Author Archives: Bob Evans

Movie Review: Wake Up Dead Man

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Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out mystery, opened to a limited theatrical release on Thanksgiving, the day my sweetie-wife and I saw it, and will be available on Netflix, the service that produced the project, on December 12th.

Netflix

Daniel Craig once again stars as Benoit Blanc, a private detective noted for solving perplexing and intricate cases of murder. Blanc has been drawn to a small New York town where the local Catholic priest, Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), was murdered, with suspicion falling on the parish’s junior priest, Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), whose troubled past—which includes a short, fiery temper and killing a man during a boxing match.

As is standard for murder mysteries of this sort, there is a large cast of characters all with seeming motive to murder Wicks, despite at one time being devoted to him. Being a Knives Out mystery, the case is stacked with notable names all thoroughly enjoying themselves.

I enjoyed the movie, felt it clipped along at a decent pace, but my sweetie-wife felt there were moments in the middle where it slowed too far and that it could have been cut. The story does present a number of reversals where you believe a solution has been presented and then that answer is demolished. Perhaps one of those false resolutions could have been removed without damaging the film, but if so, this is a very minor fault in the production.

It is a shame that Netflix won the bidding war 5 years ago after Knives Out surpassed $300 million at the box office and thus required that the sequels be primarily streaming affairs with brief—too brief—runs in actual theaters. Wake Up Dead Man, unlike Glass Onion, is much more of a traditional murder mystery and doesn’t engage in a restart of the story halfway through the run time like Onion did. (Do not get me wrong, I loved Glass Onion, but I don’t feel it’s really all that much of a mystery as it is Johnson having fun playing with the tropes of a sequel.)

If you get the chance to see Wake Up Dead Man in the theater, take it; otherwise, it will make a fine evening’s viewing at home on Netflix starting December 12.

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After Action Report: Loscon 51

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After working at the day job with my schedule shifted from its routine 9-6 to an early morning 7-4 my sweetie-wife and I made the drive from San Diego to Los Angeles for Loscon 51, the 51st Los Angeles Area Science Fiction Convention.

Now, Loscon starts the morning of ‘Black Friday’ but as I will never have the seniority to win the bidding to have that Friday off from work I am resigned to the fact that I can never make programming any earlier than 8pm on the con’s opening night.

Saturday was a different story. Not only were we there for the full set of panels and presentations but I had the privilege and pleasure of participating as a panelist on a pair of them.

1:00 PM I took part in a discussion of apocalyptic fiction, its uses to transmit to coming generations warnings of the dire threats that they would face. We also addressed the tangle that if we, the previous generations had left the world in such bad shape why should anyone paid head to our warnings?

4:00 pm was a much more lighthearted discussion as we tackled the voyage of the McGuffin. We discussed many famous cinematic McGuffins, the difference for McGuffins that are active in the plot and required by the characters for its resolution and passive ones that don’t do anything in the story but are the treasure/item that is sought by the characters.

Saturday evening, after the sweetie-wife and I played out customary games of Dominion online, I visited the open room parties for a while, taking part in conversations, snacking on junk food and soda, and having a wonderful time. After the parties I found a quiet corner and worked on the revision for my novel.

Sunday, I participated in three panels, Developing a Creative Habit, AI & Science Fiction, and I closed out the convention with a discussion of Spiritually in Science Fiction and fantasy.

Directly after the final panel, It was time to climb into the auto and drive home to San Diego. All in all it was a glorious weekend.

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Streaming Review: Eye of the Devil

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I was listening to one of my many horror movie podcasts the other day when during a discussion of folk horror films one of the hosts mentioned such a film starring David Niven.

David Niven? Horror movie?

That’s a pairing of words I had not expected at all. This was one folk horror I had to see. Unfortunately for me in their discussion the podcast did give away the turn in the movie so it was less impactful than it might have been.

MGM

Adapted from the novel Day of the Arrow, Eye of the Devil stars David Niven as Philippe de Montfaucon the Marquis de Bellenac at an old and isolated French estate where the people hold strange rituals and customs. Philippe is called back to the estate as the grape harvest has failed for the third year in a row and he implores his wife, Catherine (Deborah Kerr) to stay behind in the city. Catherine, of course, does not stay behind but follows her husband, bringing along their two children, to the estate. Almost immediately upon arrival Catherine is terrorized by a pair of apparently psychotic siblings, Odile (Sharon Tate, here credited as ‘Introducing Sharon Tate) and Christian (David Hemmings). With her husband’s behavior growing odd and the country folk of the estate apparently intent on frightening her away, Catherine engages in an investigation to discover the truth behind those strange customs and secrets of the ancient estate.

I did not dislike this movie, but it is very hard for me to judge the film since the secret that Catherine, our true protagonist, is seeking to discover is the very thing revealed by the podcast. This is a movie whose engine turns on a single question, What is Going On, and if the answer is known ahead of time, or guessed accurately too soon, then there is little to no narrative weight or momentum keeping the viewer’s attention.

Niven and Kerr are fine in the film, turning in decent performances, but Kerr’s Catherine begins to have repeated scenes making the film feel dull and expanding the sense of its running time which is a mere 96 minutes. Sharon Tate is quite good here as the mysterious and dangerous sister. With very little dialogue Tate conveys menace with a look and her bearing.

I find it hard to recommend Eye of the Devil but it’s also hard to disentangle how much of my non-enjoyment stemmed from the ‘spoiler’ versus how much the film’s pacing simply plodded.

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Movie Review: Sisu: The Road to Revenge

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I am taking a break from working overtime at the day-job this week, and so I have a little more time to write for my blog.

2022 saw the release of the Finnish action flick Sisu, which followed the story of Finnish gold prospector and former special forces commando Aatami Korpi slaughtering a number of fleeing war criminal Nazis during the ending days of World War 2. The action was comically over the top, defying physics and reason but immensely satisfying. Apparently satisfying enough for a second movie, Sisu: The Road to Revenge.

Screen Gems

The sequel ignores Korpi’s (Jorma Tommila) lucky gold strike and takes place in 1946. Following the end of the war, Finland surrendered significant land to the Soviet Union. Korpi has returned to his home, now in Soviet territory, in hopes of bringing his simple cabin that he shared with his deceased wife and child back to Finland to rebuild it. Having killed numerous Soviet soldiers during the war, the Red High Command has decided that the living legend should live no more and pulls one of their war criminals out of Siberia, the military man responsible for the massacre of Korpi’s family, and assigned him the task of killing Korpi The Immortal.

What follows can best be described as a Finnish Fury Road but with far less adherence to any recognized laws of physics or biology. Korpi, with a large flatbed truck, attempting to return to Finland with his disassembled home, encounters numerous Soviet units intent on killing him.

How over the top is Sisu: The Road to Revenge? Well, the 1985 action movie Commando is a grounded and gritty portrayal in comparison.

If one can suspend all their understanding of the physical world and accept that this is a live action but bloody cartoon, then Sisu: The Road to Revenge is a very enjoyable feature, a perfect popcorn movie for a brainless bit of fun watching impossible action as vengeance is visited upon well deserving monsters.

If you cannot set aside physics, then the movie will only be a series of ‘oh, come on!’ exclamations as more and more impossible feats are performed by Korpi The Immortal.

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Proposition 50 a Necessary Evil

A friend messaged me the other day asking my opinion on California’s ballot initiative Proposition 50, which temporarily suspends the independent commission responsible for drawing the state’s Congressional districts in order to allow a directed gerrymander before next year’s off-cycle elections.

I favored and voted for the measure, though I did deem it something I wished I had the opportunity and freedom to oppose. I despise gerrymandering. It is the process where politicians choose their voters rather than the voters choosing their representative. Under normal circumstances, voting against Prop 50 would have been nearly automatic for me.

These are not normal circumstances.

Even before last week’s elections blew fear into the hearts of Republicans, they sensed the anger in the electorate and, given the history of off-cycle elections, knew that their position of power had become precarious. Rather than adjust their policies in hopes of persuading voters to trust them, Trump demanded that Texas redistrict to carve out five new seats deemed “safe” for the GOP, a bid to keep their grip on government.

It is unwise to go into a duel where your opponent has brought a pistol when you had agreed to swords and not change your choice of weapons. California’s abandonment of its commission was tossing aside the sword to pick up a pistol.

However necessary, it is still gerrymandering—manipulating the maps to dramatically influence the outcome of an election, a concept that is at its heart anti-democratic. I would prefer that the nation find a way to kill the process of gerrymandering in all states, but one cannot fight by “gentlemen’s rules” when the other side insists on being small-handed barbarians.

I would also consider it terribly important that the size of the House be expanded. Here is a graph showing that while US population has swelled, the House has been fixed for over a century, compounding our troubles.

us_congress_population_graph

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More Thoughts on Frankenstein

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Not so much about del Toro’s recent and lush production but more thoughts about the source text and the way people interpret it.

It is a common thought that the creature is a sad and pitiable character, his pain understandable, and perceives Victor Frankenstein as the true villain. The vain and self-centered scientist abandons his creation the moment he lays eyes on its unconventional appearance, leaving the poor creation in a monstrous body to suffer the indignities of a cruel and heartless society.

And as far as that analysis goes, it is correct, but it elides several aspects of the text and the horrific events that spring forth from it.

The creature, after finding shelter and hiding amongst a family, teaches itself to read and eventually becomes quite well-read and self-educated, skilled in understanding complex philosophical texts and arguments. This element is often deployed to portray the creature as sympathetic. To me, it is an element that renders him even more evil.

It is after the creature has obtained such mental heights as having read philosophy and advanced texts that it plans and executes the murder of a young child, framing an innocent girl as the murderer so that she is killed by a lynch mob. Neither the child William Frankenstein nor the young woman Justine mistreated the creature in any manner. Their lives were mere tools to be wielded in the creature’s quest for vengeance. They were not people with lives and emotions to be considered but things to be manipulated and abused for the creature’s self-important goals. These were not mad, spur-of-the-moment killings, but actions that were cold, calculating, and utterly indifferent to the pain they inflicted except that they troubled Victor.

Yes, Victor is horrible as well. Once freed from the grips of his obsession, he abandons all responsibility, but honestly, his sins are far less than the monster’s.

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The Neglected Blog

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I have not died, but I have been very tired. Each year from October 15th through December 7th is the Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) for Medicare Advantage plans. It is the period when people who are not new to Medicare can enroll, disenroll, or switch their plans, and my day job deals with those changes, making this time of year a quite busy one. Usually, the workload doesn’t become large and overtime is not offered until later in the AEP, like early to mid-December.

Not this year.

I do not know if more people are retiring early, losing their jobs, or whatnot, but right from the start of the AEP our work queues grew exponentially quickly. I have been taking advantage of the sudden overtime, working 10 hours a day and half a day on Saturdays.

That is not the only reason my poor blog has been neglected.

I have also entered the revise-and-edit phase of my 80s gay cinephile horror novel Final Reel.

Editing and revising is very different than drafting. Now my brain isn’t trying to conjure something from nothing, but rather shape what is already there to the image and form that now exists in my head. This process for my other novel has been mainly one of fixing sentences and paragraphs with minor plot and story changes. Final Reel wasn’t written with an outline—I made it up as I went along. This produced a manuscript where the back half doesn’t fit with the front because it wasn’t until then that I truly understood what I was crafting. So, editing and revising has a lot more revising this time around.

That said, I am extremely happy with it so far, and I think this may be my best novel yet.

However, this poor blog will continue to be neglected for the next several weeks.

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Movie Review: Frankenstein (2025)

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There was no way I was missing my shot at seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein on the big screen, even if it wasn’t showing at an AMC theater and therefore I couldn’t use my subscription benefit.

Netflix

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has been directly or indirectly adapted countless times and has been a staple of the silver screen for over a hundred years. (There is a silent version made by Edison, so it’s at the very start of movies.) I do not think any adaptation has retained every element of Shelley’s sprawling novel, with most productions picking and choosing the parts and themes that they most want to enhance and explore. Universal in their classic film played to the God vs. Man themes while Hammer focused on the evils of a scientist obsessed with his own pursuits.

With del Toro I went in with a fairly strong set of expectations based on the director’s body of work. This production would emphasize the creation’s humanity, shower it with sympathy, and tread on the ground questioning who is the tale’s real monster.

I was not wrong.

Frankenstein (2025) is a luscious feast for the eyes in its production. Nearly every new scene or sequence not only presents production design that dazzles and captivates and also brings in numerous beloved actors. The script, for the most part, dodges the deadly dull trap of overexplaining Victor Frankenstein’s obsession and its origins, but neither does it skate past them unmentioned.

Oscar Isaac turns in a wonderfully calculated performance which echoes without repeating the traits he employed for Ex Machina. (Another story clearly derived from Shelley’s original novel.) Jacob Elordi is sublime in his performance as the creation, certainly capturing the initial innocent, childlike nature that del Toro wanted and managing the transformation to enraged, implacable beast quite handsomely. If there is a weakness in the cast, and I realize the horror community will violently disagree with me on this point, it is Mia Goth as Elizabeth. I never believed that Elizabeth lived and breathed as a character but rather seemed to exist as a collection of traits and phrases meant to impel others along their courses. I have witnessed Goth’s performance in other projects and even when I detested the movies, I found her quite good in them. I suspect the challenges of both an accent and pseudo-period dialog sapped too much of her energy. There is a school of thought in film production that accents can get between an actor and their performance. On the other hand, I found Chistoph Waltz’s Harlander, Victor’s financier and research associate, thoroughly engrossing with more than a hint of The Bride of Frankenstein‘s Doctor Pretorious.

del Toro clearly is a fan of numerous previous productions of this tale and throughout the film makes sly references to them. I appreciate that the references are subtle enough that for the casual viewer they will pass by unnoticed. There is not ‘look at this’ in the cinematography letting you know that the decrepit mill set mirrors the windmill from Universal’s production nor when the creation is shot in the face is there a cue highlighting that this came from the Hammer films.

There are elements eliminated entirely from Shelley’s text. William is no longer a child of six or seven to be murdered by the creation as a revenge plot but is now an adult and is complicit in Victor’s crimes against nature. Elizabeth’s close, though not by blood, relation has been eliminated so any romance between her and Victor no longer carries the aroma of incest.

This is a lovely film, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It needs to be seen in a theater if you can swing it, but at the very least on Netflix next month. Should it come to an AMC in the next couple of weeks I may venture forth for a second in-theater viewing.

However, I wonder if anyone is ever going to do a production that depicts the creation as the monster it is in the text. A vain, narcissistic incel that believes its own pain and agony justifies murderous rage upon innocent victims.

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And The Overtime Begins

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The Annual Enrollment Period for people who are on or want to join a Medicare Advantage Plan runs each year from October 15th thru December 7th for enrollment, disenrollment, or plan changes for the following calendar year. My day job is working for a Medicare Advantage Plan provider, a non-profit that I think provides excellent service, but that is personally just my opinion and not an endorsement.

Anyway, the point is this is the busy season for my job. We bring on contract workers and overtime is offered but usually the extra hours become available later in the cycle. People tend to wait and procrastinate about getting in that paperwork so late November is often when my particular team starts being offered that sweet sweet overtime money.

Not this year.

We aren’t a week into the period and already the call has gone out, ‘If you want to work overtime, it’s yours.’

I am up at 5:30 A.M. this morning and expect that to be standard for the next week; it’s going to be tiring.

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The End of Drafting and the Beginning of Revision

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Friday, the day we honor and celebrate the Norse goddess Freya, I typed the final words of the extremely rough draft of my 80s gay, cinephile, San Diego, cultist, horror novel, with the draft clocking in at a respectable 89,000 words.

As I have written before, this novel I composed without the roadmap of an outline or even hardly anything of a plot in my skull. I knew a few aspects of the project: that it would take place in the mid-80s (I settled on ’84) and in San Diego. In addition to that, it would deal with ghosts in some manner, magic that had been bound to old cellulose nitrate movie film, and use a fictionalized version of the Ken Cinema, a theater that had once been the heart of revival and art house screening in this city, but closed forever in 2020. That was it. That was all I knew about the project when I sat down and wrote the opening scenes and the first chapter.

Characters were invented as they stepped onto the ‘stage’ and ones I thought might be major elements never quite got there and characters I thought were minor became major movers of the plot as it evolved. The plot slowly congealed from the disparate elements that erupted from my brain like Athena from Zeus’ forehead. But as a firmer, clearer, and more consistent picture of the plot emerged, earlier elements did not fit anymore. However, I did not, at that time, go back and either remove those ill-matched elements or revise them, but, like some sharks, I kept moving forward because backwards was death; the novel would only live if I maintained its momentum and reached a satisfying end.

Now that satisfying ending, with themes and plot that emerged organically from the process, has been reached and the task of revising has begun.

Already my opening line has changed to match the new core conflict, and the first chapter now reflects a deeper understanding of the character’s history as he understands it. Much like The Marathon Man, part of the character’s journey is discovering that nothing he thought he knew about his family is actually true.

I think the most important lesson I learned writing Final Reel in this manner is that I must never go back and revise while drafting. It’s easier, more efficient, and ultimately better for the final manuscript to let the inconsistencies live in the text while I discover what it is that really needs to be there.

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