My Mysterious Comedic Weekend

Went out to the cinema twice this weekend, both times to see comedic mysteries.

Saturday, I saw Confess, Fletch the third film to be adapted from the series of novels centered on Investigative Reporter I.M ‘Fletch” Fletcher, (Fletch and Fletch, Lives in the 80s both starring Chevy Chase.) with Jon Hamm as Fletch.

Fletch finds himself. while trying to recover stolen art as part of a bizarre kidnapping, suddenly a suspect in a young woman’s murder. Dodging Boston police and an assortment of eccentric characters Fletch untangles the confusing case while retaining his own mysterious secrets and motivations.

Hamm worked better for me in this role than Chevy Chase, but that may simply be my own bias at work. I have never been a real fan of Chase’s comedy and tend to find most of his project forgettable. Over all I found the film a perfectly acceptable hour and a half diversion that kept me entertained and amused. I hope that Hamm is given more opportunities to play this character in further feature films.

Sunday my sweetie-wife and I went out to catch a screening of See How They Run, a comedic take of Agatha Christie mysterious set in the early fifties around the stage production of The Mousetrap. The film mixes reality. Richard Attenborough starring in the play and the production incredible longevity as a stage production. When the director of a proposed film adaptation is murdered and his corpse left on the stage Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and novice constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) are thrown together to solve the mystery.

Self-aware and playing at the 4th wall See How They Run hangs multiple hats on worn tropes of the mystery genre but sadly for me most of the humor provoked only smiles and rarely laughter. (Though the first flash-back was actually funny.) Adding to my inability to lose myself in the story is the cast of Harris Dickinson as Richard Attenborough. Dickinson is s shade over six feet one in height while Attenborough, perhaps best known to modern audiences as John. Hammond from the Jurassic Park franchise, was just 5’7″. Dickinson towering over the rest of the cast continually pulled me about of the film’s reality. But the movie’s biggest failure was that the comedy simply wasn’t funny enough. Rockwell, a performer that makes scenery chewing a treat for audiences, gave a restrained and quite performance. Ronan continued to be charming and a delight to watch but the plot needed to be centered on her if she were to carry it and it wasn’t.

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Enigmatic Estonian Folk Horror: November (2017)

By way of the YouTube channel Dark Corners Streaming Review my Sweetie-Wife and I discovered the Estonian film November.

Adapted by writer/director Rainer Sarnet from the novel Rehepapp ehk November by Andrus Kivirähk November set in an isolated Estonian village in the 19th century and the story

Homeless Bob Productions

principally concerns a love triangle between Liina (Rea Lest-Liik) a peasant girl, Hans (Jörgen Liik) a peasant boy Liina adores, and the baroness (Jette Loona Hermanis) daughter of the local baron and with whom Hans is deeply infatuated. Both Liina and Hans, desperate for the love and attention turn to supernatural aid to win the attention of their loves.

Films often break down into two vast categories when dealing with the supernatural. In one case the supernatural is in intruding, unknown, force that shatters to the existing order and introduces chaos which by the end of the tale must be dispelled to restore or create a new order. A Vampire moves in next door and until it is destroyed there is chaos.

The other great category is a subtle one where the events can be interpreted as possibly taking place in reality, though the evidence is quite thin, or possibly the tale is the product of a deranged mind and there is no supernatural at all. Are there ghosts haunting the children or has the nanny gone mad?

November defies both categories.

From the film’s opening scenes, it is clear that the supernatural exists and is a part of the peasants daily life. The dirty, squalid, and tenuous lives of the peasants is infused with the supernatural. Ghosts, werewolves, devils, witchcraft, and animated golem-like creations composed of farm equipment are all routine and accepted by the peasant as ways of surviving their brutal environment. Visitations by the dead is as routine as stealing from the Baron.

Curiously the supernatural’s integration doesn’t extend to the local lord. At no point in the story does the Baron or his daughter make use of or acknowledge to spirit world with the same level of acceptance as the peasantry.

Cinematographer Mart Taniel captures the world of November is stark, high contrast, black and white. Fog glows with a spectral inner light, moonlight is diffuse, and the shadows are dark, deep, and threatening. I suspect that Taniel and director Sarnet also employed filters in a manner similar to Eggers’ The Lighthouse so that the skin of the peasantry took on a dark and unhealthy appearance while keeping the nobility clean and pristine further dividing the classes.

November is far from a standard horror film. It is atmospheric and moody focusing more on tone that scares. It almost but not quite follows a nightmare or dream logic reminiscent of David Lynch but with a more linear and straightforward narrative. It is not a film that gets your adrenaline pumping and one that sets your heart racing, but one that rather lingers in your mind like a half-forgotten dream.

November is available on VOD, Kanopy in the US, and Amazon Prime in the UK.

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A Bittersweet Time

For me, coming to the end of an artistic project always carries waves of mixed emotions. There’s the high of actually reaching the end, sharing the exctement and thrill of the conclusion with the characters I have spent so much time with. Throughout the writing of a story, short or long, I churn up in myself the same emotional states of the characters I am recounting and creating. The sweeping climax as everything comes to head at the end is often the most emotionally engaging period for me.

There is also a sadness as the journey ends. Writing a long form piece like a novel swells this emotion. The characters, the settings, the very nature and tone of the work become a part of daily life. Even when I am not actively at the keyboard putting words in a line my mind is fluttering about their scenes to come and how they might be crafted and feel. All of that comfortable familiarity vanishes with the end of the project. What had been a stable, predictable schedule of life is no more and as a creature of established routine and habit that is always unsettling.

Finally, there is fear.

Of course, some of that fear is directed at the completed project. It’s about to be sent into the wider world, a cruel cold world of querying agents, submitting to editors, with the near certainty of impersonal rejection or outright dismissal without reply.

But some of the fear is directed at the nascent project already forming. The new work with vague characters and setting, where the tone is already known but achieving that is only a possibility. One that might not be reached. Will the project work, will it come together, or might it like others, fail to take flight and crash like an overladen bomber from the Second World War?

This is the time I am in now. My military SF novel is complete. 100,000 words following an American serving in the European Union’s star forces. It held suspense, fear, and surprises for me but now its time at the front of my mind has come to close. Now it is time to fully commit to the new story, the new characters, and to set fear aside and march into the new battle.

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Political Thoughts

The world is on fire but there is hope. Remember that the essential message of The Lord of the Rings is that despair if a failing because it presumes a determined future, and no one can know the future where unlikely events can produce unlikely and joyful outcomes.

The War in Ukraine

Certainly, over the last weekend things have improved for the Ukrainians. Russian lines have shattered in some sectors and there are reports that Ukrainian forces have reached parts of the Russian border. But the war is not over. We may, looking back with the advantage of history, see this as a turning point or we may see it as another battlefield fluctuation. What we need to do is continue supporting the Ukrainians in their fight with weapons, money, and morale.

American Politics

The political system of the United States is also aflame and here the structure is fully engulfed. The slow steady poisoning of the Republican party with racists and authoritarians has brought that body politic fully into its diseased state. From New Hampshire to Arizona the GOP is infected, controlled, and Led by people who have rejected democracy. The former president did not create this situation, he is a product of the infection not its cause. As someone who was a registered Republican from 1980 thru 2003 it boggles my mind to see the party in its current state. If you are someone born in the 90s this may seem ‘normal’ to you and that the GOP has merely thrown off the mask and revealed its true nature, but it doesn’t look that way to me.

To me it is far stranger and far more extreme than that.

In the 80s conservatives often anti-nuclear power and weapons movements ‘watermelons,’ because they were ‘green on the outside and red on the inside.’ The Soviet Union helped fund and promote those groups and movements to disrupt the West and NATO. These groups and associated travelers were considered foolish and gullible by the right for how they accepted Soviet propaganda as truth with any healthy skepticism and now those roles have been reversed. It is the conservatives embracing and promoting Russian propaganda with qualm or reservation. It is the conservative pulling Russian aggression to their bosom and declaring it just and good. It’s nearly incomprehensible to witness. Literally for decades I have heard conservatives rant and snarl about a supposed ‘deal’ from Edward Kennedy to take Russian assistance in a bid for the presidency. (A tale that has but one unverified source.) And now they openly proclaim that they would rather be Russian than a democrat. They turn a blind eye to mountains of evidence of Russian interference in American Politics. For those of that lived through the final stages of the Cold War this is a topsy-turvy as when Kirk found himself in the Dystopian Terran Empire. I hope that this year’s election defies the historical norms, that young people, so fickle in their off-year elections, arrive in droves and surprise us with Democratic victories, but even if that doesn’t come to be, the fight goes on and I will not despair.

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Sunday Night Movie: War of the Satellites

Exhausted from the heat and finishing my latest military SF novel I opted for something that wouldn’t tac the brain cells and settled on Roger Corman’s 1958 SF film War of the Satellites.

Inspired by the public interest frenzy and terror following the USSR’s 1957 successful orbiting satellite Sputnik, Corman conceived filmed and edited this feature in 90 days.

War of the Satellites open with Project Sigma’s ninth attempt to place a crewed satellite into Allied Artistsspace. Once again, a mysterious force destroys the vessel and the project leader, Dr. Van Ponder (Richard Devon) vows to continue the program despite opposition from other nations over the financial costs. (No one mentions or seems to care about the cost in lives of nine destroyed crewed mission.) Assisted by loyal scientist Dave Boyer (Dick Miller) and mathematician Sybil (Susan Cabot) Van Ponder fights the system for funding for a 10th attempt, one he plans to captain himself.

The nature of the mysterious force is revealed when an alien message probe arrives announcing that the Earth, due to humanity’s childish nature, has been placed under a quarantine and that all launches will be destroyed. With the core conflict established, humanity opposing the unseen alien’s blockade of space, the film unfolds with the 10th launch attempt progressing and the aliens further attempts to stop it.

Made on a budget of about 70,000 dollars and with a brief running time of 66 minutes War of the Satellites is a literal B-Picture, released as a second feature with Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Only a year after sputnik and the same year the United States placed its own satellite Explorer into orbit around the Earth this movie has an amazingly optimistic view of humanity’s push into space. Not only is the technology absurdly advanced, three launches within minutes of each other that assembles a fully functional large spacecraft but also one capable of reaching the speed of light, but the politics of the story is even more optimistic with the project operating under the multinational authority of the United Nations.

War of the Satellites also has the earliest onscreen performance I have seen yet of Roger Corman. While later in life he often made appearances in the films from directors whose careers he helped launch, as director of the FBI in The Silence of the Lambs and as a Senator in Apollo 13, this is the first time I can recall seeing him, as a one scene launch controlled, in one of his own pictures.

This film is by far not a great movie, but it is far from the worst Corman ever produced and directed. For those who enjoy cheesy optimistic SF 50s movie it is worth watching at least once.

War of the Satellites is currently streaming on Shout Factory!‘s commercial supported streaming service.

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Movie Review: JAWS (1975) in 3-D

Released in 1975 Jaws, along with Star Wars two years later, created the summer blockbuster. Optioned and sent into development and production before the novel was published Jaws made a superstar director of Steven Spielberg and terrorized a generation. 14 When I came out Jaws was a memorable theater going experience and one my all-time favorite films.

Seven years ago, I attended a screening celebrating the film’s 40th anniversary but that screening was nothing like the one I experienced last night.

The digital projection was flawless with the image sharp and perfect as though we were

Universal Studios

watching a print struck directly from the original camera negative. The sounds, which may have been remastered, was rich and enveloping with the bass notes of Williams’ iconic and unforgettable score presented powerfully. Of course, what made this screening so very different from any other of Jaws was that the movie had been retro-scanned into a 3-D format.

In 2016 I made the trip to Hollywood for some Halloween themed fun at Universal Studios followed by a screening of 1979’s Dawn of the Dead retro-scanned into 3-D. Because that conversion had been so successful in presenting the film in 3-D without savaging the experience I wanted to see if Jaws had a similar result.

Yes, yes it did.

The 3-D conversion, which I understand Spielberg helped supervise, was flawless, giving the film that illusion of depth but without taking away from the masterful filmmaking of Spielberg or cinematographer Bill Butler. The added planes of depth changed the experience for me. Now, I have seen this film countless time. It is a movie I know well and can quote at length, but this version felt new and fresh as I noticed the framing of foreground and background elements in a manner I have never noticed before. Because these elements exist in their own plane of depth that are easier to notice and pay particulate attention to. For example, during Quint’s famous ‘Indianapolis’ monologue this was the first time I really noticed that Hooper is in the frame for the entire speech giving Dreyfus time to listen and subtly react as the horrific tale unfolds. With the laser-sharp projection and a screen that is never too dark due to the polarizing glasses, Jaws in 3-D is an experience not to be missed.

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Quick Thoughts: House of the Dragon and Rings of Power

Two new shows arrived recently, House of the Dragon a prequel series for Game of Thrones on HBO and Rings of Power a prequel series for Lord of the Rings streaming on Amazon Prime.

Both shows are following in the footsteps of massively popular that also made mistakes and missteps of their own. Lord of the Rings had it’s disappointing if financially successful Hobbit trilogy and Game of Thrones fell off the narrative cliff with its final two seasons.

House of the Dragon, set just over a hundred years before the events in Game of Thrones is concerned with a civil war among the ruling houses of the seven kingdoms and so far, has failed to emotionally engage me or cause me to care about any of the characters. Unlike Game of HBOThrones there are no characters to root for or identify with and the characters as presented are far too bland to be engaging as interesting characters. The series feels more plot than story with events pushing the characters about rather than being driven by their choices. I don’t dislike the show but neither do I like it.

Rings of Power is much more engaging. While it is set thousands of years prior to The Lord of the Rings, due to the immortality of the elves we actually have character continuity between the properties. Character have much clearer and well-defined motivations and personalities that Amazon Studiosmake the series easy to emotionally care about. I know just enough of Tolkien’s lore to see some of what is happened but not so much as to be offended by any liberties taken with the text. And as to the ‘controversy’ over the casting of some of the characters? Piffle. Elves and Dwarves are not real and therefore it is immaterial the race of any actor in the part.

I like and I am enjoying Rings of Power and look forward to where the show may take us.

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Like A Shark

Most, but not all sharks, need to constantly move through the water to breath. This was the point of the barrels in Jaws, tire the beast out until it cannot swim and then suffocates in the water.

Like a shark most writers, but not all, need to move from project to project. Always writing always creating on some level. As I finish up my latest military SF adventure novel, not just cleaning up and the prose and getting my sweetie-wife’s assistance on my typos and fondness for run on sentences my mind turns to the next book.

Returning the dark cynical world of crime and people making bad decisions as I have with Vulcan’s Forge, my next novel is set on Mars about 2130. Thematically its draws inspiration from crime and noir movies such as The Maltese Falcon, desperate people trying to escape such as Casablanca, and social commentary such as The Jungle.

Here is a smattering of some of the notes I have written as I begin to lay out the bones of the world before I flesh it out with characters and dilemmas.

Major Economic Industries of MARS

ROCKET FUEL

From Martian water and CO2 and utilizing nuclear power (Fission) mars produces Methane CH4 and O2 for rocket fuel used throughout the Solar System. The energy coast of lifting the fuel off the Mars is less than half (about 40%) of that compared to Earth. (3.8 KM/s vs 9. Km/s) This fuel is then transported to Earth and the asteroid mining operations for use in scientific and commercial operations.

MANAGING SPACE OEPRATIONS

Given the lower energy costs to lift from the surface, Mars has also become the principal site for directing space operations. The majority of the operations are commercial but substantial scientific and research projects, crewed and uncrewed exploration, process development, and pure research, are also managed from Mars for governments, Universities, and Private concerns.

WEALTHY RETIREMENT LIVING

The lower Martian gravity, about .3G is discovered to prolong life by way of less stress on vital organs. (Lunar gravity about .16 is too low and like no gravity induces muscle and bone loss along with other health troubles.) Mars hosts a community of wealthy person who have permanently relocated to the red Planet in retirement to extend their lives. They do not live communally, they are rich after all, but have in effected formed their own colony within the Martian community. This option is very expensive with the total number of wealthy retirees less than a thousand. However, because of their desire for personal services they employee a fair number of native Martian persons.

WEALTHY TOURISM

Mars is an exotic destination that can only be afforded by the wealthy. Given the scheduling of the cyclers transferring between Earth and Mars no one visits Mars for a week or two, but tourists are usually required to stay about 2 years. This reduces the pool of potential tourists to just the wealthy who can either afford to ignore their lives and commitments for two or more years or those still wealthy but able to manage their duties remotely and with lengthy communications lags.

MARTIAN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

A small community of rotating scientists from Earth live on mars researching the planet itself. Due to bacterial contamination from the settlement of the colony the question of native Martian life has yet to be definitively answered. (all microorganisms discovered to date have similar enough genetic make-up it could either be parallel evolution or contamination.) The scientists live is spartan conditions with nearly all of the technical and lab support coming from native Martian colonists.

MARTIAN FACILITIES SUPPORT

The largest number of people are actual native Martian colonists employed supporting the other forms of economic activity on the Red Planet. Nearly all of these people dream of living on Earth under open skies and weather, but these are dreams as they are shackled to the planet by their debt. None may immigrate from Mars without first clearing their debt to the colony.

I have major questions to research and answer. What would be the schedule of a Mars cycler, a spacecraft that ferries between Earth and Mars about 2130-2140? What the right inflation factor for cost between now and the novel’s period? How does daily assessed interest make loans nearly inescapable? How does the legal regime on Mars develop? And more.

That said I am excited and looking forward to this new project.

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Streaming Review: Hatching (2022)

Hatching is a family-drama/horror film from Finland.

Siiri Solalinna plays 13 years old Tinja, a girl trying desperately as a gymnast to please her

Nordisk Film

mother, a former gymnast herself and now creating content for the internet presenting her life and family as a model of perfection.

When a stray bird ruins one of mother’s video shoots it ends up dead and feeling guilty for the animal Tinja finds the bird’s nest and begins incubating its egg.

Kept secret from the rest of the family Tinja egg’s grows to enormous size and reacts directly to her presence and touch. Once hatched the chick, nearly as large as Tinja herself, displays a deep emotional connection to Tinja and begins acting upon her repressed feelings and anger.

Sadly, Hatching is not a very engaging picture. It is a prime example of a plot-driven structure. Aside from taking the egg to begin with and hiding it Tinja, our protagonist, does very little to drive the action of the story or even make meaning choices in her actions. Tinja reacts to the bird’s death, reacts to the strange egg, reacts to discovering her mother’s affair, but rarely is proactive making for a passive character. This is a shame as Siiri Solalinna is a terrific young actress and, in my opinion, gives the most compelling performance of the film. I certainly hope to see more her as she matures and continue her career.

The special effects of the film are quite good. I believe that for most of the ‘monster’ effects the production utilized puppetry and make-up effects rather than digital visual imagery and their choice was correct. Hatching doesn’t feel or look cheap The cinematography is lush and vivid, the sets and design inviting and create a real of real places and locations. It is the script that fails the production giving as an interesting premise that never fully mature into character driven story.

Hatching is currently streaming in the US on HULU.

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Accessible Science-Fiction

There are SF writers whose works is at the cutting edge, the vanguard, of the genre, pushing the artform into new and bold areas. Their work can be illuminating and challenging often difficult for readers new to the genre to grasp and fully enjoy. These works, and they can be thoroughly enjoyable, are more suited to readers already well-versed in the form and tropes of Science-Fiction from which foundation the more experimental pieces can be explored.

I think of my own SF writing as nearly the opposite of that.

I would hope, and what I strive for, is welcoming, accessible science-fiction. That is not to say the vanguard, boundary-breaking, parts of the genre are bad, not at all. We need those bold experimental pieces to take us to new lands, new ideas, to keep the whole body healthy. But we also need works that welcome new readers, that allows people to wade into the safer and calmer waters before setting sail across the genre’s ocean. That is, in part, what I want to achieve.

Local Author, Critic, and Podcaster David Agranoff said of my debut novel Vulcan’s Forge:

“Speaking as someone who likes Golden Age and new wave science fiction I liked that this felt like a lost 60s or 70s novel. There is very little that feels modern about this novel, that is a compliment by the way.”

That is very much the sort of feel I wanted for my novel. The 60s and the 70s were a time of great expansion in the genre both in what was produced and in the readers coming to discover it.

Someone else who read the novel and who was not a big reader of SF books told me that they were particularly happy with how they did not feel lost as the new world with its own backstory unfolded for them. That is one of the most pleasing pieces of feedback I have ever received, and it is what I mean by ‘accessible science-fiction.’ It is the sort of thing I aim for and hopefully with hit more and more in the future.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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