Movie Musings: SEASON OF THE WITCH

It used to be that wigging out and Nicholas Cage meant a very specific type of scenery chewing. Now, of course, it has different connotation. Who doesn't like seeing a poorly made wig flowing from on top Cage's head as he works hard to to become Hollywood's version of Cal Ripken Jr.?

And in truth, we've all seen Cage on the acting treadmill of late, turning out a stream of mediocre and instantly forgettable movies in an effort to make some bank. So it’s not like I sat down to this one with anything approaching high hopes.

But the truth is, its...its not fucking terrible.

I thought it was going to be another warmed over SOLOMON KANE rip off crafted on the cheap. But there's actual plot and character development and honest to god acting in this film from time to time.

Don't get me wrong, WITCH has some pretty obvious limitations. It lags horribly in places, leans pretty on some familiar movie clichés and the surprise twist isn't really all that surprising as they telegraph it pretty heavily for the entire movie.

But none of that detracts from the film's legitimate watchability.

There's some good stuff at play here and at the very least every one of could use another opportunity to watch Ron Perlman continue to deal out pain and suffering well into his 60s. This is what he does now.

Book Review: BONEYARDS by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I’ve got surprisingly little to say about BONEYARDS that I didn’t touch on somewhat during my review of DIVING THE WRECK. (Go ahead and check it out now, I’ll wait) If you enjoyed what writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch was doing in WRECK there’s nothing here that’s going to send you screaming into the hills.

BONEYARDS is the third book in what Wikipedia tells me is called the The Diving Universe. I was going to go with Stealth-i-verse, but as people are quite fond of reminding me it’s not all about me.

Using stealth technology recovered by her Lost Souls corporation Boss leads a team into the far reaches of known space in search of information about the makers of the Dignity Vessels, their terrifying ancapa drives and where they’ve vanished too. With the time displaced crew of the Ivoire at her side, Boss hopes to find tangible indications of why the remnants of the mysterious Fleet have disappeared. The only problem is the last recorded sightings of the Fleet were over 5000 years ago. Boss’s only hope may be ancient graveyard of derelict stealth vessels protected by an unseen force field and millennia of superstition.*

Meanwhile back in the Enterran Empire one of Boss’s oldest friends is in danger. Squishy has vowed to destroy all the empire’s research into the dangerous stealth technology. Unbeknownst to Boss, Squishy has put a small team of her own together and used her position as the Empire’s former head of stealth tech research to gain access to its testing facilities. When Squishy is captured after blowing up a research base Boss has to make a decision between continuing her mission or helping her friend.

There’s a structural problem at the heart of this book that make it hard really lose yourself in the story. A healthy portion of Squishy’s story is told in flashbacks. This wouldn’t be a problem if Rusch had chosen a specific starting point in Squishy’s backstory and then developed it chronologically from that point onward. Instead Rusch chose to bounce back and forth along around personal Squishy’s history, muddying the forward progression of the story and frustrating me as a reader.

Now I can glean why Rusch has chosen to approach the story this way. Part of it is reflective of the character’s emotional state and part of it is straight forward narrative cause and effect. In the present, Squishy’s painful encounter with an old lover has caused her to reminisce about their past together. Emotion, being terribly disrespectful of narrative flow, causes Squishy to dwell on one painful memory after another, not always in chronological order.

As the book went on, and more plot points and distinct flashbacks were introduced, I found myself confused as to what specific time period Squishy was recalling. Almost every time we left Boss’s story to check in with Squishy I’d have to do a quick mental scramble to try and piece together exactly where we were on her personal timeline. It wasn’t a particularly difficult task, but the denser and more complicated the story got, it increasingly became a very aggravating one.

My enjoyment of overall story was being constantly limited by having to run through a mental checklist of ‘The Personal Life of Squishy”. (Doing a quick flip through the book I notice that Squishy’s story jumps around 7 distinct time periods, some separated by only a month, try keeping all that straight in your head) I’m all for changing up the structure of a book to keep things new and interesting, but unfortunately in his case playing fast and loose with the timeline poisoned the entire book because every time I had to read a Squishy chapter it was the emotional equivalent of eating your greens.

Aside from that small but important aspect I don’t have much to add.

Rusch keeps the same measured emotional tonality that drew me into her first books. Only now she’s managed to extend the metaphor of the lonely pursuit of understanding history by wreck diving in space to a more terrestrial setting by looking at the past through archeological exploration.

Rusch also has a slight tendency to over explain her dialogue a bit. Entire conversations will be filtered through Boss’s perceptions and then analyzed and expounded upon to the reader, presumably to make sure we understand precisely the unspoken undercurrents at play here. I would have appreciated a little less handholding and a little more freedom to piece together the delicate interrelations at play between the characters all on my own.

But all my nitpicking aside I’d still highly recommend BONEYARDS to anyone looking for science fiction that manages to set aside some of the more familiar and well-worn tropes. In the constant sci-fi tug of war between character building and strange science, BONEYARDS comes down firmly on the side of its characters, without sacrificing the things that makes sci-fi so interesting. There’s a lot building up in the background of this series and Rusch is clearly using this book as the jumping off point for something really big in her upcoming book(s). I look forward to seeing where she takes it.

*The titular BONEYARDS which only show up for a dozen pages or so before being abandoned for other plot concerns. A point I still find baffling, considering that Rusch thought the Boneyards were so important she named the book after them.  

Movie Musings: FAST FIVE

Got a major Hollywood tentpole franchise in a death spiral of diminishing returns?

Just add a liberal dose of The Rock!

(Now with free Dwayne Johnson attachment for those family friendly outings)

FAST FIVE doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be, straight up action film, car porn or heist movie.

Instead it decides to drop all three in a blender, add a healthy dose of simmering sexual tension and serve it up to teenagers and 20-somethings everywhere.

The film doesn’t bother with those trivial nuisances like plot or character growth. At least three cops in the film give up their careers to go rogue for a life of crime because it’s the 'right thing to do' and ‘I was really angry at the bad guys’.

There's a back and forth showdown of sorts between Vin Diesel and series newcomer The Rock. Sort of a Highlander-style meeting of the action star minds or the basis of an ongoing fan-fic franchise. The mutual fighting style of Diesel and Johnson can best be summed up as hugging each other tightly, rolling around and a lot of grunting.

There can be only one.

Movie Musings: RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE

AFTERLIFE reminds me why I’m unlikely to ever be a convert to the 3D phenomenon.

All it lacks is the actors flapping their fingers at the screen periodically and yelling 'booga booga'.

If you’ve seen one entry in the RESIDENT EVIL series you’ve seen them all. Literally, there is no other reason to watch. But I have to appreciate the actors’ commitment to throwing themselves into a never ending series of absolutely impossible setups without ever breaking character and laughing themselves silly.

Also, I admire how the writers intentionally write themselves into impossible corners, dreaming up the craziest scenarios possible, and then conjure equally batshit insane ways to get out of them. AFTERLIFE introduces and discards more interesting setups and ideas in its first ten minutes then some films will have throughout their entire runtime.

RESIDENT EVIL movies are fun, providing you like shooty-shooty, splodey-splodey, good is strictly an afterthought.

Book Review: Dragonfly Falling - Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Two young companions, Totho and Salma, arrive at Tark to spy on the menacing Wasp army, but are there mistakenly apprehended as enemy agents. By the time they are freed, the city is already under siege. Over in the imperial capital the young emperor, Alvdan, is becoming captivated by a remarkable slave, the vampiric Uctebri, who claims he knows of magic that can grant eternal life. In Collegium, meanwhile, Stenwold is still trying to persuade the city magnates to take seriously the Wasp Empire's imminent threat to their survival. 

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s SHADOWS OF THE APT series and I have a bit of a sordid history. When I first picked up EMPIRE IN BLACK AND GOLD (book #1) back when it was published, I’d heard some early buzz and it sounded interesting enough to buy. I grabbed it and when I started reading it I was initially quite impressed. Here was a fantasy book that eschewed the traditions of Elves, Dwarves, Ogres and the like and replaced it with Insect-aspected human races, who had traits in common with their namesake brethren. Beetle-kinden were shorter, squatter, and generally more industrious, Dragonfly-kinden were elegant, could fly and were lethal with a sword, Wasp-kinden were vast in numbers and had magic in the form of a sting that blasted out of their fingers and oh they were ruthless. Every possible insect imaginable can be used and Tchaikovsky spends a lot of that first book fleshing out the world. I was enthralled for the first half…but somewhere around the midway point my interest flagged and things got truly bogged down for the reading experience. The various young characters took on a bit too much of a teenage angst and the various situations they found themselves in were “trying” to say the least.

I put the book down, sad that it didn’t live up to the early excitement it gave me.

It wasn’t until a few years later, when fellow forum members had stuck out the series and got to the latter books (there are 7 volumes out now I believe), that I heard that not only did things improve greatly with each book, but that the things I disliked about the latter half of the first book were absent from the second one onwards.

So I randomly picked up the 2nd book DRAGONFLY FALLING one day and let it sit in my ToRead pile for a few months, and somewhere in that time I finished the first book as well. While the first book finished stronger than I thought it would, it still didn’t knock me out. So the 2nd book sat a little longer. Then one day last week I picked it up and began to read it.

And damned if the thing wasn’t immediately a hundred times better. Perhaps it was the situations that the characters were put into, or the fact that we’ve moved past a lot of the teenage growing pains that plagued the first book, but something was noticeably different…and for the better!

Let’s get one thing out of the way, the world is MUCH larger in this book, as the Wasps have begun their invasion in force and none of the Lowlands are safe from their onslaught. We are introduced to many more new kinden races (Mosquito, Mole Cricket, Fire Ants), while other kinden are further fleshed out (Ant’s, Beetles, and Wasps), and we even get a decent look at the Emperor Alvdan II of the Wasps and his young sister Seda and what exactly drives the Wasps to expand and conquer. Most notably though, reading this book is like being dropped into the middle of a war being fought on various fronts from the very get-go, and being able to see all facets of it. We see many battles, and how the various factions, events and even characters affect our heroes (or non heroes). There is added intrigue, with exiled Wasp Rekef Thalric attempting to regain favor after his failure in the first book…but he is being systematically hunted by a mysterious Dragonfly woman named Felise Mienn who seems intent on ending his life. Young Totho makes what he thinks is an honorable sacrifice only to end up in hotter water than ever before. Stenwold finally gets through to the council of the Collegium just in time for the Wasps to have sent the Ant-kinden armies of Vek against its walls. Mantis-kinden Tisamon and his half-Mantis/half-Spider daughter Tynisa head out to the sacred isle of Parysol for her to start on a path that he hopes won’t get her killed by his own brethren in Feylal (since to them Tynisa is an abomination born of one of their own Mantis-kinden and a Spider-kinden [their hated enemies]).

I don’t want to spoil too much storywise as this one really has a lot of meat to it (It’s nearly 700 pages long) and I don’t want to steal any of that enjoyment from you. I’d like to say that this book really doesn’t have a main protagonist, and that if it did…I’d say that protagonist is War. The main characters are thrown into the chaos of war, and this book is kind of like a diary of those various and disparate experiences in the face of such horrors. It makes the narrative altogether more interesting to see how each deals with those things. I think that some of the characters get heavy depth added to them (Totho, Thalric), while others do get the same depth, but it happens off-page (Tynisa) and that presumably will come up down the road, but it is all compelling.

The pacing is much better in this book. It only slowed down for me very briefly in the middle, but that was only for about 20 pages or so and was a personal foible with an extended sequence. I can definitely say that Tchaikovsky has improved as a writer between the volumes (and I hear he continues to do so in future books), since I thought his positioning of chapters and character arcs was very deft in DRAGONFLY FALLING. I always felt like just as things were getting truly interesting the chapter or section would end and I’d have to wait to the next one to see what happened. That’s always the mark of a good storyteller, leave us wanting more. I have my favourite characters in this series now, and I have my loathed characters (because they are evil, not because they are poorly drawn) and I have an ever-expanding world to explore. I’ve already gotten a brief look into the Spiderlands in Book 3 (BLOOD OF THE MANTIS, which I’ve already started) and it’s wholly different from the Lowlands or the Empire. It makes me feel like I’ve begun a truly special series.

If you enjoyed the first book (or at least had it entertain you on some level), then I really urge you to read the second book. It fixes most of the issues I had with that first book, and shows growth on the part of the author and his craft. But most of all, it’s a rip-roaring story set in a unique world populated by a unique and varied set of main characters, each of which are fleshed out quite well. The added facet of a slightly steampunkish mechanized world interacting with an older fantasy magic world just gives it more to excite you with. This book has swords, and magical Art wings, it has airships and airguns, it has buzzing-winged Orthopters and oldschool sailing ships, it has insect defenses (like Mantis claw) built onto human frames, and even has vampiric mosquito-kinden dinking blood. This whole series is probably one of the most unique and fresh settings in the entire fantasy genre today, and Tchaikovsky ought to be proud that he broke onto the scene with such a triumph.

I am now embarrassed of my initial sordid relationship with the series as I have since become such a big fan. So much so that the very moment I put down the 2nd book upon finishing it, I picked up the 3rd book and dove right in!

Podcast: The Giggle Loop #08 - Comic Cons, The Hunger Games, & U.S. TV V.S. UK TV

Drone: Scott, the podcast is late.

Me: What do you mean late? Had we decided on specific time frame for releasing these?

Drone: It matters not. You have so far stuck to a monthly basis. It is now late. There was no podcast in the month of March.

Me: I know, but things come up and it’s difficult to get it edited and posted. I'm only a couple of weeks behind.

Drone: There is no excuse for a late podcast. You recorded it in March. Your audience is awaiting it and when it is late, they will get antsy.

Me: Antsy?

Drone: Agitated.

Me: Agitated? Come on don’t be so melodramatic.

Drone: I am not a human; I do not have the capacity to be melodramatic.

Me: I beg to differ.

Drone: You have 30 seconds to comply and post the podcast.

Me: Or what?

Drone: I release Nanomachines into your brain.

So here it is folks. The latest Edition of The Giggle Loop, in which Chris and I discuss a myriad of topics, beginning with out latest trip to a local Comic Con, the phenomenon of THE HUGER GAMES and we even get into a lengthy discussion of American TV V.S. UK Telly programs and how they stack up against one another. It’s full of debate, interesting theories and opinions and even a little booze.


Note: This week the podcast jumped to almost an hour and a half, but we will try to contain our time to the proper hour as much as possible in future...mostly because editing it takes that much longer.

So sit back, pop in your headphones, and enjoy the insanity.



The Giggle Loop #08 - Comic Cons,  The Hunger Games, & U.S. V.S. UK TV
Running Time: 1 hr 28min
MP3 DOWNLOAD HERE

Movie Musings: DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE

Never heard of it before but decided to take a flyer on it because the info button informed me it was starring that Dick Van Dyke fella that all the ladies raaaave about.

Fun fact: Van Dyke is just so damn watchable he can make even mediocre films feel like they're punching above their weight.

It was a goodish film, but what made it really interesting was how open, honest and tongue-in-cheek it was about a subject that's still somewhat frowned upon today in Conservative Middle America.

We tend to wail and gnash our teeth and proclaim that the modern family is disintegrating and that ‘things aren’t how they used to be’. DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE puts the lie to that notion, dealing fairly candidly about the topic without bemoaning the end of life as we know it.

Also, Jason Robards and Jean Simmons (no, not a typo) are in this film and they are awesome.

Book Review: THE JAWS LOG: 30th Anniversary Edition by Carl Gottlieb

In the wake (hah, self-congratulatory nautical humour there) of JAWS being re-re-released on Blu Ray this summer, I thought I’d mosey on over to my bookshelf and finally get around to reading THE JAWS LOG by Carl Gottlieb.

In many ways JAWS is responsible for a lot of the shape and form of modern movie making. Before JAWS there were no such things as Summer Blockbusters or Tentpole Franchises, at least not as we understand them today.

So with a hefty pedigree like that one weighing on its fishy shoulders its quite natural that in the nearly 40 years since it first hit the theatres fans and film historians alike should paw through its leavings in the hopes of better understanding what the fuss was all about.

Only Carl Gottlieb did it all first.

Gottlieb was co-screenwriter and a bit player on the film and the LOG was written in the direct aftermath of JAWS unprecedented success.

The LOG covers the production history of the film from novelist Peter Benchley’s original idea, to the early pre-production struggles of the filmmakers, right up to the grueling and unpredictable experience of shooting the movie itself.

It’s written in a laid back almost informal diary style. If it happened on the set of JAWS Gottlieb saw it with his own two eyes, or at the very least was able to speak directly to someone else who had. If this book was written today and not in 1975 chances are the material in it would be freely available to everyone as an ongoing production blog or a ‘making of’ featurette on your DVD.

I think the majority of interesting JAWS trivia I’ve heard over the years probably comes from this book. Including…

How the shark got its name. (Psst, it’s Bruce)

What a pain it was to deal with the mechanical shark, and how initially they thought of training a live version.

How one of the biggest shocks in the movie was shot after the fact in the swimming pool of the film’s editor.

There isn’t a lot of effort made to examine the deeper impact of JAWS on the world of modern filmmaking and that’s OK. Back when the LOG was written there was no way to tell if JAWS was a gamechanger or a fantastically amazing one-off. I ended up reading the 30th Anniversary edition of the book and to his credit, in this version, Gottlieb does try to place JAWS in a historical framework and do a little analysis on the film’s impact on modern day film making*

But the book was written on the fly one presumes, as it has the rushed ‘bang it out quick and cash in on the furor’ feeling that savy fans recognize from a studio unaware of just how big something would blow up.

(Quick in this case shouldn’t be confused with poor quality, BTW. The LOG is well written for what it is, but what it is is a companion piece to a popular intellectual property with iconography from said property stamped all over its cover. )

If you’re a budding filmmaker, you’ll find something in this book to interest you.

If you’re a film buff, ditto.

But if you’re at all acquainted with JAWS in even a passing fashion this book will seem overly familiar to you. And I think that’s because it’s the primary source material for a lot of the analysis that’s come out of the film in the last 30-something years. A light, breezy read, but hardly a necessary one.

*Unfortunately Gottlieb included all his updates in the back of the LOG as footnotes, forcing the reader to endlessly flip back and forth throughout the entirety of the book in order to keep on top of things.

Movie Musings: COLOMBIANA

Luc Besson finally got to make a sequel to THE PROFESSIONAL.*

Only this time Natalie Portman's Mathilda grew up to become the equally attractive and lithe Zoe Saldana.

Shot in a high gloss Besson-esque euro style, It’s a fun little story, mucking about in that same child assassin genre, which I think might actually be a thing now, that he broke the mold on over ten years ago.

The movie intersperses teenage 'fuck yeah' moments in between character building setups, so that the adult in me gets to pretend I'm watching the movie for something under than the visually impressive shoot ups.

It is EXACTLY the kind of movie you think it will be and that's all right.

*There’s even a scene where the hero climbs down the inside of a wall to escape the incoming SWAT team for god’s sake.

Book News: New J.K. Rowling book announced!

Little Brown UK have announce the title and synopsis for HARRY POTTER author (and gajillionaire) J.K. Rowling's first book for adults.

THE CASUAL VACANCY

Synopsis:

When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock.

Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.

Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems.

And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.

Sounds quite interesting, like Corrie or Emmerdale with a varied cast of characters in a town that is full of intrigue and backstabbing, and political positioning. Funnily enough, this could ride the waves made by DOWNTON ABBEY being so popular as it sounds like a similarly interwoven character driven narrative.

It will be approx. 480 pages and will be coming out in September.


Only time will tell, but I will certainly read it...and I'm pretty sure the sales on it will be ridiculous regardless.

Anime Wednesday: April!

You may have noticed two things about this post already.

1. This is the latest edition of Anime Wednesday, but you see it is an April edition.

2. There was no Anime Wednesday for March.

This is because of a few things. I’ve been so immersed in ONE PIECE that I’ve not been able to watch much other anime since beginning what one could only deem an epic-quest to catch up with all 541 episodes that currently exist (update: I am at episode 90). Secondly, I’ve been editing the latest edition of the Giggle Loop Podcast and it’s much longer and more chaotic than it normally is so it’s been devouring my time getting it right. Lastly, I knew I was going to be seeing a couple of Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli films at the retrospective in Toronto and that they would make a good column subject, but they weren’t screening until April.


Please excuse the lack of a March Edition.

So, this post is going to take you all back a bit, into anime history. I got a chance to see both KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE and MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO at the Film Fest theatre this past weekend. Both were the dubbed versions, since the subtitled screenings sold out in minutes and I missed out on those.

KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE

This film came out in 1989 in Japan (subsequently dubbed into English in 1997, done by Disney) to rave reviews and further solidified Miyazaki as a national treasure.

Basically the story of a 13-year old witch who must go out for a year on her own, hone her powers and learn to live her life. She travels to a nearby port city called Koriko, and through a random series of events ends up living in a bakery, helping the baker family to mind the store and creates a flying/broomstick delivery service which touts that she can get packages there faster.

Immediately jumping out at me within minutes of the film starting, as a big Miyazaki fan, is that this is probably his most Western-influenced film. One thing about his films is that no matter how far out there, or fantastical the storyline, you can always expect it to be very Japanese in tone and visuals. Names, signs, homes ect., basically all the cultural Japanese stuff is always present. KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE is a different beast as the port town looks like it could be a combo of turn-of-the-century Vienna and Monte Carlo. Even the signage on the storefronts or transit appear to be German-ish. The characters across the board look very western, by which I mean hair colour being bright blondes and browns (aside from Kiki herself), and clothing choices. This all doesn’t detract from the film mind you, just very noticeable if you are at all a fan of his work, this will aesthetically LOOK like the odd man out.

The film itself and the story therein, though simple, is wonderful and entertaining. It works both as a kid’s film, and one for adults. Kiki’s trials as a delivery service and her subsequent relationships with the various characters are what sing about the film. The most entertaining being her relationship with an idealistic young inventor boy named Tombo, as it is the one that truly grows over the course of the film. The voice actors in this one are virtually a who’s who of Hollywood Circa the late 1990’s, with Kirsten Dunst in the lead, Matthew Lawrence as Tombo and VERY strangely the late Phil Hartman as Jiji (Kiki’s black cat). That last casting I found VERY odd not just because Hartman doesn’t fit the character, but I know that in the original Japanese and the FIRST (read: Non-Disney) English translation the cat was female and voiced as such. They do an admirable job, though I’d truly like to watch the subbed version at some point to see the difference. That said, it’s a lovely little film that is sure to entertain if you are nostalgic about the roots of anime and just what went into the films back in the day.

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO 
 

This one will be a bit of a gush. It’s no secret that this is one of my all-time favourite Miyazaki films and was one of, if not the, best of his work. It was released in 1988 in Japan and subsequently dubbed into English, though Western audiences didn’t truly get to see it wide released until 2006 when Disney did a fresh English dub with a cast including Tim Daly, Frank Welker and both Dakota and Elle Fanning as the main character sisters Satsuki and Mei. Funnily enough, where I was a little off-kilter by the Disney dub voice actors in KIKI’S, the one they assembled here for TOTORO is absolutely stellar and not only captures the spirit of the film, but the voice actors weren’t just going through the paces for a paycheck, they (especially Daly and the Fanning sisters) thoroughly immerse themselves in their respective roles.

Again, the story begins simply enough. In 1958, Tatsuo Kusakabe (a university professor), his 10-year old daughter Satsuki and her little 4 year old sister Mei move to rural Japan to be closer to the hospital where their mother is suffering from an illness which keeps her hospital bound. The girls find that life in the countryside is idyllic, but that there appears to be some quite fantastical things in the forest beside their home, the least of which is a huge old camphor tree. Slowly sprites begin to appear, first in the form of dust sprites hiding in their old house, and then small to medium to eventual large Totoro’s (essentially trolls, but later termed “keepers of the forest”. The largest of which is a gigantic grey and white, rabbit eared Totoro who really only communicates in loud shouts and seemingly happy yells. After Satsuki discovers the creatures (who can only be seen if they wish to be seen, and can’t be seen by adults at all) the two girls begin to see how these docile creatures are not only helpful, but nearly detrimental to the way of life in the forest. This then begins to intermingle with the plotline of their ailing mother and how that illness affects both Satsuki (who tries her best to hold it together and not let Mei see her cry or be scared), and fearless Mei (who doesn’t understand really what’s happening and only wishes to see her mother well again). At that point you really begin to realize that you are watching something special, and that the charm just oozes off the screen in bundles. This is a wonderful kid’s movie, but it is also an incredible love letter for adults who want to remember what it was like to be young and dream of magic and adventure. Lastly, it’s a significantly brilliant piece on the environment (a feature of the majority of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s films) and how important our natural surroundings are to us as individual people and as a society.

By the time the credits roll on this film, you will have been completely entertained, and may have even gotten a bit emotional at certain moments. It’s hard to watch the film and not smile, or cry, or laugh. As a 35 year old, I can honestly say I did all three.

There is a reason that the image of Totoro is the logo for Studio Ghibli as a company. This film is very close to his masterpiece and the best bit about that is that it’s not say as epic as PRINCESS MONONOKE, or as altogether whimsical and award winning as SPIRITED AWAY, or even as quirky as PONYO, but it is the one everyone remembers best. There must be a reason for that. To me it’s because MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO is perfect in every single way.

Funny sidenote: Hellboy I & II, BLADE II, PAN'S LABYRINTH director Guillermo Del Toro was at my screening of MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO. He quietly came in and sat near the front with (I think) his daughter. He's in Toronto shooting his giant monster movie PACIFIC RIM and has turned parts of downtown Toronto into Tokyo. 

Movie Musings: THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD

Twenty minutes into the film and the first thing I'm thinking is how unlikely it is that the military would just let a newspaper reporter tag along to any event he requests, including distant Alaskan scientific outposts and unexplained UFO crashes.

Gosh, I had no idea military security in the 50s was so laissez-faire.

I enjoyed the business as usual approach to the whole well-worn 'oh look it’s a downed spacecraft and alien visitor' plot contrivances and how the film avoids striving to be just another a melodramatic horror film. These are aloof and reserved scientist types, with an equal dose of emotionally distant career soldier thrown in for good measure. Screaming and crying are meant for lesser beings.

I love THING’s use of cross dialogue and overtalking, almost like a 30s screwball comedy. It gives the movie a real sense of pacing and character that sets it apart from other B-movie offerings from the same time period.

Considering how many trashy Bs I've seen in my time, I'm always pleasantly surprised when a film like this steps up its game.

There is an obligatory love story that’s wildly out of place but thankfully doesn't take up much screen time.

(And, compared to the 80s remake, everyone seems so clean cut and upright. None of the hairy and dirty grubbiness of the redo.)

Movie Musings: HIGH SOCIETY

Despite claiming to be a remake of the snappy PHILADELPHIA STORY it comes across as a bloated big studio version of a movie that defined itself by its breakneck pace and witty banter.

What is it about the presence of Der Bingle that turns everything he touches into a laid back Sunday afternoon slow jam a la WHITE CHRISTMAS? Croon is musical style, not a lifestyle choice.

The musical numbers are moderately catchy at best, but mostly feel like chores to struggle through before we get back to the aforementioned 'crackling dialogue'.

It’s good enough for what it is, but I definitely prefer the original version.

It’s nice to see Grace Kelly on screen though, no matter what the vehicle. And Louis Armstrong is criminally underused, reduced to cackling cryptically in the shadows.

VOTE: Anomander Rake needs your vote to beat Moiraine!

Readers, I beseech you. Every year Suvuudu does Cage Matches in which they pit fictional SFF characters against one another.

This year, in round 5 Malazan series fave and all around Badass ANOMANDER RAKE needs your vote to beat Wheel of Time's Moiraine Damodred...who is passingly cool...but come on, she can't beat Rake!

So please....please dear readers, go now and vote for him!

VOTE HERE

Thanks all!

Movie Musings: THE LAST DETAIL

Vintage Jack Nicholson.

Unpredictable, anarchistic, chaotic. He's doing that thing again where he inhabits characters who can't help pushing back against the establishment. (See, FIVE EASY PIECES and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST)

Comes out of that 70s road movie tradition where plot and story take a back seat to 'being there' and 'enjoying the experience'.

The plot is a little sappy at times but not overly so.

It was a nice little discovery for me. Everyone is aware of Jack's career highlights but its nice to know there are films of his out there playing in the same sandbox which aren't as over exposed as the classic outings.

Also, it has Randy Quaid in it when he was still an American.

Book Review: Star Wars Fate Of The Jedi: Apocalypse - Troy Denning

In the stunning finale of the epic Fate of the Jedi series, Jedi and Sith face off—with Coruscant as their battlefield. For the Sith, it’s the chance to restore their dominance over the galaxy that forgot them for so long. For Abeloth, it’s a giant step in her quest to conquer all life everywhere. For Luke Skywalker, it’s a call to arms to eradicate the Sith and their monstrous new master once and for all.

In a planetwide strike, teams of Jedi Knights take the Sith infiltrators by swift and lethal surprise. But victory against the cunning and savage Abeloth, and the terrifying endgame she has planned, is anything but certain. And as Luke, Ben, Han, Leia, Jaina, Jag, and their allies close in, the devastating truth about the dark side incarnate will be exposed—and send shock waves through the Jedi Order, the galaxy, and the Force itself.

STAR WARS Expanded Universe books are fickle creatures for me. Sometimes they suit my mood and other times they don’t. I have mentioned in previous SW Book Reviews that I feel that the 9-book series they’ve done have been mostly long-winded and padded, really affect pacing and the overall narrative. This is to the degree that I actually SKIPPED the 7th and 8th books in the series and jumped straight to the 9th (and final) book, Troy Denning’s STAR WARS FATE OF THE JEDI: APOCALYPSE…and I’m none the worse for it as the things I needed to know I caught up on over at Wookiepedia. Is that a disservice to the other two authors’ of the series? Certainly. Do I feel bad about it? I suppose a little, but whenever I feel that way my brain clicks onto the fact that a quick 10-minute perusal of the synopses of those two books at Wookiepedia told me everything that happened in over 600 pages worth of material. That’s a lot of filler as far as I am concerned, and this series and the LEGACY OF THE FORCE series before it are known for such padding. So I skipped some of it.

This is a terrible way to begin a review for a book I actually loved.

Sorry.

APOCALYPSE was one of the best SW EU books I’ve read in a very long time. Whether that was because of plot threads that were tied up that have been going since the Dark Nest Crisis (2005), or because of the finale-like action set pieces, or simply just because there was a definite feeling of “moving forward” occurring in the pages, I don’t know. All I know is that Denning had me rapt from page one until the closing chapter 440+ pages later.

Note: Beware, as the last book in a 9-book series, this review is going to have some minor-to-heavy spoilers. Unavoidable.

So basically this book wraps up exactly who Abeloth is, and I was a little stunned and impressed to find out how she ties into the overall STAR WARS universe; that she ties into the strangest episode arc of the 3rd season of STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS where Anakin and Obi-Wan visit a strange world called Mortis where three very powerful force beings (A Father – Balance, A Daughter – Light Side and a Son – Dark Side) live. The Father is dying and asks Anakin to take his place as Balance (who obviously refuses)…it turns out that Abeloth has to do with them, and they have more to do with the Force as a whole than previously thought. Jedi Grand Master Luke recalls hearing the story from Yoda and after checking it out in the Jedi Archives on Coruscant finds the mission his father and Obi-Wan undertook did indeed take place. This also ties into what Jacen Solo (prior to his turn to the dark side and death) found out from the Killik’s who simply referred to these beings by different names, but the mythology was the same of a Son and Daughter at constant war and the father who kept them in balance.

Basically Denning has not only tied this story into the past (and other SW media) with the above points, but also has Jagged Fel and the Imperial Remnant tied into the future as well (the LEGACY comics which take place 137 years ABY), leading me to believe that Jaina and Tahiri may be the first of the future Imperial Knights (Red-Armored Jedi who defend the Fel Emperor)…who knows. Still, it's nice to know that the people behind the curtain at LFL take continuity into things when ideas are raised.

We also finally get the public reveal of Allana Solo as Tenel Ka and Jacen Solo’s daughter (instead of the masquerade as the elder two Solo’s adoptive daughter Amelia) thus making her VERY strong in the Force and Hapan royalty in line for the throne. But naturally she’s also in line for another throne…one of balance. I think it will be very interesting to see a more grown up Allana training as a Jedi and taking up the mantle of hero from her grandparents. Ben and Vestara get an ending I wasn't expecting and it was kind of refreshing since I assumed that they would follow a certain path with their relationship than how it ends up. Which brings me to my last story point, the Jedi have finally (in a council decision) decided that the best thing for the Jedi Order is to separate themselves from the Galactic Alliance and leave Coruscant (for the academy training world of Shedu Maad) to its own devices and political squabbling.  I like that a great deal and see it as a long time coming since the New Republic and the subsequent Galactic Alliance have never fully trusted the Jedi and why would any group stay and defend people who didn’t trust them? I think Luke has the right idea in making the Jedi become a more autonomous entity beholden to no one but themselves. I’m also really ready to return to the Jedi Academy type locale. That was one of my favourite things about the Academy when it was on Yavin 4, that there was nothing else going on there. No political infighting, just Jedi training. Love that. It will be a welcome return to see the new fresh Jedi rise up and become knights and not have to worry about what is going on with the Order.

Denning has done an incredible job wrapping up the plot points that truly needed wrapping up. There are some complaints that there are still open threads left hanging at the end…but then that only means we’ll be seeing more of our friends in future. I don’t mind those open threads, because like anything of this type of story, enough was solved for me personally in the end and it’s always nice to have things to look forward to that connect to the past.

The one thing I am looking forward to the most: The squad of Ten Jedi Knights who are sent out to find the wandering planet of Mortis and hopefully the Force-imbued dagger that can kill a celestial. That’s going to be very Outbound Flight-ish methinks.

If you’ve been reading this series, then APOCALYPSE should satisfy you much more than INVINCIBLE did in the last series. A great book, and definitely one of the best Main-series books I’ve read since the NJO.