#protagonist than many‚ but he's good at selling the terror and the confusion in the latter half. always nice to have Burke pop up but

[ephemeral-afterlight]

Day 8: Stab Wound

(But hold on a little while longer.)

Whumptober 2019 Day 8: Stab Wound

Word Count: 2054

Relationships: familial Creativitwins, platonic/familial dlamptr

Warnings: Stab wound (obviously), other minor injuries, blood, minor dissociation, lots and lots of cursing

A/N: yes, i know this is late! it’s only by 30 minutes though D: hopefully my characterization of the trash man is alright! this was fun to write hehe

Well. That wasn’t a very fun camping trip!

Remus has always been one for surprise. He likes the excitement, the variety, the fun! It’s healthy to keep a little bit of spice in your life. He’s not afraid to live by this sort of motto, because life is about the little things. Although, he isn’t sure that getting stabbed in the middle of the woods at three a.m. necessarily counts as little, but he’ll take what he can get.

So sue him! Maybe he likes to have a little fun sometimes. Routine is boring! Fuck patterns! Fuck authority! Cause anarchy!

And, uh, yeah. He’s pretty chill with living on the edge like that. But maybe… maybe just a bit further from the edge? He means, like, the edge of harmful societal expectations and complacency, or whatever dumb shit Dee and Lo-Lo rant about to each other at one in the morning. Remus loves his roommates, and would totally rip out a bitch’s spine for them, but they’re fucking nerds. Speak ENGLISH.

Yeah, the edge of “normal”. Not the edge of death.

He’s not gonna die out here, no siree. If he believes he’s immortal strongly enough, he will be. That’s what Barbie movies teach you, right? In any case, even though he refuses to die, getting stabbed hurts like a motherfucker, and it doesn’t help that it’s also storming. He just wanted a nice, fun camping trip, but nooo, some shitty-ass god out there decided “Oh! Time to turn Remus into a shitty cliche horror movie protagonist!”. Why can’t he be the antagonist? Or… wait, what’s the one in the middle of the two? The side character? He wants to be the one guy who is in the midst of all the action with the protag, but seemingly dies halfway through the movie, and then comes back at the end to be like, ”Haha, surprise, bitch! I’m not dead!”.

Huh. Maybe he shouldn’t make all of his life choices based on movie stereotypes.

Anyway, he wishes that at the very least it’d stop fucking raining, because it makes it seriously hard to crawl through the underbrush while slipping in mud and falling flat on his face every two seconds. The stab wound is painful, sure, but as long as he can keep pressure on it and not lose too much blood before he gets to the main road, he should be fine. But having to deal with the downpour hindering his movement and blinding most of his senses sucks ass. How the hell is he supposed to utilize his tracking skills and make sure he’s going the right way without being able to see, hear, or smell a single goddamn thing? He might like making other people wet, but that doesn’t mean he likes being wet himself.

So, he thinks he’s going the right direction. Trying to escape a batshit crazy murderer in the middle of the woods doesn’t leave you a lot of time to casually sit down at a table with a cup of tea and pull out your faded, burnt treasure map, but if he had a table and a cup of tea and a partially burnt map, he would totally do that. Maybe the killer would be so confused, he’d have time to run away.

The thought causes Remus to bark out a laugh into the white noise of the storm, which is a VBI (Very Bad Idea), because it goes straight to his stomach. The pain that radiates out from the wound is like, actually excruciating, hahaha! But... Remus is supposed to be the one who actually survives to the end. He-- he has to be. Who else is gonna fill Roman’s socks with wet concrete?

Oh, Roman. His brother would probably be crying like a little bitch if he were here. Now he’d be the protagonist, the one who’d make so many stupid decisions and somehow come out of it alive anyway. He’s like those teenage girls in horror movies who make you scream at the screen “Don’t go in the dark scary basement, you fucking idiot!” but for some reason, never have a single repercussion for any of their terrible choices. (Remus would be the one who would sacrifice himself for the main character near the end of the movie at the dramatic climax, but Roman can never know that.)

Maybe he wishes Roman was here so that he didn’t have to crawl all this way on his own, but whatever. His brother would probably be too busy whining about his ruined hair to help much, anyway. Not-- Not that Remus needs help! He is having a blast slipping and sliding through the sticks and mud and bushes, thank you very much!

“C’mon out, dude! Don’t draw out the inevitable!” a voice echoes from the trees, a yell that’s far too familiar for Remus’ liking. God, can this guy just give it up already? Go find some other helpless damsel to terrorize! He does not wanna try Remus right now. This may all be fun and games, but Remus is starting to get pissed off, and he is unafraid to take out the stress on this crazy dumbfuck.

Somehow, Remus is able to hear the guy’s footsteps come closer through the sound of the rain splashing all around him, and he speeds up. Probably better to just avoid the guy. Although Remus’d totally win in a fight, the dude does have a knife, and Remus would really prefer to not get stabbed a second time. There’s a drop ahead, a place where it looks like the floor disappears, so Remus shuffles over to it and peers over. It’s a small cliff, with maybe fifteen or so feet to the bottom, and Remus curses under his breath. Fuck, he’s gonna have to do it, isn’t he? And now that he’s looking, he can just barely make out some headlights flit through the trees and disappear, so he knows that he’s close to the main road.

With a grimace, Remus steels himself, then slides off the edge feet-first, trying to use his shoes as a brace against the incline. Of course, because his life fucking sucks, he somehow manages to hit a rock embedded in the side in the wrong crevice, and it pitches him forward off the wall to tumble to the ground below. He smacks into the wet dirt, is just barely able to bite his tongue hard enough to stop the scream from ripping from his throat, and he lands at the bottom harshly. 

His stomach is on fire. It fucking hurts, feels like he’s being stabbed all over again a thousand times over. Bruises are definitely going to start forming all over his body from that fall, and coupled with the fact that his leg hit the ground at a weird angle, walking is going to be even worse than before. Fuck! Why can’t he just catch a fucking break?!

Remus pants hard, trying to work himself up to resuming his trek, when he hears his attacker’s voice calling out from above again. It sounds like he’s coming to the edge, so Remus just swallows hard and scoots himself over through the agonizing aches in his body to lay flat against the cliff wall. He just has to hope the dude doesn’t see him. He can’t really see very well through the storm, but Remus thinks he sees the guy look over the edge. Silence is key, and that’s pretty damn hard considering the absolute torture that is his wounds, but he has to. To survive.

He can’t die today.

And then the guy’s yelling for him again, and his voice is getting further away, and Remus waits in the mud until he can’t hear his footsteps anymore. Vigour and adrenaline now fully renewed, Remus bolts into the trees again, crawl morphing into a crouched run when he’s finally in cover. He clutches at his stomach to try to lessen the pain, which of course doesn’t help, but maybe it’ll keep some blood inside of him or something. Probably not best to bleed out right before he can get help. That’d be a shitty movie ending, if he’s being honest. Absolutely uncreative and unsatisfying. -11/10. 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Is Remus delirious right now?

Despite all that, the sight of the road through a break in the trees is like a blissful breath of fresh air, a shining light of hope in the darkness. He’ll get to see Roman again, and prank Patton with bugs, and absolutely destroy Virge at video games, and listen to Dee and Lo-Lo’s stupid philosophy talks, and give his adoptive uncle Thomas a heart attack every time he does something stupid, and holy fuck maybe Remus is dying because when did he become sentimental? Ew.

A car finally comes along right as Remus manages to drag himself up onto the shoulder, and he waves frantically from where he’s kneeled on the ground in an effort to flag it down. Thank fuck, the car actually slows to a stop, and the window rolls down almost immediately. The face that pokes out is cute, and innocent-looking, and Remus prays to a god he doesn’t believe in that this person will actually help.

“Oh, jeez, are you okay? Why are you out on the road like this? Is-- Is that blood?!” the driver asks, horrified, and Remus tries to stumble closer. He doesn’t know what he looks like right now, but it’s probably horrifying, and he wouldn’t really blame this stranger if he drove away immediately. Maybe Remus will become like those ghost stories, the spooky legends about ghost hitchhikers. Ooh, maybe he’ll become a local cryptid! They can tell stories about him, and sell merch with his face on it, and he’ll be famous, and he can rub all of his sweet, sweet royalties in Roman’s face.

“Got-- I got stabbed. Crazy fucker got me while I was asleep. Help,” Remus manages to force out through his grit teeth, voice hoarse under the weight of the pain he’s in, and the driver looks extremely worried. For whose well-being, Remus has no clue.

“Alright, I’m taking you to the hospital. I couldn’t live with a guilty conscience if I left you out here. I’m Emile, by the way-- please don’t murder me, okay?” the stranger, Emile, says, and Remus chokes out a laugh despite himself. Emile gets out of his car and rushes through the drizzle without any hesitation, and Remus can already see that this is a genuinely good person. Anyone else would leave him here to die. He knows that. Even he’d leave himself here. But here this guy is, the kindest anyone has ever been to Remus, and it makes him wonder if he’ll still be as nice when he realizes that Remus’ personality is awful and the polar opposite of good and kind. (He knows he’ll never be good enough. He knows. He’s heard it enough, and he doesn’t need to be told again.)

“Not g’nna murder you. I can’t-- can’t even walk on my own, so,” Remus mumbles once he’s sure Emile is close enough to hear, and the latter just clicks his tongue with hands that frantically wave all around as if they don’t know where to go. Luckily enough for Remus, Emile pulls himself together quickly, slings an arm underneath his shoulder to help support his weight, and they limp back to the guy’s car together. As they do, Remus realizes the rain has stopped outright, and, well, isn’t that poetic?

Once he’s inside, dripping all over this stranger’s seats (okay, maybe he feels a little bad about that. When he’s a famous cryptid, he can pay for Emile to get his upholstery fixed), Remus starts to fade in and out. Not like the dying kind of “fading”, because he knows from multiple personal experiences what dying feels like, but more like he’s losing time as an effect of a literal stab wound. Oh, what did Lo-Lo call it? Desecrating? Dissipating? No, dissociating. Yeah, that’s the bitch. Yeah. Yeah...

He gets flashes now and again. Streetlamps outside, a tall building, hands underneath him, bright lights, rapid conversation. It smells like an E.R. It feels like home. He’s not gonna die today. Not yet.

[thesffcorner]

Robin Hood

Robin Hood is directed by Otto Bathurst and it’s a reimagining of the Robin Hood stories. I say reimagining, because this film has barely anything to do with the time period or the actual historical tales, and yet somehow it’s still one of the better adaptations out there.

This film positions itself as an origin of sorts; we start with Robin of Loxley played by Taron Egerton being called into the Saxon army to join the Crusades, except here the army seems to be English(?) and lead not by King Richard Lionheart, but the actual sheriff of Nottingham played by Ben Mendelsohn. After four years of fighting Robin tries to intervene in the execution of a Saracen soldier, the son of John (I know he has a full name, but he’s not credited as such and I don’t remember how to spell it, played by Jamie Foxx), and failing that, he is returned to England. There he finds his property seized by the Sheriff, Maid Marion gone (who in this version is neither a Lady nor a wood smith's daughter, but a thief played by Eve Hewson), and the Sheriff proclaiming him dead. At the behest of John, Robin starts training to become a master thief, the Hood, who will take down the Sheriff from the inside.

I love Robin Hood. I grew up on the stories, and I had an illustrated version that collected all the most famous tales and as such I am familiar with the source material. I have hated every single Robin Hood adaptation Hollywood has shat out, with the exception of the Disney version which is fine, if a bit simplistic and Men in Tights, which is both the closest in tone and execution. This version is at once excellent and batshit insane; I had a lot of fun watching it, and I do recommend it, but it’s not a good film. It has some major problems, and how much you will enjoy this depends solely on how forgiving you are of them for the sake of action and style.

Stylization (Automatic Ballistas? In my movie?):

The stylization of this film is intense and very ridiculous. What I feel like it was going for was Moulin Rouge/Great Gatsby, but what it actually ended up as, is the Matthew MacFadyen Three Musketeers.

Nothing in this film is of the time period; the clothing, the scenery, the castes, the weapons, the way people act and speak. We are introduced to Maid Marian in the first scene of the film, wearing a headscarf while she has on a dress with a cleavage so deep and so pronounced it would be considered raunchy by today’s standards, nevermind the 1300’s! And this is her ‘thieving outfit’.... Right. The moment where Robin tells her she’s stunning I was like… well, her boobs sure are. Robin himself wears regular modern day shirts, leather jackets, and let's not even touch on what everyone is wearing at the party for the cardinal.

The scene where they show the Crusades is so insane I genuinely thought we started watching a different film. It’s shot like a war movie, with lots of tight, worm’s eye perspective shots, and everyone is wearing armor that looks like modern day kevlar vests. There is a ballista which fires arrows like a machine gun and the way people are shooting arrows and crossbows in narrow corridors is like something out of a video game. In fact this whole sequence feels like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed had a child and it was a good indicator as to the rest of the film. I didn’t mind the stylization as much, but there were times, mostly with Robin and Marian’s outfits which made me go “what am I watching??”

Tone (Zero Dark Loxley):

Let me go through just a few scenes as an example of just how wildly inconsistent and fluctuating it really is. The first scene is the meeting between Marian and Robin; it’s supposed to be romantic, something akin (ahem, a copy) to The Princess Bride. But it’s shot so weirdly, and the blocking is stiff and unnatural and the dialogue is just so full of quippy one liners that I felt like I was watching a porno!

Then, Robin gets drafted and the next scene is literary The Hurt Locker, but with arrows and catapults instead of bombs. There is even a fellow soldier Robin is trying to rescue, and like I said, it’s shot exactly like a war film. It was by far the best and tensest part of the whole film, and the action was creative and well shot and edited for the most part, especially the fight between John and Robin.

The scene after that is absolutely brutal and honestly almost too dark for this film. It shows the English torturing the captured Arabian soldiers and has two executions which are brutal. But then, we cut right back to Robin Hood shenanigans with Tuck, and I swear I got whiplash. This happens throughout the film; we have a scene of funny, quippy dialogue between Robin and Tuck or Robin and John, and then bam, the next scene is torture, or  a riot.

Plot (Nobody Expects the English Inquisition):

The tone isn’t helped by the fact that the plot of this film is completely ludicrous. It is essentially several heists that culminate in a massive riot/heist, but the plan of the villains makes everything that much more crazy. Warning SPOILERS, but trust me, you want to know the plan.

The Sheriff of Nottingham is working with a Cardinal to finance the Arabian army during the Crusades, so they can beat the English, and presumably win the war, so then I guess the Cardinal can say whoever is King in this (neither Richard nor John are mentioned once) is unworthy of the crown and install  The Sheriff as the new King… what? Do the Arabian soldiers know they are being paid by the English? Does the Sheriff’s death squad? Because they seemed all too happy to execute Arabian soldiers and lost a lot of their men in the skirmish. Also, do the cardinal and the Arabs have a deal that after they win they won’t just invade England? Cause that sure seems like something they’d want to do. Also England wasn’t the only country (well it wasn’t even England, but we’ll ignore that for now) fighting in the Crusades. There was Normandy, Lombardy, the Holy Roman Empire…. Are they also in on this plan?

Another thing; the whole bit with the Sheriff wanting to imprison or kill all his subjects who had no money to pay in the mines; who are you going to rule over if your populace is dead? No. Sense.

Characters (Ben Mendelsohn Makes Everything 300 Times Better):

Speaking of the Sheriff let’s talk about his backstory.

Ben Mendelsohn is an excellent actor, and he elevates material that is usually far beneath him to good, even great standards. And he is clearly having the time here; he has several monologues, many scenes of shouting or overacting, and he has really good chemistry with both Egerton and Fox. The scene where he is threatening John is probably the best acting in the film, and I wish the two had more time to spar.

However, this character’s backstory and the way he delivers it is insane. I have to put a SPOILER warning, but trust me, you want me to tell you what it is. The Sheriff apparently was an orphan, raised in a church orphanage, where every night the Lords and Cardinals would come to beat and possibly, heavily implied, sexually assault the children, including him. He has a long monologue about this, where he goes in graphic detail, of which I will spare you here, and he tells all of this to Robin of Loxley who he has, at this point known for a few days at most. Honestly the pure confusion and terror on Egerton’s face during this scene was what I was feeling the whole time. The film makes you remember this backstory, brings it up in both every scene Egerton and Mendelsohn have after this and even have Robin callback to it at the very end in a pretty callous manner, unbefitting of the film’s protagonist. And I have to ask, why? Was the Sheriff being a greedy, immoral man not enough, now he has to be the victim of child abuse and sexual assault too?

Speaking of bad idea characters, Will Scarlet is in this and boy did I hate him. Jamie Dornan is finally allowed to be Irish in this which is refreshing, but by God, he has nothing to work with. His whole character is just set up for a sequel and in this film he just exists so Marian has a reason not to immediately reconcile with Robin. Why filmmakers always feel the need to have Will’s character be some kind of a twist, instead of just playing him straight is beyond me.

Marion, if we ignore the ridiculous outfits she’s forced to wear is fine as a character, but she just doesn’t fit with the fabric of this world. First off, how was she living with Robin (and everyone knew this) without being married to him? And how is she living with Will now without being married to him? Also, how is she allowed to question and attack the Sherrif without being 50 kinds of executed after the first time she dared to speak? She was also a lot more proactive in the whole going against the Sheriff business than Robin, so why he was leader at the end and not her is also beyond me, but what do I know. At least she wasn’t a damsel in distress.

Tuck and John were both fine. I liked them both equally, though John gets a lot more screen time. Jamie Foxx kills every scene he’s in, and I liked that he had his own mini storyline with the Sheriff and his son’s death. I don’t understand why they felt the need to combine the role of Little John and the Saracen character (who in my version of the stories was called Salim), but he was still a great character. Tuck was comic relief, but he was a welcome change from the rest of the film, and he resembled his story counterpart the closest.

Robin Hood himself was a mixed bag. Like Foxx, Taron Egerton is a trooper and he give Robin a lot of charm and life, which this version of the character desperately needs. There are several scenes where he is absolutely frightened, emotional or suffering from PTSD, end Egerton sells it. He is great at the action scenes, has the physique for the part, and brings a charm and a sexiness to the role that really works for the scene where he’s the Lord Loxley.

What doesn’t work (at least not always) is the actual character. Bless his heart, but he has no chemistry with Eve Hewson, no matter how much he tries. He has much more chemistry with both Foxx and Mendelsohn, but the issue is that Marian is his entire motivation. The film resorts to numerous cheezy flashbacks of their romance, scenes of them kissing or longingly looking at each other and it just comes off as ridiculous and forced. If they were going for a Princess Bride vibe, that film worked because a) Cary Elwes and Robin Wright had chemistry b) the film established their love and didn’t rely on flashbacks to convince us they were in love, we just knew it.

I did like that Robin was a bit selfish, and seemed to be doing things just to win Marian back, even though technically that’s not faithful to the stories; it was was a good starting point for the character to grow from. I’m just not sure he grew much at all; at the end of the film he’s still a bit selfish and a bit petty. Things like his PTSD are also never really addressed and explored and though again, it makes sense that Robin being in the wars would suffer from it, I’m not sure Robin Hood is the place to tell it.

Conclusion?

All in all this film was very fun. It doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, and as such it tried to be everything and excels at nothing. However the good acting, fun action scenes and truly bizarre style of the film more than make up for it, and I implore you to go see it, both so you can experience the madness yourself, and so it makes enough money for a sequel.

[sparda3g]

One Piece Chapter 899 Review

The arc is drawing closer to the end and this time I am certain it is. Unless Luffy gets Full Heal from somewhere and we’re off for Big Mom versus Luffy. In all seriousness, the only part remains is to escape the Whole Cake Island, let alone Big Mom. The long journey of sweet of terror is nearly over and this chapter provides a round of info/setup before the climax.

The first couple of pages raise the tension of Charlotte Family’s fate, let alone everyone around Big Mom. Mont D’or continues to be the info giver and receiver of the family as he is trying to get a hold of Peros, the same bastard that forced Pedro to go out with a bang (no pun intended). Thankfully and sadistically, he has grown weak from his injury alas losing an arm. It’s about time that it took a toll on his body; if only he doesn’t wake up anymore.

Oda wrote Mont D’or to info dump the three possible scenarios that Big Mom may end up after eating the ultimate cake, which could fuel the prediction poll for fans to guess. One is if the cake is bad, Big Mom will resume chaos and soon, everyone and everything of Whole Cake Island will perish. Two is if the cake is poison and kill her, the whole family is done for; the reputation will go down the drain. Lastly and the most hopeful one, if the cake is delicious and she lives, everyone is spared.

Granted, it is highly likely that the last option is where it is going with, but part of me feel like something else will happen instead. It happened with the wedding whereas Pudding ended up being the cause of the downfall, so maybe the route that wasn’t said would happen. To think, the fate of everything all lies on that one cake. It sounds like a cooking manga if I were to only mention that plot thread.

If that wasn’t enough trouble for the family, they now noticed that Big News Morgan and Stussy have left the island. If Big Mom doesn’t go down under, those journalists could still report the incident and ruin the reputation. It sounds to me that the family will square off against them, unless they are easily captured. That is if everything goes smoothly. This would be big news indeed.

Oda drew a good atmospheric setting of panic and sadness. The citizens are in state of emergency as Big Mom draws closer to the cake. No one knows if this will cure her, but it’s certain that they regretted for literally sell part of their soul to her. Was it worth it? Interestingly and very risky of Chiffon, she placed the cake at Puffs Island - Fluffy Town. The interesting part is that the island is her in charge of alas the Minister of Puffs. At least we knew what she was doing before the Strawhats invade. That said what a way to danger your people, Chiffon.

I guess you can say this is metaphor of her to go down with the ship; that is if the cake fails to please. On the other hand, not only she believes that cake will fulfill Big Mom’s desire, but Bege comes in time to escape with her before the climax. I’m still amazed on how much he grew on me. Big Mom finally arrives and it stops there before we get anything further; probably saving for the big 900. The moment of truth is almost here.

It does feel pretty good for all Strawhats Crew (that has gone to this journey) to be reunited and the first thing we got from Luffy is he was tired of waiting. I don’t know why, but I laughed; it’s probably how it was executed with his comical expression like he was fed up with his crew. Small moments like those are the joy of the series that continue to be strong. They still have to worry about Smoothie as she is getting closer to the ship, so the danger isn’t over.

The most amusing part of the chapter is when Judge actually makes his way to the scene and slows down Smoothie from advancing further. For some reason, I thought this would be a moment to bury the hatchet or at least try to start the train of redemption, but instead, Judge is still ruthless as always. What a crybaby. However, the amusing part is when Judge asks Luffy why he is going all the way here just to save “that.” Douche…

He insults Sanji by calling him a failure to the family, good-for-nothing, and weak minded fool. The only part that he is good at is cooking, but that is nothing to be proud of. This would have been a right time for Luffy to defend Sanji and usually going into persuasive mode alas talk no jutsu. Instead, we got a hilarious reply of thank you. I know Luffy’s character has been done in many Shounen but for some reason, Oda knows how to execute the dumbfound aspect of the protagonist properly.

I was ready for Luffy to defend Sanji because that’s his friend and all. Sanji was frustrated to hear Judge’s rotten mouth, yet Luffy saw it as a great compliment. He even felt confused on why Judge said so many good things about Sanji. Even if his friends tried to convince him that it’s not meant to be positive, he still goes with his first impression. Now that’s selective hearing. That said I do appreciate the comical yet subtle respect of Luffy for Sanji. He saw him as a cook and a good person, not a solider to his own family. That’s a fun way to exploit that and my respect to Oda’s writing remains strong.

Although that was good fun and all, it shifts back to the serious problem they now have. The ambush fleet arrives and Strawhats are now cornered. That damn Daikfuku is still around as well as his genie that can grow larger than before. Why no grant wishes? What’s worse is Smoothie is close enough to engage combat herself. It looks like this escape scene would be centering on sailing out of there rather trying to board one, which is surprisingly refreshing. It’s probably because I’m used to them running to the Thousand Sunny or in the past, Going Merry, and that will be the endgame. In here, they’re already on board, but they have to sail out now, so the situation is different.

The setup for the big climax has certainly gotten thrilling; however, there’s one more part that put a smile on my face. Just when you thought Strawhats are pretty much done for, it’s not Germa 66 that comes to make a surprise save. It’s the former pirate crew, Wadatsumi. Those chapter covers really does come play in; never ignore those pieces. What made me jump for joy, metaphorically speaking that is, is the Sun Pirates returned to back up their former captain. This is why characters in this series are likable or dislikable in a reasonable way; Oda times the moment nicely to make it standout.

Overall, it was a pretty good chapter that’s preparing for the big climax. The tension behind Big Mom and the cake is quite intriguing as everything relies on it.  The atmosphere of danger in all fronts is well presented. Strawhats Crew moments are delight and hilarious with Luffy responded very positive for something that was meant for a series of insults. The artwork is nice and clean. I just like expression that Luffy made when he was tired. The ending is uplifting and makes the climax much anticipated than before. The big 900 is next!…Wow…900 chapters. Quite a feat…

[lady-of-rohan]

My sincere and honest thoughts regarding The Evil Within 2:

So, I'm finally sitting down and writing out ALL my thoughts on TEW2... at first, I was kind of nervous. After all, I mean so many people are going to love it, right? Well, to put things into perspective, @detective-joseph-oda and I literally returned the game. I've never taken back a game in my life.

It's been a difficult rollercoaster for me. TEW fandom is my everything... so, it's not like I'm leaving, or going to stop being mama or shipping or cosplaying or anything like that. I love this community and I want to contribute and continue to support my kids. I also would never want people to not play a game, or not get enjoyment out of it by voicing my opinions. A lot of people have asked me what I thought ... so here's my honest write-up, as someone who picked up TEW1 on its release date back in 2014 and has been in the fandom ever since.

MAJOR SPOILERS naturally.

Let's start out positive with things we actually liked:

Stefano! He was a super cool character, a total flamboyant psycho, and I adored all of the artsy, musical-inclined deaths with the slow-mo blood. That was really aesthetic, and really gorgeously done. Like, I couldn’t get enough of it.

Obscura is also amazing, though her moaning noises were a bit odd.

Anima (the singing enemy) was nicely done.And probably the scariest thing in the game.

The graphics are beautiful.

Gameplay controls are good.

Music is also nice.

Save kitty and Tatiana are back, which was a brief treat, but awesome ones.

Green gel and syringes are back (eyyy~).

Getting to walk around KCPD in Seb's old office.

The beginning fire sequence with Seb entering the house. GORGEOUSLY and amazingly done... it really built it up and started out strong... but then... well...

General things I sincerely disliked:

Firstly, the OPEN WORLD SEGMENTS. Ugh... this was the worst part of the game. Hands down. It was unnecessary, and not remotely horror at all. It was easy to see where this game drew influence from other games recently, and quite honestly , it didn't work for me. It was wicked distracting and out of place. This does not belong in this genre, making the game feel like it was torn in several different gameplay directions. It couldn't decide whether it wanted to be linear or open world. The tracker was annoying, and straight out of Silent Hill Shattered Memories which is certainly nothing new.

The game also sometimes flipped from third to first person. Very distracting. To be fair, I think a lot of this game mechanic confusion happened due to the following reason:

It's American horror transformation from Japanese horror. I won't lie, I'm a Shinji Mikami fangirl. I find him to be brilliant.  Always have... and I stopped liking Resident Evil as soon as 5 came out, and he left as director. TEW was supposed to be his love story to horror fans. Something he could leave us, as he described in one interview, that didn't suffer from "sequelitis." So you can imagine my true horror when I heard that Johanas was the new director.

The jump from American horror from Japanese is stark, and shattering if you're a big horror gamer like I am. Japanese horror isn't afraid to leave things up in the air or neatly explain everything. They often leave you confused, and often in high anxiety or suspense. They don't give straight answers.  In TEW2, though, nothing is really scary any more. It also relies HEAVILY upon mechanics, plot devices, and gameplay from other games... most notably The Last of Us but also Uncharted, Resident Evil 7, The Division, Outlast, SIlent Hill and SH Shattered Memories, Layers of Fear. Of which TEW was nothing like ANY of these. And yes, I know the new director, Johanas, is the same as the DLCs... but at least the DLCs provided some sincerely terrifying moments.

(side note: I was the most peeved that the ending of both TLOU and TEW2 is literally carrying your daughter or daughter figure in your arms... and that the emotional moments between them take place in a vehicle as they gaze at one another. Influenced much?).

Which brings me to... the main thing a survival-horror game should have. Horror.

This game is not scary. Nor was it difficult in any sense of the word. Unless you count... actually getting through it, which was very painful at times.

We honestly didn't die once during our 12-hour stream. This was absolutely disappointing. And confusing. Why wasn't this game more difficult? Sometimes I still die in the beginning sequence of TEW1. It's still terrifying as the Sadist comes at Seb, he injures his leg, and Seb limps for his life.

Furthermore, the utter sense of isolation, confusion, and abandonment is gone. In TEW1, you literally have no idea what the hell is going on, left in the dark figuratively and at times, literally. That's what makes it scary, aside from the hideous creatures out for blood. With so many Mobius NPCs, you always know a safe house, or a safe room, is well within running distance. It's so easy to use avoidant tactics and not fight much, rather than fighting for your life every few minutes.

Which leads us into...

The NPCs. I'm sorry, everyone was so cardboard and generic. Also boring in my opinion. Their interactions with Seb felt awkward and forced. I didn't give a damn about any of them ( @detective-joseph-oda, liked Sykes, which is fair because he had the most personality out of all of them). Again, the isolation and terror is gone. You have friends... and not just Kidman in your ear telling you what to do. Unlike the first game, where you were absolutely alone 90% of the time, with increased anxiety every time Joseph left your side and you were left to your own devices again.

On that note, this game provides way too much information as you work with Mobius. TEW1 left theories in the online community for months. No one knew what truly went on behind Beacon. It was fascinating to theorize about the character's fates. Mobius was just a terror in the distance, vaguely mentioned and yet their symbols were emblazoned on doors every so often leaving a sense of intrigue and mystery.  What was real and what wasn’t? Not something to worry about any more, as everyone directly explains everything to you, every step of the way. Even the DLCs added more information than answered questions, and the fandom was, well, for lack of a better word, shook.

The DLCs suddenly made Mobius, and Kidman,  Administrator, etc... the main focus. Suddenly, Beacon wasn't so spooky any more because they were tugging the strings. Which brings us to our next point...

The importance is suddenly almost entirely placed upon Kidman as a side character (she's the only other one you play as, after all).  I get it. People love Kidman. She’s a familiar face. This was obviously shifting this way in the DLCs. Not only was this Seb's story arc (unless you count the DLCs) but it felt out of place seeing as you only get to be her a few brief segments.  It seemed to me like the game wanted to neatly tie up BOTH of their character arcs in one game, rather than provide another Kidman DLC to see how things went down on her end again. It felt like a bit much going on.. not to mention Joseph was Seb’s actual partner and his focus in TEW1. More on that later. On that note, The Administrator was such a wasted opportunity. Instead of being a creepy monster influence like he once was inside of STEM, he just sits in his chair like a typical Bond Villain and has agents do his evil bidding. He sits back and "MWAHAHAS" rather than actively playing a part in the events around him.

And now we get into the nitty gritty, and the things I am most passionately outspoken about with this game.

Stefano is HARDLY in it, and the game has far too many antagonists. I was so disappointed to see Stefano ended by chapter 9 because he was the best part of the game. That's only halfway through that he makes it, and he is the character they used on all of their promotional material, and even their art contest. Super disappointing.

New Seb... isn't our Seb. He's down on his luck, sure, but he's almost at peace with it given his other behavior. We only really see that Seb is downtrodden because he's written in a bar at the beginning of the game and he has a beard of sorrow. Everything else leads to Seb seeming pretty high functioning and generally in better spirits. It almost feels like invasion of the body snatchers. His facial features are different (rendered to be more classically handsome, perhaps). He's suddenly more sassy, and infinitely more talkative, making him far from the near-silent protagonist he once was. Instead of playing his cards close to the vest, he wears his heart on the sleeve, often openly emotional. Which, given the contrast between he and Joseph in the first game, is not his usual style. Joseph was the "emotional" of the two. He also hardly swears or even says his token trade-marked 'FUCK.' You can't get through five minutes of the game without him making some kind of snappy, cheesy one-liner or talking to himself. It’s hard to take the game seriously as horror this time around.The obviously new voice actor for him, compared to Anson's experience, is also a rough transition.

Is it because he's after his child, who he thought was dead that he's so different? I dunno... I don't buy it. And speaking of, Lily's crying was some of the worst voice acting I've heard in a game in a very long time. I won't say much on her, other than I was severely disappointed by the overly-happy ending, neatly tied up in a package with a bow. TEW isn't The Last of Us. It was never a "father saves his daughter" game. It was horror. Lily and Myra were there for backstory only.This seemed like a money-making gimmick to me, given the popularity of such series that have gone the familial route, rather than sticking to their original genres (Uncharted for example). Family sells. Saving your family sells. Although I'm happy for Seb, I truly am... it's absolutely jarring to see the end of this game compared to the first.It’s almost alien.

The characterization, and dialogue writing... overall was bad. Especially between Seb and Myra (O'Neal, too).

Myra... well, again, I won't say much. I was very disappointed that she had a redemption arc, and that she wasn't out against Sebastian from the start as the DLCs perhaps hinted at. She was a good wife. A good person. Very clean for a horror game. It was an easy out. And her design was a direct rip off Ruvik and honestly really reaching. Shoutout to the fact that she looks like literal cum.

Finally, and here we go... the original story arc was about Ruvik. His pain, his motivations, his invention of STEM to bring Laura back. As far as we know, he's still out there inhabiting Leslie as a vessel. This... was just dropped in favor of a retconned Seb saves Lily story. Ruvik was so much more interesting. They could have at least given him a little bit of screen time. I really feel like they dropped the actual horror ball, shifting the focus from the mind of a madman, as the original game called it.. to a very Umbrella-esque organization. Seeing Seb face Leslie/Ruvik in the real world was a HUGE missed opportunity.

And last but certainly not least.. the fandom's beloved Joseph Oda. Going back to Kidman who was the Junior Detective, and not Sebastian's actual partner of 9 years like Joseph was, it just hurts to see him discarded. Yes, we got our confirmation that he's alive which is something the fandom has theorized for years. Johanas himself had left Joseph with a heartbeat in the DLCs, hinting at his state of life. But you also have to work for it. HARD. To even see this happy information flashed on your projection screen, you need every single photo slide and side quest finished. It isn't even remotely satisfying, and again, it's another tease. Kidman gives you an excuse and dodges questions about his whereabouts, or how he is, or if he's just a brain in a jar...

The ending hints that someone is now running STEM again as the Core. Is it Joseph? Who knows... DLC perhaps? If so I'm not sure I'm interested. Joseph may not be who he once was if he gets the same treatment of the other characters.

Going back to Seb's characterization, (I think @debussyj will agree with me on this) his partner for most of his detective career has been supposedly "dead" in his eyes for three years.  He was willing to believe Lily was alive again, but why not Joseph? The care that they showed for each other in the first game was so apparent. All shipping aside. They cared for each other so much and yes, Lily is his blood, but Joseph was part of his life far longer. And now Joseph is just a footnote in Seb's life, because he got his daughter back. Blood is thicker than water I guess, but boy Seb, that's no way to treat the man who helped you through your personal tragedy, as the DLCs went out of their way to mention, and the partner you came to work beside, admire and respect. This more than anything felt the most disappointing and OOC for me. It felt downright disrespectful, especially since Ruvik pointedly mocks Sebastian by using Joseph in the first game ("poor little Joseph") and Seb's motivations throughout the first game are first and foremost, helping his partner get through it, too. It's like the two almost never existed as partners.

The TLDR version; this game is not an actual horror game, is a far cry from its original genre, theme, and atmosphere... it uses a heavy reliance upon other popular games, the writing isn't good or consistent, the characters feel entirely different, and no, Joseph is not in it.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Reopen Movie Theaters Edition 8/21/20: UNHINGED, PENINSULA, THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS, TESLA and More!

Well, this is the weekend when movie theaters are supposed to reopen, whether it’s some of the big chains like Regal or AMC, even though, Canada is well ahead of us, having opened about 300 theaters last weekend. A few of the movies in this week’s column will supposedly only be released only in theaters, while a few of them have already given up on theatrical to go the streaming route. I really don’t know what to tell you if you live in New York and L.A. except that pre-COVID, you used to get all the movies first, so I guess we better get used to things flipping thanks to the pandemic. Either way, there’s an INSANE number of new movies this week, and I’m going to do my best to cover all of them… or at least the ones that I know exist.

And then on top of all THAT, the annual Fantasia Festival in Montreal is starting this week in a virtual edition filled with literally hundreds of genre films, and lots of great films from Asia in particular, and man, I wish I had time to watch more of the movies they’re offering. I’ve only been up to Fantasia in person a few times, and both times were great experiences. Much of that has to do with the audience, which is mostly made up of college-age and older genre fans who enthusiastically lap up every minute of genre awesome that Fantasia delivers. Sadly, it’s very much the type of festival that benefits from being together in person, especially at the end of the night when filmmakers and fans alike converge on one of the local drinking holes.

One of the movies I did have a chance to watch was Justin McConnell’s Clapboard Jungle: Surviving the Independent Film Business, an intriguing doc that follows the director of Lifechanger on his five-year journey to get that movie made. It involves a lot of schmoozing and networking at festivals like Fantasia (in their Frontiéres market, which I’ve never attended) and Cannes, basically struggling to sell his ideas to financers and trying to focus on other ventures (like short films) in the meantime. It’s a sobering film for anyone wanting to become a filmmaker, because McConnell doesn’t leave any moment of utter heartbreak on the cutting room floor on his journey to make a movie that I have literally never heard of! So yeah, I guess calling your movie “Lifechanger” could end up being more ironic than you set out to, but what McConnell has in this movie is some great advice and anecdotes from some of the greatest horror filmmakers, including Guillermo del Toro, Richard Stanley, Larry Fessenden, Sid Haig, Mick Garris. I mean, if they’ve been involved in any aspect of indie horror over the past five years, they’re in this movie, and often, it’s more worthwhile listening to them than following McConnell’s own journey.

I hope to have more to say about Fantasia over the next few weeks as it runs through September 2, but I gotta get to the crazy number of movies opening this week, and again, a few of them are in theaters.

Speaking of movie theaters, Russell Crowe stars in the action-thriller UNHINGED (Solstice Studios), which will presumably ONLY be seen in movie theaters this weekend, reportedly 2,000 theaters that will not include either New York or California, the two biggest movie markets in the country. Sigh. Let’s just get on with this…

Directed by Derrick Borte (The Joneses), Crowe plays a violent and angry white man – can’t wait for THOSE think pieces, he said sarcastically – who is literally honked at by Caren Pistorious’ soon-to-be-divorced mother who is late bringing her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) to school. He does what every sane person would do… he proceeds to terrorize her, kill her loved ones and do everything he can to teach her a lesson. America, what a wonderful place, huh?

Those going to see this movie to literally watch Crowe come unhinged won't have to wait too long, as we meet his character as he’s attacking a family and burns down their house, before we’re subjected to an opening credit montage of the type of anger and violence that’s permeated this country over the past few years. We then meet Pistorius’ Rachel as she tries to cope while facing a divorce and trying to get her son to school when she has what would normally be a fairly innocuous encounter with Crowe’s character that drives what is clearly an already insane man over the endge.

There’s something about Unhinged that reminds me of the Michael Douglas movie Falling Down, but that’s only if you consider Crowe the protagonist of the movie, which I certainly don’t. That would be Pistorius’ character, who finds herself being tormented as this man starts following her around and making an already bad day even worse, just to make her feel as miserable as he does. Yeah, it’s not a great movie for current times, but you at least have to give it credit for having a title that gives you exactly what you’re paying to see.

Borte does a pretty decent job creating tension, although parts of it end up being unintentionally funny due to how over-the-top and absurd the whole thing is. At least it all builds up to an amazing final car chase, driven by David Buckley’s score, and that more or less makes up for how ridiculous the movie’s high concept premise gets earlier. While Unhinged has its moments of silliness, I honestly haven’t gotten as excited watching a movie over the past few months as I did watching it – your road rage may vary.

After opening in roughly 300 Canadian theaters last weekend, it will expand into North America in an estimated 2,000 theatres. Under most normal circumstances i.e. before March, I might try to predict how well it might do at the box office, I feel that the times have made it tougher or nearly impossible. (I’ll say it makes $2 to 3 million, just for a laugh.)

The movie I was MOST looking forward to seeing this week was Yeon Sang-Ho’s TRAIN TO BUSAN PRESENTS: PENINSULA (Well Go USA/Shudder), which as you may guess from the title is the sequel to his 2016 zombie flick, Train to Busan. This one takes place four years later as a group of Koreans that have evacuated to Hong Kong before the country was shut off from the rest of the world are sent back to retrieve a truck full of American money that could make them rich beyond belief. Not only do they have to contend with zombies but ruthless military gangs that make their mission more difficult.

Listen, Train to Busan was so good as its own standalone movie, we really didn’t need a sequel to see what was going on with that world, but Director Yeon clearly had some idea what that world might look like years later, and it’s a pretty scary place. Paying tribute equally to movies like The Road Warrior and Escape from New York, he decided to introduce some new characters and follow their journey.  We meet Kim Do-won’s Cheol-min as he’s taking his wife and son to a ship that’s going to take survivors from the first zombie wave to Japan. Things don’t go as planned and Cheol-min is one of the few survivors thanks to his military brother-in-law Jung-seok (Dong-Won Gang), but the two end up stranded in Hong Kong as the borders of Korea are closed. Four years later, they’re given the incentive to go back to Korea to retrieve the money, and of course, things don’t go as planned. After being attacked first by zombies and then the gang-like military group Unit 631, led by Min-jae Kim’s Sgt. Kwang and Gyo-han Kwoo’s Captain Seo, Jung-seok is saved by two young girls (Re Lee, Ye-Won Lee) and their mother, played by Jung-hyun Lee.

That’s the basic set-up for a film that doesn’t quite measure up to Train to Busan, not because director Yeon wasn’t trying. He clearly didn’t want to necessarily copy exactly what he did in the first movie, but also, he wasn’t able to completely replicate that film’s magic either. A lot of that may be since the characters aren’t nearly as interesting; they’re tougher and far more able to fight off the zombie swarms, which lowers the stakes considerably. Setting the movie further into an apocalypse just means it’s going to tread familiar territory, particularly from things like The Walking Dead.

Despite what I said above about the characters, I generally liked the cast, especially the spunky young girls who took on zombies and militia men alike, but I’ll admit I got more than a little confused about the two main guys, the brothers-in-law. They look so different in the opening sequence, I couldn’t figure out which was which when introduced for the body of the movie. Since this movie mostly takes place at night, it’s also harder to see the brilliant work done by the FX people and zombie actors, which is still pretty amazing to watch.

Peninsula makes for a pretty decent throwback action flick, and you can’t completely fault it for not having as many emotional beats throughout, because the ending is so overflowing with feels, it’s obvious Director Yeon has succeeded again.

Disney+ is premiering the family film THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN on its Disney+ streaming service this Friday. Directed by Thea Sharrock (Me Before You), it stars Bryan Cranston as Mack, the ringmaster of a strip mall circus whose star attraction is the gorilla, “The One and Only Ivan!” (as voiced by Sam Rockwell). The circus isn’t doing as well as it used to, so Mack has bought a baby elephant named Ruby (voiced by Brooklyn Prince) as a draw for the show’s other elephant Stella (voiced by Angela Jolie). Ivan isn’t too thrilled with the show’s new attraction, but he has other things on his mind, including a pesky dog named Bob (voiced by Danny DeVito) and others voiced by Hellen Mirren, Phillipa Soo… and yes, you’re reading this right… Chaka Khan!

It’s based on the children’s book by Katherine Applegate, adapted by the always great Mike White, and while at first glance, it might seem like a dangerous meld of Tim Burton’s Dumbo with the early 2020 dog Dolittle, there’s a lot more at work here. Sure, there’s a lot of the typical Disney kiddie-related humor – fart jokes and other visual gags – but it’s really about these CG animals and their feelings about their situation, and the elements used to create them and make them feel are superb. Cranston also does a good job maintaining his composure while getting involved in some of the film’s silliness.

Of course, you could just “aww” over the adorable elephant Ruby (basically a miniature version of the Jolie-voiced Stella) or laugh at the antics of the other animals. My favorite was definitely the De Vito-voiced dog, Bob, who offers some of the best jabs and gags, which helps keep the tone from ever getting too heavy without losing the dramatic weight. The movie even takes a cue from Madagascar for one sequence, but either way, it will keep you and your kids entertained.

The entire movie is very emotional, especially the last twenty minutes that might make it hard from having a good old ugly cry. This is a truly wonderful family film and one of the weekend’s nicer surprises. (Note: I also did a more technical review of the movie about things like cinematography and visual FX over at Below the Line.)

This week’s “Featured Flick” is WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS (LD Entertainment/Roadside Attractions), based on the novel by Julia Walton, which stars Charlie Plummer (Lean on Pete) as Adam Petrozelli, a high school senior who discovers he suffers from schizophrenia that is far worse than just the voices he hears. It gets him expelled, but knowing he wants to go to culinary school, Adam’s mother (Molly Parker) enrolls him at St. Agatha’s Catholic school, where he tries to keep his condition a secret while being tutored by a brainy and quite attractive classmate, played by Taylor Russell (Waves).

If you read last week’s column, you’ll already know my reticence towards young adult fare. Even with that in mind, I do enjoy coming-of-age tales, especially those set in or around high school, and then if you throw in a bit of religion, some foodie culture and a little tinge of humor, even while dealing with a serious subject, you’ll probably have me on board. That’s definitely true about this movie, adapted by Thor Freudenthal, who makes a smooth transition from kiddie fare to older kiddie fare with a really unique look at one young teen’s journey through an important moment in his life while dealing with a condition that some are never able to overcome.

Having not read the original book or anything about the movie before seeing it, I was a little surprised when things go haywire in Adam’s science class, since I thought maybe he was a mutant. We then meet three characters who will follow him around (at least in his head) for much of the movie, played by Anna Sophia Robb, Devon Bostick and Lobo Sebastian, each representing a part of Adam’s psyche: kind of like the devil and angel telling you what to do in any given situation. It’s quite witty and a clever way to bring some humor into many scenes, particularly Sebastian’s role as “The Bodyguard,” carrying a baseball bat, ready to attack anything that keeps Adam from achieving his goal of being a chef. I loved how the three characters interplayed as a Greek chorus with what was happening.

Adam eventually meets Russell’s Maya, the perky, snarky and super smart St. Agatha’s Valedictorian, who he convinces to tutor him in math, while also trying to hide his biggest secret from her. As Adam starts taking a new medication, the voices and his companions start disappearing, but he also learns there are negative side effects. There was a lot to enjoy about this movie, but it was particularly interesting how Freudenthal uses sound and CG FX to recreate what’s going through Adam’s mind when he’s off his meds.

The film coasts gracefully on the general likability of both Plummer and Russell during the highs and lows of their relationship, but I also enjoyed the adults cast around them, including Molly Parker as his mother, Walton Goggins as her overly-cloying live-in boyfriend, and Andy Garcia as a compassionate padre, who all have great scenes with Plummer, bringing many more layers to the characters and story than we normally might get.

Words on Bathroom Walls is an absolutely wonderful movie – for me, it’s this year’s Book Smart -- and a very pleasant surprise at a time when I’m super-cynical about movies that I’m forced to watch on my laptop. Besides being a really original coming-of-age film, it also finds a way to deal with schizophrenia in a head-on way that hopefully gets others to understand a mental illness that makes it hard to live a normal life.

Michael Almereyda writes, directs and produces TESLA (IFC Films), which as you may guess is not a biopic about Elon Musk, but is actually a very different biopic about inventor Nikola Tesla, as played by Almereyda regular, Ethan Hawke. The film follows Tesla through his early relations with Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan), George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan) but more importantly the women, including Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson), who narrates the semi-fictionalized account of Tesla’s life.

If you saw last year’s The Current War, you may be wondering why we need another movie about Nikola Tesla that covers some of the very same ground. I’ll get to that in a moment. Using IMDB, I can probably figure out how many movies Almereyda and Hawke have made together, but I’d have a harder time figuring out if Almereyda has made a single movie I’ve liked, and believe me, I’ve tried. That’s partially what makes Tesla such an interesting endeavor, since it might be Almereyday’s most daring and accomplished work to date.

You have to assume The Current War was already made and out there by the time Almereyda even started making this since that played at Toronto many years ago. Apparently, Almereyda had his own vision and decided to make it, undaunted, because this is certainly a rather unique take. It’s narrated by JP Morgan’s youngest daughter Anne, played by Hewson, but she does so in a way that’s almost out of time, even mentioning Google. For the most part, Almereyda and his cast stick with the period, but there are definitely a few moments like that where it veers into an almost surreal fictionalized version of events.

What really makes Tesla standout is the subdued performance by Hawke where he never goes overboard with Tesla’s Eastern-European accent (unlike Tesla’s associate Szigeti who often sounds like Borat). More importantly, Almereyda decides to tell Tesla’s story through his tentative relationship with women. You see, he never got married, and yet, he meets all these beautiful women along the way who have an impact on his life and career, mostly Anne who provides him with her father’s money but also the intriguing actress Sarah Bernhardt (played by Rebecca Dayan) and others. There are still some of the other players like Edison (played by Kyle MacLachlan) and though I like the interesting turn in Jim Gaffigan’s career into dramatic roles, I did prefer Michael Shannon as George Westinghouse in The Current War.

Regardless, Tesla is just such a gorgeous film that delivers a biopic unlike others using a very distinctive tone, maybe even with a nod or two to David Lynch, and that’s what helps set it apart from Almereyda’s previous work.

Wu-tang Clan founder The RZA directs his third movie, CUT THROAT CITY (Well GO USA), a crime-drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans, starring Shameik Moore (Dope) as James aka Blink, a cartoonist from the Lower 9th Ward, who, along with three of his drugdealer buddies (Denzel Whitaker, Demetrius Shipp Jr, Keean Johnson), are coerced by T.I.’s vicious druglord, “Cousin” Bass, into robbing a casino that puts them in the crosshairs of the local police and others.

There’s something on paper about this movie, written by P.G. Cuschieri, that seems a little been-there done-that, although the cast The RZA has put together – including Ethan Hawke, Rob Hunter, Wesley Snipes, Isaiah Washington and Terrence Howard – some in smaller roles – is just so impressive you just can’t ignore it. RZA is also working with a decent script, one with a few tonal and pacing issues, but also one tht maintains a youthful energy that feels authentic to the time and place.

It takes a little time to get to the actual heist, which paves the way for everything else that happens, including a few deaths. It’s after that where we meet Detective Lucida Valencia (played by Eiza González), who is trying to solve the case of the casino robbery, as more parties get involved, including a City Councilman played by Hawke and some of their fathers. Rob Hunter is fantastic as Blink’s father, who delivers some mighty fine scenes, but others, like Snipes and Howard, have fairly small roles. At first, Hawke’s role seems like a mere cameo, but when he returns almost an hour into the movie, he delivers quite an impassioned monologue that proves his worth in any sized role. It’s a sign of a good director to cast such great actors them step aside an let them do their thing.

Cut Throat City is definitely one of those movies that gets better as it goes along, although it’s by no means an “action movie” in terms of how it deals with the situation in New Orleans that turns so many young men like James/Blink to crime to earn a living. It sometimes gets bogged down in its dialogue and drama and things might not come together as well as hoped, but right now, as a director, the RZA might end up being the unlikely successor to the Singleton legacy.

Jay Baruchel adapts the comic book RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE (Shudder) by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. It follows Todd Walkley, a graphic novel writer played by Jesse Williams, who goes on a road trip with his wife Kathy (Jordana Brewster), for them to follow the trail and study the murders of the serial killer that inspired Todd’s hit comic book character “Slasherman.” Along for the journey is Todd’s best friend Ezra (Baruchel) and art assistant Aurora (Niamh Wilson).

Although I had read the original comic book on which this is based, it was a long time ago. I clearly forgot how dark it was, especially since in this case, the quartet’s story starts in far lighter and fun way. I assume Baruchel and his co-writer Jesse Chabot did this intentionally. It isn’t long before a killer in a welder’s outfit starts brutally killing people and leaving the bodies where our heroes can find them. Turns out that it’s a copycat who is recreating the murders in Todd’s comic.

Baruchel does a decent job with his second feature as a director, which is surprising since his first movie was a hockey comedy, which would have been right up his wheelhouse. Goon: Last of the Enforcers also was tougher since it was a sequel to a really good movie, but Baruchel shows that he has a real handle on horror, especially when it comes to making it as disturbing as anything out there.  He has able help in cinematographer Karim Hussain, who gives the film such a stark look with bright green and red lighting, as well as the make-up FX team who create some truly grotesque murder victims.

I’m not usually a fan of slasher films so much, but Random Acts of Violence takes the interesting spin on the genre from the comics and adds new elements that really elevate the original story. (For one, Niamh Wilson’s character was terrific, and she’s completely original to the movie.) These elements and just the overall look and tone makes Baruchel’s adaptation one of the more effective horror films I’ve seen this year.

Indie filmmaker Aaron B. Koontz (Camera Obscura) returns with his second feature, the horror-Western THE PALE DOOR (RLJE Films/Shudder). It’s about two brothers, Duncan Dalton (Zachary Knighton) and his younger brother Jake (Devin Druid), who lead a motley group on a failed bank robbery. After Duncan is injured, they find a girl named Pearl chained in the wilderness, and they follow her back to a ghost town to get Duncan medical aid where they’re brought to a brothel that turns out to be a coven of witches.

I don’t want to fully shit on this movie, because it has a few elements of merit, but honestly, none of them show up until roughly 51 minutes into the movie when it transforms from a fairly lame Western into a semi-decent horror flick. The movie is co-written by Keith Lansdale, who you might guess is the son of Joe R. Lansdale (an EP on the movie), who is kind of legendary for his horror-Westerns. Instead, The Pale Door spends the first half following overused Western tropes but not particularly well-written ones, and everything just looks too clean and bright without the grit that’s necessary to make a Western work. Granted I’ve seen a LOT of Westerns in my day but there are so many great ones even of similar budget, like Ti West’s In a Valley of Violence, so there’s little excuse for how badly this one falters.

Amidst the mostly bad cast, Koontz does have a few ringers like Pat Healy (from Ti West’s The Innkeepers!) and Stan Shaw, the latter as Lester, the former slave who becomes a substitute father for the brothers and who has some great moments in the last half of the movie. After the big reveal of the witches, things do generally get better and the ending is quite touching, as it strikes a nice note about brotherhood. But all of the stuff up until that point just isn’t very good on so many levels. It’s almost as if Koontz was learning how to make a movie while actually making the movie. (This is something more common on someone’s first movie, though.) Even the fact this movie is basically about brave men fighting evil women just isn’t a particularly good look for a movie right now. The Pale Door is a movie that needed to be better from the jump, and also get to some of the more exciting and gory stuff faster, since it’s just going to lose too many people before it finally shakes things up.

Actor Peter Facinelli (from The Twilight Saga, among other things) writes and directs the suspense thriller, THE VANISHED (Saban Films), starring Thomas Jane and Anne Heche of a ten-year-old girl, Taylor, who disappears while they’re RVing at a lakeside camp, causing them to do all sorts of unexpected things in order to find her.

I’m not sure whether I was more surprised that this was based on true events before or after actually watching it, because this movie gets pretty cray-cray, and that’s in the same week where we have Russell Crowe in Unhinged! Unfortunately, Facinelli’s sophomore effort as a filmmaker – that seems to be a theme this week -- comes across like a bland TV movie that doesn’t offer anything new from ‘90s thrillers like Fatal Attraction or I Know What You Did Last Summer, other than maybe some overacting from Heche or general sleaziness from Jane. It also stars a barely-recognizable ‘90s star Jason Patric as the town sheriff trying to find the couple’s daughter along with his deputy (Facinelli, who else?).

Very quickly, the couple get so desperate to find their daughter they start killing anyone they think might be responsible. By an hour into the movie, everyone is still a suspect, including the guy who runs the camp who (just by coincidence) happens to be part of a pedophile ring. UGH. The problem is that Facinelli throws red herring after the red herring at the viewer, leading up to one of the biggest “What the Holy F?!” endings that would likely make Shyamalan proud. The Vanished wears out its welcome pretty quickly and just leaves you wondering how much of it is true… and mind you, this is in a week where we have a movie with a talking gorilla, who also happens to be an artist… and that’s also based on a true story!

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get to some of these other movies or won’t have time to review, and hopefully you’ll check some of them out.

A genre film that looks pretty cool is Jimmy Henderson’s THE PREY (Dark Star Pictures) that follows Xin (Gu Shangwei), a Chinese undercover cop on a secret mission who ends up in a remote Cambodian jungle prison where the warden (Vithaya Pansringarm from Only God Forgives) sells his prey to rich hunters looking to go after “the Most Dangerous Game.” Yup, this is the second movie this year (after The Hunt) inspired by that short story. I’ll try to add some thoughts if I have a chance to see it before week’s end

Oscar-winning BlackKklansman writer Kevin Willmott writes and directs THE 24th (Vertical Entertainment) is about the all-black Twenty-Fourth United States Infantry Region and how 156 African-American soldiers held a mutiny in Houston as protest to the violence and abuse at the hands of the city’s police. The film stars Trai Byers, Bashir Salahuddin, Aja Nomi King and Thomas Haden Church.

Bummed I didn’t get to watch Thom Fitzgerald’s STAGE MOTHER (Momentum Pictures) in time to review since it has such a great cast that includes Lucy Liu, Jacki Weaver, Andrian Grenier and Mya Taylor from Tangerine. Weaver plays Maybelline, a Texas church choir director who inherits her late son’s drag club in San Francisco so she goes there to save it from bankruptcy.

Of this week’s docs, I’m most interested in Barbara Koppel’s DESERT ONE (Greenwich), which looks at the 1980 rescue attempt by U.S. Special Forces to rescue American hostages held in Iran (as seen in Argo) with interviews with President Jimmy Carter, Vice President Walter Mondal, Ted Koppel and both hostages and hostage takers. I haven’t had a chance to watch it, but Koppel is an amazing doc filmmaker, and I’m sure it’s a fantastic movie. Just need to find the time to watch.

I did get to watch Danny Wolf’s Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (Quiver Distribution), which not only has the most self-explanatory title of any doc ever made but is also quite comprehensive in covering how nudity has been used in movies going all the way back to the pre-Code and silent film days. No surprise that Wolf is the director of the highly-enjoyable Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All Time series, because he gets just as many interesting names and faces on this movie, including Malcolm McDowell, Peter Bogdanovich, Pam Grier, Amy Heckerling and more. This is actually a really good doc for the cinephile completist who wants to know everything (or just watch) every semi-famous nude scene that people have been talking about over the past 100 years.

I didn’t have nearly as much interest in P. David Ebersole & Todd Hughes’s House of Cardin, which gets a virtual cinema release this Friday before its On Demand release on September 15. I’m just not into fashion. More my speed is Dana Brown’s new doc A Life of Endless Summers:  The Bruce Brown Story (1091) about his father who became famous for his surfing movies. Also on Thursday, you can catch Ric Burns’ doc Oliver Sacks: His Own Life about the neurologist and storyteller on his battles with drug addiction and homophobia. If any of those names jump out at you, just go on Google, and I’m sure you’ll find the movies.

Opening at the Metrograph for a one-week one as part of its Digital Membership (with a live screening with intro on Friday at 8pm Eastern) is a 2k restoration of Judy Irving, Chris Beaver and Ruth Landy’s 1982 film about the arrival of the nuclear age with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. TONIGHT at the Metrograph is a special Live Screening of James Gray’s 2008 film Two Lovers, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow with an intro by Gray tonight at 8pm Eastern. Remember, it’s only $5 a month and $50 a year for a Metrograph digital membership, which is a fantastic deal!

Also opening in Virtual Cinemas (including Film at Lincoln Center’s and other regional arthouses) this week is Marcell Jankovic’s Hungarian 1981 animated film Son of the White Mare (1981), getting its first ever U.S. release in a new 4k restoration made from the original 35mm print. FilmLinc will also show Robert Kramer’s 1990 doc Route One/USA about a five-month road trip from the Canadian border to Key West.

A few of the other movies out this week include Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerina Borowcyk (Altered Innocense), Jamie Patterson’s Tracks (1091), Mona Zandi Haghighi’s African Violet (Venera Films), Behind the Line: Escape to Dunkirk (Trinity Creative) and Watch List (October Coast).

Oh, also Christopher Nolan’s Inception is opening in some U.S. theaters as a 10th anniversary rerelease? Man, I miss 10 years ago.

On Netflix this week, you get Trish Sie’s The Sleepover, a family adventure-comedy starring Sadie Stanley and Maxwell Simkins as Clancy and Kevin, who discover their mom (Malin Akerman) is actually a high-end thief in the witness protection program. When she and their dad (Ken Marino) are kidnapped to commit one last job with her ex-beau (Joe Manganiello), they have to team-up to rescue their parents. There’s also the Argentine crime-drama The Crimes That Bind, starring Cecilia Roth, coming to Netflix Thursday, and the Indian gangster film Class of ‘83 coming Friday. Amazon will premiere Richard Tanne’s teen romance Chemical Hearts, based on the book “Our Chemical Hearts” by Krystal Sutherland, which stars Lili Reinhart and Austin Abrams.

Next week, more movies not in theaters, but also some movies in theaters! And others not in theaters, since I’m guessing the ones in New York will still be closed.

By the way, if you ever read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest

[meupila]

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Seen on October 6th 2017 in a 2D cinema.

A beautiful film, powerful story, and immersive experience. It left me feeling like its protagonist– exhausted, confused, and yet somehow at peace.

I am certain there was symbolism that went way over my head, but I thoroughly appreciated what I was able to register. The theological parallels with the figures of the savior, the holy virgin, and the immaculate conception pushed my expectations along subtly but surely. I was as devastated as K / Joe (Ryan Gosling) when I found out that I would not get to follow the path of the hero after all. The question seemed to become: if you are not the hero of the larger narrative, what is your role?

K, much like the audience, becomes a witness to a miracle. When it becomes clear that he himself is not the miracle, he must choose either to fight to preserve it or to sink into indifference/nihilism. Either choice would be understandable in his circumstances, and both would make for relatable stories, but Blade Runner 2049 takes us down the path of fighting for a larger cause– a path shared by many characters in the film. Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista) fights to keep hidden the story of the Replicant birth; Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) leaves his loved ones to protect the miracle they'd created; Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) desperately fights for social order; Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) is keen to transform civilization. They are all driven by a grand vision larger than themselves.

Therefore, the climactic fight between K and Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) is significant not only in the lives of those involved but also as a conflict between self-preservation and self-sacrifice. By this point, K's motivation is mostly devoid of ego, while Luv's main concern remains to be "the best of the angels". Somehow, Luv's shameless egotism made me sympathize with her– there is some of that in all of us. Perhaps by fighting her to the death, K completely kills what remains of his own ego. Perhaps by watching it, we experience part of that too, and this may explain why I was on the edge of my seat during this fight, unable to pick a side, and dreading either outcome. The encounter is visceral and genuinely tense, with the water pulling everyone closer to their death, relentless and impersonal. The blue and yellow hues from the fallen vehicle were a creative way to light this crucial scene, making the struggle all the more ethereal.

The cinematography (Roger Deakins) and visual effects were stunning throughout the film. In retrospect, the range of landscapes presented to us is remarkable, but during the film, they flowed naturally. Every moment was filled with marvelous detail, but worldbuilding never overshadowed storytelling. The vast cityscapes, mind-bending architecture, deep colors, and the wondrous reflections that lit so much of this film all seemed but backdrops to a powerful central narrative. In between being utterly lost in the emotional and personal, I would suddenly become aware of the amazing world underneath.

I have yet to research the extent to which Ridley Scott was involved, but it is obvious the film owes a lot to Denis Villeneuve's clear vision as a director, and to a good script by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. The mojo is consistent, the structure is creative, and it's clear these filmmakers didn't take us for fools.

The acting was excellent. Mackenzie Davis as Mariette had a magical significance about her, and the overlaid performance with Ana de Armas as Joi was visually striking as well as emotionally potent. Armas completely sells the character of Joi, a disembodied entity that is totally genuine in its desire to be, to have a body, and to please K. The fact that Joi is a mass-produced product does not change the sincerity she projects, nor how easily we and K buy it.

Robin Wright as Lt. Joshi was very much human, with her arrogance and sensitivity blatantly exposed. Her final moments with Luv were painful to watch, and for a moment Wright embodied all of us in the face of the unyielding machine. When she downed that glass of whiskey, she knew what was coming, and so did we. In contrast, Jared Leto as Wallace was somewhat opaque and obscure, but I suspect this is how the character was intended to be. We get a glimpse of an overwhelming ambition and idealism driving him, but it felt distant and cold to me– human, but not in a way I liked. This should not be surprising, as after all there are very few Niander Wallaces in the world, and their calculated vision must be alien to most.

Harrison Ford, returning as Deckard, appears fairly late in the film and adds a reluctant charm, grounding the film at a point when it could have easily gone off the rails. He plays someone who has made tough choices and has long since learned to live with them. I wonder what a day in the life of Deckard would have looked like, drinking whiskey with his dog and tending to his bees amidst the surreal ruins of Las Vegas. One particular scene especially owed its poignancy to Ford's powerful performance: when Wallace throws into question Deckard's life and love as pre-determined and devoid of meaning, we get a long close-up of Ford's face and witness a sequence of subtle transformations. The terror that flickers across his eyes, and the weight that sets down upon him, and the inexplicable strength that he somehow musters to speak the words, "I know what's real," were thrilling to watch and a perfect vessel for my own experience of those same emotions.

The soundtrack (Hans Zimmer, Benjamin Wallfisch) and overall sound design worked wonders, completing the feel of the universe and driving home the dread and hope. I felt some kind of rage writhing beneath the music, subtle and powerful, and it hinted at the unimaginable inner experience of K and the Replicants in general. Who is to say what it is like to be an artificially intelligent bioengineered being? I have no idea, but rage is a primal experience I find easy to imagine in others.

Ryan Gosling's task of portraying K's utter fury and desperation cannot have been easy. Like Pinnochio, K is tossed between the lures of pleasure, dreams of family, and a quest for the truth. His relationship with Joi is fragile, touching, and tragic. His anger and hope in finding a father figure, Deckard, is ultimately baseless and heartbreaking.

On the one hand, his character is ultimately an alien– something entirely non-human; at the same time, his struggles mirror an experience that humans have utterly monopolized: the journey of defining oneself and one's path. The only reason this film works at all is that we can relate to K, but the main reason it works so well is due to the uneasy reminders that, in the end, he is not one of us.

There was a sense in me that his experience cannot possibly be authentic – a feeling clearly shared by K himself, who is constantly reminded that he "has no soul"– and yet I was convinced that those same feelings in me would be as valid as can be. As his doubt slowly seeped into me as well, I began to wonder about my own human experience: what makes it authentic?

In some sense, Blade Runner 2049 explored not so much what it is like to be an AI, but what it is like to be human. Perhaps the writers hid a jewel in an inconspicuous joke quipped by Deckard in the casino– when K asks him if the dog he lives with is real, Deckard smirks and says, "Why don't you ask him?"

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Skullsplitter Dice, Fantasy divisions, Future Firearms, Samson Pollen

Fiction (DMR Books): I have a real attachment to the supernatural tales that appeared in what is often called the golden age of the English ghost story.  Ranging from around 1880 to somewhere in the 1920s its boundaries are as vague as its achievements are remarkable.  For a time, in that difficult to imagine world in which fiction had yet to solidify into specific genres, any author might try his or her hand at a tale of the supernatural, writing primarily motivated by the desire, as M.R. James put it, to make the reader feel “pleasantly uncomfortable.”  While dozens of authors who would later distinguish themselves

  Genre (Perilous Worlds): Sometimes it seems like the myriad sub-divisions of the fantasy genre cause more confusion than clarity. Terms like Epic and High Fantasy are often used interchangeably, labels like Sword-and-Sorcery and Dark Fantasy are commonly applied indiscriminately, and books with seemingly nothing in common can be found right next to one another in the fantasy section. A novel set in modern times featuring a heroic, magic-wielding protagonist and one set in a medieval-flavored secondary world devoid of the supernatural and concerned with the selfish adventures of an amoral rogue are both works of fantasy – but if only one of those sounds like a book you’d want to read, it helps to be familiar with the broad categories of contemporary fantasy.

  Weapons (Future War Stories): Any leap forward in design, fashion, and/or technology can be greeted as the harbinger of the future or a laughing stock by the masses. While this can be applied to personal electronics, clothing, and architecture; it can also be applied to firearms. During the 1980’s, the western nations invested heavily in advancing weapons technology to overcome the numerical superior of the Warsaw Pact. This was the time of cutting edge weapon system like the Apache attack helicopter, the M1 Abrams, the Steyr AUG, night vision, laser sights, and the H&K G11.

  Weapons (DMR Books): Hank Reinhardt would have turned eighty-five today. Though I never knew him personally, Hank affected my life in some unique ways and he shall receive due honor from me for that. If you don’t know who Hank Reinhardt was, check out the hyperlink above or read on.

I first learned of Mr. Reinhardt when I bought the DAW sword and sorcery anthology–quite possibly the greatest ever published–Heroic Fantasy. Hank was co-editor of that book along with Gerald W. Page.

  Art (CBC News): Semi-nude women, sadistic soldiers, and animal attacks aren’t exactly high art.

Yet those were themes that appealed to the millions of men who read “sweat magazines” — adventure digests sold across North America from the 1940s to the 1970s​.

Publications like Man’s Story, World of Men, and Man’s Epic weren’t exactly pornographic — but were the opposite of politically correct.

  Authors (Socialist Jazz): Theodore Sturgeon was by all accounts a confounding personality, genial, personally irresponsible, questioning many of the more basic matters of human relations, perception and emotion, and a man who could certainly write a sentence…and then be hung up by how badly he’d done so for years-long writer’s blocks. And yet managed to be very prolific over a long if troubled career.

          Art (Mens Pulp Mags): Simply put, Samson Pollen was one of the greatest of the many artists who provided illustrations for the men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) that flourished from the early 1950s to the late 1970s.

My publishing partner Wyatt Doyle and I had the good fortune and the honor of working with Sam on two books featuring his artwork before he passed away in December of 2018.

The first, POLLEN’S WOMEN: THE ART OF SAMSON POLLENwas published last year. It quickly became one of the best-selling books in our Men’s Adventure Library series, which features classic MAM stories and artwork.

  Fiction (Perilous Worlds): If you love The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ringsand want to follow the third road of the J. R. R. Tolkien fantasy triad, these first words of The Silmarillion might trick you into putting the book back on the “May Read … Someday” shelf, right beside War and Peace and Les Misérables.

I’m making a plea for you not to shelve it. Or for you to reach up to the shelf and take down Professor Tolkien’s 1977 volume of the Elder Days of Middle-Earth and try again. Too many people have let The Silmarillion’s reputation for difficulty—and its actual difficulty—keep them away from discovering what may be one of their favorite works of fantasy.

  Fiction (Tellers of Weird Tales): A month ago I wrote about Vikings and other medieval subjects on the cover ofWeird Tales, and out of that I received a couple of comments from readers about Viking fantasy stories. That got me thinking that there may be a missed sub-sub-genre of fantasy and science fiction dealing with those men and women of the north, with their winged and horned helmets, long, braided hair, conical breastplates, and raiments of hide and fur. So here is a first shot at stories of Vikings and Norsemen, with some also of Saxons, Geats, Goths, and other early northern Europeans thrown into the mix.

  History (Men of the West): The Turk has long been known as the “sick man of Europe,” and the story of the Ottoman Empire for a hundred years has been a tale of gradual dismemberment. Thus it is no easy matter for us to realize that for centuries the Ottoman power was the terror of the civilized world.

It was in 1358 that the Ottomans seized Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles, and thus obtained their first footing in Europe. They soon made themselves masters of Philippopolis and Adrianople. A crusading army, gathered to drive the Asiatic horde from Europe, was cut to pieces by the Sultan Bajazet at Nicopolis in 1396. On the day after the battle ten thousand Christian prisoners were massacred before the Sultan, the slaughter going on from daybreak till late in the afternoon. The Turk had become the terror of Europe.

  Authors (A Shiver in the Archives): The legend* has altered in the retelling, from a slip found in Robert E. Howard’s wallet after his suicide in June 1936, to it being the last thing Howard typed on his typewriter before going out to his car where he shot himself in the head. The couplet is now legendary:

All fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre; The feast is over and the lamps expire.

Rusty Burke published an article “All Fled, All Done” in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies (Winter 2001), in which he identified Howard’s source for the final line of the couplet, a poem titled “The House of Cæsar” by Viola Garvin, which appeared in a poetry anthology Songs of Adventure (1926), edited by Robert Frothingham.  Each of the five stanzas of the poem ends with the line “The Feast is over and the lamps expire!”

  Gaming (Table Top Gaming News): These little gems are one of my favorite things, and so when Skullsplitter Dice asked if I’d like to review one of their sets, and not only that, their first-ever limited edition set, I was like, “(censored) YEAH!!” So, they sent me some dice. I rolled them around a bit, and I’m here to let you know about it.

It’s time for another TGN Review. This time, it’s the Huntress Limited Edition Dice from Skullsplitter Dice.

  Cinema (Kairos): In my work as a freelance editor, I’ve noticed a common tendency among the current crop of science fiction authors to write books as if they’re writing movies. That practice is understandable since most science fiction and fantasy novels published after 1980 suck, and therefore today’s authors are disproportionately influenced by film.

However, writing a novel by playing a little movie in your head and transcribing what you see in your mind’s eye hobbles the final product. Because this generation of authors don’t read as much as their forebears did, few of them realize the storytelling advantages that books have over movies.

  Fiction (Cirsova): Per Michael Tierney, the original fragment that Burroughs wrote was just found this morning.

Apparently, Danton Burroughs had sent it to be transcribed by Bill Hillman of ERBzine.com, who has announced today in a thread on the ERBzine facebook group that it is still in his possession!

Danton sent me this ERB handwritten script. I typed it out and returned the typed copy to him. He offered it to a few writers to see if they would be interested in finishing it. I still have the handwritten copy plus my transcription.

We have updated the copy in the original piece.

Cirsova’s spring issue featuring Young Tarzan and the Mysterious She is available for digital pre-order now and physical pre-order in February.

  Fiction (Glorious Trash): I had a tough time with this third volume of Conan. In fact I read it over a year ago, but at the time I found myself skimming the collected stories, to the point that when I “finished” the book I didn’t have any idea how to review it! So I waited a while until getting back to the series, only to find my interest again sagging at times.

    Sensor Sweep: Skullsplitter Dice, Fantasy divisions, Future Firearms, Samson Pollen published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[petr3pan]

You live in a #scifi! How will you save the world? #superheroalert

You live in a #scifi! How will you save the world? #superheroalert

I’m writing from the past to tell you that YOU live in the future. I don’t mean that metaphorically. You live in a wild science fiction world that many people can’t even imagine, and you can impact and change that scifi tale if you want. Let me show you. Or, as a freaky man once put it, “I’d like to play a game.” Tell me which of these three technology scenarios is in development–or already working!–right now. Home-grown Pancreas

Formaldehyde and the scent of blood assaulted Prakriti’s nostrils as she entered the lab. Her eyes widened; her stomach leapt, maybe not into her throat, but it certainly leapt somewhere. Body parts littered the room in petri dishes and vats, and in the center of the room a man with a stained lab coat was handing her brother a wad of cash. “No!” Prakriti cried. “No, we’re not that tight on money–we’ll get through, you don’t need to sell your kidney!” “Kriti, what the–how’d you find me here?” her brother gasped. “Been trailing you since Mongolia, through Tibet–everywhere. Please, don’t–” He crossed the room and gripped her shoulders. She pushed away; he yanked her in for a hug. “Kriti, listen. I’m not selling my kidney. I’m selling a few stem cells, that’s it, and Reshad’s gonna grow me a whole new pancreas to replace the silly diabetic one I was born with. He’ll publish the results, and people world over will be growing organs!” “That’s impossible,” Prakriti cried. “Please, let’s just go. Come back home, face the disease and stop running! We’ll–we’ll find a way to pay for medications.” “I refuse to live that life. I’m willing to gamble for a better one.” He flicked her a two-finger salute and disappeared into the surgical room. “See you in Mumbai.” What did you guess? Real, not real? Is he seriously getting a new-grown pancreas? Well, he is! We’ve totally done this. Again and again. Even with vaginas! We can grow organs now! Dinosaur DNA

I cocked back the slide on both pistols, listening for that sweet click and pop as the tranquilizer darts prepped in their barrels. “You’ll have one shot at Dr. Schillenberg through the window when you fall past the Tower of Terror. Miss that, and you gotta trek your way back up a roller coaster more rickety than a house o’ cards made o’ toilet paper.” I smirked. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I strapped on my parachute and dove out the plane. Wind slammed me in the face as I rocketed towards the abandoned theme park. Popped my chute; aimed my pistols; floated by the open window– It was empty. “Whoohoo, soldier!” someone called. I glanced down. My heart just about stopped then and there. The woman in a lab coat, below me, she was–she was– I tapped my finger to the radio embedded in my ear. “Uh, command, we got a problem. Schillenberg’s ready for us. And, uh, she’s riding a freakin’ T-rex.” “You know what to do, soldier.” I grimaced; pulled my rifle off my leg as I floated towards them. Hell if I’m gonna talk back to Jones, but I really DIDN’T know what to do. They don’t teach you to kill dinosaurs in Afghanistan. This is the odd one out, right? Viable dinosaur DNA can’t survive fossilization. Or so we thought. A few years back, scientists found fresh, viable tissue inside dino bones (1, 2) , which of course stunned us all since we know soft-tissue decays far too fast to survive that long (3). It prompted all kinds of debate about the age of the fossils themselves (4), which you should totally check out if you get time. But for now, let’s bottom-line it: we can’t make dinosaurs yet because we’re not sure we have the right creatures to splice their genes into, or enough intact DNA, but we’ve got blood! We’re much further into crazy scifi world than ever before. Telepaths

Tanisha drew her shawl tighter over her head, doubly-masking the cap of wires hidden under her weave as she slipped into the drug-lord’s penthouse. Had to find out when and where this deal went down tomorrow. Leak that back to Anderson, and she’d win her revenge. She ducked into the closet, huddling between Armani suits that reeked of musk. Click–apartment door opening. Hushed voices; Big Brandon’s booming laugh–but she couldn’t quite make out words–light stung her eyes–crap! The closet-door opened–Tanisha froze before a pale, hollow-eyed man and the barrel of a .44 magnum. “Looks like we got a rat, boss.” Crap crap crap–Tanisha ground her teeth as Hollow Eyes yanked her out of the closet. He threw her in front of Big Brandon. The fat-ass mob boss stood arms akimbo and laughed. “Oh, hey, it’s–Taniqua? Tan-tan? Oh, you wanna correct me?” Tanisha’s eyes blazed. Oh, yes she did. “See how pissed off she is? But she can’t talk. Unfortunate accident, right, to her tongue, after her poor dead Momma ratted Daddy out. Tan-tan’s a living example of what happens when you betray me.” The mob boss leaned in; spittle soaked his rank breath. “And that example is the only reason you’re still living.” To his men– “Make sure she doesn’t leave the apartment. ‘Specially not around 3:30 tomorrow by Warehouse 33, right Tan-tan?” Big Brandon roared with laughter. His men glanced back and forth in confusion. “Oh, little family joke. My little girl was gonna report her Daddy to the cops just like her mom. But she’s not now. Handcuff her to the dresser, we’re moving out. Tanisha struggled a little, and kept up the whole rebellious glare thing for a while, but the moment they shut the door behind them she unleashed her glee. Ha! She could scream her triumph from the rooftops. Dear Daddy didn’t know how he’d lost his last ten lieutenants to Officer Anderson. Dear Daddy didn’t know about telepathy. So yeah, Tanisha can communicate with Officer Anderson by telepathy. You totally don’t believe me. But the Army does. They put down $4 million dollars ondeveloping telepathic helmets, and they’re only fifteen to twenty years from completion. I KID YOU NOT. I am gonna be talkin’ to my kids via brain waves, no crap. So, point made? You live in a ridiculous future scifi world. But it takes more than crazy settings and wild technology to make a good scifi story. You need a protagonist with a conflict. Unfortunately, in addition to the scifi setting, your world has conflict. Throughout your modern scifi world, there’s a rampant slavery epidemic washing across your nation, your continent, and your planet. I’m not building metaphors here, political or otherwise. The number of women, children, and men bought and sold as slaves for sex and forced labor right now throughout Africa, Europe, East Asia, and the Americas literally dwarfs everything you ever heard about ancient slavery. We need everyday citizens to learn how to identify and rescue human trafficking victims using resources like these (http://cmda.org/resources/publication/human-trafficking-continuing-education). We need cashiers, healthcare providers, moms at home, protagonists all around the planet to get these phone numbers into their cells (http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/30/how-to-help-global-hotlines/). We need heroes to intern for rescue organizations like these (http://www.slaverynomore.org/organizations/), and eventually pursue long-term careers in catching the bad guys and recuperating the victims. You’re in a scifi world perhaps far greater than anything you ever read in a comic book or watched on TV, and we just need a protagonist to step in and make a difference. Are you our scifi protagonist? Maybe your life’s more of a contemporary romance or drama, and I can’t force you into a genre swap. But maybe, just maybe, this post will reach someone who’s ready to take a leap into the real science fiction future. Who knows. It’s a brave new world out there. If you liked this, there will be more like it over at petrepan.blogspot.com! (1) Schweitzer, M. H. et al. 2009. Biomolecular Characterization and Protein Sequences of the Campanian Hadrosaur B. Canadensis. Science. 324 (5927): 626-631 (2) Schweitzer, M. H. et al. 2013 Molecular analyses of dinosaur osteocytes support the presence of endogenous molecules. Bone. 52 (1): 414-423); see also Woodward, S. R., N. J. Weyand, and M. Bunnell. 1994. DNA Sequence from Cretaceous Period Bone Fragments. Science. 266 (5188): 1229-1232 (3) Allentoft, M. E. et al. 2012 The half-life of DNA in bone: measuring decay kinetics in 158 dated fossils.Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 279 (1748): 4224-4733. (4) Compare two major debate articles http://creation.com/dinosaur-soft-tissuevs.http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/dinosaur-dna Click to Post

[becomingherocomic]

Becoming Hero

You live in a #scifi! How will you save the world? #superheroalert

I’m writing from the past to tell you that YOU live in the future.

I don’t mean that metaphorically. You live in a wild science fiction world that many people can’t even imagine, and you can impact and change that scifi tale if you want. Let me show you. Or, as a freaky man once put it, “I’d like to play a game.” Tell me which of these three technology scenarios is in development–or already working!–right now.

Home-grown Pancreas

Formaldehyde and the scent of blood assaulted Prakriti’s nostrils as she entered the lab. Her eyes widened; her stomach leapt, maybe not into her throat, but it certainly leapt somewhere. Body parts littered the room in petri dishes and vats, and in the center of the room a man with a stained lab coat was handing her brother a wad of cash.

“No!” Prakriti cried. “No, we’re not that tight on money–we’ll get through, you don’t need to sell your kidney!”

“Kriti, what the–how’d you find me here?” her brother gasped.

“Been trailing you since Mongolia, through Tibet–everywhere. Please, don’t–”

He crossed the room and gripped her shoulders. She pushed away; he yanked her in for a hug. “Kriti, listen. I’m not selling my kidney. I’m selling a few stem cells, that’s it, and Reshad’s gonna grow me a whole new pancreas to replace the silly diabetic one I was born with. He’ll publish the results, and people world over will be growing organs!”

“That’s impossible,” Prakriti cried. “Please, let’s just go. Come back home, face the disease and stop running! We’ll–we’ll find a way to pay for medications.”

“I refuse to live that life. I’m willing to gamble for a better one.” He flicked her a two-finger salute and disappeared into the surgical room. “See you in Mumbai.”

What did you guess? Real, not real? Is he seriously getting a new-grown pancreas? Well, he is! We’ve totally done this. Again and again. Even with vaginas! We can grow organs now!

Dinosaur DNA

I cocked back the slide on both pistols, listening for that sweet click and pop as the tranquilizer darts prepped in their barrels.

“You’ll have one shot at Dr. Schillenberg through the window when you fall past the Tower of Terror. Miss that, and you gotta trek your way back up a roller coaster more rickety than a house o’ cards made o’ toilet paper.”

I smirked. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I strapped on my parachute and dove out the plane.

Wind slammed me in the face as I rocketed towards the abandoned theme park. Popped my chute; aimed my pistols; floated by the open window–

It was empty. “Whoohoo, soldier!” someone called. I glanced down. My heart just about stopped then and there. The woman in a lab coat, below me, she was–she was–

I tapped my finger to the radio embedded in my ear. “Uh, command, we got a problem. Schillenberg’s ready for us. And, uh, she’s riding a freakin’ T-rex.”

“You know what to do, soldier.”

I grimaced; pulled my rifle off my leg as I floated towards them. Hell if I’m gonna talk back to Jones, but I really DIDN’T know what to do. They don’t teach you to kill dinosaurs in Afghanistan.

This is the odd one out, right? Viable dinosaur DNA can’t survive fossilization.

Or so we thought. A few years back, scientists found fresh, viable tissue inside dino bones (1, 2) , which of course stunned us all since we know soft-tissue decays far too fast to survive that long (3). It prompted all kinds of debate about the age of the fossils themselves (4), which you should totally check out if you get time. But for now, let’s bottom-line it: we can’t make dinosaurs yet because we’re not sure we have the right creatures to splice their genes into, or enough intact DNA, but we’ve got blood! We’re much further into crazy scifi world than ever before.

Telepaths

Tanisha drew her shawl tighter over her head, doubly-masking the cap of wires hidden under her weave as she slipped into the drug-lord’s penthouse. Had to find out when and where this deal went down tomorrow. Leak that back to Anderson, and she’d win her revenge. She ducked into the closet, huddling between Armani suits that reeked of musk.

Click–apartment door opening. Hushed voices; Big Brandon’s booming laugh–but she couldn’t quite make out words–light stung her eyes–crap! The closet-door opened–Tanisha froze before a pale, hollow-eyed man and the barrel of a .44 magnum. “Looks like we got a rat, boss.”

Crap crap crap–Tanisha ground her teeth as Hollow Eyes yanked her out of the closet. He threw her in front of Big Brandon. The fat-ass mob boss stood arms akimbo and laughed. “Oh, hey, it’s–Taniqua? Tan-tan? Oh, you wanna correct me?”

Tanisha’s eyes blazed. Oh, yes she did.

“See how pissed off she is? But she can’t talk. Unfortunate accident, right, to her tongue, after her poor dead Momma ratted Daddy out. Tan-tan’s a living example of what happens when you betray me.” The mob boss leaned in; spittle soaked his rank breath. “And that example is the only reason you’re still living.” To his men– “Make sure she doesn’t leave the apartment. ‘Specially not around 3:30 tomorrow by Warehouse 33, right Tan-tan?” Big Brandon roared with laughter. His men glanced back and forth in confusion. “Oh, little family joke. My little girl was gonna report her Daddy to the cops just like her mom. But she’s not now. Handcuff her to the dresser, we’re moving out.

Tanisha struggled a little, and kept up the whole rebellious glare thing for a while, but the moment they shut the door behind them she unleashed her glee. Ha! She could scream her triumph from the rooftops. Dear Daddy didn’t know how he’d lost his last ten lieutenants to Officer Anderson. Dear Daddy didn’t know about telepathy. 

So yeah, Tanisha can communicate with Officer Anderson by telepathy. You totally don’t believe me. But the Army does. They put down $4 million dollars ondeveloping telepathic helmets, and they’re only fifteen to twenty years from completion. I KID YOU NOT. I am gonna be talkin’ to my kids via brain waves, no crap.

So, point made? You live in a ridiculous future scifi world. 

But it takes more than crazy settings and wild technology to make a good scifi story. You need a protagonist with a conflict. Unfortunately, in addition to the scifi setting, your world has conflict. 

Throughout your modern scifi world, there’s a rampant slavery epidemic washing across your nation, your continent, and your planet. I’m not building metaphors here, political or otherwise. The number of women, children, and men bought and sold as slaves for sex and forced labor right now throughout Africa, Europe, East Asia, and the Americas literally dwarfs everything you ever heard about ancient slavery. We need everyday citizens to learn how to identify and rescue human trafficking victims using resources like these (http://cmda.org/resources/publication/human-trafficking-continuing-education). We need cashiers, healthcare providers, moms at home, protagonists all around the planet to get these phone numbers into their cells (http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/30/how-to-help-global-hotlines/). We need heroes to intern for rescue organizations like these (http://www.slaverynomore.org/organizations/), and eventually pursue long-term careers in catching the bad guys and recuperating the victims. You’re in a scifi world perhaps far greater than anything you ever read in a comic book or watched on TV, and we just need a protagonist to step in and make a difference.

Are you our scifi protagonist? Maybe your life’s more of a contemporary romance or drama, and I can’t force you into a genre swap. But maybe, just maybe, this post will reach someone who’s ready to take a leap into the real science fiction future. Who knows.

It’s a brave new world out there.

If you liked this, there will be more like it over at petrepan.blogspot.com!

(1) Schweitzer, M. H. et al. 2009. Biomolecular Characterization and Protein Sequences of the Campanian Hadrosaur B. Canadensis. Science. 324 (5927): 626-631

(2) Schweitzer, M. H. et al. 2013 Molecular analyses of dinosaur osteocytes support the presence of endogenous molecules. Bone. 52 (1): 414-423); see also Woodward, S. R., N. J. Weyand, and M. Bunnell. 1994. DNA Sequence from Cretaceous Period Bone Fragments. Science. 266 (5188): 1229-1232

(3) Allentoft, M. E. et al. 2012 The half-life of DNA in bone: measuring decay kinetics in 158 dated fossils.Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 279 (1748): 4224-4733.

(4) Compare two major debate articles http://creation.com/dinosaur-soft-tissue vs.http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/dinosaur-dna

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