Movie Review: Bohemian Rhapsody

This will rock you.

Or at least it rocked me. Certainly the reviews, both professional and casual, are mixed over this movie, and as such your reaction is going to depend a great deal on your viewpoint and what you bring to the auditorium.

Bohemian Rhapsodyroughly covers from when Freddie Mercury joined Queen 1970, though that was not the band’s name at the time through their Live-Aid performance in1985. The story focuses on the charismatic Mercury following him through what is a fairly standard rock-star narrative arc, his early days of establishing his performance styles, the twin paths of his evolving understanding of his own sexuality while dealing with the poisons that fame and success bring, and the eventual revelation that real meaning in life is found in friends, love, and art. One common thread in the negative reviews is that this film’s execution brought little that was new in the way that this familiar path was presented and that may be true. I myself have seen few musician bio-pics and as such have not had the form beaten into my brain. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I found all the performances to be endearing and believable, I was emotionally invested not only in Mercury’s arc but the entire band as well. Having glimpses at who wrote which songs and such brought to me a greater understanding of who Queen was beyond their flamboyant front man,

Another thread I have seen in reviews concern the treatment of Mercury’s sexuality and his relations with both men and women. I though there several reviewers have missed critical points in the part of the story and the one that perhaps best exemplifies the off-base interpretation is Sheila O’Malley’s at rogerebert.com.  Let me point you to two observations she made about the film.

 

He falls in love with Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton), and looks shocked and disturbed when a trucker gives him a seductive side-eye at a restroom in middle America.

 

In the scene earlier in the film where Freddie first sees Mary, the woman whom he would love for the rest of his life, he not only is captivated by her beauty but give looks of interest to a handsome man also in the same setting. When Freddie is speaking on an outside pay phone at a truck stop in America and the trucker gives him the come hither look Freddie’s reaction to me is not of a man shocked and disturbed, but rather of a man tempted and frightened by that temptation. it was clear that the scene depicts the trucker ‘cruising’ for anonymous gay sex and it leaves unanswered the question if Freddie followed him into that restroom.

 

Later, Mary says to him, “You’re gay, Freddie,” and he responds, “I think I’m bisexual.”

 

As I remember the film this is factually inaccurate as the line are delivered in reverse order as O’Malley has presented them here. In the scene Mary and Freddie as are having difficulties and Freddie is trying to confess his new understanding of his own sexuality, Mary has already stated that she has known that not only is something wrong between them but that is has been wrong for some time. Freddie says that he thinks he is bisexual and Mary responds with “You’re gay.” This makes the scene play out very differently. Freddie still unwilling to accept himself for whom and what he is tries to make a half-measure and Mary, with a more objective viewpoint, doesn’t allow a half lie to stand.

Bohemian Rhapsodyexceeded my expectation and left me thrilled and moved not only by Freddie’s journey but the loved ones he traveled with along that all too brief road. The film to me is ultimately about love, love for you friends, love for kindred souls, love of art, and learning to love yourself in an honest and egotistical manner. My recommendation is hurry and see it.

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The Importance of Finishing

Today I will finally complete the rough draft of my latest short story. This story has been quite a challenge to get down into a first draft. Most short stories I write are complete within a few days or at most a week or two but this one I started in mid August and the now it is the first week of November before I get to the end.

There was a time many years ago when quite a few of my short stories crashed and burned if the processes stretched out too long. Getting stuck in the middle, feeling lost in the narrative, usually resulted in me abandoning the project and moving onto to something newer and fresher. This is nothing unique to myself; it is a common impulse among writers to feel the allure of a fresh project come along while you struggle with the current piece.

I deeply feel that one of the most important skills a writer can posses is achieving completion. Even if what you finish is deeply flawed and never shown to anyone it is important to get to that ending. Quitting can become a habit, one that robs you of the chance to learn, to grow, and sometime to achieve heights you didn’t know you could obtain.

This project I honestly thought I would abandon. I write complete stories while this one languished unfinished but I always returned. I knew my final line, I knew the point of the tale, and I just had to force myself to discover the mysterious middle.

There’s now the easier task of editing and then trying to get some feedback on the story. Perhaps it was too much for me and it’s not executed well enough to submit anywhere, but it is completed and that in itself is a victory.

 

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Pilot Review: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Netflix has launched a new interpretation of the Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Originally from the Archie comics Sabrina is perhaps best known from the 90’s sitcom starring Melissa Joan Hart. Netflix’s new showing has ditched the half-hour, brightly lit, sitcom format for an hour of moody and horror themed dramatic episodes. The core setup remains the same, Sabrina is a teenage who lives with her two aunts and all three are descended from a long line of witches and Sabrina navigates the complexity of a life that exists in two separate worlds, the sorcerous and mortal. Where the 90s show played it life and decidedly family-friendly, Netflix version is violent, dark, and hews closer to a traditional view Christian of witches complete with pacts, blood rituals, and bonds to dark powers.

In the pilot episode, and the only one I have seen so far, Sabrina is quickly coming up on her sixteenth birthday one that is very special among the witches. On her birthday she is expected to receive her ‘dark baptism.’ sign her name in the Dark Lord’s book, and give herself in congress with the Dark Lord. Once this is done she will leave her old life behind and take up studies at the witches Academy of Unseen Arts. However Sabrina has a life among her mortal friends including a boyfriend Harvey and she is finding it difficult to commit herself to the life her aunts and the rest of the magical world expects of her. Things are complicated when a mysterious witch murders and replaces on the high school’s teachers Miss Wardwell, player with delicious evil by Michelle Gomez proving she has true evil acting chops beyond Doctor Who’s Missy. Things get darker when taunted by three other young witches known as ‘The Weird Sister’ (how’s that for a Macbeth reference in what was inspired by a 90s teen sitcom?) is it suggested that the accident that killed Sabrina’s parents was far from accidental.

As I noted above the mythology borrows heavily from the Christian view of witchcraft. In addition to repurposed phrasing and imagery, such as the Dark Baptism,’ there also are symbolism directly lifted from Christianity, such as forbidden fruit as an access to knowledge. I have seen some concern and negativity direct towards the show from those who consider themselves the modern adherents to pagan and Wiccan lore. Of course as with all things artistic what you bring with you will impact how the art works or does not work for you and that is neither good nor bad it simply is what it is. A more common approach in popular media is to play witchcraft towards the Wiccan traditions. (Yes, I am looking at you Buffy The Vampire Slayer.)  Both approaches ate valid and I am interested in see is Sabrina decides to follow up the implications or borrowing heavily from Christian mythology. (I was also intrigued by Buffy’s explicit rejection of the Christian worldview and yet deciding to continue to have the Vampire repelled by crosses and crucifixes.)

I enjoyed the pilot and will be following up with more episodes until I either finish the season or it does something to break my interest.

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Halloween Movie Review Nightmare City AKA City of the Walking Dead

So I end Halloween reviews this year with a film I scarcely remember from the time a friend and I rented back in the early 80s. Nightmare City, also released in the US as City of the Walking Dead, is an Italian zombie movie one of the vast number that country produced following the success of Dawn of the Deadand Zombi.

Over the years I remembered only a few scenes and that this film had struck me as confused and not good at all and following with this year’s mission of revisiting film that hadn’t worked for me the first time around I was pleased to find it available for streaming on Amazon.

The movie depicts the events as an unnamed city is overrun by the living dead resulting in civilization’s collapse Our main character, though that is using the term quite loosely, is a reporting. He arrives at the airport to interview an atomic scientist. The plane arrives without any communication with the control tower, lands, and the party meeting it is attacked by weapon wielding zombie. Apparently unlike classic Romero zombie these fellow not only use weapons, clubs and knives, but can pilot aircraft as well. In order to prevent a panic the military gags the reporter, though that turns out to be pointless after the zombie attack a live television broadcast. Throughout the rest of the movie we follow the relations of various military personnel as the outbreak grows worse and the reporter as he and his wife flee the city. Apparently neither of them feel a particularly sense of duty, he as a reporter or she as a friggin’ doctor, and leaving the people of the city to their fates. Because this is an Italian zombie movie there are numerous kills and several involve mutilation to eyes and by the final act the audience is following far fewer characters. Chased by zombie through an amusement park, shades of Zombielanda much better film, the reporter and the doctor climb the rollercoaster. (Because going up always works as an escape route.) A passing military character in a helicopter spots them, hovers overhead with a knotted rope, not even a rope ladder but just a knotted rope like in sadistic middle school P.E. classes, and lowers it to rescues them. The pair climbs but the doctor falls to hear dropped stuffed dummy death and the reporter wakes from his terrible nightmare. Yup, the whole movie has been a dream; they went there. It’s okay they have one more twist left. The reporter goes the airport to interview an atomic scientist and the movie’s opening repeats.

Nightmare Citycan be used as an example of how not to write a story. While there are plenty of events going on none of them have any real weight because the people involved are only there to serve the threadbare plot and act as targets. As story more than a sequence of events. People in stories need to have objectives, they need to have motivations that arise from the nature of their characters, and they need to exist in a plot that serves a thematic purpose. Stories have a through line that is more than simple cause and effect. Stories are journeys and journeys imply destinations not just ends. This movie had no journey but mere meandering murders.

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Terrible Times

These are terrible times.

The mass murder in Pittsburg, the attempted assassinations of Democratic leaders, and the racist slaughter of two innocent people as they shopped because their skin contained too much melanin. These are terrible times and Trump’s inciting conspiracy filled rants fuel these evil deeds far too much.

It would be wrong to hold Trump solely responsible. These cowardly murderous individuals are no passive actors without agency. They took up the arms, they sought out their innocent victims, and they committed the slaughter. They did not do this in a vacuum however. Like the witched in Macbeth, Trump has ignited passions that end in murder after murder.

Let me be clear I am not conflating typical political imagery and hyperbole with the racist, anti-Semitic, conspiracy fevers that Trump and his allies have used to poison our political processes. As Trump rose through the field of political midgets that comprised the GOP’s presidential hopefuls there were plenty on the right that spoke out about this man, his vile views, and the threat he represented to our system of governance. After he secured the nomination and that electoral misfire gave him the presidency conservatism cravenly collapsed.

Why the collapse? That’s easy to answer, because the Grand Old Party has no spine. While Trump has an overall approval rating of the low 40 percent range among Republicans his number climbs into the area of 85-88 and among those who identify as ‘strongly Republican’ his approval exceeds 90 percent. Elected Republicans, ever fearful of getting a primary challenger from the right, surrendered the party. They will exert no pressure on Trump to moderate his language, his attacks, his lies, because their own political survival far outweighs any quaint notions of propriety or principal.

What is ironic is that I recall shortly after Trump won the presidency a conservative friend of mine suggested that the intense rhetoric and emotions of the resistance to Trump and his administration might put Trump in greater danger from assassination, and while there have been some instances of violence against conservatives, let us not forget about the shooting of Republicans as they practiced for a softball game, the number and intensity of the violence against liberals and liberal allies has been greater. Normally you would see this sort of violence exercised by the disenfranchised, by ideologies they have given up on achieving their goals through the normal political processes, consider the leftist groups of the 70s as an example, and yet while the conservatives have control of the entire government their rhetoric and hyperbole plays them as impotent victims.

That brings me to the only silver lining in the dark, dangerous times. I believe that we are witnessing the death throes of an ideology. Not conservatism in general, but rather of that strain of thought that is racist, homophobic, transphobic, and clingingly bitterly to a worldview that is passing into the ashbin of history.

That does not mean we need do nothing and just await the better times ahead. To bring about a future with greater equality and greater respect for humanity’s incredible diversity will require all our effort.

This is part of the reason I cannot be silent on such things, even as I chase professional publications. It is easier to stay silent and protect possible future earnings but they would mean abandoning my core ideals and surrendering the concerns of loved ones to the mob. That I cannot do. There are many aspects of conservatism that appeals to me and that I find morally just but as long as they lash themselves to hateful ideologies there can be no rescuing them. They will share the fate of the allies that they have chosen.

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Sunday Night Movie: The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Last night I continued my self-study into cinema’s sub-genre Blaxploitation with 1973’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door.

Based on the novel of the same name the story is about Dan Freeman who, after processed rigged to eliminate all of the class’s black candidates, becomes the CIA’s first black case officer. Despite his drive, talent, and intelligence, Dan is assigned menial office work and endures the agency’s entrenched racism. Eventually bitter with his treatment Dan resigned from the CIA and returns to his home of Chicago where he founds a social agency dedicated to rehabilitating black youth away from street-gang life. In reality systemic racism has radicalized Dan and his social work is a cover for his plans to take the training, skills, and knowledge he learned from the Agency and establish a national black liberation movement and guerrilla army. After usurping the gang of his youth, Dan trains the street kids in the specialized knowledge and tactics instilled in him by the U.S. Government, fosters friendships with members of the police, all while maintaining his cover as a social worker. The film reaches its climax with the launching of the revolution and Dan’s confrontation with his past.

Not as well known as other entries into the sub-genre I discovered The Spook Who Sat by the Door while listening to podcasts. Unable to locate it on any streaming service and with the DVD unavailable through my rental services I gave in to temptation and purchased it new from Amazon. If I liked the film it could join my library and if I didn’t care for it my sweetie-wife could utilize her e-bay skills and resell the disc. The movie now resides in my library.

Now, that is not to say that this is a great movie, it suffers from a number of small flaws that hamper the execution, things that look like establishment of complications are dropped without any word or later use and the principal driving drama of the third act could have been better established but the film overcomes these relatively minor missteps and achieves a compelling and thoughtful narrative. Competent, if uninspired, direction by Ivan Dixon of Hogan’s Heroes carries the viewer through the combination of action and social commentary. Written by Sam Geeenlee, who also wrote the novel and served as producer of the film, and Melvin Clay, the screenplay does more than explore the white and black divide, taking time to explore some of the troubles within its community. Herbie Hancock provided the film’s electronic music giving the movie a different yet budget friendly sound.

All art is both a product and a reflection of the culture that produced it. This is especially true for Blaxploitation cinema. While there has always been a cinema for black audiences it is only after the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of the Producer Unit system of film production, and turmoil of the counter-culture than the fertile ground had been prepared could this revolutionary movement find both artistic and commercial success. The Spook Who Sat by the Door did not find financial success on its initial release and after being hastily pulled from distribution for many years this film was only available on bootleg tapes. The author and the director voiced opinions that United Artist has found the final product’s political message too upsetting as the reason for the films banishment into the forgotten archives. In 2004 actor Tim Reid located an original negative and arraigned for the DVD release and in 2012 The Spook Who Sat by the Door was included the National Film Registry of culturally significant movies.

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Getting Out the Vote – Digital Edition

While listening to a podcast – Vox’s The Weeds– I heard an advertisement for an app to help you get your friends out to the polls this election, Vote With Me.

The app uses your contact list to search public records and produce for you a snapshot of how diligently your friend attend the polls. Your vote is a matter of public record, who or what you actually cast your ballot for is secret. In addition to knowing if your friends skipped the last midterms the app will also let you know if their district is considered a toss-up or not so you can target your efforts to those area where it will matter the most.

The data goes back to the year 2000 so it can provide an interesting peek into political leanings you may have been unaware of in your friends. Again whom they voted is unknown but if they voted in closed primaries that is public knowledge. I was a little surprised to discover who in my contact list had participated in a Libertarian primary. Here’s a couple of screenshots to give you an example of the type of information you can gleam from this app and very publically available data.

The first is from a friend of mine and I have redacted out their name, even though this is public data without specific consent I’ll keep their identity under wraps. The second is my own data and so no need of redaction and you can see when I switched my party affiliation.

I don’t recall anything like this at all for the last election, though it may have already existed and I simply did not know about it. Statistician Nate Silver, who founded and runs the data driven news site fivethirtyeight.com, had said that if the polls have a consistent error of 2-3 points biased either for the Democrats of Republicans, then either party could have a strong showing and take both the House and the Senate. I can’t help but wonder what sort effect this app or others like it will have on the election.

This, of course, is only the start of our big data culture. Even those of us who avoid Twitter and Facebook leave a digital trail through the world and the ability to gather, process, and interpret this data is only getting easier.

 

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The Challenge of ‘Pantsing’ It

In the real of writing authors can be divided into two major camps, plotters and pantsers. Plotters outline their works before starting a project while ‘pantsers’ start writing and follow the impulses of their muses. Neither approach is inherently right or wrong; writers need to utilize the technique that works for them. Even the broad categories themselves are somewhat misleading as often pantsers have some idea where their story is ultimately going and plotters often discover twists and turns not revealed by the outlining process. My novels tend to be highly plotted and outlined, the last project had an 87 pages outline but when it come to short fiction I am much more of a hybrid author. I know where the story starts and I know the ending, I cannot begin without that ending for me it contains the point of the story, but I will often discover my middle like a pantser.

My most recent short fiction was following this pattern but stalled when I discovered that while I knew what critical information had to be revealed to both the first person protagonist and the readers I was utterly stuck on how to do it. I have work-shopped the opening of this story and it’s gotten good feedback, I know not just how it ends but the final line of the piece and I would say that about 80 percent of the plotting is taken care of, but this one element, this vital element, had stalled the project for months. Every time I think I have found the solution when I consider it more closely it falls apart.  I have set this story aside and drafted complete shorts in the interim but still this tale remains uncompleted.

Until last night.

While I stood at the sink and did the dishes, (we do not use the dishwasher, saving the energy it consumes.) my mind explored the blank areas of this story. Suddenly as I imagine scenes between characters, exploring their motivations, some of which were to be entirely subtext, the answer appeared. I had been coming at it from the wrong character, insisting that my protagonist go out and seek the information that would torment her when I had an already existing character that would revel in supplying the information and torment her with it.

My weeks of being stuck have ended and the story should be finished in first draft soon. As a bonus I even, finally, found the title, ‘Savior Complex.’

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These Bombs are not a Surprise

I am late getting my blog post up this morning because I had an early appointment with my talent chiropractor but here at lunch I can take a little of my fiction writing time to comment on the breaking but not surprising news that mail bombs were sent by persons unknown to several politicians and prominent people.

I do follow the adage that you know the nature of the perpetrator by knowing their victims and the fact this morning’s murderous attempts targeted liberals and other ‘enemies’ of the right certainly is consistent with the person or persons who constructed the devices belonging to the conservative side of the debate. After years of crafting elaborate conspiracies around these person, about their birth, their motivations, and ascribing all manner of evil to them it hardly unexpected that somebody would take it upon themselves to ‘do the right thing’ and fight back. Of course having a President that labels a free press as an enemy of the people, phrasing better suited to Stalin than to our Chief Executive, and whose rallies incite violence contributed to this bitter news. To me there is a direct line from ‘enemy of the people’ to this morning’s attacks. Violence is always preceded by violent thoughts. Once violence becomes an acceptable method of political discourse the future becomes dangerous.

Had those bomb been delivered to Trump, Paul Ryan, and Senator McConnell I would just as quickly draw a line from ‘punch Nazis’ to those same hypothetical attacks. Once the rabid dog of political violence is unleashed it obeys no master.

There are those who are going to try to take this morning’s news to silence all discourse and criticism of the administration, drawing a false equivalency between vocal reprimands and actual threats. These people need to be rejected as solidly as those who advocate physical violence.

Of course this also exactly what enemies in the Kremlin want to see. They fanned the flames of political hatred, inflaming the division that already threatened our society’s fabric, with the hopes of causing us to defeat ourselves. Don’t help them. Don’t share, false, mean, or spiteful memes on Twitter and Facebook. Too often these are the weapons meant to weaken us and it is one reason why I try to avoid name-calling and insulting attacks.

Civility does not require servility, we can fight for everyone’s rights, we can fight the hate without deploying more hate, and we must do this if our country is to not only survive but come closer to that more perfect union, to come closer to its ideals.

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The Time is Drawing Nigh

As I write this the morning of October 23rd with the midterm elections just two weeks away the political site fivethrityeight.com is giving the Democratic Party an 82.8 percent chance of taking control of the House of Representative and the Republican Party an 81.0 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate. (With an additional 80 percent chance that the Democratic Party with gain either one seat or lose none.) This election cycle the statisticians at the site have included a model for the various Governors elections and they current favor the Democratic Party to win the top executive positions in thee states of Illinois and Florida with George and Ohio being rated as toss-up and Arizona leaning towards the Republicans but not a safe lock.

Some of this movement can be attributed to the normal US electoral process of the midterms swinging against the party that won the last Presidential elections and some of it is also a reaction to the specific presidency of Donald Trump. Within the Republican Party itself Trump remains very popular and many GOP candidates across the country are emulating him making his style and positions the Republican brand. Whether this is merely a strong reaction the current President, his policies and his party’s adoption of these planks or a genuine ‘blue wave’ that could be strong enough to sweep the opposition party into power in both the House and the Senate will not be know for a fortnight. Even a modestly good showing by the Democratic party, taking the House and several governorship while leaving the Senate in GOP hands, will dramatically influence the future American landscape. With the House the Democrats will be able to launch investigations into suspected corruption at the heart of the presidency and with governorship of large important states they will be able to use the 2020 redistricting to mitigate the GOP gerrymanders from the 2010 census. These gains, even just the modest ones, will also begin the rebuilding of the Democratic bench that was destroyed during the Obama administration when the party ignored state and local contests, surrendering the field to GOP control, a mistake the Democratic party now seems to have finally recognized.

It is ironic to consider what world we would likely be facing if the 2016 presidential election had turned out differently, if the ‘blue wall’ had held and Hillary Clinton had won that contest. A second Clinton presidency would not have provoked a ‘resistance’ and aside from unhappy ‘Berrnie’ supporters the Democratic Party would have mostly asleep at the switch. The House and Senate, safely in GOP control, and despite a strong economy, the midterms would have most likely eroded President Clinton’s number in both chambers, while an un-energized base would have left the states and local control uncontested, teeing the GOP for another round of favorable gerrymandering following 2020. Even if Hillary won her reelection bid, incumbency is a powerful in any election; it is probable that by 2024 would have seen a procedural bias strongly in the Republican’s favor.

I am not arguing that the election of Trump was a good thing. He has done too much damage to our institutions, our political norms, and our standing in the world for his election be considered a good thing. His administration’s drive to defined transgender person out of existence will make Washington D.C. the Nuremberg of the Potomac. His admiration of dictators and his blind eye towards their crimes makes a mockery of our morality and his corruption debases the very concept of the rule of law. Trump is doing serious, lasting, and possible permanent damage to the Union but there is hope and despair is only for those who can foresee the future with perfect clarity.

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