For some reason my arthritis is acting up today. It made my day job fairly rough and by the end of the day my fingers were smarting quite a bit.
I did manage more editing on Cawdor, but the project is taking longer in the 1.5 draft than I had expected. Still, I am happy with the product and should have a readable version ready before the end of September.
A few years ago, before I had met my lovely sweetie-wife, I saw a charming movie at the local Art House theater. The movie was The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. A tongue in cheek send up of bad SF/monster movies of the late 50’s and early 70’s. the film gave us many memorable comedy bits including the famed Amish Terrarium. If you have not seen this movie you need to see it.
Yes, not every scene works as well as it could have. Some scenes drag on too long, but overall I enjoyed the movie.
This week the sequel hit the DVD shelves. It’s rare that I buy a DVD without having seen the movie, but I was willing to take that risk with a Lost Skeleton sequel.
The good news is I felt I got my money’s worth. This was charming and funny. It was clear that the cast enjoyed working with each other again. (those whose characters had died in the first film were playing the twins of those original characters.)
Unlike cheap SF films of the era they actually tried to shoe-horn in character growth as part of the comedy and it mostly worked.
What didn’t work was that this film by its very nature could not be as original at the first. Many of the jokes are extensions of gags and jokes used in the first film. Because of that they lose punch and comedy needs punch.
There is nothing in the film as original or as quote worth as the aforementioned ‘Amish Terrarium.’
I can’t wholeheartedly recommend buying this DVD unless it really strike your fancy. Best rent it first.
So yesterday my sweetie-wife and I watched a film called Incubus, from 1965.
Now this was a film I had heard about, but one I had never seen. It stars — as you can see from the screen cap — William Shatner just a few years before he began his five– no three — year voyage as Captain James Kirk.
As the title suggests, it is a horror film and a demonically based horror story. (Though much better than Shatner’s other foray into devil worship The Devil’s Rain.)
What made this film so utterly mysterious and difficult to see is two factors.
One, it was thought that all know prints had been lost and or destroyed. The film failed miserably at the box office and this was before there was a home-video market to rescue turkeys like Manic Cop 2.
Second this movie was and is the only film to be entirely in Esperanto a wholly artificial language invented in the late 19th century. Continue reading
Anyone who has been around lit SF for any amount of time is likely aware of the nearly instant debate that can be generated with a single name: Robert A Heinlein.
Depending on who you ask, Heinlein was….
A Communist
A Fascists
A Hippie
An Authoritarian
A Libertarian
The best Sf Writer of all time. (including future tense)
A Hack
A talented creator of female characters.
A sexist.
And he was all these things at the same time. Truly he is the Rorschach test of SF Fandom.
One of his most controversial works was the novel Starship Troopers. He wrote the book as a juvenile, it was rejected, new material was added and ti has not been out of print ever since. This is the book many point to when they call Heinlein a Fascist.
I have stumbled across — thanks to the comments and discussions at TOR SF — an archive of criticisms and defenses of Starship Troopers spanning a time from 1959 when it was being serialized in F&SF through its publication as a novel and ending in 1963.
Wow. The Heinlein flame wars are sort of like the 100 years war. This was a fascinating series of comments and essays to read. It has not moved my thoughts on the matter. (I’m a Heinlein Fan, but I worship no man. Something I think got from reading Heinlein; though — like Ayn rand — fantatical followers are upsetting and close-minded.) The essay comparing Starship Troopers with The Star Dwellers has made me want to find a copy of The Star Dwellers and give it a read.
If you have any interest at all this link is worth your time.
This video is a bit long, almost seven minutes, but it is bloody brilliant.
By way of my Netflix account I got ahold of the Blu-ray for the 1938 production of The Adventures Of Robin hood, starring Errol Flynn as Robin Hood.
There have been a number of Robin hood productions. The character has been in the popular imagination for literally centuries. Which means two things to movie makers.
One, that there is a built-in audience for the stories, and producers love a built-in audience. Producers really hate risk, when it comes to putting money into films they can be very conservative.
And two Robin Hood is in the Public Domain and they don’t have to pay no rights to nobody.
This production of Robin Hood was hardly the first. Douglas Fairbanks had been in a very successful silent version and was considered the definitive screen Robin Hood until this film was realeased. Continue reading
‘Can’t stand that day.’
Seems to be an off Monday all around. I have been having one and off headaches, while my sweetie-wife has been suffering from migraines.
I have managed to edit a chapter and a half tonight. (Typing in the edits is a fairly brainless job, as the hard calls were made when I put the changes down on the manuscript with ink and paper.) I have two new scenes to write for Chapter 7, but they will have wait for my faculties to improve.
As it stands I am about a third of the way through and I haven’t burned the manuscript yet.
This is a taste of a wonderful spoof on Randian Objectivism brought to the playground. It’s well wortha read.
So today is Friday the 13th and frankly that makes me happy. Fridays are good days in general. The weekend is kicking off, I’ll hang out with my friends and play games. The business is less busy the freeways are less congested. (There are actually fewer accidents on the road on Friday the 13th than on other days.)
So if you are huddling in a cave on this day, well that neither picks my pocket nor does it break my leg so have fun. Me? I’m going to enjoy today.