Regina Glei's Blog, page 39

Saw “Saw”

I have a colleague at work who is a big fan of „The Walking Dead“ and we are chatting about what’s going on in the TV series every now and then and recently he asked me whether I had seen the “Saw” movies. No, not yet. I have nothing against the occasional horror movie but I had thought for some reason “Saw” was splatter of the worst kind and had avoided the stuff.

My colleague said, oh, it ain’t worse than The Walking Dead. So, since the entire Saw series was/is available on Japan’s hulu, to which I have subscribed, I took it upon me and watched the entire series of 7 movies over a span of a couple of weeks.

I am now thoroughly horrored

The following needs a spoiler alert warning.

As so often with series like that the first part is the best. The series shouts that part one, which was produced relatively cheaply, was planned as a one shot. Now that one shot was successful, and since it’s about a serial killer, they “mined” the story excessively with another 6 (!) movies.

It should have, in my humble opinion, been left at the one movie – greetings from commercialism.

Now, the first one has a good, high concept premise:

What happens if two guys wake up in a large, defunct and decrepit bathroom, one foot chained to pipes at either end of the room and a bloody corpse lay in their middle and their captor started a wicked life-and-death “game” with them?

The title “Saw” is very smart. The two are being watched by “Jigsaw” the mastermind of the situation who has played “games” like that with several other people before the current victims, and who likes to cut jigsaw puzzle pieces out of the skin of his victims.

The other “saw” refers to the two saws which are left as props in the bathroom. Not hard to guess, but in the end, one of the victims indeed does it and saws off his own foot in order to free himself from the chains.

Then, as a third level, there is the nice circumstance that “saw” is a part of the name “Jigsaw”. So we’ve got “saw” on three different levels.

The seeing itself has also three levels: The lowest: the obsessed policeman who (tries to) watch Jigsaw, the guy in the middle who watches the victims, and the real Jigsaw who is watching everything “on the highest level”. The author of the thing has invested some thought into his plot! Yeah!

I didn’t see the ending coming either. The audience is led to believe that the dude who watches the two victims via a camera installed in their room (the guy in the middle level of “seeing”, as it turns out) is Jigsaw, but as a last bang and with all the plot threads coming neatly together, the real Jigsaw turns out to be the corpse in the room between the two victims. He only played dead, meaning he “saw” the whole drama unfold itself live, while being in the same room with his victims and while manipulating the fake Jigsaw as well.

I am not surprised that the first movie was a success. It had everything a horror film needs: Some gruesome situations, awful decisions of the victims, the victims not being so much victims but bad guys themselves, very nice plot twists and turns and horrific moments and no happy ending.

The original Saw is a damn good horror movie.

The rest of the series one does not need to watch. The “games” Jigsaw and his successors play get more and more “elaborate” in terms of killing machines and you ask yourself when and where and how anybody could possibly construct such stuff undetected. The plot is desperately trying to intertwine the movies keeping the high level of the first but fails and the “revelations” in the end get more and more fantastic and less believable.

Saw III is the most brutal one and more busy with torturing the victims than anything else. The last one has the most ridiculous games and for whatever reason the plenty of blood spilled is ridiculously pink. The only thing that the last movie has going for it is the total-party-kill style and a re-appearance from one of the victims of the very first movie to tie them all together somehow.

Anyway, the Saw series is a nice lesson for: don’t expatiate upon a (good) story that’s been conceived for only one movie (or book). But if you want to see one great horror movie, watch part 1 and don’t bother with the rest.

Publication Update

Here is a little update concerning what is going on at the publication front for me.

There are currently three projects in the pipeline:

1) The first thing that will see the light of day this year will be my short story “The Wolpertinger” in the Big Pulp queer-themed anthology: “Clones, Fairies, and Monsters in the Closet”. The anthology is scheduled to come out around June. Currently Big Pulp is trying to finance a print run via a Kickstarter like project. Independent of whether that will come to pass or not there will be an e-book version of the anthology. This thing is coming out about one year after the submission period was closed. The time lag in traditional publishing is still something I need to get used to!

2) In the meantime the second part of my trilogy (?) about my modern day alchemist Hagen Patterson is taking shape (I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be done with Mr. Patterson after part 3 ). The draft is written and is currently with test readers, two of which have given me their feedback already (many thanks!). I’m waiting for the remaining feedback, then will revise the book and give it to an editor/proofreader for final corrections and checks.

I have asked the amazing artist Naoyuki Katoh again to create the cover art for this book and it will be our fourth collaboration after he did also the covers for Dome Child, Lord of Water and the first part of the Hagen Saga – She Should Have Called Him Siegfried.

How do we do this? I am writing a summary of the book at first in English, then translate that myself into Japanese and have a Japanese friend look at my Japanese wish-wash. The same happens with the description of the cover that I would like to have. Apart from the description, I am also making a power point page – trying to convey visually what I would like the cover to become.

This is great fun for me. I cannot paint at all and am “better” with power point than with making a sketch by hand. It’s always so amazing to see what Katoh san makes out of my clumsy and ridiculous power point drafts! I hope to get ready for the CreateSpace process in June or July and Hagen 2 should see the light of day in September or October.

3) Then I received the good news that the publisher of “Lord of Water”, Dark Quest Books, will bring out another novella of mine. I’m not sure if I can already reveal the title, so I better don’t. I like to call this little piece a fantasy-horror-comedy I already heard of a preliminary publication schedule and if things go well, also that fantasy-horror-comedy will see the light of day by the end of 2013 = a busy year Getting maybe a bit ahead of myself, I already enthusiastically “painted” a power point cover draft for that one as well

Apart from all this, I am shopping around two finished novels with agents… though that is a different story and I better get back to the revision of Hagen 2 now…

Cheers!

Hal-Con Preparations

In exactly one month from now the fourth Hal-Con will happen in Japan.

Some of the organizers of the Nippon 2007 SF worldcon in Japan wanted to stay in practice concerning international convention organization and running and started with Hal-Con in 2010. We’ve had illustrious international author guests of honor since then: Charles Stross in 2010, Robert Sawyer in 2011, Alastair Reynolds in 2012 and this year our guest of honor will be Joe Haldeman.

You can find out all about Hal-Con on their homepage. This year’s Hal-Con will happen north-east of Tokyo in Saitama prefecture’s Musashiurawa Community Center on the 27th and 28th of April .

Since 2011, I’ve been on program with one or two items. Twice, Hal-Con staff and I translated one of my short stories into Japanese and we discussed about the difficulties we encountered when translating from English to Japanese.

This year I’m planning for three programs and have started with the preparation of those:

1) Traditional Versus Indie Publishing.

I have two novellas published with North American small presses and have self-published two novels. In the program I will discuss the pros and cons of both methods.

2) Writing and Time Management.

I have a demanding full time day job and I am a writer. How do I balance those and what about work-life balance in general for a writer with a day job. Apart from talking about this topic, I will also hold short readings from the two books that got published since Hal-Con 2012: my indie-published Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung based novel “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried” and my recently small-press published “Lord of Water” novella, about a young man who can command water. I intend to ask the audience to film both readings so that I can put them up on YouTube like my 2012 “Dome Child” reading during Hal-Con.

3) Interview with Gay Haldeman

The third program in planning is an interview with Joe Haldeman’s wife Gay. I’ll ask her about what life is like with a writer and other things

I’ll hold all programs more or less bi-bilingually = in Japanese and English. Well, the readings will be in English only

The artist guest of honor for this year’s Hal-Con is Naoyuki Katoh. He is the cover artist for Robert Sawyer’s Japanese editions and for Joe Haldeman’s Japanese editions as well. I met him in 2011 when Robert Sawyer was our guest and asked him whether he would help me with my books too and so far he did! The amazing cover arts for “Dome Child”, “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried” and “Lord of Water” were all produced by Katoh san!

I’m looking forward to this year’s Hal-Con and meeting Katoh san the Haldemans again!

Django Unchained – Review

I wouldn’t call myself a Tarantino fan, or am I one? When I look at my DVD collection there is Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds… So am I a Tarantino fan after all? Of those four DVDs, Inglorious Basterds is my favorite mainly due to Christoph Waltz. His Nazi villain was just awesome.

However, now Django Unchained (though the title is just horrible) has received the honor of becoming my new favorite Tarantino movie and not only because of Christoph Waltz.

Spoiler alert… if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you are hereby warned.

I like going to movies (or reading books) without being influenced by any other opinion, meaning I don’t read reviews etc. before I see the movie (or read the book).

Therefore, I quite naturally presumed that Waltz would play the villain again, but oh, he doesn’t! Well, they are all villains in a way, only that the others are even worse. Waltz and Foxx happily shoot, thanks to their jobs as bounty hunters, many a worse villain without much blinking, especially on Waltz’s behalf. What makes the Waltz character a good guy is that he becomes Foxx’ friend and is opposed to slavery.

In the first half of the movie Waltz shines with his dry humor and sorry to say, but he steals Foxx’ show a bit.

One of the highlights in the first half of the movie goes to Don Johnson and his Ku Klux Klan buddies though – the movie is worth its box office money for that scene alone when the thirty or so Ku Klux Klan guys complain that they can see nothing through the cloth bags over their heads. What a hilarious scene!

A word about the general plot, which is another reason for why this movie greatly appeals to me. Waltz frees Foxx from slavery and makes him his bounty hunter partner but Foxx’s goal is to save his wife from whom he got separated. Now his wife’s movie name is Bruennhilde… Waltz, who plays a German, can’t believe his ears and tells Foxx a tiny bit of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung – that Bruennhilde annoyed Wotan, the highest god, and he banished her inside a ring of fire on top of a mountain and only a hero can save her. That hero is of course Siegfried… I have a special relationship to the Ring of the Nibelung thanks to my “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried” novel, which is (very loosely) deals with the Ring of the Nibelung as well

So, since Foxx’ character is setting out to save his Bruennhilde, it turns him into a Siegfried!

The second half of the movie though belongs to Leo. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the nasty, ruthless plantation owner Candie, who is the new master of Bruennhilde and he does it marvelously.

At first Waltz steals Foxx’s show, then DiCaprio steals Waltz’s and Foxx’s show… much like Waltz’s portrayal of the villain in Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino has a great feel for villains and his heroes just cannot keep up with them. DiCaprio is gloriously supported by an absolutely amazing Samuel L. Jackson, who plays DiCaprio’s head servant with great bravado.

The DiCaprio story is, at least in my opinion, a masterly piece of plotting. Everything leads up to a handshake, more I will not reveal, and in that handshake scene both DiCaprio and Waltz outdo themselves. It was, for me, totally believable that Waltz just cannot abide that handshake and does what he does. Awesome display of plotting and acting. This is how you create edge of the seat tension and drama and it was superbly resolved. For me, the movie kind of ended at that point and I found the denouement a bit too long, but another highlight remained, the demise of the Samuel L. Jackson character.

The only thing I have to complain about in this movie is Bruennhilde, the “real” Bruennhilde is a Valkyrie and not a damsel in distress as she was presented here. I’d have loved to see her more active and less “screamy” and victimized. But hey, nobody’s perfect, also not Tarantino.

The violence in the movie is so over the top and corny (except for the thing with the dogs) that I had no problem with it at all. The music stresses the corniness wonderfully and helps to take the bite out of the hard topic of slavery as well.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed Django Unchained and I will surely buy the DVD when it comes out!

Big Men Clashing

As I might have mentioned before, I hate sports. I might not 100% believe in that Winston Churchill quote when a reporter asked him how he managed to get 90 years old, with him sitting in a chair, big and fat and smoking a cigar and his answer was “no sports”, but I love quoting that. Why move your body in vain? What for? The only sports I can persuade myself to is riding my bicycle, because I look at it as a form of transport rather than sports. As for passive sports = sport watching, I like the occasional Wimbledon tennis, the occasional soccer world-cup, the occasional winter and summer Olympics and I like – and now I finally arrive at today’s topic – Sumo and I don’t know the hell why!

Six times a year, fat men are clashing in Japan and though I am not glued to the TV but have it rather in the background like now, I am always happy when there is a Sumo tournament.

Let me try to find out why while writing this:

1) One of the advantages of watching Sumo live is that you don’t have to watch the entire time, since the time between matches is much longer than the matches themselves. You can type, do whatever, and once you hear they are ready, you watch a fight for a few seconds.

2) The fights are quick! You don’t have to sit there and watch all the time, it rarely happens that a fight is longer than a minute, they are over conveniently quickly.

3) The rules are simple. In Judo for example I have, as a laywoman, no clue what makes people win. In Sumo you don’t have that problem. A fighter hits the ground with something other than his feet and he has lost. A fighter is pushed out of the ring and he has lost. No brains needed! Just sheer force in case of pushing out, some technique to topple your opponent in the ring.

4) I always find it amazing that these big, fat men can be so quick.

5) I also like the referee and his “nokotta, nokotta, nokotta” ((They) remained (in the ring, still standing) = nobody has lost yet). Some of these guys have awesome voices that sounds as if their life depended on it whether the fighters are still standing their ground or not.

6) It’s totally fascinating that the “mawashi” (literally: wrap around) is never, and I mean never, coming off Sometimes, when there is just too much pulling at the belt, one layer may shift a bit but coming off entirely? Never! The designers of Hollywood dresses or papal gowns could learn something from mawashis to prevent embarrassing exposures for the wearers and dangerous stumbles.

7) The shouting audience is adorable too. Who says Japanese people are quiet and disciplined? They shout out the names of their favorites full throttle and throw their seat cushions through the hall when somebody beats the Yokozuna.

8) It’s not only mass – just today a by comparison tiny Japanese beat the huge Baruto who towered over him for one and a half heads.

9) Sumo is, I guess, one of the most physically demanding and destructive sports. The wrestlers push their bodies to the limits since they more or less have to become obese. Their average life expectancy is only some 65 years or so, ten years less than the Japanese average for men.

Well, now I found 9 reasons for why Sumo is awesome, that sounds like a good number and just now both Yokozunas won and no cushions flew

Agitation

It’s weird the past few days here. I, and many others I suppose, feel kind of agitated for several reasons:

First of all it is much too warm for the season. We have over 20 degrees Celsius while we should have 10 to 15. In a way it’s kind of nice, but also a bit spooky.

Second, the warm weather and wind bring us two presents from China: sand from the Gobi desert, which in itself is nothing unusual, happens more or less every year in spring. However, this year people and the TV are kind of “charged” since the particles are as well. Maybe I’ve been living on the moon, but I have not heard anything about this in previous years. Now all the news are bellowing about “PM 2.5″ (= particulate matter and the respective particle size.) Here’s a definition. Frankly, I heard about PM 2.5 for the first time this year when Beijing was drowning in smog a couple of weeks ago. NHK shows now hazy pictures of Nagoya and Fukuoka and gets all worked up about PM 2.5.

Next thing that charges the air is pollen, hay-fever season has started and half the population is wearing masks, me included. Luckily I’m not feeling much yet, since usually it’s my hay-fever turn in April and May. I am apparently allergic against “hinoki”, a cypress species, rather than “sugi”, which is funnily enough also a cypress species and spewing much more pollen this year than last year.

The third factor for the general agitation currently is that 3/11 is coming up. Two years ago our lives got shaken up quite a bit. We still have plenty of smaller quakes that I am not writing home about anymore, if so I’d repeat myself every week or so. Only bigger jolts get written home about these days. Nevertheless, the news are full of “two years ago and two years on” reports. A major newscaster guy from NHK has visited the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant wearing impressive gear and a mask and all. I saw the report only with half an eye but did not notice any mentioning of radiation measurement = how many micro or whatever Sieverts he tanked that day at the plant or that any of the plenty of workers running around at the plant are exposed to every day = the most important/interesting information was missing…

Which brings me to agitation factor number four: North Korea. Now what the hell are those dudes doing now? Apart from the fact that I get to see and hear a lot these days from my “favorite” “newscaster” Ri Chun Hee or Hui (though Wikipedia says she is “retired”, she seems to be still around. The lady’s intonation and tone are just hilarious) the contents of what she is announcing though are not so funny. On what planet does the North Korean government live? It doesn’t seem to be ours…

So, these are the four agitation factors the past few days that are making me a bit jittery. Maybe I should stop watching news and more The Soprano’s instead (just finished season one and liked it a lot)…

Lord of Water – Kindle version now available

I’m happy to announce that my Lord of Water contemporary fantasy novella is now available as a Kindle eBook as well as in Nook format.



In order to celebrate the Kindle release you can download the Kindle version of my SF adventure novel Dome Child as well as my contemporary fantasy novel She Should Have Called him Siegfried for free from the 3rd till the 5th of March!

Dream vs. Nightmare

I had an interesting encounter this week at work with a German guy on business trip to Tokyo. He was in Japan for the first time in his life and he (of course) asked me how long I am living here already. Answer: 13 years. Question: All the time in Tokyo? Answer: yes. The guy looked at me as if I was an alien and then said that he couldn’t imagine living “in a place like this” for so long. I asked him to specify what he means by “a place like this” and here is his point of view.

If you look from the 17th floor of our office building in downtown Tokyo (Shibuya) in every direction: you see nothing but city = steel and concrete. The tiny patches of green from an occasional tree or park are quite negligible in the concrete jungle. In the tiny bits of park that the guy on business trip has seen during his two weeks in Japan not even the grass is green but brown. Well, yes, it’s dry in Tokyo in winter, so the grass gets brown. The city seems grey to him, despite the sunshine. He lives in a 5000 people village outside of Stuttgart in the woods. It’s good for him that he seems to like it there

Now how do I see “my” city. Yes, there is not much green and yes, I don’t like the squeezing in the train when I commute to work every morning and yes, it’s a concrete jungle, but I still love it here. To me Tokyo feels often like “the center of civilization”. Even if I use only a fraction of the possibilities of Tokyo, the sheer thought that I could and can get anything here is awesome and a part of my personal quality of life.

There is close to nothing you cannot get in Tokyo, be it goods or whatever form of human activity, there are a million bars and restaurants, there are hundreds of concerts every day, dozens of theaters of whatever sort, sporting events of whatever nature, hundreds of movie theaters, museums for everything and and and. And all that you can have in the ridiculous high safety of this country, where you can walk any street at two in the morning without a care in the world. Since I have a reasonably big park in twenty minutes bicycle distance (which contains two museum and a planetarium by the way, plus a look-out over the concrete jungle) I personally don’t even have a greenery problem.

Anyway, talking to that guy on business trip showed me wonderfully that one person’s dream can be another person’s nightmare! Long live diversity

Shavendra Interview

After an anonymous tip, I recently had the opportunity to travel to Shangbei and to meet with former Mukol Grand Priest Shavendra. I managed to persuade Shavendra to give me a short interview and its transcript is as follows:

(R = Regina, S = Shavendra)

R: Shavendra, so good to see you. Thanks a lot for agreeing on this little interview. How are you doing?

S: Very well, thank you.

R: So, let me jump right in: What do you think about the new government?

S: Lei Lao means well, but he is bound to fail.

R: Why is that?

S: He wants to make everybody happy. That’s impossible. You can’t make everyone happy. It’s in human nature to be unhappy and there will always be someone who’ll find something to complain about.

R: Isn’t it rather in human nature to want to be happy?

S: Want to be, yes, but who actually is happy with what he or she has got or achieved? I for my part don’t know a single thoroughly happy human being, do you?

R: But hasn’t the situation greatly improved for a lot of people since Lei took over?

S: Admittedly, yes, more people have jobs now, and the slums are shrinking, but in the long run the new system will fail. Any system does. So we can as well quit trying. That was or is the essence of the Flock of Mukol teachings and I still believe in them. In this world no one can find fulfillment, we have to transcend this world and let go of our miserable existence here.

R: And yet you decided to not trigger the bombs.

S: I understood that the world is or was not ready for the teachings of Mukol. Too few believed. We had not enough critical mass spiritually as well as practically. Merjen was shut down before it could provide a sufficient amount of unalmatium.

R: I see. What are you doing now every day?

S: Lizard hunting.

R: Oh, come on. Stop kidding me.

S: I’m not, I’m serious. I spend most of my days in the outer slums and help anti-lizard squads.

R: What about Lenny?

S: I hope to find him one day and I hope he will recognize me.

R: And then what? You want to keep him as your pet?

S: If he is inclined to, yes. I think making pets out of the lizards is the key to conquering them. I’m not only helping the anti-lizard squads, I’ve started a lizard farm. We found a few eggs and are raising baby lizards now in an attempt to tame them and make pets out of them and to make them defend us against wild lizards.

R: Wow. And that works?

S: So far it does, well, none of the lizards in our keeping are fully grown yet.

R: Who’s we?

S: (grinning broadly) Friends of mine.

R: That sounds as if you were not very inclined to telling me about those friends.

S: Correct.

R: Your new Flock, hm?

S: (shrugging) Maybe.

R: Yes, people like you can’t let go, can they? They always need a bunch of followers to tell them how awesome they are.

S: (chuckling) Wrong. They flock around me, like moths to a flame. I am not seeking them out. They just come and don’t leave again.

R: Enchanted by your sparkling personality or what?

S: Apparently.

R: (scoffing) Anyway. So you also kill lizards.

S: Some, but mostly I’m scaring them away with the help of my mental energy. They tend to leave me alone more and more. It’s as if I smell of lizard now thanks to the young ones in my care and the grown ones notice that, respect that and avoid me.

R: Interesting. Don’t you have any intention to support Lei Lao and his government instead of wasting your considerable talents and intelligence on lizards?

S: Governments ruin themselves. They don’t need my help for that. My talents and intelligence as you call them are put to good use in my lizard program.

R: Do you have contact to Jove?

S: (with a smile) Who?

R: Jove Hendricks, Executive Officer of Shangbei.

S: Who?

R: (smiling) What about Vana?

S: Oh, she’s not made for the outer slums. I haven’t seen her since the day I let her go with that notepad.

R: What about contact to your sect? Have you heard from any other Mukol Grand Priest in exile or from your headquarters?

S: Several Grand Priests committed suicide, others were killed in the turmoil, some disappeared. No, I don’t have contact to any former Mukol Grand Priests.

R: I see, I…

S: (interrupting) Can we wrap this up now? I can show you the lizard farm if you want to, off the record, of course.

R: Oh, well, yes, please. Thank you for this little interview, Shavendra, I am glad that I found you and that you agreed to talk.

S: My pleasure, now let me introduce you to my lizards, they are truly remarkable creatures.

R: I bet they are.

Small and Big Events

Don’t you think this was an odd week news-wise? Some of the news weren’t big, some were, but I found the combination quite remarkable. At first the North Koreans make a nuclear test and the world stands there gaping and finds itself not really able to do anything against the madmen. One can only hope the Chinese get more real with the North Koreans and tell them to quit that shit.

Talking of quitting – then the Pope quits! I didn’t even know he could do a thing like that and no Pope has done it in 600 years. I’ve been Catholic once and feel still a little bit of an interest as to what the Catholics are doing. I know a lot of people are alienated by what Pope Benedict did, but I actually think he made a great move. Better a new Pope than a sick and suffering one who cannot function anymore and cope with his office. Respect that he did this astonishingly radical thing and quit.

Then the smaller news, yet another cruise ship in trouble from the same company as the Costa Concordia that sank last year, 4000 people trapped on the boat without power and overflowing toilets – yuk! Surely a trip to remember. I cannot help but wonder what would happen if something like that were to occur on the “70,000 Tons of Metal” tour. I am itching to attend that cruise one day, but imagine: some 2000 heavy metal fans and 40 bands trapped on a malfunctioning cruise ship. I guess the metal fans would simply continue with the giant party! But alas… no juice – no e-guitars – crap!

Next, the “blade runner” – that South African Olympian – shoots his girlfriend, or at least seems to have shot his girlfriend and weeps his eyes out in the first court hearing. What the hell happened to the guy, at first a “hero” and now this?

And last but not least giant fireballs in the sky in Russia and countless broken windows due to a couple of meteorites that suddenly land in your front yard at 30 kilometers per second. Some of the footage of the fireball(s) is pretty awesome, though of course it was no fun for the more than 1000 people with glass splinters in their faces.

Quite a week, hu? Now what always gets to me is the fact that less than a hundred years ago the world wouldn’t know such news. The Tunguska event happened in 1908 and it was way bigger than what came down now in Chelyabinsk and I am rather sure the average dude in Europe or elsewhere at the time had no clue about it. I sometimes wonder whether it’s a blessing or a curse that we live in instant information age. Though admittedly, this week’s big and small events were all pretty darn interesting, even if some of them had freak-show character.