Category Archives: Reviews

Crime, Reviews

Gilda (1946 Film Noire Classic) – a Review

8 Comments

Given the cinematic stool samples being laid in Homowood, Commiefornia in recent times, I am frequently more willing to pay to watch an old film than to risk watching a late-model movie for free. Unfortunately, it often seems as though I’ve already seen all the good ones. Then, once in a while, I discover a film like Gilda.

Gilda was directed by Charles Vidor and stars Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. Were there no such genre as film noire to classify it, it would probably best be described as a character-driven drama.

What it’s About:

Johnny Farrel (Ford) is a gambler who uses loaded dice and card cutting/shuffling tricks to “make his own luck” and earn a dishonest living in Argentina. Early on, after an implausible winning streak at the blackjack table, he runs afoul of the casino’s owner: shady tungsten magnate Ballin Mundson. With no shortage of nerve, Johnny convinces Mundson to hire him to run the Casino.

(Mundson’s trust of Johnny, though not misplaced, is perhaps the least believable aspect of the story in this film.)

Soon after Johnny makes himself indispensable at the casino, Mundson surprises Johnny by introducing him to his brand new wife: the titular Gilda. By brand new, I mean the two met about a day before getting married. How could you not assume she’s a gold digger trading sex for access to Mundson’s fortune? Furthermore, it’s obvious to the audience and Mundson, right away, that Gilda and Johnny have a past, though at first they deny knowing each other.

So, there you have the classic love triangle, right? And being a film noire, you just know it will end in tragedy.

Characters/Acting:

George MacReady plays Mundson exactly like he probably should be played: gullible and petulant on the one hand while shrewd and dangerous on the other.

The Johnny Farrel role is a departure for Glenn Ford. I’ve never seen him play a devil-may-care wise guy before. And after the opening act, you won’t see that in this film, either. He reverts to the mature, responsible sort of personality we’re used to seeing Ford play. But he pulls off both sides of Johnny Farrel with aplomb.

What perhaps makes no sense is how Johnny risks his entrusted position with his boss to cover for Gilda’s frequent and casual infidelities. The two hate each other, after all.

You may have seen the now-famous shot that introduces (Rita Hayworth as) Gilda. Her head is bowed down out of the camera’s view, then she swings up into frame, flipping her long hair over and behind her to smile at Mundson’s top henchman. The smile fades as she recognizes Johnny and begins to seethe.

Rita Hayworth had a very attractive face and a killer smile, but was physically underwhelming in most other ways. For some reason, the actresses who get offered the ticket are rarely shaped like an hourglass. More like a test tube. Hayworth fits that mold.

Gilda gleefully cats around on Mundson through most of the film, but once in a while we glimpse a chink in her armor. As Mundson tells her, hate is a form of excitement. Put in modern parlance, hate can quickly boil over into lust. And boy, is there a lot of bad blood between Johnny and Gilda.

I was waiting almost from that introductory scene for Johnny to give in to an assumed obsession with (or at least lust for) Gilda, and be played for a chump by her–presumably for the umpteenth time. But the screenwriter mercifully avoids that predictable formula (possibly because it wasn’t yet the formula). Despite his ill-advised cover-ups for Gilda, he remains strong and, dare I say, honorable…up until the third act. Of course, many may disagree with me on all counts.

Dialog:

Film makers today are lauded as “edgy” or whatever for having actors spew blasphemy and F-bombs in between every other word. In the Movie biz of yesteryear, a lot was said beyond the sum total of the words spoken. Not just innuendo, though there was often plenty of that. In Gilda, we are never given a flashback, confession, or other exposition dump, but the backstory comes to us piecemeal, exclusively via implication or insinuation.

In a nutshell, Gilda hates Johnny for dumping her; while Johnny despises Gilda for cheating on him just like she is now so blatantly cheating on Mundson. It didn’t just wound his pride. It revealed to Johnny that Gilda is not even a human being, but rather a ruthless man-eating monster who belongs in the gutter or a whorehouse.

Theme:

Similar to what Alfred Hitchcock did in a couple of his suspense thrillers, Charles Vidor built this film around the duality of the three main characters. Each of them displays two opposed natures struggling within their personas. Or you could say each of them appear to be one sort of character, but are actually something else.

Twists:

There are unstable business execs accepting bribes, an omnipresent Argentine detective hovering all over casino business, two sinister Nazi agents, and a fatal plane crash.

But not everything is as it seems. In fact, very little is. I highly recommend you watch this classic and find out for yourself what is what.

Make sure you check back here every week to read Gio’s Top Five Film picks!

Action, Espionage, Reviews

Alt Hero Q to Date – a Review

Leave a comment

Alt Hero Q is one of the first Arkhaven projects, which preceeded the Arktoons website.

What it’s About:

It is a globe-trotting action spy thriller featuring a former Treasury agent recruited into an open source intelligence operation. He was one of the few honest agents left in the Federal Alphabets, who was nearly snuffed for noticing what should not be noticed. Now Roland Dane is tasked with investigating the blackmail of a scumbag politician, foiling the assassination attempt on a unicorn honest politician, and thwarting a plot to start a war between Russia and Ukraine.

That last plot thread was devised before the war in Ukraine began IRL. It shows you just how current and savvy the storyline can be at times.

How About that Title?

You have to be pretty sheltered to not have at least heard of Q by now.

If you still believe the Swamp Media and Uniparty scumbags, then “Qanon” is a dangerous domestic terror network which might do something horrible at any moment, meaning  American citizens need to surrender more liberty and give the traitors in Washington even more power. To keep us safe, of course.

If you bypassed the Swamp Media, researched it for yourself, and share the beliefs of the anons who followed Q, you think it is a rogue element within the Federal Leviathan which organized a counter-conspiracy to take down the traitors. They have a plan you’re supposed to trust in, which will result in mass arrests of the traitors who have hijacked our government with no, or minimal, bloodshed.

Many who once were in the latter camp are now convinced it was all just another psyop to keep us compliant. To keep us docile. To demoralize us yet again. To get us to self-identify as thoughtcriminals so we are easily targeted for the purges to come during the Great Reset.

Production Values:

Whatever the truth is behind the Q phenomenon, it is a great backdrop for an ambitious espionage/conspiracy thriller. But rather than some ludicrous formula about a unicorn honest MSM journalist chasing the story down to present the truth to the masses (who totally care about freedom, the Constitution, and our long-term future more than porn, social media and getting high), this is a story of a cellular network of patriots and just decent folks sacrificing their own time and resources trying to expose and bring down the Cabal. That’s pretty unique in the conspiracy genres.

Chuck Dixon scripted this tale (based on Vox Day’s general outline, I would guess) with a structure reminiscent of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, but without the vulgarity. The characters and dialog are believable. I’m not exactly sure what the page count would be at this point, but it looks like the plot is nowhere near resolution, yet. Were this an Akira Kurosawa film, I would be confident that after this methodical buildup of tension and conflict, there will be a satisfying, gratifying, rip-snorting denouement to resolve the story arc and tie off all the loose ends. If I were a betting man, I’d say Chuck Dixon is a Kurosawa fan and this is exactly what he intends to do.

The artwork is good and compliments the story well. Sometimes it looks a little rushed, but even at that, I would still say the quality is high. Notice, in the panel above, how you know at just a quick glance that this is a night time scene–and you would know that even without the black sky at the upper left corner. The artist got the shadows from multiple light sources, and everything else, just right. I’ve looked at a lot of comic panels over the years and can’t remember a night scene done this well.

As with much of the Arktoons artwork, the artist sometimes “cheated”/saved time by using mostly empty panels, or zoomed in/out on a preceding panel to form a “new” one. It doesn’t detract from the experience and I would probably do the same, in their place.

You can read everything I’ve read for free on Arkhaven, and I recommend you do–all at one sitting so you don’t lose track of all the setting jumps. If I remember correctly, there will also be a crowdfunding campaign soon for a print version of Alt-Hero Q. Which means, hopefully, that the aforementioned climax has been scripted, drawn, inked, colored, and is ready for showtime.

Reviews

Last Year at Marienbad (1961) – a Review

4 Comments

(Directed by Alain Resnais)

Reviewed by

The first movie on the INFAMOUS🦀 Top-5 Movie List is a visual spectacle with no equals. Directed by French visionaire A. Resnais, this masterpiece belongs to the French New Wave movie scene which came about in the 1950s and was characterized by new and unconventional shooting and editing techniques, creating something never seen before on the big screen.

 

PLOT:

The plot is as surreal as the visuals themselves: you have a splendid yet ethereal luxury hotel resort somewhere in Europe (Austria? France? Another reality?). Guests mingle and interact; a man converses with a woman claiming they met each other the year before, though the woman seems not to recall that. Everything feels slightly Stanley Kubrick-ish: is the woman dreaming all this? Is she even alive or a wandering ghost? And why does this entire hotel feel so strange even though we can’t quite put our finger on it?

CG vs REAL LOCATIONS:

Part of the initial effect that the sets have on audiences is due to a good chunk of filming taking place at the palaces of Schleissheim and Nymphenburg, including the Amalienburg hunting lodge, and the Antiquarium of the Residenz, all of which are in and around Munich, Germany. I’ll keep saying this until the cows come home: CG has ruined modern film-making. Real locations, particularly when it comes to historical locations, have a ‘life’ of their own, for lack of better terms. The shooting locations of Last Year at Marienbad not only provide the perfect backdrop for the actors’ performances, they become an additional character themselves. Whether you roam through the halls of this majestic building, or walk around its magnificent gardens, you just sense an otherworldly atmosphere at every corner.

THE PROTAGONIST:

French actress Delphine Seyrig plays The Woman at the center of this surreal experience (and yes, characters in this movie don’t have names, they’re just The Man, The Woman, The Second Man, etc.). For a movie to be a masterpiece of this caliber you need to have a lead that can carry and embody the spirit of the movie, and Seyrig does all that and then some! She can just look at the camera without speaking a single word and enchant an entire audience! The only present day actress that even comes remotely close to her is Nicole Kidman, perhaps. But I digress…

This movie absolutely required a lead actress who could convey emotions with her eyes and her subtle gestures: over-act a scene and you look silly; under-act a scene and the audience won’t be able to connect. Seyrig accomplished that marvelously!

FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN:

Robbe-Grillet who wrote the screenplay jotted down every detail, specifying not only the dialogue and gestures and décor, but also the placement and movement of the camera and the sequencing of shots in the editing. Director Resnais filmed the script with great fidelity, and when Robbe-Grillet, who was not present during the filming, saw the rough cut, he said he found the film just as he had intended it, while recognizing how much Resnais had added to make it work on the screen and fill out what was absent from the script…

Which brings me to the next major point I want to make: a script should be adapted to screen in all of its authenticity and with no changes as to affect the nature of its content in order to appeal to particular groups or audiences or in order to not offend somebody. When a script has to pass through 3 or 4 different hands, chances are that what ends up on screen is just a mockery of what the original story wanted to be. A good director will only use his/her talent and skills to best express what the script wants to convey. That’s it. End of story.

CLOSING REMARKS:

In closing, Last Year at Marienbad remains one of the best yet subtle visual feasts in cinema today: it’s elegant, grand, stylish; yet dark, unsettling, mysterious, ethereal. 

Who are all these elegant people? What’s their story? Well, to this day fans of the movie still come up with exciting theories to such enigmas.

Watch for yourself, and let us know what your theory is. But make sure you don’t get lost while roaming through the halls of Marienbad!

🦀

*Make sure to watch the 55th Anniversary movie trailer (above)!

Reviews

The INFAMOUS Top 5 Movie Picks

7 Comments


Though books have always been my primary focus of interest, as a lover of storytelling in general, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I would also mingle in the art of filmography.

Though I was born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s, and lived most of my young adult life in the 90s, and having witnessed the phenomena of your Star Wars Trilogy, your Godfather, your Lord of The Rings, to name a few-spanning over 3 decades of filmmaking-ultimately my heart gravitated toward a different crop of movies. These are films that precede my lifetime and yet have had the most profound effect on me and keep doing so to this day. I’m all for movies that ‘just entertain’, we need those too, but surely not at the expense of using the medium for soul-impacting, life-changing experiences.

So my top 5 picks that we will discuss in the next weeks are not just what I consider to be GOOD movies, but masterpieces that have impacted my life to one degree or another. These are movies that I can revisit over and over again, and still discover something new, or notice little hidden details which speaks volume of their richness in content.

Some of them you may have heard of…but I doubt it!

 

Top 5 Movie Picks (newer to older):

  1. Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
  2. The Earrings of Madame de… (1953)
  3. La Ronde (1950)
  4. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
  5. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

 

Join us next week for our first movie review and conversation (don’t forget to leave comments!):

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

INFAMOUS🦀

Aviation, Military, Reviews

The Dawn Patrol – a Review

2 Comments

What It’s About:

A British pursuit squadron suffers the attrition of air combat in WWI. Major Brand is in command, driven to drink and relentless stress by the young pilots he loses every day to enemy action. His “A Flight” Leader is Captain Courtney, who is a survivor and a skilled veteran pilot whose perspective will be forced to change before the movie is over.

Vintage:

This film was made in 1930. To put that in perspective, The Jazz Singer had been released just three years before. Audiences were no longer content with silent movies, and the Hollywood studios had been scrambling to adopt the new technology. This meant a new equipment needed to be installed in theaters, new recording equipment (capable of synching with cameras) needed to be acquired and used by every film crew, and a whole lot of expensive sound stages needed building on the studio lots.

“Talkies” were still in their infancy, but this one has got a better soundtrack than most.

Even though the entire industry now realized synchronized sound was the wave of the future, it still took a while for film makers to ditch certain practices that were no longer necessary.

Exhibit A: Intertitles. Dawn Patrol doesn’t have as many as a typical silent film–and none for dialog–but it’s got a few. The writers/directors evidently hadn’t figured out a way to give exposition without inserting text in between shots. Or they never even wondered about doing it some other way.

Exhibit B: Subtitles. They put one at the bottom of the frame whenever we see the villain in his cockpit.

Exhibit C: Acting. Some of the actors strike overly-dramatic poses, wear exaggerated expressions, and use jerky, exaggerated gestures. Many of them were veteran actors of the silent era and directors had conditioned them to emote that way. It must have been a tough habit to kick. It kind of grates, now. The film was remade in 1938 and I bet that one doesn’t suffer the same issues.

Exhibit D: Patience. This might not be directly related to silent movies or talkies. This film is just too methodical for the modern audience, in places. Folks back then were more easily entertained (not spoiled rotten with omnipresent entertainment) and had the attention span of a human being–not a gnat or a smartphone zombie.

Plot and Themes:

If you watch a lot of WWII movies, you’ll probably lose count of how many of them are built around certain tropes like individualists learning to do their part as a member of a team. This one thrums on “the loneliness of command” nine years before the invasion of Poland and 20-30 years before the trope became such a cliche` in war movies. For all I know, Dawn Patrol might be what set the precedent for several war movie tropes which are overly familiar today.

The audience is left to assume that the Germans don’t face the same problems as our heroes.  The Allies have manpower problems and material shortages, whereas the Germans don’t. In reality, it was almost exactly the opposite.

In fact, this type of story would better represent the German side. The best German aces were given such a workload that they were completely used up by 1917 or so. The constant stress, exhaustion, and requirement to accomplish much with little dulled their abilities and wracked them with sickness. Even the legendary Red Baron could barely keep his eyes open on his last few missions. (His stand-in in this movie is “Von Richter.” What movie about WWI air combat does NOT feature a portrayal of Manfred Von Richtoffen and his Flying Circus, I wonder.)

But, I mean, they’re bloody barbaric Hun savages with no appreciation for the value of human life. So who cares what problems they faced, eh wott?

Production Values:

Howard Hawks directed this. He was a prolific director who made some very memorable  films from the silent era right up until 1970. But this (his first talkie) feels like he’s just getting his sea legs.

(As a side note for the red pill and manosphere communities, his serious films depicted very masculine men and feminine women. However, in his comedies, he conformed to the mild gender confusion so popular in the postwar era that helped push our culture onto the slippery slope that led to the institutional gender insanity of today.)

The film probably had a pretty good budget. There are about three aerial combat sequences, including one in the opening scene. Aside from just a couple rear-screen projection shots, this was all real pilots in real planes doing this stuff. Considering that, some of the stunt flying is truly spectacular. I’ve watched my share of dogfight scenes in war movies, and this movie’s are better than most, and still hold up somewhat today.

But even big budgets have their limits. I wonder if that’s why most of the film involves the lonely commander and other personnel at the airfield simply worrying while waiting for the squadron to return, to find out who survived and who didn’t. That’s another popular trope in the genre. No doubt some screenwriters used it because they wanted an intense drama. But, like the stark lighting in Film Noire, budget constraints might have necessitated it in the beginning–so directors took that lemon and made lemonade.

My Take:

Considering everything I’ve mentioned, overall, Dawn Patrol doesn’t hold up that well today. I appreciate the limitations it was made under, and that it was a pioneer film that established precedents for the genre. Few others will. And the crude sound, outdated conventions, hammy acting, etc., are not justified by the story, which seems hackneyed and formulaic despite the fact that it wasn’t back in 1930.

If you have an interest in WWI air combat, you might want to also read my review of The Red Baron.

Action, Reviews, TEOTWAWKI

Rogue: The American Dream – a Review

5 Comments

This type of story that is wildly popular with most of the male population in the West–especially the part of it which still reads comic books. There’s no reason why the eponymous character of this comic shouldn’t collect a lot of fans.

The female supremacy grrrrlboss tropes come in at least two flavors. One features the 105 pound Playboy-bunny lookalike who can easily defeat, in hand-to-hand combat, a marine battalion composed entirely of 220 pound MMA champions. Less ubiquitous is the grrrlboss with a more masculine build, bigger and more heavily muscled, who can easily defeat, in hand-to-hand combat, a marine battalion composed entirely of 220 pound MMA champions.

Just by looking at one of the many alternate covers for this comic, you know it is about a busty-yet-hypermuscular woman kicking ass.

What it’s about:

The plot is pretty much Escape from New York. The protagonist is basically Snake Plisskin with tits (but without the eye patch, though she needs one) and a penchant for addressing others with faux-affectionate (sardonic) terms like “sugar” and “honey.” Her name is Rogue, but she sometimes won’t admit it. As a standalone narrative, the confusion regarding her name felt unnecessary and poorly developed. But perhaps there is backstory in previous Rogue adventures that would cause this to make sense.

Still, she is invincible and doesn’t really need to hide from anybody by pretending to be somebody else. I would add, “Besides, how many busty-yet-hypermuscular grrrlbosses strutting through the postapocalyptic landscape, leaving a swathe of fresh destruction in their path, could there be?” But never mind that, because such is not all that uncommon in the setting of this story.

Another character referred to Rogue as a Boomer, and Rogue didn’t dispute that. Meaning Rogue is in her 60s, at the youngest–yet she’s still as agile as a squirrel in its prime. Maybe this was also explained in a previous comic.

The society in this postapocalyptic world could be described as a dystopian matriarchy. But the federal strong-arm goons are coed–that way you get to see plenty battles-of-the-sexes with the grrrlboss dominating multiple men. Straight men go down like tenpins hit by a busty-yet-hypermuscular bowling ball. The only characters who come close to giving our Womyn Warrior any challenge are other grrrlbosses, and a homosexual.

Character:

Despite all the sardonic terms of affection, Rogue’s machismo is laid on thick in the dialog. Her lines would be condemned as ridiculously over-the-top if spoken by the Rock or Jason Statham. But whatever.

The art strikes me as mostly hasty rough sketches, influenced by Manga. In most of the action sequences, I was confused about what was supposed to be happening.

Rogue: The American Dream is not my cup of tea. But if you like macho chick stories, you can probably forgive the artwork. The campaign is underway right now.

Fantasy, Reviews, TEOTWAWKI

THE GLOOM OF THE GRAVE by Kevin G. Beckman

Leave a comment

THE WEIRD TALES OF SILAS FLINT (THE FLINT ANTHOLOGIES BOOK 1)

~ Review by

Here we are folks: once again we get to follow Knight Templar Captain Silas Flint and his associate Supernumerary Ricardo Navarro on yet another adventure! What’s ironic is that this was the perfect occasion for our heroes to finally take some time off as no cases needed particular attention. But of course that is not bound to happen!

When Flint receives a letter from Professor Johansson he decides to go visit Johansson at a newly found air force base from before the war that ended all civilization. Being a student of history himself, he decides to take Navarro and Ms. Fletcher (you might remember her from The Witch’s Repentance) along for the ride, all three looking forward to seeing an actual military base from the old world.

Without giving any spoilers, we quickly find out that evil forces lurk at the air force base, and our power trio (Fletcher included ) is tested to their limits!

Beckman once again treats us to a fun ride that has good pace and good characters that come off as likable and relatable. Particularly, Fletcher brings a breath of fresh air, being herself a former witch. She is not allowed to use magic but life and death situations will test her to the limit. Will she be able to refrain from using her magical powers and keep her word, even though she is tempted to use them for good? Pick up a copy of The Weird Tales of Silas Flint today and find out!

This tale is fun and suspenseful, and again, it’s a clear example that a writer doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel to write 5-star stories that we can all enjoy!

 

Join us in two weeks for the next tale: The Deepest Circle

🦀

Reviews, Sci-Fi, Western

Claudia Christian’s Dark Legacies – a Review

2 Comments

I’ve never seen a project quite like this. It’s written by an actress and has a sequential art section and artist’s sketches interrupting a prose narrative. The main characters (even in the prose section) are based on people involved–who are credited as such. Sounds like this would be a fun collaboration.

Back in the ’90s I had friends who were fans of Babylon 5, which is where I think Claudia Christian made a name for herself. So an actor in a sci-fi TV series is now the co-writer of a sci-fi fiction publication–with the main character based on her. That character is Adjudicator Steele.

The Prose Section:

And Hell Followed Him is a western set on a Mars colony. Instead of a shady Indian Agent selling rifles to the Apache, there is a shady outlaw who has been selling people to the mutants. For dinner.

Agent Steele teams up with tough-as-nails Marshall Jake Reeves to rescue a kidnapped teenager before she, too, is eaten by the mutants. There seems to be more going on around Devil’s Ridge than meets the eye, and there’s definitely more to Steele’s mission than what we are told, for now. She hides her true agenda from the Marshall, and from the reader, but if this is just the first installment in a series, I’m sure all will eventually be revealed.

The plotting seems fine, so far. Avid western readers should feel right at home in this opening act. The text could have used some proofreading/editing, though. My guess is Chris MCauley wrote it, based on Christian’s ideas, but there was no other pair of eyes on it before it went to press.

The Sequential Art Section:

Steele is the star of this story as well. Here she investigates a string of murders on a Jupiter “mining platform.” Damage to the victims, plus footage of the murders, suggest the murderer has superhuman strength and wears a “morphic” suit of armor which is more advanced than the most state-of-the-art military combat armor.

It’s a simple mystery, easily solved, but also sets up a longer story arc involving Steele and her homicidal sister, who murdered their parents and now commands a space fleet and works out dirty deals with at least one planetary government.

I’m a little confused about the setting here. What is the mining platform, exactly? I think most of this story takes place indoors–in ships, maybe a biodome or airtight buildings, but some of it is outdoors where it rains. I wouldn’t think the climate on Jupiter would be very human-friendly, yet humans are evidently fine there with just a rain poncho and no oxygen mask or rebreathing system.

Nevertheless, the artwork is very nice. Penciller Staz Johnson seems very comfortable with comic panel work, and his cover art is even more impressive.

My Take:

I watched a few episodes of Babylon 5 back in the day, but never really got into it. I saw it as sort of The Love Boat in Space. But this series looks to be more like Trek Classic: more adventure, with some mystery (and western!) mixed in. It has the potential to be fun. I would like to see what happens in the prose story next, but would like it even more if they transform it into comic form, as well.

Fantasy, Reviews

The Girl with the Fire in Her Hair

3 Comments

Legends of the Wandered Lands: The Girl with the Fire in Her Hair by Robert Victor Mills

~ A 6-Part Review Series by

Note from INFAMOUS🦀: 

After breaking down Man of Swords in our previous 6-part series, and given how much we loved and enjoyed that first collection of Legends of the Wandered Lands, it was only natural to go ahead and tackle Mills’ second official book featuring our fierce hero Rohye of Kethaine. I’m curious and excited to see how Mills will manage to keep a narrative that is compelling yet not repetitive.

Writing good stories about the same character and the same world can only get more challenging, so it will be interesting to see how this new collection of legends was handled. 

I hope you will join us on this ride back into the Wandered Lands!

 

THE GIRL WITH FIRE IN HER HAIR (Part 1 of a 6-Part Series)

 

~The delicate profile of her nose, the alabaster of her cheek, and the rich raven ringlets of her hair, which tumbled wantonly about her shoulders, impressed of her singular beauty~

 

I’ve said this many times, but when writing multiple stories revolving around the same main character in the same world, there’s a fine balance to be established between writing something new without losing the essence of what made that main character and that world appealing in the first place. Write too much of the same stuff, and readers will say it’s gotten boring; write something too far departed from the original, and readers will say that it’s lost its original appeal. I think Mills understands that, based on this first opening tale, which is named after the book’s title: The Girl with Fire in Her Hair.

The Challenge:

Going back to my opening statement, keeping things fresh and exploring new realms is key when further expanding on an established character. And this is EXACTLY what we witness in this first tale. To begin with, I can tell you that-for the most part-not one single fist is thrown and not one single sword is swung. But instead, Mills focuses on dialogue that is rich, compelling, and enthralling. 

Plot & Characters:

Rohye finds work at a smithee in yet another town far away from his mother land of Kethaine. The well he goes to get water daily leads to a fence which divides the smithee’s property from the next, where a mansion with a luscious garden in blossom presides. And everyday, a beautiful woman is seen tending the garden. This is where Rohye and the beautiful woman strike a conversation and quickly the two grow feelings as they get to know each other from across the fence.Soon though, a harsh truth will  be revealed to Rohye, as things are not always what they seem.

This story also features faithful companion Astropho, a bard/poet/thrill-seeker whose lack of physical prowess he more than makes up for with cunningness and primal intuition. Astropho does not appear in Man of Swords but he does in The Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab which we already reviewed. Astropho is much more than a sidekick, in fact his character is complex enough to have his own series of stories written. 

 In a series of surprising revelations, Rohye is confronted with challenges that don’t necessarily require the use of his fists or a sword. Astropho plays a key role here when he tells his best friend: “perception of virtue oft bears little relation to truth. And, though she has doubtless earned your anger, perhaps she has not yet earned your hate”.

Conclusion:

In closing, I am excited to say that if this first story is any suggestion of what we can expect from the rest of the book, we’re in for a treat! It feels fresh but without losing the key elements that have made the Wandered Lands so special to us!

🦀

See you in two weeks for: The Spherae of Arkimeddon

Pet Peeves, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Speculative

War for the Planet of the Apes

3 Comments

As a fan of the 1968 Planet of the Apes movie, and even the first sequel, I’ve watched the revamping of the franchise with interest.  Between career drama, family tragedy, and other distractions in my personal life, I missed this film’s release in 2017 and was not even aware of its existence until a few days ago.

Of course I had to watch it.

What it’s About:

After the events depicted in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Caesar has led his fellow smart apes into the woods and established a secret colony there. At the beginning of this film, the  evil humans (who apparently have nothing better to do) find the colony and intend to commit genocide against them.

Caesar needs to move the entire colony away quickly to a new settlement where they won’t be found, but breaks off from them to undertake his own revenge mission. To avoid spoilers, suffice it to say that from there, the plot builds toward a climactic battle at the end.

Who Directed this Thing?

Upon looking up director Matt Reeves on InfoGalactic, I was shocked to discover he is Generation X. For reasons that might occur to you while reading the rest of this review, I would have guessed Boomer–specifically a draft-dodging “campus activist” Boomer who probably still has a North Vietnamese flag tacked to his wall. I can only speculate about this: Maybe Reeves is a Boomer wannabe. Perhaps, like me, he grew up immersed in Boomer culture and, unlike me, adopted all of it as his own. (Full disclosure: I still love a lot of Boomer music and some of the American cars manufactured during their rising adult years are still my favorites. In fact, some of my best friends are Boomers.)

Cringe Factor:

The older I get, the more of a problem I have with cruelty to animals. The newest Ape movies have been hard to watch because there is so much of it. And, just like so many pinko directors before him, Reeves uses our empathy for the ape characters in an attempt to make us buy in to his themes and worldview.

On several occasions I felt like apologizing to my dog on behalf of all human beings. He sat watching me, waiting for me to turn off the TV and play with him–much less upset about human cruelty than I was.

Technical Ineptitude:

The screenwriter and director know absolutely nothing about the military, other than what they’ve seen in other movies and TV shows. Which is to say: damn little.

And that’s fine–as long as they steer clear of projects that depict military units and personnel. When film makers make their predictably half-assed effort, it grates on me

Hey, Spielberg is a leftist Boomer who (along with George Lucas) probably has a North Vietnamese flag tacked to his wall. But at least he hired an advisor for Saving Private Ryan so he didn’t vomit his ignorance all over the screen for the entire movie. There were moments when he obviously vetoed the experts’ advice, for the sake of dramatic tension and such. Because Hollywood Boomer. Can’t get your expectations too high with that crowd.  And this movie reminded me that Boomer director Francis Ford Coppola actually did a commendable job depicting soldiers at war (for a draft-dodging Boomer, anyway).

Dismissing exceptions like Spielberg and Coppola, when it comes to draft-dodging Boomers who make movies about war, there are two camps: those who believe the US armed Forces is comprised solely of the Marine Corps, and those who believe every swinging Richard in the military is Special Forces. Reeves was obviously discipled by the latter camp.

The evil humans are led by Woody Harrelson playing his own version of Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse, Now! Dude shaves his head and listens to Jimmi Hendrix while planning an idiotic defensive battle against other evil humans  who believe his methods are unsound and are coming to terminate his command, with extreme prejudice. At least there was no monologue about watching a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor.

The “Special Forces” officers and men under his command demonstrate the tactical acumen of a young boy playing with plastic army men. (Maybe the real deal is like that these days. I know the standards have been plummeting across the board as good soldiers have been chased out to open slots for freaks, perverts, womyn and diversity hires.)

However, the movie’s human soldiers do have magic ghost-ninja powers that allow them to repeatedly and easily sneak up and get the drop on the apes, who apparently lost their animal survival instincts, hearing, sense of smell, and developed one whale of a myopia in their vision. At least for the parts of the story that require such handicaps. In fact, these seasoned, professional SF A-Team operators can even have hysterical conversations about 30 yards from an ape listening post and not be discovered.

There’s a lot more I could complain about on this subject, but that would make this a loooooong post.

Theme, Etc:

Much like a Stanley Kubrick film, the big question the screenwriter/director wants you to ask is, “Who actually demonstrates humanity in this story?” Hint: it ain’t the humans.

I give the filmmakers props for driving this theme home with a couple shots of soldiers showing themselves to be more feral than the apes with the motivational mass command and hoowah-ing that grunts are conditioned to perform (but Special Forces soldiers do not, unless their ranks are filled with guys from the Ranger Battalions).  They sounded more like apes than the apes, and this is the closest the movie ever gets to verisimilitude from a military perspective.

Humans are barbaric savages who would rather lose a battle and be wiped out than to miss an opportunity to murder some escaping, unarmed apes. Like the gorilla traitors they employ as “donkeys,” humans are fanatical killers who will follow idiotic orders blindly without question, but are incapable of empathy, gratitude, fair play, or any sort of decency. Except for Nova, who is a young girl in this movie.

Caesar, Luca, Rocket and the other apes are the only characters (besides Nova)  who have any humanity.

This movie really comes off like yet another symbolic summary of Vietnam, as told by a communist propaganda minister–like Little Big Man, Soldier Blue, Return of the Jedi, and Avatar.

Everything you’ll see here has been done before many times. There is no part of this movie that suffers from any modicum of originality.

The acting is fine and the musical score is competent. All the elements of filmmaking come together to sadden, depress, disturb and/or infuriate you over the mistreatment of the apes. And that is pretty much all this film is good for.