Rant: Hollywood, STOP THE 3D!

Let’s talk 3D shall we?


First off, this post will be available in TWO DIMENSIONS. In BOTH of those dimensions you can see Chris and I standing with our arms crossed, and a scowl on our faces that is directed at Hollywood executives that are looking to fleece their audiences.

Blogger Note 1: First and foremost I would like to specify that films that are conceived, constructed, and shot in 3D with proper cameras and attention to details of how 3D works within film…I have no problem with. AVATAR is a good example, and without having seen it yet I’ll wager that THE HOBBIT films will have this attention to detail. If used correctly, it can add depth of field and help to delineate action set pieces that are wholly chaotic (as it did in THOR or AVENGERS) and it can even add beauty as I assume PROMETHEUS will do. I have no problem with the 3D in these films, since they were designed to be that way from moment one. Basically, when a film is conceived and shot in 3d at the very least there’s a reason for that artistic choice. The director and the creative team build the sets, frame the shots and design the action to incorporate the 3d element as seamlessly as possible and for the maximum visual impact. Post 3d conversion is the artistic equivalent of using a trash bag to keep dry in a thunderstorm. It’ll do the job, but it’s not particularly pretty.

Blogger Note 2: The above statement does NOT mean that EVERY film should be in pre-production-conceived 3D. It basically is an addendum to this article that when I talk about 3D I am mostly speaking of post-converted, crappy, murky, ultimately useless 3D. I will be speaking about the recent notion that Hollywood feels they should convert EVERYTHING to 3D and the reason they seem to always give (which is utter crap and a lie) is that they wish to make it a more fulfilling audience experience…when we all know that it’s so they can pump up ticket prices and gouge us all a little more.

The idea for this post came about of Chris and my continual dislike of this trend, and that came to a head with the recent revelation that G.I. JOE: RETALITATION (a film that for all intents and purposes looked like good fun and a damn sight better than its predecessor), a film that was meant to come out next month and has been marketed six ways from Tuesday for the last six months (including a pricey SuperBowl spot) is now being pushed back almost a year to March of 2013 to…and I quote…”post-convert to 3D to offer a more fulfilling experience for fans”. This is crap, we know it’s crap and I’m not going to go into the myriad of other REAL reasons for this delay, but if you look around the net you will find them.

What I’d like to know is this. Why does Hollywood think that they can foist the idea of 3D onto an audience that (aside from the ones mentioned in Note 1 above) clearly LOATHES it. We don’t like the crappy quality of 80% of the films released in it (post converted or not), and we sure as heck don’t like a bloated ticket price on a movie ticket that was ALREADY bloated to begin with. And yet the Studio’s seem to get away with pushing this on us and claiming it’s because we are asking for it.

I'll say this very clearly, We are NOT asking for it.

In fact, the seemingly resounding consensus (at least online) is that we all hate it. There is more snark on the internet about 3D being a gimmick and something that can ruin a perfectly good film (CLASH OF THE TITANS gets a bad rap, but personally I liked it. The seeming answer is that people disliked the murky 3D conversion and not the film itself more than anything in the narrative.

So are the suits at the Studio’s who make these decisions bothering to look at fan or news sites where the audience they claim to be trying to please are decrying 3D En-Masse as unwanted? You know what? I actually think they are seeing that and they are simply ignoring it. Why? The healthy bottom line of getting to charge more for a ticket for a shitty post-3D conversion is worth more to them than the naysayers. That's it. It's about the all-mighty buck, not "a more full-filling fan experience" as they pedal it to us.

Well, I’m saying this needs to stop. We need to stop seeing these post-converted, or crappily planned movies in 3D. See them in 2D, or not at all till DVD/BluRay. The studios won’t get the message until they begin to lose on these films. We are the ones who have that effect on ticket sales. If we keep seeing the crappy films in 3D then they will keep shoving them into the market.

Now, this sounds like I am getting really down on the film industry, and I’m not at all. In fact, this year is shaping up to be one of the best for good movies since 1999, and with films like PROMETHEUS, AVENGERS, HUNGER GAMES, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES and this winter with THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, we are looking at a renaissance of GOOD stories in GOOD movies with 2012 looked at as a huge success for the industry. What I AM saying is that 3D is NOT (as it is touted) the next leap forward in movies. It’s a nice thing to do when it incorporates into the film and makes of it something a little more (like the ones mentioned in Note 1) and it is worth it in those cases…but when it is done as an afterthought I want us to let the studios KNOW that we see what they are doing. We aren't stupid. The G.I. JOE 2 fiasco is going to be a good step in the cease the 3D madness direction since the move to next year is going to absolutely kill any fan interest and they are going to lose hard on the box office. When funnily enough had they released it next month as planned (and with the buzz around it so far having been decent) it would have done decent cash (if not stellar in a summer that includes such other juggernauts) and the fans would have rallied it, had it been entertaining. Now it will have to be re-marketed next year and by then no one will care.

So Hollywood, STOP THE 3D. It's not a good enough gimmick to screw over legions of fans who simply don't want it.

Russell T. Davies VS Steven Moffat (A Doctor Who Comparison)

After having watched and reviewed the last episode of DOCTOR WHO this Series, I feel the need to get a few things out. So bear with me as I go over a few things, and perhaps vent a bit.

I have watched the re-launched DOCTOR WHO (circa 2005-present) since it began airing week to week on the CBC in Canada (who ponied up some of the dough for the show in 2005 and is considered co-financier company for Series 1). I got to re-embrace a TV show that I LOVED as a child, and over time the show took my top spot for weekly viewing. I never missed it, talked about it endlessly, debated it with friends, and purchased many t-shirts and collectables.

Six (nearly seven) years later, the show has moved on from its re-launched showrunner Russell T. Davies and its first two stars Christopher Eccelstone (9^th Doctor) and David Tennant (10^th Doctor), to be run by a different person and have different stars. This is a long running aspect of the show. Since its inception in the early 1960’s it has been about the character moreso than the stars playing him. So when Matt Smith took over the TARDIS duties (as 11^th Doctor) it was somewhat par for the course for DW. Yes, we’d all miss Tennant, but the show would go on and in the hands of arguably its most capable writer (other than Davies himself) Steven Moffat (BLINK, THE GIRL IN THE FIREPLACE) right?

Well…

Chris and I talked at length about the issues we had with the 6^th Series of DW in the last two Giggle Loop Podcasts, and I’m sure you can see my feelings about the show in my reviews, but I felt like I had so much more to say beyond a review about the show in general that I’d write a Post-Season wrap up article, and this is going to include some rather venting-type statements.

The differences between Steven Moffat’s DOCTOR WHO and Russell T. Davies DOCTOR WHO become more glaring with every episode that airs, and after the finale THE WEDDING Of RIVER SONG I feel that the shows have become so different as to be unrecognizable from one another. In fact, I’d wager if you had someone unaccustomed sit down and watch Series 2 and chase it with Series 6 they’d tell you that it was two different shows. I’m going to break down my issues into categories.

The Doctor

RTD’s Doctor (both 9^th and 10^th) had a level of mystique, but rarely made anyone feel like they were lesser because of not knowing. They were also charming, funny and emotional. When the scene called for it those two incarnations could be comedic, unrepentantly angry, near tears emotional, or even just manic and running. RTD’s Doctor had a soul. He had a dark history that was layered with things like being forced as a child to look into the vortex of time itself (the un-tempered schism) to become a time lord, he had witnessed and been on the front lines of a war that decimated both the Time Lord and Dalek population to the point where it had to be locked out of reality lest it destroy everything. RTD invented the Time Lord infantryman. The shell-shocked, PTSD Doctor who had not only experienced horrors of a war, but had been responsible for sealing his own people into a locked state of hell. Imagine carrying that around and STILL wanting to save the universe. That was what RTD brought when he revived the franchise. He gave us something to identify with, while at the same time not entirely human and in need of such humanity to make him whole. He gave us the broken, hollow, shell of a great man who could do so much good, and told us how his interactions with some people started to fill him up inside and make him better again. But he never lost the core of who he was, and what he had experienced. So that even by the time we got to Series 4 he was still acting off the impulses of a man who had been through these things. Week to week he showed some aspect of that personality, and it always made each of the stories that were being told that much more compelling because of who he was as an individual. That was part of the magic in the show and part of what kept me coming back every Saturday.

Moffat took that man and turned him into something different. Whether the reasoning behind that was to wipe away what RTD did or not I can’t say. I must admit it feels that way sometimes though. Very little of the person who both Eccelstone and Tennant played exists in Matt Smith’s Doctor. Yes he’s mentioned the Time War, and shown his regular contempt for the Daleks and Cybermen ect., but it’s always as an afterthought. And while I’m not saying I want an emo-Doctor all the time or something, it would be nice if the 11^th Doctor had to deal with his past more often and at least show shades of his previous incarnations. Yes, he’s been filled up with humanity by the companions he’s come into contact with, but he shouldn’t forget who he is and where he came from either. So now he’s a madman with a box. He’s scatterbrained, plays his cards close to his chest, and for the most part doesn’t treat his companions the same (see Companions category below for more info) as his past incarnations did. It seems he thinks that damned near everything is a secret and should not be shared with anyone. We not seen that level of secrecy since the 7^th Doctor’s (Sylvester McCoy) last season, and I’m now totally positive it’s a bad thing. The Doctor should still be mysterious to an extent, but whereas the 9^th and 10^th Doctor’s would share important info with their companions, 11 rarely does. In fact, never has more been kept secret between The Doctor and the companions (Amy’s Schrodinger baby, pregnant/not pregnant, Rory doesn’t know about Flesh Amy), nor from the Doctor himself (River, Amy, and Rory not telling the Doctor of his impending death) and such cracks are showing their wear to me. The whole point of this show has always been how the Doctor has companions who temper him, make him better and more human and more often than not HELP him solve the mystery or issue at hand in any given episode. Chris and I were discussing it and he noted (paraphrasing) “it seems like more and more as the 11^th Doctor matures as a character he’s becoming more condescending and dismissive whereas 9^th and 10^th were merely excitable with poor impulse control.” And I think he’s totally correct on that. I’m also fairly positive I dislike the condescension and dismissiveness that 11 shows.

Companions

RTD’s era had more than a few memorable companions. Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, and Jack Harkness were the main ones and then we can add a few of the smaller role companions like Sally Sparrow, Wilfred Mott, Sarah Jane Smith, Adelaide Brooke, Lady Christina de Souza, and Jackson Lake to the roster. With every one of those companions the Doctor had a different relationship, but one that was always poignant to the story told and especially to the overall personality of the Doctor himself. What I mentioned before about tempering him. While they all exhibited some of each of the following traits I think we can break them down into a few specifics: Rose (basic love), Mickey (sacrifice), Martha (unrequited love), Donna (strength & humour), Jack Harkness (passion), Sally (conviction), Wilfred (blind faith/belief), Sarah Jane (loyalty), Adelaide Brooke (truth), Lady Christina (admiration), Jackson Lake (emulation), and even The Master (not that he was a companion) eventually showed the Doctor something (brotherly conflict, and ultimately familial love). That’s what RTD gave us in companions. One thing Chris noted this morning to me and I think it rings excessively true was that no matter what was going on in any given episode, the Doctor more often than not had his companion at his side and they’d jointly solve the issue. Whatever happened they would always work together as equals and whatever the problem was they would approach it as a team. The base was ALWAYS the friendship. Always.

Moffat has removed a significant number of things that made companions relevant to the Doctor. Another paraphrased quote from Chris is that “whereas RTD had the Companions working alongside the Doctor as equals who always punched above their weight, Moffat has Smith treating Amy and Rory like kittens that need to be protected so they don’t get killed.” And I think he’s bang on there. If you think about it Amy and Rory almost never are on screen with the Doctor at the same time during the crisis, and they rarely solve the problem or issue at hand as a team with him. Instead he usually has to tell them what to do to save the day. Like when Amy is lost in THE GIRL WHO WAITED and the Doctor issues orders to Rory as to what to do from the TARDIS. Though Rory eventually does a few things on his own in regards to the situation, it’s still basically the Doctor who is in control at the end of the episode. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing as he clearly knows a lot about the perils and pitfalls in the universe, but we rarely get into a situation where the companions are doing anything to help the Doctor in which he NEEDS them at all. So gone are the days when the companions fulfilled their tempering job and made the Doctor more human it would seem. In fact any time one of the two tries to show the Doctor how harsh he is being (usually Rory yelling at him) he kind of just shrugs it off and I guess we are expected to accept that this Doctor is just a less human inside and more of an alien. But I think that’s going to be missed, simply because part of what has always made the character so compelling is the humanity inside him. So here we have a Doctor who won’t allow an older Amy into the TARDIS with young Amy because it’s a paradox, but the same person will allow a paradox like the whole Amy/Doctor in the Pandorica Sonic Screwdriver escape thing. I think there is a disconnect there. Like in THE GIRL WHO WAITED the aspect of the Doctor not allowing old Amy into the TARDIS paradox is cashed in as an emotional heartstrings moment, because the show has crossed the timey-wimey paradoxical bridge more than a few times in the last few seasons. So having two Amy’s briefly in the TARDIS (something that funnily enough actually DID happen in the mini-sodes that aired last year) while they find somewhere for old Amy to go to seems exceptionally harsh as an act by a man who has said things are impossible and paradoxical A LOT of times and overcomes them. I’m probably nitpicking, but this is an example of another difference in the show recently that I think is detrimental to overall enjoyment. And the base of it now never actually feels like friendship as it did before and instead feels more like master and servant.

I also don’t really care as much what happens to either Amy or Rory most days and I certainly don’t care about what happens to River Song. None of their various mortal perils' has created in me any kind of tension about them surviving. Add to this aspects like Amy seemingly not caring about her child after she’s taken and accepting that someday she’ll be River so all will work out well, it all rings sort of blankly to me. I got more out of the frozen/out once a year/opera singer from last years Christmas Special than I think I’ve ever gotten from Amy or Rory. Though Rory has frequently gotten the badass award from me, I don’t think it’s enough in the long run.

Enemies

I just want to note something Chris mentioned to me. In RTD’s era there was always a big bad, and it was almost always dealt with in one Series (Daleks, Cybermen & Daleks, The Master, Davros, The Time Lords themselves) and though he might revisit previous big bad’s (see Series 2, 3 and 4) you always had some sort of closure going into the following Series. With Moffat, The Silence/Silents, have been used from the outset of Series 5 and you’d think that by the end of Series 6 we’d more than simply vague information about who they are, why they care and the like. It seems like they are going to continue to be a big bad in Series 7 (unless I miss my guess), and at this point I’m simply fed-up with them. They aren’t interesting anymore and I got more out of 3 episodes with the Weeping Angels than I ever have with the Silence. My big gripe here is this: Fresh ideas Moffat. When you use the same villain (sometimes secondary villain) as the big bad in 2 full series and then set them up as the big bad in the 3^rd Series under your tenure, there’s a problem. Give us something else. I would have been happy if the Silents had been revealed at the end of Series 5 and dealt with…but no we continue to use them and the weirdest thing about it all is that every time I think they are the big bad, something happens that drops them into the secondary villain category, which only serves to confuse me. And don’t get me started on Moffat treating the Daleks and Cybermen like secondary citizens in the Who-niverse. I realize that they shouldn’t be overused, but then DON’T put them in at all is my advice! The Cybermen especially have been CRIMINALLY used this Series. In the mid-series finale they were pre-credits cannon fodder, and even in the penultimate episode CLOSING TIME they are treated like a flies to be swatted. I’m not going to lie it feels entirely disrespectful to the lineage that these various villains have been created to exemplify to use them and make them out to be just an irritating piece fluff that should be swept from your coat.

Overall Narrative and Plot Arcs

RTD took us on a long journey and showed us many things. His Doctor’s both saved the earth and the universe multiple times (sometimes to his own detriment), dealt with many enemies and friends, saw wondrous things and achieved amazing heights. What always was front and center though throughout was a fairly straightforward narrative arc. Sure sometimes he did monster-of-the-week episodes (usually with some subtle nod to the overall Series arc), but they were always clean stories with clear beginning, middle and end points. Even when they were concentrated on the overall Series arc they were not using any gimmicks to tell the story. Say what one will about RTD, he always approached the story FIRST and FOREMOST, and everything else came later. He was always concerned with his characters relationships across the board. He always addressed what his companions families thought of him whisking them away and putting them in peril, Jackie Tyler and the Noble family are the biggest in this category. I don’t care what story you are telling me, you should always pay attention to the interactions between characters as a reality for the viewer. RTD always did that during his tenure, and after reading his book about Series 4 and the 2009 Specials I am convinced of the fact.

As to Moffat's dealing of characters and reality in relation to their earthbound lives: Have we seen Amy's parents again, or Rory's parents EVER? Don't they wonder what the heck is going on?

As well, Moffat likes to use visual and narrative trickery. He always has. If you go back and watch COUPLING he had episodes concentrated on split screens in different timelines, and even one where a character speaks in another language for ten minutes and we watch it again with the opposite character speaks in another language and we understand the former. In those instances he also was telling a compelling story and it worked. He’s probably one of the most non-linear screenwriters on the planet and it always shows. You can always know his work for being his work. The problem that has arisen partly in Series 5, but really moreso in Series 6 is that it appears as if he’s using his narrative trickery as a jumping off point instead of story. So it’s almost as if he’s sitting down and thinking “I want to do a story where we introduce a character that the main character has met later in his timeline and show how their interaction would be wholly skewed and messed up by their meeting in the wrong order” and THEN cobbling a feasible story around it to fit that idea. He seems to keep doing this and every episode he writes in this way ends up being a total narrative mess that has to depend on strange plot ideas, tricks and even sometimes paradoxes to makes any sort of sense, and even then they don’t really if you look at them with any kind of discernable eye. We therefore get a situation in which the Doctor can do great things, have great moments,  and look and sound really cool while he does it…but where is the heart? Where is the emotional resonance? Where is the level of humanity I need to care? Is it cool to see the Doctor stand on the middle stone of Stonehenge and shout a speech to the alien enemies above? Yes certainly it is. What my issue is falls on the fact that it’s all rather hollow when he’s not the same person he’s always been. The 11th Doctor likes to speak fast, be glib and make references to things no one knows about, but when the entirety of the dialogue starts to depend on that to move things along, there's a problem. It definitely confuses me when he spends all of Series 5 grandstanding like he should be feared and then Series 6 closing with him feeling he needs to retreat to the shadows and be less of a presence so he can do more. Why do we even have to go to either of those extremes at all? The 9^th and 10^th Doctor’s always seemed to ride that line between being feared and being only one man so not worth the bother. The same thing was true of Classic Who in fact. Why did we have to go through the motions of the 11^th Doctor being too big for his britches and realizing it (after two seasons) when he’s already over 900 years old and likely is already aware that he shouldn’t be too much of a presence in the universe, lest he summon the ire of his enemies? It seems like pointless busy-work to me, and should be par for the course to the Doctor.

Final Thoughts

Long story short, it’s official. No mater how much I try and no matter how much I respect what Steven Moffat has tried to do with DOCTOR WHO, the current incarnation of the show isn’t even really a shadow of the one I fell so in love with in 2005. It’s strange, even my girlfriend who is far less discerning than I in what she expects from a TV show (who I got into DW and she LOVED RTD’s era of the show), and rarely even watches Sci-fi anything, seemed a little less than excited to watch the finale (which she hasn’t done yet). I asked her why she wasn’t excited and she said “It’s just not been that good this season”. Add to that the convoluted, Series arc-dependant nature of Moffat’s DW has actually alienated a few “casual” viewers that I know, including my own fifteen-year old niece and another good friend of mine. Making every episode depend in some way on the one that came before or the three that came before totally destroys any aspect that makes it easy for a casual viewer to come miss an episode. So unless you see the ones that came before you can’t figure out what the heck is going on and those casual viewers are going to flip the channel.

I’m still a big fan and I’ll continue to watch of course and hopefully enjoy some more episodes down the line, but I think there will now forever be a part of me that is more at home watching RTD’s era Series on DVD than I ever will be with what is airing on TV. And to me that’s sad.

Review Requests (Indie Books/Authors)

My friend and fellow blogger Amanda over at Floor To Ceiling Books made a post similar to this the other day and as much as I wish I didn't have to, I feel like I should express these feelings to our readers as well since our inbox has seen its share as well.

When submitting an email to us asking if we'd like to review your book, put a little effort in. I'm not saying that we don't get emails that DO put effort in from Indie authors...we do get those, but a large amount put little to no effort in.

For example, when larger publishing companies send emails to ask us if we'd like to review a certain book (by a new or existing author) they usually preface their email by saying they have read the site or enjoyed our reviews. They call at least one of us by name (meaning they at least glanced at the about us page). They then go on to explain they have a book we (Chris or myself) might enjoy reading, they tell us who the author is, what the genre is and normally give a synopsis right there in the email of what the volume is about. They usually give a link to the authors website, and sometimes a little info about the author themselves. To top it off they normally throw a cover image in to whet the eye-whistles, and while this is not required or anything, you'll have to admit it's a nice touch. Thus does the email come across as well constructed, lucid and interesting. In fact, most of those emails we receive in said fashion get an immediate response with an "Okay, we'll read that!" (we got a great one the other day for an upcoming Hodder & Stoughton book that Chris jumped at the opportunity to read)

We get some funny ones that I like too, like one where the author said "Dear Chris or Scott (I refuse to say Dear Iceberg Ink cause that just sounds crazy)" and I had a good laugh at that, and the person was being entirely genuine.

We don't really think that the above is asking a lot. Publishers find a way to do it, so when we receive emails from random indie authors trying to break onto the scene who don't, it kind of boggles the mind.

We're also not trying to single anyone out, but we've received a number of emails from Indie authors that don't put that sort of effort in, and we wanted to perhaps help.

Three random sentences where they may or may not get your name right, tell you their book is fantasy or sci-fi and then provide a link where you can learn about it, is not going above and beyond. If you can't be bothered to put the synopsis of your book in the email text itself, why on earth should we be bothered to read it? You should be selling yourself to us, you're attempting to create a brand. You want us to one day look at book shelves and see your name and book title in a distinctive font and we should want to grab the title...but you don't want to do the leg work. You're meant to be an author, so sell us on reading your book by giving us the synopsis and telling us why you think we'd like it...using words. Treating your email like it's a classified ad is just not going to cut it with most sites.

Needed: One Book Reviewer. For Fantasy Book. Info please call.

Let me use an analogy. A few years back I went out to a restaurant (Alice Fazooli's in fact) with a number of friends, and when the waitress came to the table after getting us a round drinks she told us about the specials. She mentioned a rack of lamb and when asked how it was she talked about it melting in her mouth, that it was utterly luscious and she even made this motion with her hand on her neck as if it went down like butter. Of the seven of us dining that night, five ordered the lamb. Seriously. She also ended up (over the course of the evening) being the BEST server I have ever had at a restaurant and I tipped her $20 on top of the tip the table gave her. It didn't require oodles of her time and yet she spoke of what she was selling us like it was ambrosia. The lamb was delicious, but whether or not it was is totally besides the point as she'd done her job and we'd bought in.

We're not looking for your email to be amazing, but we are looking for it to be a bit personal (hopefully you've at least read the site) towards Chris or myself, and we are looking for you to sell us on it in the email...not elsewhere. You should be behaving like the big publishers when they sell us on a book, since you are self-publishing it is, in fact, expected of you.

Like I said above, if you think it takes too much time or effort to write an email that will make us want to read the book, then I can't see how reviewers are meant to take you seriously.

Rant: Summoning the collective ire of Book Bloggers is a poor idea

It’s not often we here at Iceberg Ink draw attention to what I would term “internet goings on”, but a guest post over at the Santa Cruz.com about the most recent Book Expo has raised a lot of hackles and ire. My own included.

You can read the whole post (I refuse to call it an “article” as it is ill-researched and generally elitism of the highest order) over HERE.

Paraphrasing though, Daniela says boneheaded things like:

“This year’s BEA confirmed what most writers and book reviewers already knew: that the publication of serious literature, and particularly of literary fiction, has been abandoned by the big publishers to the small or medium-size independent presses.”

As well as Blogger rage-inducing tripe like:

“Book blogging has become a subculture whose members are mostly women between 20 and 50 years old, often known as “mommy bloggers” because they are housewives who blog about romance novels, horror/vampire stories and paranormal novels.”

Oh, and the writer of the post also makes confounding statements about social media like:

“At the Book Bloggers reception I met many girls in their early twenties who already have hundreds of followers on Twitter. As far as I could tell, I was the only person at the convention who doesn’t tweet.”

What’s even funnier is that if you trawl through the 138-odd comments on the post, book bloggers have come out in force to vehemently decry this Daniela persons post as the pinnacle of idiocy simply for being woefully ignorant not only of what she’s talking about, but about the publishing and review industry at large. There’s some random dude trolling every last comment with his own particular brand of snobbery and elitism, but mostly he just comes off as a petty troll with too much time on his hands and a ready library of classics in his arsenal. Basically the entire comments section is one long defensive argument letting Daniela know that not only is she wrong, but that book blogger's have a voice and will gather en masse to use it. In fact it’s probably unfair that since she doesn’t use twitter she doesn’t know the onslaught of mentions she’s likely getting and SantaCruz has probably never been a busier site. Similar to that author who self-destructed her career a few months ago by posting nasty comments on a random book blogger’s site calling him out for his negative review of her book, tweeting it proved her ultimate demise career-wise simply because of how fast wildfire spreads in the age of the interwebz. This story has been making the rounds for a few days, and there are already numerous blogs about it, but I wanted to chime in myself.

Firstly, it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that book bloggers come in all shapes, sizes, colours, ages, ethnicities ect. Saying otherwise is just so incredibly silly that I can’t even comment past that. Chris and I are certainly NOT mommy bloggers, nor are we 20-50 year old women.

My main issue here, other than the blatant elitism of the posting, is actually to do with her dismissal of genre fiction as not “serious” and that children’s books shouldn’t be so popular, and that we should all be reading more “serious” literature. In what has become an increasingly pointy thorn in my side as Chris and I have embarked on this Book Blog journey, more and more I hear people (mostly pretentious hipsters) saying things like “Why are you wasting your time with fantasy and sci-fi? Why don’t you read something REAL for once?” This seems to be sadly a prevailing opinion with folk not into “genre” or “speculative” fiction. Now I am narrowing in more within the post in question (which is more broad), but the basic premise seems to be the same. The notion that Daniela puts forth is that what we are reading (as society) is not “serious literature” and therefore is worth less somehow, that as bloggers we are not serious reviewers and shouldn’t be paid attention to by the masses of readers out there, and above and beyond all that she mention's concentration on Children’s books is too heavy these days.

I’m not joking.

This woman is actually implying such things.

In a world where the HARRY POTTER series literally got an entire GENERATION of children reading again, not to mention showed their parents that these books could be enjoyed on many levels. I don’t think this many teenagers have read so voraciously in the last 30 years to be honest. So instead of ALWAYS watching TV, a good percentage of kids are actually CHOOSING to pick up books and read. Not only that, but kids who read stuff like POTTER and grew up on it are now in their mid-late teens and hopefully POTTER sparked in them the need to continue on, check out classics, but also to continue to indulge that part of them that desires entertainment that only books can provide. That’s HUGE to me. Absolutely HUGE.

An example, there is a middle-aged guy at my office who’s mainstay is being a man’s man and talking sports and being generally gruff. Well he watched HBO’s GAME OF THRONES and so enjoyed it, that after the finale he came to me and asked me if he should read the second book. This is a guy I’d never peg as reading a fantasy book in a million years! Yet there we sit, and he wants to read it.

That’s not something we can afford to scoff at. We can’t sit there as readers and say that classics like Chaucer, Shakespeare and Joyce are the only “serious literature” we should all be reading. We can’t sit there and behave as if those titles are the cream of the crop and everything else is crap. That’s absurd. In fact why does it even need to be mentioned? Why can’t one person enjoy classics, but also enjoy an airport thriller or an urban fantasy paranormal romance? Why do the two have to exist in different clubs? I don’t quite understand that notion. We read for entertainment full stop, so why does it matter what story you’re being told as long as you are enjoying it? Why are there people in the world like Daniela who seem to think that writing and books exist in this bubble of aristocracy where only something they deem as “serious literature” (a phrase she fails to define, but I am sure she and I would differ on the definition) makes the grade?

Beyond even all that, Newspaper and Magazine (print media) are NOTORIOUS for completely ignoring genre and spec fiction UNLESS it’s on the NYT Bestseller list or has an HBO show. Seriously, when was the last time you cracked an issue of EW and saw a review of a proper fantasy or sci-fi book? When was the last time you opened the Toronto Star and saw a book review of that type in there? It’s not only rare, it borders on proper exclusion. Look at last years arguably biggest SFF title, Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson’s 13^th Wheel Of Time book TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. It reached #1 on the NYT Bestseller list, and NOT ONE newspaper in my area (Toronto Star, The Sun, Globe and Mail, National Post) covered it or made mention of it. Why? Because it’s fantasy and they feel that not enough of their readers would be interested in that. Which is why I think they are all so behind the times. Their readership is now comprised of people weaned on stuff like TRUE BLOOD, BUFFY, GAME OF THRONES, LOST ect. I think the newspapers are totally missing the boat by pointedly ignoring these sub-genre’s of fiction. Then again, I guess their loss is our gain.

As my final thought here I’ll tell you all what I tell those pretentious people who tell me to read something REAL and not bother with fantasy and sci-fi. I read to be ENTERTAINED. That’s the bottom line. I will, quite frankly, read what I want to read. I personally read to escape, not bore myself with contemporary books about everyday life. Actually, if I’m being totally honest I’m usually more abrupt with those pretentious hipsters…and a lot less eloquent, but you get the point.

So the book bloggers have united and become a Voltron of sorts. Daniela will be suitably, and probably epic-ly put in her place. She’ll likely think twice in the future about her comments, and the interwebz will have one more self-destruct to witness and tweet about. If there is one thing that proves it’s that Book Blogger’s are not only here to stay, but we defend our own and are not some fly by night mommy bloggers.

Doctor Who: A conflicted DW fan makes his case.

Okay, if you’re looking for a review of the latest episode of DOCTOR WHO, the one for the mid-series finale A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR, you won’t find it here. I make it a point not to review the first part of a two-parter, of which this latest episode most certainly is.

What does that mean? Well, because they’ve decided to split the season up (sigh…really?) into two halves, you won’t seen another DOCTOR WHO review here till September.

That said I’d like to discuss a few things about the current series that I’ve been feeling recently. Chris and I were discussing this a bit the other day and I thought, since I usually post something about DW on Monday’s, why not make a post about it. I’m not going to post much in the way of spoilers, so don’t worry about that, but these will be my thoughts about ideas and plotlines ect. so proceed with whatever caution you feel like.

Let me start by saying that I am (as you all know) a GIANT DW fan. I loved Series 1 with Christopher Eccelstone in the role and I loved the majority of Series 2-4 + The Specials with David Tennant. I would look forward to seeing it every Saturday with baited breath. Like I would get seriously excited. I remember getting up an hour early one Monday morning just so I could watch the Series 4 opener PARTNERS IN CRIME before work, and when Rose showed up at the end I totally freaked out. I’ve ordered t-shirts, mugs, and my gf spoils me with DW paraphernalia on my Birthday usually, and on Christmas (hello remote control Dalek!). That’s the kind of fan I am.

Now, which are my favourite stories/episodes from those seasons? THE EMPTY CHILD & THE DOCTOR DANCES, THE GIRL IN THE FIREPLACE, BLINK, SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY & THE FOREST OF THE DEAD. What do all those episodes have in common? Writer Steven Moffat is what. So when I heard that Russell T. Davies was leaving the role of showrunner and that Moffat was replacing him I was over the moon! I mean, my favourite DW writer…running the show? What more could one ask for?

Welllllllll…

Having to deal with “Regeneration Jitters” once again (with David Tennant leaving the lead role and Matt Smith taking it over) was bad enough, but to also watch a changing of the guard ushering in a new era of WHO had me kind of basket-casey as a fan…till I saw some of the first real footage of Smith dressed as The Doctor and I relaxed a bit. Then I saw the Moff scripted Series 5 opener THE ELEVENTH HOUR which I thought was a pretty damn fine intro of Smith as the character and I was pretty sold on him as the Doctor. Fast forward a bit. Smith is brilliant as the shows’ lead and while I have a soft spot of Rose and Donna, Amy Pond is a decent enough companion. Rory seemed underused and had yet to go through a Mickey-like transformation from slobbering boyfriend to staunch warrior, but it was early days still. Overall the cast was cool and I was totally still enjoying on some level.

Series 5 had a number of good episodes. The pinnacle was indeed the two-parter weeping angel story FLESH & STONE and THE TIME OF THE ANGELS that occurred mid-season…again scripted by Moffat. That said, the only other ones that even resonate in my head are VINCENT & THE DOCTOR and THE BEAST BELOW….both not scripted by Moff and both are the only ones that feel excessively Who-ish. Yeah, there are a few others I enjoyed, but I think my feelings while we watched every week was that the Moff was building to some HUGE finale revelation. Well, while THE PANDORICA OPENS and THE BIG BANG had their moments…no one was ever really in peril and no one really died. Rory was an Auton and all it took to fix things was rebooting the universe. Easy right? So the whole season builds on the “crack” in the skin of the universe and how the TARDIS blows up in the future for some reason. Do we fix the cracks? Yeah….but apparently that doesn’t fix the future TARDIS exploding thing. The other thing is we STILL don’t know who River Song really is, or what bad thing she did to end up in the Stormcage.

So the Series ended. I was…confused. Not about anything in the show…but rather about how indifferent I felt about the whole 5^th series organized by my fave writer of the show. For what it’s worth, in Series 1 Rose took the time vortex into her head and the Doctor kissed her to get it out and sacrificed himself to do so (memorable!), Series 2 not only had Rose adjusting to a new Doctor, but also had the two-parter finale THE ARMY OF GHOSTS and DOOMSDAY (arguably the most memorable EVER!), and say what you will about Series 3 (but again the build up and the three-part finale was stellar and totally memorable) and Series 4 (fanwankery though it may be the two-part finale had Davros, crazed Daleks and 3 Doctor’s! Memorable.) and of course the Specials which contain my all time favourite episode THE WATERS OF MARS, and the finale for Tennant THE END OF TIME PI & II (both incredibly memorable)…

So what about Series 5 then?

Well…THE ELEVENTH HOUR was good. Memorable on the level that the above mentions are? Not really. What about the two-part finale? Again, not really. I totally enjoyed them, sure but I am not sitting here waxing nostalgic about them.

Series 6. Neil Gaiman’s ep THE DOCTOR’S WIFE is the obvious standout up to this point. But the rest of the season? It’s about a hundred red herrings and double-speak with little pay-off. The two-part opener was great. Memorable? I guess better than anything in Series 5, but it doesn’t touch any of the ones I mentioned in the RTD years.

I don’t want to say that I dislike Moffat’s tenure. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am enjoying it, but something missing. More running? Maybe. Haha! I think the sad thing is that Matt Smith is such a brilliant Doctor, and he’s kind of getting a shortened stick for stories. Amy and Rory, while manageable as companions just don’t resonate with me the way their predecessors did. Rory still hasn’t done a Mickey (lovesick BF to badass warrior) transition…and maybe he shouldn’t or never will. But to be honest, the whole lovesick hubby thing is getting tired. He’s there to crack jokes, look forlorn and defend his wife Amy…who talks in Moff-speak riddles about who she’s really talking about half the time (The Doctor or Rory) and even THAT is getting old. Amy is feisty, sure. She’s impressive, sure. Does she temper the Doctor the way most companions do? No, she doesn’t. In fact she mostly leaves him to do what he likes, which in the past has proven to be quite catastrophic when he gets angry and unmanageable. Hell, the Doctor himself seems to be playing all his cards close to his chest. A Doctor hasn’t been this secretive since the ill-fated 7^th Doctor Sly Mcoy had the role in the late 80’s…and THAT did not go over well. As the show went on a nearly permanent hiatus after that till it was re-launched (as a show anyways) in 2005. That’s kind of brave on the Moff’s part to make the Doctor again be left to his own devices to be secretive and possibly destructive (even though he tries to do good, he makes people into weapons)…when every other season of the show since it re-launched in 2005 was meant to show us how the Doctor’s personality NEEDS tempering, otherwise he runs amok.

The River Song thing. I have SEEN A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR and I know who she is (I won't reveal it here, no worries). To be completely honest, Moffat and Co. all swore up and down that this was going to be such a BIG reveal and a “game changer” that we’d NEED the summer off just to think about it and digest it. It wasn’t really, and to be honest, the mid-series finale was kind of a mess. It had some good ideas, but overall I can’t say I was surprised by anything about it, and to say I was entertained would be stretching it. It had some very cool moments, but the whole thing felt put together slapdash. I do have to reserve my opinions for the second part though so take all that with a grain of salt. River Song went on and on and on about the whole thing, and even the Moff has clearly painted his series around her…but is she interesting enough? After the last episode I am just not so sure. I WOULD have said she was interesting enough after THE SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY when she met Tennant’s Doctor…but now? Yeah, just not really.

I’m now left kind of wondering where the new series has gone slightly off the rails. Is it unsalvageable? Not at all. It’s totally doable to bring it back with such an incredible lead in the role…but I think we need to ditch Amy and Rory (at least for a while) and DEFINITELY River Song. We need some new blood now in the TARDIS. I’d like to see Smith be able to play the Doctor as more open with himself and others. I mean obviously he still keeps the things to himself he always has, but right now on the show he’s nearly a closed book. He never explains anything. Not until after he’s done it and even then he doesn’t.

I can’t make any judgments about this whole season as we’ve only seen half of it, so who knows, perhaps the second part of A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR (titled strangely LET’S KILL HITLER) is going to knock my socks off. And maybe the rest of the 6^th season will make me be as excited as I used to be about the series. I can hope.

As it stands I sit here on Saturdays and feel like I am just going through the motions watching and that nothing is really blowing me away. I’ve had a few “gasp” moments of revelation that are key to Moffat’s writing, but nothing like the end of BLINK or THE GIRL IN THE FIREPLACE yet. I used to say that in Series 5 we had to watch the whole thing to get that big gasping reveal or twist…but we never really got it did we?

So here’s me, watching Series 6 on baited breath...awaiting the ending of BLINK or THE SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY…and that just may never happen and I’ll have to be satisfied with that. Consider me supremely conflicted about the whole thing.

Rants: Release Date & Stocking Issue

I have an issue. It requires a rant. So here we go…

Basically it stands like this. Ian C. Esslemont’s 3^rd book set in the Malazan world STONEWIELDER was released November 29^th 2010. So it says on Amazon, and Chapters/Indigo, amongst other bookseller websites. Since that date, I have frequented my local bookstores, and those online sites in search of said title. To no avail. Though the release date is correct, and the book should be in stock. Tis not, and doesn’t appear to be showing up soon either.

This is not the first time I have run across this issue. Funnily enough this happened with Erikson’s last few Malazan books. I’m not going to blame Esslemont and Erikson’s publisher Transworld. For although the Canadian authors’ publisher is a UK one, the booksellers who list the release date on their sites ought to actually HAVE those items in stock on the release date for purchase.  If this means placing your order for however many copies early so they arrive on time, then so be it. Do so.

This is not a time of year issue either as the last Erikson book was meant to come out in summer and this new Esslemont one is clearly fall-winter.

If you go to amazon.ca and look to order a copy, it says it will be 2-3 weeks to send it out. If you go to Chapters/Indigo it says it is in stock but if you try to order it the shipping time is way in the future, not to mention the stores don’t have it in stock anywhere. So basically, if I want this item shipped from a Canadian company I will be waiting a long time, between 2 weeks to maybe even a month all told to my doorstep.

Then there is another option. Ordering it from amazon.co.uk, and pay a tad extra in shipping. Their website says it will ship to me tomorrow, and be here in less than 2 weeks. So explain to me how that makes any kind of sense.

I try to order it from Canada, but Canadian companies have decided to not order copies ready to dispatch, but rather seem to have to get it shipped to them on a case-by-case or order-by-order basis from the UK and THEN ship it out to the customer. This makes for a very long ended order and to me makes zero sense. It’s not like these titles don’t sell, cause if they got even 5 copies of STONEWIELDER at my local Indigo, I guarantee they’d sell out in a week. The Erikson ones always seem to sell out most copies and they have the same issue.

So instead of making it easy for customers to get a hold of a book title by having at least a few in stock ready to either be shelved at stores or ready to dispatch from online, they make it difficult enough that either the reader will wait until the store finally decides to put them out on the shelf, or they will go to the other route and order it from the website that will get it to them on or near the release date.

I’ve said it before, but Chapters/Indigo’s ordering system and cataloging system is fairly bad. I love the store, don’t get me wrong, I spend oodles of time there clearly, but it pisses me off to no end that their customer service on this sort of thing is sketchy at best. With both the two last Malazan books by Erikson and now with this latest ICE title I have gone into the store (or phoned) and the CSR looks, finds the same info I found….the computer says it’s been released but they don’t have it on the premises. What’s funny is I could tolerate a week or so delay…but with the DUST OF DREAMS by Erikson it was somewhere in the realm of TWO MONTHS before the store had it. I mean, this is a company I spend a lot of my money at and they lose my custom for something so ridiculous as poorly managed catalogs.

It’s been a week since the release of STONEWIELDER and I got fed up today after speaking with a CSR at my local Indigo who, as usual, had no way of telling me when they would have it in store OR online, so I ordered it from amazon.co.uk….it will be shipped tomorrow and get to me before Dec.17^th. Which makes me happy, but I wanted to rant about it.

Chapters/Indigo have issues with this, and amazon.ca just seems to not bother stocking it on this side of the pond unless someone orders it, at which point they become a middle man you can avoid. Well sorry amazon.ca I don’t plan on waiting a month for an order to ship, that’s ridiculous.

These are CANADIAN authors both, and two of the most prolific fantasy authors we've produced, yet finding their books anywhere close to a release date it nigh impossible. Meanwhile, you can find 200 copies of any given books by Margaret Atwood out on the shelves the morning they are released...which adds a whole other level to my upset, but you get the point.

Sigh.