Canavan’s Comments (group member since May 15, 2018)

Canavan’s comments from the Spells, Space & Screams: Collections & Anthologies in Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Horror group.

I just heard that Aron Eisenberg, the actor who played Nog in DS9, passed away on 21 September.

Corinne said (in part):

Grimm did start off week and "immature" IMO but as it grew, I grew fond of it.

Thanks for sharing that viewpoint, Corinne. I’ll keep an open mind and consider continuing with the series.

Lena said:

It’s strange she even tried, it should have been a lip synch like Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose.

According to one account I read, Zellweger wasn’t particularly keen on singing, but the director was. In Goold’s opinion it was an essential component to capturing “the truth of the performer, the literal physical exertion of performing.” Well, maybe. I will just say in response that some of my favorite on-screen musical performances relied on lip syncing.

I’ve watched a few things lately, most of it mediocre.

Altered Carbon, based on the 2002 novel of the same title by Richard K. Morgan, is a noirish dystopic vision of a future that seems to take place in a megalopolis that at times looks eerily like the set of Blade Runner. There’s a lot of violence and nudity. Overall verdict: not bad — I generally liked the cast and some of the all-to-few quieter moments; on a down note, it’s all too easy to cut through the overly complicated plot and figure out in advance who the bad guys are.

Simon Kinberg’s Dark Phoenix is a somewhat disappointing conclusion to Fox’s X-Men series. According to a number of sources this was originally meant to be a two-parter, but late in the creative process the studio (worried about the lackluster box office results of recent entries in the series) asked Kinberg to condense the script to fit a single film. It kinda shows, especially in Sophie Tucker’s character arc (or lack thereof).

I wanted to watch NBC’s Grimm, given that a few group members were at least luke warm on its merits. I’ve watched the first two seasons and may pull the plug at this point. There are definitely things I like about the universe the show runners have created, but at the end of the day it strikes me as a slightly above average cop drama.

SS-GB is a 2017 BBC series based on the 1978 Len Deighton novel of the same name. It’s set in an alternative timeline in which the United Kingdom is occupied by Nazi Germany. I like quite a few things here, e.g., the way the plot explores the moral ambiguity that accompanies being an occupied nation. The one glaring problem is the series’ ending — (view spoiler)[it’s left open-ended, due presumably to the expectation of a second season. It now seems this is unlikely to happen. (hide spoiler)]

SS-GB, Philipp Kadelbach (2017) ✭✭✭½
Grimm, Season 1 (2011-2012) ✭✭✭
Grimm, Season 2 (2012-2013) ✭✭✭
Altered Carbon, Season 1 (2018) ✭✭✭
Dark Phoenix, Simon Kinberg (2019) ✭✭

Corinne said (in part):

I have been watching for reviews because I didn't want to see it if it wasn't a fair rep of Judy Garland. This review doesn't have that as the complaint.

Most of the reviews I’ve seen to this point have been fairly positive. But Mick LaSalle does have a point (even if he does kinda beat it to death in his movie review) — Zellweger’s singing voice is not very much like Judy Garland’s. I’ll probably still see it, even though it promises to be pretty sad and depressing.

J. said:

Isn't the league leader still Dracula?

It depends. There are a ton of films that feature some version of the character, but fewer that are (more or less) based on the actual Bram Stoker novel (e.g., the Coppola and Louis Jourdan versions). If you’re just talking about movies featuring the character, according to an estimate I found on Wikipedia, Sherlock Holmes edges out Dracula 223 to 217.

Fiona (speaking about the upcoming remake of The Secret Garden) said (in part):

I'm not a big fan of the scale of this one, as gorgeous as it is it just looks too big somehow?

You’re not alone in having made this observation, Fiona. There have been a number of worried comments on various social media platforms to the effect that this aspect of the teaser may indicate that the director/writers envision the garden as literally rather than metaphorically magical.

Lena said:

Little Women, yes, once a decade it seems.

Yeah, I’ve actually seen a bunch of these adaptations. My favorite is probably the 1994 Gillian Armstrong version, although I’m also very fond of the 1933 Cukor version (that starred Katherine Hepburn as Jo). Just a few weeks back I happened to be listening to an interview with Armstrong and Winona Ryder in which they recounted how surprised the Columbia studio execs were that a film about women and directed by a woman did so well with critics and at the box office.

Fiona wrote (in part):

What are the other books they just keep making into movies - Pride and Prejudice comes to mind, but I'm drawing a blank, though I know there's more!

The following spring to mind, although there are probably more and better examples. I think there are three or more versions of each of these films: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Jungle Book, Ben Hur, and Little Women. In fact, I believe a new remake of Little Women (helmed by Greta Gerwig) is slated to hit the screens this December.

“A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel”

(view spoiler)[This Ken Liu piece is an alternative history tale in which, simplistically stated, the second world war is averted by virtue of the economic stimulus provided by the construction of a trans-Pacific tunnel. I’ve read over the years a few SF stories that referenced the possibility of a trans-Atlantic tunnel (including Harry Harrison’s 1972 novel, A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!), but I think this is the first one I’ve read which focused on a trans-Pacific one.

The story is also about racism and the power of truth to effect change. I thought the passages recounting the walling in of the slave laborers were particularly compelling and disturbing. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

I’m just getting back to this collection after a long period of non-reading...

“The Literomancer”

This tale, set in 60s-era Taiwan during the Cold War, is an account about the power of words to both heal and divide. Powerful, but heart-breaking.

✭✭✭✭½

“Simulacrum”

This one is about, I suppose, the human penchant for trying to “capture reality” and evolution of the technological means to do so. (One assumes that the designation of the first home simulacrum camera as the Carousel Mark I is a not-so-subtle reference to Kodak’s first carousel projector, the 1961 Model 500.) Liu seems to suggest that something like the Heisenberg Principle is at work: the very act of trying to capture reality is always imperfect and distorts the behavior of both the captor and captive in sometimes subtle but important ways. The story is about other things as well — about, for example, forgiveness in the context of the parent-child relationship. Liu talks about this at length in a 2011 interview for Lightspeed. If I have reservations about this particular story, it has to due with Liu’s success or failure in melding together these different themes and about the “fuzziness” of the ending.

✭✭✭

Melanie said:

I just started it [Carnival Row] last night, really enjoying it. (view spoiler)[The fairies weren't flying because of the barbed wire above them in the trees. (hide spoiler)]

Re the spoiler part of your comment, that’s a good catch. I missed that and so, I assume, did a lot of other folks. I’ve seen Fiona’s original question echoed in a few other places on the net.

I finished off Season 1 over the weekend. It’s got some problems, but I found there to be more to like than dislike. Professional critics, on average, were not particularly kind. A frequent complaint was that the script was too “complex” or “sprawling”; I thought that perspective odd, because, if anything, I found the world-building and the various plot threads a little too simplistic. As an example, one layer of this series is basically a whodunnit — I was able to guess about halfway through the identity of the “bad guy” and what their motivation was.

✭✭✭½

I was wondering whether anyone had taken a gander at Amazon’s new series, Carnival Row, which dropped at the end of August. At risk of oversimplifying it’s sort of a dark steampunk-fairyland mash-up. The first season is comprised of eight episodes (I’ve only watched the first two) and it looks as though Amazon has committed to at least two seasons. Not quite sure what to think at this point — a qualified thumbs up perhaps. The look of it is certainly impressive (depending on your tastes, I suppose) and my guess is that Amazon has thrown a fair amount of money at this creative project. I’ve never been a particularly big fan of Orlando Bloom, although he’s perfectly adequate here as a police inspector. I was a bit more impressed with Cara Delevingne, who plays a “pix” refugee. The political subtext, whether you agree with the sentiments expressed or not, can sometimes feel a little unsubtle.

J. wrote (in part):

They paid billions for this sci-fi juggernaut, but the sci-fi elements are just a veneer. It's a fantasy series that starts out with a wizard and his new apprentice hiring a rogue to help them save a princess.

The Star Wars films were always far more fantasy than sci-fi dating back to the very first one Lucas directed back in 1977.

“Good Hunting”

This story is a mashup, not only of different subgenres, but also of different emotions — viz., Liu manages the neat trick of evoking a painful nostalgia for the “magic” lost in the wake of technological progress while simultaneously holding out the hope that that magic might somehow still be re-captured or re-formulated in a different fashion.

The author’s intent is summarized in the story notes, which appear on his web site. Here is an excerpt:

(view spoiler)[In writing this story, I wanted to do two things. One, to turn the misogynistic hulijing legends upside down. In these legends, usually composed by male scholars, the hulijing is a dangerous feminine creature who uses her sexuality to deprive men of their vitality and essence. My hulijing questions that narrative.

Two, I think there’s a paucity of good steampunk that addresses the dark stain of colonialism in a satisfactory way. Like many of my stories, this tale has an anti-colonial theme. One of the character says, at one point, “A terrible thing had been done to me, but I could also be terrible.” It is about as succinct a summary of the experience of being a member of a colonized population as I can give. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭½

“The Perfect Match”

I don’t have much to say about this one. The sense of paranoia the story exudes is at times almost suffocating. In that respect it reminds me a bit of some of Philip K. Dick’s fiction. And like of the best dystopic fiction, the elements of this tale don’t diverge all that much from current reality.

✭✭✭✭

“State Change”

When Liu, in the introduction to this collection, referred to literalizing metaphors, one of the stories he had to have been thinking about was “State Change”. (view spoiler)[Here the author spins a tale in which the way each of us lives our life is a reflection of our soul, which in turn is imagined as a concrete object. For example, Liu makes reference to the 20th century poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. I don’t think that the specific volume of letters to which Liu refers actually exists, but the Elaine who is the writer of the letter is clearly Elaine Ralli, a classmate of Millay’s with whom she was involved but subsequently dumped. And the fact that Elaine specifies a candle as Millay’s soul just as clearly stems from the latter’s famous poem, “First Fig”. Liu’s most important (and hopeful) revelation is that one’s soul may change, as Rina’s does in the story’s conclusion. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭✭

“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species”

As a story about ideas I found Liu’s effort to be both impressive and thought-provoking. It’s basically a descriptive piece and therefore fairly bereft of emotional content. But perhaps that’s implicitly criticizing “Bookmaking” for something it was not meant to be.

✭✭✭✭

Lena said (in part):

Cillian Murphy thinks James Bond should be a woman!

This is already slated to happen...well, sorta anyway. I think it was last month when word circulated that in the next movie in this franchise, Craig was reprising his role as Bond, but that the 007 code name was being assumed by Lashana Lynch (recently seen in Captain Marvel).

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison has passed away at 88.