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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Movie Review: Three Thousand Years of Longing

George Miller, a filmmaker whose filmography is so eclectic as to encompass both the Mad Maxfranchise and Happy Feet, released last week, Three Thousand Years of Longing a story about Djinn (Idris Elba) and scholar of stories (Tilda Swinton.)

Alithea (Swinton) while in Istanbul for a conference where she delivers a talk about how stories once explained the natural world, but the gods and heroes are reduced to simple metaphors. (With a sly visual reference to the D.C. Property of comics, possibly a nod to the never made George Miller’s Justice League.) While shopping for a memento in the famous Grand Bazar she

Filmnation Entertainment

purchases a delicate glass bottle that she later learns contains a trapped Djinn (Elba.) the Djinn desperately wants Alithea to speak three wishes from her heart as that will free him from his imprisonment but Alithea as well-versed in the dangerous nature of wishes as any experienced D&D players is reluctant to make any wish fully expecting once fulfilled it will twist and transform from benefit to bane.

The deadlocked characters are the heart and soul of Three Thousand years of Longing with each trying to discover the truth of the other’s nature. Is the Djinn really a trickster seeking to twist her wishes for malintent? Is Alithea as fully contented with not heart’s desire as she professes with nothing that she truly wants to wish for? To answer these questions the characters tell each other their stories transporting each other and us to distant lands and peoples rich with tradition and astonishingly lovely, and yet the throughline for both is loss and yearning.

While director and co-writer George Miller and Cinematographer John Seale has composed a visually stunning film rich and vibrant with color and texture the real reason to watch Three Thousand Years of Longing is Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba in a room, acting off each other. Strip away the special effects and the fantastical elements of plot and the story reduced down to two characters talking and eventually exposing their true selves to one another. With actors as massively talented as this pair that becomes compelling far beyond fantasies of djinn and magic.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is a story about stories, the power of stories as well as the fantasies we tell ourselves when reality proves too harsh to face. It is a film about loneliness, betrayal, and how in the end we can never be sure when that magical touch will appear and transform our live and ourselves.

Three thousand Years of Longing is currently playing and theaters and while it has none of the action of Mad Max: Fury Road it deserves every inch of the big screen as Miller’s thrilling post-apocalyptic fables.

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Streaming Review: Glorious

Streaming Review: Glorious

Released last week to the streaming services Shudder as an exclusive the cosmic horror film Glorious is a very different take on universe spanning threats.

Wes (Ryan Kwanten) is a man in the midst of an emotional crisis. Driving alone and distraught far from freeways and large cities and after a night of drunkenness at a lonely rest stop he finds himself trapped in the bathroom with an ominous voice (J.K. Simmons) speaking to him from the other side of a stall’s ‘glory hole.’ (If you do not know what a ‘glory hole’ is in reference to public spaces I strongly suggest that you do not Google the term from your work computer.) Wes endures horrors, physical and revelational, as the voice implores and compels him for a favor.

Directed by Academic, Scholar, and filmmaker Rebekah McKendry, and co-written by her spouse David Ian McKendry and Joshua Hull, Glorious is a small film that utilizes all of the potential of its limited location and cast in a spare but efficient 79 minutes. McKendry and cinematographer David Matthews continually find inventive ways to frame and shoot their film with a bare handful of locations, keeping clear of the trap of boredom within such a confined space. Like many ‘cosmic horror’ films following in the wake of Stanley’s The Color out of Space the film leans heavily into the purple and violet to convey the unworldliness of Wes’ plight and the looming threat over existence.

Even with its brief running time the script carefully doles out Wes’ backstory and the source of his emotional trauma, judiciously avoiding rushing in to explains too quickly, leaving revelations for the audience as well as the characters.

While the film is not sexually explicit, see above the term you should never Google from work, it is violent, bloody, and not lacking in gore but does not lean into those elements to achieve its effect, but rather uses them to enhance the story being told. One should not watch Glorious if the sight of on-screen blood is disturbing to you.

I very much appreciated that the film did not linger or lazily get to its point. There is nothing wrong with a massive satisfying 3 hour epic but there is also beauty in a story that flies without need for rest breaks.

The standout star of Glorious is J.K. Simmons. While audio manipulation has been employed to enrich the timber of his voice and enlarge its presence it is Simmons’s delivery that make the unseen character come alive with power and menace. Had a lesser talent been engaged here the product would have suffered terribly.

Glorious will not be to everyone’s taste. It is dark, it is disturbing, and its humor, where employed, though effective can be nausea inducing if that is your inclination. That said the 79 minutes I spent watching the film were thoroughly enjoyable and if this sounds remotely appealing to your tastes then you should surf over to Shudder and give it a go.

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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Series Review: The Sandman

 

Sorry for the lack weekday updates this week. Tuesday evening, I got to experience something new to me, a gout flare. Wednesday was spent in quite a bit of pain and many hours at the kaiser Urgent Care, and by Thursday night it had nearly all passed. So now when I watch the musical 1776 and Franklin is wishing that King George felt like his big toe, but all over, I fully understand the kevel vitriol he is throwing in the crown’s direction.
Last night my sweetie-wife and I completed the Netflix series adaptation of Gaiman’s The

Netflix Studios

Sandman. The 10-episode series follows Dream/Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) one of the Endless, personifications of enduring concepts interregnal to humanity. Morpheus is the Lord of Dreams and some of the other Endless are Death, Desire, and so on. Following a century long imprisonment when human sorcerers were attempting to capture Death, Morpheus embarks upon a quest to reclaim stolen items of power, rebuild his decayed kingdom of The Dreaming, and recapture escaped nightmares of major Arcana who has in his absence troubled the waking world.
I have never read the original Comic run from which the series is adapted and as such I cannot speak to the quality of transformation but merely react as it is currently presented.
I like the show. It’s fantastic elements meld with the reality of the ‘waking’ world quite nicely and rarely does the show lose itself in deep lore and heavy bouts of exposition. (Always a tricky balancing act with genre fiction.) The cast Are quite engaging and well placed in their parts. (There has been controversy over the gender-flipping nature of some of the parts but I found no issues with any of the cast.) Sturridge had a particularly difficult task; he is the show’s lead and central character, and he must carry the show while playing a withdrawn and more silent than not personification. The part required that subtle tics and posture inform the audience to the character’s inner turmoil and crisis a challenge that Sturridge proved equal to.
The story slides easy between sweet fantasy and disturbing horror, particularly in episode 5 which centers on the horrific events over a single day and night in a diner where a troubled man lifts the veil of lies that often makes life bearable to terrible consequences.
Over all the series is well worth a watch and here’s hoping that it is successful enough for Netflix to engage another season.

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It’s Never Simply Policy

I recently got into a very brief exchange, cordial and pleasant, were as they complained about West Virginia Senator Joe Machin I advised that at this time this was the very best they could hope for out of a state that went for Trump by nearly 40 points. They were unconvinced and spoke of winning WV with ‘Democratic Values.’

Here’s the thing, helping people with their medical bills, lowering the costs of vital medicines, protecting them from predatory corporations, and exploitation by their employers seems to many like winning arguments and intuitively self-obvious reasons to support Democratic candidates. But people only sometime vote by policy. I think much more often and much more powerfully it is ‘vibes’ and culture that move people and provide incentives to action. You cannot win people’s support, no matter how generous the policy, if the price is perceived to be an attack on their culture and thus an attack on the people themselves. How many progressives would accept a deal where the nation gets fully socialized healthcare for every single person in the country, but every school is also required to tech that anything other than heterosexual coupling is ‘abnormal’ and a ‘perversion.’ Very few I suspect, and they would be right to reject such a thing. The hypothetical deal is absurd and fallacy of extremes, but the core concept is sound, people will reject material advantages for ‘cultural’ issues. Culture can and does change and it can be guided, poked, and prodded along so what is true today culturally is not what will be true in a decade or two but to win in places such as West Virginia at the very least you must not offend the people by attacking their culture.

This is an element often ignore or progressives are ignorant of when attacking Trump. He is a vile, racist, authoritarian bully and I desperately want to see him in prison orange, stripped of his make-up and his wig. However, when I see elites attacking him for things such as his love of junk and fast food I am angered. They are too blinded by their desire to attack the piece of shit that they fail to see they are also attacking scores of people for whom KFC or McDonalds are normal and enjoyable fare. Creating that division of ‘us’ and ‘them’ only binds them to the orange man-baby tighter. There is no policy argument that will win over such basic tribal identity as that one.

Sadly, that battle has already been lost. Nearly seven years of snobbish attacks have well welded these people culturally to Trump but that is not enough to assure him electoral victory. I beg progressives do not go for the cheap shot and the stereotype attacks but please try and think about where you can win with culture in addition to policy. Our nation depends upon it.

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