The C.O. is Always Responsible

Imagine a military ship sailing in the early hours of darkness near a shore. The Captain is asleep all is quite when the vessel suddenly grounds on a sand bar and tug is dispatched at dawn to free the ship. Who pays the price for the foul up? Whose career is threatened? The Captain. It goes with the power of the position, the captain is responsible for everything that happens on his or her command, period.

So, who is responsible for the Democratic loss at the last presidential elections?

Hillary Clinton. It was her ship, her command, and her responsibility.

Yes, the Russian sowed chaos to assist Trump.

Yes, Republicans used their position in the House of Representative to publicly hound fairly minor scandals.

Yes, the news media chased every leak with the Pavlovian response of a kitten chasing a laser spot.

All this is true and all this was known at the time. It is the C.O. jobs to deal with, and to deal with it effectively. I would further argue that these factors are relatively minor factors considering that Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular contest by nearly three million votes but the election is not determined by the popular will but by the state by state arcana of the Electoral College.

The Democrats relied on a ‘blue wall’ through the rust belt to hold Trump away from the White House and that wall turned out to have been eaten away. The weakness in these states was no surprise. Upset by Sanders gave clear warnings that things were not standard this election cycle. Alarm bells and calls for urgent assistance from local politicians and campaign workers went unheeded. Why? Why was such a critical front left undefended?

When I read the book Game Change that recounted the 2008 election I was truck by how much the Clintons, both of them, valued loyalty over competence. It’s my opinion that justly or unjustly the Clintons live in perpetually psychological state of siege. They seem to act as though that they must expect any and all attacks from all quarters and as such their inner circle are chosen as people that the trust and trust if the quality that value the most.

Because they distrustful of anyone not in their tight inner circle they horde power, micromanaging situations and shutting out those who are suspect, and anyone who is not part of the inner circle is automatically suspect.

When during he primary Sanders surprised them they didn’t open up their command to new voices and refused to learn that their predictive models were seriously flawed. When local pols in the rust belt screamed for help and warned that the candidate was in danger of losing votes due to people staying home, the alarms were rebuffed as they did not come from the trusted circle. It is astonishing that during the campaign Hillary Clinton never visited the union halls of Michigan, a state that if simply two more people per precinct has gone to the polls and voted for her she would have carried.

We can never know if Sanders, as is supporters insist, would have won the campaign. What we do know is that the Democratic candidate outpolled the Republican by millions of votes but bungled the tactical battlefield and lost the war

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Revisiting: Aliens

Last night I pulled down by big blu-ray boxed set for the Alien films and selected 1986’s Aliens as my Sunday Night Movie. At the start the disc presented me with a choice; 1986 theatrical release or the 1992 Special Edition? I selected the Special Editions and settled in with my bowl of popcorn.

The film is as fast and as exciting as ever and I have seen the special edition before but on this viewing my connection to the film seemed somewhat different. I approved of the many scenes restored to the film that deepen and expand the Ellen Ripley. A character that lacked even a given name in the original classic film. However when it comes to the scenes depicting life in the doomed colony Hadley’s Hope before the parasite destroys them I found I had come to a different opinion that the one I had held for a number of years.

Films, just as with prose stories, have character points of view and Aliens is a story told from Ripley’s POV. If you look at the first film, Alien, it is told with several points of view a technique used by the screenwriters Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusette to disguise which of the characters was the protagonist and thus they kept the audience off-balance as to who would liver and die. (A technique George R.R. Martin has been quoted as copying for his epic A Song of Fire and Ice.)

Aliens wisely doesn’t attempt to recreate this ambiguity. We have ridden with Ripley through the first horror and our identification with her is strong. Looking at it from that perspective the extended scenes that take place on Hadley’s Hope violate this film’s POV. Ripley is not there and there is no one to relay those scenes to her. It is information she will never know and as such it is information we should not know.

There are plenty of moments in the special edition that still work with Ripley’s POV, scenes she either directly participates in or where her relationship with characters in the scenes would allow her to reasonably be aware of the events and those I would advocate retaining, but I think all the Hadley’s Hope scenes should be excised.

Of course it’s not my film and so that’s not going to happen, but it is a peak into my thoughts on story structure.

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Movie Review: Train to Busan

Oh the movies and their zombies. From way back in the pre-code era with Bela Lugosi starring in White Zombie and transformed forever by George A Romero with Night of the Living Dead, the zombie has been a favorite for films. In more recent decades the sub-genre has exploded internationally and now available for rent and purchase via iTunes and other portals from South Korea comes Train to Buson.

I was quite lucky and in that I did not watch this on my home television but rather I got to see it in the 46 seat micro-theater Digital Gym here in San Diego and if you get the chance to see this properly in a theater you should leap at it. (If you are in San Diego it plays through Thursday January 13th.)

The story is about a father, Soek Woo (Played by Yoo Gong) and estranged ten year old daughter Su-an. (I am guessing at her age as I don’t remember if that specified it in the film even though it opens on her birthday.) He is the typical hard working corporate ladder climbing parent who has let the career displace family and Su-an desperately want nothing more for her birthday than to take the train to Busan and see her mother, who is also estranged the father. The zombie outbreak erupts and their journey becomes one of survival.

For long time zombie fans, these are more akin to 28 Days Later, fast moving and fast transformation that Romero’s slow implacable marchers.

This film is no low budget knock-off affair. The actors, from the leads down to the smallest supports, were selected with care and fit perfectly into their parts. The director makes excellent use of the tight and closed confines of the setting to created a situation of terror, dread, and claustrophobia. The writers manages the often difficult task of upping the stake continually without either becoming predictable or shattering disbelief by racing too far too quickly. The film is bright and full of colors but retains an essential darkness born of the dread and danger while never slipping into cynicism.

Aside from a few fairly minor editorial quibbles, like submarine films I think this would have greatly benefited from no shots outside the train and never allowing the viewers a moment of relief from the claustrophobia, this movie works beautifully. It was horrific, exciting, engaging, and by the end deeply touching, go see it if you can, rent if you must.

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Movies that Should be Remade: The 27th Day

Hollywood loves the remake, but sadly thy usually choose, from an artistic perspective, the movie to remake. The number crunchers in charge of the studios usually select what needs to be remade based on two criteria, is it a property that they currently own but is not making them money and two that has a built in base of fans who might be separated from their cash.

The problem with the built in base of fans is that movies are not like cars, newer models are not what people want. They love their old classic movies for what they are and remakes usually upset the fans who then go out and bad talk your newest attempt at the same story.

I would argue the best choice is to find a property that a studio holds, that has fallen into obscurity and turn it into something relevant to the times. Here’s one such film and how I think you could update it.

The 27th Day is a novel and SF film about aliens and humanity’s capacity for self-destruction. Writen, produced, and released during the Cold War, the plot revolves around five people who have been scooped up by aliens. The aliens inform our characters that the alien homeworld is dying and they have selected Earth as their new home. Galactic law forbids just moving in and killing off the current residents, so the aliens give each person a very, very high tech capsule that can be used to destroy all human life for a radius of thousands of miles around a target, specified by the user. The five people have the combined ability to eliminate all human life on the planet. (Animals and plants are unaffected.) The weapons will become inert after 27 days, but given humanity’s violent and deadly nature the aliens are betting we can’t go the distance. There are more details in how the magical devices work and the film has a mildly interesting twist that doesn’t work as well as the novel’s. (Strangely enough screenplay and novel were written by the same fellow, but who know what other fingers mucked around in the writing.)

This nearly forgotten film would be perfect for a modern remake. instead of focusing on the Cold War and nuclear annihilation a remake could focus on environmental issues and an ex-planetary judgment that we are poor caretakers of our world and perhaps if we killed ourselves off quickly the planet could be given to a more deserving bunch. (this is not to say that is a theme I hold as true, but it would work as a powerful theme to drive the plotting and characters.)

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Gravity Always Asserts Itself

As a kid I watched countless hours of Warner Brother cartoons and among my favorite were the Roadrunner and the Coyote. Invariably at some point in his futile attempts to catch the Roadrunner the Coyote would find himself suddenly without ground beneath his feet. For the first few moments, everything was fine, but once became aware of the fact, gravity took command and his fall began.

For more than six year the Republican Party has railed against the ACA and encouraged their political base to view it as an evil that must be destroyed. That destruction has been their premier promise in every election cycle and now, with control of both congress and the White House, it is within their grasp. However, like the Coyote they have discovered that the ground beneath their feet is not what they believed it to be.

Immediate repeal means throwing twenty million or more people off of their insurance. Even if you are not inclined to think of the news media as hostile to conservatives there is no universe where that plays well on the evening news and with number that large nearly every person will know someone who lost their coverage. It will be a painful, personal, and powerful storm of anger.

Not repealing means enraging the base, encouraging the dreaded ‘primary opponent’ that all officials in safe districts fear, and sparking intra-party warfare between the more pragmatic and Freedom Caucus wings.

Repeal and delay, vote for repeal but word it so that the effect occurs two, four, or more years down the road throws a hand grenade into the individual insurance market. What company will want to participate when the market will cease to exist in just a short time? Insurers flee, people loose their coverage, mandate are not enforced and a death spiral for the industry is a real possibility. That means people with deep pockets and political connections will be very angry.

Complicating this terrain is the fact that the President-elect is well known for his lack of consistency. Is he committed to repeal for ‘conservative’ reasons? This is a man who has praised single-payer nationalized healthcare, hardly a conservative policy. And just recently his spokespeople have affirmed that under the President-Elect’s plans no one will their coverage, no one.

They have dashed off the precipice, there is no ground under them save the disastrous and countless distance below, and no one will be inclined to give them any aid.

If they do manage to repeal, without dealing with the very thorny and difficult issues infusing this problem, (Which is likely because in six years they have advanced zero legislative packages to institute a ‘conservative’ solution.) they will have done more to hasten single-payer in this country than any ten liberal politicians.

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Novel to Film

There is a witticism that the book is always better then the movie but in my opinion this generally represents elitism on the part of the speaker. The truth of the matter is that novels and films are two very different art forms and direct comparisons are generally unfair to both. It is like comparing sculptures to paintings and fault paintings for their lack of three dimensions and sculptures for the lack of brush strokes.

Now having said that direct comparisons are unfair I want to expand my position by asserting that you can still judge if a film fairly adapts the source material. This is different from proclaiming one superior to the other. You can read ‘The Maltese Falcon‘ or you can watch the 1941 adaptation of the same name. Neither is better than the other, both are classics and the 1941 film is faithful to the characters, themes, and mood of the novel the elements required for a successful adaptation.

There are films that I enjoy more than their prose predecessors. Jaws strips the story down to the core elements and by doing so heightens them, the loss of an affair or a mafia sub-plot strengthens the thriller aspects of man vs shark. The Hunt for Red October loses a tone of Americans always bests their enemy, to present amore balanced story of men in conflict and the terrible costs of that struggle.

I am current reading the novel The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro and it was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1993 starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

It concerns an English Butler, Mr. Stevens, his relationships to his employers Lord Darlington, his father, and the housekeep Miss. Kenton. Stevens is so utterly repressed and committed to his sense of duty that his is unable to expression his feelings for others, even as his world tumbles apart.

This is a drawing room drama, with tension expressed in quite conversations and constrained by station and class. It is not a movie for those enamored of Bayhem. (Can you tell I really do not like the movies of Michael Bay?)

This novel, which won the Booker Prize, is an example of fantastic writing. Presented in the first person point of view the author pulls off the amazing feat of letting the reader see what the first person narrator is incapable of, his own motivations.

The film adaptation is so faithful, in character, tone, and theme, that as I read the novel it is Anthony Hopkin’s voice I hear in my head and it hasn’t clashed with the movie once. The producers, Director, and screenplay authors performed a masterful feat of capturing the heart and soul of this novel.

The film is not better, the novel is not better, but both are fantastic.

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Brain can’t brain

I can’t seem to conceive a new essay today so am off to edit some fiction and I will leave for your enjoyment a music video from one of my favorite singers, Caro Emerald. (If you cant sing acoustic you’re not a real singer.)

 

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Revisiting John Carpenter’s They Live

Released in 1988, towards the end of Reagan’s second term, They Live is a film that I often jest represents the moment in time when John Carpenter lost his talent. There has not been a Carpenter film that followed where I did not feel robbed of my money and time for having viewed it, while before They Live there are several movies that I enjoy repeated showings.

HBO is currently showing They Live and through the gift of streaming I rewatched the movie to see if I had been too harsh in my earlier appraisal or if time would confirm my conclusions.

The film still does not work. The front half of the movie works, mostly, and the second half is a jumble of confused and clichéd scenes. The concepts and ideas behind this movie are strong, powerful, premises which are applicable today as they were in the late 1980s. The film has a viewpoint critiquing rampant capitalism, consumerism, and economic inequality. Granted the handling of this message is heavy-handed, no one can accuse Carpenter of subtlety, and setting aside if you agree or disagree it is good to see a film that takes a stand and a viewpoint. It is better to have something to say than to simply fill the screen with riotous color and explosions such as any Michael Bay franchise flick. There are better and slyer critiques on these themes, you need look no further than the original RoboCop for that, but the failure of They Live is not the stand it takes but the technique by which it takes them.

Most glaring is that the film  establishes itself with a slow pace that reveals bit by bit menacing dread but then suddenly it changes into an action film that requires absurd coincidences and idiotic enemies to reach even a marginal resolution.

How does Gilbert find the boys in their hotel? How does Holly find the resistance? Why didn’t the police secure the parameter before assault the resistance? Why is the door leading to the most important device in the enemy’s possession unlocked?

None of this makes any sense.

The problems only go deeper when you try to unravel the world building. Listening to the audio commentary by Carpenter on his film Prince of Darkness illuminated for me that Carpenter doesn’t do backstory or world building and this is a great flaw for his scripts. If the aliens are here to ravish our world of wealth, then why are so many of them in common shops and stores, working as tellers in banks or regular patrol officers?

It makes even less sense the more you try to work out exactly how this functions. This movie is a series of ideas, many of them powerful, but slapped together in a manner that undercuts all of them.

I would love to see a real remake of this. Not a quick cash grab that has been done to other Carpenter properties, yes I am looking you The Fog. This could be a franchise starter. The issues, a secret alien subversion of our world, our economics, our lives, is too big for one movie. This could be a great dystopia series for adults instead of teenagers.

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Goodbye 2016

Today is New Year’s Day and we can officially place 2016 into the pages of history. For some 2016 was a terrible year and I can share their horror of what unfolded on the public stages, but personally 2016 was for myself a year of gradual change.

I made no new fiction sales during the year. My agent continues to shop my military SF novel so on first inspection it would appear that the year has not been very kind for my writing, but I do not feel that is very representative of my experiences.

Yes, the lack of sales is disheartening, but I have also gotten some very nice comments from top editors. While the particular stories were not to their tastes they praised the prose and asked my agent to send more.

In 2016 I also completed two novels, both were experiments outside of my writing comfort zone. One, an SF noir I think worked very well and now rests in the hands of my capable agent, the other my first attempt at an SF YA adventure failed, but the idea is not dead and who truly succeeds at a first attempt?

I believe that I have in gaming terms ‘leveled up’ this year and start 2017 as a stronger and more skilled writer.

My personal life continues to improve. I love my wife and our marriage is strong, my day-job is interesting, worthwhile, and compensates well. I work with good people who I enjoy interacting with everyday. 2016 also saw my first opportunity to attend San Diego’s local horror film festival Horrible Imagings. I loved it more than I had expected and look forward to the next festival later this year.

2016 was not without its troubles. I watched friends struggle with adversity and right there at its close I became aware of the need for a dramatic lifestyle change of my own. My G.P. has informed me that my cholesterol numbers are beginning to climb and I had a choice, radical alteration to my diet or medication. I detest the idea of taking ever more maintenance prescriptions and so the diet is a changing. Fruits and veggies are the order of the day, whole grains, and never again the beloved fried foods.

So the year had it’s bumps and its benefits, overall I am not unpleased with how the year has turned out.

2017 holds promise. I have entered the Writers of the Future Contest after an absence of several quarters, though the tale submitted it another experimental one and we shall see if it strikes a chord with the judges. My novel continues to be considered for traditional publication, and after a little short story work that won’t take more than 2 or 3 weeks I return to the comfort of military SF for another novel.

May your future hold much promise and joyful challenges.

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What Made the NAZIs so lethal?

Six million Jewish people, five million others, and even more war dead what made it possible for that evil empire to kill so many people? Of course I an not talking about the technical problems. Mass industrialization make many things formerly impossible, from moon landings to genocide, possible, but that doesn’t provide the will, the commitment to carry out such monstrous deeds. It is that commitment that is truly frightening.

Think for a moment on the 80’s genre movie They Live. (Spoilers ahead.) Nada played by the late Roddy Piper discovers, thanks to special sunglasses, that a secret cabal of alien living amongst us has been directing human affairs. They control the media, the economy, and the government. Some are in positions of great power and others occupy more menial posts such as police officers. When his eyes are opened to the truth, he goes on a killing spree, killing the aliens wherever he finds them. Soon he is pulled into a secret resistance group of people who know the true, who see behind the lies and the propaganda, and are dedicated to fighting this clandestine subversive threat.

Because the film is clearly set in Nada’s Point Of View and he is in no manner presented as insane or otherwise as an unreliable narrator, we the audience accept the premise of the a small group of beings secretly controlling world events as factual (within the confines of the story) and judge Nada’s killing spree not as murder but as justified. Accepting the worldview justifies the horrific murders.

For the Hitler and the NAZIs the anti-Semitism was not a tool, it was not propaganda, it was not a way to motivate followers and seize power, it was a worldview. It was a sick, insane conspiratorial view rooted in hatred that created their goals not their methods. I am reminded of a documentary The Goebbels Experiment which consisted of archival footage and Kenneth Branagh reading from the propaganda minister’s private journals. When the Enabling Act passed, making Hitler absolute dictator of Germany Goebbels didn’t note privately that they finally had the power to crush their enemies, that they had taken what was they thought of as rightfully theirs, no he wrote that at last they were ‘free.’ He believed, utterly and insanely, that they had been living in a world as controlled as Nada’s in They Live.

There is a bit if advice often floated to writers – the villain is the hero of his own story, and that is true. It is a lesson we must also apply with vigilance to the real world.

When people of position and power put forth conspiratorial explanations for how the world works, we must not let ourselves be lulled into complacency with notions of ‘just talk’, ‘playing to the room’ or that’s for ‘internal consumption.’ We need to always take such statements as dangerous examples of their worldviews and be prepared to fight them.

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