic elements will be reinserted back into the franchise as individual directors try and recreate the Bond of their youth.

My hope is that the brains behind the franchise can keep the nu real world aesthetic of the films going long enough that it becomes the default tone of the films.

Book Review: Bloodline - James Rollins

Galilee, 1025. Infiltrating an ancient citadel, a Templar knight uncovers a holy treasure long hidden within the fortress's labyrinth: the Bachal Isu—the staff of Jesus Christ—a priceless icon that holds a mysterious and terrifying power that promises to change humankind forever.

A millennium later, Somali pirates hijack a yacht off the coast of the Horn of Africa, kidnapping a young pregnant American woman. Commander Gray Pierce is enlisted for the covert rescue mission into the African jungle—for the woman is no rich tourist; she's Amanda Gant-Bennett, the daughter of the U.S. president.

Suspicious that the kidnapping masks a far more nefarious plot, Gray must confront a shadowy cabal, one who has been manipulating events throughout history . . . and now challenges the current presidency.

For this sensitive mission, SIGMA is aided by a pair of special operatives with unique talents: former Army Ranger Captain Tucker Wayne and his military war dog, Kane. But what should be a straightforward rescue turns into a fiery ambush and a deadly act of betrayal as Gray and his team discover that the hostage is a pawn in a shattering act of terrorism with dark repercussions. And the danger is only beginning. . . .

Halfway around the world, a firebombing at a fertility clinic in South Carolina exposes a centuries-old conspiracy to manipulate our genetic code. With time against them, SIGMA must race to save an innocent unborn baby, one who holds the key to a mystery and whose very existence raises questions about the nature of humanity, asking:

Could you live forever?

Would you live forever?

I read James Rollins books because they are usually Historical mysteries, twined with modern science, and crazy action set pieces. These are his call signs and were seemingly his bread and butter. This is especially true of his Sigma Force series, which I enjoy quite a bit. The core of these volumes is almost ALWAYS the historical mystery, be it Alexander the Great’s tomb, The Nazi experiment called Die Glocke (The Bell), Angkor Wat, Greek Ruins in Northern India or even Celtic tombs in Britain. To me that’s what always makes the adventures of the Sigma Team so fascinating, that above and beyond the modern day science that ties into the past, there is always some nugget of truth to ancient legends or myths and when found and interwoven with the present it made for compelling stories. This is the reason we all like Indiana Jones so much, or guiltily watch ANCIENT ALIENS. As a species we are endlessly entertained by the unexplained in our own history. Link that into a fictional narrative and you will usually have a winner. It’s why fluff like THE DAVINCI CODE did such bananas sales.

Most the Sigma books follow this pattern. And while it is always present, Rollins usually finds a way to change things up to avoid the law of diminishing returns. Be it adding characters, or changing the status quo for returning characters he was quite adept that this. It’s actually a rather fine balance to ride between science and history, and Rollins should be applauded for normally riding it.

Sadly, in his latest Sigma outing BLOODLINE he doesn’t ride it much at all. The book is almost entirely a science / tech / action thriller. The history, when present, is minimal at best. There is mention of the Knights Templar in the prologue, but then nothing for hundreds of pages. There is a relic at play here, but even its screen time is limited and constantly overshadowed by the forward thinking science and tech. It’s as if he decided that the tech and science narrative was more important on its own than couching it within the historical wrapping. Kind of a dismissal of the historical mystery as “besides the point”. At least that’s how it felt to me. Which annoyed me, I’m not going to lie. Seeing as how intricate the previous books have been about tying everything together, BLOODLINE doesn’t even attempt it. So what we are left with is a decidedly well-written, science-tech-action thriller and that’s it.

Add to this the fact that over the last few books the shadowy and evil organization known as the Guild has become more and more of a thorn in Sigma’s side, what we end up with here are a few revelations about the Guild’s beginnings and its current saturation of the higher echelons of human power. While that is interesting, I’m also left kind of wondering if BLOODLINE exists only to be a vehicle for those revelations. Kind of a Guild Mole hunt.

This is not to say that BLOODLINE is a poor book, it’s not by any means. Rollins skill is paramount and he still writes a pace-churning, hour vanishing book that will compel you to finish it. The characters are all here, though some in diminished roles. At points it feels like Too Many Cooks though. There are a lot of characters in this one and sometimes it felt like the need to include them is indulgence at best…but that meant I got to see Monk, and even Jack from the Deep Fathom so I can’t complain. The addition of new cast members Captain Tucker Wayne and his wardog Kane was probably the most shining part of the book for me. They bring more to this book than anyone else and absolutely are the best latest additions to the team. Interesting, and with a depth of character I wasn’t expecting both Tucker and his companion Kane (who actually gets POV sections) snap, crackle and pop off the page. The Gray and Seichan burgeoning love story is getting a bit old now. It’s still good, but we know where it’s headed and it needed to get there a book ago. They will either be totally together, or they will not and she will go the way of Rachel Verona. Either way, let’s just get there. If I have to read one more scene where Gray and Seichan NEARLY…only to have it interrupted by Kowlaski or someone again I’m going to freak out.

Does the historical stuff show up again? Yes. Does it pertain heavily to the story? Nope. In fact the bits about mad science and crazy tech are sort of treated the way that those parts are usually treated. Now, I’m aware that there are only so many old tombs or mysteries that the public knows about…but what about some compelling places and myths that still pepper the planet. Like Mohenjo Daro in India, or how about the mysterious Baalbek in Lebanon itself built upon the ruins of Alexander’s ancient Heliopolis, or how about the underwater pyramids of Yonaguni Jima off the southern coast of Japan, or the Valley of Death in Yakutia, Siberia. There is an absolute plethora of history to plumb in fiction, and to tie into modern day and science the way all his other books have done.

So in conclusion, for one of my favourite author’s to have delivered what can only be construed as a typical science thriller was quite disappointing to me. I was truly expecting something more like the previous Sigma books, but the history was seriously lacking here and that put me right off. Like I said, a very well-written and entertaining book, it’s not like the previous Sigma books much and could actually be a non-sigma thriller starring Sigma operatives.

Two things before I go.

1. For those people who can’t stand silly plot points in books, one in this book that stood straight out at me and said “Howdy, I am implausible” was when a collection of buildings on an island in Dubai was purchased by the bad guys so that if you looked at it on a B&W map (this was illustrated in the book for me) and highlighted the buildings they owned in colour, you’d see a nearly perfect equal armed cross. Wow. Really? So a powerful, evil sect of people (who have stayed hidden for centuries) are going to purchase a bunch of buildings in a row that will form a cross when highlighted together (basically a bright, blinking arrow and sign saying “Bad Guys Here!”)…for what purpose? So their co-conspirators can find the place easier? There is no real purpose for this notion in the book aside from “Look, it forms a cross, how cool!” and it is a HUGE chink in the armor of the narrative as it’s just super silly, and something no smart collective of bad guys would ever do.

2. This is a personal thing that rankled me that other may not have noticed. The back cover synopsis states “Galilee, 1025. Infiltrating an ancient citadel, a Templar knight uncovers a holy treasure long hidden within the fortress's labyrinth…” Being a fan of studying the Crusades and especially the Knights Templar this was so immediately incongruous that I actually had to do a double take and wonder if it was a typographic error. The first Crusade was not begun until 1096, and the Knights Templar would not be formally created by Hughes De Payens and Co. until around 1129-30. There is a notion that perhaps De Payens used a prior existing society that was in France at the time as his basis…but either way no one, French or otherwise would have gone into the Holy Land with or without a force of people and gotten ten feet into any ancient fortress without the existing Islamic peoples finding out and capturing them. Hell, that’s WHY the Crusades were what they were. It took thousands upon thousands of Knights to invade and get anywhere NEAR the relics and ancient ruins they sought. So no, no one went into Galilee in 1025 (which at the time would have been the domain of the Arab Caliphate) and not especially any of the Knights Templar who would not be formed until over a hundred years later. I hope against hope that the 1025 date is a mere typographic error (but a visit to the author’s official site proves that the synopsis exists there as well), but it’s probably not. That makes it kind of a BIG oversight. To posit that the Knights Templar existed a hundred years before they actually did bothered me. Part of the work involved in writing a fiction book that concerns history is to attempt to stay as true (at least to dates) to the reality as possible. I understand that no one knows what the Templar’s had over the Church and what they found in the Holy Land that made them rich and powerful, but the DATES in which they existed are not really meant to be played with if I am to believe the rest of the info presented as “true” or “factual”. Like I said, this might just be me who was bothered by it, but when the facts are so readily available for those events and peoples then I expect more…certainly on the back cover synopsis.

So like I said, a decent thriller, but really low on the totem pole of the Sigma books for me and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t really disappointed with it. Will you enjoy it? If you like his books for the thriller, action, science and tech stuff only, then yes you will probably enjoy it immensely. Like I said, it's not a bad book at all, just not the book I expected, and the onus for that result is probably entirely on me. There's lots to love for Rollins' Fans, and personally if I were to give you a reason to read this book, it is the new characters of Tucker Wayne and Kane easily, they are brilliant from their introduction onwards. So, a bit of a middling to negative review here, but please don't let me sway you, give it a go yourself as you might enjoy it a lot (as other reviewers seem to be doing).