Author Archives: Bob Evans

Sunday Night Movie: The Wicker Man : The Final Cut

This is the first time in my occasional series where I have revisited a film. With more than 300 movies in my collection and the vast choices available by way of my three streaming services this is not a choice forced upon me by a lack of options.

The Wicker Man first hit theaters in 1973, but before the first drive-in audience sleepy discovered this film on the bottom of a double bill, it had already been tossed by a storm of drama. Forced into production early, it is film about springtime on a Scot island, that was filmed during a chilly Scot autumn. A challenging film about a clash of cultures, and what Wickermandoes it mean to be devout, it found itself measured as product and summarily sentenced to butchering before release. Tossed out to die an ignoble and forgotten death then film slowly built a following. From the strange images, the non-cinematic score, and the brutal inescapable ending, the film became legend.  Interest grew, interested in perhaps the director’s original vision, not subject to an executive’s callous command to cut fifteen minutes and he didn’t care which. The birth of conspiracy, when it was discovered that all the original negatives had somehow inadvertently been used as landfill in building a highway. All of this merged into a strange and almost unbelievable history for a simple low budget horror film.

I refer to it as a musical/art-house/horror film and from the first time in 1979 when I watched it on the very young HBO it captivated me. Home video made it possible for me to watch the film again, and a duplicate of an early cut, transferred to 1” videotape, granted us a glimpse at what might have been. Then last year, after new owners acquired the rights and initiated a world-wide search, a print was found, a print with the missing footage.

So in 2013, the directors vision, restored and repaired, was released to theaters, and last month to the glorious quality of Blu-ray. I saw this version in the theater with myself and two friends as the only patrons, and two weeks ago purchased the Blu-ray, making this the only film that I have three versions of in my library.

The Blu-ray is gorgeous, though a bit light on special features. (One reason I have three version, its to have the most complete set of documentaries about this most unusual movie.) While the picture was lovingly restored, the soundtrack was not upgraded to multichannel sound. That said the stereo is good and accurate to the time when the film was produced. Watching it I was drawn into the beauty of the frame, the lush images, and the off-balance story. The plot is simple. Sergeant Howie of Scot West Highland police force, on an anonymous tip, flies to an isolated Scot island to investigate the report of a little now missing for many months. Howie, a good Christian copper is deeply offended  by the locals and smells conspiracy. What follows is a story that on one level is simple thriller, a good man facing an faceless and hidden enemy with lives in the balance, but under that plot lurks a fascinating study into belief, and what it means to truly believe.

This is a film I would recommend to anyone with slightly off-kilter tastes.

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Sunday Night Movie: Death Wish

There are films that are classics because of the artistry with which they are crafted, and there are films that are classics for having an outsized impact on our culture, but Death Wish is neither, it is a film that is important because it captures the mood of an age.

I have never watched the entire film. Not because of a stand to refuse to participate, but Death-Wish-1974-Hollywood-Movie-Watch-Online1simply it never was around in a form for me to watch at the time and place where I had an interest. I had seen scenes and I had even seen the closer couple of shoots, but never the entire film, and certainly never in one go from front to back. It is an interesting experience, particularly from a position 40 years after it was released, and after it had spawned a franchise of its own.

Death Wish is at heart a political film buried in the national psyche of the United States during the 70’s. For those not around during that time, it was dreary and depressing for America. Vietnam had fallen, the Arab oil embargo had shocked the economic system, Watergate had destroyed faith in the government, and the idea that things were bad and only going to get worse ruled the day. The Stark motto from the Games of Thrones would fit perfectly the mood, ‘Winter is Coming.’ In addition to out of control inflation, energy storages, government corruption, terrorism, crime began surging during the decade.

Spoilers Ahead Continue reading →

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Oh my time is in serious danger…

A few months ago I lost quite a bit of productive time at home to a computer game, Kerbal Space Program. The game is very low cost to buy, and if you have a science or engineering bent it’s worse than blue meth. Just a couple of weeks ago I broke my addiction to the game.

Now my strength of will is being tested again.

A couple of years ago my wife I received as a Christmas gift a card game ‘Dominion.’ It is a funny game, easy to play, nicely social, and subtle enough that the ease of play disguises a tricky and challenging game to master. We quickly fell in love with it, and it is a cornerstone of our board and card gaming nights.

Behold the demon temptation that is Dominion on Line. Not as fun as playing around a table with friends, but still dangerously easy and apparently free to play.

DominionOnlineOpeningScreen

Oh can I roll a 20 on my Will save?

 

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Movie Review: Knights of Badassdom & a short essay

Last night my sweetie-wife and I went out for an evening film. Knights of Badassdom is not a movie you will find in general release, however if you search the TUGG website you may find showings in your area. Otherwise you will need to wait for video to see the film.2013-07-25-knights_of_badassdom

The premises is farcical and simple: LARPers, that’s Live Action Role Players for those of you not in the geek, on a weekend game in the woods accidentally summon up a real demon amidst the scores of players and their foam weapons.  It falls upon these fantasy warriors and wizards to defeat the evil.

My feelings about the movies are decidedly mixed. There no doubt that the comedy worked and worked often. I laughed out loud repeatedly and I truly felt that the filmmakers were not grinding an axe about LARPers and gamers in general, but rather were celebratory in the geekiness of their characters. That’s several good base hits in my book, however they also whiffed at bat where is comes to mixing horror and comedy.

This film did not find the right mix and too often I found myself having to go from laughter to seriousness and far too short of a time frame. I have often said in the past that mixing horror and comedy is generally a bad idea.

Knights of Badassdom get fairly explicit in its violence and the violence is with real consequence, this plays against the well written and well delivered comedic aspects of the piece. During the film there is a moment – I will not spoil it so no details – but when that moments happened I felt the film lose the audience. This audience had been right there in the palm of the director’s hand. There were laughing, having fun, and thoroughly engrossed in the film. The Moment happens and you could sense the stunned emotion radiating from the seats.  In my opinion the audience was never back in the zone are well after that moment, though they did return to having fun, and the filmmakers did try to make amends for the moment with the ending of their movie.

This film is very hard for me to recommend or not recommend because I think people are going to have very idiosyncratic responses to it. Certainly see it on video, provided moderate gore does not bother you.

Many times today my mind returned to why this movie did not work for me and why sometimes I have no issues with comedy and horror mixed up, after all I love The Cabin in the Woods and other times It just drives my away. I think I understand now. You can mix horror and comedy, but you have to pay particular attention to the kind of horror and comedy.

For example in the afore mentioned The Cabin in the Woods. There is certainly comedy, but it is not farcical. It is the type of comedy that crows out of naturalistic characters reacting as real people could react to an actual situation. Contrast that with Dead Alive (or as it is known down under Brain Dead) by Peter Jackson. That film has very broad characters, the kind that are found on farce, and the violence and gore is very broad as well. It’s not realistic at all to expect that a lawnmower will let you literally mow through a crowd of zombies, but in that film it works because it matches the style of the comedy. The Lost Boys does not work for me because it has farcical characters, The Frog brothers, the Grandfather, placed with naturalistic settings. When I watch farce I don’t get wound up about the dramatic troubles in the plot, there are there just to drive the plot. In Airplane! No one is on the edge of there seat about the landing, you just don’t take it as a serious danger. It is mixing the farcical with the seriously dramatic that grates on me the wrong way, and Knights of Badassdom did just that. The characters are farcical, and wonderful in that aspect, but the threat is too real, too certain and that breaks my disbelief.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

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Some Thoughts on Political Tribalism

A Broadway, or perhaps off-Broadway I’m uncertain on that point, show was proclaim in verse that the internet is made for porn. That’s only partially true, it’s also made for flame wars. Among the most heated and viciously fought of these wars are the political ones, and it is there that you see the purest distillation of political tribalism.
It seems to me that tribalism must be in some ways very liberating. Freed from doubt, freed from choice, you always know exactly what is the right answer, who is the right candidate, and what is the right position. You trust your sources of information and all others are suspect, subject to your tribes vetting before their data can be evaluated.
Now, I am not talking about have convictions. I am not talking about having a philosophy. I am talking about having a team and the team’s position is always correct, even when it changes, it can only change from correct to correct. You have seen the tribes on the Internet. They are the people who never ever surprise you with their political posts. It doesn’t matter if they are sharing a meme, commenting on an article, posting a link, without even looking you know what the position is going to be, you know who is going to be attacked, who is going to be praised, and what is going to be reviled. That must be easy.
I have cast a few votes over my life. I have wrestled with the choices laid out before me. I can look left and I can look right and in both directions I can see things to admire, objectives worth striving for, and freedoms worth defending. What I do not see are enemies, and at it’s heart that is what tribalism always is about, the enemy.
It doesn’t matter if it comes from the left, or if it comes from the right, the tribe is about defining the enemy and drawing a circle that proclaims those on the outside are not like us, they are the enemy and they are not to be trusted.
Doubt is not allowed and doubt to me is essential. Anytime I feel absolutely certain about anything a nebulous as politics, I know I haven’t given the subject serious thought. Politic is culture and culture is big and messy, it is not given to absolutes answers, those are illusions obscuring our understanding.

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Game Review: Star Trek The Deck Building Game; The Original Series

Before I get into the meat of this first post in over a month, let me give you a brief look into my life lately.

The reason I have not been posting is threefold.

1)   Day Job: I’ve been working 6 days a week for three months now and it has taken a real toll on my energies when I arrive home. 5 days a week at 11 hours at the day job and then a half-day on Saturdays. This is good money-wide and while I am still a temp there things look good for transitioning to a regular full time position.

2)   Writing: Despite the enormous number of hours poured into the paying job, I have also been very productive on my non-paying writing job. The re-write of my SF adventure novel hit 70,000 words and I figure I have another 30 to 35 thousand to go.

3)   Kerbal Space Program: This I blame on my nephew, or is it nephew-in-law? Is there such a thing? Anyway  he mentioned this program in a facebook post, I downloaded the Demo and good god this is crack for science/engineering types. I used to play a lot of first person shooters on my Xbox 360. That was perfect. I could fire up the machine and play for just 15-30 minutes and get in several games. Kerbal? Hours sucked away designing spacecraft and then trying to figure out why they blow up.

So on to the mini-review. Continue reading →

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I Don’t Miss Cable Television

Every four years I order the basic Cable TV suite from my local provider to that my presidential election party can have a full array of talking heads, but other than that I don’t have cable T.V., or conventional television for that matter.

All of my video watching need are met either by my library of discs, or by the streaming services I subscribe engage. (Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu-plus) With these services I have found I miss cable television almost not at all. It’s wonderful being able to browse a selection, find something that fits my mood at the moment, and just start watching.

This week I watched in bits and pieces, because OT is sucking up a lot of my time,  a film I have not seen since I was 13 or 14, The Hindenburg.

For those of you too young to remember the 70’s was the era of the disaster movie and I have always enjoyed that odd genre. It’s one reason I adore Mars Attacks, it a perfect blend of the 50’s SF invasion film and the 70’s disaster movie. In 1975 Universal Studios gave us the disaster movie based on an actual disaster, The Hindenburg, about the German zeppelin that exploded over Lakehurst New Jersey, does anything good every happen in New Jersey? The fictional account is about a German air force officer tasked with ferreting out the bomber and his bomb who plans to destroy the Nazi symbol of technological triumph. George C. Scott stars as the conflicted officer, torn between duty and his disgust for the new regime. The ship is of course filled with interesting characters, diamond smugglers, spies, shady businessmen, entertainers, and aristocrats. What the film is a little short on is suspense.

It is a given that he fails in stopping the bomb, because well as we all know the airship did explode. I think it would have rather original if he had succeeded, but the cause of the disaster was something other than the bomb. Think of it as a statement on the futility of our fight against death. We can beat one thing, but in the end we always lose.

Anyway, it was fun watching the film again and the special effects amazingly stood up rather well over time. If you have Netflix you might want to give it a go.

 

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Unreality and Hallucination in MacBeth

Over the last week I have been watching one of my favorite films, Throne Of Blood, in bits and bites as my scheduled scarcely allows me to watch an entire film on any one night.

As you may or may not be aware of, Throne of Blood, is Macbeth set amongst feuding Samurai in medieval Japan. It is truly my first real experience with the play, and led to my experiencing the play in a number of other forms and productions. I even have a failed novel that was an attempt at placing Macbeth in an SF setting.

As I was watching Thursday night we got to the scene where Miki, the Banquo character, appears as a ghost after his has been murdered. It suddenly occurred to me, and I doubt that this is truly original after all people have had hundreds of years to consider various aspect of the play, that instead of the ghost being a hallucination from the guilt ridden and mad MacBeth, instead it was exactly as it appeared. Am angry ghost taking revenge upon the man responsible for its murder.

Macbeth is a play full of madness and hallucinations, but it is also a play full of magic and witchcraft, leading me to question just how much of the hallucinations are from insanity and how much may be from supernatural sources.

The play opens with the supernatural, the three witches meeting and agreeing to meet in the future with MacBeth. In addition to their prophesy about MacBeth, murder, and a Scott Game of Thrones, the witches also boast of the deeds that they have performed by way of the cruel magic. Clearly the audience is meant to accept that these are not deluded women pretending to be evil spell casters, but actual witches armed with potion and spell.

Before MacBeth has murdered Ducan, and so supposedly before there are strong stressors to drive him made, he sees a phantom dagger that prompts him onward towards his foul deed. What would he have such a hallucination? May it be possible that this an evil spell from the witches whom we already have learned revel in causing death and discord?

Of course we’re back at the ghost, and Shakespeare  was fond of using the undead spirits to advance a plot. So instead of looking upon Banquo’s shade as mere illusion of MacBeath’s mind, hit might very well be real.

If we accept these ideas, where does that leave our interpretation of the play? With evil spells at work, just how much of the tragedy is the result of MacBeth’s and Lady MacBeth’s  lust for power and position and how much can be laid at the supernatural powers playing the couple?

 

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The Importance of Emotional Balance to My Writing

For me, this has been a real roller coaster of a year. The sudden los of gainful employment in April sent shockwaves throughout every aspect of my life. When I found myself with loads more unaccounted for time I really thought I was going to get loads more writing completed.

The plan had been that the mornings would be dedicated to job searching (as task made much easier by the internet) and the afternoons would be spent writing. Boy, that plan never worked.

The stress of not having a regular job really took away my ability to concentrate. While I did get some writing done, including I think one of my strongest stories even if the coordinating judge at the Writers of The Future Contest disagrees,  by and large I got very little written. Certainly my novel suffered.

Two months ago I landed a job as a temp at the healthcare giant, Kaiser Permanente. I almost passed up on the job as the offered pay was barely more than the unemployment compensation I was receiving, but I did take the job.  (One reason was that I prefer to work to no and another my belief that having a job makes it easier to land another.)

While I am still a temp, things are looking optimistic that I will transition to a regular full-time employee at Kaiser. This is very good. We’re talking good pay, good benefits, and a union to help protect me for the inconsistencies of poor management.

Currently at Kaiser we are doing a lot of overtime. This is the busiest time of the year for my division. For the last three weeks I have been working 10 hours a day for 5 days a week, and then putting in a half day on Saturday. It would be expected that so much overtime would be an additional drag on my writing, but that would a conclusion at odds with my observations.

I purchased a backpack – I need to walk a mile and a half everyday to get from work – and began taking my MacBook Colossus with me to work. Even dead tired and working like a dog, I am writing every day on my lunches and my breaks. I’m not yet back to thousand words a day, but I will be hitting that goal and exceeding it soon.

It’s not the tiredness; it’s not the hours, it is the emotional stability of having my problems in my rearview mirror that seems to be the singe most important factor.

I must say, it feels good to be back.

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