Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Posted by Peter Schwotzer in Books, Reviews, Terror Tales with Peter D. Schwotzer on March 18th, 2010
“Thirty years ago, a depraved assault during a Halloween costume ball shattered a young woman’s mind, turning her into a brutal mass murderer. Dressed in her rival’s blood-soaked wedding gown, the legend of the Butcher Bride was born. Now, decades later, everyone who enters the Silas Mansion will encounter a frightening spirit ravenous to satisfy perverse appetites. Death is the only escape. Here comes The Bride…”
It was the late 70’s, early 80’s, and there was nothing better than going to the drive-in on a Saturday night with your girlfriend, your best friend and his girlfriend and a couple of 12 packs for a horror double feature. B-Movies, grindhouse, exploitation and drive-in staples like Mark Of The Devil were good for a few screams from the girls and good laughs by your bud and you.
Vince Churchill’s The Butcher Bride gave me a roller coaster ride back in time to those fondly remembered hot summer nights. It is a glorious romp of decadent sex, over the top gore and one of the most vicious ghost and haunted houses I have had the pleasure to read about in quite a while.
The haunted house/vengeful ghost story has been done many times over the years but Vince puts a gleeful manic spin on his version of the tale and pulls it off nicely.
The characters are well realized and lifelike. You grow to love or hate them and you revel in the ways Vince chooses to kill off the unsavory ones. The book has some genuinely creepy moments, and will keep you turning the pages to see what Vince’s fertile imagination can come up with next.
If I had one small complaint, it would have to be the ending. It doesn’t take away from the quality of the storyline or writing, I just think the story would have been better served to come up with something a little different.
That being said I really had a lot of fun and very much enjoyed reading The Butcher Bride and fully intend to delve into Vince’s back catalog to find some more guilty pleasures.
If you love vengeful ghosts, a haunted house on Halloween sprinkled with a liberal amount of bloodshed and sex, The Butcher Bride should be at the top of your reading list.
Posted by Peter Schwotzer in Books, Latest News, Reviews, Terror Tales with Peter D. Schwotzer on March 17th, 2010
“An age ago, the children stopped coming. The priests’ promise of a curative kept the fury and misery at bay, for a time. Then the airships passed over and dropped their antidote. A delighted people drank it up like a mist of ambrosia.
Marooned and hopeless, Chaylie and her family escaped the horrors that followed, only to return to a land plagued by the tragic and the bizarre.
They appear in the night. Deformed. Mewling. Inhuman. And it’s Chaylie’s job to destroy them in great and blistering heaps. But the living nightmares can only be thrust aside, never defeated. And what if one of them were to survive?
Children of the New Disorder is a chilling vision, a frightening fever dream from the minds of Tim Lebbon and Lindy Moore. Paired with the unexpected voice of a pseudonymous partner, Lebbon’s lauded prose becomes remarkably daring in this spellbinding tale of the horrors both around and within us.”
From Creeping Hemlock Press comes a disturbing short tale of a bleak future. The book may be short, but its impact is powerful. Lebbon and Moore have combined their talents to make a formidable team that deliver a story that is shocking yet poignant.
Chaylie and her co-worker must perform a job nightly, a job to hide the mistakes of a society that is imploding. The prose is decisive and strong, the settings surreal and frightening. Children Of The New Disorder can be read in one sitting, but I can guarantee you will be greatly disturbed when you are finished.
The book itself is a work of art. It is a signed edition limited to 450 numbered copies, bound in genuine black leather with two-color foil stamp, has six full-page illustrations, color printed end sheets and a full-color glossy signature sheet.
Right now Creeping Hemlock Press is offering this beautiful edition of Children Of The New Disorder for only $19.50. If you like short, well written disturbing stories that are presented immaculately, this book is for you.
A special thanks to Creeping Hemlock Press for sending me the book and supplying the book cover and synopsis.
Posted by Peter Schwotzer in Books, Reviews, Terror Tales with Peter D. Schwotzer on March 16th, 2010
“They were just a group of high school kids looking for a place to party. They didn’t know the end of the world was coming. Now, alone and trapped below ground in a state-of-the-art bomb shelter, they are being stalked—and the creatures that come for them through the dirt and ash are like nothing anyone has ever seen before.
There is a new ruling life-form on earth, and these six humans are the only remaining prey.
Welcome to your worst nightmare. Welcome to…Sparrow Rock “
Sparrow Rock is Nate Kenyon’s fourth book with Dorchester Publishing and, I think, his best so far. Bloodstone was his first (in 2005 it was named a Bram Stoker Award finalist in hardcover, winning the P&E Horror Novel of the Year); The Reach (also a Bram Stoker Award finalist) was his second; and The Bone Factory was his third. (You can read my reviews of the latter two by clicking on the links.)
Sparrow Rock is a spine tingling, claustrophobic, creepy end-of-the-world tale that will leave you shuddering in its wake. Nate goes for the throat with the opening prologue and doesn’t stop until the very last page.
Though it doesn’t have the sprawling story lines and multitude of characters as King’s The Stand or McCammon’s Swan Song, it has the visceral impact that these inspired, and in my opinion deserves to be put on the same shelf as these classics.
I literally could not put this book down. Nate’s writing has continued to improve with each book and he focuses his tremendous talents on the small group of teenagers trapped in the bomb shelter while the world is destroyed around them.
How they handle the seeming inevitability of their situation (discovering that they don’t know as much about each other as they thought that they did), and the discovery that there are other things that lived through the bombings moves the story along at a breakneck pace.
And there are frights aplenty; if you’re claustrophobic like me this book will make you sweat. Kenyon has a sure winner on his hands and I can safely say it is the best book I’ve read so far this year.
Do yourself a favor and head over to Dorchester Publishing and pre-order Sparrow Rock, you will never look at ants the same way again.
Posted by Bryan in Latest News, Reviews, Television & Web Series on March 12th, 2010
Has there ever been a Ben episode that didn’t deliver? First was the highly-anticipated origin tale of “The Man Behind the Curtain,” one of the high points of an uneven third season. That was followed up by season four’s “The Shape of Things to Come,” which capably pulled off the difficult task of wringing an incredible amount of emotion from the relationship between the show’s villain and a daughter he kidnapped. Season five brought “Dead is Dead,” which was good enough to win Michael Emerson his second Emmy, and first for the role.
It’s impossible to discuss these episodes without constantly praising Emerson, who impressed the creators so much in what could’ve been a five-episode stint in season two, that he was bumped up to series regular and became one of the most integral parts in the show. Ben hasn’t had a ton to do this season in the wake of his violent outburst against Jacob in “The Incident,” but Emerson once again makes good on his annual episode showcase in “Dr. Linus,” reminding us of why the character is so compelling, and just why the show had to keep him around.
The most surprising part about this episode was the dexterity with which it alternated between on-island events and the flash-sideways storyline. I’ve been vocal about my fondness for the new framing device the writers concocted for this season, but as intriguing as it’s been to receive continued glimpses into this strange new timeline, I wouldn’t consider them to be the most compelling drama on the show this season. They’ve operated as a compliment to the main action in a similar way to the flash-forwards of season four, providing additional shading for the characters and just enough plot to justify inclusion on that basis.
But despite the positive of the flash-sideways, it has still seemed at times that the creators have thrown in things that exist merely to wink at the audience. Here I’m thinking of Claire popping up in the cab Kate hijacks, or Jin being tied up in the building Sayid kills Keamy in. It may prove that these crosses are more than sheer coincidence, but as of now they reek a little of the tendency writers had in the first couple of seasons, to stick recurring minor characters in cameos for others’ flashbacks. Sure, these moments are exciting on a “hey, it’s that guy!” level, but when they never rise above that, they can seem a little pointless.
So when Ben popped up, as a teacher of European History no less, in Locke’s flash-sideways the other week, the immediate reaction I had was to suspect cheekiness from the writers. Thankfully, “Dr. Linus” managed to utilize the new format better than any episode thusfar, resulting in an engaging hour that both answered some questions while raising some intriguing new ones.
The way that Ben’s storyline called back to the choices and sacrifices he had to make on the island were evident without being overstated. From choosing between his affection for Alex and more self-centered crises of leadership to caring for his aging father, even providing an oxygen tank, these moments all worked as interesting turns on Ben’s story as we’ve seen it so far. Plus, in an unexpected twist that makes perfect sense, we discover that not only is Locke employed at Ben’s high school, but so is the hapless science teacher, Leslie Arzt (Daniel Roebuck). Since accidentally blowing himself up in the first season finale, Arzt has become one of Lost’s most valuable in-jokes — a memorable and funny character it can pull out of its sleeve in situations like this to provide that additional bit of humor, such as in his scenes with Ben, agreeing to support his run at principal as long as he receives a better parking space.
But the real reason the material works so well is the energy and pathos provided by Emerson. Just as in season four, he completely sells his relationship with Alex, even when it’s placed in a completely different context. The series has taken so many twists and turns with Ben’s character, taking him from a clearly drawn villain to someone that didn’t really have the answers he seemed to, that it was a logical progression to place him in the role of valiant hero here, to see how his persona translates to truly being one of the “good guys.”
The scene where he flees to join the smoke monster, because he’s the only one who will have him is a fantastic piece of acting, both by Emerson and Zuleikha Robinson, who conveys an aching grief over the loss of Jacob, but makes the difficult decision to accept Ben back into the fold.
All of this is not even to mention the compelling new developments with Richard, who leads Jack and Hurley to (presumably the vessel on which he came to the Island) the Black Rock, where he makes the sudden request of Jack to kill him. Richard also reveals that because he was “touched by Jacob” he does not have the ability to do it himself. Since we have seen Jacob touch several of our castaways, the “candidates,” are we to assume that they too can’t off themselves? It does call to mind Michael’s off-island storyline in season four’s “Meet Kevin Johnson” where his attempts at suicide were deterred by some odd combination of inexplicable coincidence or fate.
We also got a couple of nice shoutouts to previous seasons, the most surprising being Miles’ mention of the ill-fated Nikki and Paolo, including an amusing visual callback at the end where Miles revealed he had dug up the diamonds they were buried with. And of course the episode concluded with the surprising reveal that Charles Widmore was on a submarine, plowing straight for the island. It’s safe to assume that he is the one who was coming in “Lighthouse,” as predicted by Jacob. The whole Widmore storyline was one that seemed like a focal point of the show for a while, but has somewhat fallen by the wayside since the introduction of the Jacob/Man in Black stuff that has risen to the forefront this season. It should be interesting to see how he fits back into the shape of what the show is now, and how his ongoing feud with Ben will play out.
Another very strong episode, but it’s really hard to believe that there could possibly be only nine more weeks of Lost, ever. It’s a safe bet that they’ll be memorable.
Posted by Jesse in Games, Latest News, Reviews on March 11th, 2010
By K2
Ever wanted to step behind Predator’s mask or into the Alien’s tough exo-skeleton? Well now you can. In Rebellion’s new game Aliens vs. Predator, you can truly see how it feels to be two of the universe’s most deadly creatures.
The game takes place after Alien 3,where a group of scientists on planet BG-386 begin to breed xenomorphs for war. When a Predator war party discovers these experiments, they decide they need to eradicate them before there is an infestation throughout the universe.
The game features three single player modes which all have various feels, so it’s almost as if playing three games at once. The marine campaign begins with you alone trying to reconnect with the rest of your landing squad. The marine gameplay has an enjoyable horror survivor feel that makes up for the game’s slight graphical inadequacies. Aiming is a little tough before you get used to it, and seeing only as far as your flashlight can make you want to throw a flare every two seconds, but its general eeriness is perfect for fans
of any horror sci-fi. Though the campaign does have a dash of repetitiveness, who doesn’t like being locked in a room with a bunch of aliens trying to kill you, right?
The Alien’s gameplay is a worthy challenge. While you can imagine that walking on walls would make your stalking easier, it actually tends to pose a problem in practice. When trying to just get closer to wall, at times you end up directly on top of it, which isn’t ideal. However, after a while - if you manage to get used to the controls – it’s a rewarding gameplay experience.
Predator is, by far, this humble reviewer’s favorite portion of the game. With auto targeting for both long range attacks as well as hand to hand combat, it’s one of the easiest to get used to. The emphasis on silent stalking rather than “run and destroy it,” is a little disappointing, as you are not able to use the weapon’s full capabilities.
Multiplayer is a lot of fun, giving brand new challenges after you have mastered the controls. The games are not too big, and provide just the right space to get a feel for what your favorite species can do.
Overall the game is extremely enjoyable, and those of you with a love of the genre and characters will get an extra kick out of it. I give the game a 7.5 out of 10. Unless you love AVP, it is definitely a rent before you buy title.
Play on.
Posted by Jesse in Latest News, Movies, Reviews on March 10th, 2010
The art that stays with us, that moves us, that captivates, beguiles and enthralls us, is the kind that goes to extremes.
No comedy is as funny as when the action therein is taken to extremes of the farcical and absurd. Film noir depicts human beings in their most extreme states of moral decay, asking questions of us as to whether we can be decent people in an indecent world. Superheroes inspire by operating on the extreme side of nobility. Horror films thrive by confronting the extremes of evil, pain and death and forcing us to confront terrors deep and even instinctual within our conscious as well as our subconscious.
The cinematic phenomenons of late – whether one would evaluate these pictures as “good” or “bad” – are no exception. The extravagance of Avatar’s fantasy is matched by the outrageousness of the financial and technical resources required to create it. The obsessive devotion of the Twi-Hards have made unlikely blockbusters of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.
There’s something compelling about extremes, perhaps because we tend to look at our world in terms of the day-to-day normalcy that drives so many of us to genre films in the first place. For a moments escape from the rational, the trade-off is suspension of disbelief; it is in the talent of gifted filmmakers that they can make us — even if only for two hours — accept that a man can fly, or the dead can walk the earth, or that the full moon can turn a man into a monster.
When this exchange pays off, we remember it for the rest of our lives, and great movies are made of these moments.
And yet, there’s another side to this extreme, a cackling, raving Mr. Hyde to quality’s Dr. Jekyll. The phrase most often used to describe this extreme is “So bad, it’s good.” However, that oft-used phrase is a gross over-simplification – not all “bad movies” are in some antithetical way, enjoyable. Films where little fun is derived from the experience of viewing them and where - instead of being glued to the screen, disbelieving at what is unfolding - you are numbed and pained by the senselessness the filmmaker is subjecting their audience to. Films like Monster A-Go-Go, Hobgoblins and the infamous Manos: The Hands of Fate, are films acceptable only with the blessed chaser of Mystery Science Theater.
More happily, “So bad it’s good,” that beloved contradiction in terms, applies to a unique few films that, either despite of or because of their obvious flaws, have become cult classics in their own regard.
Since his death in the late-1970’s, filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. has become a legend for films whose earnestness and ambitions were woefully undeserved by incompetent execution. In films like 1955’s Bride of the Monster, and the immortal Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), the very laws of time and space do not apply. Day and night exist within one scene. Graveyards are constructed of cardboard, and paper plates from another world buzz Los Angeles on fishing wire. Lines such as “Future events such as these will effect you in the future…” are spoken stiffly, but with utter sincerity.
Wood has since been canonized as the “worst filmmaker who ever lived,” but what qualifies a film as “bad?” Wood’s films are surreal for being so shoddily conceived and produced, and in terms of objective film technique, truly do qualify as awful. Yet, who isn’t entertained by watching Plan 9 From Outer Space? And doesn’t that count for something?
Other films, such as Phil Tucker’s 1953 3-D opus Robot Monster, or Tom Graeff’s heartfelt and bizarre Teenagers from Outer Space (1959), don’t just flirt with the irrational, they embody it. These are films where plot coherence, believable performances, and technical craft don’t apply, and yet they’re defiantly entertaining. Perhaps because they were made by filmmakers who so believed in what they were doing, it didn’t matter that they were utterly unequipped to execute their visions.
Enter, Birdemic: Shock and Terror.
The interweb has been abuzz for almost a year about this one; whispers here and there of a phantom in the pop culture ether, something special waiting and lurking to pounce on an unsuspecting public. And the trailer! Subject of countless links and forwards, it’s the piece of film the prompt most, upon seeing it, to ask: “Is this a joke?”
People are clamoring for this show, but this is no Paranormal Activity style phenomenon. This might be something much more meaningful, as Birdemic is a bird of an entirely different feather. And the “why” of this story is as fascinating as the “how.”
Written, produced and directed by software salesman James Nguyen over a period of four years, shot and set in Northern California, and being described, officially, as “a romantic thriller partly inspired by Hitchcock’s The Birds,” Birdemic is getting a lot of attention and hype, with many keen on calling the film the new Worst Film of All Time. Famously, Nguyen generated hype for the film by crashing Park City during Sundance (which denied admission to his film), and driving up and down the street for a week in a van covered in fake dead birds, dried blood, and signs asking provocative questions like “Why did the eagles and vultures attacked?” [sic]. Pointedly, Entertainment Weekly recently described it as “the film which answers the question of what Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds would have looked like if it had been made not by Hollywood’s legendary Master of Suspense, but by a mid-level Silicon Valley software salesman.”
That’s not even the half of it.
Our story (let’s go with that term) begins with Rod (Alan Bagh), a mid-level salesman (of some kind…), who we meet as he drives through the opening credits. And then keeps driving. Ten minutes of driving under his belt, Rod stops into a small-town diner and spies Nathalie (lovely Whitney Moore), a former school mate whose modeling career (operating out of a photomat in a strip-mall) is just taking off. Intrigued, they exchange numbers (I think: their conversation moves outside and with the traffic and non-existent sound recording, it would be easier to hear their conversation in deep space) and begin a courtship (their first date is at a restaurant in a strip mall – is there some kind of theme here?).
Rod gets advice from his jocular friend (in one scene he plays basketball, and later can be counted on to make a humping gesture with little prompting), makes a killer $10 million sale at work, watches the news (apparently global warming is breaking up “sea ice” and really messing with the polar bears…) and gets a fairly aggressive sales pitch for solar panels. This scene alone counts for nine and half hours of screen time. Nathalie, meanwhile, models, gets advice from her “unsupportive” mom (who thrusts her hips much less often than Rod’s friend, thankfully) and goes dancing with Rod. (The dancing scene is a highlight – they’re the only ones in the club!)
Consummating their new found love in a nearby motel room (wait, they both have their own homes! Why in a hotel room?! I guess it’s just supposed to be kinda kinky), the two go to sleep, completely unprepared for what awaits them the next morning…
40 minutes into the film, the titular Birdemic begins. And… words fail to describe. Anyone who has seen the trailer has had a taste of this, but that doesn’t prepare one for the full visceral magnitude of the sequence. Static background plates are suddenly molested by CGI eagles and vultures who hover in place, before dive-bombing the landscape and, I kid you not, exploding on impact. Superimposed CGI fire and smoke out of a first generation PC game illustrate nature’s wrath, and our heroes are forced to arm themselves with coat hangers (!) and flee their motel to find sanctuary out on the road.
Along the way, Ron and Nathalie pick up couple Ramsey (Adam Sessa, who inexplicably has a machine gun with unlimited ammo stowed away in his mini van) and Becky (Catherine Batcha), as well as kids Tony and Susan (Colton Osborne and Janae Caster), and hit the road in search of… a place free of marauding, CGI birds, one supposes.
Their travels take them up the coast, and their adventures along the way have to be seen to be believed. A masked “bird expert” is on hand during a roadside picnic (!) to explain that the birds are attacking because their rather put-out by global warming. A “tree hugging” backwoods hippie too, blames mankind’s presumption and increasingly large carbon footprint on our feathered friends turning on us, in what is perhaps the film’s oddest aside (and, as one may gather, that’s really saying something in this picture). Stopping for supplies at a fully operational gas station (the effects of the Birdemic are scattershot, to say the least), our heroes bemoan that the current ecological crisis has caused gas prices to shoot up to $100 a gallon (one has to commend the attendant on his vigilance: in the event of a mass bird attack, I’d be the first to abandon my minimum wage job at a gas station!).
Oh, friends… the joys of Birdemic are many.
The nonsensical plot would make Luis Bunuel yearn for a little literalness. The first half of the film offers a pointless “love story” between two characters so ill-defined and without chemistry, that it makes it hard to complain that there’s no pay off to it, as once the bird attack begins, we’re off like lightning.
The camera work is scattered, as every attempt to juice up the proceedings with an interesting angle or some camera movement is bungled by trembling operating or blindingly bright lighting.
The sound design warbles between inaudible and deafening: dialogue anywhere but an interior is almost completely washed out by traffic, water, wind, etc., while the bird attacks are greeted with a cacophony of ambient screeching that literally had the entire screening holding their ears, like poor James Franciscus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. “ONE AT A TIME!!!”
Then, of course, there’s the special effects, and man are they special. The CGI used to create both the birds and the effects of their attacks are so odd, so statically one-dimensional and false, that – coupled with the film’s time-and-space-defying editing – the entire film comes off as a surreal, fever-dream of Lynch-ian proportions. One cannot be sure one has actually seen what has just happened.
But before you can raise a drink and proclaim “It’s the end of the world!” the movie ends, on a shot that seemingly does notend. The entirety of the end credits play across one definingly silly shot of the birds in flight and our survivors (who will they be?) contemplating an uncertain future. The ending answers little, but does confirm for the viewer that they may have just experienced a miracle.
Congratulations must go to Severin Films, Birdemic’s distributor, who should be very genuinely proud of their judgment; Birdemic: Shock and Terror could easily become a camp classic on par with the above mentioned Plan 9 From Outer Space.
I cannot recommend the experience of this picture enough; if the above films qualify as desirable viewing, than Birdemic: Shock and Terror is a cinematic milestone you won’t want to miss, as a new chapter in Z-movie ineptitude is written on the screen before your tear-filled eyes. Lovers of the bizarre, of the unaccountably senseless (like me!) will have a blast, as this is one picture very deserving of the growing phenomenon surrounding it.
Is Birdemic art? That depends on your definition. But it is as extreme as one can get.
Click here to visit the official site!
Posted by Ashleigh in Books, Home Page Top Story, Latest News, Reviews on March 9th, 2010
“As this hilariously horrifying prequel begins, the Bennet sisters are enjoying a peaceful life in the English countryside. They idle away the days reading, sewing, practicing instruments, and daydreaming about future husbands—until, suddenly, corpses are springing from the earth. As bodies pile up, Elizabeth Bennet takes charge and transforms into the zombie-slaying machine readers know and love from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.“
Anyone who has spent some time on the Internet is probably familiar with the phenomenon of fanfiction. If you’re not, allow me to explain: fanfiction are works of fiction written by fans of a particular book, movie, video game, etc. Honestly, if it exists in some form of media, there’s probably a fanfiction about it – there’s even I Love Lucy fanfiction (if you value your sanity at all, then please, in the name of all that is good in this world, do not look it up).
These fan-derived works may or may not contain characters from the original but they almost always take place in the same world of the original. Some are good, most are awful. Like, forcing-you-to-lose-faith-in-humanity awful.
Make no mistake: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a work of fanfiction, but the good kind — one that can suck you in with relative ease if you’re willing to turn logic off during a few key moments.
Allow me to just say that the entire book is a loving-crafted tribute to both the work of Jane Austen and horror in general. From the dedication (“To Jane. We kid because we love.”) to the settings, author Steve Hockensmith obviously took great pains to create an original tale that’s set in a world that’s recognizably Austen’s.
The characters are also familiar. Whether you’re a fan of Austen’s original works, or a fan of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies you’ll recognize each character’s subtle quirks and personalities that were established by the older works.
Despite Hockensmith’s amazing attention to detail, it doesn’t match its predecessor from a comedic standpoint. This is mostly because the prequel doesn’t have the same luxury of the original, in that it didn’t have an already-established and beloved work of fiction to take liberties with.
It’s a shame because I truly believe that if this was a stand-alone book with the character’s names changed and didn’t carry the Pride and Prejudice tag, no one would even notice that the absurd humor found in the original is lacking.
In fact, it could be said that the book’s pedigree is also its biggest drawback. I’ve read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and I felt myself continuously comparing the original to the prequel. Hockensmith writes in a more modern style whereas Grahame-Smith had Austen’s original prose to fall back on; the prequel places more of an emphasis on action and gore than the original.
But overall, those complaints don’t detract from the book’s overall experience.
Dreadfuls is a damn fun read. If you’re a zombie fan with a healthy sense of humor, I guarantee that this book will latch onto your brain with rotting hands and refuse to let go. Read it, if only for the quirkiness of it all.
Posted by Bryan in Latest News, Reviews, Television & Web Series on March 8th, 2010
Now things are really starting to cook. While Caprica has done a good job of mining the dramatic fallout of events from the pilot, charting the separate and collective grief of the main characters, it was only a matter of time before the writers needed to make a concerted move forward in plotting. This week’s episode, “Know Thy Enemy,” represented that first step forward, but it was also a slightly ginger one.
Most of my admiration of the series thusfar has stemmed from its emphasis on character and world-building. Plot wasn’t forestalled so much as secondary to fleshing out this odd world and its inhabitants. Although the story in “Enemy” focused on an event that occurred within the Pilot (Daniel’s hiring of the Tauron mob to steal a part from his competitor), it also introduced new characters and new developments that provide us with an idea of where the show is heading.
The first of these new characters is Daniel’s aforementioned rival, Tomas Vergis. Much of the episode is dedicated to Vergis’s arrival on Caprica, and his declaration to Daniel that he will have revenge for the slaying of his two co-workers/godchildren. At first he claims he wants to help Daniel by buying the Caprica City Buccaneers so that Graystone Industries can get the money they need to perfect the MCP. Daniel doesn’t believe it, though, and finally comes to the decision that Vergis is merely trying to ingratiate himself into Caprican society to steal military contracts from Graystone. In a pivotal scene, Vergis reveals that Daniel’s barking up the right tree, but there’s more to it. He wants to own the C-Bucs because he knows how much Daniel loves them. “My dream is to tear up your dream,” he says with a smile.
This plotline unfortunately had to do so much heavy lifting to both introduce Vergis, and then tie him into the proceedings that there wasn’t much room for nuance. The same could be said for the subplot involving the other new character introduction this week, genre favorite James Marsters as STO fringe leader Barnabus. We get a sufficiently creepy introduction to the man, with a strip of barbed-wire strapped around his arm, opining about the necessity of pain. But at this point, Marsters is merely being set up as a dangerous ally for Lacey — unwilling to advance further in their coalition until he understands more about her motives.
Thankfully, the pair of other subplots were given the room to breathe that has characterized the series’ strength so far. First was Sister Clarice’s desperate attempt to infiltrate the Graystone household in order to poach technological data from Daniel’s database. Though the other members of her pluralistic marriage harbor doubts, she exhibits some unforeseen cunning in tricking Amanda by getting her drunk and then accepting an invitation into the laboratory to get a good luck at the Zoebot.
Speaking of Zoe, she was allowed to further explore her relationship with the young technician, Philomon. He’s so lovesick that he finds himself awkwardly romanticizing his robot, until Zoe takes matters into her own hands by inviting him on a date in V-world, under the pseudonym of “Rachel.” This is the kind of plot that doesn’t serve any sort of overarching purpose in the show’s trajectory, yet it provides great shades in character that you don’t get in a lot of television.
Now that they’ve established the rivalry between Daniel and Tomas, I’m hopeful that it can continue to be explored with as much nuance as the plots up until now have been dealt with. In some ways, this show is oddly reminding me of HBO’s Deadwood. Like that show, the writers are accumulating a huge collection of characters, each with their own unique quirks and motivations, and then throwing them together in a community to see how they react against each other. Deadwood was pretty brilliant from the outset, but really picked up in season two when the world and characters were well enough established to be left to their own devices, free from excessive plot contrivance. The same could very well hold true for Caprica, but for a season that could be largely about setting the table, it’s been pretty darn engaging so far.
Posted by Peter Schwotzer in Books, Reviews, Terror Tales with Peter D. Schwotzer on March 8th, 2010
“Theatre director Beth Ortiz is the newest resident of The Castle, an exclusive Los Angeles artists’ community. Anxious actors aren’t all Beth has to worry about in her new space, however, for The Castle has a secret history of madness and murder, and a celebrity artist who develops a strange fixation on Beth.
And The Castle also happens to be haunted.
By some particularly uneasy spirits.”
Lisa Morton is probably best known for her short fiction (she won the Bram Stoker Award for short fiction in 2006) and for her non-fiction (she won the Bram Stoker Award for Non-Fiction in 2008 for A Hallowe’en Anthology: Literary and Historical Writings Over the Centuries). She is also a screenwriter and was editor for the anthology Midnight Walk which I reviewed at the link.
Castle of Los Angeles is a genuinely creepy story about The Castle, an artist’s community and theater in LA. Beth Ortiz moves into to take over the theater company and soon finds out that it is supposedly haunted.
Lisa fills her story with diverse characters; a genius artist that dabbles in the occult, prostitutes that are steadily disappearing one by one and other artists and talent behind the scenes of a theater company. I found the characters wonderfully written and believable, I could make an emotional connection with them and that is what always makes a great book as far as I am concerned.
The story also has a few nice twists and turns that will pleasantly surprise you. No spoilers from me though, buy the book.
My favorite part of the story besides the chills it provided was the detail she provides on the behind the scenes working of a play. I have been to a few plays in my life and never really thought about all the work that is needed behind the scenes to successfully pull it off.
Haunted places and ghost stories are some of my most favorite reads and Castle of Los Angeles ranks up with there with some of my all time favorites like Ghost Story and The Shining.
If you are looking for a well written, page turner of a ghost story you would be hard pressed to find anything published in the last few years as good as this.
Visit Lisa at her website www.lisamorton.com.
You can purchase the book at Gray Friar Press or at Amazon.com
Posted by Jesse in Home Page Top Story, Latest News, Movies, Reviews on March 5th, 2010
With Alice in Wonderland, the House of Mouse goes back down the Rabbit Hole, this time with Tim Burton leading the way. The result is eye-candy that almost equals the hallucinatory visuals of Walt Disney’s original animated pic. Tykes especially will go nuts for this.
While all the familiar characters and elements are there, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter and his mad tea party, the menace of the Queen of Hearts, etc., Linda Woolverton’s screenplay does take the film into some unexpected (and some not so unexpected) directions.
First and foremost, this new Alice is not necessarily a straight adaptation of either of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland books (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass), but instead — much like Steven Spielberg’s 1992 pastiche Hook — is a semi-sequel, and, again like Hook, a hinge of the film’s plot is the necessity for the protagonist to regain memories of a lost youth.
Our star here is an older Alice (19), quietly contemptuous of the strictures and pretentiousness of Victorian society, and on the verge of womanhood and marriage (gulp!). This time, her adventures down the rabbit hole arise not from the boredom of Carroll’s young Alice, but from teen aged angst and unwillingness to play-the-game as a young woman in a typically repressive, 19th century society.
This is the beginning of the film’s ultimate simplification and literalization of Carroll’s original text, a development that may irk some purists but that, honestly, does make the intentionally anarchic and deliriously nonsensical text more accessible to a commercial, family audience.
Tim Burton gets much credit for being one of modern cinema’s choice surrealists, but aside from the requisite swirly landscapes and muted technicolor bonanza, his Alice is as straight a shooter as they come.
The plot — the very existence of which is something Carroll would have railed against — is the focus, with Alice arriving in a Wonderland that, Narnia-like, is in the grip of an evil despot that has driven all in the kingdom to even madder distraction. The Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, the Chesire Cat, are all refugees in a world that no longer seems to embrace madness for its own sake, but instead lives under the boot heel of a vicious tyrant whose own personal madness sets the standard for everyone else.
Instead of choosing to escape back to her world of (admittedly boring, but perhaps necessary) order, this Alice’s quest becomes one of defiance, in which she must literally take-up arms against the Queen of Hearts and restore the benevolent (if not ethereally creepy) White Queen to proper sovereignty.
Gone is the literary allegory that permeates Carroll’s text, replaced with a straight ahead fantasy adventure. But, most audiences won’t mind a bit: there’s far too much going on.
The Knave of Hearts hunts Alice and her gang through a Dore’-like forest of impossibility. Great armies of red playing cards battle the White Queen’s knights on a chessboard the size of a football field. Alice confronts the dragon-like Jabberwocky (voiced wonderfully by veteran-to-beat-all-veterans Christopher Lee) in an apocalyptic showdown.
And, let’s not forget, it’s all in 3-D.
This most recent bent towards the stereoscopic has yielded some great examples of how a film’s story can be genuinely enhanced by the format, namely last year’s brilliant Up and, of course, James Cameron’s 800 lb. blue behemoth Avatar. While watching Alice in Wonderland, however, one might be surprised to find a return to an older school of 3-D methodology, that being that every five seconds something new (a leering, disembodied cat head, smoke from a caterpillars hookah pipe, scrolls being unrolled, etc.) is being hurled at the audience. It reminds one of shows like House of Wax, Revenge of the Creature, Friday the 13th 3-D and Jaws 3-D.
The goal doesn’t seem to be to create the illusion of depth: Burton’s usually formal compositions are distinctly (and often, rather pleasingly) two dimensional. Instead, the 3-D of Alice in Wonderland qualifies as a true gimmick: a false, visceral jolt.
Overall, the film is carried along as much by the appropriately eccentric performances as by the visual buffet at hand.
Mia Wasikowska makes for a charmingly sedate, if not rather blank Alice, but this can be attributed to a blandly written character than to the talents of the actress.
Helena Bonham Carter has a devilish time as the hyper-cephalic Queen of Hearts, and any scene she’s in is easily stolen by her bulbous, Queen-Elizabeth-meets-Joan-Crawford theatrics: a drinking game based on her frequent outbursts of ”Off with her head!!” would result in deep coma.
Crispin Glover has another great shot to strut his whacky stuff, and he’s a welcome, authentically crazed presence.
Anne Hathaway is a lot of fun in a somewhat out-of-character role as the White Queen, presented here as an airy, but quite driven, matriarch, that’s all cold politeness and spacey magnetism.
Considerable praise must be heaped upon the voice talent, who — along with the excellent character animation — lend real life to completely unreal characters. The great Stephen Fry bequeaths a seductively charming purr to the Chesire Cat. Michael Sheen’s nervous vocal tics fit perfectly the White Rabbit. Alan Rickman is extraordinarily welcome as the wise, wry Caterpillar.
Of course, the real attraction, and the expected fireworks of the show, come from Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter. Depp, in perhaps his most outragous make-up ever, lets loose in a way that makes Jack Sparrow look like Donnie Brasco.
Over-the-top doesn’t exist in this world, and nor should it; he’s having a blast, and — as long as he’s on the screen — so do we.
Technically, the film is the expected marvel. Darius Wolski (Pirates of the Caribbean), one of today’s most reliably dynamic cinematographers brings Robert Stromberg’s (Avatar) designs to life, resulting in a beautifully fogged, diffused and tactile Wonderland, that makes no attempt to be ”real,” and is all the more engaging for it.
Danny Elfman presents another lush score that compliments the film well; his and Burton’s collaboration has reached such a point of familiarity and confidence, that it’s hard to imagine one existing without the other.
Burton fans should be overjoyed by this one. The director’s output of the last decade has been mixed to be sure, and anyone expecting the perfection of Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood will not get it here, but this is easily Burton’s most heartful and satisfying film since 2003’s Big Fish; more coherent (but less fun?) than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and less compromised than Sweeny Todd.
Those desiring fidelity to the source material will be satisfied in most respects: while not a straight-forward adaptation, the key elements fans expect from anything called Alice in Wonderland will find them in spades. It’s hard to imagine children won’t walk out of this one eccstatic, either. The fantasy quotient and spectacle is more than enough to make this a must on the big screen.
Posted by Bryan in Reviews, Television & Web Series on March 4th, 2010
For all its faults, Lost has always been nothing if not unique. Although it has constantly evolved since season one, incorporating more elements and shifting focus regularly, the show has proven to be inimitable. Since becoming a hit with its premiere in 2004, every network has attempted targeting what makes the show tick, in an effort to replicate its success. There have been those that looked to the heavily serialized science-fiction elements (FlashForward, V, Heroes), and then there have been those that went with the “everybody-is-connected” thread (Six Degrees, Reunion, The Nine). The problem with all these (short-lived) imitators was they didn’t realize that Lost works so well because it fuses so many seemingly disparate elements into a cohesive whole.
This week’s episode, the Sayid-centric “Sundown,” perfectly embodied the show’s balance and precision — providing a hefty helping of philosophical headiness before careening into an action-packed thrill ride. This has always been Lost’s greatest draw for me. Sure, it’s fun to extract meaning from the show’s proclivity for philosophical references, whether they be in the character’s names or a book someone happens to be reading (heck, Lostpedia.com is a downright addicting website), but they can often only take you so far.
When it comes right down to it, Lost is still a network show, prone to the restraints implied therein. On a purely intellectual level, it’s never going to approach the subtle humanist ponderings of a Deadwood, or the detailed societal examination of The Wire. But that’s okay. What the show lacks in those respects, it has always made up for in its sheer ability to thrill. Television isn’t a medium ideally suited to the action sequence, but Lost has always pulled them off with flair. From the opening minutes of the Pilot where Jack pulled Claire from beneath burning wreckage, to Hurley running down a swarm of others in his VW bus, the show consistently finds ways to encapsulate tension and release on a television budget. 
The most impressive thing about “Sundown” was the way it utilized that familiar tendency for jaw-dropping action sequences, while simultaneously making it relevant and necessary for the storyline. To elaborate, many have griped that the recently-introduced quarrel between Jacob and the Man-In-Black has come along too quickly to have so much relevance to the conclusion of the entire series. These complaints certainly had merit — why should the viewers feel invested in these two God-like supernatural entities as opposed to the characters we’ve followed all along?
The final passage of this episode, where Sayid eerily drifts through the fallen bodies, “Catch a Falling Star” twinkling on the soundtrack, were both spooky as a coda to the violence he had helped perpetuate, but also oddly poignant. The firm arrival of Sayid onto the so-called “dark side” effectively solves the show’s dilemma — this familiar character is now a part of the story they want to tell. I’m not sure how much of this comes from Naveen Andrews performance, but it’s key that through all his horrific actions – first drowning Dogan and then slitting Lennon’s throat, he’s still recognizably Sayid. While Terry O’Quinn continues to do outstanding work, he no longer playing Locke. It should help now to have the actual character of Sayid employed by the Man in Black, to allow the storyline to cohere without us losing investment.
The jury is still out this season on who we are supposed to side with in this ultimate conflict between Jacob and the Man in Black. Ongoing inferences that the dark represents evil have been toyed around with, notably in the previous episode where Jack raised a fuss about being pushed along and watched his entire life by Jacob in his lighthouse. Although the Man in Black kills many, many people in this episode, the scene where Dogan reveals the origins of his relationship with Jacob is very telling. It seems that Jacob is willing to provide people with the opportunity to have the one thing they want (in Dogan’s case his son’s life), with the qualifier that they cannot directly interact with them ever again. It only further complicates the quarrel between the two entities, and intrigues me as to how their ultimate relationship affects our characters.
Amidst all this I’ve barely mentioned Sayid’s actual plot, including the flash-sideways story that finds him still pining for Nadia, now married to his brother. The whole thing serves as a nice grace note for the character, and makes the final payoff of his embracing the dark side all the more potent. Overall, I think this rates as another very good episode to begin this final chapter of the story. In a way, it’s almost more reassuring now that they’ve nailed these opening episodes — the creators have had so much time to mull over the ending that I’m confident it won’t disappoint, which leaves only the journey there as the last question mark. So far, so good.
Posted by Ashleigh in Books, Latest News, Reviews on March 2nd, 2010
So you think you know classic literature, eh? Maybe you’ve read some Shakespeare and Brontë in your day, and you consider yourself something of an expert when it comes to the books English teachers love and high school students fear. All right, hotshot, then you should remember that scene at the very beginning of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth Bennet first encounters Mr. Darcy.
Poor Elizabeth is sitting by herself at a ball. Mr. Darcy’s friend sees this and urges him to go dance with her, to which he responds by insulting her. Understandably upset, Elizabeth takes a knife out of her boot and is prepared to slit Mr. Darcy’s throat until a zombie horde suddenly crashes through the door, devouring anyone in their path.
Revenge will have to wait as Elizabeth takes her place with her four sisters in the “Pentagram of Death” formation; the five young women hacking and slashing their way through the undead masses.
Wait, sorry, that’s the beginning of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a book that proves anything good can be made better with a heaping helping of zombies. It’s science, folks.
But what led Elizabeth to become a hunter of the undead in the first place? Why aren’t the dead staying, well, dead? Why are poker games broadcast on ESPN when everyone knows that poker isn’t really a sport? I mean, seriously.
Enter Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith, a prequel that will answer two of those questions while exploring Elizabeth’s earlier romantic adventures – hopefully amidst all the blood and action of the original. Because, as all horror fans know, it’s just not a proper zombie story until someone gets eaten.
The book also features fifteen illustrations by artist Patrick Arrasmith, adding a visual element to Elizabeth’s origin story.
Dreadfuls will be published by Quirk Books (which also published the monster-meets-classic-literature-mashups Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters) and will be available for $12.95 wherever books are sold on March 23. Audiobook and eBook formats (for the Kindle and Sony Reader) will also be available for purchase.
In the meantime, look out for FM’s review of Dreadfuls coming soon.
(more…)
“Thirty years ago, a depraved assault during a Halloween costume ball shattered a young woman’s mind, turning her into a brutal mass murderer. Dressed in her rival’s blood-soaked wedding gown, the legend of the Butcher Bride was born. Now, decades later, everyone who enters the Silas Mansion will encounter a frightening spirit ravenous to satisfy perverse appetites. Death is the only escape. Here comes The Bride…”
