Author Archives: Bob Evans

Movie Review: Ant-Man and The Wasp

Marvel Studios continues proving that their juggernaut of interlocking franchises as an unstoppable cinematic force with this weekend’s release of Ant-Man and The Wasp. Returning a lighter tone after the dark themes of overpopulation and scare resources presented in Avengers: Infinity War, AMTW deals the personal fall-out for Scott Lang, and his family, along with Dr Hank Pym and his family from Scott’s adventures with Captain America in Captain America: Civil War.

Having run afoul of the global empowered individual legislation The Sokovia Accords, Scott Lang is sweating out the final days of his house arrest while Doctor Pym and his daughter Hope, estranged from Scott, are fugitives refusing to abide by the accords. The Pyms discover that Scott holds the key to rescuing a long lost member of their family launching them into a desperate race against international arms dealers and a mysterious empowered villain.

Payton Reed returns as director and the short version of this review is if you enjoyed Ant-manthen you are likely to enjoy Ant-Man and The Wasp. Paul Rudd continue to bring is easy likable style to Scott Lang providing both an empathic character and a voice for the audience. Marvel’s special effects wizards again demonstrate mastery at their ability to digitally ‘de-age’ an actor in younger versions of themselves. I do find it curious that Marvel can create digital make-up and faced that transcend the uncanny valley and Lucasfilm’s attempt fell short rendering a Tarkin and Lea that were less than convincing.

This film does not deal with heavy themes and that is not a detriment. While I love movies like Captain America: Civil War it is good to occasionally go to a movie and simply have a good time, something that this movie delivered.

Share

Film Review: Hereditary

That’s going to leave a mark.

There are a lot of flavors of horror films, and that’s not even getting in a classic versus modern sensibility. Thee are monster movies, slasher movies, psychological horror movies, young people in peril movies, torture porn movies, devil movies, nut after viewing Hereditary I had to come up with what I thought of as a new sub-genre, emotional horror movies. Hereditary does not move by gross out or violence, it is not a film with a central unstoppable threat moving through the plot leaving a wake of corpses, but rather the film forces the audience to confront raw, tragic emotional power.

The focuses on a family grieving after the death of their grandmother, a complex woman who left behind a tangled web of secrets and emotional damage to everyone she touched. Her daughter, Annie is played by Toni Collette, is an artist specializing in realistic miniature dioramas, dioramas taken from her real life and a metaphor for Annie’s desperate need to control her life. With her mother’s influencing her family well after the grandmother’s death, Hereditary at first appears to be following in the tradition of horror literature such as The Turning of the Screw where events may or may not represent the character’s distorted point of view but by the middle of the second act a darker and more mysterious malignancy motivates the movie. This film has one of the most shocking act one to act two transitions I have witnessed and all of it down with off-screen violence and terror that plays out on the actor’s faces and their anguished screams. Truly for several minutes I expected the sequence to be a nightmare but eventually the film forced to me to confront it had really gone where it went.

Drawing on paranoia such as in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and supernatural suburban invasion such as in Friedkin’s The Exorcist, and the inescapable fate of a Greek tragedy. Hereditary is a dark unrelenting film that eschews audience comfort and optimism for its artist vision.

This is by far not a film for everyone. Whenever there is a sharp divergence between the critics’ and general audience scores on aggregate sites such as Rotten Tomatoes such as with The Witch and with Hereditary, it often suggests that a film is more challenging than the usual fare and that is the case here. This is not a horror film for people in search of action, thrills, or escapism. (Not that those are bad things, I enjoy all three but it would be a poorer world if that was all there was to enjoying film.) With only a touch of snark I tweeted that Hereditary is a movie for people who find Black Mirror too optimistic.

I want to give a special shout out to the production design and the fantastic cinematography. This is one of the rare films where I noticed the color palette because it so perfectly fit the tone of the piece. Also director/screenwriter Ari Aster and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski creative and visually stunning mishmash of scale where the miniature looked massive and the massive looked miniature not only made for beautiful compositions but perfectly symbolized tone, theme, while keeping the audience off balance, critical

Share

The Bill Always Comes Due

Entropy drags the universe relentless towards chaos and debts always come due. This is a truth for politics as it is for anything else and no matter of hand-waving, wishful thinking, and verbal evasion can indefinitely forestall the bill.

It was many years ago when I started constructing a fiction setting where the USA had become a third rate power, trapped by its political passions and blindness into an interstellar power barely worthy of that title and here in 2018, though the reasons have changed the prospect has only grown.

Civilization grows from the bottom up. Billionaires, political leaders, and other elites rarely think of trail blaze radical new systems or methods. That which unsettles the status quo is that which endangers the current top of the pyramid and so the revolutionary change comes, most often, from those with great gains ahead of them and not from those with great losses on their minds.

To grow in ways that benefits society and not destroy or hinder it requires that the gains come from a desire to expand our horizons and not from a place of fear, rage, or hate. If you construct a system to traps people, robs them of hope, leaves them with only burning resentment and no hope for themselves or their children, then you reap a whirlwind of destruction when the system can no longer contain their passions.

If you leave people with only bad choices do not be shocked when the choices they selected are the ones that cause you the most pain, the most suffering, the one that fulfill rage.

You can protect your own, you can steal the food and the medicine, and the wealth, but eventually the bill comes due. Unless people feel that they have a fair chance they will eventually lash out and when that time arrives it will be too late to salvage society.

Share

Streaming Review:Trilogy of Terror

Part of my usual unwind just before bed is to watch either short videos, such as on YouTube or to watch a feature film in sections. Trilogy of Terror is perfect for this, while it runs an hour and a half; the trilogy section of its title comes from that fact that it is comprised of three short films. Trilogy of Terror was a made-for-TV movie broadcast in 1975 and starring Karen Black in all three stories. If you were old enough, as I am, to have watched the original broadcast you undoubtedly remember one aspect of this program, the Zuni fetish Doll. The story of Amelia chased about her apartment by the murderous puppet seared itself into popular culture and more than twenty years later when Joss Whedon scripted the episode Hush of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, he was hoping to craft the shock and terror that the Zuni fetish doll created. Truly the Zuni fetish doll is an exciting and generally scary bit of filmmaking. Lacking the budget for any sort of animation the production masterfully made do with fast editing, in a time before one could edit on a computer, strong point of view camera work, and, an aspect I think that gets overlooked for just how much it added to the film, Walker Edmiston’s fantastic, and un-credited, vocal work as the inarticulate raging voice of the doll.

But what about the other two short film that make up the trilogy?

While I remembered the Zuni warrior chasing Karen Black around her apartment, as will anyone else who has seen Trilogy of Terror, the other stories are literally forgettable. One deals with a mousy professor and her student that becomes obsessed with her, drugging her and forcing her into a sexual relationship until the inevitable plot twist. While the second story is about two sisters, locked in a terrible cycle of hate and revenge that also ends with a twist that was telegraphed from over the horizon and surprised no one who had seen these sorts of stories before.

If it had not been for the Zuni fetish doll this made for TV movie would have disappeared from out collection consciousness along with the made for TV remake of  Double Indemnity or the series Casablanca.

Share

The American WIP

Art is never finished, only abandoned. -Leonardo da Vinci

Anyone who has hung around writers or artists is familiar with the concept of WIP, the Work In Progress and da Vinci’s quote when coupled with the idea of the WIP leads us to the conclusion that all art is a WIP until it is abandoned.
While an artist is crafting their piece they may go through a number of drafts, revisions, and alterations as they search for the right expression of the motivating ideas. A work in progress has flaws, expression that in conflict with the ideals of the piece, sometimes you have to wave your hands around the troubles, sometimes you have to cut them out entirely, and sometimes you have to incorporate them, turning defects into admirable qualities. The artist must struggle to maintain a clear vision of their art, neither refusing to be dragged into despair by the faults nor allowing the beauty to blind them to the required work and corrections.
The United States of America is a social and political work of art and like all art it remains a work in progress. More importantly America is a collaborative work, all of use, left and right, majority and minority, are the artists working together crafting this monumental, lasting, and inspiring project. We suffer the same pitfalls of any artist as work. It is easy to see only the flaws in our history the terrible crimes committed by the artists before us and feel the temptation to burn the canvas in defeat and despair. It is also easy to see only the shining moments of greatness, to see only the ideals and be blind to real and continue pain falling short of those ideals inflict upon others. Both views are necessary and seeing the work in only one aspect leads to walking away, either because you hate the flaws or because you refuse to see the work that lies ahead, but the work waits for us. It is up to us to continue the craft of this amazing piece, this inspiring project, and to pass on to another generation of artists the vision of what is the United States of America,
Let us not abandon this art.

Share

Blast From the Past

For some reason today I got thinking about a submission from 1978. In 1977 Star Wars exploded across the nation and with a single blast from its turbo laser both reinvigorated media science-fiction and charted a new course. Part of that new course was a flood of space opera type adventures, including the 1978 television series Battlestar Galactica. At the time Galactica was the most expensive show ever produced on network television.

For several years before Star Wars, I had been writing and submitting SF short stories. I had also read, more than once, David Gerrold’s account of the production of the Star Trek episode, The Trouble With Tribbles.

Inspired by his tale, and shooting way way above my class. I wrote a treatment for an episode of  Galactica and using the library’s copy of the Writer’s Market, sent it off to an agency. It came back with a kind note informing me that the series had been canceled. What has caught my attention today is how similar in themes that early story idea is to some of my most current work.

Split into an A and  B plot the story opened with disaster befalling the fleets hydroponics vessels, a fungus that killed off all their oxygen generating plants. The story followed Starbuck piloting an expedition to a nearby system to acquire new plants with which to regenerate their stocks. (Apparently I hadn’t considered seed banks.) The expedition was under the command of Starbuck’s girlfriend, Cassiopeia. (Ignoring the fact that in the pilot she was a prostitute the series had turned into a ‘life tech.’) The main character conflict rose from Starbuck having trouble taking orders from a woman and having to learn a lesson on that front. The B plot followed a number of the main characters that had been evacuated from the Galatctica. (In order to save Oxygen reserves on the vital capital ship.) Forced to live among the crowded, barely tolerable conditions that the rest of the fleet endured, Apollo and others get a tastes of the depravation the rest of fleet suffered while they enjoyed comfort aboard the flag ship. The central conflict of course was between the less fortunate refuges and the Galacticians with a resolution that centered on the need for common sacrifice.

Looking back on that early story idea and on some of my most recent work I can see the common themes of sacrifice, and the need to set ego aside. It’s interesting what stays the same even after so many decades.

Share

Rejection is Baked In

Yesterday I got the word that I had not scored one of the few spots at the Viable Paradise writing workshop. Certainly that disappointed me but I also moved on fairly quickly. If you are striving in this writing gig an aspect that is baked into it from the very start to the very end is rejection. It says so right on the tin.

Everyone understands that when writers are starting out that there are loads of rejections. Many writers save every slip they get, often finding creative ways to deal with the pain, such as turning them into wallpaper. In general I don’t save mine. However once you establish yourself that’s over right?

Nope.

Editors may bounce books proposals, anthologies might invite you but still find the story not quite what they had in mind, second runs will get turned down, critics will reject your art, awards will overlook your brilliance in the same manner those editors did at the start of a career. Rejection is a writer’s constant companion; it is neither a mark of shame nor an indication of a lack of quality. Except for expressed comments and critiques all a rejection tells you is that the piece in questions did not work for that editor on that day.

Acceptance always tells you very little except that the story worked for the editor. As they say with financial prospectuses past performance is not indication of future performance. A string of rejections does not mean the next one to that same editor will also be rejected. I had a long strong of ‘did not place’ rejections from Writers of the Future and then skipping over Semi-Finalist and silver Honorable mentions, I scored a finalist.

Conversely a string of sales doesn’t mean the next submission to the same market will sell. Each and every piece lives and dies on its own.

When you get that rejection if there are comments, listen to them, then submit the piece a new editor, and move on to the next project.

Always writing, always submitting, that is the writer credo.

Share

The Volatile Man is Gone

Yesterday the world received the news that author Harlan Ellison died. Depending on who you are and particularly your age you are likely to have wildly divergent feelings about the man’s passing.

He lived a provocative life rarely keeping his tongue or in some cases his hands to himself. I think he was a tremendously talent artist but a flawed individual and a perfect example and warning to people to never confuse the art with the artist.  His writing is powerful stuff and he composed with a ‘take no prisoners’ gusto to what he saw as truth. From The Outer Limits, Star Trek, to Babylon 5 and I have No Mouth and I Must Scream; he left an indelible mark on speculative fiction.

I met him on one occasion but we were not acquaintances. It was at a room party for a Chicago bid to host the WorldCon. One fan, holding a hotdog from the party’s offerings, commented that these were good hotdogs. Harlan reached over, and with his fingers plucked the sausage from the bun, commented that the hotdogs were crap, and then replaced it back into the man’s bun.

Undiluted opinions served without consideration for your feelings, wrap it up in a towering talent and I think you’ll get fairly close to who Harlan seemed to be.

Share

The Norms Are Gone

There is a style of game playing that is best describe with the phrase ‘Find a rule to stop me.’ It is an approach that seeks to find every weakness in the rule, exploit them to the player’s maximum advantage and not just disregard but destroy any spirit of the game in the all out drive for victory. This has been the Republican Party playbook for some time and if the Democratic Party wants to get anywhere they are going to have to adopt it.

The most recent example of this is of course when Scalia’s SCOTUS became vacant. Sensing, correctly it turned out, that the seat could remain in conservative hands if he held up the nomination until after the election Senate Leader Mitch McConnell stalled the processed and ran out the election clock. No law, no provision of the Constitution prevented this action only the political ‘norms’ of behavior, which the Senate Leader was more than willing to sacrifice for a victory. No amount of shaming, no amount of pleading would ever dissuade McConnell from this course and that is a lesson the Democrats need to learn. You cannot win if you are fighting by a different set of rules. For quite some time now the liberal party has been bringing a knife to a gun fight its time to get properly armed, to fight the war as it being waged.

The seat being vacated by Kennedy is lost to the Democrats. They have no power and no option at all to stop McConnell and Trump from filling as they wish. There is no filibuster for SCOTUS anymore and fear of the base rising up will make the few remaining GOP moderates fall into line. That seat is gone and with it very likely Roe vs Wade.

So what should the Democrats do to fight back?

First off VOTE. If the democratic voters had turned out in 2016 as they had in 2012 this would not have happened. Vote in every single election, local, state, midterm, and presidential, every election matters.

If the Democrats can win the House, that’s within reach, and the Senate, that’s a stretch but not impossible, then they have to fight the way the Republicans fight. There’s plenty of corruption to investigate, launch a committee for every single one. Eradicate the damned filibuster.

Looking further ahead, should the Democrats capture the White House in 2020, dust off FDR’s Judicial Reform Bill. There is nothing in the law or the constitution to prevent a Democratic Administration and Congress from adding five more seats to SCOTUS and McConnell has already proved that ‘norms’ are history. FDR’s attempt failed because his own party rebelled at the court packing, those days are gone.

Those are suggestions for how the liberals can counter the conservatives, but what would be best for the country is for rational and sane political parties, but I don’t see that in the next ten years. If we had those we could possible craft from sane reforms, something like constitutional amendments for direct popular vote elections for President, and fixed 10 or 14-year terms for SCOTUS and all Federal Judges. That’s not in the cards though and we have to deal with the reality on the ground and that’s a reality that produced the current president.

Share

Finalist

In 2003 I entered the Writers of the Future contest for the first time. I think, though I am not certain, I entered the story The Station on the Edge an attempt at cosmic horror.  The story placed as a semi-finalist and I foolishly thought that it would be a short trip to the winner’s circle.

Here’s how the contest works. The cycle is quarterly so every three months they receive thousands (they do not release the exact number but only ‘thousands’) of stories from around the world – though the stories must be in English. With all author identifying information stripped away the coordinating judge reviews the stories.  Most do not place and you get a form rejection letting you know that. Another group of 20-30 get an Honorable Mention these writers get a nice little certificate, a handful are awarded Semi-Finalist, these get a certificate and a short as to why their story failed to make it to Finalist. Six are named Finalists and these six stories are passed from the Coordinating Judge to the Quarterly Judges, a rotating panel of professional writers in the SF and Fantasy field. From the Finalist the Judge selected three winners, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Once all four quarters winners are determined the contest arranges a weeklong workshop for the 12 winners, and from the 4 1st place quarterly winners 1 grand prizewinner is determined.

So you can see how scoring a semi-finalist on my first try boosted my confidence and my ego. Skip ahead 15 years, I have not entered every quarter but I have entered a lot and in those 15 years, and in those 60 quarters I scored 5 semi-finalists and a little more than that in Honorable Mentions. It’s a very tough competition among writers who have not yet achieved professional status. If fact it’s been quite a few years since I scored anything more than an Honorable Mention.

Until yesterday.

My most recent entry has placed as a Finalist. It is one of the six stories from which the three winners will be selected. (And no that does give me a 50% chance. As the great editor Gardner Dozois once said from a panel “It’s NOT a lottery!” My chances depend on the style and quality of the other stories and the tastes of the Judges this quarter.) This is closer to winning than I ever achieved but I am preparing myself for a loss.

Still, this is very exciting.

Share