Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 28

Recently Reviewed in The Guardian and Los Angeles Times: Graham Joyce and Kim Stanley Robinson

Just a quick note that you can find reviews of mine online this week at the Guardian and the LA Times.

I read Graham Joyce’s Some Kind of Fairy Tale for The Guardian, and it was a bit of a mixed bag. I really enjoyed parts of it, but for once Joyce’s agility at craft seemed exposed—a few too many wires and gears showing.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, on the other hand, I thought was wonderful—and featured one of the great love stories in science fiction.

I’ll have reviews of, among others, Carlos Fuentes appearing soon in other major newspapers.

Recently Reviewed in The Guardian and Los Angeles Times: Graham Joyce and Kim Stanley Robinson originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on July 5, 2012.

Foyle’s War…Unaired Episode with Cockroaches

I think our current all-rain all-the-time situation, which is increasing the incidents of encountering my mortal foe, the cockroach, is getting into my head—along with Foyle’s War, the Masterpiece Theater mystery series, which we’ve been devouring….

I had this dream last night that we were watching Foyle’s War, and the episode was about the search for a giant human-sized murdering cockroach. Except there were a lot of law-abiding giant cockroaches in England, so the case was difficult. At one point early on, Foyle decided he needed someone to go undercover in an apartment complex full of giant human-sized cockroaches.

So Sam speaks up and says, “Oh, sir, I’d love to go undercover to help get this cockroach, if it’s all right with you, sir. I think I’d enjoy it, as a break from driving.” So Foyle reluctantly agrees to this, and Sam goes undercover.

From there, the episode gets really strange. First of all, they keep cutting to Foyle’s sergeant, who has called in sick. But you see recurring shots of him, and he’s dressed in a black tuxedo and attached to the ceiling of his house, and just kind of hissing and there’s white stuff coming out of his mouth, that he’s affixing to the ceiling.

Meanwhile, the scenes with Sam infiltrating the apartment complex are as if through the holes in her cockroach disguise that allow her to see out, so you just see a lot of confused, claustrophobic dark shots of exterior feelers and cockroach mandibles and terrible glossy bug eyes, along with this chittering that you gradually realize is Sam trying to speak cockroachese.

If that’s not bad enough, Foyle spends the entire episode from then on in a chair by the fireplace of his home, and every once in a while he’ll move his head really fast to face the camera, and he gives this really fiendish smile, and we see a ghostly overlay of a cockroach head over his own head.

So, finally, Sam gets in a lot of trouble, and they just manage to rescue her, but when she returns to Foyle’s place, he’s still in the corner just staring off into space, and we cut to the sergeant on the ceiling, who has kind of married the ceiling—like, he’s now kind of decomposing into it, or becoming something else entirely.

We then cut to Sam on the white cliffs of Dover—no idea how she got there—and she’s staring out like she’s expecting to see something on the horizon, and she says “They weren’t really cockroaches, were they? They weren’t. They weren’t.” Then the next-to-final shot is a close-up of Foyle’s son flying through the air, but when the camera pans back, we see he’s not in a fighter plane but instead on the back of a giant flying cockroach, high above the white cliffs of Dover. Except, as we pan back in, we see that it’s the son’s *head* growing out of the back of the “cockroach”.

The very *last* shot is of Foyle again, in his chair, except we realize it’s not really a chair. That it’s a kind of weird carapace. And he looks right into the camera and screams, “For England! For England! For England.”

The end.

Foyle’s War…Unaired Episode with Cockroaches originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on July 4, 2012.

Karin Tidbeck’s Collection Jagannath: Blurbed by Mieville, Fowler, Lord, Le Guin

Here at Cheeky Frawg, we’re getting more and more excited about the fall release of Swedish author Karin Tidbeck’s debut English-language collection Jagannath, which will be available in e-book and trade paperback formats. We hope to have a book release party at World Fantasy Convention in Toronto, and there is a possibility that the author will be able to attend.

Check out these advance blurbs!

URSULA K. LE GUIN: “I have never read anything like Jagannath. Karin Tidbeck’s imagination is recognisably Nordic, but otherwise unclassifiable–quietly, intelligently, unutterably strange. And various. And ominous. And funny. And mysteriously tender. These are wonderful stories.”

CHINA MIEVILLE: “Restrained and vivid, poised and strange, Tidbeck, with her impossible harmonies, is a vital voice.”

KAREN JOY FOWLER: “Tidbeck has a gift for the uncanny and the unsettling. In these wonderful, subtle stories, magic arrives quietly. It comes from the forests or the earth or was always there in your own family or maybe exists in another realm entirely. It arises from the pages as you read, leaving you slightly dazed and more than a little enchanted.”

KAREN LORD: “The mundane becomes strange and the strange familiar with near-Hitchcockian subtlety. I loved Tidbeck’s clean, classic prose. It creates beautifully eerie music for a twilight domain.”

Under the cut, find more information about this excellent book–out in November. I’ll have some advance reader copies at ReaderCon. (In other news, we have the translation of Finnish writer Leena Krohn’s novel Datura and will have a pub date for it shortly, along with a pub date for a collection by Amos Tutuola.)

Enter the strange and wonderful world of Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck with this feast of darkly fantastical stories. Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes “Cloudberry Jam,” a story that opens with the line “I made you in a tin can”? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in what is likely to be one of the most talked-about short story collections of the year.

About the Author: Karin Tidbeck is a rising star in her native country, having published a collection there in Swedish, won a prestigious literary grant, and just sold her first novel to Sweden’s largest publisher. A graduate of the iconic Clarion Writer’s Workshop at the University of California, San Diego, in 2010, her English-language publication history includes Weird Tales, Shimmer Magazine, Unstuck Annual and the anthology Odd.

For fans of: Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand, Karen Russell, Lauren Groff, Ursula K. Le Guin, and China Mieville.

Cheeky Frawg is a literary imprint founded by Hugo Award-winner Ann VanderMeer and her husband World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer.

Karin Tidbeck’s Collection Jagannath: Blurbed by Mieville, Fowler, Lord, Le Guin originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on July 3, 2012.

Cheeky Frawg News: Stepan Chapman’s PKD Award Winning The Troika

Stepan Chapman’s incredible 1997 novel The Troika, winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, is now once again available to readers—in e-book form. Originally published by my Ministry of Whimsy Press, this new, definitive author’s version has been published as a joint venture of Ministry of Whimsy (now an imprint of Neil Clarke’s Wyrm Publishing) and Cheeky Frawg. Neil has a post about how to order it. (Thanks to my Ministry partner back in 1997, Tom Winstead, for making it possible to publish the book.)

When it came out, the novel was perhaps the most reviewed science fiction novel of the year, garnering a ton of critical praise. It was also the first independent press title to ever win the PKD Award. Beneath the cut, find a teaser from my original introduction to this new e-book edition…

INTRODUCTION: The Resurrection of a SF/Fantasy Classic

Jeff VanderMeer

Stepan Chapman may well be one of North America’s last true fabulists—a storyteller who mixes myth, science fiction, fantasy, and the surreal into a rich tapestry of dark, ironic, and darkly humorous stories. His first story, bought by the legendary John Campbell, was published in the December 1969 Analog SF Magazine, followed by four appearances in Damon Knight’s prestigious Orbit anthology series. More recently, Mr. Chapman has published stories in a number of prestigious literary magazines and avant garde publications, with a chapbook Danger Music (Ten Fables) and a collection Dossier.

But his most famous creation is the novel The Troika, which received wide-spread critical acclaim and won the Philip K. Dick Award after being published by my Ministry of Whimsy Press in 1996. I first read the novel after Chapman submitted two parts of it as stand-alone stories for the Leviathan anthology series. The first segment made no sense out of context but I still felt it was brilliant and asked to see more. The second, “The Chosen Donor,” made it into the first volume of Leviathan and at that point Chapman revealed it was part of what he called “my unpublishable novel,” rejected by over 120 publishers. He then sent me The Troika to read.

Daunted by the prospect of an “unpublishable” novel, I was somewhat leery about reading it, even though I’d loved the excerpts. But before I knew it, I had read through the first three chapters. Then six chapters. Then nine chapters. In short, I finished The Troika in one night–I simply couldn’t stop reading it. When I had finished, I sat back in disbelief—disbelief that the manuscript had not interested even one publisher (something of a literary crime, in my eyes). Added to my disbelief was the cover letter Mr. Chapman had attached, to the effect that eight of the 17 chapters had been published in very prestigious literary magazines and genre anthologies. Since The Troika , to my mind, worked best as a novel rather than a series of short stories, it seemed inconceivable (ridiculous, actually) that Mr. Chapman could not find a publisher!

Simply put, The Troika is a tour de force of sustained surreal science fiction—influenced to some degree by manga—and contains some of the most audaciously imaginative passages I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Although the mordant humor of the novel invites comparisons to Joseph Heller and Terry Southern, it is uniquely “Chapmanesque” in its fusion of mythology, psychology, and the afterlife. Some scenes are magnificent break-neck narratives, while others are whimsical, dark, and shot through with pathos.

The Troika is also that rarest of birds, a truly visionary novel of the surreal that never loses sight of its main characters’ lives. In this case, those characters happen to be a robotic jeep (Alex), a brontosaurus (Naomi), and an old Mexican woman (Eva). If that sounds strange, consider this: the troika is trudging across an endless desert lit by three purple suns. Not only has their journey lasted hundreds of years, but they have no memory of their past lives, and therefore no clue as to how they came to walk the desert. Only at night, in dreams, do they recall fragments of their past identities. To further complicate matters, sandstorms jolt them out of one body and into another (a game of metaphysical musical chairs): Eva falls asleep a Mexican woman only to wake up a jeep.

The novel alternates between dream-tales about the troika’s former lives and their present-day attempts to discover where they are and how they can get out. From this quest form, Chapman has fashioned a poignant and powerful story of redemption in which pathos is leavened by humor and pain is softened by comfort. It is the story of Alex who wanted to be a machine. It is also the story of deranged angels, deadly music boxes, and of the love and desperation that can bind people together.

Buy the e-book to read the full intro!

Cheeky Frawg News: Stepan Chapman’s PKD Award Winning The Troika originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on July 1, 2012.

VanderMeer ReaderCon Schedule

It’s been ages since I had the opportunity to attend ReaderCon, but I’m going this year (after teaching at Stone Coast). I’ll be there from the afternoon on Friday through Sunday afternoon. Looking forward to meeting a lot of cool people and having a lot of fun. Meanwhile, here’s my schedule—below. I’m thrilled to be paired with Chip and Gemma, and the panels are exciting; this is one of the few times the panel topics fascinated me. And to get to discuss Tutuola’s work is a real thrill, too. You’ll also note a first: my first reading of an excerpt from my brand-new novel…See you there!

5:30 PM VT Reading. Jeff VanderMeer. Jeff VanderMeer reads from his new novel Annihilation, about an expedition sent into the mysterious Area X (also known as the Southern Reach) and what befalls them.

7:00 PM G The Literature of Estrangement. Christopher Brown, Lila Garrott (leader), Greer Gilman, Anil Menon, Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Witcover. In a 2011 interview in The Guardian concerning the paucity of SF and fantasy texts among Booker nominees (and, we might add, Pulitzers or National Book Awards in the U.S.), China Miéville suggested repositioning the debate as not between the realistic and the fantastic, but between “the literature of recognition versus that of estrangement,” though he admitted that “the distinction maps only imperfectly across the generic divide” and that “all fiction contains elements of both drives.” Is this a more useful set of terms for discussing the familiar schism? Does it reveal literary alignments in an inventive new way? Or is it simply cutting the same cake at a different angle?

9:00 PM RI Readercon Classic Fiction Book Club: The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Michael Cisco, Sarah Smith, John H. Stevens, Michael Swanwick (leader), Jeff VanderMeer. The Palm-Wine Drinkard is a classic of world literature, a vivid, exhilarating, and linguistically breathtaking tale of a fantastic quest. The novel is based on Yoruba folktales, but Amos Tutuola makes them uniquely his own. In a 1997 obituary for Tutuola in The Independent, Alastair Niven wrote: “Tutuola was a born story-teller, taking traditional oral material and re-imagining it inimitably. In this way he was, though very different in method and craft, the Grimm or Perrault of Nigerian story-telling, refashioning old tales in a unique way which made them speak across cultures.” Now, 60 years after it was first released, The Palm-Wine Drinkard stands as the best sort of classic: one that remains a pleasure to read, but that opens up new readings with each encounter.

Saturday July 14

12:00 PM CL Kaffeeklatsch. Samuel R. Delany, Jeff VanderMeer.

7:00 PM F Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza. Matthew Kressel, Veronica Schanoes, Brian Francis Slattery (leader), Jeff VanderMeer, Jo Walton. ONCE AGAIN AND FOR THE SECOND TIME, Eric Rosenfield and Brian Francis Slattery of the Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza Series will orchestrate yet another INCREDIBLY FANCY SONIC ART EXPERIMENT consisting of ESTEEMED LITERARY PERSONAGES reading TEXTUAL OBJECTS in short bursts, one after another accompanied by LIVE, IMPROVISED MUSIC provided by a FULL BAND, with the intent of creating a kind of unbroken MOSAIC of what Readercon FEELS LIKE. Come witness our spectacular SUCCESS and/or FAILURE.

Sunday July 15

10:00 AM F Uncanny Taxonomies. Daniel Abraham (leader), Ellen Datlow, Caitlín R. Kiernan, John Langan, Jeff VanderMeer. When considering the literatures of the uncanny—horror, dark fantasy, supernatural fiction, the weird, etc.—it can be difficult for a more casual reader to distinguish between the marketing-based labels and real differences in concern and approach. Moving away from common genre labels, our focus will be on the specific areas of uncanniness various authors have investigated in their writings. We will attempt to establish key commonalities and differences within and between their writings and other notable past and recent works. Possible topics include knowledge versus the unknowable, and the scope of possible knowledge; certainty and uncertainty, and the value of each; truth as power versus truth as horror; the body and the mind; the possibility or impossibility of metaphor; and the primacy of our world and the drive to transcend it, or to inhabit it more completely.

11:00 AM G The Shirley Jackson Awards. Nathan Ballingrud, Matthew Cheney, Michael Cisco, F. Brett Cox, Ellen Datlow, Sarah Hyman DeWitt, Elizabeth Hand, Jack Haringa, Caitlín R. Kiernan (leader), John Langan, Sarah Langan, Kelly Link, Kit Reed, Peter Straub (moderator), Paul Tremblay, Genevieve Valentine, Jeff VanderMeer, Gary K. Wolfe. In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. Jackson (1916-1965) wrote classic novels such as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. The awards given in her name have been voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors, for the best work published in the calendar year of 2011 in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.

1:00 PM E Autographs. Gemma Files, Jeff VanderMeer.

VanderMeer ReaderCon Schedule originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on June 24, 2012.

Recently Experienced: Thumbnail Reviews of Books, Movies, Music, TV

I’ve been hoarding up little thumbnail reviews of books, movies, TV, and music experienced over the past few months—offered up to you here in a long post that hopefully has something for everyone. There’s not as much in the books section just because of all of the sampling I do for Omnivoracious features, the editing (so I’ve been reading manuscripts, really), and the writing. I’m too lazy to provide links—and too busy—but all of this stuff is easy to find.

If a movie or TV show is starred **, we saw it on Netflix On Demand.

Books

(Just a note that I’m currently reading and enjoying the hell out of the 1970s novel The Death of the Detective by Mark Smith—so far, I’d recommend it most highly. I’m also half-way through Chiina Mieville’s Railsea, and I think it’s his most relaxed novel yet—he’s clearly enjoying himself, and I think that helps the reader enjoy the book even more, too. Definitely recommended thus far.)

THE CRONING by Laird Barron. Alas, although I like Barron’s short fiction, this first novel wasn’t that good. From my review on the Amazon sales page: “Unfortunately, this novel is a mess. The main character is tediously boring, the main situation relies on the main character being something of an idiot, and there are chapters and chapters of family history that display very little talent for knowing what is useful and interesting. The rituals described are right out of old pulp fiction. Allusions to Machen et al only spotlight the problems. The last chapters, which are meant to be epic horror, are instead pretty unintentionally hilarious, with a portal described as being as big as a bowling ball and then a hula hoop not helping the atmosphere much. Opening scenes set in Mexico that feature a fairly cliched-sounding university rep and generic detail don’t help. The other problem is that the novel could’ve been written in the 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s, and the author wouldn’t have had to change more than a few words, really. The writing on a sentence level is often good, but can’t save the novel. It’s a real disappointment, as I went in wanting to like this novel very much–I am a fan of much of Barron’s short fiction. I hope the next novel is better.”

VLAD by Carlos Fuentes. I enjoyed this one a lot, with a review forthcoming, so I won’t say too much here except that he manages to mix satire and dark humor with something also very serious and Grand Guignol, and refreshes the vampire trope rather nicely. Creepy and hilarious.

THE VANISHING by Heidi Julavits. Ann read and really liked this weird fusion of the uncanny and other elements. Psychic attacks. Mysteries from the past. Lots of layering-in of elements from different genres.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. I think it’s no surprise to anyone given prior blog posts that I loved this one to death (with a review forthcoming). As I said commenting as a reader on the Amazon sales page, “2312 is an amazing feat of the imagination: a plausible view of our solar system three centuries from now, one that combines genre and mainstream literary influences to create a rich tapestry of adventure, intrigue, and extrapolation, with strong, strong characters. What holds the whole thing together is the love story—yes, I said it. A love story. As brilliant an interesting a love story as you’re likely to find in all of science fiction. I thought this was the best SF novel I’ve read in the last few years.”

I HOTEL by Karen Tei Yamashita. This book is beyond brilliant. I can’t believe it didn’t win the National Book Award. I could rave about this novel all frickin’ day. It’s a nuanced fusion of both traditional and experimental approaches to fiction, detailing the experiences of Asian American characters and others during the time of social upheaval in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. Composed of ten novellas, each one unique, each one amazing, I Hotel is notable in part for how adroit Yamashita is at negotiating such a complicated landscape with such ease. Despite the weight of the subject matter, there is a lightness to the book, and a clarity, that is remarable. What it illuminates about race, culture, class, and other important issues—and how it takes the didactic and renders it in artistically compelling ways—is stunning. And it beggars in its complexity and its sheer exuberance and compassion and…well, in every other way just about any SF/fantasy novel dealing with similar issues over the past decade. It really underlines for me why it is so toxic and so inbred to just, as a writer or reader, read only SF/fantasy, or only any one kind of approach to fiction. It’s like walking around with only part of your brain engaged. Or walking around with blinders on. Such balkanization leads to all kinds of missed opportunities for cross-pollination and for understanding.

Movies

Reminder: the ** means I saw it on demand; those stars aren’t a reviewing scale or anything.

AND SOON THE DARKNESS. A cult British film about two women biking through France who make a series of increasingly stupid decisions with a serial killer on the loose. The annoying thing about this movie is that it holds your attention for the first third, with a kind of growing tension and great use of the landscape…and then it just becomes dumber and dumber until it becomes Super Dumb. Avoid.**

ANTIBODIES. A pretty absorbing German serial killer movie, with the right weight and emphasis given so you care about the people involved. It, however, decides on a kind of semi-mystical ending that involves CGI deer that don’t look real and don’t fit the rest of the flick. Just turn it off right when you see the first deer, and maybe that experience won’t scar you.**

BAJO DEL SAL. A great-looking Mexican serial killer murder mystery that I haven’t finished yet due to deadlines. Also because it looks like it’s setting up one particular individual to be the killer, and he’s not particularly interesting. But definitely worth a look-see, depending on what you want from this kind of movie.**

CABIN IN THE WOODS. Joss Whedon can renovate rather brilliantly at times, but he’s not good at subversion. So in tackling horror movie tropes and putting his subtext on the surface in a ham-fisted attempt at social commentary or satire…all he winds up doing is perpetrating the same clichés he’s trying to make a comment about. The fact is, any bad horror movie already parodies the horror genre, things have gotten so bad in that regard. Whedon would have been better off just trying to create a horror movie that renovated and riffed off the genre instead of this meta-mess.

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS. This documentary by Werner Herzog actually wound up not being our favorite, as it seemed to go on a little long and end with white crocodiles for no reason, but the core of it has some breathtaking visuals of the prehistoric cave painting, and Herzog’s ruminations are always great. Worth it for that alone. See it back-to-back with Prometheus. Heh.**

CEMETERY JUNCTION. Featuring Felicity Jones, a heart-warming little comedy about growing up in the UK in the 1960s. It’s nothing particularly amazing, but has good performances and the director knows what he’s doing. If it had been set in a more familiar place to us, like somewhere in the US, it might not have been as interesting. **

COLD WEATHER. A strange little Northwest mystery that’s a kind of shoe-gazer noir in a sense. You have to let it creep up on you, but it’s worth it. **

DARK CORNERS. Starring Thora Birch, I couldn’t get past the way the first scene was shot and the general vibe and gave up.**

DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING. An Italian horror film. Never, ever rent this. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever. Never. No. Don’t Do It. No. No no no no. **

DOWN TERRACE. Brilliant and dark and icky thriller about a crime family when the patriarch comes back from prison. Everything starts to go wrong and people start dying. Really great slow-burn script, and plays through right to the end. **

EVERYTHING MUST GO. This story about a down-on-his-luck man based on fiction by Raymond Carver and starring Will Ferrell is nicely understated and works pretty well all the way through. Definitely recommended. **

GOOD NEIGHBORS. This Canadian film, about the lives of neighbors in an apartment complex while a serial killer is on the loose was somewhat mesmerizing, even if we figured out a couple of things pretty early. It’s kind of a mystery story, but also about the dynamic between the neighbors. It also features some amazingly cute cats (although if you cannot differentiate between cats being harmed in a film as opposed to real-life, don’t see this movie).**

JIM GAFFIGAN: MISTER UNIVERSE. This hilarious stand-up comedian’s latest routine lives up to the general excellence of prior films. His bit on Subway is particularly gut-busting. **

THE HUNTER. Starring Willem Defoe, this is a merciless Australian film about Defoe’s character being hired to track down the last tiger and get tissue samples (basically kill it) for a corporation into biomedical research. It doesn’t go where you expect it to go, and there are no Hollywood-ish tendencies. It’s devastating, but it’s also real, and it’s brilliantly shot, acted, etc. It’s one of a spat of recent Aussie films that to me signal a new wave of talent beginning to shine. (Well, actually, since about 2005.) (Saw this on Comcast cable on demand—not yet available on Netflix.)

HOTEL SPLENDIDE. This great little movie, with lushly decaying sets and nice cinematography and storyline, featuring Toni Collette and Daniel Craig—quirky, funny, and surreal, and definitely underrated. Hard to describe, but you have to see it.**

HUNTER PREY. Avoid this turd of an SF movie. Crash-landed on alien planet. Escaped prison. Annoying talking through helmets. Long stretches where we fast-forwarded and didn’t lose any sense of the plot.**

LAKE MUNGO. Hands down our favorite horror film of the last few years. About a daughter who goes missing and then seemingly reappears to haunt the grieving family. Uses a lot of found footage, and hand-held cameras, but, for once, to good effect. Another great Aussie film. Truly brilliant. Go rent it NOW.**

THE LAST LULLABY. A noir thriller involving a hit man drawn into a tangled web of familial relationships and a crime from twenty years ago. The film takes some familiar elements and refreshes them, due in large part to an intelligent script that provides enough space to flesh out characters and the excellent performances by Tom Sizemore and Sasha Alexander.**

LIMITLESS. This film about a struggling writer who gets his hands on an experimental drug that exponentially increases his brain power has a really smart script and good acting. We’d avoided it for fear of another crap Hollywood movie, but it’s actually pretty clever. It’s not without a couple of hiccups, but well worth watching.**

MOONLIGHT KINGDOM. Directed by Wes Anderson, this is a gem of a film. Just pitch-perfect, with Anderson’s trademark whimsy working on all cylinders for the first time in a long time. A boy scout goes AWOL to meet up with the love of his life so they can run away together. The boy is nerdy, the girl is a kind of giantess next to him, which is a great touch. The dialogue is first-rate, and I think there’s something to be said for the kind of hermetically sealed setting of the island the bulk of the movie is set on. It seems to give Anderson focus and more chance at depth. I think there was a similar effect in Mr. Fox. When he goes farther afield, he can’t seem to handle the elements—or the whimsical elements grate against the details of the real world, and the whimsy comes off not as charming or insightful but as insufferable. To give you an idea of where I fall on the Anderson Appreciation Meter, I loved Rushmore and Mr. Fox. I tolerated the Royal Tenebaums. I hated Darjeeling Express and The Life Aquatic. But I loved this new movie. Loved loved loved.

MY JOY. This film from Russia (or the Ukraine?) follows a truck driver making a delivery cross-country, and the mis-adventures that befall him. This is possibly my favorite film of the past few months. The director has a roving eye, so we leave the truck driver’s perspective for stretches to inhabit the lives of the people he meets…and then comes a game-changing event a little before half-way through and we go back in time to an isolated cottage/house and the events that happen there before coming forward to the present, in a move that seems bewildering, until you realize the setting in question is where the truck driver has, after the game-changing event, come to reside in. The event I keep alluding to, by the way, is a truly gutsy move by the writer and director, and something you rarely see anyone do. From there, the narrative moves outward, attaining further breadth and scope, while keeping the truck driver more or less at the center of it all. The whole thing is mesmerizing and the ending both brutal and unexpected, and somehow fitting. The conversational scenes are rather striking, including one in which the truck driver is himself hitching a ride, and he sits there silent while the guy who picked him up just keeps talking and talking. Rather brilliant stuff. **

THE OBJECTIVE. Directed by the guy who did the Blair Witch Project, but whether you hated that movie or not is immaterial, since this is totally different in scope. A special unit infiltrated Afghanistan to investigate strange phenomenon. A very lithe script and good use of limited special effects. Pretty chilling. Definitely worth checking out.**

THE PERFECT HOST. Starring David Hyde Pierce of Frasier fame, this crazy little movie about a bank robber stumbling into the wrong house to seek refuge is both funny and disturbing, and also over-the-top. We enjoyed it even though it gets perhaps too nuts at times.**

THE PERFECT AGE OF ROCK AND ROLL. Featuring Jason Ritter, this film, in which a reporter is called by a rock star who has been a recluse for 20 years to finally tell why their famous band suddenly fell apart after only two albums…is actually pretty good. I’d even go so far as to give it four stars. With a nice role in it for Peter Fonda. Yes, there are some of the usual rock-and-roll clichés, but the script is fairly smart. **

PETE SMALLS IS DEAD. Something of a mess, with a screenwriter well-played by Peter Dinklage seeking money to rescue his kidnapped dog. A dead director who stole the rights to the Dinklage character’s script plays a big role in the proceedings. The voice-over narration by Dinklage’s character is somewhat stilted, and individual scenes sometimes shine, but as a whole, it didn’t quite have the right energy or something. **

PROMETHEUS. I think it’s impossible for anyone to see this movie for what it is due to the rampaging debate across the internet. We thought it was visually stunning movie that wasn’t without flaws, but that it also had serious strengths. It’s somewhat exhausting to continue to say “Yes, but…” to some of the criticisms, which don’t always seem to be based on fact. So I’ll do just two “yes, buts”. One: the medical table is clearly male because it’s for the selfish use of one particular person. Two: anyone who thinks this movie is an affirmation of intelligent design or superstitious religious beliefs is nuts. I’ll have a long post on the movie in the next few weeks.

PUNCHING THE CLOWN. Comedian Henry Phillips plays a version of himself in this tale of a satirical songwriter kind-of hitting it big in Los Angeles. It’s absolutely hilarious and brilliant and you should go rent it immediately. **

RED STATE. This Kevin Smith movie is pretty much like every Kevin Smith movie—there are good things and bad things. In general, the good outweighs the bad, though, and this tale of religious fanatics and a stand-off is definitely very watchable, even if much of it fades in your memory pretty quickly. **

THE SKEPTIC. A haunted house movie that features Tim Daly, this one was both good and perplexing. Which is to say, the script had some really good moments, but the direction was subpar, while Daly’s performance was excellent. So a bit of a mixed bag but worth checking out. **

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN. Wow. This was about as bad as a movie can get. The Huntsman is played by an actor who’s like a fourth-rate Kurt Russell. The lead actress—best-known for Twilight—is just terrible. The dwarves are cringe-worthy, and you know which one is going to die: the one who tries to hear the sea by putting his ear up to Snow White’s chest. The magical forest is stupid and the answer to where we are in various scenes is “Generic Landscape.” And I could go on and on. They should’ve called it Things That Disintegrate into Smaller Things, because that’s basically the only special effect, repeated over and over again. What a steaming pile of crap, redeemed only by Charlize Theron doing her best to act her way out of the bad script.

SUBMARINE. A UK coming-of-age film that got a lot of critical attention, but to us had several “don’t believe that” moments. It was watchable but definitely not essential.**

THE TUNNEL. Wow. A truly intelligent hand-held camera flick about something in the tunnels beneath Sydney that allows for some character development before the horrors start. The ending can’t possibly live up to the set-up, but it tries damn hard. Go rent it now if you want a creepy horror flick. **

WAKE WOOD. Grieving parents move to a small community and discover they might be able to have their daughter back for a short time, with, of course, horrible consequences. We both thought this was an above-average movie, with good direction, acting, and cinematography. Give it a try.**

THE WARD. Eh. John Carpenter, working on a small scale, and it doesn’t screw up too badly until later in the film. But it’s nothing you’d jump over your grandmother’s grave for.**

WRECKED. Great set-up, with this guy played by Adrian Brody waking up in a wrecked car at the bottom of a ravine in the wilderness. Except except except. It just gets stupider and stupider. Half-way through you think it’s going to be amazing…and then it becomes dumb. Don’t fall into the same trap we did!**

Music

Since it’s so easy to sample music and tell if you’re going to like it or not, I’m just going to list a few releases I’ve particularly enjoyed over the past months, in no particular order—definitely check them out.

The Black Keys—El Camino

Eleni Karaindrou—Elegy of the Uprooting

The Kills—Midnight Boom

Magnolia Electric Company—Josephine

Ringside—Lost Days

Shearwater—Animal Joy

Tindersticks—Something Rain

White Rabbits (all three CDs)

Three Mile Pilot—The Inevitable Past Is the Future Forgotten

Lloyd Cole—Broken Record

Black Angels (all CDs)

The National (all CDs)

Television

GAME OF THRONES. We’ve generally enjoyed season 2, although we’ve debated the use of female nudity—it’s all been problematic and creepy, and it would be nice to think that this is precisely the intent, to not allow the viewer to be comfortable with it, but who knows? (And, where’s the male nudity? The imbalance seems odd, if the idea is a generally raw depiction of this particular milieu.) Last season there seemed to be unnecessary nudity too, but as I recall most of it had more of a consensual feel to it—I might be wrong, as those prior episodes are all a blur. Anyway, it’s a definite entry point to all kinds of possible debate, and I think that’s a good thing. I think it also helps with an understanding of how this element is handled in the books, although I haven’t reached any conclusions about what that means. Also, there’s the issue of fragmentation. For the first couple of episodes being whiplashed all over the continent and beyond was great, but then it began to make the material seem thin at times. Having read the books, I have the extra layering built-in, but I don’t know what I’d think if I came to the series without that. It seems to me GoT would benefit from 90-minute episodes.

GIRLS. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed this HBO series—it has some of the best writing on TV, and the series creator is fairly brilliant. A protracted argument between roommates in the penultimate episode was a masterpiece.

MADMEN. Just a brilliant, shocking season—their best so far, I think. Any viewers who thought they just settle in to enjoy the bad behavior on display without feeling too uncomfortable…well, think again. Some stunning episodes, including one where the characters are at a table for an awards show, all gradually drift away, and when they come back, they’re essentially all different people. Some other stunning stuff, too.

THE KILLING. Very few complaints with this slow-burn of a series, which came to a complex and good conclusion, although the lead female detective was somewhat subsumed by the drama, before coming back into focus near the end. We liked how they kept going past the solving of the central mystery, and added additional layers and closure to the case. The actor playing the politician running for mayor did a great job, as did the whole cast, really. Everybody was messed up and everybody wasn’t messed up.

PEEP SHOW. This show from the perspective of two dysfunctional, totally wrong and horrible British blokes, one of whom is a manager in a corporate business and the other of whom is in a failed band….is so unutterably filthy and terrible and wrong wrong wrong…and one of the most hilarious, well-written things I’ve ever seen. The reliance not just on the regular dialogue of a scene but on the two main characters’ inner thoughts is carried off with marvelous self-assurance. The show also sends up all kinds of things, including workplace politics and relationships. **

SHERLOCK. This modern-day reboot is pretty damn brilliant, with both leads doing a great job, and some really smart scripts. With the exception of the Chinese smugglers episode, which relied on clichés and hackneyed stuff, and parts of their attempt to update the Hound of the Baskervilles, which was great at times and stupid at others. Highly recommended otherwise.**

TERRIERS. This amazing California noir series was canceled after only one series, but someone should use it as an example of how you build great TV scripts that are fulfilling episode by episode but also build to a greater whole. The layering and the pacing are phenomenal, as is the acting. Go rent this immediately, and let it build—it might take getting to episode three before you get addicted.**

VEEPS. A hilarious, edgy HBO sitcom by the same people who did the movie In the Loop. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is great as the vice-president and the supporting cast is appropriately sleazy and fawning.

Recently Experienced: Thumbnail Reviews of Books, Movies, Music, TV originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on June 22, 2012.

Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria: Free Chapbook Preview!

I received an advance copy of Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria from Small Beer Press a few months ago and unfortunately—I feel pretty guilty—have been so busy that all I’ve been able to confirm is that it’s really well-written and looks like a great debut. BUT, now you can preview the novel, as Samatar is letting everyone know that Small Beer is offering a free sampler. So go forth and get an early look at a promising new writer.

Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria: Free Chapbook Preview! originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on June 21, 2012.

Rose Lemberg on Feminist Characters

I’ve been meaning to link to this post by Rose Lemberg for awhile, about not “limiting the range of female characters to the kick-ass heroine,” although that description reduces it down too much, so go read it. The comments are also insightful and interesting. I have to say—this is what I thought it was always supposed to be about. Creating individual, unique people in terms of your characters, attempting as much complexity and inconsistency and strength and weakness as we all have.

***

A tangent: I think to at least some extent, we’re also seeing a kind of push-back against the kind of shrink-wrap, pre-packaging of cliche across several fronts, in part because the commodification of fiction, the reduction of it to just one aspect of the publishing process–as commercial product—is often incompatible with dealing in nuance, complexity, and individuality. This affects many aspects of a novel but is most noticeable, of course, in the context of the characters.

Cliche, stereotype, thinking in terms of types rather than individuals, not putting enough thought or imagination into our decisions…these things don’t just create bad writing, they diminish us as writers because it means we either don’t care enough about really exploring and investigating human nature or we simply aren’t capable of doing so.

Rose Lemberg on Feminist Characters originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on June 21, 2012.

City of Saints: Not Very Long Whale Slop!

City of Saints: Not Very Long Whale Slop! originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on June 21, 2012.

Prometheus Art…and More

I have a post up at Omni about the reaction to Prometheus, the art book you can buy, and more. In a nutshell, I liked the movie and my feelings about it are close to those of Caitlin Kiernan, who has posted twice about certain issues. Which isn’t to say I don’t think the movie has flaws, but that it’s far from the turd some people think it is.

That said, I do have some ideas about a version in an alt-universe or a reboot in 20 years, but I’ll save that for another post.

I also will have my ReaderCon schedule soon, and I will be at Stonecoast very soon. Before heading down to Shared Worlds, to teach.

Prometheus Art…and More originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on June 19, 2012.