My thoughts on STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

Hey blog fans, sorry for the radio silence. I've been busy with moving to Seattle, starting a new job, having a baby and getting another dog.

However, I do have a new post on awesome pop culture website Deadshirt about THE FORCE AWAKENS. You can find it here. And it should be a different take than most of the stuff the blogosphere has been talking about.  So check it out and there might be more coming soon!

Department of new ventures....

So I've started a tumblr blog as an offshoot to the Mr. K enterprise.

The tumblr blog will be more of a place for flash fiction and occasionally snarky images, whereas this site will remain devoted mostly to criticism, thought pieces and reviews.

Check out the tumblr now for the beginning of a continuing series called "A Tomb for Hugo Gernsback."

A little hint to you blog-fans: this first series of short flash fiction is inspired by Borges, Bolano and Danilo Kis.

Adventures in Victorian spec-fic...

I recently got a Smartphone, thanks to the generosity of Father K and Mother K, and one that came pre-installed with a Kindle app. After about two days of playing with the Smartphone, I remembered that, "gee, Amazon lets you download works in the public domain for no money."

At which point I began a downloading binge of (less-than) epic proportions, focusing on obscure or lesser-known public domain books that I'd wanted to try. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey , Melville's The Confidence Man, Welles' The War in the Air and The Sleeper Awakes standing as great examples [I've already read The Confidence Man, but it's short and so clever, I couldn't resist].

I also downloaded Mary Shelley's The Last Man, published about 8 years after Frankenstein, which is supposedly about a plague that wipes out humanity.

Unfortunately, though I doggedly continue reading, I've remembered why Shelley's Frankenstein, unlike Stoker's Dracula, is mostly remembered and enjoyed for the Universal and Hammer adaptations than in the original novel form. It's a problem that extends to this book as well. Mary Shelley spends a lot of time giving her characters looooong speeches about philosophy or their emotional states. She's hardly the only person of her time to have that problem (after all, she was writing for serialization and multi-volume collection), and some of the passages are decent if sentimental. But all the characters in The Last Man sound the same and their moanings and philosophical ruminations distract from a future world that is quite interesting. Unlike with Dickens, who wrote characters you wanted to spend time with even when they were doing very little, or Scott, who would throw lots of adventure and incident into each section, Shelley is rather dull.

I'm not going to claim that Shelley's predictions are accurate. Set around 2086 (in the first volume, which is where I am), she talks about lighter-than-air craft that were only "recently" discovered and seems to view England as economically and technologically about the same. Politically, the British government has abolished the institution of the monarchy (the one point on which Shelley's predictions might seem optimistic to our eyes), though the nobility is a mostly intact and substantial (if gradually waning) political force.

So, if your main criterion for reading sci-fi or judging it is how accurate the predictions are, this probably isn't the book to read. However, in this age of steampunk, it seems to me an interesting and thought-out alternate future Shelley is proposing. Once we get to the actual "everyone's going to die" parts, I'm interested to see what tropes of the disaster/post-apocalyptic genre Shelley anticipates and what tropes she ignores. After all, she lived in a time where plague was a much more real and ever-present threat than ours.

But, oh lord, someone needs to do an abridged or Classics Illustrated version of this story. I guess it makes sense that there's so much blather from the two main male characters that aren't the narrator once you realize they're based on Percy Shelley & Lord Byron (the fact that Lord RAYMOND is an ambitious asshole who gains fame fighting in Greece is a dead giveaway). But still... wanting to write fanfic about your dead husband and his best bro is not a goal that works with a vision of the future undone by a plague.

Sci-fi tropes that need to be banned for 50 years...

I had a serious post half-written about how I'm somewhat tired of the sci-fi genre. And then I realized it would probably be more helpful/fun to make a post of sci-fi tropes/plot devices that need to be banned for at least the next 50 years.

Clearly I'm not a governing body with any kind of authority, so, think of it this way. If you are writing something in which any of the following things are used, just think twice about it. Are you really writing something that original?

1. Despite being the distant future, America still exists pretty much like it does now, both geographically and sociologically.
2. Despite being the distant future, America's main political/military rivals are still exactly the same as they are today.
3. Despite being the future, the one world government is run suspiciously like a US-style democracy, and most of the leaders seem to be white and/or male.
4.  Despite being the distant future with high technological advancement, the roles of men and women are exactly the same. If they are being disputed, it is in the same way they are currently being disputed.
5. Mankind has encountered only one alien race, and they are monolithically united in fighting us.
6. The morality of totally wiping out a sentient race is never questioned, or only by a straw man.
7. Mankind is technologically set back by a disaster. It responds by adapting SCA/medieval political units, with no alterations.
8. When mankind loses technology and forms a quasi-utopian pre-Industrial society, no one ever requires internal medicine or modern pharmaceuticals.
9. Despite major technical advances, including mass teleportation, mankind still relies on 19th/early 20th naval tactics for warfare. Especially in space.
10. The Nazis/Confederates win World War II/the Civil War.
11. The Nazis/Confederates win World War II/the Civil War with the aid of time travelers/aliens/dragons.
12. A quasi-fascist strong man is the only one who can save the Future US/Earth from a major threat. Anyone who questions him is completely wrong.
13. Except for uniforms that look like Iron Man joining a SWAT team, average soldiers are completely the same as the stock types from a World War II movie.
14. Sexual relations and mores are exactly the same as they are currently.

Ok, this is just a start. If you have more suggestions, leave them in the comments.

Fantasy if it was written by sci-fi writers...

So, a random tweet made me think of Robert A. Heinlein's LORD OF THE RINGS, which in turn put me in mind of how classic fantasy is usually very conservative (in the little c sense). Science fiction writers usually have their own brand of crazy political ideology, but at least few of them share the same idiosyncrasies.

So without further ado, here are synopses of how sci-fi writers would have handled some classics of fantasy:

MOUNT DOOM IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert A. Heinlein - Clever, plucky adventurer overcomes monolithic state regulation and transformation into giant floating eye to become successful vulture capitalist. When elven and human monopolists try to break up his free-steading organization, he expands his operations and introduces the Industrial Revolution to his land.

I, HOUSE-ELF by Isaac Asimov - When a house-elf by the name of Dobby breaks the 3 Fundamental Rules of Hogwarts, an investigator from the Ministry of Magic has to figure out what caused this. He discovers a man named Dumbledore is trying to create a cult that will preserve magical knowledge after the collapse of wizard society, hidden as a religion built around a figure called "Harry Potter".

THE DOMINATION OF THE WHITE QUEEN by S.M. Stirling - Sexually-liberated pagan woman flees a disintegrating world to found a new one colonized by survivalists, soldiers of fortune and hunters. She subdues the primitive natives with her superior organization skills and weaponry. By her efforts, she slows global warming and does away with a hopelessly repressed, sexist society. Then a fanatical religious leader shows up with four children to serve as his figureheads, and does away with all her achievements.

I encourage you to add your own attempts in the comments.

Exterminate!

Between finally catching 5 Million Years to Earth (a.k.a Quatermass & the Pit) and watching a ton of Dr. Who, I'm curious as to what the timeline for each franchise (because Quatermass was a franchise, for a short time) and their various successes have to say about British science fiction and popular taste about science-fiction in general.

Hypothesis: The Quatermass series' subject matter is generally the failings of man and nature, and how man's organizations worsen those traits. Dr. Who's subject matter is the wonders of man and nature, and how most problems are best solved by an individual's bravery, compassion and intelligence. So Quatermass' success suggests a period of disillusionment or uncertainty, Who's success suggests an approaching period of optimism and excitement.

Just an idea. Anyone with any opinions on this? I can already see some flaws with the societal interpretations I've suggested, but anyone with a counter-argument about the way I've characterized the two franchises?
Quatermass & The Pit
Quatermass 2
Doctor Who: The Complete Fourth Series
Doctor Who: The Complete Second Series
Doctor Who: The Complete First Series

We are living in the future, I'll tell you how I know

You know, in the last five years, we've had the US government basically abandon a city following a natural disaster and now we have a major US metropolis without potable water for days to come.

It's like Cory Doctorow and Mad Max and every zombie film's opening scenario merged into one.

Future events such as these will affect you in the future: FLASHFORWARD

As LOST wraps up its final season with a fair amount of fan argument & disappointment, it's easy to forget how well the show has blended soap opera with adventure, and straight-ahead adventure with an intellectual puzzle game. LOST is one of a very small number of shows where, even when I'm frustrated with the way characters are paired off, I'm emotionally invested in those pairings. And while it looks like (pardon the pun) the creators might not stick the landing, they've kept the show going through 6 seasons, making the numerous changes and compromises (creative & practical) look like part of a relatively coherent, focused show.

All you need to do to realize how difficult this feat is to look at ABC's attempt to create a successor for the show. A show which debuted to high ratings on LOST's old night, which supposedly had 5 seasons worth of material already planned out... and now seems guaranteed to be cancelled after one season.

FLASHFORWARD

I fought the war but the war won't stop for the love of good: Chris Carter's HARSH REALM

So I just watched the first four episodes of Chris Carter's X-Files follow-up Harsh Realm this weekend. The AV Club had mentioned it in a list of shows that never got a proper resolution, and the premise sounded intriguing. Plus, it has Terry O'Quinn in a pretty important recurring role.

The concept is that Thomas Hobbes (Scott Bairstow) is a rather heroic Army Lieutenant who's engaged to Sophie Green and nearing the end of his enlistment. One night, some soldiers show up, escort him to a military base, where he's informed that he's been selected to play this virtual reality game called Harsh Realm and take down the number one player, the legendary Omar Santiago (Terry O'Quinn, giving a decent performance in an unfortunate pencil-thin mustache). Harsh Realm was developed as a simulation of the aftermath of a nuclear war, replicating the geographic and demographic characteristics of the United States (or at least as of the 1990 census). He was only asked to pack an overnight bag, so he assumes this should be a pretty simple mission.

Except once Hobbes gets in the game, he finds out that a large portion of the game's population are would-be players who were given the same mission as him, and that Omar Santiago now rules an ever-growing portion of the Harsh Realm version of the nation. Oh, and there's no way out of the game except dying (which also kills you in real life) or discovering Santiago's portal to the real world.

What's weird about watching Harsh Realm now is the way it predicts a couple of shows (there are a lot of elements of LOST and Dollhouse in both concept and execution), while never quite synthesizing those elements successfully.

Like LOST, this show uses its mysterious setting as a crucible of character, with a lot of thematic interest in destiny vs. choice, and talks a lot about faith and salvation. There's also the referentiality/allusiveness to history and philosophy to add depth (the lead character's name and the second episode named Leviathan after his namesake's book, for example). And both possess the same talent for crafting surreal, enigmatic cold opens that draw you in (for example, "Leviathan" and "Kein Ausgang"). And most superficially, there is a driven madman played by Terry O'Quinn, a Party of Five alumnus with an everyman appeal, a shady, wise-cracking mystery man and a cute dog that follows everyone around.

Like Dollhouse, there's the same fascination with where identity comes from and whether technology can create something with the complexity of real human beings. The care and recruitment of the soldiers injected into Harsh Realm is reminiscent of both "the treatment" and "The Attic" from Dollhouse. And of course, both share a paranoid fear of technology hijacking our lives while suggesting that the shady people controlling  that technology are actually holding off a far worse threat.

So Harsh Realm has some interesting ideas in play. It also throws in some nice elements of world-building. Since the world is a video game where people disappear once they die, there is no concept of religion or afterlife except for whispers of "the real world" that a savior could lead them to.The soldiers injected into the game usually treat Virtual Characters like pets or possessions since they're not real, which contributes to that same Hobbesian nastiness. Finally, there's a suggestion that a lot of people forced into the game try to find simulations of loved ones from the real world (since the game is based on a fairly recent census) to cope with losing the real thing.

But for all these cool moments, Harsh Realm suffers from several problems. First, Scott Bairstow's character is pretty bland and forced to deliver some of the most thudding, on-the-nose narration you'll hear in anything from a major network that's not Flashforward. Second,  Carter lacks the courage to follow his material. There are several comments on how Hobbes' dog would make a good meal for the post-apocalyptic hordes, only for him to be left alone and allowed to interfere with the bad guys' schemes without harm. Third, a crippling case of On-the-Nose-itis, where characters are named "Max Pinnochio" with a straight face and people constantly reiterate that "if you die here, you'll die in real life" (just like in every movie since Tron).

So it's easy for me to see why Harsh Realm struggled, especially in the age before DVDs collected full seasons of TV. It was daring for it's complex concept and dystopian setting, but it was flaws in execution that sank it, not just its' visionary qualities. Like a lot of pioneers, it never reached the new frontier it sought.

The Creature With a Thousand Films

I'm kind of conflicted by what I'm about to write. For I am a geek and I love the horror and sci-fi genres. And if you love horror and sci-fi films, then the man you owe the most thanks to is Roger Corman.

Roger Corman was/is not the best director or producer to work in those genres. He obviously wasn't the first. He was never the most ground-breaking one, even at his heyday. But he was probably the most prolific one*. And as Stalin once said, "quantity has a quality all its own."

Even if you think AiP/New World Pictures put out mostly cheap cash-in crap (which is true), Corman's desire to corner areas of the market that the "serious" studios like MGM or Warner wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole often produced interesting or daring work. Corman made a movie attacking the KKK in 1962 (!), when such a film could be personal and commercial risk (The Intruder). His Bucket of Blood and Little Shop of Horrors helped to perfect the dark comedy. And X, the Man with X-Ray Eyes, really needs no defense or explanation, beyond the fact that it is a well-made and effective horror film that mines the seamy side of our desires to great effect.

And if, for whatever reason, those films just don't speak to you, then remember that Corman helped raise an entire generation of film-makers, giving them a place to learn their craft and perfect their voice. Directors like Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, John Sayles, Jack Hill, James Cameron, Monte Hellman and Paul Bartel all learned at his feet or the feet of people working for him. Corman's films gave actors like Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, William Shatner, and Peter Fonda some of their first major acting gigs.

But he made a lot of crap. Sometimes personal crap, sometimes exhilarating crap, but in the end, enough to keep MST3K running for years on his directorial & production work alone. And the older he got, the more of a cash-in artist he became. The Vampirella movie. The 1990s Fantastic Four movie. The endless Syfy/Sci-Fi channel re-makes and originals.

And while you could never claim he alone dumbed down the industry, he specialized in cheap, stupid movies aimed at teenagers, filled with blood and sex and rock 'n' roll (or his best approximations of them). He churned out endlessly padded films with no plot, bad science, attractive but lightweight actors,  and ridiculous costumes. He practically invented the car chase movie. Corman was no Val Lewton, taking a trashy genre and finding the beauty in it. He was a dumpster diver, who could recognize when someone threw out something perfectly good, but more likely to take a pile of junk to the scrapyard.

When you watch a summer tent-pole film that's clearly cobbled together around action sequences and catch phrases, market-tested to the 18-25 demographic, you're watching the inheritors of the Roger Corman tradition. The difference is that they are more scientific about it.

So it's easy to complain the loss of intelligent movies these days, the bad actors, ham-fisted direction & awful scripts. But that's the commercial model, dreamed up by a man who knew how to compete with TV without having to work on TV's model.

So don't complain about the culture wars. Roger Corman's Hollywood is on one side, really; the side of the consumer.

Let's give Roger Corman an Invisible Hand, everyone!

*I'm excluding people like William "one-shot" Beaudine, who were so prolific because everything they churned out was unadulterated crap. Corman certainly put out crap, but almost all his crap is at least trying to do something.

"I'm sorry you had to see me like that": Thoughts on Lost's Season 6 premiere

Now, the problem with blogging about the premiere of Season 6 of LOST at this point is that all these smart people on the internet have commented (along with some stupid people).

For examples of stupidity, see Jack Shafer at Slate's response & Salon's write-up. I can understand the critics' not relating to the characters anymore, but not the vitriol directed at the actual narrative concept of parallel universes. Admittedly, you don't see it that much in the mainstream, but it was used in Sliding Doors for crying out loud, which is hardly art-house cinema! If TV critics have their minds blown by this idea, then that says something very sad about the poverty of imagination in television. Does Jack Shafer explode with rage when he reads Phillip K Dick or see the last scene of 25th Hour?

As for me, I wasn't bothered by the parallel reality storyline. Personally, the narrative that grabbed me was the one in 2007 on the Island, but it was nice to revisit with some of the cast members lost in previous seasons and get gentler moments with even the current cast members. There was something strangely moving about seeing Locke & Jack actually connect, after seasons of seeing them argue & both move in douche-ier directions.

And while I don't agree with "Darlton"'s claims that this new season is accessible, I can see what they're getting at. In one timeline, you've got all the sort of sci-fi/fantasy/mystery elements that get the theorists & wonks going. In the other, you've got a return to the character-based soap-opera of the first season and a half.

Of course, each timeline contains both those elements to some extent. But if you hate all the Dharma Initiative/Others stuff, you can enjoy Jack-and-Locke daddy issue theatre!

But I enjoyed both. And it was interesting how the two contrasted. For some reason, the 2004 timeline felt desaturated & washed out, while life itself had a sordid quality. As much as the character of Kate still annoys me, the change from selfish fugitive (who takes a pregnant woman hostage) to take-charge adventurer was a change for the better. The same with Charlie's growth from self-destructive addict to brave martyr. I think you can argue both sides of these people are inter-related (in both realities, Charlie searches out death, but at least in the 2007 reality, he died for something worthwhile), but they show growth.

Wrapping this up now, so onto my comments:

• Love Flocke/Smokey. Terry O'Quinn certainly gets his fair amount of show-off time, but his delivery of "I'm disappointed in all of you" hits several notes at once (sincere disappointment, anger, parental condescension) that most actors would be hard-pressed to match.
• I'm starting to feel like the writers don't know what to do with Sun & Lapidus anymore. It's especially disappointing with Sun, who is probably one of the most complex characters in the show, but she keeps on getting dragged along in other peoples' schemes. My disappointment with Lapidus' treatment is more at the waste of Jeff Fahey's considerable talents.
• Woohoo! John Hawkes! I thought he looked familiar, but it's to his credit that I couldn't place him as Sol Starr, who is not that different a character, but is expressed in such a different way.
• I think the writers have a plan with Man-in-Black & Jacob, but I'm still not completely sure how the survivors' experiences have been shaped by both. I'm guessing all the ghosts have been agents of MIB, except a good portion of their advice has been benign. Whereas Jacob seems friendlier, but some of his assistance in the real world (saving Sayid but not his wife, encouraging Sawyer's hunger for revenge) actually has a darker tone. And why is Smokey active in the Outer Temple when the people of the Inner Temple want to & know how to keep him out?
• Also, what is the relationship between the Dharmaville Others & the Temple Others? Cindy, Zach & Emma were with both, but Alex didn't know about the Temple. Why has Richard's group been camping out in the woods for three years (since they clearly didn't return to Dharmaville) when they could be at the Temple?
• I think criticism of the Oceanic survivor's Jughead plan as selfish is a little harsh. Short-sighted, yes, but bombs don't SINK islands. Also, it's not just that Jack/Kate & Sawyer/Juliet are unhappy. Almost everyone that crashed with them is now dead, as are Faraday & Charlotte & almost all the other Freighties. Plus Rousseau, Alex, Nadia, a large portion of the Others & at least a few of the passengers of Ajira 316 (though that last group the 1977 people didn't know much about). In the face of that, it is hard to remember how the Island has positively effected them.

"No, I'm done lying": Lost blog-a-thon, Season 2, episode 18

"Dave"

Synopsis: Hurley starts seeing a "friend" named Dave from his time in the mental institution on the island. Dave tells him this entire experience is a figment of his imagination. Meanwhile, Locke finds himself pushed to the sidelines as Jack, Sayid and Ana Lucia deal with the false Henry Gale.

So a friend of mine from college recently sent along a bunch of in-development scripts from major studios. And one of them was a pretty loathsome horror film about some cooking staff trapped in a mental institution during a power outage. And part of the loathsomeness stemmed from the fact the horrific suffering seemed pointless. But the thing that got me was that the inhabitants of the asylum were monolithical, one-dimensional crazies, capable of absurd evil with no rhyme or reason to their affliction. It acted as if Arkham Asylum were meant as a realistic depiction of mental illness and it was kind of sickening.

So, kudos to this episode for avoiding that. Whatever else you can say about Hurley, Lost's writers and Jorge Garcia have never treated him as less than a whole human being. We see him as a nice guy (in some ways, he's the nicest character in the main cast, a fact which the character of Rose acknowledged in-show) and his mistakes usually end up hurting only himself. Compare that to Charlie, whose sympathetic issues have pushed him into incredibly dark territory in recent episodes this season.

But, you know, I called the main twist really early in. I've seen too many horror/fantasy films that rely on unreliable memory or dreams to know that if no one else directly interacts with a character except for one person, he's a ghost/imaginary friend/alternate personality.

That's not to short Evan Handler's work as Dave. He exudes malevolence, but of a very earthly kind, that of that one asshole friend who sort of gives you an adrenaline rush through his asshole-ness.

So too the character of Hurley and our genuine concern for him keep us interested. And his sort-of-breakdown causes one of the best moments of the episode, when he administers a very public beatdown to a surprised Sawyer.

And for a few moments, the double-bluff that the writers play that this might, for once, actually be all in Hurley's head hold power. But despite the clues (not all of them pointed out by Dave, to be fair, which increases the likelihood of them being true), a St. Elsewhere kind of ending after we've become invested in all these characters would make people worldwide want to destroy their TVs. Even with the extra twist ending at the end.

Frankly, the Hatch plot is much more interesting. I like how Locke is struggling against what seems like fate trying to pull him back to his pre-crash life. The other survivors don't know how dismissive they're being, but the episode really gets his POV across, as he lies on the bed and waits for people to tell him what that gunshot was for.

Grade: B-

Other Comments

• So, that's Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) as Doctor Burke. I really hope he doesn't twig to the fact Walt's a mutant.
• And yes, the poster on his office wall looks a lot like the Island. So, points to you, deranged figment of Hurley's imagination!
• I like that Hurley and Libby's relationship, for all it's gentleness, has a slightly disturbing side. Is she in love with him or in love with fixing him (just like Jack with his ex-wife)?
• Also, John Locke is really having a bad day. Down to one good leg, then your sense of purpose gets taken away? Harsh.
• Also, Dave leads Hurley through the wilderness, through a garden, to a cliff and promises Hurley a new world if he just jumps. See, it is this symbolism that stacks the deck too heavily against Dave for us to believe him.

Quotes

- "God doesn't know how long we've been here, John. He can't see this island any better than the rest of the world can." - "Henry"

- After Libby suggests the survivors will share food of their own accord: "Great plan, Moonbeam, and after that we can sing 'Kumbaya' and do trust falls." - Sawyer

- "Don't you have an adventure to get to? I think Timmy fell down the well over that way." - Great ep for Sawyer quotes.

"Nobody says anything bad about the dead": Lost, Season 2, Episode 17

"Lockdown"

Synopsis: When Jack leaves Locke and Henry behind in the hatch, the blast doors shut, catching Locke's leg and forcing him to rely on Henry to press the button. Meanwhile, Ana Lucia, Sayid and Charlie find the balloon. Jack and Sawyer play poker. And Locke remembers how his father destroyed his relationship with Helen. It involves his dad faking his own funeral, some laundered money and the mob.

Comments: And then, after that amazing episode with "The Whole Truth", we get a more mixed bag with this one. I don't know if it's the pun in the title or the way the cliffhanger gets squandered or the fact that Locke's daddy issues don't really take any new turns, but this episode falls a little flat for me.

On the plus side, I appreciate the Henry/Locke dynamic that develops, first reluctantly and then blossoming into full-blown trust... until the end. And I also enjoyed the poker game and Jack and Kate's night conversation. We even get some new meta-plot clues (what's that ultraviolet map for? what does the question mark represent? who is dropping supplies?). Finally, the final reveal is well-played. [SPOILER ALERT] The balloon is there, but the grave isn't for Gale's wife. The body buried there belongs to a guy named Henry Gale! [END SPOILERS] Fade out.

On the negative side, the focus on Locke and Henry comes off as Keystone Cops-ish more than claustrophobic. Sure, I buy Locke injuring himself in his eagerness to escape. But stuff like the shelf collapsing... yeesh. I half expected Henry to keep stepping on rakes while he stumbled into the computer room. And Locke's interactions with his father didn't really expand much on the last few episodes. Worst of all, Katey Sagal was wasted, except for that moment at the end during the proposal. Anyone could have said no. But the expression on her face, that mix of pity and sadness, that was great.

I don't mind that the plot-heavy/thriller episodes need to alternate with character development episodes and quieter moments. But when those quieter episodes come up, I want them to actually tell me new things about characters. "Locke is searching for someone who'll stay with him" doesn't cut it.

Grade: B-

Other Comments:

• When Hurley said that the food in the hatch would only last a month for a single man 5 or 6 episodes ago, I wondered how Desmond and his partner had lasted as long as they did. Nice to know that wasn't an error.
• So, did all the Lost writers have daddy issues? Because, between Kate, Jack, Sun, and Locke, we already have a lot of explicitly bad fathers. And I'm not even counting the people whose fathers haven't shown up or are absent. And of course, Michael and Walt's relationship... blarg.
• I became kind of suspicious how Henry knew the numbers after being told once. I've got a pretty good memory, and I can never remember the sequence.
• Two con men in the Lost backstory. You know Locke's dad has to have run into Sawyer at some point. [Older Mr. K retroactive spoiler: Yup, I kinda called this one right. Emphasis on kinda.]

Quotes

- Jack: "When I want the guns, I'll get them."

- Anthony: "Two hundred thousand gets you a great honeymoon."

Locke: "I didn't do it for the money"

Anthony: "I guess some maid's going to get a helluva tip."

Sonic Weapon Fence actually does make a good name for a band

So that post below, the LOST recap, that is one of several orphans from when I planned to do this whole LOST recap-blog-a-thon, since there wasn't much dedicated coverage, episode-by-episode, on the AV Club or my favorite parts of the interweb.

I didn't follow through with the entire thing, but I did write up maybe five or six more episodes, which will also be posted here over the next couple of weeks.

Because (and I know, I'm burying the lede), I have both finished LOST up through season 5 AND just in time too. Season 6 starts February 2nd, and while I'm unsure if I'll be able to watch that night (it's complicated), I am impatient for the chance to see it.

And so my posting might be a little LOST-centric over the next couple of weeks remaining. I've got a LOST drinking game that I joked about on twitter, along with a couple of thoughts on what LOST means to me and TV going into a new decade. And maybe I'll watch the Rifftrax version of the LOST pilot.

Until then, listen to some Sonic Weapon Fence, who are a pretty good band for a novelty, tv-themed band and who I recommend over Previously on Lost.

In the next re-release, I will shoot first...

I didn't think I was the first one to think of Lucas as a skilled craftsman with a very limited toolbox, but it's great to find something like this in Robin Wood's Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan:

"If we are to continue using the term 'imagination' to apply to a William Blake, we have no business using it of a George Lucas. Imagination and what is popularly referred to as pure fantasy (actually there is no such thing) are fundamentally incompatible. Imaginatin is a force that strives to graps and transform the world, not restore "the good old values". What we can justly credit Lucas with (I use the name, be it understood, to stand for his whole production team) is facility of invention, especially on the level of special effects and makeup and the creation of a range of cute or sinister or grotesque fauna (human and non-human)." (166-167) [emphasis mine]

So far, in skimming Wood, I'm quite impressed by his evaluation of Larry Cohen as well. I'm not so impressed by his hedging on Marxism (though I do agree that there's something weird about how reluctant people are to consider discussing something different from capitalism on a basic level in a free country such as ours).

E.T.A. Although Wood seems to think James Earl Jones is British and white. And he claims Lando Calrissian offers no prospect of revolution or subversion. Even though his first appearance in the cycle shows him betraying the white American hero? I won't argue totally with Wood's general claims about the handling of race in the Star Wars trilogy, but Lando seems to be one of Lucas & Co.'s few attempts at moral complexity (more so than Han, at least, after the first movie).

Throw me to the rancor: Some almost-heresy on Star Wars

I know I'm hardly the first to say this, but with each subsequent viewing, the Star Wars original trilogy seems a little more threadbare to me.

To be fair, Lucas had great production design (from the late great John Barry), great practical effects work (now watered-down with some crappy CGI) and a supporting cast of great British actors to buoy his American neophyte actors and his awful dialogue. And occasionally, Lucas knows how to frame a shot or shoot a sequence.

Of course, Lucas did away with most of his advantages for the prequels, even as he tried to compensate for at least a few of his weaknesses (like the ringers who polished Revenge of the Sith's screenplay). Somewhere in those films, there are even some interesting implications and ideas to gloss the "original" trilogy with (like a religion whose "miracles" are based in a genetic mutation!). But that atrophying of his few talents/advantages is why the prequels' awfulness hit so hard.

I think Lucas' true genius was in consolidating so many pulp/b-movie cliches into one setting. Look at Episode IV. We start with a war/thriller angle (the pursuit of the Rebel cruiser and shipboard battle), detour into desert adventure (the C3PO/R2D2 travels) with a dash of Western (the Tusken Raiders as Indians, the Mos Eisley cantina scene), and get back to the spy/thriller before a rousing finale straight out of any war movie. The characters are just an amalgamation of different cliches, made interesting merely by the sheer oddity of combinations. Darth Vader is a robot/wizard/samurai, Han Solo a pirate/Wild West outlaw, and Luke a combination of hotrodding teen, young gun and brooding superhero.

And yet, most of the sci-fi and fantasy films have been ripping off these cliches for the past thirty plus years. No wonder s-f/fantasy is so creatively bankrupt.

"Just tell me I'll live forever... then I'll be happy": Something Wicked This Way Comes

Something Wicked This Way Comes is such a weird, disappointing movie. It's beautifully shot (imagine Michele Soavi or Mario Bava making a Disney film, with that same sense of the surreal), has a couple of great performances by Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce, and it has such a specific and terrifying vision of small-town life, adult desires and childhood.

But most of the other actors are either wasted (poor Royal Dano and Pam Grier) or just wooden.

Maybe more later. But seriously, what works in it works sooo well (especially the scene in the library and the parade/manhunt) that anything less than great is a disappointment. And as the movie shows, disappointment breeds evil.

So Rousseau, Hume and Locke land on an island...

So I've been watching a lot of Lost lately. As in, a season and a half in about a month.

And this is after having only ever seen ONE episode of the show somewhere in season 4.

I'm totally new (or was) to the show. I only knew the zeitgeist-y sort of scuttlebutt until recently: there are these people on an island, there's a smoke monster of some kind and polar bears, Michael Emerson is creepy, etc. And that a fake band named "Geronimo Jackson" showed up. But it wasn't until they put the first 4 seasons on Netflix Instant Viewing and I watched the pilot that I got hooked.

So I'm less of a Lost newbie now, but I think it holds together better in some ways, watching so much so close together. The callbacks and plot threads hold together better. It is rather well-plotted, the characters are well-drawn, and the cast is pretty solid. It might not be doing anything new per se, but the way it is combining a bunch of existing elements and ideas, both in terms of methods and themes, is interesting. Heck, even the way the show is peppered with allusions without getting pretentious with them is refreshing.

Of course, there are problems. It seems like sometimes people let stuff slide on the island faster than a real person would. Ten days after Locke gets Boone killed and lies to everyone, suddenly he's a trusted arbiter of whether Charlie is crazy or not? This is stuff that doesn't matter when you've got about a season separating these events. But when it ends up being separated by a few days (more similar to the way time is flowing on an the island), it kind of irks me.

But in some ways, it's like reading a serialized novel, like early Dickens. Over the next few days, I hope to post an entry or two about Lost up until where I am now (in the last few episodes of the second season). From then on, I intend to do TV Club-esque (a la the AV Club) entries episode by episode as I watch them, talking about themes, characters, and theories as I come across them. It should be amusing to see how much I miscalculate upcoming events, at the least. And heck, it seems like the AV Club's TV Club coverage doesn't really start 'til last season.

And I promise updates on some of the other stuff I've been promising along the way. Or at least to tie these entries into my pet causes. So, make your own kind of blogging/Blog your own kind of blog/ Even when nobody else blogs along!

Catch-Up Screening Log: July

Alphaville (d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1965) - Mystery/sci-fi hybrid where famous French detective Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is sent to the utterly logical city of Alphaville to find Dr. Leonard Nosferatu van Braun (Howard Vernon), who developed a super-weapon for them. One of those early post-modern exercises in film, which is both effective and hilarious. The destruction of Alphaville at the end is handled more by implication than effects, but is all the more surprising for it. And Godard does a hilarious deadpan, from the futuristic newspaper name of Figaro-Pravda (he can at least imagine a post-Cold War society) to the utterly perfunctory initial attacks on Caution to the way that interstellar travel is just represented as a car driving down a highway. B+

Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (d. Larry Cohen, 1977, NIV) - Larry Cohen's ambition severely outstrips his ability in this film. As I've seen more and more Cohen, the less impressed I am with his film-making ability. His shot compositions are very basic (with the exception of one where Hoover, at his favorite restaurant, is framed as to be surrounded by his own reflection). Cohen's script is an amorphous blob; refusing to organize his picture around one era or one theme or even one character (!), Cohen aims for a "greatest hits of Hoover" approach. Poor, under-utilized Rip Torn serves as our on-again, off-again narrator/POV character (who doesn't even show up on screen until 40 minutes into the film!).

Broderick Crawford is amazing as Hoover, managing to bring some gravitas and mystery to a rather unsympathetic character. To Cohen's credit, he tries to position Hoover as an anti-hero with loathsome methods who still shouldered the huge burden of protecting his Bureau from even more loathsome people. Michael Parks as Robert Kennedy is probably the best of the politician impressionists, bothering to suggest a person behind the familiar affect. C-

Walk Hard (d. Jake Kasdan, 2007, NIV) - I really regret not seeing this in theatres now. I watched it in my bedroom on the heels of a bad break-up, and I still laughed uproariously. The screenplay strikes the perfect balance between stupid and clever in the best Airplane! and Top Secret! traditions. It perfectly punctures the pomposity of the biopic, with the prepackaged life story that always follows the same arc. The cast is excellent (Tim Meadows in particular displays a great comic sincerity and innocence totally at odds with what his character is doing) and the cameos are well-deployed. A-

Piranha (d. Joe Dante, 1978) - A great example of what B movie film-making represents at it's best. Although the opening sequence is well handled, and the Jaws video-game is an incredibly clever joke, the next ten minutes are kind of annoying as Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies are thrown together by over-contrived circumstance and without any regard for the characterization they've established (because young, attractive girls go for paunchy, angry alcoholics all the time where I live). But once it gets past those 10 minutes, the pacing and plotting builds relentlessly and cleverly. The action sequences are well-staged and the caricatures that populate the story are engagingly depicted by a cast of b-movie character actors (Dick Miller, Barbara Steele, Kevin McCarthy). And Dante's visual wit (the escape attempt from the army, the race to stop the dam from venting) helps to lighten the mood. Like a fresh Krispy Kreme donut, you wouldn't want to devour more at one sitting, nor would you make a meal of it. But a fun time and not insulting to the intelligence. B-

Gypsy (d. Mervyn LeRoy, 1962) - A horror movie disguised as a musical, as suggested by one of my favorite blogs, Shadowplay. Rosalind Russell does a great job of portraying someone who has bought into the combined fantasies of show biz and the American Dream, trying to disguise her selfishness as kindness and bulldozing past any attempt at realism with sheer enthusiasm. Karl Malden and Natalie Wood also turn in great performances. Wood in particular deserves commendation for the decidedly tomboyish and defeated posture she carries through most of the film, totally effacing herself with a pitiful anti-charisma. LeRoy's direction marries these performances to a decidedly tactile universe that continually undercuts any attempts at show biz glamor by Rose (the cow head adds a particular grotesqueness, always lingering at the corner of the frame in most scenes). A

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (d. David Yates, 2009, at theater) Do I really need to give a synopsis? Yates does a great job of staging his scenes, so that a glimpse of a by-passed conversation in a quiet scene suddenly explodes into violence a second later. He and the production department also find a nice balance between the magical feeling of Hogwarts and the lived-in aspect that any such place would have. A good, game cast, but Jim Broadbent as Professor Slugworth adds a particular poignance. As a compromised, faded professor drawn to celebrities like a moth to flame, he offers a reminder of fates worse than death or Dementors that Voldemort can offer. B

"You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies"

Read The Stars My Destination tonight. 

Alfred Bester wrote a great sci-fi novel that just stretches well past both his era and our era.

I find it so humbling and disappointing to find something so great. Because now there is one less great thing to find and one more thing to match myself against.